First weeks of March

It's been snowing today. It looks beautiful, but I miss the early California spring with new blossoms and bulbs.

I'm enjoying my new adventure in Utah. My daughter Julie and I enjoyed a great exhibition of African-American art and some from their permanent collection at the University of Utah. 

Here are a few of the variety of works and messages...see what you make of them!

This is the Place (Salt Lake Valley)

Noah Davis' 2008 "Black Wall Street" refers to the once-prosperous African-American neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma known as Black Wall Street. In 1921 a white mob burned Greenwood to the ground in what is known as the "Tulsa Race Riot" or the "Tulsa Massacre."

Immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago, Leroy Clarke's "Now,"a call for equality and the freedom from colonialism

An unusual/ironical elaborate tapestry, symbolic?

Isaac Julien's 2003 "Incognito" is a prop used in his film "Baltimore" portraying Black cultural icons

Jordan Casteel's 2016 "The Kiteman" portrays a man he observed across the street from his studio in the Adam Clayton Powell courtyard in Harlem, NYC, expressing his joy by dancing and flying kites.

Mickalene Thomas' 2002 Panthera, rhinestones on acrylic on birch panel. The panther is a symbol of Black femininity. Beauty can accompany strength, as in my daughter and youngest grand-daughter!

1917 Bingham Canyon (known as Kennecott) copper mine, opened in 1906, the world's largest excavation at the time. The Chuquicamata copper mine I visited in northern Chile is the world's largest open pit mine (opened in 1882) today.

I love so many of the Utah landscape paintings

all of them!

I'm anxious to see Utah in the spring, summer and fall, too. Fortunately masks cover mouth and nose, not the eyes! 

(Salt Lake City) But keep wearing yours!!

                                          

Phoebe loves steps and stairs

So fun to finally be with family, enjoying hikes, food, games, songs

whether it be outdoors on a nice day, or indoors now that I've been fully vaccinated. Nick, Hannah, Simon, and Evie (children of my son Marc and Fernanda) invited me to say good-bye to their Brazilian great-grandparents returning to Brazil.

This month, particularly this week celebrating International Women's Day, we have many amazing women to acknowledge. One is commemorated by a plaque in Rock Canyon Park. I'm grateful for all my courageous, and mostly unsung female ancestors, as well as my sisters and daughters alive today. The Lord loves his daughters!

And I hope we all love the beauties of nature and all the small blessings of everyday life, which include you, my friends and family, near and far. May you all be well.