Another Lucky Find

While repairing a book on the life and paintings of Jean Fragonard, I was happy to stumble upon such a beautiful painting. A fair amount of his paintings were of cherubs and fairies, wealthy lovers and fat, rosy cheeked children, and lacked a certain depth that usually attracts me to a piece of art. But this particular painting manages to reflect Fragonard's warmth and cheerfulness, while still portraying a believable moment in a girl's life. The attitude and expression of the girl's face is far more natural seeming to me than many posed smiles or lofty looks in other portraits of the same era. I imagine that the girl was told to pose while reading and, if she were anything like myself and it was even a half-decent book, she became caught up in the story and forgot to affect a look of coy enjoyment or sophisticated contempt. The rich, warm, yellow tones of the painting are very appealing and make the girl seem far more real and breathe life into the painting. I love working in a place where one day I can just happen to find a painting that I love, and the next day and I run across a beautiful poem, and then next day I can get sucked into reading a new and exciting story. Not to mention the amazing things it has done for my stores of random trivia knowledge.

The Reader by Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Wind and Window Flower by Robert Frost

LOVERS, forget your love,
  And list to the love of these,
She a window flower,
  And he a winter breeze.

When the frosty window veil
  Was melted down at noon,
And the cagèd yellow bird
  Hung over her in tune,

He marked her through the pane,
  He could not help but mark,
And only passed her by,
  To come again at dark.

He was a winter wind,
  Concerned with ice and snow,
Dead weeds and unmated birds,
  And little of love could know.

But he sighed upon the sill,
  He gave the sash a shake,
As witness all within
  Who lay that night awake.

Perchance he half prevailed
  To win her for the flight
From the firelit looking-glass
  And warm stove-window light.

But the flower leaned aside
  And thought of naught to say,
And morning found the breeze
  A hundred miles away

Its beautiful and terrifying at the same time

Baile Tehuantepec

Diego Rivera

I work in the Book Repair Deptartment of the BYU library, and I run across some pretty interesting books as I work. In the past few weeks my favorites were How to Lie With Statistics, Zsa Zsa Gabor's How to Catch a Man, How to Keep a Man, and How to Get Rid of a Man, and a book containing Diego Rivera's complete works. Its been making me miss California real hard. And not just because the paintings often have that southwest, Mexico feel, but because so many of his paintings were murals done in public places and beautiful homes. You were a lot more likely to run across public art in California than here in Provo or up in Kennewick where my family lives now. Even though I grew up in a small town, it seemed like there was more value placed on the beautification of public places than there is out here. There may not have been a whole lot of people in town, but the places we visited were always asthetically pleasing, unlike here in Utah where the goal seems to be to get as much building or advertisement as possible into every space. Views are blocked, spaces are crowded, and everything seems to sprawl without direction or meaning. It makes me feel like a hamster thrown into one of those complex system of tubes. Everything is well maintained and organized, but its full of unnecessary turns and hills that could have been avoided if anyone had taken a little while to plan instead of just connecting tube after tube. As Anne would say, there is absolutely no scope for imagination in a place like this!

Gasp!

I only have nine days left in India? Inconceivable! No really, I am having serious trouble comprehending the fact that I'm leaving here and going back home in less than two weeks. I will never forget the first day I spent here, and my family will probably never forget the first time I called home and couldn't stop crying long enough to form coherent sentence. For those first couple of days it felt like four months was forever, but then somehow I got caught up and lost in all of my work and in the joy of the people I was meeting and interacting with and the beauty that wasn't hard to find once I stopped crying long enough for my tears to dry. I never would have thought that living in a country on the other side of the world could teach me so much about myself. I knew that I would have the opportunity to learn many things about India's history and culture, as well as learning more about the rest of the world of which I now feel I belong. As my dad keeps telling me, now that I've made through this I know that can make it through anything! Not that its all been fun trips to the beach and sari shopping . . .

Things I Will Not Miss

• Squatter toilets
• Over-sized crows
• Squeaky Chipmunk/Squirrel things
• Boiled ochre twice a day
• Open sewage systems

Things I Will Definitely Miss

• All of my new Indian friends
• Streets lined with bushes that blossom every day
• Spending nights under the stars on the rooftop
• Swimming in the Indian Ocean
• Play cards on the second floor balcony and enjoying the night breezes

So a few weeks ago my camera battery died, and then my camera charger disappeared, and then my camera was either lost or stolen. So I went a bought a replacement and got a little picture happy and took tons of photos, some of which I'll post here. Some of my favorites are pictures of all of the cool houses in between the house where I sleep and the Program House, were I have Telugu class and where the cooks live and prepare and serve all of our meals.

Field Work

So here are some pictures from my most recent group meeting. My translator and I went and met with the women right outside their homes, so I got to meet and play with all of the children while the women were filling out the surveys. It was the Indian version of a cul-de-sac, with two and three story buildings on three sides, making a U-shaped area facing onto the street. All of the children and the women and the old people and the animals all sit outside in the little common area in between the houses, and there was really a great community, neighborhood feel to the whole place. Anyways, nearly all of them begged to have their pictures taken, and I was more than happy to oblige. Also included is a picture of all of the women in the group whose meeting I observed.