here's a face worth remembering.
this mural has been going downhill for the last two years we've lived on 12th street. it took me this long to get pictures. here's another view:
this kid in this picture is malia. when she was a preschooler, i was one of her "teachers". she was a big favorite of mine. this mural, which is clearly not long for the world, really captures malia's personality.
then, just a few yards away, she's in another one. this one's bigger, and in better shape, and i hope it stays that way.
malia and her family live on 12th street too, and i am not at all surprised that she has made a celebrity of herself. she was, in fact, the flower girl at my wedding. don't believe me?
i walked down the aisle to the sounds of her shouting "where's my mom?!" directly in front of me.
i made that little pagliacci outfit, too. she was a dream.
of course, my marrying days are behind me. in fact, until the day when this can happen, for anyone, in every state of the union, i think marriage as we know it "legally" is a putrid, desperate display of hypocritical bullshit.
have a lovely sunday!
what is nicer on a breezy summer friday night than to have a world renowned symphony playing in your neighbhorhood ballpark?
as usual, we have our landlord and city councilman frank di cicco to thank for it. it was one of the nicest neighborhood events we had ever seen. flannery enjoyed it tremendously (mostly because she thought that every time the audience of hundreds applauded, that it was for her.)
free to you here courtesy of notsoswift.com: the rare video and audio clip we like to call flannery: the movie (score by the philadelphia orchestra).
our stroll around the neighborhood provided many sights: a shopping cart full of trophies...
...and a mural of a really ugly baby and the virgin mary covered in money. this is a topic we've brushed on before.
on arch between second and third, this mural is against the back wall of a parking lot. it is hard to see in the picture unfortunately, but the blue foliage of the tree in the painting is "growing" out of the remnants of a real tree -- perhaps espaliered -- still clinging in a ghostly way to the wall itself.
when we parked the car last night to go to dinner we were tickled to find this charcoal portrait by todd marrone, the artist who had agreed to handpaint every cover of the "lost" night rally issue. bless you, todd. i own a few originals, and he designed a bookplate for me as well (a christmas gift from tim.) wanted to make sure that this image got recorded before this week's rain swept it away!
here is a portion of the beautiful new mural at spruce and juniper streets, on the side of the william way gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community center.
this mural celebrating progress in the women's movement is at about... 13th and locust. this angle is the result of trying not to include power lines in the photo.
this was always one of my very favorite murals. when i realized it was going to come down, i walked up with the camera. quite by luck (if it can be called that), i got there about an hour after they had begun demolition.