Better late than never!!

Here you have links to the DGP photos of 2010!

Thanks, guys, for the great photos!!

Michael Burton’s photos

Eric Nichols’ photos:

DGP2010

This is a sisterhood circle that I love going every first Wednesday of each month.

These are not my best shots (I look so ugly… BUT it’s the REAL THING, ok?)

It’s Pri crying and laughing at the same time, so happy that her friends from Brasil remembered her… AND the cake in her party… OMG it was Sue’s gift. She is such a great bolera!!!!

Also Donna made brigadeiros for me and George. They were delicious. My mom grandma and my brother and Dani sent me gifts as well. How lucky I am! And David took me out to the movies, and also to dinner. THANK YOU, I love you ALL!!

A little sample of what is Dance Trance… I loved it again (it was also my first contradance weekend) and got a new nickname from it: “Sparkle”… SOOOOO sweet!!!….

Click here!

smiles to you all!

love

Pri

Well, it’s so satisfying to see the flowers you planted last year coming back more beautiful and stronger, specially for me, a Brazilian who thinks everything looks like dead in the winter!

Check out our plants! Isn’t our garden beautiful?

Also, if you go here and look for name: Borges – you can find the photo I submitted to NYTimes a Moment in Time. (also in the end of the Garden album)

Garden in 2010

Well, somehow I thought I had written here that I decided visiting all Bloomington museums this Spring/Summer. It’s funny that I am so into art, and never seen our own museums.

Last week I went to the first floor of the IU Art Museum. I was impressed by some nice things there, and some famous people too – Monet, Kandinsky, a Picasso, maybe? I had a fun 30 minutes there during my lunch time.

This week I went to the Lilly Library, which has a permanent puzzles exhibit, and now is celebrating it 50th anniversary with some rarities for us.

I was very surprised to see the first edition of many super important books, such as Darwin’s Origin of Species (with the author’s hand written dedication!); MLK’s Why we can’t wait, inscribed and signed by himself; James Joyce’s Ulisses, some very beautiful medieval illuminures, a very very old map in Ptolomy’s Geographia, the oldest scientific textbook in the world – Elementa Geometriae, by Euclid; some other curiosities, and my favorite part…. the smallest books in the world. Incredibly small. take a look in the photo gallery…..

I bought these 2 pots of columbines this week, hoping to plant them in the back yard soon, by our beautiful rock wall.

Oh, well…. I couldn’t resist…. Here are some photos I took today during lunch time.

Note the different focuses in what I am calling my first series of “Different Perspectives”.

Oh, the beauty of nature – so simple – so perfect.

Spring in different perspectives

Eu definitivamente AMO viajar sozinha. De trem então, melhor ainda. A liberdade e o desapego são parte da felicidade que sinto. Nada me amarra, o presente compreende.

A observação prevalesce, junto à imaginação e curiosidade. Quem são e o que pensam as pessoas que observo no trem? Que línguas falam? Que cidadezinhas são estas que passam velozes e parecem tão antigas? Um rio se estica lá embaixo.

Não vejo a hora de ver a imensidão da água, na costa norte da França, também conhecida como Normandia. O monastério no topo de uma ilhota.

From Paris II

O sol vem e vai, as nuvens passam rápidas porém pesadas. O dia tão bonito com verdes pastos e árvores com folhas ligeirinhas a nascerem. É o começo da primavera, sem dúvida.

(escrito durante minha viagem de ida a Mont Saint Michel, Normandia)

During the flight to Paris, I read an excerpt of a biographic book in a magazine called Parabola (this edition the theme was love). I was then reminded of the fascinating story of Hellen Keller, which I had heard in the week before I came to study in USA.

From Paris IV

The coincidence is that the same book was there, in Paris, in my friend’s book shelf, and I decided to read it during this vacation week (lots of metro & train time).
What a delight to read this story of this blind and deaf girl growing up. She was so determined and full of love for life that she learned how to read as well as speak, went to college and mastered not only English but German and French!

She used the Braille method, spelling words on her hands as well as reading lips ( touching them)
Her amazingly vivid descriptions are really touching, and I let myself absorb her ways to take in the world, through her touch, smell and sensibility.

“I also enjoy canoeing, and I suppose you will smile when I say that I especially like it on moonlight nights. I cannot, it is true, see the moon climb up the sky behind the pines and steal softly across the heavens, making a shiny path for us to follow; but I know she is there, as I lie back among the pillows and put my hand in the water, I fancy that I feel the shimmer of her garments as she passes.”
“next to a leisure walk, I enjoy a ‘spin’ on my tandem bicycle. it is splendid to feel the wind blowing in my face and the springy motion of my iron steed. the rapid rush through the air. gives me a delicious sense of strength and buoyancy, and the exercise makes my pulses dance and my heart sing.”
“I lived myself into all things. I was never still a moment; my life was as full of motion as those little insects that crowd a whole existence into one brief day”.
“When a rainy day keeps me indoors, I amuse myself after the manner of other girls. I like to knit and crochet; or perhaps I play a game or two of checkers or chess with a friend. I have a special board on which I play these games.”
and, to finish there quotations, nothing more adequate than this part, since I went to museums and especially enjoyed the marble sculptures of great Greek, French and Italian masters:
“museums and art stores are also sources of pleasure and inspiration. Doubtless it will seem strange to many that the hand unaided by sight can feel action, sentiment, beauty in the cold marble; and yet it is true that I derive genuine pleasure from touching great works of art. I can feel in faces of gods and heroes hate, courage, and love, just as I can detect them in living faces I am permitted to touch. My soul delights in the repose and gracious curves of Venus;”

I love when a book inspires more love for life.