Good Greeney Things to Look At

Continuing on the theme of good things to look at, at top left is one of F's eternally green figs.  Her fig tree is laden with healthy green leaves, bursting with plump little figs;  but sadly, not a single fig has started to ripen.  Today we dissected one of the greenies in hopes that it was simply a green variety and that the inside would be lusciously purply ripe.  No such luck.  it was tough as old leather to cut open, and the inside was white-cream-pale green and filled with dry immature seeds.

The little clay head of a pre-Columbian figure had a hole drilled in its forehead, probably started life as a bead.  I don't remember its provenance, but I still love to look at it.  It has sat on the back mantelpiece for years and years.

The green pre-Columbian man wearing the crocheted hat came from the museum store at the Knoxville Museum of Art.  It reminds me of many similar clay figures in the Meso-American Native Peoples rooms in my favorite museums.  The crocheted hat, which appears by itself on the right, was made by my friend Ann's mother when she was in her 80s.  Ann and I had asked her to make us thirty or so tiny hats and scarves for an intervention we had planned for a collection of amateurishly taxidermied birds that were housed in ancient, neglected cases in the humanities building at the college where we were teaching.  Ruth happily made our hats and scarves, and after Ann and I had completed our installation, I slipped one of the extras into my pocket and put it on pre-Columbian man's head, where it has rested for the past dozen years or so.