This and That: A Blog

Our last letter, Z .   It's a Z oo Out There was bought at Goodwill for $2.69.  How could I resist!  There must be a story behind this trio of Washington D.C. powerhouses!  The title is one I picked for the Challenge, I usually call it Animals in D.C.  A Z poem is here .  This is the end of another April A to Z Blogging Challenge.  It's always fun to participate, and read so many other A to Z posts.  Come back soon, I post multiple times a week beyond April!

  Y ang Jian is a figure in Chinese mythology.  I found this mid-century half-tone print of Y ang Jian in an Italian frame in the Goodwill Outlet bins.  It's not unusual for his third eye to be missing, as exports (the print isn't Italian, only the frame) "softened" the supernatural elements for the Western markets. Also, his celestial dog is often left out of these small prints, focus is on the central figure.    There's an alphabet haiku for Y here .

Not an X for a title or subject of the artwork, but for the red X I see across the image.  It may not have been the artist's intent, although it would fit his theme.  This is a print of Franz Marc's Fate of the Animals , painted in 1913, here renamed by the publisher, for an American market, to Animals at Bay .  The artist wrote on the back of the original canvas, " And all being is flaming, suffering ," or " And all being is flaming sorrow ."  Marc had a sense of foreboding, a premonition of society's apocalyptic shattering.  He sensed the coming World War, and his painting depicts the price of human conflict on nature, the animals innocent victims.  The dark portion of the painting was damaged a few years later, after the artist's death, in a warehouse fire.  Using photos, the artist Paul Klee, a friend of Marc's, restored it, but used brown tint to show an obvious difference, although it was never discovered why he did so.  I got this in the ...

 There's a new thrift store in town!  The sign in the window reads " Clothes and Antiques ."  The clothes were all outside on racks, and I wasn't too hopeful about what we'd (my son and I) find inside.  But, it was full of vintage and antique items!  More than newer items actually.  It reminded me of an antique mall booth, but an entire store.  Good prices too.   I got dogs.  Five dogs and an antique photo.  Here are the dogs shown by size, little to large.  Light plastic to heavy chrome plated  brass. A little plastic Scottish terrier made in Japan.  This and the next were $3 for both. A pair of playing fox terrier puppies, also marked Japan. As a rule, I avoid buying chipped or cracked items.  However, for $1 I couldn't resist this pressed glass French bulldog, chipped in places and missing his right paw.  It's Westmoreland, from the original mold, c.1920. In the mid-20s they added their logo.  The gl...

  W restlers I  (there is another I call  W restlers II ) was painted in 1960 by my father, W in Smith. There is a W poem here .

  M is the letter of the week for Sunday Stamps .  M andrill  Republic of Burundi 1975 M oustached Guenon  M onkey Federal Republic of Cameroon c. 1962 M ouse, Cactus USA 1999, Nature of America: Sonoran Desert series N ext week it's N stamps.