Thank you Joanne who sent the article and photographs from Halifax
The Volunteers Bronze Statue in Halifax, at the Waterfront, Nova Scotia (click link for article written when the monument was unveiled in 2017)
“The bronze sculpture, called “The Volunteers,” features three life-sized figures from three generations: A young girl pulling a wagon full of salvaged metal, an African-Nova Scotian woman holding a tray of coffee and sandwiches, and an older woman seated with a Mi’kmaq basket and knitting.”
Every Monday Restless Jo posts her walks (click to see Tróia) she has many blog followers sharing their walks. Jo often leaves a good word on my blog. Although I’ve been “walking along” with Jo for years, this is my first time to join the community of walkers, too. Total 5.6 miles walk but…..
A very old tree 100 year old swamp cypresses (Taxodium distichum)The rock garden A rose still blooming Persimmon tree Original entrance used only for ceremonies now The dinosaur tree. A new species discovered in Australia. “One of the most famous living fossils and the greatest botanical discovery of our time is a plant discovered in 1994 in a hidden canyon of the Australian Wollemi national park, not a 100 miles away from Sydney. This is so called Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis) belonging to the araucaria family (Araucariaceae), thought to be extinct and only known from fossils. Our specimen was planted on the 20th anniversary of its discovery. It is protected by a small cage which both attract the visitors and is useful for protecting this subtropical tree from winter cold.”On to the center. A busy marketplace. You can buy all sorts of fruits, nuts, vegetables, and even a broom or woolly socks. On the way to the center https://eco-zagreb.hr/o-nama/VincekChestnuts Roasting Zagreb Funicular ( incline) Croats invented the necktie I need to find out who this sculpture is. There are lots of scientists, inventors, throughout the center The cathedral is under renovation Weather station Chestnut honey on the right Representing country women coming to market
“Binding Contact” One of my favorite statues: Woodward, OK.
You might remember one of Shuey’s guest posts of a Barred Owl. That is is you’ve been following the blog eleven years! It is one of the most viewed posts on the blog’s existence, last time I checked.
A favorite with my art students, Swedish Artist Sculptor Claes Oldenburg passed 18 July 2022 at 93 years of age.
You may have seen some of his well known sculptures. They are huge!
Oldenburg also created giant soft sculptures– some of food- hamburger, cheeseburgers, ice cream cone, profiterole. He took everyday objects and created giant sculptures.
The Shuttlecocks in Kansas weren’t immediately embraced“…..four-large-sculpture birdies placed throughout The Nelson-Atkins-Musueum-of-Arts-Green by husband and wife team Claes-Oldenburg and Coose-van-Bruggen.(d. 2009). Each birdie weighs 5500-pounds standing nearly 18-feet-tall.”
Tuesday afternoon I met a friend for dinner. We used to teach in the same school but are in different schools across the city now. It was good to catch up. When we walked into the restaurant,La Tavola Italiana, I could not believe what I saw in front of me! A St. Joseph Feast spread from the day before. Later Carmela came out to speak with us about how we were enjoying our dinners and she was taking photos with her iPad to send to her family. She uses the iPad to keep the restaurant calendar for parties and other aspects of her business.
I asked if she made the St. Joseph Cavazunes filled with the chick peas and she said, “NO, they are Calabrese.” She is Sicilian and she makes Zeppoles.
I said that I’d photographed all the bread and would send her the photos but would she like to pose with all her handiwork and she did! I didn’t notice she put the iPad down onto the cloth in front until I saw it on the computer. She was gracious to allow me to photograph her. NEXT year we have to go to actual feast! It sounded like a terrific party.
Today my friend J(of Pittsburgh, not Omaha) and I went to the Tin Front Cafe for lunch. We heard about the St. Joseph the Worker statue having been removed from the nearby church. Judith Tener told us where to find him in a parking lot and so after lunch we wound around one- way streets and asked a few people for directions but eventually we climbed up hills and back and found this beautiful statue waiting for us. He was striking. There were the huge stone barrels pouring molten steel out onto the world. Flames carved in stone. See detail below on image three.
A big crane erected this statue (which was blessed in Italy by Pope VI) on St. Michael the Archangel Church in 1966 in Homestead. Many Slovaks helped build this church.
When the church closed, the diocese took the statue down in 2010.
People missed looking at St. Joseph high above the buildings, overlooking Homestead and the Monongahela River.
A memorial to the hard workers of the mills in this town. He was loaded on a flatbed and taken to St Anne’s now 3 combined parishes to form St. Maximilian Kolbe Parish. Read the names of the people etched in bricks- Vehec, Tarasevich, Godleski, Milchalk, Straka, Pavlik, Sklencar, Sayko to name a few.
The statue was designed by sculptor Frank Vittor (b. 1888 in Italy) who also made the Honus Wagner Statue now at PNC Park. His story on the link if you click on his name tells how he came to work with Stanford White and then a week later White was murdered…but that is not the main idea of today’s post and I am getting off track. It was just incredibly interesting. Vittor taught at Cooper Union in NYC and also at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University)
Here are two views of the giant St Joseph the Worker statue. And a detail shot, too.
There are plans in the works to get him relocated in a place of honor but will keep you posted when this happens.
There is an historical marker honoring sculptor Frank Vittor by the Columbus Statue in Schenley Park, Pittsburgh
In response to yesterday’s post about January 25th being Robert Burns’ birthday
In my inbox was an email from my friend and blog follower Gayle. Gayle lives in Brisbane, Australia. I’d “met” her through the Woolswap exchange program she created and runs.
Would you believe there’s a Robert Burns statue in a park Centenary Place, directly across the street from where she lives in Brisbane? Here’s a photo of the statue. I’d a link in my original post of a list of sixty Burns statues around the globe.
Photographed in Brisbane by Gayle’s partner, Dean
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And here’s a comment from my friend Joanne with what her sister wrote after viewing the blog post. Joanne’s sister Mary wrote of the annual dinner that she and her friends celebrated in Canada, on the poet’s birthday –
JB says
Ruth – here’s a comment from my sister Mary up in Canada: “Our friend Esther always had a special dinner for the occasion …… We all decked out in whatever tartan we had (I made Nova Scotia tartan vests for Bernie and me) . We were allowed to bring Scottish themed appetizers (I took little oat cakes with a whiskey flavored cheese ball) (or is it whisky – actual scotch whiskey is spelled differently from the others). Anyway Esther served the entire traditional meal – a modified Haggis (liver flavored meatoaf) served with a wee dram of Drambuie, cock-a-leekie soup, roast beef with taters and neeps (mashed potatoes and turnips), and a trifle for dessert. Dave spouted from memory the actual Toast to the Haggis as he sliced and served it, with much brandishing of a large carving knife and using his best Scottish accent. And we all came prepared with Burns poetry that we took turns reciting while toasting Burns. It was great fun. And it was there that a number of us tried Scotch for the first time and decided we liked it.”
It’s always fun to receive responses to a blog post.
Originally posted 7 years ago- it’ssnowingtoday, too! 2022-1759=263
SCOTTISH BARD’S 256TH BIRTHDAY ANNIVERSARY – JUST BEFORE SUNSET IN THE SNOW-January 25, 2015
Steve said it was Robbie Burns birthday today. Born January 25, 1759.
We missed the fancy fundraiser for the museum last week, the Haggis and men decked out in kilts of their clan.
We missed the “not your grandfather’s ” Robert Burns birthday party in Lawrenceville and the one on the South Side with all kinds of scotch at Piper’s pub.
But we got to pay homage to the Scottish poet, just before dusk. The end of a January gloomy Sunday.
We headed out to Schenley Park to the Robert Burns statue (by Scottish sculptor J. Massey Rhind)and it started to snow.
Right next to Phipps Conservatory.
Mrs. Peacock sounds like a game of clue but here is a snippet of the article in the Mary 3, 1914 Post-Gazette.
For a list of Robert Burns memorials around the world, click here
Quotes
“
“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley. An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy!
(To A Mouse)” ― Robert Burns, The Works of Robert Burns
My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go.”
― Robert Burns
from Tam o’Shanter
But pleasures are like poppies spread—
You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river—
A moment white—then melts forever. Line 59
“And man, whose heav’n-erected face The smiles of love adorn Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn!” ― Robert Burns
“The Eternal Indian, sometimes called the Black Hawk Statue (dedicated in 1911), is a 48-foot sculpture by Lorado Taft located in Lowden State Park, near the city of Oregon, Illinois.”
