38th year of a rare and fortuitous marriage

As of this very day, Mary and I have been married for 38 years. We've lived all over the country, traveled abroad for the pleasure of work, and have come to know so many people. It is a joy to be with her, increasingly, with each passing day. How wonderfully fortunate we are—as is tiny Lola, only the most recent of the amusing and curious creatures who have shared our daily lives. What is the secret? In part, it is because we see and think alike.

small like the wren, chestnut hair, eyes of sherry

Trammel: White Wish © Mary Snyder Behrens (2005)

Above  Mary Snyder Behrens, one of a series of small (palm-sized) mixed media artworks called Trammels (2005). This is Trammel Box (White Wish), made of cloth, thread, and twine in which a box-like metal form is encased.

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Emily Dickinson (describing herself in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson)—

I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the Wren, and my Hair is bold, like the chestnut Bur, and my eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass, that the guest leaves.

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Charles Darwin—

I remember a funny dinner at my brother's, where, amongst a few others, were [Charles] Babbage and [Charles] Lyell, both of whom liked to talk. [Thomas] Carlyle, however, silenced everyone by haranguing during the whole dinner on the advantages of silence. After dinner, Babbage, in his grimmest manner, thanked Carlyle for his very interesting lecture on silence.

A Sweet Disorder in the Dress / Robert Herrick

Above A parody of a painting by either Angnolo Bronzino (Jacopo Carucci) or (possibly) Pontormo, titled Portrait of a Lady with a Lapdog (c1537), providing current portraits of the charming, smart, beautiful women, Mary and Lola, with whom I delight in life.

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Robert Herrick
Delight in Disorder (1648)

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction;
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthralls the crimson stomacher;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribands to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, that when art
Is too precise in every part.

Milton Glaser on All Life as Transcendence

Above This image, created by Thomas Kent, was published in the Strand Magazine in 1909. It was one of a number of graphic peculiarities. A pencil-drawn portrait, it was accomplished with a single continuous line that originated at the tip of the nose.

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American graphic designer Milton Glaser, interviewed in Joan Evelyn Ames, Mastery: Interviews with 30 Remarkable People (Portland OR: Rudra Press, 1997), pp. 84-85—

I remember Rudi [a friend and teacher] saying once that all life is about transcendence. If you’re ugly you have to transcend your ugliness, if you’re beautiful you have to transcend your beauty, if you’re poor you have to transcend your poverty, if you’re rich you have to transcend your wealth… There is nothing worse than being born extraordinarily beautiful, nothing more potentially damaging to the self. You could say the same for being born inordinately rich. You suddenly realize how wise the idea is that you get nothing at birth except things to transcend. That’s all you get.