The Erroll Flynn of graffiti artists

Ano! takhle chci! smenit pohled na kultura!
Yes! I want! to change the view on culture!

Apparently this is what happens when Robin Hood picks up Warhol's banana as his bow and arrow - surreptitious mass produced stenciling.

Miro Mirror - Doodle Graffiti

Wall doodle behind Wenceslas Square.

Along the Waterfront

The green line starts here.

Christine, over at My Typography, suggested microblogging for August. She inspired me last January to try everyday art - turning one of my least favorite months of the year into a time of joy and satisfaction for me, so I thought I'd take her up on microblogging too.

I decided I'd try it with a twist though, picking a theme every few days to follow. As you can tell, I'm on a graffiti kick this week. We live with a lot of graffiti here in Prague, and it is one of the first things people remark on when they arrive in town. I notice it too when I first get back from a trip or when I pull out my camera, and over the years I've found all sorts of samples that are a bit more interesting than the incessant tags and bubble letters that cover walls here.

These pictures are from 2006, the last time the Vltava threatened to flood Prague. When the water rises, the city builds barricades along its waterfront. Firmly anchored by posts buried in the embankment and further buffered by sandbags, the barricades work well. They kept most of the river out of downtown Prague in 2002 and again in 2006. They are tempting graffiti targets though - someone apparently decided that the post would make a fine connection to the green trail and slapped on a sticker to help show the way.

You can see just how high the barricades can go in the broader view below.

Psi Psani Graffiti

Stencil graffiti on street corner.

"Psi psani" roughly translated - doggish doggerel.

Eat No Animals

Stencil graffiti near Kampa.

The Lennon Wall just around the corner from this gate is the most famous graffiti space in Prague. It's a legal zone for graffiti and is covered with paint - tags, messages, cartoons...and changes from day to day, depending on who shows up to work on it. I prefer these birds taking flight.

Piano Play

 

Caroline likes to doodle on the piano now, playing a sort of jazzy one handed improv. She pretends she's playing along with a score, and sometimes announces that she is playing Rudolph, or one of the Czech folk songs she's learned in school. One of my favorite moments in the day is just before dinner, when we get her set up messing about on the piano while we fix a meal. We tell her she's singing for her supper.

A Little Baby Glee

Here's a picture of J just a few days ago. He's chatting away, practicing one of his two favorite words - Harold and Helga. He loves to be talked to and he especially loves when you say something he can echo. Then he'll grin with delight, wiggle all over and answer in kind.

Me: Harold?
J: Haaarol
M: Helga?
J: Elllga*

*Elgar might be a better transcription, J wiggles along to his cello concerto too!

Mushroom time

 

During our hike last weekend we managed to find several clusters of mushrooms. Mostly we found Bitter Boletes already uprooted by early-bird hunters (see above), but we also ran into some slightly old edibles that got added to our basket to take home for soup.

Bitter Boletes catch the eye because they look like their cousin, the Penny Bun. One bite of the Bitter, and you'd know the difference. It isn't poisonous but it is spit-provokingly untasty. You don't have to take a nibble to tell the two apart though. Just look at the netting around your mushroom's stem. The Bitter's stem looks like it is wrapped in black netting, while the Penny Bun sports white hose instead.

In Czech, a Bitter Bolete is Hřib hořký. If you don't recognize Penny Bun, think Porcini.

A Walk in the Woods

We spent the weekend in the mountains north of Prague, just on the border between the Czech Republic and Poland. We stayed in Rokytnice nad Jizerou in a pension set into the side of a hill above town. It was the first trip out of Prague for the baby and the first for me this year, and the entire weekend felt like I had just woken up and was stretching my toes in delight.

Sunday found us hiking up the hill behind the pension on a mushroom and blueberry hunt. While Caroline and her friends tracked down all the berries they could eat, I took pictures. I wanted to see if I could find patterns in the forest the same way that I can in town. I think I'm better at finding textures, but anyway, here is the condensed story of our walk up hill, past the last cottage, and into the woods.

And yes, we did find mushrooms too!

You know you've lived in Europe too long when...

1. You expect to be in another country if you've spent two hours in a car.
2. Your kid asks you how to say a word in three languages.
3. You learn the Cyrillic alphabet so that you can read the street signs in your favorite spa town (and know what your spam is talking about).
4. You think $4 gas is a good deal.
5. Americans regularly compliment you on your English and ask what country you're from.
6. You catch yourself singing to an oompa beat.
7. You think the New York Times online edition is the hub of American journalism.
8. U.S. politicians are still embarrassing, but then so are everyone else's.
9. You believe everyone has the right to good chocolate at least once a day.
10. You forget your favorite holidays. See below:

Conversation on a conference call to the States, July 7
Julia: Hey guys, so, how are ya’ll doing over there. You just had a holiday didn’t you? Which one was it again?

July, shortly

James keeps getting bigger and bigger. Here he is today, almost grown out of the blue sleeper that swallowed him when he came home three months ago.

The hole outside my window has also gotten bigger and bigger. We suspect they may be digging to China, or at least to the metro.

We celebrated Caroline's birthday (at the end of June) three times in July. As a result, Caroline became a candle blowing-out expert. She says she is a "big 5," now that she's hit 5.07 years old.

Baby life isn't all about crying and spitting up any more. See? J's on his baby playground here. Caroline likes to join him sometimes and pretend she's Gulliver.

Myself, I'm mostly found with a baby draped over one arm, phone in the other. I'm working full time from home and chasing after that elusive thing called sleep.

What are you up to, this side of July?

Card-carrying member of the Antiheliocentric League of Preschoolers

I pick Caroline up to give her a goodnight hug and swirl around the room and think what a grown up girl she is now, almost too heavy for me to carry. Her face comes near to mine in size and her long legs and arms threaten to overturn the raft my arms make carrying her. I know my sense of proportion has changed since the baby was born (he seems big to me too, no longer a newborn now that he’s ten weeks old and 24 inches long), but when I set C down and we talk about school, her teachers and how she tries to listen to them, I guess I know what it feels like to have a big kid in the family.

Then we see the moon peeping through the chimney stacks above the house next door and C says, "Look, it’s the moon! He’s my friend you know, he follows me around when I go outside, and the sun does too. They are my special friends." And I remember that she is still a little girl and if the world might not always seem to revolve around her, at least the sun and the moon still do.

Ahoj matey!

 

Every day Caroline comes home from her summer school with new pirate accoutrements. Hat, sword, map and telescope - she's even added an eye patch to her costume collection. It's all made of paper and tape, but she's convinced the telescope works. She wants to adjust some settings though to make it as powerful as her new yellow binoculars, featured above, one of her best birthday presents.

Here she shows off her binoc technique, she says she's ready to sail the seas with 'glasses' as powerful as these!

Happy Almost Fourth!