Ursula Murray Husted's field notebook.

klg19:

“To Do,” by Wendy MacNaughton.

Available at 20x200.

Ridiculously candy colored quick study of tulips, board games, and the last 2 ranunculus. Less than an hour, acrylic on panel.

Cooper Black (aka- Coop, Mr.Man, and Number One Cat) takes a nap on the red flowered comforter. Small acrylic painting, 8x10in on panel.

A little painting to warm up before teaching illustration today. Flowers and fruit- I feel such the Sunday painter!

More plein air painting. It was colder today, but there’s nothing like painting for 4 hours to keep you warm. Also, my new wool hat, knitted with aunty-love. :)

Doing a little plein air since it’s spring break and I am full of joy for the universe.

Dearest internets,

Raised in the tail end of the Free to be You and Me generation, I grew up harmonizing to songs played on my father’s guitar. 

I learned in elementary school that many of those songs we sang at home were civil rights protest songs.  We also sang them in our school choirs- Amazing Grace, We Will Overcome, How Many Roads, Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing. We learned Dr.King’s speech set to music and peeled back the paper wrappers of our crayolas to color in pictures of people from around the world holding hands. Speakers came in and told us about we were all different but we were all the same and how that was not only okay but wonderful.  

We learned about Miss Rosa Parks and how she wouldn’t give up her seat on the bus for a white man and how that started the Montgomery Bus Boycott and changed the world. It wasn’t right for her to be thought of as any less.  We watched film strips and cheered to see photos of her marching with a swell of people in the streets: all colors, all ages, all religions.  

We didn’t learn that after the marches Miss Rosa lost her job as a seamstress and moved from her home in Alabama to Detroit to again sew other people’s clothes.  Even though people said she was important and special she still had to work.  Even revolutionaries and heroes need to feed their families.

Although we knew she was strong and beautiful, we children didn’t really understand how brave she was to do what she did.  It made perfect sense to us that Miss Rosa would refuse to give up her seat because to do so would not be fair.  Adults can learn to live with unfairness, because it isn’t so bad once you get used to it and that’s just the way the world works.  “Life is unfair.” Children stand up and speak when something is isn’t right.  They aren’t interested in how the world is, they say how it should be.

The world today is better than it was, but it should be better.  The circle still isn’t unbroken, but we’re working on it.  Thank you, Miss Rosa.

Love, 

Ursula.

Dearest internets,

Outside my window are the dying remains of November as seen through white ben-day dots. Frozen slush schlorps over the bike tires of the spandex-clad bus dodging true believers and my students trudge to class with heads bent; inadvertent ghosts in hooded parkas.    

I daren’t complain.  It is not so bad.  Minnesota winter lives by the silver standard of ‘it could be worse’ and it could indeed be worse.  

The Canadian air has not yet frozen the webbed feet of late migrating geese to the surfaces of the lakes bulging over their shores with ice cube edges.  My eyes still valiantly struggle against freezing open, one blink at a time, from an unseeing eternity.  It is not yet Jack London cold.  

Two pairs of socks have, to this point, proven warm enough to keep from losing my toes when I remove my boots.  I can still move all, and feel most, of my fingers.

I have not dug myself into a south-facing slope, living on snowmelt and foil wrapped Christmas cookies, until help comes.  I am not yet snow blind.

For this, I am thankful. You see ma chérie?  I am learning to look on the bright side.  

Love,

Ursula.

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. 
~Marie Curie 

“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to matter very much, do they?” -Virginia Woolf