ladynyoblog

a writer with passion

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about

I am a writer, having published 10 books with different publishers….I also am a landscape painter, and bird painter. I had covid 3.5 years ago and worked my way out of long covid with an independent study of biochemistry, painting and learning to play the erhu. I have 5 of them.

  • Looking for a good violin….

    I haven’t played violin since I minored in it in college. Cenruries ago, But this weekend I found my son’s first violin, reduced size, a child’s violin. Actually a good German violin.

    I played it for a while but it is not a full violin and I am a full human. I was surprised that I could even play but I have been playing erhus and a zhonghu for 5 years and I was startled that my playing erhus could translate to the violin. Cerrtainly not the bowing, something totally different between the two instruments…But still, I found my fingering much faster and the intonation good on this little violin. I was amazed.

    So, I was going to buy a really expensive cello, but my dear brother Christopher left me his 1940 Japanese cello. Chris died in May after a long stroke illness and he was only 72. Just. I miss him so much. With his death and the long ago death of my father, Albert Kohut, two incredible musicians, my birth family is dead and gone. I miss both of these men.’

    So, with the repair of the cello and this old almost full violin, I have no need for two cellos so I am going to buy a good violin…a full sized one. Either German or Italian, but just did listen to a “Mastro” from Dublin, Ireland. Sweet tone, but I like a deeper tone, something more cello like. LOL.

    Since I am retired I fortunately can afford a good violin. I like the tones of the older (19th century)Italian violins, but the Germans are top ranked, too. I know more about cello brands than violin, but am learning. I kinow and reconstruct erhus until the sun sets. that is an instrument I absolutely love and it isn’t as easy as it looks. Sure, only two strings but those two strings contain lots of musical issues. LOL. But having 5 of them, (though I gave two to a musical bil) I have learned to work on them myself. I love antique erhus and have two one (Elizabeth) who is 125 years old. My zhonghu is around 80 years old. The dragonhead is around 70 years old.

    Actually, I bought a new erhu, Donghuang, and at first I dismissed it as raw and stupid. I was stupid not the erhu. It needs to be played daily and Good Gravy!!!! It sounds rather good. Clear tone, easy play, more mellow than I gave it time before. I think that any instrument that is over 50 years gains in tone, mellowness, playability. Given another 50 years this new erhu will be…. excellent. LOL.

    But I am encouraged with my playing a child’s violin this weekend. I was surprised how fast my fingers moved and though the intonation on a violin like this isn’t great…..it is acceptable. It will never be mellow. LOL.

    So perhaps an Italian fiddle will be a good purchase that fills my hours with joy and entertainment. Still looking but Voss here in Atlanta has a good selection. I am encouraged that the luther is German and trained in Germany. We will see what evolves. It makes me laugh how my fingers immediately remembered the etudes I haven’t played in 60 years. LOL. Same crap I struggled in class with seems so elementary now.

  • “Quiet, Piggy”

    this is addressed to Donald Trump. The most misogynistic man on the face of the earth, except probably his dead buddy, Epstein.

    Those who voted for this ‘man’ hopefully will experience some of the same crap that so many people in this country are experiencing. Dump’s cabinet is made up of yes men and yes women, with no empathy or consciousness in their brain cells. What is happening around the world is this: People are laughing at ‘our president’ and well they should. Ukraine refuses to give up even more territory to Putin, Dump’s friend and so should they.

    Trump is out to destroy our constitution, to become another Bananna republic ruler (for life…and at 79 he is showing the senility and dementia that he parades all over the world. He is attacking veterens, paroling the rioters of Jan. 6th, and when he goes after Mark Kelley, that is beyond the pale.

    Trump has never served any military force, but he has served himself and his dam,n family well. People starve, progressive programs are ditched and he gets fatter with his whorish wife. Jesu.

    People have many issues with the damn Democrats: these yellow bellied goats come to a gun battle with ping pong paddles. I have no confidence in any of them….

    Now Dump repardens the two turkeys that Biden did last year. What a joke we have in the White House…and what comes after him is still a joke.

    I am glad my WW2 father is dead so he can’t see what our government has become. To all the men and women in my family, both my husbands and mine? Enjoy the spoils before your head rolls off. I didn’t especially like Harris but this bastard is a vampire…. and not only that but Hitler reconstituted.

  • two babies….

  • I LOVE Georgian style and furniture

    this a mid Georgian tallcase clock we bought about 4 years ago. Samuel Harley, 1780. English.

    we paid twice as much as it was worth but that is ok. It is rare and though the pediment is broken on one side, we can fix that. Or Fred can. We bought the proper weights recently, and it is a two weight clock, not a three weight clock. Harley was a goldsmith in Severen England and a noted clockmaker. It has a painted scene from the area and it helps dating the clock.

    Georgian (early and middle) style is my favorite. It is 93 inches high which is taller than most tallcase clocks and probably made for a rich merchant farmer. It is not fancy but a good oak/walnut/mahogany clock. It has a perfect place in our 130 year old Georgian house in Atlanta. At the bottom of the staircase.

    Our house was built in the late 1890’s by the Ragsdale family, farmers from England. They opened “West End Horse and Mule” company in 1860’s Atlanta. This was the family’s earliest house. It was smaller when I bought it in 1973, but Fred (husband) added 5 rooms. it is now 11 rooms and way too big for two aging people. The history of the house I know and it was rolled on logs from the back of the property to the front in 1922 to use the new sewer system of Atlanta. There were outbuildings but only the foundations left. We love the property and have been here for decades. It is hard to consider moving but who needs 11 rooms? It has been good as we love antiques and our travels in Europe allowed us to study the Georgian period. Fred built a great room with a 24 foot ceiling and the woodstove sits on a beautiful lavender thick flagstone hearth. He laid the hearth himself around 1996.

    When we took off the front porch around 1996 we discovered the true Georgian character of the house. Beautiful. It flowed well and Fred built the overdoor surround and raised the floors with new construction. The brick work was done by English friends years ago and had two Oxford graduates doing the cement work. I designed the curved brick surround then. Last year we had the whole house repainted in the blue I wanted and was historically correct. The trim is more a cream, not white. The gate is 9 feet tall and Victorian. The prices in our neighborhood have soared over the years thanks to gentrification and we have planted many fruit trees and berry bushes. We also took down a huge maple and a pin oak and the fuji apples are doing much better with all the sun. This year we should get fruit.

  • sketch of “Victory”

  • watercolor

  • another bird painting…watercolor

  • one of my watercolor paintings

  • Reason for the Season

     I saw the Cooper’s hawk this morning. She landed on the chimney pot, probably looking for my miniature hen, Grayson.  Four years ago she was a starving fledgling who mantled over while I fed her cold chicken.  She’s back this holiday, my spirits lifting. A good Christmas present.

       In the middle of the commercialization of Christmas, Nature closes the gap.  I have noticed squirrels with pecans in mouths leaping the trees, hawks hunting low over now-bare woods, unknown song birds sitting on fences, heard the migration of Sandhill cranes as they honk in formation. You hear their cacophony well before they appear.  Their chiding cries float down to upturned faces.

       There is brightness to the holly, washed by our late autumn rains and the orange of the nandina berries has turned crimson. Smell of woodsmoke in the air and the crispness of mornings means the earth is going to sleep. We humans should reclaim our past and our fecal plugs and join the slumber party of our brother bears.

       Jingle Bells will fade and our tension with it. Looking towards deep winter when the Earth is again silent will restore our balance and calm nerves with a blanket of peace.

    Jane Kohut-Bartels

    Copyrighted, 2008, 2010, 2023

    haiku related to the prose above:


    the hawk sits quiet

    Songbirds now hide their heads

    8x eyes wander

  • Healing with Nature…a haibun

    Haibun:  Healing with Nature

    My solitude shared

    night crickets and an owl

    the moon must approve

    soft moonbeam filters dust motes

    a thousand fish swim upstream

    –

    It is late afternoon, winter by calendar, spring by temperament. The radishes have pushed above the dark soil, and look promising.

    Two cats and I are sitting on a retaining wall that retains nothing, except Madame Alfred Carriere and Graham Thomas.  They both have climbed to the second story and are looking in the windows, watching us sleep.  I am surrounded by budding nature, the canna lilies brush my thighs with tenderness, making room for me. I sigh and relax into the gathering dusk.

    Last night I heard the wood owls.  Their demonic chattering scared me into the chicken coop to stand guard with a rake, nervous as the hens.  Now I know they are only six inches tall and can’t eat me.

    When I die, I want my ashes scattered on this garden.  Then, my ash-hands will caress the seedlings from below, my ash-heart will take pride in their growth, and my ash-ears will still hear those wood owls.

    The moon is rising, a beggar’s cup too thin to fatten the soil.  Mourning doves chant their benediction and swallows tumble like sickles in the failing light. The dark embraces all below. I am healed from the day’s tribulations.  The sounds of the urban give way to the enchantment of the Night.

    The soil our bed

    Our classroom and our graves.

     Reborn to the world.

    –

    Jane Kohut-Bartels

    Copyrighted, 2017-2025