Mr Fixit and the Thermostat Blues: Sunday, January 12th!

War’s an auction where whoever can pay the most in damage and still be standing wins. ... War may be an auction for countries. For soldiers it’s a lottery. -David Mitchell, novelist (b. 12 Jan 1969)

Hello Water Baby Caregivers et al! Here are the terrific snaps Lady Dar took when she and Mom were bathing The Boy! I took last three when I came over after swimming. Love his jaunty new outfit. Lady Dar now has a built in excuse for shopping! Love and Cheers, Dad/Patrizzio! Pics: Bath Boy! 

Zevster!

PS: Here is an article which proves babies and felines have figured out Life! Let’s start the year by curling up, cat like, and hibernating… | Life and style | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jan/05/lets-start-the-year-by-curling-up-cat-like-and-hibernating
 
Hello Cousins and Famiglia Dronkers! Thank you for such a wonderful evening, Antarctica Base Camp People! The appetizers and dinner were simply delish so thanks to everyone who contributed to the fabulous meal and more than quaffable wine! We had little difficulty with drive home as there was no blowing snow. Thanks again. Cheers, Patrizzio! Pics: Here are my grandchildren! Above the salt!
 

..... such nice people!

Contact # Tangerine https://www.tangerine.ca 

TWIKE participates at ecorallye RIVE MAROC 2019 in MoroccoHe is also the one that's talking, singing etc. Since it is a German car he is speaking German, but there should be English translation. Aart This is one of the videos I was talking about: https://youtu.be/-44e6Qgkq48 The guy behind the wheel is my cousin Wim Rullmann who lives in France. They own a TWIKE and use it for everything (other than hiking up a mountain). Cheers, Aart Hi Aarturos! Thanks for the link to Tangerine. Much appreciated. Also, we both really enjoyed the TWIKE clip. Wim did a superb, superb job of recording the rally and showing off the countryside and culture of Morocco. I was first there in 1970 and seeing the video made me want to return, especially on a TWIKE. Fondestos and Cheers, Patrizzio!

Laura Cumming has been art critic of The Observer newspaper since 1999. Before that she worked for The Guardian, the New Statesman and the BBC. In addition to her career in journalism, Cumming has written well-received books on self-portraits in art and the discovery of a lost portrait by Diego Velazquez in 1845. The Vanishing Man was a New York Times bestseller and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2017.

Cumming is the daughter of the Scottish artist James Cumming and his wife, the artist Betty Elston. A memoir based on her mother's disappearance as a child, On Chapel Sands: My mother and other missing persons, was published in July 2019 by Chatto. It has been shortlisted for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize as well as shortlisted for the 2019 Costa Book award in the Biography and Memoir category.

Cumming was literary editor of the BBC's The Listener, assistant editor of the New Statesman, and the presenter of Nightwaves on BBC Radio 3.

Cumming has written two well-received books on art. Her work on self-portraits, A face to the world (2009), was praised by Serena Davies in The Daily Telegraph for seeking to "persuade us, with sumptuous superlatives, how great her subjects are" rather than baffling the reader with art theory as some other works do. Her work on the discovery of a lost Diego Velazquez portrait by John Snare in 1845, The vanishing man: In pursuit of Velazquez (2016), was described by Honor Clerk in The Spectator as "a study in obsession, a paean of praise to an artist of genius, a detective story and, for the author, an exorcism of grief". 
 ,

Fisun Güner, in The Independent praised the "beautifully compelling accounts of Velázquez's paintings" that revealed as much about Cumming's own relationship with the work of Velázquez as it did about the ostensible subject of the book. Jonathan Beckman in The Times, however, felt that the book was "breathless" and that its source materials (or lack thereof) didn't completely support the weight that Cumming placed on them. The book was serialised on BBC Radio 4 in a reading by Siobhan Redmond.

Cumming's latest book On Chapel Sands: My mother and other missing persons, published in 2019, has been shortlisted for the Costa Book award in the Biography and Memoir category, 2019.

Hi Seaside Slinger! Great snapolas of you, Whirlygiggster and Zeverino! Where you on a product shoot for Budino Brothers?



I see Zevster has already made his first screen test try-out! Friend, Bill Loomis, from hiking group. (He and his wife, Naughty Nancita, [in walking group with Lady Dar], live on Burns, one block north of us.), is a most interesting chap for being a former lawyer and a displaced Yank! Among other common interests, we both share a love of movies. He suggested we start our own Film Club, [Are you interested? We could schedule Book Club, Bridge Club and snowshoeing over course of monthly visit!], watching many on Netflix or some other provider, and/or rent them from The Bookshop. Make an evening of it, with or without The Sisterhood, drinking local Grappa-like porch cleaner and pontificating! Fondestos from Lady Dar to you, The Slingshot Kid, and to the esteemed, but more than rather kranky, not to say cantankerous Giggenpluggensnorkellheimer! Stay well. Cheers, Patrizzio!