Remember To Let Her Under Your Skin (Mostly Cloudy) – Sunset, Thursday, 26 February 2015

William Van Doren, REMEMBER TO LET HER UNDER YOUR SKIN (MOSTLY CLOUDY). Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30.

Sunset, Sunday, 17 January 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

If someone you were very fond of was celebrating their 60th birthday, you too might dispense with caution and embarrassment, dust off Garageband, grab the Taylor 410 (for sale, if anyone’s interested), and look up the chords to “You’re Sixteen,” which was #8 when Johnny Burnette did it in 1960, and #1 when Ringo Starr covered it in 1974, apparently with help from Paul McCartney (on the kazoo?) and Harry Nilsson. Anyway, the chords, the changes, were a lot more interesting than I expected, no offense intended to those performers.

Then you might send that person a little song, including:

You stepped out of a dream
Off of the farm
Now you’re our Sandy divine
You’re sixty
So beautiful
And so fine

She really did come right from the farm.

You also might try to make sure that ‘her’ sunset, even though it’s been raining all day, didn’t look like a complete washout.

Del Ankers, Photographer, Part 1

Copyright © Maria Elizabeth Freire

Tonight’s main post (August 1st) refers to my uncle Del Ankers, who was born on this date in 1916. The photos here aren’t meant to even try to do justice to his life, personality and career – which is why I’ve included links to both the obit and a special remembrance in the Washington Post – but rather they’re meant to celebrate a little connection between his experience and mine, something he might have enjoyed.

In Del’s photo above, the sculptor of the Iwo Jima memorial, Felix de Weldon, is showing the work in his studio to a visiting class of students.

(U.S. elementary school students of a certain era, note the ‘safety patrol’ badges on a couple of the kids.)

I believe the Marines in the sculpture here are positioned just the way they are now, in Arlington.

Copyright © Maria Elizabeth Freire

In this shot of de Weldon modeling the head of one of the Marines (and no, I don’t know if this is one of the veterans of Mount Suribachi, although I guess it’s possible), I’ve always thought the face at this stage resembles Paul McCartney a little more than it does the guy sitting there.

The funny thing was, when Laura and I got to the memorial before dawn on Inauguration Day (see next post, above), and looked up into those bronze faces, as finished by de Weldon and as seen from below the likeness was uncanny. We could recognize de Weldon’s, and Del’s, subject immediately.