Happy April Fools Day... April is QH MONTH!

I'm glad it's April. One of my favorite months-- I really love May and Sept/Oct. (in Vermont). Also June, July, and August.
As you can see I'm personally not much on winter... we've had a lot this year and I don't ski.
Anyway-- April 10, 2011 will be QH's 65th anniversary (of the day Barb and Irv bought the land in 1946) -- Celebrate, QuarryHillians wherever you are! There are a lot of people out there who grew up at QH, or who lived here, or who were here for one day in 1966, or whatever-- please, anyone who wishes to, this would be a great time to post a nice thing about Q.H. on this site or on Facebook's Quarry Hill Creative Center page.

Quarry Hill is something that is magical to many-- and it still exists. But it is a struggle to keep it open and going and available, always. So please, everyone, good thoughts and memories, and if you want to do more than that, we would be happy to have people come back for some time to help fix things up, contribute financially, or in any way be happy that QH was and is in our lives.
No April Fool Joke!
Love,
Ladybelle... and all of us.

Quarry Hill: A special place then, now and always.

Quarry Hill in days of yore.
It was very nice then and it is also very nice now. Time changes all things, but Eternity endures. Irving always said QH is a place where Time and Eternity intersect... we also heard of a Buddhist Yogi who was driving by with others one day and pointed up the road towards QH, saying, "What is up there? I feel a great deal of energy coming from that place."

There has been joy. There will be joy again. -- Alfred Bester.

When I die
What I shall see will be
The lustrous moon.
       -- Hyakuri, Japanese Haiku poet, d. 1727

(from Japanese Death Poems, compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. Tuttle Publishing, Rutland, VT. and Tokyo,
Japan. Copyright 1986).

 

 July 18, 2008; the full moon shone over Vermont on the night my brother William left this earth.

   http://www.moonconnection.com/moon_july_2008.phtml

Barb is OK

Barbara does not have melanoma in her system (sentinel lymph node), according to her doctor. I was very relieved to hear this, and she was, too, though some flesh still needs to be removed from her arm, and then the arm sewed up, possibly in plastic surgery. This will be in a few days.

Thanks to all who called her or in other ways expressed good wishes.
Ladybelle

Irving Fiske, in New York ca. 1980 (?) meets a street poet.

 

Photo by JMD (James Milton Drougas)

Mutual forgiveness of each vice Opens the gates of Paradise. -- William Blake.
Animals are my friends, and I don't eat my friends. -- G. Bernard Shaw

Larry Carlson's picture of Home

See: The Wonderful World of Larry Carlson (Website)...

http://larrycarlson.com/


Mutual Forgiveness of each Vice
Opens the Gates of Paradise. --Wm. Blake

Irving Fiske Fixing a Car in Florida, Bruce, Brion, India, and Katie watching; by James Drougas

Barbara and Irving in Florida by James M. Drougas

Isabelle Hall Fiske Calhoun (Barbara), painter, cartoonist and co-creator of Quarry Hill, born Sept. 9.1919 in Tucson, AZ; with Irving Louis Fiske, writer, playwright, inventor and co-creator of Quarry Hill (they bought the property in Rochester, VT on April 10, 1946).  This is a lovely and affectionate photo of the two.
Irving was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY on March 5, 1908 and died on April 25, 1990 in Ocala, Florida.  As he said, "We do die. But we don't die poetically, so to speak."

Barbara is now 94, and in frail health, but still a spirited being for whom art and the creative life have ever been paramount.