But since I’ve been busily trying to build boards on Pinterest, I ran across several bird paintings like this one entitled Wren Painting Bird Art on the Art board of Melissa Gill. You can purchase it from Etsy on a site called SplodgePodge.  

Quite lovely, don’t you think?

For more information on how to order or to see more selections, click on this site: http://www.etsy.com/listing/79403543/wren-painting-bird-art-print-of

To see my Art board on Pinterest, click here. It’s definitely a work in progress!

The Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, the first concrete-steel arch bridge in the U. S., rises 840 feet above the Colorado River.  The bridge is named for Mike O’Callaghan, Governor of Nevada from 1971-79, and Pat Tillman, who left his pro-football career with the Arizona Cardinals to serve in the U. S. Army, but was killed in Afghanistan during a tour of duty.  (Click here for more information.)

When we arrived at the Hoover Dam parking area, we walked out onto the bridge for this view of the dam and the surrounding area.

Later, we stood beneath the bridge and looked up, totally in awe of the sight.

For more interpretations of the Word a Week Challenge: High, click here.

Moving the T down the field at Neyland Stadium

Sue’s A Word a Week Challenge this week from her blog A Word in Your Ear is LINES. And since we’re big University of Tennessee Vols fans,we watch intently as the Pride of the Southland Band lines up, marches into the stadium, and performs the circle drills that bring down the house.

The Pride marches in front of the Natalie L. Haslam Music Center on Volunteer Blvd.

Before the game, the band gathers near the new Natalie L. Haslam Music Center and then marches in almost near-perfect lines down Volunteer Boulevard to Neyland Stadium.

The band’s pre-game performance gets the crowd roaring as The Pride forms the Power T, and in rush the cheerleaders, Smoky (the blue-tick hound), and the players and coaches.

The Pride of the Southland forms the Power T

Players and cheerleaders run through the T to pump up the crowd in Neyland Stadium!

But it’s the halftime performance that sparkles.  The Pride moves across the field forming lines that move and morph into various shapes.  Like the circles they’re known for.

The Pride performs their famous Circle Drill.

Or spirals that move yet maintain their shape.  (How DO they do that?)

Moving the spirals during the half-time performance

And sometimes they get really fancy forming geometric shapes like we used to make with a Spirograph!

Another great half-time performance!

Lines have defined UT’s Pride of the Southland Band, and most folks forgo getting popcorn and Coke or taking a bathroom break until after the band’s mid-game performance.  You CAN’T miss The Pride!

After all, even when the Vols aren’t playing so well, we can truthfully say, “We ALWAYS win the halftime!”

For more interpretations of the Word a Week Challenge: Lines, go to http://suellewellyn2011.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/a-word-a-week-challenge-lines/

This is post #19 for National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) 2013.

As we moved from room to room with a crowd of (just like us) tourists leaning, peering, and picture-snapping, we couldn’t help but marvel at the acquisitions and ornamentation that made each room more spectacular than the last.  With clean white walls and gold trim, the mirrored room held us captive.  But subsequent rooms showed off statuary, table settings, and period pieces the likes of which we had never seen before.  Here’s just a small sample.

The decadent exterior of Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg.

Note the statues of Atlas holding up the world at each section of this exterior wall.

One of the white-walled rooms adorned with gold. Fireplaces made with Delft tiles stood sentinel-like in various rooms — sometimes in corners or centered like this one. Opulence was under foot, too, in the form of exquisite parquet floors.

Just one of many artifacts of decadent clothing on display.

Even the artwork featured people in exquisite attire.

If I’m there at sunrise, this is the view I get from that widow’s walk.  I look beyond two rooflines toward the ocean at daybreak to jumpstart my day.

When I look back, I see another widow’s walk with an owl decoy standing proudly to guard his “estate” at Pawleys, the oldest seashore resort in America.

And if I direct my attention to the marsh, I look at the roofs of the porches on the docks stretching into the creek.

But looking at these pictures from the Westin Lake Las Vegas, you could almost swear that we HAD entered a tropical paradise — in the middle of a Nevada desert!  The tall slightly bending palm trees hovering over the clear blue pool in this elegant resort appointed with fountains, outdoor fireplaces, and sheer water walls glimmering in the sun transported us to the tropics . . . even if only for a little while.

A Word a Week Challenge: Tropical (Click here) from the beautiful blog A Word in Your Ear.

The Westin Lake Las Vegas Resort and Spa

101 Montelago Boulevard

Henderson, NV 89011

http://www.westinlakelasvegas.com

A Word a Week Challenge: Vibrant

Built in 1940, this 28-foot-tall roadside icon holds a gift shop and a restaurant where sandwiches on homemade bread and meringue pies keep folks comin’ back for more.

Look closely to see horseshoe earrings and a curvy little mouth.  No doubt you’ll smile, too, when you drive past and do a double take of this little lady so reminiscient of the beloved women of the Deep South.

Want to see more great photos?  Go to Word a Week Challenge:Curves.

Mammy’s Cupboard

555 Highway 61 S

Natchez, MS

601.445.8957

I was driving from the Las Vegas Strip on I-15 to a school in Clark County, Nevada, one morning when the sun glinted off a building near the World Market Center.  Of course, I didn’t get a good look at it, but I thought it resembled the undulating curves of a Gehry building.

After work that day, I returned and exited onto Bonneville Avenue.  There it was.  It had to be a Gehry!  Sure enough, I walked around and discovered the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health.

The unmistakeable shiny metal forms swerving, curving, caressing whatever lay inside were indicative of the architecture of Frank Gehry, designer of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles; the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; and the Experience Music Project in Seattle — all with that characteristic metallic motion and form.

Later, I read an article from the Los Angeles Times by Christopher Hawthorne dated May 19, 2010 (Click here) who added this information.  Gehry had become friends with Lou Ruvo, a Vegas liquor distributor, whose father had struggled with Alzheimer’s.  Ruvo wanted Gehry to design a neurological research center for the treatment of brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.  Gehry agreed but only if the center would also include research/treatment for Huntington’s disease since Gehry’s longtime friend and analyst, Milton Wexler,  had seen his own wife and three sisters-in-law suffer with Huntington’s.

And so it is that this $100 million center came to be — with its seemingly movable walls and bending metal layers that reflect the Nevada sun artfully.  Although I could not go in, I was able to snap these pictures.  And I also noticed a sculpture in the rear enclosed area that bears Gehry’s name.  Perhaps it was a gift of the architect.  Does anyone know?

I’d love to return on a sunny day so as to capture that same metal gleam that caught my eye the morning I drove to work.  But for now, I just smile knowing I’ve checked off seeing another Gehry!

A Word a Week Challenge: http://suellewellyn2011.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/a-word-a-week-challenge-metallic/

Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health

888 W. Bonneville Avenue

Las Vegas, NV 89106

http://my.clevelandclinic.org/neurological_institute/about/default.aspx