Folks within 100 miles of Bridgeport, Connecticut, should pay a visit to the Black Rock Insurance Agency on Fairfield Avenue to see Charlie Walsh's paintings.

I've known Charlie for about 10 years, having met him through his daughter Patty Pettit, my good friend and former colleague at two newspapers. I knew Charlie wrote brilliant columns for the Connecticut Post, but I had no idea that he'd been drawing and painting for almost as many years as he's been writing. And the results are evocative, moving, sometimes funny, always perceptive. Word people don't usually adapt to visuals all that well, and I'm jealous.

Charlie works in pen and ink – I especially liked the whimsical "Lies," with a man whose nose appears to be coming out of his hat – and in water color where the delicate lines and vivid colors achieve a brilliant contrast in "Chinese Women." Some works possess the same technique as Miró, but Walsh renderings are much more accessible and less busy, both good things.

Occasionally Charlie mystifies, as with "Woman in a Bikini," a huge figure with broad shoulders and a flat chest wearing a bikini bottom and a tube top. Charlie's five-and-half year old granddaughter confirmed my opinion by referring to the figure as "he."

The ingenuity of presenting at an insurance company adds to the show's appeal. Charlie's art inaugurated the gallery and made the viewing that much more fascinating. Whoever mounted the show did a great job with the lighting – not intrusive but bright enough to illuminate the artwork properly. The office part of the agency has traditional oils on the walls, and they provide a contrast to Charlie's more modernist works in the two rooms that form the gallery.

Here's more information about the show from Lennie Grimaldi. Scroll down to "But Before That" in the December 3 column. Please go see this terrific show before it closes on January 17!

AT HOME INSIDE: A DAUGHTER'S TRIBUTE TO ANN PETRY By Elisabeth Petry

Published by the University Press of Mississippi

This memoir sifts the myriad contradictions of the best-selling author's life from a daughter's vantage. Ann Petry applied her formidable skills as a storyteller to herself and her family. Her daughter corrects the record about her mother's birth date, marriage, and other personal details. Mining her mother's journals, Elisabeth Petry creates part biography, part love letter, and part exploration of her mother's genius and luminescent personality.

Available now from the University Press of Mississippi

http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1134

 Book signing

Emerson and Cook Book Company

Old Saybrook Shopping Center

665 Boston Post Road

December 19, 2008

3 p.m.

At last things are beginning to return to normal, although I'm still behind on various projects. Next few days will tie up some dangling ends.

First, I owe Jessie L. Weston two apologies. The first is that I got the title of her book wrong. My compulsiveness forces me to point out that it's "From Ritual to Romance," not "Ritual to Romance."

Second having finished the book (see post of November 11), I now recognize that she was not ignoring Christianity but was rather building up to her argument about its roots.

In fact, it's her core thesis that the author of what most scholars regard as the "first" Grail account in the 12th century told the true story of a knight who wandered into a hidden temple where Christians were still practicing rituals adopted from the cult of Mithra. That cult, in turn, had evolved from the early fertility rituals. Toward the end of the book, Ms. Weston describes how the search for the Grail, like the rest of the death-and-resurrection story, became subsumed in Christianity to such an extent that its early roots were lost.

It makes total sense that today's major religions arose in the Indus Valley and then branched off from the early worship of the Mother Earth and Father Sky. The big ones evolved in a long more or less seamless line as populations spread east and west. Of the western religions, the three most recent arose at about 500 year intervals between 600 BCE (Buddhism), 0 CE (Christianity) and 622 (Islam). Hinduism and Judaism of course had established themselves ages before.

Having understood at least some of Ms. Weston's argument, the bigger mystery remains: Why did the men who founded the Protestant sects (except for Henry VIII, whose motives were strictly secular) feel so threatened by women that they had to eliminate veneration of the mother of Jesus? I realize that some of this antipathy dates to the era when Judaism was separating from the worship of Isis (which some contend is the true name of the deity called Minerva, Venus, Diana, Proserpine, Hecate, etc., etc.) who held sway around the Mediterranean. But Martin Luther, John Calvin, and those folks came along centuries later. Were women still such a threat? It's the one area where the Catholics get it, at least a little bit, even if Mary doesn't rate up there with the Big Three.

Just to complete my thoughts on the book, I still don't understand many of the passages and haven't found any place that translates all that ancient German, French and other arcana. If anyone wants to read the full text, it's all right here. From Ritual to Romance.

Wednesday launched Thanksgiving in a great way. Larry came back from one of his lessons with a beautiful note and a bottle of the sweetest smelling hand lotion I've ever experienced, a combination of lavender, bergamot (visions of Earl Grey tea) and lime. Heavenly!

Then I made and delivered all those pies on Wednesday and reaped even more than I sowed. At the first stop I received the most gorgeous bouquet of flowers. Roses in shades of orange, burgundy and burnt umber. Lilies and delphinium (what's the plural?), which smells even more heavenly than bergamot. The dining room table looked elegant, and the place smelled good even before the food arrived. At the second stop, I received yummy cranberry sauce, made with orange and I think a bit of ginger. That meant no worries about making it since cranberries had not found their way on to the grocery list. At the third stop I received a bottle of Chardonnay titled Be Friends – and "When Washington Was in Vogue" by Edward Christopher Williams. The description (subtitle?) is "A Lost Novel of the Harlem Renaissance." Can't wait to try both the wine and the book. Will provide a full review of each when I do.

So I managed to get to the supermarket before 8 a.m. It was mercifully empty of all but a few people grabbing breakfast and/or lunch. One or two others had piled their carts high, but no waiting at checkout. Done before 9 a.m. After putting away the huge pile of chips, dip, soda, etc. I managed to fend off incipient illness – fever and chills. All better by noon in time to go to Reiki at the hospital. Lots of people going home. Then a quick trip to the post office, to another store to buy a birthday card and present for my mother-in-law. Tonight, I'll make the "stuffing" for my veggie main course for Thursday. Recipe will probably follow tomorrow, in between baking the pies and clearing the counters. We're going to try for a fire, which means Larry's got to gather the kindling – all the sticks that fell out of the dead tree in the back yard, and I've got to clean the glass in front of the fireplace, which shouldn't be dirty since we only had two fires last winter.