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Dear Friends:
I spent Memorial Day Weekend painting and listening to news programs honoring our servicemen and women. How grateful I am for their bravery and dedication and for their sacrifices as they defend and protect our country. So many of us go about our daily lives and have no clue what happens a world away from us. We live in peace and safety while our young men and women, all volunteers, live in primitive conditions and constant danger so that our way of life will be preserved.
Whether we want to accept it or not, the events of September 11, 2001, changed the world in which we live. Politics aside, our soldiers deserve our gratitude, respect, and support. I have always been patriotic, but these feelings were reinforced when the son of a former staff member (and a dear friend of “the Moss family”) was shot by a sniper while serving in Iraq in April. The prayers of so many brought him home to recover, and we should be praying for all of them on a daily basis.
I completed two paintings over the weekend that celebrate our way of life. Picnic at the Mill features a couple enjoying a romantic picnic near historic Silver Lake Mill in Dayton, Virginia. This print will be released at my Barn Show and Museum Open House July 13-15 in Waynesboro, Virginia. Happy Days is an idyllic schoolyard scene, typical of one-roomed schools in rural Pennsylvania, and will be released at our Collectors’ Convention in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, July 20-21. It will be available only to those attending the Convention on either of those two days.
Picnic at the Mill will be released at the Barn Show and Museum Open House, July 13-15.
Happy Days is the small convention print for the convention in Lancaster, PA, July 20-21.This Friday, I’ll fly up to Virginia from Florida, just in time for my granddaughter Kate Donnelly’s high school graduation. Kate’s is the first of ten high school graduations I’ll be attending in the years ahead, as my other grandchildren grow up.
Kate’s younger sister Sarah, a sophomore at Radford High School, made All-District Honorable Mention in the Three Rivers District for shortstop and pitcher. Sarah’s boyfriend Abram Williams is graduating with Kate this Friday and was First Team All-District as well as Player of the Year in the Three Rivers District for pitching. He will be attending Liberty University in the fall and will be playing baseball there as well.
Sarah and Abie share a love of baseball.I thought it would be neat to show a couple pictures taken at my Museum earlier this spring. A mother bird discovered a hole in the side of one of the Museum’s wooden trash barrels and decided to make a nest inside beneath the trashcan liner. Three visitors to the Museum heard a noise and discovered three fledglings in a nest when they investigated the trash barrel. My son-in-law and Museum Director Corrado Gabellieri put a “do not disturb” sign on top of the barrel to protect the mother and her babies until they were ready to leave the nest. Fledglings are one of my favorite symbols, so I’m very honored that Mama Bird made her nest on the Museum grounds.
Three hungry baby birds, top, (with mouths open wide like the living versions of Pat's fledgling paintings) are quite at home in a trash barrel at the P. Buckley Moss Museum.
’Til next week…
Love,
Pat
I hope you have your calendars marked for the P. Buckley Moss Society’s next 20th Anniversary “birthday party.” Friends are coming from everywhere to join in the fun on June 15 at my Museum. The Society’s Board of Directors will be meeting that weekend, too, so people will have a chance to meet the Board members and talk to them about what we’re doing.
Maybe you will win this miniature watercolor by Pat and framed by The Beveled Edge, Glen Allen, VA, if you attend the Society's birthday party and fund raiser for the P. Buckley Moss Foundation and Ronald McDonald House Charities. The watercolor will be hidden in one of the birthday gift bags that can be bought for $20. All the bags will be stuffed with goodies, including gift certificates to be used on the pbuckleymoss.com shopping site. Auction items at the dinner include a week's stay at Pat's house in Cortona, Italy and a weekend at her condo in Wintergreen, VA. Don't miss this highly original and memorable event.
Buy your tickets now by calling (540) 943-5678.
The Moss
Portfolio
74 Poplar Grove Lane
Mathews, VA 23109
(800) 430-1320
©P. Buckley Moss 2005