Pigeon-Voyageur
Every visit to every museum leaves me with at least one thing I think about again and again. It might be something I made a note about or it might be something I did not even fully register at the time but it returns again and again for me to think about. Sometimes I have to go back again to see the thing which has settled into my mind. The Carnavelet seems to be the place which pulls me back again and again this trip. I adore the Musée des Arts et Métiers, but I return again and again to the Carnavelet. I have tried to get a good photograph of the feather of a carrier pigeon (Plume de Pigeon Voyageur) from the time of the Siege de Paris (1870-71) but it is in a little frame and the frame is in a glass fronted vitrine. There is just too much glass between me and the feather. The feather is bedraggled. At the end of the feather there is a tiny little knot tied with the thinnest ribbon imaginable. The ribbon even in its thinness shows stripes of red, white and blue. I think my drawing is better than the photograph. Also from the time of the Siege and in the same vitrine is a glass container holding pieces of bread. The bread was prepared with a mixture of flour and sawdust. Times were hard and there was little to eat. A painting of a man selling rats for roasting is another example of reduced eating options.
notes from an urban hibernation 
