Act of Beauty: Jane and I had visited the Musée d’Orsay earlier in the week and had seen a painting of the Canal St Martin. I commented that I wondered what it looked like today. Meanwhile, we were trying to decide where in Paris we wanted to reclaim and beautify. On June 22, we still hadn’t decided but that night, decided we would go to the Canal. Sure enough, the neighborhood was sort of seedy, covered with graffiti, trees lining the Canal were choked with weeds. Surprisingly, there was not trash, except some flowers that we had found in a trash can on the walk over to the canal. So we used the weeds and flowers to make our bird, picturing the former beauty of this place.