Recent Blog Posts
Serendipity: Chicago 2
The only available time slot for the trip fell after exams, papers and final grades and before my Young English Friend’s presumed departure on Monday. The Cubbies were in town hosting the Mets and there were games on Friday and Saturday afternoon. The best flights on Southwest (nonstop and cheap fares) offered few options and…
A Mighty Woman: Chicago 1
We paused at the gallery entrance, transfixed by Jan van Hemessen’s Judith with the Head of Holofernes (c.1540). Her Olympian torso filled the frame, her muscular arm raised overhead, only the hasp and bit of blade of her brandished sword visible at the upper left, an ornate bag with a drawstring held at the lower…
Art and Artist-Assisted Suicide
There was an interesting piece in The New York Times this morning. Under the headline “An Artwork Turns to Mush, All According to Plan,” William Grimes described sculptor James Grashow’s desire to be the “architect” of his own work’s demise. In December 2006, Grashow’s recently deceased dealer Allan Stone received a couple of elements from…
Sid Vicious Is Back!
Genuine April weather it was, air soft from yesterday’s rain and sunlight occasionally reaching through the clouds. I was at my desk, focused on the needs of students desperate to improve grades who were finally willing to invite my tutelage on the last paper of the semester. My Dear One tapped on my window, beckoned…
Wrought with Steadfast Will
I read the new history of my school, Emma Willard School in Troy, New York and paid particular attention to the summary of my own era within those “grey walls protecting.” I am struck by the paradox of the book’s enveloping familiarity and its utter strangeness. Was this the place I spent four crucial years…
Arizona 1: Discovering the Desert
My lips are chapped, the top of my shoulders faintly pink despite sensible shirts and the omnipresent wide-brimmed hat, and my mind is filled with constant contrast of an arid, spiny and primeval beauty locked in a death struggle with ugly human sprawl. Saguaro cacti, the “apartment houses” of the desert, even in the National…
The Painter and Modern Art
I think the studio teacher said something like “What is that supposed to be?” during a painting critique. The comment is a variation on an old, old theme in since “Modernism” earned its capital M: “whatever you are doing, it clearly doesn’t meet the standards of ‘good art’.” The Impressionists earned their name from hostile…
On the Gulf Coast 3
Manatees hang in the water at the Tampa Electric Company (TECO) in Apollo Beach, seemingly born by the currents of oblivion as little fish nibble at their skin and sharks school protectively around them. At a distance they are nothing but brown bumps, little islands. When one glides by, dappled with light that barely penetrates…
On the Gulf Coast 2
Our rental for this Florida vacation is a Kia Optima, a perfectly nice car, but not what I planned on. Dollar was offering a deal where I might get either a compact or an upgrade. Turns out that the upgrade was a Grand Caravan and there were no compacts. Backed into that automotive corner, I…
On the Gulf Coast 1
We updated the the Garmin Nuvi and lost Serena. Serena’s charming English diction tended to break down with the letter “r” but that was kinda fun, you know, the “what on earth did she just say?” giggle. With the update, the voice changed to something of slightly flattened affect, still distinctively English but something less…
Let It Snow, Let It Snow…
I got so excited I just had to post of Facebook: “It’s snowing!!!! It’s Christmas Eve and it’s snowing!!!!!” Yes, way too many exclamation marks. I remember one year quite some time ago, I think probably 1965 or 1966. We were at the grandparents’ home, 161 Main Street in Hingham, Massachusetts, and it was Christmas…
All I Want for Christmas
What, no peppermint stick ice cream? Is there something wrong with this place stuck just under the Mason-Dixon Line? My Dear One has been searching high and low and with no luck. There is none at Klein’s/Shop-Rite, none at Mars, none at Weis or Wal-Mart. We even tried Wegmans, hoping that their chi-chi reputation and…
The Christmas Letter – 2012
In the waning months of my “Year of Present Living” we finally got to Lithuania. Both of us acquired a whole bunch of new cousins in 2012, as well. That’s what happens when you shake those family trees with vigor and a little manic enthusiasm. Our dinner table, however, can always accommodate just one more…
Hurricane Sandy
Prolonged periods without electricity are rather like air travel with long layovers—I get a lot of reading done. I finished the last few pages of Andrew Graham-Dixon’s superior biography, Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane. Every Third Thought by John Barth—a book my Dear One read a year or so ago when Jack sent a…
Of Time and Family 4: Young James and His Katie Wed
It wasn’t the wedding my heart yearns for. That wedding must wait until my Tattooed Boy is wrapped in love by some young woman who loves him and his family the way he will no doubt love her and hers. No, this was the nuptials of Young James and His Katie, friends since Middle School,…
