Our rental for this Florida vacation is a Kia Optima, a perfectly nice car, but…
Good Plants Gone Bad
Such a beautiful Saturday in May, a brisk wind, temps in the sixties, irresistible gardening weather. What to do, what to do. Weeding. Pruning, General cleanup. We are coming up on the 8th anniversary of our moving in. In August of 2005 things looked pretty drab. The...
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...
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...
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,...
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...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...
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 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...