BEES AND CHICKENS

Fancy F eggs

Elizabeth is a beekeeper.  You may call her an “apiarists” or “apiculturists” or a “honey farmer.”  They are all the same.  She’s a hobby bee keeper but she harvests enough honey each year to fill and sell off several jars. Once upon a time, she was a jewelry maker and I guess she still is but not so much now. She’s still an artist; artists pay more attention than the rest of us. They pay attention to everything!  That’s why I was never a good artist: I go for the Big Picture and lose the detail.

Anyway, Elizabeth pays attention and that probably helps with the bee thing.

I read that if you eat honey produced by bees in your particular locale you get allergy relief. It has something to do with the pollen.  I haven’t tested this myself even though I have some of Elizabeth’s bees’ honey; she only lives about 8 miles from me so the pollen should be basically the same. It’s the quantity part that trips me up. Exactly how much must one consume for the anti-allergy component to kick in?  And allergies to what exactly? I suspect respiratory ailments but not nut allergies or wool allergies. Another detail that I missed along the way.

Two Green Eggs

I admire Elizabeth and her hobby. It’s seems to me it’s on a higher level then say the hobby of collecting most things which can easily slip into hoarding and degrade the environment by the very nature of manufacturing more of whatever it is you collect. And while I truly appreciate all the  animal shelters and the heroic work they do, I’ve come to believe that we must begin on a much more basic level - lower on the food chain. Bees are a good place to begin, not the very bottom but close enough. 

Catherine Delphie is also a detail person but I don’t know her. She raises chickens.

Catherine trained as a medical illustrator and graphic designer and I guess she still works at that job sometimes. She fell in love with Aaron Dunn, a landscape architect, and together they bought a 15 acre farm in Hillsdale, New York, and began The Fancy F chicken farm. 

Everybody wants to raise chickens these days; it’s like the Pet Rock of urban farming. With chickens, you get eggs and the Fancy F breeds heritage and rare chickens for the colored eggs they produce and I’m totally smitten with these eggs.  Not only are they beautiful all by themselves (we’re talking shells here. I’m pretty sure that the insides all look the same  - yellow/white, a nice combination but nothing to write home about.) Catherine designed and found an old fashioned box factory to manufacture gorgeous egg crates. This is what an artist would do - attention to detail.  

more eggs

You can buy Fancy F eggs (in crates) from the Copake General Store which is where Margaret Roach lives.  Have you been there? Look up her blog -  “A Way to the Garden” - and visit her garden if you’re ever nearby. It’s worth the stop. She also is super-aware of detail but I actually think she might fall into the “obsessive” category which is a whole different kettle of fish. 

the Martha Stewart collection

LET'S TALK ABOUT PORTRAITS

Let’s talk about portraits. Early this week, President Obama and First Lady Michelle’s “official” portraits were unveiled and they soaked up all the media conversation for about 12 hours. Then came another school shooting, another dozen children’s lives squandered at the whim of a 19 year old with a gun and more “thoughts and prayers” by our Country’s leaders. 

THE MOST FAMOUS SMILE IN THE WORLD

So, while our hearts break, let’s talk about portraits.

I began this session with a plan to write a scholarly piece on portraiture, i.e. the first portraits probably done around 1000 b.c. in China, into the Renaissance and the most famous portrait in the world and the most reproduced, the Mona Lisa by Leonardo daVinci (painted between 1503 - 1517.  Mona currently hangs in the Louvre Museum, Paris, and is insured for $800 million.) 

Charles Dickens wrote that “there are only two styles of portrait paintings - the serious and the smirk”  -   awfully cynical! Gordon Ayman said “..the eyes are the only place one looks for…reliable, pertinent information (in any portrait.)” 

Painters attempt (usually) to capture the “inner essence of the subject - not a literal likeness” and nearly always the subject (or those judging the likeness) claims that the painter fell short but Gilbert Stuart, when he was critiqued as such, said “You brought me a potato and you expect a peach” which pretty much sums up the chasm between reality and aspiration.

Portraiture has come in and out of fashion over the years; it fell out of style during the early part of the 20th century (with some obvious exceptions: Picasso, Klimt, Frida Kahlo, etc.) and yet, two portraits from those years are among the most loved and recognized in America. “American Gothic” was painted in 1930 by Grant Wood. The “Gothic couple” hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood’s sister and his dentist were his models.

Artist: Grant Wood

The other is “Christina’s World” painted in 1948 by Andrew Wyeth. Christina is owned by the Museum of Modern Art, one of the few portraits that doesn’t show the subject’s face. Wyeth painted Christina with her back to us in the style known as “magic realism.” In 1995, a portrait titled “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” was sold at a Christies Art Auction for $33.6 million, the most money paid for a work by a living painter. The painting was created by Lucien Freud, Sigmund’s Freud’s grandson. There must be a grain of insight there but I haven’t found it yet.

portrait by Lucien Freud, sold for $33.6 million

As I quickly discovered delving into this topic, there are MANY “official Presidential portraits” produced during each man’s term of office. For instance, one portrait of Bill Clinton was painted by Simmie Lee Knox, the first African American painter to be so honored (I thought that award went to the Obamas' portraitists. In fact, I’m sure it was so stated by the news media and they were wrong.) 

William Clinton portrait by Nelson Shanks

I found the Knox portrait and looked for the hidden reference to the sex scandal and the infamous “blue dress”. It isn’t in the Knox portrait; blue dress clue is in the last official Clinton painting done by Nelson Shanks. 

Already, there is an official portrait of Donald Trump. At least, Google says it’s an official portrait - fake or not. There isn’t much in it.

I’ve gathered together a bunch of portraits that I happen to like (as well as a few I’ve spoken about here) and let me confess, I ADORE the portrait of Michelle Obama.  I like the gown designed by Michelle Smith with it’s reference to the Gee’s Bend quilters, I like that she’s so ethereal - I love the stark blue background. I like it better than the painting of Barack which I find too clever by half. 

CHRISTINA'S WORLD

Stephen O'Donnell (self portrait)

GREEN SHOES, Kathy Calderwood (painter and grandmother)

Michelle Obama portrait by Amy Sherald

WE AIN'T DONE YET!

Help! I’ve fallen into obscurity and I can’t get up!

I might change the caption on this cartoon just slightly to read:

Help! I’ve aged into irrelevancy and I can’t get back! 

Reprinted from The New Yorker, Feb. 5, 2018

Chip and I went to a lecture Tuesday night.  The speaker came from Detroit, Michigan, and his talk was all about how he and his group, practicing “people oriented” planning, were changing the mean streets of his home town.  He showed lots of slides of streetscapes from around the world and Detroit, photographs crowded with shoppers and coffee drinkers sitting at sidewalk cafes while sunshine and festive pennants poured from above.  The speaker was sincere and enthusiastic.  Yippee-yay….

I hate to sound like an old fart but really? “People oriented?” “Pedestrian scale?” “Planned for autos=bad!/planning for people=good!” Uh…didn’t he read Jane Jacobs (any one of her books written after 1961 until she died two or three years ago?) Or study Christopher Alexander’s 1977 A PATTERN LANGUAGE? What about William Whyte’s body of sociology studies on city streets (1958 through 1988)? We covered all this territory in the 1980s and again 1990s.  The big difference between then=Rochester and now=Detroit? Detroit reached such a dismal scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel-low that big money has - in the last dozen years or so - poured in from every faucet and it’s no secret how pretty things can look with green wallpaper.

This man was the first speaker brought to town this season by the Community Design Center, a worthwhile organization that is in danger of death by boredom through repetition. During our years of involvement in civic planning, we’ve heard mayors, planners and architects tell us why their city is working - their town: Charleston, Nashville, Indianapolis, Nashville, Austin, San Antonio, Toronto, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle (those are just the ones I remember!) And here’s the thing: there are lecturers that do inspire a better life for city dwellers and city users. Curiously, they often look to transcend city limits and speak to broader humanity, even (gasp!) suburbanites! But first the script must be changed; the old 45 record is worn out…just ask us, the retired warriors. We may be out of the limelight but we still listen to PBS, NPR, TED Talks and we read!

Those of us old enough to serve as reminders of past lessons - unless we also hold powerful purse strings - are nearly always shuffled to the side seats during meaningful problem solving/creative initiative conversations. We are patted on the head and asked to volunteer as envelope stuffers or something equally menial. It is assumed that brain power resides in bodies under age 55. 

So are human beings meant to live this long? What are we good for after diminished muscle mass leaves us barely capable of picking up our shoes let alone a work load? After procreation, are we meant to climb aboard the U.S.S. Iceflow and wave good-by to all our still-fertile and viral friends and family? What about all that “free time?” Can it be bad for teen agers but anticipated as good for old age? Why? 

Most of us will not pull a Grandma Moses and discover a brilliant talent after passing 90. We probably will not run marathons, write a best selling novel or make a scientific discovery.  But neither do we care much about spending endless hours watching television or plotting charts of doctor visits. Don’t keep telling us to volunteer when the fact is that few of us find satisfactory volunteer positions.

We are the elders among you, with bodies that don’t work but brains that do.  For heavens sake, ask us for input once in awhile.  We’ve heard Tuesday night’s lecture - or its clone -  a dozen times but there are new voices with updated sermons that might inspire you as well as us. 

Let’s look for them.