THE EYE SURGERY TANGO

 I got an eye job.  I didn’t know I needed one. I wasn’t even sure what that was. I view all surgery as questionable and facial surgery as mostly vanity unless you were born like Sylvester Stallone with a tilting head and permanent lip snarl — the result of “assisted birth” by a doctor too aggressive with forceps. 

None of that happened to me. I merely reached mid-70s and my eye lids gave up trying to stay all the way up. I thought I was just tired. Or maybe sick of the world anyway so why would I want to see the whole disgusting scene?

But there I was, in the Office of Torture —the annual eye exam. No place that I can think of attacks my self-confidence quite as acutely. The assistant begins “which is clearer” and I immediately begin melting into the chair…”Please, please, please don’t call on me today. I didn’t prepare! I meant to read the assignment but the dog threw up and I needed wine.”

Not only is A not one bit clearer than B but I can’t tell the difference! And then I totally give up and admit that the entire wall is a blur. Just let me out of here and I promise I’ll never drive again! 

But Madame Hilda says “well, just guess.” That’s when I tell her that I’m sorry but I can’t read the Greek alphabet. Hilda is not amused. She leaves in a huff “I’ll call the doctor in now.” 

Uh-oh! Now I’ve done it. I have eye cancer!!! 

A “Field Vision Test” was next. It was more fun than the “A or B” routine. You sit in a chair and click when you see a little light appearing anywhere on the screen. The lights dart around like lighting bugs and before too long I was just clicking the damned remote figuring what the hell — guess work got me through school — it could work again.

I failed.

So here I am two weeks after surgery.  I visited the eye surgeon last week. He said “I’m surprised you can see anything with those cataracts.” This came as complete news to me but it explains a lot…like why I see three moons…why my neighborhood is full of sparkles…why night time driving is a lot like “Close Encounters of a Third Kind.” My entire universe has become one giant Star Wars episode. I guess I’ll have the cataracts removed in February or March but in a way, I’ll miss all the sparkles. Who doesn't like sparkles?

ODE TO SANDWICHES

CLASSIC GRILLED CHEESE WITH TOMATO SOUP

Can you think of anything more perfect than sandwiches?

First, you get bread — any kind! Glucose intolerant? There’s a bread for that. Nut allergies? No problem! Problem with gluten? Yep, found one. And any shape will do:  flat, pocketed, round or the classic “loaf.”

My mom never made bread — the kind that requires yeast and kneading. She baked cornbread and biscuits. “Wonderbread” — in the polka dot wrapper — was my initiation into soft, white bread. I was about 6 or 7. Pauline, my next-door neighbor, could go inside her house any time and bring out white-bread-and-yellow-mustard-sandwiches which she shared. Before too long, I was buying Wonderbread on my own and graduated to butter-and-sugar sandwiches — the slippery slope to bread addiction.

All kinds of exotica can be added to basic bread dough — seeds, berries, nuts, spices, sea salt (is sea salt a spice?) Plain, toasted or fried. Even steamed - although I’ve never been a fan of wet bread. Does steamed bread really count? Isn’t that actually a dumpling? Or maybe for Brits, a pudding? 

(Aside: I’ve been thinking about french toast. In theory, it’s fried bread. But if there’s no filling, it’s not a sandwich. Same with plain old buttered toast — even if you put jam on it — unless you smash two pieces of toast together and then, voila! you have yourself a jam sandwich!)

In years past, I did enjoy canned bread. Canned bread is very dense and very dark brown. The best thing about canned bread is that it doesn’t go stale in the can so if you’re outfitting a bomb shelter, say, you can fill an entire shelf with canned bread. Later, you’ll be glad you did.

Which brings me to sandwich fillings. Like bread, there are no rules and nothing is out of bounds. Is your sandwich eater a vegetarian? Sure there’s the ordinary lettuce-and-tomato add-to but that’s just a start. Cucumber sandwiches are the hoity-toity of tea parties. Or watercress. Why would anybody bother eating watercress even on bread? During late summer, nothing is any better than a ripe tomato sandwich with mayo when the tomato is so juicy it drips all down the front of you and ruins your white t-shirt. 

 Any combination of cheese and meat filling makes a tasty sandwich. Basically, that’s why the refrigerator is full of possibilities. No piece of pork roast is too small to save. What about the half eaten chicken breast? That too. It doesn’t really matter who initially left it on their dinner plate. Tomorrow, it’s fair game for anybody’s sandwich. 

You can even do a sandwich with OTHER BREAD as filling! Fancy places call that a “club sandwich” but you can’t get around it — one layer is another slice of bread! 

If a vegetarian is still around who eats dairy, go for grilled cheese. Paired with Campbell’s tomato soup, everybody can time-travel. You are 8 years old again. It’s a cold Saturday morning and “Sky King” or the “The Lone Ranger” is on the television. Mom calls you in for lunch before forcing you to get dressed and get outside. Grilled cheese sandwiches always remind me of the Lone Ranger playing on a black and white television sitting across from a scratchy sofa upholstered in dark brown nylon.

The King of Sandwiches: nothing beats the left over Thanksgiving dinner sandwich — turkey, dressing (there’s bread-inside-bread again), and cranberry sauce! Yes! Fruit! Inside a sandwich! Want more fruit fillings? Try thinly sliced apple on turkey. Or peach chutney on pork. Sometimes, I skip Thanksgiving dinner and go straight to the left over sandwich.

Sandwiches require no eating implement! No tools at all! It’s totally appropriate finger food no matter what company you’re in. All dressed up in hat and gloves? Tiny triangles (sandwiches!) At a wedding? Funeral? Bris? Canapes…just a fancy word for sandwich. Doing a big party for the neighbors? Office? Church? Lay the table with bread and sliced meat and walk away. Everybody knows what to do — no explanation needed. Having a cook out? Hot dog and hamburger buns: sandwich bread in disguise.

I nominate sandwiches as the perfect food.

 

THE WEEK THAT WAS

 Last week, I reported that Chip was sick. He had pain in his ear that radiated down his jaw and up into a sinus cavity with total hearing loss and sleepless nights. SOMETHING SERIOUS. 

Four health professionals pointed tiny wands into his ear canal, scratched their heads and said the wrong things. For six days, he took prescription drugs, tried heating pads, ice packs and acupuncture. I suggested rubbing his ear with a dirty t-towel then burying it in the back yard at midnight then I remembered “No, that’s the treatment for warts.” 

I was no help at all.

On day #6, he got in the car to pick up yet another prescription, hit the Down garage door button instead of the Up and broke the door. That thing on top of cars? That looks a little like a shark fin? We don’t have one now. I can only get one radio station — FM. It plays polkas.

On day #7, he saw an Ear, Nose, Throat specialist. 

“Yep, you have a fungus growing in your ear.” The PA cleaned it out. Chip took pictures. It looked a little like pureed over-ripe mushroom. Instant cure! (He never gave the t-shirt thing a chance.)

Today’s New York Times says “good luck to newly elected President Biden but everything hinges on a cure for Covid 19. Nothing else much matters — getting the economy back on its feet, confronting solutions to racism, climate change, restoring dignity to the White House.” 

It occurs to me that maybe we haven’t gone to the right specialist.

“There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.” (James Baldwin)

Not everybody was thrilled about the national election outcome but I think there is plenty to be happy about: more women elected to public office than ever before including a transgender Congresswoman, four native American women, and in Oklahoma (my home state) a 27 year old binary-sexual person to the State legislature. (I had to look it up.) Stacey Abrams emerged as a powerful energy source, somebody everybody should want on their team! 

What to me are signs of evolution are — to some people —  signs of America’s growing pagan-satan-worshipping, socialistic depravity who lament (that’s a good civil word) that “this president was elected by women and blacks.” 

So? What’s your point?

Stay well and wash your hands.

Our little red barn....

 

ROBERT MARX; AN AUTHENTIC LIFE

 Robert Marx had the kind of tall, rangy body that hinted at the youngster he must have been — outdoors, riding horses, planting trees, comfortable in his skin — a Sam Elliott/Clint Eastwood kind of man. He smoked cigarettes in those days — a habit he gave up after a heart attack about 40 years back —wore plaid flannel shirts nearly exclusively, and grew the mustache that he wore the remaining years of his life.

I didn’t know him when he was young, of course. Nor do I know how he got from Germany, his birth place, to the United States. A bunch of talented European artists landed in Upstate New York during the 1950s and 1960s — Kurt Feuerherm, Tage Frid, Frans Wildenhain, Hans Christensen, Robert Marx.  Who said “they came for a better life?” That sounds about right.

They took jobs teaching in newly developed college art departments. I asked Bob Marx in an interview last year: “Can you teach art?”  He answered “No. You can only guide people.  I worked alongside the students in class. They could ask questions, watch how I did things.”

Is that enough? I don’t know that either. I’ve never taken an art class. Design, yes. But not art. Sure, even I could learn perspective, color theory, art history. The great violinist Itzak Perlman said “Music is what happens between the notes.” 

Art is what happens beyond technical skills. 

These artists brought with them a universe of talent and equally important, an “old school philosophy” of what it meant to be an artist — to lead an artful life — a life of authenticity. They approached life with curiosity and intellect and generosity. 

“Art must lead beyond the arts, to an awareness and a share of mutuality.” (Paul Klee)

Robert shared the last third of his life with Francie. While he was tall and quiet, she is tiny and bubbly. Robert twinkled; Francie is LED super-wattage. They were regulars at classical concerts and loved good movies. Walls at their house are lined with books and favorite movie videos. Until a year or two ago, they thought nothing of loading up the car and starting out on multi-state swings to visit old friends and galleries.

I asked Bob: Have you kept any of your paintings? 

“Yes, I have 5 or 6.”

Why did you keep those? 

“I was trying to get to something and they came closest.”

I think Bob was referring to the music between the notes…his art. 

Robert died September 21, 2020. He was 94 years old.  

 

Robert Marx (photo by Joan Stormont)

COG IN THE WHEEL OF LIFE

 So, you’re old. Really old! Now what? 

You are no longer defined by the job, nor the children, nor the things you bought for your powder room, nor the tile you choose for the re-do of your powder room because guess what?  That was twenty-five years ago and who cares? Nobody much comes to your house so nobody ever uses it!

You are old and depressed. It’s called being “irrelevant.” Now what? You used to be “somebody.” Everybody knew you. Well, maybe not everybody when you really think about it. But you had friends that met twice a week. Now they’re dead or moved to Phoenix.  Chris Rock says in a NY Times interview that you can’t count on friends anyway. But you think your friends are different? Ha! They’ll still move away to be close to “the son in Nevada.”

You worked at (an office, a factory, a store, a farm) and somebody was always needing something that you had. Now? Everything you have is old, worn, out of date, or lost in the last move. Or also irrelevant.

You tried volunteer work which you hated. Your book club/sewing circle/Bible study group dissolved — the Covid 19 quarantine was the final straw. You looked through all the pamphlets for “Continuing Education for the Elderly” and wanted to throw up. You’ve been thinking about writing your memoirs but your life hasn’t been all that interesting and your grandkids don’t read anything unless it’s on their “device.”

Frankly, you did all that “searching and expanding your horizons” stuff in your 40’s and 50’s. You found yourself, made peace with the whole mess and moved on. (You still can’t actually meditate. You try but all you really do is sit with your eyes closed and think about what you’ll have for lunch.)

So what now? (By the way, two caveats for this “irrelevant” situation: you will never be shuffled off to Buffalo if you are rich and give your money away. A whole bunch of people will still call on you with their hands outstretched. Also, if you know how to shake the money tree — if you were a huge donation finder in your previous stints on non-profit boards. But don’t count on that last one. Those sources you tapped? They’ve died or moved to Ft. Myers.)

Google passes on some answers to the age relevancy thing.

First, make sure you can hear, smell or see as well as possible.

Keep up with technology.

Listen to current music.

Go out (after 5:30 pm).

Do not criticize styles - remember your hair in high school?

Entertain and mix up the guest list.

Don’t talk about your health problems (outside the doctor’s office).

Stay as physically active as possible.

Make yourself an authority on something specific or…

Own all the tools!!!

TALK LESS, LISTEN MORE AND ASK QUESTIONS.

O.K. Maybe. But something’s missing from this list — something I can’t quite put my finger on — something I can’t quite find. 

I think it’s this: respect yourself. You are still a significant part of the universal script. Your contribution to this crazy play is necessary. So play your part with gladness and gusto.

  

Charcoal drawing by Peter Allen, "Made In New York"

SOME DAYS ARE JUST LIKE THAT

I’m having trouble writing these days — writing anything at all — emails to family and friends, letters of outrage, birthday messages to grandchildren. I sit down at the computer, type in a line or two and then….nothing. Finally, after I’ve looked out windows, and gone for another handful of salted nuts, I hit the “save” button. After a few days, my desk top is covered with them...debris from days of writing failures. I send them all to the trash. Frankly, that slight effort feels like accomplishment.

Is this depression? Reality? Age related? Diet related? I’m also not exercising as much and that leads to all kinds of mental mayhem. 

Or is this grief? 

This is the 6 month anniversary of “Lockdown” — half a year. Will we ever sit in a crowded theater again? Host a come-one-come-all party? Cheer for our favorite team among  a crowd of fans? Hug and be hugged in return?

We need a warning siren installed in our brain  — SHUT DOWN NOW. SYSTEM OVERLOAD. TAKE COVER.  We do. The sirens are all over the news: alcoholism is up. Gun sales have increased which predicts an increase in suicides. 1 in 4 young people between ages 18 and 24 think seriously about killing themselves. Domestic violence. Public unrest. Anger. BAD DREAMS! 

Whew….anybody have a spare bottle of Valium? 

What do we do with all this cosmic sadness? I wish it was an easy prescription …a pill. “Take 1 daily with ice cream.” 

This week I visited a friend. She lives in a Shangri La that she’s built with hard work, creative genius and admittedly, $$$. It’s been 40 years in the making…beautiful flower gardens, a bird sanctuary… peaceful fields of grasses… a pond designed for frogs and children. She climbs off her tractor, throws her workman gloves across its seat and walks toward me.

“Sit down. I’ll bring out some iced tea.”  We sit outside the required 6 feet apart. In every direction, the view is delicious. If you lived here, could anything bad ever happen? But she is not immune to sadness and trials — her life includes its quota of scars. 

“I asked … to rototill that patch over there. I’m moving shrubs.  He’ll do it, but for him, it’s a chore. Like ‘please vacuum the living room’ chore.  Not for me. I loose myself out here. Sure, it’s hard work but I just….” 

She looks around and begins pointing out changes since my last visit. She doesn’t say “love” … or “satisfaction”…or “accomplishment” but those are obvious. I remember the definition of “happiness” from the Yale happy class.  Here it is. She's offered me a transfusion. I soak it in for an hour before driving back into town.

 

DEBAUCHERY -- NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH ARCHERY

 Debauchery — extreme indulgences in bodily pleasures…eating, drinking and especially sex.   Decadent, depraved.

I was thinking about Al Franken this week. I always liked Al Frankel as a U.S. Senator — not so much as a comic. I couldn’t help thinking “he got a raw deal! Forced out of the Senate because as a comic he did something stupid” when, in my estimation, as a comic, everything he did was stupid!

But Al’s timing was off. The video of his comic stupidity hit the ethernet just as #metoo was heating up and all the perverts were lining up in courtrooms. The Democrats needed to put a little glow on their righteous halo. After all, Bill Clinton was still wafting around doing “god-only-knows-what-with-whom.” 

And apparently, it was O.K. to make an example of old Al because his seat was safe. In other words, a Democratic Governor of his state (Minnesota) would appoint another Democrat to fill out Al’s term. Also, Senator Kristin Gillibrand of NY wanted to run for President and needed some ammo. So this hot mess was cooked up in somebody’s kitchen somewhere and some idiot said “it’s a win-win!” 

(I hate that expression…almost as much as “thinking outside the box.” First, in my limited experience, there is rarely any such thing as a win-win situation. Somebody somewhere always gives a little more — the scale is never in perfect balance. And that box thing is purely stupid. No explanation necessary.)

So instead of a smack on the wrist, or being grounded for a week, Al fell on the sword. So long, Al! But old Al knows more than one way to skin that cat. Now he broadcasts a podcast and can say anything he wants about anything and Gillibrand flamed out. She’s been totally quiet these last few months.

It is obvious to any moron that the all time debauchee (aside from Caligula) is actually in the White House leading the free world straight to hell (if I may editorialize here just a bit. It’s my blog after all.) Just like Al, no need to look for hidden messages or call in the line-up of bimbos or conduct any investigation.  Each of these men are right there in living color, on tape debauching all over the place.  But nobody has requested the Debauchee-in-Chief step down as “unfit.” Why is that? An even bigger question: why did people vote for him in the first place? I actually love some conservatives; I have close friends and family who are Republicans. I have really good Republican friends that I seriously doubt would take this guy on as a business partner. Hell, I think they’d run the other way before tying their wagon to that stink pot! One of the many mysteries of my life — followed closely by “why don’t I lose 30 pounds when I hardly eat a thing?! And I still don’t get quantum physics or black holes. And why is a nickel twice the size of a dime?”

So here’s another quandary:  the Cancel Culture. (Catch up, people!)  Masses of citizens and former fans instantly withdraw support for a public figure (like Ellen?) after that person says or does something they believe to be offensive. So why isn’t the Cancel Culture coming after debauchees? As liberal as I am — as dyed in the wool progressive — as born-again Democrat — why the Hell did we allow Bill Clinton near a microphone at the Democratic Convention? I’d rather hear Al.

 

CLOTHES, CLOTHES, CLOTHES

Last week, I took bags of clothes to the Catholic Charities for Immigrants.  The drop off point is a big old, two story house next door to the Pittsford Catholic Church. It has a covered porch and I sneak up to the front door, drop the bags on the porch and run. I don't know why. They won't call the cops or yell at me for trespassing.  After all, they are there for the express purpose of making that connection between "rich, white mostly old people who have way too much and migrant workers or recent immigrants - probably of color - who have little more than the clothes on their backs." 

And it isn't as though I leave them bad stuff. Really...some of it's Chip's.

The following day, I took more than a dozen garments to the consignment shop. Panache finally re-opened. They are very careful. People must wear masks -- only 4 in the store at one time. Consignees must have an appointment. They only accept "good labels" and everything must be cleaned, pressed and on hangers. If your garment is sold, you get 40% of the loot. They set prices -- and then mark them down for special 'sales'. (Sometimes, I take things to Lu's Back Door. The rules there are the same except they ask that styles be no more than 3 years old. I don't take much to Lu's Back Door.)

I feel a little guilty about this whole deal. Why shouldn't immigrants have the $200 Eileen Fisher pants? How come the charity clothes get stuffed into plastic bags and not on hangers -- freshly pressed? 

Being good is hard these days. Political minefields are everywhere.

A news story last week said the sale of jeans are way down. Instead, people are buying soft, slouchy, elastic waist, comfy clothes -- a clothing version of comfort food -- mac and cheese, meat loaf and mashed potatoes. I'm thinking there's a direct connection. I grew up believing that jeans were the comfy clothes. What happened? Another minefield.

Once, while on vacation, I bought a fancy jacket. You do things like that while on vacation. The jacket was wool embellished with appliqued bits to look like tree branches running up the sleeves. Individual petals sown around the neck formed the collar. The price was out of my comfort zone but I imagined how great it would be to wear this piece of art. I wore it to a special Christmas party. Across the room (did you guess?), there she was -- a woman wearing the same jacket. 

Several years later, I took the jacket to Lu's. Nobody even asked me how old it was. I hope I see it again someday. Maybe at a fancy Christmas party. Will we ever get to go to those again?

SIGNS OF HOPE

"IT'S ALL ROCK AND ROLL TO ME"

 

 I once knew a girl named Hope. She was a shy little thing. My mom would have called her “plain.” That was before the age of enlightenment. Now with sharper human compassion, we look beyond the surfaces of people to find other attributes. But I never found much in Hope — no hidden talent, no outsized passions, no righteous empathy. She was always waiting for somebody to tell her what to do next — a profoundly sad way to go through life.

Hope’s parents were older — into their forties — when she was born. I didn’t know much about them except that they were scientists and quietly reserved in that Old World proper kind of way.  Did they expect this baby to change their social status or their politics or their own personalities? Maybe they invested all their dreams, yearnings, expectations into this tiny person. Hope’s thin little shoulders simply could not bear that much weight.

When Hope was about 15 years old, her parents divorced.  I never heard why. One parent remarried; the other did not. Both parents were in their early 70s when they died — an age that seems young to me now. I lost track of Hope — where she lives, if she married, became a mother herself. None of those facts. Nor do I know if she ever woke up and became assertive or at least, self confident. Probably not.

America is in the middle of a cyclone right now fed by vile politics and bad health with economic insecurity piling on. The Age of American Arrogance ended. Some of us don’t know where to turn. Peace is what we most want. When the world is deconstructing, where is the Gorilla Glue?  

I’m  a big fan of Rebecca Solnit and I listen to Elizabeth Gilbert and I read Heather Cox Richardson most mornings. Women might save us. In her book HOPE IN THE DARK, Solnit writes “Hope is an embrace of the unknown…a sense of radical uncertainty.”

 (She wrote a lot about radical change even before the COVID 19 virus slammed us out of our stupor. )

Elizabeth Gilbert, in a TED conversation said “Resilience is our shared genetic inheritance.” She told stories of people who found themselves in extraordinary situations — floods, earthquakes, accidents — and reports that they nearly all said the same thing: in the middle of crisis, suddenly they felt calm and intuition took over.

Resilience. It’s what separates us from other animals. Not the opposable thumbs we all learned about in 8th grade. Not even the size of our brains, as it turns out! It is resilience ( and our ability to work together in groups.)  

“In disasters, most people are altruistic, brave, generous,” a point of view echoed by Rutger Bregman in HUMANKIND: A HOPEFUL HISTORY. My daughter just gave me this book. I’m only on page 10.  When I finish reading it, I’ll pass it on because ultimately that’s the most powerful thing I can do — read, think, write, hold on to hope.

Would I ever name a daughter Hope? Never! Just having a daughter — just being somebody’s daughter! — is hard enough.

THE STATUES OF OUR MAKING

How do you solve a problem like Civil War Statues? 

What about war memorials?

What about buildings (roads, bridges, sports arenas) named for a person? How about company names on those things? Is there a difference?

WE’VE LANDED IN A GIANT COW PIE! 

First, some definitions:  a STATUE is a 3-dimensional work of art usually representing a person or animal and usually created by sculpting, carving, modeling or casting. (Yes, there are statues of non-living objects — badminton birdies for example. But these are outliers and for our purposes, we’ll stick to the more prosaic definition.)

A MONUMENT is a structure built for commemorative or symbolic reasons or as a memorial to honor something or someone. Statues can be used as monuments but not all statues are memorials.

In a perfect world, a consensus of the governed or given community  agrees on whom or what to honor. The overriding question: was the world better or worse for that person having lived or that action having happened?  Politics should (always) be overruled in favor of merit; we’ll stick with idealism rather than reality.

Those of us in the art world understand all too well that the operative word here — CONSENSUS — is near impossible when applied to any art object or art gesture placed in the public domain.  And as a representative of the art biz (I’m taking a mighty jump here!), I consider EVERY SINGLE MANMADE OBJECT PLACED IN PUBLIC DOMAIN TO BE BY IT’S VERY NATURE, ‘PUBLIC ART.’ (I, in an effort at full disclosure,, require that these objects possess some aesthetic degree of sophistication/expertise/intellectual rigor. “Brain tickle” if you will. Otherwise, I’d rather look at a sunset.)

Given all that tonnage of qualifications, how does any statue ever get into public view? Easy! Make it an homage to God, or (as in Greek mythology) the gods. Or Biblical heroes. Those figures are all over Europe…spouting water in piazza fountains or reigning over …well, everybody. Think of “David”… or all those saints and virgins.  

But, uh-oh, not everybody wants a giant Jesus, arms outstretched, presiding over a city. The Jesus of Rio De Janeiro (erected in 1923) was paid for by donations from the general populace of Brazil (nearly 100% Catholic) and is a symbol of that city and a huge tourists draw. But when outgoing President Garcia of Peru, in 2011, had a close replica built and installed over Lima, all hell broke loose. Lots of cat calls but the biggest objection? NOT ORIGINAL (A fundamental measure for public art success: give me creativity… or stay home.)

Next? Make memorials to past reigning kings and queens. Statues of past royals stand all over Europe…and in the last forty years, they’ve caused protests…especially those rulers responsible for colonialism.  Belgium’s King Leopold who brutally killed thousands in the Congo is a special target but increasingly, human rights exercised by all past rulers are being scrutinized and challenged.  

United States “royalty” hasn’t had an easy path either. The Washington Monument in Washington D.C. took more than 50 years from first talk to final construction, not because Washington was a slave owner — which he was — but because nobody liked the obelisk proposed as his monument. (With public art, everybody’s a critic!) Mount Rushmore (conceived and built as a draw for tourism dollars) was bitterly fought by the Lakota tribe whose sacred land was defaced without permission. To get even, a huge statue of Crazy Horse on horseback was carved from another mountaintop which is totally weird — how can one bad decision be fixed by another equally bad? 

Currently, a statue of Abraham Lincoln, standing over a slave with broken shackles on the ground, is among the pieces coming down in Boston. Lincoln? you might ask. Well, here’s the thing, the slave is in a sub-serviant pose but worse! it’s the old “Rio Jesus” argument! It’s a copy of the original Lincoln that stands in Washington DC. 

Copies never work.

Which brings me finally to the Civil War men on horseback. Most of these mighty bronze sculptures were put up between 1900 and 1950, the majority in the 1920s…the same years of the rise of “White Pride.” The US saw a sharp rise in lynchings of blacks and the mythology of the “Lost Cause” (largely fueled by the re-birth of the KKK.) The federal government made no effort to prevent any of this and the movement glorifying the Lost Cause of the Confederacy grew throughout the South.   No, these statues are not “teaching tools” unless we persist in allowing this myth that the Civil War was fought for any reason other than the right to barter in human flesh - slavery.

What happens to them after they’re taken off pedestals? Scrap heap.To do anything less is to be complicit in America’s giant lie. 

How about naming rights? Henry Ford hated jews. Mahatma Gandhi degraded Africans. “Nobody’s perfect,” you say,…you can’t judge people of another era by today’s standards…aren’t we whitewashing history when we remove these names from good things such as charitable foundations, college scholarships, libraries and schools? Does it matter what name is on the local baseball stadium or performing arts center? Or U.S. military base?

Washington & Lee College professor James Casey writes: “Your name, whether you’re Coca Cola or Google, is a pronouncement of your values.” Federal Express just issued an ultimatum to the Washington Redskins: drop your racist name or give back our money and take our name off your stadium. 

(Confederate generals were technically NEVER part of the United States armed forces so how can those names be justified on U.S. military base? Smalll correction: Lee - a few others - were commissioned officers in the U.S.military but resigned to join the Confederacy. Duke Professor Michael Newcity writes "...they were traitors who conducted war against the U.S." How much clearer can it be?))

Bottom line: maybe we’d better be more careful throwing names around in the first place!

Bad ideas expressed in monuments may seem intractable. Public art is nearly always controversial. Consensus is achieved through bushels of talk —  but sometimes, protests and even pain ultimately are the only tools that break through to our collective conscious.

But attitudes can change. Entrenched opinions are not immune to truth and facts. We are creatures of habit but names change every day. Monuments that we assumed would exist forever can come down with enough human outcry. Look what happened to the Berlin Wall. 

  

RETRO (and then some)

"The Gardener," a life-sized fiberglass and cement sculpture at Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, Artists:  John Ahearn and Rigaberto Torres

A famous-architect-designed house in Brazil showcased in DESIGN MILK last week illustrated the very latest in “Vaporwave Genre” design. 

Huh?

In case you (like me) missed that reference — invented last Thursday — Vaporwave Genre is design influenced by trends of the 1980’s and 1990’s when electric music, surreal art and consumer culture reigned. (A few clues? Sharp graphic black and white patterns juxtaposed against pastels or sometimes primary colors, sleek chrome paired with organic shapes updated from the 1940’s, glittering glass accessories…) 

To state it differently, what you and I may consider “modern” is now “retro.” (And before you ask, yes, art can be “trendy.”)

My oldest grandson showed up a year or two ago wearing new khaki Bermuda shorts embroidered over-all with little pineapples straight out of the 1960s. I asked if he’d been vintage store shopping.  Meanwhile, the youngest grandson (seventeen) ricocheted within a single month from tight-legged jeans with rolled cuffs that showed off his white socks (1950s) to Monday’s fashion statement: a printed Hawaiian sloppy shirt and high topped sneakers from the 1990s. (The 1980s got skipped: acid washed denim, bandannas and flannel shirts. I think they came and went with the other two g-kids at college — along with logo t-shirts and tracksuits.)

CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) was the exciting new crime-fighting tool talked about in the 1980s/1990s. It seemed so …right!…especially to those of us looking for ways to increase city living and investment among a generation raised to fear “them” — the minorities who became increasingly imprisoned in city neighborhoods. And the high crime that always accompanies concentrated poverty. 

CPTED offered an even more seductive charm to architects and city planners: it was based on design — the principals studied by the art literate and pooh-poohed for generations by more prosaic influencers. 

Design streets and sidewalks to increase pedestrian use.

Build-in windows that overlook sidewalks to increase “eyes on the street.”

Address clues such as broken windows and graffiti  that announce labels of high-crime areas

Increase proper lighting and trim away “hiding places” among shrubbery.

So far — so good. But like most things, design has a Dark Side. Gatherings of young people, the homeless, the poor…city investors still didn’t want these groups visible in their “improved environments.”  Enter metal studs used as anti-skate boarding/anti-sleeping/anti-loitering devices. High pitched sound to prevent gatherings particularly of young people. Sanitized public spaces that no-one wanted to linger in and curiously, no-one felt safe entering. 

Black Lives Matter brings into focus another CPTED criticism rarely stated. Minorities consider most of these efforts as direct condemnation of their existence….in cities and in the very neighborhoods where they have been ghettoized into living. 

It’s hard for some of us to escape the feeling that we live on a boomerang…as quickly as we learn about and accept new ideas, those same ideas come back to bite us in the behind! As city influencers, we thought we were doing the right things to insist on low crime but perhaps forgot one or two important facts: crime situations are rarely simple nor can prevention be neat and tidy solutions. Sure, good design helps — but adequate health care, exemplary education opportunities, livable housing and equal opportunities for work come first.

 Always, quality of life for everybody is at the heart of crime prevention.

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Grandma Clark lived next door where I grew up. She sat in a rocking chair on her front porch most days and would call out “Mz. Mac, the kids are into trouble!” Or “Mz. Mac, they’re crossing the road again!” Not much happened in those few hundred feet of frontage that Grandma Clark didn’t know about. That’s what is known as “eyes on the street.” 

ANOTHER WEEK OF QUARANTINE

(MY NEW TEE-SHIRT)

On Monday after dinner I put on the tee-shirt that I sleep in and didn’t take it off until Wednesday morning. Is that a sign of something bad? I didn’t feel depressed  — merely, disengaged. Now I’m worried. 

Isolation has unlocked a whiplash return to “pre-adult” behavior. First to go: bras. Next, make-up. No hair cut in nearly three months. No toenail polish and I’m biting my finger nails again.

I slouch over my desk. I rest elbows on the table except that I’m short and my elbows don’t reach.  Thank god tomorrow is Memorial Day. It’s O.K. to wear white shoes without breaking any rules — if I had white shoes — if I needed to coordinate shoes with an outfit — which I don’t. 

Sleep tee-shirts don’t need matching shoes.

Rebecca Solnit in her new memoir “Recollections of My Nonexistence” writes about her years in San Francisco. As a young adult in the 1980’s, she soaked up the unique atmosphere of a city entwined with gay culture, one where people lived in public more than any time since. 

A friend of hers, a young painter, in stage 4 lung cancer, phoned an art gallery director every morning and asked “what are you wearing?” The gallery director was gay, proud and elegant with a vast wardrobe that Solnit describes as “statements that had wit, wryness and glamour.” Ed would describe that day’s splendor and then the patient would say ‘Thank you. I feel so much better.” And hang up.

Solnit writes:  I came to recognize that… looking amazing is usually thought of as a mildly despicable self-glorification or a strategy to access sex, (but)  it can be a gift to the people around you, a sort of public art and a celebration, and, with wardrobes like Ed’s, even a kind of wit and commentary.

Solnit goes on to say that who you are, what you do, what you wear and say matters to people around you in ways rarely direct or measurable — “that how you live can be a gift to others.”

Isn’t that the best?  Do you know someone whose unique style makes you smile — or sometimes raise eyebrows (before you smile!)? What better gift? Have you ever told them?

Add them to your gratitude list.
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We bent the isolation rules slightly Saturday night. There were only six of us to dinner — outside —  celebrating a friend’s birthday.  Public life! How I miss it! I wore my new tee-shirt with the silver metallic on front. At first, I wondered if it was appropriate for an outdoor picnic, a bit over-the-top for a bonfire. Then I thought “Fuck it!  It’s a birthday party and who knows how many more of those any of us have coming?”