HOME AGAIN!

When I was 9 years old, my mother took my younger brother and me by Greyhound Bus from our home in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, to visit her brothers and sister in Hardy, Arkansas where they were all born. She was the only one who moved farther than a few miles away from the 100 year old “homestead.” 

This was high adventure for kids who had never been on a bus, never been further than a city park away from home, and never remembered meeting these people with whom we shared DNA.  There was my bachelor uncle, shot gun over his knees, just in from hunting squirrels -  a trunk full of confederate dollars in the corner of the log cabin where he lived.  My other uncle lived with his sweet lady just down the hillside in a pristinely clean farmhouse. We drank milk straight from milking while Aunt Delaney baked biscuits and pies for lunch. Two cousins showed up - Aunt Velma’s sons - that I never saw before and only once since when he was interviewed on a 60 Minutes episode twenty years later.

Now I’m home from a week’s road trip through the Carolinas - one of innumerable jonts my husband and I have gone on over the years and so I am thinking about “vacations.”  I remember vivid details about that long ago visit to Arkansas, the closest thing that I can loosely label “family vacation.”

My mother must have been homesick all those years away from family and place that she loved. For her, the bus ride back to Arkansas meant something entirely different from the shift into alien territory I might describe. My brother, four years younger than me, probably holds a totally different memory (or maybe none at all!) of the bus ride back to Arkansas.

Families, known or unknown. Trips familiar or exotic. The value is in the deposit they make to our memory bank. I am thrilled - even as old as I am now - to add to the treasury.  

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This is artist Patrick Doughtery. He's building a site specific work in Hillsborough, N.C. commissioned by the arts council and paid ($26,000) by private donations and grants from the Merchants and Tourism Councils. He works with one salaried asistant and loads of volunteers.  Chip and I spent part of a day stripping leaves from saplings.

The Round Stone House in Wilson,NC, was designed and built by Oliver Freeman (born 1882), a graduate of Tuskegee and one of the country's first African -American architect/builders. It was built in the 1940s to house vets returning from World War II.

A completed work by Patrick Doughtery - NOT the one in Hillsborough. I love that these pieces are built of natural material and meant to fade back into the earth in 3 or 4 years.

The home - and art installation! - of Clyde Jones, one of the naive/folk artist we tracked down in N.C. 

ADVICE ON A RAINY SATURDAY NIGHT

I recently finished reading BIG MAGIC: CREATIVE LIVING BEYOND FEAR by Elizabeth Gilbert, the EAT, PRAY, LOVE lady.  And before I go any further and hear you witheringly say “oh, her!”, I remind you that EPL was on the New York Times Bestseller list for 187 weeks (that’s more than 3 years, baby!), re-issued in nearly every language and made into a movie (unfortunately.)  

Liz came to Rochester for a reading at a large venue and I was the oldest person in the sold out audience. Clearly she spoke to a profound need and connected uniquely to a huge number of younger women and you, friend, are too much of an old fart to know anything about that!  (Frankly, I didn’t get it either.)

But I love BIG MAGIC and recommend it to everybody - required reading for any liberal arts major. I will try to paraphrase some of her ideas and surely will get it wrong. But know this:  there is some meaty stuff between this book’s covers, enough controversy for some blood letting discussions and I hope you’ll invite me to one.

Basically, what Gilbert says is that we arrive on this earth with a cache of creative jewels stashed inside us waiting for the time and place to be vomited up and the vomiting part (she doesn’t use that term exactly) is the GREAT CREATIVE EXPLOSION that can give our humdrum existence meaning, excitement and satisfaction. (I may be over-stating all this just a tad.) 

Don’t be afraid. You will fail. So what? You will not “get it right” because there really is no “right.”  Don’t expect the end result to change your life because getting there is the change. And meanwhile, for heaven’s sake, do something else! Don’t spend every waking moment whining in the garrett trying to paint the next Mona Lisa. Guess what? The world won’t end! Don’t decide because you haven’t gotten a single poem published of the 3,742 you’ve written that the jig is up. Write 3,743.

The mantra is:  today I have this life. I will meet basic needs and I will find a way to stoke the creative parts too and sometimes the balance is weird. Or hard. A long time can pass before a glimmer of success shows up. But sometimes the discovery that comes along is AWESOME. 

CELEBRATE!  FIND A WAY TO REMIND YOURSELF THAT YOU HAVE THE POWER TO BRING THAT WONDERFUL THING INTO THE LIGHT. 

But WAIT!  What if you’ve only felt a twinge of slight gas? What if you haven’t felt that gagging, oh lord, here it comes! feeling? What if you don’t even know what the hell I’m talking about?! Not to worry….change the terminology.  Instead of “passion” and “creativity”, try “curiosity” and “challenge.” (But I’d stay away from “hobby” if I were you. Sounds too flighty.) I don’t know why anybody would be interested in building ships in bottles (for instance) but there they are anyhow. Your curiosity may be totally stupid to somebody else. So what? Go ahead and build the stupidest ship ever imagined in some lame bottle. It’s yours and you know what? It’s just as important as the Mona Lisa.   So let ‘er rip!

I chose these two photographs....the recent lunar eclipse posted on Facebook (I'm sorry I don't have the photographer's name for proper credit). And wonderful Ithaca painter Joy Adams  -  one of her Mad Sally paintings. I look at both images and am thankful to be living this life where such marvels happen.

SEE BELOW POST

P.S. A FOLLOW UP POSTING

Is there a moral to the below post: the Oneida Story?  I can’t seem to find it.

I thought perhaps one avenue was the feminist angle. During the same week end adventure, we stopped at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. The current exhibit in Smith Art Center was Feminism: Phase 2.  All I could think was (1) this is ugly stuff and (2) it’s time to quit your whining and (3) under any banner in the universe, this would not be considered “art.”

At the same time, I do understand that women are not treated equally in any profession - including the arts - and I strain to resist and suggest that this situation must be amended for the good of humanity.  Do females need to turn their backs on parenthood and monogamous relationships to fully be considered equals , as in the Oenidas? I hope not. I hope there’s a more enlightened way. (But interestingly, is the very fact of the Oneida business success due to talented women’s equal ownership?)

There’s a message circulating on social media presumably authored by a middle eastern woman who warns about sharif law, its horrible treatment of women particularly and it’s growing influence in the western world…that somehow, this movement will overthrow our government through the voting system and we will find ourselves with girl children being sold to old men/husbands, stoned for any variety of reasons…an entire menu of miseries. 

Why is it that women and sex are used repeatedly for political and economic leverages? the “reason” for acting - or not acting - in reprehensible ways? and the kernel of fear mongering? female reproduction, a political issue? Is it a fundamental as CONTROL? If you control women, you control the culture? Well….yes…..

A HISTORY LESSON

Churches. Cathedrals. Tabernacles. Temples. Meeting Houses. 

Religious edifices symbolize man’s effort to glorify and appease a more powerful creator. It’s a calling, a longing, a challenge, a primal need. Architects give it their all and artists enhance, embellish, create, and interpret. The pull is as old as humankind.  So it isn’t any surprise that we visit, photograph, and write about these structures probably more than any other manmade object in the world.

Which brings me to …THE WORLD’S SMALLEST CHAPEL! 

The Cross Island Chapel is non-denominational, seats two, measures 51 inches by 81 inches and rises out of Mason Pond in Oneida, New York.

The chapel was built by Chandler Mason and his son in 1989 and “Dedicated as a witness to God.” Unless you can walk on water, you can only reach the little white building by row boat or a quick swim. The pond and the chapel remain in the Mason family.

Weird, eh? But it’s in ONEIDA!  And that’s a story that so far outstrips weird that the definition needs a good stretch! 

In 1848,(remember the Second Great Awakening?)  John Humphrey Noyes founded the Oneida Community. I remind you that just down the road in Palmyra, Joseph Smith founded the Mormons  and around the corner, the Shakers… all around the same time. Middle New York State was bristling with religious visionaries. 

The Oneida Community built a community house for its 300 + participants.  The guiding theory was that Jesus had returned to earth in AD70 and so, believers (that would be, them) were perfect and without sin. 

All men and women were presumed “married to one another” and that puts a whole different spin on sex, division of labor and “family.” Birth control (male coitus interruptus) was practiced rather successfully  - as was selective breeding. Children were removed from the birth parent at around a year old and raised by the commune. Without the constraints of exclusive responsibility for home and hearth, women were encouraged to be equal partners in pretty much everything. 

The community manufactured, grew, traded and/or sold a variety of commodities successfully but clouds were on the horizon. By the late 1800s, led by a professor from Hamilton College nearby, an organized band of clergy began protesting the ideas and living arrangements of the Oneidas.  Old John, the founder, turned over the community to a son who lacked the leadership qualities to keep the band en point. The maturing second generation members were drawn to monogamy, sexual exclusivity and jealousy.

By the turn of the century, the Oneida Community reverted to a purely industrial limited stock company. For a century, Oneida became synonymous with silverware.  The flatware company sent manufacturing off shore in the early 2000s and was subsequently sold to a foreign owner. 

The community Mansion house still stands in Oneida. It has been lived in continuously since its construction in 1862 and today incorporates 35 apartments, 9 dorm rooms, 9 guest rooms, a museum, meeting and dining rooms and is listed as a National Landmark Historic building.

RISK DELIGHT!

As I get older, time has changed. Days, weeks, months and years are compressed, whipping past me like greyhounds on Florida race tracks. But sometimes, minutes and hours drag and I find myself walking from room to room wondering what I should be doing with myself. Guilt sets in.

I went to a friend’s funeral earlier this month. Her accomplishments and involvements were thoroughly resurrected for scrutiny and admiration. She was smart and energetic and was committed to influencing the world she touched for the better. Listening to her accolades, I wondered how I could justify watching television…not just watching television but watching repeat episodes - movies that I’ve watched so many times that I nearly have the dialogue memorized! Or movies so bad that they must have been thrown in “free” when Turner Movie Classics bought out the  old studio archieves. 

I resolved - yet again! -  to make my life count for more. Stumped. I've set another trap to deflate the spirit. I am no good at volunteer work, too many aches and pains for a regular job and too impure to do much else. So what is left? And perhaps the larger question: if hers was a life lived large, can a small life count too? 

I read a quote by John Cage recently which seems to me to be the very essence of “optimism.”

“It is essential that we be convinced of the goodness of human nature,

and we must act as though people are good.”

For a good part of my life, I thought of myself as a pessimist. I was wrong.

Only an optimist could live as I have done. I didn’t pick the path that my friend followed but I believe in the basic goodness of human nature and allowed that to lead me most of the time. And that's no small thing.

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The Mint Museum Founders’ Circle - all 21 of them- visited Rochester last week and here are a few things they saw:  

Porcelain sculpture

CHRISTINA BRINKMAN

Steel and glass sculpture
ALBERT PALEY

 Ceramic sculptures
BILL STEWART

 Metal furniture
PAUL KNOBLAUCH

Wood furniture
WENDELL CASTLE

TROUBLE IN DALLAS

I never heard of Raymond and Patsy Nasher until recently.  Raymond was born in Boston and graduated from Duke University. Somehow he met Patsy Rabinowitz, the daughter of a Dallas, Texas, businessman and that was that. Nashers’ became leading citizens of Dallas and world class art collectors. 20th century sculpture was their speciality. Raymond  said “it was cheap in the 60s and 70s - nobody else wanted it.” 

The Nasher collection became well known in the museum world: the Guggenheim, the National Gallery in Washington, DC, and the San Francisco Museum all jockeyed for the collection.

Patsy died first and Raymond, known as a loner and a man who liked control, purchased 2.4 acres in downtown Dallas right across the street from the Dallas Museum of Art (1997). He hired architect Renzo Piano to design the Nasher Sculpture Center (Piano designed the new Whitney Museum, NYC.) and landscape architect Peter Walker as designer of the outside sculpture park in which the Center sits.  The $70 million dollar complex opened in 2003, the lynchpin in the Arts District of Dallas with museum, sculpture center and park, an opera house and a performance hall clustered in approximately 19 blocks.

So far, so good.  Then a new player entered. Financed by police and firemen’s retirement funds, Museum Tower was built a few blocks away and opened in 2013.

This is NOT a retirement home for public employees. The tower is 42 floors filled with 115 condos priced at approx. $825 per square foot.  Every amenity is included in this version of an urban gated community including a dog “park” for residents. It’s surrounded by a stone wall and people can live totally separate from the city at their feet. Museum Tower is the “mean girl” of the neighborhood.

In Dallas, Texas, the sun shines bright  - all day, every day. And it bounces off the 42 story glass clad (I’m sorry…it looks just like a giant penis). And the reflected sun zeros into the Nasher Arts Center and is killing outside planting and affecting the art inside. 

A mediator picked by the city’s mayor tried to find a reasonable solution between these two factions but failed. At this writing, Museum Tower is hoping for a technological invention that will magically …what? bend the light? It’s too easy to say “Mean Girl” is to blame for all this mess. And mostly, it is!

But I have a few unanswered questions. I suspect that Dallas - like every U.S. city these days - nearly wet their pants when Museum Tower was proposed! All that tax revenue! All that prestige that would come with all those rich people living downtown! I’ll just bet the town even gifted the Museum Tower developer with a few “incentives”…maybe tax abatement, or site prep at city expense or bending of a few “smallish” rules. Did they require a substantial escrow account to cover eventual “problems?” Probably not.

Dallas made a huge mistake - one being repeated everywhere - Rochester too - with the need to SAVE THE CITY AT ALL COST.   Sometimes the costs are just way too much! 

 These two shots: Museum Tower. What do YOU think it looks like?

 This last is an exhibit at Nasher Center by Guiseppe Penon.

A VACATION RENTAL RANT

A VACATION RENTAL RANT

I don’t know about you but I would try one of those “house swap” vacations, the kind where you leave your car, your cat and house keys totally in the hands of strangers who live on another continent and they do the same thing and you board a plane, find the environment to refresh your soul and meet whatever amazing adventures undoubtedly await.  What could go wrong?

It works in the movies. Didn’t everybody see that movie with Jude Law and whoever those women were? one who lived in a $15 million mansion in the Hollywood Hills and the other in a thatch roofed Cotswold cottage in snowy England?  That went perfectly for EVERYBODY even Jack Black (!) who got to kiss and woe Kate Winslet,  heretofore considered beautiful and SENSIBLE.

But what happens in the movies, stays in the movies. Real life vacation rentals - and I’ve known more than my share - are rarely as advertised and I and my husband just got home from another week spent in something called an efficiency condo on the grounds of Chautauqua Institution. 

Chautuaqua is what I describe as “Disneyland for Discerning Adults,” built on the shores of Chautauqua Lake and chock-a-block with intellectual courses, lectures and entertainment. It’s expensive. There’s a one time charge for a gate pass (something around $500 per person per week) and a parking pass (another hundred). Most “events” are free but not all. And then there’s the cost of accommodation rental.  

We paid $120 per night for a space approximately 10 feet wide and 18 feet long. A bathroom, kitchen and closet came off one end. The bed folded into the wall and sliding doors opened onto a small balcony on the other end. No maid service - no fresh towels every day - and as it turned out, no soap or shampoo included. The building did include WiFi and a flat screen t.v. that received 7 channels - 4 of which were National Public Broadcast and 1 twenty-four hour news and weather.

It also included….. 

27 threadbare towels

14 placemats

6 blankets/bedspreads

8 pot holders

china and flatware, complete setting for 12

enough serving pieces for Thanksgiving dinner

several drawers full of wires, remotes and misc. electronic stuff

2 vacuum cleaners

a kitchen cabinet filled with coffee mugs (but no juice glasses)

So here’s the thing: I understand that you landlords will charge as much money as you can but please, could you at least buy a couple of fresh towels and maybe sheets made after 2000? maybe put all your personal junk in one drawer somewhere so that I have space for my week’s worth of undies? And when did you last need baking dishes, serving platters, 2 massive barcaloungers, a desk and chair, a table and two chairs, a loveseat, coffee table and folding chairs? What kind of parties do you throw anyway? 

I just want a decent juice glass and a towel that doesn’t take my hide off! When I trade houses, I’ll ask more questions.

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We met a really interesting couple in Asheville,NY. Vince builds skyscrapers Monday through Friday but on week ends, he welds rusty found garbage into yard art. He says “To invent, all you need is a little creativity and a good junk pile.”