Finds it —

Finds it odd.

Do not you?

If not, why not?

What the hell – Tuesday is December.

Yes, she invokes slight profanity.

After all, it is not 1867.

Or 1967.

Must mean that she is old "beyond her years," as you 60-70s might be inclined to express. And, for you 15-25s, oh, yes, just bring something in person.

Profanity = lack of adequate vocabulary; we have noted, have we not, that those under 20 don't care for diction?

She

proposes in the post-Neo-Con(ceptualist) era of

post-Modern Postmodern art

of the contemporary time

to "hire" artists

of exceptional craft & concept (& love)

to execute her concepts

that would fail @ her craft-skill-level.

If we sell, you get 80% (post gallery fee, if applicable) …

though some are NSF/4causes/nothing

anyone can have or afford space/$ for at this time.

Have 2 ideas & half the materials for both already.

Mixed media, of course.

(grammar is so 1998)

I want

a Crayola glow station!

(not really : )

34th Street

This shopping pep rally is so distinctly American. Oh, we consume so well, even when we don't have a dime to spare.

The marching band tradition is not one I understand (in my own culture; I think it's a symptom of my being in parochial / Catholic schools.

Speed Racer Enterprises. A whole "enterprises."

The commentary about the toys and things "that we celebrate" is pretty good this year. I mean, I appreciate learning that the creator of the Sponge Bob Squarepants character who irritates me so much was a marine biologist.

I am thinking about those copywriters and the white-suited radio-eared balloon techs. The ad writers and the balloon designers — as well as the entertainers — all fall under the category of "working artist." There are 5.7 million FT such folks in our country.

Since the parade is followed by the national dog show, the NBC commentators are talking about the history of a wiener dog float, which is followed, unfortunately, by the Jimmy Dean sausage company float, with a performance by a nice blonde country singer … sounding better than Alan Cumming's Broadway piece with the M&Ms.

There was a granny tricycle troupe from Ohio. My.

Geez, when is Santa coming?

Well, at least there's Sailor Mickey, courtesy of Disney Cruise Line. A Disney cruise sounds like an on-water Dante's Inferno to me.

It's noon in NCY and 54ºF.

(The Macy*s ad is making me want to buy down-alternative comforters — including two pillows — for $34.99 … there is no way I am ever going shopping on "Black Friday," a name which I have never understood, considering we name our stock market crashes black, too.)

OMG, they have the Oneida Indian Nation — please tell me they are not promoting silverware … they are dancing on a turtle … promoting peace and love, commentator tells me, "in the true Spirit of Thanksgiving."

Gibson Guitars has Jimmy Fallon. Hmm. Holiday medley. That drummer needs to stick-synch better …

Snooooopppy … is 59 years old!

The space-slinky dancer girls were good.

This parade has grown tiresome. New York Daily News and Dora the Explorer …

Mmm, waffles

And for you, it's a GeoQuiz (patent-pending).

11 (19)

One 2nd cousin,

3 half-siblings,

and a bonifide direct descendent;

Mascara is the best invention ever —

— and, finally, the brush-part (with its ineffective & clog-ful nylon-y bristles) has been replaced with rubbery plastic monster fingers. Thank goodness for smoother materials.

Is having great fun

Reading Katherine Joslin's Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion.

Just out.

Too bad it has nothing to do with her shaky term paper. Countdown?

23 days.

I used a very old gift card to purchase it (and several other books ranging from $1 to $15).

Women love clothes; men who do are less common and more suspect. Indeed, there is not much variation in men's business / formal / casual attire … for the past 250 years … to be obsessed with a thing supposedly designed to increase passive sexuality (attractiveness) can be unseemly in a male.

Women do so appreciate clean, well-trimmed male individuals; bathing is good, and so are clean clothes that fit nicely. We have not entered the pauper-stage of U.S. culture just yet — not universally, anyway.

Today I mended a pair of some over-the-knee socks. They are more than 10 years in my possession. One of two pair. Both have been repaired, at the Achilles and randomly in spots, more than once.

They are Swiss, cotton, durable and still as dark as when I first acquired them.

Three pair of Made-in-the-USA black cotton trouser socks from the Banana Republic Company have also shown much and unexpected decade-long durability. It has been a long-standing surprise.

Upstairs, there is a pile of wool sweaters on top of a chest of drawers, asking for hole-repair. Cedar blocks are not effective against moths. One never sees the moths, only the eaten-away hole and the dead or shell-casting of a moth-larva. I got distracted at noon after getting the socks done and on; to indulge a continued sewing desire sounded wrong, and so it was subverted by the "you should be working / going to a work-place in person to support your co-worker" mandate, which was not carried out either — but you see my mental gymnastics of avoidance and how things do or do not get done.

I have two Italian merino ribbed wool sweaters from J. Crew that have given more than ample years of service. Of course, they have been washed, and I have grown since high school. Congratulations to moth-proofed yarn.

Ibex also knows a good spin. They even craft underclothes, if you can imagine that — and my interest in woolen unmentionables. This girl once paid $25 for a black wool swimsuit from the 1950s or so at an antique fair. Yes, it used to fit — a one-piece with unexpected parts cut away. No, it was never water-tested; the original manila-colored price tag is still stapled to it.

Anyway, my vanity extends beyond my body, my clothes and beyond the interaction of mine with mine.

I have such skewed senses of saving up, of documenting – of my own self-importance — that my greatest wish for my attire is that it end up preserved.

One of my favorite days was spent in the basement of Union Station in Kansas City (where the Kansas City Museum, under the greater incorporation de' non-profit, keeps its collection in temperature-controlled cases and cabinets), when Nancy Rexford was in town to help evaluate and catalog the historic children's clothing collection. [Her books are very expensive, and the one I want is out of print.]

Going over out-of-date fashions, the fabrics faded, crunchy and unfamiliar, the construction fussy and impossible to dump into a contemporary washing machine, is my form of ghost-hunting.

You can smell people still, no matter how well-washed or long-stored their clothing.

It's the same when someone sends you a letter. You can tell if they smoke, if they use a scent, if they cooked bacon recently.

One of the things we stand to lose, along with songbird diversity, is our use of smell for much more than finding out that the kitchen garbage bin is overdue to be emptied or that a chunk of industrial beef has somehow gone off just a day after its purchase.

Anyhow, my point is that I aim to donate my clothes to the museum, based on the fact that a curator once told me that the 1990s > lacked in non-formal wear in terms of collections. And I'm supposed to have photos of me in it, preferably. I did not save catalog pages … and to wear the clothes now would be somewhat false history.

However, it can be noted as such, because I want people, if we still exist and have had the resources to cherish non-survival-related endeavors in 20 to 100 decades, to be able to feel about "my time" what I believe I can feel about the one 100 to 200 years before my own.

90 minutes

Remaining smell-time for roasting dead bird … pervades house … might try 3rd floor or basement-of-own-smells … is it sick that the live birds are 5 to 10 feet away?

The cat is confused. Will accept lap in exchange. We are both confused each time an exterior door is opened.

The avian veterinarian's latest YahooGroup post did say it was fine to feed one's captive birds from the Thanksgiving table. In fact, if anyone still has a Carolina parakeet squawking 'round, please let me know.

I once fed Squeaky KFC. He loved it; we did not have any furniture — floor-time is an essential part of any young creature's emotional and motor foundation. Babies; you have to play with them while crawling around the floor yourself [which is why it's usually a little easier to do this sort of thing during one's 20s; those of us on the latter side of 30 to 35 are amazed by women like the one I met at some conference or something, who was 43 or so and had just had her first (and somewhat accidental, it was given to us to understand) baby. She admitted without prompting that it was very hard … amazing, but exhausting].

At any rate, this bird we shall eat (mostly he) was raised on a farm with a bad life, I'm sure. Its legs and wings went elsewhere. It still weighed almost 9 pounds. The cat is about 17.

It was $12-16, and it will taste mostly fine; organic is for beef. That's a funny thing to propose.

Must see

These are only some of the works by some of the artists. There are 10 artists whose work is part of "Witness: Perspectives on War" at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center. Mr. Leedy (79) served in the Korean War, and some of his experiences there informed his work (originally shown at Grand Arts a decade ago) in this exhibition. Kansas City is lucky to have him.

From Review:

Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
2012 Baltimore Avenue
Kansas City, Missouri
816-474-1919
Wednesday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., First Fridays, 6-9 p.m., and by appointment

Witness: Perspectives on War
Ten-person multi-media exhibition featuring major and large-scale works by Tim Guthrie, Jim Leedy, Jim Sajovic, Denis Reichel, and John Thein, with new work by Justin Bell, Skyler Bieberly, Gear, Misha Kligman and Matteo Potter ; curated by Holly Swangstu and including an encore installation of Jim Leedy's millennium The Earth Lies Screaming 3-D mural project, created in conjunction with Grand Arts.
First Friday opening: November 6, 6-9 p.m.
November 6, 2009 — January 2010

Combine

I am not Rauschenberg , but it's fun to be able to mash together a desire to blog (procrastinate) and a need to learn something half-new.

LeCorbusier's Villa Savoye in Poissy, France, 1928-30 — international style / broad flat planes, no frivolous ornamentation (form, shape and surface are important), streamlined appearances expressed building's function; his five points of what architecture should do included 1) raising all buildings on pilotis (pillars), to create a place to stash the motor nicely in an uncluttering way and to create a better view for inhabitants, who would be 2) looking out through their "ribbon windows," wrapping around the whole building, or enjoying their 3) rooftop garden space, a private sometimes green spot for social gatherings; the inhabitants also would benefit from 4) an open floor plan, which would be made possible by the 5) free-façade design (meaning the walls were not load-bearing and thus could be moved around to alter rooms as necessary) — functional, utopian "best use of space"

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe taught at Bauhaus, with its very modern, all-window, regular patterned space devoid of excessive detail (which at the time was supposed to inspire creativity), was an advocate of extreme clarity and simplicity in architecture, as well as a use of modern materials like industrial steel and plate glass, the skeleton of steel a minimal framework and the glass a skin covering it without ornamentation or concealment. His 1922 plan for a skyscraper was never built and was one of two models. This one proposed an all-glass sheathing, even around corners, which were curved, suspended from a central core; his version of International Style.

William van Alen, Chrysler Building,1046-ft., NYC, 1928-30, Art Deco: inspired by machine forms, a style spanning architecture, fine and applied arts; influenced by Cubism, Constructivism, Futurism, Blaue Reiter (abstraction, geometric forms, distortion, intense colors and a love of new technology); celebrate the rise of commerce, the machine age, technology and speed; the growing impact of the machine expressed by repeating and overlapping imagery — streamlined forms derived from principle of aerodynamics, elegant and ultra-modern). The building was supported by a steel skeletal frame, and the exterior was decorated by a stone façade to show patterning, especially at the top, where car symbols like hubcaps and chevron-shapes are celebrated into a pinnacle expressing the building's company's product.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater in Bear Run, PN, 1934-37, modern architecture derived from his own prairie style … cantilevers, native stone, water access, etc.

Wright, Guggenheim Museum, NYC, 1957-59, late Wright; molded concrete, great interior spiral, horizontality of exterior after 1982 renovations; presents ordered view of art / an experience that's not passive

Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, Pompidou Center, Paris, 1971-78, postmodern deconstruction: move away from rules that constrict (like form follows function, purity of form, truth to materials or the Modern idea of simplification or elimination of ornament — controlled chaos). PoMo coined in 1948 describe post-WW2 dissatisfaction with precepts of modern architecture; extends to many disciplines and is very diverse, complex, contradictory, ambiguous and interconnected — also debated. A building that is literally inside out; exterior escalators start visit at top of building; interior is basic and usual.

I.M. Pei, Grand Pyramid for Louvre, 1988 in Paris; entrance way in central courtyard, postmodern

Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, 1991-97; typical Gehry style incorporating sheets of metal for exterior, in this case shaped as a ship or to mimic the undulating waves of the river at the site. Combines classic modernism with organic whimsy of Expressionists; designed with CATIA

LaVerdiere and Myoda et al, Tribute in Light, NYC WTC, 2001-02 34 nights (a light installation in situ while rebuilding is funded). Replicate Yamasaki's 1972 towers, mile-high projection with 44 7000-watt bulbs

Above Us (reprise — it's a theme!)

I have a friend from college who used to trip over sidewalk cracks and such because she was always looking up.

It sounds like the makings of a kid's book, "the girl who had her head in the clouds," but Suzette has always been quite grounded intellectually. I don't know if she still glances skyward all the time anymore, the ground under her skies being Deutchland's and our contact's having been broken for about seven years (to my regret; Google, etc. have not been helpful so far). (You like my gerund, you like my nonparallel construction that runs that gerund right after another nonessential possessive? Getting a kick out of my parenthetical punctuation creations, too?)

Adults rarely kick back and stare at the clouds on purpose. The last time I remember lying down to watch the sky was during the 2001 annual fall meteor showers.

Babies watch the sky from their carseats all the time, don't all of us enjoy a good "you drive me" experience, too? The land-fields and sky-field attached to Missouri's major east-west/west-east thoroughfare are not spectacular views, though, so when we drive (to my original) home (eastward) next weekend (not in 2009), I don't have much to look forward to those four hours besides the counting of birds of prey.

There is also the counting of X's, for Missouri's Interstate 70 is home to a number of lovely places such as the Million Dollar Fantasy Ranch. Legislation in 2005 reduced the number of "you're almost there" billboards, and now, the lonely trucker runs the terrible risk of missing CDL-discount announcements and only has a few miles to consider each Adult Toy and Video and/or LIVE GIRLS establishment before pulling off, so to speak.

Anyway, they are always done in boring, block-lettered fonts in flashy black, white, bright green, pink, etc., these billboards that share air-space with a huge M - I - Z - Z - O - U series, a Behlman-or-something car dealership series, the "Feeling Sick — Think It Might Be Something You Ate?" one, some radio station ads, a few funeral home "Don't Drink and Drive" ones, and obviously nothing that I have ever enjoyed reading. For a while, we had the God series, the white-on-black one-liners like, "Don't make me come down there," or, "That 'love thy neighbor' thing, I wasn't kidding."

So far, God has not commented on the Million Dollar Fantasy Ranch.

Self-indulgence

It seems 4 years ago, I was much more narrative and slightly less cynical (we're quoting CG in its birth-month, November, 2005):

So, crazy girls break into unlocked schools and crazy men plow their vehicles down hills and across four lanes before coming to rest at the bottom of a loamy, human-filled hill.

Apparently Abraham Lincoln was rejected by his first object d'amour, too. The historian at Elmwood told me Thursday that Lincoln's approach to proposing to Sarah Rickhart had been to cite the Bible.

"You know, Sarah," he said to her sitting next to him on the porch swing in Springfield. He had watched her grow to womanhood, womanhood back in the early 1800s being 12 to 14 years old or something, while staying with Sarah's sister and brother-in-law, the Butlers, Elizabeth and William. "In the Bible, Abraham marries Sarah." I can't help but picture the delivery as a little bit smarmy. Perhaps any good Christian girl would have swooned.

As the story goes, conveyed to me by someone who actually has read history books on this subject, Sarah left the scene. What an answer. Just walk away. In later years she was said to have regretted the choice, but only because Lincoln turned out to be president and all.

Ages.

Do not expect to find springs in Eureka Springs, though at one time there were 62 or so. What remains are Victorian houses perched along a series of switchback loops along a slight mountainside. It seemed that half of the homes were operated as bed and breakfasts, and that half of those were for sale.

I am exaggerating, just as I did when the jets in the bathtub sprayed water all over the place and I repeatedly exclaimed, "It's a tragedy!" while wiping up the floor. We laughed supremely then, which makes finding out that Manuela keeps a really clean floor more than worth the wet clothes. (Manuela: the cryptic printed signature under the crooked printed sentence "Gratuities are always appreciated" on an envelope on the dressing table.)

On Friday night we set out after dark on foot and had no idea where we were going. There seemed to be no one around, and it's accurate to say the town is quite quiet. The trolley bus is loud, but that's about it. Deer wander though every evening.

I declare

that this is a scholarly and legal use of* Ms. DiFranco's lyrics; links to full versions on official site for her "Reprieve" album included; she says a few things better than I do right now, so I'm saying, "click me:"

"step up and forfeit your frontal lobe
to the sexed up strobe of celebrity
never mind that the nanoseconds in between
are some of the darkest darkness you've ever seen …"

♡

"… yeah, so
it took me a few years to catch on
that those days i catch everyone's eye
correspond with those nights of the month
when the moon gleams like an egg in the sky
and men are using a sense they don't even know they have
just to watch me walk by
and me, i'm supposed to be sensible
leave my animal outside to cry

"but when all of nature conspires
to make me her glorious whore
it's cuz in my body i hold the secret recipe
of precisely what life is for
and the patriarchy that looks to shame me for it
is the same one making war
and i've said too much already
but i'll tell you something more …"

❀

*Who has received a "fair" deal of my money over the years.

*)I miss Utah Phillips

I'm tired of all the information

… and the smells.

Mardi blah

I must be the only person who hates Tuesday more than Monday. Mondays are fine. On Mondays all is open, bright — blank and hopeful. Hit the ground running. Made a commitment, went to commitment, on foot both ways. Read for school. Made it to meeting, sat through meeting. Went to school.

Darkness follows, and it has nothing to do with the cloudy sky overhead.

Bad news is something I can't handle at all, I guess. Bad behavior creates so many ripple-effects of negativity. Where am I supposed to "go" — in my head / with my body / for my meaningful vocation/engagement with life?

There is too much to do in 2010. Too much to do before the holidays/semester's end. Too much to do today.

Winged Victory of Samothrace says, "Just do it."

But —

Doing is just too hard.

Running away is my favorite ~

Let's compete and see who gets to.

Politicians

are the people who take what exists and screw it all up.

Artists

are the people who take what I imagine and make it happen in real life.

Is a hater

Who does expect

(there are many issues unstated : )

Oh, regulatory things … read up … we spent what on what now?

But still, why can't we hire a bunch of out-of-work degree-holders to work in H1N1 vaccination factories?

Rahr.

I will be your incubator!

Was right

… about the 16-year-old.

Layers

Bad news can come like phyllo dough. When finally baked up and presented from an oven, after all the preparation, the kneading, filling and folding are over — the work — the pastry may simply taste bad.

The number of flakes are infinite. The amount of layers are impossible to calculate, and as you dig, thinking, "ah, here at last is the end of it," it all ends up crumbling apart.

It's quite late in the day, lunch for many already, to be playing out a self-indulgent baking metaphor on a blog.

Let's not forget that this blog has (never?) led to any remuneration; lately, it has induced me to donate money to a stranger's medical bills. Not much. Recently I gave KCUR $10 more than to her, and I gave $10 to SNKC. The Kansas City Museum (Friends Of) got about $27 this year, on top of my usual membership … I think … their fiscal year is impossible to trace; membership might be individually annual — and poorly tracked — and they were audacious or ignorant enough to allow a hidden (non-standard) PayPal fee in the secondary campaign for shipping, though nothing was mailed my way.

I think those are all my 2009 501c3 givings. Actual work, unfortunately, is not deductible as an in-kind or any donation. Way back in my head there must be something that half-believes in the "good works," which Martin Luther did not, or in karmic balance. We have not reduced our tip percentage, though we might be dining out less. I have chipped off about $100 to give to a few things I believe in during a time when resources are inadequate. I might be responding to the generosity of hundreds of people in the community 'round here who have chipped off in my direction, based solely on belief.

Oh, and I bought some art this year, too. About $200.

So, an hour later, after the puffs and sambousas and spanakopita have been picked apart and hastily digested with a friend, she drifts back into the third person, decides nothing really has changed and gets back down to somewhat boring and somewhat tarnished brass tacks.

It shall be fine someday when they shine.

Les Mots

you'd have to know to read what i'm reading for art history class (most of which baffle standard spellchecking apps and also must be looked up by me in order to read):

diminuendo (reduction in force or loudness; this word should come in handy)

prole (means proletariat — yes, run, glenn beck!)

aperçu (know french but english connotations are a bit different)

pangyric (recall from undergrad life; fun and hopefully will be directed at me someday : )

fatuous (you know this one)

borborygm (gas!)

voulu (more french; contrived — why not just say "contrived," dear author?)

Bundesrepublik (german, of course, and it just means "germany" — i'm starting to get angry)

exegetical (sounds familiar … oh — means, "explanatory")

catamite (eew)

feuilleton (argh!)

tittup (we should talk about this one more often)

SAVAK (o.k. that just exposes that people my age are not familiar with the cultural and political things of our own babyhood years)