Category Archives: Art and Culture

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television, Our Land and Home

Scattered Images

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Imbolc                                                                                 Cold Moon

Reorganizing my fragmented collection of images.  I have a method, it works, but there are a whole lot of images.  This may take a very long time.  Worth it in the end though because I will have a well organized image resource, collected by me and easily usable.

Watched Wim Wender’s “The End of Violence” last night.  Kate likes her narrative served straight up with no sides.  This  film had oblique angels and sudden turns.  She wasn’t crazy about it, but I liked it.  It was an early post-modern film.  A film about a film about violence in which the resolution of the film destroys the protagonist’s career and liberates him at the same time.  Clever, beautiful.  Well acted.  Bill Pullman.  Andie MacDowell.  Gabriel Byrne.

Looks like the critics on Rotten Tomatoes agreed with Kate for the most part.  I write these critiques before I look up the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.  Sort of like translating Latin before checking with an English version.

I’m in full inside mode at the moment, not moving outside for much though I do plan to visit the grocery store this afternoon.  Cold.  And our furnace is out.  Fortunately I have my own gas stove in the study.  Centerpoint is coming today.  Could be the end for the furnace; it’s 18 years old and their life-span is 15-20 years.  Sigh.

 

Art and Culture, Latin, Writing

Personal Best: Cont.

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Winter                                                                              Cold Moon

Focus on writing.  All the best hours.  Really dig into it.  Revise.  Rewrite.  Write.  Market.  Put stuff out there, in the world.

Hang with the Latin.  As a hobby, in off hours.

That seems to be where I’m headed.  The museum?  May have to go.  Still noodling.

Art and Culture, Friends

Leaving

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Winter                                                                  New (Cold) Moon

And so.  Had lunch with Allison at the Walker.  “Elvis has left the building,” she said when we met.  Today at 1 pm I said good-bye to Jennifer and Paula, turned in my badge to the guard, picked up my coat, the attendant found it before I put my number on the counter, that’s how much I’ve been there of late, walked out the door and left the museum behind.

Not forever.  Just till July 1st.  But it felt like a definite parting, an end of something and the beginning of another.

It was time, too.  I found myself impatient with kids on my first tour, 9 year olds, half of whom flocked to benches to sit down while the tour moved around them.  I was short.  Not helpful, but my toleration level for young indifference had reached a peak.  Time for  a rest.

When I saw Allison, we talked about the MIA, about touring, about her absence.  She mentioned that no one made any to do about Tom Byfield, who resigned last week.  Folks leave and neither the docent corps or the museum acknowledges the time and love they’ve put in over the years.  Often, many years.

Something to consider.

We also walked through the Cindy Sherman show.  Allison made an interesting point.  “Who is Cindy Sherman?  I mean, she’s about our age.  Has she had work done?  What’s she really like?”  A Walker guard said she’s unremarkable in person.  58.  It’s an interesting question.  As a sort of performance artist, wondering who she is raises questions of the nature of reality and the ability of artists to manipulate it.

After lunch, I drove home through the mist and grunge off the highway kicked up a filthy spray onto the windshield.  In January.  In Minnesota.  Guess we gotta get used to it or move.

Art and Culture, Latin, Writing

And of these three…

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Winter                                                                          New (Cold) Moon

Still parsing the change that happened over the last year or so.  It may have something to do with Kate’s retirement.  Allina and medicine as practiced there made her so unhappy.  With that out of her life she’s a different woman.  That may have had more effect on me than I imagined.  Perhaps relieved in me some of the emotional carrying charge I had as spouse.  Not sure.  Just speculative.

It may also have been the soul clarifying advance into life past 65; life lived with an existential awareness of death, rather than an abstract one.  Thinking about the third phase and its opportunities did lead to understanding what I wanted to do.  What only I could do.  And the necessity of putting myself behind those efforts as much as I can.

As that picture has become more filled in, I find myself focusing on three things:  writing, art, Latin.  That’s not to say that the garden, the bees, reimagining faith won’t get any effort from me.  They will.  But the good time, the time when I work best now belongs to those three.  It also means that I’m going to shun picking up any other responsibilities in the near and medium-term future.

And of those three, writing is the focus:  completing the Tailte trilogy, reworking the five other novels I’ve written, polishing some short stories and getting further in three novels I’ve got well started but left hanging.  If things go well with the Tailte trilogy, I have more books in that world.  It’s a rich vein.

Getting older.  Getting clearer.  Getting more determined.  That seems to be the direction.

Art and Culture, Asia, Family, Weather +Climate

Good Morning. Good Afternoon. Good Night.

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Winter                                                                 New (Cold) Moon

When Mark and Mary and I spoke today, it went like this:  “Good morning, Charlie.”

“Good afternoon, Mark.”   “Good night, Mary.”  8 am here.  5 pm Riyadh.  10 pm Singapore.

Another interesting aspect here.  Solar weather can upset internet connections over global spans.  Felt like we may have had some today.  Mark’s connection seems to be the weakest of the three.  Whether that’s Saudi tech or Mark tech or, in this case, the sun itself, hard to say.

Woolly brother Bill Schmidt down with a bad cold as the 2013 flu season begins to reach saturations last seen during the pandemic.  The older we get and the frailer we get, the more problematic the flu can become, a fact strongly underlined by the death of two healthy teenagers in Minnesota this season.

The flu shot, they say, is 60% effective.  Good, but far from perfect.  That leaves 40 out of a 100 still exposed.  A large number.  But, better than 100%.

4 more tours with Qin Shi Huang Di, then blank mornings on the calendar.

 

Art and Culture, Great Wheel, Great Work, Writing

A Sabbatical

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Winter                                                                    Moon of the Winter Solstice

Winding down.  Last two days of tours.  A vast stretch of mornings between next Monday and July 1st.  I’m excited.  Rewriting.  Writing.  Marketing.  Lots to do.

One outdoor to do over the next few months.  Get out in Anoka county.  Hike.  Take pictures.  Make some phenological observation.  Maybe take a week plus somewhere, hiking from a cabin or perhaps, if I can find one, a trail going from inn to inn.  I’m feeling the need for some natural rejuvenation.  Not cities.  Not books.  Not movies.  Not art.

Mostly though I want to lean into the writing.  Make it as full time as I can.

Art and Culture, Politics, Sierra Club, Writing

Pruning

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Winter                                                                Moon of the Winter Solstice

Tomorrow the legislature goes into session and for the first time in three years I’m on the sideline.  A bit wistful.  A bit chagrined at getting out just when the getting might get good.  Yes. Yes.  Doubtful about the decision?  No.

It’s midwinter, the time for pruning in the orchard.  Fruit trees need space for air to circulate, fewer branches so they can focus their growth on less fruit with more vigor, and space, too, in which a harvester can reach.  Plus, if possible they need to be kept shorter.  Easier to harvest and less prone to damage during wind storms and heavy wet snow.

Just so my life of a year ago.  I’d allowed branches to grow every which way.  Too many branches.  The fruit might be greater in quantity but not as good a quality.  There was little space to reach inside the tree, watch an idea blossom, nurture it, then pluck it.  My tree had become overgrown and needed pruning.

It wasn’t easy.  The people at the Sierra Club are fellow travelers.  Folks who see a world and want it better.  Folks willing to do what it takes.  I admire that stance and have made it my own for much of my life.  I miss that sense of agency and I miss the camaraderie.

Yet.  The hours of driving, of having attention pulled away time and time again.  And the writing.  Peaking now, for some reason.  At this late stage of life.  It was the tree I had not nourished.  So I made the decision and pulled away.

I’ve pulled back from everything but Latin, art and writing now.  The art temporarily, till July 1st, but all else, at least for now, permanently.

And so the gavel will go down, the great sausage grinder start up its rusty gears and I will sit at home and think of Odin.

Art and Culture, Asia, Myth and Story

After the Museum Closes

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Winter                                                  Moon of the Winter Solstice

Holiday outing with Anne, Kate’s sister.  We went to the MIA, tickets for the 4:00 pm terra cotta warriors.  This is the last hour of the day, the museum closing at 5:00 pm.  There were crowds downstairs in the lobby, crowds on the 2nd floor wandering through the China and Africa galleries and crowds, many people, in the exhibit itself.

(who do you suppose the gladiator finds to fight?  One of the officers in Germanicus?)

This has been a big one, passing Rembrandt apparently already, though that’s hard for me to believe.  We meandered through, looked at the wonderful gold hilted dagger and the Bo bell, the beginnings of the Qin state back in that faraway time.  Homer’s time.  A time of marauding nomads in China.  770 B.C.

As we finished the announcement came that the museum closes in 5 minutes.  Doors were shut denying access to certain galleries.  All of us herded down the main corridor, the one with Doryphoros and out, the corridors becoming empty, going into the magical space that art takes on when the viewers leave.  What is art when no sees it?  Do the terra cotta warriors fan, sit on the benches before another tiring day of educating the masses?  Does Frank blink his eyes, no doubt dry from a day holding them open.  Perhaps Picasso’s baboon takes over the place, swinging from the Calder and the Chihully and maybe opening the door of the Tatris.

We’ll never know because all the art finds its way back to its stations before the next human returns.  I could sense them getting ready, perhaps willing us all out so they could get on with their night.  The Buddha wandering over to discuss divinity with Vishnu and Shiva and Parvati.  The old sages getting up from their poses beside waterfalls and on the balconies of secluded houses, perhaps dropping into the scholar’s room for a chat, some tea.

But then again, maybe everything stays the same, static and waiting.  Would be a shame if it did.

Art and Culture, Asia, Writing

8 more Terra Cotta Tours to go

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Winter                                                                    Moon of the Winter Solstice

Two terra cotta tours today.  Went well.  60 people on the public tour.  Quite an event moving everyone around in an already crowded exhibition.  Fun anyhow.

All my beta reader mss. are ready for distribution.  Tomorrow and Saturday I’ll mail and deliver them.  I’m asking for them back by January 31st.  A little nervous because I want honest feedback and writing is tender, at least for me.  No thick skin here.

No other way to grow, move on as a writer.  On the other side of the critique is better work and that’s where I’m headed.

Art and Culture, Asia

From the Spring and Autumn Period Until Now

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Samhain                                                                 Moon of the Winter Solstice

Kids from Mankato today.  They have studied China and the first emperor.  We connected though I wouldn’t put these in my top two favorite tours of the year.    On me and them.  When the students come from further away, they have to get up early to get to school, get on the bus, then make the drive.  They seem tired.

Docent friend has decided to hang up his lanyard after 18 years.  I’ll be sorry to see him go. Tom’s got a quick wit.  As he said, “I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I’m in the drawer.”  Quite a bit more than that.  I hope we see him around at some points anyhow.

I have this feeling like it’s time for the semester to be over.  There are 16 more Terra Cotta Warrior tours on my calendar between now and January 11th.  That lengthy time off will feel good.