Monthly Archives: February 2009

Art and Culture, Writing

I’m Baaaack!

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Imbolc      Waning Wild Moon

Gosh, my numbers have shrunk this last week.  I know I’ve neglected this space in an attempt to keep up with other blogging, like the Sierra Club and the Star Tribune weather site and I apologize.

Not to mention that I fell into a bit of a slump with the retreat followed by vertigo and a week of feeling sub-par after that.  No excuses, just the truth, Ruth.

This morning finds me once again alert and awake, feeling on top of my game.  ‘Bout time, if you asked me.

Today the textile tour for Anne will come together, aided in part by an insight I got yesterday at the research workshop.  I learned about the directories function on the MIA website.  It shows a complete list of objects on display by type, artist and location.  This makes it easy to plan a tour route knowing exactly what’s on exhibit.  No time wasting trying to figure it out.  The information is just there.

The On Dragon’s Wings tour for Friday will also get assembled today.  I have an 8 dynasties tour, an idea created by Bob Marshall.  In this tour I go through the Shang, Zhou, Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties using one object from each.  As Bob suggested, I try to select the finest example of the most well-developed art form in each of those dynasties.  That means starting with the bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou, moving to a Han ceramic piece, perhaps then to a Tang three-color glaze, then either a Song dynasty landscape painting or a ceramic piece, for example.

I have dynastic maps and a precis’ of the dynasties character.  This allows for a quick over view of Chinese history and associating with each dynasty a particular art form, one that reached its height at some point during that dynastic period.

At 5 p.m. Kate and I will head out to Roseville for another Chinese New Year celebration with the Collection in Focus guides.  I look forward to this each year because it is often the only time I see some of my old colleagues from that program.

Art and Culture, World History

Learning, Always

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Imbolc      Waning Wild Moon

What a treat.  Janice Laurie, the MIA’s librarian, gave us a quick once over of the resources available in the library.  They have a JSTOR subscription, an Artfull Index subscription, plus several other expensive database collections available online in the library and through the computer in the docent lounge.  This makes me want to give up everything else and just dive into art history.  My first venture with it in depth will be the William Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite exhibit coming in June.

All the while the lectures about the Middle Ages, the High Middle Ages right now, keep me company as I shuttle back and forth.

The sun came out today and improved my mood quite a bit.  I shook myself a bit this morning and said Carlos, you can choose.  You can lean into the day instead of away from it.  Seemed to have some positive effect.

My small black notebook remained behind when I left the library this morning.  The librarian told the guard to look for the guy with the Harry Potter glasses.  Me.

Kate and Anne went to see the Lipizzaner stallions perform at the Target Center.  They had lunch at the Chambers Hotel before hand.  Meanwhile I learned about art history databases.  Different strokes…

General

Could Happen

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Imbolc   Waning Wild Moon

Snow fell in the night.  Long ago I read a sociologist who thought about winter.  He said a good snow fall wipes out boundaries, makes the world seem more connected, more fluid.  It makes me wish snow could fall in, say Iraq and Iran, all over, maybe pushing up into Afghanistan and over to the rest of the ‘stans, maybe a vasty storm covering all the world in snow evening the beaches of Florida, Hawaii, Phuket.  Then, maybe then, we could all see how much we are one, how much barriers we’ve installed are false.  How our lives gather together huddled on this one small rock hurtling through the vacuum of space faster than a speeding bullet.  Could happen.

Today I’m off to the museum again to learn about art historical research.  I can do it all right of course but I want to learn how to go deeper, dig more into the mountains rich with knowledge.

General

7th Best? Come on. Equal Justice? Crisis Leadership?

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Just days after the nation honored the 200th anniversary of his birth, 65 historians ranked Abraham Lincoln as the nation’s best president.

Former President George W. Bush, who left office last month, was ranked 36th out of the 42 men who had been chief executive by the end of 2008, according to a survey conducted by the cable channel C-SPAN.

Bush scored lowest in international relations, where he was ranked 41st, and in economic management, where he was ranked 40th. His highest ranking, 24th, was in the category of pursuing equal justice for all. He was ranked 25th in crisis leadership and vision and agenda setting.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090215/ap_on_go_pr_wh/ranking_presidents

Aging, Weather +Climate

Cabin Fever and Feeling Old

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Imbolc      Waning Wild Moon

I know this will continue a down refrain from the last couple of weeks, but I want to talk about it anyhow.

One of the more problematic parts of getting older lies in the corrosive nature of normal problems.  That is, today and this last week I have felt slightly sick, unwell but not moving outright into a cold or the flu.  This may be, probably is, a hangover from the vertigo of two Mondays ago, but I find it hard not to ascribe it to generally decreased vigor.

When I went to the  capitol on Tuesday, I was there from noon until 4:00 pm or so.  By the time I got home I felt completely worn out.  Yesterday at the continuing education at the Art Institute the thought of waiting from 4 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. to do a walk through of the Asmat exhibit found me on the way home.

A certain shuffle in the walk necessarily accompanies vertigo, since rapid movements often tripped the spinning/nausea cycle.  That shuffle, the tenderness and care with which I held my body, made feel only months away from assisted living.

As I write this, a more plausible explanation than age occurs to me.  Writing has a consitent therapeutic value, something I appreciate about it.  I’ve been inside and hunkered down since late December, only venturing out for Sierra Club, Art Institute, Woolly Mammoth or sheepshead events.

The cabin fever that can strike us  Minnesotans during this time has been noticeably absent from me this year.  I thought I’d beat it with interesting and varied activities.  Nope.  This tunnel vision, feeling like life has no breadth, comes from the inside life.  It also creates the old guy feeling of a life with no pizzazz and no energy, then reinforces it with whatever examples the environment offers:  vertigo, feeling a bit off.

There.  Now I have to get ready to go the Institute.

Art and Culture, Great Work, Politics

I Can Get Satisfaction

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Imbolc   Waning Wild Moon

I don’t yet feel a time crunch in my life, but I have sensed the increasing speed with which events zoom onto my radar.  I may have to alter my daily schedule, for example, I have worked out around 4 pm for several years now, but shifts in other events now make that difficult.  Workouts may have to move back to the mornings, where they were for many years.

The Sierra Club political work satisfies a deep need I have for agency in the political process.  Long, long ago I integrated “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” into my Self.  I’ve tried to decide against it from time to time, but that has always proved futile.  Resistance is futile.

The Docent work satisfies another deep need, this one for constant contact with art and opportunities to learn and think about it.  The two year training program allowed me to put down medium roots in global art history; now I spend time pushing those roots deeper into the soil of the world’s artistic heritage and spreading them out across continents and movements.

So, change.  The only constant.  Again.

Aging, Politics

Working Myself Out Of A Glum Mood

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Imbolc   Waning Wild Moon

It’s cold again.  8 degrees with 3 for a windchill.  I’m always glad when the weather gets in synch with season, at least the seasons as I knew them.

I had drifted away from working out over the last ten days, too afraid I’d fall over on the treadmill or bonk myself with free weights.  Whenever that happens, I can get glum, down.  I did, but after a workout on the treadmill this afternoon my mood lightened.  Partly because I did not fall off.

The legislative committee for the Sierra Club meets via conference call every Wednesday night at 7pm.  I’ve chaired two meetings now since Dan, the chair, is also a lobbyist for Clean Water Action.  Some of our bills have begun to pop and the politics look complicated already.  Gonna be a good spring.

Aging, Politics, Weather +Climate

When The Bell Tolls, It Tolls For Tor and Celt and Morgana…

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Imbolc   Waning Wild Moon

Our Arcosanti bell has rung and rung today.  A north wind has blown in at speeds up to 24 mph.

Kate bought this bell quite a while ago on a trip to see her father.  When she brought it back, we had just experienced two Wolfhound deaths, I believe it was Celt and Scot.  I suggested we hang it and let it be a memorial bell for all of our dogs.  And so we did.

My day at the capitol yesterday wore me out.  I remember when I would go to the capitol and be there all day, sometimes until late in the night.  Geez.  It’s a long drive in to St. Paul, so I’m going to limit myself to one trip in a week for right now.  As the weather warms and the session gets more action oriented, I may go in more.

It’s important to be there from time to time, to take the pulse of the place myself for the Sierra Club blog.

General

Mystical Democracy

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Imbolc    Waning Wild Moon

Legislative Reference Library

Ate at the capitol cafeteria today for the first time in probably 15 years.  Met with Justin and Dan.  They both have the lobbying persona, happy positive upbeat.  Make only friends.  No enemies.  Why I’m not a lobbyist.

Walking up the capitol steps today I had a physical sense of the collective power of Minnesota citizens.  It inhabits this building, especially during session.  We come, from whatever role or status, to seek the benefit of this power.  This was the first time I recall feeling this presence in such a palpable way.

Democracy has its mystical side and on my way up the white granite steps it pressed inward, right to my heart. I do reverence here because  even wounded as it is by class democracy comes closest to the vox populi.

Here in the library the maroon covered tables have five filled seats.  Only one man, a strange little bald guy in a tweed jacket and hair dyed an odd reddish color consults a book.  The rest of us, in this literary chapel, stare at computer screens.  The new reality.