Daily Archives: September 29, 2010

Travel

An Odd Frugality

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Fall                                    Waning  Back to School Moon

Over to Sushi/Hot Wok for supper.  Lee waited on me with the kind of deference and almost invisibility that only Japanese can manage.  The food was good, I looked out over Michigan Avenue toward Millennium Park.

Here’s a weird note.  Suddenly my right hip has begun to act up.  Made being on my feet for a long time or going for long walks painful.  Tired tonight as a result.

Got a recommendation for a jazz place, The Backroom, but the first show starts at 9:00 pm.  We don’t have anything that starts at 9:oo pm in Andover.  The concierge gave me a promotional pass for the $20 cover charge and it’s only a $6 cab ride away, but I find myself unwilling to get up and go.

I have these odd notions of frugality.  If I spend money getting somewhere, I should see as much as I can. That leads me to overdo it.  So, I feel guilty about not going.  I also turn off my cell phone to save the battery.  I discovered Kate thought it was because I didn’t want to talk to anybody.  Well, maybe a little, but more the frugality part.

The energy here is good.  The city is busy, people rushing here and there with serious intent, a few loitering, one older black man  sitting on his soft-sided suitcase, head in his hands.  The trains rattle by overhead and the Lake sends in a breeze from not far away.  Buildings here reach up, they do scrape the sky.

Art and Culture

A Baroque Morning

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Fall                                 Waning Back to School Moon

Down to Ada’s Deli this am for fried matzo and egg with onions and lox.  My mystery guest (Kate’s retirement gift) told me her kids loved fried matzo with syrup.  Hmm…not with lox and onions for this gentile.

We had a spirited hour long discussion.  Very high energy, Deb is.  Her fiance deals in the secondary metals market, aluminum.  She’s in favor of retirement, wants to travel with her new love.  She used to live in Hyde Park and brightened when I said we could have met at Jimmie’s.  Gonna be good, I know for sure.

When we finished, I walked out on Wabash to Washington.  Orthodox Jewish men here with black satchels.  Jeweler’s Row.  Up Washington to Michigan Avenue, south a block of Michigan and over to the Art Institute.  Great weather and I considered just heading into Grant Park, but the Institute was right there.

Wandered in the European Art before 1900, finding many Baroque paintings, some wonderful Renaissance works, too.  Overall, our collection compares well, not in quantity but in quality.  Baroque is a propaganda art form like Socialist Realism; the Roman Catholic church wanted to counter the rising tide of the Protestant Reformation.  One branch of that counter reformation effort emphasized images that spoke of particularly Catholic themes, at least as the Catholic church saw it:  forgiveness, assumption of Mary, saints, crucifixion scenes.

They were lucky that some of the very best painters in the Western tradition came to the task with energy and invention.  Many well known names were Baroque painters:  Vermeer, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Poussin, Rubens and Vermeer.

The Baroque painters select the climactic moment to depict. They use rich, deep colors, often lots of shadow. wanting to arouse emotion, a commitment of faith in the religious insistence.

Religious painting does not exhaust Baroque themes, however.  Our own Lucretia by Rembrandt is a Baroque work that features a historical them from Roman history.

These are wonderful paintings, romantic in a sense, calling the viewer to participate, to feel, to decide.  Glad I had the chance to see more examples here in Chicago.

Bees

Bee Diary: September 29, 2010

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Fall                                  waning back to school moon

Marla comes to all the hobby beekeeper meetings.  She also taught the Beginning Beekeeping Course.  She’s bright, quick and has the power to explain things simply.  Good choice, MacArthur.

“Marla Spivak’s work with bees and their keepers has earned her a $500,000 “genius grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Spivak is a distinguished professor of apiculture and social insects at the University of Minnesota, but earned her doctorate in 1989 at Kansas University, where she studied under Chip Taylor, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

Her work on honeybees’ health has helped protect honeybee populations from disease.

She has focused on genetically influenced behaviors that make entire colonies resistant to disease, and has bred more disease-resistant strains of bees for use throughout the industry.

The genius grants provide money based on creativity, originality and potential to make important contributions in the future. Other fellows from this year include an indigenous language preservationist, a stone carver and a quantum astrophysicist.

No stipulations are placed on the monetary awards. Fellows are nominated and selected in secret by people whose anonymity is carefully guarded.

Taylor on Tuesday praised Spivak’s work, saying she was unique among scientists in the field. “She works more closely with beekeepers than any of the researchers I’ve ever known,” he said. “She’s been extremely successful in getting them to cooperate.”

As a result, he said, her research more than others’ has had an impact on more people.

“She’s absolutely dedicated to both the science that she’s doing and the industry that she’s working with,” Taylor said.”