Noticing - Greta Gerwig, director

This afternoon I took myself out to the movies: Little Women. I enjoyed it. I don't think it was great,  but it was very good—certainly entertaining—and I enjoyed reencountering Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth. I also recognized a few of the actors: Laura Dern, Bob Oudenkirk (though I kept thinking Kevin Costner), Chris Cooper, Meryl Streep. And that dark-haired, pretty young man—Timothée Chalamet. This evening I looked him up, and saw that he was in Lady Bird. As I was discovering that, David had brought up Netflix: and what was there on the screen, but . . . Lady Bird. David said he hadn't seen it. So that became this evening's fare. And it turns out, not only with Timothée Chalamet in it, but also the star—Jo—of Little Women, Saoirse Ronan; and Tracy Letts, who plays the publisher, Bradstreet, in LW, and the long-suffering, patient, loving dad in LB. And both movies are directed by Greta Gerwig.

So I've had a huge dose of GG, SR, TC, and TL today. Most enjoyably.

And what's more, the lead actors—SR and TC most notably—are all of 24, 25 years old. I look forward to seeing where they go.

Here are the trailers for the two movies:

Greta was passed over this year on the Oscar nominations for best director. All the nominees are men. She was nominated in 2017—only one of five women ever nominated for that award in the history of the Academy Awards. Only one woman has ever won: Katheryn Bigelow, for The Hurt Locker (2008). Here is Gerwig talking about the award. Surely it's time to change this sorry record.

Noticing c - Billy Collins's "The Birds of America"

Ha ha, I thought the other day when I wrote my last entry that it was day 100, but it turns out I skipped from 96 straight to 98. So I've corrected my error, and because I really wanted to end on day "c," here is one last, more or less randomly selected offering: a poem by one of my favorite poets.

The Birds of America

by Billy Collins

Summer or Wood Duck

Early this morning
in a rumpled bed,
listening to birdsong
through the propped-open windows,

I saw on the ceiling
the figure of John J. Audubon
kneeling before
the pliant body of an expired duck.

I could see its slender, limp neck,
rich chestnut crown,
the soft grey throat,
and bright red bill,

even the strange pink legs.
And when I closed my eyes again
I could hear him whisper
in his hybrid Creole accent

I have taken your life
so that some night a man
might open a book
and run his hand over your feathers,

so that he could come close enough
to study your pale brown flecks,
your white chin patch,
and the electric green of your neck,

so that he might approach 
without frightening you into the sky,
and wonder how strange 
to the earth he has become,

so that he might see by his lamp light
the glistening in your eye
then take to the air
and fly alongside you.


Here are some more of Audubon's paintings of the birds of America, all 435 of which are now available online.

American Magpie

Pinnated Grouse

Spotted Grouse

Roseate Spoonbill

Purple Heron

Sharp-tailed Finch

American Flamingo

Sooty Tern

Noticing xcix - geocaching

We spent the day with our friend Alastair (aka Mimring) in the Los Gatos (south San Francisco Bay) area, geocaching. Alastair had been overseas for a couple of years, and this was our first outing in a while. It was, as always, excellent to catch up, do some hiking, do some puzzle solving, and find some caches. The main object today was to do a series of nine puzzles titled "The Mystery of the Missing Geocacher." Each cache contained a clue leading on to another cache, and another clue. The series was nicely put together, and is well kept up, and we had no difficulties short of the occasional No Service message—which just meant we had to seek higher ground, typically. In the end, we solved the "Mystery," and we found eleven other caches along the way as well.

The day ended with a visit to Mt. Umunhum, from 1958 to 1980 an Air Force radar installation, and just recently opened to the public as a regional Open Space area. A couple of friends had mentioned it to me, saying it's an interesting spot for the history and the views are spectacular. So what a pleasant surprise to find ourselves just down the road when we finally "found" the missing geocacher.

Here are some photos from the day:

One of the first few caches of the day

Kennedy Trail in Sierra Azul Open Space

We were all amused by the shoes thrown over the power lines

We found one clue in a little native plant garden,
near some Artemisia californica

Coordinates for the final Mystery

 

The answer to the final Mystery: key to the combination lock

Shannon Valley Open Space

Near where we "found" the "missing geocacher,"
looking east and south

On Bald Mountain, looking north and east

Mt. Umunhum: The Cube (atop which the huge radar dish once rested)
and recently constructed Ohlone ceremonial prayer circle

Yin-yang drawn in the dirt of the prayer circle

We needed to take a selfie to get credit for a virtual cache;
here it is—you can tell we were having fun

Monterey Bay from Mt. Umunhum

And with that, I am going to take a break from this blog, on day 100. In two weeks I'll be leaving on a trip where I will have no Internet connectivity. Maybe I'll resume when I get back, or maybe I'll just leave this at 100. Time will tell. But for now, I've enjoyed the past three-plus months—learning some new things, discovering some new art and poetry, getting out into the world and sharing my experiences. I hope you have too.

Noticing xcviii - classic salmon flies

When I drive, I often listen to NPR. Lately, on two occasions—most recently this evening—I've managed to tune in to the very beginning of what sounds like a fascinating show on This American Life, called "The Feather Heist." It's about a young flautist who stole some very rare and extremely valuable feathers from the British Museum of Natural History in order to sell them to classic fly tyers, so that he could buy himself a golden flute.

In the show, there is a description—rather, a "recipe"—of a fly from the 1840s called the Durham Ranger: "The tail calls for feathers from the Indian crow, which is the red rough fruit crow that's all over South America. The butt requires two turns of black ostrich hurl. The throat has light blue hackle, usually from the cotinga, which is from Central America. The wings have a pair of long jungle cock feathers with double tibbetts on both sides. . . . The cheeks are from a bird called a chatterer. The horns are blue macaw, which is a parrot."

All this despite the fact that an actual salmon couldn't care less about the colors and the subtleties and the details. Nevertheless, back in the Victorian era ornate flies were very popular—and they remain so today, on a level with Civil War reenactments in terms of the effort to be as authentic as possible. The website Fly Tyer is devoted to this art form, as for example in a page called "A Path to Tying Classic Salmon Flies."

In any event, this got me curious about what these flies look like. Here are a few, with recipes:

Leadwing Coachman
Hook: Regular wet-fly hook, sizes 10 to 6.
Thread: Black Flat-waxed Nylon.
Tag: Flat gold tinsel.
Body: Peacock herl.
Throat: Brown wet-fly hackle.
Wing: Mallard wing quills.

Clarke's Caddisfly
Hook: Mustad R43, size 14 or 12.
Thread: Brown Sheer 14/0 or your favorite brand of extra-fine thread.
Wings: Ring-necked pheasant cock church window feather.
Body: Super Fine Dry Fly Dubbing, blue-winged olive.
Legs: Ginger cul de canard.
Antennae: Two barred fibers from a mallard flank feather.
Hackle: Brown saddle hackle.
Head: Black fingernail polish.

Rust Marabare
Hook: Mustad C49S, sizes 18 to 12.
Bead: Bright red.
Thread: Black 8/0 (70 denier).
Tail: Tan grizzly marabou.
Abdomen: Rust Midge Diamond Braid.
Wing case: Natural bustard Thin Skin.
Thorax: Lint Bug Dubbing, or you may substitute
Hare’e Ice Dub or a similar dubbing.

Classic Yellow May
HOOK: Mustad 3399 or your favorite regular wet fly hook, size 6.
THREAD: Yellow 8/0 (70 denier).
TAG: Small gold tinsel.
TAIL: Yellow mallard quill.
BODY: One or two strands of yellow four-strand rayon floss.
RIB: Small gold tinsel.
WINGS: Yellow mallard quill.
HEAD: Black 8/0 (70 denier) thread.

Popping Bug (a warm-water lure)
(This doesn't count as a "classic" lure,
but it's awfully fun!)

I have a friend, Doug, who, last I knew, enjoyed tying flies, as a release from his stressful job as VP of a large furniture company. At one point he gave us a box of hand-tied flies—which we never used, and years later, when I opened the box and looked inside, they had all disintegrated, sadly. Doug does use his flies to fish with—another release from his stressful job. Though I gather that many of those fly tyers whose goal is merely to replicate Victorian authenticity do not actually fish with the products of their labor: they're just for show.

One of these days I'm going to sit down and listen to the entire episode of This American Life. It sounds like a fascinating story.

Noticing xcvii - Lee Miller, photographer

Picasso, The Weeping Woman (1937)

I am proofreading a book about one of Picasso's many lovers, Dora Maar (1907–1997), daughter of a Croatian architect and a French woman. Dora was herself a photographer and ran in the Surrealist circles, but when she liaised with Picasso in 1935, he urged(/forced) her to abandon photography, which he considered merely a "tech- nique," not an artform in its own right. As we all know, Picasso was not a very nice man when it came to his treatment of women, and Dora suffered: today she is perhaps best remembered as his "weeping woman."

The book is based on an address book of Dora's that the book's author stumbled onto fortuitously, via eBay. It lists many prominent artists and intellectuals of the day—including writer and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, photographer Brassaï, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, writer André Breton, Russian painter Nicolas de Staël— and we learn about those relationships and how they evolved (or died).

Man Ray, solarized portrait
of Lee Miller (ca. 1930)

One of the people mentioned in the book is the American photographer Lee Miller (1907–1977). Before moving to Paris in 1929, she had briefly been a Vogue model; in Paris, she became associated (in various ways, both professional and personal) with Surrealist photographer Man Ray. Together, they hit on the technique of solarization.

Back in New York in 1932, Miller became a successful commercial photographer: studio portraits, fashion. She married a wealthy Egyptian businessman, moved to Cairo, and more or less gave up photography—but then (a theme of the times in that artistic circle, I'm learning) she grew bored with that life and moved back to Paris in 1937, where she met Surrealist artist Roland Penrose, whom she subsequently married. At the outbreak of WWII she launched a new career: as a photojournalist and war correspondent, for Vogue. She was at Buchenwald and Auschwitz shortly after they were liberated.

It's those photos, of wartime, that I'm especially interested in. But before I show you a few, here is a brief video introduction to her via Albertina Museum, Vienna:

Okay, photos (as always, click on the image to view larger on black):

Portrait of Space, 1937

SS Guard in Canal, Dachau, 1945

Irmgard Seefried, Opera singer singing an aria from
"Madame Butterfly," 1945

Fire Masks, 1941

Children celebrating the liberation of Paris, France, 1944

Henry Moore, Holburn Underground Station,
London, England, n.d.

Clark Gable, US Air Force Base, England, 1943

FFI Worker, Paris, France, 1944

One Night of Love, 1940

Evacuation hospital operating theater, France, 1944

Suicides in Town Hall, Leipzig, 1945

Fortunately, Lee Miller's significance in the history of photography, and of the documentation of WWII, has been recognized (in large part due to the efforts of her son, Antony Penrose), and there are many articles out there about her diverse and creative life. She's a fascinating character. I'm glad I know a little more about her now.

Noticing xcvi - Ted Kooser's "Death of a Dog"

Jett

A friend of mine learned this morning that her "young," 9-year-old dog, Jett—as opposed to her blind, deaf, stiffly arthritic dog of 16, Chance, who nevertheless still wags his tail and seems happy to greet each day—has cancer and will only live a short while longer, perhaps three weeks, perhaps as little as one more day. The news was unexpected. Which makes it that much harder to bear.

Rarely a day goes by that I'm not, if only fleetingly, aware that our beloved Milo, who turned nine in October, will not be with us forever. It's the saddest thing, that we lose these creatures who are so very dear to us, who are so loyal and devoted.

Today I decided to take the easy way out with a blog post and present a poem. Ted Kooser sprang into my head. I scanned the titles at the Poetry Foundation, and there was this. Seemed fitting today. For Jett.

Death of a Dog

The next morning I felt that our house
had been lifted away from its foundation
during the night, and was now adrift,
though so heavy it drew a foot or more
of whatever was buoying it up, not water
but something cold and thin and clear,
silence riffling its surface as the house
began to turn on a strengthening current,
leaving, taking my wife and me with it,
and though it had never occurred
to me until that moment, for fifteen years
our dog had held down what we had
by pressing his belly to the floors,
his front paws, too, and with him gone
the house had begun to float out onto
emptiness, no solid ground in sight.

Noticing xcv - karaoke

Yesterday on FB I mentioned something about our upcoming Antarctica "cruise" (which it hardly is: it's a small boat, and there will be approximately ten of us passengers onboard). That prompted a sly remark from a friend I met in Vietnam last year, asking whether I'm practicing up on my karaoke.

It so happened that just that morning, searching for a photo on Flickr by keywords, I stumbled on a picture of the one and only time I've ever done karaoke. It happened to be in Vietnam. Said friend was a witness. And I'm sure I mentioned to him that I never ever thought I would ever participate in the sport. (He has a long memory, I'm learning.) Here's a photo he took, with my Flickr caption:

I have always (always always always) sworn I would NEVER
(never never EVER) be caught DEAD (I will refrain from
continuing the refrain) doing karaoke. But in Vietnam,
our fearless leader, Susan, celebrated her... 50-somethingth birthday,
and our fellow birders Jules and Ange (in the upper left of this photo)
arranged a smashing birthday bash, complete with karaoke.
When the second song came up and it was "What a Wonderful World"
and for some reason people started gesturing to ME to
get up and sing... well, I did. Because I love that song. Channeling Louis?
There's nothing better. Fortunately, Susan, Dixie, and Gill joined in,
and although I have no sense of whether I'd performed "well,"
I did have an enjoyable moment in the karaoke spotlight.
And now: never never EVER again. (Sorry for the lousy quality,
but it was dark and this was sent to me by a friend from his phone,
so I had nothing to do with the quality.
But I'm kinda happy to have this memento.)

I told this story to David this evening over dinner, and he said that the only way he would ever do karaoke was if Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues" came up. I scoffed, wondering what the chances of that song being on a karaoke machine were. He countered that it's a classic, considered Steely Dan's very best. I love the song; I wasn't scoffing at the song. Just at karaoke machine programmers' literacy and ability to appreciate a masterpiece like that.

Anyway, that got us humming the tune, and trying to recall the lyrics. And David mentioned an article he'd run across that delved into the making of the song, in all its creative wonderfulness. (Unfortunately, the WSJ has a paywall, so access to the article requires a bit of finesse.) The article opens, "As midlife-crisis songs go, Steely Dan's 'Deacon Blues' ranks among the most melodic and existential. Recorded for the album 'Aja' in 1977, the song details the bored existence of a ground-down suburbanite and his romantic fantasy of life as a jazz saxophonist."

So here are the two karaoke songs in question: "What a Wonderful World" (my karaoke debut and swan song) and "Deacon Blues" (David's in-the-distant-future maybe debut).

Noticing xciv - Women's March 2020

Three years ago I went to Washington, D.C., to participate in the first Women's March on January 21, 2017, the day after Trump's inauguration. I wrote about that experience here. It was a tremendous few days—so much good energy, friendship, and solidarity. The estimated number of marchers was 470,000, surely more than attended the inauguration, if only based on DC Metro travel statistics (January 21 was the second-highest ridership day in Metro's history, falling just short of the record, set on the day of Obama's first inauguration, in 2009; here is an interesting discussion of relative crowd sizes for these various events). I took a few photos that day (I continue to adore all the pink pussy hats!):

My sister-in-law Patty on the right, and her good
friend Kaisa, both from Seattle

Today here in Monterey we staged our own repeat Women's March. Two thousand attended. I was part of the tabling crew for Swing Left, where we got 21 new sign-ups for our ongoing letter-writing parties:

Kim, me, Tama, and Maggie

Here are a few shots of the event, starting with the tabling area (some 30 groups were represented, ranging from political to social justice to the environment) and a few of the signs:

Tama thanking our Congressman, Jimmy Panetta,
for introducing the Climate Action Rebate Act
of 2019 (H.R. 4051)

Tama describing Swing Left to an interested party

And here are a few from the march itself:

The march was kicked off by our local
taiko drummer group

 

Walking down Monterey's main street, Alvarado

Drumming was the musical name of the game today—
very rousing

I ran into my friends Talma and Sue, who were
with the League of Women Voters

It was fun. Probably the best part of it for me was talking to some younger people, who seemed interested and informed—and signed up for our email list, and hopefully will come and do some letter-writing.