A Memory

In our online drawing class, we were asked to do a piece in homage to the late Harper Lee. One reason I loved "To Kill a Mockingbird" is that it is so evocative of my own childhood, which was during the same period as that in the book. In this picture, I am 9 years old. It is 1936 and we are in Atlanta, Georgia. The other person is Emma, and she is in her 70s, and was born into slavery around the time of the Civil War This did not seem remarkable to me, because in the South in those days, that war was about two weeks ago.
I am reading Emma's favorite comic strip in the Atlanta Journal. The strip is about a young woman named Pam, whom Emma calls "Pom." I am reading to her because she has forgotten her glasses, which happens every day. When I asked my mother about  this, she said that Emma probably could not read, but that I was not to say anything to her about this, ever.
Emma came to work after my mother gave birth to her fifth child, who was born about 18 months after the fourth one. Emma did the washing and ironing, and once in a while, the cooking. She made fried bread, and cooked greens in salt pork, and insisted that I drink the "pot likker" a bit of folk wisdom in that that's where all the vitamins ended up. I was the skinniest shie'd she'd ever seen and needed fattening up.
The only clue I ever had about her history was that during the Halloween season she was frightened by people wearing masks, which she called "dough faces," and also by kids wearing sheets to play ghosts. She told my mother that it all reminded her of the night riders, those terrorists who rode into Black settlements, torching cabins and burning churches.
It wasn't until many years later, when I read "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," a fictional, but well-researched account of a woman born about the same time as Emma, who lived through  those awful times, and lived long enough to vote in her nineties. (It was made into a terrific TV movie with the magnificent Cicely Tyson.)  I immediately thought of Emma, and wondered if that gentle old lady had lived long enough to vote. I wondered if she had gone through some of the trials Miss Pittman had endured, especially as a child and young woman. Something had helped her survive into her seventies, still strong enough to go to work every day. I would never have thought to ask her about her life, which would have been rude, but I wish I knew more about her. 

The View From the Throne

I strive not to be indelicate. However, this post nay be considered thus.
Sixto loves the bathroom. When John takes his shower, he is joined by the black cat, who strolls around the rim of the tub between the curtains. If the door is closed before he hears the running water, he sits at the door and demands entry.
When I go in to, uh, use the facility, he comes running in, throws himself flat on the floor in front of my feet and stretches out on his back, requesting a belly rub. I have never had a cat that interested in that particular human activity, or assuming that I cannot function without him.
'Tis  a puzzlement. He has no respect for privacy.

Romantic Me

When my favorite radio station, WCLV, the best classical music venue, goes into its fund raising mode, I send in my contribution and then switch to WQXR until the money talk is  over. This usually lasts about a week. WQXR had previously asked listeners to send in their most romantic classical music choices. The top twelve were played yesterday in celebration of Valentine's Day.
It was a trip down memory lane to my adolescence and my obsession for the Romantic era  of music, and it's still beautiful to hear,  the old favorites, plus some I didn't discover until I was older.
My young choices, things I heard on the radio, which in those days had many classical music programs, and of which I bought those heavy 78 rpm albums  or singles were what I heard yesterday: Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet Overture," Debussy's "Clair de Lune," Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata," liszt's "Liebenstraum," and Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concero. That last was also the soundtrack to one of the most romantic ( and saddest) movies ever made, "Brief Encouner."
A little later came the Liebestod from "Tristan and Isolde," the love/ death aria of their tragic love story. Somehow love and death were very appealing concepts to me.
Another on the list, which came into my life later, was that gorgeous second movement of Mozart's Piano Cocerto 21, which  became known for its use in the movie "Elvira Madigan," a story of two beautiful young lovers who end up committing suicide....more love/death themed associations. By the time I saw that movie I was pretty much over with that obsession, but I do love that piece.
Another one on the list that I discovered about twenty years ago was the adagio movement from Mahler's 5th Symphony, which is probably the most gorgeous piece of music ever written. It was used as the soundtrack to "Death in Venice," so there you are again.
As soon as I heard this program yesterday, I flashed back to that skinny adolescent sitting by the record pkayer, which one had to do in those says if you didn't have a record changer, so you could flip the record or  put the next one on as quickly as you could in order not to break the mood. TodAy, you have access to almost every piece of music ever composed with a tap of a finger on a device you can carry with you. Today's young people are probably a lot less inclined toward the old fashioned romantic fantasies of my era. I think I would be labeled "emo" today. Whatever. It was a rich phase to me

Iowa. What Good Is It?

It is still early in the day. I do not know what portends. A couple of weeks ago, on "The Good Wife," they only did the Democrat side, and  Hilary came in first, and Chris Noth, the raftink husband, came in last, thus dashing his hopes for the presidency.
I am already sick of the whole thing, tired of the media fascination with the Big Jerk, and worried about the state of intelligence in this country.
This is the last drawing of the online drawing class and it was fun drawing all those red faced, angry white men promoting their guy, aiming to vote against their own self-interest. Since the "American Dream" seems to be mainly about getting rich, I guess they think some of his wealth will somehow rub off on them. Oy!
I included a Miss Universe on the Far Right side. She only wants World Peace.

My Stove

I mentioned that my next drawing for the online drawing class was to be of my stove. Susan likes to choose quirky subjects for this class which is part of the fun. Last Sunday morning we decided to watch CBS Sunday Morhing, which we don't usually do. It happened to feature a piece on an artist I was not familiar with. It was Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and I loved his work. He was a contemporary of Gabrielle Muntet, the German Expressionist I discovered some years ago in Munich, whose work inspired me in doing my Amish paintings. I decided to use that for the stove drawing, using oil pastels. It went very fast and was most enjoyable. We have to use a huge (11x 14) sketchbook, double spread (22x44) and cover every inch. I'm used to working small, so I have found that a bit daunting, but this one was relatively easy.
Today I went to see '"Turandot," another opera with one good aria-"Nessum  dorma." Unfortunately, the tenor who sang it sucked. The production was lavish and gorgeous. Cecil B. DeMille would have been jealous. The production was designed years ago by Franco Zeferelli, who also did the over the top but beautiful "La Boheme." Less is more does not apply to some of these productions at the Met, although there was an interview today about the new production of h"Mamon Lescaut" coming up, which will be presented as a 1940s film noir, with a rather stark looking set. They are working hard to get new and younger audiences , rather than us geezers, who totter in to hear old favorites. Polly saw "Turandot" at the Met last week and saw quite a few younger folks there, so they are on the right track. Maybe they'll tackle "Tommy" some day.

It's a Cold, Cruel World

Well, not really, since I have a working furnace and warm clothing. That title was inspired by looking out the window, where all is black, white and mainly gray. We have gotten a little sun now and then to keep us from S.A.D. However , the unsanitary going on in the political arena no doubt has made many people sad, wondering what's happening to those voters being polled who persist in following a total nut job, recently endorsed by the clown princess of nut jobs. Perhaps there has actually been an alien invasion, kept silent by the billions of dollars owned by King Nut, who claims to have great powers (cue Twilight Zone theme).
I am distracting myself by taking the fabulous Susan Shie's online drawing class, which is a sort of free form " express yourself" class. We do have assignments each week and special event  projects, that may involve the State of the Union address (our impressions of) or the Golden Glibe Awards
(our impressions of) or MLK 's birthday (our impressions of). It's a lively and fun thing to do, especially in the drab days of winter in Northeast Ohio. The above illustration is my impression of the late David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, who I figured would want to meet VanGogh, somewhere amongst the starry skies over Arles. Thus week's assignment is to draw an impression of our kitchen stove, my least favorite appliance. This may sound strange, but the idea is to challenge oneself, and the results in the class are always original and imaginative. Lots o' fun.
My movie going has been sparse, mostly by choice. Not much appeals to me. I have seen a few of the nominees, found them enjoyable, but not great. Two were clones of "All the President's Men," namely " The Big Short," and "Spotlight." The latter will probably get the award, even though it is full f white people, as were all the nominated films. Hmmmm.

Dreaming

I enjoy the phenomenon of dreaming. I know there are those who study this area and interpret meanings, and make claims about all sorts of issues connected with dreams. Freud and Jung made a big deal out of them. Gamblers, the kind who play the Numbers or the lottery, buy dream books, which are supposed to predict wins if you dream about certain things. In our family, we like to talk about them.
When all of my children were living at home, we tended to have similar dreams at the same time. Maybe it was from moon phases, or season changes. I particularly remember  once when we all had  dreams about soft, swishy things, like cushions, rubber toys, and fat pink snakes, when we all happened to have fevers. God knows what Jung would have made of that one.
I have dream versions of familiar places. In my dreams, everything is bigger than life. The buildings at my dream Kent State are the ones I knew as a student, only on a gigantic scale, with ceilings so high you can barely see them. I am usually looking for a bathroom in one of those vast halls and when I find one, it's usually a lone toilet in the middle of a public space. That has absolutely no relationship to an
ything I ever experienced there. In fact there was one women's rest room in Kent Hall that had great acoustics, and was a great place to harmonize in. Of course, campus dreams bring up the one where I go to take a final exam and discover I never attended class. That happened again last night, which is probably why I am writing about dreaming.
I also dreamed this dog ( see illustration); in fact there were two of them on leashes held by an old man. They were very small and had human-ish eyes. I asked the old man what kind they were, bur I don't remember the answer. They were very stylized, looking as if they were made of china, bur weren't. I happened at the time to be looking for two other dogs, one large and one very, very small, both of which  were made of pencil sketches. Really.
My dreams are usually fragmented, but there are some people, like my friend Nancy, whose dreams have comprehensive, if surrealistic, plots. Maybe that's a sign of a sound sleeper, or a more organized psyche. The brain is a complex and wondrous  thing, and dreams must lurk in all those folds and creases, triggered by who knows what. As Scrooge suggested, perhaps a bit of undigested meat, or a
dab of mustard.
Anyway, I don't interpret;  I just enjoy the weirdness of it all.