Monday, August 31, 2015

Oliver Sacks, Santana, Septuagenarians and Sketching... Inspiring

Need inspiration for writing, for finding your passion, for contributing?  Oliver Sacks wrote right up to the end and has several unpublished pieces that will be aired in due time. The photo on his Facebook page of him writing, paper in air haunts me.

Yesterday I talked with a septuagenarian who is applying for an MFA starting in Fall 2016. On Friday I had dinner with a man, about the same age, who has multiple marathons in 24 States wearing out the treads of his tennies and plans to get the other 26 completed including Pikes Peak, between the ones he's doing in other countries. If you follow Nancy Camden, you'll read and hear on her Spotting Wisconsin posts about her rides with the octogenarians who pedal on beyond her impressive range.  Oh, and last night, I saw 1947 born, Carlos Santana play from 7:30-10:00 nonstop!


I am completely inspired by this long view of life. It's so easy to shut down with aches and pains and to buy into "retirement"  as not living fully.  Yesterday, inspired, maybe a bit afraid that I've waited too long, I rode my bike to an art fair and took a longer way home, after sketching the scene.

I am grateful this Monday morning for good health and people who show me the way.

Sacks photo from Facebook, bike photo from Spotting Wisconsin. The others are mine.


Sunday, August 30, 2015

Grandma - The Movie is Absolutely Right, the Audience is Two Thirds Wrong

Shirley MacLaine to guest star on ‘Glee’You know the scene in the movies where a rear view mirror in a taxi shows the eyes of the protagonist, and there’s an exchange between them and the cabbie? Four times it’s happened to me when the driver says, you remind me of… twice and one of those recently, suggesting Shirley MacLaine and twice I was told Lily Tomlin. Yesterday, the eyes the cabbie saw were Lily Tomlin’s in the movie Grandma.

Lily Tomlin: "Young people don't even know who Bella Abzug was"


No, there wasn’t a remark that she reminded him of Mary Longe, the shot moved to her remembering a love that made her laugh and took her to a place where transformation was an option.

Ok, I stood in line for that movie, telling my friend three times, not to tell me more about another movie she saw the previous week, so I won’t use up one more word about the plot line here. I just want to say that after seeing the film,  the line waiting for it with us, was all wrong. Comprised of people who looked like us… over 60 with good haircuts and as my favorite, May Sarton line goes, with the “grandmother (and father) faces”… Botox and surgery included aren't who should see it. With a title like Grandma and starring a septuagenarian, its easy to figure that the demographic attracted will be the star’s cohort, but it’s an intergenerational story about love and forgiveness and making mistakes and fixing them- or not in high school, in mid sophisticated career or late career later life.

That Grandma is an academic and author gives license for the writers for thought provoking, funny, smart dialog. That the grandchild is a wise B-student who crosses the street after a dog barks from behind a fence offers a vulnerability that made me care about her safety then and her well being as an adult in development. And in between the generations walks a lawyer at her treadmill desk, doing the things that give financial life to her family, and complicated relationships with the one who came before and the one following… not so much in her footsteps.    They are the cliché sandwiched generations - sour dough, chicken and rye.

Girls, take your mom’s to this movie. Mom’s take your mom’s to this movie. Mom’s take your daughters and grand daughters to this show.  Have the talk... not the one that ends in periods, but the one about who you are and where you are headed. I wish I could.

I wish I knew what my mom really experienced instead of what I made up from what I saw and the highlights she revealed. I wish I had an opportunity to ask her to tell me the back stories of the turning points in her life.

This all reminds me of... (connecting the dots) The Turning Point, a wonderful Shirley McLaine movie about younger and older ballerinas  and, of my own turning point... a Christmas day the first year my son went off to his father’s family to celebrate without me, when I saw Lily Tomlin live in her Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.





Saturday, August 29, 2015

Missing a Paper Dictionary - Moslem, Mosque and Moses on the Same Page

In 2013, I purchased for $2 at a garage sale, a 2500 page Unabridged Webster's New 20th Century Dictionary with a 1968 copyright. Randomly exploring on this rainy day that interrupted my usual busy Saturday morning,  I learned that mosaic, Moslem and mosque are on the same page, as is, ironically, moses, though in this case, it's defined as a boat having a flat bottom, used for carrying sugar to vessels. So is mot, n. (Fr.) 1. Literally, a word;  hence a motto. [Obs] 2. a witticism; a pithy remark; a bon mot.

(Which, ironically, this is supposed to be.)

And moth ball, where, in the plural,  I have metaphorically stored my dictionary.

I discovered, I miss a paper dictionary a place where co existence of unlikely items is possible. 




Friday, August 28, 2015

Time Shifting: A Choice Learned from Reading Outlander

A few months ago a friend suggested that I read Outlander. I downloaded it on my phone to read on my hour commute to and from work. The first day, the first chapters, I arrived at work, without having read my emails that had come in overnight... nor Twitter or browsed through my Pinterest boards. The story absorbed every minute of my trip. Once I settled into my seat on the way home, I heard nothing until the conductor announced that we were pulling into the station. Again, I didn't catch up on FaceBook or any other of my social media sites.

Reading from a phone is a constant swipe swipe swipe. I stopped at the library across from the train station to pick up a hardcover copy for reading at home. OMG. It weighed a ton! I took it home anyway.  Once home, I didn't watch tv. I made the minimalist of meals, cutting up finger food... a carrot, an apple and found some almonds, raisins and pumpkin seeds. Before Paleo, I probably would have made a bowl of popcorn. The reading experience with the book was far better than the device, but I didn't want to lug the tombe. I looked at emails, Twitter and Facebook for a few minute after I brushed my teeth. I didnt look at work emails. Back and forth on the train I read the story from my phone and at home, from the book. 

The challenge in this process became finding my place on either when I made the switch. Page numbers are not the same when there are many print versions of a print book. I never figured out an algorithm to easily determine where I was in the other reader. I became good at finding a particularly notable word in a first line of a paragraph. It had been awhile since I’d tackled a big, fat book. I'd forgotten how delicious it feels to be completely enrapt in a story… in a hard-back book especially.

I forgot the fragrance  of the paper, the color of the page with light behind me and the infrequent turn of a page... a languished swipe rather than a quick scratch. I loved it, like a reunion with an old friend. I felt more connected, mindful and less connected to stimuli. 

Once I finished Outlander I wanted to continue that experience, like opening a new bag of potato chips, but the library was out of the second in the series. I had to wait. Time slipped and my interest began to wain. Two weeks later I received notice that the book waited for me. I walked to the library to borrow it after dinner that evening.


The librarian retrieved the book from the shelf, snapped the rubber band off the book holding a paper with my last name on it and handed it to me. It felt like a brick.  I leafed through it. I knew I'd love it. The weight represented a commitment to dinners without as much chop and prep, to more nodding in conversations about world and internet happenings, to a messy house and less sleep. I couldn't bring it home. 


Train reading has its own time continuum. The hour commute home can be so much longer than the trip to work.  Reading an absorbing book is a savior, but I realized I didn’t want the book to devour my life either.  I don’t know how to read for short stints. If I was an alcoholic, I couldn't be a social drinker. I know how to let a book take over my life, to keep me up till my eye lids won’t stay open. I used to love that. I still like the idea of it.  In the meantime, I will read it on the train. I downloaded it and I am going to see if I can allow my self to read a book over a couple weeks. It will assist me to drown out the one sided phone calls, the drunk lawyers and the ding of Scrabble games played by someone else on the train. It will be another way to engage me.




****

Wondering about the photos? Since January,  I take them every Monday morning just prior to the 7:35 at the Deerfield station. 

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Restless Vacation - Antique Stores and Finding My Way

With serendipity, I ended up  in an antique store in Lowell, MI where the circles of my life (a la Harry Chapin) started spinning around with a fury. I was supposed to be in Maine, but my watercolor plein air class was cancelled and I decided to create a sta-cation and paint in locations around my home in Chicago... that lasted three days. I was restless.

By Wednesday afternoon, I agreed to meet a high school friend who lives in Ann Arbor for lunch in Kalamazoo halfway between us... By his map. I threw my toothbrush and contact lens supplies in a bag and took off confidently thinking I could find somewhere to paint in Michigan and maybe stay overnight. I called friends (obviously good ones) in Lansing and found a place to catch up, drink some wine, watch the last Jon Stewart and crash. They were leaving early the next morning so I could too. By then, I'd decided to take back roads toward Ionia to check in on my parents, both resting in a sunny spot at Mt Olivet with their parents, grand parents and the village that raised them.
Driving down Ionia's Main Street I stopped for over an hour and sketched my mother's family home, a once gorgeous Victorian with a porch that wraps two sides. My grandpa saw patients in the parlor there after hours.

Directly across the street, I spent many Free Fair weeks with my paternal grandmother in her tiny one bedroom apartment, sleeping on the scratchy horse-hair couch that she made up for me each night. She probably thought the highlight for those "vacations" was the Free Fair midway with the rides and games. It wasn't. It was her tiny white Jiffy mix muffins with a swipe of white butter frosting and the hours I got to play canasta with, as May Sarton said, the "girls" with the grandmother faces, her friends.

Remembering, feeling nostalgic, I continued on Main till I recognized the steep hill to the left and followed it to the crunchy dirt and gravel drive into the cemetery.

My dad visited my mother's grave, then in Florida, every Friday until he couldn't drive. For me, a cemetery is not where or when I remember those who've passed on. Yet, I found something comforting in a reminder of the inevitability of life. That cemetery holds the people that were mythological in my growing up. The owner of the drug store. A much revered great-uncle who helped my dad. The Fred who owned a furniture factory near where when my grandpa laid dying and turned off the noon whistle to not cause him pain. Another Fred along with my grandpa Fred, and the factory owner, Fred (They were known about town as "the three Freds") who started the Free Fair (Both my dad and brother have the middle name of Frederick, AND coincidentally, I married a man whose last name is Frederick. A seventh grade teacher dubbed our son, Alex as “Fred”... a nickname which remains.) Within feet of grandpa's monument there are (at least) three stones of relatives holding my name, Mary E. Longe... another reminder of life here and gone.

I stopped to remember and sketched the scene.

I let the paints dry while I took a swig on a bottle of water and decided the rest of the day.  I  meandered up and down a few streets, but even the plethora of yard sales didn't tempt me to stop. While waiting for traffic to clear on Lincoln, I saw that the road also had a road number, M21. I turned lef, west onto it, figuring my GPS would eventually figure out, a way home. I wasn't ready for the expressway. The trees and grass were too green, the flowers in gardens too vibrant, the sun too bright to not take it in at a slower pace. I needed time to process the day so far.  M21 led me to Lowell.

Maybe as a child with my parents I was in Lowell, but not in any conscious way. I drove into town, decided I was hungry and would pick one once I could see the options.  I drove three or four blocks of downtown, crossed the river, where the antique stores near the west end caught my eye. I circled around, parked, went into one, and promptly bought a new camp chair, still in its original bag, that the owner explained was left in the store when they took over. It appeared perfect for sketching with its back and a little hideaway compartment for, in my case, a sketch book, pens and  paint. Cool find. I walked next door into Glass House Designs and walked out with Christmas presents made by Michigan artists. Cool finds. Walked into Dovetail Antiques. it was the first shop where I wasn't the only customer. There were voices and activity in the back.

None of them heard me yelp. Over in a corner holding dried flowers or something inside it sat a greyed and slightly bowed wood crate with black block lettering, FRIARS ALE, Grand Valley Brewing Company, Ionia Mich… My father was the brewmaster there before I was born from just after prohibition until 1948. Prior to this, the only item from that part of his life that had been passed to me was a small promotional sign, probably made for a bar. The aforementioned Alex/Fred, a craft home-brewer himself, owns the best memorabilia from my brother's collection … Dad's little black leather-bound book, with his notes from brew school (in  Chicago) and the recipes from that brewery.

I left Lowell, after a fantastic lunch a few feet from an old paddle boat that looks like it belongs in New Orleans, by the water at Flat River Grill,. I felt better than elated… content, maybe. Coincidence? I think not. I can’t help but connect dots of having spent time with friends who knew my grandmother and parents,  of visiting the cemetery where I saw the names of the three Freds and “the girls” who taught me card games and my own name on gravestones and, of finding the Friars Ale crate, something my father may have seen stacked in shipping or loaded on a truck. I was ready to come home feeling connected with those who came before. I felt good for having sketched - my present, and a peace about what is to come. I have an unfamiliar sense of being in the right place in my life… not restless.



Monday, August 3, 2015

Tourist or Traveler? Rick Steves on Travel as a Political Act

I heard this thought provoking interview today between Rick Steves the travel author and Bob Edwards. Steves talks about the difference between travel vs touring and being a tourist. He has learned so much about how the world and people work through his travels. I can't help but believe he would make an excellent ambassador in the bigger sense of the word.

One part that caught my attention was when he was in Iran and a cab driver shouts, Death to drivers." Rick Steves says to the interview I always thought it was death to Americans but the driver explained it's what we say here whenever we are frustrated with someone. Rick Steves explained to the interviewer how the media made "death to Americans" unnecessarily a battle cry because they didn't understand the people.

Steve's pointed out that Obama is highly regarded, not because of what he says but because he listens. For the first time in many years the brand of America has improved greatly especially in Europe. Since the Bush years he had learned it was better  to say that  he was from Seattle not the United States  because saying that he was from the US would begin a negative political conversation.

Though I discovered this interview long after it was held in 2009, it remains poignant and inspiring. It offers a map on how to be a traveler of the world, not a tourist who's taking... photos and cementing old ideas that keep the people of the world from being empathetic.