morning in America

I'm old enough to remember the Ronald Reagan ads for his re-election back in the day, 1984. There was a very effective one called "Morning in America." It was a fuzzy, nostalgic, and patriotic piece, only 30 seconds, showing a cowboy, a wedding, people raising flags, with a voice-over about low inflation, high employment, all the things about what was Good. And of course he got re-elected and because of his trickle-down economics the country went on a downward swing that we haven't recovered from, despite some good years during the Clinton administration.

I wish we could have seen well-produced ads like that one this year. But no, every political ad was negative, horrible. Paid for by secret groups that were funded by who knows whom. Finally it's over and it's morning in America and Obama is still our President. He's far from perfect, but he and his family make me proud. At least for today, I can carry that around with me.

the force of water

Twenty years ago I lived in Rowayton, CT, a little shoreline town about 40 miles from NY, when a powerful Nor-easter rolled through. It was December, I was married but my husband went off to work that morning. I remember watching the tide come in- rolling down my street, carrying everything in sight along with it. It was terrifying. The basement filled immediately and I stood at the basement stairs watching the water creep higher and higher, ultimately stopping maybe an inch or two below the floorboards of the house. Electricity was shut off to the area to prevent fires from electrical panels, it was cold and we were newbies so we had no generator or pump. My husband waded down the street to get home and the water was chest high. Ultimately there was extensive damage to the basement but it was covered by insurance. It was uncomfortable and a pain, but we were lucky.

Of course all this came back to me this week, seeing the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. No one expected the flooding that occurred. People had put things a few feet off the ground, but in many cases it wasn't enough. Photos that I saw were shocking, and I was glued to CNN and Facebook for hours. The loss of life is horrible, in many cases could have been prevented. But what to say about the entire neighborhood of Chelsea galleries, many of which suffered terrible damage, thousands of dollars of art lost, besides damage to their offices- and the artists whose studios were under water, in some cases from the miserable Newtown Creek between Greenpoint and Long Island City, work lost, toxic chemicals from the creek permeating everything. My heart goes out to all who will have many sad hours cleaning up and repairing, and getting used to the losses.

You can read about it here and see the shocking photos.

I remember the clear blue sky

Billy Collins was poet laureate in 2001. He wrote this poem for the one year anniversary of September 11th. 

The Names

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.
In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name --
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner --
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart. 

ugh stuff

Today is Sunday and Sunday means: house cleaning and laundry.

Quandary: How to keep the house clean, the bills paid, the newspaper read, the meals cooked, the dog walked, and still make art. I wish I had a cleaning lady, a cook, and an assistant.

The assistant would clean up my computer files, put images into the right folders with the proper meta-data, so when I apply for things I have the information right there and I don't have to go look at my website to see the size of things, or wonder what the size of the file is. The other day I decided to begin the task of filing things properly in Adobe Bridge. This meant googling how to put the info in, which wasn't that obvious, but once I knew that and the keystroke shortcut, it didn't take long, at least for one group of images.

So I organized my NY Times pieces, and for each of them I have a large tiff, a large jpeg, and a medium jpeg. That should do it, I thought. But now the bad news: I lost one. Yes, somehow it has gone missing from my studio. I cleaned out every flat file drawer in case I had put it somewhere in haste, because the rest of them are where they are supposed to be, in a foam core folder in a drawer, carefully sandwiched with glassine. Could I have accidentally thrown it out? Preposterous. And yet- it's just not there.

I have work in a show right now in the Axle Contemporary Gallery, about which I posted a while back. I told Matthew about the missing art, and he said it's now in the collection of the Caja del Rio Landfill. Here it is, for posterity's sake:

Postscript: After all that angst, I checked my gallery's inventory sheet and to my surprise, this piece had been framed and sent to them. Confirming that I need an assistant, or at least, better filing. VERY happy to have located it, and at least my flat files are reorganized. 

more on the subject of age

Last Thursday the mother of a dear friend of mine died of lung cancer. She was two years older than me. I had only met her a few times and we hadn't exchanged more than a handful of words, but she was lovely and her death was peaceful. She didn't suffer with the disease for a long time.

Tonight the news was published that Nora Ephron had died at age 71. This actually brought tears to my eyes. Of course I didn't know Nora Ephron. Yes, I once perused the small kitchen gadget wall at Zabar's right next to her. I don't remember if I bought anything or if she did. This was years ago when we both lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But there was something about her that made it seem like she could have been a relative of mine. Someone, actually, whom I wish WAS a relative of mine. Someone funny and smart and well-connected, with a keen sense of what people were really thinking, especially Jewish women my age who had children, philandering husbands, insecurity about our looks, and an appreciation for shopping. I once read an interview with her in which she said she only had black clothing. Lots of clothes, all of them black. She said it made it so much easier to get dressed. This is only one reason I loved her. Another one was that she was slightly odd looking, with one eye a little droopy and a big toothy smile. So many times I'd read a piece of hers and marvel at how she "got it." The movies were a bonus. Yeah, the fake orgasm scene in "When Harry Met Sally." But there were so many great scenes, so many terrific essays. Thanks, Nora.

There are numerous links to her stories online. I notice the New Yorker posted this link, a fairly recent piece that any New Yorker will connect with. It makes me homesick, and it makes me happy I still own an apartment in New York and so I can live with the fantasy that I can always move back.


I don't know if the magazine site will allow full access to it, but I hope they will:

http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2006-06-05#folio=034

Yeats

I have a friend on Facebook who posts quotes from famous writers on their birthday. Today is W. B. Yeats' birthday, and he is the author of my favorite poem. I like lots of poems (seems I've been posting a lot about poetry lately) but I have always loved this one:

When You Are Old
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

from the many, one.

Axle Contemporary is a sort of rolling gallery in a truck. The two directors, using that term loosely, because they'd probably laugh, are Matthew Chase-Daniel and Jerry Wellman. Their program, again using the term loosely, involves a few group shows in the summer, with one of them, usually Jerry, manning the gallery and chatting up the visitors, and installations in the winter that are visible through glass, thus the truck can sit unattended.

There are a few sites where the parked truck is welcome, like the Farmer's Market, and SITE Santa Fe, but if they want to park it downtown, for instance, they have some serious issues. I'm not sure if they feed the meter all day or what. But that's where the bulk of the walking traffic is, especially in the summer.

Their latest project is called E Pluribus Unum which involved taking a photograph of anyone who walked in, and each person would hold something that was dear to them. At the end, after the portraits were displayed all over the truck, the photographs were combined into one portrait, a meta-being if you will. It's pretty clearly female, and I can't reproduce it so you'll have to check it out here.

I thought it was a brilliant idea and I bought the book that they published of all the photos. Some of them are people I knew, my students, colleagues, and friends; but most of them I don't. As I flip through the book I reflect on how the people in it are specific to Santa Fe in a way- I mean they certainly don't look like folks back east. I regret not taking part, and I can't explain why I didn't except I don't love having my photo taken and displayed on a truck. The project speaks to the specificity of place and time and having the book gives me a little piece of that.