Siege - Day 135

This past weekend we took an actual Field Trip!!!!

(So exciting.)

The art museums in Fort Worth have reopened and one of them, the Modern Art Museum had an exhibit I've wanted to see for decades (maybe 45 years?)... so we dared it.  

And it was fun!  Red Grooms's Ruckus Rodeo.  This photo gives you a good idea of the entire environment he creates - a Rodeo even more colorful and larger than life than the real thing.

Red Grooms's Ruckus Rodeo at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

 - photo by C. DeVries, free to use, public domain

Their other exhibit, "Mark Bradford: End Papers" was also interesting... completely different, being abstract painting/collages, but full of color too of a delicate, subtle, calibrated sort.  This is minimalism that has maximal impact and reward for close study.  And the two exhibits really did contrast each other in a nice way.  (I'll post a few images of Bradford's work next time.)

The museum itself felt comfortable and - in these Covid19 times - felt safe.  The Kimbell Museum next door was much more crowded, though just doable to me... but then its permanent collection gallery was free, compared to the pricey (and thus defacto more exclusive) Modern.  I'd visit both again.

At the Kimbell the curators were having a good time, pairing art works from different periods and places together - like this pairing of a Mayan sculpture with this Mondrian painting, both artists fascinated by mosaic like color / shape patterns.

Kimbell Art Museum permanent collection 

- photo by C. DeVries, free to public domain

So what else has been going on?

The heat of Texas summer has hit... stunning my tomatoes so that they feel too hot to even ripen.  Now that's hot.  I'll be experimenting with fried green tomatoes here shortly.  But I have just discovered a bonus avocado tree!  Well, a bonus tiny sapling where I idly planted the pit of a particularly tasty avocado.  Also the sprouty sweet potato I planted has grown into a pretty vine that shames the useless eggplant plants in the same pot.  Accidental gardening!

On the reading/watching front, I've been listening to more Masterclass gurus.  I kind of stalled out half way through Ron Howard's class on film directing (probably because I have no real ambition to direct a film), listened to a few classes on color by the expert interior designer (who reminds me very much of an interior designer I once worked with), and have started listening to my new poet fav, Billy Collins, class on poetry.  He's very good - slyly funny and very down to earth, plus a good poet.  I've been really enjoying this experience and heartily recommend it - but Take Your Time.  I find I can only absorb so much at a time.

One tidbit from the Poet Collins' talk: he describes the first few lines of a poem, which sets up its situation and eases the reader into it, as "dangling a bit of scenery in front of the reader."  As a set designer I like that!  (Honestly, in theaters with no grand drape to hide everything, a play's scenery does exactly what Mr. Collins requires from his first few lines of poetry: set the scene and ease the audience into the show.  Exactly that.)

Viewing?  After watching Hamilton, I've been "getting my money's worth" out of this one month Disney+ subscription, watching first The Mandelorean (very good and Baby Yoda!) and then rewatching The Black Panther.  The next couple days will be a Disneyfest!

Picture me lounging in my screen-watching-seat, munching popcorn and waving down the Ruckus Rodeo beer vendor, "Hey! Over here!"

Red Grooms's Ruckuss Rodeo

- photo by C. DeVries for public domain

Siege - Day 113 4th of July Weekend

An interesting, quiet, introspective 4th of July.

I heard lots of (illegal) fireworks late at night, but didn't go out to see them.  We swam on Friday, but left the pool to neighbors and visiting grandkids after that... too crowded.  Took a drive to see an architectural project and a sample wall to check out the stone color, which was both work and a welcome out-of-the-house trip (charging the battery yea!)... but only when the job site and adjacent park were empty.  Drove past the good BBQ joint without stopping.

But we flew our flag, grilled hamburgers, ate apple pie, watched Hamilton, and checked in with family by phone vid.  So, all the traditional holiday family and country without the germy crowds.

Hamilton is fantastic!  I have to see this on stage when I can.  I do have the, sorry, THE book Hamilton: the Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter, which is a deep exploration of the creation of the show.  Best room where it happened story I can remember off-hand.  Also, it has all the lyrics!  Highly recommend it. 

Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull - public domain

Other books I'm reading - or getting ready to read - include A Hedonist in the Cellar, by Jay McInerney, which is a very entertaining memoir/collection of essays about wine buying.  Also - this one needs gearing up for - the hugely important and influential architecture/urban planning book, A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein and others.  

This book is a bit of an Everest for me... I heard about A Pattern Language in college (lo! decades ago) but could never get hold of a copy.  I looked for it in bookstores for decades but either could not find it or could not afford it.  After the internet book finding revolution... I still could never afford the copies I found.  The copy I did recently buy was considerably cheaper than it's $65 jacket price or the $100+ it usually goes for.  This volume looks brand new, but I can't tell if it's a reprint or a miraculously perfect relic of 1977... nah, it has a scan code on the back of the slipcover so it's gotta be new.  Just under-priced for some reason. My good luck!

Finally!  I have a copy I can sit down and READ.  This book is small but dense with thin Bible-like pages and small, light type, and it weighs like a brick in my hand.  I understand its density of ideas equals its density of wood pulp and ink.  I'll let you know how it goes...

Reading Riot!

It's been too long since I reviewed any books here... but then, it has been too long since I had time to read any books.  But I've been having a sort of sanity break just lately - time to visit the beach, take that long-promised water color painting class, and to really read.

As my theatrical life speeds up again, I'll give you a in-the-rear-view-mirror look (if not full reviews) of some of the favorite books I've found during The Lull:


The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde - recommended by the owner of Fort Worth's cool new bookstore The Last Word, this is the first in a series of literary detective novels that I really enjoyed.  And when I say "literary detective" I mean a detective/peace officer inside literature.  As in dealing with those hotheads in Wuthering Heights and prosecuting fraudulent and/or cloned Shaxpeares.  Or working with 'em.  Whichever.  Amusingly meta.  Literate.  Clever.  Funny.  Alice-in-Bookland inventive.

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler - another find from The Last Word.  This is a retelling of Shakespeare's (the real one's) The Taming of the Shrew.  I found it oddly charming and gently funny.  Romantic, but not in the least mushy.  I liked it so well that I immediately followed up with the same author's Pulitzer Prize-winning Breathing Lessons as a chaser.  Both good... wisely observant of real people and (rare!) understanding of the chemistry of relationships and especially long time marriages.

Another entry in the retell-classic-stories race is Emma, Jane Austen's classic rewritten by Alexander McCall Smith.  Which worked pretty well.  I have to admit that Emma is not my fav Austen heroine - too bossy, too unaware, too embarrassing-herself (I cringe).  But this modern day retelling is lively and funny and makes ol' Emma more fun, I think.

As is my wont, I spent a good few hours revisiting old favorites by the old authors too.  Among the best times this time was a great Terry Pratchett, The Truth.  This is set in his Discworld, but is a strong stand-alone from that series.  More-or-less it's about the invention of a Free Press... really funny, thoughtful, smart, silly, and sane... in a crazy way.  Classic Pratchett.  Not a bad first book to start with if you haven't met his work before.

Another golden oldie: Trustee from the Toolroom, by Nevil Shute.  I'm a fan.  Shute's On the Beach is probably best known now, but this is my favorite, with one of my favorite all-time heroes- he's quiet, humble, talented but poor in a worldly way, unambitious... and, when he needs to be, a brave and resourceful man.  His superpower is figuring out what the right thing to do is and then just doing it.

A different kind of hero - but with the same superpower - is in The Prince of Foxes by Samuel Shellabarger.  I loved this book as a teen, and it was dated then, but I still enjoyed it hugely.  For me, it's a classic like The Prisoner of Zenda.

On the topic of heroes: Andy Weir's The Martian is as good as and even more involving than the film version.  And that just won a Hugo award.  Plus NASA people I know like the science.  So there.  Read it!

A shockingly new variation of hero lives in Naomi Novik's non-science but magic-based novel Uprooted.  A girl?  Hero?  Absolutely.   Disclaimer: I always want to like books about magic, but am often disappointed by how well, mundane, it all becomes by about chapter five.  By chapter eleven it's generally all ren-faire-ish politics.  Yawn.  (Ditto "urban romance" another vamp/were/zombie clash? mega yawn.)  Not so much here.  In this novel magic is real and really scary.  Some wonderful, thrilling visions of magic at work.  Very visual.  Very the creepy side of the Brothers Grimm.  Loved it.  I need to reread this soon.

Speaking of so called "urban romance" AKA Vampire Lit...  A few interesting recent reads:  the latest in Charlaine Harris's Midnight, Texas series is fun.  (She authored the books behind TV's True Blood.)  I enjoy her work, but I'd kinda class it in the beach-book airplane-book category - in the nicest way.  Funnier, so I like it better, is the series by Drew Hayes that starts with The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant.  At the tippy-top of my Favorites for this genre (more or less) has to be Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series, starting with Rivers of London or in the US, Midnight Riot.  (Because, being the US, we won't read books without gratuitous violence in the title?)  These are excellent.  Can't recommend these magical-policeman stories strongly enough.  And BTW there are comic books as part of the series at Comixology.

Reflecting on all this sort of richness is an interesting collection of essays by writer Neil Gaiman in The View from the Cheap Seats.  Obviously, this will mean more to you if you first know Gaiman's fiction: I'd suggest starting with Stardust or Neverwhere or his collaboration with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, a cheery look at the Apocalypse.  The essays are thoughtful and scholarly about the sort of imaginative fiction I love, though delving more deeply into comics than I can keep up with.  A takeaway?

"I believe that in the battle between guns and ideas, 

ideas will, eventually, win."

On the battlefront of Ideas - in the skirmish of democracy - Sarah Powell's Lafayette in the Somewhat United States is an amusing and informative look at one of the Founding Fathers... or, rather, their French battle-buddy.  I really like the way she spins things, for example:  "Devoted to the principles of liberty, equality, and religious tolerance - which, dear Internet, is not necessarily the same thing as Satanism..."  

I've been reading up on history lately... starting with 1820s New Orleans ('cause Architect/Pirate Barthelemy Lafon!) but slipping back in time a bit (because I've gotten interested in the hit musical Hamilton).  So I've been reading The Hemingses of Monticello, by Annette Gordon-Reed.  Another award winner.  Fascinating!  Also dipping into letters by Hamilton himself and this and that.  The internet is a rabbit hole for history - just a warning.  Anyway. 

I've found my history reading timely... Nice to know that political discourse - as we see it in this years presidential race - hasn't really changed much.  Sigh.

Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull courtesy of Wikimedia

public domain

The most fascinating reading has been my gift copy (thanks!) of Hamilton: the Revolution, the book by Lin Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter.  This documents the creation of the you-can't-BUY-a-ticket Broadway musical.  A really in depth look at its writing and its development on stage.  This book would be an ideal present for anyone creating (or interested in) new works for the theater.

Phew!  Last entry.  Also on artists doing their art, the book of the long over-due retrospective for painter Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun...  Gorgeous portraits!  Vigee Le Brun, by Joseph Baillio, Katherine Baetjer, and Paul Lang.  Important painter, protege of Queen Marie  Antoinette, international celebrity in her own day, it only took the Metropolitan Museum, what, 200 years? to stage her first international show.  Figures. 

 Another thing that hasn't changed enough, misogyny.  As a member of France's Revolutionary Council explained back in 1800s:

"Among savage peoples, who are closest to nature, does one see women doing the work of men?  He thinks it is because a famous woman, la citoyenne Le Brun, showed great talent in painting that a host of others have wanted to take up painting, whereas they ought only to engage in embroidering police officers' belts and caps..."

Sometimes fiction is more upbeat than history.  I'm looking for a nice comforting dystopia next...