Mmm, waffles

And for you, it's a GeoQuiz (patent-pending).

11 (19)

One 2nd cousin,

3 half-siblings,

and a bonifide direct descendent;

Mascara is the best invention ever —

— and, finally, the brush-part (with its ineffective & clog-ful nylon-y bristles) has been replaced with rubbery plastic monster fingers. Thank goodness for smoother materials.

Is having great fun

Reading Katherine Joslin's Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion.

Just out.

Too bad it has nothing to do with her shaky term paper. Countdown?

23 days.

I used a very old gift card to purchase it (and several other books ranging from $1 to $15).

Women love clothes; men who do are less common and more suspect. Indeed, there is not much variation in men's business / formal / casual attire … for the past 250 years … to be obsessed with a thing supposedly designed to increase passive sexuality (attractiveness) can be unseemly in a male.

Women do so appreciate clean, well-trimmed male individuals; bathing is good, and so are clean clothes that fit nicely. We have not entered the pauper-stage of U.S. culture just yet — not universally, anyway.

Today I mended a pair of some over-the-knee socks. They are more than 10 years in my possession. One of two pair. Both have been repaired, at the Achilles and randomly in spots, more than once.

They are Swiss, cotton, durable and still as dark as when I first acquired them.

Three pair of Made-in-the-USA black cotton trouser socks from the Banana Republic Company have also shown much and unexpected decade-long durability. It has been a long-standing surprise.

Upstairs, there is a pile of wool sweaters on top of a chest of drawers, asking for hole-repair. Cedar blocks are not effective against moths. One never sees the moths, only the eaten-away hole and the dead or shell-casting of a moth-larva. I got distracted at noon after getting the socks done and on; to indulge a continued sewing desire sounded wrong, and so it was subverted by the "you should be working / going to a work-place in person to support your co-worker" mandate, which was not carried out either — but you see my mental gymnastics of avoidance and how things do or do not get done.

I have two Italian merino ribbed wool sweaters from J. Crew that have given more than ample years of service. Of course, they have been washed, and I have grown since high school. Congratulations to moth-proofed yarn.

Ibex also knows a good spin. They even craft underclothes, if you can imagine that — and my interest in woolen unmentionables. This girl once paid $25 for a black wool swimsuit from the 1950s or so at an antique fair. Yes, it used to fit — a one-piece with unexpected parts cut away. No, it was never water-tested; the original manila-colored price tag is still stapled to it.

Anyway, my vanity extends beyond my body, my clothes and beyond the interaction of mine with mine.

I have such skewed senses of saving up, of documenting – of my own self-importance — that my greatest wish for my attire is that it end up preserved.

One of my favorite days was spent in the basement of Union Station in Kansas City (where the Kansas City Museum, under the greater incorporation de' non-profit, keeps its collection in temperature-controlled cases and cabinets), when Nancy Rexford was in town to help evaluate and catalog the historic children's clothing collection. [Her books are very expensive, and the one I want is out of print.]

Going over out-of-date fashions, the fabrics faded, crunchy and unfamiliar, the construction fussy and impossible to dump into a contemporary washing machine, is my form of ghost-hunting.

You can smell people still, no matter how well-washed or long-stored their clothing.

It's the same when someone sends you a letter. You can tell if they smoke, if they use a scent, if they cooked bacon recently.

One of the things we stand to lose, along with songbird diversity, is our use of smell for much more than finding out that the kitchen garbage bin is overdue to be emptied or that a chunk of industrial beef has somehow gone off just a day after its purchase.

Anyhow, my point is that I aim to donate my clothes to the museum, based on the fact that a curator once told me that the 1990s > lacked in non-formal wear in terms of collections. And I'm supposed to have photos of me in it, preferably. I did not save catalog pages … and to wear the clothes now would be somewhat false history.

However, it can be noted as such, because I want people, if we still exist and have had the resources to cherish non-survival-related endeavors in 20 to 100 decades, to be able to feel about "my time" what I believe I can feel about the one 100 to 200 years before my own.

90 minutes

Remaining smell-time for roasting dead bird … pervades house … might try 3rd floor or basement-of-own-smells … is it sick that the live birds are 5 to 10 feet away?

The cat is confused. Will accept lap in exchange. We are both confused each time an exterior door is opened.

The avian veterinarian's latest YahooGroup post did say it was fine to feed one's captive birds from the Thanksgiving table. In fact, if anyone still has a Carolina parakeet squawking 'round, please let me know.

I once fed Squeaky KFC. He loved it; we did not have any furniture — floor-time is an essential part of any young creature's emotional and motor foundation. Babies; you have to play with them while crawling around the floor yourself [which is why it's usually a little easier to do this sort of thing during one's 20s; those of us on the latter side of 30 to 35 are amazed by women like the one I met at some conference or something, who was 43 or so and had just had her first (and somewhat accidental, it was given to us to understand) baby. She admitted without prompting that it was very hard … amazing, but exhausting].

At any rate, this bird we shall eat (mostly he) was raised on a farm with a bad life, I'm sure. Its legs and wings went elsewhere. It still weighed almost 9 pounds. The cat is about 17.

It was $12-16, and it will taste mostly fine; organic is for beef. That's a funny thing to propose.

Must see

These are only some of the works by some of the artists. There are 10 artists whose work is part of "Witness: Perspectives on War" at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center. Mr. Leedy (79) served in the Korean War, and some of his experiences there informed his work (originally shown at Grand Arts a decade ago) in this exhibition. Kansas City is lucky to have him.

From Review:

Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
2012 Baltimore Avenue
Kansas City, Missouri
816-474-1919
Wednesday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., First Fridays, 6-9 p.m., and by appointment

Witness: Perspectives on War
Ten-person multi-media exhibition featuring major and large-scale works by Tim Guthrie, Jim Leedy, Jim Sajovic, Denis Reichel, and John Thein, with new work by Justin Bell, Skyler Bieberly, Gear, Misha Kligman and Matteo Potter ; curated by Holly Swangstu and including an encore installation of Jim Leedy's millennium The Earth Lies Screaming 3-D mural project, created in conjunction with Grand Arts.
First Friday opening: November 6, 6-9 p.m.
November 6, 2009 — January 2010

Combine

I am not Rauschenberg , but it's fun to be able to mash together a desire to blog (procrastinate) and a need to learn something half-new.

LeCorbusier's Villa Savoye in Poissy, France, 1928-30 — international style / broad flat planes, no frivolous ornamentation (form, shape and surface are important), streamlined appearances expressed building's function; his five points of what architecture should do included 1) raising all buildings on pilotis (pillars), to create a place to stash the motor nicely in an uncluttering way and to create a better view for inhabitants, who would be 2) looking out through their "ribbon windows," wrapping around the whole building, or enjoying their 3) rooftop garden space, a private sometimes green spot for social gatherings; the inhabitants also would benefit from 4) an open floor plan, which would be made possible by the 5) free-façade design (meaning the walls were not load-bearing and thus could be moved around to alter rooms as necessary) — functional, utopian "best use of space"

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe taught at Bauhaus, with its very modern, all-window, regular patterned space devoid of excessive detail (which at the time was supposed to inspire creativity), was an advocate of extreme clarity and simplicity in architecture, as well as a use of modern materials like industrial steel and plate glass, the skeleton of steel a minimal framework and the glass a skin covering it without ornamentation or concealment. His 1922 plan for a skyscraper was never built and was one of two models. This one proposed an all-glass sheathing, even around corners, which were curved, suspended from a central core; his version of International Style.

William van Alen, Chrysler Building,1046-ft., NYC, 1928-30, Art Deco: inspired by machine forms, a style spanning architecture, fine and applied arts; influenced by Cubism, Constructivism, Futurism, Blaue Reiter (abstraction, geometric forms, distortion, intense colors and a love of new technology); celebrate the rise of commerce, the machine age, technology and speed; the growing impact of the machine expressed by repeating and overlapping imagery — streamlined forms derived from principle of aerodynamics, elegant and ultra-modern). The building was supported by a steel skeletal frame, and the exterior was decorated by a stone façade to show patterning, especially at the top, where car symbols like hubcaps and chevron-shapes are celebrated into a pinnacle expressing the building's company's product.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater in Bear Run, PN, 1934-37, modern architecture derived from his own prairie style … cantilevers, native stone, water access, etc.

Wright, Guggenheim Museum, NYC, 1957-59, late Wright; molded concrete, great interior spiral, horizontality of exterior after 1982 renovations; presents ordered view of art / an experience that's not passive

Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, Pompidou Center, Paris, 1971-78, postmodern deconstruction: move away from rules that constrict (like form follows function, purity of form, truth to materials or the Modern idea of simplification or elimination of ornament — controlled chaos). PoMo coined in 1948 describe post-WW2 dissatisfaction with precepts of modern architecture; extends to many disciplines and is very diverse, complex, contradictory, ambiguous and interconnected — also debated. A building that is literally inside out; exterior escalators start visit at top of building; interior is basic and usual.

I.M. Pei, Grand Pyramid for Louvre, 1988 in Paris; entrance way in central courtyard, postmodern

Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, 1991-97; typical Gehry style incorporating sheets of metal for exterior, in this case shaped as a ship or to mimic the undulating waves of the river at the site. Combines classic modernism with organic whimsy of Expressionists; designed with CATIA

LaVerdiere and Myoda et al, Tribute in Light, NYC WTC, 2001-02 34 nights (a light installation in situ while rebuilding is funded). Replicate Yamasaki's 1972 towers, mile-high projection with 44 7000-watt bulbs

Above Us (reprise — it's a theme!)

I have a friend from college who used to trip over sidewalk cracks and such because she was always looking up.

It sounds like the makings of a kid's book, "the girl who had her head in the clouds," but Suzette has always been quite grounded intellectually. I don't know if she still glances skyward all the time anymore, the ground under her skies being Deutchland's and our contact's having been broken for about seven years (to my regret; Google, etc. have not been helpful so far). (You like my gerund, you like my nonparallel construction that runs that gerund right after another nonessential possessive? Getting a kick out of my parenthetical punctuation creations, too?)

Adults rarely kick back and stare at the clouds on purpose. The last time I remember lying down to watch the sky was during the 2001 annual fall meteor showers.

Babies watch the sky from their carseats all the time, don't all of us enjoy a good "you drive me" experience, too? The land-fields and sky-field attached to Missouri's major east-west/west-east thoroughfare are not spectacular views, though, so when we drive (to my original) home (eastward) next weekend (not in 2009), I don't have much to look forward to those four hours besides the counting of birds of prey.

There is also the counting of X's, for Missouri's Interstate 70 is home to a number of lovely places such as the Million Dollar Fantasy Ranch. Legislation in 2005 reduced the number of "you're almost there" billboards, and now, the lonely trucker runs the terrible risk of missing CDL-discount announcements and only has a few miles to consider each Adult Toy and Video and/or LIVE GIRLS establishment before pulling off, so to speak.

Anyway, they are always done in boring, block-lettered fonts in flashy black, white, bright green, pink, etc., these billboards that share air-space with a huge M - I - Z - Z - O - U series, a Behlman-or-something car dealership series, the "Feeling Sick — Think It Might Be Something You Ate?" one, some radio station ads, a few funeral home "Don't Drink and Drive" ones, and obviously nothing that I have ever enjoyed reading. For a while, we had the God series, the white-on-black one-liners like, "Don't make me come down there," or, "That 'love thy neighbor' thing, I wasn't kidding."

So far, God has not commented on the Million Dollar Fantasy Ranch.

Self-indulgence

It seems 4 years ago, I was much more narrative and slightly less cynical (we're quoting CG in its birth-month, November, 2005):

So, crazy girls break into unlocked schools and crazy men plow their vehicles down hills and across four lanes before coming to rest at the bottom of a loamy, human-filled hill.

Apparently Abraham Lincoln was rejected by his first object d'amour, too. The historian at Elmwood told me Thursday that Lincoln's approach to proposing to Sarah Rickhart had been to cite the Bible.

"You know, Sarah," he said to her sitting next to him on the porch swing in Springfield. He had watched her grow to womanhood, womanhood back in the early 1800s being 12 to 14 years old or something, while staying with Sarah's sister and brother-in-law, the Butlers, Elizabeth and William. "In the Bible, Abraham marries Sarah." I can't help but picture the delivery as a little bit smarmy. Perhaps any good Christian girl would have swooned.

As the story goes, conveyed to me by someone who actually has read history books on this subject, Sarah left the scene. What an answer. Just walk away. In later years she was said to have regretted the choice, but only because Lincoln turned out to be president and all.

Ages.

Do not expect to find springs in Eureka Springs, though at one time there were 62 or so. What remains are Victorian houses perched along a series of switchback loops along a slight mountainside. It seemed that half of the homes were operated as bed and breakfasts, and that half of those were for sale.

I am exaggerating, just as I did when the jets in the bathtub sprayed water all over the place and I repeatedly exclaimed, "It's a tragedy!" while wiping up the floor. We laughed supremely then, which makes finding out that Manuela keeps a really clean floor more than worth the wet clothes. (Manuela: the cryptic printed signature under the crooked printed sentence "Gratuities are always appreciated" on an envelope on the dressing table.)

On Friday night we set out after dark on foot and had no idea where we were going. There seemed to be no one around, and it's accurate to say the town is quite quiet. The trolley bus is loud, but that's about it. Deer wander though every evening.

I declare

that this is a scholarly and legal use of* Ms. DiFranco's lyrics; links to full versions on official site for her "Reprieve" album included; she says a few things better than I do right now, so I'm saying, "click me:"

"step up and forfeit your frontal lobe
to the sexed up strobe of celebrity
never mind that the nanoseconds in between
are some of the darkest darkness you've ever seen …"

♡

"… yeah, so
it took me a few years to catch on
that those days i catch everyone's eye
correspond with those nights of the month
when the moon gleams like an egg in the sky
and men are using a sense they don't even know they have
just to watch me walk by
and me, i'm supposed to be sensible
leave my animal outside to cry

"but when all of nature conspires
to make me her glorious whore
it's cuz in my body i hold the secret recipe
of precisely what life is for
and the patriarchy that looks to shame me for it
is the same one making war
and i've said too much already
but i'll tell you something more …"

❀

*Who has received a "fair" deal of my money over the years.

*)I miss Utah Phillips