Memoirous

In 2015 I first blogged about the series of photos taken by Nicholas Nixon of the Brown Sisters. I was intrigued by the honesty of the photos—women from girls into midlife into post middle age, marking the external changes, telling details (such as the Blackberry attached at one of the sister’s waist). Secondly, I was amazed at how a photographer (albeit one related to the oldest sister through marriage) could consistently organize an annual shoot. It is sooo hard to get family together even casually let alone for a project on a year-to-year basis. See family reunions, headaches, #moretroublethanworth Kudos to Nixon and the Brown Sisters! Now almost 50 years since the first photo in 1975, the project is still ongoing. I was so pleased when visiting the Art Institute of Chicago over the past weekend to see the 41 images plus a few more more on display. My friend and I before setting out to explore the museum wanted to fill water bottles and wandered downstairs to the bathrooms. Wow...

We just did a longish weekend to Chicago. Short and frenetic, constantly on the go. I was able to tick a few items off my summer to-do list: concert downtown in the park (Beethoven’s Fifth under the lights and waning nighttime sky), Siam Noodle and a GREAT Mexican place I ate at last time, and a visit to the Art Institute, where I saw the Georgia O'Keeffe’s show “My New Yorks.” As opposed to how we often remember O'Keeffe as a painter of the American Southwest, these drawings and paintings represented her time off and on in New York City as well as upstate New York where she and Alfred Stieglitz summered at Lake George. Shows like this sort of gather up what ever they have and add to it from whatever collections they can borrow from and hope for a cohesive theme. I really liked the angle of this exhibition as it showed another facet of the artist that most people are not used to seeing. O’Keeffe and Stieglitz were apartment dwellers, taking rooms in various hotels high abov...

Lately I’ve been revisiting Song of Myself by the poet Walt Whitman. On one hand it’s hard to believe he composed this in the 1890s (circa) and on the other the language and spellings are archaic. Then there is the very idea: loafing, a lazy summer day spent inspecting a blade of grass, smelling fresh-mown hay, no to-do list or worry about the upcoming presidential election, no social media or 24-hour news cycle. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. The summer is half over, which sends me into a frenzy. I need to grill out, go to a concert in the park, hop on my bike, camp out, eat more ice cream!!! Whitman could care less about any of this. Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books...