'Past' Surprises --- Days 15/173-174

Walks: Mostly around home, putting things back in place after trip

Distance: 2 miles average

So overall, Ciwt was mostly surprised by Colonial Williamsburg.  First by its size. She had been planning her trip based on the map above.  The tiny map above. If you can read it, you see there are no distance/scale markers.  So, in the dark of night, when her driver told her they had entered the site, she was surprised when he kept driving and driving and driving until they finally reached the Inn where she was staying.  In fact Colonial Williamsburg is 301 acres, a mile and half long and at least 8 blocks side to side.  In 'normal' weather, a slightly challenging but comfortable, walking day.  In 95 degree, 90 percent humidity, bordering on hell. 

The carriage rides were cancelled to save the horses from the heat. - along with most of the reenactments you see in pictures on line.

When she went out the next morning, her next surprise was how spick and span the replicated village was.  Every wood building creamy white, every stone building chipless.  The 1776 inhabitants must have spent their days tidying in and out between planning for a revolution, then executing it.   Ciwt had expected to be instantly cast back into history, instead it was a matter of suspending disbelief.  By day two her sensibilities had adjusted; so, if you are going to go, Ciwt suggests 3 days, 2 to get into the feeling.  Otherwise you might end up with the impression of the great architectural reviewer, Ada Louise Huxtable: a 'superbly executed vacuum.' 

Or as she wrote in her The Unreal America: “What the perfect fake or impeccable restoration lacks are the hallmarks of time and place. They deny imperfections, alterations, and accommodations; they wipe out all the incidents of life and change. The worn stone, the chafed corner, the threshold low and uneven from many feet, the marks on walls and windows that carry the presence and message of remembered hands and eyes….are absent or erased. There is nothing left of the journey from there to here, nothing that palpably joins the past to the present, that makes direct physical and emotional contact with the viewer, the bittersweet link with those who have been there before.”

But then Ciwt majored in U.S. History and gives art tours. If she had been on the 'restoration' (ie, rebuild, replace, eliminate) committee in the 1930's when the vast and beyond expensive project ($100M+)  was ongoing, what would she have done?  You can't have original buildings - even if they exist - because they would look like off-putting slums and probably collapse on the first visitors.  And having a whole mix of the architectural styles that actually were in place might confuse the educational focus.  The project was and is meant to be educational, and it succeeds in large part with the costumed employees and their historical reenactments and spiels.  It is hard to say whether children fall for all of this or how deeply they are educated.  Many adults apparently are very pleased; There is one story of a couple who has returned 153 times since first visiting on their honeymoon.

Now for the First Class venues:  The Art and Archelogical Museums!!  Because she had such a short time, Ciwt let AI plan her trip and he/she/it took her to the historical buildings the first day and reserved the second and last day for the Art.  In fact Ciwt could have spent her entire trip at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Museum, DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum and even the newly opened Archaeological Museum. She would definitely return for those.  Fortunately, they all of  have extensive online presences where she can spend time now that she is back.  A nice surprise.

Now We Are Five --- Days 15/160 - 172

 Walks: Williamsburg, DC

Distances: 5 hot, humid miles average

Not Gonna Happen...

So, Ciwt is a traveler of very limited focus.  From the minute she gets serious about a trip, all eyes are on it and all nervous system parts begin fighting against the entire concept.  It always a race between going ahead and cancelling.  This is all very un-2026 in which toddlers have already traveled internationally - several times.  

Their parents, Ciwt presumes, think of planes like Ciwt thinks of walking - a pleasant (enough) way to get wherever you want as often as you want.  Not Ciwt; she took one look at an airplane sometime around age 5 and decided immediately and conclusively:  A big metal think like that Can't fly!!  To this day, even though 10's of thousands of planes prove her absolutely wrong on a daily basis, her five year old self remains steadfast.  "Doesn't mean the next one will.  Doesn't mean the one she gets one will make it."

So, heeding her inner five year old, she has canceled many trips, some at the very last minute.  And the few she has taken, like this last one, have been cliffhangers.  Then there is the matter of the return flight....

Okay, all that said, she's happily back to her beloved CIWT and her more beloved readers.

Zoom to Your Theater --- Days15/258 & 259

Walks: Hood, AMC Kabuki (Acme vs Coyote)

Distance average: 3 miles

So when Ciwt was a kid,  the Looney Tunes characters in the shorts before the main movie seemed like silly friends.  Particularly Wile E Coyote and his ridculously impossible and always 'fatal' attempts to catch his nemesis, the Beep Beep, Road Runner!  Now they - and all sorts of other Looney Tunes friends -  are back on the screen in Coyote vs. Acme, and Ciwt suggests you rocket right to a theater to see it. 

 (But don't take an Acme rocket if you expect to get there!)  If you are of 'a certain age' you're sure to have a delightfully.nostalgic time being entertained by the zany, imaginative, lighthearted getaway with a teeny amoung of seriousness and a lot of heart. No thinking needed.

Awwww --- Days 15/255- 257

 

Mutual Friends        photographer: Ernest Porter

So London's Natural History Museum has posted a few previews of its Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition which opens October 16.  From chance encounters to patiently planned, the images are always stunning, thought provoking and touching.  

For instance, what could be more dear than the relationship between an oxpeckers and a rhino captured by Ernest Porter.  The 'wildly' different animals have an ancient close and mutual relationship.  The oxpeckers get a good meal by plucking parasites from the rhino's skin which helps protect the rhino's health.  The birds also act as lookouts, warning rhinos of impending danger.  And it looks to Ciwt like the rhino provides a the oxpecker with a calming 'window seat' to sleep or just calmly chill.

How to Handle Ongoing Glum, Cold, Windy Weather? --- Days 15/251 - 254

Walks: Cold, Windy, Mostly Grey Hood

Distance: Average 3.5 miles

Answer:  Window Seats, Books and Cats

(Over?) Education? --- Days 15/251 to 253

Walks: SFMOMA

Distance average: 4 miles

So, Ciwt is absorbing the new look of  SFMOMA.  They have completely rehung the Fisher Collection  filling four of the huge museum's seven viewing floors with 750 out of the 1,000+ art works bequeathed by Don and Doris Fisher.  A mighty undertaking which we're told fulfills SFMOMA's agreement with the Fishers that an important exhibition of their collection would be mounted every 10 years.  Probably it was time anyway because much of the Fisher art had remained in the same place since 2016. 

For Ciwt a big  problem of the massive rehang is that the Fisher Collection introductory tours she has been giving since 2016 have been organized around the old hanging.  So, how is she doing taking in the new placements?  Well, she started a few months ago when she was invited to a special presentation of the rehanging by the curators in charge.  And she was horrified.  She thinks the story of (modern) art, its history, its evolution, the way one look of art influenced the next work, the thinking and stirrings around all that.  There is a fascinating story there, like there is in all history.  (To Ciwt)   And that story, the pretty much agreed on scholastic story modern art tells, was gone.  For instance, Sol Dewitt, Alexander Calder and Ellworth  Kelly, highly important, influential artists who had interesting real world connections with each other now occupied an entire floor grouped together by something impersonal and (to Ciwt) off-putting like "Artists Who Worked with Line and Form."  

This was very not right (to Ciwt) and her initial reaction was to reject the entire rehang out of hand.  For numerous and more adult reasons she pulled herself out of her pout and has now spent considerable time studying the new placements. Clearly prodigious multidisciplinary efforts and thinking went into the rehang project and Ciwt admires this. Without a guide like Ciwt,  modern art is truly incomprehensible to most people.  Great educational pains have been taken to teach viewers about each artist's intention or historical period or working technique.  There are multiple pictures of the artists, young and old, videos of them or others speaking about their art, individual headphones to listen for more information, extensive expanatory signage with braille tablets for the blind.  Especially if the viewer is new to modern art or Don and Doris Fisher, viewers are given abundant information and ways to access it.

But, so far in her efforts to integrate the rehang - maybe form a new tour in her mind - Ciwt is questioning whether all this education is Too educational.  In many rooms she feels more aware of the the education but not the art.  She wonders how many viewers the art is able to speak to.  Looking at the art, 'hearing' it speak, allowing it to communicate (or not) is how she herself was drawn to it. Her spirit was touched and the rest followed. There are greeting cards, posters, even coffee cups which can spark immediate connection in old, young and art ignorant souls.  No education needed.

So Ciwt, at least at this point in her integration, is wondering whether viewers are being over educated. Are they able to just look and be moved in some way first?  But, Ciwt learns intuitively by seeing and listening. Too much (factual) informaton alienates her. But in this multimedia age maybe the Fisher Collection rehang is communicating beautifully to most people. The various curators at SFMOMA are aware these ways of presenting art are a departure from tradition.  So, Ciwt is continuing to keep the doors open to her conclusions about SFMOMA these days.  Another type of education - learning how to push at her own boundaries.

Wake Up with the Birds --- Days 15/249 & 250

Walks: small hood

Distance Average: 3 miles

Green-headed Tanager

So the other morning Ciwt came sleepily to her computer, turned it on and ...Boom!  A little birdie woke her right up! Small, brightly colored Tanagers have a way of doing that. 

The one on her screen was the Green-headed Tanager for reasons Ciwt doesn't quite understand, since its head appears aqua to her.  It lives mostly in the humid forests of Brazil, Paraguay and far north-easter Argentina.  None in Northern California.  Darn.  And the few other Tanager species that can be seen here - Scarlet, Western and Summer - are usually just on their migratory way.  Same was true in in Minnesota and Connecticut where Ciwt grew up.  Once in Minnesota she thought she saw a Scarlet one  but it might have been a Red Cardinal .  Either way she has remembered her happy excitement ever since.

Okay, Bye................

Early Course --- Days 15/247 & 248

Walks: Hood

Distance: 3 miles average

Seems dicey to Ciwt to make a biographical movie based on a young Anthony Bourdain.  Ciwt was thoroughly entertained by Bourdain's writings and TV shows but not a weekly followed, and even she still feels the sad shock of his 2018 end.  But she is glad director Matt Johnson went ahead with Tony and that she got herself to one of our neighborhood theaters to see it.  It is well acted throughout, with Antonio Banderas as supporting standouts, nearly entirely believeable, highly entertaining and - best of all to her - gives insight into Bourdain's mental workings  That last sheds new light on Montaigne's "seize the moment."