Walk: Early in Hood scouting for Entrants
Distance: 3.5 miles
ANHDC Entrant status to be determined
Walk: Dr., Kiehls, Carpet Store, Basically all over the hood
Distance: 6 miles
Black houses are particulary good at showing off white skeletons.
All over Ciwt's hood neighbors have called professional installers or blocked off weekends and gotten their laddes ready to put up their decorations for San Francisco's favorite holiday. Early in October Ciwt sees multiple crews with many workers or entire families carrying skeletons, witches, ghouls. And there are some dragons and other enormous eerie creatures that probably require forklifts. Other installations are done at night so unsuspecting neighbors are terrified when they pick up their newspapers or leave for work. The competition and just old fashioned Halloween energy is intense.
Right on October 1, four trucks and numerous men spend a good part of the day making sure this black house was among the first to enter the unspoken but clearly real Halloween decorating contest. And also to officially open and become Entry #1 in the 2024 CIWT Neighborhood Decoration Contest.
Walk: Legion of Honor (press preview of Mary Cassatt at Work)
Distance: 1.8 miles, As little as possible in current heat wave
Mary Cassatt, Woman in a Loge, 1879, oil on canvas |
Mary Cassatt, In the Loge, 1878, oil on canvas |
Walk: Beloved Hood
Distance: 4 miles early before height of heat wave
Mary Cassatt, Little Girl in the Blue Armchair, 1877-78, oil on canvas |
Ciwt is not often drawn to cute paintings of women and children, domestic scenes or just children. So why for so many years is she always captured by the work of Mary Cassatt, the premier portrayer of the airless daily lives of late 19th century haute bourgeois women and children? Well, precisely because Cassatt took her subjects seriously, gave them intelligence and subtly laid bare that airlessness.
In so many of Cassatt's works you can sense the women's private thoughts and chafing at the public demands of perfectly pressed dresses, high collared coats, complete with gloves. Modernism was bursting out in men's lives throughout Paris. And Cassatt captures the brewing modernity that was simmering for women - just before they began to be engaged in professional work and were able to vote.
When that happened you just know know that little girl in the blue chair (Cassatt's niece) - in one of the world's favorite paintings - was leading the charge through the door and away from claustrophia.. She's full of pent up energy, realistically squirmy, bored, and his no interest in being modest and proper in her perfectly ironed dress.
To date much has been made of all the places and opportunities Cassatt was denied as a woman - bars, nightclubs, folies and, of course, art training at the Ecole. Ciwt is looking forward to hearing the new respect art historians are now giving to the masterful and workmanship way Mary Cassatt presented the world she was a part of.
Walk: Hood, natch
Distance: 4 miles
Mount Norwottuck on an Indian summer day in western Massachusetts, October 2008 @Andy Anderson |
So, yesterday Ciwt described the current San Francisco weather as 'Indian summer.' Over the years she has done the same countless times about the weather in the Midwest, the East Coast, certain parts of the West. It is a descriptive phrase she picked up sometime in her youth for balmy, summer-like weather that occurs later in the cold, frosty Fall. But, until today, she never wondered 'why the term?,' 'where did it come from?,' things like that.
On researching, it looks like most people have the same understanding of the term, but no one is exactly sure of its origins.
The earliest known reference to Indian summer is in an 1778 essay by the Frenchman, J. Hector St. John de Crevecouer. It reads in part and in French: Great rains at last replenish the springs, the brooks, the swamp and impregnate the earth. Then a severe frost succeeds which prepares it to receive the voluminous coat of snow which is soon to follow; though it is often preceded by a short interval of smoke and mildness, called the Indian Summer. Apparently that essay didn't reach the States until 1920. Make of that what you will; to Ciwt it means it couldn't have had much influence on our use of the term here.
Whether the 'Indians' referred to are Native American (probably) or from India (maybe) is also up for grabs. What isn't though is the universality of the phenomenon. In Western and Middle Europe a warm period in autumn is called - get ready - 'old woman's summer.' Likewise in Slavic-language countries. In Bulgaria it is called 'gypsy summer, or 'poor man's summer.' The Irish refer to it as 'little autumn of the geese' while those in Spain enjoy 'little autumn of the quince tree.'
In Turkey they call it pastirma yazi, meaning 'pastrami summer' since the month of November at some point was considered the best time to make pastirma, or modern day pastrami. Like that meat, the names and countries are a big mix from Saints names to Greek mythology.
Wherever it is and whatever it is called, Ciwt bets that, like her, most people consider these days the most gorgeous of the entire year. Especially in New England, which she misses deeply during 'Indian summer.'
Walks: Hood of course
Distances: 4 miles average
So, Magalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola's long heralded, much gossiped about and just released movie is here. It is Coppola with an extraordinary cast so attention deserves to be paid, but Ciwt is a movie buff of sorts, not a movie scholar so she is wondering about going. Will you go? Or maybe you've been.
She has a friend, both a buff and a scholar as well as off-the-charts brilliant, who happened to call and report his experience. He couldn't exactly praise it, but did admire it. Even he though admitted to not completely understanding it and noticing that many of his fellow movie audience walked out because it was soooo sloooowww until nearly the end.
At the total far end of the critical spectrum was a local columnist who began his review of Megalopolis this way: This is not a review. This is a warning. Needless to say, the rest is not positive.
So, here it is Monday and Ciwt has a free afternoon. If she goes, she will report. And if she takes a long, slow walk or does hours worth of CIWT-worthy activities instead, she'll let you know about those.
Indian summer Monday greetings in any event.
Walk: Hand/Wrist Therapy
Distance: 4 miles