Walk: Errands
Distance: 3 miles, Yoga stretch
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Robert Seldon Duncanson (1821-1872), Landscape with Rainbow, 1859, 30 x 52.25", oil on canvas |
Walk: Errands
Distance: 3 miles, Yoga stretch
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Robert Seldon Duncanson (1821-1872), Landscape with Rainbow, 1859, 30 x 52.25", oil on canvas |
Walk: Day of Rest/Reflection
Distance: n/a
Ciwt is lucky enough to have witnessed at least 17 Presidential inaugurations, all except two by election and all except one at the U.S. Capital. They are very meaningful to her; she watches them from beginning to end and can vividly remember many of them. Today, mercifully, was no exception, but the first on line. Seeing it that way, with no outside commentary felt personal and intimate. She wishes the best for our new President, Joe Biden, our new Vice President, Kamala Harris, and our United States of America.
Walk: Presidio Wall Pickleball
Distance: 2.5 miles, 90 minutes (windy) pickle
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Ramon De Elloriaga, Washington Inauguration 1789, 1889 |
Walk: 1. Presidio Pickleball 2. Hood stroll
Distance: 1. 2.5 miles, 90 minutes pickle 2. 2.5 miles, yoga
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Bob Ross shows us how on The Joy of Painting |
Over the years, when people learn that Ciwt writes about art, a common reaction has been "Oh, you must be artistic." Same was true when she sold art.
Wrong, in both cases. Artists make paintings among other things, and only a small part of her questions exactly how they do that. To her artist figures it out, just like someone in Silicon Valley figures out how to make the computer she's now typing on. It's like there is a Mona Lisa brush that Leonardo da Vinci dipped into his paint can, and when he slid it along the canvas, voila, a masterpiece
Walk: Hood
Distance: 3.5 miles, Yoga (while watching)
So, on another no pickleball day Ciwt grabbed a bag of popcorn, took a front row seat at her computer and went to England:
Then she worked off a little of that popcorn by doing yoga as she went to Budapest and watched an online selection from her Cinema Club. Discussion with her excellent San Francisco moderator to follow tomorrow afternoon.
So, almost like having an impromptu movie escape. Oh, and both trips were quite good - as was the popcorn.
Walk: No, Day of Rest
Distance: n/a
See that rounded dome behind the frescoed ceiling?
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Brother Andrea Pozzo, S.J., Self-Portrait, 17th C. |
Walk: Hood
Distance: 5 miles
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Then you get there and start missing shots... |
The thing about sports is they can become addictive or at least a distraction as you replay that shot you missed or try to figure out how you'll get better next time. So Ciwt is looking forward to a pickleball free zone while she lets a little cut heal and hopefully gets her mind off that game and around some interesting CIWT topics.
Walk: Presidio Pickleball
Distance: 3 miles, 45 minutes pickle before a little rain 😀
Can you imagine hosting the very first Jeopardy show since the death of its host? That is, it's utterly beloved, consummately professional host for 37 years, Alex Trebek.
Ken Jennings, the man who did just that last night, can hardly imagine himself. In his words, the experience was "surreal," "intense," "unimaginable," "nerve wracking" and more.*
But, very personable and professional himself, Jennings did an excellent job beginning with a warm tribute to Alex that reportedly brought many viewers to tears. He also brought a calming sense of continuity to the discontinuity because he is the Jeopardy GOAT, has made many and extended appearances on the show, won a bundle and was known to admire and care deeply for Alex. In turn, Alex was visibly fond of Ken and all the Jennings brought to Jeopardy.
So, onward..
Walk: Hood in Drizzle (any moisture is welcome)
Distance: 3.5 miles
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Original Cover |
Ciwt was reminded today of this favorite book from her youth, well her younger years at least. James Herriot's compilation of heartwarming stories is based on the people and animals he met during his early years as an English veternarian.
Now that it has become a massive hit both in bookstores and on television and the big screen, it is quaint to recall it actually had quite a sleepy start. In England at the time of its publication (under another title), veternarian surgeons were heavily discouraged from writing books under their own names. To be published at all, James Alfred Wight adopted the Herriot pen name. But, even then, sales were so slow his book might have died there if an editor from St. Martin's Press New York hadn't believed in it. And when it was published in the States in 1972, it took off with far less than best seller momentum; Ciwt remembers being told by a friend about it, and then she told one or two friends, and so on and so on across the country.
Walk: Hood (to get away from DC mayhem)
Distance: 1.5 miles, yoga
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Alexander Calder (1898-1976), Mobile, Triumphant Red, 1959-65, rod, painted sheet metal, wire, |
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Alexander Calder, Circus, 1926-1931, Painted Wood, cloth, rubbing tubing, wire, nails, fur, pipe cleaner, cork
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Walk: Presidio Pickleball
Distance: 3 miles, 2 hours pickle
Ciwt (and her readers probably) is thinking Enough Already with the snow. There are other things above like Alexander's charming, playful, happy mobiles and stabiles.
Walk: Hood ( after needed Rain 😊)
Distance: 3 miles, Yoga
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Gustave Caillebotte, Rooftops in the Snow, 1878, 32" x 26," o/c Musée d’Orsay, Paris. |
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detail |
Walk: Presidio Pickleball
Distance: 2.5 miles, 2 hours pickle, Yoga stretch
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Claude Monet (1840-1926) , The Magpie, 1868-1869, 3' x 4.3' , o/c, Musee d'Orsay |
detail |
Walk: No, Rain (yay) and cold
Distance: n/a, Yoga
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Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hunters in the Snow, 1565, oil on wood, 5/3' x 3.8' |
Leave it to Ciwt, a cold weather girl transplanted to California, to romanticize winter as the year begins. But, really, who cannot be completely drawn to this heartwarming winter scene painted so long ago but still so alive?
The world of the painting is locked in winter but teeming with life as huntes and their dogs bring in game for winter provisions
Villagers skate on a frozen pond
One of the most beloved and reproduced paintings in the world, Hunters in the Snow is also one of European art's first widely accepted genre painting focusing on the life, rituals, pastimes of peasants as well as the architecture and landscape of the surrounding village. And its artist, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Dutch, ca. 1525/30 - 1569) was truly the pioneer of this form which precisely recorded details of a now vanished folk culture and also paved the way for the explosion of genre and landscape painting to this day.
But, if you spend time with Hunters in the Snow, you realize Bruegel has more in mind than re-creating every day peasant life. He has actually transformed the landscape. The Dutch landscape is flat with much of it below sea level, but that crow is flying before steep alpine cliffs. No peasant himself, Bruegel was a highly trained, brilliant artist and sophisticated world traveler. He was was also a learned humanist patronized mainly by scholars, weathy businessmen and prominent humanists such as cartographers and humanists. His vision was exceedingly complex, expansive, and his use of landscape itself to communicate an atmospheric, universal vision of the world was a first and ultimately his greatest artistic legacy.
Or forget all this just let your heart be warmed by his wonderful art work......