Home Town Favorites --- Day 7/92

Walk: Marin Driving Day (Cibo, San Rafael)
Distance:  A few blocks, Yoga

MacBook Air with Allbird Loungers

With all her walking Ciwt craves really comfortable shoes.  Meaning shoes with support along the lines of ski boots.  When the raves about Allbird shoes reached her, she dismissed them out of hand.  Allbirds might be as comfortable as people said, but how in the world could wool shoes possibly support your feet for a moment?!  This is the Ciwt who dismissed raves about the iPhone out of hand, so you know where this is going.  Allbirds are tough, strong birds that cushion your feet. And, boy, will they be the perfect thing to wear while she works on her array of Apple devices (and elsewhere).

'Fore' Art --- Day 7/91

Walk: PGCC
Distance: 1 mile, heavy pushing and lifting

Where's the fireplace?  

 Today was the opening of the Members' Photography Show at Ciwt's traditional golf club.  So she was busy hiding pub chairs, trophies and other sports paraphenalia and converting the remaining surfaces into a makeshift photography gallery. This is her idea of fun, and she thinks it worked out pretty well.

Intimate Viewing Spaces --- Day 7/90

Walk: SFMOMA, SF Playhouse (An Entomologist's Love Story)
Distance: 1.5 miles, small yoga

Cast of An Entomologist's Love Story (World Premiere at SF Playhouse)

Ciwt enjoyed tonight's play at the small, up close SF Playhouse. But the real treat of her day was being the last person into the Magritte show before closing. Usually they don't let people in so late but made an exception so she had the exhibition virtually to herself. What a difference 

from viewing Magritte in a crowd. Magritte is meant to be seen quietly and intimately she had

the good fortune to realize.

Memorial Day 2018, Presidio of San Francisco --- Day 7/89

Walk: Presidio 150th Memorial Day Service
Distance: 4 miles

Memorial Day 2018, San Francisco Presidio, Program

Color Guard

Speakers (Dianne Feinstein here)

             Marching Band 

                                                               Fly By
                                                                                                             

Vets and other attendees leave the ceremony

26,425 Stay

Volunteer Boy and Girl Scouts place a flag and red rose on every grave

Ciwt's father, who served in WW II and lost his brother in that war, wasn't a demonstrative man, but get him near a parade, and the tears flowed. Mention patriotism, parades, that Jimmy Cagney music to Ciwt, and you get pretty much the same reaction.

You Are There, 1865 --- Day 7/88

Walk: Presidio
Distance: 3 miles

Winslow Homer, The Bright Side, 1965, oil on canvas,  13.27" x 17.52"*

Winslow Homer wasn't all Prout's Neck, Maine dramatic sea paintings and scenes of children at play.  Those came later.

At the beginning of his career, age 25, the self taught artist marched off to the Civil War armed with drawing utensils and paper.  He was one of a select group of artist-reporters embedded with Union troops documenting battles and camp life for Harper's Weekly Illustrated, then the premiere illustrated newspaper in the country.  

Artist-reporters were on the front in every sense - facing battles, injuries, starvation and disease along with the fighting men and women.  Their job was to be astute observers with an instinct for story and drama and the ability to sketch quickly and accurately in highly dangerous and exhausting circumstances.

Homer brought his bedrock insistence on truth telling to that job.  Probably no contemporary artist looked with clearer eyes, and he did as much as anyone to give Harpers's and posterity a visual representation of the Civil War.

After the war, Homer went on to have a distinguished career as an oil and watercolor painter and also continued to produce commercial illustrations for Harper's and other publications.  But he was always an artist-illustrator at heart.  He considered his war work to be a public service, intentionally endured some of the same experiences as soldiers did and - according to his mother - was fundamentally and forever changed by what he lived, witnessed and recorded.

*One of the exceptional paintings from the Rockefeller Collection Bequest of American Art to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.  Hangs at the de Young Museum.

Down 17 to Up 19 --- Day 7/87

Walk: No
Distance: few blocks, small yoga

Busy watching the Warriors stunning turnaround win this evening.  One more game to go.

The Stationary Armchair, Pt 2 --- Day 7/86

Walk: Polk Street, Kabuki Theater (First Reformed - Ciwt says Do Not Bother/D+)
Distance: 4.4 miles, small yoga 

Henri Matisse, The Rocaille Armchair, 1946

What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.  

The Stationary Armchair --- Day 7/85

Walk: A Little (still cold and windy)
Distance: 1 mile, small yoga, small pt

Rocaille Chair
Henri Matisse felt a strong attachment to the objects that inspired him, even expressing love for one special Rococo style chair. In 1942, when the artist was in his seventies, he was walking by an antique shop in Nice, France when he fell in love… with a chair. He wrote to a friend about it saying, “I was bowled over. It’s splendid. I’m obsessed with it.”