Just A Stage Kiss...And Then Another..And.... Day 4/302

Walk: Union Square (Benefit, Scala Restaurant, SF Playhouse: Stage Kiss)
Distance: 8 blocks, home yoga



Ciwt is enjoying her season tickets in the front row at a small, excellent San Francisco theater.
Tonight's highly intelligent (youngish playwright, Sarah Ruhl, is already a MacArthur Fellow), extremely funny Stage Kiss is recommended.  Now, Nite, Nite Possums...

Long Drive to Wagner --- Day 4/301

Walk: Presidio
Distance: 3 miles



Ciwt finally got to a Richard Wagner opera yesterday.  It was a journey that took more than a decade and began in a Volvo in a flood in Virginia.

She was back East visiting a friend who has a family farm in Virginia Hunt/Civil War country (So beautiful) which Ciwt had never seen.  So we hopped in her friend's Volvo and starting driving, listening occasionally to the news about an impending Noreaster and watching the sky blacken and the trees start bending in the increasing wind.    Ciwt was trying not to think about hydroplaning when her friend reached into a pack she'd brought, pulled out a cd, popped it into the car player and turned up the volume.  From then on through the deepening waters Ciwt listened to Wagner's Die Walkure (or one of the Ring cycle operas Ciwt had only vaguely heard of) at top volume.  Somehow over the booming music Ciwt's friend could also be heard explaining the dramatic action on the stage and the stirring feelings as each note played.

Ciwt's friend had become a Wagner nut!  This was not expected.  But it was special, quite marvelous and made all the more so by the black skies and flood which was just deep enough for the Volvo to navigate.

Since then Ciwt has followed her friend's operatic Wagner escapades from her 'opera home,' the Met, to D.C., Texas, Germany (of course) and other venues Ciwt forgets. So when Ciwt noticed  Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg was coming to our San Francisco Opera she asked her friend if she should maybe buy a ticket - even though the opera was five and one half hours long .  Well!  No maybes!!  "In a heartbeat." was her friend's reply. She went on to say she'd recently been to two performances in two different cities in a matter of days. (Ciwt was still thinking "Nut," but she did buy a ticket).

And yesterday Ciwt finally went to see and hear for herself what Herr Wagner had wrought.



OMG, transporting, 5.5 hours wasn't long enough.  It is possible that mini-Deadhead Ciwt has now become an instant Wagner nut.  A matinee nut so not in the big leagues, but still you may want to think twice from now on about getting into a car with Ciwt during a rainstorm.

Rain Walks --- Day 4/300

Walk: Cinema Club (45 Years), Opera House (Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg)
Distance: 4.6 miles



Nice peaceful walks in just as nice light San Francisco rain.  To: early morning Cinema Club with Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay. From: our opera's (almost 6 hour) production of Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.  Now Ciwt rests, renews and lets these two rich offerings sink in. Hope to see you tomorrow at CIWT.

At Home --- Day 4/299

Walk: No
Distance: 0, home yoga


Pierre Bonnard (French 1867-1947), Normandie, oil on canvas


Edouard Vuillard (French 1868-1940), 
Interior, Mother and Sister of Artist, 1893, oil on canvas

Ciwt had a stay at home day today which put her in mind of two famous French friends and artists of homely scenes, Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. People often get their works confused.  And for good reason.  Both artists worked small-scale, abandoned perspective and concentrated on developing an "Intimist" style of decorative painting depicting their friends and families in tight domestic spaces packed with competing patterns.

The way Ciwt keeps them straight is to look for an outdoor scene on the canvas.  If there is a window with any sense of life outside the room, she knows she is looking at Bonnard.  Even if there is a (rare) window or door in a Vuillard painting, the energy is concentrated inward.  For instance, Vuillard's mother seems to be holding a fabric up to the sunlight on the right of his canvas above, but the subject of the painting is the fabric work being done inside the room. So far this distinction - along with Bonnard's happier colors when seen side by side - has served Ciwt well.

   
Vuillard

  

Bonnard

Creativity Unplugged --- Day 4/298

Walk: Union Square (Smoke and Mirrors, Neiman Marcus), Fillmore Street (Theresa Lam, OD, Susan Howell Designs)
Distance: 2 miles



New haircut (just a trim really), new make up (just blush for cheek/any!color really), new glasses (just lenses really), new jewelry (just beads, actually).  Fun, but now Ciwt is creatively done for today.

Lights at Dusk (cont') --- Day 4/297

Walk: No. Rain!!
Distance: A few blocks.  Home yoga




Speaking of ethereal city lights (see yesterday), Ciwt thinks these new ones at Grace Cathedral are beautiful. And so do the Cathedral's neighbors (with nods to Sam Whiting at sf chronicle):

For 30 years on Nob Hill, architect Nelson Chick has walked his dogs at dusk and wondered why Grace Cathedral did not illuminate its enormous stained-glass window.

Then last Monday evening in late November he came to Huntington Park and was stunned by what he saw across the street.
Above the front door of the dark Gothic church  the rose window was sending and intricate and abstract pattern of red, orange, amber, turquoise, white, blue and violet pattern across the hilltop park. He stopped to take it in thinking "Wow! That's beautiful."  But then of course got yanked back into action by his dog who was out for the walk, not the scenery no matter how artistically lit.

The lights are the result of a bulb illuminating in the mind of light artist Elaine Buckholtz, a Boston
artist currently in residency at Grace Cathedral.  They are temporary, but Ciwt (and probably Buckholtz and many residents and visitors) hopes some 'savior will find a way to keep them on whenever it gets dark  - for a long, long time.

Art Outside the Museum --- Day 4/396

Walk: Kimberley's, Town School Clothes Closet, Corte Madera (year end errands)
Distance:  A few blocks here and there

Once Again Ciwt was lucky enough to be at the Legion of Honor at ethereal dusk.  So sweet no matter what direction she looked.


Toward Marin Headlands


Toward the Golden Gate Bridge

 
Toward the Glowing City


Driving Away.  Bye Bye, Legion

Nah --- Day 4/395

Walk: JCCSF, Laurel Village, Hi Tech Nails
Distance: 3 miles and yoga class



Call her old fashioned, but Ciwt can't quite get with #Giving Tuesday, the holiday (?) invented in 2012.  She feels inundated enough with near constant "Can I have Your Money?" emails, snail mailings and phone calls from "Unavailable."

But apparently the concept is working and growing - for some charities.  Read for well-heeled charities with staff and resources to mount an additional, one-day campaign that doesn't raise much and encourages spot giving rather than loyalty to the cause.  Small charities with small staff and budgets are better advised (by some experts) not to dilute their dear time, energy and budgets and to stay focused on major, long-term giving campaigns.

So says Ciwt, Grinch.