Pool

The Buchanan family pool.
(Photo by Katy Buchanan)

I have splashed through my last laps at home.

My family has inhabited this space for 48 years and it is past time to go. The pool won't be open next year.

So many good memories of parents, siblings, schoolmates, neighbors, nephews, in-laws and friends enjoying this space.

My dad used to swim laps in this pool. So did my mom.

I remember, after coming back home from college, skinny-dipping with friends early in the morning and sharing champagne and strawberries with sour cream and brown sugar.

The pool was part of the scenery and of the reception on my wedding day.

The service for my late brother Chris was held on the deck that he used to power wash.

My late brother Peter fearlessly bounced off the long-gone diving board. (I don't remember using the board, but I do remember doing racing dives off the deep end. Mom was a fanatic about all us kids knowing how to swim.)

There were noodles, inflatables, water guns and lots of hilarity. And so much time spent just sitting on the deck and talking into the evening, the underwater light keeping dusk away.

Originally, there was a wrought iron fence surrounding the pool. I remember spending a high school summer stripping the white paint off of it. A few years later, my parents had the fence taken down and the pool refurbished. It still has the pretty blue tiles from that remodel circling under the coping.

My nephews as recently as this summer came to visit and, in between gaming and practicing guitar, dove in with the casual exuberance of very young men.

The water was cold on Sunday, but the sun was shining. After about 45 minutes, I got out and, even though I had slathered on sunblock, was still a bit sunburned.

The best thing about swimming is that it really gets your heart rate up. You can feel its benefits throughout the day. And you'll sleep well, too.

Thanks for the memories, pool.

Art appreciation

"Era of Cool" show at the Westmoreland.  Art by John Van Hamersveld.
August 17, 2019. (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

I can't draw. I can doodle, and scribble and do good design. I've even thrown a few nice pots in my time. I'm fine with that.

And yet ... besides wishing that I could sing, I wish, I wish my brain was built for the super-driven creativity and exultation of purpose on display in "Era of Cool,"  now at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art.

I'm more of a dilettante. I love learning new things, that's my passion and my weird discipline, I guess. Still, when I see cool art like this, I feel on the outside looking in. Why doesn't my brain work this way? I want it to, but ...

Blah, blah. Anyway. This art speaks to me because it is referential, not realistic. That sense of representation is why I love the Impressionists. They took reality and beautifully reduced it to shape and color. This is not to say I don't love the work of painters like Caravaggio or Vermeer. Their art is stunning and sends you deep into pondering the stories of the people they painted. But the artists who can strip off detail and take reality down to its essentials, I don't know why, but their work really does it for me.

In the 1960s, John Van Hamersveld used a photo of surfers, reduced it to its bones and made a poster for the movie Endless Summer that is just as stunning today as it was then. The yellow sun at the center draws you in, and you can see how the surfers converge toward it, chasing the light and the wave.

I had some 90 minutes to see the exhibit on Saturday, which is about my max time for gallery wandering. Admission is free. Plus, I got to see a painting by one of my favorite American artists, Milton Avery.

Here is my Endless Summer image.
Taken at Dormont Pool in Pittsburgh, around 5 p.m.
August 19, 2019. (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

Get busy living

Reading my mom's biography that's she's compiled over the years ... this stands out. She was recovering from the birth of my middle sis.

"Dad brought me 'The Guns of August' by Barbara Tuchman. I somehow managed to finish it in the five days I stayed in the hospital. Probably the last book I read for 20 years. Things got rather busy after that."

Five post-partum hospital days.

Wow.

And reading "The Guns of August" in 5 days.

After birth of kid 4 of 7. And my dad brought her such a weighty book.

Families are interesting, aren't they? (And things got busy!)

Also "Guns of August" is still on my to-read list.

I miss my dad. So many questions I would love to ask him. But he was a pretty private person; guess that's where I get it from.