Desks and work

 

The desk!

A messy desk is a sign of a creative person.

So the narrative goes.

During my working days, I kept a fairly neat desk. Oh, I had my postcards and buttons. At one point, I even had storage space above my computer to keep copies of the print products that I designed.

But, mostly, I did not like a lot of crap cluttering up my work space. It was always extraordinary to me that coworkers could, in a building that OSHA would have summarily condemned, pile up papers, news releases, clippings and all other sorts of flotsam and jetsam. Once, many years ago, an editor pulled out a sheaf from a notorious hoarder's pile and she (the hoarder) immediately knew that her territory had been disturbed. Tears followed.

(And seriously, my newsroom was definitely a tinderbox waiting to be lit. There were the aforementioned  hoarders and then there was the morgue. Full of ancient clippings of long-ago events that would set you sneezing [the clippings, not the events] the moment you pulled out a file from an overstuffed shelf. Unfortunately, too, it was unguarded, so many valuable prints were stolen over the years.)

So the narrative of now is this.

 My desk at home is messy, but in an orderly way. My morgue is two paces away, containing a boxes of ancient and fascinating clippings about my life: diaries, photos, letters. I don't think OSHA would condemn it, but it definitely needs some Marie Kondo-type attention.

Collage No. 9

I'm making stuff from the flotsam and jetsam that sits on it. 

(Favorite quote from a former colleague, who got tired of some copy desk questions: "Is anal-retentive hyphenated?) :)

 

 

All Hallows Eve

Allegheny Cemetery (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

Halloween, for a long time, hasn't been a big deal for me. (Best Halloween ever? My mom made me a Morticia Addams costume when I was in seventh grade!)

So some years ago, when the number of trick-or-treaters at our house diminished to a trickle, leaving us with too much candy to take to the office the next day, my husband and I decided that the evening would be dinner out.

Close the drapes, turn out the lights and head to a restaurant. It was a nice tradition for a while. While I missed carving the pumpkin and roasting the seeds, it was kind of a relief not to rush around with one more decoration in the busy Labor Day-to-Christmas season.

I do feel kind of curmudgeonly about it, like I'm no fun, especially with friends and family who wholeheartedly embrace it. But so it goes.

This Oct. 31, 2020, I really had forgotten about it until I had to dress in black for a protest at the home of the publisher of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. My former employer, where the union employees have not had a raise in 14 years, no contract in three, to name two of many injustices. I added an orange scarf and purple gloves to complete, so to speak, the outfit.

After days of rain and gloom, Saturday dawned as one of those perfect fall canvases: drenchingly blue sky, leaves of red and gold and lawns still in brilliant green.

Since I was in the Shadyside/Friendship/Lawrenceville neighborhood, I did something I've been wanting to do for a long time. Revisit Allegheny Cemetery.

Decades ago, I wrote about it for the Associated Press, when I worked in the Pittsburgh bureau. Somewhat more recently, I wrote about a Japanese woman, living in Pittsburgh, who made it a point to visit the grave there of songwriter/native son Stephen Foster each year on the anniversary of his death (Jan. 13, 1864).

What I've always taken away from visits is how much history is buried there. Not a startling deduction, sure, but it allows so much room for ruminating and daydreaming. Some headstones are so sad because they testify to long-ago lives that often ended just after birth. There are grand mausoleums that have photographs inside of those who rest inside; sometimes flowers, too. 

And the sculptures! The wealth of art is amazing, although I noticed today that some tombs have window openings and door grates essentially bricked over. Whether those features have been lost to the indignities of time, the elements or vandals, I don't know.

Still, it's a beautiful place. You might even say restful.

Flying. And dreams of

It's mid-September and the days grow short. Every day I squeeze in some patio time in the lengthening southwestern Pennsylvania light.

 

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail.

One pleasant surprise this late summer has been the arrival of four Monarch butterfly caterpillars. I noticed them a bit more than a week ago on the swamp milkweed that we had planted last summer as part of a landscape project. I knew it was Monarch food, which is why I insisted on it, but was not quite up to speed on how they consumed it.

 

So naturally, I was disappointed over the summer by the dearth of Monarchs in my back yard. Lots of Swallowtails and skippers, though, as the season waned.
 
Back to last week. Surrounded by unfinished Sunday newspapers and various magazines, I noticed four beautiful yellow-green and black striped caterpillars munching away on the milkweed leaves. It's the caterpillars, not the butterflies, that consume the milkweed. The females find the plant and lay their eggs on it. So the Monarchs had been visiting. I just hadn't seen them.

I feel bad now, because in spraying the milkweeds with a garden hose to dislodge aphids, I may have dislodged Monarch eggs as well. I'll know better next year.

 

Monarch chrysalis.

One day, the caterpillars disappeared, only to show up, hanging upside down in a J shape, on nearby shamrock hollies. Within a day, they had shed their final skin and were covered in jade green with gold necklaces.
 
The chrysalises are like pieces of jewelry. It may be a couple of more days before they actually break out and start feeding on the nectar of nearby plants. Of the four caterpillars, I count three hanging, waiting and dreaming of flight. (Looking closely, you can see the wings through the transparent chrysalis.)
 
They won't soar like the hawk (probably a red-tailed) I watched this afternoon, circling high overhead in big, lazy circles. Over the 15 minutes I followed it, the wings flapped only twice.
 
But they will flutter and feed all the way to Mexico, where they'll spend the winter. I hope fate will be kind enough to get them safely there.
 
Vaya con dios.

 

Pal Is Still Lost

In my rare pandemic peregrinations, I drive the same few routes over and over.

• Local grocery store (Instacart does not work well there).
• Further out grocery store  (where wine is sold).
• Local hardware store (for bath strips and grab bars that husband now needs.) 

Masked up at all of them and in and out without dilly dallying.

Photo by Katy Buchanan

On the runs to the second (farther) store, I pass several versions of this sign.  Either "Pal Is Lost" or "Pal Still Lost."

You can see by the fading and running colors that the notices have been up for a while. It's now mid-May 2020; I think I've been seeing them since mid-April.

I hope Pal's people have found him or her, and have merely forgotten or neglected to take down the signs. That there are so many of them speaks to the love Pal's family has for this little cat.

For some reason, Pal reminds me of a chapter in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," the opening tale in C.S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia."

The chapter is titled "The Spell Begins to Break." The White Witch's terrible winter is nearing an end, yet she still maintains her power to turn Narnia's creatures to stone with a flick of her wand.

As the Witch and her dwarf (with captive Edmund in tow) slowly realize that her grip on winter is ending, they sledge along ever more slowly through Narnia's melting snow.

Father Christmas has already been by and the villains come upon a "a merry party" composed of squirrels, satyrs, a fox and a dwarf, all celebrating with meal of plum pudding and other delights.

It ends poorly for the little gathering. The Witch turns them to stone.

An increasingly remorseful Edmund thinks of of those small stone figures, "sitting there all the silent days and all the dark nights" until they just crumble away.
 
Right now, it seems the chances of Pal being found are crumbling, too.

Maybe the signs will come down. If not, they will continue to fade to illegibility, melancholy reminders of a beloved little cat, missing in all the silent days and all the dark nights.

Color me

Arrangement by me. Mother Nature helped.

Well, the ceaseless rain took a brief break on Wednesday here in Pittsburgh, so I went for a walk.

April's breezes have been scattering blossom petals and young leaves all over the place.

I picked up these maple seedlings and baby leaves on my stroll. The deep rose red and bright pistachio green are one of the best color combinations in nature. (Complementary on the color wheel.) 

I don't know why this pairing speaks to me, especially because my birthstone is amethyst and I love all things purple.

Here's the thing, though. I love purple with green. I love walnut brown with green. And blue is not my favorite color (except for denim, it will never hang over my bones) but I love it with green.

And I'm not talking about Kelly green. I'm talking cool limes, pale spring leaves and the glaucous shades of evergreens.

It's been years since I took a class in color theory, but what I remember is that I liked the gradations, the hints of what happens when you mix a bit. Talented artists do this mixing all the time to great effect and with more art education than me.

I just pick it up on the street. 😊

(Update: April's showers are more than living up to their name. The drenching has resumed.) 😞

Noodling about doodling

A doodle by me. Katy Buchanan

In a way, sheltering is an opportunity to be meditative. To think about things, and, if you are fortunate, to be able to write about your experience. And then there's the opportunity to get really nervous. Yeah,  I've been doing that.

So, meditative has been (amid chores) long walks and doodling. Another thing I've been doing is looking over a notebook that I kept on hand when I had the incredible (in retrospect) luxury to go to meetings and be bored ... because you know, meetings! And people who hijack them! A former colleague, who is also a very talented illustrator, used to get teased about the stuff she drew during budget meetings. (For you non-newspaper people, a budget meeting is a daily get-together of department heads to go over coverage for the day and how it will be displayed, A-1 being the prime (print) real estate. In retrospect again, considering the profitability of journalism today, the budget meetings probably should have been about the money. Well. Water long under the bridge.) That notebook is full of doodles and notes that are now pretty much incomprehensible.

Anyway here's a doodle drawn over the course of a non-meeting week. I've figured out that doodling is a way to make mistakes and learn from them. After all, it's not like I'm going to be graded. And it's not like I'm going to be in any meetings anytime soon.

I plan on sharing some meeting doodles. But just this for now.

And of course, after publishing, this just hit me. Any Major Dood!

Traveling

Photo by Katy Buchanan

Last time I was at the CMOA,  in early February 2020, I actually found out the name of the sculptor. Did I bother to write it down? No. Proof positive that I'm an idiot.

 So. The 2020 spring has upended the known universe.

About two years ago, I kept tentatively making plans to spend a month in Paris. Note the word "tentative."

Here I am, two years later, no Paris trip completed and confined to my ZIP code for the foreseeable future.

One thing I was not tentative about was checking out a pile of books from my local library before it closed last month.

So I'm not a total moron.

I'm pretty close to done with the pile, so I'll be reading online soon, but these books have been a real trip. They've taken me to 19th century Paris and St. Thomas, 18th century London, 20th century London and early 20th century Nepal.
Here are some of the titles:

 "Poison Thread," (Old London) (based on a true story)
"A Marriage of Opposites" (Old St. Thomas and Old Paris) (based on the life of Impressionist artist Camille Pissaro)
 "The Steady Running of the Hour" (Old London, mostly, Iceland and Nepal and Berlin. Also, Paris circa 2013-14. Also, the muddy trenches of WWI.)

I'm now into an anthology edited by Stephen King titled "Six Scary Stories." Two more books to go before online reading (or before a deep dive into my library of New Yorkers, NYTimes and 'Grant' by Ron Chernow, which has been sitting around for ages).

Re: "The Steady Running of the Hour." I grabbed it mostly because of the title. I just love those words. So meditative. An OK novel (it's the author's first) but the love stories that weave together the long-ago yesterday and today were uncompelling. Long-ago Imogen is an awful, dreadful person, trying to get her soldier-lover Ashley to desert. And today-Tristan falls in with people so casually and so without any sense of self-protection that it's hard to take his 'romance' with Mireille seriously. And she's just like Imogen ... begging her lover to quit his duty. She's awful, too. At least Ashley stood up for himself. Tristan just goes along, like a cow with a ring through its nose.

"Steady Running" is also filled with too much research detail (James Michener, anyone?). I'm an experienced enough reader to know when I feel comfortable moving past paragraphs and pages of facts (about, in this instance, guns and terrain and and climbing gear). As the cleaning lady in "The World According To Garp" testified, the mark of a good book is you want to know what happens. That's what keeps you turning the pages. Not lots of detail about how guns work.


That said, I think research-iness and wordiness sometimes speak more to lapses by editors. Authors are understandably proud of their work. Writing is hard. Research is hard. But winnowing words is work that needs to be done, too.

Oh, and here I am, criticizing. Said the person who never made her trip to Paris. Or who never wrote a book.

Carry on. Or, better, Allons' y

About the photo: Last time I was at the CMOA,  in early February 2020, I actually found out the name of the sculptor. Did I bother to write it down? No. Proof positive that I'm not a total moron, but I am, in fact, an idiot.

Vessels

Photo by Katy Buchanan

I don't know why, but I love collecting pots and vases and glasswork. At one point in my life, I made them, when CMOA still had art classes ( I so loved wandering past the bone room to the clay studio. )

Pottery was fun. And hard! You really develop some strong arms using the wheel and kneading the clay (actually, that is the hardest part ... trying to get out all the air bubbles.)

Anyway, CMOA ended those art classes some years ago, and I had stopped attending before. I still see my former instructor, Valda Cox, at the 3 Rivers Arts Fest and the Fair in the Park.  (And by the way, on Shady Avenue on Fair in the Park weekend, there are some great yard sales.)

Back to my point. I am trying to declutter, but I have some vessels that I just can't part with. Why do I like things that hold things? Stability? Safety? Beauty? For whatever reason, I love them. And some were purchased when I really could not afford them (and the shops no longer trade). Not pictured here is a really pretty glass vase that I bought when Fifth Avenue Place in DT Pittsburgh had some cool shops.

Here are a (very) few of  my favorites (including an empty bottle of perfume by Paloma Picasso. (Perfume bottle design is a fascinating land of art all by itself.)

Photos by Katy Buchanan

Paloma Picasso perfume bottle.

Red pot is from Fireborn Studios on the South Side.
One on right from a shop in Lawrenceville.
The little crackle glass vessel I bought at a yard sale in Shadyside. Looks like a Blenko.

 

 

 

From Toadflax in Shadyside, November 2019.

Valentine's Day, Gerri and the Alcoa Building

Photo by Katy Buchanan
I don't have a photo of the Alcoa Building in my archives, but, in the spirit of Pittsburgh's mid-century renaissance, here's one of Gateway Plaza, with the Gateway 2 & 3 buildings in the background,

I took an acquaintance out for coffee on Valentine's Day.

She's 90 and has never driven. We met several years ago when I volunteered for Mt. Lebanon Village, part of a larger volunteer organization. We ran into each other at the grocery store a couple of weeks ago.

She's a nice lady, walks with a cane due to arthritis yet still gets out to do grocery shopping and lunch with other members of the group.

I remembered from our conversations of several years ago that she worked as an artist/designer for Gulf Oil and later Alcoa, back when Alcoa had just moved in to its digs in the-then new building bordering Mellon Square in Downtown Pittsburgh. (It's apartments now.)

She had such an interesting career, working for those companies designing brochures, creating messages.

She told me that when the Alcoa Building opened, one of the major innovations was that the windows opened from side to side (interiorly), not up and down, so that they could be cleaned without benefit of exterior window washers. And in some of the top-tier executive suites, the paneling was of Philippine mahogany.

It all sounded very "Mad Men." In the end, though, she was a woman who worked, cared for her son and lived the day-to-day.

And she still gets out and enjoys life.

That was a nice Valentine's Day get-together.

Cat who won't sit on my lap.

Photo by Katy Buchanan

Look at you,

you elegant cat

who won’t wear a collar

or sit on my lap.

I recall the day

that you came to stay

you were so very small, and so very tabby

Your name was Bob Jones and

who names a cat that?

(Seriously?)

Anyway, does it matter?

I think it does not.

Because, Jones, you know

you will

never,

ever

sit on my lap.

Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat! (Again? That trick never works!)

Photo by Carol Treat Morton
Artwork by Olle Eksell

Our story begins in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota. 

(Had to get that Rocky and Bullwinkle nod out of the way.) 

I’ve been driving up to Elyria every couple of weeks since about May 2019, helping Mom declutter her huge ranch to get it ready for sale. She’s in good health, but taking care of a big house and a large piece of property (with a pool) is way past getting to be way too much.

My parents bought the place in 1971, so there are decades worth of stuff to sort, save and clear out. It’s a cool home, and my well-traveled parents filled it with an eclectic collection of art and furniture, heavy on the MCM influence.

One recent Sunday, our plans to tackle the attic were stymied, so we went into the office, which we’ve been working on bit by bit, and pulled a bunch of file folders to go through.  Dad was a fanatic about keeping receipts for everything, (and keeping lots of other stuff, too) and I think this habit rubbed off on Mom.

We get to the last folder, pix of antiques, records of art purchased, jewelry appraisals, etc. As we’re tossing and saving, an envelope with a brochure and a business card slips out.

The brochure was tucked in the folded over envelope. It came from a shop in tiny Patagonia, AZ, which Mom visited on a birding trip in 2006. The shop had some weavings by Joe Montell, and she was instantly struck by one similar to the one below, which was pictured in the brochure. It looks like the artist’s name is woven in red.

It was a very large work, and the price was $3,000. Though she could afford it, she thought it was just too much money, but was tempted enough to have the shop send her along the artist’s brochure. She never bought the weaving.

Flash back to October 2019. Good friend Carol Morton hosted BFFs and me for the Detroit Free Press 13.1 marathon. In her new home. With a cool shower curtain (at the very top of this post) that we both really believed had to be by whoever drew the Rocky & Bullwinkle series. A quick Google search didn't retrieve any results except for a vague reference to the animation being outsourced to Mexico and, since we had a lot of talking, walking and beveraging to do, we let it drop.

Now back to November 2019 with Mom. The brochure cover art and the typography immediately caught my eye, just because I love so many MCM things. I opened it and started to read the “about the artist” blurb. Imagine my surprise when I came to this sentence:

So this guy, Joe Montell, did Rocky and Bullwinkle! In Mexico. And Mom could have bought one of his tapestries!

What a bit of serendipity! (And I'm sure the Rocky and Bullwinkle writers would appreciate this, too. But that's a post for another day.)

And the shower curtain design was by this artist, Olle Eksell. How his style and Joe Montell's were so similiar is another mystery.

Anyway.

Mr. Montell passed away in 2007 and he had a great career in art, as an animator and textile artist.

Links below are about him. I think it's just fascinating how our lives work out. Thank you, Joe. (And thank you Mom, and thank you Carol.)

https://yowpyowp.blogspot.com/2011/01/a-part-of-life-of-joe-montell.html

http://artofjayward.blogspot.com/

Harper Lee's "Furious Hours"

I’ve just finished “Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee,” by Casey Cep.

It’s part murder mystery, part journalism, part biography and very well-researched.

The title takes its name from a reference to the Battle at Horseshoe Bend, between the forces of Gen. Andrew Jackson and some members of the Creek Indian tribe in what was then Mississippi, but is now Alabama, in 1814. (Harper Lee mentioned this in a lecture about someone else who would be interesting to read about, 19th century Alabama historian Albert Pickett.)

The book is about Harper Lee’s attempts to complete a second book (not counting “Go Set a Watchman,” which was the base on which “To Kill A Mockingbird,” was built.)

She came upon the tale of the apparent serial killer Rev. Willie Maxwell by cocktail party chance, and spent an amazing amount of time (years and years) trying to bring his story, the story of his victims, of his lawyer and of his murderer to life, but in the end, could not. In good part because the lives of black Americans in the South were not documented. Unless they were lynched.

Casey Cep has done a great job of examining why writers write, how they write, and, how, sometimes, they cannot (lack of good and supportive editors being a one reason).

In the end, “Furious Hours” seems to me more apt in referring to the time spent honing “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Trying to bring the story of the Rev. Willie Maxwell, Tom Radney and Robert Burns, seemed more of a slow boil of frustration. I suppose in that sense, it was the last trial of Harper Lee, daughter of a small-town lawyer.

Good book, well written and, again, very well-researched. A Borzoi Book published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2019.