Wednesday Whimsy

(One in a continuing series!) (Thrills and excitement to follow!)(Don't get too excited!)

Passages through DT Pburgh on a lunch-hour walk: Belgian blocks in Market Square, blockades at PNC, empty storefronts on Fifth Avenue. All attempts at reconstruction still don't address the fact that, for whatever reason, Market Square attracts a lot of people who don't have much to do except hang out. So. We shall see. And, by the way, my grandfather, Edward Hurley, loved Market Square, except in his day, the space was called the New Diamond Market.

I found the image below at the Carnegie Library Online site; it dates to after Grandad Hurley's day, but shows that Market Square actually was a covered market, kind of like Les Halles (much smaller scale!)

Here it is. Thank you, Caroline!

Art Appreciation: Milton Avery

This is "Conversation" by Milton Avery, from 1956.

I have a large framed print of this work, presently hanging in our basement family room but deserving of better display.

This painting speaks to me on a primary level, that of kinship between two women, but there are so many other things that I love about it.

Number one is the seeming ambiguity between the two women. They are touching, but leaning away from each other despite the conversational tone of their poses. The viewer is left to wonder what kind of intimacy exists between these two people. Anger? A disagreement between longtime friends? Or just a momentary shift in positions during a long conversation?

I also wonder what the artist intended in painting one person in sharp detail, the purple girl, and another in softer, fuzzier more ethereal fashion, the blue girl. Blue is so ephemeral she looks ready to float away. Purple has her legs crossed, on firmly on the ground, hands clasped and a shoulder on the sofa. She is not going anywhere.

This painting also has a strong horizontal composition: The four bands of background color; the women's gazes, seemingly pulling the women toward each other, and the placements of their hands. Even the shapes of their heads mirror the shapes of their knees.

What, finally, I love about this painting, is, that like a wonderful biography or piece of fiction, I never tire of it. Each time I enjoy it, I see something new it it.

Shake Up at La VieC!

I’m sitting in my living room, thunder rolling outside in a very rainy dusk. Power is out, but the laptop has a full battery. Still daylight-ish, and I am wishing it was a Saturday or Sunday morning (as it was not when this was written) so I could be snuggling under the bedcovers and drowsing to the symphony of thunder and rain. Another wish: I wish I had another good day for every day that I wished time away.

(Warning! Another paragraph beginning with “I” to follow.)

I have been mentally constructing a new direction for this blog. I do fairly well, usually, writing off the cuff, but off the cuff has no structure. So, new direction means “topics,” as the Mackenzie Brothers of Second City TV called them. Structure means schedule and so I will address each of these topics in a Sunday and Wednesday posting schedule. Posting every day, I have come to realize is unrealistic and exhausting.

This list will be edited down for expediency, but as of now, here are the subjects I want to cover:
*Art and Design
*Birds and Dogs (birds, with help from family, dogs, mostly mine)
*Family and Girlfriends.
*Pittsburgh (My Mom was born here!)
And the occasional piece of whimsy, craziness and/or sarcastic humor. That last will be a challenge. I (think I) have become a more compassionate/less critical person thanks to therapy but I hope I have not lost my very precious prickliness (VPP).

Shall I call it Katy And? No, there will be no voting on the name. None of this community crap. I will decide, you will read.

Love and air kisses.

Kate

I want a vacation

Up until a few years ago, a group of friends and I made regular spring trips to New York. Not all together, but usually overlapping so we could get together for drinks or dinner or lunch or coffee. Some of us ran (walked, in my case, with an occasional spurt of jogging) in the More Magazine half-marathon in Central Park. One spring the race was scheduled for a weekend in late April that ended up being coolish warm, perfect for a run, and sunny, perfect for the baby green leaves on trees and the tulips and the daffodils. It was absolutely gorgeous.

We haven't made this spring trip in a few years, but I have a door-hanger from Anthropologie to remind me of the fun a weekend in the big city can be: "I'm in New York. Come back later."

I have been wanting a "me" vacation for a while, and New York seems like as good a place as any. I would love to just wander, poke in and out of shops and museums, stop for coffee, wander through Central Park, visit the Union Square farmers market and explore the parts of the city that I don't know.

In my 30s, I interviewed with The Wall Street Journal and had a pretty good shot at a job there. Carl didn't want to live in New York and I've always regretted I didn't push harder for us to try it. We were young enough then and probably could have gotten over the cost of living shock. Now, not so much.

Anyway, teeny weeny spring vacation: Walking the dogs tonight, we wandered along a street with no sidewalks. Lilacs in full flowers hung over part of the asphalt. Twist of course found something underneath to investigate while Holli waited patiently. I waited, too, and stuck my nose deep into some of those lovely blooms, breathing in their perfume.

Lilacs, a cool spring evening, me, and the greyhounds. Pretty short vacation, but it'll do for now.

The coo of the doves

I've been enjoying so much lately listening to the mourning doves, who become more vocal in the spring, along with all their winged brethren.

Their cooing takes me back to college and my lovely old apartment on Neil Avenue, north campus. The building, I'd put it at 1920s vintage, had an "E" footprint, with the spaces between the horizontal extensions of the letter serving as tiny courtyards, paved in stone and coolly shaded from the sidewalk. Three stories, if I recall. My apartment, a very spacious studio, was on the second floor.

Between my sophomore and junior year, I stayed on the OSU campus for summer quarter. I don't remember waking up to an alarm, though I had a job as a secretary in the anthropology department that required my presence at around 8.

But I do remember the coos of the mourning doves, serenading me as I awoke and prepared for the day.

That is the first bird call I ever paid attention to, and, though they are among the most humble and common of birds, I treasure their song, because it reminds me of a less complicated time of life (though, of course, back then, I did not realize it!)

Anger and quiet

I let my emotions get the better of me this evening.

A long day, starting with an overslept, rushed morning, ended with me (Miss Public Transit) sitting behind the wheel in the evening rush hour.

Couldn't do it.

I detoured to a less traveled route, probably taking the same time to get home as I would have sitting, but at least I was moving. Got honked at by an idiot, made every red light and basically wondered why I was being such a slave to hurry. Don't know. Just was. And didn't f---ing feel like sitting in traffic or being honked at by idiots.

Finally home. Let the girls out, sat down in front of the fire with a glass of wine, scratched the dogs and took a few deep breaths.

We went for our walk. No owl tonight. Just the quiet of the evening, black tree silhouettes against the grey night sky and the sound of a train in the far distance.

The rush of air deep into my lungs.

I felt better, and we strolled home.

A short Sunday

A short Sunday is what you get when you sleep until 11:30 a.m.

Part of my short Sunday included grocery shopping at my tiny neighborhood Giant Eagle, which, if I don't exactly love, I favor, because it is familiar and has only two self-checkout lines. The rest have people at the cash registers

I know the cashiers and the baggers by face, if not by name, meaning I know which ones I prefer and which ones to avoid. Today I learned the face of a new bagger to avoid; he tossed items in my bags willy nilly, with me repacking almost as soon as he plopped a bag in my cart. But most of the people there are nice, they seem all to have worked there for a long time, although I haven't seen the Sikh cashier checking anyone out lately.

In September 2008, my friends Carol, Virginia, Ellen and I took a girlfriends trip to Paris. One of the nicest experiences of the trip was buying our dinner the first night at a street market near the apartment we had rented in St. Germain des Pres. We bought a whole roasted chicken, some fabulous roasted potatoes, green beans and a baguette.

It was so much fun choosing our food and having it packed right in front of us.

I'll always remember from having lived in France when I was a kid seeing moms head home in the evenings with string bags full of provisions for the evening meal and the ever-present baguette. My mom once took us to Les Halles, now demolished, and, because I was little, I remember being awed by things like skinned pig heads in the meat cases. As a grownup, I am certain I would have appreciated the atmosphere more. In Pittsburgh, the Strip District comes close, but for my money, Cleveland's West Side Market is the place to shop on Saturday mornings.