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Author Archives: Nerdishly
Ebertfest
The Virginia Theatre, as seen from our hotel room.
Anecdote: On March 30, I followed a link from the University’s site to the official Ebertfest site and scrolled through the films. The documentary immediately attracted my interest, but then… I couldn’t believe my eyes! Sheila O’Malley’s short film July and Half of August was scheduled to be screened just before They Call Us Monsters. What synchronicity, eh? (I recently republished my post about seeing the reading of her play in Chicago.) With her powerful short still on my mind, I send prayers to the film gods that it has attracted the sort of attention that will result in feature-length treatment. More people need to meet Neve. Two enthusiastic thumbs up!
Ben Lear’s documentary weaves the debate surrounding a California State bill concerning whether juveniles should be tried as adults with the story of three juvenile offenders enrolled in a script-writing class while awaiting their sentences. Thumbs up!
Blossoms
Image taken on April 8.
Speaking of weeks, it has been two since my last post. The time passed in yard work, bike rides, books, two flute lessons, and several volunteer hours, among other things. I also completed “Literature in the Digital Age,” a FutureLearn MOOC. And I saw Remy Bumppo’s Born Yesterday, which runs through the end of this month.
Paul: A world full of ignorant people is too dangerous to live in.
Reading notes
Here are some passages for the commonplace book:
From Before the Fall (Noah Hawley; 2016. Fiction.):
p. 95
The machine he believed himself to be broke down. and Gus found himself immersed in an experience he had witnessed for years in his job with the NTSB, but never truly understood. Grief. Death was not an intellectual conceit. It was an existential black hole, an animal riddle, both problem and solution, and the grief it inspired could not be fixed or bypassed like a faulty relay, but only endured.
p. 101
Convergence. It’s one of those things that feels meaningful, but isn’t. At least he doesn’t think it is. How could it be? A batter in Boston fouling pitches into the stands while a small plan struggles through low coastal fog. How many millions of other activities begin and end at the same time? How many other “facts” converge in just the right way, creating symbolic connectivity?
p. 251
He breaks off, thinking, aware that he is not giving them what they wanted, but concerned that their questions are too important to answer in the moment, to define in passing, simply to meet some kind of arbitrary deadline. What was the experience like? Why did it happen? What does it mean going forward? These are the subjects for books. They are questions you meditate for years — to find the right words, to identify all the critical factors, both subjective and objective.
It’s unsurprising that the flow of this “thumping good read” reminds me of great television; Hawley is a television writer and producer.
From The Last One (Alexandra Oliva; 2016. Fiction.):
p. 58
This adventure I asked for, it’s not what I was expecting, not what I wanted. I thought I would feel empowered, but I’m only exhausted.
p. 90
For all her love of animals, for all her work with animals, she feels little remorse. She is comfortable in her knowledge that humans are omnivores and that securing reliable sources of protein is what allowed the species to evolve its current intelligence. She will not kill to kill, but she will kill to eat, and she sees little difference between the eyes of a dead fish and a live one.
Some reviews mentioned that the book erred in revealing its “twist” in the opening pages. They miss the point. Completely. A central conceit of a “reality” survival show is that the audience has information the participants do not. Here, the reader has knowledge the protagonist does not, so The Last One delivers its gut-punch not in a twist but rather in Mae’s eventual comprehension that what she had thought was the fakery of television is actual her new reality.
From The Hard Problem (Tom Stoppard; 2015. Drama.):
From Scene Five:
Hilary (roused) Being wrong about human behaviour half the time is our guiding star, Leo! It’s what’s telling us the study of the mind is not a science. We’re dealing in mind stuff that doesn’t show up in a scan — accountability, duty freewill, language, all the stuff that makes behaviour unpredictable.
We saw Stoppard’s latest play at the Court Theatre this past weekend. If you’re in the area, both it and TimeLine Theatre’s A Disappearing Number are must-see theater. Both run through April 9.
In other reading…
Election Day (April 4) was a long slog made bearable by Lucinda Rosenfeld’s Class, a book light enough that I could regularly look away but meaty enough that I didn’t feel like I had consumed the mental equivalent of Yodels.
Brian Wood’s The Massive is a pretty terrific post-apocalyptic tale. My daughters, both artists and readers of graphic fiction, say that I should remark on the art when I talk about graphic fiction. It’s generally all about the story for me, but in these volumes, I realized that I do know when a different artist takes over. In a medium dependent on image, why would one change artists partway through the story? Different styles change the narrative in subtle ways. Is that the point? Or is it simpler than that? Is one artist available when one issue or arc is being prepared for publication but unavailable for another? Well, in any event, Danijel Zezelj’s work in the “Sahara” arc was particularly powerful.
For my “Shakespeare in a Year” project, I have read through Sonnet 45 and Line 936 of Venus and Adonis, the latter of which I find the more satisfying endeavor. (No pun, Shakespearean or otherwise, intended.) Don Paterson’s commentary, however, quite nearly makes slogging through the sonnets worth it. Irreverent and insightful and highly recommended.
Since my last bookish post, I’ve also (re)read Richard II, a favorite of mine…
Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let’s choose executors and talk of wills….
… and Romeo and Juliet. Is it old(er) age that makes me increasingly immune to this story’s appeal? I must have muttered, “Overwrought,” two dozen or more times while reading and listening. Mercutio, though. What an invention! I think it was Bloom who posited that the Mercutio passages presage the verbal antics of Hamlet. I can believe it.
In advance of seeing the CST’s Tug of War: Foreign Fire last year, I read Edward III, which occurs in the reading plan between Richard III and The Comedy of Errors. I simply have not been able to bring myself to reread it. Since this admission does not appear to have gotten me booted from the group, I plan to move on to A Midsummer Night’s Dream this coming weekend.
A related aside: Over spring break I shared with my daughters my proposal for the CST’s 2017-18 season: Richard II with Scott Parkinson as the deposed king, Coriolanus with Timothy Edward Kane as the (to my mind) underappreciated noble, and Titus Andronicus with Larry Yando in the lead. You heard it here first, folks.
Smart Museum of Art
Arthur Dove. Harbor in Light. 1929.
Max Dungert. Landscape. Circa 1920.
Norman Lewis. Untitled. 1947.
Chinese, Shang Dynasty. Ritual Tripod Cooking Vessel. Circa 1300-1200 B.C.E.
Chinese, Northern Song Dynasty. Guardian Figures. 1056-63.
R: Japanese, Kofun Period. Haniwa: Warrior Head. Circa 5th century.
L: Isamu Noguchi. Iron Wash. 1956.
Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. Cloud Study. 1817.
Giovanni Castrucci. Wooded Landscape with Crenellated Wall. Circa 1600-07.
By the numbers
The 2.75-mile trail along which we logged five geocaches.
3
Number of weeks, more or less, since my last post.
10
Number of days in our daughters’ spring break, during which they studied, researched, and recharged at home.
5
Number of geocaches we logged during their break. What a delight to share this new pursuit with them!
2
Number of trips into Chicago during spring break: one for the Lyric Opera’s Eugene Onegin (review here) and one for Love’s Labor’s Lost at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater (review here).
88
Number of hours I will have worked (early voting and Election Day) for the Consolidated Primary and the Consolidated Election. The turnout was much larger in October and November, which is both normal (Presidential Election) and puzzling (when you consider that local elections have an immediate impact on a voter’s life).
3
Number of weeks I’ve completed in my latest MOOC. (Three to go.) This one concerns reading in the digital age and has sent me to the shelves for my copies of The Shallows (Nicholas Carr) and The Gutenberg Elegies (Sven Birkerts).
44
Number of books I’ve already read this year. This is shaping up to be the first “Big (Reading) Year” I’ve posted since adopting a “reading slowly” approach. I haven’t moved away from that; rather, I simply have even more time to read. Book notes to follow.
Boxing with Death
This entry, which first appeared on my previous site five months after my son died, is posted here at the request of a former reader. There are no words, but please know that you have been in my thoughts.
Because he died the weekend before Thanksgiving, we were pummeled by the first of “the firsts” (i.e., the first Thanksgiving without him, the first Christmas without him, the first trip to the Brookfield Zoo without him, etc.) in quick succession — One! Two! Three! Left! Right! Another left! — before we had even risen to our knees from the near-knockout punch delivered by three grim-faced Marines at 5:10 on a gray Monday morning.
Know this: No referee can or will intercede. So raise the gloves; absorb the blows. Fall to the mat; rise again.
We’ve endured five months of firsts now, and we’re still standing. Sometimes we stagger. Sometimes we grip the ropes. But sometimes we deliver our own punches, too. One! Two! Three! Left! Right! Another left! It seems that humor — dark, silly, ribald, sophisticated, Seuss-inspired, or Shakespearean — is our best offense. Laughter has certainly prevented us from remaining down for the count.
It’s too early to say, I suppose, but our sense of humor may, in fact, cause a majority draw in this boxing match between Death and our family. Death has certainly beaten us up, make no mistake. But it won’t beat us. And if I’m right about humor’s role in our ability to stay on our feet during this fight, then it’s a damned shame that laughter, sardonic or otherwise, isn’t more thoroughly endorsed by those involved in the death-ritual business (e.g., funeral directors). A hundred times, nay, a thousand and a hundred, I have thought, Boy-boy would have thought this was hysterical! And he would have. Because it usually is. After all, so much of what we humans say and do — especially what we say and do in times of stress — is funny. Silly. Humorous. Ridiculous. Stupid. Clueless.
Laughable.
Tears are expected, but sometimes laughter feels like the much more appropriate — and the much more restorative, healing, even — response. Laughter mixed with tears works, too. And laughter takes the edge off those times when tears are, in fact, unavoidable.
I suppose I began thinking about all of this because I will celebrate my birthday soon. My first since he died. And then it’s Mother’s Day. The first since he died. And soon after that, summer swim season will begin. The first since….
And perhaps the only way I can make any sense of the days, the months, the years that will follow, that will have the balls to occur even though my son has died, is to remember how he laughed and how he made us laugh.
And to laugh, even if it’s through tears.
Pursuits
Site of our seventh geocache.
In the week since I last posted, I
■ saw Captain Fantastic — and loved it;
■ caught up on all of my comics, including the final issue of Revival (which was lame);
■ realized that Season Five of The Americans begins this week and set my DVR (Woot!);
■ counted the days until my daughters return home for break (Woot! again); and
■ thrice-dreamed that I was mowing the lawn. It cannot be time for that already, can it?
This weekend, I read and then saw Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land. National Theatre Live’s rebroadcast of the production featuring Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen as Hirst and Spooner, respectively, earned two enthusiastic thumbs up from us.
From early in Act I:
HIRST: Tonight… my friend… you find me in the last lap of a race… I had long forgotten to run.
Pause.
SPOONER: A metaphor. Things are looking up.
Later in the act:
FOSTER: We protect this gentleman against corruption, against men of craft, against men of evil, we could destroy you without a glance, we take care of this gentleman, we do it out of love.
And from the play’s conclusion:
SPOONER: No. You are in no man’s land. Which never moves, which never changes, which never grows older, but which remains forever, icy and silent.
Silence.
HIRST: I’ll drink to that.
If I were a drinker, I’d toast our seventh geocache find. Yes, we made two entries in our log this weekend, one of which occurred before a leisurely walk/hike in a new-to-us park. We arrived at geocaching long after its surge in popularity, but we are thoroughly enjoying this mini-adventure.
If I were a drinker, I’d also toast my new flute. On the recommendation of my teacher, I’ve graduated from a perfectly delightful student instrument to a bold, responsive intermediate instrument that was designed to surpass a player’s needs through college studies. It’s a treasure.
My flute lessons began two years and five months ago, when my daughters, now juniors, began college. My current studies center on Rubank Advanced Method: Flute, Vol. 1. and Pares Scales. I am also preparing the solo “Song of India” from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Sadko. Hadyn’s “Serenade,” which is the fortieth of Louis Moyse’s Forty Little Pieces in Progressive Order, preceded this and is technically more difficult, but working on expression in “Song of India” has been developmentally appropriate for me, and I will be sorry to set aside this beautiful piece. Speaking of Forty Little Pieces, although I’ve already presented the most difficult, we continue to pepper my list of open assignments with the remaining songs. For this week’s lesson, I have prepared No. 33.
As an adult student and a retiree, I bring two things to this pursuit most of my teacher’s other students do not have: experience and time. Experienced learners tend to question, clarify, synthesize, and study — a lot. All of this requires time. During my first year of lessons, I once confessed to having only thirty minutes each day to practice before that week’s meeting. Usually, I made time for at least three fifteen-minute practice sessions daily; often, four. “Forty-five minutes?” my teacher responded, wistfully. “I’m happy to hear that students [in Rubank Elementary Method: Flute] have done fifteen minutes a day.” These days, I’m deeply chagrined when I haven’t put in at least four twenty-minute sessions daily, and I aim for six or more.
Of course, younger students rarely struggle, as I most certainly do, with velocity, and they have fewer problems “translating” unfamiliar music. Generally, too, they will travel further and do more with their music, including performances, than an adult learner will be able to do. Still, this is a worthwhile pursuit, and I am grateful for the opportunity.
Coming up: My progress on the “Shakespeare in Year” project; what else I’ve been reading; and more.
Hills on the prairie
Ah, the weather. From 65 degrees last Saturday to 29 this. It must be Chicago or thereabouts, no?
Well, we didn’t let a bit of snow or wind deter us from our walk / hike — or from our fifth geocaching find. After attempting four and coming away with two while visiting our daughters at university, we were pleased to find the more traditional geocache at the site pictured above. It was a lovely walk, too.
Krannert Art Museum
I took the above images during a recent visit to Krannert Art Museum. The first two capture detail from Lorado Taft’s “The Blind” (1908). The next two images feature items in the permanent collection “Arts of Ancient Peru.” The grave post is dated circa 1000 – 1470 and the female effigy figure, circa 1100 – 1470. Charles Turzak’s “Oak Street Beach” (1933-1934) and Hugh Pearce Botts’ “Nana” appear in a temporary exhibition “Enough to Live On: Art of the WPA.”
Nerdishly 