The above images were taken at the Illinois Railway Museum on what may have been the last cool, breezy day in Summer 2016.
Author Archives: Nerdishly
Practice
From Bill Richardson’s charming novel, Bachelor Brothers’ Bed & Breakfast:
Many people have had this experience, I think, especially where music is concerned. We become steeped in the notion that if we can’t excel, there’s little point in pursuit.
As I’ve maintained before, for me, the pursuit is the point, although when I studied piano, I regularly likened the pursuit to learning a second language as an adult: No matter how much I practiced, facility eluded me, and my “accent” was unmistakable. Now that I teach English to adult non-native speakers, the comparison seems quite apt, but my flute teacher (I’ve been studying flute since September 2014) prefers to focus not on the disadvantages but the many, many advantages adult learners have over younger learners, including their maturity about practice and the purity of their motivation.
I will try to remember that when I screw up the chord and chromatic études yet again. Heh, heh, heh.
Mental geography
The following images were taken during the Member Preview of the Art Institute’s “America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s,” which runs through September 18.
■ O. Louis Guglielmi’s “Phoenix (Portrait in the Desert: Lenin)” (1935)
■ Grant Wood’s “Death on Ridge Road” (1935)
■ O. Louis Guglielmi’s “Mental Geography” (1938)
“I want to believe.”
Neither the family calendar nor the family disposition permits what folks now routinely describe as “binge-watching,” but my group has enjoyed watching several series the way one might read a long novel — a chapter or two at a time. We’re currently on Episode 17 of Season 6 of The X Files, and, no question, the Smoking Man is one of the most compelling characters. Here are the series we’ve particularly enjoyed:
■ Lost
■ Sherlock Holmes (The Complete Granada Television Series, featuring Jeremy Brett)
■ Veronica Mars
■ Planet Earth
■ Slings and Arrows
■ Buffy the Vampire Slayer
■ Sherlock
■ Elementary
■ The West Wing
■ Colony
■ The X Files
On the subject of “binge-watching,” a recent scholars’ luncheon whet our appetites for Tug of War: Foreign Fire, and the reviews are good: WSJ, Trib, Sun-Times. Six-plus hours of Shakespeare!
At the Field Museum
China’s First Emperor and His Terracotta Warriors runs through January 8, 2017, at the Field Museum.
At the Milwaukee County Zoo
At the John G. Shedd Aquarium
The year (so far) in theater
■ A Q Brothers’ Christmas Carol (January; Chicago Shakespeare Theater)
■ The Heir Apparent (January; Chicago Shakespeare Theater)
■ Marjorie Prime (January; Writers Theatre)
■ The Winter’s Tale (January; Shakespeare Project of Chicago)
■ Cymbeline (February; Shakespeare Project of Chicago)
■ Romeo and Juliet (March; Lyric Opera)
■ Arcadia (March; Writers Theatre)
■ Long Day’s Journey into Night (March; Court Theatre)
■ Othello (March; Chicago Shakespeare Theater)
■ The Life of Galileo (April; Remy Bumppo Theatre Company)
■ Cardenio (April; Shakespeare Project of Chicago)
■ Richard III (April; The Gift Theatre at The Garage: Steppenwolf Theatre)
■ Othello: The Remix (April; Chicago Shakespeare Theater)
“This time it’s just simply my bedroom…”
I took the images above at the Art Institute’s “Van Gogh’s Bedrooms” exhibit, which runs through May 10.
■ “Parisian Novels” (1887)
■ “A Pair of Shows” (1887)
■ A letter to Theo
■ An early sketch of the bedroom from a letter to Theo
■ “Self-Portrait” (1889)
■ “A Corner of the Asylum and the Garden with a Heavy, Sawed-Off Tree” (1889)
■ “Thatched-Roofed Cottages of Jorgus” (1890)
■ “Hospital at Saint-Rémy” (1889)
The Oriental Institute
Nerdishly 