On Friday, we headed to the Milwaukee Art Museum to see Robert Longo: The Acceleration of History and Currents 39: LaToya M. Hobbs, Carving Out Time, as well as some old favorites. Above are my images of detail from the following works:
✤ “Untitled (After Pollock, Convergence)” by Robert Longo (2020)
✤ “Red and Brown Leaves” by Georgia O’Keefe (1925)
✤ “Carving Out Time” by LaToya M. Hobbs (2020-21)
✤ “Still Life with Flowers” by Joan Miró (1918)
✤ “Pillar” by Aaron Bohrod (1954)
Yesterday I finished reading Sandra Newman’s Julia, a feminist retelling of George Orwell’s 1984, which I finished rereading just a few days before. After this evening’s Middlemarch discussion (Book VI), I plan to continue reading Evil Eye by Joyce Carol Oates.
From “The Blue Bowl” by Jane Kenyon:
Silent the rest of the day, we worked,
Continuing yesterday’s celebration of the delightful and often serendipitous intersections of interests and pursuits, consider the frog in “Home Sweet Home” by Thomas Dial, Jr. (1990) and Mr. Rigg Featherstone of Middlemarch. From Chapter XLI:
The copy in this case bore more of outside resemblance to the mother, in whose sex frog-features, accompanied with fresh-colored cheeks and a well-rounded figure, are compatible with much charm for a certain order of admirers. The result is sometimes a frog-faced male, desirable, surely, to no order of intelligent beings. Especially when he is suddenly brought into evidence to frustrate other people’s expectations—the very lowest aspect in which a social superfluity can present himself.
But Mr. Rigg Featherstone’s low characteristics were all of the sober, water-drinking kind. From the earliest to the latest hour of the day he was always as sleek, neat, and cool as the frog he resembled, and old Peter had secretly chuckled over an offshoot almost more calculating, and far more imperturbable, than himself.
My image of detail from “Another Chance” by Jack Butler Yeats (1944).
While preparing Louis Aubert’s Lied for flute and piano in September, I stumbled onto a recording of Robert Beaser’s “The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water.” Based on the William Butler Yeats poem of the same name, it is a haunting, lovely piece. I presented it at a lesson last month.
“Another Chance,” which demanded my attention this Saturday, is painted by Yeats’ brother. The places at which my interests and pursuits intersect delight me.
“‘All that’s beautiful drifts away / Like the waters.’”
Of course, what drew my eye initially was the figure — to me, Ishmael atop Queequeg’s casket. Speaking of the intersections of interests and pursuits, my younger daughter and I are scheduled to read at the 2025 Moby-Dick Marathon. (I was a reader for the virtual program in 2021.)
My images of detail from the following works at the Toledo Museum of Art:
✤ “Gay Above All” by Roberto Matta (1959)
✤ “Harvester” by Grace Hartigan (1966)
✤ “Nancy and the Rubber Plant” by Alice Neel (1975)
✤ Figure of a Man by an artist in Yemen (4th-3rd Century BCE)
✤ “The End of the Beginning” by Alexander “Skunder” Boghossian (1972-73)
✤ “Man in a Fur-Lined Coat” by Rembrandt (about 1655-1660)
According to the forecast, daytime temperatures will reach the low eighties tomorrow and Wednesday. That’s all right; I’ll rise early to walk, and throughout the day, I’ll remind myself that the cooler weather will return on Thursday.
In my last post, I somehow neglected to mention Monk, which opened my recent “small screen as succor” season. My older daughter suggested that I try a few episodes of the television series, one that my son adored. I came for sentimental reasons and remained for Tony Shalhoub’s performance.
Of course, I have been reading, too. Since my last annotated list I finished Henry IV, Part II, Henry V, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing, and Pericles, Prince of Tyre for my “Shakespeare in a Year” project (Pericles out of order in anticipation of seeing this); and for my Willa Cather project, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and Shadows on the Rock (1931). For a seminar led by translator Stephanie McCarter, I tackled her 2022 translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and for a seminar led by W.H. Auden scholar Edward Mendelson, The Shield of Achilles. I read John Leland’s Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old for a talk he was giving at the University of Chicago but missed the event. Similarly, I read SciFri Book Club’s September selection, Forest Walking: Discovering the Trees and Woodlands of North America (Jane Billinghurst and Peter Wohlleben; 2022) but did not participate in the online discussion.
Revisiting some books I shared with my children has been a source of comfort and delight: Freddy Goes to Florida (Walter Brooks; 1927), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (J.K. Rowling; 1997 and 1998).
Other fiction read during this period included Bury This (Andrea Portes; 2014), The Gate to Women’s Country (Sheri S. Tepper; 1988), The Devil and Webster (Jean Hanff Korelitz; 2017), Sipsworth (Simon Van Booy; 2024), The Sea (John Banville; 2005), and A Haunting on the Hill (Elizabeth Hand; 2023). Other non-fiction works included Notes on a Silencing: A Memoir (Lacey Crawford; 2020), The Limits of My Language: Meditations on Depression (Eva Meijer; 2019/2021), and A Wolf Called Romeo (Nick Jans; 2014).
With a small discussion group, I’m rereading George Eliot’s Middlemarch and with 100 Days of Dante, The Divine Comedy. Beside my favorite chair is George Orwell’s 1984, which I picked up to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of its publication and to mark Banned Books Week. (Yes, I’m a wee bit behind but catching up.)
It matters.
Slowly, surely, I’m regaining my reliable daily rhythm of walking, reading, practicing, studying. While things were a bit rough, though, the small screen distracted me well: the latest season of Only Murders in the Building, Law & Order, and Abbott Elementary, the uneven but charming English Teacher, the sordid Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, and the first season of the dated but dear Murder, She Wrote. Kenneth Branagh never fails to delight me, so after rewatching his Henry V and Much Ado Nothing, I enjoyed Death on the Nile.
I tried to watch the film based on Banville’s The Sea, but despite a luminous Charlotte Rampal, it proved tedious. Perhaps it was too soon after reading the book? Speaking of which, it’s just about time for the discussion.
If a body were to be likened to a car, then one could say that an aging body, like an older car, will eventually require more than an oil change, a multi-point inspection, a tire rotation, and an alignment to continue running (set aside smoothly). I’m an older car. More than one mechanic and more than one service appointment were required. And that’s really all I need say about that.
It’s back to walking several miles a day, practicing my music, reading, and studying. Today’s books are Pericles (in anticipation of this) and John Banville’s The Sea.
Nerdishly 