Dear Miss Valland,

Home sweet archive

Composition Notebook,  American (ca. 1908). Ruth Lopez Fund, 2013. © Ruth Lopez

Ther whus a man. he coocked his lunch in a pan.— Brad Smith

That's the first page of little mister Smith 's "Big Book of Wrds...My book number 8" — a recent archive acquisition. Sometimes, getting lost on back roads is a perfectly fine way to lose time. Small Town+Main Street+Antique Store =Heaven. How many scuffy floors of antique malls have I squatted on, patiently pouring through boxes containing thin slices of ephemera? Heaven does know.

As a motif, marbeling (not the meat term that denotes the mix of fat and lean, although DMV researchers surmise it shares its metamorphic progenitor with composition notebooks) is fetching. Chair seats in the future conference room will be covered with printed yardage of such purchased at the Fabric Arts Workshop in Philadelpia recently (and designed by the architect Robert Venturi 1981–84). 

What is the origin of the composition notebook? A cursory look  revealed many compatriots with the same question but no answer. Who killed Cock Robin? Brad's poor spelling is probably responsible for igniting this tangential memory: While researching early children's books at the American Antiquarian Society, I encountered countless (sans attribution) versions of this 18th century English nursery rhyme. From there, it was just a hop, skip to learning about the history of copyright law. As for the composition notebook , I can only offer more well-informed surmising on the origin. Paper marbeling—which goes way, way back to countries far, far away—was a common process and material for bookbinders. Those were the folks either building the blank book business or getting hired to work in them. But really, this impulse to learn the origin of the composition notebook was prompted by the find above and from reading an obituary during the same week, on the recently deceased Mary McConnell Bailey, heiress to a composition notebook fortune. Bailey  left $10 million to the New York Public Library and stipulated that half of the money go to the branches. Her money came from the Roaring Spring Notebook Company which opened its blank book factory in Pennsylvania in 1887 to produce ledgers...and then made, and continue to make, composition notebooks. 

The main branch of the New York Public Library,watched over by the marble lions named Patience and Fortitude, is a well-tended jewel, but its 87 branch libraries need help. This is smart philanthropy.  The Brooklyn-based independent publisher Melville House writes extensively about issues facing the NYPL  on their excellent site. (Love their Art of the Novela series.)

Two more bits. I almost missed the Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago last year. Being neither a fan or a detractor, I didn't go out of my way to not go. Here is the thing; we don't know what we don't know. In 1964, he made subtle pop black and white paintings of ordinary objects, informed by simple line-drawings from supermarket & other advertising. He filled five composition notebooks with this "source material." Then there was the human-sized painting of the cover of a composition notebook. I blew throught the exhibition then snaked my way back to have another look. And finally, thank you to the clever person who made the first DECOMPOSITION notebook.

 

Déjà view

Point Pelee below, LGA > ORD, New Year's Day, 2013 © Ruth Lopez

In landscape historian John Brinckerhoff Jackson's A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time, he writes about seeing the earth from the air for the first time and being struck by the repeated patterns of rectangular fields and "checkerboard towns." This overwhelming rectilinearity dates back to Jefferson's National Land Survey of 1787 that divided unclaimed land into square miles to accommodate future settlers. Jackson wrote about it as "an ingenious, if unimaginative way" of creating a landscape ... "more than two centuries later, there are millions of Americans so thoroughly at home in the grid that they cannot conceive of any other way of organizing space." I thought of J.B. Jackson after a recent trip and dusted off my copy of his book. I was lucky to meet him and write about his collection of essays in 1995. During our interview, I mentioned that I lived about a half-mile up a dirt road from his place in La Cienega, New Mexico. Jackson took community seriously—of the grid, he said it was just about facilitating the distribution of land, the rest was up to us. A week or so later there was a freak snowstorm that kept those without 4-wheel-drive from getting into town. The phone rang and it was Jackson wanting to know if I needed anything. All I needed was community and Jackson gave me that with his thoughtful call. He died a few months later. During my first visit to his home, I noticed piles and piles of books. He had just completed an inventory and all his books were going to a library (I think Wellesley—I remember it being a woman's college and near Boston...). We live on don't we Rose?

The fin-like shape in the aerial photograph above did, in a roundabout way, connect me to Jackson. As anyone who has stared out of an airplane window would agree, non-rectangles really stand out. But I  was sure that I had been there before. That I had walked out to that tip. And I had. It was a drive to Leamington, Ontario from Detroit with  Mona Megalli—I had no classes that day and she was off-duty at a now defunct wire service. I pulled out an atlas and spread it out on the dining room table while we were having our coffee. We were going to explore something somewhere. On the map it was noted that Leamington was the tomato capital of the world. That was enough of an enticing factoid for us to head in that direction. Beyond the town there was this curious tip of land jutting into Lake Erie.  Point Pelee National Park. We would go there too. There is not much to remember about Leamington save for the red information booth in the shape of a tomato and the park was buggy that day. I have the desire to go back for that sense of place, and for that sense of time (thank you and sorry J.B. Jackson). Point Pelee is one of the resting zones for monarch butterflies on their way to winter high in the volcanic mountains of central Mexico. August to October is the best time to see them enroute. According to an article in the Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society (yes, really Rose) entomologists have been tracking the monarch butterfly's migration since 1852. Imagine how much the landscape has changed for them.

 

Floored by the splendor beneath my feet

Bookshop, Greenwich Village © Ruth Lopez

Historic architectural details rarely escape my notice, but a long ago visit to NeoCon at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago introduced me to the world of contemporary flooring. I got trapped on one f******* f**** devoted to flooring for hours—at first marveling at the seemingly endless array, then trying to find the elevator out of there. (Tip: Leaving that building can be an ordeal and scheduling an extra 10 minutes for finding an exit is prudent.) I believe my future home will reconcile my disparate loves of cork flooring, ancient mosaics and vintage tile.

The  Princeton University Art Museum has some examples that I adore—in particular one of Daphne and Apollo. It's from a dig in the 1930s in Antioch (now in Turkey). Princeton archeologists teamed up with representatives from the Worcester Museum of Art, the Louvre, and the Baltimore Museum of Art and uncovered many objects but most dramatic finds were the mosiacs of Greek mythology from Villas that had been destroyed in an earthquake in 526. This summer, Princeton removed the flooring to a conservation studio in Brooklyn for restoration. It will be reinstalled at the end of the month. A recent study on the myth of Daphne led me to these treasures. 

The other day I stopped in Left Bank Books in the village in NYC where I was  captivated by the floor and spent more time studying the pattern than looking through books. The cheerful shop clerk informed me that the shop was once an ice cream parlor. Happy news of sorts; if this ice cream wonderworld had to die, there is no better reincarnation than as a store specializing in literary first editions. I left with a copy of Liliana Heker's The Stolen Party translated by Alberto Manguel. I've wanted to read something by this Argentinian writer (who thankfully survived the military dictatorship). I'm almost done with Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and her Family's Feuds and plan a visit to her house museum this spring. Emily, as usual, is grounding. I'll let her tie up this post:

You cannot put a Fire out/A Thing that can ignite/Can go, itself, without a Fan/Upon the slowest Night
You cannot fold a Flood/And put it in a Drawer/Because the Winds would find it out/And tell your Cedar Floor

Perfect Trip: The train to  Princeton with reading material from Casa Magazines & Left Bank & chocolates from Li-Lac caddy-corner on Eighth Avenue. 

Punica granatum

 

Pomegranate's last stand. © Ruth Lopez

Paralyzed here at the DMV headquarters yesterday pre-hurricane. Checking in with friends, obsessively searching for news, compulsively checking email & all the obvious social media stuff. Friends and loved ones much on our minds. Then the winds. The crazy winds here in Chicago that made us feel so connected (because we are) to the big coast. Sometime in the night a window blew out of the back porch and landed on my car leaving shattered glass on the hood and shards nestled on the windshield blades. High winds continue today, the squeals and whistles of air are especially pronounced in an old house with shoddy window casings. Look at the fluttering curtain. Back away from the desk. Do something other than consuming news. De-seed the pomegranate. Look at that funny crown. It's a fairy tale fruit. Take a picture. Makes me want to read Rumi. Or make Chile en Nogada. I go in search of a poem, pulling The Essential Rumi (Coleman Barks translation) off the shelf. There is a bookmark on page 122. And there I see the segment that I copied and embroidered on my portion of the chuppah for Joanne and Til's wedding long ago. I used silver thread so it was barely visible. Here it is:

In your light I learn how to love.

In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest,

where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,

and that sight becomes this art.

The Alliance for the Restoration of Culture Heritage, a non-profit based in Washington, D.C. has been working on plans for the restoration of Rumi's home (a ruin) and gardens in Afghanistan. The garden will feature the flora so often referenced in Rumi's poetry—roses, cypresses and, yes, flowering pomegranate trees.

I eat books for breakfast

© Ruth Lopez

While gathering lists & searching syllabi in order to design a course of study (Goddard, I am coming at last); I encountered this offering from the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley — thematic summer readling lists going back to 1985. The above library book box was in the outdoor foyer of the Working Men's Institute in  New Harmony, Indiana—the oldest public library in the Hoosier state. Established in 1838, it's mission was, as the founder William Maclure put it,  the "diffusion of useful knowledge by mutual instruction amongst the producing classes who labor with their hands, and gain bread by the sweat of their brow." An early collection of DIY books? Isn't it useful at times to just be delighted, er, entertained? The librarian behind the information desk was a stern but curious fellow who wanted to know where I was from. Chicago. "Oh, I don't like cities," he said. "Then it is a good thing you live here," said I. May we all be where we want to be.

 

Silence not absence

In Garfield Park, the day after it nearly hit 70s in February

Adrienne Rich, poet, May 16, 1929 — March 27, 20012.

I go to my book shelf in search of Diving into the Wreck to share poems with friends and can't find it. I'm bereft. There is little to say. Somewhere in my boxes of clips is an interview with Rich, conducted via telephone, for a newspaper feature in advance of a reading in New Mexico in 1999 or 2000. The reading was packed when I got there and the organizers set up an extra row in the front, so I got to sit up close. Rich used a cane made of clear acrylic. Her interviewer was nervous and sat with her legs open, flashing the audience as her skirt slid up her thighs. Really.  I remember that, so what. The trivial stays with me, unfortunately, taking up  room where chunks of facts and poems should reside. Of course, the best part, Adrienne reading her work. We lost another literary hero recently—Barney Rosset, the first publisher of Beckett. Who are our Adriennes and Barneys today? OK, look dear friends of DMV, we've got tremendous resources online, you can look up Rich's work at the Academy of American Poets, Poetry Foundation's excellent site, and at the Lannan Foundation.

Moyra Davey & her circle

Colin's bicycle.

Bold is the man who puts flowers on his bicycle basket and rides in the ice and snow. My neighbor is a hardworking clown. This summer, a policeman ticketed him for carrying his unicycle on the EL platform. He was on his way to work—a circus program for children—and tried to explain that it was his work tool. The officer, a coulrophobic on a power trip, would have none of it. God bless the G8 protester who encounters that cop. 

Yesterday afternoon I went to see Moyra Davey's work at Donald Young Gallery.  There were two pieces by Davey; one a grid of mailers (see below) and a video—a 60 minute video—and I got so absorbed in the piece (Davey's family bio merging w/ Mary Shelley's group against a backdrop of the interior of the artist's NYC apartment) that I ammended my intinerary and watched it to the end. If you go, give yourself time to see this. Why do I love her work so? She gives order and attention to things I also care about; details of life. And books. The exhibition here is part of a longer program built around the work of Robert Walser, a Swiss-born German writer who, until I received the invitation postcard, knew nothing about. I will be forever grateful for being introduced to his work. Other artists will present work over the next few works that is simpatico ("In the Spirit of..." as the title of the series states) to Walser. So there will be more chances to study the copies of Walser's microtext pieces, installed along one wall over a long table of all his first editions. The Walser memorial stays up while the other artists do-si-do.

 

 

A detail of Moyra Davey's Subway Writers II, 25 c-prints, tape, postage and ink. 

Gin a body meet a body

Rendezvous with Robert in Garfield Park.

It's in the 50s. In  January. In Chicago. I feel the pull of the great outdoors but remain at my desk diligently working on an overdue report. Then come the power tools. (...The best laid schemes o' mice an' men...). The brick alley outside my office window has turned into an alfresco work space. A neighbor has seized the rare temperate moment to tend to a project. There is drilling. Why sit there agitated and distracted? Go for a walk, I hear you say.  (...Then catch the moments as they fly...). The sun is hitting the gold dome of Garfield Park's elaborate field house just so and I walk from one side to the other trying but failing to find a good angle. Then, from nearby, Robert Burns beckons.

The 8-foot-tall bronze statue stands atop an 8-foot-tall pedestal. It was made by a sculptor from Edinburgh named William Grant Stevenson and dedicated in 1906. About the same time, other memorials to Burns (1759-1796) by the same artist were erected in Denver and Milwaukee. There are 16 statues in the U.S. in all and dozens more around the world. A particularly handsome stone one in Barre, Vermont was erected by Scottish granite workers in 1897 to celebrate the centennial of his death. The Robert Burns statue in Milwaukee is well-tended unlike this one which is kind of a mess.  Here, on the impoverished west side of Chicago, the bronze plaques were pried off the granite pedestal long ago but Burns is still there, safe and sound. He would have been OK with this site; he liked hanging out on the edge. An 1884  biography of "the peasant poet" defended Burns against claims that he was nothing more than a "coarse libertine." Burns liked the ladies and they liked him back.

There are numerous clubs for Burnsians thriving today and it is not hard to understand why. His reach spans centuries. On the way home, an inventory (inspired, as always, by you Rose) began. Cultural cross-referencing linked immediately to Salinger (of course), then Steinbeck and Bob Dylan. Who else? What else? Coca Cola. Atlanta Burnsians took the memorial business up a notch and built a replica of his cottage thanks to a fortune built on soda pop. 

This portrait of Burns, painted by Alexander Nasmyth in 1787, is in the collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. 

Want to hear the folk song that connects the Romantic poet to modern American cutural history? I did. Here is a soft rendition via Hollywood:

 

 

For further reading pleasure, there is an excellent Burns digital archive at the National Library of Scotland. Some day we'll go to Scotland and visit the Burns birthplace. We're fond of house museums here at DMV. 

Burns night is coming up on January 25 (and probably more haggis will be eaten in one night than in an entire year). We celebrated ahead of schedule sans the nasty pudding. Time to get back to work.

Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!
Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure!

Lever House

Partial view of Land Mind, an installation by Paula Hayes at Lever House, NYC.

Lever to beaver. If I were working at a certain magazine, that could be the headline (coz it's all I got this morning) even though there are no beavers in the tropics. I'm drawn in by the vegetation—enhanced by the green tint in the floor-to-ceiling glass wall (when is a wall not a window?) The above fishbowl within a fishbowl is part of an installation, which is part of the contemporary art program at Lever House—that 1951 architectural masterpiece on Park Avenue.

Watch the thoughts splay (to order an egg sunnyside up in Mexico say: huevos estrellados—starry eggs. Starry, starry eggs). The aquarium above was made from a single cast of acrylic. One of the great pleasures of becoming a successful artist must be getting a commission with a budget that allows something like a giant pitcher-shaped salt water aquarium to be fabricated. 

Lever House restored the plaza eight years ago to the design first proposed in 1953 by Isamu Noguchi. So this visit is a pleasure inside and out. Modernism at its best.

The Chicago Architects Oral History project has an interview with the architect Gordon Bunshaft, and I was curious to read the parts about Lever House. Bunshaft (who nominated himself for a Pritzker Prize and won) is so entertainingly cantankerous that it is easy to read the entire document. But he never mentions Natalie de Blois, his co-designer. I then read a de Blois interview where she states that Bunshaft was not difficult to work with in answer to a question clearly designed to get a different answer. How gracious.

What we are really interested in here at DMV is Noguchi. And the art program (leverhouseartcollection.com). And the fact that the soap company from Great Britain came very close to having Lever House built on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. (Chicago's  modernist wonderland is thanks, in large part to Mies, whom Bunschaft calls "dull.")

For this DMV Day of Wandering*  only two points were set: MoMA for the de Kooning retrospective and BAM for the evening showing of Wim Wenders's Pina 3D (

PINA - Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost - International Trailer from neueroadmovies on Vimeo.

). Everything before and inbetween left to the wind/whim. 

 

Before happening by Lever, we browsed languidly in the  Argosy Book Store on 59th (birthday present fantasy: autographs of heroines particularly Louise Bryant's "For the revolution" and an early 19th century print of wigs). We steered clear of the art books on sale (a long day ahead on foot helped tame temptation). But after foraging in bins of vintage marble endpapers and antique bindery materials, I ended up with a pile (affordable @ 3 dollars a piece) of deconstructed book covers for a project.

Warm up post Lever House gazing with a brandy in the lounge at  Casa Lever House, just round the corner. 

*DOW is typically a birthday day, but DMV advocates frequent DOW, particularly, although never exclusively, on one's birthday.

Travel tip: When in Manhattan, overshoot your destination by one subway stop.

Of Lange & Steinbeck

Plaster Charley, forever alert at the National Steinbeck Center.

On the way from Carmel to Sonoma County, I stop in Salinas to see the lettuce fields (Salinas: "The Salad Bowl of the World!") , and to visit the National Steinbeck Center. The work of Dorothea Lange is very much on my mind. In 1935, Lange documented Filipino workers cutting lettuce in the area, and migrant workers in search of a living. My first community work was as a translator/nurse aide for a migrant education program in Michigan. The experience politicized me & eventually I became a United Farmworkers Union campus organizer. What follows? When you love photography and you are growing a social conscience, you will encounter the work of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and the work of the FSA.

In 1960, Steinbeck drove across country with his dog and wrote "Travels with Charley." He observed that "no one was for anything and nearly everyone was against many things."  Oh, people sure haven't changed much. On display behind acrylic walls is his camper, Rocinante, named after Don Quixote's horse. From the open back door we can see the manual typewriter and a bottle of Courvoisier on the small dinette table. 

A biography of Lange has been ordered via the library but I want to know her story completely NOW, so I read a 1964 oral history (completed the year before she died) in the Archives of American Art online. Lange was born in 1895, just three years before you Rose. Like you, she wanted us to see injustice and to change things for the better, and that could only happen if we "dare look at ourselves." Further poking around leads me to the documentary, Grab a Hunk of Lightning, that is in production. It is being made in part by her granddaughter, who has access to archival footage and journals. They are still raising funds (check out: www.katahdin.org and give if you can). Look at this clip. She talks so softly:

 

Dorothea Lange - Grab A Hunk Of Lightning from Katahdin Productions on Vimeo.

The North

Santa Que? in Farrera, Parque Natural deal Alto Pireneu

 

"They sat in silence as the housemartins swarmed about the village. They listened to the water flowing fast down from the hills above." — The South by Colm Tóibín.

Tóibín's novel is the perfect book to be reading in these parts . Which explains why I found three copies in English in the library at CAN. The English books are the ones left behind by former residents. I take one for the five hour bus ride to Barcelona and pretty soon I am in the city. That's what a good book does to time—it lengthens and compresses it the same...time. The story (love, art, war and the brutality of it all)  takes place in Barcelona and then in a small village in the Pyrenees. The model for the remote village is the one I found myself in for several weeks. In fact, the daily chinkchinking of the mason rebuilding a massive stone wall was another constant sound. And, once again, everything is connected: The wall, I'm told, belongs to Tóibín.

Housemartins. Swallows. Golondrinas. Orenetas—the other feature of this stone village that has me captivated from the start. Those critters and the stream below, way below, with its gurgle echoing up the valley and through the open doors of my habitation. Sound is amplified in that rocky world. The acoustics of the mountain. The first night I awoke thinking I needed to jiggle the toliet handle. 

I can't leave until I have hiked out to the ermitage above, crummy knees and all. It turns out to be a beauty. My most favorite direction of all. From the doorway of this Romanesque church, I can see the ermitage of St. Eulalia across the valley. So many churches in such a remote place. Eulalia is one of the patron saints of Barcelona. I'll miss her party by a couple of weeks. When I go to the cathedral today, it is with the intention of visiting her crypt. But there are too many tourists, too many cameras and two sore knees and I go in search of a good meal and wine. Eulalia. What a name. I learn about the infanta who represented Spain with a visit to the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and who caused a scandal for trying to have fun. That's my one second interpretation. I leave you with her full name:

Maria Eulalia Francisca de Asis Margarita Roberta Isabel Francisca de Paula Cristina Maria de la Piedad

 

BBR, part two

Two more from the 4th of July in Michigan

Subtitle: On attempting to eat a taco while reading Jacques Ranciére's The Future of the Image.

At the Seminary book store about this time last year, a friend turns to me and, holding up the above book says, "I am buying this for you." The book went to the top of a pile of books and was quickly buried by other books. The future of reading the book arrived. I take it to the commissary/neighborhood taqueria on my lunch break. (Do you really want to hurt me?) This post is really only a vehicle for sharing the above images from my 4th of July at Lori & Geoff's farm. And also to say that after watching José Andrés cook an egg in a "pool" (as he so poetically put it) of olive oil, I decided that was what I wanted for my next breakfast.  Do you see an egg being fried in a greasy puddle or an egg being bathed in a hot pool of olive oil? 

"The artistic image separates its operations from the technique that produces resemblances." —JR 

 

You never forget your first love ...

And here at DMV (or the DMV where we give license to the reading of books) we never forget the first book we had signed by an author we loved.  How sweet is this? It is not a hardback. I was poor and fed my habit at used bookstores. When I lived in Detroit, I frequented one on Woodward Avenue where the owner gave refuge to the homeless. One day I arrived just as he was unlocking the door and out stumbled a mess of a man, who squinted up at the sky as he pushed past me. "He sleeps in poetry," the bookstore owner said.

I stood in line at the Detroit Institute of Arts and waited to have Grace Paley write her name and my name on the title page. So when was that? Post-h.s., early '80s? 

Grace Paley, Grace Paley, Grace Paley. 1922-2007. Years later, I would become a book review editor and I would get to tell her, in an interview, that my first signed book was a collection of her short stories. I still her have Vermont phone number in my rolodex. Another talisman I will hold on to. Rose, dusting my library has reunited me with all sorts of treasures. I think I'll take this project slow. 

 

Free Wei

Ai Weiwei is home at last. The Chinese artist/designer/architect/activist started blogging in 2006. By May of 2009, Chinese authorities shut down his site and more than 2,700 of his posts evaporated. Ah, but look here, some were saved, translated and thanks to MIT Press, collected in this book. Shortly after his arrest in April, I picked up this collection in part to know him better through his words, but also to show my support. I had come to love Ai Weiwei for his humor, intelligence and bravery in the face of harassment. The authorities mounted surveillance cameras outside his Beijing studio. Ai Weiwei continued to make art and blog. (One 2010 sculpture is a replica of one of the cameras carved from a single piece of marble). In January, the Chinese government ordered the demolition of his studio complex, two years in the making. No one sets out to be a political hero. I really don't think that's a choice someone makes because it is a pleasurable activity. So, thank you Ai Weiwei for remaining in charge, for taking every piece of crap thrown at you and turning it into art. It takes cojones to appear insouciant while being unmercifully hounded by the government. Stay strong. Rebuild your health. Eat lots of dumplings.

Pan tumaca

Edward's farmer's market tomato.

In Cataluyna they rub garlic and smashed tomato on toasted bread. I was shown how to make this traditional appetizer at a party somewhere in the Eixample neighborhood of Barcelona. That part of the world is on the brain now and the memory of pan tumaca punta-tacos its way forward after Edward presents me with the above tomato at the farmer's market.  It looks like it is wearing a tiny party hat, or dunce cap. I have just selected a hearty bread at the farmers market from the storefront-less Crumb Bakery, and we are hungry. At home, we make a late lunch, a gentler version of pa amb tomáquet/pan tumaca; there is no vigorous rubbing and no crushing, just slicing, drizzling and dipping. It is sustaining. Delicious. The tomato "tumor" is just a fleshy chunk of fruit meat sans seeds. It is documented thoroughly before consumed.

Days later,  in a used bookstore,  while browsing in the science section on the way to the gardening shelves, I randomly open a book to this sentence:

"Energy is only useful when it is under proper control."

It's a slim volume and I hesitate before returning it to the jumbled shelf.  I'm in a non-acquisitions phase. I've already picked up one book I can't resist—the first volume of Bob Dylan's memoir. It's been out only a few years and already has that musty, used bookstore stink. Before I take it into bed with me, I fan it out on the back porch and then sprinkle talcum powder on the fore edge and fan it again. I know what I need to do: stick it in an oversized ziplock bag with some dried lavender. Herbal cleansing. 

Dylan's voice is so in my head and I hear him singing the line:  Energy is only useful when it is under proper control. Dylan's reading and gathering period was so deep and wide, his lyrical observations at once mysterious, profane and sensible, so it is possible.  That sentence is from a book with the straightforward title of Energy. It was published in 1929 by British physicist Sir Oliver Lodge who, I later learn, expanded his interests to explore the possibility of  life after death. Spiritualists claim him as one of their own. What better spokesperson for the metaphysical set than a pioneer in wireless telegraphy? And what, you ask, does this have to do with tomatoes?  I recently read an article (in the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture newsletter. Yup. Rose, you know all about my farm fantasy....)  concerning a farmer who burned walnut shells, as an alternative to fuel, to grow energy-fficient spring tomatoes his northern California greenhouse.  A tenuous connection? Sir Lodge would disagree. And Bob wouldn't give a shit.

 

Heaven can wait

Chapel on the way to the Seminary book shop on the UC campus

One crazy preacher in California predicts the end of the earth, one comic picks up on it, and then every media outlet participates (lemmings, again) ...but, of course, sans context. When I was growing up, the world was always ending (the first line of an essay I wrote a long time ago). I suppose if I hadn't been raised by a mother who expected the second coming  to occur after each natural disaster, I would have found the doomsday prediction fresh and amusing. (And how many jocular newscasters said it would be the end of the world if the Bulls lost in Miami...hearty laughter for all). But I knew all about The Great Disappointment of 1844. Google it. Strange times out there. There is a sort of global anxiety in the atmosphere. We are all breathing the same fumes. There is death (a rash) & destruction & devaluation of our work (journalism in particular) and of the things we hold dear.  And then the weird weather. The almost 90 degree day two months ago that did not feel like a cause for celebration. The trees were still barren and there is something apocalyptic about that much heat and no leafy shade. The thing is, life is beautiful. We have more than we need. And, we can change things for the better if we can only rouse ourselves from the blue stupor. I'm preaching to the choir in my head. Wake up. 

Work continues to dribble in along with odd opportunities. The other night, I was invited to dine at Tru (Alinea, their first choice, was fully booked) with a prize-winning gelato maker and three representatives of a gelato machine manufacturer from Bologna. A story will be forthcoming. The meal, small and subtle tasty bits, was lost on my jet-lagged and sophisticated dining companions. And like the last time I ate there, not particularly memorable (except a creepy Nick Cage came in with an entourage. He ordered the cheese cart. It was brought  over to the table & as the lid was rolled back, a massive  fart cloud wafted over to our table). A tiny beet salad sprinkled with caviar, a small piece of salmon...desert, they called a risotto with cinnamon, topped with almond sorbet, was the best. I love rice pudding. It was almost as good as mine.

I walked over to the restaurant from the Cervantes Institute on W. Ohio Street, where I had attended a panel discussion, Beyond Cervantes: New Writers from Spain. The event was sponsored by the Spain-USA Foundation in celebration of Granta's Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists issue. The editor of the literary quarterly, John Freeman, introduced the three writers and when it came to Andres Barba, who inspired  references to Kafka, Freeman said: "The way to make the  uncanny real is to describe it in ferocious detail." A quote worth pulling out my notebook for. Everyone was so smart and cute. Made me proud of the fatherland. Also up at the Institute, a contemporary drawing show, titled Nulla Dies Sine Linea (a Latin proverb meaning No Day Without a Line), that requires a return visit. 

Before that fine event, I stopped in for a manicure. My dark yet sparkly polish from a gala past was half chipped off (the polish, named "Unripened," was from Opi's Goth line). I chose a pinkish natural hue. When it comes to nail color,  I  often decide based on the name. This time, "Rosy Future" seemed appropriate.

Fishing for fancies

Shopping for salmon and kale at Whole Foods on Saturday.

Memory, hither come, 
And tune your merry notes...

A long ago unexpected gift of a Dover facsimile of William Blake's Songs of Innocence turned me into a devotee of Dover publications and William Blake. But what did I really know about Blake? I loved his watercolors and engravings—romantic, mystical. His "illuminated manuscripts" gave depth to my appreciation of book art. I loved the titles of his works, such as O, How I dreamt of Things Impossible. On the first day of my first visit to London,  I went straight to the Blake Room at the Tate. When I left a newspaper editor job to freelance in 1999, emboldened by a book contract and a spanking new iMac (Bluebery. I wrote a passionate letter to Apple asking them to make a white one and, if they must, call it coconut or snow), I made a screensaver with this Blake quote, blown-up big:

I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.

A battle cry for then and now. At a recent event commemorating the Haymarket tragedy, I was reminded of the fight for the eight hour day (8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what we will). Blake (1757—1827) had a great idea (system) of what would best serve the working artist:

Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night. 

All this to say that one of my favorite playwrights is Mickle Maher—give the man a genius award already—and he has written There Is a Happiness That Morning Is performed by the fearsome (as in scary brilliant) Theater Oobleck. Colm O'Reilly and Diana Slickman as sparring Blake professors—a comedy in rhymed verse. Go. Go. Go. I left the Storefront Theater in a happy daze. I never really knew Blake. I happy am.

Seminareverie

Being a member of the Seminary Co-op Bookstores in Hyde Park is not just about supporting independent book shops (in these gloomy days of the terminal book, is that even a relevant distinction?), it is not just about getting a 10 percent discount or even about the pleasure of searching the labyrinthine subterreanean stacks.  It's also about poking around the  barrel vaulted cloisterette and chapel of the  Chicago Theological Seminary—home to the bookshop for the past 50 years—and admiring the carved corbels (like my fave pictured above) and fragments embedded in the walls (from a chunk of Plymouth Rock to a bit of Corinth's Agora) and stone floor. The Gothic Revival building was designed in 1926 by architect Herbert Hugh Riddle.

I'm not going to whine about the bookstore moving out of the basement and to a new space at the end of the year. I know the above ground space (windows...imagine that) will be a more pleasant environment for workers and browsers who appreciate fresh air and temperature controls. The local architects (Tigerman McCurry), ever mindful of the members love for the cramped, maze-like shelving, will be designing the space with the old feeling in mind. The new neighbor will be Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House. And there will be room for more books. Meanwhile, the Seminary building is being renamed and repurposed as the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics. And this is where it is starting to suck. The other day when I went to pick up books, plastic signs had been drilled into the structure on either side of the entrance to cover up the old carved stone letters. Must the free market fundamentalists be so tacky? 

 

Patti Smith

One of my favorite parts of Patti Smith's  memoir Just Kids, is when she is writes about the urge, as a little girl, to kick in a shop's plate glass window with her Mary Janes. It's her first recollection of feeling rage. She recounts this moment to Robert Mapplethorpe (lover/friend), who responds with disapproval. (Oh, Patti, No). She tells the same thing to Sam Shepard during one night of love and confession and he responds: Oh, go ahead and kick in the window Patti. I'll bail you out.

Smith has always been one of my heroines. After reading this passage, Sam Shepard became my number one romantic hero. What a man. Permission to transgress, permission to express, and a promise of salvation. That's better than a diamond ring.

The book won the National Book Award for nonfiction. Well deserved.

During a pre-concert telephone interview with Patti in 1999, we talked about literary influences and our mutual love of Little Women. "Come see me back stage," she said. Her performance that night was typical—pure adrenaline and poetry. I have always been amazed at how she comes alive on the stage. By itself, her poetry, her voice, her music does not hold for me. But in concert, alchemy takes place and she is bewitching. 

Literary hero

On a beautiful Sunday last month, I rode up to  Augustus Saint-Gauden's Lincoln statue (his first) in Lincoln's park. I sat on the curving exedra bench in the shade on the 12-foot-tall Abe's right side and thought, read, wrote, FLip'd (great footage of dragon flies), sipped from my water bottle and people watched. On the way back, I rode to the Newberry Library, crossed bughouse square and encountered Gabe Levinson giving away free books (bookbike.org); an act of utter sincerity and generosity. He made my day.