8/20/21
Yes, I am the kind of person who reads The New Yorker. And yes, I am the kind of person who keeps a big stack of aging New Yorkers trying to read all the dog-eared articles. This book review from April seemed promising - the quote from J.M. Coetzee . . . "'a deformed and stunted' society produces a deformed and stunted inner life" really resonated with me as it applies to my own country - deformed and stunted indeed, but with hope, I like to believe.

And then I got to the passage "first the mother dies, then the father, then one of their daughters, then their only son" and I stopped reading. I find I have no further interest in anything James Wood has to say.

It all rides on the insertion of the word "only" to describe their son. Why say "only son" and not just "son"? The meaning is the same - "only" is redundant. But oh what a powerful redundancy - as though the low value daughters are akin to a litter of kittens, but the son . . . oh the son is the inheritor of the family name, the family estate, the family heritage. And only one! What a tragedy.

But the daughters? Oh you know, just girls. That some number of daughters survived? Not important compared to the loss of the ONLY son.
​
​And that gives rise to another "only son":

Does the author compare the loss of the only son to the loss of the most famous martyr of all time? Well I won't be reading the rest of the book review so I'll never find out. The author weaves the narrative of male patriarchy into his text and it's not for me. Perhaps I'll read some bell hooks to soothe my wearied soul.

as8/17/21
Yesterday I saw the Van Gogh Exhibit in DC. 
I wish now I had taken pictures of the things that disturbed me about the exhibit . . . But I did get a few photographs of things I liked about it.

Overall, I highly recommend this show:

• There is an interesting set up of images of vases projected onto a large bias relief style vase. Comparing the vases was an amusing exercise, if a bit small potatoes.
• There is a model of The Bedroom that you can walk into. You can sit in there, have your picture taken. Wow factor is high on that piece.
• In that same section there is a deconstructed model of one of the Japanese paintings and a three dimensional construction of the lobby/entrance to the mental institution. Fascinating.
• The largest room is immersive in its own right. Some of it is not really about Van Gogh, but it is still interesting.
• ​The close look at all his self portraits is wonderful. His eyes are piercing and he's looking right at YOU. He's intimidating.
• The coloring room seems like it is for children, but that was also really enjoyable. Just do it.
• You have to pay extra to be a VIP - DO IT! You then get to do an additional 3D immersive experience at the end plus you then get a lanyard, a badge, and a poster, all with starry night decor. The 3D googles were hard to fit on and the whole thing made me car sick, but WOW was that an amazing trip. You start in Van Gogh's bedroom that he so famously painted, check out some buildings in the village, walk past a windmill, walk (glide really) through a wheat field and then a Pissarro-esque forest, then come into the village where the outdoor nightclub is there on your right and then down the street to the quay. So many paintings brought to life and you get to travel through them, looking all around. Are the mountains in the background authentic to Arles? I dunno.​

On the down side:

• One of the panels tells us the largest amounts of money ever paid for Van Gogh paintings. This elevation of the economic value of these objects - as though their worth is amplified because rich individuals and corporations speculate on the value of art - is beneath contempt. It has no place in an art gallery.
• Speculative theories are presented as fact and they denigrate the contribution of the artist. For example, with no further evidence that some modern eye doctor thinks he's proven it, Van Gogh's inventive mastery of color is chalked up to the "fact" that he was color blind. In other words, he didn't invent it! He was just a victim of color blindness. That really ticked me off. There is  zero contemporaneous fact offered to support this claim, although he was seen by numerous doctors, wrote thousands of letters discussing his life, and consulted with (hobnobbed?) scores of other artists.
• In another presentation, we hear the voice of someone claiming to have a profound understanding of the symbolism of Starry Night - in which the stars are the light of optimism and the village is the darkness of despair. The cyprus tree unites these two opposing forces - bridges the gap. Van Gogh's letters are quoted repetitively in the exhibit. There is NO evidence provided of any kind that Van Gogh intended his works to have symbolic content. Yes, we are all subject to Jung's collective unconscious - communication by symbols is the universal human condition. But to ascribe these thoughts relating to Van Gogh's mental illness is unsupported by fact and demeans the artist. It's just speculation that looks like click bait. Do we care about Sylvia Plath's work because she killed herself? Are we just prurient consumers of morbid lives?
• They made a big deal about Van Gogh's last painting, of roots, as somehow manifesting his depressed state, while ignoring other works that had a similar structure of bare wood and the unvarnished truth about nature, not prettified. I found it odd that the curators, who made a big deal about his suicide, did not bother to mention the counter-theories that he was shot by an unsettled teenager. If we are going to dig around in the mud - why not bring up the controversy about that? But no - it didn't fit in with the producers narrative that he was not a suicidal individual.
  
• The obsession about his mental illness and suicide seemed to be of a piece of the current obsession with the lives of famous people - someone kidnapped Lady Gaga's dogs - news at 11; Robert Downey Jr. got loaded and went and slept in a bed at the neighbor's house by mistake, now you can dislike him rather than appreciate his art. I admire these artists but knowing this level of information about their personal lives is degrading to all of us. Pitching Van Gogh as a color-blind suicidal nut-job - why is that needed? There is SO  MUCH to discuss about art without bringing that up. 
• Another element that I found missing was any discussion of Van Gogh's brush work. Their claim is that the reason Van Gogh is so well appreciated is his use of color. Au contraire! While his use of color is spectacular, his brush work, the amount of painting he used, the thickness of the paint, and the brush strokes themselves, unmediated as it were, are a huge element - an element I would argue that is more powerful than his use of color. I love his brush strokes of flowers . . . 
• ​Additionally, his vision of the way things look - the refraction of light around stars, the shape and nature of the clouds in some of the landscapes, the way wall paper pushes forward into the foreground, the difference in how a painting of irises looks close up and far away (abstract vs REAL - as though you are looking out a window at them) - there is SO MUCH MORE TO VAN GOGH than his use of color. How could the curators have neglected these aspects of the best painter of all time?

So I recommend that you go SEE THIS SHOW but bring your critical thinking with you. Are the opinions offered as facts actually supported by evidence? Do you appreciate Van Gogh's art because he was crazy? Or perhaps because some rich people have paid for a painting more than the gross domestic product than some of the world's poorest nations? Shun the anti-artist commentary and focus on the magnificence of Van Gogh's work.

8/3/21
Drove back to Baltimore from Fredericksburg, hauling a load of dishes and clothes and whatnot from one of the storage units. Mama Bear is cleared out and Papa Bear should be cleared out by next Tuesday. That leaves Baby Bear - all high value items - books and paintings. We're getting there . . . 

Driving through the construction of the new HOV toll road on 95 got on my nerves so much that I invented a new name for those lanes - the "Pig Lanes."

Virginia let a contract out to an out-of-state builder to install a toll road down the center of Highway 95. The charges for this one way road are astronomical - only wealthy people can afford to pay that rate on a regular basis.

So when traffic is stop and go all the way from Quantico to Fredericksburg, which it is frequently, the poor people can watch as the wealthy fly by in the Pig Lanes. The incredible expense of these special roads, with immense ramps and other structures and waste of lanes (two lanes going only one way at time where four lands could be fit) will NOT improve traffic flow. Far from it. What the Pig Lanes do is ensure that the rich people won't have to get in the slow traffic that regular people must suffer. 
​
The rest of the drive was much more pleasant, after we got past the Pig Lanes, and the slide show shows some of the views that intrigued me on the way home.
​

8/1/21
Yesterday, the elder of my two daughters and her amazing boyfriend rented a moving van and picked up all the furniture pieces from the "Papa Bear" storage unit that are too unwieldy to move in our cargo van. They drove them up from Fredericksburg to Baltimore and unloaded them all to the correct rooms and then dead-headed back to the U-Haul place near where they live. I am grateful to have such helpful relatives.

The pre-eminent piece was our bed. I slept in my own bed again last night, the first time since around mid-April, around 14 weeks. During those unhoused weeks, we did get to sleep in a bed sometimes: for the 2 1/2 weeks we mooched offa my sister-in-law and her husband, my brother, and the one night stay-overs every two weeks in "Base Camp" (a bedroom in my daughter's house), and those two days at the motel near Colonial Beach. So there were some breaks in the "get down on the floor to get into bed" routine . . . and the "bugs can crawl right over you with ease" torment . . . 

Sleeping in a bed is more than the nice mattress, the sheets, the room to move around, the closeness to your mate.
The getting in and out of the bed is so radically easier.
While I slept on an air mattress hoisting me 2 inches from the floor, I kept holding onto the idea that I was become more nimble every time I got out of bed at o-dark-thirty to go pee, having to position myself just so and then roll over onto my knees, which I positioned onto my soft furry slippers to keep from injuring my ancient knees (well one of them is really circa-2016, isn't it? All titanium and plastic, innit?), and then grabbing onto my excellent camping chair to get the leverage to stand up. I was getting more nimble, but I was also injuring my knees on a regular basis, making them ache. Being 70, I am trying to care for my creaking infrastructure and not do myself a mischief. A real bed helps that enterprise tremendously.

My heart goes out to all the people who are getting evicted at this very moment - some of the "15 million people in 6.5 million U.S. households" according to an article in Reuters today. (U.S. COVID-19 eviction ban expires, leaving renters at risk.) I have some sense of what they will be experiencing, if they are unlucky enough to have no relatives to mooch offa but lucky enough to have camping equipment.

​I'm counting my blessings.

July 23, 2021
Since the start of the year, in concert with my team mate, partner, love of my life, husband, I have packed up my entire house into three storage units, moved to a bedroom in my daughter's house from where I launched 6 weeks of the worst camping in my life, and discovered that camping under these circumstances is just a nice name for being homeless. I had a van crammed full of everything that would fit but rarely found the energy to use any of the work, art, and magic tools that I brought.
It was a soul sucking experience with ticks.

Then I started searching for a place to live full time, while camping. It is very difficult to find a new home when you are not able to GO to the places to meet with tentative landlords or property managers. And when we did go to look at a place, we had to leave all kinds of valuable things unsupervised in our campsite for hours. We did our best to secure the most precious things (Mike's computer and other work tools being foremost) but it would have been a devastating blow if someone had looted our campsite.

Then I started mooching off my brother and his wife - it took three weeks to find and lease our new home here in Baltimore, 20 minutes from where my brother and his wonderful wife live.

Now I'm unpacking three storage units worth of stuff from a large home with a shed into a two bedroom basement apartment. Many things must go. I need to stop paying to store things that don't fit in my home.

So I've been busy non-stop since the start of 2021, except for that wonderful brief hiatus for my 70th birthday - when my eldest daughter took me to The Magic Kingdom in Disney World.

• I love mail delivery.
• I love being housed.
• I love air conditioning.
• I love having hot running water.
• I love having ice that doesn't melt.
• I love having electricity whenever I want it.
• I love having a full sized refrigerator with a big freezer.
• I love never having rain water seep into my kitchen and form large pools of water that I must stand in to cook.
• I love that Mike doesn't have to haul in water, wash dishes in the rain, go out on ice and potty disposal chores.
• I love being able to use my computer whenever I want, without feeling guilty about stealing the electricity that Mike needs to do his job.
• ​I love that I can have a house plant. I hope to get the house plants my daughter is caring for soon. I wonder how Violet is doing with her new mother. 
• I love a hot shower with strong water pressure with no strangers nearby, no mosquito attacks, no calibration of how to get dressed without getting my clothes wet on an unclean floor. I love that my shampoo just sits on a shelf in the shower and does not need to hauled to and from the shower every time I want to wash my hair. It's just THERE!
• I still like my camping dishes and continue to use them but I love having access to all my best utensils that didn't make the cut, that didn't get to come camping with me. I never planned to have boiled pasta while camping . . . so I didn't need the pasta serving tool. Garlic press. Pizza wheel. Knives in a wooden block holder (a lovely gift from my brother) instead of in a bag in a tub, confusing to locate amongst the other bags in the tub.
• I love being housed.

Life is good.
Dr. P-J

July 21, 2021
I went with a friend to see Women Behaving Badly, an exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art. I recommend it.

We briefly viewed a few other things - I will be going back to take a much closer look at the mosaics, looted from Antioch (an ancient Greek city). The museum has: "Twenty-eight mosaic pavements from Antioch on view that tell the story of this ancient city prior to its destruction by catastrophic earthquakes in 526 and 528 A.D." They fascinate me.

I am often filled with revulsion when I see the portraits of rich patrons and the religious art created to perpetuate a hegemonic world view that oppressed/oppresses women and others. Today was no different. I am attracted to the beautiful furniture (monoethnic in size in some fine examples I saw today) while being slightly nauseated as it forces me to contemplate the massive structural economic inequality that continues to plague our world. Rich women painted as though they were goddesses . . . the better to massage their superiority and empower them to "lord it over" their "inferiors."

When the weather is cooler, I want to see the sculpture garden, which looks to consist of contemporary / modern 3D art - which I both appreciate because they are not looted artifacts, and despise because they generally uninspired, insipid, or dreary. 

The slides start with a photo of the cover of the museum brochure.  The next three photos are of a painting I admire of a Gypsy child - I was offended by the use of the world "exotic" used in the textual support - used without critical thought to describe subject matter such as gypsies. Perhaps the curator of this part of the museum should read Said's "Orientalism."

If I spend too much time in some parts of an art museum, I become angry. That "winners and losers" worldview that rewards those with unearned privilege claws at my gut. I've been to the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay in France and the art museum in Cologne, Germany. I've been to the Smithsonian Art Museum in DC, the Chicago Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Art Museum by UCLA, and the MET in NYC. And others. They are the same in organizational structure. We see ancient statues (stolen from various countries around the world - Egypt, Greece, Italy, etc.). We see religious art - roomfuls. We see patronage art of rich people, many of them portraits of the rich themselves, wearing fine clothes or puffed up in imagined scenes. We see the silver work, the gold jewelry, the furniture and the pottery of the rich. Tiffany glass work and Fabergé eggs, crystal bottles and beautifully inlaid wood screens.

The exhibit "Women Behaving Badly is worth the price of admission; oh wait - it's free. What an antidote to my feelings of participation in my own oppression that arise when I view art that reinforces masculine hegemony.
​
The fourth photo is of a massive doorknocker meant to represent Sarah Bernhardt as Medea. The next three photos are of an inkwell designed and created by Sarah Bernhardt in 1880 - Inkwell: Self-portrait as a Sphinx.
The next two photos relate to Loie Fuller - the poster is an example of the textual support in the exhibit. She invented colored stage lighting, among her other accomplishments.

The final photo is of our lunches at Gertrude's Chesapeake Kitchen. Our meal was marvelous; everything on the menu looked fabulous. We sat with a view of some of the sculpture garden. We watched as the rain moved into town and then we scurried out to the car just as the first drops hit.
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I'll be going back - I have yet to see the modern art, which rarely offends me and only often bores me . . . perhaps they have some Impressionists. It would be too much to hope for some Van Gogh paintings, but perhaps some Sisley or Pissarro works will grace the walls of the Baltimore Museum of Art.
​~ Dr. P-J

Women Behaving Badly: 400 Years of Power & Protest
​July 18, 2021 — December 19, 2021
Overview
Women who rebelled against sexist social rules have been trivialized and controlled for centuries. Portrayed according to stereotypes or vilified, women acting on their own behalf have been undermined consistently by their representation in Western art. Spanning the Renaissance to the progressive social movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries, this exhibition links heroines of the past with modern trailblazers, celebrating women throughout history who broke rules, transgressed boundaries, and insisted upon recognition of their human rights.
Approximately 75 prints, photographs, and books illustrate female power and courage over five centuries into the modern era when women were actively engaging to effect social change. In the first section, prints by such canonical artists as Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Francisco de Goya, and Edvard Munch demonstrate how iconic portrayals of powerful women of the past have informed our subsequent understanding of female agency. The second section celebrates women who pursued identities beyond the traditional categories of wife and mother, expanding their presence into the public sphere as dancers, actresses, musicians, authors, and advocates for civil rights. The exhibition title nods to the well-known quote, “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” from a 1976 essay by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Generations of women have continued to give this maxim a life of its own, rallying behind it as a call for challenging societal standards.

Curated by Andaleeb Badiee Banta, Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs
This exhibition is supported by Nancy Hackerman, Clair Zamoiski Segal, Amy and Marc Meadows, Patricia Lasher and Richard Jacobs, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

7/6/21

So it turns out heat, humidity, bugs, especially biting bugs and ticks, make it impossible to enjoy life outside. Camping on the East Coast is hideous, as compared to camping on the West Coast.

The rain. The puddles in the kitchen tent. The clammy claustrophobic ponchos. The restriction to life inside a screen tent.

The lack of sun leading to no solar collecting leading to now power leading to Mike struggling to work. 

The reduction of life to drudgery - meals became more simple as each day passed. Washing dishes involved fetching water, heating water, disposing of water. The dishes were often still greasy after being cleaned. Constant monitoring of ice, fetching ice, throwing away food that has gone bad, worrying about food floating around in questionable icy water, eating it anyway.

Eventually I my back broke out in itching welts due to humidity and lack of showers. I was starting to experience heat related symptoms, particularly lethargy. Taking a shower was a major effort, which exacerbated skin conditions and general discomfort. When I did shower, by the time I got back to camp I was already sweating my clothes into dampness.

And that is just the superficial elements that were problematic.

The best thing about camping is that I appreciate greatly the things I used to take for granted - electricity on demand, hot and cold water on demand, a private shower with no mosquitos and GREAT water pressure, a large easily accessible refrigerator and FREEZER, and most of all, AIR CONDITIONING.

Of course life in Baltimore is not without its problems. Javy was attacked by two pit bulls the day after we moved into our apartment. I will report on that soon. Check out my Facebook page for updates.

May 29, 2021
A FB friend asked:
Is it a just for fun adventure?
The answer is:
Not exactly. We cannot afford to live where we were and had very large dental bills uncovered by Medicare that destroyed our financial situation. (And didn't work anyway. Say buh-bye to $16,000.) By the time we got out of our rental house (one year lease) we needed to reduce our rent dramatically. This camping situation reduces our rent and utilities.d
We are developing a plan to live in some poor region in western Maryland, or elsewhere that we can afford. Right now I'm sitting in our screen porch with two jackets on while the rain beats a drumbeat on our roof.
I have always enjoyed camping . . . but this is different.

• For one thing, it is on the East Coast, where there is a different kind of tick. LOTS of them.

• It is humid and it rains. A lot.
• So far there has been nothing particularly interesting about the campgrounds. I miss the West Coast. Camping there smelled really good. It was generally nicer looking.

 I never got ticks camping on the West Coast, except that one time when I slept on a tarp on the land I owned near Cazadero, California. I don't remember rain being a problem camping back then. Now rain is a constant obstruction to getting things done. You think an old Seattle-born girl like me would be used to the rain . . . I like the rain just fine if I don't have to walk in it to get to the bathroom, or to go from the bedroom to the kitchen.
And then back in the day, when I used to go camping, I'd stock up on reading material (Scientific American and National Geographic) and just relax. Walk to the beach or the stream or whatever. Now I am too cheap to buy anything as pricey as a magazine; I have plenty of reading material already. And I don't like leaving our gear unsupervised, because I can't just drive home if someone rips me off.
On the positive side, I am getting stronger, that's for sure. I can get up off the floor more quickly. I'm not taking nearly as many naps - but that is principally because the tent is usually too hot for a good nap. I still get tired but i just push on as best I can. One good thing about today is it is 54 degrees - the perfect temperature for a nap, especially with that wonderful Pendleton blanket Mike gave me. I'm 70, dammit. I think I'll go take a nap. Not really. I have chores to do.
~ Dr. P-J

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

We've been here at Campsite 2 for over a week. Yesterday was the half-way point when we resupply. We get ice, propane, and various groceries.
There is an ebb and flow to camping. We show up on a Tuesday and the campground has a lot of empty spots. Most of the people are quiet. On the weekends, the park fills up with noisy people, noisy children, bicycles, people walking dogs. Javy is very concerned about all of this. I like when Monday rolls around and there are fewer people around.
The campsite somewhat opposite of us has had three different camping groups so far. First was "angry woman." She had a big sleeping tent, a littler ten, and a nice-looking cargo box. It looked like a red coffin. There was no car there.
Angry Woman was talking on her mother on her cell phone. She was VERY loud, so we got to learn all kinds of information about her personal life, but there were some gaping holes in the narrative. She had had it with her boyfriend and was going to break up with him. He just didn't care . . . about something. He had another lover, a boyfriend. It had been that way from the beginning. She was homeless! Eventually, someone drove into the campsite. It was a man. Mike and I disagreed about whether that was the boyfriend, or whether it was a different person, a friend in whom she could confide. They kissed upon greeting - if that's a hint.
Not long after he arrived, Angry Woman started yelling and carrying on and using the F word. We could not hear the man's communications - Mike speculated that she was actually talking on her phone. She used the F-word a lot and had really had enough of the whole thing. She was through!
Eventually I could hear an angry man's voice. The Mike saw her get into the car. Then the man got into the car two and they drove away; she was tearing up the road which is impolite and dangerous in a campground but Angry Woman was VERY angry!
Some time later they came back. She had stopped yelling. They went about their business as if nothing had happened. The next day they packed up like experts and made like sheep herders and got the flock out of there.
The next campers showed up on Friday afternoon. A man and three children. They set up a tent. One of the boys and hatchet and he chopped with it on a log for about an hour. I was grateful that he finally got bored. Or maybe his arm got sore. He and his probably siblings got together with another gang of young-uns and ran around the campground playing some kind of Peter Pan game. I couldn't figure out what the game was but it involved a lot of yelling and a certain amount of screaming. 
The next morning, one of the kids was yelling to the dad that "Tyler had the hatchet" indicating the youngest member of the gang. The dad yelled back very strongly, "If Tyler had the hatchet, TAKE IT AWAY FROM HIM." We pondered the danger of that move . . . but there were no incidents. Then they quickly packed up and left. Short camping trip, eh?
The final group, so far, were a very old couple with a nice red flatbed truck hauling a big fifth wheel. They got set up and left. Came back late, didn't spend any time outside. Next day they left early and were again gone all day. Next day, they were up early and left. For oldsters, they seemed to really have it together. AND they were quiet.
​Life without TV leads to spying on your neighbors, apparently.
This morning I woke from a lovely dream about a new attraction at Disney World, kind of a huge outside Haunted Mansion set up with a lot of comedy. There were many interactions with the cast members - I asked one of them if he liked children and he said, "with salt," which I found tremendously funny. I still do. When Rocky takes me to Disney World, I like to ask her, "Where did these children come from and what are they for?"
I actually like children and don't eat them, with or without salt. I'm not the witch from Hansel and Gretel, for goodness sakes! I'm the witch from The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West, and also the witch from Snow White - the one with poison apple. 
​But I digress . . . 

Our first campground was Westmoreland State Park in Virginia. We departed on Monday, May 17, 2021. It was okay. The showers were never cleaned the entire two weeks we were there but they were free, had HOT water, and had waaay better water pressure than we've had since we moved to Virginia six years ago. I give that campground a C. It was okay. No big whoop. Perhaps if I had been able to go on the Ranger led walk to Fossil Beach I would have enjoyed my time there more, but the work of having your entire life in your vehicle is taxing. It's been 12 days since I posted to this blog; I have been too busy or too tired or my internet was too lousy . . . but I did write a story.
It's called "Tick Vision" - not to be confused with the poem of that title somewhere below this post.
Link to fiction story "Tick Vision"