Wade Zahares: Window Music

Now and then I post photographs of windows because I suppose I like what symbolize and how they gave composition to an image or structure to an otherwise unstructured world – I love the implied order of right angles. Wade Zahares is an artist who loves windows even more than I do, I think, and he creates art that portrays windows in ways and colors in I can only dream about. And the more of his art I see the more it matches up with times and places in our lives, including this Boston area triple decker from the ’80s and his more recent coastal New England landscapes and harbors. There is even what appears to be a midwestern plainscape – I have never felt so validated by another person’s art.

And as if that isn’t enough, he portrays trains and rolling vistas in prints and illustrations for wonderful books. We first discovered Zahares’ art though the 1998 book, Window Music, which delighted my young children and still delights me.

And for all of the sharpness of the images and vibrance of color, he works in pastels; I love the juxtaposition of sharp angles and bold landscapes – sometimes with the turf rolled back to reveal fantastic infrastructure – with the occasionally gently smudged pastel. It is fine art that stands up to the cacophony of the garish digital age, paying homage to some great pop art but keeping a kind of hand-forged integrity.

Zahares’ art, in its way, turns LettersHead on its own head, offering up 21st century art in a 20th century way. He does in images what I try to do in words, and the time he has devoted to his craft has produced spectacular results.

Thank you to Wade Zahares for giving us permission to use his art in this post.

10 April 2012 0

A Hipstamatic Escape

Okay, so I’m on a bit of a nostalgia kick visiting old haunts and old friends. A few weeks ago I had the rare and lovely chance to have lunch with a friend at Sandrine’s in Harvard Square. It was a bitterly cold day and snow flurries whipped by the window as we stayed far long and ate far too much and marveled that the truly kind waiter in this French Bistro was actually French. It was almost too much to ask. As we lingered they began setting out the wine glasses for dinner service on the bar and, wanting not to appear the suburbanite tourist, I sneakily snapped this with my Hipstamatic setting on my phone. It’s fuzzy, it’s crooked, it’s almost too Cambridgey, but I don’t care – just looking at it is a vacation.

16 March 2012 0

Window Under the Dome

This is the view from the second floor over the lobby that stands under the great dome at MIT. I walked by and often stood at this particular spot nearly every day for a few years back in the 80s and 90s, and there was always something interesting to see either inside or out: the skyline across the river, tickets and events information at lunchtime, engineering students in a bridge-building competition, or the regal rhododendron in full bloom along the perimeter of Killian Court outside. After I left the Institute I returned to the Lobby a few times to sell hand painted clothes at the craft fairs. It was lovely to work in such a busy and imposing structure; it made every task seem useful and important and sometimes I would invent reasons just to take that walk down the Infinite Corridor and feel the buzz. I miss it sometimes but on recent visits have found that the nostalgia of the architecture is not enough; it was the people and the work that kept me going, and I would almost prefer to look at the photos than walk down the corridors where, now, nobody knows my name.

9 March 2012 0

The Oracle

I have been reading the letters that inspired – and continue to inspire – LettersHead. She really was ahead of her time; Mom should have been a blogger. Her words are inspiring, sweet, maddening, crazy, funny, wise. The best ones are family updates with a little local history thrown in followed by “I have been reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica on [insert topic here]” with a page or two xeroxed and stapled to the letter. When I read them now I can understand exactly the way she felt as she sat at the typewriter tapping them out, cigarette burning on the ashtray to the right, Hershey bar half out of the wrapper to the left. We may not be passionate about exactly the same things but in large part we are both driven to do what is right for our families and to express it, explain it and expound on it early and often. At least once she signed my name to a Letter to the Editor because she had met her quota for the month.

But a key thing I loved about her was that while on paper should could be relentless, most of the time in person, with the family around, she was such fun. I so wish she had taken the time to write down the stories she spun after dinner – a little less L’Osservatore Romano and a little more Spy Magazine. Both she and Dad had such great stories about the early and mid 20th century (their WWII courtship is a novel in itself) and they were good at telling them. I know that most of us (with some very notable exceptions) do not do them justice in the retelling.

I admit there were days when those postage-paid envelopes with the telltale IBM Selectric type address on them stayed on the counter for a bit until I was ready to open them – but I’m glad I did and I’m glad I kept them.

2 March 2012 2

Home Windows – a reading spot

It’s been a while since I posted any window photos, though I have taken many. This one is in the house where I grew up, looking much the same now as it did then. We used to climb though the windows on the left and right to sun ourselves on the warm tar roof during cold April days. It was a sign of spring. The vantage point from which the photo was taken was where my mother kept her cedar chest, and I imagine it full of wool blankets and linen and lace wrapped in brown paper – to be honest I am not sure if that’s what was really in the chest or I am just channeling all of those Laura Ingalls Wilder books I read on that landing, my body wedged between the radiator and the window. But I do still have lace and linen wrapped in paper from that house, that much is certain, and I wonder now when I will ever have occasion to use them. They’ve been waiting for their moment for so long.

23 February 2012 0

Steve Martin: Pied Piper with a Banjo

I work out to Steve Martin ‘s ba njo music. I imagine he would be appalled to know that, but then again maybe it’s a marketing idea. I sort of admire people who can go the gym and work out regularly but I am not one of them. The idea of getting in my car and driving somewhere to exercise just seems wrong, not to mention embarrassing for someone who refuses to wear sweatpants anywhere, ever. If it’s too cold to walk outside, looking out the basement window and listening to The Crow gives my mind something wonderful to do while my body is busy being miserable. It’s perfect. Forget Katy Perry, Michael Jackson and the rest of the thumping-base workout music – it all only reminds me of how young I am not. But banjo music brings out the young in everyone. It is inherently happy, endlessly sunny and an invitation to love life. The winter melts to spring, the rural roads stretch before me, and when I am finished I can go and write.

Speaking of which, a while back my daughter and I went to hear Steve Martin himself talk about his life and play a little banjo. At the end of the interview by insipid entertainment reporter Joyce Kulhawik (I am loathe to even give her a link), Mr. Martin took questions. One person whined to him about writer’s block and asked him how he kept himself creative and he was blissfully bemused. In effect, he told her that, having worked so hard to get to this point in his life that he can now pursue his ideas whenever the mood strikes him. No pep talks, no tricks of the trade, just a very candid glimpse of someone who has earned the right to do nothing and thus pursues everything. Think about it – writer, comedian, actor, director, playwright, poet, collector, musician. Even if you did have writer’s block how could you think someone like Steve Martin could provide you with any more wisdom than he already has?

9 February 2012 0

Who Wants to be the Next Leader of the Free World?

Let’s just put Meredith Viera in charge and get this over with, shall we? A million debates and we still need voters to tell us that Newt Gingrich is a nut job? It would be so much easier – and cheaper – if we just made this primary thing into reality TV show. Something like a hybrid of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, American Idol and American’s Next Iron Chef – we can charge people to text in their votes and sell commercial time (Lowe’s still has some money to spend after pulling out of All-American Muslim, right?). Talk about capitalism at work! Come to think of it we can even use some of those contestants as fillers – a little (okay, maybe a lot) Mario Batali here, and a Geoffrey Zakarian in the competition would give the candidates a little perspective. Each week they send them to a different state for a challenge – butter sculpting at the Iowa State Fair or a square dance at the South Carolina State Capitol – and then there’s a local fare tasting and a foreign and domestic policy quiz at the end. I’m perfectly happy to let Meredith and pal Alton Brown tally the votes and send someone home every week – the two finalists get to go to the convention.

Who’s with me?

10 January 2012 0

It’s that time again – January, and an election year to boot

How many platitudes, resolutions and predictions can you cram into one January blog post? The mind reels. But times are changing and I can’t stop thinking about it because it all seems so overwhelming good and bad – it’s exhausting to move so constantly from depression to enthusiasm to panic in sub-zero weather. Coffee. Wine. Cupcakes. Stale Christmas cookies. I’ve tried them all. And I just read on the Internet – on Science Daily, no less – that people who write about their emotions regularly are more likely to lose weight. Seriously. So I put down my cupcake and here I am, typing away on my fabulous new computer on which I should be writing anyway because, well, what else am I going to do while the plumber is here fixing my bathroom? Unfortunately the article does not give me a word count to reach before I can return to my cupcake.

But seriously, 2012 is bound to be a doozy one way or the other, right? The Iowa Caucuses alone constitute a shot over the bow. And even though that is indeed a link to the Daily Show’s coverage of the caucuses, pretty much any coverage of it is hilarious. I’m not rushing out the door this year to take in the New Hampshire primary scramble this year, though, oddly tempting as a Newt Gingrich sighting might be. Back in 2008, I spent the day after the caucuses tracking down Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

I watched Bill and Chelsea Clinton, wearing pained expressions as they watched Hillary try to recover from her loss to Obama the night before.

I witnessed McCain’s last retail style appearance at a Hollis, NH, pharmacy in which I was one of a handful of people who saw Warren Rudman endorsing McCain. The tiny store was so jammed with press people and equipment there was no room for actual voters – Cindy wisely stayed on the straight talk express bus. after that, it was all Town Hall style venues. I also spent some quality time observing CNN’s John King at work in the still-empty country pharmacy as he waited for McCain to appear. This was before he was promoted to the role of smart screen guru in the studio – I recall being in awe of his ability to talk on a cell phone, look at a Blackberry and type on his laptop all at once. Even just 4 years ago that kind of multitasking was novel stuff. Still, he took time out to chat about the momentous events in Iowa and was relaxed and personable even as he continued to work and the room slowly filled with people around him.It was probably the best January morning I have ever spent anywhere. Mitt, Rick and Newt could not hope to come close.

5 January 2012 0

Raising a Cup

Eighteen years ago my mother was here with me, welcoming our first child, a girl. Mom stood on our deck, smoking cigarettes and commenting on the spectacular display of autumn leaves. “That,” she said, nodding toward a large, bright red sugar maple, “will be her tree, because it will always be beautiful on her birthday.” And for 16 years, it was, casting lovely pink light into her bedroom on sunny autumn mornings. It is both satisfying and sad to know how much of the world we shared in those heady, confusing days of new parenthood is gone. I look at it now as the cusp between being a child and becoming a mother, feeling only now, with my girl 18, that the transformation is nearly (though never, I guess) complete.

We are renovating our bathrooms, the last rooms untouched since those weeks she spent here, and it was recalling her blowing smoke out of the downstairs bath window (please don’t smoke in the house, Mom) that prompted me to think of all that has changed since then. Little by little we have made the place our own, replacing the carpets, the floors, the kitchen, the boiler, the air conditioning, the roof, the deck and many of the trees (the sugar maple fell victim to a spring storm downdraft that sliced it clean in half). Nursing a broken foot, I am forced to slow down and note the changes to life, inside and out, as I walk gingerly down the street and up the lawn after getting the newspaper, just as she did.

She used to tell a story from that visit, in which she and my husband stood at the kitchen window viewing some small pine trees scattered around the back yard. They talked about how it would be so nice to have a little row of them lined up outside of that window. A couple of hours later she came bustling upstairs to my room where I was nursing the baby, to report that my husband had gone out that very moment and moved all the trees to create the row of tiny pines outside the window, where they remain today, almost as tall as the house now. She couldn’t get over it, “He just went out and DID it!! Just like that!!” It was a defining moment for her, and for us, as we have benefitted from – and been dumbstruck by – countless permutations of my husband’s thought-it-up-and-did-it moments.

She did that for me, and for many others, pointing out things in life that we weren’t really noticing but maybe should be. She wasn’t always right but she made me think, made me BE in my life in a way that is still hard to do without her, eight years after she died. But she has her ways of appearing, of reminding, of inhabiting the lives of her children and grandchildren. A day does not go by that I don’t tell a story about her, say something just like her, or wear something that makes me think of her. I wear her rings, I have her gray hair, I have glasses that are too big for my face, and I’m pretty sure I am buying her sweaters. So, while the outside looks more and more like Mom, inside I am less lost in her shadow than I have ever been. Life has thrown us different curves, and we have handled them differently, if with the same kind of determination.

This week I pulled out a china cup and saucer for my coffee like the ones she used to use to replace my usual white diner mug, partly to reduce the amount of coffee I drink (which is a Mom story for another time) but also because when I see it from across the kitchen, I can pretend for a second that she is just around the corner – or more likely, in the bathroom (I painted it her favorite color, periwinkle) having a smoke.

27 October 2011 2

9/11 Postscript

After all of my hand wringing yesterday afternoon, perspective arrived in the evening. After a patchy, overcast weather all day, a thin stripe of sunshine lit the trees across the pond followed by a pink sky, promising a lovely day today.

And as I watched the full moon rise after the light faded, my boy mention as he passed me, “I planted a seed in your garden today.”

“You did?”

“Yes. I planted my nectarine pit in the garden so that it would grow into a tree.”

Never much of a gardener before, I began planting new things each September since 2001 as a way of reminding myself to appreciate where I am now and to invest hope in the coming spring. The result is a garden that gives me more joy than I ever imagined. This year’s bulbs sit in a box in the garage waiting to be planted, but it’s good to know something went into the ground on the 11th. Now, to figure out where he planted it and keep the chipmunks away from it.

Finally, we stumbled on the Science Channel’s Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero and it was gratifying to see something emerging, at last, from the ashes of that day. No false reality TV drama, just stories and extraordinary images of the new buildings and the memorial and how they are being built. The series is several hours long and worth every minute. Thank you, Steven Spielberg.