2010_2_14 Tenure can bring on the crazies
In read in the New York Times this morning about Professor Amy Bishop of the University of Alabama in Huntsville going around the bend after not getting tenure at the school. I am sure many instructors have fantasized about doing what she did, Billy Liar-like, while up for tenure, but she took it all the way by pulling a gun during a Departmental meeting, killing three of her colleagues and sending three others to the hospital in serious condition. In the process of checking her background the police found out she had shot to death her 18 year old brother 24 years ago, and she was let go because it was called an accident when it may not have been. And. strangely, when they asked for the file on that case they were told it had disappeared.
By all accounts Amy Bishop was Harvard-trained and brilliant but left a lot to be desired as an instructor. She never made eye contact with students and taught by reading the text book to the class. There had been many complaints about her teaching. On the other hand she was innovative in the lab and had come up with a method that was said to soon replace the use of petri dish in research. She and her husband, also a member in the Biology Dept at Huntsville, had started a business to market her invention. It seemed she had plenty of reason to live, and in addition to her husband, she had three kids at home. Yet she cancelled all that in a moment of ultimate pique, throwing all caution to the wind, and could now face the death penalty in Alabama. One wonders what kind of mind would make such a crazy decision. But apparently, what goes around comes around. Her madness had a history.
The year I left academe I was up for tenure at UNLV. Before there was any formal start to the process two Deans I had been playing basketball with on Sunday mornings for 5 years took me to a bar in Las Vegas called THE JUNGLE CLUB to give me “the bad news.” It was so dark inside the place it took me several minutes to adjust my vision. There was something Darwinian about being told I would never get tenure at the school in THE JUNGLE CLUB. What was I, a performing ape that didn’t make the cut? I knew what the reason would be: my political activism on campus and in town. The administration was especially displeased with the fact I had brought the teacher’s union to campus. However, none of this made any real difference to me as I had long ago decided to drop out of teaching. The decision was, as they say, academic. Also, my wife was already in negotiations to teach in Tucson at the University of Arizona. But after being given the official word by the two Deans, who were friends of mine, I at least had the satisfaction of quitting before they had a chance to deny me tenure. Life is made up of these small triumphs over anger and adversity.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Moon & others of its ilk.
2010_2_09 Moon
I saw “Moon” a couple of nights ago, a syfy indie directed by Duncan Jones and starring Sam Rockwell, along with the voice of Kevin Spacey who plays a computer named Gerty, a distant cousin of HAL. “Moon” is derivative but not too bad; at least it kept my interest up, thanks to Sam Rockwell’s performance. What was it about? I was asking myself that during the first hour of the film, although I had my suspicions. Rockwell plays Sam, an astronaut manning a space station on the moon all by himself. His tour of duty was for three years and we meet Sam as he has 2 weeks to go before he goes home to Tess, his beautiful blond wife, who at this point he misses terribly. For three years? All by his lonesome? I don’t think so. That would not be wise or possible. He had to be a clone or a droid. Suddenly there were two Sams and I knew I was right.
Several years ago I read the novel THE EXPERIMENT by John Darton; it was a story about a secret colony of clones off the coast of South Carolina that were created by greedy scientists to be available to rich folks who might need an organ transplant, at which time a clone would be sacrificed to obtain the organ. The clones had no innate knowledge of what their fate was going to be. It was essentially a farm of clones whose innards were to be harvested to keep other people alive who could afford such private and clandestine services. I also thought of “Blade Runner” and its idea of the “replicants,” who were slaves invented by some genius at a huge corporation; they were short-lived near-perfect droids used for “off-world projects.” Several had escaped and tried to see if they might live longer. The “blade runner” was a futuristic cop whose job it was to “retire” the replicants, a code word for killing them. The other night I also saw “Surrogates,” the latest Bruce Willis vehicle, which just came out on DVD. It is a variation on the theme of human-like substitute beings of a robotic nature that do the work of the world while the person they represent is home wired to them and speaking and acting through their surrogates. Another mad genius (James Cromwell) had invented them but it turns out to be what he considers a bad idea. Exit surrogates!
Both in “Moon” and “Blade Runner” the Directors made use of fake photographs to fool the clones and replicants that they represented personal memories back on planet Earth. Both droids invest quite of bit of emotion in the pictures, which are like a raft they hold on to. Sam knows he is at some kind of breaking point when he sees a dark haired woman sitting in one of the rooms in the space station. Shortly afterwards he goes out on a Mission to check a machine that chews up moon rocks for some kind of commercial purpose. Exactly what is hard to figure out? Blinded by light and a dirty window he runs into the machine and passes out. When he wakes up Gerty tells him he hurt himself and that he should stay in bed. Gerty, who like HAL controls everything on the base, was obviously in a position to wake up another clone to go get the injured Sam. In fact, from this point on he begins to physically deteriorate. Then his replica steps out and the two start an uncertain relationship, but they both eventually figure out what is going on and who and what they are. They eventually find a hidden room, which in essence is a sleeping morgue full of dozens of drawers of Sam Rockwell clones. A rescue mission is on the way to the moon station, not to take Sam home but to activate another clone and to terminate Sam’s value to the company. The two Sams make a deal, the dying Sam will stay and the newly awakened Sam will take a space pod back to Earth, leaving just as the rescue mission lands on the moon to live out his days outside corporate control.
I saw “Moon” a couple of nights ago, a syfy indie directed by Duncan Jones and starring Sam Rockwell, along with the voice of Kevin Spacey who plays a computer named Gerty, a distant cousin of HAL. “Moon” is derivative but not too bad; at least it kept my interest up, thanks to Sam Rockwell’s performance. What was it about? I was asking myself that during the first hour of the film, although I had my suspicions. Rockwell plays Sam, an astronaut manning a space station on the moon all by himself. His tour of duty was for three years and we meet Sam as he has 2 weeks to go before he goes home to Tess, his beautiful blond wife, who at this point he misses terribly. For three years? All by his lonesome? I don’t think so. That would not be wise or possible. He had to be a clone or a droid. Suddenly there were two Sams and I knew I was right.
Several years ago I read the novel THE EXPERIMENT by John Darton; it was a story about a secret colony of clones off the coast of South Carolina that were created by greedy scientists to be available to rich folks who might need an organ transplant, at which time a clone would be sacrificed to obtain the organ. The clones had no innate knowledge of what their fate was going to be. It was essentially a farm of clones whose innards were to be harvested to keep other people alive who could afford such private and clandestine services. I also thought of “Blade Runner” and its idea of the “replicants,” who were slaves invented by some genius at a huge corporation; they were short-lived near-perfect droids used for “off-world projects.” Several had escaped and tried to see if they might live longer. The “blade runner” was a futuristic cop whose job it was to “retire” the replicants, a code word for killing them. The other night I also saw “Surrogates,” the latest Bruce Willis vehicle, which just came out on DVD. It is a variation on the theme of human-like substitute beings of a robotic nature that do the work of the world while the person they represent is home wired to them and speaking and acting through their surrogates. Another mad genius (James Cromwell) had invented them but it turns out to be what he considers a bad idea. Exit surrogates!
Both in “Moon” and “Blade Runner” the Directors made use of fake photographs to fool the clones and replicants that they represented personal memories back on planet Earth. Both droids invest quite of bit of emotion in the pictures, which are like a raft they hold on to. Sam knows he is at some kind of breaking point when he sees a dark haired woman sitting in one of the rooms in the space station. Shortly afterwards he goes out on a Mission to check a machine that chews up moon rocks for some kind of commercial purpose. Exactly what is hard to figure out? Blinded by light and a dirty window he runs into the machine and passes out. When he wakes up Gerty tells him he hurt himself and that he should stay in bed. Gerty, who like HAL controls everything on the base, was obviously in a position to wake up another clone to go get the injured Sam. In fact, from this point on he begins to physically deteriorate. Then his replica steps out and the two start an uncertain relationship, but they both eventually figure out what is going on and who and what they are. They eventually find a hidden room, which in essence is a sleeping morgue full of dozens of drawers of Sam Rockwell clones. A rescue mission is on the way to the moon station, not to take Sam home but to activate another clone and to terminate Sam’s value to the company. The two Sams make a deal, the dying Sam will stay and the newly awakened Sam will take a space pod back to Earth, leaving just as the rescue mission lands on the moon to live out his days outside corporate control.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Noah's Compass
2010_2_5 NOAH’S COMPASS
I am a long time fan of the novels of Anne Tyler. I have read them all through PATCHWORK PLANET, but for various reasons I didn’t read the next three. When I went to my local Barnes and Noble the other day I saw number 18 had just been published, NOAH’S COMPASS, so I bought it and read it in two days. I liked being back in contact with the peculiar ambience around her ambivalent characters. I have promised myself to catch up on the three I missed as they came out.
The central character is a sad-sack poor-man’s philosopher named Liam Pennywell. Although his college degree is in Philosophy, he is at 60 year old man teaching 5th Grade at a run-down private school in Baltimore. The Baltimore area is Tyler country in almost all her novels and she has lived there herself for many years. Things haven’t quite turned out like Pennywell had hoped when he was younger; indeed, he had just been downsized by the school. Because of the recession the school was forced to consolidate the two 5th grade classes into one and, despite the fact Liam had been there longer than the other teacher, they kept the other guy and let Liam go. It didn’t seem right but he was not one to kick up a fuss. Things happen; life was like that. Actually, he felt early retirement wasn’t such a bad idea; it had a certain allure for him. He was so frugal and lived very simply that he had some savings, but the first thing he felt he had to do was move to a cheaper apartment. The book opens with him and two friends making that move. However, it was just his bad luck to be assaulted by an intruder his first night in the apartment. He had gone to bed and woke up in a hospital with a bump on his head and a gash on his hand where the burglar had bit his hand in the struggle that ensued.
The injuries didn’t bother Liam half as much as the fact he had no memory of the obvious struggle he had put up. The intruder took nothing except an experience that he may never consciously recapture. He was inordinately upset over the loss of that ‘dead zone’ in his memory. He didn’t care if was traumatic he felt rob of that experience. There was a hole in his life and he didn’t like it one bit. A doctor he consults makes light of the loss memory. He tells him to forget it; it’s no big deal, or at least it shouldn’t be. Other people tell him the same thing. But Liam, not able to let it go, happens to meets a sympathetic soul, a woman named Eunice who has an unusual job. She is employed by an elderly rich man with a memory problem; he has hired her as his “rememberer,” someone to keep tracked of what he does on any given day and what he needed to do the next day. She seemed to tune right into Liam unhappiness and dilemma over the lost experience. They seem to hit it off right away. When one of Liam’s daughters meets Eunice she tells her dad “that woman has a crush on you.” And the next thing you know, they have become a couple. They have a lot of affection for each other but not yet sleeping together because one his daughters has moved in with him because she can’t get along with her mother, Liam’s ex-wife; plus Eunice lived at home with a father recovering from a serious stroke. (Going to a motel never seemed to occur to them.) In addition, his other two daughters and his ex-wife come by frequently without warning or calling first. In fact, Barbara, his ex-wife came in once just as Eunice was unbuckling Liam’s belt, as she wanted sex then and there. But Liam has the bad habit of never locking his doors and his family members have the impoliteness of always barging in without knocking first. He also has to do a lot of schlepping of family members and a boy friend of Kitty’s, the daughter who lives with him. But he loves Eunice despite her plainness, chubbiness, and numerous quirks and total lack of getting on in the world. She can’t cook worth a lick and is socially inept. She is a funny bunny of a female, very ordinary but with a vein of eccentricity, which appeals to Liam, who is also normal but odd at the same time. He is no particular bargain either, as he is a slovenly dresser and not particularly handsome, and hasn’t been seen naked by a woman for a very long time, which makes him plenty nervous. They are Tyler people; I’d recognize then anywhere. And Eunice is only 38, quite a bit younger than Liam. Still, they love each other and both want things to work out.
But then a fateful coincidence occurs, of all places, in line at the supermarket. He runs into Eunice’s mother who he had never met before, and she informs him in passing that Eunice is married. One can imagine the shock. When Liam confronts her she cries and cries and profusely apologizes. Liam is uncertain what to do, as he is attached to her, but on the other hand he knows he doesn’t want to destroy a marriage because that’s what his father did to his family and his mother never recovered. The two of them go back and forth for a while. His father’s argument for divorcing his mother to go off with a “femme fatale” was “you have to grab happiness when you can.” But Liam is incapable of feeling that way even though it likely means a lonely old age for him. On the other hand, he would have his beloved philosophers to sustain him. Shortly after he meets Eunice’s husband, who impresses him as an all right guy, he makes his final decision: he’s going to break it off with her, and he does. The book ends with him working as an aide in a preschool and going home to his apartment where Kitty is still living with him. The last we hear of him he is sitting at home reading Plato. What I’ll remember is what he says about himself halfway through the book. “I just don’t seem to have the hang of things, somehow. It’s as if I’ve never been entirely present in my own life.” Amen!
Why, a reader might ask, is the novel titled NOAH’S COMPASS when there is no character by that name in the novel? It’s a fair question. Well, there is a short section midway through the book when Liam baby sits his grandson, Jonah, whose mother is an overzealous Christian, where he explains to the lad, who is four years old, the story of Noah’s ark. It bothers the boy that Noah left so many animals behind to drown. When he asks Liam where did the ark stop for gas, he explains it had no motor or, for that matter, no sails because it had nowhere to go; the only aim of the ark was to float while the rest of the world drowned. It just bobbed up and down without a compass, rudder, or sextant. He tells Jonah, “Noah didn’t need to figure out directions, because the whole world was underwater and so it made no difference.” So the image of Noah’s Compass and the fact it is useless when everything “was under water,” becomes a metaphor for Liam who is a nowhere man bobbing up and down on a flood he doesn’t understand very well, despite his reading of Plato.
Finally, once he connects with Eunice, and even after they break up, he forgets all about that lost experience he longed for at the beginning of the story. Larger issues have drowned it out.
I am a long time fan of the novels of Anne Tyler. I have read them all through PATCHWORK PLANET, but for various reasons I didn’t read the next three. When I went to my local Barnes and Noble the other day I saw number 18 had just been published, NOAH’S COMPASS, so I bought it and read it in two days. I liked being back in contact with the peculiar ambience around her ambivalent characters. I have promised myself to catch up on the three I missed as they came out.
The central character is a sad-sack poor-man’s philosopher named Liam Pennywell. Although his college degree is in Philosophy, he is at 60 year old man teaching 5th Grade at a run-down private school in Baltimore. The Baltimore area is Tyler country in almost all her novels and she has lived there herself for many years. Things haven’t quite turned out like Pennywell had hoped when he was younger; indeed, he had just been downsized by the school. Because of the recession the school was forced to consolidate the two 5th grade classes into one and, despite the fact Liam had been there longer than the other teacher, they kept the other guy and let Liam go. It didn’t seem right but he was not one to kick up a fuss. Things happen; life was like that. Actually, he felt early retirement wasn’t such a bad idea; it had a certain allure for him. He was so frugal and lived very simply that he had some savings, but the first thing he felt he had to do was move to a cheaper apartment. The book opens with him and two friends making that move. However, it was just his bad luck to be assaulted by an intruder his first night in the apartment. He had gone to bed and woke up in a hospital with a bump on his head and a gash on his hand where the burglar had bit his hand in the struggle that ensued.
The injuries didn’t bother Liam half as much as the fact he had no memory of the obvious struggle he had put up. The intruder took nothing except an experience that he may never consciously recapture. He was inordinately upset over the loss of that ‘dead zone’ in his memory. He didn’t care if was traumatic he felt rob of that experience. There was a hole in his life and he didn’t like it one bit. A doctor he consults makes light of the loss memory. He tells him to forget it; it’s no big deal, or at least it shouldn’t be. Other people tell him the same thing. But Liam, not able to let it go, happens to meets a sympathetic soul, a woman named Eunice who has an unusual job. She is employed by an elderly rich man with a memory problem; he has hired her as his “rememberer,” someone to keep tracked of what he does on any given day and what he needed to do the next day. She seemed to tune right into Liam unhappiness and dilemma over the lost experience. They seem to hit it off right away. When one of Liam’s daughters meets Eunice she tells her dad “that woman has a crush on you.” And the next thing you know, they have become a couple. They have a lot of affection for each other but not yet sleeping together because one his daughters has moved in with him because she can’t get along with her mother, Liam’s ex-wife; plus Eunice lived at home with a father recovering from a serious stroke. (Going to a motel never seemed to occur to them.) In addition, his other two daughters and his ex-wife come by frequently without warning or calling first. In fact, Barbara, his ex-wife came in once just as Eunice was unbuckling Liam’s belt, as she wanted sex then and there. But Liam has the bad habit of never locking his doors and his family members have the impoliteness of always barging in without knocking first. He also has to do a lot of schlepping of family members and a boy friend of Kitty’s, the daughter who lives with him. But he loves Eunice despite her plainness, chubbiness, and numerous quirks and total lack of getting on in the world. She can’t cook worth a lick and is socially inept. She is a funny bunny of a female, very ordinary but with a vein of eccentricity, which appeals to Liam, who is also normal but odd at the same time. He is no particular bargain either, as he is a slovenly dresser and not particularly handsome, and hasn’t been seen naked by a woman for a very long time, which makes him plenty nervous. They are Tyler people; I’d recognize then anywhere. And Eunice is only 38, quite a bit younger than Liam. Still, they love each other and both want things to work out.
But then a fateful coincidence occurs, of all places, in line at the supermarket. He runs into Eunice’s mother who he had never met before, and she informs him in passing that Eunice is married. One can imagine the shock. When Liam confronts her she cries and cries and profusely apologizes. Liam is uncertain what to do, as he is attached to her, but on the other hand he knows he doesn’t want to destroy a marriage because that’s what his father did to his family and his mother never recovered. The two of them go back and forth for a while. His father’s argument for divorcing his mother to go off with a “femme fatale” was “you have to grab happiness when you can.” But Liam is incapable of feeling that way even though it likely means a lonely old age for him. On the other hand, he would have his beloved philosophers to sustain him. Shortly after he meets Eunice’s husband, who impresses him as an all right guy, he makes his final decision: he’s going to break it off with her, and he does. The book ends with him working as an aide in a preschool and going home to his apartment where Kitty is still living with him. The last we hear of him he is sitting at home reading Plato. What I’ll remember is what he says about himself halfway through the book. “I just don’t seem to have the hang of things, somehow. It’s as if I’ve never been entirely present in my own life.” Amen!
Why, a reader might ask, is the novel titled NOAH’S COMPASS when there is no character by that name in the novel? It’s a fair question. Well, there is a short section midway through the book when Liam baby sits his grandson, Jonah, whose mother is an overzealous Christian, where he explains to the lad, who is four years old, the story of Noah’s ark. It bothers the boy that Noah left so many animals behind to drown. When he asks Liam where did the ark stop for gas, he explains it had no motor or, for that matter, no sails because it had nowhere to go; the only aim of the ark was to float while the rest of the world drowned. It just bobbed up and down without a compass, rudder, or sextant. He tells Jonah, “Noah didn’t need to figure out directions, because the whole world was underwater and so it made no difference.” So the image of Noah’s Compass and the fact it is useless when everything “was under water,” becomes a metaphor for Liam who is a nowhere man bobbing up and down on a flood he doesn’t understand very well, despite his reading of Plato.
Finally, once he connects with Eunice, and even after they break up, he forgets all about that lost experience he longed for at the beginning of the story. Larger issues have drowned it out.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Herb and Dorothy
2010_1_30 Herb an Dorothy
Every once and a while I score with a sleeper film on NETFLIX. I had ordered a film for Saturday that I knew nothing about, a documentary called “Herb and Dorothy,” about a Jewish couple from New York City who collected art. The noteworthy thing about their collecting was they did it on the basis of a modest income, which enabled them to become world-class collectors of contemporary art, with an emphasis on minimal art, although that by no means defined their collecting.
God, what a life-affirming thing it was to see this film. Herb and Dorothy Vogel were far from typical collectors, profit-minded and greedy. They were an angelic unique pair, greedy only in the sense of collecting all that they could in one lifetime. In the end they bought over 4750 pieces, all of which somehow fitted into their rent-controlled one bedroom apartment. She was a reference Librarian in a Brooklyn Library, while Herb, who never finished high school (because he hated it), worked in a local Post Office. He schooled himself about the history of art and after they got married brought Dorothy along in her understanding of art. They dabbled with painting for as short while before they turned their full attention to collecting. One artist they collected said Herb was born with an “aesthetic eye.” Their apartment was clogged with art they collected; there were stacks from floor to ceiling; the walls were so jammed with pictures that the wall was not visible anywhere. They seemed to live around a card table and a TV, with their cat Archie, a huge white long-haired male. We never saw a bedroom but it was made clear they had very little furniture outside that card table and a bed somewhere. When the National Gallery of Art took the collection to catalog it (and perhaps to buy it) it took several truck loads to remove it all. They couldn’t believe how much was stored in that tiny apartment. But unlike most collectors who made killings during the eighties and nineties, the Vogels were not interested in selling their collection, even though it was worth millions. That wasn’t in their DNA. They collected for the love of the work and they decided to give the collection to the National Gallery who eventually felt they had to give them something in return so they could survive and buy some furniture. So what did they do with the money? They bought more art, not a couch and a dining room table.
Most of the artists who became good friends—Richard Tuttle, Sol de Witt, Chuck Close, Christo and his wife, Lynda Benglis, Pat Steir, and many others—were also artists whose work they collected. Sol de Witt and Herb talked on the phone every Saturday for years. The Vogels, both of whom were very short, were perceived by the artists as a cute nebbish couple whose heart was in the right place. They admired then as they knew what they were doing and had bought things when some of the artists really needed the cash. They had started collecting in the early sixties. In time the couple became, if you will, mini-celebrities on the New York Art Scene, as they went to almost every show in town. They did little else, maybe a Broadway show once in a great while. They were all about working and collecting. Some extra money did come their way when they eventually sold a couple of properties they owned in New York.
There was one restriction on what they bought: it had to be small. It was the only way they got so many in their apartment. Nor could they afford larger paintings or high-priced items. Many artists gave them good deals too; they were that charmed by their eagerness and passion for art. Since there were so many pieces in the collection the Museum decided to take 2500 of the pieces and distribute 50 of them to 50 states and presumably that process has been completed after two years.
“Herb and Dorothy” was made in 2008. Herb’s health is not so good today and he and his beloved wife have stopped collecting. All I can say is it was an inspiring film and God bless the two of them.
Every once and a while I score with a sleeper film on NETFLIX. I had ordered a film for Saturday that I knew nothing about, a documentary called “Herb and Dorothy,” about a Jewish couple from New York City who collected art. The noteworthy thing about their collecting was they did it on the basis of a modest income, which enabled them to become world-class collectors of contemporary art, with an emphasis on minimal art, although that by no means defined their collecting.
God, what a life-affirming thing it was to see this film. Herb and Dorothy Vogel were far from typical collectors, profit-minded and greedy. They were an angelic unique pair, greedy only in the sense of collecting all that they could in one lifetime. In the end they bought over 4750 pieces, all of which somehow fitted into their rent-controlled one bedroom apartment. She was a reference Librarian in a Brooklyn Library, while Herb, who never finished high school (because he hated it), worked in a local Post Office. He schooled himself about the history of art and after they got married brought Dorothy along in her understanding of art. They dabbled with painting for as short while before they turned their full attention to collecting. One artist they collected said Herb was born with an “aesthetic eye.” Their apartment was clogged with art they collected; there were stacks from floor to ceiling; the walls were so jammed with pictures that the wall was not visible anywhere. They seemed to live around a card table and a TV, with their cat Archie, a huge white long-haired male. We never saw a bedroom but it was made clear they had very little furniture outside that card table and a bed somewhere. When the National Gallery of Art took the collection to catalog it (and perhaps to buy it) it took several truck loads to remove it all. They couldn’t believe how much was stored in that tiny apartment. But unlike most collectors who made killings during the eighties and nineties, the Vogels were not interested in selling their collection, even though it was worth millions. That wasn’t in their DNA. They collected for the love of the work and they decided to give the collection to the National Gallery who eventually felt they had to give them something in return so they could survive and buy some furniture. So what did they do with the money? They bought more art, not a couch and a dining room table.
Most of the artists who became good friends—Richard Tuttle, Sol de Witt, Chuck Close, Christo and his wife, Lynda Benglis, Pat Steir, and many others—were also artists whose work they collected. Sol de Witt and Herb talked on the phone every Saturday for years. The Vogels, both of whom were very short, were perceived by the artists as a cute nebbish couple whose heart was in the right place. They admired then as they knew what they were doing and had bought things when some of the artists really needed the cash. They had started collecting in the early sixties. In time the couple became, if you will, mini-celebrities on the New York Art Scene, as they went to almost every show in town. They did little else, maybe a Broadway show once in a great while. They were all about working and collecting. Some extra money did come their way when they eventually sold a couple of properties they owned in New York.
There was one restriction on what they bought: it had to be small. It was the only way they got so many in their apartment. Nor could they afford larger paintings or high-priced items. Many artists gave them good deals too; they were that charmed by their eagerness and passion for art. Since there were so many pieces in the collection the Museum decided to take 2500 of the pieces and distribute 50 of them to 50 states and presumably that process has been completed after two years.
“Herb and Dorothy” was made in 2008. Herb’s health is not so good today and he and his beloved wife have stopped collecting. All I can say is it was an inspiring film and God bless the two of them.
Call from Don Z.
2010_1_28 Call from Don Z.
I got a call from Don this afternoon, shortly after I had written him an email. We talked for an hour, which is my limit on the phone. It was only the second time he has called so I had to give him an hour. I hadn’t heard from him for 8 days so I wrote to find out if he was okay. He was.
We talked a lot about success and failure, something I know something about. It was tied in with how good or bad was our judgment about people. I started out telling him about Dan Christensen, a young man I had worked with at Bookman’s in the late 1990s; his ambition was to be a cartoonist and writer of graphic novels. I was skeptical he could make it in that field, as he had showed me some of his work and I thought it was okay but not great. He upped and moved to Paris in 1998. We exchanged letters for a couple of years, than I had no contact with him for a decade. Then two weeks ago he found me through Facebook.com and we have exchanged a couple of emails since then. And guess what? Not only is he now married with two boys, age six and four, he is making his living as a graphic novelist, having so far published six books, with three of them being color hardbacks. He said he wasn’t wealthy but he was able to sustain himself and his family on what he made as a cartoonist/writer. The important fact is he is doing what he likes to do. He is currently working on 140 page graphic novel about a fencing master who commits a murder but is arrested for a murder he did not commit. So far he hasn’t found a publisher but he remains hopeful.
Don in turn told me a story about one of Holt Murray’s sculpture students at Cabrillo College. He was great admirer of Holt and Modernism’s “cut-open-an acorn-and-see-the-beauty” aesthetic; but when he arrived at the University of Washington Grad School, when Don knew him, his work did not impress him. He thought it was pretty common within the framework of abstract sculpture. The guy told Don he wanted to be an artist/professor just like he and Holt. Don scoffed at that idea; he thought it would never happen. Several years then went by. Recently he found out the guy was teaching at some Eastern University and that he had just signed a contract with the City of New York to do a Public Art thing for a quarter million dollars. Don said he didn’t mind being wrong; indeed, it was more fun that way.
Neither Don nor I have ended up a great success in the eyes of our peers and the world’s judgment, although Don stuck it out as a University Professor. Part of me says, well, it takes a long time to tally the score. Is that wishful thinking? Who knows? But at the moment I can see myself as a failure, at least according to the conventional measurement. I had a successful entry into the world of professional art and university teaching, but in a few years I blew it, with political activism and disillusionment with college life and teaching. I felt very confined and angered by modern institutionalism. “You went to the top of the mountain, and then jumped off,” was how my situation was encapsulated by an academic friend of mine. I would add, “Into the unknown.” Yeah, something like that. Following that leap into the abyss I went off into a very private direction creating a very personal art, achieving what I set out to do, spending no less than 40 years in the effort, so within my own frame of reference I consider my art and writing a great success, a fulfillment of intentions in a worthy manner, even if the larger, public world doesn’t know it. I amuse myself by saying it is recorded in The Great Book of Life. But I am not so naïve as to ignore the fact that at this moment most people do regard me as an abject failure, one of those individuals who showed a lot of promise but fizzled in his mid-thirties and failed to reach his potential. Ah yes, I fell off the map and disappeared into a black hole of my own making. I have been treated that way by certain individuals, like, for example, my mother. She never forgave me for lacking the ambition to be a conventional success so she could brag on me like her woman friends could on their sons; and taking a job as a janitor as an alternative way to make a living was the absolute low point for her. Well, no doubt it was an unorthodox thing to do. But it fit with my background and who I was.
Looking back to San Jose, I remember a conversation I had with another grad student, Doug Vogel, who was utterly involved with the idea of “making it,” as the expression went in the early sixties, when I told him I thought I’d be a “beautiful failure” rather than a “worldly success.” That is a goal I have managed to attain, or perhaps it’s just a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why I said that in 1960 is a mystery to me, but I now look at it as a deeply intuitive thing to say.
The person in the Arts who I measure myself against in regards the issues of success and failure is Herman Melville. After his initial success of his popular sea tales and being characterized as “the man who lived with cannibals,” he went on to write MOBY DICK and PIERRE OR THE AMBIGUITIES, both failing miserably with his genteel readership, so when he died in 1891 no one remembered who he was or what he had written. After publishing a few short stories in magazines in the 1850s he went into hibernation, earning his living as a custom official on the docks on New York. He held that job for 22 years.
This is not to say I regard myself in the same category with Melville, no indeed, but I do see a dynamic between us that is similar: some initial success followed by years of obscurity and a dead-end job not equal to my talents. When Melville saw Hawthorne when they met in England after Herman’s dire days of public defeat back in America he told his friend and fellow writer, “I have decided to be annihilated.” I understand what he means and it can be an appealing choice after such a grim defeat of great purpose, but I have fought that feeling, pursuing my goals against all odds with as much passion as I could sustain over the long haul.
I got a call from Don this afternoon, shortly after I had written him an email. We talked for an hour, which is my limit on the phone. It was only the second time he has called so I had to give him an hour. I hadn’t heard from him for 8 days so I wrote to find out if he was okay. He was.
We talked a lot about success and failure, something I know something about. It was tied in with how good or bad was our judgment about people. I started out telling him about Dan Christensen, a young man I had worked with at Bookman’s in the late 1990s; his ambition was to be a cartoonist and writer of graphic novels. I was skeptical he could make it in that field, as he had showed me some of his work and I thought it was okay but not great. He upped and moved to Paris in 1998. We exchanged letters for a couple of years, than I had no contact with him for a decade. Then two weeks ago he found me through Facebook.com and we have exchanged a couple of emails since then. And guess what? Not only is he now married with two boys, age six and four, he is making his living as a graphic novelist, having so far published six books, with three of them being color hardbacks. He said he wasn’t wealthy but he was able to sustain himself and his family on what he made as a cartoonist/writer. The important fact is he is doing what he likes to do. He is currently working on 140 page graphic novel about a fencing master who commits a murder but is arrested for a murder he did not commit. So far he hasn’t found a publisher but he remains hopeful.
Don in turn told me a story about one of Holt Murray’s sculpture students at Cabrillo College. He was great admirer of Holt and Modernism’s “cut-open-an acorn-and-see-the-beauty” aesthetic; but when he arrived at the University of Washington Grad School, when Don knew him, his work did not impress him. He thought it was pretty common within the framework of abstract sculpture. The guy told Don he wanted to be an artist/professor just like he and Holt. Don scoffed at that idea; he thought it would never happen. Several years then went by. Recently he found out the guy was teaching at some Eastern University and that he had just signed a contract with the City of New York to do a Public Art thing for a quarter million dollars. Don said he didn’t mind being wrong; indeed, it was more fun that way.
Neither Don nor I have ended up a great success in the eyes of our peers and the world’s judgment, although Don stuck it out as a University Professor. Part of me says, well, it takes a long time to tally the score. Is that wishful thinking? Who knows? But at the moment I can see myself as a failure, at least according to the conventional measurement. I had a successful entry into the world of professional art and university teaching, but in a few years I blew it, with political activism and disillusionment with college life and teaching. I felt very confined and angered by modern institutionalism. “You went to the top of the mountain, and then jumped off,” was how my situation was encapsulated by an academic friend of mine. I would add, “Into the unknown.” Yeah, something like that. Following that leap into the abyss I went off into a very private direction creating a very personal art, achieving what I set out to do, spending no less than 40 years in the effort, so within my own frame of reference I consider my art and writing a great success, a fulfillment of intentions in a worthy manner, even if the larger, public world doesn’t know it. I amuse myself by saying it is recorded in The Great Book of Life. But I am not so naïve as to ignore the fact that at this moment most people do regard me as an abject failure, one of those individuals who showed a lot of promise but fizzled in his mid-thirties and failed to reach his potential. Ah yes, I fell off the map and disappeared into a black hole of my own making. I have been treated that way by certain individuals, like, for example, my mother. She never forgave me for lacking the ambition to be a conventional success so she could brag on me like her woman friends could on their sons; and taking a job as a janitor as an alternative way to make a living was the absolute low point for her. Well, no doubt it was an unorthodox thing to do. But it fit with my background and who I was.
Looking back to San Jose, I remember a conversation I had with another grad student, Doug Vogel, who was utterly involved with the idea of “making it,” as the expression went in the early sixties, when I told him I thought I’d be a “beautiful failure” rather than a “worldly success.” That is a goal I have managed to attain, or perhaps it’s just a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why I said that in 1960 is a mystery to me, but I now look at it as a deeply intuitive thing to say.
The person in the Arts who I measure myself against in regards the issues of success and failure is Herman Melville. After his initial success of his popular sea tales and being characterized as “the man who lived with cannibals,” he went on to write MOBY DICK and PIERRE OR THE AMBIGUITIES, both failing miserably with his genteel readership, so when he died in 1891 no one remembered who he was or what he had written. After publishing a few short stories in magazines in the 1850s he went into hibernation, earning his living as a custom official on the docks on New York. He held that job for 22 years.
This is not to say I regard myself in the same category with Melville, no indeed, but I do see a dynamic between us that is similar: some initial success followed by years of obscurity and a dead-end job not equal to my talents. When Melville saw Hawthorne when they met in England after Herman’s dire days of public defeat back in America he told his friend and fellow writer, “I have decided to be annihilated.” I understand what he means and it can be an appealing choice after such a grim defeat of great purpose, but I have fought that feeling, pursuing my goals against all odds with as much passion as I could sustain over the long haul.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Obama among the Cannibals
Nasima,
No doubt the Republicans when they invited the president to participate in their Friday retreat viewed it as one of those old fashion “Roasts” that Sinatra’s Rat Pack used to put on for big laughs. The “Loyal Opposition” was like 140 cannibals sitting in wait of a feast. But Obama turned the tables on them because they acceded to his request that the TV cameras should record and broadcast the event, a big mistake, which many of them admitted afterwards.
Now, that was unusual for such events; they usually take place in private behind closed doors, so no one would be embarrassed later. In this case it turned out to be a shrewd move by the president and something the Republicans were cringing about later—and with good reason as they looked like a bunch of nay-saying self-important schmucks. David not only stood up well to Goliath, he cut them off at the knees, outtalking them, running circles around their talking points disguised as questions, showed great command of the facts and his own mental prowess, was witty and self-deprecating when that was called for, and in general outshone the eager but vulnerable questioners. Your mother and I stuck with all two hours of the re-broadcast on MSNBC last night, which included observations made by the trio of Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Matthews. They talked in-between numerous confrontations at the retreat. It was gratifying to see and without a doubt the president’s best performance in a long while and particularly effective due to the fact it happened in the lion’s den.
If you didn’t see it, try to; it would be worth your while.
Dad
No doubt the Republicans when they invited the president to participate in their Friday retreat viewed it as one of those old fashion “Roasts” that Sinatra’s Rat Pack used to put on for big laughs. The “Loyal Opposition” was like 140 cannibals sitting in wait of a feast. But Obama turned the tables on them because they acceded to his request that the TV cameras should record and broadcast the event, a big mistake, which many of them admitted afterwards.
Now, that was unusual for such events; they usually take place in private behind closed doors, so no one would be embarrassed later. In this case it turned out to be a shrewd move by the president and something the Republicans were cringing about later—and with good reason as they looked like a bunch of nay-saying self-important schmucks. David not only stood up well to Goliath, he cut them off at the knees, outtalking them, running circles around their talking points disguised as questions, showed great command of the facts and his own mental prowess, was witty and self-deprecating when that was called for, and in general outshone the eager but vulnerable questioners. Your mother and I stuck with all two hours of the re-broadcast on MSNBC last night, which included observations made by the trio of Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Matthews. They talked in-between numerous confrontations at the retreat. It was gratifying to see and without a doubt the president’s best performance in a long while and particularly effective due to the fact it happened in the lion’s den.
If you didn’t see it, try to; it would be worth your while.
Dad
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Weeds
2010_1_27 “Weeds.”
Sue and I finished “Weeds,” the 5th Season last night. It was not quite what it used to be and a million miles from where it was in the beginning, that is to say, a lighthearted satire with the ticky-tack song leading the way. The ending of Season 5 perfectly illustrates what I am talking about. The tone was angrier and there was more violence, and what humor there was was spottier, falling in the cracks between dramatic events and sequences. Some of the humor seemed out of place because of the change of tone. There will be a 6th Season and I won’t be surprised to see the series end in a tragedy.
Nancy Botwin’s (Mary-Louise Parker) attempt to have Pilar Suazo eliminated comes to naught because Guillermo Diaz was in Pilar’s employ and told her what Nancy wanted him to do. Pilar throws this in Nancy’s face at the party she was throwing for Estaban Reyes (Damian Bichir) who has just return to being her political protégé. This encounter occurred at poolside while the party was happening inside the mansion. Pilar got Estaban to re-up with her by blackmailing him; by showing him all the documents and photos she had on file that illustrated his illegal activities. He told Nancy he had no choice. And worst of all Pilar, who Nancy called “Mexicunt,” then threatened to kill Nancy’s two boys, Silas (Hunter Parish) and Shane (Alex Gould.) She reacts with horror and with loathing for this evil bitch she has to deal with as her chief tormentor. Then, suddenly, someone off camera whacked Pilar hard on the side of the head with a croquet mallet, sending her flying into the pool. After her splash down we saw her body floating spread-eagle in the water, blood oozing out of her head.
In the short interval before we see who wielded the mallet I considered who the assailant might be. My first choice was Cesar (Enrique Castillo) who was, after all, the professional killer in the current cast of characters. We had earlier seen him dispassionately dispatch three guys without blinking an eye. Or it could have been Ignacio (Hemky Madera) one crazy Mexican who had recently beaten the hell out of a golfer who had the nerve to give him the finger. He had picked up a 5 iron and clubbed the poor bastard into unconsciousness. Shane had witnessed this abuse and was repulsed by it, calling Ignacio an “animal.” He could have enjoyed killing a woman just for the pleasure of it. But no, I wasn’t even close: it was Shane who did it, Nancy’s 14 year son. And the first thing he said to his shocked mother who was standing there with her mouth open was, “I couldn’t find a golf club.” The camera returns to Pilar’s body floating in the blue water, a bird’s eye view.
So at the conclusion of the 5th Season we see Shane, the youngster in the crowd, go from being horrified by Ignacio violence with a stranger with a 5 iron, which had made him so critical of the men who worked for Estaban, his mother’s drug lord husband, to the trauma he felt after he got shot and began to see life from a darker perspective during his recovery period, to the violent 14 year old who threatened some would-be rapists with a knife at their throat and by copying the behavior and technique of Ignacio, who earlier had repulsed him. He had come full circle in his attitude about violence. Nancy, already disturbed and ill at ease with her parenting, felt like a failure after Shane’s attack on Pilar, which did of course remove her tormentor from the scene and prevented her from harming Silas and Shane, so maybe it could be read as a good thing, or at least self-defense. But the rationalization didn’t bear up that well against the weight and gravity of the karma, the moral consequence of the killing and her life style. She had run afoul of the choice she had made shortly after the death of her husband, Judah. She had had no idea of what the consequences could be. One son had nothing going except his skill at growing and selling pot, while her baby had just crushed the skull of a woman and he did not feel bad over what he did. She realized she could never win any prizes for parenting, and neither would Estaban. It turned out that his visiting teenage daughter who lived in Paris and went to school there, who he had felt was a higher caliber person than Nancy’s two boys, was crushed when he was told she was a heroin addict. That stopped his bragging and cut him down to her size.
Many other things happened during the 5th Season to the secondary characters. The clownish personalities, Celia (Elizabeth Perkins) and Dean Hodes and Doug Wilson, were a bit boring and over the top, too absurd next to the drama going on the with the primary characters. Andy Botwin (Justin Kirk) fell in love with the female doctor, Audra Kitson (Alanis Monisette) but deserts her when the anti-abortionist captures her. Earlier he had an affair with Nancy’s sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh.) But, in the final analysis, Season 5 was focused on the momentum toward a darker space for the Botwin family.
Sue and I finished “Weeds,” the 5th Season last night. It was not quite what it used to be and a million miles from where it was in the beginning, that is to say, a lighthearted satire with the ticky-tack song leading the way. The ending of Season 5 perfectly illustrates what I am talking about. The tone was angrier and there was more violence, and what humor there was was spottier, falling in the cracks between dramatic events and sequences. Some of the humor seemed out of place because of the change of tone. There will be a 6th Season and I won’t be surprised to see the series end in a tragedy.
Nancy Botwin’s (Mary-Louise Parker) attempt to have Pilar Suazo eliminated comes to naught because Guillermo Diaz was in Pilar’s employ and told her what Nancy wanted him to do. Pilar throws this in Nancy’s face at the party she was throwing for Estaban Reyes (Damian Bichir) who has just return to being her political protégé. This encounter occurred at poolside while the party was happening inside the mansion. Pilar got Estaban to re-up with her by blackmailing him; by showing him all the documents and photos she had on file that illustrated his illegal activities. He told Nancy he had no choice. And worst of all Pilar, who Nancy called “Mexicunt,” then threatened to kill Nancy’s two boys, Silas (Hunter Parish) and Shane (Alex Gould.) She reacts with horror and with loathing for this evil bitch she has to deal with as her chief tormentor. Then, suddenly, someone off camera whacked Pilar hard on the side of the head with a croquet mallet, sending her flying into the pool. After her splash down we saw her body floating spread-eagle in the water, blood oozing out of her head.
In the short interval before we see who wielded the mallet I considered who the assailant might be. My first choice was Cesar (Enrique Castillo) who was, after all, the professional killer in the current cast of characters. We had earlier seen him dispassionately dispatch three guys without blinking an eye. Or it could have been Ignacio (Hemky Madera) one crazy Mexican who had recently beaten the hell out of a golfer who had the nerve to give him the finger. He had picked up a 5 iron and clubbed the poor bastard into unconsciousness. Shane had witnessed this abuse and was repulsed by it, calling Ignacio an “animal.” He could have enjoyed killing a woman just for the pleasure of it. But no, I wasn’t even close: it was Shane who did it, Nancy’s 14 year son. And the first thing he said to his shocked mother who was standing there with her mouth open was, “I couldn’t find a golf club.” The camera returns to Pilar’s body floating in the blue water, a bird’s eye view.
So at the conclusion of the 5th Season we see Shane, the youngster in the crowd, go from being horrified by Ignacio violence with a stranger with a 5 iron, which had made him so critical of the men who worked for Estaban, his mother’s drug lord husband, to the trauma he felt after he got shot and began to see life from a darker perspective during his recovery period, to the violent 14 year old who threatened some would-be rapists with a knife at their throat and by copying the behavior and technique of Ignacio, who earlier had repulsed him. He had come full circle in his attitude about violence. Nancy, already disturbed and ill at ease with her parenting, felt like a failure after Shane’s attack on Pilar, which did of course remove her tormentor from the scene and prevented her from harming Silas and Shane, so maybe it could be read as a good thing, or at least self-defense. But the rationalization didn’t bear up that well against the weight and gravity of the karma, the moral consequence of the killing and her life style. She had run afoul of the choice she had made shortly after the death of her husband, Judah. She had had no idea of what the consequences could be. One son had nothing going except his skill at growing and selling pot, while her baby had just crushed the skull of a woman and he did not feel bad over what he did. She realized she could never win any prizes for parenting, and neither would Estaban. It turned out that his visiting teenage daughter who lived in Paris and went to school there, who he had felt was a higher caliber person than Nancy’s two boys, was crushed when he was told she was a heroin addict. That stopped his bragging and cut him down to her size.
Many other things happened during the 5th Season to the secondary characters. The clownish personalities, Celia (Elizabeth Perkins) and Dean Hodes and Doug Wilson, were a bit boring and over the top, too absurd next to the drama going on the with the primary characters. Andy Botwin (Justin Kirk) fell in love with the female doctor, Audra Kitson (Alanis Monisette) but deserts her when the anti-abortionist captures her. Earlier he had an affair with Nancy’s sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh.) But, in the final analysis, Season 5 was focused on the momentum toward a darker space for the Botwin family.
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