Lately time seems to lurch and lag like a student driver trying to master consistent acceleration. I have lots of time in my under-booked retirement, but still it slips away. Suddenly a month is gone and I’m not sure where it went. Days turn into weeks, and our home routine becomes a rut. Maybe with this past weekend’s annual launch of Daylight Saving Time and its longer days I will get my slow car in gear and punch up my productivity.
almost finished hostess gift
I read some good books and did some painting and embroidery last month, so it wasn’t a wash. But I did notice my calendar was depressingly short of excitement. Anticipation is ramping up now, however, and providing more fun tasks. The 2020 Covid-cancelled trip to the UK is back for this May, and Cathy and I are happily planning our adventure. We’ve sorted the flights, hotels, trains, and tours and are busy making hostess gifts and figuring out appropriate clothes. My biggest challenge: buying walking shoes for my problem feet. Amazon offers a wonderful solution with “Try Before You Buy” and I’ve spent way too many hours online-searching tennis shoes! Shoe shopping in stores is hard because you can’t tell in three minutes whether appearance (“what a cool color!”) is trumping comfort. So far I’ve returned eight pairs at our local Whole Foods that didn’t quite work, but I’m hopeful the latest candidate (in periwinkle blue!!) is the ticket!!
An unexpected highlight of my quiet life in 2024 is the slow blossoming of Paola’s Christmas gift, an amaryllis bulb. Coated in bright red wax, all that it requires is sun and time to grow a stalk, buds, and then fabulous red flowers with white centers. The first was the slowest to open, then more and more unfurled such beauty that I’ve taken many photos and painted a couple versions, in oils and in watercolors. This particular coloration is called Minerva Amaryllis, sporting glorious goddess finery. Yes, I appreciate the little things in life!
My sister and I were in our 20s in the 70s, and now we are in our 70s in the 20s!! And we still travel with the joie de vivre of our younger selves. Just back from an Arizona adventure, I really appreciate seeing the world with Cathy. Both of us value experience over acquisition and comfort food over fancy restaurants. We can get up and out early, and feel no need to stay up late. And if we can’t sleep, we read or eat or both.
This road trip was motivated by a desire to visit our brother in his new place in Tucson, and the crazy fact that neither of us had ever visited the Grand Canyon. So south to north, we plotted a 5-night escape and managed to include friends, family, and three National Parks! We both take beaucoup photographs and enjoy outdoor sketching, so this was an itinerary with lots of opportunities. And between our mountain cabin overlooking a roaring Oak Creek and the charming BnBs in Tucson and Indio, our accommodations were inexpensive and welcoming. And we only ate in restaurants twice!!
Every summer Cathy drives eight hours to our family vacation place in the Smoky Mountains. I try to join her whenever possible, but this year we shared Arizona instead. I’m sad to miss The Mountain House in 2023, but the Forest Houses outside Sedona were a lovely substitute. I hope she and I can stay healthy enough to visit Scotland – or wherever we decide on – next year. Retirement is such a blessing and I don’t want to waste a minute of it!
Oops, I’ve let a whole month slip by without an entry – too busy with planning and enjoying my first trip to the Right coast since Covid! Cathy and I worked out a really fun itinerary, friends and family were great hosts, and the weather gods were totally in alignment. That last bit was just barely the case as hurricane Ian was slamming Florida as I flew home! Here are the highlights:
Female Justices and us!
Flying into National Airport in Virginia (I refuse to call it Reagan National) was easy and my high school bud and college roommate Martie picked me up and hosted my first two nights. She and husband Chris live in a self-built (father/son) amazing log house set in a lush green dale with pond, ducks and deer. And totally secluded from the surrounding urban area of Alexandria! Next day we drove into DC and met up with my other long-time pal Pat and my younger daughter Devon who was also visiting her bestie and had timed her trip to join up with mine. We four loved the Whistler’s Women in White exhibit in the East Wing of National Gallery, wandered through the NGA to see some other favorites, then lunched in the sculpture garden before walking over to the National Portrait Gallery to see the winners of their annual (or biennial?) competition. Just the right amount of art and a tad too much walking for my bum knee. Back at Martie’s, she and Chris grilled dinner outdoors, and party included Pat and Mike, Devon and Danny. Good times, with deer photobombing my people shots!
Tuckahoe Plantation, Thomas Jefferson’s boyhood home
Early Thursday morning Martie dropped me at the train station near their house and I was in Richmond by 9:30. Cathy picked me up and we went directly to a plein air painting event at Tuckahoe Plantation. Beautiful setting to wander and sketch, and so relaxing. Back at her house, she and Tim made us BLTs for lunch and we sat and chatted on their porch with entertainment by kitties Inky and Moochy. Then off to meet D&D’s train, fast-food supper and dropped them at niece Julie’s house. Best part of that afternoon was the gorgeous orange sunset as we drove to Chesterfield!
We enjoyed the Tyler clan and having everyone together!
Friday morning was more art-related errands: picking up and dropping off Cathy’s paintings to local exhibits, then some prep for next day’s pre-dawn departure for the mountains! The Dartez crew (Cathy’s younger daughter, husband, and 3 kids) arrived from Chesapeake about 3:30, and we all headed over to Julie’s for the pizza party with their whole family. Good fun and silly antics around a fire pit in their wooded back yard, a group photo, and back to Cathy’s.
Saturday morning Cathy and I were up and out and got to Julie’s by 6:00 a.m. to pick up D&D – still dark out, the sun did some more special effects as we drove south. I tried to spell Cathy on driving, but by this time my knee was not cooperating so she had to do most of it (neither D nor D drive!!). Made good time and were in Bryson City – after obligatory stop at the Asheville Farmer’s Market – in time to catch some of the Harvest Festival, pick up some boiled peanuts (yum), and get deli dishes and groceries for the weekend. As we were unpacking at the Mountain House, Margaret roared up the driveway (too steep for quiet ascent) and invited us to ride up to the top of Hickory Cove in her Polaris all-terrain vehicle for the amazing views. Spectacular afternoon sunshine and long vistas of rolling Smoky Mountains, so green and unlike our mountains here in SoCal! Quiet evening on the porch before early to bed.
Sunday Cathy and I made our traditional Mountain House breakfast, a menu dating back to when we were kids and Daddy and Aunt Ruth did the honors: biscuits, bacon and fried apples!! Cousin Jesse stopped by for some laughter and sharing memories, and brought us some of his chocolate chip cookies. Late morning we drove back into Bryson and managed to meet up (organized by text) with Devon’s good friend Rhye and her family. They hung out at a small brewery on the main street while Cathy and I did some window shopping, then we all discovered a beautiful spot we never knew about: Island Park is just that – an island, reached by footbridge, in the river that bisects town! There were canoes and kayaks practicing in the rapids, and Cathy and I did some watercolors while the kids walked around the park. There was an ice cream stop before goodbyes, then we four drove back to the Mountain House and ate leftovers for supper. Devon and I played some Chinese Checkers, and she outsmarted me twice! After admiring the starry night, crawled under our quilts (very chilly night) and were immediately wide awake as rain hit the tin roof with a short blast of crazy noise!
Monday we decided to go to Deep Creek to see the waterfalls as it was too chilly for the usual summer tubing activity. Again Cathy and I did some sketching while the youngers hiked the trails on another beautiful crisp fall day. Everyone was getting hungry, so we found delicious BBQ from a food truck parked by a tap room in Bryson, and visited the history museum in the old Courthouse. When we got back to the House, Jesse stopped by for another fun chin-wag of story-telling and memories. He and Margaret live on the mountain most of the year, and built their own sweet 2-story house which has recently been visited by local bears!!
That was the coldest night yet, and Cathy hauled in more blankets from her car for us to curl up under. Tuesday morning we all helped close the house up, short version, as Cathy was coming back for a night after taking us to Atlanta. Headed to Ann and Walter’s in Hiawassee for lunch and a nice visit – she made soup and ambrosia – and looking at old family photos. D&D helped them reconfigure wifi on their devices, and we took pix together before hitting the road again. Stopped at Ann’s favorite tourist spot, Mercier Orchards, for shopping (huge selection of decor, gifts, foods) and a gas-up for the road. We paid $2.97 a gallon, half what fuel costs in LA!! Got to Woodstock and Lydia’s house in time for a big family pizza party: she’d included her three kids, spouses, baby, plus our cousin Fred and Sara!! Lots of kidding and laughter, and admiring her big mastiff-lab pup Walter. Lydia is a massage therapist, and worked on my knee with her various devices, creams, and massage. Felt good but too far down the hurt path to fix me.
Ann and Walter
Wednesday morning we relaxed and decided it was too difficult to include a stop at the High Art Museum before the airport, so Cathy departed solo, Lydia went to work, and D&D and I called a Lyft after hanging out with Walter on the porch awhile. Got to ATL with couple hours before our flights, which ended up not being too much: their TSA line was way long! D&D were also flying Delta but not the same terminal as they were going home to Portland! My flight was full, but luckily I had an aisle seat and could stretch my knee during the 4-hour flight.
It was wonderful to spend time with my sister, as well as D&D, and all the nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends!! Mercer and Echo survived my absence, and it was good to be back home after my Great Escape ’22!!
First day of summer is kind of anticlimactic, midway between big holidays Memorial Weekend and 4th of July, but I both like and dread it because Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year. And then days get shorter – ugh. The other downside to this week’s start of summer is that it precedes June 30th – marking one whole half of the year gone!! Time flies faster the older we get, which translates to aging faster: yikes!
And on the subject of time, I realized more than a month has gone by since my last post. Time to get back to my good intentions to write weekly. I put “blog” on my daily to-do list, but you know how that works. So here goes with a catch-up on thoughts I meant to write about…
Today is Father’s Day and Juneteenth – two good reasons to celebrate, and for the first time the latter is a federal holiday by executive order. We video-chatted this morning with our daughters and son-in-law, in honor of Father’s Day. And I’m getting excited because Whitney is coming down for July 4th weekend and Devon and Danny are meeting me on the Right Coast in September! We miss the girls with them both living in Oregon.
Spring has been pleasant here in SoCal – only a few triple-digit days so far, and lots of May Gray and June Gloom. My plants are blooming and aren’t suffering from the water rationing yet. We started using buckets in our showers and the kitchen sink to catch the heat-up waste, and it is amazing how much watering I can do with just those bonus bits previously lost down the drain. When summer’s killer heat arrives, I will remember spring with fond nostalgia…
Artventure journal pages for Getty Galz visit to the Broad Art Collection
I’m keeping busy with art making – “Every Day in May” drawings, designing Getty Underground (biennial staff art show) posters and signage, and now summer art classes in figure drawing and watercolor still life. Great impetus to create, as I easily fall into reading as my default activity/non-activity! And now I have a trip to look forward to: life is good.
It seems I haven’t written in almost two weeks – and I was planning to get to this every few days! The funny thing is, today I was back at the Getty Center, site of my last entry. And in between I visited the Getty Villa – so art museums are obviously my favorite places!! Today a few of us docents gathered to brainstorm ideas for the virtual classroom art experiences that we are providing through the Getty – in lieu of the on-site tours we gave pre-pandemic. We also gravitated and could barely drag ourselves away from the just-opened exhibit on Holbein!! Such fabulous portraits, my favorite subject matter. I’ll include some of the photos I took (my phone camera was overheating with the excitement!), and in the next paragraph a quote from a writer of weekly literary blogs, formerly called BrainPickings, newly rechristened the Marginalian! Enjoy…
“This is always, at bottom, a discourse with oneself: me with myself, in writing it; you with yourself, in reading it. We bring to anything — a book, a love — the whole of what we are, projecting onto it every experience we have ever had and every unanswered question reverberating through the deepest chambers of our being. If it is worthy — the book, as the love — and if we are lucky, it reflects us back to ourselves magnified yet transformed, luminous with a larger self-image of possibility, more alive, more awake. Better able to see how our temporal, marginal lives shimmer with meaning. Better able to see ourselves as the makers of it, whether we call it love or art.” – Maria Popova
Holbein – Capturing Character in the Renaissance October 19, 2021–January 9, 2022, GETTY CENTER
While on the Right Coast in August, I was able to feed my passion for art museums big time! After our nature week in the Smoky Mountains, we did a loop through Chadds Ford, PA, then to Philly, PA, and back to D.C. I make journal entries for every “artventure”, and here are scans of pages from these recent treks. My co-conspirators who shared some or all of these art-outings include my sister Cathy, my friend from high school and college roommate Martie, and my long time best bud from last year of college Pat. All are also art lovers and creatives who are always happy to indulge me when I visit. If you can’t read my handwriting, comment and I will clarify 🙂
Two pages from my August 2017 nature journal – watercolors & haiku
When we go to the mountains, my sister and I always do journals of some kind. They often feature our illustrations of nature encountered, along with photos and poems that help us remember the special time spent with family and friends. I especially like to write haiku, the ancient form of Japanese 17-syllable verse that traditionally evokes images of the natural world. They are fun to compose and great little snapshots of memory.
In fact, this watercolor I did from a photograph I took of sunflowers is all the memory I have now of the beautiful scene in Bryson City. My phone camera was saving images to an extra SD card – which got corrupted!! Sometimes modern technology is no match for the act of drawing and painting in order to preserve experiences…
The Getty Center had several exhibits happening when I visited on July 22. I was most interested to see the “David Hockney 80th Birthday” Shows, but both were extremely small selections from his huge range of work, and not my favorites at that. I enjoyed the “Birth of Pastel” more – just one room of lovely works that illustrate the transition of this particular medium from its use in drawings to actual pastel paintings. And a female painter, Rosalba Carriera, 1673-1757, was “the greatest pastellist of the early 18th century, patronized by monarchs and nobility from her native Venice…to Paris”. She also influenced many artists, including Parisien Charles-Antoine Coypel, 1694-1752.
Another temporary exhibit was “Eyewitness Views: Making History in 18th Century Europe”. These mostly large scale paintings documented important events of their time. I liked the super-dramatic scenes of fire and volcanic eruptions – capturing the heat and destruction before every disaster could be seen as “breaking news” on CNN.
Among the permanent galleries, I stumbled on a lovely still life by one of my all time favorite artists, Jean-Étienne Liotard, Swiss 1702-1789. His “photo realism” is often depicting quirky compositions, and this one is especially complex and playful at the same time!
The actual reason I was at the Getty this particular Saturday was to participate in group interviews to be a Classroom Tour Docent! The program provides nine months of training to prepare docents to “share” all the works in the museum, and docents agree to volunteer for at least one day a week for two years. I think I would really enjoy this commitment, and hope I’ll be selected…art museums ARE my happy place!!
Images: (1) my photo of the stairways outside west wing; (2) “A Muse”, Carriera; (3) “Portrait of a Woman Sewing” and detail of lace, Coypel; (4) “Still Life: Tea Set”, Liotard; (5) “Decoration of the Calle Platerias” detail, Quiros; (6) “Self Portrait”, Hockney
Our spring trip to Holland, Germany and Belgium reaffirmed my eternal love of travel. We visited old friends in each country, which is also a rewarding way to go: seeing the sights through local eyes. As always, I took lots of photos using my Samsung phone camera, and “dragged” Man Mercer to many art museums. He’s actually quite amenable to my mania, and never rushes me, and enjoys the exit through the gift shop as much as anyone. Lucky me!
This ink and watercolor on vellum is from my photo of the main square in Bruges, Belgium. The thriving ancient city was a key location in the book series my sister and I just read set during the late 1400s: “House of Niccolo” by Dorothy Dunnett. The characters traveled to many countries over the course of eight volumes, but the story began in Bruges.
Today I’m visiting an exhibit at the Fowler, the art collection at UCLA, and the show is about African textiles and fashion and the links to Holland and other European manufacturers. I am very interested in the gorgeous colors and patterns of African cloth, and can’t wait to learn more. Photos to follow!
Curiosity tickles my itchy feet – as I used to say, “buy me a ticket, and I’ll fly anywhere”
Last year I started making a journal of my art outings – museums and historic places – and I do a page or three for each “artventure”. Here are pages from recent visits to the Skirball Cultural Center and Museum of Contemporary Art, both here in Los Angeles. Remembering for me is all about visuals recorded, and by photographing things I can recall them. I studied “schema” – the brain’s filing system – in my teaching coursework, and my noggin totally relies on pictures to retrieve memories! (Love my Samsung 5S phone camera!!!)
Open Your Eyes! 