a Japanese aesthetic

The Asian Pear in our back yard is just coming into its annual majestic bloom, and set against the back wall of the house, it looks as though it's auditioning for some Victorian wallpaper.

 

fleeing the storm

If we hadn't been able to change our flight to today from tomorrow, we'd have been stuck in NY for - well, who knows how long?  The flight we were due to take is already canceled.  And I have a PhD defense on Monday morning ... So here we are, back in LA - and the cats are very glad to see us early!

 

bits of NYC

For various long and complicated reasons, today didn't take quite the shape that I hoped that it would or that I planned for, but when doesn't one enjoy walking round parts of NYC, even when there's an increasingly chill wind assaulting one round corners?  So meet a sticker supporting human (as oppose to AI, I take it, rather than, say, feline) artists;

a bee friendly manifestation in Madison Square park (the park that has a statue to Chester Alan Arthur in it, one of the most forgotten presidents, but actually a good civil rights supporter in many ways); and some oysters at Grand Central Station.  Where would a trip to NYC be without a visit to to Oyster Bar?

 

a warmer day in NYC

I'm always happy for a walk in Central Park, especially in winter: it was looking as good as ever today.  En route to the Met, to see the Helene Schjerfback show - a Finnish painter I's never heard of until this show was announced - late C19th and first half of the twentieth century, passing through realism to a kind of mysticism - as here - which were the works I liked best, especially when influenced by her time in Italy - to still lifes and endless, increasingly angrily melancholic self-portraits.

Met up briefly with a grad student who's a Fellow in the Met this year, and then on to a show about quilts and ecology at the American Folk Art museum: textiles; dyes; recycling - really, very like my class on quilts in my US art course, but this meant I took lots of useful images;

and then back for one last spectacular sunset from the apartment before taking last night's party host out for a spectacularly good Greek meal.

 

Alice's book launch

... Black Power White Heat is now out in the world , and today Alice gave a wonderful short talk and answered Q and As at a private gathering in a most wonderful apartment on the upper east side.  Indeed, the apartment was not only wonderful in itself, but the art work was extraordinary - with the result that I can't, I feel, show pictures of the interior since, well, it's not mine, and not a public museum, and that, alas, rules out pictures of the gathering as a whole.  But it was a terrific event, and glasses were most definitely raised.

 

another chilly day in NYC

Same apartment; different direction; even more freezing; same kind of work, and lots of it.  BUT - it was Alice's book publication day, and we just went out to celebrate!  And the proper party happens tomorrow!  And the cat sitter tells us that the copies have just arrived in LA!

 

a day's work

Or: from dawn to dusk.  It was horribly cold today - and yes, it's going to get worse (apart from Thursday).  Of course I went out - what are coffee shops for, if not to be visited? - but, given that a lot is closed on MLK day by way of museums, etc, in New York; and given that I had a lot of admin to do (sorting out interviews for potential graduate students - the kind of thing that office staff used to do; letters of rec, and so on), I was extraordinarily grateful that out VRBO apartment has a completely compelling, endlessly changing view.