I can't get over this feeling that it's going to be a good year.
Despite my tendency to be cranky and maybe a bit old before my time, I do believe good things are coming.
Honestly, it's not something I can effectively describe or defend.
As you read this, I hope you can share my optimism and I hope that 2015 brings you health, happiness and peace.
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Something Is Very Wrong
So, trending on Twitter tonight is #ShootThePolice.
I kid you not. Two NYPD officers were killed while sitting in their squad car today by some wonderful vigilante. Yup. There are people in Twitter calling him a hero.
Hero? He killed his girlfriend in Baltimore a few days ago. He was already a fugitive from justice. And then the coward shot himself when cornered by police on the subway.
Something is very wrong. The police are no longer members of the community. And members of the community believe the best way to respond is to block traffic... or loot.... or kill other police.
It's all wrong. Militarization of the police will not make our neighborhoods safer. But meaningless protests won't either.
I have no solutions. At least not right now. I'm sick over this.
I kid you not. Two NYPD officers were killed while sitting in their squad car today by some wonderful vigilante. Yup. There are people in Twitter calling him a hero.
Hero? He killed his girlfriend in Baltimore a few days ago. He was already a fugitive from justice. And then the coward shot himself when cornered by police on the subway.
Something is very wrong. The police are no longer members of the community. And members of the community believe the best way to respond is to block traffic... or loot.... or kill other police.
It's all wrong. Militarization of the police will not make our neighborhoods safer. But meaningless protests won't either.
I have no solutions. At least not right now. I'm sick over this.
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Passion Play
Four years ago at a Sotheby's auction, a painting by Amedeo Modigliani sold for $68.9 million. At the time it was one of the most expensive prices ever obtained for a painting through auction. It was sold to an anonymous Russian middleman via phone representing an anonymous Russian buyer. A billionaire oligarch? A wheeler-wheeler dealer mobster? Putin? Who knows except that the painting, "Nu Assis Sur un Divan" (If my high school French holds up), "Nude Sitting on a Divan," completed in 1917 will probably never be seen by the public.
Last month my girlfriend and I trekked over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sitting on the eastern edge of Central Park in Manhattan, a giant and regal home for history and art, perhaps the finest in the U.S. and one of the world's great museums, to see a display of Cubists, a show of the collection of Ronald Lauder, he the scion of the Lauder beauty products empire. We also found the gallery (there are dozens and dozens of them, a veritable maze of discovery in the great facility), which houses the great facility's only Modigliani (well, the only one on display). The gallery was empty, almost forgotten among so many other galleries with 10 centuries of masterpieces. Same model. Another nude.
The woman, Jeanne Hebuterne, was Modigliani's lover and mother of his child. She is the subject of much of Modigliani's work, his inspiration and passion. Getting within arm's length of the lithe figure of "Recumbent Nude," I easily transported back to their post-WW1 Paris studio.... the beginnings of modern art.... and, as a voyeur, could see and smell and hear the intimacy which inspired Modigliani. It is love of course.... sensuous, on fire and deep rooted with nothing else in the universe other than each other, a canvas and a brush painting with broad, maddening and determined speed, and in the end.... a sweaty clench and just desserts. For people with nothing there is great wealth, potential .... everything.... in love.
As it is sometimes with genius and focused determination, tragedy accompanies. Modigliani, an outcast from his well to do Italian family (as was Hebuterne with her family for taking up with the artist), remained poor, his art at the time never accepted. The great nudes, dripping with energy, passion and furnace heat, were traded for a month's lodgings, art supplies and weeks' worth of meals.
Hygiene and health were ignored and in 1920, three years after "Nude Sitting on a Divan" was finished, he died suddenly in a squalid room with only Jeanne at his bedside after contracting Tubercular Meningitis. He was 34. On the following day, his great love, heavily pregnant, inconsolable, broke free from the arms of her father and threw herself to her death from a fifth floor window.
Last month my girlfriend and I trekked over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sitting on the eastern edge of Central Park in Manhattan, a giant and regal home for history and art, perhaps the finest in the U.S. and one of the world's great museums, to see a display of Cubists, a show of the collection of Ronald Lauder, he the scion of the Lauder beauty products empire. We also found the gallery (there are dozens and dozens of them, a veritable maze of discovery in the great facility), which houses the great facility's only Modigliani (well, the only one on display). The gallery was empty, almost forgotten among so many other galleries with 10 centuries of masterpieces. Same model. Another nude.The woman, Jeanne Hebuterne, was Modigliani's lover and mother of his child. She is the subject of much of Modigliani's work, his inspiration and passion. Getting within arm's length of the lithe figure of "Recumbent Nude," I easily transported back to their post-WW1 Paris studio.... the beginnings of modern art.... and, as a voyeur, could see and smell and hear the intimacy which inspired Modigliani. It is love of course.... sensuous, on fire and deep rooted with nothing else in the universe other than each other, a canvas and a brush painting with broad, maddening and determined speed, and in the end.... a sweaty clench and just desserts. For people with nothing there is great wealth, potential .... everything.... in love.
As it is sometimes with genius and focused determination, tragedy accompanies. Modigliani, an outcast from his well to do Italian family (as was Hebuterne with her family for taking up with the artist), remained poor, his art at the time never accepted. The great nudes, dripping with energy, passion and furnace heat, were traded for a month's lodgings, art supplies and weeks' worth of meals.
Hygiene and health were ignored and in 1920, three years after "Nude Sitting on a Divan" was finished, he died suddenly in a squalid room with only Jeanne at his bedside after contracting Tubercular Meningitis. He was 34. On the following day, his great love, heavily pregnant, inconsolable, broke free from the arms of her father and threw herself to her death from a fifth floor window.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Merry Christmas. Yes. I mean you.
Merry Christmas. I mean that sincerely.
I think it's perfectly ok that people say Happy Holidays. But I think it's sad that people are now afraid to say Merry Christmas for fear of being exclusionary.
Was Kramer right? Do we, in fact, need a Festivus? For the rest of us?
When someone says to me "Happy Holidays", all I want to say is ,"have a great Chrismakwaanzukkah"
Ever wonder if people in the Southern Hemisphere complain that all these holidays that are based on lights because it's so dark in the north have to suffer through songs like "Let It Snow" when it's smack in the middle of the summer?
So, if you're not a Christian (I'm not), instead of taking offense when someone wishes you a Merry Christmas, instead, smile and wish them a happy whatever you are celebrating. Or, just say "thank you. You too"
Happy Festivus everyone. Enjoy the snow. Or the sun. Or whatever you have going on.
I think it's perfectly ok that people say Happy Holidays. But I think it's sad that people are now afraid to say Merry Christmas for fear of being exclusionary.
Was Kramer right? Do we, in fact, need a Festivus? For the rest of us?
When someone says to me "Happy Holidays", all I want to say is ,"have a great Chrismakwaanzukkah"
Ever wonder if people in the Southern Hemisphere complain that all these holidays that are based on lights because it's so dark in the north have to suffer through songs like "Let It Snow" when it's smack in the middle of the summer?
So, if you're not a Christian (I'm not), instead of taking offense when someone wishes you a Merry Christmas, instead, smile and wish them a happy whatever you are celebrating. Or, just say "thank you. You too"
Happy Festivus everyone. Enjoy the snow. Or the sun. Or whatever you have going on.
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