There's More Where That Came From

In the great downsizing of 2006, I keep telling myself that it's OK to let go. There is more stuff where this stuff came from. Maybe even better stuff.

Our spare room has been a staging area for the current wave of downsizing. It's been employed for stuff sorting for more time than it's been used for guests for sure. We have a table divided in half. I put books on one side that I am willing to get rid of. FFP puts books he feels similarly about on the other side. We come by and consign books from the other person's half to a box on the floor and from there they are sacked up for disposal. I think he has, of late, become lazy about filling his side. Instead he's just approved ones I'd identified. Oh, I think he returned a few to the groaning shelves. But many are now in sacks and boxes ready for the thrift store nearby, Top Drawer. He's already taken quite a few before, too.

The picture was taken a couple of years ago in the spare room during my cleaning out of other areas and of my mother's things. Four years after her death we are still disposing of her things. She had a lot of stuff from her hobbies and collecting. If she hadn't been poor for many years, I guess she'd have had more. I'm hoping not to leave a legacy of stuff. But it's hard. "A little bit every day," says himself. That's it.

Wandering through the books has been fun, though. It's like digging through a secondhand bookstore that is a treasure trove of books we would like. A goodly pile has accumulated in my office to become part of the 'Magnificent 1000.' Yes, we plan to own at least 1000 books when we die. So there. Where we will put them in a small condo is another matter. And whether we will ever read (or read again) any significant part of them is questionable. Consider them decoration, I guess. I love to see books in a home. Homes without them seem sad and naked.

I Don't Read Enough

I have probably read seventy books since I retired. But it's been four years. I don't feel like I read enough.

Going through our books in order to downsize from about 3000 tomes to 1000 or less has made me realize that there are scores of books I want to read or reread that I already own. There are quite a few I would never care to read or have read and wouldn't revisit. These would only be useful in some situation (unimaginable in any home of mine) where there was a shortage of words.

Yeah, I just don't feel like I read enough.

I struggle to get through some of the three dailies and two weekly newpapers we receive. My piles of aging papers are legendary. I walked into my club the other day empty-handed and someone ask why I wasn't carrying a pile of New York Times. Yesterday I had a pile of sections of old copies of The Wall Street Journal, The Times and the local rag, The Austin-American Statesman at the gym. I had only managed to get through part of a front page section of The Times on the bike and I put the unruly pile down next to a leg extension machine and tried to do some leg extensions. I have a sort of strained knee and the exercise hurt so I moved about four feet away to do some pulldowns for the triceps. A man I didn't know walked up to my pile of newspapers. In spite of me staring at him as he spent several minutes staring down at them and then got on one knee and riffled through them, he never turned around and ask if they belonged to me. He seemed intent, almost prayerful, over the papers so I moved over to a bench and got a barbell and did some skull crushers. (Also for the triceps.) I figured he'd go on his way and I wouldn' t have to claim ownership of the mass of old papers. Amid my reps on the bench, I saw him head to the locker room...clutching two or three sections of papers he'd apparently carefully chosen. I finished my set. I gathered up the remainder of the pile and was headed out the door when I saw my fellow reader return to the workout room sans newspapers. Not that I wanted them back! But those are some sections of newsprint unread by me.

I admit that everything I don't manage to read, or at least glance through taunts me. The weekly arrival of The New Yorker, while welcome with its clever cover and promise of wonderful articles inside, mocks me because I may not, most likely will not, get it read. I'm now in possession of DVDs of all issues of The New Yorker through last February. Yes, all issues since 1925. This comforts me and allows me to finally throw out some issues that have escaped recycling for over a decade but still there is little comfort in knowing that I have access to the material.

This feeling of despair at what's left unread is not satisfied by reading things online either. I'll sometimes read an entire article from The New York Times WEB page and my subscription to the paper gives me a 'free' Times Select membership and access to lots of back issue stories, but this doesn't make my failure to absorb the papers any easier to bear.

As I've sorted out books to give away, I've tried to tell myself that if I decide one day to read the book I'm tossing that I can always get a copy from Powell's or the library. And maybe I'll obtain a better copy to read than some of the grimy, yellowing paperbacks that I'm putting into the thrift store sacks. At some point I have to seriously examine why I need to own all these books.

I took two sacks of Bridge books to a friend who plays a lot of Bridge and enjoys reading about it. She promised to loan them back to me if I got interested in Bridge again. And I am sort of interested in Bridge. It's just that I never got interested enough. To play or to read all the books. But it used to be that the first thing I'd do if I got the least bit interested in something would be to buy a book about it. Or maybe more than one book! Maybe piles of books. That's what happened with Bridge.

I'm starting to understand that owning all these books is not improving my track record at getting my reading done. I've got to choose the books I keep with care. This may be my hardest downsizing task and not just because there are 3000 objects to deal with. Each unread tome is an admission of failure.

Daily Photo

I've been reading Paris Daily Photo for a while and while this site isn't daily and isn't always Austin so it can't be Austin Daily Photo, I appreciate the idea.

Eric of PDP published this entry and I immediately thought of a picture I had FFP shoot at MOMA in New York City in the summer of 2005. So here it is. I think it's pretty clear who is real and who is not in this one. Maybe.

I had in mind to blog today on two other topics. I fully intend to write one entitled "I Don't Read Enough" and another under the rubric "This Aquisitive Life." Instead I've published this (over a year old) photo.

And so it goes.

In the Shadow of the Creatives

I fancy myself a creative person.

In fact, when I took these pictures (over a year ago) I thought I was showing on the one hand the most blighted view of downtown Austin and on the other a bright thing about Austin (the Art Fest held in Republic Square and the surrounding area) against the blighted shell of the abandoned INTEL building.

Who knew that in October, 2006 I would (1) be planning to live about where the Moonlight Tower appears in the blight picture. (The Tower has been relocated to make way for the 360 Condomiums. It was the only unblighted part of the picture.) (2) The ugly Post Office block would be getting a redevelopment plan as a mixed use space; and (3) That on October 6 I would see a fantastic work of dance performed by Blue Lapis Light in and on that blighted shell?

I had lunch yesterday with a smart, energetic, starving artist. Only 22, he is wise beyond his years, creative to the max, introspective and perceptive. He's not really starving either thanks to a friend of mine who is his mom.

Last night I saw the most amazing work of dance and rappeling to music in the most unusal setting of that Intel shell. Almost more amazing than the work was that someone let the performers and us on the site. We drank and talked to Cliff Redd (executive director of the Long Center) and Stephen Moser (fashion editor of The Austin Chronicle and the designer of several of the blue-themed dressed on display) and other folks. Then we saw the performance that blew us away.

I felt overshadowed by the energy and creativity exhibited around me today. I am amazed at Austin's transformation downtown. I feel old against this backdrop of energy.

I came home to listen to our gubanatorial debate. I gleaned from this that Chris Bell would raise money by having businesses 'pay their fair share' whatever that means and that Kinky would do it with gambling and that Strayhorn and Perry wouldn't raise taxes but they would do good things for schools without the money. I also learned that Strayhorn didn't answer a single question directly and didn't know the president of Mexico. Kinky was most creative. Asked if he would continue to smoke cigars if he were governor and a 'role model he said he would and said Sam Houston was an opium addict and, he guessed, not a good role model for kids. (A little Internet search also hinted that he had venereal disease. Not Kinky. Sam Houston.) It was a creative day and the creative candidate won my vote, I think. It is a sad lot. They didn't let the Libertarian participate. Sad. I would have liked to hear what he had say. He is suing Belo Corp, I think, because his exclusion constitutes promoting the other four candidates. Well, maybe. They all came out looking sort of bad to me. Except, you know, Kinky when he was being funny which is almost all the time.

Growing Old

These guys were caught by a street photographer. It's probably sometime in the 30's. On the left is my father-in-law and on the right is his 'baby' brother. The baby brother would become one of the 'Greatest Generation,' cheerfully fighting in Italy, France and Germany with the 36th Infantry Division, called into active service from the Texas National Guard. He would return unharmed and live a long life.

We took my husband's Dad (the smaller 'big' brother here) to his brother's funeral today in Temple. My father-in-law is 95. His baby brother was 91.

As my mother-in-law recounted the births, deaths and marriages of the clan she entered sixty-eight years ago, she said at one point: "And, well, she died. And he died."

Yeah, that's how it always ends.

The trip was exhausting. My in-laws have grown old and a longish ceremony that started late (after we arrived way early) and another ceremony at the cemetery and finding food and bathrooms on the way home was a production. But once my father-in-law and his brother sauntered jauntily down Congress Avenue before the big war, before they married and had kids. Maybe the depression was oppressive but they still found the funds for some good-looking threads. And my husband's uncle smiled just like that from his bed at the nursing home when last I saw him, correctly identifying me as belonging to the right branch of the clan in spite of the fact that he must have a dozen nephews with wives and girlfriends. In fact, at the service they recruited six nephews on the spot for pallbearers and another nephew conducted the service and another gave the eulogy. Several other nephews sat in the crowd.

I have read that about a thousand WWII vets die each day. I lost my own 92-year-old uncle recently. He lived in the same nursing home (for Texas Vets) as my husband's uncle. Outside many rooms there handsome young hopeful faces in military uniforms stare out of frames below the names in the corridor while, inside the rooms, old men (and women) grow older and weaker.

And, well, that's how it ends.

Top Ten Reasons for Moving to Downtown Austin

10. What a cool name for a hot dog wagon! (See picture.)

9. The mussels at Capitol Brasserie.

8. Mercury Design Studio.

7. Walking to Whole Foods Planet. (My name for the downtown Whole Foods because of the signs that say 'Whole Foods/Whole Planet' or something like that.)

6. Walking to Austin Music Hall, the Paramount, the convention center, many restaurants, bars, some museums. Not to mention several coffee shops that don't have 'Bucks' in their name. Like Halcyon. And Little City. And Hideout. And there's Elephant Room with jazz every night and nowadays almost no smoke. Jazz with takeout from Kyoto upstairs and a Guinness on draft. Yum.

5. Walking to Book People. And other shopping besides that cool Mercury place. Home stores, art galleries, Austin Wine Merchant and...

4. The new hip bodega, Royal Blue Grocery, on Third Street in the AMLI.

3. Proximity to City Hall so it's a piece of cake to get in line to speak your mind.

2. Getting on the Hike and Bike trail and walking around Town Lake without driving downtown.

And the top reason for moving to downtown Austin for us?
1. Walking to the new Ballet Austin building at Third and San Antonio. Heck, on a good day and in comfortable shoes we could walk to Long Center or the Opera Building or Palmer Events Center or the Capitol for the Book Festival. But FFP spends a lot of time volunteering on Ballet Austin projects. So being close will be great for him. And if possible, we are going to be really close to their building.

I realize I can walk to lots of stuff from my house. A branch library, three bakeries, restaurants (Billy's Burgers, Blue Star, Jorge's, Fonda San Miguel, Upper Crust, Pacha's, Phoenician, La Victoria, Sampaio, some new sushi place, etc.), thrift stores and, if you are feeling like a long walk...Central Market. And I realize that I often complain that I can't walk to these places because it's too hot or the sidewalks aren't adequate (they are putting sidewalks on Shoal Creek however). But somehow this downtown thing feels right. I guess we'll see. The future is kind of a blur anyway, huh? But imagining life a little different is good.

Airport Trip Seven Complete

About the picture. FFP took it on Second Street in downtown Austin. Maybe now that my '90th Birthday Project' is over I can get out and shoot some pictures.

I delivered my sister to the airport yesterday. She stayed over after my dad's party to visit. She is somewhat disabled (requires a wheelchair to get to the gate although she can walk short distances with her cane) and the only person I could find to help me take her to the airport was...my ninety-year-old dad. I deposited the two of them and her luggage on the curb next to United's curbside where there was no one helping people. "If you have to, just wait here until I park," I said. Then I raced around to short term parking. I couldn't find a place for the van so I used Dad's handicapped tag and got a handicapped place and raced up three flights of stairs to the departure level. [If you were at the airport and saw that, well when Dad and I left I would have had to leave him on the curb again and go for the van if I hadn't been able to park it near the elevator. I never use his tag when I'm just out and about in his van. I don't use the one in my glove box assigned to my father-in-law either unless he's with me. It's illegal. And I wouldn't do it. But I felt I had the right here.]

They had gone inside and there was a wheelchair person arriving. Turns out they were cancelling her direct flight to Denver. Yikes. They were trying to rebook her and finally gave her some paperwork and sent us to Continental. I called my brother-in-law with the info. She was going to have to fly to Houston and then Denver. After more snafus between the airlines she got her luggage checked with Continental. Since she was going to be even later than we'd thought I sprinted down to buy her some candy bars which is what she said would sustain her. . My dad got tired during all this process and had to go sit down. We said our goodbyes to her and the wheelchair attendant took her to the gate.

Dad and I walked out to the curb. I pointed to the elevator bank across the street. "If you can walk that far, the van is right there." He made it. He had told me that he had to get home because he was taking two lady friends to a musical show later. He does pretty well, but he's a little slow and standing a long time or walking a long distance is tough. But he takes care of himself pretty well.

When I retrieved my car from Dad's and went home, the house was empty. FFP was at a board retreat. I couldn't believe it...ten days of visits and the party and all the logistics were over. Time to worry about something new. I checked on my sister's flight. It was delayed. Yikes. What if she missed the flight to Denver? FFP got home and we were watching the football game (UT's, of course, this is Austin) when thunder roared and they suspended the game in a downpour featuring lightning. Fortunately, my sister's plane was already headed to Houston. Maybe her plane out would be delayed and she'd get home just an hour or so late. The rain stopped. I hoped my Dad wasn't out in it. I tracked my sister's progress. Yup, missed the plane. I reached her and my brother-in-law on their cell phones. She did get a later plane. I worried a little but what can you do if someone is in the Houston airport? Or sitting on the tarmac in Houston on a plane delayed by weather? I think she finally landed about midnight.

It's over. All seven trips to the airport. My sister had the roughest airport trip although my niece and her husband were bumped on the way here. At least two other people flew in for the party that I did not have to pick up or take to the airport. Thanks for that. Many drove in and all apparently without incident. Although my Dad's great nephew forgot his dress up clothes. He fit in fine with the Austin vibe in a black T-Shirt and jeans. All the comings and goings, months of invites and RSVPs and changing hotel reservations. Arranging for everything. Trying to keep the hoopla from wearing my dad out while letting him enjoy it.

Now, what should I worry about now?

Well...That's Almost Over!

Living ninety years is well-deserving of a lot of hoopla, celebration, adulation and such. However, that requires a bit of planning and a lot of luck to pull off. Especially to make the ninety-year-old person in question not feel like he's been through the wringer.

Since last Thursday, I've made five round trips to the airport, organized six hotel stays, answered the inevitable last minute calls and e-mails, and overseen a party for 140 people that included music, valet parking, name tags, flowers and some minor decoration, hors d'oeuvres, a bar and a full buffet dinner. I've tried to keep several meet-ups of out-of-town relatives organized while dealing with the fact that two of my AC units in my house decided to fail in different ways. I have two out-of-town guests remaining and two more airport trips to make.

I'm not complaining, but I told Dad that he isn't getting a big party for 95. Maybe for his 100th. So...he has set his sights on living to be 100. Well, there are worse goals.

I Haven't Been Writing

And, honestly, I miss it when I haven't been doing it. Even my 'personal' journal entries have been terse. I am currently in that familiar mode whereby everything is being delayed until something else happens. OK, it does take focus to have a party for 150 people and have a couple of dozen people coming in from out of town. And in the midst of that, I had to shop for a car with my almost-90-year-old father. That'll stop you in your tracks. And then there is the crick in my neck. Yesterday I woke up with a sharp pain in my neck. Tried warming it up (with exercise and heat applied). Tried wine. Tried Advil. Got it rubbed. Got my feet rubbed. Tried cookies. Woke up better off this morning.

Life deals things out. Little things. Big things. Little things that will become big things. Seemingly big things that will be forgotten.

But I did have a good vacation. And enjoyed a visit to this cute little bookstore in Tilamook, OR.

Another excuse I've had is tennis. The U.S. Open has provided way too much TV time. At least I don't care about football.

In Case You Haven't Been Flying

The way things keep changing in the nation's airports, it seems that even experienced flyers quiz their friends about flying if they haven't been 'out there' lately.

We made a trip to Portland, OR (PDX) recently from Austin (AUS). We went through Dallas (DFW) on American (AA).

This was our first flight since liquids became evil. It's funny how it works, but they had me thinking of my hair gel and shampoo as sinister. When I fly, I have to take decongestants to keep my ears clear. On the way, we had a short layover in Dallas. I'd had a bottle of water after security in the Austin airport. I was going to have to take a second pill on the long (almost four hours) DFW-PDX leg. But I couldn't carry water on board. We had a short layover. In the departure longue they announced that there would be a $4 snack for sale but there would probably not be enough for everyone. We were welcome to take food on board. We rushed off and got a sandwich and coffee. I managed to swill about half the coffee before I had to discard it. DFW had clever poetic signs. "Avoid Delay; Throw it Away." I had to swallow my pill dry before the service cart reached our row.

I was wondering how a friend of mine would get along, given he'd admitted a chapstick addiction.

The whole flying experience out there went remarkably well, though, in spite of full flights. It was almost as if all that was needed to smooth things out was to ban big gulps and Starbucks.

When we flew back, I noticed a couple of interesting things at PDX. One, they were now allowing lipstick and chapstick. My addicted friend can relax. And...they had an interesting way of talking about stuff you buy after security. They said that 'drinks purchased inside the sterile zone must be discarded before boarding.' I wouldn't take that 'sterile zone' thing too seriously when considered the soap and automatic faucets in the restrooms. Yeah, I'd keep washing.

Coming home went quite smoothly, too. We got upgraded to first class for the PDX-DFW leg. And we had a long layover at DFW which allowed my volcanically hot Starbucks to cool so I could finish it before boarding. I hadn't been in first for a little while. You still get glasses that are glass. (I would worry about them being cracked to make a weapon but they are that indestructible thick glass.) You still get linen napkins but they have shrunk over the years. Of course, they only have to be wrapped around plastic dinnerware now. They still have a buttonhole in them so if you have on a proper shirt you can button them on and protect yourself from marinara sauce. Not that I had any marinara. A croissant sandwich it was.

I appreciate the Austin airport and its cultivation of local businesses. No being subjected to Starbucks there. And I appreciate PDX for having a Powell's (City of Books) outlet. By far the best little bookstore I've ever seen in an airport.

Yeah, things are always changing in the air. When is the last time you thought of a leggy attendant with a beehive as your mother?

Not Good at Posting

I've been really remiss at posting. I've been doing something else. What? Hard to say. Going through piles of books. Looking through pictures and slides. Other cleaning and straigtening tasks that are beginning to feel a lot like moving stuff around, like motion. Reviewing films for Austin Film Festival. Tennis. Water aerobics class with my dad. Then yesterday I had to take my dad to the hospital to visit a twenty-something friend who had a brain aneurysm rupture. Well, not to visit the kid, because he was in surgery and having procedures but to visit with the kid's parents. The dad is the son of a nurse friend of my dad's who is dead now and he has kept up with the family.

My dad has always been a compassionate sort. He called the hospital today and tracked his friends down to see how the son was doing. And he hates telephoning. I'm still finding pictures of him. This one was taken in 1945 or 1946 and I'm guessing he is comforting my sister because he has to go back to some army duty. My dad was lucky to be rejected for service until late in the war when, although he wasn't fit for duty, I think they decided to induct him and make him fit for duty. The war ended before that trajectory could get him in harm's way.

So, yeah, I'm busy in my own usual erratic way. So I'd better get on with it. I'm going on something called a 'gallery crawl' this afternoon. I'm going to hear some music tonight later on. I've already hit the tennis courts and done a few minutes on my favorite aerobic machine (the recumbent bike). I've eaten leftovers, showered leisurely. Life is good. I should appreciate it.

I Should be Working on it NOW

Yeah, this cleaning up thing is taking a life of its own. The pile of books shown here represents about half of the ones I'm going to give away. Most are probably useless because they are so obsolete. Some are good, standard references. If I ever need to know any of this again, I'll find the info somehow.

Every time we drive into the garage now, FFP says how its (relatively) cleaned out look gives him pleasure. We plan to spiff it up with paint and sheetrock and some attractive cabinets or shelves. We think a big functional garage is a selling point for a house. But only if it's pretty uncluttered.

Behind our garage is a 'storage room.' We perched FFP's office above this area when we remodeled. We have a laundry room there and shelves, storage cabinets, old file cabinets, a closet under the stairs, a closet we call our 'wine cellar.' FFP is set up there to paint with a drop cloth, easel, etc. although the first and last paintings he completed were done on the floor of the garage when we remodeled the bedroom. There is also an enormous 'rack' of wood and pipe that held oversized file folders for negatives and PMTs and pasted-up art. Back in the day when such were necessary to produce ads. Now we don't produce ads, mostly, and if we do they are just pixels until they are realized in print. We actually offered the filing cabinets on Freecycle and had a pickup set but the people never showed up. FFP and I are discussing what we might use to 'furnish' a storage unit. Should we actually save the enormous beat-up filing cabinets? I think storage units are so expensive that we might reconsider even having one. But I find it hard to see how to do without it. We are definitely going to have the handyman dismantle the giant rack. We've disposed of most of the ancient adverstising stuff.

While I write this, I should be looking through a pile of magazines I just uncovered in my office. I'm feeling better about discarding copies of The New Yorker since they have announced the upgrade of the complete DVD set. I think this is the way of the future, mine anyway. Where you discard the magazines and have the archive available. Ideally it would be on the WEB, but this is certainly more compact. I no longer really want to own movies either. And I'm going through old cassette tapes. One criteria for discarding them is 'do we have the CD?' Another is 'are the tunes available on Rhapsody?' If we could listen on our computers or download the tunes if we wanted them, that would be great. We aren't even talking about the CD collection yet. I'm thinking that when we go to the condo we might have the collection ripped to a hard drive.

What was that tag line for VW back in the sixties? Think small! Yeah, that's it.

Moving in the Right Direction, Stuff-Wise

I was thinking today how we acquire stuff and discard stuff. Year in and year out. For the last couple of weeks we've been burning faster than we were filling, you might say. And that's a good thing. It's horrifying to think how many possessions we still have, especially considering how much we have disposed of over the years.

When I moved to Austin, in 1975, I couldn't fill a small one bedroom apartment with the stuff I owned. Sad. I wanted stuff. I even bought some furniture for that place. When I combined my stuff with FFP's in 1976, it was a little crowded in his house which was probably 800 square feet. When we moved a block away in 1977 (twenty-nine years ago this month), we had a larger house. We filled it with a business we were running and all the stuff it needed and things we were eager to own.We bought a building and moved the business there. We remodeled a few times and redecorated, stuff coming and going. Always thinking it was the ultimate stuff. One remodel made room for the business (smaller now) to move back. With the complications that engendered.

It makes me feel better to pare the stuff down. But it's going so slowly. The garage is looking pretty good now. But my office and the spare room are still a sea of things being sorted and dealt with. There are closets and shelves begging for a good cleaning. There are large pieces of furniture that will ultimately need to go. I get depressed about it sometimes, but at least the needle is moving in the right direction at the moment.

The Dilettante Collector

I read something the other day about a guy who collected comic books very assiduously for many years. They were stored in very optimum conditions for a long time, too. His family is now ready to sell them for millions although they have found out that some are missing. And because he obsessively made some small cryptic pencil marks on each and every one, his heirs were able to trace them and it was probably some contractors who were 'alone with the collection' who pilfered them. I can't find this story online just now or I would link to it. So what does that have to do me anyway?

Well, that's not the kind of collector I am. I don't stick to collecting anything with that kind of single-minded diligence. Unfortunately I am tempted to save things because they might be (pick one) useful / valuable / interesting later. And I might start collecting something...say cocktail shakers, globes, bendable posable figures, etc. and amass quite a few of them without a clue about what I should be saving or discarding, how to store them, etc. I feel like a lot of times I discard something just before it becomes valuable.

I have decided to seriously get rid of stuff. We've been cleaning out the garage. We've tossed a lot of stuff, given away a lot of stuff. We are trying not to worry if it will ever be valuable, useful, sentimental. A 10x10 climate-controlled storage unit in downtown Austin goes for $377 per month. We want to move downtown one day. I must get rid of stuff. I have too much stuff. If some of it is useful, I can never find it when I need it.

I will admit, however, that it is interesting to find a box in the garage containing my tax returns from before I married and the Christmas cards I got over a decade ago. As I looked through the latter, I choked up at notes written by people who have died. I wondered at a photo of someone that I simply don't recognize. Well, OK, she is vaguely familar. But I can't save all this stuff. It's going to be hard enough to decide what to do with boxes and boxes of bendable, posable figures. Every time I go through the stuff, less and less survives. Oh, I'm going to save some things all right. But I don't think I have to worry about any contractors stealing a million dollars worth of collectibles. And that's a good thing.

I don't think dabblers end up with million-dollar collections. I once wrote a poem about me and my attention span for organizing and doing. You can see it here but I'll also reprint it here in blogger-land where I seem to spend most of my time writing to you.

Dabbler, Babbler, Dilettante
Flitting about
Cannot stop.
Focus Free
Excuse me,
I must hop!

I've Been Busy Since Last We Spoke

It started with that cheap Mexican breakfast I mentioned. My companions and I shared the guacamole pictured here next to some good hot sauce with our migas. We were at Aranda's on Burnet Road.

I got invitations out to my dad's birthday party in September and have even received quite a few RSVPs.

We have been working on the clean up project alluded to here. We hope to move out of our house and into a (smaller) condo in about two years. And we are thinking it may take two years to get things tidied up and sorted. I stood in the garage today with sweat pouring off my face, chopping up cardboard boxes for recyling, filling garbage sacks with things to throw away when there is space in the 'pay as you throw' bin. You can only discard about twelve cubic feet of stuff in our bin per week and if you want to leave garbage bags on the curb as well you have to attach a two dollar sticker. We did leave a few things on the curb with a free sign, gave some things to the handyman and the yard man. FFP made a trip to the thrift store and I have another pile of stuff in my car now to go there. Slowly, we unwind our acquisitions and see most of them for what they are: anchors. There are a few shocks. Like when I found my tax returns from before I married FFP. Yeah, I am thinking shredder.

I think we may be, for this small period, getting rid of stuff faster than we acquire it. Now if we can just keep it up for the next few years.

Are You a Blogger or Not?

When you let yourself off that leash of writing every day, then there are questions. How often should you show up? And what to write about? You have to read your own last entry to see what you were talking about. You can't just talk about today or yesterday and be confident that you have brought your readers up-to-date.

We've been having an 'arts weekend' so far. We went to a gala on Friday benefiting Austin Cabaret Theater and saw Eartha Kitt perform. Before that a jazz group from San Francisco and a Tony Bennett tribute singer entertained a bit. Afterwards, Eartha was surrounded by people getting autographs and pictures so I took a picture of Holly of the Downtown Planet and the piano and sax player from the jazz group. Holly recently scooped all the local media on a possible embezzlement scandal at the Downtown Austin Neighborhood Association. And she's a bright and pretty girl. Unfortunately, I don't remember the muscians' names. See, I'm no journalist.

Even though I don't have a picture to show you, I will say that Eartha was amazing. Soft and melodic to screeching in several languages. She sang an African song that would stand up well to Mariam Makeba and she sang a "La Vie en Rose" (after setting the stage by talking about seeing the little sparrow in Paris back in the day) that, if you closed your eyes, you would have thought Edith Piaf was up there. She was sensual, showing us legs and movements someone her age really shouldn't have.

Last night we saw a play at Zach Scott called "I Am My Own Wife." A one person play about a transvestite who survived WWII and communist rule in East Berlin, the story is fascinating even if the facts are in some dispute. I found it a little slow, though. It would have made a better book where pages of exposition could evoke Berlin during all this time. I like Berlin and am intrigued by its history. There is an autobiography I find. This play did win a Tony for best play, though, so my opinion doesn't count, I guess.

We had a couple of guests last night. FFP wanted to go to Jeffrey's after and no one objected. We had some half price appetizers on their late Saturday night happy hour and some expensive drinks (a delicious glass of Bogle Pinot Noir for me) and enjoyed our company.

No arts events planned for today. But this morning it looks like we will go for a cheap Mexican breakfast. Always a good thing to do on Sunday morning in Austin. You know, if you aren't a church goer.

It's the Not Knowing

Yeah. It's the not knowing that drags us along. We can predict certain things, assign them a probability, but we don't know until it all plays out.

My dad's brother died. He didn't recover after we visited him in the hospital. The picture on the right is my dad's family with his parents and all his siblings save the one as yet unborn. Dad is the small, hopeful-looking boy, dwarfed by his brother and older sister and even a bit shorter than his younger sister on his right.

Dad and I were talking about all the unknowns and how it is good not knowing as we drove Monday to the funeral in a little town northwest of Dallas.

Dad has had his eyelid lift since I last posted here. Technically called a blepharoplasty according to the surgeon, what was done was the removal of excess tissue from the eyelid. This excess flesh was pushing his eyelashes against his eyes and generally making his eyes uncomfortable and interfering with his vision. It went rather well. His face was (and still is) bruised but he never had swelling and the incisions have healed nicely. He said he kept thinking he wasn't going to last long enough to make this surgery worthwhile but, after finding it uncomfortable for two years, he just decided to get it fixed. I don't like the idea of cutting and I hate the nurse maid role, but I went along with it. And it has turned out well. Soon the only evidence will be his rather more wide open eyes. The bruising around his eyes has faded leaving bruising around his cheekbones that puts everyone in mind of Kiss makeup. And I guess he'll get Medicare's money's worth and last a while with his better vision and comfort.

We spend a lot of our time planning for the future, doing uncomfortable things for comfort later. We are never sure how it will pan out. We know we will die but not when and the journey until that time can take a lot of turns. August 1 approaches. August 1, 1966 saw a sniper (Charles Whitman) on the UT Tower ending a lot of lives and turning others in directions that hadn't been dreamed of. FFP was on campus that day. He escaped harm. But it would be wrong to say he wasn't changed.

Blogging isn't Progress!

Or is it? It's instructive to look at pictures taken before you were born, isn't it? My sister looks happy, doesn't she? Just kidding. She was always good to me. And she liked having me around, I think.

I have to get that invitation done for my dad's party.

Instead of working on that or working to get the place tidy and organized I spent yesterday in dalliance. (I bet that word isn't used too many times on the WEB today.) Yeah, we went downtown for brunch and walked around, saying 'hi' to other people brunching who we knew. I dozed over a couple of disks from Netflix. (This Indian movie, 'Fire,' was very good.) I'd been neglecting Netflix for reviewing movies for the festival. I also watched the very long 1987 movie 'Cry Freedom' which I'd never seen. I read the entire Sunday newspaper and finished Saturday's, too. Which doesn't mean that there aren't still piles of unread newspapers in these parts.

It was a nice way to spend a day. But not very productive. As the week unfolds, I have appointments and duties. I should have done more yesterday.

My First Year

The original of this photo is on a newly exposed clean part of my desk, stacked among others representing milestones in my dad's life. I have a HUGE desk, by the way, but there is rarely a clean space to work and look at things like this. The desk wraps around me and goes about six feet in two directions. It is 36 inches deep but of course that means some space is wasted in the corner. There are surge protectors, a stack of storage cubes with a TV and cable box on top, a computer, phones, scanner, ink jet, reference books, external hard drive, a cable modem, router, hub and chargers for various batteries. I try to relive the clutter every now and then. There are two keyboard drops and two stacks of drawers. Anyway, there is a little work space at the moment but something will suck something into that area any moment. But I have scanned the little heap of photos into the computer. That is some tiny progress.

This photo was taken during the first year of my life. I don't know what I'm doing. Stretching? Reaching for Momma? She must be taking the picture. Dad seems comfortable holding me but my sister, clutching her doll, seems a little disappointed in the living doll she has received. For the record, that's the shadow of my dad's work shirt collar, not an early evidence of the spiky hair I exhibit occasionally now.

So I am cleaning up. I need to go buy some more archival photo storage sheets and get these back photos filed away. What's that I hear you saying? That things are getting messier faster than I try to clean them up. Ah, well, yes.

My Dad in Pictures

I haven't found any of him as a young kid, but I've captured him in 1941 with Mom. He's about twenty-five.

I have actually been working on the organization and such. I've scanned some pictures for the 'story' of my dad's ninety years. I'd actually scanned this one before and used it on a 'save the date' card I distributed earlier in the year when I reserved a time for his party.

I actually did a couple of other things to get organized, too. I like to keep the disks and instructions for software and gadgets in their original boxes. But they take up so much space that I decided to just fold the outer boxes for some of my stuff into a folder and put the stuff inside. I came across, also in the same closet, my parents' first photo album. It was falling to pieces so I had earlier taken it apart and put each fragile page in an inert plastic sleeve to preserve it.

All that youth and hope. It amazes me to see my parents quite a bit younger than I am. In this picture they are less than half my age! My mother is probably nineteen.

The only question is: will I get organized before I'm ninety years old?

Watch Me Clean Up!

I have this obsession with getting things tidy. I long for clean neat rooms, open space on the desk, neat drawers and closets where you can find everything.

But in the digital age there is more to getting things organized than all the physical stuff. There are all the docs and photos on your computer. Copies and variations and obsolete and useless stuff. With good things scattered about, too.

Then there is that intersection of the physical and the digital. Like the document on my computer that purports to list the contents of my fire safe. And finding a physical photo and thinking "maybe I should scan this into my computer." Where, of course, the picture becomes more clutter.

But I *AM* trying to tidy up. At the same time I'm trying to give some stuff away and get an invitation together for my dad's 90th birthday in a couple of months. But it's hard to get started on it. I'd rather blog. So I thought I'd let you guys follow along.

I started looking through digital files. To tidy them up and to look for pictures of Dad for use in the birthday invitation and maybe to make a slide show for his party. This picture is of the Sony Center canopy in Berlin. It has nothing to do with Dad. I just stumbled on it. It was taken in 2002, I think, on my last trip to Berlin.

Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre

So yesterday was Bastille Day. I was driving home from the club and the local public radio station was playing a rousing version of La Marseillaise with a huge choir and an orchestra. It was long and I wondered if there were really that many choruses. I thought "I bet you can find the words on the WEB."

So this morning, when I was trying to sleep in but FFP and the dog kept waking me up for this and that, I got up, brewed a cuppa in the Capresso and found that about.com had the words. In French and in English. So I settled in for a pleasurable few minutes with my computer and my giant Harrap's French/English dictionary. I realized that I just don't know that much French. That, coupled with my difficulty understanding sung words in any language, has meant that for years I couldn't get past 'Allons enfants.' Which means "Let's go children." Those are the first words.

Before the last refrain there is a strange chorus that is a bit ghoulish. It is all about avenging or dying and it expresses an eagerness to join one's ancestors in death. "Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre." Much less eager to survive them. " Que de partager leur cercueil" Than to share their coffin. Hmm. What an interesting song. And even though I had the translation there I looked up a couple of words in the dictionary. And I remembered using my pocket translator to translate this word in 1989: cerceuil. I was in the hills of Provence near Mougins village in a country inn. I'd gone on a trip with some girlfriends. I'd gone to the village and gotten some papers. An earthquake had devastated the San Francisco area. The paper talked about the double decker freeway collapse in terms of "cerceuils de béton." Coffins of concrete.

Illness and death are on my mind. Who knew the French National Anthem was just going to reinforce it?

I tried to find a picture from Paris that I hadn't shown you. Well, this one was taken in the Musée d'Orsay. They have a giant cutaway of the old Paris opera house and this is a detail of it. I suppose it would have been more appropriate for a rumination about "The Phantom of the Opera." But, oh well.

I made another decision this morning. When we downsize and severely curtail the amount of stuff we are carting through life, I'm going to keep my gaint French/English dictionary. But a lot of stuff I'll just count on looking up on the WEB.

Closing In

The world is an enormous place. Sometimes your little part of it feels like it's closing in, however.

This photo was taken out the hotel window (the Fairmont in Dallas) on our little jaunt up there the other day. My hand and camera look enormous with respect to the buildings. All those offices. People inside. (Well, usually. I think a lot of them might have been empty when I took this.) All those people, everywhere.

FFP and I've been discussing downsizing a lot. The very admission that we need to reverse the acquisitive trend and reduce our stuff and move into a smaller place with less responsibility highlights the general helplessness we all feel as our time winds down.

Yesterday I took my Dad to see his older brother in the hospital. When we arrived a woman from admissions was arranging a small marker board on his chest and snapping a digital picture. It was a VA hospital but I still found it a little shocking. "Can you open your eyes?" she asked. He didn't though. Not for her. He did for my dad. My dad's brother is ninety-two. It looks like he might recover from this pneumonia and move back into his small room at the nursing home. Maybe.

As we headed downtown last night to celebrate a bit for FFP's milestone birthday (we are celebrating the entire month), I got a call that my friend in South Africa had some upsetting news about her cancer. She's been fighting it nine years. Will it finally win?

The reminders of the finiteness of one's life flit around me. The big old world keeps turning...but we may get off at any time. And, if not, a lot of our mates will.

Times Change

This picture was taken on Cole Avenue in Dallas. When I was living nearby (on Abbott St. in Highland Park) there was an upscale (to me) restaurant in a deconsecrated church. Today it's a burger joint. Here it is reflected in the glass facade of a tall building across the street. That wasn't there when I lived there.

My trip to Sherman and Dallas over last weekend and the holiday sure put me in mind of how much things change over several decades. And yet there are glimpses of what was. And even I don't remember the church being a church.

I Can't Stop Myself

This will be the last one today. Shops like this one beg to be photographed. I promise to mentally leave Paris any day now. Although I don't think a visit to Sherman and Dallas is going to provide the same sort of memories. But you never know. There are amazing things everywhere. If you only look. Or so I've been told. How else to explain the current ultra-cool Marfa, Texas scene? Or the fact that I sometimes find cool shop windows here in Austin albeit rarely with that sort of building reflected among the goods.

I'm going to quit uploading these pictures for now. But I do have more.

The Travelers

There's our portrait, in a art gallery window in Paris.

Somehow I prefer this sort of portrait to the ones where you hand over the camera to a friendly-looking stranger and mug in front of the Eiffel Tower or something. But you knew that about me. I also like it when at least one of us is sort of obscured, becoming one with the stuff displayed and the reflection. I also like it if a few stray hairs stick up from my generally disheveled hairdo. That's the 'je ne sais quoi' I'm going for. You guys know I'm mostly kidding here, right?

Culture Shock

I like this one because the graceful Degas sculptures of ballerinas are being studied rather intently by these decidedly punk guys. You have to love those moments. Plus the glass case and movement (no flash allowed in the Musée d'Orsay) provide the kind of reflection and distance I like in my photos. I do them primarily to be exhibited on computer screens after all, creating yet another level of reflection.

Cutlure and fashion and art captured and manipulated by my chosen moment. I like it.

Today I was reading a book (Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light by David Downie) and one of the essays made me want to go back to Paris and go to a particular area and take some pictures. I have been following Paris Daily Photo and I love it. Eric's photos capture current events, details, traditional sights and surprises. I think it's amusing how each of us puts a stamp on the things our digital memory cards capture...even though we might stand on almost the same spot.

A Bit of Time Suitable only for Blogging

I've packed for our little trip, mostly. And we are going out tonight in a couple of hours. I've reviewed the day's Wimbledon play off my DVR. It doesn't seem like a good time to start a project. So blogging seems like a good idea. The place where I have my own WEB pages currently is having a problem with FTP so I can't post anything there. So maybe we should just flip through some more of these pictures....Actually,
I've grown rather tired of my Paris pictures, but there are many I haven't exhibited to you, my three or four loyal readers.

The Montparnasse Tower and the Montparnasse Railroad station and that area aren't much to look at. But there is a park perched up above the tracks. There is a Leclerc Museum of the Resistance up there, too, and some sports facilities. You take the elevators along either side of the station and voilà...you are in another world. They have this big reflecting sculpture in the middle of the park. A fan of reflections I took its picture.

It was funny. There were kids on a scouting excursion, nuzzling lovers, people kicking soccer balls, old folks bench sitting and below were the tracks. You could just almost peek down in a few spots. A fashion shoot was going on, too, and the model had climbed on one of the odd roofs.

The world is really full of secret places, isn't it? But big wonderful cities like Paris have more of them. I'm going to spend a few days in Dallas with an excursion to the small town where I spent most of my school age years. I doubt I'll find so many things to photograph. Except, you know, my once classmates with graying hair and expanding waistlines. As mentioned in the prior entry.

Less than a Pound a Year

Soon I'm going to a high school reunion and I was thinking how the class changes, as a group. Marriages, divorces, deaths, children. And pounds. Oh, I'm sure there are people who have maintained their high school weight. But as a group, I bet we've gained.

Today's picture shows me reflected in a shop window selling coffee paraphernalia. I am a caffeine addict. At least I don't use cream in my coffee!

But, yeah. I've gained weight since high school. I've done it honestly though. By eating cheese. And foie gras. By drinking alcohol. By choosing rich sauces. By making eating out a hobby.

I did some math, though. On average I have gained .8 pounds a year since high school. If everyone in my class has done the same, then we've raised the weight of ourselves a few tons.

Actually, of course, this has not been a neat linear gain. Rather I've had my ups and downs. And my plateaus. In particular, when I retired in 2002, I had gained about 1.4 pounds per year since high school. But I've since lost about twenty pounds and kept it off. Hence the new .8 figure.

I had this idea some months ago that I'd lose some more of my excess pounds and exercise and build up my muscles and look really good for this reunion. Well, if not 'look good' (there is the matter of the goofy hair and stuff), at least look fitter and thinner. Didn't happen, though. I am pretty active and do some exercise, but with my eating habits it's all I can do to keep off that twenty pounds.

So, I'm off to the reunion a little heavier than when we graduated. (Of course, I don't honestly remember my weight in high school. I'm guessing.) But it's only a .8 pound per year gain. And that's only like twenty-four ounces of cheese. Per year. Or twenty-four Guinnesses. So two ounces of cheese or two Guinnesses a month over what you burn...and there you are, decades later, that much fatter... thirty-two pounds fatter. (Imagine, again, if I put cream in all that coffee.)

I'll bet my classmates have some gray hair, some balding, some drooping, some wrinkles to show for our years. And some pounds. I've got all of that. Actually I'm not very gray yet but my barber claimed the other day that my hairline was receding.

Food is Serious Business for the French

In France, food is serious business. And there are still many specialists. Bakeries, pastry shops, fish shops, cheese shops. Waiters are professionals, chefs are revered. The U.S. (thankfully) is getting more like this but I doubt we will ever catch up. The picture shows a detail from a poissonnerie (fish store) that was around the corner from our hotel during our trip in May. Notice that the tile is in the form of...fish scales. These details make it so much fun!

I spent some time over the weekend collecting bits and pieces of info about the food I ate while in Paris and have posted a draft on my regular WEB site. I loved thinking about the food, the locations, finding information about places on the WEB. I kept having to go get a cup of coffee while I worked on it, though, because I kept thinking of all those café visits!

I love travel. My favorite thing about travel is eating in new places. My second favorite thing is museums. Some museums are starting to have fairly well-acclaimed restaurants (for example, the Modern in Ft. Worth and the MOMA in NYC). Now, that's what I'm talking about!

I Want My Rachael Ray

I knew I should probably get up, but there was this gentle rain falling and the bed felt so good. Then the phone rang. Well, it was nearly 8AM. I hadn't made a welfare call to my dad. So I expected it would be him. And it was.

"Are you still asleep?" Obviously not, I wanted to say.

"No, but I'm in bed." I admitted.

"There is just this nice, gentle rain falling."

"Yes, that's why I was still in bed. I wasn't really asleep." I wasn't actually.

Changing the subject deftly, he said, "I can't get channels 31 and 32. It's the food channel. And HGTV. They are just black."

Ah, my dad loves Rachael Ray. I said I'd check into it and got up and found the channels on my cable. There was Rachael all right. I checked and found the same channels on the digital spectrum and called and told him those numbers. No joy. After getting some coffee, I tried an online chat with Time Warner. I got a note that my analyst had 'left the room.' So I tried the phone number for service, reluctantly. I was fearful that they had decided the channels belonged in a separate layer which we were no longer providing for the astronomically high charge we pay for his cable. But, no. The guy I got on the phone (after only a few button pushes and amazingly quickly) said that the channels were being provided in a 'new way which requires two-way communication.' Hmm. Is someone monitoring my dad watching Rachael? Anyway, it was the old and universal answer to computer problems. (Yes, that cable box is just a computer.) Boot to the head. In other words, I had to convince my dad to cycle power on the cable box and wait for it to boot.

My patient explanation of the process didn't raise his confidence or mine. "I'll try it as soon as I'm finished watching this program," he said. I haven't heard if it worked. A check of the line-up showed that he could catch Rachael at 10:30.

Today's picture is from a market in Paris. Something to go with the food channel theme, you know. I guess I have to check out this Rachael Ray. And wonder if my dad is spending too much time alone.

Cows in Paris

I'm posting this because I noticed that the Paris Daily Photo blog had exhibited some of these. This cow was in the Place de Marché St. Catherine. It's a little square where there is a magic club opposite the bistro. We went to see a magic show there in 2004. This spot is near Place des Vosges, but not nearly so well-known.

I've been in London when they had cows, in Baltimore when they had crabs (well, you know big, decorated plastic ones) and in Berlin when they had bears. It is something different to point your camera at. What I was going for here was the cow's intrusion into that square (place) with the typical bistro with the typical name 'Au Bistrot de la Place.'

We've done our Father's Day duty here in Austin and I'm about to put together a little summary of our Paris dining experiences.

It's All Relative

Today's picture shows a couple of glasses of Picon Bière (beer with a shot of Picon pastis) on a table at the famed Café de Flore in Paris. FFP is not much of a beer drinker but does like this concoction. Beer drinking was something my dad and I shared for years. He doesn't drink much now in a nod to his nine-decades-old liver.

Are we our genes or our experiences? A little of both? On Father's Day, we take the parental units out for brunch. From these people we get our genes. But our experiences reach out in different directions...other people we've encountered, places we've gone, things we've read and seen. FFP's parents have not left the state, I don't think. Except maybe his dad crossed the border to Mexico once, long ago. Maybe. My dad has visited all fifty states of the U.S.A. And Russia, England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Germany, Austria, Belgium and Iceland. Still his experiences are different than mine. In spite of thirty years in a technical trade, I'm not always at ease with techonology. But our parents are really at odds with it. Only my (late) mother would try a computer and her struggles revealed the gap of generations. FFP's parents' phone is out of order and we leave a cell phone over there and they seem uneasy about using it. Our dads worked with their hands, though, and understand tools and things that baffle us since we spent our lives in professional jobs.

Still I often observe some of my actions and see my dad's influence...whether his genes or just his influence. And sometimes those actions, the one that seem most like Dad, seem the most beyond my conscious control. Lately, there have been newspaper accounts about genes maybe being responsible for traits like risk-taking. I think that's probably true. I certainly think certain forms of shyness are genetic. Or that's just my excuse. Everyone needs excuses. Even relative ones.

Connections

I got an e-mail from a friend today with the subject line 'Left Field Connections.' He and his wife met some cool young women and thought that FFP and I should meet them. We may never actually do that but the e-mail exchange let us catch up with one another. His kids are growing up rapidly and he's had to face some untimely deaths and, well, the usual. I'd like to keep up with everyone I'm acquainted with, especially good and interesting friends, but it just doesn't happen. He also mentioned that there might be a casual party at 'the company.' The place where he works and where I once worked.

We are connected to lots of people and that's what keeps us going. The oddest or the most mundane things can make us think of one another.

I recently wrote an e-mail to a friend who lives in the Ft. Worth area. She reads my WEB stuff sometimes but I often wonder how she's doing. She answered the e-mail and we caught up a little, promising to have that 'face-to-face' some time soon.

And I'm actually going to, gulp, my um (many years later) high school reunion soon. Sadly, going to high school together isn't much of a connection. I haven't kept up with many of the people. But there are a couple that I'm eager to talk to again. And, heck, it might rekindle an old connection or common interests. Or reveal new connections now that we are older. Several people, though, who would be interesting to see again don't seem to be coming to the event. That's always the way, huh?

What Cheers Me Up

The picture shows a sign pasted on a tombstone at the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris. Basically I think it is saying that the gravesite is considered abandoned and will be reclaimed to bury someone else unless you pay up. Actually it doesn't say anything about paying up. I'll appeal to the French language experts reading along. Still it was jarring to see the disrepair and the labels slapped over them.

No, that doesn't cheer me up.

But something has and does. I think it has to do with beginning to figure out how to simplify and get rid of some stuff.

Or it may have more to do with listening to jazz. We've wandered into the Elephant Room three times in the last week or so. And I bought one band's CD at one of the shows and listened to that a bit in the car. Jazz cheers me up.

Movies don't always cheer me up. Especially some movies. I like to watch them. I'm sometimes educated or entertained. Sometimes I'm disturbed and upset by them. Rarely cheered up. Except for some food movies. Even sad food movies like Big Night can cheer me up.

But it's the jazz, I think. Or the getting rid of stuff. (Actually more like planning to get rid of stuff. Does that count?) Or just giving in to the way things are. Or maybe it's getting out on the tennis court or getting some exercise. Maybe it's knowing that everyone has problems and, really, I have less than the average person.

Sometimes I think that chemicals (or electrical charges) flow in the brain giving one the gamut of emotion from euphoric to depressed. And that what happens hasn't much to do with it. Unless what's happening is jazz.

You Dirty Dog...Spamcommers

Spam comments showed up on this blog site last night. They had links in them associated with a question mark or other bit of punctuation designed to suck my (nonexistent) readers off into (at best) some ad site or (at worst) to some site that would download vicious stuff. Not that I followed the links. But that would be the pattern. I removed them all and changed the options to moderate comments. So if you are a real person and show up to say something real (not "I like your color scheme" or "you are awesome") then there will be a lag of unknown duration before your comment appears. Also you may have to type a nonsense word from a picture to prove that you are, um, human. Or a reasonable facsimile thereof. I haven't had this at my halo scan site yet if you want to comment there. The world is becoming so inhospitable. Well, not becoming. It always was. We just hide in our little corner of it sometimes and forget all the bad actors who are out there, forget all the pain.

As to the picture, which kind of follows my vague thesis for this post...I think that they didn't want dogs inside this area of the market in the 16th arrondisement in Paris where (I think) meats were sold. So they constructed a leash tie-up point. It's funny to think if there were really six or more dogs tied up there! Would they calmly wait for their owners to buy some meat (and perhaps a bone or two?)

Yep, the world is not always charming.

I was going to do some work in the yard this morning. Instead I'm waiting for my dad to call. He's trying to get a repair on his van and may need a ride. I don't have any other duties today other than getting the great streamline my stuff project under way. Yeah, right. And, of course, try to get my daily workout. Well, at least I cleaned up this blogging site. Not like that is an accomplishment.

I Think I'd Love some Simplicity

I was trying to think what would make my life better and decided that I need to simplify. I need to see some clean corners and surfaces. To have one thing to concentrate on. Otherwise my life is nearly perfect. Except for friends who are ill or who have died.

It will take some work to simplify. As a buddy of mine says things are always more chaotic initially as you pull things out and sort them. This random shot of stuff in my office is an illustration of the problem. Books and such just piled on the shelves. Some of this stuff I'll never refer to again. Even if there are books I'd like to read or keep for reference, all needs to be organized, some things discarded or given away and some things boxed up.

This doesn't get done by just thinking it would be nice, however. Nope. Gotta do something.

My first task is to catch up the finances so that less time has to be devoted to that. Perhaps I'll blog my progress. Or not.

Just Enjoy It

This one, taken in Paris (yeah, still with those), is a riot of round shapes and reflection. I really like it.

It's important to like things. To enjoy them. Right now (as in on the TV sitting above this monitor) I'm watching the French Open Men's Final. I was hoping for an epic battle. It sort of is. Ebbs and flows and amazing shots. When you give yourself a few hours to indulge in watching a match like this while drinking coffee, eating and reading newspapers during breaks, then you should revel in it and enjoy it. It's three hours in at the moment. It might have been over before the three hour mark. But wasn't. Federer pulled it back out. I'm enjoying it. Like I say, if you are going to devote time to something you should get into it. I'm enjoying my papers, too, even though I'm hopelessly behind in controlling them. If you are going to do something, especially something that is supposed to be leisure, dig in and revel in it. Don't think about the next thing. Enjoy now.

That is going to be my mantra for a few days. I have a plan to do some rather distasteful chores around the house and yard. To do some more of the financial stuff I need to do. And of course to continue our social life and the fun things and the workouts. But I'm going to be in the moment by golly. Really.

Sometimes it's All Too Easy

I guess there might be a question of whether it's art if you find windows to photograph that are already so artistic. It's kind of stealing just adding the texture of the reflection. This shop, in the St. Germain area I think, was displaying odd collage art they had for sale. We didn't go inside. We merely stole the image and stole away.

In fact, we didn't go inside too many shops. I convinced FFP that the clothes he was attracted to were both too expensive and that he would have trouble fitting into them. We didn't go into too many food shops as we didn't picnic. We didn't bring home souvenirs. We did wander around Bon Marche’s Le Grand Epicerie and even considered buying some Picon but we didn't buy anything. I'm not much into shopping and bringing things home any more. A few postcards, mostly from museum shops, giveaway maps and ticket stubs. That's about it. Except for all the sugar cubes and giveaway chocolates that come with the precious little espressos.

Feeling odd today...life is good. For me. But I'm thinking about other people more than usual.

The Den of Bacchus

Yeah...the Repaire de Bachhus. I actually bought all my wine in restaurants on our visit. But if the weather had been more hospitable for a picnic...I might have gone in this place instead of just shooting the window. I don't regret not buying some French wine and bringing it home. There is lots of good French wine available right here in Austin. What I regret is not buying a bottle of Picon and bringing it home. French peasants mix this with beer and maybe a little lemon syrup. Yum. (I say peasants drink it because it is widely available in places we've been but was not part of the bar supply at the Ritz when we went there in 2004.) Also called Amer Picon this liqueur appears not to be available here. In fact one WEB site says "Amer Picon is a bitter cordial made with orange, gentian, and other ingredients. It has a bold bitter flavor and is often used as a digestive. At the current time, this product can be fairly difficult to find, and in fact doesn't appear to be available in the US at all." This wasn't always so. After our 2004 trip to France, we bought two bottles at Austin Wine Merchant. But that was their last and they never got any again. So if you are headed to France, pick me up a bottle. It's cheap but, of course, the reason I didn't bring any back was that carting bottles on the plane is a pain.

Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

I love words but I'm not a fan of puns really. I kind of miss Paris. As cool as shop windows can be in Austin, you are lots more likely to see cowboy boots or punk clothing than absinthe paraphernalia. In an attempt to capture the fun we had in Paris (or maybe just to get back to our roots of having fun in Austin) we went to the Elephant Room last night. ("Cool Jazz in the Basement 365 Days a Year...3426 consecutive nights of music and still counting."). Paris wishes they had a place like this with NO SMOKE. I used to think about going there and then think about the low ceilings and the exhaust of all those smokers and think 'nah.'

Another acquaintance of ours, roughly our age, died. That either means I should keep living with vigor like I did yesterday or get a checkup. You know...I'm thinking the former. Didn't know this guy well. We worked with him long ago and then we would see him and his wife dining at a restaurant near us in recent years. (Fonda San Miguel if you must know.)

But, yeah, I do love words. Lately I've been thinking how I like foible and today I'm thinking how I like paraphernalia which has an obscure meaning as well as the one we are familiar with..." A married woman's personal property exclusive of her dowry, according to common law." Not so much use for that one anymore. We've come a long way baby.

This has to be the most rambling entry I've ever made. So be it.

Artist's Statement--More Silliness

A friend reacted to my artist's statement with tongue firmly lodged in cheek as follows:

"At times even the artist herself is reflected in the photograph, hazy and indistinguishable from the artifacts or other viewers. Trapped in her own work, the viewer can feel her struggle, yearning to be independent and free of influence in her art yet included in the world at large. Her unclear image personifies her struggle, her reflection on her place both outside and inside the everyday experience."

That is hilarious I think. Particularly when you look at this picture from my Paris trip. (And where else would it be from at this point?)

Blogger has been sort of flakey today. Indeed all my online interactions have been troubled. Someone is using my e-mail address to spam people. Sad.

But there I am in the picture. My unclear image.

You Know You Want Another One

Same shop window, totally different look and feel. For those of you returning here for pictures of the Eiffel tower or Notre Dame, though, perhaps a disappointment.

Artist's Statement

My friend SuRu says that (and I do paraphrase because I can never remember exactly what people say) artists are the ones who take what they create and themselves seriously and that I should work on my artist's statement for my shop window photography. So why not:

The photos are intended to use the glass enclosed shop windows (les vitrines en Français) as a second lens and then, by displaying them on WEB sites, use the reflective LCD and CRT screens as yet another way to include photographer, viewer and passers-by in the process. In the gallery or home, of course, reflective glass should always be used in the framing process and, perhaps, even a shadow box with real objects included along with the print. While France does provide some of the more interesting shop windows, my work encompasses examples from Texas to Portland, Maine and Portland, Oregon.

Yeah, well, maybe. I may even try the shadow box thing in real life. Anyway, there you go. I'm taking myself seriously. I'm an artist. Not.

In this photo, the unknown couple with their interesting fashion, the stringed instrument and plant in the shop window and the traffic cones create a vibrant environment and a certain tension and intensity that any individual picture of the building across the way, the people or the items in the window would lack.

Whoa...maybe I should take up ghost-writing artist's statements!

Yep...another shop

Just off the Place des Vosges there is a store selling musical instruments. Makes for great shop window pictures. I reeled off a bunch of pixels trying various aspects of it. I think I shot the same store last trip. Or one very like it.

More Paris Fodder

I just finished sorting out the Paris box to go back in the closet. Inside are ancient guidebooks, new ones, newspaper articles, cards from hotels, restaurants, shops. And lots of maps, all useful but none more so than the Michelin 55/58. I've set aside phrase books and menu and food guides and a couple of things about places outside Paris. They belong in the France box, of course.

I love Austin and I have fun here day in and day out. But I sure long to be tramping around Europe when I look in these boxes and open various books looking for things or just at random for fun. The picture, by the way, is FFP, wearing a cap because of the wind that day, staring toward the Seine from the outside escalator area of the George Pompidou Center while the camera shows Sacre Coeur up there on the hill in the distance.

We didn't have a great experience this time at this museum. For a couple of reasons. But it was the first time I'd gone inside the center. So it was OK. We did it. We retreated to a nearby café after we'd visited and the waiter made fun of me ordering a Croque Monsieur. He said something like all English and Australian people order that. It was the only one I had. What's not to like about bread, ham and melted cheese with, more than likely, some butter to fry it in? Waiters were friendlier about orders of achovies, steak tartare, baby squid, rabbit and the like. But I just laughed. And gobbled down my snack while watching people troop by.

Last time I posed FFP with all the 'sights' but this time I mostly left him to be a reflection in shop windows. He seems happy to oblige either way.

This was really a great trip and sorting through the Paris box just makes me want to go back. Doesn't help that I'm watching the French Open.

Another Picture

Here is another Paris shop window picture for those of you (all two or three of you) who love them. I guess pigs figure in it somehow, but the cans look like paté of the fattened duck or goose.

I'm multi-tasking at my desk. I'm sorting out the Paris and France boxes and getting ready to put them away. I'm watching TV coverage of the French Open. I'm typing this. Obviously. And I should be doing a few other things.

A friend of mine calls shops the 'museums of popular culture.' I agree with that. She likes to go inside and actually shop, though. Me, not so much. But I love the windows.

Blogging Lazy

The blog 'machine' here makes you lazy and is an invitation to avoid any rules. You just type and everything is dated, arranged and archived. When I was hard at work at www.viswoman.com I made myself put up an entry for every day and tried to post a picture and arrange all those links I liked to have. The downside of this forum is that I don't know what will be preserved into the future and I get blog-lazy. If I feel like posting, I do it, that's it. I seem to be above rules. I can go back and edit later for typos, but will I?

I also no longer feel compelled to be completely transparent. There were times when I tried to publicize every thing I did or ate, every bit of exercise; I would virtually expose anything that I would happily tell a friend. All the non-secret parts. I am now keeping an off-line journal. Even there I'm not obsessing over recording every thing I eat or every rep of bicep curls.

I definitely like to swim in the online world, making connections with you folks by writing and reading blogs and journals myself so that I can know something about people I almost never get to see in person. There's never enough time for it, however. We make so many choices in life about how we spend our time. Currently I'm spending a lot of hours screening films for a local film festival and working on the business of my country club. I consider the former very educational about the film business which I profess an interest in. I consider the club essential to my health and happiness and so have decided to contribute some time for a term on the board. I have also been spending considerably more time on the finances of my life since the untimely death of our bookkeeper.

Last night we saw the premiere of "Ride Around the World" at the IMAX theater at the Bob Bullock State History Museum. Wow. The footage of cowboys and horseman in seven locations around the world is amazing. If you are in Austin, you should go see it. Night before last we went to an opening at d Berman gallery and saw the current show at AMOA and then braved rain to eat at the new Mexican place downtown and wander the Second Street district and have some coffee and gelato. FFP took the picture at one of the hip Second Street shops. I'll go back to posting pictures from Paris, I'm sure. But I just wanted to be a little more au courant.

Probably My Favorite Paris Shop Window Pic

I took this somewhere near the Place de la Madeleine, I think. It will be my favorite until I have a new favorite. I have combed through all my digital shots and fooled around with them a bit. I'm still toying with the idea of a proper, dated and detailed travelogue.

Meanwhile, life goes on. Big news in our world is that our Capresso machine is the subject of a recall for faulty wiring that might cause a fire. So we have to risk it or else pack it up and send it in for rework and, gulp, be without our caffeine machine for weeks. It has also developed a habit of saying it needs cleaning all the time, even after you clean it. I love my Capresso. It has been in for repairs two or maybe three (more?) times and I missed it so. Back from Paris I am, of course, more addicted than ever. It's not that I can't find peace with other coffee. But I love that perfect temperature concoction that has the creamy foam on top from the pressure and the so NOT burned effect of the burr grinder and the pressure brewing (rather than heat). Cheaper by huge amounts than a coffee shop product, too.

On the other hand...I wouldn't want it to burn my house down.

Of course, if I were still in Paris I could sit down to a tiny perfect espresso for only four or five dollars...but including a life lease on a sidewalk table. I noticed by watching the French Open that the weather is still chilly with scattered showers and wind, though. Not as friendly to cafe sitting. But there is that enclosed NON-SMOKING area facing the boulevard at Deux Magots. But back to reality. I'm in Austin. Summer is coming. Thank goodness for air conditioning.