It's Too Complicated!

Today's photo is a recent reflection at the Uncommon Objects Store on South Congress.

Today's Holidailies prompt is: "Today is Cat Herder's Day, a day to celebrate the times when things are overwhelming, and you feel as if you are trying to 'herd cats'. What in your life feels like herding cats, and how do you handle it?"

For the first sixty years of my life I sought to complicate things. I wanted more stuff. I wanted more experiences. I wanted to know more people. I embraced buying a home, landscaping, buying furniture and art and computer after computer, camera after camera (to capture those people and experiences). I threw parties and introduced the people I'd met to one another. I met other minds online and met some of those people in person. I mailed hundreds (well, at least more than a hundred) holiday cards, each year printing something complicated and, in my mind, clever. At work I got to know people and products and ideas.

Along the way we lost track of friends and even family. People died. Belongings began to lose their luster and were given away, discarded or sold. We downsized from about 3000 square feet and a garage with storage to a 1225 square foot apartment and a forty square foot storage cage. By the end of 2011 all our parents were gone and early in 2012 we had disposed of their belongings. (We still have the last home my parents lived in but we rent it out.)

But. Now I have this desire to simplify things.

I still want to meet people but I'm honestly circumspect about getting too involved with more people or their causes. I have trouble keeping up with the ones I know. A data base of people on my computer contains 655 individuals or families. Of course, I don't really remember who some of them are. (I have, I think, eliminated those who have left this world.) My facebook profile claims I have 864 friends at least one of whom is not still alive. I have friends who are not in the data base and not friends on facebook.

I have so many possessions albeit in a small space that I thought I would get organized in retirement (I've been retired twelve years) or after downsizing (I moved to the smaller place over six years ago) or for sure after handling the affairs and possessions of the parents (completed almost four years ago).

But. Life is still too complex. I need to make it even more straightforward. I need to concentrate my attention. How to do that?

Don't buy so many things. I now look askance at buying things. I may even occasionally discourage FFP from buying something although this is less frequent. When I was younger I would occasionally eliminate magazine subscriptions to simplify things. For me only The New Yorker has survived this cut but FFP subscribes to others off and on. I never get The New Yorker read. Ditto the three newspapers I still take. Sigh.

Get rid of stuff.  I do less well at this. I think too much about whether I should keep things and even if I'm convinced I shouldn't have it I fret over proper disposal.

Say No to Events and Causes. I have a tendency to accept invitations whether personal ones or for events associated with causes. We have eliminated season tickets for everything but the ballet, picking and choosing other performances. We have decided to stop buying badges for film festivals. (Well, for sure we won't for SXSW.) And yet we have something every night and two lunches between now and Sunday!

My life should be simple. I have downsized. I have retired from the working world where herding cats is putting it mildly especially in the computer business. And yet I'm often overwhelmed with things I want to be doing. And here I sit, trying to write a blog entry. Why did I decide to dally with Holidailies?

Lego is the Topic

I am writing about Legos today. They Holidailies writing prompt has to do with Candle Lighting Day and losses for the year. Last year I could have done something with that prompt. It wasn't working this year. But I saw this entry on another blog in the Holidailies family and decided to write about Legos.

Seems like only yesterday (because it was) that I was talking about construction toys I wanted as a child. Legos didn't make it to the U.S. in time for my childhood passions but later, far after I should have outgrown toys, I became fascinated with them. I often his this passion in the guise of playing with or buying for children. When I downsized, I had many pounds of Lego and I sent almost all of them off to my great nephews. I can't say I regretted it.

But occasionally I really want to play with Legos. I often visit the Lego store when we are in NYC and I bought this 39 piece Statue of Liberty there. (She comes with a spare flame.) They have massive models of Rockefeller Center sights there and I've been to the Times Square Toys 'R Us to see giant Lego models there, too.

I buy Legos for my great nephews and try to just let my coveting of Legos stop at admiring stuff on the Lego site. I almost succumbed to the Simpsons house! I recently rented "The Lego Movie" and I loved it.

What cool toys, right? Of course, I'm not a parent who has to step on little pieces of plastic and try to store all these pieces.

Gifts

I'm having trouble writing today. The Holidailies Writing Prompt is about gifts (material or otherwise) and what you'd wish to get or give. So let's start there and see if something gets written.

My first thoughts on getting is that there are very few material things I can imagine wanting. Certain nothing beyond having with a swipe of the credit card (which, yes, I can also probably pay off). I could use some new shoes: tennis shoes, the higher hiking boots (I got new country walkers recently), some dressy loafers (unfortunately I find it increasingly difficult to find ones that I like that fit well). I could use new clothes but I keep thinking I'll lose weight first. I guess it would be nice to have a new car but, honestly, as long as my 2001 Civic keeps running I think I'm happier without a new one.  I need to get a new phone but really it's just a matter of going to the store and getting it. There is a package for me from FFP and I'm sure it's books and sure I'll like them but I also have scores of books around I haven't read and want to read. I'm pretty happy with the gadgets I have: the cameras and computers and such except for that old iPhone 3GS and like I said...just go shopping. The whole idea of getting presents this year seems depressing and obsessive. What a far cry from the child who pored over pages like the ones below from the Sears Christmas Catalog...hot with the desire to own these toys.

 I would have loved all these construction toys. Indeed, I did finally acquire an Erector set around this time (late 50's) after much haggling with parents and Santa and society. (The makers of these toys didn't help my cause by putting pictures of boys on the packages and in the catalog.)

Ditto all these games and shooting galleries. Never did get electric football. I did get a BB gun, though, so yeah there was that.

Yep, pored over these catalogs for hours on end. I was full of wishing (and the Sears Catalog was nicknamed the wish book). Full of wanting. But even then I noticed how little satisfaction came with the getting.

So what gifts would I like now? Nothing really in the material realm. And I dare not hope for world peace and understanding. I would love to snap my fingers and stop wars and hate. But I know it won't happen.

A Tough Subject

What's this? A self-portrait scribbled on my iPhone for my phone's 'wallpaper'. I think it looks just like me. In fact, when I drink my face gets red enough that people ask if I've 'gotten a lot of sun.' I'll say, "No. It's the wine." or whatever.

Other people don't think it looks like me. Go figure.

So here's my actual picture. Not the pinup at the bottom but that reflection...the one to the right of the camera.

I snapped this in a junk shop when I first got my iPhone. And, yes, I'm sure I intentionally included myself.

And this one? Maybe that's a reflection of my feet and legs.

What do we see when we see ourselves? In pictures? In the mirror? In the reflection in a shop window when we are passing by. I'm often a little shocked a what I see. ("Stand up straight!" I say to the passing image in that window.) In the mirror or photo I see the extra chin, the wrinkles, the imperfections, the hair going everywhere and going a little gray. (I'm inordinately proud that it's not ALL gray. After all a lot of my friends are completely gray. And truth be told, I like when it is going in multiple directions.)

Here's what I really look like. Well, not really. The picture is a couple of years old. I look older. I have more gray. The photo was taken (and retouched perhaps) by a professional.

Well, OK...here I am now. Last week.

My right eye looks a little wonky. My hair is suitably weird. See the gray? I keep it short because that de-emphasizes the gray. I'd had a drink, maybe two. Red cheeks. This is just a snapshot FFP took and I cropped it out to show my face.

So who are we really? How do we perceive ourselves and, of course, others? Do we make instant judgments based on age and skin color?  Sex? Dress? Do we hear someone speak (articulately or not, accented or bland) and make judgments about origin and education?

These perceptions are much in the news. People are protesting deaths of blacks in police shootings. A young girl shot in the head for being in favor of education for girls is receiving a Nobel prize. There are ancient wars between and among religious sects and ethnic groups outsiders would find difficult to define. The world is full of this hate. Stereotyping. Prejudice. There's no doubt about it.

Amid the protests over police shootings of blacks and, let's face it, before that, there has been a call for whites to confess to their privilege if not their prejudice. I'm not sure what one is supposed to do once this privilege (and perhaps prejudice) is acknowledged. Perhaps the hope is that one will become less apt to make an instant assumption about someone. Or maybe become less opposed (assuming one was opposed) to affirmative action.

From the pictures above (well maybe not the drawing!) one can see that my skin is the 'white' associated with Northern Europeans. I confess that the rhetoric which demands that I admit my privilege is a little off-putting for me. I am a woman (the short hair sometimes confuses people on this point but I am) and I grew up in the lower middle class. My privilege is hard-worn assuming I have it. I could go on and on about male privilege in college and the work place in my era. I will not.

In any case, I'm white. I check the Caucasian box when asked. (What does that even mean?) I haven't done 23andMe although I'm considering it. I think it might find some ancestry that would be surprising. But the fact is that other people see white skin.

Which brings me to a thought experiment that I began about two months ago. I decided that when I interacted with others or just saw them on the street that, in addition to noting how they were dressed and making assumptions about who they were and what they were doing, I would note their race, the color of their skin, the distinguishing facial features of race, first and foremost.

Wait, you say...that's what you always do! No, I found, it really was not. I had to force this fact to the head of the line in making assumptions. A guy with a backpack and earphones? I'd internally say a person of Asian origin who is probably a student or a high tech worker. Before I would not have added the racial aspect although certainly I would have probably remembered it later. A group of people speaking another language taking up the entire sidewalk looking back and forth at phones? A group of Asian foreign visitors. A male runner with no shirt on and a great body? A black athlete. The scary homeless man we see a lot who stands straight up and makes threatening gestures? A white man who obviously has psychological problems. The homeless guy we see a lot lounging on a particular park bench never asking for anything or speaking? The black homeless guy with dreads.

I could go on and on. I learned a lot of things from this exercise. I learned that I wasn't always sure about race. Hispanic? Or black? Mixed race? I learned that in Austin many construction workers appear Hispanic but blacks are few and far between. (Our Hispanic population is four times that of blacks here, however.) I learned that though our black population is less than ten percent that I see lots of blacks in many contexts. (We'll talk about the elitism of the blacks who are my friends and the economic, education, cultural implications of that another day.) I saw blacks headed to work, homeless, shopping, having meetings in coffee shops, running the trail, dressed like bankers, performing musicians, street musicians. For some reason I didn't see many black families on the walking trails but mixed race families seemed to abound. This isn't a statistical study, of course, but a personal one. What assumptions was I making? And the number of people in Austin identifying as two or more races is fifty percent of the number identifying as black.

I love watching people. Sorting them into types and ilks. Skin color and facial features denoting origins is one way. And I found that making myself identify it at the forefront when encountering strangers rather than emphasizing my own prejudice probably adjusted it. These strangers covered the spectrum in all the other ways we have of distinguishing people: dress, seeming economic status, age, sex, fitness, way of speaking (if they spoke), what they carried, etc. Race identification didn't really tell one much else. Which may be why I didn't put it first in my people-watching before. Which is not to say I didn't notice racial characteristics.

For those who aren't on the front lines of the battle against hate of the 'other' I recommend a thought experiment like this as you encounter strangers. If you make assumptions based on race or age or sex alone then you might ask why. I certainly make assumptions. Particularly when I see drivers of a certain age or race. I think it's worth taking these out and examining them honestly. I don't know if this constitutes a contribution to the conversation we are told we are supposed to be having about race. But it's always good to take a good look at oneself. Outside (OK, I'm not that red and I'm getting old and a bit fat) and inside (what are you really thinking and from where does that thinking arise).

Throw Back Thursday...The Christmas Spirit

My mom loved Christmas and if you had known her, you would have to smile when she came to your house with holiday decorations hanging from her ears and this sweatshirt on and, as I remember, socks with Santas on them as well. This is in our old house in Austin in 2000. It is the last Christmas that my mom really felt good, I think. By Christmas 2001 she would be on her way to death by Multiple Myeloma but we wouldn't know it or have a name to put with her problems. We would even have an extremely frustrating hospital visit right before Christmas in 2001. But she was pretty chipper in 2000.

She put up the tree when we were kids and put surprise wrapped packages under it when I'm pretty sure money was very tight. Santa came and he didn't disappoint.

She made turkeys and homemade dressing and gravy and rolls and might invite scads of people to partake. She made pies.

I remember one Christmas when I was still living in Dallas. My sister was visiting Mom with her kids, I think. My cousin and his wife and their three kids were there. Mom decided everyone needed a stocking. She got out the sewing machine and started whipping up these personalized stockings. Her sewing machine needle broke and I had to go to a mall (I swear it was Christmas Eve) and go to Sears or some place like that and get one. I believe my mom decided kids needed bikes and trikes and wagons, too,. It seemed my mom was whipping up holiday spirit out of thin air, that we all had some good reason not to feel that great that particular holiday and I can't put my finger on why. But we had a great time as I remember. And it was all her.

I've said it many times but I'll say it again: the Christmas spirit left me when this woman left us. And it will never really return. Not in that way. Not even if I get out a jigsaw puzzle or a board game and sit down to that recreation with a cup of black coffee and some leftover pie. That would remind me of Mom but I don't think it would give me the same feeling of holiday cheer.

The Joy of the Season

This picture was taken of the window of a shop near us decorated with a 'joy to the world' theme. I like it. I used to collect old globes. Gave them all to charity when I downsized.

A few days ago I talked about letter writing and how I was writing personal notes to people who sent me cards rather than printing up a bunch of cards and mass mailing them perhaps with just a scribbled sentiment. As of yesterday I've already fallen a tiny bit behind. (I have five unanswered cards.) But I'm hopeful that I can keep this up. It is nice to stop and reflect on the folks that have taken the trouble to buy or design and print something, address it, stamp it and entrust it to snail mail.

I hope this activity is making me stop and appreciate the season a little bit. Because it's really about those human connections. Here's a picture of a young couple and their four kids, almost visibly growing as they are photographed. Here's these two guys in front of the Capitol with their dog, here's a Santa card with a nice personal paragraph inside. And so forth. We are making a connection with one another in all our sameness and differences. It's a reason to be happy, isn't it?

Cheers!

At Holidailies the writing prompt is "Holiday parties - do you throw one? Do you attend them? What would the very best holiday party be?"  Well, parties. My first thought goes to...you guessed it...the libations.

When we lived in our house we had a large kitchen and a 500 square foot room attached for entertaining and a living room/dining room and small room next to the kitchen for setting up a bar or food, too. We had a lot of parties. Not too many Christmas ones, but a few. We haven't had anything elaborate in our little apartment and as it becomes more and more overcome with books and other things I wonder if I ever will have many people over. In our old house we could shut off a room or even two, lock the dog(s) and all the unread papers, stray books and messes in there and have fifty or more people in for snacks and drinks.

We held some New Year's Day recovery parties where we served up black-eyed peas and sausage and Bloody Marys and such. We served taco buffets, giant slabs of smoked salmon, etc. It all runs together. But no more.

We still go to parties. Big ones held at clubs and little dinner parties and big ones held at large luxurious homes decorated to the nines. And we drink. Both of us if we are not driving. FFP drives if we go out at night so....

I don't think the holidays influence my drinking, though. Year in and year out I'm pretty much a five or six drink a week person. (I hear people always underestimate their drinking. So do what you will with that.) I often don't drink if we stay home. If we do go out to dinner, I usually drink. If we go to a party I usually drink. If I drink a Manhattan I often take a picture of it and post it on facebook. I don't usually post pictures of glasses of wine, other cocktails I might try or the very occasional after dinner drink.

If I live to be 100 (or for my boomer generation whatever the appropriate old age is to amaze people) then I'm going to say, when asked to what I attribute my longevity:

• Onions
• Garlic
• Staying away from the doctors
• Walking
• Drinking almost every day
• Not doing the same thing every day

Yep, holiday parties mean drinking to me whether it's your party or mine. A club we belong to even throws a party at noon on December 23. The Bloody Marys are free. I break my 'no alcohol before five' rule to drink a couple. But in general, I don't drink any more during the holiday time than usual. Now whether that's good or bad is hard to say. I'll try to decide while you set me up again.

Note on the picture: this liquor store is three blocks from us. We don't usually shop there because there are three other liquor stores within walking distance. Maybe more. This one has the simple stuff, though, that you might need. A couple of others have fancy brands and good wines. The deli downstairs has wine and beer. The Whole Foods has a huge wine selection and 'beer alley.' We don't buy all that much in these places because we do a lot of our drinking out at parties or bars or restaurants.

Where's The Spirit?

The picture is from 2007. The Capitol tree is lit for this year I'm sure. I haven't been to see it. Maybe tonight. It's less than a mile away.

I'm not feeling it. Christmas, that is. FFP keeps bugging me to give him a hint for a gift. He's picked out for himself a new suit, leather jacket, three sweaters and a belt. I did buy a new belt. He even said he went to Toy Joy (a very silly and fun store that moved to our neighborhood a while ago) looking for something silly to buy me. He didn't find anything. He's picked so much himself that I'm not even inclined to try to surprise him. The last few years I've given him a nice scarf, a link and stud set and a very nice compact umbrella. I have a couple of things I think I could buy him, but I don't know if I will. He's hard to buy for but perhaps not as hard as I am. I keep thinking I'll lose some weight and get fit before I buy new clothes. I have a pile of books I want to read. (I'm currently reading one I bought long ago but never read. It's been adapted into the movie "The Imitation Game" which we saw in the Austin Film Festival.)

But Christmas isn't about presents for oneself, right? One is supposed to want to help others. But my helping others is usually by giving money. And we do that throughout the year. Our causes have pretty well tapped the well by the time the holiday comes. (And yet every day's mail brings several appeals and 'Giving Tuesday' filled my inbox.) I know I could go out and volunteer to physically help someone. Maybe I'm a bad person, but I reserve that kind of activity for friends and family. Perhaps because strangers frighten me. Perhaps because I'm just selfish. It might give me the spirit but it's too hard for me to do.

If the season is supposed to be a religious celebration then I'm also sort of out of luck. My Christian background makes the songs celebrating 'Christ is Born' resonate with the season but my beliefs don't really bring a sense of wonder at god man being born and all that means to many folks. And it seems that few Christians even view the season that way but rather as one of football, food, drink and presents. Which doesn't sound bad to me, of course. Especially the food and drink. But, no. I'm not feeling it.

It's Beginning to Look

Yep. There I am by the Christmas tree. Not our tree, but, um, the tree at the Driskill hotel in the beautiful lobby. We were walking around Thursday night and went into several places with trees and got pictures. It got dull quickly and we went for food and drink. The season isn't really so bright for me.

I am still intent on answering all the holiday cards I receive with a little personal note. However, we are only a few days in and I have two pending ones so I may not get that done.  I guess I fail at Christmas. Or Happy Holidays or whatever others are celebrating. (Christmas is the one celebrated in my childhood before I new other traditions existed.)

And that's about all I've got today.

Letters

Today's writing prompt on Holidailies concerns "World Letter Writing Day" which is tomorrow. The prompt is: "When is the last time you sent (or received) a letter? Write a letter (to anyone or anything you want) and share it with us."

That had me thinking about the early days of ebay, my sister who had a catastrophic health problem around that time and my efforts to entertain her with letters.

Today is my sister's 71st birthday. Shortly after her her 55th birthday she collapsed at her home in Denver from a ruptured aneurysm in her brain, a hemorrhagic stroke. For weeks, she struggled to survive. They repaired the aneurysm and attempted to stop several subsequent ischemic strokes caused by swelling. She survived and learned to walk again although she never regained all the strength and mobility on her right side.

My sister was in rehab hospitals for many months and then home struggling to come back for many more. I was far away. She lived in Denver. I forbade my parents from going to Colorado in the winter so I didn't go either. In March I finally took them to see her.

As my sister progressed I sent lots of get well messages and then, at some point, wanted her to have mail from me that would distract her from her struggles and encourage her to come back to things she loved.

I had discovered the wonders of ebay. I sold a few things, I bought a few things but mostly I was utterly fascinated with the stuff on offer. I would snip out pictures of things for sale. I began in 1999 using these stolen pictures to write letters to my sister illustrated with ebay items (and a few collectibles I owned) and talking about our childhoods or certain categories of collectibles.

My sister loved these letters. She'd always been a fan of junk stores and garage sale and she had a lot of collections, especially of miniatures but of other things, too.

One letter was about Christmas collectibles. The German card above was one of the illustrations.   I loved the way it was written on all around the illustration. Here is another snippet from that letter

I would also close by asking her to write to me. (She was struggling to write again because of the weakness on her right side.) I would tell her that if she wrote to me, I'd construct another one of these letters that was essentially a looking glass into ebay. I think she collected all the letters in a notebook. She may still have them as a matter of fact. I found the word doc for this one among computer files I'd transferred over and over from machine to machine.

Which brings me to my current letter writing. They are more notes than letters, but this year, instead of printing up a bunch of holiday cards and mailing them to a hundred or so people, I am making a card or getting a card and replying to each card I receive with a short personal note. I'll respond to what the person wrote on their card or mention how lovely the children are in the picture. One person sent a MOMA card of a Matisse stained glass window. I mentioned that we saw the recent Matisse show at MOMA. On some of these cards I'm using Forever Stamps (or scans of them) to decorate them. For example,

In some cases, I've used the stamp on the envelope that my correspondent sent me to decorate the one I send. I'm thinking that these cards may surprise the recipients who realize we are suddenly having a correspondence instead of exchanging cards. It's made the holiday card thing fun again for me but as the cards flow in I may not have the stamina for it! Still I do love hand-written letters. Or notes. And remember tomorrow isn't just Pearl Harbor Day but World Letter Writing day.

Texas Christmas

As we muddle through the holiday season here in Central Texas, usually without snow, having a few bitterly cold days, some just right and some, let's face it, too warm, one sees people resort to odd decorations like putting Christmas balls on the sharp spines of the agave (aka century plant).

I'm not much for decorating and this year I will not have a tree or tinsel. No wreathes (hallway decorations not allowed in our building) or centerpieces. I will put some holiday cards we receive out on a shelf so I can enjoy them for a while. I won't be digging in the storage cage downstairs for bendable posable Christmas figures to strew around the apartment. (Yes, when I *do* decorate, it's unconventional at best.)

What I will do, however, is co-op others' efforts to be seasonably festive. I'll go to the hotels around here and snap pictures of their trees and other decor. Ditto the efforts in my condo building. I think there's a tree up on the 9th floor. I'll pose FFP in front of giant presents or Christmas characters. Maybe catch some clever shop windows with the camera. (We usually go to NYC to see those magnificent displays but not this year.) Restaurant decorated? Grab a picture. Someone made a real effort on their yard this year and we happen by on one of our rambles? Grab some pictures for this blog or our daily photo effort.

I consider this tactic making the best use of the efforts of others. One of these years I'll throw a little cocktail party like I used to do when we lived in the house and I will decorate. I may even have to clean the house for that. Not this year though. All the festive stuff you'll see here is either someone else's work or from the annals of time. But I will try to have somewhat festive pictures to dress up for Holidailies.

Time Passes!

Dad's family 1944. Only his brother is missing. I think that may be because he was away in the Navy. This is during WWII, of course. My dad was rejected for conscription a few times for health. Eventually they took him, though. Except for his brother (who was not yet married) this is his family. I wonder if the picture was taken to send to his brother. None of the sisters are married at this time. His youngest sister, on the ground with my mother and infant sister, is no more than 14.

I have quite a collection of pictures (scanned from prints and originally digital) on my computer and various backup drives. I have several computers on my desk (don't ask) and when they are on they frequently go into screen saver mode and I have them flashing up pictures from a few collections.

When I look at old pictures I can't help but think about how much time has passed and how many people have passed with time. If I see the picture above I immediately think: they are all gone except that baby and teenager. The baby is now my almost 71-year-old sister. The teenager is my Aunt Cappy, featured yesterday. Only my granddad didn't survive to be in my life. But my grandmother, Dad, Mom and the other four sisters are gone now, too.

So much happened to these people. Eight more children would be born amongst three of the women in this picture. They would work and struggle and laugh and cry. (The Ball family, in fact, has a tendency to laugh until they cry.) The children would grow, the people in this picture would grow old, the children would have children and those children would have children. A couple of children would die before their parents.

This tendency of mine to look at who has been lost in pictures as they flash by doesn't feel morbid. It feels like celebrating lives lived and the struggle inherent in life. Let's see...there's a picture of my friend Al on the beach at Normandy, my mother with a snowman, two of our dogs (they are gone, too), my mom with us on the Capitol steps when we are children, my Aunts Mary and Dottie at my sister's wedding in 1965. And there's my friend Charles giving me a hug, So recognizable in these pictures on my screens but no longer in the world. Does this make me sad? No just nostalgic and maybe accepting that one is just a pawn in a long sputtering line of humanity trying hard to stop time but failing. Always eventually succumbing.

What's Eating You?

Aunt Cappy at Shaw's near Pemaquid, July 2005.

This morning I stayed in bed until 8 o'clock. I almost never stay in bed that late. I had some weird dreams. When I got up I thought I should write something for Holidailies right away and get that done. The writing prompt was about shopping Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We will speak of my non-shopping ways another time. Today we will talk about my Aunt.

We call her Cappy. It's a nickname her brothers and sisters (and parents for all I know) gave her. She had two brothers and four sisters. My dad and my uncle and my four other aunts on that side of the family. Two of her sisters married and had kids. The brothers, too. (Two of her sisters never married.) She was single until she was in her mid-thirties. She was in the Navy. She married a Marine late in both their military careers. He went to Viet Nam after they married. He had been in WWII and Korea. They were married for over four decades until he died in 2013. All her sisters have died, too. Her brothers. All the husbands and wives of those siblings. Her nieces and nephews married. Some had children. Some of those children had children. But of her 'generation' on my Dad's side, it is only Aunt Cappy. It's true she was youngest of her siblings. The oldest was 20 years older. Cappy was born straddling the next generation, only 12 years older than the oldest niece.

The Marine she married hailed from a little town in Maine where generations of his family had lived. So they moved there after they retired and they took care of his mother until she died and stayed on in the land of harsh winters and beauty and lobsters until they couldn't weather the winters and finally couldn't maintain two homes so they could summer in Texas.

The picture above is of my aunt when Forrest and I visited Maine on a car trip. Nine years ago. She's joking with the lobsters we will consume. (Funny how the camera she's holding dates the picture. A Polaroid I believe. Although the rest of us were in the digital era by then.) We had a routine when we visited called 'Code of the West' (somewhat inexplicably in the eastern most state) that involved going for lobster at a lobster dock restaurant, taking home leftover lobster meat for lobster rolls the next day in a cooler, visiting the Pemaquid Lighthouse and Museum and having ice cream at a gift shop nearby.

My aunt is on my mind. She lives near Dallas now but on a Thanksgiving trip to Houston she fell and dislocated her shoulder and had to get a shoulder replacement yesterday. Several of my cousins and their wives are on the case. But I'm there in spirit. I took her back to Maine the summer of 2013 to lay my uncle's ashes to rest in his native soil. (And, incidentally, to reenact the Code of the West in his honor. And, let's be honest, do every fun thing he liked that we could make time for. That Marine was always so much fun.) I took her back again this last summer with the help of my own niece (who is, gulp, 46 years old!) to do the driving. Another cousin took her to South Carolina this year. On these excursions I worried that she would have a fall. I was inordinately proud of getting her home upright.

I hope that she rebounds to take the risk of being on unfamiliar ground again. There is an army of nieces and nephews and their progeny who will hopefully be there for our last elder of that generation. Maybe we will keep taking her on trips even though we fear the fall, especially the out-of-town fall. I wish she lived closer to me. (She is in a retirement home near Dallas.) But that would imbue additional responsibility. It's been a few years since we had parental units to look after. None were quite as fun as Cappy, though.

And whenever I see some older person being looked after, by a child or someone else, I now wonder: who will look after me? I posed that question to Aunt Cappy one time. She said: "Be nice to your nieces."

The Visible Woman...Unmasked

These lucha libre masks in neon are on display at the Roadhouse Relics art gallery on South First.

Yesterday's writing prompt at Holidailies was "Introduce Yourself" but I didn't follow that prompt. But I guess some introductions are in order. The portal can bring strangers to your virtual door.

The short version: I'm old. I've been retired for 12 years. I thought I'd do more. I'm very lucky.

I retired in 2002. Early retirement by most standards. I worked in various computer businesses (and businesses using computers) for 32 years. I fell into that work looking for, well, work. Money for work. When I graduated from college I had no money. I didn't have enough for an apartment deposit. Fortunately I was able to live with my parents for a while after I got a job with an oil company training to do computer programming. I changed jobs a lot but kept taking jobs in computing because I didn't win the lottery or anything and I had to support myself. I took a job in Austin late in 1975. I met a man and we married. We didn't have much money together either but we had a good time and he started his own advertising business.  Eventually we acquired a good-sized house and paid it off and saved some money. We are both retired now and I feel very lucky that we got from having nothing to having enough money to retire. We set goals but, yes, we were VERY lucky.

I did think I'd do more. Both during my career and after retirement. We sold our big house which was expensive and time-consuming to maintain and downsized to a 1200 sq. foot apartment in downtown Austin, Texas. We've lived here for six and a half years. It seems like it's both been a short time and a very long time. We got rid of lots of stuff when we moved. We moved a lot of books, though, and we still buy too many.

I had the idea that when I retired I would write, solve the world's problems, be very organized and do lots of traveling for pleasure. I've been lucky to be retired and I have a good time and travel a little. It's not as easy to travel as having the time off I find.

Write? I made some business cards when I retired that said: "Pretending to Write but Really Just Blogging." I later used a red pen to revise that to "Pretending to Blog but Really Just Tweeting."

Solving the world's problems? When I worked, I donated to causes. I thought maybe I'd be more hands on with volunteering when retired but actually I'm lazy and a little shy and so it's still financial support that I give to my causes.

Yes. I thought I'd do more. It used to seem like there would always be time. What's changed in the last year or so is that the time doesn't seem to stretch to the horizon and beyond. The time for my little life seems quite finite. On good days this seems fine, encouraging even. On bad ones a bit of a loss.

The things I do accomplish most days, weeks, months? Mild exercise (long walks and doubles tennis mostly). Keeping track of our investments and bills. Maintaining a daily blog of photos from Austin. Doing the minimal housework and arranging maintenance for our little apartment. Watching movies, TV and visiting with friends, going to plays and ballets and attending social events, many fundraisers. We don't cook much. We eat out a fair amount. In all these things but tennis I'm ably assisted by my long-suffering husband. It fills up the days. Completely most of the time. But I thought I'd do more.

Keeping A Record

Remember when having a picture of something involved film? Remember the furor over instant photography where the film developed right after you took it? But then to share it you had to send it off for reprints? These vintage cameras were for sale the other day in Uncommon Objects on South Congress. (For a reverie on the Polaroid Camera from five years ago see here.)

Remember when words on paper meant longhand, typing or typesetting?

Well, now it should be easier to keep a record of your life, right? Digital stills, digital videos, digital voice recorders; digital scanners to convert those old pictures and slides to pixels; computers to process our words and blogging sites like this to format them, date them, search them; and social media preserving your real-time comments and making sharing what you're doing so easy.

But somehow I still lose track of my life. Puzzle over what I did yesterday and wonder why I don't have a photo of something.

There is a comfort in it sometimes, though. That one can still get lost. Hide a bit from others and be a recluse.

Today is the first day of Holidailies. Drivel like this is supposed to be my gift to you my reader. But if it fell short just see what other participants have written that might enhance your day. I guess I'll be a little exposed here for the next month. However, I'm not going to be doing a blow-by-blow diary of my activities here most days. Just little ramblings. I have been keeping a diary offline lately. I used it yesterday to figure out when I last got a haircut. And so it goes.

Repetition brings Reputation

It's funny the things you remember. When I was in school band, I had a  book of music practice drills. It had encouraging slogans on every page. One was: "Repetition brings Reputation." I wasn't much of a musician, talent-wise, and I also didn't have much discipline to practice. But I did remember that slogan and there's a lot of truth to it. Accomplishing something is often just doing something over and over until you get it right or gain some skill. Or, as they say, build up a 'body of work.'

I've participated in the past in blogging exercises where you force yourself to write something every single day for a month. And I'm doing it again this year with the same portal site.It was run in the past by some friends but it has been taken over by some new folks. It can be found here.

The idea is that your writing is a gift for the holidays to your readers. I don't know how much of a gift it will be but I'm going to start the exercise in earnest on Monday, December 1. The portal has already attracted over 40 participants. I'll try to read some of the other blogs as well.

I am really questioning why I do this. Because, after all, who blogs these days? (Still...forty plus people have signed up.) 

I've done online 'journals' since before they were blogs, of course. Sometimes disciplining myself (with no promise to some portal) to write and post pictures every day for months and even years at a time. And while I didn't get much of a reputation I do think it helped me to hone my writing skills a bit and to organize my thoughts.

As to what the picture is doing up there, past readers may know that snapping reflections in shop windows is something I like to do. Especially when they capture a reflection of me. So whenever I blog I do some of that. Artist's statement here. This particular picture was taken at a nearby sporting goods store with big silver Christmas balls in their windows for the holidays.

Holiday Resolutions

That's FFP last year posing with the Santa at Headliners Christmas party.

I used to be a big proponent of New Year's Resolutions. It just seemed so hopeful to be able to stop on a dime and change your life in some way (or ten or more ways) by just promising it to yourself. But the post-resolution depression soon set in as you realized there was nothing about January 1 that promised change more than any other day. In fact, a day when everyone lies around recovering from too much food, drink and revelry while watching football? Yeah, a day best lost to the wasted bucket rather than a new beginning.

In the past I'm pretty sure I bailed on New Year's Resolutions and made Holiday Resolutions. Some time prior to Thanksgiving but after all the stores were already hawking holiday stuff and arguing over whether to be open on Thanksgiving Day I decided what I would do in the period stretching out to the day after New Year's Day. I can't find that old list, but it probably was something like the following.

• Don't go to any big box store or mall between a few weeks before Thanksgiving until a few days into the new year. (I don't visit these places often and in fact made a run to Costco, the only place like this I frequently visit, a couple of weeks ago. I'm stocked on toilet paper and cheese and such.)
• Do go to any independent stores you like and buy yourself or your spouse anything that your whims dictate. (FFP is hard to buy for, but I usually come up with something from a store I can walk to that is one of a kind and independent. I don't buy presents for anyone else.)
• Do not feel bad about sending money to relatives. They enjoy spending it. The adults will pretend to the kids that you picked out a perfect gift. 
• Do not dress up in Santa-themed or elf-themed costumes.
• Do not cook a turkey or a ham, but graciously eat those cooked by others. 
• Do not worry that you are properly addressing everyone's religious needs during this season. They will take care of themselves.
• Do not decorate the apartment for the holiday unless you get those bendable, posable collectibles out of storage. (See below.)
• Do enjoy the decorations of others especially those we can walk to and the magnificent displays at hotels. 
• Do eat out as much as you like and enjoy the company of others. Have fried oysters at Threadgill's for Christmas dinner if you like.
• See a lot of movies both in the theaters and streaming and on DVDs.
• Go to all the Christmas parties that you please and don't feel bad about not giving one.

Object Lessons...The Shelfie

I recently read on social media (which is where I first read of almost everything although I later flesh out many of the stories by reading long articles in actual print: magazines and newspapers) about 'shelfies.' Doing for your inanimate possessions what 'selfies' do for your visage. People artfully arrange their knick knacks, art work, etc. Then photograph them for social media.

I've done this for years, actually, sans the part about social media (although I often blogged pictures of shelves and stuff). See here.

The one above was taken a day or two ago. Every time I dust the shelves, there is an evolution of juxaposition of objects. You see cards I've stuck up there, glimpses of rewards we received, some small art work and some small things we've saved (a silver yoyo FFP gave his Dad, a harmonica he had as a kid).  Of course, books. A picture of us taken for a newspaper article.

Truth is I love looking at my shelves. They give me a warm feeling of memories and possibilites. The books reveal past and present interests. There are ones I've read and many I haven't but intend to read. The cards connecting me to people and events. The art work subject to constant reinterpretation.

I spend way too much time worrying about the physical things in my life and the disposition of them in the short and long term. Does writing about that fretting help or hurt? At least things look better than this:

Taken over six years ago before the move from the big house. I was trying to get organized. Ha.

A Nostalgia For Simpler Times

The Picture
This is another reflection picture from the car show. Behind me is an old '50's era Chevy in that aqua blue color. These cars didn't come with Blue Tooth.

The Year
The random number generator came up with 1987. Specific memories of that year are elusive. I have some files on my computer where I have typed in some hand-written notes from old notebooks and journals and scraps of paper. I only found this:

12/29/1987 (December 1987)This morning on the way to work I was thinking about how I haven’t been playing tennis or racquetball. Then I thought about the lesson I bought for The Black Tie/Tennis Shoe Auction. I couldn’t remember Jeff Moore’s first name. Other Moores. (Greg for example) kept getting in the way. Even remembered his wife, Lucy. Then other Lucy’s started popping up---Katz for example. Finally about 9:30 I called FFP, but got the answering machine. When he called back and the phone rang---Jeff sprung to mind. I knew all the time that (1) it wasn’t alliterative; and (2) it was one syllable. FFP had lunch yesterday with Dr. Ernest Sharpe. He told Forrest he was losing his memory. Sometimes I’m afraid I’m losing mine a little fast for a 39-year-old woman. 

I'm not exactly sure where I worked at that juncture. It was a time of changing jobs before I landed at my final real job in 1989. It was perhaps a company that was later subsumed by another company and then another. I remember the event in the note (it was to raise money for Women's Athletic scholarships at UT) but not the tennis lesson or whether I ever took it.  I am sort of fascinated by the description of my effort to remember the name of the UT Women's tennis coach which, of course, I don't remember trying to remember. I have to laugh, of course, at my 39-year-old fears. This 65-year-old is both troubled and secretly glad that 1987 is sort of lost in the mists of time. It is either wonderful or sad that this year and this day will be similarly lost.

The Object

I got a haircut yesterday. It's a tiny bit short and the bed head effect was weird so I wore a hat on our walk today. I bought this hat in Normandy (en français, Normandie) in 2004. We went there for the 60th anniversary of D-Day. It was unseasonably hot. I hadn't brought a cap so I bought this one. It has been worn on some hot walks around Austin in the subsequent years. So it has some layers of salt from sweat. I keep too many old hats around but I particularly like this one because it reminds me of a trip and inspires some memories. 

The Last Few Days

I played tennis yesterday and took a walk around Lady Bird Lake today and it occurs to me that I'm happiest when doing these two things. We went out last night and serendipity took us to two favorite hangouts, Bar Congress and Arro, and we enjoyed the food and drink (a bit too much of the latter) and seeing some friends who were with some people we didn't know. Enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation.

Monday we went to hear music at El Mercado on South First. Christine Albert and Jimmy Dale Gilmore. Both yesterday and Monday were last minute choices of where to go and what to do. I like that in a way. Tonight we will probably meet up with a friend who is in town to see his mom. We haven't planned for where or anything.

Reflecting...Organized

I've been feeling like updating this blog, but have been at a loss about structure. Don't know if I'll keep it up, but today's structure is (1) one of my reflection pictures; (2) a memory from a random year; (3) a reminiscence inspired by a random object I own or have owned; and (4) something I did in the last few days.

The Picture
I took this at the end of last month at a car show at my club. I'd finished playing tennis. That's me in shorts, with hat and my tennis bag reflected  in a bright red car finish along with a vintage aqua Chevy, I'm not a car person but I love all the beautiful reflective surfaces of paint and chrome.

The Year
I used this random number generator to generate a year of my lifetime. It came up with the year 2000.

Wow. Y2K.I remember being on call for customers of my software firm on New Year's day  in case of problems after corrections for the assumption that years were two digits!

I remember buying a house for my parents in Austin and, in May and June, their move down here from Mesquite (near Dallas) where they'd lived for 34 years. They stayed with us for six weeks while their stuff sat in the garage of the new house and we waited for the seller to move into new digs.

Then, in the fall, I had a gaggle of business trips. Las Vegas, Australia, Europe, Wisconsin. In the snow. I remember the fall being so busy with trips all over. But I don't remember too many details. I went to Paris after my Europe duties for fun. I remember doing a few touristy things in Sydney. And drinking lots of Shiraz. And looking down at the tennis courts in Melbourne from an appointment high in an office building. I remember a restaurant in Las Vegas where I went with two work mates. I took a call from my mother there on my cell. My cousin had died of breast cancer. I missed her funeral due to the travel.

The Object
A manual calendar. This is a little wooden advertising specialty.  It belonged to my mother. I don't know where she got it or when but in 2000 (that year again) she moved it to Austin. It is made up of the frame, two cubes with numbers and six wooden slats with months front and back. You can assemble it to be today's date. I remember it in the move because some of the parts were initially misplaced. She found this upsetting. Two young girls I'd hired to help her unpack eventually found them. Inside a sugar bowl, I think. When my dad died I put the pieces in a baggy and brought it home. Not right away, of course, but as I slowly disposed of everything in the house it ended up here. (My mom had died eight years before.) I couldn't bring myself to toss it in with the thrift store donations (of which there were many). I occasionally move the pieces around, but not often. Only recently did I find it in a cabinet and put it on the shelf with books and pictures and artifacts. It reminds me of time passing and the meaningless of things.

The Last Few Days
We've been 'coming down' from a trip with friends to New Orleans, replete with eating and drinking and doing road trip things. I've been trying to get myself to catch up on chores with house cleaning and such. I did get through catching up on bills and budgets. I approved my tax return for the CPA to efile and I wrote checks to the IRS.

Saturday (the 12th) we walked to UT's Bates Recital Hall and saw the UT jazz orchestra with guest Joshua Redman. He was amazing. I'm so glad we went. (We chose it over several other social events.) There's nothing FFP and I enjoy more than a jazz concert. I have six of his albums in my iTunes (ripped from our CD collection.) I should listen to him some more.

SXSW Film is Over!

Never was I so glad for a festival to end. We only bought film badges and we had a pretty good time and seem to have picked wisely on movies. Still. I wore myself having fun. And I felt compelled to try to see a few things and also to eat and drink at my favorite bars! And the crowds seeking free booze and rap music or whatever made me so weary. I decided I'd recap the nine days just so I'd have a record of it. What I can remember anyway.

We picked up our badges and bags on Thursday, March 6th after my tennis game. It was quick and easy with only minor confusion in the swag bag line. It seems wasteful to have two big guides and two pocket guides and two extra Chronicles. (FFP put one Chronicle back in the stack at the convention center. But as the next ten days went by there were tons of these dead tree publications lying around the convention center.) We put the app on FFP's iPad but it took time to start up and get to the schedule and our personal picks and was also trying to update itself so we did use the pocket guide I stuck in my backpack. I also put some energy bars, other emergency stuff like mints, Advil, extra phone power, a camera, etc. in there. And when rain threatened, little umbrellas. FFP added a magazine or two, I carried around two issues of The New Yorker, I sometimes had a crossword or other puzzle in a newspaper section. We sometimes stood in the line reading from the  iPad or magazine or newspaper but we spent a lot of the line time looking around and talking to friends and strangers.

I chose a bunch of films and panels early on and then, each day, based on how we were feeling and the weather we winnowed it down.

Here are the things we did (that I remember) both as part of the festival and during this time.

• Went to the convention center to see a panel on Lego! This was Day 1 and we had high hopes for doing lots of activities. When we got to the Convention Center we picked up an SXXpress Pass for the movie we planned at the Topfer. They told us that they weren't available for the Vimeo. This did not seem to be true, but that theater is vast and I can't imagine badges not getting in. The panel was in a vast room, too. However, after we were seated we heard there was a pipe burst in our building via twitter. We rushed back to the building to see if our unit was affected (it wasn't) and by the time we returned they were just taking questions. I love Lego but I have no idea if this was a good session. We would not do another panel. I did watch one of the Interactive ones live-streaming. (I couldn't personally get in with my film badge.)
• Saw Thank You a Lot at the Topfer. This movie is about the music business. It follows a struggling music agent who is pressured to sign his father (an aging country singer with a cult following) or lose his job. He and his father are estranged precisely because he'd started his own agency pinning his hopes on having his dad's representation and his dad had disappeared. The father was played by James Hand who is a country singer. They used his name as the character's name, too. I enjoyed seeing the Austin scenes and thought the performances were pretty good. A very Austin and SXSW beginning to our festival. [We had SXXpress passes. They were unnecessary. We didn't get our favorite seats, the row with three seats on the left side, but that was because there were tons of filmmaker tickets seated first.]
• We rode the shuttle bus! We had walked to the Topfer. We thought maybe we'd see another movie at the Vimeo (at the Convention Center). We would not ride this again instead walking around and among the venues we visited: Paramount, Vimeo, Rollins, Topfer and the Violet Crown.
• Saw The Legend of Shorty at the Vimeo. We had plenty of time to queue and get in when the shuttle got to the Convention Center. This movie is a documentary about "El Chapo" the Mexican drug lord from the Mexican state of Sinaloa. I don't know how the film makers stayed alive. They tried to meet with him. They never succeeded but met lots of underlings and his mother. Shorty was captured after they wrapped and edited but they went back and added a bit about the capture. This was a good film and very revealing although there are still mysteries about why he finally was captured and why he evaded for so long as well as how he escaped the first time he was imprisoned. (Most likely it was the old conundrum of who was paid off and when.)
• Hung out in Bar Congress a couple of times. We'd eaten in the restaurant on Wednesday before the thing opened. We love this bar and the food is delicious. We also ended up eating dinner one night during the fest when they had a cancellation and there wasn't much room in the bar.
• Saw No No: A Dockumentary  about Dock Ellis and his famous no-hitter for the Pirates thrown while on LSD. This movie was about drugs, baseball, redemption and much more. Like many docs that thoroughly tell the story of one person it was fascinating and instructive. There was a lot of footage of Dock although he died in 2008.
• Saw Wicker Kittens a documentary about jigsaw puzzle enthusiasts and a competition for them. The title is the actual title of a puzzle. Many jigsaws involve kittens in baskets, apparently. I like jigsaws and spent many a lovely time with relatives and friends bent over a table, especially at holidays, assembling one as a group. This movie was kind of sweet and well-made and had interesting characters but there was an edge of OCD behavior and maybe hoarding that I found too close to home. Something I could find in a not so well-liked part of my own or my relatives' personalities. A rain storm outside and some lightning stopped the film briefly but it was restarted successfully. After this we went across the bridge again and found ourselves eating at Congress. Got soaked on the walk home.
• Almost went to a party. It was not an official SXSW thing. Quite the opposite. It was an annual brunch during the fest given by Austin Film Festival. We stood in a slow-moving line to get inside and then, seeing the line for the tacos and such, walked out and went to Walton's for breakfast.
• Saw Hellion, a film made by a local director and produced in part by friends of ours. It is about a young boy struggling with the loss of his mother and his father's grief-stricken inattention. His behavior seems a little too severe to me, but it is an interesting journey and well-acted. Adults and children do sometimes make terrible choices for the best of reasons, I suppose. This film is very well-made for a budget effort (or any effort really) and I'm proud of the local crowd. Kat Candler is a very savvy director and a fine writer of characters.
• Saw Sequoia, a narrative about a young woman with an incurable cancer who decides on a suicide plan that is to involve her sister but eventually brings in the whole family and a stranger. This was an OK piece with a few characters who were too comically-drawn but with fabulous scenery of the giant trees.
• Tried to get SXXpress passes at the beginning of them being handed out for the Monday session. There were hundreds and hundreds of people in line. We walked down to SoCo and ate at the Snack Bar instead. We then just queued in the badge line for A Night in Old Mexico which was written over more than three decades by our friend Bill Witliff and starred Robert Duvall. It was a romp and the co-stars, Jeremy Irvine and Angie Sepeda, were great playing off the old master. Only saw this one movie on the day and instead sat in the lounge at Ruth's Chris and drank and ate while watching people stream by outside on Sixth Street.
• Saw Lady Valor, The Kristen Beck Story, a documentary about Navy Seal veteran Chris Beck who transitioned to a female identity. It was a very personal story. I could not really relate to the Navy Seal, struggling to become one of these elite warriors and weathering so much danger and death and continually volunteering for deployment. The woman who was fearlessly speaking of her journey to be her authentic self did resonate. At one point in the film she says she hid girls' clothing and faked illness to stay home and dress up during elementary school. It reminded me of a gentleman in a film shown in last year's SXSW (Before You Know It) who had a desire to cross-dress his entire life that, after his wife died, he devoted himself to enabling. People are complicated. That one feels strongly enough to re-identify against society's expectations tells us much about this complexity. Kristen was at the screening and is a very dynamic figure but in a fairly self-effacing way. 
• Saw Take Me to The River, a documentary about the evolution of the Memphis sound. It was told in a most unique way by uniting old hands of the Memphis Blues with younger artists from Snoop Dog and other rappers to teen-aged music students to cut tracks. There was a lot of good history and final interviews and performances from some of the legends. And...it made me not hate rap so much when it was integrated with the other music.
• Punched request into Open Table after seeing above movie and ended up at Wink for a great meal.
• Saw Rubber Soul, a documentary and re-enactment of two interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, ten years apart, in 1970 and 1980. I found it very informative and a unique way of looking at this post-Beatles era as well as the entire Beatles phenomena. I heard other people disparage this flick or at least say they didn't care for it. That unofficial sample of people did seem to be a bit younger, perhaps unborn in 1980! It is, in any case, a very unique take on John Lennon material and perhaps not for every fan even.
• Went to the trade show a couple of times. We did a pretty thorough 'walk by' of the many countries section. Saw many wanna be next social media platform or development platform. Also: Chevy, 3D printing and more 3D printing, post-it notes, origami (but not with post-it notes).
• Went through the CF that is getting into a SXSW movie at Violet Crown. To see something I normally eschew: a vampire movie. But this was Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, a fantastic movie. I'll never have to see another vampire movie. But I'll see anything Jim makes.
• Saw Impossible Light, a documentary about a project to put many thousands of LEDs on the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge and have a light artist, Leo Villareal, program an abstract light show with them. This was a good movie about making a massive in situ art work. It made me want to go to San Francisco and see it. (They are trying to raise money to continue it but currently it will end in 2015.) Very reminiscent of Christo and Jeanne Claude works. In fact, they got Christo to write a letter backing the project.
• Saw Road to Austin, a documentary billed as a chronicle of "how Austin, Texas became the Live Music Capital of the World, dating from 1835 to present." Well, really it was more a cursory look at Austin music history and a film about a concert Steven Burton produced and an homage to him to promote a new non-profit for musician's health. (Austin is really the non-profit capital of the world. Is that a good or bad thing? Sometimes a bit of both.) There's was a party after with music and we almost went but then decided to see the Johnny Winter movie.
• Saw Johnny Winter: Down & Dirty, a documentary about Johnny Winter. A good overall portrait of defeats and triumphs and one man's life. The film needed editing very much but its overstuffed length allowed the man himself to arrive at the theater from a taping of Jimmy Kimmel Live.
• Saw Harmontown, a documentary chronicling Dan Harmon's road show of his podcast. Dan Harmon is the man behind the TV show "Community." He has a popular podcast. I don't attend to either. However, I told FFP that this movie was billed as a "calamitious cross country tour" and sometimes those can be interesting. In spite of beginning with and ending with no interest in Dan Harmon's work, I did not hate the movie.
• Saw Born to Fly, a documentary about choreographer Elizabeth Streb and her work. It was a very comprehensive study of the person and the work. Amazing person, work and film. This is like no other dance or movement you will ever see.
• Saw The 78 Project Movie, a documentary about a cross country trip to make one-of-a-kind 78 records of performances of old songs on a Presto direct-to-disc recorder. The movie shows these recordings being made and has other documentary footage of the Smithsonian folk collection and record collectors. I was fascinated by a lot of this but felt the movie needed some editing. Perhaps it was simply getting to be too late in the festival.
• Saw The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Schwartz, a documentary about a brilliant young programmer who was so tormented about being indicted for downloading thousands of pages of documents from JSTOR (a purveyor of scholarly papers) and threatened with years of jail time that he committed suicide. This piece is packed with information important to our connected society from the contents of ill-founded legislation to our government's role in deciding what to prosecute and bending over backwards for corporations.
• After our last movie (above) we went to Chavez, a new restaurant in the Radisson on Cesar Chavez. I had a wonderful cocktail. (A variation on Manhattan using a chile instead of a cherry and bitters.) Less impressed with ceviche and fish dishes. Felt relieved that the thing was over. Stopped for a nightcap at Bar Congress.
• So we saw 18 movies (5 narratives and 13 docs, no shorts), a bit of one panel, much street craziness. FFP woke me up early in the morning of March 14th to tell me about the car driving into the crowd on Red River. Three people have now lost their lives. No one we knew but only one degree of separation between us and two of them. Life is fragile. And over in a flash. Live in the moment if you can.

And back to real life