the books I read in 2024

There are still a dozen days left in 2024 but my progress in The black book by Lawrence Durrell is quite dismal. I probably won't finish reading it before the end of the year. I made the mistake of checking the book out because I was rewatching The Durrells in Corfu on PBS Passport. That series is an adaptation of Gerald Durrell's books about the family's years on Corfu, from the 1930s up to the spread of fascism sending the family back to Bournemouth. It's the rollicking story of a widow and her four eccentric children. Durrell's Black book is more experimental and surrealistic. I was also intrigued because I had read The black book by Orhan Pamuk (1990) many years ago. I remember very much liking Pamuk's book though the images in my brain at the moment could be from that book or other Pamuks.

These are the books I read in 2024, in chronological order.

• Orwell's roses, by Rebecca Solnit (2021)
• The sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015)
• Becoming, by Michelle Obama (2018)
• Red, white & royal blue, by Casey McQuiston (2019) - I don't think I've watched the film adaptation more than 100 times yet.
• Trickster makes this world: mischief, myth, and art, by Lewis Hyde (1997)
• Didn't nobody give a shit what happened to Carlotta, by James Hannaham (2022)
• Bad gays: a homosexual history, by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller (2022)
• Architects of an American landscape: Henry Hobson Richardson, Frederick Law Olmsted, and the reimagining of America's public and private spaces, by Hugh Howard (2022) - Bill and I walked about in Mount Auburn Cemetery in October, one of the great 19th-century public spaces.
• Theorem, by Pier Paolo Pasolini, translated by Stuart Hood (first published 1968, my copy is the NYRB, 2023 edition) - the basis for the Pasolini film Teorema (1968)
• Let's not do that again, by Grant Ginder (2022)
• Pink line: journeys across the world's queer frontiers, by Mark Gevisser (2020)
• Young Mungo, by Douglas Stuart (2022) - like his earlier Shuggie Bain, this book has a strong sense of place
• Blackbird, by Larry Duplechan (1986)
• The color of law: a forgotten history of how our government segregated America, by Richard Rothstein (2017)
• Erasure, by Percival Everett (2001) - I read a review of his new novel James (inspired by Huck Finn's companion) and read this book in anticipation of James coming out in paperback. More recently, I read a review of Colored television by Danzy Senna in NYTBR. Senna wrote the introduction to My search for Warren Harding (see below) and is the wife of Percival Everett. Will the circle be unbroken?
• The Paris hours, by Alex George (2020) - plenty of amusing name-dropping from literary Paris, e.g., Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Proust, Sartre
• Older brother, by Mahir Guven, translated by Tina A. Kover (2019)
• What she ate: six remarkable women and the food that tells their stories, by Laura Shapiro (2017) - a lucky grab from random searching at the public library. Shapiro's voice in the concluding chapter seemed so familiar even though our life paths were different. Turns out, she was born the day after I was. It was a good read too!
• The pairing, by Casey McQuiston (2024) - more food and drink and story
• The box: how the shipping container made the world smaller and the world economy bigger, by Marc Levinson (2nd ed., 2016) - I accidentally ordered two copies and gave one to Craig. I hit "add to cart" at bookshop.org when it seemed like things were going kerflooey and didn't review my cart carefully enough. Craig enjoyed the book too.
• This is New York, by E.B. White (1948)
• My search for Warren Harding, by Robert Plunket (first published 1983, my copy is New Directions, 2023)
• The black book, by Lawrence Durrell (first published in Paris in 1938, not published in unexpurgated form in the U.S. until 1960 or in Britain until 1973; my reading copy is Dutton, 1960)

I use Goodreads to record my reading. As usual, it's about an even mix of fiction and nonfiction. If you want to see how Goodreads compiles these books and shows you a clickable cover where you can get more information, go to 

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2024/6837039

separated at birth: simple tasks like dealing with your shoes

They've argued. He's all banged up. She's going to her own room for the night. He sits on the bed to get undressed but his injuries prevent his reaching his feet. She helps him take off his shoes. (The Diplomat, Season 2, on Netflix)

He's a troubled kid, always carrying a gun. Mom gets exasperated and kicks him out of the house. He ends up staying with a couple ne'er-do-wells. They treat him badly and make him do criminal things. He finally can't take it anymore after they pee in his shoes. "They're expensive. We went on a special trip to London to get them." He drags himself home. She asks him about the smell. He just says "My shoes" and she sits him down and takes the shoes off and gives him a hug. (The Durrells in Corfu, Season 1, Episode 4, on PBS Passport)

Unconditional love ... though maybe intermittent and contextual.

writing in space

Sometimes my indexing or cataloging takes me to places I really want to go or where I have very happily been. Sometimes it's a bit of both. I really enjoyed my trips to Milan in 2018, including a climb up to the roof of the Duomo. Hanging out with the gargoyles. My indexing a day or two ago included an article about eL Seed in Abitare. His work usually includes some Arabic calligraphy and the work above was on the plaza in front of the Duomo in Milan. He is Franco-Tunisian so I assumed his nom d'art was derived from something like al-Said. But no. One of the bits of biography that I found on the web described his love of El Cid as a child and his appropriation and respelling of that name.

I often check the Library of Congress Name Authority File when I encounter a new person and want to see if their record looks ok. I was amused to note that the record for eL Seed was done at the Metropolitan Museum of Art so I sent them a note of gratitude. William claimed it.

Thanks, William, and thank you, Bassam Makansi on Facebook, for the good picture of the calligraphy on the plaza. The picture from the roof of the Duomo is mine from 2018.

newest trend: architectural office name from tail of personal name?

Twice in the last couple days in my indexing, I have encountered an architectural firm that invented their name from latter portions of their personal names.

This is a project by Miogui Architecture, a collaboration of Sabine Fremiot and Léo Barestegui, in Le Havre, France.

This is a project by elaNández, founded by Manuela Fernández Langenegger, an architect based in Milan.

Naming is an art. Why not do it creatively?

separated at birth: celadon shards and green tiles

 

Li Hongwei

The Origin, 2022

(exhibition on view currently at the

Alfred Ceramic Art Museum)

detail of façade

Chao Center for Asian Art

The Ringling

Sarasota, Florida

Machado Silvetti, architects

I'm an antique and like print magazines

The ceramics library did not receive the July/August issue of The Magazine Antiques and it has been claimed. I imagined that I could go over to the David A. Howe Public Library and use their copy to index the issue for the Avery Index. Both the Hornell and Wellsville public libraries used to subscribe to Antiques. Those were the days, the before days. The holdings in Wellsville stopped in mid 2020. The librarian looked in STARCat and said that there was no indication of the magazine being held at Hornell. There were quite a few other Wellsville periodicals that seemed to stop in 2020. And the display of current magazines was quite paltry, relative to a few years ago when I indexed an issue there. Sigh.

But it was too early, after I discovered there was no issue to index, to go over to Texas Hot for lunch so I meandered into the special collections parlor and then to the 700s to see what was there on art and architecture. Drifting along into the 900s for history and biography, I noticed a book entitled What she ate: six remarkable women & the food that tells their stories, by Laura Shapiro (Viking, 2017). I read the first few pages of the introduction and went right over to check out the book. Next. 

My current reading is Older brother by Mahir Guven (Europa Editions, 2019). I'm enjoying it so I should be able to get through it and What she ate before the latter is due back at the library.

visiting the Met with my older sister

My older sister Roberta lived in Queensbury, New York, about an hour north of Albany. She was a volunteer at the Hyde Collection, a museum in Glens Falls. Although she did various addressing and desk tasks, the task she talked about with the most warmth was sewing dust covers for some of the historic furniture when it was in storage.

Roberta came down to New York City for a day trip sponsored by the Hyde when I was living in the City, probably at least twenty years ago. The bus dropped them off in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Berta and I spent a couple hours or so in the Metropolitan. Since she was a regular seamstress, knitter, and crocheter, we went to the American collection and looked at quilts. It was delightful to look at textile objects with her. They were art objects but she talked about the bias of the fabric and how it worked with and against the design and preservation of the object.

We looked at other art and then walked across Central Park. We ate at a Vietnamese place on Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side. I don't remember what we did later in the afternoon other than getting her to the Radio City Music Hall neighborhood where the bus was picking them up for the return trip.

I have been thinking especially about Roberta because she died this past week. Just days earlier, she had been on an early 80th-birthday cruise on Lake George with her whole immediate family. That is, both kids and the grandkids. She had a pulmonary embolism about two weeks before she died and then was up and down. After a downturn, she declined returning to the ICU and died in her daughter's arms.

Naturally, she has been much in my thoughts. I went up to the library to drop off a note for one of my colleagues and also picked up the latest issue of Magazine Antiques which is one of the magazines I index for the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals. I was looking at the issue as I walked home and there was an article about the conservation of a canapé à la turque commissioned by Marie Antoinette and now in the collection of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. The subtitle of the article mentions its "prized if drearily upholstered presence at San Francisco's Legion of Honor since the 1950s." The sofa now has new hand-embroidered upholstery. 

Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

This picture, from Wikimedia Commons, predates the conservation and reupholstering. I was not familiar with the term "canapé" in reference to furniture. The Art and Architecture Thesaurus describes a canapé as an elegant sofa developed in France in the 18th century and picked up by Chippendale and others.

Berta would never have had such a fancy piece of furniture in her residence, unless maybe if it was handed down by an elegant relative. It wasn't money. It was common sense. She was the solid rock of us kids and I'll miss that.

no more uppity teachers ... or students?

We were supposed to go on a field trip to the Cuba Block Barn today but Hurricane Debby is working her way up the eastern coast. Rain date in September. When I got to the Alfred Station SDB Church parking lot where we were supposed to combine for shared rides to Cuba, Sharon Burdick arrived and she had copies of a fact sheet on the Bedford Corners School House. The schoolhouse was the added bonus for our trip to Cuba, being on the road between the Block Barn and lunch at Sprague's in Portville.

The schoolhouse is now the home of the Portville Historical and Preservation Society. The main room had double desks to hold two students and was large enough that multiple grades could be taught. The teacher was seated on a platform in the front of the room. Later, it was mandated that teachers should not be on a different level than the students and the arrangement of the room was flipped with the teacher platform at the back.

When I was in first-third grades in New Auburn, Wisconsin, the school house was for all the grades, no kindergarten but all twelve numbered grades met in one building with shared rooms for first and second and for third to fifth. That meant that my older sister and I were in the same classroom when she was in fifth grade and I in third. One day, Roberta's class was discussing the polar regions and nosy me butted in to say that we had been to the North Pole. Roberta had to correct my story to say that it was Santa's North Pole in the Adirondacks.

The "we" of the field trip were members of the Bakers Bridge Historical Association and other interested folks.

the disappearing hours

Having lots of books around the house can be a real delight but sometimes one will just disappear. It won't be in the place that I'm sure it should be. The most recent disappearing title was the small and inexpensive, and long-owned, partial facsimile of the Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, Queen of France. This fourteenth-century manuscript illuminated by Jean Pucelle even has a Wikipedia page. 

The facsimile is just under five and a half inches tall. When the book of hours, now in the Cloisters collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, was being restored, the Met displayed the disbound manuscript before it was cleaned and rebound. The "facsimile" is actually slightly larger than the original.

The other day, I was thinking about something and the facsimile came to mind. I went to that shelf of small books in my bedroom and the Hours facsimile was not there. The facsimile of the Hours of Mary of Burgundy was there. I went down the shelf book-by-book several times. I looked on a few shelves where other books of manuscript illumination are kept. I thought, for a while, that I might have lent the facsimile to an art student who was in the manuscripts class. No luck. I was about ready to resign myself to no longer having the facsimile.

This morning, it is cooler outside and I was opening the window in the middle room of my part of the family house. I realized that there was another cluster of little books at the end of the shelf just to my left. And, there was the facsimile of the Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux. Happiness. Made my day.

P.S. (an hour later) I went to move some of the other little books from the shelf near the window to the shelf in the bedroom, the most expectable collective spot for shelving my little books. There was the book on the Bosch and other Flemish paintings in the Prado that I'd really spent a lot of time looking for a year or more ago. I looked among the travel books and among the folders of stuff from trips to Spain. Nope, it was hiding in the little stack of little books.

just a normal guy

“I’ve never felt symbolic. I felt — you know, I’m just here.” He laughed. “I’m just Ken.” (This was an allusion to Ryan Gosling’s showstopping song at the Oscars, the night before the interview.) “I’m just me. I’m just somebody who’s trying to be a writer, trying to do his best. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.”

Salman Rushdie, in an interview with Sarah Lyall, in the New York Times Book Review

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/14/books/salman-rushdie-knife-interview.html

goin' digital

Quite a few years ago, we used to have regular and contentious discussions about the need to retain physical mailings for ARLIS/NA member business and publications. Email was available to many or most of us but not everybody. I used to argue (sometimes) that until we only used email, people would insist on physical mailings. Even today, the local Bakers Bridge Historical Association sends out a regular newsletter by mail to about half of our members.

I did finally get a smartphone but my life has not moved there. It is not my favorite venue for dealing with life. Today, I am reading a message from the Brooklyn Museum that they are moving our membership card to digital. It's not the first museum that I belong to to do this but I'd rather not. It almost irks me enough to not renew my membership. When I was in New York City last week, I used my old membership card at the Museum of Arts and Design and the front desk clerk checked their database to be sure that the expiration date was not past. The Brooklyn Museum letter said an unexpired membership card can be used for a grace period, with the implication that grace would not be extended for a long period.

Palladianism in Kane, Pa., and Yorkshire

McDermott Mausoleum

Kane, Pennsylvania

Temple of the Four Winds

Castle Howard

Yorkshire

Wikimedia Commons

By jcw1967 from Leeds, UK - Temple of the Four Winds, Castle Howard, 17112017, JCW1967, EOS 1Ds (2), CC BY 2.0

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78305779

39 x 2 = 78

I do enjoy when numbers line up or add up as much as I enjoy a good sentence. Well, maybe as much. Words and numbers. Sometimes mirrored like palindromes. This morning, I stopped for gasoline before I went to Wegmans to get my Sunday New York Times. The total purchase was $20.78 for 6.078 gallons. Off to Wegmans where I picked up groceries along with the three papers for me and the two Lindas (Alfred friends for whom I pick up and deliver their Sunday papers). My Wegmans bill was $60.39, minus the $21 for the three papers is $39.39. Thirty-nine is half of 78. When I added the grocery total to my monthly food expenses, the total was $638.78. I guess it's just going to be a 39 and 78 kind of day but no "palindrome" yet.

One of the pictures you get when you search the internet for "39 x 2 = 78." It (39 x 78) happens to be the size of sheets for a twin bed.

Harmony Hammond at the Whitney Biennial

A wonderful paragraph, for a variety of reasons, from the review of the 2024 Whitney Biennial in the New Yorker by Jackson Arn entitled "The Whitney Biennial's taste for flesh." Posted March 22, 2024, to appear in the April 1 print edition:

By a close margin, the four fabric assemblages of Harmony Hammond are the fleshiest things in this show. They use a variety of materials to suggest a whole menagerie of bodies, from pimply-shiny to aged and chalky. Colors are subdued for the most part, and strategically so: when a touch of red shrieks out of the dirty white field of "Chenille #11," it almost hurts. Hammond has suggested that flourishes like this were meant to evoke "sexual brutality against women," but take a few steps back and marvel at how this only deepens her work's mystery -- if the red is brutality, what are the string, the smeared white, the grommets? Interpretation is interwoven with the sheer, thingy strangeness of the object, and can't be ripped out. Art like this is built to last, I would guess. But if you prefer your political messaging neat, no chaser, you are welcome to walk to the other end of the sixth floor, go to the terrace, and spend some time with Kiyan Williams's big dirt sculpture of the White House sinking into the ground, complete with upside-down American flag. There's a label in case you can't figure out what it means.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/01/the-whitney-biennial-art-review

Some of the reasons:

• descriptive words, rich and evocative
• I was lucky enough to spend time with Harmony Hammond when we were both active in the Queer Caucus for Art, an affiliated society of the College Art Association (now rebranding itself as simply CAA).
• particular memory of drinks and conversation after a caucus business meeting in Philadelphia when the last remaining folks in the hotel lounge were several older lesbians and me, and then we walked each other back to our hotels. The younger folks had gone off dancing.
• memories of visits to various Whitney Biennials; this one has just opened and runs until August so there's a chance I might get to the City to see it
• I actually said the word "chenille" today when a friend asked us what color we thought her sweater was. I asked about the material. "Is it chenille?"
• the ending of the paragraph

trying to remember the artist's name

Some months ago, I was reminded of the work of a contemporary artist who does watercolors of animals, usually with captions beautifully written in the image. Kind of Audubon-like. I tried all kinds of googling and just could not get a result that included the artist. I had become familiar with the artist when I worked at the Amon Carter Museum and I searched their collection online and that of other museums that might have had a work by him. I thought of sending a note to Milan (a colleague at the Carter) to ask about the artist. The desire to remember his name came and went. I cannot really say I was obsessed but I was frustrated. I felt like I could kind of remember his name but it's hard to search "kind of" on the web.

I hadn't thought about it for a while but, this morning, as I was reading the style section from last Sunday's Times, the social event pictures were from a centennial event at the Morgan Library & Museum which happened to mention that one of the guests was artist Walton Ford. Ta da! That's it! It is Walton Ford that I was trying to remember. Now I wonder what I just forgot so I have room for "Walton Ford" in my brain.

Walton Ford

"Dying Words"

Honolulu Museum of Art

(from his Wikipedia page)

Bute & Montmirail

This is a portrait of John, Lord Mountstewart, later 4th Earl and 1st Marquess of Bute. The portrait is now in the Getty and was one of the works in today's Artle. I hear "Bute" in the voice of Michelle Fairley who plays Princess Augusta in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. Another of today's Artle works was a portrait of Charles Benjamin de Langes de Montmirail, Baron de Lubières. "Montmirail" was the noble name of the man who was obsessed by Dowager Countess Violet (Maggie Smith) in the second Downton Abbey film. He left his villa in the South of France to her. Perhaps I'm living too much in historical spaces as manifested in popular culture. Or perhaps the real world needs to be escaped from.
 

another southern road trip, 2024

This road trip in the deep of winter to the southern states may be habit forming. Last year's road trip was quite focused on the Sargent show in Washington, visiting Jeanette in South Carolina, magazines to USModernist, visiting Elizabeth in Orlando, and the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum in Biloxi, Mississippi. This year, I did visit Jeanette again and spent a couple days with Elizabeth and brought her some papers from Alfred that she needed. But overall it was less focused. Here, again, I am posting a list of the overnight or other stops along the way.

• Fredericksburg, Virginia: after the bucolic ride through horsey Virginia country, the confluence of U.S. Route 17, U.S. Route 1, and Interstate 95 at Fredericksburg was almost more maelstrom than I could handle; I did find the Holiday Inn Express and settled into a yummy catfish and grits at the Orleans Bistro, a walk from the hotel; it was karaoke night at the bistro but I survived and woke refreshed; alas, I lost my beloved Harvard IT Summit 2011 travel mug when I left it on top of the car (I didn't drive away with it still on the roof but it wasn't there when I remembered to go get it after supper)
• Florence, South Carolina: overnight with Jeanette and Wanda, plenty of pleasant catching up
• Beaufort, South Carolina: intrigued with Beaufort, is it just because I like saying "bew-fert"?; the waiter at the Lost Local told me where I might find the Sunday New York Times the next day but City Java & News didn't come through and the Publix supermarket did; I enjoy traveling through the coastal salt marshes between Beaufort and Savannah though I didn't stop in Savannah this year
• Brunswick, Georgia: Main Street in the historic district; good pad thai at Basil Thai with a staff that included Asians, Mexicans, Blacks, and whites
• Flagler Beach, Florida: dreaming of an old-fashioned oceanside motel along the beach highway but ended up at a Hampton Inn in Palm Coast
• Winter Park, Florida: lunch, strolling, and shopping to spend time before getting to Elizabeth's after she did her volunteer income tax assistance sponsored by AARP at a community center
• Orlando, Florida (day 1): got to Elizabeth's before she was home; Capsi looked at me quizzically and then decided I was that guy from Alfred and started jumping and barking
• Orlando (day 2): both Elizabeth and I had a morning zoom; we had an easy day with a visit to the Orlando Museum and otherwise just kind of hung around and chatted
• Orlando (day 3): Elizabeth went to the community center for some more tax assistance and I walked around downtown Orlando, looked at some architecture books at the public library, and then went to the Orange County Regional History Center; the library had a historical vitrine display that included an early accession book; the new performing arts center in Orlando is named for Dr Phillips and I learned at the History Center that he developed the process for pasteurizing orange juice; I also learned that Hannibal Square in Winter Park was the former Black section of the downtown shopping area
• Sarasota, Florida: Ringling Museum of Art, particularly the new Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Center for Asian Art (a small pavilion with a green-glazed terracotta façade, designed by Machado Silvetti)
• Sarasota to Tallahassee, Florida: I wanted to take the blue highways and ended up confused off the interstate around Tampa and discovered a pre-Vatican II chapel (Queen of All Saints Chapel) near Brooksville; I couldn't go inside since the dress code for men required coat and tie, no jeans, no earrings
• Tallahassee, Florida: what a hilly surprise (the seven hills, just like Rome) after several hours of flat coastal territory
• Bainbridge, Georgia: the Quality Inn here somehow reminded me of Mount Vernon (columns and porch)
• Blakely, Georgia: county seat of Early County (good courthouse and square)
• Kolomoki Mounds State Historic Park, near Blakely: the Temple Mound is 50-odd feet high (I didn't make it to Teotihuacán last year but this mound was pretty impressive)
• Columbus, Georgia: the museum was mostly closed for rehabilitation but the Corn Center at Columbus State University had a Lennart Anderson show and several large Bo Bartlett paintings on view; downtown Columbus has a handsome new formalist Government Center that reminded me of Yamasaki and a performing arts center designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer; the symphony here is the second oldest in the U.S.
• Bremen, Georgia: El Morelia Mexican restaurant was just across from the Tractor Supply, near the Quality Inn
• Bremen to Rome: just the beginning of the international city names; U.S. 27 up the western side of Georgia was mostly four lane and divided highway and virtually empty; it was quite a surprise to re-enter the interstate world after Rome, Georgia

Continuing to repeat last year's road trip, at a certain point I quit dawdling and interstated most of the rest of the northward journey. This year, I did a more inland trip, skirting Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Lexington, Kentucky. I stopped at Dry Ridge, Kentucky, because it was getting dark, it was about 25 miles south of greater Cincinnati, and it was just south of Sherman, Kentucky. It also happened to be just north of The Ark Experience in Williamstown, Kentucky. I did go look through the gates to The Ark but it wasn't open and I probably wouldn't have gone in even if it had been. Anyway, I looked around Sherman a bit and took a couple pictures.

I had started seeing snow alongside the road but it was bright and the snow was melting. I skirted Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland, Ohio. One more night on the road, in Painesville, Ohio, and then back to the blue highways in Salamanca, New York, for the last couple hours.

Beyond Bremen, Rome, and Salamanca, I also went through or saw signs for Paris, London, Chatsworth, Florence, Berlin, and Athens, and Ringgold.

Top picture is a church (no sign) in Sherman, Kentucky. The bottom picture is Ca' d'Zan, the Ringling mansion, Sarasota, Florida. More pictures at https://www.flickr.com/photos/56294332@N00/.

Miuccia Chickanzeff: ah, Venice

Queen of All Saints Chapel

I happened on the Queen of All Saints Chapel on Spring Lake Road near Brooksville, Florida, because I was lost northeast of Tampa on my way from Sarasota toward Tallahassee. But what fun to find this treasure of conservative traditionalism. It would have been fun to go inside but the dress code for men included coat and tie, no jeans, no earrings. Three strikes, you're out(side).

More pictures from my southern road trip at https://www.flickr.com/photos/56294332@N00/albums/72177720314881851
 

the big thrill

I was in Beaufort, South Carolina, last night, with early supper at the Lost Local for tacos (one ahi tuna and one carnitas) and a yummy margarita (Perfect Margarita on the menu). It was Saturday night so I asked the waiter if she knew where I might get a Sunday New York Times the next morning. She didn't know but asked one of her colleagues. One place was City Java & News so I figured there was a good chance they'd be purveyors of a good selection of papers including the Times. They weren't open after I left the restaurant so I couldn't ask. The waiter said she saw folks with Sunday papers so the chances seemed good with both City Java and the other coffee shop, over on the waterfront.

Well, when I went 'round on Sunday morning, neither of the coffee shops had any papers other than the local weekly. So I asked the City Java clerk if there were any big grocery stores. Yep, there's a Publix over on Boundary Street, on the way out of town, said she. And I'm delighted to say they had quite a stack of Times but one less after I got mine.

There was a fine used book store in Cleveland named Publix Book Mart. We medieval art history graduate students at Case Western used to find great treasures there. Like manuscript leaves (at least one of mine is from the Ege album), early prints (at least one of Chuck's was a Dürer and I found a page from the Nuremberg Chronicle), and other good stuff. 

Ege 13

Nuremberg Chronicle

reading at the taverna

"Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).

 Each summer I rent a house in a village in the foothills of the White Mountains in Crete. There is one bougainvillea-shaded taverna, which shares the village square with a tiny Byzantine chapel, decorated with magnificent 14th-century frescoes. I go there at lunchtime with a book. The taverna owner, Kostas, brings me whatever he's cooking, with beer. He lets me talk my lousy Greek. Cats snooze. Dogs lollop. The local farmers come and discuss the price of watermelons. I'm in heaven."

Dan Jones, "By the book," New York times book review, January 28, 2024.

Sounds perfect, Mr Jones.

cheatle

I'll admit it: I cheat at Artle, the art game from the National Gallery of Art. They show you four works in succession and you have to guess the artist. I do try but if I'm just blanking, I'll do a Google image search. Work number three today was intriguing, kind of Daliesque, fantastic surrealism.

The first and second works were very different and I should have guessed but work number three really threw me. It's one of the interesting early works from a federal competition by an artist whose mature works are significantly different.

Spoiler here: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.158369.html 

I justify my cheating by saying that Artle is a learning experience. The object pages are linked from the game as is the artist information page. Fortunately, Artle doesn't talk back to me or accuse me of cheating. One of my friends and colleagues at the NGA Library says she is involved with setting up Artle and I thank her every day.

When I'm done with Artle, I do Wordle and Globle. They (the famous they) say that little brain exercises are good for aging people, aka everybody.

The Diplomat

I have been bingeing The Diplomat and it is kind of scary. But then you check out the day's headlines in the New York Times and discover that the real world is just a whole lot too similar. Explosive events in the Middle East. Potential for nuclear options. Personal relationships getting tangled up. Ambition and revenge. Power hunger. Maybe I should go watch Barbie.
 

the books I read in 2023

The last book I finished in 2023 was The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. I was in New York City for the New Year's weekend, catsitting at John's. John had shown me an article from Harper's on "Street Life" by Rachel Kushner from the August 2023 issue. I went to the film "All of Us Strangers" on New Year's Day. The book, the article, and the movie all circled, in their way, around the banality and disappointment and glory of everyday life and how big a role observation can play in how that works out. On the 30th, I was off galleryhopping at MoMA PS1 and ran into Janis, Sherri, Julie, and Hikmet in the Court Square subway station. I joined them in visiting the Tracey Emin and Donna Huanca shows at Faurschou in Greenpoint but then split off and went to the Whitney and LGBT Center before meeting Heidi and Dan for supper. All everyday and ordinary and glorious and, well, New York City.

The books I read this past year are listed here in chronological order of reading.

• The magician, by Colm Tóibín (2021)
• Harlem shuffle, by Colson Whitehead (2021)
• Flâneuse: women walk the city in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London, by Lauren Elkin (2017)
• Piazza Carignano, by Alain Elkann (1985) - bought at a used book store in Provincetown; the Carignano Palace in Turin was one of my favorite buildings on our 2018 trip to Turin, Milan, and Genoa; the book was fine but I really enjoyed the association with the building and plaza
• Driver's eduction, by Grant Ginder (2013) - this only gets 3.17 stars on Goodreads; that's why I don't pay too much attention to review stars; I really enjoyed this book and its style
• Germania: in wayward pursuit of the Germans and their history, by Simon Winder (2010) - one of a trilogy of histories of Middle Europe; I really enjoyed all three volumes (thanks, Daniel)
• Just by looking at him, by Ryan O'Connell (2022)
• Just mercy, by Bryan Stevenson (2014)
• Mrs Caliban, by Rachel Ingalls (1982)
• Radio girls, by Sarah-Jane Stratford (2016)
• Italian days: fifty things we know about life now, by Beppe Severgnini (2022)
• Danubia: a personal history of Habsburg Europe, by Simon Winder (2013)
• The art of description: world into word, by Mark Doty (2010) - it sounds like a book on cataloging ... but it's not, it is about words and putting them together
• The heart's invisible furies, by John Boyne (2017)
• The honey bus: the memory of loss, courage and a girl saved by bees, by Meredith May (2019)
• JD, by Mark Merlis (2015)
• Girl, woman, other, by Bernardine Evaristo (2019) - it took me a while to get used to the writing style but it worked: each sentence was a paragraph, not capitalized
• The library book, by Susan Orlean (2018)
• Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver (2018) - chomping at the bit, waiting for Demon Copperhead to come out in paper but did enjoy this one while waiting
• Becoming George Orwell: life and letters, legend and legacy, by John Rodden (2020)
• The promise, by Damon Galgut (2021)
• The poetics of cruising: queer visual culture from Whitman to Grindr, by Jack Parlett (2022)
• Solomon's crown, by Natasha Siegel (2023) - Richard the Lionheart and Philip Augustus, 12th century speculative fiction
• The address book: what street addresses reveal about identity, race, wealth, and power, by Dierdre Mask (2020)
• The last day: wrath, ruin, and reason in the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, by Nicholas Shrady (2008)
• The personal librarian, by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray (2021) - fictionalized life of Belle da Costa Greene, longtime librarian for J.P. Morgan; it took me a while to get into it but I really enjoyed it once I hit the rhythm
• Every good boy does fine: a love story, in music lessons, by Jeremy Denk (2022) - maybe my favorite book of the year
• High-risk homosexual, by Edgar Gomez (2022)
• French braid, by Anne Tyler (2022)
• Dream cities: seven urban ideas that shape the world, by Wade Graham (2016)
• The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce (2012)

I would not advise you against reading any of these books. I enjoyed some of them very much as I read them. Several of them resonated with places I have been or want to go. I bought several of them in Provincetown, over the years. Plenty of Rachels. As usual, about an even split of fiction and non-fiction. And now I've started reading Orwell's roses by Rebecca Solnit and find it thoughtful (no surprise because Solnit) and compelling.

If you want to see how Goodreads saw my year in reading, go to https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2023/6837039. There, you can click on book covers and see a summary of the book and how it is rated on Goodreads. I did read a note in one of my magazine newsletters that the author had given up on Goodreads (part of the Amazon empire) and was just using Google Sheets where she could add a column for author's gender if she wanted to. I would like a column for how I heard about a book. I know Carol recommended Orwell's roses.

Lady Moody's Gravesend

The Municipal Art Society announced a tour of Gravesend, in southern Brooklyn, and entitled it "Discovering Lady Moody's Gravesend." The announcement is illustrated with a picture of Trinity Tabernacle (above, screengrabbed from Google Street View). Lady Moody (born Deborah Dunch, married Sir Henry Moody) left England in 1639 where she was prosecuted for her Anabaptist beliefs. She settled in Saugus, Massachusetts, where she soon got in trouble with the established Puritan church. She moved on to Gravesend, Brooklyn, where she is the only European woman known to have founded a town in colonial America. The Dutch West India Company was more tolerant of religious dissent than the Puritans of Massachusetts. More detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Moody

The tabernacle grabbed my attention with its quirky massing and Gothic Revival details. I was further intrigued because my mother's family has paternal roots in Gravesend. Among Lady Moody's followers who joined her in Gravesend after she was excommunicated in Massachusetts was a Thomas Poling who had a son John Poling. John's son Samuel Poling married the granddaughter of Pieter Claesen Wyckoff, an early Dutch settler. The early Polings used various spellings of the surname, including Poland, Polen, and Polan. My mother's people had settled on Polan a few generations before hers.

I am not as obsessed with genealogy as some folks but I do enjoy the probable connections. Bunches of religious dissenters. My father's paternal ancestors come down through the Clarkes of Rhode Island.