gerundickal or gerundical

I have long enjoyed how some words like picnic or panic get a "k" when you get to the gerund or present participle. That is, Édouard Manet and his friends were picnicking on the grass. You wouldn't want it to be picnicing because that would rhyme with the icing on a cake, not picnicking by a lake.

And then I came across havocked which I really liked. It's the past tense of havoc as in wreaking havoc or "The parade really havocked my trip through town but it was fun to watch."

This morning, I was reading the review by Robert Rubin of Shutdown: how Covid shook the world's economy, by Adam Tooze (Viking), in yesterday's New York times book review. Rubin says "The best we can hope for, [Tooze] argues, is what we in the United States got: disjointed 'subnational' action, crisis management by 'ad-hockery.' (Europe, Tooze writes, is even less capable.)." One does feel like they were havocked by the ad hoc over the past year and a half. But you can take pleasure in twisting words. Without the k, I guess ad-hockery would rhyme with grocery and not with mockery.

armchair traveler: Venice to Palmanova to Sabbioneta

 Mom used to travel vicariously with me. Now, we all can just about only travel vicariously when it comes to European destinations. I was writing up my Venetian adventure as a Pandemic Escape for the Alfred Sun and couldn't remember the name of the artist who did the painting of the Ospedale Civile in Venice that is at Yale now.

Walter Richard Sickert

L'Ospedale Civile 

Yale Center for British Art, Mellon Collection

As I was thinking about Venice, I went to flying over the city and zooming in on Google Maps. I had meandered to the northeast and noticed a name -- Palmanova -- that seemed familiar and probably telling. I zoomed in and there was the 16th century fortified city. Designed by Antonio Scamozzi (but that leads to a different story).

Thinking about Renaissance planned cities led me to think about Sabbioneta, over in Lombardy, north of Parma, where Christie and I stopped in 2001. 

I Navigli di Milano, then and now

Two and a half years ago, we were in Milan, really enjoying the early evening cocktails and snacks, aka aperitivo. One of our most enjoyable evenings was along the Navigli (canals), on the south side of the centro. The remnants of the canals are there but it is now mostly social engagement territory rather than trade and warehouses. Last Sunday's Times had an article about the situation in Europe as coronavirus cases increase significantly. The article was accompanied by a photograph by Alessandro Grassani for the Times. He also has done significant series of photographs on immigrants and immigration. Now, the crowded streets of the Navigli are quite empty ...

A cyclist peddling down an empty street in Milan on the first day of a new lockdown on Friday.

(Alessandro Grassani for the New York Times)

site specificity

 Site specificity in art, as a concept, sometimes troubles me but especially when someone claims it to be absolute. All installations are at least somewhat specific to the place in which they are installed, and almost anything can be moved to another site or reproduced (reconstructed) in a new place. My interest was piqued when the Library of Congress added a subject heading for Site specific installations (Art) as distinct from and a narrower term than Installations (Art). If you click on the "troubles me," you'll be taken to a few earlier blog entries that dance around this matter. And now I've had a couple interesting experiences and readings with site specificity in the past couple weeks.

"Annie Jump and the Library of Heaven" was presented at Alfred University in mid September 2020 after being delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring. It is "a play for all audiences about finding your place in the universe and intelligent life in your hometown." The original plan was for a traditional theater presentation. COVID health concerns moved it outside and, mirabile dictu, the setting became the parking area at the observatory on campus with a couple bits actually taking place inside the telescope buildings. The story was all about Annie Jump trying to come to terms with life beyond this planet and how to deal with her quirky astronomer father. The play was pretty heartening but seeing it under the starlit sky at the observatory was fantabulous indeed. What a site for this specific play.

I love my indexing work for the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals. One of my titles is Future Anterior and an issue I just did -- volume 15, number 2, winter 2018 -- was on the theme "Ex situ: on moving monuments." That is, ex situ as contrasted from in situ. The issue includes a description by Ryan Mendoza of his deconstruction of Rosa Parks's house in Detroit when it was threatened with demolition and its reconstruction in Berlin. When its time in Berlin was ending, there was talk of moving it back to the United States but it has now been reconstructed at the Palazzo Reale in Naples. What a trip this supposedly immovable structure has been taking, and what a time this is.

I'm not sure either of these experiences has convinced me that Site specific installations (Art) is a necessary subject heading but they certainly have given me plenty to think about. I think I'd prefer Site specificity in art in combination with Installations (Art) when the artist really talks about the specific site of an installation.

Italians and Jews in Odessa

Episode "Traveling to Eat" was on The Splendid Table on NPR as I drove home from Wegmans this morning. One of the stories was a talk with Caroline Eden who has traveled around the Black Sea, investigating places and food. She did a couple road trips but visited Odessa and Istanbul as specific destinations. She considers Istanbul the most grand food place in the world.

Caroline Eden mentioned the significant evidence of Italian and Jewish food in Odessa. Though there were ancient and medieval settlements where Odessa now is, its modern origins date back to 1794 when Catherine the Great established the city and port on the shores of the Black Sea, now in the Ukraine. It was a free port from 1819 to 1858 and the fourth largest city in the Russian Empire, after Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Warsaw. There were Italians among the planners and developers and a large Jewish community developed in the 19th century. The Italians were mostly a legacy of Genoese colonies in the Crimea in late medieval times.

I've never known a great deal about Odessa though we did hear about it when Atticus Aldridge was explaining his origins to Rose and the Jewish refugees in York.

Atticus mentions to one of the refugees that his family came to England from Odessa in 1859 and 1871. The former nobleman says that he's not Russian, he's Jewish. There were several pogroms in the mid-later 19th century, including 1859 and 1871.

I hadn't known much about Genoa beyond art history classes until visiting it twice in 2018. I really enjoyed the city. The landscape is tremendous, the hills rise sharply from the harbor. The food is delicious. The art nouveau villas are stupendous, as they are all across Italy. Italians call art nouveau Liberty, from the store in London.

I probably don't need to mention how disappointing the pandemic-related travel restrictions are. It is soul numbing to not even feel that planning a European trip (or Canadian) is feasible.

here and there

Here and there are concepts (words) that especially resonate during a pandemic with social distancing. You spend a lot of time here but wish you could be there. The headline of the lead article in today's Sunday Styles section of the New York Times is "It's hard when you can't go anywhere." It's a story about six people in an assisted living facility in Colorado who received cameras to document life during the coronavirus crisis. It's hard to see pictures of places that you've visited, imagine how empty they may be now, and how much you wish you could go there again.

Vittoria, Sicily, Italy: Piazza del Popolo

Lily had sent me a message about a virtual toast via Zoom for Milan who received this year's ARLIS/NA Distinguished Service Award. In my response to Lily, I said I intended to be there for the virtual toast but, in reality, I'll be here for the toast, seeing Milan and the others on a screen.

I was listening to Weekend Edition as I drove to Wegmans in Hornell to get my Sunday Times and some groceries. One of the stories was "Author Elizabeth Acevedo on her new novel 'Clap when you land'" (published by HarperCollins). The novel-in-verse revolves around two girls whose father dies in a plane crash. He had maintained two families, one in New York City and one in the Dominican Republic, and neither knew about the other. The girls deal with "the devastation of loss, the difficulty of forgiveness, and the bittersweet bonds that shape our lives" (from publisher's description) as they try to balance the particular here and there of their newly shared reality.

In a short sequence in the "Carl's Funeral" episode of Schitt's Creek, Bob is talking to Twyla at the Café Tropical. Carl was his brother and Twyla asks Bob how he's doing and says "Death is just life except you're not here. You're somewhere else. You know, but that's ok because at least you're somewhere. You know, when does somewhere become there, and when does there become here. And I ..." Bob cuts in to say "Just a coffee, please." Twyla asks "For here?"

showcase or sanctuary, probably both and neither

A simple sentence can resonate now in the time of coronavirus in ways that it would not have a year ago. This morning's indexing included a book review by Emily Guthrie of Get out of my room!: a history of teen bedrooms in America by Jason Reid (University of Chicago Press, 2017). The review is published in Winterthur portfolio, summer/autumn 2019. The sentence that especially grabbed me was "Others might describe the feeling that the room instilled, from the pride of a carefully curated showcase to the solace of a private sanctuary."

There is also a bit about the Princess telephone designed by Henry Dreyfuss in 1959. The phone was an icon of being with it, marketed to women and girls. I remember that Bill Murphy had one in Scotia, Nebraska. Imagine how different my life might have been if I had come to terms with my nascent homosexuality then, rather than sitting there near his Princess phone with a gaggle of giggling girlfriends. Sadly, I've never been able to learn out how Bill's life turned out but he was a careful curator before his time.

Coronavirus isolation also brings bingeing and, for me, that has mostly meant Schitt's Creek. The whole idea of children sharing a bedroom is fundamental to the series, not that the Rose kids are teenagers but being together in their motel room brings on teenage behavior. "Ew, burn, David!" The actor who plays the role of Patrick is Noah Reid which brings us around to the book whose author is Jason Reid.

merrily we roll along

This time of in-person social isolation takes us down some quirky paths. I had heard of the television show Schitt's Creek but hadn't watched any of it until Mark posted the clip of "I'm Jake. Oh, of course you are" on his Facebook page. That caught my fancy and now, just a few weeks later, I've been around the first five seasons three times. That's all that is currently on Netflix and I don't have cable so no Pop TV for Season 6. The characters are deep in my thoughts and being with them is considerable distraction and solace in my alone time. Who knows (or cares) if it's a healthy diversion?

One manifestation of the S.C. penetration into my quotidian life (that use of a $10 word is for Moira and Roland) is its resonance as I'm reading about something else entirely. I was reading The New York Times Book Review for last Sunday (12 April 2020) as I ate lunch. In the review of Lady in Waiting: my extraordinary life in the shadow of the Crown, a memoir by Anne Glenconner, the reviewer Alida Becker quotes the first post-coma words of Glenconner's son who had been in a motorcycle accident: Lamborghini. The reviewer then says "Truly, the rich are different." Lamborghini also plays out in Schitt's Creek: in the words of "A little bit Alexis" and in the Christmas medley that Moira and David sing.

Another review in the same issue of NYTBR is on a book entitled The undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio. The author relates a story about a trip through a wealthy Miami subdivision on the way to a club. One of her friends says the big houses stress her "because it makes her think about having to clean them." The opening moment of episode 1 of Schitt's Creek is of a Latina in servant uniform answering the doorbell. It's not immigration but revenue agents to dispossess the family of most of their possessions. "Mrs. Rose, there are people here from the government."

But the most amusing resonance (sometimes, at least) is imagining the chapters of my dissertation in comparative literature "Downton Abbey and Schitt's Creek: a comparative study of the daily life of the rich in late Victorian and Edwardian England and in contemporary America." There will be chapters on raising children (spending an hour or two with the children when it's possible), Christmas specials, inter-class commingling, the power of language, and of course the predictable stuff like fashion. Some folks have said that Schitt's Creek works because its stereotypes aren't mean and I think that may be part of why Downton Abbey also worked in that even the villains like Thomas and O'Brien were sympathetic. Or maybe it's the script, in both cases.

There will also be a chapter on place. Though Downton Abbey was mostly shot on location in southern England, the fictional setting is Yorkshire and local information comes up pretty regularly. Also, some outside scenes are actually shot in York, like when the Dowager goes to visit Kuragin. Or maybe it's CGI. According to the creators of Schitt's Creek in various interviews on YouTube, the location of Schitt's Creek is intentionally ambiguous, not specifically U.S. or Canada. The Roses did apparently live before in downstate New York or Long Island. The bicycles were discarded in the Hamptons. David asks if it looks like he shops on Canal Street. The aerial view of the house is not Manhattan but could be outer Queens. The only time that there is anything remotely specific about the location of Schitt's Creek is when Mutt and Tennessee are going on a trip "up the coast" to look for pine cones.

That said, it's probably more likely that I'll go around Schitt's Creek again unless I break down and somehow get access to Season 6 so I can have the resolution of all the situations and close the book.

Piazza Cordusio, then and now

There's a wonderful photostream on Flickr with historic photos of Milan: Milàn l'era inscì Urbanfile  I'm not sure exactly what the name means and am guessing that it may be a regional dialect rather than mainstream Italian.

This photo has the caption "Via e Piazza Cordusio 1915-20" on Flickr. Piazza Cordusio is normally a busy space near the Castello Sforzesco and the Cadorna train station which provides a nice alternative to the central station when you're coming in from Malpensa airport, home to all kinds of shopping adventures and good restaurants. Very busy. It must be strange to be in Cordusio (as the neighborhood is called) at the moment of the coronavirus lockdown.

When I was in Milan in September 2018, a commercial "palazzo" around the plaza (formerly a post office) had just opened as the first Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Italy.

Six or seven streets come into the square, trolleys pass through, people wait for buses, tourists snap photos ... in normal times. Good memories.

hunker down? go on a cruise? tell stories in an Italian country villa?

At the end of my morning walk, Drew and Mary were walking down the other side of the street. Drew asked if I was hunkering down or on a cruise. He explained the latter by describing the student houses around town that seem to have taken on new life, at least on a warm day. Folks on the porch, laughing, carrying on. I'd noticed the increased activity around the houses too. There were nine cars parked at the house and a half just before the AU campus. The university is closing the dorms today so residents have been here to clear out their stuff, after spring break. I feel especially bad, in this regard, for the students that come from busy urban areas and live in perhaps small family apartments. I wish the university could have figured out a way to provide for social-distant housing for the rest of the term for students if they wanted to hunker down here in the country. Yes, I realize that dorms involve more than providing a bed, e.g., supervision, food, potential medical care and deeper isolation.

Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio

MS. Holkham misc. 49, fol. 5r

Miniature by Taddeo Crivelli, circa 1467

Bodleian Library, Oxford

(from the Wikipedia page for the Decameron)

Now, if an Italian villa seems a bit difficult at the moment, you might consider a visit to Holkham Hall, perhaps my favorite Palladian house in England. Better make that a virtual visit for the foreseeable future.

boundaries in a time of coronavirus

This month's Tentative List of LC Subject Heading proposals includes a proposal for:

Boundaries (Psychology)

The author of the proposal (an LC cataloger) found six occurrences of the use of Boundaries--Psychological aspects in the LC catalog. Since the scope note makes it clear that Boundaries in LCSH is used for borders between countries, states, etc., those six occurrences would be more relevant for books about being distraught about immigration or border wall issues. The work in question for which the new subject heading is being proposed is entitled Setting boundaries will set you free. These days, setting boundaries might also keep you for catching COVID-19.

Be well, all.