Thursday, December 16, 2021

Art for Joy at Art Basel Miami Beach 2021

Just let me stroll among creative people and I feel joy. How can you not smile when you see somebody walking around looking like this?
Or, when you step outside into the botanical garden for a sip of chilled Whispering Angel and you see these women at the bar? The guide who led me and my friends through selected pieces pointed out a bit of playfulness. What appeared to be a pile of Amazon boxes delivered to the gallery's booth was not as they appeared. The boxes were sculpted of brass.
Yes! It smacked of Art Basel Miami in 2019, when Maurizio Cattelan taped a banana to a wall. Provacative. Conversation Seeder. Silly? Joyful.
Posted by

Art Basel Miami Beach 2021: If you’re big, it’s no big deal.

But if you’re small, it’s overwhelming. In the Miami Beach Convention Center, at Art Basel Miami 2021, I stared down at a square white coffee table. Covering its top was a large smear of red sand, arrayed in a spiral. It appeared tracked, as though someone’s fingertips pushed it across the surface. Although it was pleasant to look at, it didn’t seem particularly creative or intriguing, compared to the mass of exciting art displayed throughout the cavernous building. However, I was walking the floor with a knowledgeable guide who encouraged us to squat down and look across the circle at eye level. Everything changed. At the edge of the sand, I saw a tiny figure of a woman pushing a broom. At her scale, the expanse of sand and the suggestion of the work spread before her was overwhelming. She had days of work ahead of her. What tedious and discouraging toil. How you see artist Liliana Porter's spiral varies depending on whether you're big or small. Rushing or patient. Know-it-all or open-minded.
Posted by

Saturday, October 9, 2021

Traveling the US of A

One of the things I love about traveling is the planning. I love researching places before I go --- figuring out how to get the most out of the experience of being there. Sites to see, experiences to try, history to learn, restaurants to find, people to meet up with. Since COVID-19 arrived in March 2020, I killed several sets of plans. Really good ones! Antarctica, Patagonia and Paris. I am not going to reschedule until it's clear that traveling abroad is safe and has a low likelihood that it will need to be cancelled. That doesn't mean that the travel bug is dormant. It's not. Instead of polishing my passport, I've been eyeing the map of the United States. I've been carrying 8 states on my bucket list. I've visited the other 42. Wouldn't it be nice to have been to all 50 states? (Answer is YES). Being a list maker and an accomplishment checker-offer, I'm thinking that this is a good time to travel on the US highways. With vaccine in my arm, a mask on my face and my husband beside me, I could get excited about organizing a road trip to top off my state collection. Lucky for me, all eight states are pretty much stacked on top of each other in the center of the country. They form a swath from North Dakota up top, down to Alabama at the bottom. Through Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, the Civil Rights museum and lots in between that I haven't unearthed yet, this idea has the potential to shape up into a super road trip. In the middle of the country in the middle of a pandemic. Has a nice ring to it.
Posted by

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Why Travel Again - Why it’s a Trip

It was the third day of what should have been a one-day cross-country flight from San Francisco. I was wedged into my slender economy class seat watching David Byrne, former Talking Head/current old guy barefoot in a business suit, jumping around on a stage. Joined by a troupe of performers in identical gray suits, they sing about chicken brains and talk about voting rights in “American Utopia.” WHY? Trying to travel by air was my world for longer than it would take to fly to Asia. I watched American Airlines’ curated entertainment and read three books on my kindle. David Byrnes’ clap-clap-clap soundtrack provided background for a memoir I was reading: Braver Than You Think. The author, Maggie Downs travels the world, honoring her Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother by visiting the places on her mom’s bucket list that are now unattainable. While her mother is still alive. For a year. I momentarily set aside my reading to resume my own “travel” writing. WHY? Having concluded that air travel for COVID-vaccinated people is safe, I flew to San Francisco from my home in Providence, Rhode Island. Because the FAA hasn’t yet aligned with the latest CDC advisory, everyone on planes and in the airports must wear a nonstop face mask in the travel-by-air bubble. The trip out was easy peasy. The trip back was not. The flight out from San Francisco was scheduled to depart at 11:00am on Sunday morning. Granted, it did leave the gate. However, after sitting on the runway for about 1.5 hours, they needed to refuel. Due to a “technical” error, they overfilled the tank, spilling fuel on the runway. Fire engines were summoned just in case. The attempted clean up failed. The flight was cancelled, we stayed at the Marriott San Francisco Airport and we were rerouted for a morning departure.
On Monday morning, we boarded on time. After nearly two hours of sitting on the plane because airports on the east coast were closed due to weather, we deplaned to the lounge to stretch our legs while the rains cleared. After an hour of leg-stretching and food-buying, we reboarded the plane and took off for Philadelphia. Scrolling through the entertainment options, I discovered David Byrne. The theater audience leapt to their feet, stomping and clapping to the song “We’re on the road to nowhere.” As I watched on the little screen on the back of the seat in front of me, I was happy to be on the road to somewhere. However, because of the late departure, we arrived in Philadelphia after missing the connection and the rescheduled connection. We spent Monday night in a hotel not near the airport (the airport hotels were all booked). We checked into the Courtyard Marriott at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, overlooking the Philly sports stadiums, making my husband happy.
Finally, on Tuesday, the third and final day and after an hour delay departing Philadelphia, we landed in Providence. The tally: Three days in California. Three days traveling back. But traveling to see family was beyond worth the trip. WHY?
Posted by

Friday, May 14, 2021

C-c-c-cold California

 

NOT taking the gloves off in Healdsburg, Sonoma County, California 


In late April, my husband and I braved the COVID situation and traveled to Northern California for six reasons: two sons, son-in-law, grandson, granddaughter, son's boyfriend.

If there weren't a horrifying global pandemic swirling around, the traveling aspect could have been a smidge more enjoyable. The weather was unusually chilly. It being a pandemic and all, we couldn't duck into coffee shops or restaurants to warm up. Instead, we spent dozens of hours outside. Shivering. Here, my husband chose to order a spin on his favorite gin and tonic. It was ... refreshing (?). I went for the Sonoma red.

As we drove up the coast, we took the obligatory touristy photo of the Lone Cypress on the 17-Mile Drive in Pebble Beach. I hopped out of the car only long enough to snap the picture and then jumped back in for the heat. That poor tree looked chilly. 


 
During a spin through Marin, we stopped at Nick's Cove, a roadhouse in Marshall, California for their famous oysters. We decided to live COVID-daringly and eat inside. We tried the oysters barbecue style, figuring a little warmth might be involved. They were warm, but we chose to wash them down with cold drinks. Kind of cancelled out the tummy warmth, but made for a delicious lunch.



And these sisters finished their lunch just as we arrived. 



Maybe they were also praying that it would warm up? 



Posted by

Reyes Requires Resourcefulness

 



A visit to Point Reyes Lighthouse near San Francisco was supposed to look like this. Except it didn't. No thanks to COVID-19, the lighthouse was closed. It's a small area and too risky to let people clog up inside or in a line down the stairs approaching it. Instead, I looked down on it from the hill above it, at the entrance to the staircase, all gated off and forbidding. I positioned my iPhone's camera lens inside one of those little diamond voids in the chain link fence to take this photo.


And here's a picture of the stairs we didn't get to walk on, with the stair safety warnings partially obscured by the COVID-19 risk notice. I guess you could say it's a layered look.



Posted by

Traveling Again: Hiking with Royals



I traveled again. Yay! In April, I hiked in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in California. With a princess and her older brother. 

This is a travel blog, after all. For the last eight months, my only contribution was to share an article reporting that NOT traveling is bad for you. Ready or Not, there we went. In April, my husband and I flew cross country from Boston to California. Fifteen months had elapsed since we last hugged our grandchildren. We decided that as double vaxxer's, we would take the risk of the 5% unprotected by Moderna's vaccine. 

It was beyond fabulous to be with the grandchildren. My son Alex photographed the first moments when my husband and I met up with the kids. They leapt into our arms. We hugged. (But we didn't kiss. That was the deal). We squeezed. We cooed. We swayed. 



And then we swapped.




Things people say about the ache one feels from the separation? It's true. Face Time, Zoom, Google Meets are all great ways to stay in touch. But they're nothing like the real thing. When you're together in real life, you get the little moments. Like this one. 


Sage (shown protesting why anyone would question her choices from the charcuterie platter). She made a sandwich of three crackers between two pieces of bread. 



Posted by
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)