… the day is already hot though humidity is low, a blessing… i will put the AC units in their windows and we will crank them up…

… i read a thread about a divisive keynote speach at the Red Hook, NY VFW on Memorial day… it is horrible… curiously, in the comments there is a Jon Galt commenting a lot… i know that name i think to myself… oh yeah, Who Is John Galt? of Atlas Shrugged fame… i look at his facebook page, pretty left wing… odd…

… an article on why every statue should be taken down…

This statue obsession mistakes adulation for history, history for heritage and heritage for memory. It attempts to detach the past from the present, the present from morality, and morality from responsibility. In short, it attempts to set our understanding of what has happened in stone, beyond interpretation, investigation or critique.¹

… i like monuments and, as the article suggests, i don’t so much like them for the history they may or may not teach me, i like having landmarks in the landscape to navigate by… every monument is one group of individuals idea of what or who is important to remember and given that there are all kinds of groups of individuals that have different ideas about what is memorable, there seems actually to be a lack of monuments in the landscape…

… given that we are entering an era where we can virtually place monuments in the landscape, perhaps we could have a program that corrects the deficiency… one could personalize their monument landscape, just as one makes a play list for a trip, one would make a monument list for their journeys, daily or otherwise… there could be a monument top 100, identifying the relevant monument the most people preferred for a given site… we could then take down all the old analog monuments and do something else with the space…

As American As Apple Pie – Amy Sherald © Amy Sherald, Hauser & Wirth Photo: Joseph Hyde

… an article on Amy Sherald, Michelle Obama portrait artist, painting the American lives of black people…

Each person’s identity is revealed only through visual cues and objects familiar to contemporary American life, for instance, the Barbie logo, denim, surfboards, a picket fence, and – in one case – a convertible. It’s all to “reinforce their inseparable connection to the nation’s historical and cultural fabric, and to reconstruct conceived notions and reinforce the multiplicities of Black American life”.¹

… the tension of growing up Black and Brown American, having dreams of an American life that any of the rest of us have, but knowing that for a large section of white America, you are not entitled to the realization of those dreams…

… an article on the sensual photography of men and sculptures of men by Magnum photographer Herbert List… i am not into the depiction of the male body sexually, so i view the images with a certain detachment that i don’t have when viewing depictions of female bodies, where viewing is always sexually charged… List photographed during the Second World War… he had little opportunity to exhibit or publish during his lifetime… looking at the images, i imagines him traveling through the Greek Isles and surrounding himself with youthful, heavenly bodies wherever he went…

… i think about writing the character of a woman and whether i could do it or not and something inside me suggests to myself that i could… probably a delusional something inside me, after all, how can a man write a woman without the experience of having been one?…

… about Constantine taking her to lunch and her own inadequacies, which are legion… this chapter all about what nice girls do and don’t do, while she decides not to be a nice girl anymore… this chapter is about the place of women in the lives of men and our heroine does not like it… to wit…

And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard’s kitchen mat.¹

… sadly, she never has sex with Constantine… if SP lived in the current time, there would have been sex… and our heroine would not have been a virgin either…

… called R yesterday for their birthday, they were very happy i did, i resolved to call more often…

… the heat wave has begun, we slept without AC last night, probably the last time till the end of summer… dogs were restless, i think they were too hot, me too…

… Heather Cox Richardson with a rare full Sunday post… apparently there is definitive proof that 45 tried to get the Justice Department to intervene in the election… kind of knew that, but i guess proof is proof… i remember hoping, as we came down the stretch to the election, that his efforts to infiltrate and subvert every branch of government would fall short… barely, as it turned out… there is still reason to worry unfortunately…

… prep for departure will intensify today, need to set up the checkoff list today…

… birds singing madly… i remember one summer between years at college, i worked at the Ford assembly plant in Mahwah, NJ… i was on day shift… i had to be up with the birds… i hated the dawn chorus that summer…

… on C-SPAN? i said, having no idea why i might be on C-SPAN… i looked it up and sure enough, i appear twice… this was during the time i was President of the New York Society for Ethical Culture… we donated the auditorium to groups conducting programs in tune with our mission, and the President (me) got to introduce NYSEC to the (hopefully) large audience… here is a program put on by The Nation Magazine on Scott Ritter’s then new book Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change…

… another stop along the way…

… Fishkill Creek and the Roundhouse… when we got here 15 years ago, the building was unused and deteriorated… it is now a high end restaurant and hotel… Beacon has held its own during the pandemic…

… walked to Bob’s Corner Store… there are benches in shade, hikers arrive in the parking lot to climb Mt. Beacon… this is the more arduous approach, i use the Pocket Road trail approach mostly known to locals… nicer walk, fewer people… an image of Mt. Beacon i made earlier on the walk…

…photographs by Peter Hujar and Moyra Davey… review by Jorg Colberg… i have seen a number of reviews of this book, all of them good…

Jena Westra, from Afternoons

… Brad Feuerhelm gives this book a highest recommendation, stating that it is as near perfect a photobook as could be… i recognize the name of the artist which makes it likely i’ve run across the work before…

In the case Jenna Westra’s Afternoons (Hassla, 2020), several factors within the book suggest a return to the body as an act less of political dialogue, but more as an act of balance. Westra employs gesture and a number of interesting sculptural tactics to create a world where the feminine is embraced without men involved at all and unlike Girl Pictures, the emphasis is not on fantasy, but on reality, collaboration, and intimacy.¹

… the book is about the shape and form of women… young women… it feeds my rabbit hole… i ordered it…

… just reviewed the last day or two of my Notes On Attention Paid blog… i like everything i wrote… i am encouraged to continue, and maybe share occasionally on other SM platforms…

… a long post by JB on going home… lots of pics, lots of quick stories, family, friends, food, a travelog… riffing with pictures, none of it trying to be too, or even at all, profound, just normal shit that people do when they visit home in NJ… his low craft post made me think a little about this blog… what am i doing with it?… why am i doing it at all?… it feels right, i like doing it, but there is very little notice paid… JB has a group of fans like me that will look at what he writes every week… i keep trying to not want fans, but don’t succeed… we all want fans, don’t we?… even when we pretend we don’t… anyone so secure in their skin that they can say they don’t need or want fans probably has lots of them…

… morning flow not as i prefer, kitchen not clean, coffee not set up, urgent bathroom needs…

… desire for new desk pad because my new mouse sticks to the desk surface, making it frustrating to use… i order a new one from Amazon, will be here tomorrow, near instant gratification… while i am at it, i order a birthday gift card for R, now have to think about something for C too… still a million things to do before leaving for BI…

… been feeling exhausted lately, not unable to function, but kind of spent… been feeling very much like the pollen in the air is getting to me, draining me with histamine reaction… not usually much of an allergy sufferer, the occasional bad year though… this seems to be one of those…

… hot today, the window ACs will have to be hauled up from the basement… we got a long way without needing them… the first heat wave of the season on its way…

… train horns in the distance, freight train coming through… this side of the river?, it seems so close… happens sometimes, usually other side of river… this is the commuting train side…

… doing our civic duty by doing an absentee ballot…

…transwoman trainee, training staff struggling with appropriate pronoun… i am wondering about how she/they are being received…

… as i am walking i remember in this morning’s chapter of The Bell Jar, a picture of a woman is described, a black spot on her face, four months later she is dead it is explained… we are not told what it was but i know and i hurried on and tried to forget… i need a skin exam to be scheduled with my doctor, i am way overdue…

… i also thought that i need to rearrange my Z meeting with J, as we need to absentee vote today so it is done…

… i think that the expected rain has not materialized and the garden will need tending… i am glad we are setting up a watering system…

… the sounds of Fishkill Creek burble gurgle by… birds calling back and forth… i am alive in this moment…

… again, following up on note 05 from today, i find my way to the digital exhibition On Protest and Mourning at the Caribbean Cultural Center & African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI) website… i read curator Grace Aneiza Ali’s statement…

Protest is a form of mourning; and mourning is a form of protest. Throughout these images we see a consistent narrative, a shared language, a call to action: we must resist slipping into numbness, we must always cry out against a state’s militarized violence, against the emotional and mental brutalities it wields. And, as a matter of survival, we must always cry out for the Black lives loved and lost.¹

… Black Lives Matter…

… relative to the exhibit at The New Museum, i think, CCCADI is better positioned to curate a visual art representation of the oppression, grief and protest of black and brown people…

… i am ambivalent about doing this in the cultural institutions of white patriarchy… i think it is important to have a conversation, a conscience… to admit the wrong of systematic oppression… but i can’t let go of the idea that oppressive cultural and political structures have a huge capacity for self critique without changing… the object of the self critique being to say, we see, we understand… maybe some do, but overall, there is little change as a result…

… is the critic who wrote the article i mentioned in the previous post… an African American Man with a PhD… this gives him the right to be critical of the exhibition… a white critic might or might not be astute in their critique, but does s/he have standing to make the critique?… then i think, she might, because she too may have felt a certain kind of patriarchal oppression… it’s a morning of puzzling thoughts and reactions… i make my thought process transparent as i grope forward…

… there are two exhibitions discussed in this article… the first is what gets my attention… i am interested in the critique of star power rather than the subject of the exhibition… is this my white male privilege rearing an ugly head?…

… from yesterday stands out in my mind…

… the reflection in the discarded storm door of the house(s) across the street is wonderful… a kind of ghost presence…

… well, the trouble with Buddy seems to be that he wasn’t straight forward and honest about sleeping with a waitress two or three times a week for the better part of a summer while working on Cape Cod in a hotel… hmmm, why should anyone lead with that?… when i was growing up, most young men had significant sexual experiences at a relatively early age… many young women too… why are we supposed to lead with that?… i suppose you tell someone eventually if the relationship is serious and it seems important they know… or is it only in a world where virginity is important that it matters at all?…

… pretty much slept through the night… been mostly sleeping through the night lately…

… prep work for BI trip going smoothly…

… work to do for J, feeling resentful about having to do it, feeling like i wish everything i consider extraneous in my life would just go away… i don’t want to give any precious time to anything i don’t embrace wholeheartedly the doing of…

… noisy birds…

… my weather app tells me the heat will start cranking up tomorrow, may have to drag AC units up out of the basement before we leave after all…

… 45 is insisting that he will be reinstated by August, actively trying to undermine democracy, can’t anyone do anything about him?, he seems so depressingly out of reach, he’s a bad actor, there ought to be a straightforward, non authoritarian and efficient way to contain him…

… a shorter walk today… possible rain… pain in several places up and down my left side… nose tickling in a pre-sneeze way, allergies… i wonder about having an iPhone tripod… not this time, lots of money being spent… i think about the noise of rapids and waterfalls, did primitive humans avoid lingering near them because it is difficult to hear danger approaching?… it makes me nervous that way… i suppose one learns to position themselves in a spot where the rear is naturally protected… i watch the chaos of the rapids, water pounding through… i imagine the ocean pounding the shore in stormy weather… do i make this link because we will soon be at the shore?…

… i spend some time finding people to follow on micro.blog…

… an article on Sarah Jaffe’s new book, Work Won’t Love You Back… it is a little expensive, even in the Kindle version so i add it for now to my list on Amazon…

… as i read the book, i think a few things… i think that i tried to have a career where i loved my work, but it did not pan out in a satisfying way in the end… then i switched to being a photographic artist… i don’t have to make money doing it, thanks to H mostly, but it is nice when i do… yet, i am ambivalent about the gallery system, the gatekeeping, etc. which has me focusing my art in ways i would not otherwise… still, i have come to a compromise, where i make what i make and wait for opportunities to have something come of it… right now, i write a blog that i think of as part of my artwork… nobody reads it… i don’t publicize it much, i would rather people discover it and let me know if they liked it…