W.W.I.W?

I have a new mantra for when I get dressed in the mornings.

W.W.I.W.? Because what would she?

Last week, during what I thought was the end of all illness among my brood but turned out to only be a brief respite (and meant the kids probably infected an entire region of the Commonwealth), we went to one of my favorite museums. I love it any day of the year.

Right now I want to live there.



The museum is hosting Rare Bird of Fashion: The Irreverent Iris Apfel. It is an incredible show of one woman's love of clothes and embracing color, texture and jewelry with abandon.

She combines haute couture with thrift store finds. She layers necklaces upon necklaces and then adds more necklaces. She thinks dressing should be an adventure.



So I have a new mentor. Someone I will talk to every morning and ask how bold, how outlandious I can be. Not that she will answer but it will be a lively conversation that I will have with my new imaginary friend.

Every morning I plan on asking what would Iris wear?

Open letter week - my fair city

This week I am posting an open letter a day. Feel free to write your own and let me know about it.

Dear Fair City,



We had one of those moments when the world - at least the art world - was paying attention to us and we blew it. Shepard Fairey, the creator of the iconic Obama "Hope" poster (which is now part of a p*ssing match with the Associated Press since the Obama image uses an AP photograph), is having his first solo exhibit at a major art museum.



I first became aware of Fairey with stickers of Andre the Giant. I have seen them off and on in various places for years. But with the exhibit approaching, they were cropping up in many more places.



I saw on the side of an abandoned night club one of his other posters and planned to take the kids back to show them. But in the 6 days between seeing it and getting the kids back, it was painted over.

Of course, Mr. Fairey had been arrested on his way to the opening night party because of several outstanding warrants for defacement of property.

Now he was frolicking with the Mayor earlier that week. The police couldn't have arrested him then? No, we had to do it right before he entered the museum.



I'm not too worried about Mr. Fairey getting his due process. He can afford the best attorneys. I'm worried for how we will be seen. We were the city that embraced that crazy painting style - Impressionism - in the late 19th century which is why various museums have some of the most important paintings of that time.

What happened to our sense of artistic adventure?



Sincerely,
SMID

Stopped for some fun

My organization is heading into the end of the legislative session and one of our most important bills is in a do-or-die situation. However, we all took a step back to reconnect as a group. There are days when I spend more time with my colleagues then my family. It is a good thing that our boss puts a premium on us having fun together once in a while.



So we closed the office for the day and everyone - including the grad school interns - went to a museum and sculpture park deep in the leafy suburbs. We had a picnic and played lawn games.



And Dominican Dominoes. That was a brutal game.

Meet Big Papa and Blurper

What I found in the backpacks on Monday.

This week your only assignment is to make an insect project. The directions are attached. Please make sure your insect has the following:

6 legs
3 body parts: Head, Thorax and Abdomen
2 antennae

And what we finished tonight.

Describe your insect


Color: clear
Shape: Small barrel
Size: 3 1/2 inches
Movement: Walk
Sounds: blurp blurp
Insect's name: blurper


Color: brown, red, yellow, white
Shape: long tube
Size: 11 In
Movement: Walks
Sounds: "Slived eulb" ["Blue Devils" backwards in honor of Duke University, where my dad got his masters degree and to acknowledge the North Carolina head of the bug]
Insect's Name: Big Papa

The difference between L and R

Funny how two letters can make a big difference.

Please insert the letter "l" where the asterisk is located in this word:

e*ections

Now insert the letter "r".



I'll wait for you.


Done?


Have you giggled?

One word means, according to Merriam-Webster, "the right, power, or privilege of making a choice" while the other means "the state marked by firm turgid form and erect position of a previously flaccid bodily part containing cavernous tissue when that tissue becomes dilated with blood". When choice and freedom are involved, both feel really good.

One was, for the majority, illegal in South Africa until 1994 when the first multi-racial elections were held and the other was rarely discussed until a constitution was ratified that ensured the rights of all, regardless of who inspired their erections. Or elections.

Sunday night Amazing Guy and I attended Pieter-Dirk Uys' performance of Elections and Erections. We had seen his show Foreign AIDS three years ago. I became aware of him and his character Evita Bezuidenhout in 1999 while traveling in South Africa. I was floored to see on the newsstands this lovely lady of royalty (read drag queen) on the cover of their Time magazine equivalent. She had rented a decrepit bus and was traveling from black township to township promoting elections.

Evita Bezuidenhout is "the most famous white woman in South Africa" and was quoted as saying during her bus tour that voting is incredibly important, that is why the whites kept it away from the blacks.

Now Evita performs a cabaret show in a renovated train station in Darling, South Africa. She also travels from school to school in those same black townships talking about erections. Pieter is on a one man/woman campaign to honestly talk to children about sex and AIDS. His theater show three years ago, Foreign AIDS, reduced me to tears as he talked about the fears, dreams and misunderstandings of children and their teachers and parents.

I had the opportunity to meet Pieter after the performance. It was a fundraiser for the wonderful group that brings books to South African school libraries, among the other wonderful things they do.

I was marginally articulate (unlike if I ever get the chance to meet Vince Clark then I will be a blubbering, incoherent mess) and actually told him I liked the show three years ago better (maybe I wasn't so articulate). He graciously explained to me that he didn't want to spend the rest of his days telling stories about the children, which he could easily do. Amazing Guy later said he felt Pieter's more personal in this more recent production.

And as we parted, Pieter said to me, "I'll see you in Darling, darling".



He called me darling.

Finding a painter who lived in NYC and ...

"Mom today in art we learned about an artist...." yelled by one guy

"who moved to New York City...." yelled by the other

"and lived on the 30th floor of a hotel...."

[are you getting how this was screamed in the van?]

"and listened to Boogie woogie music"

"and painted a picture of taxis!"

Together - "Can we find his picture?"


Bless, bless Google.


I first typed into that lovely rectangle painter who listened to boogie woogie music and just got listings for CDs.

Then I tried painter boogie woogie music and this appeared on the computer screen -

"THAT'S IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" they both screamed.

Piet Modrian painted Broadway Boogie Woogie between 1942- 1943. My kids made their own versions of it in art class last week with squares they cut from construction paper.

A-toot, a-toot, a-toot-diddelyada-toot
He blows it eight-to-the-bar, in boogie rhythm
He can't blow a note unless the bass and guitar is playing with him
He makes the company jump when he plays reveille
He's the boogie woogie bugle boy of Company B

(Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy by Don Raye and Hughie Prince)

Independence Day

Yesterday, August 15th, is Independence Day. The celebration of the end of Great Britain's rule as a colonizer and the start of a new democracy.

August 15th is Independence Day in India.

The Sunday before the actual day, the local India Association hosts an annual celebration at the same location as the local pops orchestra puts on a little 4th of July concert. It is only appropriate that both days of independence be celebrated in the same place.

Only this one is a little different than the latter extravaganza you may have seen on television.

There is something pretty amazing to see dancers in full Bollywood glamour at the Hatch Shell. And the food. Even this non-foodie loves Indian food.

This year though the kids and I took a risk. We sought out the tables in the back of the green space and watched the women create their art. Then we shyly asked if we could get some. One of them graciously welcomed us, patiently decorated our hands then gently applied a lemon paste on them after 15 minutes.




We got henna tattoos.



And we all brag about them.

Paper and scissor

We ran into the children's book store and were sent to the back. The young woman had a chair up against a wall and a chair for herself a few feet away. Craig and I wondered how she would do it. Would she flash a big light and trace around their heads?

Our daughter balked at going first so one of our sons jumped on the chair. He faced us and this woman who looked to be 27 years old studied his profile. Then she started to cut a small square of black paper. As the pieces fell, our son's profile appeared. She just looked at him and cut.

Our daughter got up next and played a three-year-old's variation of "I Spy" with us to keep her sitting in profile. The artist told us she liked the challenge of cutting out curly hair. Then our other son jump on the chair and sat patiently as she cut out his profile.

She cut out three portraits of our children in less than 15 minutes.

From Wikipedia -

A silhouette is a profile traced onto and then cut from black paper and was a simple alternative for people who could not afford other forms of portraiture, which, in the eighteenth century, was still an expensive proposition. The word took its name from Étienne de Silhouette, either because the victims of his taxes complained that they were reduced to mere shadows or because he enjoyed this fad art in his retirement.