Picto Diary - 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10 October 2018 - Season Transition
Stephen D. Taylor was traveling to Salt Lake City, Utah with Margaret Taylor from Delta Terminal - John F. Kennedy International Airport (New York).
October 5 at 8:47 PM · New York, NY ·
Passed the CBP Global Entry interview on the layover at JFK.
Interview was very bureaucratic... business like. NYC tough guy like.
I tried to be very obsequious...hard for me.
But, in the end, process was efficient and CBP agents competent.
Look forward to smooth, facilitated, fast track entry into the US on future trips.
TIMDT now the leader on all our trips. My job is to follow her instructions, try not to make any mistakes.
Hat tip: Portland
Joe Moore to BMW MOA
October 4 at 3:30 PM
Sometimes the weather just works against you. Taken in Banff national park October 2, 2018.
Stephen D. Taylor
October 5 at 9:07 PM ·
I was in a comparable situation riding OR SR 140 atop the Doherty Rim in late May 2016. I rode for 8 miles in conditions per image, including road surface, before descending 1500 feet down the side of the rim, whereupon snow turned to rain. Shivering with cold, I rode a further 20 miles east to the nearest shelter, Adel, at the base of Deep Creek. I warmed up with a coffee, then continued on my way, no more weather obstacles, to Ashland, OR via Lake View and Klamath Falls.
The ride in the snow, on the BMW F800 GS, was not fun. Circa 2001 I rode a Ducati ST4S up Julier Pass, Switzerland, in a snow storm. Fortunately, the snow accumulation was not significant before I reached the summit and started the descent to St. Moritz in rain. Circa 2003 I rode a BMW K1200 LT down Oak Creek Canyon Flagstaff, AZ to Sedona, AZ in a budding blizzard.
Fortunately, snow turned to rain on the descent.
LSDM 06 October 2018 - Wasatch Bagel.
Topic du jour: The Moors
Big Data
The Bishop
Image: He's (Big Data) is baaaaaak! (from 9 month stint in Afghanistan) — at Wasatch Bagel Café. LSDM will have him discuss his stint in a few days.
Above: Fall Colors. 06. October 2018. Living room scene first morning after return from Spain.
Above: Kings Crown ski run. Park City Mountain. 07 October 2018 Image from Wasatch Bagel, Park City, UT.
Above: Bishop and Joseph Smith sphinx sculpture. Gilgal Gardens, Salt Lake City, UT. 08 October 2018.
Above: Tim Quinn, incumbent running for re election, Utah State House of Representatives, District 24, speaks to La Society Deux Magots (LSDM). Wasatch Bagel. Park City, UT. 09 October 2018.
Also present:
Glenn Wright, Summit County Councilman
Andy Beerman, Mayor, Park City, UT
"I believe government is best when government is local."
What a difference a week makes. Precursor to hard winter? Aberration? Park City, UT. Iron Canyon. 10 October 2018.
Addendum:
Steve, Margaret.. now you understand why we return to Spain so often, and for weeks or months at a time. Glad you enjoyed it so much..
Flamenco and Espresso,
Washington, D.C.
In Madrid, on 28 September, we watched a Flamenco performance at La Taberna de Mister Pinkerton. I squinted at the dancers and Flamenco (Espresso's Flamenco, that is) appeared in my mind's eye.
There is so much here I could respond to, but I won't. However, in 1968 Guernica was in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
You continue to disappoint me, my friend.
Zookeeper,
Williamstown, MA
Welcome fact check. My next stop after Madrid in April 1968, was NYC, where I stayed with a friend. I visited The New York World's Fair, MOMA, Museum of Natural History... and bought a suit at Lord and Taylor. I mixed up my viewing Guernica at Prado with MOMA. Would be interesting to hear your feedback, which you imply, but don't state, in your note, on the substance of my "essay."
Following is a good site to help frame arguments on this topic:
https://www.debate.org/opinions/is-modern-art-real-art
You're close enough to Dia:Beacon. Go see if Smithson's pile of glass shards is still there.
Above: Smithson's Spiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake, UT.
Rival of El Greco's Expolio de Cristo?
I think not.
Guernica is now housed at the Reina Sofia...
Trader Joe,
Park City, UT
Tks. For next time. This time we visited Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.
Steve
Great commentary below! I didn’t know you are such a Picasso fan—especially of Guernica. We have to talk “art” one morning a LSDM. My office at NYU in1979 was right in the middle of the SoHo art scene.
I visited Guernica at least once a week when I worked at Citibank 1976-1981---the museum fed me well at $5/meal at MOMA, and the prettiest girls hung out at the museum cocktail parties.
Attached is a picture of the “Picasso” steps going into our Park City house, and we (confidentially) have a Picasso pitcher in our family room that the kids don’t know about.
If you think Cubism is artistic chaos, what must you think of Basquiat? Here’s one I used to own before they got too rich for my blood--I bought it for $14,000 in 1985 and overpaid 200% of its then value, but then I sold it for $300,000 three years later when the artist killed himself. It’s the only painting I’ve ever sold and Basquiat’s are now in the $5 - $110 million range. The (only) one good thing I remember about Basquiat is that one weekend, as my houseguest, he brought me a signed Keith Herring litho that now hangs in our mudroom.
Cornucopia,
Park City, UT
I must have missed seeing those steps when I was at your place a couple of months ago. Apropos your pitcher, TIMDT and Mwah (sic) loved Picasso's small owl sculpture in the Malaga museum.
FYI….
In Israel last month we visited Maya Kadishman in Tel Aviv, which prompted me to write the essay below. It will probably end up in my next book..
Statement of Professor Paul Zane Pilzer, Sept 3, 2018
Food for Creativity
I was a 17-year-old college freshman at Lehigh University in September 1971. I had just joined the school newspaper, the Brown & White, when I heard that the Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman was installing a new piece at Lehigh University. I drove from my dormitory on Sunday morning to Lehigh’s campus in Saucon Valley to see the work. When I arrived, I was excited to serendipitously find the artist himself onsite working on the installation.
The work consisted of large steel plates about three stories high, facing east, mounted on a grassy area, each with a cut-out of an abstract tree. I walked over to the artist and took out my pen and notepad for an interview.
“Menashe, what is art and how do you make it?”, I asked.
Menashe responded. “I don’t make art. God makes art, like nature. I make things that help people notice God’s work, that some people call ‘art’. Art is anything that helps us better see or understand the work of God.”
He continued: “For example, look down at our shadows. Shadows are so beautiful—but they exist kinetically only for fleeting moments, seconds, and, due to the orbits of the earth and sun, each shadow will never ever exist again in its present form. But too many times we fail to see the beauty in shadows, we take shadows for granted.” “I believe two reasons we sometimes don’t notice shadows is because they are dark and they move so slowly. So, I make metal plates like these that make the shadows of the trees light versus dark. And, by leveraging the angle of the sun at sunrise and sunset, the shadows can appear much larger and move much faster.”
I was dumbfounded. I stopped writing and asked myself, “What kind of mind would ever notice that shadows are dark—they’ve always been dark? And what kind of genius would then create a way like this to make shadows light? And who would ever think of leveraging the sun’s angles to make shadows move faster as the sun rose or fell?”
Over the next 44 years I developed a lifelong friendship, and fascination, with Menashe and his work. In addition to our serendipitous meeting that Sunday, one of Menashe’s patrons coincidentally was the father of my Lehigh freshman roommate, and I spent many weekends during college with Menashe at this friend’s beach house in Westhampton, New York.
Later, after graduation, when I worked for Citibank, I would visit works of Menashe Kadishman when I traveled worldwide—which was easy to do since giant Kadishman outdoor sculptures existed in many major cities. Later, when I became a writer and an economist in the White House, I found that Menashe’s work and friendship, plus being surrounded by his work, provided me “food for creativity” when I needed to develop new ways of identifying and solving macroeconomic problems.
How Met Menashe’s Texas Children
I moved to Texas in January 1981. I was visiting my college roommate’s home in New York City on October 21, 1981 when I saw Menashe. He came over to ask where I had been that past summer, and I explained that I had moved to Dallas.
“Dallas,” he exclaimed, “I’ve never been to Dallas, but I have children there. Three of them. When are you going back?” I explained that I was flying home on the first American Airlines flight tomorrow morning at 7:00am from LaGuardia Airport. Sure enough, when I arrived the next day at the airport to check in, there was Menashe waiting for me in his trademark shorts and t-shirt. He bought a ticket at the gate where I checked in and we flew together to Dallas. When we landed in Dallas he declared: “Before we do anything else, I must see my children.” I then realized that his children were his sculptures.
We drove first to One Nonesuch Lane, the very reclusive home of Stanley Marcus, the founder and (then) CEO of Neiman Marcus. I parked in the front circular driveway and headed to the front door. Menashe walked to the side of the home and climbed over a four-foot high fence, tripping a silent alarm. In the backyard, towering over Stanley’s one-story ranch house, was a giant iron Kadishman abstract sculpture. As Menashe ran towards the sculpture to touch his “child,” two private security cars arrived blocking each entrance of the circular driveway. I heard Stanley Marcus crying out “Menashe, Menashe” when he realized the identity of his burglar. We met with Stanley for about 30 minutes, planned a dinner at my home for the next evening, and then Menashe asked Stanley for the addresses of his other children.
The second “child” was located at the home of Elsie and Stanley Pearle, the founder of the 1000-store chain of Pearle Vision optical stores. Their home was located on Strait Lane. The Pearle home entranceway was marked by a giant Frank Stella painting with windows on the side which looked out to a giant Kadishman abstract sculpture on the back lawn behind the pool. This time I rang the doorbell almost immediately, hoping I could preempt Menashe from trespassing to the backyard. Stanley Pearle himself answered the front door and I said; “I’m here with Menashe Kadishman to see your Kadishman sculpture.” Stanley and his wife Elsie ran outside just as Menashe was approaching the sculpture. We stayed for two hours and the Pearle’s agreed to join us for dinner at my home the next night with Stanley Marcus.
The final and third child was located in University Park at the home or Ray and Patsy Nasher, a highly-successful businessperson, White House cabinet officer, and one of the world’s largest collectors of outdoor sculpture. Unfortunately, the Nashers were in New York. Fortunately, after receiving calls from the Marcus’ and Pearle’s, the Nasher butler and house staff were expecting us that afternoon. We visited Menashe’s child outside in the backyard, surrounded by works from Picasso, Matisse, Calder, and Rodin. The Nashers returned home that weekend and we (me and Menashe) visited with them in person.
Over the next 10 years I lived in Dallas and had many successful personal and career experiences—experiences that began on Menashe’s first day in Dallas when he introduced me to three of Dallas’ leading families who had adopted his children. These collectors, and many others, became my friends and regular visitors each time Menashe came to visit Dallas.
Cornucopia,
Park City, UT
Terrific essay. Interesting Kadishman "abstractions."
Steve I have enjoyed reading you posts about our time in Spain. They are excellent!
El Contador, Tavistock, Devon, UK
We had a great time thanks to your and Eton Mum's companionship and guidance!
Prague image sent by The (traveling) Pope 18 October 2018
TIMDT and Mwah (sic) were in Prague for the first time in 2016. I liked most our visit to nearby Cesky Krumlov in Sudetenland. Cesky Krumlov, an old medieval town, has been restored into a tourist center. The beautiful Vltava River runs through the city. The Moldau (Vltava in Czech), symphonic poem by Bohemian composer Bedrich Smetana, evokes the flow of the Vltava River from its source in the mountains of the Bohemian Forest, through the Czech country side, to the city of Prague. We heard this composition playing frequently as we strolled through Cesky Krumlov. I have the recording at home and listen to it frequently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G4NKzmfC-Q We stood in the Cesky Krumlov main square visited by Adolph Hitler after the Germans annexed Sudetenland in 1938. Hitler is reputed to have stated at that time, "Cesky Krumlov would be a nice place if it weren't inhabited by Czechs."