Whig Hill

Ok.

  Awesome! 
  Originally uploaded by natmaconjr.

Ok. Dad update. He’s just completed his fifth round of chemotherapy. Signs of improvement at this point are confined to watching the hemoglobin count go from 9-something to 11-something. Can you believe that hope for life can be found in the interval? It seems, at this point, that’s all we’ve got.

Driving around yesterday, I found one of the billboards advertised as part of the Nasher Museum of Art’s exhibit, Street Level: Mark Bradford, William Cordova and Robin Rhode. These billboards, pictured here, are—from what I remember of a radio interview—inspirations for the artists featured in the exhibit. Well, someone placed a “counter billboard” beneath one of the big ones.

It did have the effect of causing me to go down to the museum to take a look. Ok. So in terms of how the visitors experience a museum from the very start, here’s how it goes at the Nasher: You drive up, park, and have to buy a parking pass from an electronic vendor which asks how long you plan to be here. WTF??? That’s a hell of a way to orient a newly arrived visitor or give them the information needed to time-manage the stay. Do you want to only stay an hour so you don’t start incurring exorbitant parking fees? ($2 an hour.) That’s not cool. And it reminds me of the equally expensive parking rates they charge by the machines and in the new deck behind the Bryan Center for visitors to the Special Collections Library.

Ok. So after visiting the exhibits I get a cup of coffee at the little café just as it’s closing (two hours before the museum closes) so I take the cup into the lobby. I sat on a bench in front the gift shop and sipped and a security guard came up and said I’ve got to get that coffee out of here. I said I’m just waiting a moment, and I’m about to leave anyhow and she responded very curtly that I have to get it out of here. Now. So I left the whole damn museum. And as I walked out, through the same lobby I’d been sitting in, I passed caterers setting up large dinner tables for an after hours event. Not cool.

As for the Street Level exhibit, the stuff by William Cordova was just awesome. The stuff by Robin Rhode was somewhat interesting but if you bothered to read the labels, you will 1) not get obvious questions answered about the photographs, and 2) get whacked over the head by some real obtuse political statements. That kind of ruined it for me. The artist appears in almost all the photographs and I’m just thinking I’d hate to have to meet this guy at a party and be subject to his obnoxious and unsubtle political lecturing. Well, as I’ve mentioned before, art museum labels are weird…they’re just never seem to be written with the average dumbass like me in mind.

Which brings me to another thing at the Nasher. In the rear of the classical art section, they’ve got an arch from some 4th Century (or something) French church. Pretty neat, but then I read the label and it told me that the arch was recycled from a Roman building and the original carving was on the rear. Ok. So that makes this artifact ten times more interesting to me and wouldn’t you know it, the thing is backed up to a wall. Yeah, it left enough space for my agile and wisp-like body (heh) to squeeze behind and see the Roman carvings, but few other visitors would have been able to do that. Put a mirror up, or something, but don’t tease the visitor like that and not offer a reward.

So I did sit down to write about the big changes afoot in my life, but this cranky review sidetracked me. I’ll just have to tell you next time. Ok?

The way I come across is not the problem

Man… a strange couple of days. Finally got the power back on Wednesday afternoon, but the odd thing is the power lines in front of my house are still destroyed. They’ve fixed all the other lines in the neighborhood, but have only looked at ours, and moved on. And after a thorough cull of the refrigerator, the putrid smells have disappeared.

I’ve been on a strict healthy diet for a few weeks. Ricotta cheese and blueberry smoothies, grilled peppers and asparagus, whole wheat breakfast burritos…that sort of stuff. I went to the grocery store Sunday night to get a week’s worth of food and with the power out I couldn’t cook any of it and it went bad. Threw the diet off because I ended up eating cheeseburgers and zingers all week. Apparently its been working (the grilled veggies, not the zingers). I think I’ve dropped about two or three pounds in two or three weeks. I can tell my waist is getting thinner because I’m having trouble keeping my pants up. (nyuk, nyuk)

Well, I’m grooving on the new hair. As a long time devotee of the flowing locks, this is a great surprise and I haven’t had one moment of regret. Last week I formulated that this has something to do with a growing self-confidence. You see, I’m only now discovering and recovering from some serious self-loathing that developed in childhood and was amplified by the marriage and divorce. Well, the divorce was the first step in recovering, but even now, I keep stumbling over deep-seated and previously unknown artifacts of guilt and protection within me. But they’re falling away, slowly but surely. And I like it.

I’m trying to read four books at once and when I don’t have some tome in my hand, I’m grasping at any article I can find relating to interpretation of history or historic sites. At the History Museum, I was a self-proclaimed curatorial chauvinist. I knew the Education Section and respected their work even if I didn’t really understand it. Now I’m in the Education Section of Sites and learning all sorts of fundamental stuff about interpretation and education. In fact, I kind of have this whole born-again evangelism going on that’s probably annoying the shit about of my colleagues.

Anyhow, big things are afoot in my life that will just have to wait for another post.

And, as usual, some things I’m not telling you.

Speaking of museums, Ray Smuckles went to a historic site.

New Durham slogan from Blazer Manpurse.


   
  Originally uploaded by natmaconjr.

Anyone got a chain saw?

When I lived in Bahama and a tree fell across the road, the men of the neighborhood would be out right away to cut it apart and clear the road. Now, in Durham--or at least where I live--we just sit on our porches and watch helplessly as the city tree-cutting people come by, look around, and drive off.

A very large tree from the backyard of my grumpy neighbor's house across the street fell on the road and ripped apart the power lines and jerked them from the side of my house. Another tree fell across the road on Elgin just above my house (and the city tree-cutting people's lift truck tore down another section of power line as they drove by-heh), and another fell across the creek in the park. What is it with trees falling across things?

So my power is out and the worst part of that is having no internet. Jeff and I are down here at Broad Street. If I had internet at home, I'd liveblog the inevitable, horrible, descent into Lord of the Flies that will happen later.

That's what I need the chain saw for. 

Originally uploaded by natmaconjr.

Hey Lisa

Here's yer twang.