Highlights

Pardon the neck bends. I thought I'd fixed them all last night. Facebook won't let me post anymore, so here is a digest version of the last two days.
Christmas is here and the windows are amazing!
This clocktower is sort of a giant cuckoo clock reenacting scenes from Munich's history
The is the Theatenkirche. I didn't get to see inside, but the outside is lovely.
This pillar was raised to praise God for delivering the city from invaders and the plague.
Here's where I ate my lunch.
Giant scuplture supporting authority and right doing and all that jazz. It sits just outside a tunnel entrance into the Residenz, the home of the Bavarian royalty.
At the other end of the tunnel sit two fawns, human scale and ready to play.
This is the Antiquarium. Sculpture from the Greek and Roman period as well as pieces inspired by that time are amassed in an overwhelming display of the right to rule. Each niche represents the territory loyal to the Bavarian crown and the effect can be a tad overwhelming.
At this point I'd been through a good chunk of the house and I realized that very costly decorations were everywhere. This is ornamentation on a scale I can't quite process.
This is the Frauenkirche. It is the seat of the Archbishop. I dropped in for Mass, which was an amazing multicultural experience. Some kneeled, some bowed, some curtseyed, some genuflected, and it was all good.
The devil's footprint. He was angry because the architect had built a church without windows. It's an illusion most clearly visible at this point.
Yesterday I devoted to the Neue Pinakothek. I skipped most the art that dated from the same period as the Resdenz as I was still a bit overwhelmed.
This was painting of Christ that has me intrigued. I may have found a new painter I'd like to study. My notes are buried in my bag, or I'd add the details.

A Strange and Sinister Business

The Pinakothek der Modern is the newest museum in Munich. The building's design has all the beautiful practicality that is expected. There are also touches of whimsey that allow the museum to take risks and grow. At the moment one of the big risks is the basement full of every day objects whose design elevates them to art. Currently this area is underfunded and almost all items on display have been donated second-hand.
This is my only real criticism. This museum still has plenty of time to stretch and grow, and there is already so much to love. I marched around until I had seen everything, and I'm glad I did. The biggest lesson I learned is that art is growing project. Over and over I met artist's at early and later moments in their lives and it was not just how they grown, but it was also what they had decided to say that inspired me to keep going. I may not be turning out prose worthy of the canon, but I'm learning and growing and deciding just what it is I need to say. I highly recommend a visit to the Pinakothek der Moderne.

Karl Schmidt Rottluff's self portrait grabbed me. He is determined to paint what he sees no matter what the fall out. I like that kind of courage and understand that kind of fear. The museum has a sizeable collection of Franz Marc. I do not love him as I ought, but I do love his use of color it is always strong, but in a harmonious way.
Humor is important for me in art. It's the fart that makes us all human. George Grosz tickled my funny bone with his perspective on married life. Men. What can you do with them? What can you do without them?This painting by Karl Hofer (Grosser Karneval) didn't interest me at first, but the longer I stayed in the room the more I was drawn to it. I still feel like a student of this painting, but perhaps you are a faster study.The collection has a good amount of Max Beckmann and I found studying the paintings chronologically interesting. At first he's like any other beginner, he's trying to find his voice and his subject, but then the dates are for dark and perilous times and his painting feels more out of control. It almost screams.
I could go on, but other things need doing. The collection is in many ways conservative, and I'll admit to a fondness for figures. Some of the experimental video exhibits were fun. There was a display of two pink strings strung from floor to ceiling entitiled Pink Flamingo--I loved it. There was some de Kooning that I liked though I liked it best when he kept the colors all distinct instead of adding a mixed blob. My favorite sculpture was made out of flourescent light tubes. It takes an ordinary object and turns it into a powerful symbol of mourning.

Magic!

Yesterday was a full day. I tackled the S-bahn/U-bahn on my own. It's not that difficult I'm just a tad slow with those things. The Alte Pinakothek is still a two block walk after the subway ride and I nearly ran it. The folks at the front desk could not have been nicer. One took my monkey picture for the kids and then explained that I'd need to leave my backpack in a locker while I toured the galleries. The locker required a 2 Euro coin, but gave it right back when I picked my things up.
They have a handy little device like most museums that takes you on an audio tour. It featured a broad sampling of the paintings that was cleverly chosen to give you a sense of each artist and period you were looking at even if they didn't refer to the particular painting that interested you. I only saw one gallery, but I will definitely go back.

Highlight paintings for me: Francis Boucher's Madame de Pompadour. I've not been a big fan of Boucher. He's a bit of an ass man, but this is charming. I could see it as inspiration for redecorating my office. It doesn't hurt that Madame was featured in one of my favorite Dr. Who episodes.Rembrandt's Sacrafice of Isaac. This one is in my parent's family Bible. The day I committed my life to Christ I was looking at this picture. It was startling to see how powerful the old masters had been in my life. My community rejected modern art as meaningless, so ye old masters were what was available. I guess it's like Shakespeare and Sophocles. Time had blunted the edges. They weren't controversial any more. Instead they'd been embraced. Ruben's Last Judgement. I wasn't allowed to take pictures, but this one was floating about on the web. The whole gallery was laid out around this painting. I wanted you to get a feeling for the size. The apocolpyse has always worried me. I watched the news for signs of the times and I spent a good chunk of daydreaming time trying to figure out how to stop it. I approached the apocolyptic paintings with caution. Various travel shows and art shows were quick to hint that the paintings were meant to terrify, but to me they were comforting. Good is always triumphing in spades. The power and the energy make the end of the world a terrific subject, and as long as good is winning what is there to fear?Titian's Adam and Eve and Ruben's copy of Adam and Eve. This was part of the Ruben's exhibit and I was so impressed. Here is the undisputed master Titian giving us his perspective on the rather important story of the Fall. Then here comes Ruben copying all the life of the original and then making it his own. I would say he improved it but the Titian is still so strong that even hanging next to Ruben's lively version it holds its own. They had two other pairs in the exhibit with equally impressive results. Maybe I should try rewriting War and Peace and giving it my own flavor--just kidding. :)















I'm having a grand time, and I wish you all were here. Auf Wiedersehen

Mom and Dad's Excellent Adventure

The monkey hats are back. Last summer we simplified everything in order to enjoy our new baby. This summer I thought the hats were gone for good until...I thought about taking pictures for the kids in our monkey hats. We're still working out the routine, but I hope to have a slew of pictures featuring our signature look.

Weight Gain

Before

and After
I really hate typing. I was backed up by 70-80 pages. This represents a rough draft for 3/10 of my novel. I didn' t want to haul that all over the place. Now I have room for blank paper. Harriet is an awful lot of work.

Packing My Library

The battle for book space in my luggage has been raging as I pack for my trip with Kurt. I woke up this morning to the happy thought that I could use the outer pockets of my suitcase for books if I need to. Otherwise I'm restricted to the pockets in the purse I bought and whatever little nooks and crannies are left in my technology backpack. I can hear packing experts beginning the lecture now, and I agree less is often more. The thing is we'll be in one hotel for the entire stay, so I'll only be lugging stuff onto a plane and then off a plane.

Anyway, down to the inventory. I read a little saying from this book every night before I go to bed. She was so compassionate and good.


I've gotten behind on the Liturgy of the Hours, but I'm ready to get back to it. One of my goals is to attend mass everyday I'm gone, and this might be just the thing for waiting for the liturgy to start.
I want to use this time to pay attention to German authors, so I'm finishing up Hegel's Philosophy of History. Enthusiastic optimism is nice in a philosophical work.

I'll be reading Goethe's Faust. I read it at some point in my college career, but I find that I'm missing a lot of the details. It's also a play, and I love reading plays.
Finally, a selection of material from Hildegard of Bingen. I read her biography for the Medieval Women class I taught. She still amazes me. I'm looking forward to hearing her speak in her own voice.
The obligatory guides I'm taking along are a general guide to Germany--Fodor's See It. It's very informative. Boris Becker lives in Munich. Worth the money right there. I like all the pictures. It moves it from a cram fest to a pleasurable, magazine-like browsing experience.

I also got a smaller book dedicated to Munich. I'll be sticking to Munich most of the time Kurt will be working and he will be working most of the time. I've been enjoying it and it's newsprint interior removes all concern about underlining and scribbling in the book. I went with Frommers in hopes of getting a different perspective. It's a good size for dragging around.
I decided I needed a phrase book. Kurt's picked up some German, but I'll be on my own a good bit. This book comes with an audio disk. Kurt's promised to teach me how to load all that on his old I-pod. The I-pod will also allow me to pack the Teaching Company classes I didn't think I could take. You've got to love technology.
Now we get down to the iffier stuff. Harriet research, poetry, and fun reading--not that all of the above aren't fun. I'm reading The Souls of Black Folk. I think the more enlightened characters in this chunk would be familiar with W.E.B. Dubois and he is a strong model for the character of William.
I have several anthologies of poetry, but only the "pleasant" poetry is in a portable form. I tend to buy the complete anthology even though that isn't recommended because I like to read the garbage too. For a place holder until I find time to do better, I'm putting in the way too heavy Norton Anthology of Poetry.
Finally, as a distraction while in flight, I'll be trying my hand at new rhyme schemes. It's a tiny little book, but it might be the straw that breaks the camel's back. You never know.

Chores Galore

For years our family has struggled to find a good method for training the kids in the basics. Countless ideas have been tried and have either quickly or slowly fallen apart. My sister is a crazed fan of Melissa and Doug, so when there is a display of their toys I always check to see if there is something she'd like. Barnes and Noble has started carrying them, so I looked it over and found a magnetic chore chart. Being me, I set it aside and thought about it for three or four weeks. Burned by other systems, I bought one and let Kurt look it over. He liked it, so I let the sample sit for another three or four weeks while I thought about it some more. In the end, Amazon had the best price and I bought one for everybody.
The kids love it. We love it, and best of all things are going better. The feature I was least enthusiastic about--the white board--has become one of it's best assets allowing us to penalize negative behavior and the kids an opportunity to express themselves. Since we bought six boards there are enough disks for each child to have their favorite color, which allows us to use the currently unused disks to reward random acts of goodness and full completion of all required tasks.
Discipline is now much more uniform. It's negative one for disobedience; negative two for physical violence; and negative three for protracted disobedience aka laziness. Everybody knows the deal. Kurt's natural flair for statistics has turned what was a bogged down emotional conflict into a simple set of numbers earning rewards and punishments in a very even-handed way.
Things I like about the board. The magnets dress things up and are more permanent that stickers or check-off write and wipe boards. The white board as I've described above, and it is easy to keep clean and organized. The list of chores includes things my older children do as well as simple jobs for the little ones. There are blank tags for adding your own chores. The price is good value for money. It's available at Amazon, Here.

forget the can

I'll open my worms by the pound! This year we're studying early modern history and zoology as well as the usual language arts and mathematics. Zoology is bound to be the most fun, as I studied it in college and I love anything related to biology. We already have two little frogs in a largely self-contained eco-system named Tom and Fred. I'm sure that we'll have lots more fun, but next up is vermicomposting. I've done it on a small scale before, but this time we hope to bury most of our vegetable scraps--and not just on the nights we eat brussels sprouts. I had a beautiful set of instructions in a copy of Make magazine, but I can't find them so we'll just have to do the best we can with other instructions I found on the web and that came with our worms. I have to hurry up, the worms are escaping their wrappings.

Raggedy

her face was green
her clothing worn
in the machine she spun, reborn
if you believe in reincarnation.

which I don't.
so no need to worry if somehow
a better life than one with me
will be hers.

faith is a choosy pessimist.

Look out world!

This is my first thumb typed post. My new pink Blackberry is so cool. While thumb typing is even more tedious than regular typing internet access from such a sleek little gizmo is amazing.
I'm not going to argue the next time Kurt feels it's time to upgrade my phone.

Great Grandpa Ansorge

This is my husband's grandfather. He was a circus performer during the Depression and then owned a small chain of Health Studios. He was in the Guiness Book of World Records and Ripley's Believe It or Not for various feats of strength. Grandpa Harold died when we were in highschool and I didn't know Kurt very well then. I've always seen pictures of him when he was older. In this picture he strongly reminds me of Peter, Kurt's brother and my sister's husband. What a fun thing to find on the web. There is a little more at this link.

Mrs. I Pj

My life has been going through a lot of upheaval for the last four years or so. Like waking up from a dream I realized that my life didn't look anything like I expected or needed it too--with one vibrant exception. I am overrun with kids. I always wanted it to be like this. Tons of children growing, learning, breathing. They really don't have to do much to keep me entertained. I'm in the thick of it now. Next year the oldest will start highschool, but the youngest is still in diapers.
It's so important to know what you can and can't live without. I knew if I missed out on the kids nothing else would be able to compensate, and now that I see how much I've missed out on, they compensate for the loss as nothing else ever could. I may not be where I wanted to be, but I'm in a very good place.
Once I got over grieving the lost time, I've started setting up a schedule and a system for catching up. I'll never get as far as I could have, but I'll get far enough to fling rocks at Goliath should the need arise. The hardest part was figuring out what I wanted most from my new adventure in education. Now that I know what I want to know it's a simple matter of picking up the books and reading them. They are lying all over the house. I bought them for my kids.

The House

PBS can be an overload of good information sometimes. I've become a serious fan, scanning the tv guide for good stuff to DVR. I think one of my favorite finds was a documentary about Sam Maloof. Kurt and I got comfortable on the couch to watch not just a biography, but the artisan and his assistants at work. The home he made with his wife is spectacular, like all his work it is a true one of a kind. He liked to share his success with others. Sam and Alfreda's Foundation works to encourage and support other artists as they find their way to success.
I always scan the magazine racks at Sam's Club. You never know what you'll find. Today on the cover of a woodworking magazine I discovered that Sam has died at the age of 93. I guess I can cross him off the list of people I'd like to meet and move him to the list of people I wish I'd met. He really knew how to live his life now.

International Dinner to Benefit Heifer

Before Jimmy surprised us, I was very involved with Heifer International. I still think it is the most sensible approach to ending hunger I've seen. August 5, a benefit international dinner will be held at Iona Highschool in Iona from 5-7. The food will truly come from everywhere--Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, India, Middle East, China, Italy, Mexico, Ethiopia, Korea and more. Cost will be a donation and all the proceeds will go to Heifer.
It's a fun night for a great cause.

Beatrice and Harriet

I pull this picture out for inspiration. It was taken only a few months after the period I'm currently writing.

I'll do the credits.

Writer's make great parents. OK, there's probably a few examples here and there of writer's being really crappy parents, but I was thinking about bed time stories. My kids are spoiled. Everyone has their own story line and they all gather together to hear what will happen next to everyone's alter egos. Last night a 'smore covered sea turtle saved a family reunion gathering by convincing a space dragon that he wanted to try calamari. Jove, Job and Joe all attended a star gazing party that was much enhanced by the giant and his telescope. The architect fairies got drafted to help the bad behavior fairy cure a naughty family of abusing their home. Last but not least an ice princess came and froze some flower fairies' garden out of sheer boredom. They convinced her to try the South Pole since the North Pole wasn't working for her. We'll see how it goes.
Last night was also the first time that I had a Greek chorus chipping in their own two cents about how the stories should go. Exasperated I asked the worst offender if he'd like to tell the story for me. "I'll do the credits," he says. This tickled my funny bone, so I duly finished the story and he did the credits. At the end of early Pixar movies they would create bloopers. This is my kids favorite part of the movie. Suddenly the space dragon was blowing his lines until I made that little chirpy noise. Next someone had eaten all the marshmallows. It was so funny.
Sometimes the credits eclipse the film.

Meducation

Emerge and see
It's awl for the doorpost Time
Spread those broken wings and cry
What a Present birthday

(I wrote this last birthday. It's a bit dark. I've revised it recently, but I'm in a good mood. I just couldn't think any new poetic thoughts, so I'm trotting out some old ones. I try to work a poem in every five or six posts.)

Toothpicks are evil.

Previously on this haphazard chronicle of our family life, I have declared pancake mix and dish soap to be evil. Toothpicks make those villains look tame. We ran out of the devious little stabbers, so I picked up the Sam's Club package and shoved them in the cupboard. Anytime such a handly little item is that abundant it gets noticed and experimented with. In this case grapes and other fruits were being organized into edible art. Then snack time was over, but no one bothered to put the toothpicks away. Our youngest got ahold of them and then they were everywhere on the floor. My oldest lost her balance and one of them went up into the pad of her foot and broke off.
I took her to the hospital, and they tried to remove it. They couldn't find it, so they put her on antibiotics and sent her home. As soon as we got to the end of the antibiotics she started having pussy leakage. After consulting with her pediatrician we made an appointment with a surgeon to have it removed. This time they found it. It was a full third of a toothpick. Her foot is wrapped in a huge dressing and she'll be spending most of her days lying on the couch. What a tiny thing to cause so much pain.