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.