July 11, 2024

Why my YouTube channel exists:

"I checked this album out from the Chicago Public Library in 1976 when I was nineteen. I lived in the Viceroy Hotel and after work I would spend hours listening to this parable over and over.

"Forty-eight years later now I still know it by heart.

"Thanks for posting!"

(Comment on a reading of Kafka's "An Imperial Message" by the German actress Lotte Lenya, from a 1962 LP on the Caedmon label)

July 9, 2024

YouTube channel 😎 

 

July 5, 2024

First lantern fly of the summer spotted (bad pun not averted) on a sidewalk in Shadyside, and terminated with extreme prejudice. Game on.

July 3, 2024

Highlights of my visit to the Frick Museum this afternoon to see the "Rembrandt, Monet, Vermeer" exhibit:

 

(1) Largest self-portrait Rembrandt painted of himself. Very earthy. His nose suggests that he enjoyed his drink.

 

(2) Hiding in plain sight: decorative andiron of Zeus as an eagle abducting the beautiful (male) youth Ganymede, who became his cup bearer -- after a little diddling, presumably. (Happy Pride!)

 

(3-4) Luminous details: from paintings by the 19c French painter Millet, whom I have a new appreciation for, and the 17c Dutch painter Vermeer, who produced only 36 known paintings.

 

(5) Nice hat. Don't remember the artist, but honestly does it matter?

 

(6) Madonna and child from a 13c wooden panel. No one smiles in any of the old religious images, suggesting in the first place what a bloody hard slog life was.

 

(7) The most terrifying work in the exhibit. Don't ask me who painted it, I've repressed the memory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coda:

(1) Audience participation (I love this)

(2) Recent visitor unsuccessfully trying to get out of the frame before I snapped the pic