Our trip to date
Post #1221 • August 21, 2008, 11:51 AM • 17 Comments
Thursday, August 7: Leave Benbow, California. Lunch in Eureka, California. The haul from Bookleggers in Eureka: I Opened the Gate, Laughing by Mayumi Oda and Lotus Moon: The Poetry of Rengetsu. Arrive Eugene, Oregon at midnight in front of K.'s house and spend night on the curb.
Highway 101 near Redwood National Forest, August 7, 2008
View from turnout on Highway 101 near Redwood National Forest, August 7, 2008
Friday, August 8: Eugene, Oregon. Climbed Spencer's Butte. Drove up to Skinner Butte to look over city, then out to dinner.
View from Spencer's Butte, August 8, 2008
Saturday, August 9: Eugene, Oregon. Saturday market. SG went out to wine tasting while FE recovered. Whiteaker Street party. Dinner at Cozmic Pizza.
Sunday, August 10: Portland, Oregon. Tried a couple of camps before settling on Tualatin. My brother's pesto with ingredients from the garden.
Blackberries picked from the edge of the campsite, Tualatin, Oregon, August 11, 2008
Monday, August 11: Portland, Oregon. The haul from Powell's: the 2006 Bonnard monograph from the show at the Mus&eacuate;e d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, The Libertarian Reader by David Boaz, Things I Didn't Know by Robert Hughes, Art and Culture by Clement Greenberg (I had just read in an article by James Panero [thank you Mark Brown] that some nigh-forgotten performance artist chewed up and spat out its pages in one of his works; how sad that its nutriment could not be gained that way), Passionate Journey and The Sun by Frans Masereel. Dinner at House of Louie, tea at Chinese Garden, dessert at Voodoo Doughnut.
Portland Classical Chinese Garden, Portland, Oregon, August 13, 2008
Tuesday, August 12: Portland, Oregon. Massages. Birthday party.
Bike path, Portland, Oregon, August 13, 2008
Wednesday, August 13: Cannon Beach, Oregon. Drive to RV park at McChord Air Force Base, Tacoma, Washington.
Supergirl, Cannon Beach, Oregon, August 13, 2008
Thursday, August 14: Tacoma, Washington. Commissary. Parasailing.
View from the parasail, Puget Sound, August 14, 2008
Friday, August 15: Tacoma, Washington. One of my birthday presents was private shooting lessons with a SWAT cop.
Target shooting, Tacoma, Washington, August 15, 2008
Saturday, August 16: Breakfast at Elmer's. Hippotherapy with SG's niece. Camp in Lake Easton State Park, Washington. Mileage: 25062.
Sunday, August 17: We broke down thirteen miles west of Ritzville, Washington and had to be towed to Spokane. We overnight in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
Monday, August 18: Sandpoint, ID, cross into Canada, overnight in Fernie, British Columbia. Mileage: 25478.
Tuesday, August 19: Arrive in Edmonton. Mileage: probably 40000 or something 25876.
Broadcasting live from Common Sense Gallery.
2.
August 21, 2008, 12:48 PM
I am unspeakably jealous. I have spent August in Brooklyn, cleaning gunk out of the corners of the apartment. I am well aware that this is a sin against the month of August, but options this year were, shall we say, constrained. Sigh.
Tell Supergirl that she is invited to join my wellness networking group as soon as she gets here.
3.
August 21, 2008, 3:00 PM
Spencer's Butte? Is that some sort of Elizabethan gay thing or what?
4.
August 21, 2008, 4:22 PM
Oh, I thought you said "McCourt Air Force Base". That would have been way cooler...
5.
August 21, 2008, 4:59 PM
re: ODO-40,000M The RV probably automatically converted to KM upon crossing the border. Seems like a smart RV.
6.
August 21, 2008, 9:03 PM
It's pronounced "beaut", Jack, but I guess it works that way too.
7.
August 21, 2008, 11:34 PM
re: the "view from Spencer's Butte"
From now on I'm going to bend over and look through my legs at every scenic viewpoint.
8.
August 22, 2008, 7:12 AM
Ken Johnson, NYT:
"Mr. Sietsema’s pièce de résistance is a model representing the living room of the archformalist art critic Clement Greenberg. Based on photographs, it has dollhouse-scale furniture and copies of paintings by Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski and Barnett Newman on the walls.
Greenberg, it is important to know, was a true believer in the progressiveness of modern art. He thought that art was bound to become more clear and pure in the hands of artists who focused rigorously on the formal and technical properties of painting and sculpture. As in science and technology, specialization would lead to an ever more rationally enlightened future. Mr. Sietsema’s evocation of a bourgeois lifestyle in which idealist abstraction serves as high-end decoration is hilariously deflating."
Sorry, I know it's off topic, but, can you believe this shit sometimes?
9.
August 22, 2008, 7:55 AM
I LOVE the unicycle lane!
10.
August 22, 2008, 8:17 AM
Re Mr. Johnson's little "I'm as with-it as the next would-be critic" offering, I'm afraid I find it hilariously full of shit, but I'm sure he's doing the very best he can.
11.
August 22, 2008, 9:15 AM
i've put off reading the varnedoe text in the pollock retro catalogue i have and was glancing at it last night a bit. same horsesh*t, MC. there are plenty of axes to grind, obviously. Varnedoe writes so snidely about Greenberg, it's pathetic. He postures like some condescending twit, trying to characterize him like he was Napoleon or Gengis Khan in his appetite for power and control over the direction of modern art. lol. he even throws out the inevitable ignorant statement about 'flatness' which seems wholly misunderstood by all the people who should know better. I just can't believe there is nobody in a position to call these people out. It is patent misrepresentation and so embarassingly ignorant on an academic and art historical level. shame on you mr. varnedoe.
chris...i very much like both tool and madonna. throw prince in too if it's gonna be that kind of party.
12.
August 22, 2008, 9:40 AM
It goes without saying, of course, that the fact somebody writes about art in or for the New York Times now means absolutely NOTHING in and of itself (except, perhaps, trendoid mediocrity).
13.
August 22, 2008, 9:46 AM
What's so noisome is that I've read my share of Greenberg and I can't even figure out what writing of his Johnson is paraphrasing, it's so distorted. If they would take issue with the actual material, it might mean something, but the argument is always with some caricature of it.
14.
August 22, 2008, 10:07 AM
The basic problem is not Greenberg (meaning what Greenberg was truly about as a critic); the real problem is envy and spite. These sniping midgets have neither substance nor import; many are merely glorified camp followers (literally and figuratively), and they're groping for whatever they think will give them a leg up. The whole business is quite pathetic, but so is the entire rotten edifice that shelters and sustains it (for the time being).
15.
August 22, 2008, 10:42 AM
I can't say I'm a big Prince fan; I know some of his more popular songs, and will sing along with "Kiss" (in fact I serenaded my bride-to-be the night before our wedding with the Tom Jones version), but that's about it. I'll take your word for him, though, and add him to the list.
What list? I don't know. The list.
Speaking of driving around the country: August 30 I'll be flying out to San Francisco to join my best friend in driving back with all his worldly possessions. Anyone have any suggestions for stops between San Francisco and New York?
17.
August 22, 2008, 12:12 PM
Johnson is not "paraphasing" Greenberg, he is quoting from the "this is what everyone knows" Bible, which says that Greenberg said painting had to be flat and all the rest.
In fact Greenberg was adamant that art does not "progress" and said so not only personally but in writing, in several places.
It is remarkable how little accountability exists in the art world. What would happen to a scientist who wrote "Einstain said the world is flat"? You know what would happen: his colleagues would gentle suggest that he be institutionalized.
You can say anything you want in the art business and as long as it fits the prevailing lunacy everyone just nods and says "uh huh, uh huh, yeah, thas' right, man..." (high fives)
1.
opie
August 21, 2008, 12:22 PM
C'mon. You did not drive 40,000 miles.