The Subtle Landscape
That’s Nomade by Spanish (Catalan) artist Jaume Plensa. It sits in Des Moines, Iowa’s Pappajohn Sculpture Park. Plensa says that the form of the figure relates to the knees to chest contemplative position his son assumes from time to time. Pretty cool.
Last week while riding my bike along the swollen Mississippi, my mind took me back to the architect selection process for the Figge Art Museum. One of the reasons David Chipperfield was chosen was he’d designed several projects alongside rivers, most notably (at that point*) the River and Rowing Museum by the Thames near Henley.
Before setting up her studio in Hot Springs, wife returned to site of a previous residency in west central Arkansas* to visit with the two horses - Fred and Molly - that lived in the barn below the apartment in which the resident resided.
The situation is remote, hot and dusty. National Park Rangers visit only rarely and the horses thus largely must fend for themselves. Pat them on the neck or rump, flies scatter as dust cloud erupts. When he did appear, rider ranger made a big deal about showing them “who’s boss.”
Native Americans must have been amazed when they first came across the 143-degree hot springs in what is now south central Arkansas. Should be no surprise that they imputed therapeutic properties thereto. Choctaw introduced French trappers to the area in the 1700's and word spread. After the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson sent the (subsequently unheralded and overshadowed) Dunbar and Hunter expedition to investigate.
With wife out of town, dog doesn’t get the amount of exercise to which he’s become accustomed. He’s 13, slower than he used to be, but still just as curious, so I can’t take him on five-mile perambulation that does wife and still get to work on time.
So last Saturday he had plenty of energy and we set out. Once he realized that we weren’t just going around the block, he became so enthusiastic that he grabbed the leash in his mouth and began to pull.
See the U.S. versus Slovenia soccer game June 18? That’s the one during which ref Koman Coulibaly called back a U.S. game-winning goal. Big deal certainly in a contest of such importance, but it happens and the United States team ended up playing through anyway.
That’s the light tower on Michigan Island in the Apostle archipelago on Lake Superior. This National Seashore area holds the highest concentration of light towers in North America. They take a variety of forms and shapes, are in good condition, and all quite picturesque. The day after this visit, we sailed to Devil’s Island, the northernmost. We’d hoped to go ashore there to, but the winds were shifting so we listened to the NOAA weather report. Big storm coming. Strong winds from the south.
In the June 10, 2010 New York Review of Books, noted British American physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson reviewed a new book by Nobel Prize winner physicist Steven Weinberg. The tone is largely positive, but toward the end Dyson makes an interesting observation.
He says that Weinberg juxtaposes “militant atheism” on the one hand and absolute faith in the ability of science to explain everything on the other. He tells us that Weinberg believes that science will soon have developed a “Final Theory” with a set of mathematical rules precisely describing every aspect of our universe.
Ever see 'True Lies'? It’s an action-comedy flic in which, early on, main protagonist spy Arnold Schwartzenegger returns home after a few days of violence and intrigue in Switzerland. Unknowing wife, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, asks “How’d it go at the trade show, you make all the other salesmen jealous?”
I don’t get lawns. I mean, I’m glad I have one and I revel in its revivification each spring. I’m just not particularly particular about its constitution. Green is great, but green alone lacks drama and verve. What is up with the incredible close cropped homogeneity that pervades most of suburbia?
