On the 4th of July

 

I had the pleasure of spending yesterday's July 4th celebration off camp (and in the States for the first time in two years) at Josh and Leah's house doing all those wonderful Summer things our founding father's had in mind when splittin' from ye Old England: grilling, fireworks, beer and friends!

 

We were also joined by Josh's parents, who were in from Illinois, both of Leah's assistants from Blue Lake, and a couple from across the street.  Not just any couple, mind you, but part of North Muskegon's political elite—the wife was the first female city counsel member who then went on to become the first female mayor of the city! (Which, unfortunately, is probably not what the founding father's had in mind :-/ )

My contributions to the evening were two of my go-to fav's: Jezebel sauce (a spicy jelly concoction served, of course, over a block of cream cheese) and watermelon salsa.  And what Summer in Michigan is complete without Bell's Oberon!

 

 

Josh also picked up some de-licious burgers from Mac's Meats and Country Road Bakery in the nearby town of Rothbury. I'm just gonna go on and put it out there that these burgers could kick your burger's ass from here to the Canadian coast.

Grill, baby, grill!

 

After dinner we headed out to the "party-o" to enjoy the fireworks display to be held over the nearby lake. 

Please note… the presence of fire does NOT equate to a chill in the air

 

While we were waiting for the sun to set, the former Mayoress told the group about a recent death in another nearby community.  Apparently a local man who had run a fireworks stand every holiday season recently passed away and requested only one thing: that his remains be packed into a firework and shot off over the lake during the festivities. 

R.I.P Tom: As it oft repeated in these somber moments: Earth to Earth, ashes to ashes, dust to highly-combustible-multicolored-dust and GOD BLESS 'MERICA!

 

Unfortunately my phone battery died before the official show began so I have no real evidence of the real display.  At any rate, here's hoping everyone had a fun and safe holiday!

 

Artist: James Taylor / Album: October Road

Send a Picture of Mother

 

Happy happy Mother's Day internet land!!  In conjunction with the gallery I've put together a collection of photographs that are appropriately themed.  But FIRST… in celebration of my own mom:

… because she loves me even after posting pictures like this!

 

Elliot Erwitt: Mother and Child, New York City

 

Ida Wyman: Mama, Papa, Billy

-

Edward Steichen: Mother and Child – Sunlight

_

Dorothea Lange: Migrant Mother

 

Gordon Parks: Mother and Child, Harlem

 

Martin Elkhort: Where's Momma

_

Ruth Orkin: Mother and Baby

 

Rita Bernstein: Expecting

 

Now CALL YOUR MOTHER!!!!

 

Artist: Johnny Cash / Album: At Fulsom Prison

Leftovers

 

I haven’t exactly been the best at staying on top of some of my posting in the recent months, so we’re going to call this portion of the blog the “holiday leftovers” – which in no way diminishes their importance btw!  We all know that leftovers are buh-mazing.

Thanksgiving Visit with Jan:

Back during Thanksgiving I had my annual Jan Reynolds Ingersoll visit!!!  In fact, she even came to church to hear me sing that Sunday morning because I had a solo! (Read about the experience on her blog here).  And, if you know anything about a visit to see Jan then you know to expect a couple of things:

Blurry photo of the two of us / An action shot with some kind of weapon / Me, posing with a giant stuffed animal

     

And lest we forget – an appearance from our good friends Feral and Domesticated Cougar (this time in holiday attire!):

 

I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME ROAR!!!

 

Christmas Eve Shrimp Dinner with Will:

Before the two Christmas Eve services at my church I again had the pleasure of joining Will and his family for their annual shrimp dinner. I even got to catch up with my favorite misunderstood Christmas curmudgeons!  (This year I was doubly lucky because I also got to see them all again on my drive home from Crockett back to Houston after Christmas!)

 

 

 

Sid Becomes the Pied Piper Once Again:

When Hannah was visiting recently after Christmas, her dad, my uncle Sid, came over to the city for the day to help dress shop for Hannah’s junior voice recital in February.  In the car to dinner I showed him my clarinet I had taken from Crockett and he couldn’t wait to play it when we got back to my apartment later!  (Too bad the ol’ gem needs a bit of work to it).  At any rate… it was the first time he’d picked one up in years!

Proof for the grandparents!

 

Sugar and Spice… :

No good leftover meal is complete without a second (or third) helping of those holiday pies, cookies, cakes, random sugar packets you have lying around the house just begging to be finished before they spoil.  And by spoil I mean someone else eats them. Regular blog readers will know of my undying love for anything Speculoos, and this Christmas totes delivered!!  Mallory’s dad had traveled recently to the Netherlands and was kind enough to bring me back, in addition to the yearly Maersk butter cookies, a jar of the ONLY FOUND IN EUROPE crunchy spread! Not to leave Mallory high and dry on the Speculoos front—here she is with her giant cookie!

 

 

Mom managed to join the fray and somehow found me a whole CASE of the German equivalent of Speculoos.  What the WHAAAAAT!!!

And now… FOOD COMA!

 

Artist: No Doubt / Album: Everything in Time

Mean Monsoon

 

AND BEHOLD! ANOTHER YEAR BEGINS!!!!!

As only Bubble herself can explain it:

 

I’ll be spending the day doing Absolutely Nothing while catching up on Absolutely Fabulous before the premier of their newest specials in the next couple of weeks!

 

Eddy Monsoon and I hanging out in episode five of series one and episode four of series two

 

Artist: Dan Auerbach / Album: Keep It Hid

White Christmas

 

I lamented last year around Christmastime that Texas isn’t exactly the most “idyllic” of settings for Winter positioned holidays.   Now, you all know I’ve never really been one to let a silly thing like scorching hot temperatures keep me from expressing my holiday cheer and have oft been found with enough saltwater seeping from my pores to float a mid-sized barge but, damnit, it’s December and you can pry that soggy paisley scarf from around my neck only AFTER I’ve passed out from severe dehydration (and even then there might be some lingering synapses, so perhaps the “cold, dead hands” metaphor is a bit more apropos) [long sentence much?].  I’m also pretty sure my good friend, Television, agrees with me:

Modern Family’s Cam and Jay (my favorite plutonic May/December relationship) from the 2011 Christmas episode

 

 

from The New Adventures of Old Christine

This year there really wasn’t much to complain about because it was quite chilly (proportionally) and there was a fire in full blaze when I got to uncle Sid’s house in Lufkin. My fraternal grandparents had driven down from Midland and mom and dad had come over from Crockett for the festivities. I kinda took the day off from taking any pictures so Sid was kind enough to send me a couple of family shots!

 

 

Pheobe, Sid, Catherine, Liz, Hannah

 

 

Grandmother, Granddad, Mom, Dad and I

 

The cousins!!

 

Artist: Barbra Streisand / Album: A Christmas Album

Light My Fire

As seen driving home from church Christmas morning:

Commentary on the duality of heaven/hell or (more likely) a crafty holiday business model!  Either way, it’s good news for the wise men vis-à-vis the recent announcement of quickly declining frankincense availability

 

 

“And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense  sterno©, and myrrh.”

~ Matthew 2:11, KJV (King Joseph Version)

I mean… would you wanna be in a manger in Bethlehem in the Winter?!?!?

 

Artist: The Doors / Album: The Doors

Every Day Is a Holiday (With You)

 

(Images from the John Cleary Gallery “Deck the Walls” holiday card. Top L-R Susan Burnstine, Renate Aller, Charles Grogg. Bottom L-R Jeri Eisenberg, Elliott Erwitt, Maggie Taylor)

Artist: Esthero ft. Sean Lennon / Album: Down with Love

America For Ever

 

Happy 4th of July!!! I’ll be celebrating in Eberbach and Mannheim Germany but my heart is still in the good ole U S of A!

 

Artist: Giacomo Puccini/ Album: Madama Butterfly

Momma, Momma, Momma

 

Occasionally Catherine’s son, Andre, will come up to the gallery after school or whenever they are going to leave on a family trip after work is over.  What I love most is that he just starts grabbing stuff from all over and builds little forts, caves, etc.  This time he was grabbing a bunch of things from the back and setting them up near the photo files.

Catherine: What are you making, honey?

Andre: Water sale mother’s day!

Catherine: Ummm, I don’t really know what that means…

Well—what it meant was that he was setting up a water sale to collect funds for Mother’s day!  He even got his dad to make a sign for the business (can’t see it here because it was in pencil so I did a little photoshopping).  Here I am being the first patron!

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY FROM ANDRE AND JOSEPH!

 

Artist: Elliot Gould/ Album: I Can Get It For You Wholesale

Easter

 

HAPPY EASTER!!!

 

Modeling the latest fashion in maskwear ~ by Catherine’s son, Andre (For a different take on this image, check out the gallery’s Easter blog post!)

 

By the time many of you even read this post I will have most likely done three services at church.  Thaaaaaat’s right… I was up and awake at 3:30 a.m. in order to be at a rehearsal by 5:00.  We are doing a total of four services and I have the privilege of singing Ralph Vaughan Williams “Easter” from his Five Mystical Songs.  I have only done one of the other songs from this set, “The Call,” which I sang at Matt and Joanie’s wedding.

This past Good Friday my friend Paul and I took the opportunity to visit something that has been fairly high up on my list of “To-do’s” in Houston since moving here, The Rothko Chapel.

 

This year celebrates the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Rothko Chapel by John and Dominique de Menil and famed abstract expressionist Mark Rothko. Fourteen commissioned Rothko pieces (three triptychs and five individual) adorn the walls of the chapel.  Well, I say “adorn” but there’s nothing remotely ornamental about the art or the architecture.

 

GQ recently named the space among it’s “top 10 most mind-blowing, energizing, unorthodox, and flat-out-cool places to experience art in America” stating:

Rothko, the son of Russian immigrants, never saw this space; he died in 1970, a few months before it opened, just before they had to crack open the roof and rig up a crane to lower in his paintings—creations so large they refused to be carried in through the doors. The paintings are the only adornment in this building that from the outside looks like an electrical substation, all bricks and no windows. But inside… Inside, it's a space that makes you feel like you're living in one of Rothko's paintings. It's a place that captures opposites: It's large yet intimate. Dark yet bright. Spare yet rich. The chapel is infinity captured. Vastness contained.

~Michael Hainey (read the entire article here)

 

A quick stroll down the street takes you to the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum, which I had never heard of until Paul extolled how striking it is.  I think his exact words were more along the lines of: “This is probably my favorite place in the entire city.”  With a recommendation like that, how could I refuse?

(photo by Hester + Hardaway)

 

Opened in 1997, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel is the only place in the entire Western Hempisphere that contains intact frescoes of this style.  During the early 1980’s, the frescos were stolen from a chapel near Lysi, Cyprus, cut into 38 different pieces, and shipped to Germany for sale on the black market.  With the knowledge and approval of the Church of Cyprus, the Menil Foundation purchased the fragments and restored them to their full glory, going so far as to eschew museum placement and build an appropriately meditative environment in which to house them.

Built inside of a reliquary box of sorts, the chapel of sandblasted glass panels, steel and wood echoes the original Cyprus church from which the frescoes originated.

  (Photo by Laurence Morrocco)                                        (Photo by Paul Warchol)

 

 

One of the aspects of both the Byzantine Fresco Chapel and the Rothko Chapel I appreciate the most is that the only light provided to either space is completely natural. How one painting looks during the morning will drastically change by the evening.  The glowing of the glass in the Byzantine chapel intensifies or softens depending on its exposure to the sun. 

All this being said, I believe I must concur with Paul’s earlier statement… this is now my favorite place in the city

 

Artist:Thomas Allen/ Album: Vaughan Williams- Five Mystical Songs