The Dark Cometh --- Day 4/275

Walk: Fillmore
Distance: 1 mile



Halloween Plus End of Daylight Savings.....Be Well...

Tension on the Mantle --- Day 4/274

Walk: Union Square, Best Buy
Distance: 2.8 miles and home yoga

On your right, Indian cat ready to pounce...

On your left, French bird ready to fly away*

*More on African carved figure soon...

Pet Tree Babies --- Day 4/273

Walk: Sequoias
Distance: 3 miles



Nothing looks much deader than a dormant Japanese Maple, so Ciwt is always thrilled and relieved
when she sees signs of new growth from her pet tree.

Masters of the Desert --- Day 4/272

Walk: Yoga Works, Fillmore
Distance: 2.5 miles and yoga class



Ciwt returns today to the Bedouin tent and a few facts about Bedouin culture.  Why?  Because hopefully her readers will see Theeb, the movie Ciwt saw Sunday, be as deeply impressed as her Cinema Club audience was, and curious to know more about these people.

Theeb revolves around the Bedouin male honor code of  courage, courtesy, hospitality, protection, and justice which is so admirable it is said the Knights of the Crusades brought it back to their lands as the basis of Chivalry.

The women too have strong social roles, one of which is using ancient and highly skilled techniques to weave the sturdy utilitarian fabrics that make the mobile Bedouin desert life possible.  For centuries they have woven tent fabric from black goat hair sometimes combined with camel hair. In wet weather the wool expands and becomes water tight, its thickness is a wind guard even in the frequent powerful sandstorms, and in heat the sides can be rolled up allowing breeze.  The fabric and poles are packable within an hour and their light weight allows them to be easily portable.

Equally ingenious in its simple functionality is the loose flowing cloth the women weave for Bedouin clothing. It both covers the skin and allows air to flow around the body thus preventing sunburn and heat stroke. It also makes up into the iconic symbol of the Bedouin, the Keffiyah, large folded cloth secured on the head with a cord or Agal. This simple garment shades the face from the sun, allows air to flow freely around the head and can be wrapped around the nose and mouth in case of a sand or dust storm.  (Also notice the saddle blanket and other gorgeous woven tack on the camel). Who can forget Peter O'Toole striding proudly in his Keffiyah or those penetrating clear blue eyes beneath his Agal in Lawrence of Arabia?

Not shown in Lawrence or in Theeb are women, who raise the children, herd the sheep, milk the animals, make the clothes, and are fiercely protected according to the codes - both male and female - surrounding them.  Also not in either movie were falcons and Saluki greyhound dogs which the Bedouins are credited with breeding.   In Lawrence but not Theeb were the magnificent Arabian horses the Bedouins were the first to breed.   

Theeb introduces the viewer to the importance of story telling, poetry and music to the Bedouins , their refined and many uses of pottery,gems, coins and metalwork for household objects ,,  trading   and decoration.  It is clearly a strong, deep and rich ancient culture.


No, Theeb is not a documentary.  It's a powerful, assured, Kurosawa-type adventure set in 1916 Bedouin/Lawrence of Arabia country by an Oxford born, Jordan and UK-educated, Sundance-trained Arab filmmaker Naji Abu Nowar. And lest you think Ciwt is a bit over the top, Nowar has taken home Best Director awards from several prestigious film festivals, and Theeb is being predicted to win Oscar for Best Foreign Film. (official trailer) 



PS - If you don't go to Theeb, or you do and don't like it, you will still be Ciwt's friend.

Tent City (For A While) --- Day 4/271

Walk: Union Square
Distance: 1 mile



Being a city girl, when Ciwt encounters Bedouin tribal textiles it is usually in a museum or art gallery or antiques store.  So, she really enjoyed seeing utilitarian crafts as they were actually used in Theeb, yesterday's movie based on the male Bedouin honor code*.

The nomadic life in the desert made it necessary for ancient Bedouins to evolve homes that were simple, transportable and effective against the extremely harsh weather conditions.  Their solution, the bedouin tent, though ancient, is ingenious enough to still be utilized today.  More on it and other Bedouin crafts, culture and arts soon....

Cogitating --- Day 4/270

Walk: Monday Errands
Distance: 3.5 miles and yoga class



Ciwt is reflecting in loveliness.  Back tomorrow.  

Bedouin Western Plus --- Day 4/269

Walk: Cinema Club (Theeb), Dosa 
Distance: 2 miles and flower work

Absolutely Outstanding movie about to come from Jordan to a theater near you.  THEEB.  You won't want to miss it. 

GrandPop of Pop --- Day 4/268

Walk: House Puttering
Distance: Unknown

1. 

Fernand Leger (1881-1955), La Femme Au Chat, 1955, o/c, 25 1/2 x 36 1/4"   

Ciwt's recent romp through a few new tech gadgets put her in mind of the French artist Fernand Leger.  The Impressionists flirted with statements about technology, but Leger was one of, perhaps the first to directly address the human and social effects as well as the scientific understandings that accompanied it.  Along with several other French artists and painting colleagues at the 1910 Salon d' Automne Leger was definitely the first to introduce Cubism to the public eye.   2

Over the years Leger's conical and tubular forms with patches of primary colors became more streamlined and figurative with (often playful and humourous) populist images.  So much so that he is now seen as the forerunner of Pop Art.

1  Sold at Christie's London, 18 June, 2007 fetching $2,702,084.
2 La Femme en Bleu(Woman in Blue), 1912, oil on canvas, 193 x 129.9 cm, Kunstmuseum Basel. Exhibited at the 1912Salon d'Automne, Paris

All By Herself --- Day 4/267

Walk: Sundance Kabuki (Room)
Distance: 2 miles and home yoga



A major techie transition here at Ciwt's home, and she's happy to report she disassembled the old, assembled the new and carried a big bag of used gadgets to recycling -  all by herself.

Annual Dinner Time Again --- Day 4/266

Walk: Sausalito, Broadway (Pacific Heights Residents Association Dinner)
Distance: 2 miles

Serendipity with Flowers --- Day 4/265

Walk: Presidio
Distance: 3.5 miles and small home yoga

Reminder: Sometimes you don't have to try too hard.  These just arrived one by one for various reasons into Ciwt's life.  Looking pretty together, n'est pas?

Little Things/Fall Light --- Day 4/264

Walk: JCC, Laurel Village, Goodwill, Town School Clothes Closet
Distance: 2.5 miles and yoga class

Smooth Bridge --- 4/263

Walk: Hayes Auto, Trader Joe's, Sundance Kabuki (Bridge of Spies)
Distance: 3 miles and small home yoga



The man in the middle (Mark Rylance) is the one to watch for Best Supporting Actor candidate in Bridge of Spies.

Well, Ciwt Likes It... --- Day 4/262

Walk: Cost Plus
Distance: 6 blocks, (Still lugging heavy things in and out of here), home yoga



We live in a relentlessly extroverted society with constant promotion of family, festivals, togetherness, backyard barbecues, fetching looks, desirability to others, keeping up and being with the Joneses.  If you're a loner and not drawn these things, well....

In case her readers haven't noticed, let Ciwt say out loud that she Loves living alone (with Callie).
Some day maybe she'll write a post - or many - counting the ways.  The downside is constantly having to combat near universal fear-mongering about the hazards of being a loner: being socially awkward/completely undesirable/maybe even mentally ill, not having your affairs in order, having no friends or interesting activities, eating badly and living on alcohol or drugs, despairing in the utter bleak silence, hoarding, and, of course, dying and not being found for weeks until the smell finally gets some stranger's attention. No wonder most people are terrified of being alone, haunted by the fear of dying alone.

So, why is Ciwt talking about this today?  Because The New York Times is running a multi-day front page spread about (here's the headline)

The Lonely Death of George Bell

leading with such words as 'alone and unseen,' 'forlorn, 'puffy body,' 'decomposed and unrecognizable' -  and, in a decision Ciwt finds reprehensibly invasive, running huge color pictures of his messy, dirty apartment. 

Maybe the story has some merit, but Ciwt cannot go on with it after such an introduction. The assumption she's left with is that George Bell will be portrayed - like most loners are - as miserably, helplessly lonely, abjectly desperate or worse.  But maybe George Bell was just fine with his own company, chose to live in solitude, savored the freedom of doing as he wished with his life. Maybe for George Bell the circumstances of his death was unpredictable but living alone was the most suitable lifestyle choice.  Who knows?

Tsk, Tsk. Really? --- Day 2/261

Walk: Opera Plaza Cinema (Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine)
Distance: 4 miles and hauling tech stuff around the home



Ciwt thinks it must be difficult making a movie about Steve Jobs.  He was such a cipher; people may have spent time with him, but no one knew him.  Possibly, on the mortal coil, least of all himself.

Today's documentary, Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, is very good when it just shows archival footage and leaves the viewer free to have their own thoughts.  Not so good when it tries to moralize or scold Jobs.  Yes, he was difficult, cruel, lawless when it served him.  But then there are those world-changing, economy-strengthening, love- and creativity-inducing products that obsessively drove him.  So who really cares to hold his contradictory feet to the fire?

Gilded Age with Fine Woodwork -- Day 4/260

Walk: A little (finished the lion's share of home tech update)
Distance: 8 blocks and home yoga

A childhood friend of Ciwt's just sent pictures of her great-grandfather's Chicago house.  Oh dear,
and Ciwt thought the Town House* was swell!  (Acutally it was; Georgian and very tasteful)

Some one bought it, had a lot of the details restored, and opened it as a museum.  Maybe if Ciwt gets to Chicago she'll go - with her friend.

*  See CIWT  The Town House   ---  Day 355 

Many Wires, No Signal --- Day 4/258

Walk: Driving Day and Stuck at Home with Devices and Tech Support
Distance: A few blocks



Following up on yesterday's entry: Installing all her new technology, Ciwt is wishing for the next generation's brain.

Changing Lightbulbs --- Day 4/257

Walk: Target, Vogue Theater (17th Annual Festival of Animation)
Distance: 2 miles



(From yesterday): Dogfight, the play, was Good!  At dinner before it, Ciwt was talking to friends about their grandchildren and relevant to something one of them said "Don't assume that today's grandchildren are like us."  Meaning they are probably a slightly different species, having been brought up since infancy with technology among other central changes.

Then driving home from Dogfight, the radio was airing a Ted Talk type broadcast about the plasticity of the brain and how it adapts and changes to meet life circumstances and demands.  And how it evolves into a different 'machine.'

It's called neuroplasticity and there are likely reams of literature available on it.  But, while she'd heard speculative talk about it here and there, she hadn't realized it - brain change - is an actual certainty.  And this thought actually makes her happy.

There are times when so many core level changes have happened in her lifetime (technology, babies with technology, social media, relationships between the (several) sexes, the nature of work, travel/world connectivity, scientific discoveries, the earth, the atmosphere....) that she gets totally overwhelmed.  And she projects that thinking out into something like those poor kids coming along; how are they going to handle all these things?  

Now the neuroplasticity concept has her thinking They'll be just fine; they have different brains, more equipped to handle life in their time. Plus, new brain or not, everything that is 'too much' for Ciwt is already part of their young lives and factored in from the beginning.  They will have different challenges.

Down Dog --- Day 4/256

Walk: JCC, Union Square, The Playhouse (Dogfight)
Distance: 2+ miles and yoga class



Ciwt is a little apprehensive about the play she will see tonight.  Maybe sad, a downer.  (Defintely a downer if they don't have air conditioning/fans in our mini heat wave).  Stay tuned..

Hunkering Down SF Style --- Day 4/255

Walk: JCC, Best Buy
Distance: 3 miles and yoga class



With fingers crossed Ciwt prepares for El Nino.

Ahhhh --- Day 4/254

Walk: Cinema Club (The Experimenter), Japantown
Distance: 3.5 miles 



Lots of input today.  Letting things sink in.

Of Course He Doesn't --- Day 4/253

Walk: Small
Distance: A little way, small yoga


Someone recently got another of his serial 10 minutes of fame organizing a Renoir protest at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.  It was a nothing event except that it has given Ciwt an excuse to revisit Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

1

  

  2

3  4 5

To Ciwt's mind any artist who painted these happily colorful, warm, joyfully festive and loving canvases has earned a high place in the history of art.  Because of these works and others which warm her heart every time she encounters them - even in pictures - Ciwt is a fan of Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

But Renoir has many strong detractors who see his work as too sentimental, too pretty, purely decorative.  Or as one Renoir hater in Boston recently put it: The food equivalent of Renoir is a Twinkie.  Fluffy, empty calories that are way too sweet and ultimately bad for you.  Twinkies do not belong in our fine art museum.

Certainly Ciwt disagrees with the "Renoir Sucks at Painting" crowd about the works of Renoir's early maturity. These are the paintings pictures above whose colors Ciwt finds rich and warm rather than thinly pastel like the detractors.  And he painted the people - friends and family members - he genuinely loved enjoying the vibrant freedom and leisure that modernity - with its railroads, visits to the country, boating and bathhouses, had just opened to the lower classes. Renoir had begun as a porcelain painter, so he had and used great skill in the details of his works as well as judiciousness in the amount of purely decorative he allowed them.

But just after completing Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880-81), Renoir (who had been entirely too poor to travel up until this point) traveled to Italy where he was greatly impressed by the art of the classical old masters, particularly Raphael (1453-1520) 6.  Compared with them, Renoir felt his style had become too loose and he began to separate himself from the Impressionists and look to the past for inspiration, painting in a tight carefully outlined way:  7.

At this middle point in his career, Ciwt begins to have some sympathy for the 'Renoir haters,' and by the end of his career when he was painting fleshy, thinly brushed nude women one after another, her sympathy is quite complete.   8

On the other hand, there are coming to be many critics and artists who feel Renoir's late work is his most remarkable with its glorious outpouring of nude figures, beautiful young girls, and lush landscapes.  One of those artists was (Ciwt's love) Matisse who - Ciwt was amazed to read - declared Renoir's final work, The Bathers, "one of the most beautiful works ever painted."  9*

Agree with him or not, Ciwt defers to Matisse's eye for art and is looking again at Renoir's late period.  She also respects the many learned and discriminating art scholars in the nearly 100 years since Renoir's death who have consistently proclaimed Renoir a rich and imaginative genius and the fact that many of these men and women are also revisiting Renoir's late period.  Another way to look at Renoir's place in art history is the way his great-great granddaughter, Genevieve, does:  

1. Bal du Moulin de la Galette, 1876
2. Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880-81
3. Dance at Bougival, 1883
4. Jeanne Samary in a Low Necked Dress, 1876
5. Camille and Her Son Jean in the Garden at Argenteuil, 1874
6. Raphael, The Three Graces, 1504-05, oil on canvas, 6.7" x 6.7"
7. The Umbrellas, ca 1885-6
8. Three Bathers, 1895
9. The Bathers, 1918-19

*The evident joy in painting and reverence for old master painters such as Titian and Rubens  displayed in