Home is Where the Heart Is --- Day 6/191

Walk: PGCC Book Group (1906 A Novel)
Distance: 8 blocks, morning yoga



Ciwt Loved seeing this image of people dressed in red making the effort to come to Ocean Beach from all over to express their feelings about the rallies planned (but cancelled) in San Francisco that day.

Welcome Home --- Day 6/190

Walk: PGCC for bridge
Distance: Not Far, Small Yoga  (Still coming home)

So, driving out to her old home town, Ciwt was thinking of Lake Street (above and below)

Hart's Cafeat the beginning of town. 

Then  the movie theater   

and Great Northern Depot in the middle of town

.And Meyer Brothers Dairy which marked the end of town  

She knew things would be different, but she wasn't expecting the complete and total transmodrification she encountered.

The new 'Hart's' is the clock tower building here 

Lake Street is huge, high, greatly expanded to accommodate banks, brokage and real estate firms:

  

She would show you Meyer Brothers Dairy, but it is long gone and replaced by this:

 a condominium project Ciwt assumes.

She's not sure because she spent about one minute driving the shortest possible distance down Lake Street until she could hop the next freight train out of town (ooops, now they call it a City).

  

Flying Home --- Day 6/189

Walk: MSP - SFO, Trader Joe's 
Distance: 3 Miles, Yoga

Open Day Day 6/189

Walk: ?
Distance: ?

          Who knows what this day will bring.

Present Time (3) --- Day 6/188

Walk: Linden Hills
Distance: 4 miles, yoga

     Lake Calhoun

         Lake Harriet

A friend recently built a home in Linden Hills, Minneapolis.  Even though Ciwt grew up in the Minneapolis area, she had no idea where her friend's new house was.  When she finally visited, she realized Linden Hills was tucked away between two in town lakes she used to go to often to visit friends.  Very cute neighborhood; much like San Franciso's Noew Valley.

Present Time Continued --- Day 6/187

Walk: Minneapolis River Walk and Mill District
Distance: 4 miles, yoga

Present Time Begins --- Day 6/186

Walk: French Meadow Bakery (?). Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Distance: 3 miles, yoga

?  Graduation Brunch for cousin's daughter. Hmmm. Doubtful... 

Yes, Definitely

Out to the Lake Completes Personal History Tour --- Day 6/185

Walk: Rent a Car, then walk Wayzata/Lake Minnetonka
Distance: 4 miles, yoga

A very beautiful childhood to say the least....

In Town --- Day 6/184

Walk: Walker Art, Blake School, Town House
Distance: 5 miles

Walker Art Center & Minneapolis Sculpture Garden (latter and olf old on Ciwt's family property)

Blake School (formerly Northrop Collegiate School in Ciwt's day)

Grandparents' Town House

Family Visit --- Day 6/183

Walk: Lakewood Cemetary where most of Ciwt's 'people' are buried
Distance: 8 miles

Lakewood Cemetery is known for its landscape. Developed as a “garden” or “rural” cemetery, Lakewood has been carefully planned and developed since the 1870s. Eleven miles of wide, winding roads and an eight-acre lake were built by workers aided by horses and wagons decades ago.

Today, a grounds crew employed by Lakewood carefully grooms and maintains its 250 acres. The cemetery includes a large maintenance building that houses the mowers, trucks and construction vehicles needed to process interments and keep the grounds, as well as more than 125,000 monuments and markers, in excellent condition through each season.

Pictures Begin --- Day 6/182

Walk:SFO, Minneapolis Club
Distance: 1 mile, small yoga

(From the club's site): Since 1883 (and founded by Ciwt's great-grandfathers), the Minneapolis Club has served as the region’s premier gathering place for business, civic and community leaders and has been the Twin Cities’ welcome mat for heads of state, U.S. presidents and industry icons AND Ciwt.  During that time, not a day has passed without a business decision reached, a new connection established, a cultural or charitable institution advanced, or a social occasion celebrated.

A Proper Goodbye --- Day 6/181

Walk: No, Packing and Last Minute Stuff
Distance: 0, Yoga

So, one minute Ciwt was growing up at home and the next minute she was at boarding school far, far away.  Then this happpened and that happened and now it is now with her life in San Francisco.  It is a wonderful life, but Ciwt has always felt since boarding school (which she Did Not want to go to) it was some sort of a vacation life before going home.

Did she want to leave?  No, that's clear. She was on a pretty strong trajectory.  Would she have chosen to leave if she hadn't been yanked off the stage? What would have happened if she'd been allowed to stay, do things according to her own timing? Those and other questions have always been with her wherever she has lived since then.  Sort of a deep ambiguity and detachment.  Subtle but nagging.

'Who knows? 'is the answer of course - to all those questions. But now Ciwt feels a need to go to that pre-boarding school place and choose her life.  Take charge, say her own proper goodbye to that teenage life that was so prematurely interrupted. Or something.

Tomorrow she'll take that trip, a fortnight.  And she's telling her Ciwt readers all this because posting from ipads and iphones is very limited.  She'll put up pictures with a few comments of some of the various places she will or might go and hopes you'll enjoy them.  Then she'll catch you up when she returns to her San Francisco and CIWT life.

Goodbye for now...

Cage Aux Mysteries --- Day 6/180

Walk: Fillmore Errands
Distance: 2 miles, yoga

Some careful CIWT readers (Thank you!) may have noticed that Ciwt totally forgot her Write Every Day challenge last Tuesday, August 15.  Why did she do this? she wondered and then remembered she had gone to  La Cage Aux Folles at SF Playhouse.  Gone with trepidation she should add: she'd seen two movie versions of it, and the play was to be 2.5 hours with one intermission.  Oh well, she could leave at intermission she figured and planned.  But, oh dear, No, No, No!  Cage was so endearing and involving and entertaining that now she's thinking of going to see it again before it closes this San Francisco run

HooRay --- Day 6/179

Walk: SFMOMA, Fillmore
Distance: 5.5 miles, small yoga

Ciwt is deeeelighted to have given her final Munch tour today.  Try as hard as she could to keep things upbeat, she could see the light go out of her tour members' eyes as they looked at painting after morbid painting.

Way Back --- Day 6/178

Walk: Bay Model (Sausalito), Marin Driving Day
Distance: Not far, 2 Yoga Practices

Last art tour (for a while) tomorrow and then Ciwt begins to get ready for a trip back to where she was raised.  Get ready?  No, that's not entirely possible.  She'll start packing - which is.

About going 'home' she once read something along the lines of:  It goes like this: For every day you’re home with your family (or where you grew up) , you lose five years. So you should keep your trip short enough that you’ll be old enough to drive away.  

She doesn't become a teenager again for a few more days, so to be continued....

Invisibly Intrusive? --- Day 6/177

Walk: Donations and Errands
Distance: 2 miles, home yoga, golf lesson 😐

A friend sent Ciwt pictures of a bunch of nearly invisible (and probably frightfully expensive) houses around the world.  Her reaction: why not just leave the sites alone?  But that's Ciwt; what do you think?

Ciwt Forgot.....Day 6/176

A friend 👺just brought to Ciwt's attention that she totally forgot CIWT on August 15.  So, here it is - because she posts every day - if not on the same day as it turns out....

Views of Fog --- Day 6/175

Walk: No
Distance: 0, Couple of Home Yogas and Exercise Routines

Ciwt spent today in her foggy aerie preparing for her next art tour by focusing on this painting by a renown German painter of Romantic Landscapes.

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer in a Sea of Fog, @ 1818, o/c

                 

Taylor Grit --- Day 6/174

Walk: AMC Kabuki (Wind River)
Distance: 2 Miles, Home Yoga

Jermey Renner and (the terrific) Gil Birmingham in Wind River

If you are into modern Westerns, Taylor Sheridan's Hell or High Water set the bar exceptionally high. Wind River doesn't attain that level of script writing, directing or acting.  But if, like Ciwt, you are a fan of Taylor Sheridan movies (Sicario, Hell or High Water), you will probably, as she did, like-not love Wind River.  It's the third in his screen writing trilogy, his directorial debut and very good.

PS - No reviewer mentioned it, but Ciwt found it strange/off-putting that no matter what action Elizabeth Olsen's character was involved in - including blizzards, witnessing gruesome scenes, nearly being exploded - her eye make up was always thick and perfect and her face never broke into a single wrinkle.  Guess it was in her contract - Or Ciwt is a wee jealous.  

Limits of Structure --- Day 6/173

Walk: Opera Plaza Cinema (Columbus), Asian Art Museum
Distance:  almost 3 miles, small yoga stretch

The edifying, calming aspects of external artistic structure compared with actual unstructured realities of life.  Ciwt encountered this thought-provoking concept back to back today.  First at the very 'clean' and structured but also internally tumultuous movie, Columbus. and then at the Asian Art Museum. Asian art is carefully ordered according to exacting and honored techniques.  The appearance of most Asian art, artifacts and achitecture is thus very serene.  But not so the histories (and present) of any of the Asian countries.

Annals of Aging 8,769 (or so) --- Day 6/172

Walk: SFMOMA
Distance: 1.5 miles, Home Yoga

Andy Warhol, Silver Marlon, 1963, oil on canvas

So, today Ciwt's art tour clients were a grandmother with her two, twin about-to-go-to college grandsons.  When we all arrived at the galleries in which the above work was hung, the grandmother asked her grandsons "Who do you think that is?"  Both boys/young men were completely mystified. Had no idea.  

Andy Warhol, Triple Elvis, 1963, oil on canvas

Grandmother and Ciwt were both stunned.  When she then asked who they thought was portrayed in this painting, Ciwt held her breath.  One grandson was silent, the other shuffled around a bit and finally (hesitantly) said/asked, "Elvis?"  When we told him "Right," he was visibly relieved and told us "I was so afraid of being wrong." 

Maybe Ciwt readers were stumped too.  Oh, dear.

Modiste Work --- Day 6/171

Walk: Union Square
Distance: A few blocks, Home Yoga

Edgar Degas (Fr. 1814-1917), The Milliners, ca 1882, oil on canvas

Edgar Degas, The Milliners, ca 1898, oil on canvas

When Ciwt returned to the 'Hat Show'* at the Legion the other day, she was interested in the way Degas portrayed the unromantic actualities of work in the Paris millinery trade at the turn of the 19th century.  In the 1882 painting he gave one of the young workers a colorless, exhausted pallor. Presumably the second milliner girl is no more vibrant.  And in the 1898 work, Degas' last millinery painting of the many he executed over the years, one subject has disappeared as a person into her work and the woman in the foreground is joylessly fatigued.  The contrast between the milliners and the vibrantly colored, festive ribbons and plumes that will adorn the hat creations says it all. In late 19th century the demand for hats was so high, milliners would often work 12 hours a day and 15 to 20 during the peak season. 

Degas's depictions - in their truthfulness - honor these women for their industriousness in the actual unglamorous work world that went into the far-removed and glamorous showrooms. 

*Degas, Impressionism and the Paris Millinery Trade, Legion of Honor, June 24 - September 24, 2017

Rebuilding in Silence --- Day 6/170

Walk: Fort Mason (Sophie Calle 👎, Greens 👍) Legion of Honor (Degas Hats x2 😀)
Distance: 1.5 miles, home yoga

         Ciwt misses having Callie to talk to.  

Ciwt Necessities --- Day 6/169

Walk: Fillmore
Distance: 2 miles, Home Yoga

 Matisse, Yoga, Flowers, Color

Ciwt's HAPPY Birthday --- Day 6/168

Walk: SFMOMA, Cotelac
Distance: 2.5 miles, small yoga stretch

Lucky Ciwt to be around for flowers, Matisse, her San Francisco life and another birthday!

'NO' --- Day 6/167

Walk: No, Another Closet Caper

Distance: 0, Try on Clothes, Home Yoga

Trucks and bikes arrive at Fort Mason every Sunday morning for a big Farmers Market.  A few weeks ago when she was on a long walk Ciwt tried to take pictures of it. Maybe because she's not a foodie, her photos didn't look particularly appetizing.  Like this one, where the 'curator' in the background is already saying 'NO."

PS - She once briefly dated a professional food photographer, and, omg, so precise.  Each shot literally took hours with all sorts of equipment to catch the lighting perfectly.  Ciwt was (sort of) interested for about an hour - but then....  Not a match.

Give Me That Beat --- Day 6/166

Walk: Japantown, Merola Opera (La Cenerentola -  Join a Golf  (etc) Club/Take up Opera)
Distance: 5.5 Miles

Next Lifetime Ciwt is planning to be a Taiko Drummer!  Love! that powerful energy.

                                      And take in more Drive Ins.