Buff vs Scholar --- Days 13/275-280

 Walks: Hood of course

Distances: 4 miles average

So, Magalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola's long heralded, much gossiped about and just released movie is here.  It is Coppola with an extraordinary cast so attention deserves to be paid, but Ciwt is a movie buff of sorts, not a movie scholar so she is wondering about going. Will you go? Or maybe you've been. 

She has a friend, both a buff and a scholar as well as off-the-charts brilliant, who happened to call and report his experience.  He couldn't exactly praise it, but did admire it.  Even he though admitted to not completely understanding it and noticing that many of his fellow movie audience walked out because it was soooo sloooowww until nearly the end.

At the total far end of the critical spectrum was a local columnist who began his review of Megalopolis this way: This is not a review. This is a warning.  Needless to say, the rest is not positive.

So, here it is Monday and Ciwt has a free afternoon.  If she goes, she will report.  And if she takes a long, slow walk or does hours worth of CIWT-worthy activities instead, she'll let you know about those.

Indian summer Monday greetings in any event.

CIWT Bird Style --- Day 13/274

Walk: Hand/Wrist Therapy

Distance: 4 miles

This is so dear, Ciwt just had to copy the entire Gold Winner photo and text from The Atlantic's Bird Photographer of the Year Winners announcement.

Treacherous Journey. Gold Winner, Urban Birds. "Goosanders breed in the park about 1 kilometer from Poland’s life-giving River Vistula. Each mother has to move her brood to the river as quickly as possible due to lack of food and safety in the park. They make the journey through a series of underground passages and over a six-lane highway. Each year a group of volunteers help them cross this deadly road by stopping the traffic. After crossing they arrive at the River Vistula where they can feed and grow. This image shows a mother goosander crossing a smaller road because she decided not to use the scary and dark underground passage below it." #

© Grzegorz Dlugosz / Bird Photographer of the Year

Prize Winning Birds in Black and White --- Days 13/272 & 273

Walk: Hood

Distances: 5.5 miles

Who doesn't love bird pictures?  When The Atlantic announced its Winners of the Bird Photographer of the Year 2024, Ciwt went right to them.  Here are a few marvelous ones- just screenshots with Ciwt's abbreviated titles because the actuals aren't available to copy.  But still so alive - and birdlike.

Tobogganing Antartic Penguin © Nadia Haq / Bird Photographer of the Year

South African Helmet Shrikes Huddling Together Preparing to Sleep © Gary Collyer / Bird Photographer of the Year 

Heron on Dead Tree In Front of Full Moon © William Steel / Bird Photographer of the Year

                           (Note: Halloween is coming, Ciwt will enter this one in her Annual Halloween contest).

Touchingly Elusive --- Day 13/271

 

Walk: Hood

Distance: Just 2 miles, Sunday

Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, 1872, oil on canvas, ca 20 x 24"

What more can be said about the painting that inadvertently led to the term 'impressionism' that inadvertently led to one of art's most beloved movements and paintings?  

Well, that its calm delicate washiness seems to be impossible to capture on camera.  If you google it, you many images, all different.  

And, to Ciwt, that infinite elusiveness is as it should be.  Impression, Sunrise needs to be seen in person, and, if you are fortunate enough to attend the National Gallery of Art's current exhibition 1874 Paris: The Impressionist Moment between now and January 19, you can do that.  Ciwt is still hoping to go, above all to see that work, long one of her favorite paintings.

If she gets there, she won't be the only one going directly to it.  Impression, Sunrise is beloved by many, and, she understands, is the star of the DC show.

One can only guess the work's elevation to masterpice status was a surprise to Claude Monet, its creator.  He clearly didn't labor over it.  Famous for his insistence on encountering his natural scenes closely and outdoors, he painted Sunrise, Impressionism while looking through the window of his hotel room in the industrial port of Le Havre. While doing so it's probable Monet was still taking in his recent extended time in London where he had encountered - and likely been blown away by - JMW Turner's remarkable color and light-filled paintings of the smoggy, misty Thames.  

Giving the work a hasty title, Monet did enter it - along with eleven other pastels and oils - in the now historic, 1874 Societe Anonyme Exhibition where it got scant attention.  Except! from one critic who singled out Impression, Sunrise as the prime example of what he deemed the low level of art in the show produced by untalented hacks. According to him Monet and his friends were 'impressionists' not creating art but merely impressions of art.  Thus, inadvertently and to his probable complete chagrin, coining the name of what became an unstoppable art movement: Impressionism.

Ciwt thinks masterpieces are not created intentionally.  Works of art are, but the ones that speak to the minds and hearts of viewers generation after generation have a transcendant life of their own. From its offhand inception Sunrise, Impressionism became a poem of luminous light and atmosphere transforming something ordinary into a subject of ongoing wonder.  Hopefully Ciwt will get the DC to see it on its only trip to the States.

Hmm, Let's See.... --- Day 13/270

Walk: AMC Kabuki & Carpet Contractors

Distance: 5 miles

So non-news buff Ciwt wasn't particularly drawn to Am I a Racist.  But it got high RT marks and then a friend called and sort of guilt tripped her into going. 

Fortunately - for the ending.  ...Racist was consistently entertaining and illuminating with quite a few chuckles and grimaces throughout.  Then it switched into tears streaming, laugh out loud funny and a very satisfying conclusion from the easy to watch star, Matt Walsh.  

At least, that was Ciwt's take...

Window Seat Gazing --- Day 13/267,8 & 9

Walks:  Hood and fingers on computer searches

Distances: Average 4 miles

*

Ciwt loves having a window seat again and spends many hours there, often just gazing at the city going by.

*Actually expressed by Piglet, but Ciwt liked the window seat image..

Tyger! Tyger! --- Day 13/266*

Walk: Hood

Distance: 6.5 miles

So Ciwt heard from a reader who was disappointed she hadn't been posting as many animal pictures on CIWTas she had in the past. Hearing that, childless catlady Ciwt went right to work and found this magnificent tiger.  She's actually a young mother working hard to raise her rebellious cubs. There's one above, and he does look like trouble,  You can see more of her and those naughty cubs in the movie Tiger produced by WildStar Films and the culmination of 1,500 days of filming.

* In honor of William Blake's (1757-1827) immortal poem The Tyger, with that unforgetable first line: Tyger! Tyger! Burning Bright..

Vini, Vici, Vidi - Hopefully! --- Days 13/263, 264 & 265

Walks: Hood 

Distance: Average 4 miles

So, Ciwt got her first electricity and gas bill for her new place - and had to sit down.  Stunning.  She even called a pg&e service representative to come check if the total could be possible.  He looked at every meter, appliance, and who knows what.  And, yup, it was possible - no leaks.

Turns out nearly everything here is 'green' - like your car if you've bought one recently.  In other words, computerized, totally techie, app operated, and supposedly great for the environment.  You know which age group this leaves out - basically everyone over 40.

Ciwt just walked right by all the dials for her first month - the one in the jaw dropping bill - telling herself everything they were running was a-ok.  Well, what they were was Full Speed Ahead, so Ciwt somehow had to learn how to conquer those dials.  Each one took a day: searching on line for the manual (they don't come with the product any more), trying to fathom it, flailing around with the dials and buttons.

And she's proud to announce, she has conquered the following (plus led bulbs in her lights and cannisters).  Hopefully.  Hopefully.  We will see when the next pg&e bill arrives.

Nest Thermometer

oc meterline

water heater

The English and Their Hats --- Days 13/256 -- 262

 

Walks:  Hood 

Distance average: 4 miles

Ciwt is a huge hat admirer. Must be her in her balmy English blood. And, if she lived in Bridport, Dorset, England, she would definitely attend the town's Hat Festival every year.  It's a celebration of hats, a fun(d)raiser for head-related charities (whatever they are) and a giant summer-ending party.  The festival combines live music, demonstrations, an auction, games, you name it, including multiple competitions.  In that last regard, Ciwt would head straight for the Hatted Dog Competition.

Box Walking --- Days 13/254 & 255

Walks: UPS, FED EX, Home to get more boxes, UPS, Home for more, UPS

Distances: Average 4.5 miles

Ciwt thinks she has mentioned that nothing is local these days.  So as she continues to move into her new home, her days are consisting of living on line, guessing about colors, fabrics, finishes. Some sooner, some later, the boxes - mostly large - arrive.  Then it's on to carrying the boxes up the stairs*, slicing open to see if the items are even close, either breaking down the boxes or....(and this is often the case), repacking and walking the boxes over to UPS, FedEx or USPS.  Repeat, repeat....

Oh well, it is exercise. Some people walk their dogs; Ciwt sees them on her way through the park as she walks her boxes.

* Occasionally a delivery person with a particularly heavy package notices Ciwt's cast and offers to carry the deliver upstairs.  Ciwt always says yes.

Long Stretch --- Days 13/253 & 254

Walks; Hood

Distances: 4 miles

So Ciwt has plenty of things to do from the time she wakes up until 4:30 in the afternoon.  But then comes the dreaded (for her) 4:30 to 6:30 stretch.  In her entire 80 years she has never, ever figured out what in the world to do during those hours except just sort of grit her teeth, wait around, dawdle, etc.  She wonders how her readers fill them.

Showing Off --- Day 13/252

Walk: Hood (of course)

Distance: 5.5 miles

Blow, Scott, Blow --- Days 13/250 & 251

Walks: One Day of rest, Hood

Distance: n/a, 3.5 miles

Scott Macomber on trumpet and Simon Berry on organ at St. Dominic's Church, San Francisco

Some people resonate to the violin, others to the piano.  Certain instruments speak most deeply to individual listeners.  For Ciwt is is HORNS, especially the trumpet.  And when that instrument is accompanied by organ music vibrating off the arched stone walls of a cathedral straight our of midieval France, oh my.  So you can imagine how much she enjoyed her "Dances for Trump & Organ" concert the other evening.