I Love America

& I almost have my brain back from the extended loan called grad school, so will resume knitting, museumgoing, and blogging about it VERY soon. But for now just look at these buffalo on a tennis court, ok?

More Fun than Weddings & Celebrations

Seeing how it's Monday, the eerie voyeristic allure of Weddings & Celebrations is fresh in my mind, and yours too I assume. I experienced a subtle variation of this today while googling Fred Sandback, who made art with yarn without knitting it. Sandback's obituary was on the weirdest blog ever, "Blog of Death", a bizarre yet somehow respectful daily obituary list, with comprehensive links. Maybe all you hipster kids know all about this site, but it freaked me out. I can't even write about it any more. Just go there. (Missing the pope, though.) Anyway.

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So for the three of you who actually read my blog, I apologize for the lack of posts lately. There are many reasons for this, and I invite baseless speculation. While you twich nervously on the edge of your seats, please refer to the following adequate subsitutes:
--My cranky hero Tyler Green's Modern Art Notes (I like him because he makes fun of the artforum blog, constantly and without mercy.)
--from the floor, a decent blog about looking at art.
--and then for the crafty urges, there is the DNA Scarf Pattern, which has been fourth on my list for a long time.
Ok? Ok.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Bellow

While I am moved by all the coverage of the Pope's life, I was surprised and saddened to hear today of the dear of another great icon of Modernity, Saul Bellow. Maybe I'm not supposed to like him, because I'm the girl that always points out the inadequacies of dead white male writers, whose illustrious ranks Mr. Bellow now joins. But there is something compelling, something extraordinarily valid, in the old-fashioned belief that art, firmly rooted in humanity, in daily life, makes this confusing mess of a world vaguely bearable. That there is something that good, honest, even painful writing (or art or music or crochet or whatever) does, that all the theory in the world cannot compete with. I buy it, hook-line-n-sinker, in Bellow, in de Kooning, in Arthur Miller, and in the enduring work of other dead white guys.
Here is the quote the NY Times obit ended with:
"I've never seen the world before. Now I was seeing it, and it's a beautiful, marvelous gift. Enchanting reality! And when the end came, I was told by the cleverest people I knew that it would all vanish. I'm not absolutely convinced of that. If you asked me if I believed in life after death, I would say I was an agnostic. There are more things between heaven and earth, Horatio, etc."
So rest in peace, etc.