Thursday, February 22, 2007

Japanese English 1


I've collected Japanese-versions of English since I started going to Tokyo in the early 1980's. I found this today on ebay for a "HeartWarm" toy chick and egg. The description reads:

Thank you for bidding a Chibun-no-ichi hiyoko chicken and egg. If you touch its head, it will talk to you. If you leave it along, it will sad.

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Friends



Two of my longtime, dearest friends, Bailey and Laurie, came for a brief visit on their way back to NYC from a vacation in Merida, Mexico. We had less than 24 hours together, and yet it felt like we had all the time in the world. We went straight from DFW airport to the Nasher Sculpture Center. Laurie is an urban landscape designer in NY, and she was most interested in seeing Peter Walker's landscaping of the Nasher. She had just heard a talk of Peter's and he seems almost transcendent in that field. Very highly regarded. Laurie has done a lot of major gardens in and around the NYC area.
Bailey had a hankering for ribs and beer, so that was our next stop. Lots of great conversation, hearing about their trip and what has been going on in our lives. I used to go to New York several times a year for 15 or more years, so we used to see a lot of each other, but I have no reason to go as much these days, so we keep up mostly by phone and email.
I got to know B & L back in the early 80's when I started collecting Japanese toys. They ran what I regard as the premiere store in the world of new and vintage artifacts chronicling our cultural mythology, and was called, naturally, MYTHOLOGY. The store was a work of art in itself, with the most fabulous window displays you could imagine (some with performing artists in them!). The store was frequented by everyone from Andy Warhol to Waylon Jennings. It inspired and, as they say, informed, my store Right Brain/Left Brain. Bailey went on to "frame fame" when Kirk Varnedoe hired him at the Museum of Modern Art to come up with a frame vocabulary for the Post Impressionist works. Bailey designed and had frames built for a dozen or more works, which included Van Gogh's "Starry Night" and Cezanne's "Bather". He also put together a wonderful book, published by Abrams, about the vital relationship a frame has to the artwork it surrounds. Check out Defining Edges.
I seem to be in a phase of my life currently when friendships, new and old, are being re-evaluated. And I realize how intensely I value the ones that have proven to weather time and distance.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Children


Several friends of mine are going through the painful part of relationships right now--poor communication, bad break-ups, sad endings. The kinds of things that make us not want a relationship. I've been there, too, of course. I found this photo today that I took of my children, Britt and Anna, several years ago. Sometimes when I've just talked with one of them, or am just thinking about some memory of them as children, I can hardly contain the emotions.

Monday, February 05, 2007

You Say It's Your Birthday....


...Happy Birthday to you. We celebrated Dad's 80th this weekend. My cousin Amal made all the Lebanese food, and it was a feast. I had to photograph the baba ghanoush, with the "80" in pomegranate seeds.