This weekend, Gerald (the guy who did a lot of the work on my house and who is always coming over and doing things) is getting married in my dad’s back yard. They chose the date because his brother died on this date, and his fiance’s dad died on this date, so they decided to turn it into something positive. At any rate, it’s a big deal- dad is baking the wedding cake and doing all the cooking, so my bff Tammy came up and she is helping dad all day tomorrow.
At any rate, last night, we went to a dinner at the Harry and Chatman’s (my friends who run the Barn With Inn) newly restored Sarah Miller House. It’s a bimonthly event, and last night’s dinner was great:
The opener was a polenta with sausage and a bunch of other things going down:
That was followed by a salad:
The main course was broccoli rabe with cannellini beans and a braised rolled stuffed porK:
There is no picture of the dessert because it was Chatman’s famous sugar cream pie with blueberries and we ate it before we remembered to take a photograph. At any rate, it was a very nice time, and we sat next to two wonderful women who ran an antique store and consignment house called Sibs in Wheeling that I did not know about.
We stopped by this afternoon after running errands, and I found two nice little pickups:
They really had a lot of very interesting items. I really had to control myself and was proud I only spent 30.00 on those two. At any rate, we chatted with the owner again and we agreed we are going to go to another dinner together in November, we had such a good time.
At any rate, someone is already snoring on the couch, so I need to be quiet.
Omnes Omnibus
Good wishes to everyone involved.
NotMax
Vase would come in handy during a bar fight.
;)
Mary G
Looks delicious and following your progress in making a home is life-affirming in the dogless age of Twitler.
Mnemosyne
When I was reading a memoir by an Englishwoman who did a trip through the United States in the early 1830s, she thought that one of the most beautiful spots she saw was Wheeling, Virginia.
It took me a minute or two while reading the book to go, Oh, right, it didn’t become West Virginia for another 30 years.
(Yes, the book was Domestic Manners of the Americans by Fanny Trollope, which I’ve touted before.)
Steve in the ATL
@Mnemosyne:
You’re going to have to come up with better names for your characters. This one is just not believable.
Mnemosyne
@Steve in the ATL:
The poor woman married into the name. No wonder she became an early feminist.
Barbara
I wish I could think of some occasion that would take me in that direction. It looks lovely.
eclare
Sounds delicious. Best wishes to all for a wonderful weekend!
seaboogie
John – So happy for you to be settled into your new-to-you lovely home, and in the embrace of family, friends and critters. Feathering your nest, being social…it’s all wonderful.
Thank you for sharing. I feel that it is necessary to follow the news, but that makes me so angsty – and this post is a welcome balm to that.
Olivia
Thank you so much for these sweet moments posts. I have a great family and a great life but I get so bogged down with current events and these just raise my spirit so much.
mattH
Good night Steve. Tuck Cole in before you go to bed.
Mike J
That “Let that be your last battlefield” episode sure is subtle, huh?
seaboogie
@Mnemosyne: Something I find kind of interesting is that in the U.K., the “c-word” is a rather mild expletive that describes a personality more then anything else. In the US, “fanny” is a mild – even refined – word for the posterior. It in the U.K., fanny is a profane word for lady-parts. Can’t imagine how Ms. Trollope (yet another challenge wit da trollop handle) would have travelled between the two countries – imagine introducing yourself as her in the UK: “Hello, my name is C**t W***e, and you are…?” Kinda think that might have toughened her up a bit.
And, as always – nothing means anything unless we agree upon it. Seems we all agree – worldwide now – that gold, diamonds and oil are precious. Could have easily been zinc, spider-webs and leaves- the original solar cells.
Origuy
I haven’t had sugar cream pie since I left Indiana to go to college. It seems to be solely a Midwestern thing, and not much of the Midwest at that. The correlation between sugar cream pie and euchre is probably close to unity.
Eljai
Got home late from work and had a salad and a bag of tortilla chips for dinner because I was too lazy to go to the grocery store. I very much appreciate living vicariously through your “Night in Calabria”. Thanks for the food pr0n! Also, may I say that I am quite a fan of broccoli rabe under the right conditions.
danielx
@Origuy:
I’ve encountered sugar cream pie in the south, but definitely at the 99% level.
danielx
Visited the Chicago Art Institute yesterday for the first time; truly regret that I can’t just sorta move in there for a month or so. Room after room after gallery and wanting to spend hours in each room. Looking at a relatively sophisticated figurine that is estimated to be roughly 5000 years old* did make me somewhat dizzy, I have to admit.
And no, I didn’t bother to look at the original American Gothic. I’ve seen representations of it so many times I could view it in my sleep.
*Note: the description is more along the lines of “we don’t really know diddley about this piece except that it’s really freaking old”>
eclare
@danielx: That is a great museum.
danielx
@eclare:
It was wonderful. Would take months and years to see everything.
eclare
@danielx: I have only been there once for an afternoon, but it was impressive. I’ve heard it’s the largest collection of Impressionism outside of Paris.
Anne Laurie
You’re a good man, John Cole, and I hope the wedding / weekend is a joy for all involved. (Or, at the very least, that the inevitable hopefully-minor fvckups provide you with funny stories after the fact.)
Mnemosyne
@eclare:
I may have misunderstood what I was told years ago, but I think the Art Institute has a better collection of Impressionists than the Louvre. The only museum that has an even better one is the Hermitage in Russia.
Some of this may have changed now that they’ve been able to track down artwork that was stolen by the Nazis and return it to its rightful owners.
Mnemosyne
@danielx:
I hope you were able to spend some time with the America windows. I love Chagall.
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne: I first read Domestic Manners as a college freshman, and agree that it’s still rewarding reading.
Not in the Regency period, but you might enjoy her son’s novels too, if you’re looking for long reads. Speaking of rather too on-the-nose names, one of his recurring minor characters was a certain Lord Dumbello — I hadn’t even known the insult went all the way back to the Victorians!
Anthony Trollope had the greatest respect for his mother; there’s an amazing quote in his Autobiography about remembering her writing reams of commissioned work while providing nursing care for her dying child / spouse, which is why he never had much time for tortured artists whining about writer’s block or waiting for ‘the moment of divine inspiration’. (“… makes as much sense as a chandler waiting for a moment of divine tallow-melting”).
rikyrah
Everything looks delicious. And, your finds were beautiful ?, Cole.
Origuy
When I’m in Chicago, which isn’t nearly often enough, I make a point of going to see Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte at the Art Institute. You can’t see everything in one visit, and there’s always something new, but La Grand Jatte is a must for me.
rikyrah
@danielx:
I love sitting in front of the Seurat. And in the room of Haystacks. I get peace just looking at them. I also wish that I could sit with the minatures.
Mnemosyne
@Anne Laurie:
I got another of her books from Google Books, but now I can’t remember what it was called. It’s a little ambiguous about whether it’s a novel or a thinly fictionalized memoir, but it’s set in the Regency period (which, for her, was during her own young adulthood). It’s not a very good PDF, so it’s kind of a slog just because the type is very small. The free Kindle book of Domestic Manners of the Americans is actually really well-done.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
We wanted to go to the new American Writers Museum that’s near the Art Institute while we were in Chicago this summer, but it was raining really, really hard that day and we were down at the Field. I hadn’t been there for years and was really impressed by how they’ve changed the Egyptian exhibit. It gives you a much better feel for everyday life in ancient Egypt now. But the mummies still freak me out.
Anne Laurie
@danielx:
Don’t know what the sculptor intended, but the goat horns & birdskin shawl (also, possibly, the hunched posture) would read to a modern anthropologist as a shaman (aka, “an intermediary between the physical world and the spiritual realm”).
Also, can’t speak to the art of Grant Wood specifically, but there’s a great many Masterworks that simply don’t translate, no matter how many faithful-or-otherwise reproductions you’ve seen. Renoir, for instance — those much-maligned ‘blobby merchants’ daughters’ have an astonishing vitality in the original canvases. Or Van Gogh, or Franz Marc, or Hokusai (just to stick to works I’ve been fortunate enough to see personally). Even “Whistler’s Mother” is a lot more to look at than you’d think, given how much of a cliche it’s become. (It was on loan to the Clark Institute, where we’d come to see the Renoirs. You can’t see in the reproductions that Mrs. Anna McNeill Whistler was still enough of a Southern belle to be wearing very expensive silk taffeta and the finest lace, or how much attention her son devoted to the background.) I wouldn’t necessarily advise making a pilgrimage to see a masterpiece that didn’t speak to you personally… but don’t skip the chance to see one just because you think you know it too well already.
Major Major Major Major
Check out this weird flyer I found. https://instagram.com/p/BZ7kT6sAIL7/
NotMax
@Anne Laurie
Or, even then, some families had a weird Uncle Herbie and sucked up to him to stay in the will.
Origuy
The Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago has a lot of fascinating artifacts. When it was founded “Oriental” meant the Near East, so it covers Egypt to Iran. There’s a special exhibit of the Book of the Dead that just started. I may have to spend a few days in Chicago around my Christmas trip home to Indiana.
Mnemosyne
@Origuy:
I love Chicago as a city, but I can’t take the fucking winters. There’s a ton to see and do, and IIRC the Christmas decorations stay up until at least New Year’s Day.
terben
@Mnemosyne: In days gone by, to view Impressionist art in Paris, the place to go was the Jeu de Paume. After 1986, La Musee d’Orsay became the place to go. You would be lucky to see any Impressionist art in the Louvre. (no paintings post 1848)
Origuy
@Mnemosyne: One year all the museums had special exhibits on maps, the highlight being the Field Museum’s exhibit on some of the most famous and important maps in history. I spent several days there between Christmas and New Years. The Palmer was undergoing renovation, and I snagged a tiny room for a song.
NotMax
@Origuy
There’s something endearing in imagining a tourist calling up to ask for directions to the map exhibit.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: There was a large Chagall window in a Lutheran church in Los Angeles; mr opiejeanne’s cousin was married to the pastor and we noticed the window when we were there for their twins’ christening in 1979. I asked him about the window later and he told us that it was from the NY World’s Fair (1939? The church wasn’t that old, and I don’t know where it was before then) and it depicted The Creation but the pastor told us he didn’t understand the piece.
I told him that he needed to have restoration work done on it because glass is heavy and the lead was sagging badly; it needed reinforcement. I worked for a stained glass company at the time but I knew we couldn’t handle such a piece and we were too far away. There were several in LA but he blew me off saying it would be too expensive etc. The altar in that church was a huge slab of polished stone with ammonites embedded in it. They could afford that but they couldn’t take care of a Chagall window that had been gifted to them. They had no regard for it.
I can’t think of the neighborhood that church was in and I didn’t spot it when I tried to look it up. I’ll have to ask his cousin.
magurakurin
@terben:
La Musee d’Orsay is a really nice museum. It is the perfect size in my opinion. Some museums are just too huge. Lot’s of very famous paintings that many will recognize and lots of stuff you never saw before. One thing that is nice is the absence of endless, long hallways filled with religious art. I mean, how many pietas do you really need to see? The building itself is also really cool. That is my favorite museum in Paris, for sure.
opiejeanne
@terben: The Orangerie museum has a room with huge paintings by Monet. I think we were told that they were done when he was nearly blind and to see what he accomplished is astonishing. Large strokes of color that make sense when you step back a little. The room is an oval and the panels were painted for this room. They depict his lily pond at different times of day,
opiejeanne
@magurakurin: Yes! Long galleries of the agony of Christ! Long galleries of the birth of Christ!
We spent four days visiting the Louvre and didn’t see it all, and couldn’t take any more. The D’Orsay was wonderful but Whistler’s Mother was on loan in the US when we were in Paris. That was one of the things I wanted to see.
Did you go to the Rodin museum? We really enjoyed that one too, and the Petit Palais with a lot of lesser-known artists. There were some cases in the entry area with gorgeous glass pieces when we were there.
NotMax
@opiejeanne
After seeing it reproduced a gazillion times beforehand it was almost a shock to view Dali’s The Persistence of Memory in person.
Only 9#189; × 13 inches in size, just a tad bigger than a standard sheet of typing paper. at first one presumes the original is a small reproduction of what the mind has envisioned as a larger, more imposing canvas.
NotMax
@NotMax
My bad on the coding.
9½ × 13 inches
terben
@magurakurin: I love your understatement, I think that the Musee d’Orsay is one of the great galleries of the world. At one time, religious art and portraiture was the only game in town.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@opiejeanne: There was a New York Worlds Fair in 1964-5 (I was there!) I found a Pinterest page with a Chagall window from the Vatican Pavilion at that Fair. Probably where your LA window was from too.
I never knew about Chagall and windows, so your post led me down interesting places on the internet. Thank you. Apparently (I just learned) there’s a little church in Tarrytown just north of NYC, one of our favorite towns, with a bunch of windows by Chagall and Matisse.
magurakurin
@terben: it is interesting to observe how the artists snuck self expression into that religious art, but you do have to do a bit of study of art history to really get it. I ask people who are going to Paris with only limited time and talk about whether or not the Louvre is a must do, “can you name three paintings other than the Mona Lisa that are in the Louvre and you want to see?” If they can’t I say spend a morning in Musee d’Orsay instead. Then enjoy the streets of Paris in the afternoon.
Denali
This thread is making me long for a visit to any one of the magnificant art museums mentioned. I have been stuck at home too long with a large landscaping project, a contractor with a mind of his own, and town engineers with control issues. Bleh!
Shell
Kinda like being at the Louvre and not minding if you couldn’t get too close to the Mona Lisa.
Neldob
What a fine, tasty vicarious meal, but are those dog droppings in the salad?
SWMBO
Did you wear overalls?
Sandia Blanca
@danielx: Sounded yummy, so a quick Googling gave me this description: A homemade vanilla pudding is poured into a baked pie shell, drizzled with melted butter and cinnamon, and then popped under the broiler until the topping is bubbly…
Now I want to bake one!
opiejeanne
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: You’re right! How could I forget? I was in HS and desperately wanted to go but we lived in California and that was too expensive a trip, according to my parents. My best friend at the time went, not that they could afford it but they tended to spend their money more freely than my parents did.