Geezerstock: Wine, Wrinkles and Deckchairs.

Carrie termed the evening Geezerstock. I thought that was hilarious! That is exactly what it was. Old people still rock and rolling. Now only done with middle age style- No smoking (of any kind!), wine and a flabby roll of fat around the middle!
Saturday night I found myself up at Kenwood House in Hampstead with Jeff, Carrie, Dan (and his lovely parents Janet & Michael) attending the Brian Wilson concert. Beth had to work; I missed her terribly that evening. At one point we called her on a cell phone and held it up so she could hear! It was Jeff’s Birthday (not telling which one!) and we were celebrating the 10th anniversary of our move to London. Brian Wilson also had sentimental value. The first concert we ever took Carrie to was a Beach Boys concert back in Buffalo, NY some years ago (OK, maybe about 20 years ago!).
We packed a nice picnic dinner (including Carrie’s legendary birthday brownies); four bottles of wine and off we went on public transport to Kenwood House. It was a beautiful summer evening in a really lovely setting. Kenwood House is a great place for an outdoor concert. We spread a blanket on the lawn, enjoyed our meal and then found our reserved seats on some red and white striped deckchairs ready to rock and roll. Carrie and Dan appeared to be the only people there without wrinkles and gray hair!
The show opened with California Girls and most of the audience remained in their seats. Brian came on with a terrific 11 member band - surprisingly with a female member in tow! – What? There are no girls allowed in the Beach Boys!! Jeff said the girl was there to help Wilson hit the high notes. And he needed it; Brian was really struggling to hit any notes in the first few songs. Thank God, he had strong vocal support! The Band quickly ran through a lot of the Beach Boy hits, I think everyone was waiting for their favourite BB song. Mine came before intermission…. God Only Knows……There was little band banter and one silly audience participation song of row row row your boat. Think about it, he has been performing these songs for 40 years! We sang along with the songs we knew and scratched our heads at the ones we didn’t ( I don't remember that one?) I didn’t realize Wilson has a new album coming out in September – and the band was performing them.
After a short intermission the band returned and the audience got up and began to dance. I think it took awhile to get us out of our deckchairs. Maybe it was because we had finished the wine and needed the restrooms, I don’t know. But you know, it was a fun night. The music was good, it made you feel happy and brought back great memories. What else could you ask for besides less wrinkles, gray hair and the ability to get out of deck chairs gracefully?

Mudlarking on the Thames

Wednesday afternoon found Polli (along with her sister-in-law Rota), Loretta and I mudlarking on the river Thames. Mudlarking you ask? Every day a narrow strip of land along the banks of the river are exposed at low tide. A Mudlark is someone who scavenges in river mud for stuff. What fun! The St. John’s Wood Women’s Club often offers excursions to the river to scavenge for treasures but I was never able to fit it into my busy schedule of ladies who lunch.

This same group of women while at the theatre the night before (Jersey Boys)decided we would give this activity a go the following day. A quick call to Jeff before the show began (who just happened to be on his computer!) gave us the low tide times for Wednesday. I had no idea it was so easy to obtain this information. See the links for more information.

OK, now the why? Well, mosaics of course! My mosaic teacher Katherine had made a terrific piece with items obtained while mudlarking! I was inspired to find some pottery and clay pipes! Armed with gloves, plastic bags, anti-bacterial wash and a small digging tool we set off for the St. Paul’s tube station. A short walk from St. Paul’s Cathedral had us clambering down steep stairs near the Millennium Bridge on a cool but sunny afternoon.

I spent about an hour on the river’s edge picking up Victorian and and Edwardian bits. This activity is addictive! The drawback is that it hard to stand up straight after a time! Along the fore shore, I met a group of school children from Barnet who were also having a great time mudlarking. They seemed more interested in animal bones than pottery and when I left they had a huge pile on a plastic sheet ready to take back to school. I suggested they make a mosaic of all the things they collected. We even had a picture taken together!

Klimt in Liverpool

Jeff and I on Monday viewed GUSTAV KLIMT: Painting, Design and Modern Life in Vienna 1900 at the Tate Liverpool. Billed as the first comprehensive exhibition of Klimt’s work in the UK - I came away a bit disappointed. I had read the review in the Times and ignored it. I thought the reviewer must be jaded. I wasn't going to miss what was perhaps the most important show of the year. (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment
/visual_arts/article4014012.ece)

I had been on the Tate Liverpool website the night before and was impressed to find that you could download the audio guide to the exhibition and save yourself the 2 pounds by bringing your own Ipod along. What a great idea! More museums should have this available. I didn’t bother to do the download being lazy and thinking I would just use the museums audio guides. We arrived at the Albert Dock show site in good time for our timed entrance only to be told that audio guides were unavailable. The machines were not charging properly and thus unavailable. I regretted not having done the download. I began the tour annoyed and a bit frustrated!For those of you not familiar with Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) he was one of the founding members and president of the Wiener Sezession (Vienna Secession) in 1897 and of the group's periodical Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring). The group's aim was to provide exhibitions for unconventional young artists, to bring the best foreign artists works to Vienna, and to publish its own magazine to showcase members' work. The group encouraged no particular style -- Naturalists, Realists, and Symbolists all coexisted. The group's symbol was Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of just causes, wisdom, and the arts.


Re- reading the Times review afterwards, I realized he was right on the money! I liked the exhibit don’t get me wrong but I wanted to see Klimt’s painting and nothing else! I did’t see beyond the show’s title Gustav Klimt. I didn’t pay attention to the second part of the title: Painting, Design and Modern Life in Vienna 1900 and this wound up being about two thirds of the show. The most familiar of Klimt’s paintings are missing. The Kiss, Danaë, and the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. The exhibition also featured furniture, building models, silver objects (loved the tableware!), jewellery, graphic design and some erotic drawings. I really didn’t care about all that. I wanted paintings. I walked around every corner waiting for the paintings only having to wait for the next room. They were the wrong expectations.

The Tate exhibition opens with the 1902 Beethoven Frieze done for the 14th Vienna Secessionist exhibition, which was intended to be a celebration of the composer. The original frieze was painted directly on the walls of the hall and after the exhibition the painting was preserved, but what we saw at the Tate was a re-production. I think it was the highlight of the show. I also liked his Nuda Verita (1899) . The starkly naked red-headed woman holds the mirror of truth, while above it is a quote by Schiller in stylized lettering, "If you cannot please everyone with your deeds and your art, please a few. To please many is bad."

Go to the this show. You may be disappointed but at least you will learn something about art and art shows. Enjoy what is there and wait until the real retrospective comes along on his paintings. Klimt states "I have never painted a self-portrait. I am less interested in myself as a subject for a painting than I am in other people, above all women...There is nothing special about me. I am a painter who paints day after day from morning to night...Who ever wants to know something about me... ought to look carefully at my pictures."

Sunday on the Albert Docks, Liverpool

Sunday afternoon finds us along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary in Liverpool, England. Inhabitants of Liverpool are sometimes referred to as Liverpudlians (silly) but I prefer the term "Scousers", in reference to the local meal known as 'scouse'. Scouse was originally a variation of "lobscouse", the name of a lamb stew mixed with hardtack eaten by sailors.

Liverpool is remarkable city with a long history. An 800 year old city, in fact! My curiosity about this city stems from my maternal grandfather. Thomas Bantin visited this port many times and I often wonder what he thought of it the 1920’s when his ships docked here. Liverpool's waterfront were declared as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2004 and the docks are a large part of Liverpool's history, with Albert Dock as the best-known. This was the first enclosed, non-combustible dock warehouse system in the world and was built in cast iron, brick and stone. It was designed by Jesse Hartley and restored in the 1980s.
The Albert Docks are home to everything Beatles: a museum, shop and tour company. The music is everywhere! Liverpool is a must for any Beatle fan! I love it but we have done the Beatles thing years ago. Our original room in the Premier Inn (located right on the dock!) was on the first floor but we asked for a higher floor to avoid the repetitive noise( must be getting old....).
I think Liverpool has an interesting history. One thing about Liverpool is the substantial profits made here from the slave trade. By the close of the 18th century Liverpool controlled over 40% of Europe's and 80% of Britain's slave trade. Another bit of scouser history is that during the Great Famine of the 1840s Irish migrants began arriving by the hundreds of thousands and by 1850, approximately 25% of the city's population was Irish-born. America was not the only place the Irish fled to in great numbers. OK, well I think these are interesting things............

Every where we look are signs reminding us that Liverpool is a European Capital of Culture for 2008. Hurray! I also like the Royal Liver Building It has very large and very cool bronze liver birds on top! (liver rhymes with "fiver", rather than with "river"). The mythical bird was originally been intended to be an eagle, but is now officially a cormorant. According to local legend, they are a male and female pair, the female looking out to sea, (watching for the seamen to return safely home) while the male looks towards the city (making sure the pubs are open- I believe that- oh boy, did we meet a trio of Belfast drunks in the hotel lobby). Local legend also holds that the birds face away from each other as, if were they to mate and fly away, the city would cease to exist.

We are here for the Gustav Klimt Exhibition at the Tate Liverpool on Monday morning. This is a special show that is not expected to travel to London or New York, so here we are on a lovely June afternoon. Like my Aunt Fran, I am a fan Klimt’s work. I haven’t forgotten to get some postcards for you! So more on the exhibition probably on Tuesday! The Tate Liverpool which opened in 1988 in one of the converted warehouses here on Albert Docks and was created to display work from the Tate Collection in London with a focus on contemporary art. I am excited about the exhibition tomorrow and the opportunity to learn more about Klimt!

Art and Music at ASL

It was an evening of culture for me!
Loretta and I attended the AP Studio Art Exhibition at the American School in London late yesterday afternoon. It was meet the artist night in the board room. On display was artwork of the lovely and very talented Jessica P, the daughter of our good friend Polli. I hope you can see some of her work in the picture I took of her with her mom.

After the exhibition, Loretta and I headed downstairs to the High School Spring Concert. Jesse's brother Mike was singing in the Concert Choir. The director Keith Montgomery is one of my favourite ASL'ers and always does a great job with his students. I have fond memories of Beth's concerts with Keith. As I said to Keith last night, he was still making fun music. What a great way to learn! The choir's version of Camptown Races was the evenings highlight for me!

Mission STS-124

On Saturday the 31^st of May at 5:02 pm I got to cross something off my Life List. I have been calling it a Life List long before bucket list became fashionable. What did I cross off? I was fortunate and very lucky indeed to witness the launch of a NASA Space Shuttle. Since Saturday I have told (and probably bored) just about every one I know with my story.

I grew up on Long Island, New York in the 1960’s very near Bethpage, the home of Grumman Aircraft Engineering. Grumman were the chief contractor on the Apollo Lunar Module that landed men on the moon. As a kid at Loretta Park Elementary school many of my classmates had parents who worked at Grumman. My own father was in the US Air Force. TV’s were turned on in the classrooms and our school day stopped to watch every launch. We followed every mission and we loved it! Yes, you could say I grew up with rockets. To this day, I still keep track of what is going on with NASA. Lucky for me I married another space fan. It has long been a wish of both of us to see a launch at the Space Center in Florida but never got around to it for one reason or another. I made up my mind that these was the year that we were going to do it! The pressure was on when NASA announced that the shuttle would only fly another 10 missions before retiring the fleet.

Let me tell you it wasn’t easy. Mission STS-124 was re-scheduled twice since April of this year. We were able to change our schedules and held our breathe hoping there would be no further delays to make the May 31^st launch window. Jeff and I told our selves that it probably wasn’t going to happen but would hope for the best. Oh yeah! I knew I would cry either way – either out of disappointment or happiness. I wound up crying out of joy!

Early Saturday morning we joined a Grey Line VIP tour of the Launch – we had missed out on getting NASA tickets. The tour company gave us a tour of the Kennedy Space Center in the midst of all of the hub bub. I was really too excited to pay attention. All I wanted to see was the launch pad and flames under a rocket! I would like to go back and see the facilities again some day. It looks like a great place. At one point on were on the NASA tour bus and were stopped while we watched the astronaunts being transported to the launch pad in a van.

We took up our position about 5 miles away from pad 39A on the NASA causeway with about 5000 other people and 2 hours prior to the launch. The weather was sunny and very hot. Who cared? The mission was still a go and this point unlikely to be scrubbed. I couldn't’t believe my good luck! Loud speakers were set up and we listened in as mission control communicated to the shuttle. Yes, I counted down from 10 along with everyone else with the tears already forming! All you could say was go baby go as she climbed into the sky! Jeff was in control enough to take pictures and I watched through our binoculars. What a show! All I wanted to see was that flames underneath the vehicle that meant she was moving. And oh boy did I! It all went much too fast for me and when the sound of those engines washed over us it was a welcome confirmation that the shuttle was going somewhere! This was really happening! I want to press an instant replay button and watch it all over again! I think every person near me held their breathe with me for those critical first few minutes as we watched the vapor trail grow higher and higher in the sky. Through the binoculars I watched the booster separation. How cool is that?

Then it was over.