by anneMoore on September 18, 2009
In Chicago, we savor every warm sunny day in September. Last gasps of summer happen all over the globe, of course, but in Chicago each day of warmth and sun is one we soak up and store within ourselves. We’re like Lionni’s Frederick, who uses those rays to soothe his fellow mice during the bleak, cold months of winter.
Chicago’s motto is “city in a garden” and in these last summer weekends we insist on the outdoors: eating meals or sharing cocktails in city gardens, sunning and reading on roof decks, swimming fast in open-air pools, biking or walking the lakefront.
Eight of us dined at Piccolo Sogno, 464 N. Halsted St., a newish restaurant in an old space that holds Chicago’s prettiest and most spacious garden, anchored by a huge Spanish sycamore. Strange how a place can be both achingly romantic, for a couple, and accommodating to a crowd.
Later we sat in a private garden, our friends’ good dog at my feet. Deborah pointed to a climbing vine with heart-shaped leaves. My young daughter and I had started that moon flower from seed in March, and I’d been giving the tiny sprouts as hostess gifts during the spring. There it was, grown as tall as their house. The next evening it bloomed, gleaming white against the dark.
I curled up in a comfy chair set to my garden’s one square of sunlight the next day, where I finished Henry Roth’s “Call it Sleep”. What a day; what a book. I’d chugged along for hundreds of pages, wondering how Roth’s simple tale would tie up. (It’s narrated by an overly-mothered boy whose father doubts his paternity). Wow. The climax is positively psychedelic; a cocktail of Whitman, Joyce, Ginsberg.
After another delicious dinner in a city garden — thanks Elaine and Dave! — I took our dog for his nightly walk. I passed an old home with a low-fenced yard open to the street. There, a group of friends sat at a red picnic table, lit by candles, enjoying dinner and a movie playing on an oversized screen. What a night; what a choice. “Stranger than Fiction”, a wonderfully told life and love story — set in Chicago.
by anneMoore on August 29, 2009
I recently finished an exasperating read: an unhappy couple can’t bring themselves to divorce. If they part during the spring, it will color every spring. If they tell her father…if they tell their son….
The book is “Some Prefer Nettles”, by Junichiro Tanizaki, Vintage International, $13.95, translated by Edward G. Seidensticker.
I loved it. The book brings an old world to life, the story is thoughtful and unpredictable. Best of all: it made me think.
Written and set in the late 1920’s, the story is a confessional: its author offered his wife to a friend, who accepted. He didn’t dislike her; she didn’t interest him sexually.
Or does she? When the story opens, husband Kaname catches the scent of his wife’s perfume, the care and attention she takes with her dress, the feeling of her hand against his neck as she helps him dress. He professes a steadfast belief in their “modern marriage”, but it bothers him that Misako sees her lover more often and for many days in a row.
As the story unfolds, it’s clear that no woman can fulfill him: Kaname is attracted — and repelled — by every woman. The prostitute he frequents is too modern, his father in-law’s young mistress is luscious but schooled in Old World arts and manners.
Kaname and his travels are the bulk of the story, but my heart went out to Misako. If her father finds out about her affair, he could disown her. When she leaves, she’ll lose her son. And if she waits too long to leave, her lover’s family could decide her unworthy of their son.
She is the property of men.
When her father learns of the affair, the couple finally act. They go to Kyoto to meet with him, even though Misako protests. After all, her fate is to be decided by her father and her husband. Once there, her father takes her to dinner; Kaname is left with the mistress.
The ending is so provocative, it took me several re-readings and days to figure it out. Too, it sent me to the translator’s notes. There he writes that Tanizaki is purposely vague. “Do not try to be too clear; leave gaps in the meaning.”
by anneMoore on August 18, 2009
When I describe our place in Quebec, few people can fathom our unplugged life. No television, telephone, cell calls or texts, no computers, newspapers or mail service, no stores nearby, no need to get in a car. Yes, we have a roof, beds, bathrooms, running water, comfy couches, electricity.
We’re not camping.
Indeed, certain services at Club Pythonga are downright luxurious: blocks of Ice, cut from the lake during the winter, are delivered to the cabin daily. The ice keeps food and drink cold and in the evening, we take a chunk of ice, smash it into rough cubes, and use it in our cocktails.
We don’t keep a lot cold: there’s a central kitchen, and everyone who’s “in camp” eats together, breakfast and dinner, at the dining hall or at picnic tables outside.
It’s truly a vacation when someone else is cooking.
Shared meals create a time when families and generations come together. (At its August peak, Pythonga draws 100 people.) Sure, the teenagers sit at one table — not texting! — but when one gets up for another helping, he’ll stop and chat with someone else’s grandfather, or tease one of the high-chaired babies.
What does it mean to spend a few weeks unplugged?
During the day it’s easy to spend time sunning or reading or hiking or swimming. At night, after dinner, what’s there to do? Some nights we look at the stars. Others we play hearts, or Scrabble, or poker. The kids play a card game called Spoons: it’s fast, and loud.
Mostly, we visit.
Visit? Typically it’s an invitation to come by after dinner, to sit on a screened-in porch or inside by a fire, drink and talk and maybe look at photos from the day’s outing. We talk about books, bourbon, who’s catching fish and how he’s doing it. The Pleiades, and whether they’re the source of this summer’s shooting stars. Isaac’s inner-city 8th graders, and what they should read. The future of newspapers. Heath care.
Like the kids, we get loud; we laugh a lot. But outside, it’s quiet, and when we leave a cabin for our own it’s so dark we need a flashlight to find our way.
We have everything in this life of ours; some weeks the greatest pleasure is doing without.
by anneMoore on July 21, 2009
The New York Times ran a provocative (well, it provoked me) article the other day on independent, super-expensive college counselors. Fees ran a high as $40,000.
It wasn’t the cost that provoked me: it’s the fact that adults turn to a professional for one of parentings’ last and most satisfying adventures. Just when you think your teenager doesn’t need or especially like you 
anymore, there’s decisions to be made, together. Where and how and why go to college? Country or city? Big or small? Close to home or a plane ride away?
Make no mistake: it’s an undertaking. Time, money, energy, emotion. Our son was invested — intellectually. Getting forms, essays, portfolios out the door was another matter: I recall a particularly expensive overnight package.
We took him to different parts of the country to look at schools, each in our own way. (“Mom,” my son teased, “Dad would have had us in and out of four schools by this time of the day.”)
I was put off by the brutalist architecture and strip-mall surroundings of a certain storied institution in Rochester. (Our son, rightly so, focused on what he’d learn: he loved it!) Similarly, my Dartmouth grad husband fell in love with Bard College and its way of educating students. Our son wouldn’t even apply: too broad an education, too bucolic.
I took him to Pasadena, where he’s now a student at Arts Center College of Design. Again, the campus, that part of the country: not for me. But what a place for him! A great school that would allow him to study photography from his first year on.
Sure, some questioned his narrow choice. Others wondered if a photographer should go to college. After all, it’s a craft.
Was it tense? Of course. But memorable, and sweet: when college letters arrived during school hours, my husband would hold the envelope up to the light, straining to see what it said inside.
In the end, our son went four for four. He got in everywhere he applied.
Our second child begins the college process this fall. Am I nervous? For him, a little. But what a great adventure. You’d have to pay me to hand it off.
by anneMoore on July 12, 2009
My daughter accuses me of doing nothing at our summer house in Quebec. Ha! I practice yoga after breakfast, kayak late morning and swim fast to the island and back (about a mile) late afternoon.
In between: I read.
I read small books and big books, fiction and nonfiction, old books and those newly published. I read for hours at a time. If it’s hot, I strip down to my swim suit. surface dive into the black water, take a few strokes, float …and go straight back to my chair and my open book.
I guess that’s nothing to a ten year old. To me, it’s bliss. To read a “big” book without interruption, in the sun, beside a clear water lake.
Recently, these have been my favorite “big” reads, all consumed on that dock:
- Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow, Vintage, $18.95. Sounds forbidding — and is, at 832 pages — but this is one of the most intimate biographies you’ll ever read. I learned more about U.S. business than from any text. Sounds dry? It’s not. A big life, a grand read.
- The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright, Vintage, $17. Want to know how Al Qaeda began? I did. Wright is a gifted storyteller, and his research astonishes. I even read the endnotes. A friend tried to read this going to and from work on the bus. Impossible. It is a complex read, and we know the ending. This one deserves your full attention.
- A Star Called Henry, by Roddy Doyle, Penguin, $15. A few pages into this epic, Greitja Morse stopped by the dock. “Ohhh,” she said knowingly, as though speaking of a former lover. “Doyle is so hard to give up.” Henry Smart comes of age, and plays a part, in the Irish Rebellion. A rollicking read. Doyle’s masterpiece.
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz, Riverhead Trade, $14. My then 18 year-old-son read this in a single day on the dock, then slammed it down: “This should be taught in every U.S. high school.” A 21st century must-read, about Dominicans in the U.S. and back home. End is perfect, brutal, heart wrenching.
by anneMoore on July 1, 2009
I had three days in New York and did what I always do in a great world city: eat well and see art.
First stop: John’s Pizzeria (278 Bleeker St.) Baked in a coal-fired brick oven, it really is the world’s best thin crust. John’s is two small rooms; a line trails down Bleeker Street most evenings. Go for lunch.
Next: The Morgan Library & Museum (225 Madison Ave.) for “Pages of Gold,” art cut from medieval 
manuscripts (through Sept. 13). Exquisitely illustrated scenes from the lives of the saints, often in gold. Many look like intricately woven tapestries. Also at the Morgan: “Acquisitions Since 2004,” a thrilling hodgepodge of letters, manuscripts, drawings, watercolors (through Oct. 18). Among the treasures: a handwritten manuscript of Oscar Wilde’s “The Selfish Giant,” a Beethoven score (messy!), an Arthur Getz inked-up notebook opened to ideas for Fourth of July cover art.
During a short film about the Morgan’s history, this question was raised: Why collect, preserve, display original works on paper? Because they’ve been touched by the artist’s hand. (www.themorgan.org)
The next day we dined on croissants from City Bakery, (3 West 18th St.) Who says New Yorkers are rude? The clerk made sure our croissants were hot from the oven, instead of the ones already cooled.
More art, though not what I’d planned. I wanted my 10-year-old daughter to experience the Guggenheim Museum (1071 Fifth Ave.) inside and out. (www.guggenheim.org)
She did, sort of: a show devoted to Frank Lloyd Wright’s work — mostly architectural renderings, on paper — hogged the curlicue hallway and many adjoining galleries (through Aug. 23). As Alex said later in the day: “It’s better to go see the Robie House, or one of his other buildings, because then you’re in it and you understand why he built it that way.”
Day three (prosciutto and fresh mozzarella panini, ingredients from Zabar’s, 2245 Broadway) trumped all others: my sister insisted we go to the Neue Galerie (1048 Fifth Ave.) to see its collection of German and Austrian art and crafts, and its prized possession: Gustav Klimt’s “Adele Bloch-Bauer 1” (1907).
Regardless of the work’s rich backstory, standing in front of this portrait gave me the chills. A daring composition, I was awed by its scale, kaleidoscopic imagery, and beauty. It’s the Mona Lisa of its time. See it. (www.neuegalerie.com)
by anneMoore on June 25, 2009
My sister had more time than I to tour the new Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago, and stopped into the Cy Twombly show (through Sept. 13.) The next day, she had to go back, and wanted me to see the Twombly show, too. She even persuaded her “love art, dread museums” 10-year-old niece Alex to come along. It’s a brief show, she promised, held in a few rooms: no more than half an hour.
We stayed longer than that, on the insistence of said 10-year-old, who kept circling back to Twombly’s oversized, intensely colorful “peony” paintings. Her priceless observation: “Now I won’t be afraid to make a mess when I make art.”
Twombly’s art is messy: paint drips, phrases scratched into the painted panels are in a shaky hand’s block-print scrawl. Words are misspelled…or are they? A haiku is repeated, carried from one painting to another, to another.
I pictured Twombly’s art as black and white, somewhat bleak. (That’s his earlier work, from the 1950s.) These works, created from 2000-2007, offer a kaleidoscope of color. Peonies are fire-engine red in one work, maroon in another: each are set against intense yellows.
Some peonies are white puffs, like huge cotton balls, the white paint left to drip down over panels of sea green. Alex thought these peonies looked like jellyfish, with their trailing tentacles. I thought the puffs looked like the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. Either way, it reminded me that even something we see as horrific — jellyfish count — can also be beautiful.
In the final room, deep green panels are overwritten with looped letters in a ghostly white paint. It’s not graffiti; rather, it’s a painterly technique that dates back to the “automatic” writing of the Surrealists (1920s).
Twombly (b. 1928, American) created the monumental works in this show as an old man; he’s 81 this year. What struck all of us was the physical strength one would need to paint on such a high, broad scale. The peonies and looped letters are huge; you can see their wide brush strokes.
Chicago is the sole venue for this Cy Twombly show: The Natural World, Selected Works, 2000 - 2007. See it. www.artic.edu
by anneMoore on June 22, 2009
The New York Times ran a breezy piece recently about summer reads aimed at women. I turned to it excitedly: I’m a girl, I love to read. Surely there’d be something on the list for me. Nope.
What to read during the summer? Do we really seek out “lighter” reads in the warmer months? I don’t.
Here’s a list of books I love that are by, for or about women.
- The Makioka Sisters, by Junichiro Tanizaki, translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker, (Vintage, $15.95). Nothing and everything happens in this big read set in Osaka after World War Two. Clinging to ancient ways, two sisters try to place Yukiko in a proper, aristocratic marriage — increasingly difficult as she ages. Another sister brazenly takes on lovers. Lovely descriptions of various regions, and ways of life, in postwar Japan.
- Anne Sexton: A Biography, by Diane Wood Middlebrook, (Vintage, $17.95). The poet Anne Sexton (1928-1974) was celebrated in her time for her confessional poetry. Middlebrook knows poetry and poets; her “reading” of Sexton’s poems is smart and digestible. This is a deeply affecting life story that reads more like a novel than the scholarly work that it is. (Recommended by my friend Jennifer.)
- Vita: The Life of V. Sackville-West, by Victoria Glendinning, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, buy used). Vita’s gardens, homes, marriage, lovers, and writings made her a legend in her own time (1892-1962). Virginia Wolff was among her lovers, and Vita’s Sissinghurst Castle is said to be the most visited garden in all of England. I didn’t want this book to end: what a life! (Pressed on me by my friend Suzanne, lent in a plastic bag, bound by a rubber band.)
- The New Yorkers, by Cathleen Shine, (Picador, $14). An ensemble piece set on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. People, and dogs, get together, fall in love, and fall apart. A rich read, with a surprisingly sweet, and fitting, end.
- The Great Man, by Kate Christensen, (Anchor, $14.95). A textured story of the women left behind after a famous artist’s death: his widow and their autistic son, his mistress and their twin daughters, and his sister, who’s also a painter. A window into the New York art world, and a rare depiction of older women. (Thanks, Jennifer, for recommending.)
by anneMoore on June 15, 2009
I’m often in awe of museum art; how or when it was created, how it’s presented. It’s a quiet, passive pleasure.
Delight, joy: at a museum? That’s rare.
Olafur Eliasson is the Danish-Icelandic artist whose installations can be seen and experienced at the Museum of Contemporary Art (220 E. Chicago Ave.) through Sept. 13.
Go. If you have children or can borrow one, take them.
Eliasson — whose “Waterfalls” captivated New York City last summer — creates spaces that turn art inside out, and sometimes bodily involve the viewer.
One of my favorite pieces, “360 degrees room for all coulors” (2002), allows you to step into the color spectrum. You’re inside the work of art.
Another one we liked is a long wide hall lit by monochromatic bulbs, which emit light in a narrow frequency, “Room for one colour” (1997). It looks inviting, a warm bright yellow. Step inside, all color is washed out of your clothes, your skin. You become shades of black and white! You are the art!
That was a favorite of Alex, my 10-year-old daughter, who likes art but dreads museums. We walked through that hall several times, and at a passage, she divided herself: “Okay, where am I black and white? Where am I color?”
Alex didn’t but I loved “Moss Wall” (1994) a room-size installation of slowly growing moss. It looked like a bumpy field of yellow-green cauliflower heads, and gave off a pleasing scent.
Our shared favorite, “Beauty” (1993), is a pitch black room that holds a mounted spotlight shining through a constant falling mist. Depending on where you stand, you see rainbows, gentle waves, ghostly images. You can walk into the mist — most kids do — which creates yet another image, and view.
The show is called “Take your TIme.” I’d promised Alex it wouldn’t be a lengthy visit; we were through the show in 30 minutes. And she was the one who asked to go back to certain installations.
This show will make anyone rethink the term “museum art.” And it will put a smile on your face, with kids or without. www.mcachicago.org
by anneMoore on June 12, 2009
I settled in for a bar lunch the other day at Joe’s, an elegant seafood and steak house off Michigan Avenue with my friend and colleague Barbara.
I’d been to Joe’s (60 E. Grand St.) several times, for review or to meet with editors. It’s pricey, but the seafood — especially their signature stone crab — is worth the expense. Sides and salads are freshly prepared with quality ingredients. Portions are generous.
Joe’s dining room gleams: white cloth tables, waiters in tuxedos. Why sit in the bar? The menu is the same.
Joe’s attracts a lot of tourists. More than once I’ve found myself seated opposite a half-clad group in floppy hats and flip-flops. I’m not knocking tourists; they’re great for the Chicago economy. Joe’s is so classy — refined food, divine service — I expect the patrons to be, too.
The spacious bar area attracts a different crowd. Some tourists, for sure, but typically it’s people like me and Barb, professionals who work in the neighborhood and want a meal you wouldn’t have and can’t afford everyday, in a setting that soothes. There’s a t.v. on — set to financial news — but everything else is dark wood and atmosphere.
I’d feel comfortable dining here alone.
Joe’s “colossal” crab cake ($11.95) is lightly crisped, thick, loaded with crab meat. Among the city’s best, along with Shaw’s. www.shawscrabhouse.com
The tangy coleslaw ($4.95) is more vinegar than mayo, topped with sparkling green relish, sided with thick slabs of tomato.
A meal-sized salad, the Stone Crab Louis ($13.95) was Barbara’s choice: bibb lettuce, avocado, hearts of palm, sliced egg, asparagus, stone crab.
If you’ve never tried stone crab — it’s harvested from the Gulf of Mexico — it’s a lifetime must ($17.95 for four.) Like lobster, you crack its thick shell with pliers. It’s messy, but the crab meat is heavenly: soft, white and sweet.
We passed on dessert this time, but Joe’s key lime pie ($5.95) is the real deal. It’s offered by the half-slice, too. www.joes.net/chicago.
