sam's cake

Both J and I are not big fans of cake. We didn't even have a wedding cake. Instead, we had a really awesome dessert bar with lots of great pies (although, admittedly, we did offer a some cake slices for the guests who came expressly for the purpose of eating wedding cake). Anyhow, it seems that Sam is like his parents. He wasn't too interested in his birthday cupcake; he just nibbled on tiny crumbs and some frosting. Last night we tried to give him another bite of cake, and he just spit it out. (I'm sure that his grandma (my health-food loving mother) will be quite pleased to hear that!)

We had to coax him to even touch the thing.

target practice

J might be embarrassed that I'm posting so many pictures on my blog, but I'm quite proud of my husband. He's famous. Many artists can say that their work is on display in a museum, but not everyone can say that their work is on a museum. J recently completed doing all of the campaign signage for the Seattle Art Museum's forthcoming exhibition, "Target Practice."

If you see any of these signs around downtown Seattle (or on buses), it's J's work.

I really like this poster. The thesis of this exhibition revolves around 20th century painters that created art in radical/unusual ways. Canvases were sliced, burned, etc. However, the artistic styles are all really diverse, which makes the show difficult to market with a specific image or work of art. I think J came up with a great way to convey the thesis of the show.

If you live in the Seattle area, you should check out this exhibition. It mounts this month and will be up for the whole summer.

adjunct lecturer

I'm slated to teach an introductory/survey course here next winter term! Yay for the Jesuits! I'm sure that I'll have no problems teaching at a private university, since I attended one as a student.

So, this course is set up a little differently than other survey courses that I've attended/taught/TA'ed. Instead of a broad scope of artists and works of art from 1400 - present, the art history program is structured to focus on "case studies" from each century (i.e. a specific artist or a few select works of art). It's an interesting idea and I'm excited to try teaching this way. I'll write more details about the course materials and structure later (probably on my art history blog).

Huzzah!

sam day

Today is Sam Day at our house. Sam is now one year old. I think my sister L will be sad she can't tell people anymore that her nephew is zero. She got a kick out of that.

Last week J and I came across a journal that J's mom kept while J was a baby. She recorded all of the funny things that he said and did when he was little. We got such a kick out of reading those stories and anecdotes, I thought I better start to write down more things about Sam. So, here goes:

Sam's first word was "Hi!" He probably said it first at about 10 months. He says it all the time and does this little floppy wave. He also knows:

"Bye!" (with floppy wave again)
"Daaa" = Dad
"Mom?" (He always says this like it's a question, and the sides of his mouth always turn down when he says it, which reminds me of the muppet Sam the Eagle. Maybe we should have named our Sam after the muppet.).
"DAT!!!" = "THAT!"
"Dut!" = duck

He also knows the meaning of "no," "up," "outside," "smile," "more," "book," "hug," and "ear."

It's fun to see him learning and growing. He's not walking yet, but he cruises around a lot and likes to walk with help. We like him. And we're glad he's in our family.

Anyhow, here are some pictures of Sam opening presents this morning:

Once he saw what was inside, he looked at me with the expression, "Do you see this?" He hasn't quite picked up on the idea that presents contain fun things. I also think he might have wondered if I would get upset with him for ripping paper.

Thanks for the fun toys, SJ, N1, N2, and Grandma! (And thanks to others for the fun presents that aren't pictured here!)

There is a small zoo located near our house that used to be a private animal collection. My mother-in-law said that because of zoning reasons, the family needed to turn their private collection into a zoological park. We went there last weekend as part of Sam's birthday celebration.

This parrot in the bird show kept waving to the audience

This weekend we'll be having cake and ice cream to celebrate little Sammy, which means that his birthday celebrations are spreading onto three different days. Phew. I hope he doesn't expect a multi-day extravaganza each year.

Sam we like. Like we Sam. With or without green eggs and ham. Happy birthday, little buddy!

baby + ravens = blueberry pancakes

Sam woke up at 4:30 this morning. J and I stayed in bed for a while, waiting to see if Sam would go back to sleep. But he didn't. Then we took turns going in Sam's room, but Sam WOULD. NOT. SLEEP. He was wide awake. Finally, an hour later, I picked Sam up and told J to go back to bed. Sam and I would just stay up.

J went back to bed. For five minutes. All of the sudden, a huge flock of ravens started to swarm around a tree near our yard, caw-ing really, really loud. J came downstairs and tried to shoo the birds away, but to no avail. It was crazy. Right after we pick up Sam and get him to stop screaming, the ravens kick in.

So, we were all awake. To make the situation a little more pleasant, I decided to make blueberry pancakes. I quite proud of my pancake recipe - I think it beats any pancake mix. And we have a tub of fresh blueberries. Mmm. Eating warm blueberries (either in muffins or pancakes) is one of the nicest things in the world, even when I'm ridiculously tired.

I wish I could have taken a picture of us, eating blueberry pancakes at 5:30 this morning while ravens caw-ed in the background. Sam couldn't have been happier as he munched away on his pancake bits. J and I were bleary-eyed, staring at the wall with expressionless faces as warm blueberry juice trickled down our throats.

"celebrity" memoirs

I've been thinking today about memoirs written by celebrities and "celebrities" (the "celebrities" = has-been celebrities). I found out yesterday that Melissa Gilbert recently wrote a memoir called Prairie Tales. I loved watching "Little House on the Prairie" when I was little, and even recently I wondered what became of Gilbert after the series ended (and after she appeared in "The Snow Queen" episode of Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre). However, when I heard about this memoir, I couldn't help but feel bad for Gilbert.

In my opinion, celebrity memoirs fall into two camps. The first group consists of successful actors and actresses who have interesting and inspiring things to write in a memoir of their life experiences.(Even though I haven't read Julie Andrew's Home, I would automatically think that it falls into this first group.) The second (and larger) group of memoirs are different: they are written by has-been celebrities that sometimes advertise their memoir as a as "tell-all." In my opinion, these books range from semi-inspiring to uninspiring (and generally are not worth reading). When reading reviews, I feel like these books appear to be nothing more than extended articles on celebrity gossip. Gilbert's memoir seems to fall into this category (you can see an article describing the "tell-all" here).

I wonder what motivates these "celebrities" to write a memoir. Some of the ideas I came up with were:

1 - The "celebrity" wants to become a celebrity. The memoir is an attempt at regaining the spotlight.
2 - The memoir is a way to make money.
3 - The "celebrity" feels that the public needs to view him/her in a new light. (Perhaps Gilbert doesn't want people to view her as the wholesome pioneer girl that she played on TV? Although I haven't read "Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice," it seems like this reason was part of Maureen McCormick's motivation for writing her book.
4 - A combination of the above (probably the case in most instances)

Any other things to add to the list?

But I'm sure that many successful celebrities-cum-writers also have these same motivations to write. So is my attitude the only thing that truly classifies these two types of memoirs? Am I being too harsh on "celebrity" memoirs or do people agree with me? Has anyone read the aforementioned books and wants to agree/disagree with my stereotypes and blatant generalizations?

the royal historian of oz

When I was younger, I loved reading the Oz books. Every time I went to the library, I would immediately go to the "Baum" shelf and see if I could find any books that I hadn't read. When I finished reading the original series by L. Frank Baum, I started to dabble in the Oz books continued by other authors like Ruth Plumly Thompson. However, I never enjoyed these books as much as the original series, and I soon gave up on reading the later Oz stories.

My love for the Oz books prompted me to read Katharine M. Roger's biography of L. Frank Baum. If you love the Oz books, you really should read this book. It was fascinating to learn about the different social/historical factors that influenced Baum's writing. For example, Baum was married to Maud Gage, a feminist and suffragette. Maud's mother, Matilda Gage, also was a leader in the movement for women's rights. It is interesting to see how Baum was affected by the idea of a matriarchal society and the role of women in government - only female witches have power in Oz, and the only magical male leader (the Wizard) is actually a humbug.¹

I also learned in this book that Baum was a theosophist. This was particularly interesting to me and helped me place Baum within a better historical context - I already knew that theosophy was a popular religious philosophy in the late 19th/early 20th centuries (it attracted artists like Kandinsky and Mondrian). This discovery made me realize that I've never tried to place Baum in a historical context before; I've always thought of Oz books (and Baum as the "Royal Historian of Oz") as being timeless like Oz itself.

There are so many other interesting things I learned in this book: "Gump" was a slang term for "fool" between 1865 and 1920; the Woozy character was inspired by Cubism and based off of Marcel Duchamp's painting Nude Descending a Staircase; Baum was passionate about breeding fancy poultry, which ultimately influenced his development of the character Billina.²

This biography has got me excited about the Oz books once again, and I am also interested in reading the other books discussed by Rogers, particularly Baum's novels for adults and the various books he published under pseudonyms. First I think I will read The Fate of a Crown, a novel set during the 1889 revolution in Brazil (published until the pseudonym Schuyler Staunton).

Did you read the Oz books as a child? Who were your favorite characters? My favorites were Polychrome, Button Bright, and Ozma.

1 Katharine M. Rogers, "L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz," (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002), 79.

2 Ibid., 7, 125, 194.