Eleanor Arnason's Blog, page 33

Crex Meadows

We finally made it out of town to look at birds yesterday. Our destination was Crex Meadows Wildlife Area, a marsh in Wisconsin 70 miles northeast of the Twin Cities. The day was bright and crisp when we set out, with high clouds coming in that gradually covered the sky. The fall colors were muted, which makes sense in November. A lot of trees have lost their leaves. Others are still green. The oaks are turning, and I was trying to describe their colors to myself as we drove to Wisconsin. Brown, deep red, dull orange, a kind of yellow brown, and a silvery brown. I don't know if the different colors indicate different kinds of oak.

Crex Meadows itself is a mixture of marsh, open water and oak savannah. This time of year the sandhill cranes are migrating through. During the day, they are off at neighboring farms, eating in the harvested corn fields. But we saw over a hundred feeding in in the wildlife area and a fair number of sandhill cranes in flight in small groups.

In addition, we saw two pairs of trumpeter swans and four tundra swans in a group, two adults and two immature birds, a male marsh hawk and three flying birds, too distant to identify for certain, but the way they were flying suggested they were rough-legged hawks. Oh, and an adult bald eagle, which flew up from a tree as we were leaving Crex Meadows.

There were little, black and white birds along the road in the wildlife area, which I had not been able to identify yet.

All in all, a satisfying day, though we were both tired after six hours in the car.

November Farmers Market

The Farmers Market was sparse today. A lot of venors have stopped for the season. The flowers are gone, except for ornamental kale bouquets and one guy who has a greenhouse. There are still some tomatoes and green peppers, lots of apples, winter squashes, brussel sprouts, eating kale... I got a kale bouquet, baguettes, an apple pie, pasta from the bakery on the Iron Range, spinach and cauliflower.

Being Poor and Buying "Luxuries"

This is an excellent post from Talking Point Memo on why poor people sometimes buy luxuries.

I want to add my reason.

I have not been poor, but I never had a lot of spare money, due to decades of clerical jobs that didn't pay much. When I wasn't working clerical or warehouse jobs, I was working for nonprofits that paid badly. My writing got me pocket change. I once told an editor that writing earned me enough money to go to cons and buy Laura Ashley skirts. (This was back when Laura Ashley fashions were a deal.) Living in a consumer society, surrounded by advertising and stories about rich and famous people gnaws at you, if you don't have enough money for "nice things." It is hard to be 100% prudent and thrifty for your entire life, all of it, cradle to grave. Some people can do it, but it's hard. The desire to splurge builds up; and -- now and then -- you will buy something really nice, something that makes no sense, just because it's a luxury in a life that involves a lot of careful thinking about money.

Post Script: It turns out that the link above gets you to the NASA pumpkin carving contest. Here is the link to the essay. I have left the NASA link, because the video is neat, and because life should have some unexpectedness.

MFAs # 2

The previous post is from facebook. I got comments from other writers and a potter, which led the conversation in a different direction.

The potter said ceramics is divided between working potters, who make and sell useful objects, and academic potters, who see themselves as artists and make sculpture rather than pots.

A similar distinction may exist in writing, another commenter wrote, and this might explain the hostility of academic programs to genre writing. Genre writing is commercial and may even be useful. It doesn't hold water or coffee. But it entertains. Literary writing is art.

I commented:

I have bought a lot of stoneware over the years, and it's almost all utilitarian. I love eating off handmade plates and drinking out of handmade cups. I have one pot that I saw at the Northern Clay shop and loved, then went back to buy, and it had been returned to the artist. But the shop was able to get it back for me, and it sits on a high shelf, just to be looked at -- like my mother's Chinese oxblood vase, which serves no useful purpose except to be beautiful.

So my argument would be, ceramics can work either as art or dinnerware. But I tend to like pots, even if they are just for looking. I think that is due to all the years looking at Chinese and Japanese and Korean pots and cups and dishes in art museums.

There is nothing more beautiful that a really beautiful bowl.

Forty years ago, an auto worker asked me the difference between art and an artifact. I was sure there was a difference, but I couldn't define it. His job, by the way, was putting the rear axles on Dodge vans. All day he would bend over, pick up an axle and lift it in place, then do the same thing over and over on an assembly line that was moving fast. Since then, I have decided there is no useful dividing line between art and artifacts. It's all skill and sweat.

Once you decide all artifacts are art, then you can move on the question of what art is well-made and lovely. If a crappy paper cup is art, then its utility is no longer an excuse. It's bad art. We are surrounded by bad art.

MFAs

I have trying to figure out why I am so hostile to MFA programs in writing. It may come in part from my college. When I was there, Swarthmore made a big deal about not teaching any "practical" arts, such as studio art or creative writing, though it did have an engineering department that was one-third of the student body.

I know part of it comes from the cost of an MFA, which is a very useful degree if you want to teach creative writing, but is no help if you want to be a writer -- is a hindrance, since you will have student loans to pay back on your miserable income at Starbuck's. I worked with someone who got an MFA in printmaking and was loud on what a mistake it was, since she wanted to be a working artist, not a teacher. She had $40,000 to pay back. In the end, she started a house cleaning service. Its selling point was all the products used were environmentally safe, and all the house cleaners were artists. Last I heard, she was doing fine, making money and art.

Part of it comes from a gut feeling that I would have done really badly in an MFA program, since I write genre fiction and play games when I write.

By playing games I don't mean I have computer solitaire on while I write. I play games with the rules of fiction. My ideas of art come from the visual arts in the late 19th and 20th century, when artists were challenging the idea of a painting as a window into a 3-D space full of solid and real figures. The Impressionists and Post-impressionists and their successors flattened space and broke it apart and broke the boundary between the art work and the outside world. I wanted to do something similar in writing, though -- because I wrote in a genre that was stylistically conservative -- I didn't want to be too obvious.

Snow

Met friends to write at coffee shop to write and gossip. There was a brief flurry of snow while we were inside, but it had ended by the time we left. Still and all, the first real snow of the year.

Then I came home and made Chana Masala, a dish popular in Punjab that involves chick peas, onions, tomatoes and spices. For me this is cold weather food, and I love cooking when it's cold.

Autumn

The government shutdown ended, though the sequester is still in effect. The weather in the Twin Cities is finally getting cold, which is nice. I made baked apples today and found a recipe for stuffed baked pears which looks good. The cold weather makes me think of baking and roasting and making soup.

The fall colors are pleasant, but not great, I think because the weather stayed warm for so long. Lots of yellow with red sumac and maple. I'd like to go down the river and look for eagles or go the Crex Meadows Nature Preserve in Wisconsin and see migrating waterfowl. The tundra swans usually arrive in Alma, Wisconsin in November, so I'd like a trip down there.

Otherwise, no news. I'm finishing some writing and thinking about life.

The Shutdown

I want NASA back. I want the CDC back. I want the NIH back, the FDA, the national parks and monuments... The list goes on and on...

We put off our trip to the Black Hills because of the four foot snowfall. But we might not have gone anyway, because the Badlands are a national monument and thus closed. They are amazing, a high point of every trip. If we go off season, they are almost entirely empty, very lovely and peaceful. Well, the prairie dogs makes noise. I think it was our last trip there... We saw three bighorn sheep walking along a ridge at sunset, outlined against the western sky.

I grew up on stories of the Populists and the New Deal, the founding of national parks and government regulatory agencies. That used to be heroic. Government by the people and for the people. The post office is now selling off buildings that have WPA murals, and the question is, how to make sure the murals are not destroyed.

The Minnesota Orchestra in Exile

Tonight we listened to Osmo Vanska's farewell concert with the locked out musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra, broadcast live on MPR.

There were three performances over two days, all three sold out. The one tonight had people standing in the lobby watching on monitors.

The performance tonight was the last of the three and well worth hearing. The distinguished pianist Emmanual Ax was the soloist, playing a concerto by Beethoven and another concerto by Mozart. In addition, the orchestra played Beethoven's Egmont Overture and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. I usually like Mozart better than Beethoven, but in this performance I liked the two Beethoven pieces better than the one by Mozart. The Firebird Suite was also good -- and sounds far less modern than when I first heard it 50 years ago. The encore was Valse Triste by Sibelius, and it was fabulous. Osmo Vanska asked for no applause after the encore. He said the situation the orchestra was in was too terrible for applause. Vanska sounded close to tears, and -- per the MPR announcer -- many members of the audience were in tears as they left.

The Orchestra musicians are planning their own fall season, since the Minnesota Orchestra Association is not having a season. They are fundraising at the moment and have a $150,000 matching grant. You might want to donate. A concert in November is already set.

I spend my money on season tickets for the opera, but I have been thinking recently to going to some concerts of classical music. I'm especially thinking of the November concert that the Orchestra musicians are planning. Former Minnesota Orchestra conductor Stanisław Skrowaczewski will be conducting at the age of 90. The program is Wagner, Mozart and Brahms.

Breaking News

Osmo Vanska, the very fine conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, resigned today, as he said he would if the lockout was not resolved. This may be the end of the Minnesota Orchestra.