Robert Frank's Cowboy

Robert Frank (American, born Switzerland, 1924)
Rodeo, New York City, 1955
Gelatin silver print; 13 x 9 1/16 in. (33 x 23 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gift of Barbara and Eugene Schwartz, 1992 (1992.5162.3)

In anticipation of the Best Summer Ever

A hundred years ago (some time in the late nineties, I guess... ), my friend Jacob Hartman set forth on a quest for the Best Summer Ever. He organized all kinds of outings and games and cookouts and sundry stuff to do. I don't think I participated in many of his events, probably being -- just like when I feigned various illnesses to avoid swimming lessons as a child at camp -- too depressed, busy, angry, preoccupied, etc. to join in. Or maybe I just didn't get the invitations... Even so, I remember Jacob's funny smile as he would chant the refrain "Best Summer Ever" before or after pitching one or another invitation or rattling off a recap of a recent gathering. Ever since, as summer approaches each year, I start hearing Jacob's voice in my mind, and I regret that I really didn't have the best summer ever. Not that year. And, each year, I hear myself say it to one person or another, that this will be the Best Summer Ever. "B.S.E.", I say. I mean it, but I always also hear some cynicism in my tone. Or maybe it's melancholy, or some of that regret I mentioned before. Sitting around with a bunch of friends the other night beginning to plan our annual camping trip, the Best Summer Ever refrain was intoned yet again. I think it's going to happen. I have a nice feeling about this summer. Maybe it's the fact that we are having a mild spring, with the birds chirping like mad and the sky that heavy, endless blue, and the nights still chilly. Or maybe I'm finally lucky enough to have a little bit of Jacob's magical optimism.

Happy Spring!

You can really learn a lot that way...

"For The Turnstiles" by Neil Young
From the album "On the Beach", 1974

All the sailors
with their seasick mamas
Hear the sirens on the shore,
Singin' songs
for pimps with tailors
Who charge ten dollars
at the door.

You can really
learn a lot that way
It will change you
in the middle of the day.
Though your confidence
may be shattered,
It doesn't matter.

All the great explorers
Are now in granite laid,
Under white sheets
for the great unveiling
At the big parade.

You can really
learn a lot that way
It will change you
in the middle of the day.
Though your confidence
may be shattered,
It doesn't matter.

All the bushleague batters
Are left to die
on the diamond.
In the stands
the home crowd scatters
For the turnstiles,
For the turnstiles,
For the turnstiles.

A week in bed with Peggy Guggenheim and Samuel Beckett

"After dinner Beckett asked to walk her home, and Peggy was somewhat surprised when he took her arm and brought her all the way back to her borrowed apartment. Once there, he asked her to lie down on the sofa with him. They went to bed and stayed there until dinnertime the next day, except for a brief period when Peggy mentioned champagne and Beckett ran out to get some. The idyll was cut short, as Peggy was to meet [Jean] Arp for dinner, and she was unable to cancel because he had no telephone. She was quite discomfited when Beckett left saying, 'Thank you. It was nice while it lasted.'...

Several days passed before Peggy ran into Beckett again on a traffic island in Montparnasse. They went directly to bed (at Mary Reynolds's house, which Peggy had borrowed in the interim) and stayed there for over a week."

From Mistress of Modernism: The Life of Peggy Guggenheim by Mary V. Dearborn, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 2004

Cavolo Nero

I've taken to buying two or three bunches of cavolo nero at the market on Sundays and eating it almost every night of the week. I wash it all at once, roughly chiffonade the whole lot of it, and store it in a big bag so that I can pull out handfuls to toss as a raw salad (dressed with walnut oil and lemon or sesame oil, rice vinegar, and minced ginger), sautee (in olive oil with red chile flakes and a clove of garlic, paired with roasted slices of sweet potato), slowly braise (tossed with whole wheat penne and broiled cherry tomatoes or crumbled and browned Italian sausage), or blanch it (in clear chicken or vegetable broth with garlic and black eyed peas).

What beauties...

A handful of promising (and kind of heart-breakingly lovely!) Los Angeles artists, as photographed by Hedi Slimane for Dazed and Confused...