Monday, June 28, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
VACATION: Going Home to Iowa
THE 'MIDDLE BORDER'
is a geographical term for the Midwestern prairie lands settled in the 1800's, made newly possible by the Homestead Act and improved river transport. It's also a literary concept; Hamlin Garland wrote two novels, Son of the Middle Border (1918), and Daughter of the Middle Border (1921), which contain the paradoxical phrase. Dreams of prosperity, romantic idealism, social justice and populist energy entwine with the harsh realism of physical toil, boom-bust poverty, and agrarian revolt. The tone is elegiac in these novels, but Social Realism is the bass that remains sounding even today. (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/Parrington/vol3/bk02_01_ch03.html)
"Rugged depictions of independent life with wide open space provided distractions for those in financial crisis...regionalism obscured the crucial forces of history...
providing entertainment for those realities facing oppressed peoples, said Meyer
Schapiro. (Wickipedia article on John Steuart Curry)
I think of the Middle Border as a tag for the fundament of a real place, a singular heartland, and a synthesis of the American Midwest perspective. Its point-of-view is decent, conservative, grounded, pragmatic, hard-working. It feels distant; all that flat prairie to the west of the Mississippi to be overflown before one even arrives. It's a Great Wall, the space muting and buffering the impact of coastal racket and rictus. One faces inland and inward, holding the myth that values and truths will prevail against the latest east and west coasts trendlines.
The Cedar River, approaching Waterloo Airport
Grant Wood, Stone City, Iowa
I was born in Iowa, a vanguard baby-boom child of two soldiers (Mom was a
WAC). The first twelve years we lived in a small Wisconsin town that served the
farm belt around it. As a child of the Depression, Mom had seen those orange crate illustrations of California, and never forgot them. They moved to Long Beach, California, called 'Little Iowa', following many others already settled there. As marvelous as is California, the change isolated them and left them increasingly homesick as the years went by.
My brother, Lanny, lives in Iowa this very day. After earning his doctorate, he returned to teach at the same Iowa university from which my mother graduated. He is an environmental scientist, the fruit of our childhood upbringing in a fecund, bountiful land of deciduous forests, plentifully filled lakes and rivers, and farms planted to fill American bellies. How we used to laugh over being "corn-fed"; a kind of embarrassed acknowledgment of the inherent blue-collar hick-ness of our world.
My Italian aunt and uncle were gene-bestowed with the ability to draw and paint, a most extraneous gift in the Midwest, but that's what I got; Lanny's bequest was a more evaluative, objective scientific nature. I stayed on the West Coast, in love with the weather and big city opportunities, but I do get to "go back home", and it feels like it's all still mine, deeply possessed in my identity. A very good place to be from, a good place to go back to.
When we go back, we explore the grids of roads, taking in wide sky, the magnitude of agri-business and factory. I never lived in Iowa, but in Wisconsin, and so for me it's new and familiar at the same time. I love vessels of regional character: lighthouses, restaurants, hotels, churches, main street, streetlights, old brick factories, and barns. It's all a lively connection, a certain vibrancy in body and heart, and now in reflection, too.
How I love this particular Charles DeMuth painting - the title referencing the granaries of ancient Egypt, of course. The moderne aloof structures seem
more like giant breast sanctuaries, the succor of safely-stored grain assured. Diagonal rays of light envelop and highlight them; they are protected from on high.
GRUNDY CENTER, IOWA - Central Counties Co-Operative
A cloudy, brooding day on a Sunday drive brought us to Grundy County, where cost per acre of rich Iowa earth is the highest in the state. I dreamed of finding silos
and barns but the silos are replaced by grain elevators, and the old red barns are mostly falling down, replaced by new metal structures that require less upkeep. The grain elevators still have the power of volume and containment, and so these photos are my visual accompaniment to The Middle Border's lyrics about the prairie world.
I guess everyone's heartland is a private state of mind. Of course, the problem is that all runs to kitsch, especially it seems, in the Midwest. There are more crocheted toilet paper roll covers per capita than anywhere else in the world, I'm told by reliable statisticians. Decorative objects are fashioned from the old, the found, an unwillingness to discard the past, a parallel of "rasquache", a distinctly Chicano style that was defined by a unique sensibility of repurpose, re-use, and ingenuity. A woman's output is "domesticana", a term I would use lovingly for much of the work I saw in Iowa.
THE BARN QUILT PROJECT is a lovely extension of all the best of American crafting, I think. It's appealing, colorful, and there's a natural extension of beloved memory and forward vision that is so comforting. No kitsch-twinges were recorded, anyway. The barn quilt movement began in Adams County, Ohio in 2005, a project created by Donna Sue Groves to honor her mother, a master quilter. Grundy County was the first Iowa county to begin the project, and many other counties have enthusiastically begun barn quilting projects.
All my mother's quilts are worn out, because we used them hard and carelessly, as my family was wont to do. Today quilts are tended carefully for their labor-infused value. I am moved by them because they have lost function and joined the world of "craft/art product". Murky gains. The meticulous stitchery, fabrics saved for thrifty reuse, such an infusion of symbol, comfort, and memory.
quilt on sale at The Happy Barn
Mexico, in theory, seems remote to Iowa, but not so; in a Mexican restaurant friends give Spanish greetings and they are returned by our server. Iowa's big cities fight drugs and gangs, and Mexicans and Mexican-Americans work in factories and food processing plants, actively recruited in the Southwest. And not surprisingly,they like it too - small town rural life in Iowa is safe, affordable, beautiful, slow-paced; discovered similarities to their own left-behind heartlands.
A family acquaintance teaching in Des Moines counted 37 languages at her elementary school. At first, I was surprised to find an exhibit of Mexican crafts (and Haitian sculpture) at the Waterloo Art Museum. Really shouldn't have been. Then I thought about the daily reality of living in Southern California. Our experience of the border is fraught with danger, conflict, ambiguity, and benefit, as labor flows through the permeable membrane of its nature.
contemporary Mexican weaving
WHAT'S FOR LUNCH?
at The Happy Barn, quiche with tomato and spinach, slaw, and cream soda.
WHAT'S FOR DINNER? SURPRISE!
Gasp and puzzle - dinner at Galleria de Paco with it's SoCal graffiti-style
sign and tag - what is this doing in Waterloo? It's spray can art (Mexican), produced by a refugee (Serb), of the Sistine Chapel (Italian), in Blackhawk
County (Native American), Iowa.
We laughed a bit over Adam's languid pose - the yearning trust in Adam's eyes, and the body waiting to live in God's likeness I remembered so vividly from the Sistine Chapel had become flaccid, somehow empty of promise. I think I know though, that this work was made with great sincerity as a celebration of possibility in America, and I am easy, marveling at the experience what's waiting 'round the bend any given day.
WHAT'S FOR DINNER? POT-LUCK!
Dessert table
This is what you hope to find - only in community relation can one find a dinner experience like a church supper, American Legion bar-be-que, or family party. My brother's retirement party was a warm, happy evening, meeting Lanny and Jane's (my sister-in-law) friends made over 30 years in Cedar Falls. Lots of
salads, roast meats, two Mexican casseroles, and rich, 50's desserts - brownies, pinepple-upside down cake, pound cake, chocolate chip cookies, and most fun, a rhubarb crisp, made with fresh rhubarb from Jane's garden.
red rhubarb - better color for desserts than the green
Even Martha Stewart had articles this month featuring rhubarb, and Jane, always the kitchen enthusiast, tossed one up in her Mexican-style kitchen. My bright idea was to make creme fraiche, so out came Julia's tome, and it was so special on the crisp, the sweet, tart, and crunch (chopped pecans) flavors playing together. We added blueberries, too, for color.
My dear sister-in-law, Jane. We were all so happy to see Lanny and Jane marry, and I've had a most fortunate benefit - I got the sister I never had! How fun! Since Jane already has 5 other sisters, it was very generous of her to add me.
She is an accomplished crafter, cook, gardener, nurse, and her strength buoys all who know her. And she laughs a lot, humor at the ready.
Lanny's retirement is official, so I am back to California - back to crisp balmy June sunshine, our little house, my rose garden, grandchildren, the Hublet John. How really good it was to see my family. I will go more often, I resolve. Not so different now, Iowa and California - globalization has penetrated deep through the Middle Border, drilling entrances and eroding its breadth. More will be different next time, that's a certainty.
VACATION: Miami Beach & Its Art Deco
SOUTH BEACH STOPOVER
I confess to being among those Californians who snicker in their sleeve about Miami Beach and Florida. Too many old duffer and comedian jokes, and an unmerited sense of superiority for living in California.
Duane Hansen, Tourists, 1970 i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg62/witchyhoy3/AAA/AAAAAANEW/duane_hanson_tourists
Who go-eth to South Beach? I go-eth. Why? On the way back from the Caribbean,an unplanned stopover, after watching all those TV shows with such beautiful long shots and pans of Miami and fun in South Beach.
It was a whim. I'd been to Miami a few years ago for a convention; written it off as a banal place. Hotel web selection put us on Collins Avenue amidst a wonderful collection of Art Deco buildings. Art Deco design seems a collision: yearning for turn-of-the-century Art Nouveau Louis Sullivan ornamentation dumped by Modernism, and aerodynamic-curve inspired, Art Deco is a luxurious, elegant synthesis. South Beach has got it. What an unexpected delight. (For more information, go to Miami Design Preservation League's website: www.mdpl.org/).
In LA, you'll find a radius-curve corner of a building or a neon sign on an old building in Hollywood, or a flaring sign with that Art Deco typeface. There's the old Coca-Cola plant, the Oviatt Building, yes. And Wright's concrete block homes. You can go to the Shangri-La, newly renovated, a lone Santa Monica Art Deco hotel, wishing it could go live on Collins Avenue with the rest of its buddies.
http://www.nationalroute66.org/photos/053ShangriLaHotel.jpg
But not the enveloping walk-the-street quality find plenty, as is Miami's extensive Art Deco district. A lesson in why design matters, how an environment is enriched visually and psychologically when nostalgia and a seminal/fin-de-histoire architectural style birth a distinctive intense visual experience. And, it's still a bit glitz-y too. Like mad dogs and Englishmen - it's the tropics, admit it, you know you love it.
Do not go to The Fontainbleau- it's BIG. You want to pretend to be gay-er than you are and go stay down on Collins in the Art Deco district. We stayed at the National, most luxurious and comfortable, despite its icebox air conditioning. Elevators like jewel boxes. Long narrow pool.
Collins Avenue beach hotels are like railroad apartments in New York - they have a narrow front entrance on the avenue, extending deeply back to an ambling beach sidewalk and wide, (are they always windy?) beach. Lobbies tend to be dark, saved by Art Deco's superb evening-glamour sconce lighting. Then, after the traverse through the hotel's apps, you find a restaurant, tucked to one side, and a swimming pool seemingly conceived for debauchery. Circular upholstered lounges, chaise-longues that extend to infinity, palm fronds waving like they were automated. The roots of Vegas.
The Raleigh was my quick-choice; most visual buck-bang, a bit more boutique-like, and dinner on this patio was about as dreamy and delicious as the Mauna Kea patio on Hawai'i's Big Island, (before the hurricane) which remains my fondest dining memory. Though we didn't work at dining, we had exceptionally lovely meals in the hotel restaurants - fresh fish, vegetables, and of course, a key lime pie.
images.clubzone.com/ company/images/10183.jpeg
Afternoon pastry and coffee here!
A bit institutional, I think
The Sagamore, another stop, was unique because, walk into the lobby, tourist-cruiser that you are, and behold, an art collection that is quite impressive. Who knew? I wandered about the lobby and cocktail lounges bemusedly, suddenly challenged by art when I'd only been architecture-grazing.
Black and white, white and black - the color scheme of bold, difficult, aloof, sharp,cool, elegant. Along with softened tropical tones, I saw this scheme enough to note its frequency, puzzling over the choice, so hard in a soft tropical climate.
And those Art Deco stucco and concrete decorative flourishes: how integrated they are to the integrity of the facades they grace.
Hard to banish Louis Sullivan, even with the gravid pronouncements of Le Corbusier and Van der Rohe. Think Ionic and Corinthian vs.
Doric.
What I loved more than the incredibly tacky women's clothing was the menswear. Much more fun, casual, framed even in the shop windows by art deco curves. Now I know where all that color in fashion is really coming from - Miami's gentlemen's haberdasheries, of course.
This tourist seems to have acquired extra upholstery material from the seat cushions to fashion her hat and purse. She did have a sense of humour about it, permitting me to photograph her and then asking me to take one of her too!
Tropical weather isn't always sunny - the days we spent in Miami were overcast, humid, and rainy. Beachgoers and pool lounge lizards kept at it, anyway, with a lot of sympathy from me for their determination to enjoy the marginal amount of sunshine. Back home, bright 80-degree sunny days follow one upon the other, and I confess to thinking yesterday, " yes, but it's a dry heat...", to console myself as I think of the hot summer to come.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)