MotherPie

Warhol-idays Wow! An Important Lunch...

After writing about Warhol this week, how fun it was to see Barney's windows all decked up in a Warhol world for the holidays.  Barney's theme: the Warhol-idays.  Students in East Harlem painted Warhol and their paintings decorated one window.  Other windows had passers-by gaping, admiring, talking and lingering longer just to enjoy the sheer artiness of it all.  Soup cans, left, set the border for one window.  On my way to an important lunch, I had to stop and enjoy and then, afterwards, return to capture it.

I am still giddy about these things, these Parisien-esque street commerce creations of art that make pedestrian life so enjoyable in mid-town Manhattan.  It is an ever-changing urban space museum dedicated to our cultural art of commerce. Maybe people who have lived in NYC forever get dulled to this display talent, these tablatures that exist so momentarily.

Barneys at 60th and Madison has a 9th floor restaurant, Fred's, that made a perfect setting for a tete a tete luncheon with my daughter's future mother-in-law.  We covered all the rules, defined all parameters, dotted the i's and crossed the t's.  Made in the shade, honey.  We did everything but pinky-swear that we'll never be the MIL's that one hears of from time-to-time.  I think we each truly believe that the other's child is the best child in the world to make our own child's life enhanced.  That was a pretty important lunch.  Our right feet went forward together.  And iconic Warhol-scapes made me think this might be an iconic memory, this iconic lunch.   

Shoot, my in-laws had both of their parents buried head-to-head in the Forest Lawn cemetery in Dallas.  Aren't in-laws supposed to be eternal support, bridge friends and buddies? 

Skating Through Life? Yea, Right.

The problem with blog writing is that it is self-edited, or not well-edited, or under edited or too off-the-cuff.  Sometimes, though, in writing, or in conversation, one can discover oneself in the words.  I wrote my wishes.  I wrote my hopes.  I wrote to maybe hope that writing might make it so.

"Skating through life: metaphorical, but that is what I hope for them..." is what I said in writing about skating rinks and thinking about perfect beginnings with the plus-perfect marriage proposal of our oldest daughter.  I left a wish-thought dangling and pushed "publish" and then realized that there was so much more to write and I left so much unsaid in writing all of my wishes and hopes just off-the-top-of-my-head.

I've never skated through life and no one I am close to has.  Perhaps because, as a mom, I hold out such hopes with such faith in thinking that the power of a mother's force -- the never-ending strength of mother-love -- can move the mountains, alter the earth and sky and cause all pain to go away.  I want to think that mother's kisses can heal all hurts. Such wishful thinking.

As one child was literally skating off into the blue yonder of her own life that seemed so heavenly blessed,  there are other struggles happening that pain my mother heart. What happens when pain and sorrow and trials and tribulations all come to call? If they don't break you they will make you stronger.  No wonder mothers are so ding dang strong. There is sometimes good in things that you don't or can't see until you can see the time and events in retrospect.  Sometimes all a mother can do is love. Sometimes love isn't enough.

Rarely has it happened with three children that everyone is skating forward gracefully at the same time.  Usually the most learning is done at a time when life seems most challenging.  Steel is forged in fire, or so they say.  Parents are forged things, too.   And children, bless their hearts and souls,  are not exempt from the forging process that molds and modifies and shapes and creates.

Skating through life?  Right.  Doesn't happen.

 

Update: Thanks to Merry Mama for honoring this post with a Perfect Post Award. 

Art and Ownership...

Andy Warhol was the innovator of Pop Art.  He took everyday mundane subjects -- the graphic art of products and brands -- and made them art objects in and of themselves, as with the Cambell's Soup can art images he made beginning in the early 1960s.  He also took stars in the popular culture -- Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe -- and made iconic images. 

One of Warhol's Cambell Soup Can images, right, sold at Christie's last spring for $11.7 million.  The soup images are part of our artistic heritage, our cultural memory, our graphic visual product structures.  Warhola's images are more referential, perhaps, than the product images themself, because they are purified, enhanced and appreciated off-the-shelf.

What is happening, though, to art now and who owns it and can keep it contained in terms of traditional copyrights?  If you want to try to find what art the Andy Warhol Museum might carry, you are out of luck if you search the museum's web site.  A myspace blogger, JeDonnea, took photographs from the museum and posted them on her site, one of which is below, right.

For the myspace site, the copyright holder is myspace.  Does this mean that myspacers lose all rights to their images if posted on myspace? 
Stanford Professor Lawrence Lessig is attempting to make sense of all of the digital rights and copyrights needed in the newer structures and formats.  The new Creative Commons copyrights are intended to make the structures easier. A very interesting post and commentary on the free economy and the for-pay economy is on Lessig's blog this week, on the economies of culture.

The digital online space is an entirely different way of appreciating, sharing and enjoying art and how ownerships are defined and contained, monitored and protected will be one of the interesting areas of study.  The sands are shifting daily.  The issues of copyrights and functional business models for sites like YouTube and MySpace are being debated.   Free creative content and the issues and trying to generate revenue from them are topics of articles in CNet and Newsweek this week: Is You Tube a Flash in the Pan, Analysts Don't Like YouTube's Chances, and Battling over YouTube.  Blogger Yeuda puts U.S. Copyright code to verse.
 

The economics of artistic and cultural production...fair use, grey areas in the digital realm....

Photos: top left, top right, bottom right,

The Ring...

The ring, the ice rink.  The symbol of love, the symbol of play. The new diamond ring on the left hand.  The ice skates and the blue jeans.  The silver metal of the skates and the platinum of the band. Prongs holding diamonds and rinks holding throngs. My husband still holding my hand as our daughter reaches for the hand of her new fiance.

There could be a lot to wax philosophical about in recounting the story, in retelling the tale.

Instead I just enjoyed the precious moments, minute-by-minute as they happened, and again, reliving them, as I created a permanent record of it here.  I played with the photo to make it have a little artsy ooommph effect. Denim and diamonds.  Sort of a Texas thing.

Skating through life: metaphorical, but that is what I hope for them, and it is always more fun with others. 

Will You Marry Me?

The Setting: Central Park Ice Skating Rink at noon amidst all the day-after-Thanksgiving skating crowds on a perfect sunshiny day.

The Guy (to his mom, earlier that day): Which knee do I kneel on?

The D.J. at the Wollman Rink before playing the cd of "their song": Everyone please come to a complete halt.  Please stop skating.  Will (guy)  and (girl) please come to the center of the rink. 

Two female skaters, one after the other, anticipating what was to happen: Get on your knees, on your knees!

The Guy: Will you marry me?

The Girl: (who thought she was getting in trouble for skating backwards!) Yes (in tears).

The Crowd: Ooohhhhhh.

Little Sister, an hour later: You'll need to change your Facebook profile.

Little Sister, during a Girl Fest Manicure later that day, to her soon-to-be sister-in-law: We're going to be killer bridesmaids.

Mom: Can I blog this?

Dad: You should write about how perfect and special this was.

The Girl, two days later: For more information, go to The Knot  and scroll down the right side to the "Couples Wedding Page" and it is listed under his name.

A Perfect Day...

After raining on Thanksgiving, the sun came out and the weather was perfect. 

We had a call a few weeks ago from the guy who has been the special, special boyfriend of our oldest daughter.  We've known him since grade school.  They learned to line dance with their Texas classmates during Go Texas Days and went through confirmation classes together.  I think he was part of a crew that (secretly) decorated our house with toilet paper during a fifth grade girls' slumber party. He's been around so long he's almost one of our own, it seems.  His mother and I served on the PTA and she was on the board with me of the dance cotillion classes.

He asked for our daughter's hand in marriage and asked us to give our blessings.  We did.  He has been so respectful of our daughter and of us; he has had our blessings for a long, long time. Little sister, who NEVER keeps a secret, overheard (it is very hard not to be overheard in our little bird perch place).  We knew how and when he was to propose.  He asked us to be there, along with his family.  With his mother's help, he orchestrated the most perfect proposal. My eyes weren't the only ones tearing up.

Our daughter had no idea.  Little sister and brother kept the secret.

It was such a romantic, perfect, auspicious day.  The sun was streaming through the trees, making the day sparkle. The air was crisp and fresh after the rains of Thanksgiving.  The love and hope was touchable, tangible and there, for all of us who love them, to share. 

Cell Phone Shirts, Cell Phone Symphonies and Wired Nations...

Sometimes I think about socialization indicators and incremental cultural changes and how we are accommodating and adapting to these new things that are altering us in the process of extending ourselves technologically. 

Don't you need a gadget shirt?  Gadget pants hit the market awhile back... the cargo pants with the leg pockets.  Hannah Perner-Wilson is developing conceptual clothing for our mobile gadget lifestyles.  But this isn't just about her designs for clothing with pockets for the gadgets.  Smart fabric materials can also encase gadgets to prevent personal information and data from being surreptiously scanned with RFID sensors.

Something else new: an art to the culture of the phone tone! Forget cacophony. Think Symphonic. For real.  The haute culture of ringtone performances has hit the stage.  "It was like an aviary gone mad," as scores of celluar phones trilled and beeped at once in a concert auditorium when the Chicago Sinfonietta played its world premier Concertina for Cell Phones.  Teenagers define themselves with ringtones.  I define friends and family by their rings on my cell phone.

Cell phone trends: Teenagers and young adults are using cell phones instead of landlines.  3/4 of adults have a cellphone, more than those who have landlines. Wireless texting is altering our language as I've written earlier.  Edinburgh is using text messaging to report crimes while controversy has been sparked by highschools in Australia wanting to teach text messaging.  Eventually we will not need to be "tethered" to landlines at all. 

U.S. Falling Behind in Broadband Access? It is a scandal to be publicized, a Taiwanese legislator told Susan Crawford, in questioning the U.S. internet policy and how other nations are leapfrogging ahead of the U.S. The top five wired nations in '05 were: Singapore, Denmark, Canada, the U.S. and Sweden. I'm not sure where the U.S. is today.   Information access and connectivity...the new name of the game.

Photo: plusea  Content by MotherPie

Leopard: A Classic...

Leopard has now joined the Little Black Dress and the White Shirt as a classic.  It just won't go out of fashion.

My youngest daughter was the one who got us hooked on leopard.  The two of us (we, cat lovers that we are) became besotted.  I was sure, then, about six years ago, it would go out of style.  Ha. These leopard things are the one things in my wardrobe that remain current.

Neiman Marcus is selling these leopard shoes by Manolo Blahnik.  If you have roots in Texas, you know the power of Neimans.  But I'm seeing this everywhere in Manhattan. Madison Avenue shops have leopard shoes on store front display.  Bloomies has purses with the print.  It must appeal to our wild side.

Blog Survey Continues..

My research project on blogging continues.  If you haven't yet taken the Blogging Survey, please do so. 

If you want to email it to others or post it, here is the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=564962849730

There are over 500 responses so far.  The survey will remain open until December 6.

Thanks to everyone who has participated!!!  This project is for my graduate course in Digital Media Theory and I'll post results here.

Thanksgiving Day: Rainin' on the Big Parade...

Life is a Big Parade;

a sometime charade.

Wonderful memories

we hope won't fade

after they are made.

Our memories will be made elsewhere, not street-side. We won't be at Macy's 80th parade, standing in the rain, braving the gusty northeaster.  It is 41 degrees and raining hard.  This might be the most miserable day of the year, weather-wise.  It is the sort of day in NYC that even a sturdy umbrella can't make us hit the streets and stand by the curb.