16 June 26
Nervous Energy
I’ve never been diagnosed with ADHD, but wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn it’s something I’ve lived with all my life. In some ways, it’s been something of a superpower. But it means that concentrating on just one thing seems impossible. And when it comes to listening or watching football, I have GOT to be doing something with my hands.
I have just entered the sweater pictured at right into our county fair, which takes place every August. I am planning to line it with silk, which will hide a lot of the mess caused by stranded colorwork (and make it much more pleasant to wear). There are now long sections that don’t require much concentration, making it the perfect World Cup knitalong.
Lionel Messi, nearly 39, just scored a hat-trick for Argentina, a massive feat for any player. I am not qualified to judge who the Greatest Player of All Time might be, but a lot of people who are think he’s it. That we have been alive to witness him AND Cristiano Ronaldo playing, egging each other on, is a privilege. (The game has changed a lot since Maradona and beyond him Pelé were in their prime, and such comparisons are sort of fruitless if entertaining.)
Lots more to go on this sweater but there’s a lot more football to follow over the next few weeks.
15 June 26
Drawing Signs
One of my favorite photographers is Walker Evans, who was a master at photographing the American vernacular landscape. We were fortunate enough to see an exhibition of his work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art eight-and-a-half years ago. There is a collection of his work published in 1998 that is entitled simply Signs and consists of 50 photographs he took of signage across America.
Signs are important in forming the character of an urban landscape. I was reminded of that a couple days ago when I read through The American Dream? and enjoyed all the illustrations of signage along Route 66 sketched in pen and wash. I decided I needed to sketch more signs, so yesterday I drew the building shown here at left. This hair salon is on G Street in Davis, on the opposite side of the street from the Davis Food Co-op.
14 June 26
Mundial
I know I said I was going to boycott the World Cup. I’m not, it turns out.
ETA That means many hours per day at the moment. It’s not sustainable. But Spain is playing this morning….
13 June 26
Russell and A
Here’s my sketch today of the house at Russell Boulevard and A Street in Davis looking across from Russell. This is right across the street from campus; in the lower right corner of the sketch one can see light towers on a campus playing field. The house belongs to the Chi Omega woman’s fraternity.
Pica has a good collection of graphic memoirs on our bookshelves, and looking for something to read there late this morning I found a copy of The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66, by Shing Yin Khor. A lovely little book chronicling a road trip the author took in April 2016. I was heartened to see the technique the author uses for their illustrations which is similar to the way I’m sketching now. There are three layers in their illustrations — an underdrawing in blue colored pencil, black ink line work. and watercolor washes. I’m finding I really like having an underdrawing before putting in the ink line work.
12 June 26
Mail Art -- For the Dead
This evening’s Friday Night Comics workshop was about mail art. Ron Regé has been sending art and zines through the mail for decades. We were encouraged to write or draw a letter to a specific person (it could even be yourself) and refrain from photographing it but rather putting it in an envelope and mailing it.
The Postal Service for the Dead is something I’ve encountered in my work with VEOLI (Visualizing End of Life Issues). A member of the comics community at SAW was recently diagnosed with leukemia and had a stroke before she’d even started chemo. She died shortly thereafter.
I didn’t know Kayte well but had interacted with her several times, always finding her a positive and inspiring presence. I made a zine this evening, filled it, and it will go in tomorrow’s mail to the Postal Service for the Dead. I like the idea of illustrating letters and think I’ll write more to those who have passed on…
11 June 26
And Then There Were Forty-Eight
The World Cup is now underway with two matches played today. This is not a World Cup I have much enthusiasm for, owing to the United States having alienated the rest of the world over the past year-and-a-half, including the other two host countries. Nevertheless, interesting storylines will emerge over the upcoming five weeks, I am sure.
Five weeks, not four as in the past. In its infinite wisdom FIFA has expanded the number of participating nations from thirty-two to forty-eight. In all likelihood this will make the group stage of the tournament less exciting since on average there is more of a range in quality from the strongest team to the weakest team in each group. FIFA may even continue in this direction: there is discussion of expanding the field to sixty teams for the 2030 World Cup which will take place in Morocco, Portugal, and Spain.
The nearby bakery will be showing the matches on a big screen outside on its patio. Pica was thinking of watching the first match there, but it was already 96° F outside at noon when it started, so that idea got nixed.
10 June 26
Olé León Olé
Numenius wrote yesterday about the Pope’s visit to Spain. Unlike him, I’m [still nominally] Catholic. I haven’t attended Mass for years, though this Pope’s fearlessness in criticizing autocracy is inspiring and almost has me wanting to reconnect.
Fr. Massimo Faggioli, who is a professor of Ecclesiology at University College Dublin, was interviewed by France 24 recently and talked about the rock star quality of popes. I was an active Catholic in the early 80s and went by bus from Birmingham University to Wembley to see Pope John Paul II, the first of the rock star popes. (His subsequent authoritarian tendencies and in particular his favoring of Opus Dei soured me on the papacy and on Catholicism in general, and in the United States the church tends to be far more conservative than in the UK, which doesn’t sit well.) But this Pope? Instead of worrying that he’d be eclipsed by Bad Bunny, who was in Madrid (and who my niece flew to Spain to see in concert at the Estadio Metropolitano last week), he decided to meet with him. At the Bernabéu no less. (When asked whether he supported Real Madrid or Barça, he said as Pope, he has to support all teams; as Prevost, he supports Real.) Well over a million people turned out to see him as he celebrated Mass in downtown Madrid.
I’m impressed by the breadth of the program in Spain, by the Pope’s willingness to dip his toe into Catalan which he speaks with a Brazilian accent, by his visiting a jail. By the performance of Sara Baras and the impassioned speech by Antonio Banderas in support of the arts. It’s been quite the trip.
Side note: I’m categorizing this post as “political” because like it or not this visit is highly political in all kinds of ways, not least in putting Trump’s nose badly out of joint again.
9 June 26
El Papa Llega
I am not Christian, let alone Catholic, but I have been entranced by the visit of Pope Leo XIV to Spain. He has a lot of fans in the United States: the first American pope has not been afraid to take on American authoritarianism. The spectacle of his tour in Madrid and now Barcelona has been affirming somehow, what with 1.2 million people present for the Mass he led in the Plaza de Cibeles on Sunday. I’ve watched a couple of his speeches in Spanish and the bit that he read today in Catalan.
Tomorrow is I think the centerpiece of his trip to Spain — he will go to the Sagrada Familia where he will inaugurate the Tower of Jesus Christ on the 100th anniversary of the death of the architect of the cathedral, Antonio Gaudí. This centenary would have a big deal in Barcelona even without the visit of the Pope, but he clearly was happy to time his visit to Spain to be present for it.
Prior to the event at the Sagrada Familia, he is heading up to the monastery at Montserrat. Visiting both sites in one day seems like too much to take in, but he won’t have to stand in line to enter. If I were him, I’d ask to see the Llibre Vermell.
8 June 26
Lieblingsautoren
I’ve been a member of an advanced German conversation group for several years, run through International House Davis. A year or so into it our leader got ill and was no longer able to run the group, which had been meeting on zoom since the start of the pandemic. Given that several of our members lived outside of Davis, we carried on with zoom. Since Paul’s death I’ve been running the zooms, though not necessarily leading the group (though by default that seems to have happened).
One exercise that is very useful when learning a language is to write in it. Dictionaries are ok but it’s really helpful to write down what you might say to someone in conversation, with a bit more time to think about it than on the spot. As humans, once we have the basics of a language under our belts, we are adept at finding ways around a problem, a word, a concept we can’t quite bring to the tip of our tongue in a hurry. So it is with writing — we have a little more time to cogitate on what we want to say, and even ponder the more direct way to say it.
Our exercise for this week is to write a paragraph about our favorite author. This is a tough one for me — I have several favorite authors, some of them fantasy writers, some of them graphic novelists, some of them nature writers, some of them even knitters. The problem is compounded when I have to figure out how I can convey this in German (I have already made a presentation on knitting in German to this group and I’m going to bow out of that particular niche). More anon.
7 June 26
For Lease
Here is yesterday’s urban sketch. This is the northernmost corner of the retail mall on G Street north of the Davis Food Co-op. Three of the nine spaces in this mall are vacant, though it does contain a good bike store and our favorite local bakery.