nickinshoreditch

Painting: I haven’t been doing much painting lately and it started to bother me. I realized that I really needed to get back to it. Of course, I had some good reasons for not painting, the primary one being that the flat was so damn hot for most of last week that It just wasn’t pleasant being there during the day. And I was distracted by the sermon, which is now over and done with. But, in thinking about it, I realized that I was sick of the painting I was working on, a sort of homage to Georgia O’Keeffe which had taken a wrong turn at some point and needed to be reworked. But my trip to the Royal Academy got me re-inspired and I’ve started a portrait (thanks to Hockney) and a landscape (thanks to a Nancy Prince photo from Facebook). So I am working on three pieces at once, which is good, I think. As I get sick of working on one (or need to wait for the paint to dry), I can move over to another. I think I’ll go with this approach going forward for a while.

We’re Having a Party!: To celebrate our first year in London, we are going to have a party and invite a bunch of people who have made the year special for us. We are having it at Vagabond’s, a wine-tasting pace in Spitalfields Market that has over 70 wines in special tasting machines. It should be fun. For various reasons September 11th was the only day that fit our schedules. It seems slightly odd to be celebrating the 15th anniversary of that day, but maybe it is good to get over it….

Bake-Off: I am normally not a fan of reality television or those contest shows involving performances by amateur singers and dancers, but I have to admit that I have been won over by “The Great British Bake-Off”. It is show in which a group of amateur bakers, who are just normal looking people, are challenged by the judges to make a variety of things. They are gradually eliminated until one of three is hailed as the winner. One season of it was ending just as we arrived and we watched the final show, when Nadiya, a Muslim woman wearing a head scarf, won, which I thought said a lot about how multicultural this country has become. (This was before Brexit.) We only saw the end of the next season, but yet another season has just started and we are going to try to watch it all the way through. I think there are a number of things that make this show appealing. The contestants are just regular people of all sorts of ages, looks and accents, who are competing because they really love baking. There is no big prize at the end (although Nadiya has become something of a celebrity now.) And the judges and the comedians who act as hosts are gentle and clearly rooting for the contestants. If the cake it too dry or the taste is all wrong, the judges don’t humiliate the person, but instead, gently point out their mistakes. It just has a completely different vibe from American reality contest shows.

 

Brexit Update: So, it has been to and half months and everyone returned from Parliament after their summer break to see what the May-appointed Brexit triumvirate had come up with. The answer: nothing. The only thing we “know” is the “Brexit means Brexit”, Theresa May’s major comment on it all, which could mean virtually anything. Of course, to be fair, I suppose we do know that we should not pay any attention to any of the promises made by the Leave leaders during the referendum. It is the grossest sort of incompetence to seek a result without the faintest whiff of a plan about what to do if you succeed, but that is where we are. You can understand why May wants to put off Article 50, which would trigger negotiations and set a two-year clock running, since her “Brexit brain trust” hasn’t the faintest clue of their position in such negotiations (or much else). The only positive for May so far is that David Davis, Boris Johnson and Liam Fox haven’t started back stabbing. But that is only because they haven’t done a thing, so just wait. The Eurosceptics are taking great solace in the fact that the British stock market is doing great and that the economy, especially manufacturing, is doing OK so far. Of course, they don’t mention that the pound has dropped by 10-15% since Brexit, which has made British products cheaper to export and has helped to prop up corporate profits. We are in the “quiet before the storm” period. (Meanwhile, at the G20 conference, May was treated more like the President of Mexico or PM of Australian than Winston Churchill…..)

Medical Mystery: Every once in a while, the New York Times runs a piece where they describe a real-life person with a series of symptoms that the doctors can’t figure out and ask readers to suggest the cause. That kind of happened to me this weekend. I woke up on Friday with my left cheek swollen, kind of like a spider bite. As the day went along, the swelling increased and I began to feel achy and tired. By the evening, I noticed that gland under the left corner of my jaw was swollen and tender. I figured I was getting the flu or something (aches and swollen glands), although the swelling was a mystery. By Saturday, the swelling was worse, extending to the side of my nose, which was also swollen. I had suffered with night sweats the night before and might have been running a slight fever. I occasionally had chills during the day. I looked awful, but I really didn’t feel all that bad and thought I might even be starting to get better. I still thought I had some kind of flu. Judie called Jim Winslow, who was at the beach in North Carolina during the hurricane. He suggested (a) some sort of dental abscess or infection, (b) a blockage in a salivary gland, (c) a skin infection, (d) a sinus infection, (e) some weird flu he’d never heard of , or (f) some other sort of infection. By Sunday, the swelling had taken over my nose (it hurt to wear my glasses) and had spread to the other side of my face. I was running a fever and was bright red. Judie found a clinic open on a Sunday, so I went over to Wimpole Street and saw a doctor at 11. She diagnosed it as “Cellulitis”, which is an infection of the skin under the outer layer, and prescribed two kinds of antibiotics to go after the two possible bacterias that cause it. Usually there is a break in the skin, although sometimes you can’t see it (as in my case). I went home and looked it up and the symptoms described on the web certainly matched. It actually can be pretty serious if not treated promptly. It’s now Tuesday. I’m still bight red over most of my face, but I feel fine. The swelling has gone down a lot and I can wear my glasses. I really could have gotten very sick, according the websites, so I’m feeling sort of lucky, despite my lost weekend.

One of the things they do here is have periodic Bank Holidays, which create a long weekend. Unlike the U.S., these holiday don’t celebrate any person or group. They are just a day off. We had completely forgotten that this past weekend was a long weekend, so we didn’t make any plans to leave and go to the beach or something. And I had agreed to give Andy a break at New Unity by giving the sermon on Sunday, which made going anywhere impossible anyway. We had fun in London instead of traveling.

David Hockney and Bill Jacklin: We went to the Royal Academy of Arts on Saturday to see the David Hockney Exhibit, “82 Portrait and 1 Still Life”. It is a result of an ongoing project that Hockney is doing. Over the past two or three years, he has been inviting friends and families to sit for him. They each sit in a white chair and he paints them in three days, beginning with a quick charcoal outline. The paintings are all done with acrylics and are quite large, roughly four feet by three feet, so completing a painting in three days is not easy, even for Hockney. The backgrounds started out varied, but quickly change into two colors, which flip, presumably on what they are wearing. The portraits are pretty wonderful individually, but seeing them all in one place is quite incredible. Hockney is amazingly skillful at faces, so much so that it is hard to take your eyes off them. He captures the face, without it being overly realistic. But it is his rendition of the pose and the clothes and hands and feet that really impart a feeling of the subject. (I was happy to see that even Hockney has trouble painting hands and feet, which I find incredibly difficult. One of the early portraits in the series left off the feet, but Hockney decided it was incomplete and never did that again.) His subjects all get to decide what they would wear for the sitting (saying a lot about them), which made you think about what you would wear if you had the chance to sit for him. The one still-life was from a day when someone was supposed to come and didn’t show up. Hockney was all fired up to paint, so he moved the white chair and replaced in with a blue bench with fruit on it and the result is, of course, striking. I’ve included a few samples of the exhibit below, including an excerpt from the catalog which show the process of painting Barry Humphries, but it really doesn’t capture the exhibit. I am now inspired to paint some portraits (but no white chair and probably just head and shoulder shots for me at first).

     

After going through the Hockney exhibit, we decided to take a look at a retrospective of the graphic art done by Bill Jacklin. It was completely different-for one thing it was largely black and white-but it was amazing. This is an artist about whom we knew absolutely noting and we both found his work enchanting. Judie wants to to buy one of his original prints, which it turns out is sort of possible. One of the great things about it from our point of view is that, although he was born in Britain, he was very much a NYC artist and many of his works are from Coney Island or Central Park or Wolman Rink or Grand Central Station. Actually, I think I enjoy discovering a wonderful talent like this as much or more than seeing an incredible exhibit of Calder or O’Keeffe or Hockney. A couple of samples of Jacklin’s stuff follows. He has a technique of spraying oil or turpentine on his engraving block before printing, which creates an etherial kind of effect.

My Sermon/Message: I gave my “sermon”on Sunday, August 28th (at New Unity, they refer to it as a “Message”, since “Sermon” seems too religious). It happens to be the anniversary of the day that we moved to London. I didn’t realize it when I agreed to do it, but it seems appropriate somehow. Rev. Andy was there and did the introductory and concluding stuff, which mean that I only had to do the reading and the sermon. I love the reading, which I excerpted from a TED talk. And my talk was generally about what happens when culture changes and the problems caused when there are winners and losers in a cultural shift. It had a nice structure, although it was hard to really make the point in seven or eight minutes. Everyone seemed to like it and I got a lot of compliments. If you had gotten up at the crack of dawn on the East Coast, you could have watched it live, as New Unity streams the service. If they ever get around to posting the service on the website, I’ll send a link. In the meantime, you could download and read the Reading here and the Sermon here, if you are in the mood.

Notting Hill Carnival: On Monday of the Bank Holiday Weekend, Judie and I went to the Notting Hill Carnival. It sounds like an oxymoron. Who would have thought that such a posh neighborhood would let itself be overrun by a million people furiously drinking Red Stripes and eating jerk chicken by the ton. (I did a little research and it turns out that 50 years ago, when the carnival began, Notting Hill was a West Indian neighborhood that had experienced race riots. Times have changed.) It seemed like every Caribbean person in London was there. It was a mad house and the parade lasts all day since it moves at less than a crawl. When Judie told people at work that we were going to go, they looked askance and said that it was too crowded and dangerous. (And, in fact five people were stabbed on Sunday night, at the end of “Family Day”, and over 450 were arrested over the two days.) But we had fun, despite the mob scene, and left before the crowd became completely drunk and rowdy. A few photos follow:

It has been hot in London this week. Hot meaning mid 80 °F, which we would not consider really hot in the USA, but it is hot here in the land of no air conditioning. It is especially brutal in our flat, with its glass wall of windows facing west. By late afternoon the place is literally a sauna. We can cool it off (a bit) at night, but that means opening all the windows, which means that we hear every truck, emergency vehicle and drunken groups of yabbos going down Commercial Street (and I have learned there are a lot of them). I know it won’t last long and that cold showers can help, but it really is unpleasant. On the plus side, I’ve been exercising more since our gym is air-conditioned.

The Bank of England: It was so damn hot that, in order to get out of the flat, I went to the Bank of England. I actually had a purpose because Rich and Mair had given me old bank notes that could only be exchanged there (very simply as it turned out). It wasn’t that big of a deal since Threadneedle Street is nearby (guess which of the guilds were in that area). Since I was there, I went to the Museum (which was air-conditioned). It’s a museum about a bank, so even though the Bank is one of the oldest in the world, there is a bit of limit on how much fun it can be. A few highlights:

• It began in 1694, when the King needed money for yet another war with France. A loan to the Crown of £1.2M was raised in two weeks. An act of Parliament gave all subscribers a guarantee of 8% per annum interest in perpetuity. There were hundreds of subscribers, from all walks of life.
• There was lots of information about its architectural history. Sir John Soane, the great architect of the 19th century (and the proprietor of the house that is now the Soane Museum), rebuilt the Bank in neo-classical style. It was his greatest work. Unfortunately, after World War I it was decided that the Bank was not big enough and virtually all of Soane’s masterpiece was demolished.
• Kenneth Grahame worked at the Bank for many years, rising to become the Secretary. He had wanted to go to Oxford, but his parents didn’t have the money and he ended up taking the test to work for the bank and got the highest scores ever. In 1903, he was called out to meet a person asking to see him and was shot at three times (all missed). The assailant was subdued with a fire hose and later found not guilty due to insanity. A few years later, he resigned in a dispute over Bank internal politics and moved to a bucolic spot in the country. In 1908, his book, “Wind in the Willows”, was published.

Jeremy’s Little Engine That Could: The latest bizarre moment from the Labour leadership election (although it doesn’t compare to the Trotskyite stuff) happened this week when Corbyn released a picture of him sitting on the floor of a train on the way to Liverpool or somewhere, saying that he train was too crowded and making the point that the railroads should be nationalized. Kind of pointless, but it backfired because it was a Virgin train and (Sir) Richard Branson got his people on it. They produced a CCTV video showing Corbyn walking past countless open seats in order to sit on the floor. It has become a big deal in a campaign that has no real news and probably did play well with his base. Corbyn responded to this by calling Branson a “foreign tax cheat”, which may be true, but has a sort of Trumpian ring to it.

On the one hand, your reaction has to be “Who cares?” On the other hand, here you have the “Leader” of the Labour Party making a pointless demonstration that would have seemed silly thirty years ago. Should he really be concerned about making these points off of the far-left wing wish list (but which will probably excite the Corbynistas) or should he be concerned about being a credible alternative to Theresa May and the Tories, who seem likely to move increasingly to the right as there is no credible opposition? May has already appointed a woman to be the head of the Ministry in charge of international aid whose position is that Britain should not be providing such aid and has advocated the abolition of the department which she now heads. You can expect the Conservatives to say nice things about National Health while simultaneously trying to destroy it. Who is going to stop this country from veering ver rightward? Parliamentary Democracy is supposed to have two parties. That is not the case now.

“Father Brown”: Having finished watching all of the episodes of the mystery, “Vera” (a great show which may not have made it to the States), we have started to watch the “Father Brown”mysteries, based on the books by G.K. Chesterton. They are nice and gentle shows and Father Brown is played by the same actor who played Arthur Weasley in the Harry Potter movies.

The Old Neighborhood: I am constantly learning things about this neighborhood. The history is fun. Bishopsgate Road is the road that you get on when you leave Liverpool Street Station to get to our flat. It originally emerged through the London Wall, built by the Romans to protect Londonium, at Bishop’s Gate. The gate was one of seven in the Wall and was marked with a bishop’s miter (and the usual heads of traitors and noted criminals presumably not notorious enough to make the spikes on London Bridge). The road led to Shoreditch and beyond and was a major thoroughfare. Shakespeare undoubtedly walked along it to get to “The Theatre” on Curtain Road in Shoreditch. It was run by James Burbage and housed the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a troupe that employed Shakespeare as an actor and playwright. When Burbage had a dispute with the landlord, The Theatre was dismantled and it wood shipped to Bankside where it was used to build The Globe.

Right near where Liverpool Street Station is today was the original sight of “Bedlam”, the asylum for the insane which coined the word. It became the first psychiatric clinic in the world, after opening in 1257. Located just outside the Wall (which makes sense), it was originally St. Bethlehem Hospital, a general hospital that became a psychiatric hospital in the 1400s. In typical fashion, Bethlehem was gradually shortened to St. Bedlem Hospital and then finally nicknamed Bedlam. In the late 1600s, Beldam was move to a new location in Moorfields.

If you walk away from the old Bedlam site down toward where the old gate was, you come to St. Ethelburga’s Within Church. (Within means that it was within the city wall, as opposed to St. Botolph’s Without Church, which is a few blocks up the street.) It was constructed in 1250 and rebuilt in the early 1400s. Henry Hudson and his crew took communion there before leaving to seek the Northwest Passage. It survived the Great Fire of 1666 and the German Blitz of World War II, but in 1993, half of it was demolished by an IRA truck bomb that exploded on Bishopsgate and at the church’s doorsteps. (The IRA had given enough warning so that the only person killed was journalist, but there was massive property damage.) It was rebuilt as a Center of Reconciliation and Peace and has a lovely, hidden courtyard.

I spent entirely too much time last week watching the Olympics, which were on almost all waking hours here. It was fun, but too distracting. Now I can get focused on all of the stuff I need to do.

One of my immediate projects involves coming up with a sermon/message to give at the New Unity congregation next Sunday. Andy, our minister there, is in need of a break and the Unitarian movement is too small to have a system of guest ministers giving sermons, as is done in the U.S. So he asked for volunteers and three of us agreed to take a Sunday. The theme for this quarter has been culture, so I have decided to speak about “When Culture Changes”, thinking about the impact of the cultural shifts that have caused things like Brexit and Trump. I only have the vaguest of outlines at this point.

“Groundhog Day: The Musical”: Last week, we went to see “Groundhog Day” at The Old Vic, a musical version of the classic Bill Murray movie. You could imagine how this could turn out very bad, but this adaptation was a wonderful, fast-paced, sometimes hysterical, sometimes poignant celebration. It kept the basic plot of the movie and even a few of the jokes, without trying to duplicate it. The result was something that was new, but equal to the original in its own way. The book was written by Danny Rubin, who wrote the screenplay for the original movie, and the rest of the creative team was the one behind “Matilda, The Musical” (Tim Minchin-music and lyrics, Director Matthew Warchus, Choreographer Peter Darling, designer Rob Howell and others). It was just incredibly clever in so many ways, from the sets to the choreography to use of illusions. Andy Karl, an American actor, played Phil Connors. He’s been in a lot of productions, both on and off Broadway, most recently playing the lead in “Rocky, the Musical”. He didn’t try to ape Bill Murray’s portrayal and instead played Phil as more of a smarmy, sexist, egomaniacal jerk going through a bit of mid-life crisis. He was great and watching him turn from the initial Phil Connors of the opening scene, through various levels of lunacy, desperation and despair, until his final transformation into his best self, was great theater. It was particularly enjoyable watching him repeatedly staggering back through the same opening production number with bands and townspeople singing and meeting Ned Ryerson and then meeting up with Rita and Larry to cover Punxsutawney Phil’s act, with his Phil Connors changing each time it happened and everything else was the same. One of the things that the production was able to do since it wasn’t a Bill Murray vehicle was to spend a little more time fleshing out some of the other characters, which I thought was mostly successful. (Brantley’s review in the NY Times didn’t like the humanizing of Ned Ryerson, but I though that by the time that happened, they had squeezed all the humor out of the insurance agent running gag.) The character of Rita got a little more depth and Carlyss Peer was very good in the part, although it was impossible for her to recreate the radiance of Andie McDowell from the movie. Finally, I though the sections of the production dealing with the redemption of Phil Connors was truly touching and actually better than that part of the movie. I am quite certain that I just saw the Tony Award winner for best musical in whatever year it arrives in New York (which I think may be late fall, when I am sure it will also have moved to the West End here). It is going to run forever and win lots of awards. I’ve bought a ticket to see it again (something I never do) when Judie has her next Women’s Group meeting in our flat.

Connections: One of the central parts of my life over the past fifteen years has been the community at the UU congregation in Montclair. And it is not just our close friends. It is knowing that this person is going through a major illness or has lost parent or that that person is getting a divorce or has a child who just did something special. One of the most difficult things about living in London is missing out on all of these little things that create that feeling of community. (Although we get a different version of that in New Unity, it is one that lacks the depth, although it would be just as meaningful given enough time). Oddly, my best link to my old community turns out to be Facebook, where I have able to follow some of the comings and goings and trial and triumphs of my community. I honestly never thought I’d appreciate Facebook, but I do.

Political Update: The Labour Party debacle continues to slog along. Sadiq Khan, the new Mayor of London, as well as the head of the Party in Scotland have both recently endorsed Owen Smith, but I find it hard to believe that it will make much difference given the way the leadership election will be run. The debates between the two candidates (which are called “hustings” here) have been pretty unremarkable since both Corbyn and Smith are almost identical on most policy issues. Thus, the debates are reduced to moment like Smith being asked to identify Justin Bieber in a photo (he could) and Corbyn being asked if he preferred Trotskyites or Blairites (he refused to pick one!). I think that latter one was my favorite moment of the campaign so far.

Remember Brexit? I think most people though that Britain would be on the path out of the EU by now. But it’s summer time and everyone is on vacation and not paying that much attention, so not much has happened. The biggest problem facing the government is the realization that they do not have anyone who is experienced or qualified to negotiate the zillion new trade agreements that will be required as Britain leaves. The British government has not had to do that for over a generation, as all such agreements had been negotiated by the EU. So the Tories are scrambling around trying to find hundreds of lawyers, accountants, advisors, etc. to do the job. It is going to be a windfall for private firms and their employees, who appear to be the only logical candidates. It is going to cost a fortune. Partly because of this, there is said to be some thought with in the government that the withdrawal process should not even begin until next year sometime. It is safe to say that this will cause big problems for Theresa May, when the eurosceptics that are in the majority of her party return from vacation. Neil Farage (shudder) may even come out of his announced retirement. The fall will also see a number of legal challenges to the process being heard, including the one that argues (persuasively in my view) that Britain cannot withdraw from the EU without an act of Parliament and another in Norther Ireland arguing that Brexit violates the Sunday Accords somehow. Meanwhile, there is a power struggle going on between Boris Johnson and the other two Ministers May appointed to oversee Brexit in a specially created department. It has been a slow period lately, but it may only be the quiet before the storm.

 

The Sound of a London Summer: As you walk around London in the summertime, especially around the City on a a Friday night, you constantly hear this loud hubbub. Then you turn a corner toward the noise and discover 20-100 people all standing outside a pub or some other bar, drinking and talking (and smoking). When there are a number of pubs and drinking establishments all close to each other, the sound never stops, it just raises and lowers in intensity. The murmur of the street is often quite noticeable from our flat, even though we are six stories up.

Leon Trotsky Lives!: English politics is different. In the latest craziness gradually reducing the Labour Party to comical irrelevance, a major dispute haas a risen about whether Trotskyite elements are infiltrating the Labour Party. (And Americans were worried that Bernie was kind of a Socialist….) A little background: Back in the 80s, the Labour Party under Ed Miliband decided that, in order to be taken seriously, they had to get the radical Socialists and Trotskyites out of the party and they threw them out. The major organization that they banned was called Militant, which was especially powerful in Liverpool, so Labour adopted a rule that you could not be a party member if you are a supporter of another party. (One of the Labour pols protesting all of this was a young lad named Jermey Corbyn.) Flash forward 30 years and, unsurprisingly, it appears that a variety of far left organizers and lunatics have been joining the Labour Party. Tom Watson, the Deputy Leader of the Party, has raised the alarm and sent a letter to Corbyn detailing the number of Trotskyites joining the party and specific instructions from extreme Socialist parties to their members to do just that. The Cobynistas deride this as a conspiracy theory but, of course, it is in their interest to have these far left types in the party, since they will inevitable support Corbyn. Watson sys it is not a theory, it is a fact. Corbyn responds that he doesn’t have any problem with expanding the rolls of the Party.

So, is this important or just comic relief in a boring campaign that Corbyn appears likely to win, with or without the votes of these far left faolks? Actually, I’d say it is kind of important in that it say a lot about where Corbyn is taking the Party. Corbyn has always been a “movement” guy, more concerned with making philosophical points than in the problems of governing, which was fine when he was a back bencher, but not so much now that he is the alleged “leader”. (Indeed, it was his nonchalance to Parliamentary politics and real power that led to the vote of no confidence by his fellow Labour MPs.) The Trotskyites and the far left Socialists have no interest in governing either, as they are more interested in fomenting discord, gridlock and disappointment, with the hope that this will lead to discontent with the current government system and result in a Marist revolution. (I recognize that this seems like something from the middle of the last century that was utterly discredited by the 1960s and it is a real sign of how messed up Labour is that anyone is talking about it.) Momentum, the movement supporting Corbyn and seemingly in control of Labour membership, is, like the Trotskyites, a group with little interest in Parliamentary democracy or in developing political power. They are more interested in ideological purity and in attacking the mainstream labor leaders, stuff right out of Leon’s playbook. As this far left element gains a foothold in Labour, the idea that Labour should be an effective opposition Parliament becomes less central. The party is in shambles and the fact is that they do not seem to have prayer of being elected and could be destroyed if a General Election was called. But that doesn’t seem to really bother them. Since Democracy does not work if there aren’t two viable parties (something Americans have come to realize), it should. This whole Labour dispute about the Trotskyite entrants makes you wonder whether to laugh or cry.

And while this pathetic sideshow is going on, Labour is tearing itself apart about who should be allowed to vote in the upcoming leadership challenge. I won’t bother to detail the dispute (and the resulting legal challenge) and the twists and turns that have just ended. As one of my favorite Guardian writers, Marina Hyde, puts it, “To the wider public, Labour has become something that life is too short for.”

The Olympics on the BBC: I’ve been watching the Olympics on BBC and it is a completely different experience:

• To begin with, there are no ads. This leads to lots of kind of entertaining or at least odd air time, where everyone is waiting to start again when NBC tells them that they can.
• The BBC does not broadcast sports with the polish of American TV. I’ve gotten to see some bad commentators, some broadcasts in which the announcers were utterly absent (which is very strange) and I’ve gotten to stare at green pools while someone is figuring out what to do. It is very odd to be watching the tennis final and to have minutes of silence while the match is stopped for commercials.
• The Fijian rugby sevens team has been on of the highlights of the Games for me. As you might imagine, they have never even sniffed a medal of any kind, but their rugby team was utterly dominant, playing a confident and flamboyant form of rugby that no other team could imitate. When they destroyed Great Britain to win the gold medal, the team joined in a circle and sang some sort of song at the top of their lungs while sobbing. I don’t imagine that Americans saw any of it.
• Badminton is an incredibly fast game and fun to watch. Team handball is an utter mystery.
• The BBC still spent lots of time on gymnastics and swimming, but we also got to see too much of sports that Brits are good at, like rowing and cycling. The Brits are like the USA in concentrating on events where they have shot. There just aren’t as many. The good thing is that the sports are sometimes obscure.
• On thing that the BBC does is have essentially two channels showing more typical Olympic coverage and then side channels that you can get with buttons on your remote that allows you to watch field hockey or weightlifting or volleyball or cycling to your heart’s content.

Not really a New Picture: I actually wrote about this picture months ago and had put it aside to see if it was finished. It has been sitting out on top of a radiator and I’ve gotten used to it and have decided that I don’t want to play with it any more. It is a picture of lily pads (obviously, I hope), that was supposed to have frogs until I discovered that I couldn’t really paint frogs.

Meanwhile, I have resumed my homage to Georgia O’Keeffe. It has turned out to be time-consuming and a bit less satisfying than I thought it might be. I may take a break and work on something new, hoping to be more inspired when I return to it.

I’m back in London and, as a result, I’m finally back to my blog. I’m not certain why I can’t seem to keep it up when I am traveling. I guess I just am not in my usual place and I get distracted. And, after all, it is called nickinshoreditch, so maybe I shouldn’t post when I’m not here. My next step is to get back to painting….

It was nice being back in America for a visit, if for no other reason than we got to experience some true, hot summer weather. It’s not so much that going out into a 98 degree day is fun, it is just something that we were never going to do in London (which is a good thing since nothing is air-conditioned, especially our flat).

Liberty: We had a lovely “Rinearson Sisters’ Weekend” at our place in Liberty, NY, which was made extra special by the fact that all of our nieces, nephews and children showed up (for the first time in years), along with my sister Norah. I even got to play a small amount of golf (with Hannah and James). The next weekend, we had our English friends Phil Saunders and Phillip Saunders (both lawyers for the City of London) visit us the second weekend (Phil with Jenny Bakshi). Phillip, who it turns out is a “mad keen fisherman”, hired a guide in Roscoe and went trout fishing in the famous Beaverkill and they all went to the Fly fishing Museum and the Fishing Festival that just happened to be scheduled that weekend. Even more important, we go to spend that weekend with our old friend, Paul Weeks, who drove himself down from Bangor. He has been through a lot in the past couple of years between his illness and injuries and the untimely death of his wife Gig and we really have not been able to be there as much as we would have liked. It was wonderful to be able to spend time with him.

A few things I noticed being in Montclair: In Shoreditch, we feel like we are in a neighborhood completely populated by people between 22 and 32, with very few children. In Montclair, that young adult demographic seems to be utterly missing. Perhaps because I feel a bit less connected to the town after being gone for a year, I also found myself thinking more like a city person as I drove around. We love Montclair and our friends there and look forward to our return, but it is now easier to envision a move into New York City at some point.

Adventures in Bureaucracy: Judie and I flew back to America on the very date that her employment at Bryan Cave officially ended. That meant that Judie’s U.K. visa expired at the same time, raising the issue of how we were going to get back to London. K&L Gates, her new firm, has been very helpful, hiring a boutique immigration firm to help us, and it finally all worked out. We made it infinitely more complicated by having passports due to expire in seven month and, in Judie’s case, completely filled with stamps, etc, leaving no place to put the new visa. So I got to spend the first couple days of this trip figuring out a way to quickly renew our passports with Judie out of town for the week. At the same time, I had to detail every foreign trip each of us took in the last ten years, along with countless other stuff for our visa. (Why they need information about each of my deceased parents is a mystery.) They also wanted my marriage license to prove that I was married to Judie, which meant a trip to Norwalk, Connecticut. Thanks to all of that and spending lots of money of expedited service, we finally got our visas in our new passports on the Friday before we were set to leave. They are only good for six months (because Judie is in a new job), so they expire in early February. This is a bit problematic since our house is rented through March 15th (and the idea of moving late January is not appealing anyway). I’d like to figure out a way to stay until late March. I assume it is possible.

Woodstock Nation Remembered: We decided to go to Bethel Woods Art Center while we were up in the Catskills. It is about 25 minutes from our place and is the site of the original Woodstock concert. There is a big stage and lawn seating right where the original stage had been at Max Yazgur’s farm. We went on a tour of the accompanying Woodstock museum, led by a guy who had been at the festival and appears to have enjoyed the chemical entertainment as well as the music. He was a bit of a comical space cadet, but ultimately really had nothing much to impart. The exhibit itself was a bit repetitive, but kind of interesting. If you lived through the 60s and saw the movie, there were no great revelations, but the sections dealing with how the town dealt with it and how Woodstock ended up in Bethel gave another view of things that made it worthwhile. And the music videos were great.

R.I.P. Mets: I got to go to a Mets doubleheader while I was in the States. It was brutally hot, but fortunately, Bob Benno and I were sitting in the shade. The Mets got good pitching, were unable to score much and split the twin bill, which pretty much sums up their season. The injuries to Wright (it may not be career ending, but he’ll never be the same player), Duda and Harvey for most of the season were huge blows. D’Arnaud, typically, got injured and then did nothing since coming back other than allow everyone to steal bases at will. Conforto and Wilmer did not develop. Cespedes carried them for a while and then he got hurt. It is just not happening for them this year. Their pitching is still impressive and they’ll have it for a few more years, so they ought to be contenders next year when I get back to being a full-time fan.

Trump: It may be that we were in America for the pivotal moments of the election. When we arrived, Trump had gotten his convention bounce and was roughly tied with Hillary. Then came the Democratic convention, which was incredibly well produced and seemed very effective to me, despite the sour grapes of some Bernie supporters. There were great speeches every night, with the Obamas reminding us how much we will miss them. So Hillary got her big post-convention bounce and Trump compounded it with his attack on the Kahns and on babies and on everything but apple pie. The election seemed to turn in those two weeks. It may be that it will turn back, but it may also be that the election narrative has been set and that Trump is stuck as being perceived as the utterly unprepared crazy person that he is. The other thing that I believe is happening is that most people really don’t pay that much attention to the election until about now (unlike me, for instance) and only just started to take a close look at Trump in the last few weeks and were horrified by what they saw. I hope this isn’t just wishful thinking on my part.

Georgia on My Mind: I finally went to the newly expanded Tatre Modern and I am now thinking a lot about Georgia O’Keeffe. As I walked through the amazing exhibit of her art from 1915 through the 1960s at Tate Modern, I kept thinking about how I could try to adopt some portions of her style to what I am trying to paint. I’ve already started playing around with this idea and have a half finished painting in the kitchen. I really need to go the museums more often. It so often leads to inspiration.

Other than the art itself, the highlight of the exhibit for me was learning more of O’Keeffe’s amazing life story. She knew she wanted to be an artist at the age of 12 and in 1915 she was teaching art in South Carolina and creating charcoal drawings. She sent some of them to her friend Anita Pollitzer in New York, one of her fellow art students, who she had been corresponding with about the art scene there. Pollitzer decided to show the drawings to Alfred Stieglitz, the famous photographer who also ran the most influential, avant-garde gallery in NYC. Stieglitz was blown away and contacted O’Keeffe immediately, starting a professional relationship, love affair and marriage that would last until his death in the mid 1940s. Her charcoal drawings were included in a group exhibit at his gallery in 1916 and she was on her way. (The one below was one of them and was an attempt to express the feeling of a headache.) The first room of the Tate exhibition included both the O’Keeffe’s charcoal drawings that were at that first exhibition and Stieglitz’s photos of the exhibition itself and the room was designed to mimic the original exhibition space you saw in the photos.

This sort of attention to detail continued throughout the exhibit. In the room highlighting O’Keeffe’s New York phase, for example, they had not only her iconic paintings looking down on Manhattan from the 30th floor of the hotel where she lived with Stieglitz but also the photos that he had taken of the same views. Her paintings in New Mexico were accompanied by photos of the same vistas by Ansel Adams, who was often her traveling companion. (Stieglitz decided that New Mexico was O’Keeffe’s place and not his and mostly stayed in New York for her visits to Ghosts Ranch.) The exhibit did what I think a really great artist’s retrospective has to do. It contained numerous examples of her art over the years, including some of her most iconic works. And it also gave you an idea of what Georgia O’Keeffe was like and what drove her to paint in the way that she did. I’ve always loved her work and now I know why.

It’s Only Rock and Roll, but I Like It: On Thursday afternoon, Judie (who really needed a break from the law firm move stuff) and I went to the Saatchi Gallery near Sloane Square to see an exhibit celebrating the Rolling Stones. It had been curated with a lot of input from Mick and Keith (and maybe some of the others) and was a remarkable look back at their career. The Stones appear to have had an unusual sort of self-awareness about what they were doing and saved a huge amount of material over the years. The entire archive must be overwhelming. There were big sections about their music and their extensive studio work in recording (and creating) their music, which actually runs somewhat counter to their image as one of the greatest concert bands ever. In a way, what was even more interesting was how involved they were in all of the design elements of their tours, albums and performances. So there were samples and stories about the creation of their album covers and tour posters and the original designs and samples for the lips and tongue logo. There was a large section about what they wore when performing, with fashion designers and Mick and Keith talking about the various phases they experienced, all accompanied by the actual clothing and videos of them performing while wearing it. There was a period where they were very tight with Andy Warhol, who designed album covers like “Sticky Fingers” and also did a series of striking portraits, which were there of course. And one of the odder parts of the whole exhibit was a recreation of the flat where four of them lived around 1962, when they were all about 20 or so. It was a spectacular mess. The whole thing was very creative and detailed and a real visual and aural treat. It ended with a 3D video of the Stones performing “Satisfaction”. These guys were more than just a great rock and roll band. They were artists. The exhibit moves the New York in November.

“New York, New York”: We’ve been here eleven months now, which is past the halfway point of our stay. I am already starting to anticipate our return and have been feeling a bit sad and nostalgic about the idea of leaving London. At some point, I think I will write a post about all of the things I am going to miss about living here. I’ve even pondered the idea of staying for an extra month or two. Then last night, Judie was playing the Jonathan Schwartz Show (from WNYC) on the Internet and Frank Sinatra came on, signing “New York, New York”. This instantly brought back memories of being at Shea Stadium in 1986. The Mets had just won the World Series and the Mets played that song (which they didn’t usually do) and over 50,000 people (including us) roared along at the top of our lungs. It is the ultimate song about New York (and Frank sings it better than anyone). It really reflects how New Yorkers view their city with the lines like “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere” (actually like London) and “a city that never sleeps” (unlike London). My little town blues melted away and I realized how much I am looking forward to returning home.

Back in the USA: On Sunday, Judie and I return to America for a little over two weeks. Judie will be visiting her mother in North Carolina, going to a conference in San Francisco (her first appearance as a K& L Gates attorney) and then coming back for “Sister’s Weekend”, our annual family reunion in the Catskills. I’ll be mainly hanging out in Montclair, going to a Mets game, playing a little golf and spending the weekends in Liberty. We extended our stay by a day or two so that we could celebrate Hannah’s 20th birthday with her and we will be going to Philadelphia to visit Alex and Lucy and see their new apartment. Finally, we will hopefully be able to get our new visas, since our current ones are through Bryan Cave and expire when Judie leaves the firm. K&L Gates will have a boutique immigration law firm helping us and will pay for expedited service and says it can be done. The new visa will only be good for six months, which only gets us to early February of next year, over a month before our tenants leave our house. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. So we’ll be seeing some of you soon. My pace of blogging will probably slow or even stop during this period.

It is said that there is an old Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” I am feeling particularly cursed right now. In addition to the current Brexit soap opera and the implosion of the British parties, there is the Hilary/Trump horror show and an incipient race war. And if that wasn’t enough to make me crazy, there was the terrible attack in Nice followed immediately by the wild night of the attempted coup in Turkey. I thought about lighting a candle at New Unity on Sunday hoping for a week without news. But with the party conventions approaching in America and the Labour Party here sharpening their swords in preparation for hari kari, I am probably hoping in vain.

Judie’s Big News: Speaking of interesting times, one the things that has made the last couple of months extra interesting is that Judie has been exploring the possibility of leaving Bryan Cave, her law firm for the past eleven years. Well, the exploration is over. Judie is leaving Bryan Cave and moving the K&L Gates, another huge multinational law firm. Judie just told the people in the BC London office and they were predictably very nice and understanding about it. It is a very long story that Judie should tell, but, basically, BC had stopped appreciating her. It is a wonderful law firm and was the perfect firm for Judie in mnost ways over the past decade.But now, she needed a firm that could better deal with the kind of tech companies and startups that seek her out. K&L Gates seems to fit her practice much better than the current BC. (The Gates in the name is from a Seattle-based firm that was absorbed into the legal conglomerate. He was a named partner whose son got very involved in the computer industry. You may have heard of him.) The next month or two may be a bit chaotic and bumpy (“interesting”), but this was a move that needed to be made unless Judie wanted to simply coast into retirement. It doesn’t affect our London stay.

George: This bit of news in “interesting” in its worst sense. George Griggs is someone I’ve known since the fall of 1970. We have kept up over the years, talk on the phone and see each other and our families periodically. We are close friends. We hadn’t heard from him for a while and since we are going to be back in the US for two weeks pretty soon, Judie sent him a note asking if he was around. When he wrote back, he revealed that he had some kind of weird cancer in and around his eye. He recently underwent an operation which removed one eye, leaving him somewhat disfigured. This is shocking and distressing news for me and for our many mutual friends. I have so many memories about him, which I’d relate but I don’t want to make this sound like a eulogy, since he is very much alive and hopefully cancer-free now. But I am shaken.

Back to Lords: I wouldn’t have predicted or believed this, but I ended up going to a second day of the Test Match. One of Judie’s partners had access to an extra pair of unused tickets. I thought that they might be in the pavilion area, which would have been truly fun, but it turned out that they were in the in the first row of the upper grandstand. Much better seats, if for no other reason than they were in the sun and it was a beautiful summer day. We were surrounded by people drinking champagne and eating sandwiches as I tried to explain what was going on to Judie and our neighbors filled in some of the gaps in my knowledge. Behind us we two gents with those sort of landed gentry accents that comedians make fun of. They were wearing the orangish and yellowish Lords ties and spent the day talking about hunting, real estate, the “good chaps” they knew in powerful positions, their cricket memories and other things that the upper crust types discuss over the course of a long afternoon. Listening to them was like being upstairs in Downton Abbey with Lord Grantham. The cricket was spectacularly cricket-like. There was one stretch of well over an hour in which Pakistan, who were now batting again, made absolutely no effort to score a run, just tapping balls into the ground or letting them pass. I imagine that there was some kind of strategy involved, but it escapes me. It didn’t seem to work that well because Pakistan didn’t appear to have added enough to their first inning lead, giving England a real chance to win the match when they ended up batting the next day. But the English batters crashed and burned and didn’t even make it to the fifth day. The television commentators were disgusted.

Abbey Road: We left a little early and went out the back of the Cricket Grounds and walked down Groves End Road to the intersection of Abbey Road, where the Abbey Road Studios are located. There was the street crossing from the Beatles album with lots of people walking across the crosswalk and taking each others pictures. We of course did the same and the photos are below. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to drive down Abbey Road since traffic was backed up due the constant pedestrian crossings, which made it tricky to get a good picture.

 

My Sweet Lords: On Thursday, I went to Lords Cricket Ground. It bills itself as the home of cricket and is to cricket what St. Andrews is to golf. (If that analogy means nothing to you, feel free to skip ahead.) It seemed like something that I really had to do since I understand cricket from my days in Australia and appreciate it on a certain level. Lords is in St. Johns Wood, which is an inner suburb of London and therefore incredibly easy to reach. I went to see a Test Match between England and Pakistan (which was actually sold out, so I had to buy tickets on line.) Since it was a Test Match, play began at 11:00 and went to 6:30, with breaks for lunch and tea. I only saw the first day of the match, which will go on for four (!!) more days. Pakistan was up first and it was looking good for England, who captured their fourth wicket just after lunch, leaving Pakistan at 134 for 4, with four of their five top batters out. But England didn’t pick up another wicket for four hours as two guys you’ve never heard of put together a 150 run partnership. England picket up two more wickets right before the end of play of the day to turn things back slightly in their favor. I won’t subject you to any more cricket talk.

Lords consists of an old pavilion which is for members only and big new grandstands. Paul Jee, who I went with, told me that his brother-in-law tried to join and was on the waiting list for 28 years. If you do become a member, you get to wear a hideous mustard yellow and reddish burgundy colored striped blazer and sit in the Pavilion with the other members, who must all wear a jacket and tie. The remainder of the stands (where I sat with the rest of the hoi polloi) are relatively modern and are surrounded by bars and food stands. But almost everyone appeared to have brought their own food and drink. Indeed, when I got on the Jubilee tube line to St. John’s Wood, it seemed like every other person had a cooler or back pack or both. Drinking and eating are an important part of the experience, since so little actually happens on the field. It is much more boring than watching cricket on TV, where you don’t really have to pay that much attention. But when you are there and it is live, you end up watching it and nothing much happens. Unlike baseball, which at least has an occasional pivotal moment (3 and 2, 2 outs, runners moving or stud pitcher vs. big slugger with men on), Test cricket has no moments. Here is a typical bit of action: the bowler (pitcher) runs about 100 feet and finally hurls the ball towards the batter, who just taps it into the ground and doesn’t move (he doesn’t have to). Someone picks it up and tosses it to another guy who spends 15-20 seconds rubbing the ball against his leg. He then passes it to another guy, who passes it to another guy, who finally gives it to the bowler who is walking back to begin his run up again. This whole process takes at least two minutes. Then you repeat it. Endlessly. They were supposed to play 90 overs (which each consist of six pitches), but they couldn’t complete them by 6:00, so they were given an extra thirty minutes and still couldn’t finish. There is always tomorrow and the next day and the day after that…. It is really more of a social even than a sporting event. Everyone just sits around chatting and drinking and eating.

You might think why would anyone watch this? Well, it was filled to capacity (which is 30,000–I looked it up) and nobody left, except to go to the bars or the Veuve Clicquot tent. It is really a sport for a much earlier time, with its languid pace, and provides an excuse to drink all day. So while it isn’t a compelling sport to watch, being there for a day is incredibly British and oddly entertaining. (But you’d have to be lunatic to go to all five days.) It is clearly not a sport designed for the working classes, who would never have had the opportunity to take a day off to sit around and watch twenty-two guys all dressed in white play this obscure game.

Boris is Back: The ashes of his most recent flame out were still smoldering, when the phoenix named Boris emerged to become the nation’s Foreign Secretary. It was a kind of stunning move by Theresa May. Assuming that Boris does not undergo a personality change, why would she put such an undiplomatic person in the position of Britain’s main diplomat? Some theories:

• It was a part of her overall strategy to put the Brexiteer leaders in charge of trying to work out how Britain will leave the EU. If it all goes badly, as it probably will, she will be able to point to these appointments and say that she took Brexit seriously and tried to make it work and try to blame it all on them. Boris was the face of the Brexit camp and fits this theory. Since she reportedly hates Michael Gove, who is toxic right now after his betrayal of Boris anyway, Boris was the choice.
• Boris is the most (some would say only) charismatic leader among the Conservatives and would not have let his recent fall from grace make him shut up. She probably thought that it is better to have Boris inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.
• May is pretty boring, especially compared to Cameron, who, for all of his many faults, really can be quite funny and entertaining. Someone has to entertain the masses and the Murdoch readers and Boris is the perfect guy to do that. He is a wonderful clown and could be a useful distraction.
• It gets Boris out of the country for long periods of time.
• If Boris turns out to be great at the job, which is not impossible since he is a smart person, she gets the credit for appreciating his potential to grow up. If he crashes and burns, she can just fire him and the rest of can wait and see if he rises up yet again.

Hip, Hip Hooray?: Judie and I joined a health club last week. Its claim to fame is that when it first opened its doors to women, a very young Diana Spencer joined before leaving for a bigger role. My hips have been killing me and my physiotherapist recommended a series of exercises. Of course, now not just my hips, but all of the other muscles in my legs hurt as I finally exercise for the first time in over a year (other than lots of walking).

 

New Painting: I feel like I often struggle with paintings, trying to fine tune them and seeking a look that I sometimes cannot quite accomplish. I find myself stuck sometimes. The result is that I don’t seem to be able to paint some thing in a smooth, step-by-step sort of way. I marvel at artists who can just sit down and bang outa painting. But my most recent painting was a bit different. I picked out the picture and the painting just emerged bit by bit. As you can see, it is really four stripes, and I did them one by one, but what was nice was that each of them emerged relatively effortlessly, although each took a bit of time. Maybe it is a sign that my technique is improving. The painting is of a view during a walk on the Isle of Skye. It doesn’t quite capture the beauty of the Isle of Skye (and the photo of the painting isn’t that great), but I like it.

Britain is Stumbling Towards Something: It is all bizarre, but it seems like it might be coming to some sort of an end. It is at least an end from the Conservatives point of view. Of course, I’ve been thinking this for the past three weeks and some new convulsion has always followed. Indeed, Labour now seems to descending into its own internecine fighting and a really ugly fight.

Conservatives: The internal war in the Conservative Party has really been going all year. The whole Brexit referendum was really about the split in the Conservative Party and Cameron’s desire to get the Eurosceptics to finally shut up. Well, that didn’t work very well, did it? The ugliness in the Brexit campaign was all from the Conservative’s side (and the utterly creepy Neil Farrage of UKIP, of course), so it was inevitable that retribution would follow the vote. What was kind of surprising was that the bloodletting did not occur behind closed doors but, instead, were spectacular public executions. Now, somehow or other (and if you want to assume that there was some sort of back room conspiracy here, you would not be alone), the Tories decided that nine weeks of inevitably nasty campaigning to choose the next PM would just prolong the agony, so Andrea Leadsom decided (was forced?) to fall on her sword and withdraw, leaving us with Theresa May as an unelected PM. This is probably about as good a result as was possible under the circumstances. May is experienced and reputedly tough. She is certainly right wing, without being too far right. A Conservative election would have forced her to say what she believed and wants to accomplish as PM, so this sudden ascension leaves some mystery about what Britain is really getting. But in the short term at least, Britain does get some semblance of stability, which it desperately needs. In the longer run, May is probably doomed to failure since there is really no way to negotiate an exit from the EU that doesn’t make huge parts of the population massively unhappy. She will either have to give in on immigration and agree to freedom of movement to get free access to the market or protect the borders and cause a recession. She can’t win. But it will take a while for it all to happen and at least the appearance of a firm hand at the wheel might keep the pound from sinking to parity with the dollar by year’s end, as some predict. As I finish this post, May is meeting with the Queen, in the antiquated ceremony in which the Queen asks her to form a new government.

Labour: What a mess! Angela Eagle decided to announce her challenge to Jeremy Corbyn on Monday morning. It is unlikely that the Conservatives did it on purpose (but if they did it was really Machiavellian), but Leadsom gave her surprise announcement withdrawing from the race at the exact same time, effectively preempting Eagle and Labour’s moment. Corbyn has showed no inclination to do anything other than fight this, so a major Labour fight is now in the offing, with a permanent party split or breakup looking somewhere between possible and inevitable. The big immediate question was whether Corbyn needed the support of 51 Labour MPs to run or would he allowed be to run automatically as the challenged leader. Labour’s rules aren’t clear but they ultimately decide to let Corby run automatically. There is still a chance of litigation challenging this. While the sitting Labour MPs are largely united in their contempt for Corbyn as a leader, they also are worried that Corbyn would win any vote of the huge and growing Labour membership. It is hard to predict the outcome of all of this. It does seem likely that the supporters of this challenge will eventually be challenged themselves by Corbynistas. Eagle’s offices have been attacked and the Corbyn people are already plotting to get her constiutency to attack her with a vote of no confidence. The anti-Corbyn MPs are getting death threats. I do think Corbyn means well, but he thinks he is leading a movement rather than a political party and doesn’t completely control that movement. He doesn’t seem concerned about the possibility of an election. So you can see why the sitting MPs, looking at potential electoral slaughter and without a leader who seems cognizant of his political role, are fed up. But the left wing movement people love Corbyn and regard the PMs concerns as treason. So just as the Conservatives have gotten together behind May, Labour appears to be in absolute chaos. It is all really a shame because Britain really could use an effective party to counter the Conservatives.