Venice (Again): For Art Lovers Only!

 

Truly, there is art everywhere in Venice; it does the hearts of us artists good to know that hundreds of thousands of people travel from all over the world to see art. Sometimes, we feel like we labor in a gigantic vacuum...

Like the above sculpture, and the  one below. These works weren't even part of the official Venice Biennale. They were installed in a small park along The Grand Canal. And there were several of these shady little oases along our walk out to the Biennale. I liked this piece because it was a sleek, blue horse. 

The Biennale itself is pretty hard to describe. It's like a world's fair, but devoted entirely to art. It's set in a huge park and there are permanent pavilions- like a slew of them(!) all in different architectural styles- strewn all over a vast parkland. It was great to have a cover of trees as it was sooooo hot when we were there. (The city of Venice is mostly stone and hard surfaces. It was delightful to have grass and gravel under foot instead of relentless stone!) So in each building, one or two countries have an artist featured. The theme of this year's Biennale was "Foreigners Everywhere" and featured work by artists who have been displaced or marginalized. Some pretty crazy work!! Jeffery Gibson, a gay Native American artist, was chosen to represent The United States. His work really resonated with me as he uses beads (an incredible amount!!) and lots of text to spell out thought-provoking phrases. Here are a couple of (not great) pictures which do not do justice to his amazing work:

Or:

But there was so much variety! And you can only marvel at the resilience and detirmination of some of these artists! Like the image below. An artist originally from Korea is making beautiful and elaborate kimonos... but in Sweden! How different these two countries are! And to try and reconcile these differences in you work...

They were embroidered in lovely mythological ocean images. And in a huge bamboo scaffolding forest! It was pretty spectacular! And you keep staggering from one pavillion to the next... (consuming vast quantities of water along the way. It was HOT!!!)

This may not look like much but somehow, it was very powerful. It was in front of the German pavillion. Grim! (So much of the work was the experience of being there. Very hard to put into words the sensation some of this work inspired.)

And then there were installations like the above: Just lovely colorful, playful environments with electronic music in the background and a kind of jouyous chaos. Quite the variety and contrast.

Some of the best paviliions on offer were the absolute hardest to describe and impossible to photgraph. These works were all from Day 1 at the Biennale. We returned for Day 2 and spent most of at at the second location at a space called The Arsenale where they used to construct big boats. But we went back to the first location as we had missed a few country's offerings. Like the Swiss pavillion!! Oh where to even begin: there was a video on display- on the ceiling that was like being inside a kaliedoscope- tracing all kinds of nefarious doings by the uber rich and big agra and global hegemony. But it was beautiful and swirling and crazeeeeee!!! Oh! my eyes! Oh! my brain!!! Bob and I still can't look at art after our return home...

First Drop: City of Venice

 

It's true: it's almost impossible to take a bad picture in Venice. When I sent a few pictures back to family and friends, my sister Beatrice accused me of using "stock photos". But it really does look like this! Incredible that a city build on trees stood on end (thousands of them) in a lagoon can be real. And so hopelessly picturesque. I know; I'm waxing inarticulate and a mouthful of cliches is rolling out of me...

I wasn't prepared for how much I'd like Venice. I'm actually not that inot water- like beaches and stuff are not my first choice of where to spend a vacation- but Venice was so bizarre. And quiet!! No cars! Obviously crowded with tourists, but quiet...

And it's a silly city! I mean, where else do you spend half your time climbing up stairs and bridges to get to the other side?! What a pleasure to traverse... no dodging cars and taxis. And boats bring everything to the restaurants and stores... and then things are schlepped along on hand carts. They've got it all figured out!

And the architecture is pretty mazing. And no, I am not telling you anything you don't already know, but my mind was sufficiently blown! I probably wandered around with my mouth agape, stymied at how to respond. (Bob was kind enough to allow me to be stupified. I think he was kinda stupified, too!)

I'm so glad we got to go and explore Venice because let's face it, it probably won't be around forever. Climate Change is causing sea levels to rise and Venice apparently suffers crazy flooding every spring. But it's so beautiful! And seemed pretty clean...

Hard to comprehend the space of this square: it's truly vast. I alos have to add that it was really hot when we were there... like REALLY hot. And all the stone buildings and paving just soak up that heat. And obviously, there weren't a lot of trees so the ehat is real. But it's so beautiful... and tehre were small parks and the entire Venice Biennale is in a pretty shady location.

And yes, the canals are chock-a-block with gondolas... and gondoliers! You can't make this stuff up! I took to wondering if there were clumsy godoliers who ran into other boats or occasionally lost their balance and fell into the canals. The water did look pretty green and mucrky!

Bite Me (Or Not)

 Gotta love insects! I was minding my own business,finishing up riding my horse and went to get Neko some hay as a reward for being a good horsey and not killing. (as usual). Also as usual, I clutched the flake of hay to my stomach so as to have a free hand to shut the barn door. ZAP!!!! (*1)

I got stung by something... something really nasty and pain inducing. (*2) I managed to simaltaneously pull up my shirt to see the damage and walk over to deliver the hay to Neko. Then I adjourned to the house where I applied baking soda.

I'm telling you:whatever malevolent little bastard was hiding in the hay was evil. I'm thinking a wasp was the culprit as there's been a small band of wasps attempting to make a nest right outside the hay barn door. I've knocked it down several times, so maybe it was pay back. Whatever.

Approximate size and location of bite. It's big and impressive. It swelled up so there was a big reddish pink blob on my left hand side... and it itched and stung. 

Despite this, I did sleep well and woke up this morning so it didn't totally poison me but it still looked awful, along with being swollen in a weird horizontal ridge. Trust me: even Bob thought it looked odd. But I felt fine except fot the itching.

I had to run an errand today so I stopped at the store to buy an antihistimine. But about an hour later when I went outside, thinking to ride my horse, I wondered why I felt so... funny. Like all tired and dopey. (*3) I should have read the possible side effects! No riding for me as I deem the horse "large machinery" and now know I shouldn't operate it! (*4)

(*5) AND a fucking update that when I went to feed Neko her dinner ANOTHER wasp dropped out of the sky like a SKUD missile and bit me in the arm!!!! I was just strolling by, not bthering anyone! 

(*1) It got red and swelled up pretty fast. And boy was it brilliant last night. But I also suggest it's very hard to photograph your own abdomen- tough angle!

(*2) Wasn't it enough I got bit in the arm by a bee while picking flowers last week?! I got mad because I grow these flowers and the bees (and yellow jacket and hornets and wasps and who ever) are more than welcome to sip nectar and benefit from my gardening. So why bite me?!?!!?

(*3) Okay, dopier than usual!!

(*4) Hahhahahaha! Typing this was really hard! I kept making spelling errors and losing my train of thought. I guess computers are heavy equipment, too!

(*5) This is a commission I did for a friend. Not sure if this was the sort of biting he had in mind...

House Work vs Yard Work

Right off the bat, I'm going to admit that the pictures here are for aesthetic purposes only. I could not bring myself to photograph dust bunnies (or in our case, dust puppies as 85% of what we vacuum up is dog hair) and tiny piles of grass clippings and hay. Our filth is to remain private. I have also determined that if you fill your house with lovely arrangements of flowers in thoughtfully chosen vases, most people will overlook the dirt. 

The central arguement of this blog posting will not be lost on friends and family. It is no surprise when I tell you that in a decision to do house work or yard work, the great outdoors wins every time. Vacuum or mow? Mow. Scrub the bathroom sink or water the flowers? Water... you get the idea.

I think I enjoy a clean house, once the work is done, but it never seems to be done all at once. If I clean the downstairs bathroom, the upstairs one reminds me that it, too, needs cleaning. If I vacuum the stairs, ten minutes later Bob and I and Robin the Good have once again applied a brand new layer of mud or worse. I'd rather be in my studio where the general mayhem is so overpowwered by my creative genius that no one would ever dare to suggest cleaning. I do sweep the floor on occasion...

So acquaintences marvel at our lovely gardens... and rightly so. But they look good because I do spend my time outside, not inside. Who wants to be "dusting" (*1) when it's so pleasant and sunny outside? And not to belabor the point, but it's a hopelessly boring routine doomed to be repeated over and over and over again. So as a friend once remarked: Embrace the Dust! (*2)

(*1) Not even sure what "dusting" is. 

(*2) Our good friend Louise once exclaimed this while living in Santa Fe where dust is just a part of life. 

Notes From a Childless Dog and Pony Lady

 

Oh Lordy! Another political post from a "miserable" (NOT!!) Democrat "lady". (*1) You will note the date- I was an early supporter of Kamala Harris (along with Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders... I even have an Andrew Yang tee shirt. I collected the whole set!) And as far as "childless"... yes, I am that and very happily so! I can offer no explanations for why people want spawn; they cause so many complications and cost lots of money and are (apparently) frequently "ungrateful".(*2) (*3)

So much has happened in the last two or so weeks and my head is spinning. I am cautiously hopeful despite understanding that fully half of this country is crazy and will happily (?!?!!?) endorse and support a convicted criminal and the electoral college renders the popular vote incidental. Does this make sense? How about that "one person, one vote" thing? Alas...

But I'm sure that you're as thrilled as I am that the orange menace chose a sofa-humping faux hillbilly as a running mate. He is apparently the least-liked vice presidential pick... in history? Hahahahha! And why the party (read "cult") of trump thinks it's a good idea to send half the population of the United States back to the Stone Age is truly beyond me. Big mistake- YUGE!- to pick Vance. Huuzzah.

At least we have the Olympics to detract our few remaining brain cells from constant political insanity. We signed up for yet another streaming service so as to be able to watch the Olympics in all their glory. We enjoyed the Opening Ceremonies featuring some entirely odd and entertaining tableaus: like Drag Queen Last Suppers and Blue Men on Heaps of Fruit. Bob watched boring swimming and terrifying tennis on the Big TV while I repaired to the office to watch hours of equestrian events on the computer. I saw the Dressage and Cross country parts of the Eventing Competition and was so inspired that the last two times I rode Neko, we had fun (*4) playing Olympic contenders. 

Here's Neko training for the sport she excels at: eating.Gold medal for this pony! 

I think I'm offering a gentle suggestion that we temper our political enthusiasms with spasms of other interests... like the Olympics. We've been so exhausted and stressed by wondering what was/is going to happen to American democracy that sometimes even I need a break. Let's hear it for athletics and good, wholesome exercise!

(*1) Not sure anyone would ever mistaken me for a "lady". Although, I have been "ma'am'd" at the store occasionally which also blows my mind...

(*2) With the exception of exceptional children like myself, who were always (ALWAYS!!) exceptionally good and smart and well-behaved. (Except for not being "lady-like".)

(*3) And children smell strangely. And they're terrifying. And the world's going to end because of rethuglican policies and general greed and environmental disasters so having children is nihilist and cruel.

(*4) Well I had fun and Neko tolerated my antics. She's a good sport to put up with me and my endless narration of all the obstacles and trials I put her through. 

The Sky is Falling (Day 2)

 

How about that? I managed to get roofing AND a Doge image all at once!!! Inordinately proud of myself!

So where was I? Ah yes! More to the story... an entire day-full of thrills and spills!

So Day 2 dawned equally hot and sunny and sure enough, the crew was back and whaling away up yonder, applying the now correct Shasta White rolled roofing and redoing the flashing and edging.  I neglected to mention several pertinent fun-facts from our first day. Like the company estimated out all  the materials based on some satellite image from a company A1 contracts with. I had noticed on our contract that the figure of our house's square footage seemed high, but I (incorrectly) assumed that when they got here, they'd measure the correct square footage: pretty simple in our case as our  house is a large rectangle (21' x 48") with a smaller square attached (my studio at another 20" x 20"). They had used the latest fly-over drone technology (or something) to get 1800 square feet. It's actually closer to 1400. That is a 400 square foot difference, right? So I pointed out to A1 that they were wrong, prompting Bob and the supervisor (*1) on duty to measure our house and guess what? I'm now arguing that they're charging us for way more material than we needed. This caused Corrine back at the office to re-revise the figure down, all the while arguing with me about waste from cutting, how I didn't know how these things were measured etc etc. I explained how I work with materials and if you'd asked me to measure, I'd have a whole lot less waste than that!!!  Anyway, the work proceded.

That's us "raising the roof". But we looked way less chipper. There were a few "light-hearted" moments. On Day 2, as it was not as noisy and still hot, I repaired to the bedroom with Robin the Good (who thought hanging out at Bob's studio was just weird) where we have air conditioning. I was laying on the bed, playing a game on my phone when suddenly, the sky light gets lifted up and there's all these young guys and I eye to eye. We all laughed and I shut off the air conditioning and exited the room. (*2)

Did you think that was the end of this tale? Hahahhahaha! I then realized that if there was all this scrap left over, it's our property (as has been argued that the bread and other things on the table at restaurants). So I informed Donny at A1 that I wanted all the scrap as we're handy and could use it for repairs around our property. (*3) Turns out it went into yesterday's dumpster as "most people" (*4) don't want it. So further arguing insued and they actually conceded another mark-down on our bill for unused material. And then the supervisor left us a nice pile of under layment and rollled roofing and some aluminum edging and plywood...

As the crew was finishing up, I put in what I hoped was my last phone call to A1 headquarters. I had a figure (still way higher than I liked but significantly lower than their originally revised materials charge) and asked Donny to confirm how much the check should read. He quoted me a figure a couple hundred dollars higher (oh please god will this never stop!??!!?) and I asked (blood pressure rising yet again) where he got that from. He said, "Oh, we had to charge you for the building permit". I explained that Nick (the salesman) told us it was included in his quote. So they took that off, too. Major weasels!! Trying to add on from ne end of this job to the next!!!

This roofing adventure was a struggle from beginning to end. (* 5) Nothing pleasant about any of it. It always seems to me that if you spend thousands of dollars, there should be some modicum of pleasure involved. Mostly it seems to be the other way around. The roof is done and we have nothing but praise for the roof crew. The roof looks great, they cleaned up admirably, they were pleasant. But the company. Yikes. And now I've received phone calls and emails attempting to solicit "positive feedback" and "great reviews". Hahahahahhaahahahhahhahhhahhaha!!!! We're awaiting today's rain, hoping for no leaks.

(*1) Josh the supervisor corroborated our suspicions that this satellite technology was often incorrect... and very expensive. The supervisor also said that he'd worked on a job where the drone had measured the square footage of the wrong house!! Sometimes, a good old tape measure and a couple of sentient beings is all you need for accuracy.

(*2) Good thing I had clothes on. A bit later, a hammer fell through the skylight. Thankfully I wasn't there for that!

(*3) Like there's a leak in Neko's horse barn that we can fix. Although we all got a good laugh when I suggested maybe A1 would like to estimate that. Probably charge us $10,000!!!

(*4) We are NOT "most people".

(*5) There was a cheerful note on our contract that, "It's going to be noisy and messy so you might consider spending the day elsewhere". Wow. If we hadn't been here, the office people would have forged ahead with up-charging and over selling and we'd be a whole lot more poorer!!!

Up On The Roof (Day 1)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_ksNvivbEI

                                                  

(Click on the above link for musical accompaniment!)

There they are... up on the roof.  The start of our sky-high adventure. I'm surprised this photograph came out at all as we were huddled down in Bob's studio, avoiding the inevitable noise and danger- like partial sheets of old festering plywood flying off the roof and landing stuck in the ground. It looked like a hurricane had hit!

But I'm ahead of myself. The first thing that happened was a truly gigantic truck arrived and somehow wedged its way up our driveway to drop off... our new roof in bundles.

Oh boy! I'm like a little kid! I LOVE when huge equipment comes to call. But in all honesty, Bob and I agreed that our roof could have come on a small pick up truck because here's the delivery:

That's it! It sat for a few days with Bob and I tempted to rip open the packaging to make sure the right color roofing material (Shasta White) had been delivered. (it wasn't...) But we were afraid if we "tampered" with the package we wouldn't be able to return it if it wasn't the right stuff. Which, of course, it wasn't but more on that later...

So the roof crew arrived on a day that promised to be super hot with really high humidity and we both thought, "Nope they're not coming! Probably put it off for cooler weather." But show up they did at 7:45 Monday morning. The crew all looked to be about 18 years old and only one young man (besides the supervisor) spoke English. But hats off to them! They got right to work, ripping and pulling up all our nasty, rotting roofing and throwing it down with gusto, as referenced earlier. See above picture of Men on Roof.

This is where problem #1 occurred. Our roof is stripped, we're waiting for the next stage... and we hit a major snafu. The company is suddenly quoting us another astronomical amount of additional money for "decking" (the plywood or similar sheeting). All of it needs replacement- entirely understandable as we knew there were leaks and spongy places. Bob went up and corroborated. But how did we think this was included in the price? (*1)I understood that the roof guys woudn't know the full extent of plywood needing replacing but let's just say that when a figure more than another third again of what we were quoted was bandied about, I freaked out. Needless to say, steam (along with blood and bile) started shooting out the top of my head. Turns out this must be why our contract was so much cheaper than the other companies. Bait and switch indeed! 

(Some of the lovely rotten boards pulled off of our roof.) I was on and off the phone all day, yodeling at some smooth office dude named Donny who kept saying, "Gosh I understand you're upset..." They started by quoting us 60 sheets (!!!!) of substrate at $150 a sheet. I was truly stuck between a rock and a proverbial hard place as the roof is removed and no one can get to work until we "approve" the cost of the sheathing. If I refuse, we've already paid a deposit and have no roof. I argued with these weasels back and forth saying I could go to Lowe's (or Home Depot) and without a contractor's discount, this stuff would cost me $17 a sheet! Quite the mark up!! And I had the quotes from thee other companies that came in- for the same material- at $90 a sheet (still plenty of mark up). How 'bout this company blithely requesting an additional $9000??!!??!?! And it's 100 degrees and humid and I'm now foaming at the mouth.

As anyone who knows me knows, I am nothing if not presistent (as our my sisters- especially Beatrice). I kept calling back and suggesting I/WE WAS/WERE NOT HAPPY. Through much sheer tenacity, I got them to lower the cost of the material and saved us over $3000. Yes, we still had to cover the additional plywood, but at a much lower cost. (*2)

This is the pile of materials and tools at the end of Day 1. I'm sure the roofers were exhausted. I was exhausted, Bob was exhausted and we were not happy customers. But again, in all fairness, the guys on the roof were really good, their supervisor was sympathetic to us, saying he heard this all the time. Apparently the sales people deliberately underestimate and side step the real cost of the decking. (*3)

So as the sun went down on the day, we were angry and I'm plotting my attack once the job is done. Not only is t head of A1 going to hear directly from me, but the Attorney Generals office is going to get a call. Stay tuned for Day 2. 

(*1) In our defense, their sales guy made it all sound so reasonable and we had interviewed five other companies, so many figures were swirling around and many facts and figures and pages of stuff were flying.  

(*2) Another gasket-blowing moment came when Corrine (some how related to the A 1 owners) got on the phone and started talking to me about FINANCING!!! I was so pissed I stated, "We do not need your stinking financing at probably something like 20%!!" Thank god we had the money but nothing like waking up suddenly thousands of dollars poorer!!!!

(*3) Nick the saleman is still going to hear from me after all the dust settles. He never came out and said, "You know that plywood? That's going to run you a substantial additional sum as we charge at $150 a sheet so be prepared. He alluded to having sheets available "as needed" and made it sound like it was included. Live and fucking learn!!!