Cats in Art: Girl With Cat (Marc)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.

This is my sixth post on Franz Marc (1880-1916), a key German painter whose life tragically ended early on the Western Front in 1916. This will be a multi-week series (I am still uncovering his cat works).

 

 

Image credit The Atheneum, here.  Girl With Cat, Franz Marc, 1910, oil on canvas, 16" x 12", held by Kunstmuseum in der Alten Post  (Germany).

 

This somewhat gauzy image seems to project a warm, fuzzy love between the woman and her cat.  The relaxed kitty (that I somehow feel is female), on her back with her chest being rubbed, is enjoying the moment being snuggled by her human...although the curled tail and the poised back legs do hint at the possibility of a breakout if the petting session doesn't proceed exactly as desired.

 

Again, as we've seen with Marc before: simple, bold colors; emotions authentically portrayed; and realistic kitties that could only be captured by a cat lover.

 

 

You MUST Subscribe!...and Ultrarunning

Here is the cover of the Feb-Mar edition of National Wildlife.  It's obvious why you should MUST subscribe:

 

 

[image credit National Wildlife Federation]

 

 

Lefty tree-hugger that I am, I belong to/subscribe to--among other things--to Sierra, Smithsonian, and National Wildlife Federation.  Of these, far and away, I enjoy the magazine of the National Wildlife Federation most.

 

I could try to enumerate the reasons, but just take one look again at the cover shot above: two fox pups just have to put a smile on your face.  And with membership, if I recall correctly, at only $15, you can't NOT sign up (and, no, I have no financial or otherwise interest in NWF, I'm just a happy member).

 

Plus--as if the fox photo were not enough--we have the always thoughtful editorial essay by NWF president and CEO Larry Schweiger.  This month it was "Standing at the Edge of the Known World."  Focused on the crisis of global climate change, and the total inaction by the United States of America, Schweiger says:

 

When did the simple concept of leaving the planet a better place for our kids become a partisan issue?

 

Climate change is far and away the greatest crisis facing the planet, and we do nothing but bicker, I guess because it's inconvenient to face the music and change our lifestyles. 

 

But in all things, from climate change to preventing gun violence (think Sandy Hook Elementary and a host of other places) we must simply think, aways, not for us.  No, not for us.

 

For. The. Children.

 

The link to Ultrarunning should be obvious.  If we treasure things wild and free and love our backcountry excursions, we owe it to our children to bequeath to them the same or better environment.  That should be a no-brainer, yet with today's "leaders" it seems too hard. 

 

Among the scientific community, man-made climate change is no longer a discussion point, it is settled fact.  The job now is to craft a robust enough response to solve the problem (although some scientists believe we are already beyond the tipping point of being unable to recover).  So instead of a full-court press--as though the fate of the planet hangs in the balance (it does)--we dither and delay.

 

For. The. Children.

 

 

Goodbye, Bob Marley...and Ultrarunning

 

[image credit Gary]

 

Well, over the weekend the bride and I dismantled our Christmas tree and with it an ornament that we jokingly call "Bob Marley."

 

Of course, it's Jacob Marley from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, but way back when, one of our kids garbled the character with that of the reggae musician.  Thus the ornament remains Bob Marley.

 

The link to Ultrarunning?  Very little, of course--I mostly just like the ornament.  I suppose I could make the case for the liberating freedom of trail running...but you already know that, don't you?

 

 

Something Bad Must Have Happened to This Guy as a Child

From My Way new blog:

DALLAS (AP) - A permit to hunt an endangered African black rhino sold for $350,000 at a Dallas auction held to raise money for conservation efforts but criticized by wildlife advocates.

Steve Wagner, a spokesman for the Dallas Safari Club, which sponsored the closed-door event Saturday night, confirmed the sale of the permit for a hunt in the African nation of Namibia. He declined to name the buyer.

The Safari Club's executive director, Ben Carter, has defended the auction, saying all money raised will go toward protecting the species. He also said the rhino that the winner will be allowed to hunt is old, male and nonbreeding - and that the animal was likely to be targeted for removal anyway because it was becoming aggressive and threatening other wildlife.

But the auction drew howls from critics, including wildlife and animal rights groups.

...and from me.  Killing one of the world's most endangered species for sheer sport and not because it's a necessity of life--even if a legitimate game management case can be made for it--seems pretty disgusting to me.

Going along with my Aldo Leopold piece the other day, this epitomises the notion of the Abrahamic concept of land: that the earth and all that's in it have been placed here for our pleasure and dominance.  Leopold bought this into sharp focus:

Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

I don't see much love and respect for the black rhinoceros.

More Mary Oliver...and Ultrarunning

As I have said here more than once, I realize that when many of you see poetry, you cannot hit that DELETE key fast enough.

But...if you ever got up at daybreak for a run, you know this feeling (credit to The Writer's Almanac). 

So just give this one a try--please?


Why I Wake Early

by Mary Oliver

 

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety—

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light—
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

 

Happy Birthday, Aldo Leopold...and Ultrarunning

[image credit here]

Saturday (11 Jan 1887) was the birthday of the person--Aldo Leopold--who more than any other shaped my views of the natural world. 

Mr. Merritt, a prescient college professor at my alma mater, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, was my instructor for an ornithology course, and recommended the book A Sand County Almanac to us (Merritt also posed the question "Why do birds sing?" and answered it thusly: "Because they are happy.").
 
Anyway, I got a copy, immediately read it from cover to cover, and make it a point to read it again every single year.  For me, A Sand County Almanac still remains the single most important--and interesting--book I have ever read.
 
From the Writer's Almanac, which recognized Leopold's birthday: 

He defied convention in his work. Assigned to hunt livestock predators in a New Mexico national forest, Leopold began to feel that these bears, wolves, and mountain lions shouldn't necessarily be sacrificed for the sake of local ranchers, and he made the point that removing them had a broader impact on the entire ecosystem. His philosophy ultimately came to argue that humans ought not dominate the land; he popularized the term "wilderness" to mean not grounds for outdoor activity but nature in its own, untended state.

After 15 years in the southwest — during which time he developed the first management plan for the Grand Canyon, wrote the Forest Service's first game and fish handbook, and succeeded in designating the nation's first wilderness area — Leopold started and chaired Wisconsin's graduate program on game management. In 1935, Leopold formed The Wilderness Society with other conservationists.

He bought a worn out farm for $8 an acre near the Wisconsin River, barren and nearly treeless from years of overuse and degradation, in an area known as the "sand counties." With his wife and children, he set about tending a garden, splitting firewood, and eventually planting more than 40,000 pine trees. The farm came to stand as a living example of Leopold's life work and ethic, that peaceful coexistence with nature could be possible, and that the same tools used to destroy land could help to restore it.

Anyway, give yourself a late Christmas present and go get A Sand County Almanac.  In honor of Leopold, I'll rerun my very first post ever here at Mister Tristan, from Dec 2009:

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

A Sand County Almanac

This is my inaugural post for this new blog, Mister Tristan.

Like a recurring pilgrimage, I have just completed my annual re-reading of the ecological classic, "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold. My initial reading was prompted some years ago by a college biology professor who recommended it. I became hooked, and for each of the last 30+ years, Leopold, who has been in his grave for 60 years, speaks to me and touches me with new and different insights into the nature of things wild and free. I now see Leopold's writings in a way which he never anticipated, but would certainly have approved of--from an ultrarunner's slant.

 
I continually examine my motives for endurance running (since I spend so much time doing it), and have for some time held the belief that we as a "civilized" species are now so far removed from the moment-by-moment struggle for survival that formerly ruled virtually every waking minute, that we now create for ourselves various means to simulate that intensity. I presume we do this because of some deep-seated need to experience life on the edge, to grab for that gusto and intensity. Thus I run ultras, to physically and mentally go to the edge and see what I can learn there about myself. And I like best to do this running in areas that are preferably wild and remote because there I somehow feel more connected. Simplistic, perhaps, but I suspect not far off the mark for many of us.

The tie-in with Leopold? Here are a couple nuggets: "Physical combat for the means of subsistence was, for unnumbered centuries, an economic fact. When it disappeared as such, a sound instinct led us to preserve it in the form of athletic sports and games...reviving, in play, a drama formerly inherent in daily life." Also, writing about outdoor recreation: "Recreation is valuable in proportion to the degree to which it differs from and contrasts with workaday life."


And on wilderness, Leopold wrote: "Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important; it is such who prate

of empires, political or economic, that will last a thousand years. It is only the scholar who appreciates that all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values. It is only the scholar who understands why the raw wilderness gives definition and meaning to the human enterprise."

Anyone who values the notions of wilderness, solitude, self-reliance, and of communion with nature that many of us ultrarunners seek, as we use the backcountry as a route to our psyches or souls, should check out Leopold's book. It's commonly available in paperback in bookstores in the Natural History section.

 

Cats in Art: Nude With Cat (Marc)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.

This is my fifth post on Franz Marc (1880-1916), a key German painter whose life tragically ended early on the Western Front in 1916. This will be a multi-week series (I am still uncovering his cat works).

 

 

Image credit The Atheneum, here.  Nude With Cat, Franz Marc, 1910, oil on canvas, 34" x 31", held by Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus (Germany).

 

Other than the fact that the naked woman may appear to be drowning the poor kitten in a saucer of milk, this is an interesting painting.  The scene is outdoors, with the nude seated on a cushion on the steps, trying to get the kitten to drink.

 

One may speculate that the kitty is an outdoor cat, unused to humans or milk, and needs to be persuaded that both are really OK.  Marc's choice to make the nude heavy and muscular may be a deliberate choice to contrast with the tiny size and vulnerability of the kitten.  I'd call the cat's color orange, but the bride likes to call such cats butterscotch.

 

I personally am struck with Marc's use of primary colors--oranges, yellows, greens, and blues, which lend an air of simplicity and innocence to the scene.  All in all, an interesting painting.

 

 

Vega, V-Words...and Ultrarunning

Several days ago while sitting out in the hot tub shortly after sundown, I was struck by a prominent star that I did not know, high in the midwinter western sky, one of the very first stars visible as daylight faded.

[image credit Earth Sky, here]

I soon looked it up on my iPhone using the wonderful app Sky Guide (I have no financial interest in either iPhone or Sky Guide, I'm just a happy user).  In Sky Guide you just hold the phone up and the display orients itself in the direction you are holding.  Then you just tap on the on-screen object you are looking at (star, planet, comet) to get the data on it.

Turns out this cool star is Vega, which according to EarthSky, here, is quite the major star:

Vega is easily recognizable for its brilliance and blue-white color. Vega is the 5th brightest star visible from Earth, and the 3rd brightest easily visible from mid-northern latitudes, after Sirius and Arcturus. At about 25 light-years in distance, it is the 6th closest of all the bright stars.   

Vega’s constellation Lyra is said to be the harp played by the legendary Greek musician Orpheus. It’s said that when Orpheus played this harp, neither god nor moral could turn away. Vega is sometimes called the Harp Star.

Enough astronomy.  The star Vega creates for me a segue into the overarching category of words that start with the letter V.  For some reason I am utterly fascinated with words that begin with V (and to head this off at the pass right up front, no, I'm not talking about that word...this is a completely non-sexual discussion). 

I've loved V-words since I learned to read. Maybe it's my German heritage that's responsible for me loving the guttural sound of V.  Maybe it's my love of simple objects: a letter doesn't get much simpler and practical than that: two quick strokes, capital and lower case alike.  Or maybe it's the fact that to my mind, V-words create a visceral, almost palpable feeling.

Check out this short list of a few of my favs, in no particular order, and see if you don't agree:

Vermin
Vacillate
Vixen
Vector
Vomit
Vacuum
Vagabond
Vigil
Vortex
Vessel
Voluptuous
Vex

And the link, of course to Ultrarunning is one I have made numerous times here: it gives me a great deal of satisfaction to have the ability to run VAST distances, 50 or a hundred miles in one chunk, distances that boggle the mind.  Why?  Because doing so--going to the edge, physically and mentally, takes me to places in myself that I would otherwise never know.

That's why I run vast distances.