Merry Christmas!

Christmas is taking precedence over other stuff, including blogging...which is as it should be.  I am pleased and fortunate to have such a large and wonderful extended family to share these special days with.

And remember (whether you are a parent yourself or not, you were once a child) that the best gifts in the world come from children.

Erratic, limited, or no posting till after 2016 commences. All the best from Mister Tristan (the blog AND the 7 year old human being)!

Cats in Art: the Real Picasso with a Real Cat

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I am using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.  The last 6 weeks I have focused on the cat art of Pablo Picasso.

So today--to complete the series--I provide a photographic image of Picasso himself...with cat.  

Image credit The Great Cat, which tells us:

One of the most influential artists of the 20^th century, Picasso was known to have loved cats and was photographed with kittens or cats throughout his lifetime.

To be a great cat artist, you need to know cats.  Period.  Picasso certainly knew his kitties, to the great benefit of art lovers everywhere.

Gary note: With my Cats in Arts posts, I encourage you to scope out the art appreciation site Artsy (I have no financial interest in the site, I just like it), where you can explore many aspects of the world of art.  You'll certainly be entertained and enlightened!

Powerless to Resist

Cardboard boxes exert an irresistible attraction to cats.  Ca Beere succumbs to the spell:

Image credit Gary

This holiday season, life is being well lived and blogging is a somewhat lesser priority than it once was.  Thus a somewhat more erratic and sporadic schedule.  Hope you do not feel too deprived.

Cats in Art: Jacqueline Sitting With Her Cat (Picasso)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I am using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.  This is the 6th of 6 posts on the cat art of Pablo Picasso. 

Image credit WikiArt. Jacqueline Sitting With Her Cat, Pablo Picasso, 1964, medium and size unspecified; holder also unspecified.

As an aside, despite this being a known Picasso image, I was totally unable to find out its dimensions, medium, or even who owns it.  The Internet is a strange and wonderful place, and we tend to take for granted the almost instantaneous ability to derive information.  So when we can't, we feel somewhat cheated.  Sorry!

The site The Great Cat offered this observation.  The reference to Dora Maar refers to my previous Cats in Art post Dora Maar With Cat, here:

In the 1960a, Picasso painted his wife Jacqueline Roque with cats as well.  In this painting Jacqueline sits with a small black cat on her lap.  The cat's eyes are so round and large that they reflect an innocence and beauty that matches Jacqueline's.  Picasso perhaps hints that even though she is a cat, she is a kind one.  Her hands are placed on the arms of the chair just as Dora Marr's are.  However, her hands are much different than Maar's, short, stubby and almost mannish; they are not predatory like Maar's.  

I really like this painting, especially the cat's eyes....so reminiscent of our kitty Ca Beere, a petite little black cat with a bob tail and the sweetest personality ever.

Gary note: With my Cats in Arts posts, I encourage you to scope out the art appreciation site Artsy (I have no financial interest in the site, I just like it), where you can explore many aspects of the world of art.  You'll certainly be entertained and enlightened!

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Seems that the 2016 slate of candidates for possible induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame consists of the following:

Nine Inch Nails
N.W.A
The Smiths
Deep Purple
Janet Jackson
Chic
Steve Miller
Chicago
Chaka Khan
The Spinners
Cheap Trick
the Cars 
the J.B.'s
Los Lobos 
Yes

I think that voting just closed, and I'm too lazy to Google to find out who actually wound up getting nominated.  Usually 5 or 6 artists make the cut each year.

That said, the purpose of this post is to relate an anecdote about this year's nominees.  A few weeks back, while listening to the Classic Vinyl channel on Sirius XM radio in the car, the deejay mentioned that Nine Inch Nails was a nominee.

I remarked to the bride, "I couldn't name a single Nine Inch Nails song if my life depended on it"

Just then a guy pedaled by in one of those recumbent bikes.  Like one of these:

Image credit here

I'm not a biker, but whenever I see one of these bikes, I think, that's not a real bike (though I'm sure I'll get plenty of emails correcting me.  That's OK, I deserve it for being a smug Ultrarunner who looks down his nose at mere bikers).  

So, half under my breath, I comment "Pussy bike!"

And the bride says, "I thought you didn't know any of their songs?"

After we got done laughing, we went on to imagine what other songs Nine Inch Nails may have done and came up with this fictitious list:

Ratchet Girl
Barbed Wire
Chrome Wheels
Twisted Fence Posts

In the meanwhile, Jethro Tull, Bad Company, and the Moody Blues remain solidly as non-members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, while vastly inferior groups such Nine Inch Nails--to cite but one example--are considered.  Go figure.

So...in this post I've managed to insult bikers and certain music fans.  Sorry!

Diabetes...and Ultrarunning

Please imagine a simple graph.

The Y axis runs vertically up, from non-smoker to smoker.

The X axis runs horizontally across, from actively managing your diabetes seriously, to not managing it seriously (talking here about meds and lifestyle).

You DON'T want to be in the upper right quadrant.  That's the perfectly bad storm, where a loved one is, and it's a bad, pretty much irreversible place.  This loved one has been lying in a hospital bed for about half a year, and is now legless.

Think about that when you take your Ultrarunning for granted.

Cats in Art: Lobster and Cat (Picasso)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I am using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.  This is the 5th of 6 posts on the cat art of Pablo Picasso.  

Image credit Guggenheim Museum, Lobster and Cat, Pablo Picasso, 1965, oil on canvas, 28" x 66", held by Guggenheim Museum, New York.

From the museum web site:

The latest of Pablo Picasso’s works in the Guggenheim’s Thannhauser Collection, Lobster and Cat attests to the artist’s unbroken creative energy during the last years of his life. The painting demonstrates Picasso’s ability to derive serious implications from what is essentially humorous. The subject of the lobster and cat refers to one of the most beloved paintings of French art, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin’s The Ray (1728, Musée du Louvre, Paris). In both paintings, a cat is aroused to vicious hissing by the menacing aspect of an item of seafood that is as delicious to the palate as it is horrendous to the eye.

What is so astonishing in Picasso’s painting is that he is able to retain the humorously anecdotal premise of the eighteenth-century genre painting while simultaneously heightening the encounter between cat and lobster into a miniature but extremely effective metaphor of aggression aroused by fear. It is a theme that preoccupied Picasso. If one makes all due allowances for the differences between the categories of miniature and monumental expression, it is a theme that also occurs in Picasso’s great mural Guernica (1937, Reina Sofía, Madrid). The comparison strikes an absurd note until one remembers Picasso’s frequent shifts from monumental to miniature, from trifling to significant and back again. These ostensibly erratic whimsicalities aim at an ironic demonstration of the artificial conventions of our thought and of our feelings. Here again, as in Lobster and Cat and in so much of Picasso’s work, it is impossible to think of Guernica’s bull or horse as being either all good or all evil, so is it impossible (on quite a different level of seriousness, of course) to come to a clear decision regarding the lobster and the cat in the Thannhauser painting. Both animals are potentially as innocent as they are dangerous.

Once you get past the striking blue lobster--for that's where your eye inevitably goes first--you are left with a very disturbing kitty.  Just look at its eye: apparently frightened out of its wits, the cat is hissing, hackles all raised, claws out.  Pure fight or flight reflex going on.

While the museum's analysis talks about the"...extremely effective metaphor of aggression aroused by fear," I don't see it that way.  I don't see any feline aggression, just a pathetic scared kitty.

Gary note: With my Cats in Arts posts, I encourage you to scope out the art appreciation site Artsy (I have no financial interest in the site, I just like it), where you can explore many aspects of the world of art.  You'll certainly be entertained and enlightened!

More Rambling...and Ultrarunning

Can't believe it's been 4 years since I posted about Rock Music, Rambling...and Ultrarunning, here.

Here's the lead-in to that post, which you really, really should go read right now.

As I continue to love my car's Sirius XM Radio, I've noticed a recurring theme for some some rockers from the period/genre of Classic Rock (60s and 70s).  They tend to romanticize the stereotypical artistic, footloose antihero, imbued with wanderlust so as not to dilute the power of their music.  

That post featured Free Bird, Rambling Man, Heard it in a Love Song, and Ramblin' Gamblin' Man.  Well, diligent detective work had uncovered two more classic rock songs about Rambling:

Ramble On (Led Zepplin)
Ramble On, And now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song. 
I'm goin' 'round the world, I got to find my girl, on my way. 
I've been this way ten years to the day, Ramble On, 
Gotta find the queen of all my dreams.


Midnight Rambler (Rolling Stones)
Did you hear about the midnight rambler
Everybody got to go?
Did you hear about the midnight rambler
The one that shut the kitchen door?

The link to Ultrarunning?  As I previously posted, it is simply this: maybe we get our vicarious rambling jones out of the way via trail running, so we can be happy and secure in our personal relationships and not feel the need to roam.

Johnny Blaze vs. Mister Cuddles Kitty

A few weeks back I did a post entitled Most Original Cat Name EVER! about one Mister Kitty, whose official name, as I came to find out, is actually Mister Cuddles Kitty.

The vet techs at the practice were so impressed with this cat's sweet demeanor and personality that they added the "Cuddles" part to differentiate him from any other "Mister Kitty" also seen at that veterinary office.

Well...turns out another extremely sweet and friendly stray cat has entered the picture and was taken to the same vet for a checkup, neutering, and shots.  For whatever reason, this yellow and white kitty has been given the name Johnny Blaze.  These two kitties were adopted by siblings in my family, so this human brother and sister certainly will be comparing notes on their cats.

The staff at the vet practice were besides themselves imagining the first face-to-face meeting between these two cats:

"Hi!  I'm Johnny Blaze."

"And I'm Mister Cuddles Kitty."

Sounds pretty one-sided, doesn't it?  Game over, Johnny Blaze wins without even firing a shot.

New Hat Decor

Well, I've got my official certificate and patch, so I'm now an accredited sawyer.  I'm approved to work on downed trees along the Appalachian Trail, Tuscarora Trail, and other trails maintained by my Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC):

It was also necessary to pass a CPR, First Aid, and AED (Automatic External Defibrillator) class....all of which are useful skills in personal (non-trail) life.

Looking forward to (carefully) working on my first official blowdown....