global from the coast

Spent the weekend in situations that spanned the globe - and it was humbling to consider the ability to do this. Friday at the Art Institute of Chicago with colleagues and students. Matthi Forrer (Curator of the Japanese Department at the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden) gave our small group a walloping dose of the history of Japanese woodblock prints.

We were behind the scenes, with the prints - up close and personal - including this one by Katsukawa Shunko: Bust Portrait of the Actor Ichikawa Danjuro V as Kazusa no Gorobei Tadamitsu, 1780.



Up before the sun on Saturday and was able to finally watch the film Motorcyle Diaries. Hauntingly beautiful on so many levels, visual, political, spiritual...watching the birth of consciousness of a man that so many have reduced to an iconic image without any understanding of what they are "using" as they bandy his picture about like any other piece of popular culture. Into the mix, it's all into the mix....

We know so little of the America to the south. Another good site to check out is CONVIDA: http://www.convida.org/. This is the work of long time friends Barbara Cervenka and Mame Jackson.

Sunday the choir sang at St. Francis Borgia - gave a brief concert afterward. The lack of altos was a problem - I was one of four...pitiful. KC Williams sang Children of the Sea (from the Tsunami Benefit we recently did- with all benefits going to kids...60% to children in Africa and the other 40% to children in Asia).



In between - the funeral at the Vatican and the wedding in England. AND ooh those hats - all the way around they were there. Leather motorcycle hats and ornate haircombs in the woodblocks...native Peruvian headgear, magenta and scarlet scull-caps and feathers of all kinds.

Happy Birthday John. I love you.