On a Saturday in June

On a Saturday in June, we celebrated and natural and man-made beauty with two activities: a musical nature walk and a museum visit. Tomorrow is the summer solstice, so in the morning we gathered with the East End Song Studio at Nine Mile Creek* Trail to sing, to play movement games and circle dances, and use our imaginations. We set off like treasure hunters with a hand-drawn map. *The other side of the road, leading off the larger parking lot, is the Nine Mile Run Trail--easy to confuse!

I catalogued the different colors we saw: orange, white, periwinkle, and purple flowers; orange and blue butterflies or moths; and dragonflies with electric blue or green bodies. And of course, many shades of green. The creek even smelled like moss--a very green smell.

Jett’s programming appeals to children of all ages, including an elderly man named Pete who was walking the trail and joined in for one of them. Then we had brunch under the trees, and the cool green-ness of it all reminded me of nothing so much as the Central European hygienic habit of “forest bathing,” except we were fully clothed.

Next Dear Husband went to church to play a wedding, and I went home to do this and that. We reunited in the late afternoon at the Frick Museum, where we met a friend who has lived in Pittsburgh for a quarter century and had never been before. Our object was the opening of a traveling exhibition from the Brooklyn Museum of Art on French modernist painters.

Sold as "French Moderns: Matisse / Renoir / Degas," we saw works by Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Henri Matisse, Berthe Morisot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Auguste Rodin. Also Gabriele Münter, I think the only female painter, who had lived a couple of years in Koblenz(?), the village our guest is from. The style of the paintings and sculptures included realism, impressionism, post-impressionism, symbolism, Fauvism, cubism, and surrealism, spanning the century from the 1850s to the 1940s. 

Goustave Courbert's The Wave was one of my favorite paintings, because it reminded me of one of my favorite works of glass art, a solid hunk of clear glass that nevertheless gave the feeling of movement.

I feel as though I have seen a similar vita in Frick Park, with a high path overlooking a tree-filled valley and buildings in the distance.

This one was large and stunning in person. The fact that you can tell the artist painted her left arm multiple times to get the angle right gives the painting a sense of movement.

I thought the curator(s) had done an excellent job choosing and staging the works so that we could appreciate multiple landscapes together, portraits (backlit peasants in fields, humble figures rich and poor, full-length middle-class icons), still lifes (including a painting of a basket of freshly caught fish, still bloody from having the hooks removed), and another set of portraits they entitled “Bodies” that mostly consisted of nude female bathers. 

Left: a Cardinal smelling flowers--the level of detail without visible brushstrokes was captivating.

Right: The Philosopher. reading a newspaper. He was displayed amid bathing women. I think the only other nude male was a half-life-sized bronze by Rodin made after the Franco-Prussian War.

As a historian, I find it valuable to be familiar with the culture of the time that I study, and attending an exhibit such as this helps me recalibrate my mental timeline of. I/We? have a tendency to think of modernity coming with the world wars in the 20th century, but artists were already challenging norms and perceptions in the second half of the 19th century. 

Before the museum closed, we sped through a couple of the free, permanent-collection galleries, although these are updated with some regularity. For instance, I don't remember seeing this peeved St. Catherine of Sienna with her  tortured expression before.

I was tickled by the juxtaposition of the painted wig on the left and the photographed "wig" of shaving cream on the artist's daughter on the right.

Magnificent composition of the painter's studio, in front of a room filled with ceramics:

Then we dodged the raindrops back to our cars and reconvened at a local French restaurant to eat and catch up. It was a wonderful way to celebrate the midpoint of the year.

May Memories, Part III

 Finally this May, we have been busy about town:

The third w.eekend of the month, I submitted some of my anatomical artworks for display at the Second Annual Humanism in Medicine Night, "Rock & Scroll." The music, spoken word, food, and community were all very good. Then I met up with a spirited group for dinner with the medical school commencement speaker

Another night I met a friend for Puerto Rican food and then went to the Glitterbox Theater's 40th Annual 10-Minute Playfest to watch a friend perform in a piece that involved racoons stacked in trench coats. I have a new medium-term goal to write up a sketch I've carrying in my head for a while and submit it.

The fourth weekend of May was a little wet, but Dear Husband let me drag him down to the Shore Thing, a seasonal floating lounge on the northern edge of the Allegheny River sponsored by River Life. We didn't go when it was new last year and alas, we needed lunch, but they're kitchen wasn't opening for another week. But hark! We ran into another organist-physician couple with whom DH has been promising for 5 years that we'd get together, so we decamped to dry land for the drippiest wrap I've ever eaten and a strawberry rhubarb cider that didn't live up to my expectations.

From View Pittsburgh: "New art installation in downtown Pittsburgh called “Ogua.” Ogua was inspired by legends first told by Pittsburgh's Indigenous peoples to frighten European settlers, and later adopted by immigrant laborers drawn to the valley's riverbanks in search of work. It’s made of heavy duty wool felt, by artist Isla Hansen, who was commissioned by Shiftworks Community + Public Arts in collaboration with Riverlife and the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh's Tough Art Program. Funding for the project was provided by Let's Play, PGH!, a program of Remake Learning." 

Finally, DH and I rendezvoused in Squirrel Hill on a Thursday night for teriyaki and ice cream before attending the screening of a documentary whose Pittsburgh publicity I had helped coordinate, The Chaplain & the Doctor. Created by Jessica Zitter, a Jewish ICU physician turned Palliative Care doc turned filmmaker, the film tells the story of her relationship with Chaplain Betty, an older African-American pastor. While trying to ignore the problems with the microphones, I moderated a discussion with them afterwards, in which Betty talked about  being a clinician of the soul who has to find a balance between humor and prayer, and Jessica asserted that medical schools need to admit a different kind of applicant if we want to preserve the humanistic side of medicine.

In case you haven't noticed, the single most common kind of selfie we take involves ice cream.

It's now the fifth weekend of the month, and DH and I are resting, baking, blogging, enjoying the beautiful weather, and looking forward to the picnic after church tomorrow.

Click here for Part I and Part II.

May Memories, Part II (my garden)

On the way back from Maryland, I stopped to pick up some native plant starts for my garden, as I was itching to pull out the dead stuff and plant some green and some color.

Walk around the yard with me:

The yard guys pruned the rose plants to create these dramatic, top-heavy sprays.

I went orange-and-white for the planters around the patio with prelude white begonias and aloha kona hot orange calibrachoa. 

This is a fairly inconspicuous spot along the fence, but it's right next to the swing, so I'm hoping to fill it up with purple and greens. This is a combination of plants from Chapon Nursery and Terry from Facebook Marketplace.

The midnight salvia I bought from Lowe's last year--and last year's groundhog chomped to the ground--came back! The roots were still good, and this year's groundhog is uninterested. The white euphorbia ("hip hop") is new for contrast.

I pulled almost everything out of this bed last year (and the rest this year) in order to plant it with a kind of lily at the back and purple-blue Mexican something-or-other in the middle that I'm hoping will be colorful later in the summer.

Not much grows in the shady corner under the tricolor beech tree, so I picked up a flat of "wizard mix" coleus. I had enough to plant there and under the ornamental pear tree (no marigolds this year). For the stretch on the side that had been utterly overgrown with grasses--I spent so much time digging them out that I can't believe I didn't think to leave down the cardboard and just put the new dirt, plants, and mulch over top--I put "mango tango" anise hyssop and what might be fern leaf yarrow (I can't find all the tags). Out front I went purple and white with begonias, morning glories, and something else. Of course, the healthiest plant in the pot is a wild lettuce, no doubt growing from a seed dropped by a bird!

While gardening I listened to Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale (slow start and a little formulaic but ultimately worth the read) and our local NPR radio station, 90.5 FM WESA. I donated my banged up Turquoise Torpedo to them and finally got the letter advising me they had received <$200 for it. 😅

Finally, in the fenced-in plot in the back, I've given up on having the time to grow berries or vegetables--I mean, the deer could easily jump the fence, so what's the point--so I'm slowly cultivating what I hope will become a pollinating garden with natives plants.

Click here for Part I and Part II.

May Memories, Part I

I have taken so many more pictures than I have shared to Facebook over the last month, so I thought I would put some of them together here in a post written after eating a delicious spring-like lunch (salad and Triskets with brie; the secret is Green Goddess dressing). It feels so good to sit at the dining room table--while Dear Husband eats lunch and watches soccer in the next room--with my wet braid hanging between my shoulder braids, refreshed from a shower after three hours of trimming bushes and pulling weeds and raking up the long grass left by the mower, fueled only by NPR radio on my phone, since I skipped breakfast. That's okay: more room for a piece of the heaping strawberry pie DH baked this morning. It's my turn to have the kitchen for the afternoon: I will watch Persuasion on Netflix Legally Blonde on YouTube while I make banana bread with the over-ripe bunch I brought home from the office.

The first weekend I attended two films at the Jewish Film Festival on the Carnegie Mellon Campus. Validity is a Pittsburgh-produced film starring my colleague's sister as a scientist struggling with whether to use unethically sourced data about hypothermia collected on concentration camp prisoners. It's based on an actual person and controversy, and I don't know why the film's promotional material didn't name Robert Pozos's work at the University of Minnesota (perhaps he asked them not to?).

Meanwhile, Dear Husband was playing and conducting a choral service at church with the Schubert Mass in C (WordSung).

That afternoon I hung out at the main Carnegie Library before watching Disposable Humanity, a documentary about the Aktion T4, when healthcare providers helped the Nazi government sterilize and kill disabled Germans. Theirs are the only Holocaust victim names that by law have to be redacted, as if it is still so shameful to have been diagnosed with a disabling condition that it would be embarrassing for yourself or your family to have it known.

The second weekend I drove to National Harbor, MD, for the Society for General Internal Medicine conference. I didn't actually stay at the expensive hotel, having snagged a bedroom in an AirBnB across the street and through the fence. It was awkward if I had to run back in the middle of the day for some reason, but parking was free, and I could afford it without a roommate.

I attended a variety of panels--on reproductive health for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, treating osteoporosis, culturally competent nutrition, and fibromyalgia--and helped present a workshop on taking care of adults with Down Syndrome.

I brought a bunch of "I <3 medical history" ribbons to leave at check in and was gratified to find someone wearing one. (Even though you can't see either of ours in the picture!)

I had resolved not to play trivia again after winning two years in a row and then joined an unlikely table at the back of exhibitors from Team Health. Team Stealth ended up coming in 2nd place! 

After the conference I attended the wedding of my residency cohortmate. The next morning, I met a colleague for breakfast in Old Town Alexandria to discuss our respective books and then enjoy the art studios at The Torpedo Factory. After Mother's Day lunch with My Awesome Parents, it was an easy drive back to Pittsburgh listening to Anthony Doerr's All The Light We Cannot See. (It was okay.)

I'll leave you with a panoramic view of Pittsburgh from the back deck of one of the residents, who lives on the South Side and hosted journal club. There was a break in the rain just long enough for us to go out and marvel at the city spread out before us.

Click here for Part II.