On Gifting Art

 

When I was a new faculty member, I was asked (directed really) by some senior faculty members  to contribute $50 to a retirement gift, a painting, for a faculty member I barely knew. The faculty showed me the painting and I thought it was pretty awful, but I wasn't being asked my opinion, and in fact, it was pretty clear I was supposed to ooh and ah, which I tried, unsuccessfully I imagine, to do.

The thing about art, paintings in particular, is that it is so personal, you really should not give it as a gift.

It puts the recipient in the position of having to accept it and proclaim how pleased he is, when, in fact, it's entirely possible he will be appalled.

I've been given the occasional birthday or Christmas painting, but in one case it was by an artist I liked, although, as is true for most artists, there are paintings you may like less.

You are pretty safe giving me a Van Gogh, for example, even one I haven't seen before like this one,

but had you given me an early Van Gogh, when he was in his brown and dark potato eaters phase, not so much.

I have given paintings as gifts, but only when I knew the recipient could easily discard it or hang it in her garage and I'd never be the wiser.

In general, it's like presenting a woman you think beautiful and attractive to a man and telling him she is his new wife. Tastes differ. 

A Tree's Tale: Yankee Daring Do

 

I have a fraught relationship with the trees in my yard.

Click to see Rope

We moved in to a new street in old Hampton, New Hampshire 16 years ago and one of the first things I discovered is that I could not simply take out my pick/axe and dig a hole and plop in a tree.

For one thing, the builder had buried all the electrical wires underground, so we have no street poles or lamps and the gas lines are buried as are the cable wires and the underground watering system. So, the first thing I hit with my pick axe was a water sprinkler head.

After that, I had Dig Safe come out and mark all the spots to avoid which left precious little spots for planting.

Obadiah Youngblood, Pink House Drinkwater Road

The Live Free or Die state, you cannot simply buy and plant a tree because you happen to crave that tree. I had always loved Norway maples, which have these really cool maroon leaves, but the Horticulture Department at the University of New Hampshire did not share my love and got the state to outlaw these trees as "invasive species," which cannot be sold in or transported across the state. Complaining bitterly to my neighbor, he laughed, "Well," he said. "The UNH faculty are called tree huggers.'"

But then, a few weeks later, I got an urgent phone call from this neighbor, "I'm at Home Depot," he said. "They've got three Norway maples. I don't think they know what they're selling. Do you want to get them?"

We drove over in his pick up truck and bought all three and I got two for my back yard and I managed to plant them without hitting anything explosive in my back yard, on the edge of the woods which run up to the yard, woods protected by a watershed law.  

Those trees are my pride and joy and they leaf up every Spring and I love them. I also note that the middle school landscaping includes a long line of Norway Maples, which some how got planted despite the prohibition. In fact, these trees are only ever seen in landscaped areas, never in the woods around town. A pretty tame invasive species.

I also planted a London Plain tree, because I admired how New York City uses them, although I managed to plant it on my neighbor's property, but she just shrugged it off, saying, "It's a pretty enough tree."

But then, there was the blue spruce pine. I loved the blue needles and I managed to find a spot which did not run afoul of wires or gas lines or water lines, right next to the house. In general, I do not like trees near a house, but this was just a little Christmas tree, only in blue green and it was about 6 inches in circumference and about six feet tall. That was 16 years ago. Now, it's about 25 feet tall and it blew over in the high winds we had with the last storm.

It was on its side and I went out to inspect it and to start cutting it up with my bow saw. I was saddened to do it. The trunk at its base is at least 3 feet around and the shape has always been symmetrical and lovely. It was like having to shoot a work horse you'd had around the farm since it was a young colt.

But my neighbor appeared with his huge pickup work truck and said, "I think we can pull her up again."

"Even if we could get it up," I said. "Wouldn't it just fall over again?"

"We had some trees do this in our backyard and we drove in stakes and ran lines to them and they took root and survived."

So we threw a rope around the top and ran the line to one of the Norway maples in the backyard and pulled the spruce upright and it's stayed up for 8 hours so far.

I'm just hoping the rope doesn't cost me my Norway Maple.

But so far, we've got one upright tree and one support tree.

Micaela Blei: Hope for America in a Lego Crime

 

An ordinary day. Driving to the Lowes in Seabrook, New Hampshire and this comes on the radio. 

I'm three minutes out from the store's parking lot and by the time I got there, I knew I was not leaving the parking lot until this lady, Micaela Blei, has finished her story. 

Not just that, but I'm laughing, sitting there in my car, with the motor running, because I'm afraid if I turn the motor off the radio will stop and I'll lose this story. 

So I'm polluting the environment, listening to this story.

Laughing.

People are walking by  and looking at me, but I'm helpless. 

I'm just hoping she gets to the end of the story before the parking lot passers by reach security in the store and they all descend on me.

Never heard of this author, Blei.

What have I been missing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQCdDAR6BZI

I've sent it to my friends and family.

They are probably coming for me now.

ADDENDUM:

Okay, I've heard back now.

"Oh, it's sort of cute," and "Tell you sons: They'll remember Legos."

No, actually. That is not what I'm talking about.

What makes this story so good is what Ms. Blei leaves out: Hemingway made a big deal about how the stuff you omit is every bit as important, if not more important, than what you put in. 

You do not know what the Lego jewel thief looks like. You do not have a name to place his background. She tells you only he is sour and bright. That's it. The rest of him you get from his actions. You know he is head of the Black Hole Boys, and this is important to him. You know he treasures the spaceship he made and he tries everything he can to avoid its destruction, even when he is caught. 

And the teacher tells you so much about herself: her capacity to observe the Black Hole Boys. Her delight in the nerdy passions, their wonderment about black holes and speculation about whether there could be a black hole so big it could swallow other black holes. They have that capacity to take things to the next step, as George Carlin mentioned about the kid who asked if God is all powerful could he make a stone so big even he could not move it. And she sees the ethical dilemma she can foist on her 8 year old student, and she declines to "frame" a student for the "crime" of hoarding jeweled Legos. She resolves the missing jewels without resort to crime and punishment. She knows about the spirit of the law.

Listening to all this, I thought of a parent/student conference I attended with my wife and my son's 5th grade teacher. This teacher looked 100 years old, burnt out. She said our son did not know his multiplication tables and so he was not doing well in math.  I asked her if she drilled multiplication tables in class. No, she said, that is up to the students to learn at home. I mentioned all my friends who went to Catholic schools knew their multiplication tables deeply and it was the last thing they ever forgot, even when they got demented or had strokes. They drilled the tables in class relentlessly.

She said, well, that's Catholic schools. The lesson plans for Montgomery County public schools came from the County and did not include drills in multiplication tables. That was for homework in Montgomery County.

I asked her how many boys in her class had troubles with multiplication tables and she guessed about 20 of the 32 students. "So," I said, "Roughly 60% of the boys are behind?"

"Yes."

How many of the girls had trouble? "Oh, maybe one or two. Not many."

"And, by the time they are in 10th grade, of the best math students, how many are boys?"

"Oh, I couldn't say."

"Well, let me ask this another way: Do you think 60% of the boys are behind in math by the 10th grade? Do you think of all the math classes only 40% of the good math students are boys?"

"Oh, no," she said. 

She did not get my point. Ms. Blei would have got my point.

At the parent/teacher conference for my younger son, in middle school, we were told he was an average student, actually just below the median on the bell curve. My wife wanted to know what we could do to improve that. "Oh, well, you know, you can accept it. He's just not going to be his older brother (who by that time had become an academic star, despite his trouble with multiplication tables.) You just have to celebrate him for what he is, for what he can do."

It was all I could do to keep my wife from throwing something at this teacher. "My son is a very bright!" she insisted. 

The teacher smiled a sympathetic, if condescending smile.

I observed, "You know, we just got a call from the teacher who does the literary magazine. He said they had selected this kid's epic poem, in the style of the Iliad, for the magazine this year."

"Oh," the teacher smiled, clearly not seeing how this was relevant and maybe concluding she ought to get closer to the phone so she could call security. "Well, that's nice."

"Yes," I agreed. "I had no more idea he had written an epic poem than you did. When I read it, I was surprised how he had taken the style of the Iliad we had read as a bedtime story, and transmogrified it into the playground battles and the anger and conflict he found in middle school."

"Well, I'll look forward to seeing the magazine," the teacher said,  "It comes out in May."

She had no more idea what was going on in the heads of her students than the traffic cop out in front of the school, and likely less than the school bus driver. 

She was no Micaela Blei.

So, that's what caught my attention.

By the way, we transferred our slightly below average younger son to a private school, despite my reservations about abandoning public schools, and, after a rocky start, he eventually thrived, and he went on to become a vascular surgeon and he is now asked to speak at the school as a returning alumnus, who the school holds up as a success. 

If they could transform this slightly below average kid into a vascular surgeon, they must be a good school.

I'm pretty sure his arc toward success would have come as no surprise to Ms. Blei. 

She would have seen him past the rough spots.