So after going through the 500 pictures Chris took over out vacation, I realized that we're not really good at taking "vacation photos" ... not a whole lot of touristy pictures of places we go, and no pictures of the two of us anywhere... except for this one Chris took of us looking at a Robert Smithson sculpture at the MOMA. Aaaand... that's about it.
Click for the rest of the picture.
So one of my favorite things about New York City (other than the museums and galleries which, as you know, I burned myself out on despite my love for them all) is the public transportation. I really love to walk, and that's the whole reason we live where we do in Savannah, is that we can walk to a good number of places in Downtown. Our favorite coffee, restaurants, health food store, and Chris's classes are all in walking distances from our home. But when we need something from a big store or real groceries, or if we have jobs outside of downtown, the public transportation in this town is ridiculous at best, so we have to get in the car and drive. Especially with gas prices what they are, and the fact that our economy eats up oil like we're not fighting a war over it, I would really prefer not to have to rely on gas as much as I do. Not to mention cars just feed into our ability to lose ourselves in our own little worlds and pretend that no one else really exists and that nothing is as important as ourselves. (and that car that just cut me off isn't another human being with his own issues and things on his mind, it's this big machine that just upped my blood pressure unreasonably). So I love subways and buses (when they actually go places at reasonable times) because not only do I get some exercise walking to and from the subway, but I'm actually interacting with society. Sure, I don't really feel like talking to random people on the subway, but at least I have to acknowledge them... and it's kind of fun to watch people on subways, anyhow. Not to mention it's not wasting extra fuel.
The only thing I haven't figured out is how people buy lots of groceries if you're riding on subways. My guess is either 1) You don't get much at a time, or 2) you order it and have it delivered. Maybe there's another magical way this works, but that's all I've figured out.
So now I'm all about wanting to live somewhere with subways. And walking. Lots of subways and walking (or biking, but that's not really a possibility in Manhattan if you're not a fan of being run down by psycho drivers).
That's all I have to say about this.
Well, Chris has been doing a fantastic job of talking about our trip on his side of this website. He was a lot more diligent about taking time to do things online, whereas I barely got on the computer the whole trip... I was usually too tired once I had the opportunity, and was much more concerned with showering and sleeping.
So what I will add to Chris's accounts are a lot of extra little tidbits. Like my pedometer tells me that we walked, on average, 10 miles a day. I typically (if I'm lucky) manage to walk about 3 miles a day, and the recommended is 5 miles a day. So this was a lot more walking than we were used to... my feet and legs were killing me all the time, but we never wanted to stop because there was so much we wanted to see each day. We went to every museum we wanted to go to, plus PS1 (a division of the MOMA, which was awesome) and the Philadelphia Museum of Art that weren't on our planned list. We also went to every gallery we knew we wanted to see, plus a bunch that we just wandered into that had some awesome stuff (like a Nan Goldin exhibit, and one with some Matthew Barney prints). And we saw so much artwork that I started to get sick of artwork.
Really, I enjoyed everywhere we went. But I am more interested in modern art than I am in the older stuff... basically, I care most about anything from Dada onward than from anything before, and I have the most knowledge of art from Dada onward. And I love Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art... really, I LOVE this stuff... but I got really tired of art museums that seem to think that people stopped creating art after Pop Art. It got to the point that by the 4th or 5th museum, when I rounded a corner and saw another room full of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko and Barnet Newman, I would inwardly groan. I really got tired of seeing the same stuff... I wanted something newer! Give me some Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, or George Segal! I know you own some of their stuff! So where is it? And those are three artists we never saw work from... very disappointing. We did see a few things from Joseph Beuys, Rachel Whiteread, and Chuck Close. But overall, the post-pop-art representation was scarce. Very disappointing to me.
I ended up enjoying the small galleries more than the large museums in a lot of ways, because it was newer work, even though most the time it was people I'd never heard of and would probably never hear of again.
I must say that I was very pleased with the amount of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Marcel Duchamp work that we saw, though. Their work never gets tiring to me... the Rauchenberg Combines show at The Met was amazing... and I was well pleased with the Jasper Johns room at the Philly Museum, not to mention the Duchamp room there.
Our RUF pastor has said on multiple occasions that he things beauty, and therefore art, is objective, and that Marcel Duchamp's work is not beautiful and is therefore not art. I will have to disagree with that until the day I die, because I think the work he's done is conceptually beautiful and meaningful in ways that a lot of other "beautiful" art cannot be.
Although I will say that the more I run into Monet's work, the more it grows on me.
Anyways, this has turned into a long rambling art post... I'll talk more about the trip later... next episode will most likely be raving about the food in NYC... and there's a lot to rave about!
Finally! We have t-shirts to sell to you all for our PEZ movie! Go check them out and buy them!
So this is kind of cool. Donald Miller and Derek Webb are going to do an audio chat next Tuesday night online, and answer questions that people pose to them about social issues and such. I'm a big fan of Donald Miller, and really respect his honesty and his outlook on Christianity, so I'm really excited about it (and hoping it's available to download after the live chat, because I will be in Vidalia and unable to listen to it when it happens).
Anyways, lately I've been talking to a few people about how to bring about social change in society, and so I posted a question in hopes that they will answer it on the audio chat (or at least email me back if they can't get to it during the chat). So I figured I'd post it below since it pretty much sums up what I've been thinking about lately....
It seems to me that in today's money-driven society, our only real way to "vote" on any issue is through our spending habits. Specifically considering that large corporations seem capable of buying their way out of anything, the only thing that would speak to them would be if people stopped purchasing their products.
For example, Starbucks won't stop taking advantage of their coffee farmers unless a huge percentage of their customer base stops buying their coffee there in favor of fair trade coffee at other coffee shops (or only orders fair trade coffee options at Starbucks, when available, and otherwise doesn't purchase coffee there at all). This is because what matters to Starbucks, ultimately, is their bottom line. If it's financially in their best interest to switch entirely to fair trade coffee beans, they'll do it, but only then.
What do you think about this theory, and do you think it's a viable option for socially concerned Christians to use selective boycotting to make a difference?
That's all I have to say today.
Well, I spent a lot of this weekend figuring out what all we wanted to do while in the Big Apple, and when we could do it all, and buying tickets for things that are best pre-ordered. And it's become abundantly clear where Chris and my priorities lie when it comes to these things, because our trip is very much a Museum Tour of New England. Our trip consists of stops in 3 places: 1 day in Washington, DC, 4 days in NYC, and 1 1/2 days in Philly (and a lot of driving). Our itenerary is basically made up of the following stops:
I mean sure, when all the galleries have closed for the night, which is about 6pm each night, we've got other places to visit as well, like the Empire State Building, Ground Zero, Central Park, the East Village, Chinatown, and as much else as we can handle before I pass out from sheer exhaustion and Chris has to carry me back to the hotel. But now that Chris has all this art history learnin' in his brain, he's just as excited to hit all these museums and galleries as I am.
This is especially exciting for me, because I tend to be really influenced by the art that I see, and I rarely have been able to actually share those experiences with anyone else. I've been able to see some amazing artwork in some amazing museums, but most of them have been by myself (or at least, once I was there, I was on my own). Museums I've experienced alone include: The Louvre and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Hirshorn Museum, and the National Gallery of Art in DC, and a bunch of smaller places that I can't remember. And I went to the SFMoMA in San Francisco with my friend Stephen, but although he was interested in it all (or at least pretended to be) he didn't really know what he was looking at, so didn't really understand my excitement. And most specifically when I was wandering through all the art museums in DC alone a few years back, I was really aware of how much I wished there was someone I could share that experience with. So I think that's what I'm most excited about with this trip, is being able to do all of this with my husband, and knowing that he'll be just as excited about these things as I am, and we can actually talk about that experience.
So yes, I'm really psyched. And getting very anxious.
