The book 1984 was required reading when I was in high school, but I really had almost no recollection of it. In light of the current political climate, here and elsewhere in the world, and particularly after learning of the incredible system of video cameras and face recognition technology being used to control behavior in China, Carolyn and I thought it might be a good book to buy for our granddaughter (13) for Christmas. Then we decided to download and re-read it ourselves.
Once I started reading I found that it was as if I had never read it before. George Orwell was uncannily prescient in many ways; in others aspects he was off. He used the TV as the tool that monitored and controlled people’s behavior. Nobody in 1949 could begin to imagine that people would own and willingly carry smart phones, making monitoring, propaganda distribution, and behavior shaping simple. It’s a profoundly strange book that is in many ways prophetic because you recognize aspects of the book reflected in our contemporary society. Perpetual wars, monitoring, censorship, propaganda, “doublethink,” and more. (Doublethink: The act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct. One example is the simultaneous acceptance of The Bible and evolution as accurate and correct.)
It seems that I did a poor job of posting on this blog in 2018, but I hate to let it go as if the year never happened. For the sake of brevity I am posting just one photo from each month, although there are a couple of exceptions that sneaked in.
In January, our friend Ralph introduced us to “Writers Night” at The Tambourine Lounge, which is in Sturgeon Bay. Most Thursday nights, musicians, poets and other writers congregate to perform original entertainment. We are truly impressed by the remarkably talented people in Door County and thereabouts.
In February, Julia and Pablo came to visit us from Toronto in their new car.
In March we visited our friends in Buenos Aires, which is documented in an earlier two-part post in this blog (click “Older posts” at the bottom of this post). This time we found a new friend, Alba, who is Ingrid and Nico’s first child.
On the road again! April found us on another University Icons road trip. This time our mission was to return to the University of Virginia to photograph Thomas Jefferson’s Rotunda, which was surrounded with scaffolding the last time we were there. We stopped along the way there and back to shoot a couple of dozen other schools as well.
Tobey and Anne visited in May to see Hamilton. We met for lunch at Blackbird and spent some time touring and exploring Lincoln Park and surrounds. A short visit, but sweet.
In June we were stunned and sad to learn that Younkers, a department store in Sturgeon Bay, went out of business. It’s a real loss for Door County. Younkers was a subsidiary of Bon-Ton Stores, which also owned Carson’s, Boston Stores, and several others. The times are changing.
July marked the end of an era for me. I sold my beloved scooter, which I had bought in 2012. 🙁
I lost a scooter, but gained a BBQ grill. Actually, two of them. 🙂
Somehow, I managed to have avoided ever taking one of the architectural boats tours on the Chicago River. In August Lora, Rob and Carolyn help me correct this oversight. The building on the right is 150 North Riverside, a new office building by Goettsch Partners. It sits on an incredibly narrow lot on the Chicago River and provides space for a riverwalk.
Remarkably, on August 8th, my mother celebrated her 98th birthday!
September is our favorite month to visit Door County. This year was particularly fun because Adam and Ray came to visit. In this selfie was taken at the AC Tap, a dive bar just north of Baileys Harbor.
These are not aliens from another galaxy. That’s Carolyn and Lora at a September visit to IKEA. (I’m not sure who that is behind Carolyn.)
Diane, Troy, Rachel and Kevin came to visit us in Door County in October.
November was fairly quiet. Carolyn and I spent Thanksgiving in Door County entertaining ourselves as best we could, as you can see in this photo.
Diane and Troy hosted Christmas Celebration this year. Troy prepared the most amazing short ribs for dinner. I’m still dreaming about them.
We enjoyed the last day of December with our friends Lora and Rob. Despite the insanity that prevails in Washington, it was a very good year. Here’s to 2019!
I’m starting this post off on a somber note. The image you see is a memorial to a 21-year old university student who protested against the regime in the 1970’s. He, and thousands like him, were tortured and murdered by the government. This young man’s body was dumped here, at the site of this marker, at the corner of Malabia and Niceto Vega, in Palermo Soho. We encounter these memorial plaques all over the city as we explore the surroundings. I have to admit that they are easily overlooked in the cacophony that is Buenos Aires. I realize that we walked past or even over this monument, daily, for over a week, and never noticed it until the day someone placed some flowers on it, anchoring them with a broken piece of tile and a stone. The vast majority of those responsible for these killings have never been charged and continue to live and work among those who lost their loved ones in the struggle against an oppressive regime.
We had dinner at an unusual Asian restaurant in Palermo Soho called Niño Gordo (which translates to “small child”). There are three dining areas. Above is the main room. We were surprised by several things. The lighting is red. The tables in the main dining room, above, have a shelf below the table top, so it’s impossible to cross your legs.
This is the adjacent room, where we were seated. It’s not immediately obvious, but the tables are incredibly low; about two feet high. So you sit, quite uncomfortably, like you are in kindergarten, with your knees scraping the underside of the table. It was hilarious, however, when it came time to leave. After almost two hours sitting so low, we felt like Gulliver when we stood up. The third dining area, by the way, is a long counter (white light!), but the heat from the kitchen is enough to cook you alive. Meanwhile the menu, which is meant for sharing, looked very strange, but everything was surprisingly good. Excellent, actually.
Our friends Adriana and Carlos took us out to the delta in their speedboat one day. The delta is a curious place; land created by the continuous deposits of silt; secured by trees and plants; inter-woven with tributaries of various rivers that meet to form the broad Rio de la Plata. The tributaries meander through jungle-like environs. I would be reminded of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, but it was a bright and sunny day.
The brown, silty tributaries are dotted with small cabins, here and there, on land that is otherwise in question. After all, when someone plants wooden posts into the water and builds a cabin, is it property? Whose “land” is it?
Eventually we all became hungry and Carlos aimed toward a restaurant they knew, which was interesting, considering that we appeared to be in the middle of nowhere; in a flooded, lush semi-tropical jungle, that is laced with tributaries. As it turned out, the restaurant was closed. Fortunately, we encountered El Camoati. Excellent food, good service and a perfect venue on a perfect day. See the location HERE.
Carlos and Sol, their daughter, at Casa B, as they call their new adventure. Adriana and Carlos purchased a grand old city house, just a couple of blocks from their house in San Isidro. After months of extensive renovation, the work is finished and the results are impressive. It will serve as offices for Sol’s architectural practice; for Adriana’s studio and shop; and, they intend to hold art exhibits and rent space for special events. And that doesn’t mention the large pottery making studio in the back!
Adriana’s grandfather owned a tile manufacturing company “back in the day.” It stood where the Alto Palermo shopping mall is situated today in Buenos Aires. She inherited a collection of tile molds that are on display at Casa B. The molds are intricately fashioned from metal; each one different from the next. Different colors of cement (?) are poured into the spaces separated by metal strips and together make an elaborate patter. The floor tiles in the following photo were made in such forms.
Inspired by the molds, I photographed each one of the tile forms. Equipped only with my Canon G7X Mark II and a tiny, collapsible tripod, I set up an impromptu studio in the entry hall of Casa B. I should mention that Carlos followed in Adriana’s grandfather’s footsteps and founded his own tile manufacturing company.
This is a pair of grand, old townhouses on Av. Liberator, a couple blocks from Adriana and Carlos’ house.
The window of one of the townhouses was open, so I couldn’t restrain myself from taking a photo.
A quiet side street near downtown San Isidro.
Small shops, like this one and the several that follow, remain common in San Isidro, Buenos Aires and the surrounding towns. It gives me pause to consider what big box stores have done to the neighborhoods and small towns in the U.S. An entire way of life has been destroyed and already forgotten.
I’m jealous to find a place like this in an otherwise residential neighborhood. Where we live, zoning prohibits mixing retail/commercial in residential areas. We are the poorer for it. In Chicago, the corner grocery stores and taverns were ubiquitous when I was a child. Today they are mostly all gone or re-purposed into homes.
We’re not dog people, but Maria’s new dog, Fina, won our hearts.
This photo is of the kitchen floor in our airbnb. Tiles like these are made in molds, as I described above. Stare at this pattern for a while to give your eye and brain muscles some exercise.
That’s our friend Alejandra, an architect and artist, at dinner at La Cantina La Mamma Rosa. Two bottles of malbec and each a glass of complementary limoncelo. I’m surprised we escaped having a hangover!
Artist Nuna Mangiante, in her studio with a large self-portrait that she is purposely defacing with charcoal. She has an entire body of work along these lines.
Breakfast at Cafe Crespin in Villa Crespo.
A pair of murals by the artist who goes by name “Ever.” More about him HERE (which is worth reading.)
So you are on a date. It’s raining. And you have run out of things to say. I guess it’s time for the check.
Wandering the streets guarantees that you will eventually see something or meet someone interesting or unusual; something or someone outside your sphere. Such was the case on our last Saturday afternoon in Buenos Aires. We were biking around the Villa Crespo neighborhood when we noticed this large contraption poking it’s nose out from what appeared to be a garage. Heavy metal music was blasting loudly from inside and wisps of smoke and cooking smells wafted about. So what the hell, we took a peek inside.
Inside we found this guy, trimming pork skins to make Chicharrón. i.e. deep fried pork skin. (I think he needs a taller table.)
Here, Max is pointing to the label for Logia and asking me to follow him on Instagram (which I did). Check it out HERE. I wish I had before we left.
He also had some sausages and pork shoulders cooking.
Carolyn and I have been in Buenos Aires for a week. It’s our first time in over 12 years that we are staying in a house other than our own. We miss our Casa Palermo, but not owning it has afforded us greater freedom to explore. In the past, we were inevitably on the hunt for something that we needed to replace or add. Now we are real tourists!
On our first night in Buenos Aires, we celebrated Camila’s “retirement” from her role as our local manager of Casa Palermo by treating her and Tito to dinner at Roux, which is one of our favorite restaurants. Remarkably, she pointed out that this was the restaurant at which we first made our arrangement with her to be our manager in 2005. We didn’t realize it because it was a different restaurant at that time. What an apt coincidence!
Nightlife in Palermo is out of hand. The number of bars and restaurants has grown exponentially in the last 12 years and as we walk around we see yet more under construction.
We continue to admire the remarkable system of protected bike lanes in Buenos Aires. In this photo, bicyclists are lined up at a traffic light.
We discovered the famous Caipirinha (kai-pee-ree-nah), which is made with Cachaça, a Brazilian liquor distilled from sugar cane. Want one? The recipe is HERE. (The drink on the left is a dry martini.) We enjoyed these at a bar named Clot. Weird name; good drinks.
Uniforms in restaurants, bakeries, heladerias, etc. are common and lend an air of professionalism.
Lunch at Cafe Crespin in Villa Crespo. The 300 gram pastrami sandwich is really outstanding. That’s our friend Juan Jose Cambre’s painting on the wall. Juan Jose’s son owns the cafe. If you are going to BsAs, do not miss having lunch here!
Verdulerias (fruit & vegetable markets) are ubiquitous; sometimes there will be two or three in the same block. Unlike in the U.S., the fruits and vegetables offered are whatever is in season. Nothing is imported from another part of the planet.
Carolyn ordered this beautiful “Rotolo” for lunch at La Alacena. It’s made with ricotta cheese, stuffed with spinach and rolled in dough.
A Thursday afternoon card game at San Bernando, a dive bar that’s open until 5:00 AM. They have a sea of billiard tables, ping pong tables, foosball tables and long bar. FYI, in case you go: You reserve a table at the cash register at the bar and order your drinks. Once you are at your game table, a server brings your drinks/food to your table. We didn’t try them, but we saw plates, piled high with papas con queso gratinado (french fries covered with melted cheese, being delivered nonstop. When we were there, earlier in the day, people were playing dominos and dados, which is a game similar to poker that’s played with 5 dice.
A remnant: A vintage, hand painted bus stop sign for the venerable “39.”
Krachitos. Sorry, but that is not an appetizing name for chips.
Artist Daniel Genovesi in his studio in Palermo Hollywood.
Murals are everywhere, covering homes and businesses alike. Some are sponsored; others are rogue. In any case, creative juices cover the city. The other day we stopped in at the free, neighborhood public gallery arte x arte and found an amazing photography exhibit that spanned three floors. The current exhibit is “La imaginación del desastre” (Imagining Disaster).
Our favorite works were by Fernando Montiel Klint (Mexico). His imaginations of a distopian future is at once alarming and fascinating. In the image on the right, above, a woman, wearing a iridescent costume, is eating pills with futuristic chop sticks. Meanwhile, what appear to be antennae protrude from her head. What did not appear in my photo of the work is that her neck is covered in what appeared to be electronic circuitry. Somehow, my camera eliminated that feature.
Photograph by Gabriela Olivera Hildago (Bolivia) at the artexarte gallery exhibition.
Clever use of art on a garage door of someone’s home. There is a freedom and no fear of expression in BsAs.
A big hole! Construction in BsAs continues non-stop. There seems to be work in progress on every block.
Human labor remains cheap. Here, a laborer is returning to a job with a sack of cement. Evidently, it’s cheaper than ordering a delivery.
There is no fear or color in Buenos Aires.
This is the patio of the airbnb that we are staying at. This is a “PH,” similar to our Casa Palermo, but smaller. The owner of this one has maintained a rustic, old world ambiance. The neighborhood is only 20 minutes away, on foot, yet incredibly different. Our neighborhood was relatively quiet. Here, in Soho, there is much more life on the streets, largely because it’s more of a touristy area.
Quirky, vintage bar in our airbnb.
Ornate metalwork is found throughout the city. Architects either match the old designs or, more often, employ modern designs.
Cars are expensive, so people maintain old cars for their beauty and ease of maintenance.
2:00 AM at “The Most Famous Corner” (A Nos Amours) with Juan and Anita .
We began preparing for The Celebration weeks before our December 24th family dinner. Once the wrapping of gift was finished we move on to the annual taste testing of the Egg Nog martini recipe. (It’s still really good!)
We began preparing bigos and ptaski nearly a week in advance. Julia, Natalie and Elliott arrived on Friday evening and on Saturday we all pitched in to make Swedish meatballs.
Pablo couldn’t join the festivities because he was with his family in Florida, but he sent this photo of himself and his sisters at Disney.
THECELEBRATION
We were pleasantly surprised in the morning with a gentle, but steady, snowfall. The Maliks arrived around 5:00 PM and we immediately took a group portrait, before anyone could be distracted. We kicked off The Celebration with a round of Egg Nog Martini‘s. Dinner consisted of bigos, ptaszki, Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes & gravy, rutabaga, cranberry relish, and green beans. Julia made almond torte for dessert that was served with a scoop of eggnog ice cream. We toasted with some nice prosecco, a gift from our friend Anita, and followed up with several bottles of good red wines.
Carolyn deployed Rachel and Kevin into making labels for the packets of Chocolate Covered Door County Cherries.
After the Maliks left, Elliott and I memorialized The Celebration with a shot of Slivovitz (plum brandy) … for the sake of tradition.
Clever use of art on a garage door of someone’s home. There is a freedom and no fear of expression in BsAs.
