UTAH: MOUNT TIMPANOGOS (OUCH! THAT HURTS!)

On Saturday, August 8th, the day after Sarah and Brian's wedding, I joined Dave and Bob and the Wrights (Craig, Kevin, Kyle, and Brad) on a hike of Mount Timpanogos. I climbed this mountain fifteen years ago with Dave, Bonnie, and Bob, and I remember it being long and painful, but also spectacular and gorgeous. "What's fifteen years?" I thought. "It might hurt, but it will be worth the pain."

It did, and it was.

We started early while the moon was still out:

UNBELIEVABLE flowers:

Near the summit:
Pictures taken from the hut on the top:

The awe-inspiring view during our descent:

The highlight of the trip for Bob: a moose we saw on the way down.

If I wait fifteen more years, I'll be sixty-four years old. I hope I go again sooner than that!

JAPAN: HIROSHIMA ANNIVERSARY

"The world is a very different one now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life."

-John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 1961

On August 6, 1945, sixty-four years ago today, "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, killing as many as 140,000 people, the majority of whom were civilians, and completely destroying almost 70% of the city's buildings. It's easy now to look back on that horrific event, and the one that followed three days later in Nagasaki, and pass harsh judgment. However, my birth was still almost fifteen years after this occurrence, and I know only what I have read of the horrible, unending days of war, the seemingly intractable and cruel Japanese government, the mounting deaths, and the fear that haunted most of the world. I don't know that I can fairly judge something I did not live through.

Two years ago we had the sobering experience of visiting the Hiroshima Peace Park. We were there during the off-season, and so there were many Japanese visitors but view white-skinned tourists. I must confess that we felt a bit uncomfortable, perhaps what mid-Easterners might feel when visiting the World Trade Center Memorial. When we signed in at the guest book, it was almost tempting to put "British" as our nationality, so overwhelming was the view before us.

However, we were soon put at ease because of the "Savvy magnet." The Japanese girls swarmed her wherever we went, touching her blonde hair and commenting on her piercing blue eyes. The girls' attraction to Savannah definitely helped us to feel a lot more comfortable.
The museum has some very interesting displays and reproductions, with written narration in multiple languages:
My favorite thing outdoors was the Children's Peace Monument:
The Children's Peace Monument has a display of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of paper cranes. The crane is a symbol of happiness and long life in Japan. This monument mourns the tragic deaths of many children in the atomic bomb explosion, and was inspired by 12-year-old Sadako Sasaki, who believed that if she could fold 1,000 paper cranes, she would be cured of her leukemia that was a result of the fallout radiation from the bomb. She died before she completed them, but thousands of Japanese school children have honored her with their own contributions of Japanese cranes. We saw several school groups making presentations, including this one below (uncharacteristically NOT in school uniforms):The Children's Monument includes this statue, a Japanese girl holding aloft a folded paper crane:The focal part of the Peace Park is the "A-Bomb Dome." It is the building closest to the hypocenter of the bombing that remained standing. It is an eerie site:
Today there will be a special ceremony at the Peace Park to remember the victims of the bombing and to pray for world peace. Some day I would like to attend one of those ceremonies, although I think I would like to have along a blonde, blue-eyed baby with me to ease the awkwardness.

READING

Pulitzer-prize winning author John Hersey tells the story of Hiroshima through the eyes of six people who survived the dropping of that atomic bomb there in 1945. Published in 1946, it is an amazingly objective account that should be standard reading for anyone interested in understanding the impact of the decision to unleash atomic power.

As a reporter for Time and Life magazines, Hersey covered both the European and Asian theaters during World War II. After the war he was assigned by New Yorker magazine to cover the reconstruction of Japan. Additional material from a 1985 return visit to the city has been added to the original material.

ART AGAIN: MICHAEL JACKSON

I just can't resist doing a Michael Jackson post. As I mentioned earlier, this blog is meant to not only describe the happenings in the Cannon household, but also to reflect the times we live in. Pop superstar Michael Jackson died last week on Thursday, June 25, 2009, at the age of 50. He was just over a year older than I am, and I have memories of him as far back as 4th grade when he was part of the Jackson 5

I thought since I've done several posts on various forms of weird, wild, and wacky contemporary art lately, it would be appropriate to share a few artistic renderings of The Gloved One. It is in the art world that calling him a "Pop Icon" takes on a literal meaning. After all, an icon is defined by dictionary.com as "a representation of sacred personage, such as a saint or an angel, usually painted on a wood surface and venerated itself as sacred." Some of these "representations" may make you snicker--until you learn their selling prices. We live in a strange, strange world.

The first two images depict Jackson, quite literally, as "The King of Pop":
Borrowing from a Russian art form, here is Michael Jackson as a matryoshka doll, or a set of wooden nesting figures:

The promotional poster below depicts some OTHER historical icons posing in Jackson's signature shades and rhinestone-encrusted glove:

The two paintings below (by none other than the consummate pop artist Andy Warhol) were created in 1984, the year that "Thriller" topped the charts and won eight Grammy awards:
This second Warhol graced the cover of Time magazine on March 19, 1984. It now hangs NOT in some Hollywood art gallery, but in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian:

However, my favorite Michael Jackson "art" piece has to be this one by Jeff Koons entitled Michael Jackson and Bubbles. I've seen it with my own eyes at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) at the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art (LACMA). This porcelain sculpture looks almost like some kitschy thing your grandma might have in her china cupboard, except for the fact that it's six-feet long and was purchased for $5.6 million:

I did love what Scott Tennent, a writer and editor for LACMA, had to say about this sculpture. He said that when he heard the news about Michael Jackson's death, he took the BCAM elevator up to the gallery that houses this work and stood before it. He writes on the LACMA blog: "Koons's sculpture has all of a sudden become a kind of monument. It's still a funny work of art, but as of today, a little less funny. Michael, outfitted in a suit of gold, reclines on a bed of golden flowers holding his golden monkey. It encapsulates everything I feel about the star--it's garish, ridiculous, frankly a little creepy and hilarious, and fun. If Michael were only an artist--if his music were his only legacy--then Koons's scultpure wouldn't resonate anew. But Michael was so much more: a global phenomenon, possibly the first modern tabloid trainwreck, and untouchable pop culture royalty. What king doesn't have his monument in gold? I stood in front of Koons's sculpture for five or ten minutes, considering Jackson's legacy in a way that simply playing an album can't really evoke."

BANKSY: THE FINE ART SATIRIST?

Dictionary.com defines satire as "the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule,

or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.

A few weeks ago I highlighted some of Banksy's "street art." The paintings in this post are what Banksy calls "inside art." They are painted on canvases and can be moved around (meaning they can be sold to earn the artist a great deal of money). Each is a parody of a well-known piece. See if you recognize any of them. Click on the image to make it larger for a more in-depth examination.

NOTE: In 2006, Angelina Jolie paid $75,000 for
this bust, and also paid $226,000 for a Banksy drawing
of a family having a picnic on the beach with
15 starving Africans looking on.
In 2007 she and Brad Pitt bought another one of Banksy's works for a cool $2 million.

The next two pieces are "outside art," but I thought they fit in with this post because they too parody very famous art pieces:

So what do you think? Is Banksy a true satirist? Is he really trying to say something, or is he simply taking advantage of his viewers? (I won't even get into what your opinion of Brad and Angelina might be.) Which do you like more--his "inside art" or his "outside art"?

MONDAY MEMORIES: MONTEREY 1999

I've been working at cleaning out cupboards, closets, boxes, and the like, and I ran across some pictures I haven't seen in a while. I guess that is one of the joys of cleaning: you find thngs you didn't even know you had!

In 1999 our family took a trip to Monterey Bay over one of the three-day weekends. Sam had just gotten his first surfboard (which he still has), and was pushing as only Sam could push to try it out in some real surf, so part of our trip had to be to go to the beach, even though it was freezing cold. We also rented kayaks and paddled around the Bay, seeing all kinds of fun animals.
Rachael was 18 and graduating in a few months, Sam was 14 and in 8th grade, and Andrew was about to turn 11 and in 5th grade. Good times. It is hard to believe it has been ten years.