Idle Chatter, Nothing About The Bakken -- Notes For The Granddaughters -- June 7, 2015

This was "game day" for our older granddaughter. Eleven years old, she plays for the "12 and under team" as a starter as well as a reserve on the "16 and under team" for the school that took the Texas state championship in water polo this year. She has a lot of years ahead of her; she won't be playing for a state championship for several years but at 11 years old, she's not doing too badly.  Her "12 and under" team won one, lost one today, and she was on the winning team in the first "16 and under team" game. She had a lot of playing time in that game, but opted not to play in the second game. Three games altogether today; a busy day.

Number 22 in the "12 and under game":

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The "Brown Ranch" In Slope County, North Dakota

There are so many reasons the internet has become important. One of the best uses of the internet has been for ordinary folks to capture their personal histories.

Some years ago I wanted to put down in writing my parents' history. It turned out that a "blog" was absolutely the best way to do it. The grandchildren and nephews have used the "blog" to learn about their grandparents. It has really worked out quite well. 

Don sent me a great example of what I'm talking about. This is a fascinating story on so many levels. This is the story of the "Brown Ranch" in Slope County, North Dakota. Without the internet, these are the stories that would be lost. At best they would become a paragraph in a book on the Great Plains published by the Oklahoma University Press and bought by only a handful of folks. Hopefully, this story and others like it, will exist for all and will exist forever on the internet and not archived, and "lost."

The article is packed with details about ranching, and could easily serve as a jumping off point for a youngster interested in writing a paper on farming or ranching for a school project.

What a great story.

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Fine Art Museums

Another reader is sending me daily updates on his (and his wife's) trip to Europe, a cruise down the Moselle/Rhine, I guess, from somewhere in southern Germany/eastern France to the North Sea in the Netherlands, where they have been for the past couple of days.

A highlight of the cruise, of course, is visiting fine art museums, especially in the Netherlands.

Our family spent fourteen years overseas -- an unbroken fourteen years overseas -- most of it in western Europe, and much of it along the Moselle/Rhine, so the reader's daily e-mail notes have been quite enjoyable.

We learned to enjoy fine art museums when we were overseas and continue to enjoy them here in the states. Visiting fine art museums is now the #1 destination when I visit any large city.

It took several years, and dozens of visits, but I finally figured out how to enjoy a fine arts museum, especially with younger children.

As soon as we arrive at a fine arts museum, we check the daily "schedule" to see what the curator is highlighting that day. We then head, immediately, for the museum's cafe or restaurant. I now judge the quality of a fine arts museum on its quality of food offered; price is not generally an issue. (Museum restaurants and cafes are so much better and so much more reasonable than fare at Disneyland or MLB parks.)

We try to arrive when the museum first opens, and by going to the restaurant as the first top, usually by 11:00 a.m. we miss the noon crowd, and the kids (and I) are in a great mood to visit the museum. While having brunch, my wife and I check the museum brochure to plan our visit.

The most important mindset for visiting a museum is this: visit it with the expectation that you will see it several more times before you die. If you visit it with the mindset you will never see it again, you will attempt to "do" a five-day museum in six (6) hours, leaving you incredibly exhausted and having seen everything but not seeing anything.

Obviously, most of us will never see most of these museums more than once in our lifetime, but the mindset is not "wrong." I would rather see five or six really "neat" things in an art museum over the course of two or three hours, than walk by 1,476 things in six hours.

I sit a lot while visiting art museums. That may be one of the biggest failing of art museums. Not enough places to sit, relax, contemplate. In addition, the children (or grandchildren) in strollers can get out and crawl around. The elementary-age children (or grandchildren) can be given sketch pads and have them practice drawing what they see.

Mid-day, we head for the book store, to see what we might have missed in the museum, and then another cafe visit (or not) and back to see a specific piece or two.

We generally leave early, simply because we don't want to feel exhausted upon exiting. We want to savor the moment.

I have just finished Meryle Secrest's biography of Joseph Duveen, perhaps the most influential art dealer of all time. It was in that book that I learned the word "provenance," or the history of a particular piece of art, how it has been handed down / sold through the ages, and where it currently resides. I have yet to find any museum that provides a provenance alongside their pieces. Meryle Secrest taught me that this could be done with minimum of effort and minimum of ink. These little vignettes take up very little room; the curators know the story; and, the information would add immeasurably to the museum-goer's experience.

For example, this is the provenance of Thomas Gainsborough's The Blue Boy (1770), the second most important/famous painting in the world (the Mona Lisa being #1): Jonathan Buttall; John Nesbitt, London; John Hoppner; Robert, 2nd Early of Grosvenor, 1st Marquess of Westminster; Hugh, 2nd Duke of Westminster; Duveen, 1921; Henry E. Huntington; The Huntington, San Marino, CA (where it now resides).

In this particular case, one might even add a short paragraph or two about how Duveen finessed the purchase and the sale of The Blue Boy.