Okay, here's another in my occasional ongoing series of "Photos I Took at the Art Institute of Chicago of Great Paintings." This is The Herring Net by Winslow Homer, a work I've always loved. Very atmospheric and rich in its colors which, not surprisingly, are much more vibrant in person. That said, while I know that Winslow Homer did the hard work here, it's much too easy to dismiss the fine craft that goes into finding the painting in the museum, patiently waiting until all stragglers leave the view, framing your camera lens properly, and actually taking the picture. And so, with that in mind, here is my collaboration with Winslow Homer.
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As the saying goes, the first three rules of real estate are location, location, location. But sometimes, it still doesn't make any sense. The other day I was driving along the lake just north of Chicago in the 'burbs, and got out of my car to take a picture of a local landmark which, in all my years here on the North Shore, I'd never photographed before. A very brief backstory. When I was growing up, there were only three Baha'i Temples in the world. Today, there are more, but just barely, still a mere eight. That's not a whole lot of houses of worship for an international religion. If you've ever seen a picture of a Baha'i Temple, you can see they're magnificent structures, but however gloriously you build it, that's still hardly many. And not only are they few, but they're dotted in exotic or obscure locales around the globe, like Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, and Kampala, Uganda, and Delhi, India. And for reasons I've never been able to understand -- in Wilmette, Illinois. On Sheridan Road, bordering Lake Michigan As far as I can tell, the North Shore suburbs of Chicago is not, nor has ever been (nor likely will ever be) a hot bed of the Baha'i faithful. Sheridan Road borders Lake Michigan which is laden with old-money mansions. The El that takes you to Wrigley Field is four blocks away. My high school, New Trier, is about a mile north. If you watched the original Bob Newhart Show, when Dr. Hartley left his exclusive high-rise in the opening credits, that luxury complex of apartment buildings was just down the road And in the midst of all that was, at the time, one of only three ultra-magnificent Baha'i Temples on earth. Seriously, I have no idea what they were thinking. Maybe they spun a globe and threw a dart. Mind you, I've always been glad it was there. It was always a joy to drive along the winding Sheridan Road and see the tip of the temple's dome peek through the trees, and then as you curved around the street, this majestic structure from another time would loom up. For reasons that I assume are not shocking, we always referred to this as the Giant Orange Juice Squeezer.
Over all the many years I've driven past the Baha'i Temple, I only went in once. There may have been other rooms for worshiping or meeting, but all I remember is just one big open room and a very high view upward. It was a fascinating combination of simple and ornate -- the design was meticulous and gorgeous (as you might suspect), but it was fairly barebones. I also don't recall any clergy "officials" there, though I'd think there had to have been. But it was all very low-key, and meditative. I only mention this all so that the next time you're planning to go to Tiapapata, Samoa, to visit a Baha'i Temple, just know there's one closer. You can't miss it. It's right across the street from Gillson Park. I've written here often about my friend Nell Minow, whose remarkable, albeit odd worlds overlap between being a leading world expert on corporate governance and a film critic, and many things in between, most of which involve her giving her informed and always-pointed opinion. This past week, her always-pointed opinion has riled the group Focus on Family over her politely-scathing review of the documentary they produced, Irreplaceable, ostensibly about the importance of a mother and father raising a family together. I'm sure that when Focus on Family saw that a review was being published by the "Movie Mom" (the title Nell writes her film criticism under) and on the Beliefnet website, the organization was probably already celebrating the glowing A+ they were sure they'd get and popping the champagne corks. What they didn't understand is that Nell's reviews are rock-solid honest, insightful, and profoundly thoughtful, laced with a rich sense of culture and history, and have nothing to do with Beliefnet other than they made a good offer to her to park her long-time, thoroughly independent column there -- and that she'd just as soon to give a giddy rave to Assault on Precinct 13 if it's well-done, as pan a family film like Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return if she finds it treacly. If a movie is violent or adult-oriented, she'll just give a "family warning" about a movie's appropriateness for different members of that family. What Focus on Family and many others most likely tend not to realize is that to Nell Minow, "family" doesn't mean G-rated, it means what the word actually says, all members of a family -- from parents to adolescents to teenage children to those in college to grandparents and all in-between. Always fair-minded and deeply polite, Nell rarely gives an A+ or an F. So, it must have come as a shock to Focus on Family when The Movie Mom gave Irreplaceable -- an F. While noting her points of agreement, Nell's overriding problem with the film (in a review that is as even-handed and gracious as any scathing review you will likely ever read) is that it "uses the rhetoric of support for family as a thin and increasingly cynical and specious cover for a pernicious agenda disguised as a 'conversation.' It’s so smug, constricted, and phony that it does not even qualify as one-sided." By the end of the review, after carefully explaining her points in meticulous and interesting detail, Nell writes that "With this cynical, meretricious and hypocritical film, Focus on the Family has dug a moat and burned the drawbridge." And she concludes by adding that in the spirit of the film's parent organization, "I will forgive Focus on the Family for this shoddy, hateful, and dishonest film." You can read the whole vibrant review here. Needless to say, Focus on Family was taken aback, They wrote a long defense of the film, and criticism of the review, which was posted on Beliefnet. How polite is Nell Minow? She begins her own reply by writing -- "I am most grateful to Focus on the Family for their very courteous response to my review of their film “Irreplaceable,” one of the harshest I have ever published. I strongly encourage everyone who wants to understand our disagreement to read their response carefully, along with the extensive exchange of comments following the review with people who had a variety of reactions to the film and which have a great deal more detail about what I found offensive." -- and then precedes to graciously take apart the Focus on Family criticism with a smile and a scalpel. And in return, I strongly recommend everyone interested in this subject to read all of Nell's wonderful reply here, which includes a link to the Focus on Family rebuttal. But then, I strongly recommend that everyone link to Nell's Mom website and read her reviews that are among the best you'll come across. (I don't tend to read reviews until after I've seen a film myself, wanting to formulate my own opinion first, but as Nell and I have discussed, it's scary and closely we so often agree down to details she singles out. Nell's tastes as a Sci-Fi Fan Girl Geek run wider than mine, but other than that, we have remarkable overlap. Anyway, having said all that, and since we're talking about families here, and I've spoken at length so much about Nell Minow in the past, I figured it would be nice to let you see a picture of Nell and her family of Minows, growing up, when she and I first met back in Glencoe, Illinois. That's Nell, second from the left. My guess is that she was already opinionated on most things by that point. To her right is her sister Martha, currently the dean of Harvard Law School, whose former students include Barack Obama, who she recommended at the time that her father hire him at his Chicago law firm, since he was the smartest student she'd ever had. (He did hire him at the firm...where the new attorney met his wife Michelle.) And that's Nell's father, Newton Minow, second from the right, Chairman of the FCC, appointed by President Kennedy. It's a lovely family picture, unfortunately photo-bombed by some guy between Nell and her dad.
Amid the frozen tundra of the Lake Michigan beach in Glencoe, Illinois, this is one of my favorite photos I've taken. In part, that's because I don't quite have a clue how this formed -- I know there can be big waves in Lake Michigan, but water isn't going to freeze in mid-wave. Besides, this doesn't look precisely like a wave. And none of that even explains the "vertical handles" on the left. ("What's that all about?", as my friend Tiffany is often known to say.)
However this oddity occurred, I loved the formation and its glistening. This is what you get when you wander down to the beach on a lovely late-January morning in Glencoe. On Monday, I posted a photo that I'd taken few years ago in my hometown of a sign explaining that the Glencoe beach was closed for the winter. If the snow piled high on the posts wasn't clue enough why it was closed, this picture below should.
And no, this isn't the Arctic Circle. This is simply the shore of Lake Michigan in the middle of winter Glencoe, Illinois, you see, can get fairly nippy in January and February. As it happens, that's around when I'll be going back there for a short trip. Yes, it's true, I'm one of the few people who actually travels from Los Angeles to Chicago in January and February on purpose. Now that we've tried to spruce up the place with some background photographs, I thought it might be nice to occasionally post some photographs I've taken over the years and add a little class around the joint.
This first is one of my favorites in the Contradiction category. One winter day I a few years ago, I was back home in Glencoe, about 30 minutes north of Chicago on Lake Michigan. I went wandering around town and eventually make to the village center, from where I headed over to the beach. I much appreciated the sign informing me of the current status of things. Though alas it ruined what was planned to be a perfectly lovely day on the sand, and I had to put my flippers and snorkel back. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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