Blue Jay Point | The Casual Blog

May 13, 2018

Our new leaves, art, and white supremacy

In the last couple of weeks, the trees around Raleigh (“the city of oaks”) have leafed in, and the new leaves are really bright. It’s a dazzling moment, and passes quickly. I took these pictures at Yates Mill Pond and Blue Jay Point.

I also got in some golfing with Gabe. He’s been working hard on his game, and making amazing progress. His tee shots are sailing high and long, and his short game is showing judgment and maturity. He’s starting to look like a real golfer. It makes me want to play better, too!

Sally and I are so happy that he just started a promising new job got at Kalisher, which provides art and design services for hotels and restaurants (think Hiltons, Marriotts, Four Seasons, and Hyatts, as well as less established establishments) all around the world. They have a lot of artists, and he’s the senior graphic designer.

Speaking of art, we bought a new Meural Canvas, which is basically a slim, high-resolution monitor with a matte and a simple wood frame. Meural offers a huge library of old masters and contemporary art to go in it, which is easy to access with a tablet device, and easy to change, with a wave of the hand. The images look really good, and it’s fun to sample new art.

Yates Mill Pond

We’ve been talking recently about the white supremacy art near us, including monuments on the Capitol grounds to “our Confederate dead.” I had a closer look at them this week, and determined they were put up in 1895, 1912, and 1914 — one or two generations after the “War Between the States” (as it’s called on the largest monument). These were probably not designed to help remember heroes, but to reinforce white supremacism and remind black people of their place.

Last week I heard an interview on WUNC with Maya Little, a UNC grad student who protested Silent Sam, a Jim Crow statue at the University. She poured some of her own blood and red paint on Sam, and is facing jail time for her protest. That’s activist art. Maya Little’s got courage.

I learned this week about another subgenre of white supremacy art — picture postcards of lynchings. On Fresh Air, the wonderful NPR show, Terry Gross interviewed James Allen about his book about the postcards, which were popular souvenirs. I’d thought lynchings were relatively rare, and done relatively quickly and secretly, but that’s wrong. In some cases they were advertised in advance in local newspapers, with hundreds or thousands of white people watching for hours as black victims got tortured, then killed, and their bodies were mutilated. Local law enforcement did nothing to intervene. Starting after the Civil War, there were more than 4,000 documented lynchings. About 100 of those were in my beloved state of North Carolina.

It would be nice to think that we’ve put white supremacist violence behind us. But we hear every week or so about another police shooting of an unarmed young black man. Chris Rock, in his recent comedy special, manages to cause both a laugh and a stab of pain when he suggests that we could use some equality here, by having the police shoot more white teenagers.

The NC Historical Commission recently had a public hearing on whether our Confederate memorial statues should be moved. Most of the people who showed up and spoke were in favor of leaving them in place, which is disheartening. With avowed white supremacists getting praise and encouragement from our highest government official, things may get worse before they get better. Those of us who oppose racism and bigotry (still the majority, I think) have some work to do.

November 19, 2017

Missing meteors, fall colors, robot love, the end of nature, and Grosvenor the pianist

Flying over Blue Jay Point, November 18, 2017

Coming home from the concert in Durham on Friday night, I stopped to look for the Leonid meteor shower. I hiked into the fields at the N.C. Museum of Art, which were dark enough to hope for good sightings, and also isolated enough to give a little twinge of fear. But it was peaceful looking into the clear eastern part of the night sky, with stars shining bright. I didn’t have much luck spotting meteors, which may have been shooting to the west where it was more cloudy.

On Saturday morning I went up to Blue Jay Point to see some fall colors and take some pictures. The dying leaves have not been very bright this year, but there was still some beauty there. It was calming to walk in the woods and along the shore of Falls Lake, which was very quiet apart from a couple of passing motor boats. It can be tricky keeping on the path this time of year, with everything covered in brown leaves, and I did in fact get off track on the way back, though I wasn’t lost for long. I also took a fall when I tripped over a tree root that appeared out of nowhere. My right hip got bruised, but fortunately the camera was OK.

Sally and I finally got to the movie theater to see Blade Runner 2049. I really liked the original Blade Runner, which had a visionary quality (though a fairly grim vision) folded into an intense sci-fi story, and had high hopes for the sequel. The new movie was likewise a disturbing prophecy — a world where natural resources have been exhausted, inequalities have widened, violence is endemic, and humans lord over a race of human-like robot slaves. But there was a strange beauty to it, and an oddly hopeful theme about new and unexpected kinds of love, including robot love.

The end of nature in the movie, with no trees growing and no birds singing, doesn’t seem too far from where our current trend line could take us. The situation is dire. This was the view of a letter published this week and signed by 15,366 scientists from 184 countries, which I hope will be widely read. The scientists outlined damages and risks that you probably already know about ( though many still do not), including potentially catastrophic climate change, overpopulation (35 percent more humans since 1992), and mass extinction of “many current life forms.” They note that time is running out.

But the scientists also note that it is still possible for us to course correct with adoption of sustainable levels of consumption, preserving natural resources, promoting family planning, eating less meat, respecting nature, and prioritizing green technologies.

There are some signs that more of us are waking up. 199 of 200 nations have signed up for the Paris climate accord. In the U.S., more states and cities are taking action, as Jerry Brown and Michael Bloomberg recently noted in a NY Times piece, and so are more big businesses. Despite the ascendance of Trumpanical contempt for nature, government scientists recently issued a comprehensive climate assessment report that very frankly set out the dire threats to our dear planet. There’s still hope.

The Big Lake at Umstead Park, November 19, 2017

On Friday night, Sally had a conflict, so Olga Kleiankina, my piano teacher, joined me at Duke’s Baldwin Auditorium to hear the young British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor. For what it’s worth, the program director pronounced the artist’s name “Grovner” (with no sounding s). Grosvenor was praised in the New York Times last week as perhaps the most cultivated pianist of his generation (he’s 24), and he did not disappoint.

In the first half, his Bach, the fifth French Suite, was fast moving and elegant, with creative ornamentation, and his Mozart sonata (K333) was well conceived and elegantly executed. I think I liked it more than Olga, who did not dispute his technical excellence, but felt that the performance lacked heart. She may well have heard things I didn’t or expected things I didn’t, since she is unquestionably an artist.

For the second half, I very much enjoyed Grosvenor’s performance of an Alban Berg’s Sonata op. 1 and of Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit. Gaspard is a quintessential impressionistic piece, and I thought he fully grasped the spirit, with striking virtuosity. Olga liked it as well. We ran into a number of our musical friends there, so it was an enjoyable social event, too.

December 20, 2015

Delicious pears and a magnificent Sugar Plum

One of my favorite things in the holiday season is Harry and David’s Royal Riviera Pears. Every year, we get a box from Sally’s dear godmother (whom I’ve never met), and every year they are incredibly sweet and dripping with deliciousness. So it was this week. You may have seen the Harry and David’s ads and wondered whether a mere fruit could ever be an appropriate holiday gift. Well, my view is yes. They are amazing: the fruit of the gods!

The Nutcracker ballet is another great seasonal treat. It endures because there are a lot of things to like: a great Tchaikovsky score, a story with recognizable characters, a bit of naughtiness, and a lot of sweetness. The Carolina Ballet production has gorgeous costumes and sets. There are a lot of children in the production, who seemed particularly young and touching this year. But the main reason I go to see it is for the wonderful dancers in solos, small ensembles, and choruses.

Saturday evening Alyssa Pilger, our pointe shoe sponsoree and friend, made her debut as the Sugar Plum Fairy on Saturday. As a dancer, Alyssa has a natural elegance about her. She seems at first delicate, but then there is also a quality that’s almost fierce. Her moments of stillness don’t seem like rests or pauses, but rather radiate energy. She has a musician’s musicality, which goes beyond just staying with the basic rhythmic framework, to understanding it deeply and realizing when and how it can be creatively opposed.

Sugar Plum is a big role. It makes little girls want to be ballerinas, while transporting the big boys and girls to transcendent place. Alyssa rose to the occasion. Her technique was impeccable, as fluent in adagio as in allegro. And there was that extra something, that expressive spark. I got goosebumps, and, I admit it, tears from both eyes. It was so beautiful!

It was, for me, Alyssa’s night, but I need to mention that Adam Crawford Chavis as her partner, the Cavalier, was also wonderful. He’s big and handsome, and amazingly poised and strong. Their pas de deux was intensely romantic. The crowd gave them long and loud hurrahs.

Re the pictures, this weekend I continued, and concluded for the year, my project of visiting and photographing local parks I didn’t already know well. I went up to Falls Lake on Saturday morning to Blue Jay Point, and then again on Sunday to Rolling View. It was clear and bright and cold both days, and there were almost no people. I also spent some time experimenting with my new Nikon SB910 speedlight in making the portrait here of a Harry and David’s pear sitting on my piano. Afterwards, I ate that pear, which was delicious.

The Casual Blog will be on a holiday break for the last couple of weekends, while we’re traveling. I’m hoping to have some pictures of pretty tropical fish when we return. For my dear readers who celebrate Christmas, I wish you a merry one.