Make Good Art

Jon

Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good tidings;
lift up your voice with strength.
     Isaiah 40:9

So, this guy who is the young adult minister at my church, (that's ages 20ish to 30ish) occasionally preaches from the pulpit on Sunday mornings.  His name is Jon Tschanz.  He's an amazing human being and an amazing speaker so I'm always happy to hear his wisdom.

By the way, he also always starts his sermon with the word "so."  So that's why I started this blog posting with "So."

So, yesterday was no exception.  Jon always leaves me thinking about his words and leaves me wanting to be creative.  Yesterday he concentrated on the phrase "Make good art."  What does that even mean?  He told us about his friend who does music on the  oncology floor of the hospital, but that was just one small example.

This morning when I got on Facebook I saw photos of my friend Gil and his stupendously cute two year old grandson, Charlie, attending a play and then having pancakes.  And I found myself thanking Gil for making this art for me to see.

Several folks posted photos of their newly trimmed Christmas trees.

Neil

In his sermon, John quoted award winning writer, Neil Gaiman.  I've heard of him but he doesn't do my kind of writing so don't know much about him.  This morning I looked him up.  The quote below is from a commencement speech he made at The University of the Arts, class of 2012.  In the speech he's telling these graduating students to "Make good art"  while also being very realistic about what the future might hold.

I'm serious.  Husband runs off with a politician?  Make good art.  Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor?  Make good art.  IRS on your trail?  Make good art.  Cat exploded?  Make good art.  Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it's all been done before? Make good art.  Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn't matter.  Do what only you do best.  Make good art.

I know Neil is speaking to art students but Jon apparently thinks he's speaking to all of us.  And you know what?  I know he's speaking to me.

***

Passau Poet

If Goethe had had to prepare supper, salt the dumplings;
If Schiller had had to wash the dishes;
If Heine had had to mend what he had torn, to clean the rooms, kill the bugs,
Of the menfolk, none of them would have become great poets. 

       - Emerenz Meier, Bavarian Folk Poet

I took this photo, in Passau, Germany, of the bust of one of Bavaria's greatest poets, Emerenz Meier.  She was also an inn keepers daughter and she was also - as you can see when you read this poem - really frustrated.

I can relate.

I was frustrated and worn out much of my life.  Somebody always needed me.  That's not all bad, but it's hard when all you want to do some days is read and write.  Following is a poem I wrote in the 1970s that pretty much says it all:

I was finally able to meet
The eminent psychiatrist,

Me in Passau on October 28th.
I now have all the time in the world.

Everyone had been talking 
      about.

He shook my hand,
And,
(As I was trying to think of 
     something intelligent to say)             
He said, 
"I've read about your husband
     in the papers,
He's quite a guy."

And I said,
"Oh yeah,
Well, I think they should put this
In the headlines."

CECILY CROSSMAN DID 18 LOADS OF
     WASH THIS WEEK!

Now why did I say that?


***

Rocky

Often, in the fall, when school was about to start, my husband, Ken, and I  would take our kids to the movies.  I don't know if they realized it but we were hoping the film would motivate and inspire them to have a good, strong year.  Often it was a Rocky movie.  They were the best.  

We all came out of the theater thinking we could do anything!

Now I see that Sylvester Stallone has made yet another Rocky movie.  The first one came out in  1976.  It was a huge success, earning $156 million worldwide.  

Stallone wrote all six Rocky movies and directed four of them.  He has said, "Rocky is the one thing I've done right."  I don't know if it's the one thing - but I do know the films told us something about the human spirit in a very powerful way. 

In the new movie Stallone plays the trainer.  He's now the same age Burgess Meredith was in Rocky. 

But all of us have come a long way.  My kids are middle aged and I'm a great grandmother.  But, like many others, I've dreamed about running up those steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and raising my arms in triumph!

I hope your new film inspires us, Mr. Stallone.  We need it.

***

Rich Churches

Melk, Germany

Budapest, Hungary

You know I have a problem with wealthy ministers, priests and churches.  Seeing the amazing churches and cathedrals in Eastern Europe awed me in one sense and troubled me in another.  Every time I saw one I wondered how many thousands suffered in order to get it up.

I was teasing when I said earlier that my church needs to "step it up."  I belong to a wonderful church that worships in a beautiful set of buildings - but my church is absolutely not about the buildings.  I hope this is, and has been, true of some of the ones we saw a couple of weeks ago.

Passau, German 

Regansberg, Germany

We know that the building is not God and people are not God.  We're all flawed and sometimes get our priorities confused.

In Regansberg, Germany we took an architectural tour.  We saw magnificent old buildings, including two Catholic churches.  The one Protestant church was beautiful, but much more plain.

The reason?  Martin Luther was in Regansberg and was appalled by the wealth of the Catholic Churchs.

Wurzberg, Germany

Our guide was Protestant but she said she told her kids that, when she has to go into assisted living, she wants to go to the Catholic facility - because it's better looking and they serve beer.

Cologne, Germany

***

Bamberg

Beautiful homes in Bamberg

About half way through our Viking River Cruise we reached the lovely little town of Bamsberg.  Listed as a UNESCO site, Bamberg has 2,000 buildings listed as historical monuments.

Toward the end of the day Dave and I found ourselves sitting  outside in the sun having espresso and tea.  He was sketching and I was writing about the day.  And what a day it had been in this beautiful town.

Did I ever dream when I
saw this film that I would
visit the home of this man?

Near the entrance to Bamberg from the river there is a plaque honoring Claus Graf Stauffenberg.  He was the guy portrayed by Tom Cruise in the movie, Valkyrie, who was a German soldier but joined the movement and tried to assassinate Hitler.  He's now seen as a hero in Germany.  But our tour guide reminded us that many of these towns mistreated Jews throughout their history.  This included Christians.








The night before this stop in Bamberg our cruise director told us
there would be a demonstration in the town square and we were advised to ignore it.  When we reached the town square we could see that there were several young adults demonstrating about emigration.  I wasn't concerned because most of them were holding up giants hearts.  Not being able to make out their slogan I asked somebody to translate for me.  The slogan was:

Statue in the park

No human is an immigrant.  











***

Human Behavior

As we're all still reeling from the Paris attack and all of its implications Dave and I have been talking about human behavior and how we just don't get it sometimes.

Last week, while we were traveling through Germany,  I found this book of famous German stories.  I read two of the stories, both essentially about human behavior.

The first was Flagman Thiel, written by Gehart Hauptmann in 1887.  In 1912 Hauptmann received the Nobel Prize for literature.  Flagman Thiel is one of the most widely read German stories of all time.

Supposedly about the deadening effects of routine and denial, it's the story of a weak, poor man in a boring job who goes berserk and kills his wife and baby.

The other is The Penal Colony, a famous story written by Franz Kafka in 1919.  If you know anything about Kafka you know he was not a fun guy.  Anyway, the narrative centers on a "machine," that is said to be one of the most brilliant symbols in modern literature.

An officer is in charge of  an intricate machine that is the means of torture and execution in the penal colony.  It's a ghastly, horrible thing but the officer is meticulous in describing it and its various abilities to torture and kill.  He is so proud of it that, in the end, he puts himself in it to experience what it can do.

Why am I thinking of "The Penal Colony" today?  Because Kafka did a good job of helping us to know that human beings are, and have always been, capable of unspeakable acts.

It also helps me, today, in light of the suffering and death caused in the most beautiful city in the world last night, to think about the kind of human being I want to be.


***

Bratislava

So when we left the Drop-Dead-Gorgeous city of Budapest, Hungry we headed down the Danube to Bratislava, Slovakia which borders Austria and Hungary.  The city is dominated by a massive square castle.

Just know that everyplace we went we saw castles, cathedrals, castles, cathedrals.

Cool Statue

Slovakia is centuries old. But I

Square castle on a hill.

was surprised when we took a little drive up into the hills there were several, sophisticated,  contemporary style homes.

We saw several people rub or kiss the
head of this guy coming up out of
the sewer before our guide told us not
to touch him because dogs pee on him
all day long. 

From 1968 to 1989 Slovakia was under communist control.  And in 2005 Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush met in Bratislava for a summit.

Bush and Putin, Bratislava, 2005

Dave and Cess, Bratislava, 2015

***

Bacon is the New Cigarettes

On our recent cruise we experienced three elegant meals - with snacks in between.  Breakfast consisted of a huge buffet with every breakfast item you could imagine, plus a chef preparing egg delights to order.  If that wasn't enough, if we wanted Eggs Benedict or some other more complicated treat, all we needed to do was ask.

And, yes, some folks tended to overindulge. One day I saw a man who had the biggest pile of bacon on his plate that you could imagine and several other meat items.  I'm not making judgements.  I make crazy food decisions from time to time.  We are hard wired to love meat.

Now, as I'm catching up on my Time magazines,  I just finished an article on the new findings about red meat and cancer risk.  Time calls it "The War on Delicious."  Another title I saw was "Bacon is the New Cigarettes."  We've known for a long time that cured meats can hurt us but now we have some definitive evidence about all red meat.

On October 26th, the World Health Organization officially identified processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen, meaning the quality of the evidence firmly links to cancer.  Red meats fare little better, falling into Group 2A - foods or substances that probably cause cancer. 

- High Temperatures - Carcinogens can form when meat is fried, roasted or grilled at high temps. Pan frying is the worst.

- Turkey Bacon - Bad news, all processed meat is bad.  There is no bacon loophole.

- No "Other White Meat" - All types of mammalian muscle meat, such as beef, veal, pork, lamb, mutton, horse and goat, are classified as red meat.

- How Much Can Hurt Us? - An average of 50 grams per day of processed meat increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18%.  That's 6 slices of bacon or 1 hot dog, or 2 slices of ham.

I don't know what to make of all this.  I guess I'll just keep heeding the Apostle Paul's advice:  Moderation in all things.

As for the guy having breakfast on the cruise, at least he wasn't smoking!


***

It's So Hot Here I Think I'll Go Back to Budapest

Every time we looked around

There he was that hairy hound from Budapest.

Never leaving us alone, never have I ever known

a ruder pest. 

-  My Fair Lady - "You Did It" lyrics

Yesterday was the hottest November 9th in the history of Orlando, Florida.  We topped out at 91 degrees.  Makes me long for the cool climes of Northern Europe last week. 

Clean, modern toalett

When we planned this trip we could choose to start the cruise in either Amsterdam or Budapest.  We made our choice based on the best time to go but we were both sad that we would essentially miss Amsterdam.  About all I knew about Budapest was from the song lyrics from My Fair Lady copied above.  I always thought it was so cool to rhyme "Budapest" with "Ruder pest."

Shoes

I know you want to hear about restrooms.  They're a big deal.  Years ago when Dave and I walked all over France we had some weird restroom experiences.  Including sometimes just a hole in the floor and most of the time no toilet paper.  Dave took to carrying some in his pocket for me.  So, even though some of the folks were upset because, in most places, it cost 50 euros to pee, I was happy.  Mostly clean and up to date. 

As we walked along the Danube we spied these shoe sculptures along the bank.  They were conceived by film director Can Togay and sculptor Gyula Pauer to honor Jews who were ordered to take off their shoes before being shot on the bank of the Danube in 1944-45.  Very moving site to see.

With new friends rubbing this guy's
belly for luck.

Budapest is some city. 

***

Home - Again

Our Viking Longboat was parked
along side this historic bridge
in Budapest

On October 22nd Dave and I flew to Budapest and began a 16 day trip with Viking River Cruses through northern Europe, ending up in Amsterdam.  They call this The Grand European Cruise.  We got home late Saturday night.

We're feeling like two young lovers  after a fantastic honeymoon.  I'm aching all over and Dave's in the hospital!

Budapest House of Parliament.  We have
a Parliament House in Orlando but it's
nothing like this. 

Actually he just got out of the hospital.  He picked up a bug a few days ago, then, after a grueling 20 hour trip home he fell and hit his head.  Since neither of us had the strength to get him up I called 911.  But after spending the night, getting his head stapled and getting thoroughly checked out, we're back home - again.

But I digress.

Budapest is an astoundingly beautiful city.   As you probably know it used to be two cities: Historic Buda,  on the east bank of the River Danube and upscale, cosmopolitan, Pest on the west.  This was news to me.

Budapest, with over a million people,  is one of the richest and most beautiful cities in the world.  What a great place to start this once in a lifetime journey,


***