Of course, I had Steve Martin’s WILD AND CRAZY GUY LP when it came out. Who didn’t? How much of the humor did I understand as an eight year old? I am not sure, but I can still remember the tune and some of the words to KING TUT.  And  I will admit that I listened to that album a lot. Not as much as Bill Cosby’s WONDERFULNESS or Alan Sherman’s MY SON, THE FOLK SINGER, but still it ranked a daily play for many months.

As unbelievable as it sounds, I had not seen THE JERK, all the way through, until two nights ago. I guess at some point in the 1980s, when this movie would have been making its world broadcast premier and then, on to VHS tape, I lost my enthusiasm for Steve Martin’s brand of smarty-pants nervousness. I think in part, my pre-adolescence was not defined by SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. I’ve noticed that there are numerous deviations of humor fans – for instance, there are people who love the THREE STOOGES and those who really dislike them, the same is true of SNL. Aside from the occasional bit by Eddie Murphy, I always felt that the skits dragged on too long, were based on shoddily humorless premises, and were awkwardly unfunny in their eternal quest to mint a new catch phrase.

And while Steve Martin was never a regular cast member of that show, he has hosted like 15 or 16 times, not to mention his cameo appearances. And it is this association with the SNL ethos that seems to haunt his career, a misconception that he seems desperate to distance himself. His career, these last few years, has been designed to install his reputation into the pantheon of “art.” His writing career is reviewed as semi-serious; he seems anguished to have his intelligence linked up to the higher practitioners of American culture.

Which is ironic, yes? Because the early comedy, the standup and THE JERK are so absurdly stupid. Navin Johnson is the prototype manboy, who Adam Sandler and Jim Carey would come to forge their cinematic careers playing. That borderline adult character who seems so idiotically unequipped to deal with the most mundane social experiences that his attempts come off as ridiculous and surreal. Each situation he bumbles into turns on an uncomfortable axis of innocence and arrogant obnoxiousness; idiocy and assholishness. It is this back and forth, which separates these characters from a PeeWee Herman or Mr. Bean, that defines the situational gag that runs this movie.

In short, the plot of THE JERK is inconsequential. The movie is a loose progression of gags, which have seeped into subterranean popular culture – pizza in a cup, cat juggling, the-pants-around-the-ankle-exit from the house. A scene that is so famous Oprah even references it, wrongly. She seems to see the scene has how hard it is for us to leave the house, when in context, it is about the failing selfishness of wealth. So yeah, maybe she does get it.

There is a throwback timeless to the movie. One can imagine that the original pitch was to have Navin floating through Depression Era America, which would explain some of the jokes like the questionable poor black family trope, as well as the traveling circus stint. The accidental capitalist millionaire inventor and the sweetness of the duet, nod toward classic American sketch comedies in which Carl Reiner cut his teeth. But a Depression Era conceit would have required a bit more budget than THE JERK could drum up, one suspects – though PENNIES FROM HEAVEN and the cut and paste DEAD MEN DON’T WEAR PLAID all assume Martin’s obsession which acknowledging a vaudevillian influence.

Aside from the classic comedy-kitsch, THE JERK, is incredibly racist, groaningly drug fueled, and falls flat more than it hits a high enough note to make me laugh. It’s influence is undeniable and incredible. And as a foray into the twisted stomach comedy of a cocaine addict, it is an amazing movie.

I bought version #213 out of #295 of the zine, meaning that Art Noose handset the type for almost three hundred of these books. She didn’t do it for the money, as my copy cost only $2.00 at Needles and Pens, a store in San Francisco with abundant zines and books for sale, alongside handmade dresses, purses, and jewelry; it is my favorite souvenir from the week that I spent as part of the “Our Other Weapon is a Zine: Northern California” tour during the tail end of August.

The tour kicked off in Santa Cruz, where I read along with Tomas Moniz who does Rad Dad (short for “radical dad” and winner of the 2009 Utne Independent Press award for Best Zine), Dani Burlison—my creative comrade in an endeavor we call Petals and Bones—and Gilroy-based zinester John Bobst. John writes this ridiculously sarcastic and funny zine called Silly Little, and, well..the title gives you a taste of the author’s humor. At our reading in Oakland, Artnoose, Capella Parish and Anna Reutinger and Roxie Perkins of Crosshatch Zine all made appearances. How’s that for an amazing line-up of artistic instigators? Anna and Roxie read a choose-your-own-adventure story from the latest issue of Crosshatch that begins on the morning after zombies take over Oakland. Um, yeah, it was as awesome as it sounds. Davis and San Francisco also featured fantastic guest readers like Katie McCleary, Renee Cashmere, and Andria Alefhi of We’ll Never Have Paris zine.

A couple of times, as we prepared for the tour—once during a write-up for a short newspaper piece and once on the radio—Dani and I were asked, “Why zines?” Why now? Since blogs and other 21^st century technologies allow us a way to reach a much wider audience, with less paper waste, and less effort, what is the point of a measly little zine? Or maybe I was asking myself these questions, even as I championed this formerly robust art form. I love blogs, and I read my favorites on a daily basis. Hell, I’m a fan of most 21^st technologies. Having recently read, Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky, I mightily agree with the notion that harnessing the power of group dynamics on the internet as a way to promote social change is a worthy endeavor. That said, the fundamental aesthetic joy of holding a copy of a handset zine, the paper grainy and solid under the pads of my fingers, is a joy not soon to be replaced by a computer screen.

If I’ve learned one thing from dedicating an entire week of my life to spreading the gospel of the zine, it’s that we need both modalities. While I won’t be trading in my laptop anytime soon, I also want to take a break, lie on the couch with a cup of coffee in hand, a handmade zine in the other, as I stop to marvel at the ingenuity and sheer perseverance of writing and creating something that few people will ever see. Art for the sake of art, for the sake of getting a voice out into the world. What a beautiful notion.

Its iconic landmarks are synonymous with “grandeur” in our collective psyche.

I recently visited on a summer Saturday. My previous trips, early spring and late fall, revealed an uncrowded landscape that easily surrendered its grand views.

On the last Saturday in July 2010, however, the grandeur was, in most cases quite literally, crawling with people.

This photo essay is my reflection on how people interact with and affect the wild natural places that we all so long to see.

I was looking around on flickr recently, and I came across a photo set called something like “Wires on the light poles.” This was a set of photos that documented the photographer vandalizing an eruv in New York City to accumulate evidence of suspicious wires on utility poles. In his words: “Is this fiber optic? Are they transferring information? Is it a trap for tall trucks?”

Not that I’m such a well-informed goy that I know the difference between a matzoh ball and a meatball, but I live in a neighborhood with the Midwest’s largest Jewish Orthodox population—and an eruv.

On the Sabbath and Jewish holidays, Orthodox Jews observe a number of prohibitions, among these is no carrying from a private domain into a public domain and vice versa. This means no carrying of car keys, sun glasses, or pushing baby strollers or wheelchairs—a drag if you want to get out on the Sabbath and walk to temple with your nonambulatory baby or bring a bottle of Manischewitz over to the neighbor’s for Shabbos dinner.

The Hebrew word eruv means “mixture” or “joining together,” as in the joining together of public and private space. An eruv integrates private and public properties into one larger private domain. So the boundaries between private and public are enlarged and carrying is permitted. By some complicated process involving symbolism and thousands of years of Jewish law, an eruv is a wall that is a series of doorways.

If that still doesn’t tell the not-a-Jews among us what an eruv is, look up. No, not look it up. Look up up up. An eruv is an actual physical construction, usually formed by nonconductive wire or cable strung between light or utility poles. Yeah, those wires.

I had been intending to write about boundaries for this column, those visible and invisible, how we mark where we belong and how we formalize our community, the gateways we pass through, the significance of our boundaries being recognized or not, what we carry with us…

The things we carry. That’s what I’m writing about.

The West Rogers Park eruv exists physically in the world and its existence demarcates a community and the activities of that community become “more sharp, more vivid, more alive” because of that demarcation. Boundaries construct our identities and clarify what we can carry, whether keys or babies, whether the key is a green card or a bank card, whether the baby is carried across the border on her mother’s back or rides in a Burley, whether we are on our way to pray, on our way to a new life, or just on our way to a decaf latte.

[I]t seems that whatever it is that is holy will only be felt as holy, if it is hard to reach, if it requires layers of access, waiting, levels of approach, a gradual unpeeling, gradual revelation, passage through a series of gates. –A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander

And when our walls are built, when we stand at the doorways, how do we enter the holy? Where are my own boundaries between private and public enlarged? What do I carry within these borders? Do I go to pray with just a key in my hand?

We carry resentment and longings; our nephew flipping his hair, a fat old orange cat, homegrown tomatoes. We carry water bottles and cell phones, lipstick and sunscreen, notebooks and pens, umbrellas, chips and nuts and little candies, Xanax, Vicodin, and aspirin; condoms, the latest New Yorker, a Swiss Army knife, a pair of channel lock pliers, a flashlight. We fill our pockets and carry purses and backpacks, roller bags and black plastic trash bags. We carry our ethnic and national identities, our imagined versions of ourselves, our higher educations, our diagnoses, diseases, and addictions; our redemptive desire. We carry cigarettes and identification, latex gloves, memorial cards of the dead, a spent shotgun shell, loose change, sugar-free gum, a note that reads: “East is toward the lake. Feta cheese. Read Emerson.”

Tim O’Brien wrote about what soldiers carry in war. They carry guns and love letters, the New Testament. I carry abundance and impatience, a Metro card and Life Savers.

Within my borders—West Rogers Park, the 50^th Ward—I pass through a series of gateways–the Georgian bakery on Devon, Warren Park where the dogs run, the empty Z Frank Chevrolet dealership on Western, the halal and kosher grocers. I am enclosed and enlarged by the walls around me. My hands are empty. Invisible wires guide me. I look up.

From the outside, it appears that the collector has such a deep appreciation of the object that the acquisition of it fills what would otherwise be a void in mind, body and soul. I’ve come to realize, however, that in many cases, what is more valuable than the object itself, is the story that the holder of the object can tell.

Think about it. What do you do after you’ve acquired that one piece that you’ve always wanted in your collection? If you’re like me, with a seemingly insatiable desire for music, you swoon over it for a moment, perhaps give it a spin or two and then put it on the shelf with the other albums. But, by acquiring the piece, you’ve joined the club of people who have experienced, and can tell first-hand, the story of that piece. And that, in many instances, is more valuable than the piece itself. I’m thinking here about a rare record, a collectible trading card, or a numbered print; something that is cool to own, and perhaps a bit hard to come by, but not outrageously expensive.

Then there are the items that drive collectors crazy; those pieces whose monetary value goes so far beyond any satisfaction you could possibly glean from bragging rights, that it approaches the absurd: an un-pasted copy of the Beatles “Butcher Cover,” an Action Comics #1 in mint condition, or, the hero of our story: a little stamp with an upside down airplane on it, known affectionately as the Inverted Jenny.

In 1918, the U.S. Postal Service inaugurated its air service. To commemorate the historic event, they released a stamp with the image of a Curtiss Jenny—the bi-plane chosen to transport the mail—on it.

In a twist of fate, the little stamp that may well have gone on to the annals of postal obscurity, has instead inspired multi-million dollar deals, and solidified itself as one of the most famous images in the history of collecting, as a sheet of the commemorative stamps was printed and sold with the image of the plane inverted.

You have to look closely to spot the error, but once you do, it’s obvious that the plane is upside-down; an error that keeps auction-types on their toes, and poor collectors in what can only be a state of resignation, that the coveted piece will, most probably, never be theirs. Single Inverted Jennys regularly fetch nearly a million dollars at auction, and a block of four stamps sold, in 2005, for $2.7 million.

Back in the day, inverted stamps were not terribly uncommon. When two colors were used on a printing press, the paper—in this case a sheet of stamps—had to be fed through twice; once for each color. If you’ve ever tried to make double-sided copies of something, you know that getting it right can be an exercise in trial and error, and that you usually end up sending a couple of trials to the recycling bin. It’s kind of like that.

Printing errors happen. The throwaways are scrapped, and the intended prints are kept. The story of the Inverted Jenny, is that the printers caught their mistake early in the run, and destroyed at least three sheets. But one sheet slipped through, and was purchased, at his local post office, by a collector by the name of W.T. Robey, who, interestingly enough, had mentioned to another collector friend that he should be on the lookout for inverted stamps.

When Robey requested a sheet of the commemorative stamps and spotted the inverts, his “heart stood still” and he asked to see the other sheets, all of which had the intended, right-side-up design. The story gets a bit vague here, as Robey told a few different versions of it, but apparently the next week included contact with journalists, collectors, and the postal inspector, and the hiding of the now-famous sheet, before he sold it for $15,000 to someone who immediately flipped it for $20,000.

The third owner was advised that the stamps would be worth more split up than in a sheet, so a block of eight and several blocks of four were pulled out, and the rest of the stamps pieced off to collectors individually, thus furthering the allure of one of the great stories in postal (and printing) history.

What sets collectible, inverted stamps apart from their printer’s scrap pile counterparts is the fact that they were, at some point, sold to the public; an occurrence that holds a regular spot in postal lore. There are stories from around the world of mis-printed stamps that have slipped past the eye of the printer and out into the public, but none—from what this non-philatelist can tell—more famous than the Inverted Jenny.

This is the kind of tale that collectors live for. The stamp, in and of itself, would not even get your letter from here to there. The entire value of the Inverted Jenny is in its story, and what a great story it is. The question is: would you pay a million dollars to tell it?

A day spent on-set for the making of One Way Home composing images.  I chose to carry only my film camera with me .  This simple decision of limiting my materials created a distinct framework for me to work within.  There are only so many hours of light and this many frames of  film to work with …
I reluctantly get out of the WWII jeep at the end of the day brimming with the excitement of the undeveloped film in my pockets and perfectly consumed by the images I have just made.

Follow this link to view all the images from this shoot:On-set photographs ONE WAY HOME

The easiest and least time consuming way to handle a lot of fruit is to pickle or preserve it in a syrup. It is as simple as cutting the fruit in quarters, layering them in jars, and covering them with the prepared liquid.  After that you can choose to store them in the refrigerator or process them in a water bath.  Below are two of my favorite recipes for this process:

Fruit Pieces in Honey Vanilla Syrup:
(use for stone fruit, pome fruit, berries or grapes)
(makes 6 8oz jars)

Ingredients:

• fruit
• ½ cup white sugar
• 3 Tablespoons honey
• ¼ inch vanilla bean, sliced open
• 2 cups water
• jars

Method:

• cut the fruit into ½ inch slices and layer them gently into a jar, leaving about an inch of head space at the top
• in a saucepan, combine the sugar, water, honey and vanilla bean. Simmer until the sugar has dissolved
• pour the solution over the fruit, tapping the jars on the counter to release air bubbles. Leave about a ½ inch of headspace on the top.
• seal the jars and process for 15 minutes in a water bath
• store for up to 18 months
• Serve over ice cream, yogurt, cake, etc.

Pickled Fruit:
(use for stone fruit, pome fruit, berries or grapes)
(makes 6 8oz jars)

Ingredients:

• fruit
• 2 cups of vinegar with the standard 5% acidity (preferably cider vinegar or wine vinegar)
• ½ cup sugar
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 star anise

Method:

• cut the fruit into ½ inch slices and layer them gently into a jar leaving about an inch of headspace at the top
• in a saucepan, combine the vinegar, sugar, salt and spices and simmer until the sugar has dissolved.
• pour the solution over the fruit, tapping the jars on the counter to release air bubbles. Leave about a ½ inch of headspace
• seal the jars and store in the refrigerator for up to 3 weeks, or process in a water bath canner for 15 minutes. Processed pickles will keep for up to 18 months.
• serve with cured meats or cheese

Next we have my personal favorite, the crumble.  A crumble is often confused with a crisp, a betty or a cobbler. So before we get into the recipe, lets go over each of these. A crumble is a crustless pie with a crumble topping made from sugar, butter, and flour (or oats). A crisp is similar only made with brown sugar, while a cobbler is made with a biscuit topping. A betty is a completely different dessert made from layering a spiced breadcrumb crumble with several layers of fruit, alternating between the two, then baked. Of these, the crumble is by far the easiest. It is my favorite because you can make it with a single piece of fruit, or 20 pieces of fruit.

Ingredients:
(use for stone fruit, pome fruit or berries)
(makes 1 9”x9” crumble)

• fruit
• lemon juice (for some fruits)
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• ¾ cup flour
• 6 tablespoons butter
• (pinch of salt if using unsalted butter)
• ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon (optional)

Method:

• sift flour sugar (and salt) into a medium mixing bowl
• cut in the butter with a knife and fork or pastry cutter (you can make a pastry cutter by removing the top and bottom of a can), then mix it with your hands until it begins to stick together
• cut the fruit into thin slices (about ¼ inch to 1/8 inch) and layer into 9×9 pan
• if using drier, sweeter fruit like apples, pears, peaches, add juice from 1 lemon. Omit from watery fruit like plums or berries.
• sprinkle the crumble topping evenly over the fruit
• bake at 425F until the top is golden brown, usually about 30 minutes
• serve with ice cream or in a bowl with some milk poured over it.

Last, and definitely the most time consuming and labor intensive is fruit butter.  To make a fruit butter you truly need an overabundance of fruit, as you will cook it down to about a ¼ of what you start with.  After trying several different methods of making fruit butter I have settled on what I find to be the easiest and the most freeing.  Traditionally you should cook the fruit on low heat over the stove for about 6-8 hours stirring constantly, then run it through a fine mesh sieve or food mill, jar it, and process it.  The entire process takes somewhere around 12 hours of active participation. So, now I use a crock-pot (slow cooker) and a blender. It still takes almost 12 hours depending on the volume and the type of fruit, BUT, it is passive participation. In fact, I often set it up and go to work, or go to sleep, and blend it and can it when I get home or wake up in the morning. It is basically fool proof. Plum butter is one of my favorite kinds of preserves. Thick with an almost velvety texture, it is bursting with intense, flavorful, tart fruit tastes and warm caramel sugary flavors that compliment each other remarkably well. It is especially delicious on cream cheese, or sandwiched between cookies!

Fruit Butter
Ingredients:
(use for stone fruit, pome fruit, or berries)

• fruit (lots of it, depending on the size of your slow cooker)
• sugar
• cinnamon, clove, allspice, nutmeg, orange zest (optional)

Method

• peel and core your fruit, removing all the pits or seeds (depending on your fruit). If using berries with large hard seeds (blackberries, raspberries, etc.) blend and strain them first
• fill your slow-cooker to the top with the fruit and turn it on high. Keep it covered until it begins to simmer, then remove the lid.
• stir occasionally. If left unattended for a long period of time, turn it down to low and cover with an upside-down colander to keep anything from falling into it. Turn it back on high once you are home.
• the mixture will start to brown and reduce. Once reduced to about 1/3 to ¼ of the original quantity, check the consistency. It should be pasty with small pockets of liquid around the pulp.
• add ¼ cup of sugar, stir it in well and taste it. Slowly add more sugar until it is as sweet as you like it.
• pour the mixture into a food processor and blend until smooth. Spoon into jars and process in a waterbath canner for 15 minutes.

Photographs by Rosey Lakos at roseylakosphotography.com.

We’d just entered the Tate Modern in London, and Tim had gone ahead while I’d stopped in the gift shop to look for a museum guidebook. The Tate Modern is housed in the shell of the former Bankside Power Station, and the entrance takes you immediately into the hall where the turbines were located. The Tate Modern commissions contemporary artists to create installation art at an unusually epic scale, especially for an indoor space, and are guaranteed a large audience of Londoners as well as international visitors. It’s become popular with artists and museum-goers, both relishing the opportunities afforded by this space.

Although I vaguely understood that Tim must be referring to the current installation—there wasn’t anything else around—I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. The art installed in the Turbine Hall when we visited last December was, simply, an enormous dark steel container. It was forbidding in size but otherwise not especially frightening. It stood on legs just high enough for visitors to walk under it and reach up to touch the girded metal, and, at forty-two feet high, it stood more than three times taller than a standard eighteen-wheeler. Tim dragged me around to the other side of the metal box. It looked like its lid had hinged opened, forming a gently inclined ramp that apparently led straight into the heart of darkness.

“What’s in there?” I asked Tim.

“I have no idea. I walked a few steps in, found it absolutely terrifying, and came to get you.”

We walked up the ramp and slowed as we neared the impenetrable blackness. The inside of the container was lined with black velvet and the floor was painted black, absorbing any light beams that might have lost their way. Tim and I instinctively put our hands in front of us as though navigating a dark hallway. And though I’ve long held the belief that art can’t hurt you, I was surely about to be proven wrong. I’ve had some near-religious experiences with art before, but nothing that made me worry for my physical well-being. Nothing that made me grab my friend’s arm so we could go down together. This was a blackness so thick it enveloped you, like the darkest part of a nightmare, like what the world will look like just before it is extinguished. A blackness that awakened in you any dormant fears of being buried alive, or of being smothered, or of screaming for help into a deaf void.

Unable to see even the shadows of the other museum-goers around us, we moved into the blackness, waving our hands in front of us with what must have been comic urgency. The nervous giggles of the other museum visitors became whispers. I apologized to Tim for making fun of him for coming to get me. We shuffled slowly, scared that we would run into somebody, or something, without warning. Even from the outside, the metal container appeared to stretch forever (only ninety-eight feet, actually).

We stumbled further, getting a little giddy on our own bravery as we resisted the urge to turn around to look for the light behind us.

Thump.

We’d hit, literally, a wall, covered in more black velvet, soft but not padded. It couldn’t have been at more than three-quarters the length of the container, or maybe even half. The artist knew that people would be walking far too slowly to ever actually hurt themselves.

We turned around, and my pupils rapidly acclimated to the light glowing from the front of the box—not so very far away—backlighting the figures who stumbled forward as we just had, arms waving, feet shuffling. It was easy to avoid them, but they had no way of knowing that as they groped through the blackness arms-first.

*     *     *
Miroslaw Balka, the man responsible for this experience, is a Polish-born artist whose intense, spatial installations often carry the tragic undertones of his country’s history. It’s no accident that this installation resembles, both physically and psychically, a shipping container or gas chamber. The work is entitled How It Is, suggesting that the collective memory Balka is tapping into is a grave one indeed. With How It Is, Balka has achieved an experience both vast and suffocating, collective and personal. It echoes the nightmares of a nation and the phobias of an individual.

We approached How It Is later that afternoon, after we’d seen several exhibits in the main part of the museum. Tim was apprehensive, but I insisted. I wanted to know how it would change—if it would change—if we knew that what awaited us was a soft bump against a velveted wall.

Having already walked through How It Is doesn’t erase all the questions. It’s still impossible to gage exactly when you’ll hit the wall. It’s still impossible to see the figures dodging you on their way out. The impenetrable blackness is no less dense, nor does it cease to awaken the fears of your personal or collective conscious, though perhaps the knowledge of the piece gave us more control over our emotions; we still kept our arms in front of us, but stood up straighter, carried less of the weight of the darkness with us.

And after our second trip inside, I turned to face the light, and, despite Tim’s protestations, ran out, easily dodging the people entering for the first time. Maybe art can hurt us, but if it is so powerful, then maybe it can also save us.

Photo “Abstract (Light reflection on metal boxes)” by tanakawho on Flickr. See “How It Is” at the Tate Modern website.

It really is like playing God to the astronomy community: “The future of X-ray astronomy now looks bleak,” declared an esteemed former colleague (and X-ray astronomer) on Facebook. By allotting only $180 million¹ over the next decade for the proposed X-ray telescope IXO, research in this highly energetic range of electromagnetic frequencies has been put on hold. As Julianne Dalcanton pointed out at Cosmic Variance:

The real bummer about these recommendations is that entire subfields of US astronomy are pretty much shut out of the only environment where they can operate. X-ray, UV, and high-resolution astronomy . . . are fundamentally space-based enterprises, and when Chandra and HST [Hubble Space Telescope] shut down, there will be nothing left, and nothing in the pipeline for a decade or more.

In other words, thanks to our atmosphere, which protects weaklings like us from dangerous radiation like X-rays and ultraviolet rays, we won’t be seeing anything new in these wavelengths anytime soon. Bleak, indeed.

Meanwhile, cosmologists like me won big: not only was Cosmic Dawn (the early stages of the universe’s existence) selected as one of three major research priorities for the next decade, but also the number one priority for space-based missions/telescopes is the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which will be tasked with hunting for a better understanding of the mysterious cosmic acceleration, thought to be caused by something (we really don’t know what) called Dark Energy. As a bonus, the capabilities needed for chasing down answers about Dark Energy can also be used to hunt for Earth-sized worlds in other solar systems, and WFIRST will be charged with that mission as well.

Of course, the 225 page report does more than excite cosmologists and deflate X-ray/UV astronomers. Ground-based optical observers have a lot to be excited about, as do theorists and experimentalists hoping to detect gravitational waves in the next two decades as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) received a tentative endorsement from the committee. Allotments were made for smaller missions as new discoveries require them, and this allows us the flexibility of pursuing research in an unpredictable but exciting area: the whole Universe.

Looking at another set of winners, the chapter on Astronomy and Society introduced topics previously covered in Astro decadals, but never in such great detail or with such explicit recommendations. Growing US astronomy over the next decade and indeed over the decades following it requires ensuring that enough Americans pursue education and research in the field. They note the dire need to accelerate the recruitment and retention of Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans into astronomy and astrophysics. While this issue was touched on in the previous decadal, this is really the first one to forcefully make this point:²

Black Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans constitute 27% of the US population . . . This cohort accounts for only 4% of astronomy PhDs awarded in the US and 3% of faculty members. To achieve parity would require increasing the annual rate of minority PhDs in astronomy from around 5 to a sustained value of 40 over a period of 30 years . . . Failing to tap into such a large fraction of the population is hurting the country through not accessing a large human resource.

Indeed, if the US wants to maintain the current numbers of people involved in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics fields (often referred to simply as STEM), then underrepresented people of color have to be integrated in much larger numbers, simply because of changing demographics. Otherwise, we are looking at a future where Americans just don’t do science.

I’ll leave it to the reader to guess at what that would mean for the American economy. Noting that astronomy is often the gateway (drug) to science for impressionable young people, the report emphasizes that ongoing support for the diversification of astronomy is essential to preparing the US for our technological future. The report goes on to mention my two favorite science organizations, the National Society of Black Physicists and the National Society of Hispanic Physicists. By the way, despite this focus on the future of American science, this survey had a notable international flavor, including international members of the committees involved in putting it together.

What is clear from listening to the press conference, reading the blog responses, and looking at the actual report is that, like anything else that involves large sums of money and a lot of people, everything still seems to come back to politics, or human error. I think they may be the same thing, or at least very much related. Was the committee right to gamble on cosmology, largely at the expense of everything else? Or did they do that because Adam Riess, a lead discoverer of cosmic acceleration, was on the committee that made programming recommendations? Perhaps it’s not Adam, but public perception – cosmology is wildly popular right now. Either way, it’s felt that the committee did not always make the most scientific evaluation possible, and I’m willing to believe that.

It’s also clear that things might have been different if certain evil people and organizations, ahem Goldman-$achsholes, hadn’t crashed the economy, leaving us fighting even harder for the budgets necessary to do large-scale astronomy exploration. Even as we practitioners of the scientific art dream big, Congress and the President will continue to spend trillions on unpopular wars while asking the rest of us to tighten our belts. As a scientist, I know I’ve felt this the least, and one thing I can do is try to lighten the load as a cosmologist by helping others to dream of something bigger than bombs, reminding everyone that the Universe outside of this struggling planet is a glorious, beautiful and fascinating place. Or, as the committee wrote:

The universe has always beckoned us. Over the course of human civilization, the night sky has provided a calendar for the farmer, a guide for the sailor, and a home for the gods. Astronomy . . . has revealed that the sky visible to the naked eye is really just a hint of a vast and complex cosmos, within which our home planet is but a pale blue dot.

In truth, this decadal marks an important personal moment for me. As of September, I will be one of the 5 or 6 Black North American PhDs in astrophysics this year, and I will also be one of the first on the scene preparing the WFIRST project for its jaunt in space. That’s exciting, and I hope my excitement will be contagious.

2 This may have something to do with the fact that for the first time white men were not an overwhelming majority on the committee, but that’s just my personal theory.

X-ray shot via NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center Flickr account

And then there are this week’s batch of artists, who seem to hope that if they refer to themselves by one name, we will all either a) assume they are already as huge as the aforementioned superstars, or b) be sucked in by their chutzpah and self-aggrandizement and make them that huge.  Let’s see if any of these albums inspires us to take the bait, shall we?

Dondria – Dondria vs. Phatffat

This album art is a bona fide success, in that with one glance at it, I know with 100% certainty that the contents are not remotely geared toward me, and listening to it would be like having my teeth drilled with a Jolly Rancher.  At the same time, if you are a twelve-year-old girl who stays up late every night eating candy and IMing your best friend and tweeting about Justin Bieber or Twilight or whatever, then this album is telling you that it is going to be YOUR SHIT.  Of course, you’re not actually buying the album, you’re probably downloading it illegally or burning your BFF’s copy (returning it only after leaving sugary fingerprints all over it), but you’ll totally spring for tickets when Dondria and Phatffat (is that a person?  I don’t even want to know) hit your town on tour, right?  If your mom is free to give you a ride, anyway.

Doro – Fear No Evil (Ultimate Collector’s Edition)

I had to break one of my rules and do a tiny bit of research on this just to ascertain that Doro is, in fact, a solo artist and not a band – and I think I could easily do a whole column based on her covers alone.  But don’t worry, everything I learned was wiped from my brain as I closely studied this incredibly dense piece of artwork (thank you Amazon and your zoom function).  This really has it all: Hot, mostly-naked lady!  Tribal tattoos!  Lightning!  Castles!  Wizards!  Skulls!  Fetish zombies?  Shiny gold lettering!  So, yeah, a serious soft-core glam metal type situation going on here.  Again, I am warned well away, but I can hear the boners of young metal fans around the nation springing to attention at the release of this album.

Lissie – Catching a Tiger

I like this cover.  In fact, my only problem with it is that I find the name “Lissie” to be somewhat grating, but that’s not necessarily her fault, is it?  It could be her name is Elisabeth, and she elected to have people call her “Lissie,” but let’s assume that’s not the case, and even if it is a nickname, it’s one her parents gave her at a very young age, and she just stuck with it.  Heck, if I were a girl, my name would have been Elizabeth – and I probably would have looked kind of like Lissie here, now that I think about it – and maybe my parents would have called me Lizzie and I would have thought it was a good idea to use that as my nom de rock.  So, there but for the grace of gender, etc., etc.

But yes, the photo is a really nice one.  The composition is great; her expression is kind of confused, maybe a bit worried – I swear I see a little Tippi-Hedren-in-The-Birds there, though not quite that terrified.  Maybe there’s a tornado coming?  I don’t love the handwriting – as with so many covers, I think this would be better without any text – but it works well enough.  We’re not being pounded over the head with genre signifiers, but I feel pretty sure that her voice is pretty and there are acoustic guitars involved.  Unlike the first two installments, this cover would not send me running from the listening station.

Nils – What the Funk?

It’s funny, because “What the Funk?” is not too different – just one letter away – from what I said to myself upon seeing this album cover.  I have no idea if this record is old or new, or who Nils is, or even what gender Nils is.  Normally I would assume Nils to be a man’s name, but this picture has our Nils looking like a cross between Marianne Faithful and Rod Stewart, and wearing some intense shoulder pads.  Design-wise, my eyes just keep coming back to the way the album title is set off by white, standing out jarringly from the rest of the art.  This makes me think “bad Photoshop job,” which makes me think this is a new release going for a retro look.  Whatever the situation, it’s pretty much horrendous all around.

As far as what kind of tunes Nils is rocking, I guess I’d have to take the title at face value and assume there is some attempt at funk or soul or blues being peddled here, but the photo of the alleged funk-purveyor certainly does not have me optimistic as to the funkiness of the contents.

Wason – Alma Mia

I don’t know who this dude is (or how to pronounce his name – does it rhyme with “Jason,” or is there some kinda Frenchy thing going on?), but I like him.  This is another fairly simple photo that totally comes together around the subject’s expression.  There’s so much going on there – disappointment, disgust, bewilderment – that you just keep coming back to that face.  And then the way the background is blown out to give you a sense of place without distracting you from the foreground – the man, the umbrella, the pole – is really nice.  And again, I’m not quite sure what kind of music this guy is doing, but I’m definitely willing to give it a spin.

This is a really good cover, but it could have been better.  I don’t mind the font they used for his name, but the red handwriting font for the album title (and it is a font, unlike the Lissie cover) is just unnecessarily ornamental.  And then for some reason there’s a barely perceptible fingerprint behind the artist name and title, that adds nothing and detracts quite a bit from the overall simplicity of the cover.  Overdesign almost claims another victim, but the photo is strong enough that it’s not totally ruined.

JW: Tell me a little bit about your background. I read that you studied fine art for a little bit, so how did that bring you into fashion, or did it?

AH: It did! I started art classes at the age of three. I just always loved to draw and did it all through school. I did precollege programs at the Art Institute of Chicago and I just always thought I was going to do illustration, that was my thing. Then I took a fashion design class and really loved it. My teacher encouraged me to go to Parsons. So then I did everything I could to get in, got in and moved here and that kind of got it going. I didn’t get into fashion until my senior year of high school and then it was just like, “Okay this is what I’m going to do.” But it’s very similar to the things I grew up seeing and helping my parents do. My mom is an interior designer and it’s very similar that in a lot of respects so it kind of was natural in that sense.

As we talk Annie and her shaggy haired counterpart, Max, show me around. The boutique makes a sophisticated statement that is punctuated with old-timey elements, which perfectly mimic Havlicek’s design aesthetic.

JW: Tell me about the store and how it came to be:

AH: It’s 350 square feet. It’s located on Orchard Street between Stanton and Rivington. I chose the mezzanine level; I liked the look of the flower boxes in the window. My dad and Max actually built the whole thing with their hands. They knocked it out in four days. My dad is a general contractor who designs and builds luxury homes and started out as a carpenter. They got all the lumber, all the materials and drove them out from Chicago, along with my mom.

I think I shortened their lives by a couple years! It was a lot of work and no sleep. We literally worked on it nonstop for four days. But it came out really nicely. We even built the dressing rooms, all the built-ins, and all the crown molding.

The boutique houses Havlicek’s spring/summer 2010 collection neatly displayed in the custom made built-in units. The flowing silk dresses, mustard yellow skirts, and other smart, but elegant pieces were inspired by a mix of two Renoir paintings, Bal du Moulin de la Galette and Le Dejeuner des Canotiers, and summer days in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Among these pieces are other treasures for sale: sweet pairs of tan and lace oxfords are the product of Havlicek’s collaboration with Osborn Shoes. There are straw boater hats by Brixton. An antique mirrored vanity displays funky-chic jewelry—fabric covered rings and bracelets by The Docent, a miniature telescope pendant and other pieces from Digby & Iona. On an opposite wall sits an antique hutch filled with hand-painted china and various succulents. All of these–including the furniture—can be purchased.

After seeing what the shop had to offer I am curious to learn how Annie’s work came to be, what was to come, and more about Annie herself.

JW: What in general inspires you when you’re designing?

AH: It comes from a million different places. One season it could be a movie, this season I was listening to song from Tom Waits over and over again so that affected the collection. It could be a vintage piece of your mom’s clothing and it all comes together to create this story. It comes from so many different places there is not one thing. For spring it was easy–well, even that was a collaboration of my first summer in Williamsburg, hanging out in the park, brunching and then paralleling that to the Renoir paintings. You have this main inspiration that is influenced by a million different things that you fall in love with.

JW: So tell me, what’s new for fall?

AH: Do you want to see swatches?!

JW: Of course!

Excitedly the designer rushes off and returns with a folder bursting with tiny fabric samples in an array colors.

AH: Fall is a little blues, Americana/Tom Waits inspired. It’s a little bit darker but it’s still really pretty. This is our color palette, we have the emeralds and navies, some black-which I don’t usually do, but I’m making myself put black in this fall collection because we never really have it.

JW: In New York, there has to be black!

AH: Exactly. We’re also using prints that are a take off sort of an old classic calico print.

JW: It’s very homey feeling it kind of reminds me of grandma, in a really good way.

AH: Yes Exactly. Like vintage Ralph Lauren in the best way ever–that’s what I’m telling myself. We’re also going to have some t-shirts, and a little bit of lace worked in, There’s an adorable pair of black velvet shorts coming in and a blue velvet dress, a little touches of velvet, because that is huge for fall.

JW: Looks great.

AH: OH! There’s also plaid coming! This is kind of a first for us.  We’ve been mostly doing silks, but this is going to be a really cool yarn died cotton plaid. I’m trying to mix in a few more easy casual pieces to create more of a range.

JW: So what do you like to wear on a regular day? I ask the designer who sits across from me wearing an outfit that may be comprised entirely of pieces from her own spring/summer collection.

AH: Well you caught me! I really do wear the collection, with other pieces mixed in. I’m not really a jeans and t-shirt girl.

JW: What are you doing when you’re not here? What do you do for fun?

AH: Well, for me this is fun, so it kind of is my entire life right now.

But I love to cook and have dinner parties.

JW: What’s your favorite thing to cook?

AH: Coq au vin!  Or just something simply and awesome. But aside from that I also love to bake and read.

JW: Do you have a favorite book?

AH: Favorite author, Tom Robbins, it’s really hard to narrow it down to the favorite book.

JW: Any favorite films?

AH: Too many. I know its probably been said a million times but I love Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It’s just so comforting. It’s stylish, it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful. I love it.

JW: Anything to add?

AH: Oh! The door on the dressing room is my childhood door that my dad brought from home. He’s really cute like that.

Annie Havlicek is opened everyday between the hours of 12pm and 8pm and her online store is always opened for business.

Photos by Jeffrey Mosier Photography

Schulz drew his iconic and lucrative cartoons from a dark, well-worn office built in a grove of redwoods near a dirty creek. I’m sure when he moved here, the creek wasn’t the dirty, homeless haven that it has become, but times change. During his lifetime he and his wife bought the a rundown ice arena near his studio, paying to have it completely refurbished, and renaming it the Redwood Ice Arena. He also had a hockey court with blue cement floors and white walls put in, as well as an outdoor tennis court. After Schulz died in 2000, the grounds around his playground became the site of the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center.

This modern, glassy building is right down the street from my house, and I’ve been walking my dog in the fields near the hockey rink for the past four years, almost every day, and while I have enjoyed seeing the happy tourists congregating for photographs next to a ceramic Snoopy’s doghouse statue, I’ve never actually ventured into the museum proper. The reality being that I couldn’t bear to part with a single dollar to see old Peanuts comics on view and modern art tributes by people like Christo to the “Peanuts gang.” I mean, I loved my Snoopy lunchbox, snow cone machine, and t-shirts when I was eight, but like I said, times change.

But when my husband suggested we go check out the museum on a free night—the occasion for the free entry being the museum’s eighth anniversary, I said yes without hesitation. I was finally going to enter the building that I’d peered into, mused about, and walked past for so many years. Plus, they were serving free ice cream cake. It took us two minutes to walk over, and once we stepped into the actual building, the exhibits were pretty much what I expected, but still entertaining. I especially liked the random collection of pop culture artifacts that supposedly served as Schulz’s inspiration—a macramé owl, a silver lame vest, a Davy Crockett hat, and a pristine long board pushed up against a wall. Hmmm, okay.

But the most interesting moment of the night came when we were approached by a museum volunteer as we stood before the “Wrapped Snoopy.” A gift from Christo to Schulz, a thank you for the cartoonist’s support of the artist’s “Running Fence” project, erected in Sonoma County in the mid-1970’s. The artistic integrity of a Snoopy doghouse sloppily wrapped in what looks like bedsheets was lost on me. The woman asked us how we liked the museum and we got into conversation. It turns how that she had just moved from Brooklyn, New York and had only lived in our little city for ten months. She was rhapsodic about living here, talking about how much friendlier people were than in New York, and how much she loved the weather. She told us about her walks through the Fountain Grove area where she had moved with her husband.

So this is where I actually get to the book I want to talk about this month. In 2006, Chronicle Books published this amazing collection of photos and essays titled The Visionary State: A Journey Through California’s Spiritual Landscape. Written by the trippy California-phile Erik Davis, the essays offer fascinating information about the “restless, heretical edge of the Anglo American experience as it probes the inside and outside of religious institutions.” In the essay “Divine Winery,” Davis tells the story of Thomas Lake Harris, a mystic who moved his Brotherhood of the New Life Colony—a theo-socialist commune—to California (specifically the town where I live) in 1875. He called it the “Eden of the West.” Harris and his friends lived in a richly-decorated, two-story manor where Harris taught his acolytes about Divine Respiration, and the hermaphrodite God that he called the “Twain-One.” At the same time, the group established a winery on the grounds that would one day be Fountain Grove, where they built a thriving wine export business. Eventually, Harris was “shamed” (the man did think that fairies lived in the bosoms of women) into stepping down as leader, and after years of being successfully run by Kanaye Nagasawa, the winery fell into disrepair. But you can still walk the creepy grounds of the ruins, where ancient wine barrels covered in graffiti loom under a progressively deteriorating roof.

We excitedly shared all of this information with the woman from Brooklyn, as she peered at us through her hip New York glasses. She seemed interested, but a little put off by our obsession with the Divine Winery. It seemed so far away from the sparkling, proper museum filled with the important but so commercialized-that-it-has-almost-lost-all-meaning Peanuts images that surrounded us. Two versions of the California dream, one that ended in riches, and one that ended in ghosts and decay. I’m thinking ceramic Snoopy statue in front of the divine winery, holding strange fairies and 19^thcentury wine goblet in paw, but alas, never the twain shall meet.

Our mall trips generally involved doing a whole lot of nothing, but there were three stops that made a day at the mall something to look forward to all week: a visit to the photo booth, a flip through the records at Woolworth’s and a stop at the Keyhole; that muggy little shop that was packed from floor-to-ceiling with novelty and rock paraphernalia.

The Keyhole had all the things that kids loved and parents hated; candy cigarettes, those screaming-whistle things, black light posters and bulbs, silky banners of the latest artists, tattoo magazines, gag gifts, and the reason for my regular visits: band buttons.

They had several spinning displays that had so many different buttons on them that they overlapped and concealed each other. They had buttons from every band and musician that I loved: Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, the Thompson Twins, Culture Club, the Cure, Depeche Mode, the Police, and so on.

The buttons were cheap enough that I could pick up one or two each visit, but their cultural significance greatly outweighed their kid-friendly price. As I’m sure you remember, adolescent culture pushes you to define yourself, yet it doesn’t provide the funds or freedom that such a massive undertaking requires. Opportunities to create an independent reality are few and far between, but music—and the cultures that spring up around it—provides a nice little portal of entry into self-exploration and expression.

I see this happening with my young friends. They gravitate toward music that speaks to them; that gives them a glimpse into different realities; that gets them moving down the intimidating-yet-exhilarating road of self-determination. And, since listening to music is a one-way affair, they start expressing their new-found musical freedom through the means that are available to them: writing on binders, jeans and shoes, buying t-shirts of their favorite artists, going to shows, and wearing band buttons; those perfect little totems of music fandom.

Band buttons are utilitarian, and the greatest tool of advertising and expression in the history of music scenes. I often marvel at the fact that you can tell so much about a person by the music that they listen to, and what better way to get right to the chase than to just wear your favorite bands on your clothing? I don’t even have to say, “I like the Black Keys.” It’s right there on my favorite jacket, next to the Cure and Neko Case buttons. But that particular combination is just one of many possible combinations. I have a bunch of buttons that regularly rotate around my hoodies, t-shirts, jeans and bags. The colors can be utilized to make anything look like an outfit, and their mere presence never fails to open up interesting conversations about music.

As far as I can tell, buttons were first created for political purposes and were originally made of different metals, with designs printed right onto them. The game changed when cellulose hit the scene. The protective coating it provided meant that images could be printed on paper, and then sealed around a button. This technique allowed for an increase in the colors, details, text and price of buttons. Suddenly, anyone could become a button-maker.

Somewhere around the time of the early Beatles, buttons became a widespread pop-culture phenomenon. The peace sign, the happy face, the “War is Not Healthy”; it was an explosion of self-expression that was accessible to everyone. Bands, artists, activists, individuals and companies started using buttons to further their cause.

Buttons started out pretty humble in size. Some of the early political ones are tiny. Then they moved a bit bigger with 2 and 3 inch buttons. Then, in a slightly unfortunate move, they became enormous, and every mom in the bleachers had a button of her kid’s face taking up a good 5 inches across her chest. I think that there was a collective-conscious decision made, however, that those ones were a bit much, and most of the sporty-oversizers have been retired to the cork-boards of memorabilia.

Once saucer-sized buttons faded from the scene, 2 and 3 inch buttons held it down for a while, but they felt a bit dated, and it was hard to find really great ones. Then—excuse me if I tear up a bit here—came the emergence and takeover of the 1” button. They are perfect. You can say everything that you need to say, put an interesting graphic on it, stamp out a couple of hundred of them and bam, you’re in the game. The 1 inchers are small enough to be slightly inconspicuous; they require that you’re actually in front of the wearer to see what they are. But, they’re still big enough that you can build an outfit around their colors and design, and rock a small, yet totally visible image of your favorite band, with pride.

I’m sure that some consider me a bit too old to be wearing band buttons, and maybe it seems like I’m over-stating the importance of these little things, but to me, band buttons represent things that I really dig: creativity, music, design, type, print-culture, expression and diversity. So, in the spirit of remixing a poem that has never really spoken to me anyway, when I am an old woman, I shall wear band buttons.

During the course of the holidays Mrs. Bridge would drive the children around to see how other houses were decorated, and on one of these trips they came to a stucco bungalow with a life-size cutout of Santa Claus on the roof, six reindeer in the front yard, candles in every window, and by the front door an enormous cardboard birthday cake with one candle. On the cake was this message: Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus.

“My word, how extreme,” said Mrs. Bridge thoughtfully. “Italians must live there.”

—From Mrs. Bridge by Evan Connell

What do you think of when you think of Italian? Red wine? Red sauce? A commercial on TV for some flavorless, faux tomato sauce? A group of short round women with prominent noses, wearing aprons, holding wooden spoons, gold crucifixes around their necks, are tasting the sauce.  Frederico Fellini. Frank Sinatra. Annette Funicello. Jesus is flying overhead. Marcello waves to the pretty girls. The wild-haired Seraghina dances on the beach. Sweat glistens between her breasts. Leave the gun. Take the cannoli. Spaghetti. Macaroni. Manicotti. Ravioli.

There is some truth to every cliché. I am my own stereotype. In Minnesota, I was the roasted red pepper stuck between perfect Scandinavian Lutheran white teeth. I was the olive pit island among ten thousand lakes, the dark haired goatherd’s daughter in the pasture of ten thousand blonde dairy cows. The big-haired, big-mouthed—well, you get the idea. I am my own essentialized cliché. I grow basil. I have a garden Madonna. I threaten to cut my enemies. I have too much hair. My brothers are men with mustaches. My mother was a short, round saint who talked to the dead. I bleach my cleaning rags. I kiss people in greeting. I have an Uncle Vinny, a Cousin Carmella. It’s not only true on television, in the movies.

On a recent visit to my hometown of Buffalo, New York, I was sitting on the stamped concrete patio in Uncle Vinny’s backyard. It was a beautiful late spring day, I was sipping a glass of white wine, and Vinny had just turned on the backyard fountains: the bare breasted nymph pouring water from an urn at her waist, the three-tiered Tuscan fountain, the lion’s head wall hanging spouting a stream from his pursed lips, the angel pouring water into the pitcher held by a cherub, the Blessed Virgin Mary grotto and pond. The sound of water splashing and bubbling almost drowned out the sound of Vinny with his gas-powered blower blowing grass clippings into the street. This is the Italian-American version of garden art. Vinny’s yard is impeccable and pristine within its garish manifestation. The hydrangeas, hostas, and calla lilies are planted in tidy borders. There are herbs and box hedges in pots on the patio, a grill as big as the 1991 Cadillac Vinny keeps parked in his impeccable and pristine garage. Excess is one of the hallmarks of the Italian-American design tradition.

This design tradition is evident in my godmother Mary Gnozzo’s white and gold living room, also in Buffalo, which has maintained the same look since the fall of Rome. The marble top hallway table, the white wrought iron stair railing, the gold and crystal chandelier, the white carpet, the gold couch, the antique gold Roman column plant stand, the artificial trailing ivy, the renaissance tapestry wall hanging. Walking into Mildred’s living room, I feel at home at once. Not at home like I feel in my Chicago bungalow with the dusty baseboards and cat hair clumps, not so at home that I don’t take off my shoes at the door, but home as I remember home growing up, where I come from, and where I return to.

In our current neighborhood of West Rogers Park, there’s a house we pass every morning on our dog walking route. The old guy who lives there is very trim and tan, with an Old World mustache. Every morning, spring, summer, and fall, we see him working in his yard, which is as impeccable and pristine as a Chicago yard can be. Pink begonias planted beneath yellow gladiolas, all in a row, a climbing rose tamed and tied to the fence. When we pass, he’s edging, or watering, or pulling a few weeds, picking up trash, cutting back his irises, all to the swelling sound of a foreign language opera coming from a backyard CD player. Sometimes if we take an afternoon walk sans dogs on the weekend, he is sitting in a lawnchair in the shade of his pristine and impeccable garage listening to opera. I’ve never seen him with an open bottle of beer in his hand, but a few times there have been an espresso cup and a moka pot on a small table next to him. The guy probably hates dogs and Polly’s tattoos; he would likely despise the lush, messy peonies I adore, with their extravagance of pink petals and heavy fragrance. I love him. When you look at him, you know he has been a handsome man all his life. “Buon giorno,” he says when we walk past in the morning.

I collect Italian delis and markets. When I feel homesick, nostalgic, or just hungry—which constitutes nearly the full range of the Italian-American’s emotional landscape that doesn’t involve bloodshed—I visit one of my favorite delis. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, there are only two Italian markets to serve the handful of Italian-Americans who live in the Twin Cities and I took what I could get. It was never enough. Chicago offers a few more options. One of my latest deli finds is in Edison Park. Next door is a bakery. I’ve seen folks lined up at the door of the bakery but the cookies look a little tired. When I tried them they tasted as though they had all been made from the same dough—a shortcut cheat. “Why do people line up next door?” I asked the short round cashier at the deli. I love her. She picked up my modest package of hot Italian sausage on the checkout counter and weighed it in her hand. “You gonna charge jus dis? When youse paya wit de credit, I no make no money lessen you spend more. Buya some more, bigga shot.”

In my Italian-American constellation of family and friends, the greatest sin is to be thought of as cheap. I had been shamed by an elder of my people. What could I do? I added bread crumbs, a wedge of sharp provolone, canned San Marzano tomatoes, and a bag of anise candies to my order. The cashier accepted my card. She considered me suspiciously. “You Italian?”

You betcha. Then she told me that every Saturday from 11 to 2 the bakery next door sold prepared food. “Whadevah youse want. Lasagna, nice-a pork chop, chicken–homemade. For de Italians only.”

In Chicago I am a member of the club in a way that I never was in Minnesota, where I thought I could only be in Buffalo. I can drink espresso standing up out of a tiny cup and sit in the sun and listen to opera while I remember the gold-flocked wallpaper and the ceramic urn on the wall under the picture of the Sacred Heart in my parents’ house. I can stand in line and eat chicken cacciatore or sausage and peppers. At Christmas I might pull out the aluminum tree, the gilt angels, the plastic plug-in candles, wonder if our Indian and Pakistani and Hispanic, Jewish and Italian neighbors will notice, will think, “Italians must live there.”

Photo by s_knipmeyer

We’ve been asking the questions “what is art?” or, more pointedly, “why is that art?” for centuries now. With contemporary art tearing down every boundary and challenging every taboo, it’s easy to forget that this question isn’t a new one. Even Impressionist paintings that are popularly considered beautiful today—say, Monet’s Impression, Sunrise, the painting that became eponymous with the movement—were radical for their time, and caused an uproar amongst contemporary critics. If it seems like a stretch to compare a giant three-dimensional eyeball to a muted sunrise on canvas, remember that the founding Impressionists were just as tough-as-nails as many contemporary artists have to be in defending their work against the chorus of “why is that art?”

Five years ago, when I worked at an art museum, the curator of contemporary art commissioned a piece of art for the wall of a new gallery. Huge graffiti-style letters stretching ceiling to floor spelled out ART CAN’T HURT YOU in bright fuchsia and orange and gold. The curator wanted visitors to laugh, to relax, to not let edgy installations mystify or muddle their museum experience. It’s a question we should consider more often, especially when confronted by a giant eyeball claiming to be public sculpture. Why are we so hesitant to consider it art? What prejudices define our experiences with art that might, with repeated viewings, begin to melt into acceptance?

***

I’m not squeamish about much, but eyeballs are on my shortlist just below all things entomological, so I expected the worst as I slouched toward State and Van Buren for the first time. Even the word itself, eyeball, stutters uncomfortably off the tongue. And in some ways, Tony Tasset’s aptly named EYE delivered me unto my nightmares: a massive fiberglass eyeball freed of its socket, a perfect sphere of veins and iris and pupil, the top of which you can see from a block away. I climbed into the grassy park that cradles it and I walked around the entire eye, shuddering at the detail of the veins, which fit together too perfectly to be just haphazard squiggles of red paint. The veins, a kind of premeditated architecture, splatter thirty feet high, disappearing the closer they get to the iris, a circle of gold and orange and blue swirls shooting out from the pupil like snakes. Impression, Sunrise this was not. I took a deep breath.

Tasset’s monumental ode to optic anatomy has mixed effects on people. The most frequently heard adjective is “creepy,” and I was certainly not the only person examining it skeptically, but passersby seem to love to interact with it. It doesn’t blend in with its surrounding, and it is certainly not art you can ignore. My first visit to EYE was on a hot, sunny weekday, and two college students dozed in its shade. My own prejudices were clear as I wondered how anybody could sleep in the shade of, well, a thirty-foot eyeball. Surely the giant from which it fell would haunt their dreams, one-eyed and angry. The more prudent passersby merely paused to snap a photo with their cell phones, or to step up to read the nearby label.

On another visit to EYE, I pointed it out to a friend from the safety of a Brown Line train car as we rattled above it late at night. She cringed. “Creepy,” we agreed, especially under the patchy streetlights.  I don’t know how long it takes for these prejudices against art to subside. Perhaps nearly as long as it takes for prejudices against people. Impression, Sunrise might be on millions of calendars, posters, and notepads now, but somebody once looked at it and cringed, too. Somebody once looked at it and asked, “why is that art?” Somebody once looked at it and felt uncomfortable that their definition of art was being defied.

On my final visit to EYE, a perfect Sunday afternoon attracted dozens of tourists out of their air-conditioned hotel rooms and off Michigan Avenue,  Chicago’s main drag. They didn’t just pause, but actually stopped to take pictures of their spouses or partners or children, each of whom would reach up to touch the lower belly of the eyeball, smiling toward the camera. If these tourists had been there on my first few visits, I didn’t remember them. And EYE was still disconcerting, but at least I’d stopped cringing at the mass of blood vessels and started examining the threads of gold and blue that formed the iris. The thick swirls of paint were not so unlike Impression, Sunrise, really. I touched EYE for the first time; it was smooth and warm, and I wondered how Tasset had applied the paint. Had he projected the veins onto the fiberglass globe, tracing them with a paintbrush or airbrush? I wasn’t sure I loved EYE or that I was any more comfortable with it than on my first visit weeks earlier. But at least now I could consider it, could trace the veins with my hands, could find the beauty in those hazy shoots of gold and blue.

As I left that final visit, I noticed a daisy in the grass, half its petals pulled off in a game of “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not.” I wondered which petal had been pulled last.