Earnest Hemingway's Cats

The topic of pets is a frequent one at our house these days.  It seems that one large, fluffy dog is just not enough.  The girls have taken to watching Animal Planet, checking out books from the library and searching the internet for facts, information and adorably cute photos of pets.  

In November, during a particularly weak moment, we finally gave in to one longing, begging, ten-year-old-birthday supplication for a pet hamster.  Surely, this would cease the obsession with all things cute and cuddly!  It did not.

So, in lieu of becoming the caretaker of more animals, (we do not live on a farm, or a ranch, or even an acre for that matter!) we decided to give the kids an opportunity to visit them.

Thus began our thousand mile journey to Key West.

If you've never been to Key West, getting there is not so easy.  First of all, you have to drive to Florida.  When you reach the Florida border, you suddenly realize that you are no where near Key West.   You keep driving.  You keep driving, trying to avoid Orlando, because it's spring break.  You drive through Tampa, which you somehow always manage to reach at rush hour and then you keep driving some more.  You drive through the Everglades, hoping that you don't run out of gas or get a flat tire or run over an alligator, since there isn't a gas station in like a hundred miles, and still, you are not there.  When you reach Miami, you think you might be close.  You think you  might be deceptively close.  But you're not.  Keep driving until you run out of land.  Then, hop on a bridge.  Drive 100 miles straight out into the ocean.  It's like the Bridge to Nowhere, only Nowhere, in this case, is Key West.  When you reach Key West, the southernmost point in the continental United States, you suddenly realize that you are closer to Cuba than to the mainland, and that there is only one road out.

This is what we went through to avoid getting another pet.  This is what we did to visit Earnest Hemingway's house - the house where he wrote A Farewell to Arms and To Have and Have Not.  This is what we did to visit Earnest Hemingway's Cats.

Ernest Hemingway didn't just have cats.  Ernest Hemingway had polydactyl cats.  Polydactyl cats have extra toes.  The original six-toed cat was given to Hemingway by a Sea Captain.  It was said to bring good luck.

The descendants of Hemingway's polydactyl cats, which roam the grounds at Hemingway's home, are not all six-toed.  Apparently the odds of genetics give them a 50/50 chance of inheriting the extra digit.  Some are completely normal - which might explain their unusual names - like Hairy Truman, Emily Dickenson, Audrey Hepburn, Pablo Picasso, and Archibald MacLeish (named after the famous American Poet and Librarian of Congress.)  I felt the need to elaborate on this last name, lest my in-laws think I was suggesting they were related to a cat.  (My husband's side boasts not one, but three living Archibalds.)  I guess they're in good company!

Approximately sixty cats roam the Hemingway estate.  This provided the girls with ample distraction from the informative tour.

Never mind that Hemingway produced almost 80% of his life's work during the ten years he lived here.

Never mind that The Old Man and the Sea was a real man who actually outlived Hemingway and turned out to be really OLD - like over 100!

Ignore the fact that during the late 1930's, Hemingway's second wife, Pauline, spent $20,000 on a swimming pool!

Or that they divorced shortly thereafter!

Just keep petting those cats, girls!

They are so much more interesting than the fact that Hemingway tallied up a total of four wives

During his half productive, half larger than life, half drunken life.

Just focus on the cats.

Because when you've been to Key West, one thing is certain.....

... It's going to be a long drive back.

Clyde Butcher: Photographer of the Everglades

The great thing about being on vacation is that you can be driving through the middle of nowhere, like through the Everglades in Florida - a place where there is nothing but a two-lane road and swamps and alligators and not even a McDonald's - and out of nowhere, and I mean nowhere, there is a sanctuary filled with art.  As a parent, you can decide that even though the kids think that this is just a mindless beach vacation, you will take this moment to engage their imagination and expand their repertoire of creativity by stopping and viewing the timeless photographs of Clyde Butcher, Photographer of the Everglades.

Like Ansel Adams, Clyde Butcher uses his art form of photography as "inspiration for others to work together to save nature's places of spiritual sanctuary for future generations."

"Like the work of Ansel Adams, Clyde Butcher's remarkable photographs give us an access to nature we rarely see or experience.  They not only reveal the intimate and majestic beauty of the Everglades - and the need to save the fragile environment - they also remind us of the abiding kinship we mortals share when we work together to preserve these magnificent places.  Butcher's art is a national treasure."  Ken Burns, Emmy-Winning filmmaker.

Now, here is a man passionate about his work.  If you look at the photo above, you will notice that Mr. Butcher is standing waist deep in the swamp.

Now, look below.  OK, now look more closely.  Can you see the alligator in the upper left hand corner?

This is the swamp in which he chooses to stand.  Call me crazy, but I am just not willing to dedicate myself THAT much to my art!

After viewing Mr. Butcher's photos in his middle-of-nowhere gallery, you can exit out the back, take a swamp walk, and try a few photos of your own!

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!

If the view ahead doesn't please you.....

Just look up!

Clyde Butcher's images are truly stunning.

One can't help but admire not only the photographer, but the work of The Creator, Himself.

Ansel Adams

Monolith, the Face of Half Dome by Ansel Adams

The final of three parts on the Booth Western Art Museum, I felt that Ansel Adams simply deserved his own post.  After all, it was he that truly inspired our long trek to Cartersville.  I don't know if I could have been convinced otherwise to make the long journey to see Western Art, although, in hind sight, the museum, itself, was worth the trip.

We viewed a total of 130 Ansel Adams photographs in this exhibit.  In a way, they were all familiar to me, having long been a fan of his work.  Adams once said that twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.  A good reminder, I thought, to be patient.  And a good reminder.... to edit!

And then there was the music.  A grand piano played classical music, setting the stage for nature's marvels. When Adams was twelve, he taught himself to play the piano and read music.  Soon, his intense pursuit of music became his substitute for formal schooling.  For the next dozen years, the piano was Adams's primary occupation and, by 1920, his intended profession.  

"Although he ultimately gave up music for photography, the piano brought substance, discipline and structure to his frustrating and erratic youth.  Moreover, the careful training and exacting craft required of a musician, profoundly informed his visual artistry, as well as his influential writings and teachings on photography." (anseladams.com)

Hearing this, of course, was all the reenforcement I needed to continue mandatory piano lessons for my four children!

In 1927, Ansel Adams met Albert M. Bender, a San Francisco Insurance magnate and patron of arts and artists.  Bender immediately took Adams under his wing.  Bender's financial support and encouragement, changed Adams' life dramatically and gave him the wherewithal to transform from journeyman concert pianist  into the artist who "did for the national parks something comparable to what Homer's epics did for Odysseus." (Chicago Tribune:  Dec. 3, 1992).

Adams's technical mastery of photography was the stuff of legends.  He reveled in the theory and practice of the medium and served as a consultant with many photographic companies such as Polaroid and Hasselblad.  He developed the famous and highly complex "zone system" of controlling and relating exposure and development which enabled photographers to creatively visualize an image and produce a photograph that matched and expressed that visualization.

Ansel Adams manipulated the development process manually with the Zone System as well as the dancing of his hands between the developing paper and the light in a technique known as "dodging and burning."  I wonder what he would have thought of today's computerized post-editing processes like Photoshop.  I think he would have approved.

Ansel Adams posed with his famous photograph, 

Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico in an undated photo.
His work set auction records in New York. (Associated Press.)

WORDS OF WISDOM FROM ANSEL ADAMS:

There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.

A good photograph is knowing where to stand.

There are always two people in every picture:  the photographer and the viewer.

A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.

Not everybody trusts paintings, but people believe photographs.

There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.

Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas.  It is a creative art.

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs.  When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.

You don't take a photograph, you make it.

Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter.

The Booth Western Art Museum

The Booth Western Art Museum is located approximately in the middle of nowhere.  Cartersville, Georgia, to be exact.  Perhaps it was my low expectations (not a big Western fan) that amplified my delight at this new, modern, Smithsonian-quality museum.  The building itself was modern and white, much like Atlanta's High Museum.  Inside, the atrium soared with light - unlike the dingy, dark paneled walls of my imagination.

Our informative tour guide walked us through the many rooms - a free tour that I would recommend if you plan a visit.

Arielle, the artist, took pictures of everything.

The tour took us through American history from early Western settlers, 

The Civil War, Western Films and the American Presidents. 

Look at this amazing life-size painting of all the 20th century presidents.  Each president was carefully studied and portrayed with specific mannerisms.  Can you name them all?  Beyond the wall was The Presidents' room which contained handwriting samples from each president as well as interesting facts not commonly known.

The contemporary wing contained modern Western Art, like this steel horse.....

..... and this horse made of metal scraps.

This detailed collage was made only of paper.  My husband said that it was probably made by someone who used to spend their time making cupcakes, but then decided that this would be less time consuming!

The great thing about photography, is that if you are patient, 

you can pretend that you were the only ones in the museum!

Of course, that wasn't true.  

The original Rooster Cogburn, a.k.a John Wayne, was there, too!

Day 25 - Cars, Clouds and Cookies

This afternoon, I decided to make use of our annual museum membership and took the kids downtown to The High Museum.  It was the last weekend of the temporary exhibit, "The Allure of the Automobile."  With many activities revolving around the three girls, I'm always thrilled when I can find artful adventures that will appeal to the boy, too!

As it turned out, we didn't have to enter the museum to find art - we only had to look UP!  

These cumulus clouds were a masterpiece in themselves!

Here, we combined car and cloud!

 

Inside the museum, we were treated to a display of 18 of the world's rarest and most brilliantly conceived cars from the 1930's to mid-1960's, including masterpieces by Bugatti, Duesenberg, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Ferrari and Tucker!  I made a mental note to myself to rent, "Tucker", a great family film about the auto maker!

Back in our car, I had actually planned ahead and brought a cooler with snacks.  This seems to be a downfall of spending, doesn't it?  The kids are always hungry!  I knew we would need sustenance for our rush-hour commute home.  With not a cracker nor chip in the house, and with only 15 minutes before I needed to pick the girls up from VBS this morning, I looked in the freezer and found some cut-out cookie scraps. (Yes, I really do save everything!)  I didn't even have time to thaw the dough and reshape it!  I found some jumbo sprinkles and decided that I would call them "Modern Art Cookies"!

The kids bought (and ate) it!

TODAY'S SPENDING:

Gas:  $27.37

Toll:  $0.50 (We took the back roads home)

Parking:  $3.50

TOTAL:  $31.37