Epen, February 28, 2012—
THIS HAS BEEN a particularly nice stay, the last couple or three days in our beloved Netherlands — as always, I look forward to leaving woth regrets. A lot has to do with the company, our even more beloved Elfrings. A lot has to do with the pleasures of rambling, too: but those will continue another week or so, as we make our way toward Luxembourg.
But a lot has to do with The Netherlands, a country that never fails to impress me with its improbable marriage of pleasures and proprieties. I wrote yesterday of a poem found in a pasture: I tried to include a photo with that but the WiFi here failed: the only little disappointment here.
We drove across the border yesterday to check out Aubel, a Belgian town I'd thought might make a good first stop on our projected walk. It had seemed nice on the Internet, but proved bleak and heavy on our visit. The Belgian architecture is heavy and dour by contrast with the Dutch, as if to emphasize a temperamental difference suggesting the Belgians are withdrawn and individualists, the Dutch more open and communitarian.Today we walked across the border to the town of Teuven, where we had lunch — borrelhapjes (bits of cheeses and sausages, dipped into mustars or syrup) and beer. this was pleasant enough, and artisinal too: I think our walk will have its pleasures, especially in the countryside.
Hill and dale is what it is here, the dales descending to quick-moving streams, almost narrow enough to jump but rivieren nonethless, the Geul and the Gulp, the latter giving Limburg its Gulpener beer. Cattle and sheep; chickens; cornfields later, perhaps. The first snowbells and crocus are well up, the mists are soft and bracing. Tomorrow we take a bus to Maastricht, then a train to Spa. No definitive plans beyond that other than to shoulder our packs and walk toward Luxembourg, and that's how I like it.
ENDLESS, THE TYPOGRAPHICAL errors that creep into a job of musical typesetting. I wrote these three little pieces nearly fifty years ago, using a Rapidograph pen, an Ames lettering angle, and India ink — FW was the brand, as I recall — at the drafting table my father-in-law had kindly donated to my studio, which in those days was the basement of a small apartment on Berkeley's Francisco Street. (That studio soon turned into a combined bedroom-playroom for our three kids, and I moved shop into what was originally meant to be a breakfast nook.)
This is the work of Hana' Malallah, an artist from Baghdad who is included in my book. The title of the work is "The Looting of the Museum of Baghdad."
The Acrobat, 1930 Courtesy Musee National de Picasso, ParisFinally, I have some time to post a comment on this extraordinary exhibition of Picasso's art work "Masterpieces from the Musee National Picasso, Paris, October 8, 2010 - January 17, 2011 at the Seattle Art Museum. 
Inscape was an installation of art in a former immigration facility where people were detained until 2003 when a new and much bigger facility opened in Tacoma. Detention is a private industry that is making big bucks. Perhaps you heard the National Public Radio expose that the new Arizona Immigration Law was written by operators of private detention centers and passed word for word, along with corporate and political backing from some major heavyweights. 
Other artists on this floor included Romson Bustillo whose characteristic abstract patterns with symbolic meanings and intentionally undecipherable titles ( to remind us of how it feels to not undersand a language) filled one end.
The Chinese Men's dormitory inspired an evocative piece by Helen Gamble. The hanging cot beds suggested both the fragility of existence and over crowding. The races were segregated here, and a high percentage of the inmates were Chinese. 
Christian French made a floor game that suggested the labyrinthine bureaucracy and games of chance that people had to navigate in order to get out.
But perhaps most impressive of all was Ladan Yalzadeh's tour of the facility which gave us a complete history and guide to the various rooms and their functions. She had come from Iran in 1986 and been processed through these rooms.
This is a trumpeter swan flying. They make an amazing sound, which is why they are called trumpeters. The white spots on the ground are more swans.They do an intricate social ritual arching their necks that was fascinating. We saw hundreds of them in the Skagit Valley. As well as hundreds of snow geese and thirty other birds including Kingfisher, Blue Heron, Bald Eagles, Red Tail Hawks, Bohemian Wax Wing - but now I am getting technical. I know nothing about birds. I was with two experts who identified what I called little brown birds. But I was good on the big white birds! 
Look at this wonderful image! It is a detail of a print by the Japanese artist, Yoshitora in 1860 looking at an American couple who are visiting Japan, probably in order to trade. The artist is carefully depicting their clothes. He has done a wonderful job of observing details and added his own subtle touch, like the woman in the foreground pointing, a very un Japanese gesture.
It includes art work from Africa, China, and Japan, as well as photographs made in the U.S. in the late nineteenth century of "others".
This is the work of Alison Saar in the exhibition Bound for Glory at Lewis and Clark College in Portland. The main commission was to create a statue of York, the African American slave that accompanied William Clark on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Saar's sculpture is a permanent installation on the campus. Here is the main work and the back. Little is known about York. So the artist had to piece together ideas, but we know that a dry stream was named for him. His back as a map of scars with the dry stream marked is full of poignency. York is set in the midst of a group of granite rocks, each with a bronze tablet that inscribes the few words in the Expedition journals that refer to him. 
There was one odd comment made by Tesner with reference to Travelin'Light, a bronze life size man in a suit hanging upside down. To me he was obviously being lynched, but Tesner said, he was "a little down on his luck." I read this three times to see if I had missed something! 
Lara Evans, art historian and artist, as well as Evergreen State College professor, has published with other authors a new book called Art in Our Lives, Native Women Artists in Dialog. She has also curated a wonderful art exhibition It's Complicated - Art About Home.
Perhaps the most compelling work in the exhibiton was by Kimowan Metchewais.
This was the big week. Seventy people at the launch at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle. The book is now available from Midmarch Arts Press, 300 Riverside Drive, New York City. 1 212 865 5509. This will be my last post at this address. Please buy from my loyal independent publisher!! It is not on Amazon!! A stamp and an envelope is not too much to manage.
