Archive for January, 2011

here’s to you, jack

January 25th, 2011

jack lalanne

I just heard that Jack LaLanne died. He was my fitness idol as a young child. If I was home sick from school, this wild muscle man was on tv, showing housewives how to tone & trim. He had the most amazing arms, the most amazing polyester jumpsuit, and the most amazing white dog. I was spellbound.

I wanted to be strong like him.

Photo on 2011-01-24 at 23.09 #3

He was 96.

The L Life

January 23rd, 2011

Photo on 2011-01-23 at 11.52

This very handsome volume just came out from Abrams, the fancy art book publisher. Erin McHugh wrote short profiles/interviews with various lesbians and Jennifer May took amazing photos. Kate Clinton, Urvashi Vaid, Susan Love, Phyllis Lyon, Christine Vachon, Linda Villarosa, Sharon Kleinbaum, some yahoo named Alison Bechdel, and many more. All kinds of women doing all kinds of things. Here’s the trailer. If your coffee table is feeling naked and neglected, this could be just the thing for it.

exhibition

January 19th, 2011

Dr. Winnicott doesn’t normally seem to notice what’s on TV. But tonight she displayed an inordinate interest in this scene from Desert Hearts.

the owlery

January 8th, 2011

Yesterday at dusk I caught this owl spying on me through the window.

She was back this afternoon.

feedback loop

January 6th, 2011

I’ve been doing a lot of research on the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott for the book I’m working on. At one point I searched online for any possible video footage there might be of him, and didn’t find anything. Recently I checked again, and saw that a short video I posted about my cat came up in the search.

Screen shot 2011-01-06 at 12.22.23 PM

Then I noticed the first link, to an audio clip of Winnicott. I followed it, but had a great deal of trouble trying to get the .wmv file to play on my mac. (Thank you to our kind blog monitor Mentor for finding the hidden links that enabled me to finally hear it.)

I don’t know where or when the recording was made, but it was probably some time in the mid-sixties. It’s weird that there’s not more audio available of Winnicott because he did many BBC broadcasts about child psychology in the 40s and 50s but of course it was much more difficult to record stuff then. And possibly because they were talks about mothers and babies and not war or the economy, no one considered them worth preserving.

Anyhow, after years of reading about him and reading his work, it was very exciting to hear his voice.