The summer seems to have flown and I have barely
written. I continue to lead my weekend life
as if I were on vacation. There’ve been lots of visitors and my adventures have
been many. At one of those weekend adventures – the Cindy Sherman exhibit at SF
MOMA – I lost my camera. That does put a
crimp because I a picture really adds to the tale. I’ll just have to cut and
paste someone else’s.
Let’s talk about Cindy Sherman, the rage of NYC when her
exhibit first appeared earlier in the year.
She photographs only herself, in various personas, dressed in different
costumes through many different eras –from historical times through the fifties
and onward. She’s about my age and her photos comment on the stereotypes that
women might fall into. The message has
been the same as it was in her twenties.- Women lead lives of quiet
desperation, perhaps. I certainly was plenty depressed after viewing the
exhibit.
I and my two other friends all thought it was time for Cindy
to get over it. Forty years of the whine is enough. It is a young person’s lament when they are
discovering who they are. Sure, I went
through my period of wanting to be a bombshell and then, I grew up. There are other women who perhaps still live
in some sad faux reality (I’ll try to copy Sherman as the Beverly Hills dame–
or should I include a pix of my one-time school mate Ann (Davies) Romney?) but
as I regard my female peers, they are self realized for the most part and on
this side of miraculous. I also wondered
if Cindy were gay and had not yet reconciled issues with her own
sexuality.
I much preferred a screening of “connected – the film” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLjcuDDTUTo&list=UU5nHqW7f_1xo82eqnY1xDjw&feature=player_embeddedwith%20 with the director Tiffany Shlain. Ms. Shlain
is the techie who created the “Webby Awards” and is considered by Time magazine
to be one of the top ten women in media who represent the future. She very much believes in the technology’s
ability to create a fully realized inter-connected world. This film, which
began as such, took a slightly different turn, when her father was diagnosed
with brain cancer. Shlain’s “Connected”
realized not only the internet’s connectivity, but also that of the heart and
relationship. (SIDE NOTE: Father Leonard
Shlain was a reknown physician and surgeon,
who wrote much about art and physics, and interestingly, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess . His thesis was that women once
ruled the earth, but when the written word came along, men became the alpha
dogs.)
Shlain fielded questions after the film, which was sponsored
by “ewip” exceptional women in publishing.
http://www.ewip.org/ I am thinking of getting involved in their
March conference. Many fascinating women
were there – all much younger – Moira and I were one of a few 60 year olds - really
connected to media and the business world. I asked Tiffany if she were aware of
the intelligence of the heart (heartmath). I thought that would give some new
insight.
This further sparked a
conversation with Mary Vincent, who is much involved in the green movement. Just
back from Bhutan and investigating their humane world, Vincent, a “thought
leader of sustainable development”, began
with green star solution, http://www.greenstarsolution.com/,
which further spawned “gratitude gourmet .http://www.gratitudegourmet.com/blog.html. Amazing.
All these cutting edge women and I get a glimpse of it all in ‘my city
by the Bay.” Lucky me!
