San Francisco Women

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!