TRUTH, BEAUTY AND THE YUCK FACTOR

When I was in 4th grade, the art teacher instructed us to draw a dragon. It didn’t take me a long time to finish the assignment, so I handed it in, took a book out of my desk and proceeded to read until the school bell rang. As I gathered my supplies, the teacher asked me to stay. I stood at her desk. She held up my dragon and said, “This is the worst piece of art I have ever seen.” She was probably right, but I thought it was beautiful.

Art is a value judgment. As a matter of fact, good art is not always aesthetically appealing to viewers. Obviously, mine was neither good nor appealing. However, I wonder what my art teacher would have thought of Tracey Emin’s exhibit,
My Bed (1998).  It was the actual messy bed where she slept and engaged in various activities that involved the secretion of body fluids. The bloody and semen soiled bed was exhibited in the Tate Gallery in 1999, won a prize, and was later purchased for a great deal of money. It brought fame and fortune to Emin, but I don’t know if she used the money to buy new sheets. A work of art exists in the mind of the creator, but sometimes it is okay to ask, “What in the world were you thinking?”

I have been privileged to befriend several artists over the years, and recognize that they see the world with unique vision---different from the rest of us. Artists see lights and shadows, color and forms, shapes, textures, line patterns and various materials which, combined with a wide range of ideas and feeling, contributes to the overall meaning of their finished work. I have visited art galleries all over the world, and maybe because I don’t have the gift, I have a keen appreciation of the remarkable talent of truly great artists, whose work can bring tears to my eyes. Sometimes, I enjoy just sitting on a bench admiring an inspired creation.

Recently, a friend invited me to join her to view a special museum exhibit of “Modern Work.”  When I entered the first gallery, I saw some scaffolding with paint cans on top, and asked the attendant, “Are you remodeling this gallery?”
“No,” he replied. “That’s a work of art, but you can walk under it.” “Is the hole in the wall and the plaster on the floor part of his exhibit?” I asked. “No,” replied the attendant, “That’s the work of a different artist.” I couldn’t say, “My kindergartener could do better than that,” but I could have said, “ A demolition crew-----!

The next artist gave us 6 framed bottle caps accompanied by 6 matching framed bottle openers. He didn’t paint them. He framed them. I’m not sure his was a quest for knowledge as much as a quenching of thirst, and I got the message that he prefers imported beer. I don’t think that bottle caps and openers will stand the test of time, but then famous works are also often misunderstood.

Martin Kippenberger’s $1.1 million “When it Starts Dripping from the Ceiling” in the Ostwall Museum in Germany was damaged when a cleaning woman scrubbed away a painted rain puddle beneath a rubber trough placed under a stacked tower of wooden slats. Obviously, his work made an impression on her.
The final exhibit in my tour of the “Modern Works” was indeed bizarre. Some people say that “Art is in the eye of the beholder,” but not in this case. Five plaster casts of a man’s male organ were placed on five books. I have heard of thumbing your way through the pages, but not in this case.  I don’t know if the artist used his own anatomy for the plaster casts, but if he did, I do know--- he wasn’t Jewish!

Esther Blumenfeld (My dragon wasn’t that bad after all)

AND THEN THERE ARE CATS

I was recently invited to a party where the host’s little French bulldog greeted me at the door with a few enthusiastic yips and the wagging of her little behind.  Although throughout the evening, she barked at some other guests, it was the last time she vocalized at me. Rather, she spent much of the evening sitting near me on the sofa, or on my feet under the dining room table. For some unfathomable reason, I seem to have a calming effect on animals. I don’t soak my feet in beef bullion, nor do I wear chicken liver eau de cologne.

Another friend has an old, part-chow-part-imagination, dog with a ferocious growl, but she too, only wags her tail when she sees me, and invariably sits near me throughout the evening.

When I hike in the mountains, the deer glance my way, and then continue to nibble on plants while I sing to them. I can get close enough to touch them, should I so choose, but I must admit that the music lovers tend to distance themselves.

One day a Road Runner (bird) ran over my foot on his way to a lizard lunch, but he wasn’t afraid of me. Bull feathers! He didn’t even know I was there--- my Rodney Dangerfield moment.  My favorite bird encounter was with the little “What’s It”, who sat in a tree and chirped without pause. When he spied me, he flew to a branch close to my head and kept right on singing. I finally walked away when he began to sound too much like my teakettle.

Cats, of course, either accept you, or they don’t. It took awhile for my son’s cat, Radar to welcome me into the family. When I first met him, he ran behind the sofa and peeked out from time to time---giving me the once over. Soon, he discovered my black coat, which I had tossed on a chair, and it became both his property and cat hair depository.

The first time I was left alone with that cat, he looked at me, ran around the apartment, climbed and jumped on everything he wasn’t supposed to, and finally took a running leap, skid across the dining room table, tumbled off, taking the tablecloth with him. He untangled himself and meowed, “Now, I guess you know who’s boss around here,” as he rubbed against my leg.

I didn’t tell anyone about his antics, because I was afraid he’d take out a contract on my life. That’s one big cat! We’ve been friends ever since.  Occasionally, he will sniff my hair to check out if I washed it with catnip. I guess it’s a guy thing.

Esther Blumenfeld (“A cat always leaves a mark upon a friend”) Spanish proverb.

LET'S TALK

The art of conversation has become a technological hodgepodge of texting, twittering and tweets that can all be organized with a hash tag. No eye contact is required. It’s communicating with your mouth shut starting with e-mails. Looking at the bright side, this is technologies revenge on those who never wrote a letter home. For people who are really into developing their thumbs, there is even a U.S. National Texting Competition.

For those of us who enjoy talking, there are still telephones that, for the time being, still include this capability. However, I recently found out that a person has to be very careful when actually speaking aloud.

A few weeks ago, I was chatting on my (land line GASP!) telephone with a friend.
Suddenly, her voice sounded as if she had her head in a bucket. I probably should have asked her if she was washing her floor, but instead, I said, “I can’t believe your brother-in-law has stayed with you for a month. Why don’t you tell him to go home?” After a moment of silence, my friend said, “Because you just did.” Unbeknownst to me, she had switched to speakerphone to clean up his spilled Cheerios. Speakerphone. Whoever came up with that miserable invention? It is just a distant relative to the old fashioned party line which was much more fun anyway.

When I was a kid, we shared a phone line with a bunch of other people, and I could listen in on all of their conversations. When mother said, “Get off the phone,” it didn’t necessarily mean I was talking to anyone, but it honed my listening skills.

Call waiting is another annoying invention. The same person, who complains about being put on hold while waiting for a computer geek to answer, doesn’t hesitate to put me on hold when receiving another call. Admittedly, the new caller might be more interesting than I am, but when put on “Hold” I hang up.

And, what’s up with the friend who calls me on her cell phone to tell me that she can’t talk because she’s out of range and then everything goes silent. Why did she call me?

Smart computer innovators have now made it possible to see the person you are talking to on your computer screen. That is a nice feature, if you haven’t just stepped out of the shower.  One day, my son called and said, “Hey, Mom, what are you doing?” I held up the toilet brush and replied, “Guess!”

Esther Blumenfeld (call me sometime)

AFTERNOON TEA

Last week, I thought I had purchased a can of tea from China.  It was sitting on the store shelf with all of the other teas. The can was green with writing that looked Chinese to me.

When I got home, I boiled some water, and after fifteen minutes of steeping the leaves, I poured myself a cup. The tea was colorless, and tasted like extremely weak chicken soup.  

Maybe authentic Chinese tea is supposed to taste like chicken soup. Or, maybe, the long strand of human hair, which was part of the treat, came from the head of a Chinese chicken farmer. Or, maybe it wasn’t Chinese tea after all. Maybe it was tea from Korea. They drink tea in Korea, and I don’t read Korean either.

The choices we make in life can be so difficult. You might ask, “How could you drink a cup of anything that contained a human hair?” I had boiled the water, and didn’t find the hair until it had wrapped itself around my tongue.

No! I did not panic. The water had been boiled. And, No! I did not die from sipping on an oriental hair. Who knows? Maybe Chinese or Koreans use hair in their tea-soup instead of noodles.

However, from now on, I will stick to English Breakfast Tea. Maybe, next time I will find a crumpet.

Esther Blumenfeld (finger sandwiches…if you dare!)

THE TIPPING POINT

A newspaper article by Damian J. Troise caught my attention, because the headline read, “ Profits remain high at restaurants.” And the article went on to say, “Retail sales in the sector jumped from 11.8% in July and 9.5% in June from a year ago,  and a spending surge for dining out has a reported solid profit growth. Restaurants have been big contributors for discretionary spending, and the sector is expected to report 20.3% profit growth during the current quarter.”

So, that explains why restaurants have been competing for workers, but are they offering them higher pay or has “tip-flation” taken over the job market?  Creating  software that encourages big tips has put a lot of pressure on customers. SQUARE, the company behind many payment screens gets a cut of each transaction— including the tip. So big tips make more money for SQUARE.

Boston University, Sean Jung says, “The power of social pressure is real. It make you feel like you have a choice. The famous word for that is ‘nudging’, and tips in the United States have been nudged up to 20%.”’

However, it seems as if we are now at a tipping point, because tips for restaurant servers are down about 10%. A month ago, I went the the bagel shop to buy 1/2 a dozen bagels. The bagel guy behind the counter put my order into a paper bag, and on my visa bill he had added a 20% tip. When I returned a month later, I paid cash, and dropped 25 cents into the “tip jar.”

After that experience, I was hesitant to get a phlebotomy before my physical exam, because I was afraid the technician wouldn’t remove the needle from arm before getting a tip…OR, should she have tipped me for the blood?  

Then I went to Walgreens to get two vaccinations—one to prevent flu, and the other to prevent a respiratory illness. Since I got a shot in each arm, should I have tipped the pharmacist 20% for each arm.  It’s so confusing!

The word, “tip” dates to the 17th century when London taverns would put out signs saying, “To insure promptitude,” alongside plates where customers could drop coins for faster service.  There was no tipping in the U.S. until after the Civil War.  Then in 1966 Congress created the “tip credit,” which legally allows restaurants to pay restaurant workers a sub-minimum wage accepting that tips would take up the slack.

Personally, I don’t mind tipping 20% for excellent service. Although, I do realize that the waiter is performing the same service when delivering a filet mignon to me, and a hamburger to the guy at the next table. Although the waiter has not prepared my meal, I am not tipping the chef, but am tipping on the price of the food—not so much on the delivery.

The end of this tale is of course that, sadly, after all of his  his hard work, our cheerful waiter cannot pocket the full tip after all, because he has to share it with the table clean-up crew as well as the rude washer of dishes in the kitchen. The restaurant makes a profit, and the tip gets sliced up. Oh, yes, Life behind a tray of dishes is not fair…It’s not fair at all.

Esther Blumenfeld