The Red Sofa

The Red Sofa, 2009. Oil on watercolor block, 9 x 12.Our living room, a couple of weeks ago.

Sunset, Friday, 5 June 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.I was going to say that this crazy mixed-up sunset – which I had to keep watching just to make sure it didn’t change (again) into something different, like maybe a sea lion or an office building – reminded me of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but then I remembered that’s not what did it.

No, it was because I had been reading about the so-called Indian Massacre of 1622, in which native Americans killed about 350 Jamestown colonists who were living, not in Jamestown itself, but in various outlying places, settlements up and down the James River with names like Henricus and Martin’s Hundred. I was struck by a possible parallel with new Israeli settlements in the occupied lands, and by the impression that, even today after four centuries, there doesn’t seem to be a clear consensus as to whether the colonists encouraged the attacks by harsh treatment of the natives or by not being even harsher – by being lax. 

In a sense, I gather it was a combination of both, or to put it another way, it’s risky to let your guard down and trust your neighbors if your neighbors think you’ve wronged them and don’t trust you.

Then it did somehow connect with the sunset, but here I want to be careful not to fall into the ‘Gee whiz, why can’t we all just get along’ school of international relations – a real danger since that’s sometimes my actual philosophy. But what I was thinking about a sunset, as opposed, say, to the airspace it occupies or the land it covers, is that it’s indivisible and owned by no one. All we ever have is the experience of it, often a shared experience. I realize this may be rightly considered trivial, and I don’t mean to make light of the situation, except in a different sense, but maybe we could use some Israeli-Palestinian sunsets.

Speaking of things shared, my sister Emily, in southern Indiana, precisely because she’s in southern Indiana, very often has “Tomorrow’s Weather Today.” She assures me Saturday’s going to be beautiful.

*    *    *    *

Jamestown source, very highly recommended: Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation by David A. Price.

Update on Saturday, June 6, 2009 at 10:41AM by BVD

Perhaps I should stipulate, even though it seemed too obvious to mention at the time, that the Palestine–Jamestown parallels only go so far. In the Middle East, both Jews and Arabs can argue ‘original’ claims to the land; not so for the English colonists.

Which reminds me of a bumpersticker I spotted in L.A., circa 1979: Indians Had Bad Immigration Laws.

Sunset, Thursday, 4 June 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.58°F at 8:30 p.m.

Honeysuckle winter might be that little period in the first week of June when an improvident painter who heats his house exclusively with a woodstove finds himself operating a chain saw in heavy rain while watching a socked-in sunset.

Tonight behind the grays I used asphaltum, transparent earth yellow, sepia and brown-pink, along with radiant violet. So, if it looks like there’s no earth in this painting ... that’s not entirely true.

Sunset, Wednesday, 3 June 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.Today, in the archive, we have our first look at an entire month of sunsets in a calendar array, for May 2009. In addition to building current months in this fashion, as past months are archived they will also be presented in calendar order.

Sunset, Tuesday, 2 June 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.On a lighter note – correction: on a less serious note – I have it on not very good authority that today is the anniversary of the ‘creation,’ in 1928, of Velveeta cheese.

Update on Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 08:43AM by BVD

For those who worry that June 2nd may not be the correct anniversary for Velveeta, I offer a remedy.

Instead of this –

June 2. Creation of Velveeta Cheese.

We’ll do this –

June 2. Creation of Velveeta Cheese (Observed). 

Sunset, Monday, 1 June 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.I hope this sky is sufficiently bigger than life to suit my dad, Theodore (Ted) Van Doren, who would have been 83 today. I’d been thinking about lines from the hymn “The Holy City” that I still (more than 29 years after his death) would like to put on his gravestone. (What’s on there now is not of interest, much like the story behind it.) Dad used to sing that song, along with his sister May at the piano, and his powerful voice would shake the walls. But he never could quite entirely get the highest note at the end ... witnessing him do the song was like watching someone try to break the world record in the pole vault. I think he’d appreciate the fact that one of the sites where I found the lyrics also carries an ad, “How To Sing High Notes.”

The best place I found for the lyrics was a site related to James Joyce, which also lets you play a pretty good rendition of one of the verses; this site also includes a discussion of Joyce’s use of the song. The version I found that most conveys the power of the song as Dad sang it was on YouTube, by the Beirut Orpheus Choir. Of course, the performance by Mahalia Jackson is in a class by itself.

Sampling different recordings of the song just about destroyed me.

The lines?

Methought the voice of angels

From heaven in answer rang.