26 May 2003

When I go to a museum, I want at least one of three things. I want a broad overview of the museum's topic, at the level where a bright person who doesn't know much about the topic can have some idea what went/is going on (whether or not that bright person is me); or I want depth of coverage in some narrow part of the topic, so that I may leave thinking, "Gah, they didn't do much with X! but I never knew there were so many things to learn about Y -- I've never seen so much Y in my life!"; or I want the hodgepodge of crap they've shoved together to be individually fascinating, so that I stand and peer at the individual items and possibly scribble furiously and am caught by them, even though the museum people have done nothing to help me connect them to a broader or deeper whole. (These are my adult museum options, of course. With Children's Museums I think there ought to be things that the small cousins -- or other museum-going small beings -- beg to see again from the minute we get in the door until it has been announced that we are Leaving, No, Really, We Are.)

Well, the San Francisco Museum of Cartoon Art didn't deliver any of that. The best of it was an exhibit called "Hate Mail," which wasn't there permanently, and even that was a bit sparse. It was about comic strips that have inspired ire, and it was pretty good, but even there, they weren't willing to discuss different perceptions and public/professional standards for "editorial page" cartoons than for "funny page" cartoons, or anything else of the sort. In fact, they seemed to want to avoid any mention that this is a commercially driven art form and one that has varying sets of pressures -- that the pressures on editorialists, "family" cartoonists, movie or TV animators, traditional comic book artists, the indy crowds, etc. would vary, that the audiences would vary, over time and between subgenres...just, nothing. They ignored a lot. Like, I don't know, the entire country of Japan. There was one cell from "My Neighbor Totoro," with no commentary at all. Otherwise, what, Japan? Oh, do they have cartoon art there? It seemed like they were trying to be An Art Museum, but I can't imagine a traditional art museum throwing a random Japanese painting of a totally different style in the middle of a gallery without a card talking about what was going on in it that was different. Traditional art museums provide context, but the Cartoon Art Museum seemed to fear that context would diminish something, because it was sparse when present at all. (There was, for example, an acknowledgement at the beginning of the editorial cartoon section, that these cartoons date quickly and that they're often hard to understand without knowing exactly what was going on. Yet they showed a British editorial cartoon from the 1780s without any explanation of what the heck the issue was.)

It was a very small museum, but I still think they could have done better with their space. If you didn't know a lot about comics, you wouldn't have been able to learn much about their production, their history, their state-of-the-art, or anything else from this museum, and if you did know a lot about comics, there wasn't really anything that would be in-depth enough to grab you. I'd like to see people support this museum enough that it could grow into something better, but until it does, it almost doesn't really seem worth the time.

Still, now we've gone and we know what it's like, which is something, I suppose. It's off the list, at least. And I got a rather odd postcard that's going to spark a story, I can just tell. Maybe more than one. Oh, and there's good news and bad news. The bad news is, I got another book idea. (Timprov: "That's pretty good bad news.") The good news is, it's a chapter-book. Finally! For those of you who don't know, a chapter-book is a children's book just long enough to have separate chapters. Shorter than most YAs, and aimed at a younger audience. I've wanted to do one for a long time, although I think YA is a category more to my liking in general. Still, it's nice to have a book idea so that I don't have to skip an age any more. I don't think age should be a determinant of whether a reader can find a book of mine to like. There are plenty of other self-selecting factors. So there's another book to ignore in my head, but it's a shorter one, and one in a category I'd wanted to think about at some point. Good deal.

On the train, I read more of Iain Pears' An Instance of the Fingerpost. This is really good stuff so far. I know a fair bit about England after the Stuart Restoration, and Pears hasn't screwed up anything I've seen. I hear that people who know more than I do say the same. Anyway, I'll be looking for other books by Pears after this one, if it continues anywhere near as good as it's started.

When we got home, Amber had returned my call to say that she has a meeting Tuesday night and can't go out for dinner to celebrate Mark's birthday then. So Mark called her back, and they attempted to arrange something else and finally determined that Amber had last night free and so did we. All plans of pesto went by the wayside, and we ran up to Berkeley on a whim to have Asian noodles and ice cream (and conversation and gossip) with Amber.

We took BART to the museum, but I was alarmed by my BART-smelling hair and decided that we really needed to drive to Berkeley. It was a good choice: I was having a strong olfactory day, where all the smells were a bit more amplified. Berkeley is not a city for those days. Even when Berkeley smells good, it smells strong. We had a good time anyway, but I had some disorienting moments and was in a jittery frame of mind all evening when we got home.

Two years ago, I wrote a memorial for Memorial Day, and that was good. Last year, I decided on M&Ms as my great-grandmotherly memorial observance. I may get some of those today. When I was little, we often went to Sioux Falls for Memorial Day weekend, and Grandma would put flowers on the family graves, her folks' and Grandpa's dad (since Gran was still alive then). So it's only as an adult that I've realized that a lot of people celebrate it as a holiday to honor only those dead in wars. I'm sorry for the war dead, too, but we lack a secular holiday to remember those who went before us, and I'm not sure that's a good thing. We have Veterans' Day, and people do things at veterans' cemeteries there as well as honoring living veterans. Well, most people use Memorial Day to honor the propane grill, so maybe which dead get memorialized doesn't matter to so many people. It just seems that many of those who secured the freedoms we value did so with quite different weapons than those we observe on Veterans' Day, and I don't see anything wrong with honoring that.

And apropos of nothing, I want a danish! It's very sad. Timprov said, "Do you know where you can get a danish at home?" And I said, "Yeah, at Cub Foods or Lund's or Byerly's or Jack's in Brooklyn Park or Panera or...." Danish options are not lacking there, is what I'm saying. Here, who knows? I have had this danish yen for at least a month now. I also want a Bin bagel. We'll have plenty of non-Saturday days to get them when I'm in Omaha, and I don't think there are any major Jewish holidays to interfere with my bagelly goodness.

Mark told his cow-orkers that there's no chance we'll be back here, since my vowels get longer when I even think about Minnesota. Well, yah, and it's not just me. I mean, it's just me with the vowels, but I'm not the only one who wants to get home.

Timprov has changed my mind about fireplaces, though, at least partly: he pointed out that the power goes out from time to time with major snowfalls in Minnesota, and I would indeed prefer to be able to stay in my house if that happens for a few hours of some January. So. Maybe 1FP. But 2FP still seems excessive.

In more near-term plans, we're going to see a matinee of the new Matrix movie this afternoon. Otherwise, we'll see whether Mark feels more like grilling than I feel like making a pesto something-or-other. We'll read, and I'll work on books, and generally we won't go very far. Unless something really and truly fabulous comes up. I know we should always be ready for the fabulous, but I think I'm ready for it to come in the form of my nice Poäng chair and this Iain Pears novel and maybe some M&Ms. I don't expect it of the Matrix movie. We'll see. I am, however, perfectly willing to be surprised.