Sunday, February 25, 2007
Rembrandt's drawings....Rembrandt:
I took advantage of my first day without the children (they are back to school after the ice storm last week), and other obligations, to get down to a museum on Friday. They have Rembrandt's drawings at the National Gallery. I'm not as impressed with them as I think people are of the big dark red and black paintings he did. His drawings look good, but are average daily scenes. His sense of humor comes through, you can tell there is a joke going on in the theme of some of the drawings and prints. I'm impressed that he actually produced many prints. Sort of like a 17'th century Andy Warhol. A commercial artist for his times. Amsterdam must have been doing well, because all of his characters are fat. Even the 'poor' ones. And I'm sorry to say, they all looked like 17'th century folk. Even his religious drawings were fat Dutch people. Oh, well, he knew his market.
I'd like to see some of his major paintings.
posted by Nick 3:34:00 AM
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Clutter and holding on to the pastI shredded old credit card statements and receipts yesterday. They were up to 14 years old. We kept them to double check the statements and to have onhand in case we needed to return somethng for warranty purposes. And we were incredibly insecure.
Letting the paper go felt like we had chosen to move on. The near term past had gone on to become the middle past and soon to be the distant past. We would never deal with that bank again, nor dispute those ancient charges. This also touches on the nature of psychic loss and personal change. Hmmmm.
These records are probably on computers at the various credit card bureaus. They have digitized versions of the information on file somewhere. Let future historians sort through it all. Follow the trails, analyse the cultural trends - like they will with this blog.
My bank's ATM takes in my checks now, and digitizes them and asks me for confirmation of the amount and image displayed on the screen. Wow. And I just heard an advertisement for a bank that lets vendors scan in checks and send in the digital information to that bank. I estimate it speeds up the transaction by at least a day, without the paper movement. The check travels only when needed. The images are the currency of the moment. How good is their security? And do they trust the individual vendors? They will have to.
I wonder what other psychic attachments I hold to old things and ideas that need to be tossed?Labels: archives, history, life, loss, money, technlogy, time
posted by Nick 12:11:00 AM
