Annie Liebovitz

Photography is a hobby of mine and when I saw a photography exhibit advertised at San Francisco's Legion of Honor I felt I should go. I recently became a member at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, so this would let me benefit from that as well.

I came away with an experience that was much more than your average photo exhibit. I learned and got to know a true artist: Annie Liebovitz. Honestly, I had not heard much about her before I started researching the exhibition and friends told me she was a particulary famous American photographer.

Liebovitz's work has been published by Variety and other magazines and displayed in many locales. What left the most profound impression from the exhibit is that Leibovitz captured so many different scenes through her camera lens. She photographed birth, death, movie stars, weddings, wars, landscapes, politicians, family. The exhibition showcases pieces of all of this, the personal notes posted next to some of the photographs can make you laugh or cry.

The most impactful picture and caption for me was one of a bicycle lying on a street with a smear that looks blackish red. The scene has something eerie. Then you read the note and Leibovitz tells of how a boy was riding this bicycle in Sarajevo. He was hit by a mortar right in front of Leibovitz's car. They took him to a hospital, but he didn't survive.

Koninginnedag

Lang leve de Koningin! That's "Long live the queen!" for you non-Dutchies. It is Queen's day again on April 30 and Dutch folks around the world are celebrating. It isn't actually our Queen's birthday, which is in January, but we celebrate it in April in honor of the Queen's mother and because the weather is better in Holland in April. (Seriously, that weather comment is not a joke.)

I attended two Queen's day celebrations in the San Francisco Bay Area this week. There are tradtitionally three events Dutch people here can go to: 1) An adult party in a club in San Francisco hosted by the fabulous DJ Marcus 2) A kids/family event hosted by Juf Miriam who runs the regional Dutch school 3) A formal event hosted by the consulate with herring and jenever. I went to events 1 & 2, No. 3 is on Wednesday and I'll have to miss it.



The SF party was a blast, with Dutch music, loads of people wearing orange and Grolsch from a traditional bottle. The family event was fun too, I was amazed by the number of Dutch kids in the area. Juf Miriam told me there are now 60 kids enrolled in her classes and the party attracted about 300 people. Wow, that's different from the somewhat anemic turn our two years ago. Great job Miriam!

Decadent Sunday

I'll let these pics speak for themselves:

Art at Artesa

Karma in a living room

My weekends have been packed with fun :-) Aside from the BBQ and abalone you can read about below, I also went to a concert last week. Not a concert in a big hall, but one in a living room. Christel had made friends on Facebook with South African singer and song writer Karma and when Karma needed a place to play and stay in San Francisco, she asked Christel. Apparently these "house concerts" are getting quite popular and lucrative for artists, better so than playing in a random bar. Christel emptied out her living room and filled it with about 30 friends who each paid $15 and many of whom bought CDs. It was a fun concert, which also included Steph Taylor, another singer and song writer. Personally my favorite was Karma, whose voice and music appeals to me more than Steph's. Still together they made for a fun night out. You can read more in Dutch on Christel's blog, also about taking the two musicians on a tour of San Francisco's tourist hot spots.

Abalone

Last weekend was spectacular in terms of weather, so I threw the season's first BBQ in my big back yard. Friend Pascal had been diving off the coast near Fort Bragg (Mendocino) and caught some Abalone (all legal, not more than three and all reported.) So, we wanted to prepare this supposed delicacy. The first challenge was to get the abalone out of its shell. We didn't get very far. Apparently preparing abalone takes a long time and Pascal was wiped from diving and driving, so the animal went into a ziploc and the fridge.