The Grand Tour

 

In the days of the Bluestockings, it was customary for all well educated men of means to take an extanded tour of the continent to complete their education. Some bold women joined in the fun and would travel to France and Italy, reporting their observations of foreign sights, customs, and people to their families and friends back home. Travel was an indespensible part of a liberal arts education, seeing the great cities and artistic accomplishments of the Renaissance, enjoying more liberal society, and getting into a bit of mischief were all part of the Grand Tour.

 

It is in this great tradition that I am entering my own Grand Tour. Three weeks of journeying to The Netherlands, London, and Paris to add to my own education and make my Bluestocking foremothers proud. So after not sleeping for basically 24 hours on planes, trains, and a serious dose of jet lag, I have arrived in Groningen, Netherlands, a University town in the far north of the country. It has the kind of expansive history that we in America can only read about. Many of the main buildings in town were built in the 1400s, and that was only after the first couple attempts burned down or were destroyed in various wars. We climbed the tallest tower in town, called the Martini Tower (as it is part of the church of St. Martin) and were treated to this fantastic view of town…

 

  View of the Grote Markt from Martinitoren.

 I’ve also treated myself to a Dutch tradition by drinking some jenever and gin, which is a traditionally Dutch liquor. Jenever is like the ancestor of gin, and they still make it here as it is part of their cultural history. So I raise my Dutch Jenever and Tonic to this upcoming adventure! 

 

Cheers, 

American Bluestocking

 

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Bluestocking Outing: The New York Public Library

 It’s feeling like Spring in New York City and it sounds like birds singing and 8 million sighs of relief. Wandering with the rest of the Vitamin-D deprived multitude in Midtown, I came upon The New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwartzman building.

New York Public Library Stephen A. Schwartzman Building

Bordering on Bryant Park at 42nd and 5th Avenue, the building’s facade is a well-known architectural icon as a gorgeous example of the Beaux-Arts Architecture style. Founded in 1895 by an agreement to consolidate two major privately owned libraries into a free public library. This was at the turn of the century when New York had recently established itself as a cultural and economic center, comparable to Paris and London in size, wealth, and international influence.

Many people congregated on the sidewalks, taking photos with the iconic stone lions that flank the building, some wearing shorts, a little too eager for spring. Inside was relatively quiet. Handfuls of people milled about, admiring the building, the exhibits, and, I’d like to imagine, reading about the NYPL’s history, though more likely just consulting their travel guides as they tried to agree whether to go to Sprinkles or Magnolia for cupcakes.

I had come to check out the exhibit “Printing Women”, a collection of examples of prints done by women from the 16th and 17th centuries. Displayed along two upper corridors, the collection included portraits, classical scenes, horticultural studies, landscapes. Sometimes the works were originals, but more often, printmaking was the art of replicating well known portraits or paintings so that they could be more widely circulated in print.

Original bluestocking, Angelica Kauffman was a painter, socialite, and female founding member of the British Royal Academy. She printed this self-portrait, which is part of the collection at NYPL.

Suddenly a person could see prominent works of art replicated in print, could see what politicians, artists, or historical figures looked like without having the means to purchase and own the original paintings. It was an accessible art, and women were becoming part of it.

Most of the women artists were aristocrats who learned the trade from their fathers, brothers, or husbands, as art was one of the acceptable domains of an accomplished lady. I also took particular pride in the fact that the prints were collected by a woman, Henrietta Louisa Koenen, in the late 19th century (perhaps proof to the world today that women giving opportunity to other women will be rewarded by history).

I wandered the building after I had finished exploring the exhibit, thinking about the idea of accessibility. It was one of the founding principles of the New York Public Library, as well as one of the benefits of the printmaking art form I had just seen so many examples of. Giving more people more access to the materials and resources that were so often considered to be the property of the elite has been a resounding theme throughout history in the realms of politics and culture. This building is for us, the people of New York, and the many people who visit our city for the same attractions that drew us here in the first place. It is a marble temple dedicated to history, literature, the humanities, and our collective citizenship. And it doesn’t exist behind an iron gate. It is free and available to all of us…one of the many gifts we unwittingly inherited when we came to this great city for all our diverse reasons, pursuing our myriad dreams.

Happy adventuring,

American Bluestocking

Bluestocking Musings: The Life of A Wandering Bluestocking

Let’s review. After traveling to England for a semester abroad, I was inspired by my spiritual fore-sisters who sought knowledge and inspiration and intellectual stimulation before it was really possible or proper for a woman to pursue such things. I was inspired to record my own journey in seeking these same things, which became this blog.

Elizabeth Montagu was the leader of the Bluestocking Society, where ladies who didn’t suffer fools could get together for a chat.

Since January, I’ve been wandering. I took an opportunity to act in a play, and that decision started a half-year adventure of departures and arrivals in different cities, all determined by rehearsal dates and show schedules. This year, I’ve lived in New York for 2 months, Cleveland for 2 months, was a vagabond for a month, and am just beginning the next two months of living in Boise. In some ways feel like I’m on hiatus from real life. My usual support system is thousands of miles away. A new one has crystallized, but I am constantly feeling the anxiety of the temporal nature of my new reality.

And this is the life I have chosen for myself, to pursue a life in the theater. And while I know that pursuit can and will take many shapes in the course of a life, right now it means constant change. So I am trying to be at peace with this change of place, change of people in my daily life, change of self.

But being the bluestocking girl I am, I feel lucky to be currently surrounded by creativity. I have no responsibilities other than to do that one thing that I love to do more than anything in the world—put on a play! And that is a rare and privileged thing in the life of any creative person. So I want to take advantage of this gift and fill myself up as much as possible while I have the opportunity to do exclusively that.

So far that has meant reveling in things like…

…this view during rehearsal (yes, this really happened). And I’ve been doing yoga and meditating…like, on a regular basis. And spending time outside, riding my bike and hiking and seeking out the natural beauty of this place. I jumped in a freezing cold lake the other day and felt great about it.

For a girl who has lived in New York for almost 6 years and who loves nothing more than being inside museums and theaters, this feels very…not ME!

But the truth is that ME is only partially my habitual tastes. It’s also where I am now, who I choose to spend my time with, what I choose to do with my time, what I think and worry about and what I don’t think and worry about. The problem with thinking about this part of my life as a hiatus is that it casts my experiences, musings, relationships, and changing perceptions as part of UN-reality. But this is my life, my REAL and ONLY life, as transitory and unusual as it may seem. And so I am simply living differently for the moment, and trying desperately to be living in that moment.

You can take the Bluestocking Girl out New York City, but you can’t take the Bluestocking out of the Girl.

-American Bluestocking

Bluestocking Outing: Museum of the City of New York

Happy [Belated] 2015! American Bluestocking has an exciting year in store…she’s hitting the road between March and July to follow her heart’s passion…performing Shakespeare! So she will have to find what cultural and intellectual fascinations are to be found in cities other than her hometown, New York.

If you’ll recall, readers, this Bluestocking Girl started her blog as a way to motivate herself to take advantage of the fabulous City of New York, in which she lives. So when she woke up this morning, her impending departure from the city motivated her to go out and revel in New York City!

My costume to Mrs. Vanderbilt’s 1883 Fancy Dress Ball! Too bad she decided to go as Electric Light as well…how embarrassing!

I headed straight for the Museum of the City of New York, where an exhibit called Gilded New York seemed to be right up my tree-lined, cobblestoned alley. The “Gilded Age” of New York was between the 1860’s and the early 1900’s, and is so called because it was a time of huge expansion of industry and growth in the arts in America, especially among the wealthy. I spent some time admiring some Tiffany and Co. baubles and dreaming of the day that I will discover a time machine so I can go to just one fancy dress ball and drink champagne from a dainty coupe glass!

But that’s not even what I want to write about…

For a girl who loves her city and is about to leave it for a little while, what I needed was a dose of Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao’s New York: Assembled Realities. Liao creates amazing panoramic photographs of the city by photographing huge views multiple times over the course of a day and then digitally compositing them into a single image, which can look like this…

Luna Park, Coney Island, Brooklyn. 2010.

The prints are huge and vibrant, and while they are composites of many different images and so not strictly documentary, they capture the spirit of the city probably better than any one individual photo ever could.

Flatiron Building, Manhattan. 2011.

And while he captures sweeping views of the skyline and central park, many of the photographs that captured my attention the most were scenes of more ordinary existence. Or maybe the way that ordinary life exists all around even the most austere and breathtaking sights. It reminded me, most of all, that I’m not having a fling with New York anymore…we’re in it for the long haul (5 years so far and going strong…most days). The real New York doesn’t look like a postcard or a historical landmark isolated in beautiful pristine stillness. When I photograph New York, so often I try to crop out what is ugly, or just ordinary. I think we all want to Instagram “perfect” moments in time without the noise, but we can’t expect life to really look like that, or we’ll never see the beauty in what’s actually in front of us. Of course I admire cityscapes of grand architectural marvels in front of beautiful clear skies, without the tourists in cargo shorts strolling past or the construction site blocking the view. But New York encompasses all of these things and lots more in between. And I think you really become a New Yorker when you can see all the beautiful, crazy, tragic, ordinary, awe-inspiring, gritty, diverse, electric ways that New York exists all at once and love it because of and in spite of all these seeming idiosyncrasies.

On The Way, Staten Island Ferry. 2012.

So basically what I’m saying is….New York City, will you be my Valentine? Because I think I love you.

-American Bluestocking

Bluestocking Outing: Garry Winogrand at the MET

“No one moment is most important. Any moment can be something.” -Garry Winogrand

Each year, at the end of August, I find myself growing restless, and not just because I am anxious for fall weather. What is a Bluestocking girl to do when the world is in a Back-to-School frenzy, and she is now an alumnus? Can anything provide her with as much satisfaction and joy as the annual purchase of new pens, notebooks, and planners? With as much exhilaration as the prospect of another year of gained wisdom and intellectual stimulation?! It was in just such a restless August mood that I went to the Garry Winogrand exhibit at the MET.

Going to the MET is one of my go-to quintessential New York outings. When I want to feel like a real New Yorker, in the classy sense rather than the I’ve-been-waiting-on-the-subway-platform-for-20-minutes-in-90-percent-humidity sense, I know I can’t go wrong there. And after 5 years living in Manhattan, I still feel that I haven’t even scratched the surface of what the MET has to offer me. I had been looking forward to the Winogrand exhibit for a similar reason: He is known for photographing New York City in the 1950’s-1970’s, and I thought I could absorb some yen for more New York City outings from his work.

“Coney Island, New York” (1952) by Garry Winogrand

Winogrand photographed mostly public scenes, and was considered a “street photographer”. Many of his photographs were shot with a wide angle lens, meaning much more content could be squeezed into the frame. He also shot photos constantly, racking up an amazing number of negatives that he left largely unedited and unprinted, but some previously unprinted shots are being displayed in this exhibit alongside some of his more well-known pictures. If you’re interested in photography, history, politics, fashion, or enjoy people-watching, you won’t be disappointed.

“Peace Demonstration. Central Park, New York” (1970) by Garry Winogrand.

One very striking thing about the exhibit is that these photos feel so contemporary. The almost frantic pace at which the world seems to be moving and changing around the one moment of the shutter clicking to capture a single image. Reviews of the exhibit in the New York Times and New York Magazine both point out the similarities between Winogrand’s work 50 years ago, with our own social media culture, in which people compulsively and constantly are photographing the world around them, daily happenings that capture their attention can be captured and shared via facebook, twitter, and instagram. Our own culture of social media has perhaps taught us to appreciate Winogrand’s talent for capturing public, fleeting, and ordinary moments and showing their beauty, their joy, their sadness, their significance, their restlessness. So while my own late-August yearnings and anxieties may not have been entirely put to bed, at least I found respite for a day in the galleries, finding comfort in the companionship of other restless strangers.

“Metropolitan Opera” (1951) by Garry Winogrand

Bluestocking’s Outing Details:

Garry Winogrand at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Showing through September 21st.

More info here.

 

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” -Henry Miller

The skyline of London from the Thames.

Two years ago, to the day, I was on a plane heading to London for a 4-month epic study abroad adventure. This trip was the origin of American Bluestocking and her blog, and it’s been two years in the making to re-inspire myself to go back to it. My time abroad was everything a restless-young-artistic-spirit-in-the-making could have hoped for: I felt inspired. Almost constantly. And motivated to take advantage of the time I had in such a remarkable place, full of art, culture, adventures waiting to be had.

And then I came home. To New York City. Where I have lived for 5 years.

Being in London, I practically had a mandate to take advantage of the city while I could. And I did. I saw all the sites, I learned the history, and soaked in everything I could on a daily basis. Here in NYC, I go about my business, work my day job, go on auditions, worry about how to afford things, and watch a LOT of PBS documentaries on Netflix. While I hate the pace and lack-of-general-awareness with which tourists visiting NYC often exhibit while exploring the city, I often envy their point of view: receptive, curious, adventurous. New York is as magical to them as it is mundane to me.

So American Bluestocking is reinventing herself, as an avid explorer of her very own home town, New York City.

I moved here almost exactly 5 years ago, and I am ready to re-fall in love with the city (or at least to go on a few dates and see what happens, no pressure or anything, jeez). Because while there may be rats, roaches, and enough construction noise outside our collective bedroom windows at 7am to drive a New Yorker mad, we also have the MET, Lincoln Center, and the NY Public Library to remind us that we live in one of the best places on earth. If we’re willing to take the time to remind ourselves.

 

-American Bluestocking

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” -J.R.R. Tolkien

Or, alternatively, “Why Being a Bad Tipper Makes You a Worse Human Being”.

Being a newly graduated actress in New York City, I quickly entered into the reality that I needed to pay my bills, and that unless I was immediately cast in a successful television series instantly upon graduating, I would enter into a partnership with a Flexible Part-Time Job. This can mean one of two things for an aspiring artist: retail or restaurants. I went for the later. So I am now a hostess at a hip New York eatery! And this experience has proved to me what was previously only hypothesized. If you are a bad tipper, you are probably a bad person. But don’t fear! It’s not too late to reclaim your status as a GOOD AND REASONABLE PERSON!

A Breakdown of Bad Tipping Habits. Receive 1 Bad Person Point for each Habit that applies to you!

1. You believe that tipping in the U.S. should be a reward for only truly exceptional service. CONGRATULATIONS! You are idealistic to the point of unforgivable ignorance! In the U.S., waiters and waitresses make significantly less than minimum wage under the assumption that tips will make up the difference. In the U.S, servers in most states are only required to make $2.13/hour plus whatever they make in tips. Servers also have to pay taxes on the tips they do make, so even if the hourly wage is more than the “tipped minimum wage”, most of that money goes toward paying the taxes on tips. So 100% of the money that servers can actually take home and spend on rent, bills, groceries, and, hey, maybe dinner out once in a while, is the money that you leave as a tip. Now that your mind has been blown by these facts of life, factor in a 15% tip as a requirement for eating out.

2. You’re not from around here and either 1. things here are more expensive than in your home town, or 2. tipping expectations are different across the pond. WELCOME! You have arrived in [insert name of your destination here]! In this modern metropolitan center, we not only have higher prices to reflect the higher cost of living, but we have these resources called the internet and travel guide books. You’re invited to utilize them to research all the fun ways in which this place is different from your hometown, which are also presumably some of the reasons why you’re visiting here in the first place! One of the ways in which things here are different is that things cost more, and tipping is expected when you go out to eat (see Bad Tipping Habit #1). We will return the favor by researching your home town and local etiquette should we ever take a trip to [insert your home town here]!

3. You just don’t have enough money to leave a big tip on top of the money you spent on the food! I GET YOU, DUDE! I work a part time job and have to pay my rent and my bills, and every once in a while I need to have a fun night/meal out on the town to remind myself why I pay the crazy expensive aforementioned rent in the first place! So let me ask you a question: When you go to the movies, do you usually say to yourself, “Well, that’ll be $13 for the ticket and $5 for the popcorn. So I guess I’m going to spend $18 to go to the movie. Well, maybe more like $20 once I talk myself into buying those Sour Patch Kids at the concession stand.” If you answered “yes”, then you understand how to plan your night out! When going to a restaurant or bar, you need to say to yourself, “Well, I’m gonna spend $20 on [insert name of your favorite menu item or choose 3 pints from your favorite pub]. So I guess once I factor in tip, I’ll be spending between $25 and $30.” Now I know a few of you might be thinking, but I don’t have the money to spend $30 on a night out! The solution to your problem…don’t go out. Or choose a less expensive place where you can pay less AND still tip. And some of you are still thinking, but why spend $30 when I could spend $20 instead? The answer to your question…because then you will be a good person!

My dad has always joked to me that he wants as his epitaph, engraved on his tombstone as an eternal reminder of his life’s significance, the phrase “He tipped well.” Well, the reason for that is that he wants to be remembered as a good person, which he is. And how do I know he is a good person? Among other things…he tips very well.

Happy dining,

-K.