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Art at Newfields

Posted in Family, Food, Travel on January 23, 2021 by David McInerny

The Missus, a painter in acrylics, was looking for inspiration. So today we decided to visit the Indianapolis Museum of Art, called Newfields, north of downtown. A sprawling campus of activity normally, we were concerned about social distancing, so we checked their precautions online. Reservations only, limited entries each hour, masks required. Looked good. When we arrived it was clear the museum was enforcing their policies politely and well. There was never more than one other couple in a room, and it felt like we were enjoying a private viewing.

Two floors of art were open, with a third to open after renovation this summer. We concentrated on European and American late 19th/early 20th century painting. Newfields’ collection of Impressionist art is very solid, representing both sides of the Atlantic, with wonderful descriptions of each piece and how one is related to the other, and how artists interacted with each other during that explosive epoch of creativity. Maps representing where artists lived and where their inspirations are located were a welcome touch.

The Missus was particularly delighted with the extensive collection of painting from the Pointillism school of Impressionism, a technique where the painter creates images using just the point of the brush, or pixels of color, using modern display terminology. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, and their students and followers, made for a collection as large as any the Missus or me have seen in all our world travels.

Our eyes sated, but our stomachs empty, we were glad to see the cafe was spacious and safe. Tables were marked clean or needing to be cleaned, so we settled down with the daily special, beef rib paninis with mushrooms, brie cheese and pesto. After our lunch, we wandered the gift shop and decided that we will become members of Newfields. We look forward to the day we can see the entire campus without masks and with a large group of friends!

Factoid: the famous LOVE symbol in the photo was designed by Indiana’s own Robert (Clark) Indiana in 1965 for the Museums of Art Christmas card. He created the sculpture in Newfields lobby in 1970.

#newfields #indianapolismuseumofart #ima #frenchimpressionism #pointillism #robertindiana #love

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Five Years

Posted in Family, Music with tags , , , , on January 7, 2021 by David McInerny

My last blog post was in January of 2016. I was in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, and wrote it moments after I saw on the TV that David Bowie had just died. This blog had been about traveling, cooking and, most of all, music. Bowie’s death sucked the life out of my creative will to continue here. Now, five years later, I’ve written a travel memoir and the juices are flowing again. It’s been a long and exciting five years, and I’m anxious to tell you about it. More to come. Thanks for hanging with me.

“We’ve got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
We’ve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that’s all we’ve got.”

David Bowie, Five Years

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Japanese Dreams

Posted in Family, Food, Travel with tags , , , , on October 31, 2015 by David McInerny

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Up until last week, Tokyo for me had been a quick fly-in from Taiwan, a rush to Sony headquarters, and verbal sparring over the cost of GPS components with some of the best negotiators I’ve ever encountered. It was while negotiating in Japan that I learned the value of the application of a long, awkward silence. Unfortunately, I saw precious little of that beautiful country.

This Tokyo trip was minus dark suits and plus one complete family, and there were no long periods of silence. Somehow five adults – two parents and three adult children – managed to manipulate schedules and budgets in order to orchestrate what may be the final overseas trip for a family that committed itself to seeing the world with a first venture to Amsterdam in 2001. Later there was Rome, Munich, Paris, Nice, Zurich, Valencia, Arles, Cancun, Salzburg…and now Tokyo. This journey had a sense of nostalgia to it before we climbed onto the plane for the long haul from Los Angeles.

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Fourteen years ago the agendas were whatever I made them, and my “ducks,” as I’ve always referred to my family on the road, followed behind. This trip I turned the planning over to the ducks, mostly so I could observe my children as adults and watch their choices and their manner of choosing, and enjoy them navigating a foreign country as my parents had taught me in the 1970’s.

Those who have read my column are aware of my senseless fear of urban metro systems, so my delight in watching my trio dive into the task of zipping around underneath Tokyo was unlimited. They never put us on a wrong train, and we never missed a stop. The kids also arranged a dinner in the the legendarily weird and risqué Ripponghi District. It was a first for us to have dinner next to a club named The Ten Sluts, but the view of the street from a second floor balcony made for first-class people watching, and the fried tuna cheeks were excellent!

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In fact, the dining was as good as we all hoped. My wife and daughter got their fill of uncooked seafood, battered seafood, and fruits and vegetables I’d never seen or eaten before. However, it was after a long night of souvenir shopping along the Cat Walk that we had a late dinner and my favorite – incredibly authentic Italian cooked while we watched the chef. The boys needed a day trip to Kobe for the legendary steaks – sold by the gram! This had me double checking the budget while the boys poured over the menu.

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As with all travel, for me, the best part is simply being there. Whether it’s tea on the Ginza or coffee in a maze of streets surrounding a temple, it seems that going halfway across the globe is the easiest way to strip away all the unnecessary parts of me so that I can view the world with fewer filters. Doing it with the family has always been another notch up into the otherworldly.

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International Travel Gets Easier

Posted in Family, Travel with tags , on August 7, 2015 by David McInerny

Anne Frank House - Amsterdam

Anne Frank House – Amsterdam

When we took our first family trip outside of the country in 2001, the preparations were so very different than the trip we are planning for this Fall. Fourteen years ago the kids were 10, 8 and 7 years old, and you’d have thought we were trying to smuggle them out of the country with everything the school required to pull them out of class for a week.  All three needed their first passports, and we weren’t sure our youngest really understood what we meant by the fact that we were leaving the country. What if the kids got airsick, picked up a bug, or simply hated being in a foreign country? What if we couldn’t find food that they liked? Would they need a break during the day with all the walking we planned? And the big question everyone asked – why Amsterdam?

The last question was the easiest – KLM had a cheap fare to Holland that made it possible to afford to take the entire family. Also, Amsterdam was a city I knew well from previous personal and business trips, so I wouldn’t need to worry about maps and navigation. I mean let’s face it, a dad takes his family on a great trip to establish himself as a hero, and it can be a bit scary to the tots if he shrugs his shoulders at some point and admits he is hopelessly lost. My wife is used to this admission from me, but it seemed something to avoid when carting around the whole family.

I got very lucky on one point. The elementary school the kids were attending was focusing on the art of Van Gogh that year (unbeknownst to me when I booked the trip), and it gave them a purpose to cling to when they realized that we would see the Van Gogh museum. Beyond that, I felt canals and windmills would be exciting and different for kids of all ages. As long as I skirted the red light district during our wanderings and avoided stumbling into a gay bar for a family lunch, I figured little could go wrong.

The trip went off smashingly, and Amsterdam was the first of several more trips overseas with the kids. Whenever we saved enough money to buy a new car, my wife and I would often decide to coax another year or two out of the beater and book flights. Each trip was different in terms of planning to keep the kids interested, but each journey got easier as the kids got older and appreciated the adventures more readily. One trip incorporated the new Harry Potter movie, another incorporated Christmas on the Mediterranean. Incorporating the familiar with the foreign seemed to help the kids adjust to a new culture quickly and have more fun.

Now the “kids” are 24, 23 and 21, and this time my wife and I gave them the budget and told them to pick the place and plan the agenda. They not only loved the idea, but it looks like the trip will come in under budget. They have set up their own frequent flier profiles with the airline, and we’ll be flying into L.A from all over the country to meet for the long haul to Tokyo. After years of doing all the planning, dad is just going along for the ride. I’m told we’ll be seeing the Imperial Palace, Mount Fuji and Disney Tokyo. We’ll be dining on lots of raw fish and exploring the legendarily busy Tokyo subway system. This time I get to be just another baby duck following the leaders, and I’m looking forward to it.

Notre Dame - Paris

Notre Dame – Paris

Limit River - Zurich

Limmat River – Zurich

Mozart's Birthplace - Salzburg

Mozart’s Birthplace – Salzburg

Trevi Fountain - Rome

Trevi Fountain – Rome

On the Beach - Valencia, Spain

On the Beach – Valencia, Spain

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Bedtime Reading in Rome

Posted in Books, Family, Travel with tags , , , , , , , , , on July 9, 2015 by David McInerny

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The school year was 1969-1970, and I was in the third grade. My dad, having taken a sabbatical year from Notre Dame to do research in Rome, moved the entire family of eight for a year into a large apartment which we quickly made small with our numerous presence. The address has stayed with me for reasons I don’t know: Via Ugo Balzani 6. My little brother and sister slept with me in a bigger bedroom, with my sister on a single bed under the window. My three older sisters were scattered throughout the apartment. I have no idea where my parents slept… It was a magical year of learning another language, schooling with students from around the world, and traveling to places that I had never heard of. We had a tan VW microbus, manual shift, and my older sisters regaled us in that hippie van with the new Tom Jones cassette as well as a collection of top Italian pop hits, San Remo ’70, which was Italy’s answer to Woodstock that year.

My dad was writing what would become his first New York Times bestseller, The Priest, though at the time I only understood that he was holed up in a small closet with a typewriter day after day, and seemed very pleased with his progress. After dinner, we would go out on the street and play with the neighborhood kids with real names like Massimo, or made-up names like Blondie Boy because we couldn’t pronounce his real one, and dad would write until it was time for the “three little kids” to go to bed. While my mom checked the homework of the “three big kids,” dad watched us brush our teeth, tucked us in and pulled out one of several paperbacks he’s found at an English bookstore in Rome. Each night he would read us one chapter, first from Treasure Island, and later that year from Huckleberry Finn. We would beg for more than a chapter, even though dad often had to stop and explain the story lines to us, but it was one chapter only each evening. When those books were complete, he started writing his own series of children’s stories featuring Granny One-Tooth, her grandson Roy Boy and their friend Sheriff Omar. He wrote a chapter in the evening while we were playing and would read it as our bedtime story.

Dad continued the Granny One-Tooth series after we returned to Indiana, and in later years we would recall them and ask why he wouldn’t publish them. He always refused with a smile, and when he passed away those pages were never found among his voluminous writing. Today, when I think about two things I have adored my entire life – traveling and reading – there is no doubt how those passions were deliberately fostered by my parents. Living in Rome, traveling the European continent, nightly tales of running away and heading south down the Mississippi or across the ocean with pirates, all before the age of ten. I didn’t have a chance.

 

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Voici La Hollande

Posted in Family, Travel with tags , , , , , , , , , on March 1, 2015 by David McInerny

IMG_4611A place can integrate itself into your life without you being openly cognizant of it. This week I was sorting through the dozens of travel guides I’ve bought through the years, including a large stack of my mother’s given to me after her death almost a dozen years ago. Among her collection was one I had never noticed – a guide to Holland called “Voici la Hollande,” Here is Holland. Why she bought a Dutch guide in French I will never know, but inside it was the receipt dated April 29, 1960, for 4.50 guilders (about $3.00) when she and my dad were in the Netherlands with my three older sisters the year before I was born. Also inside was a postcard showing a painting by Hendrik Averkamp called A Winter Scene. My mom’s guides are replete with receipts, museum passes and other bits of nostalgia which reflect her travels so well documented by date that a chronology of her lifetime of wanderings could easily be constructed.

This is a habit I picked up without realizing my mother did it – tucking momentos from a trip into the guide I was using that would show the dates I was there. My guides are also stuffed with similar time markers, including the first Dutch guide I ever purchased, a now dog-eared Michelin within which I discovered a fax of a 1997 business itinerary that was my first of many chocolate buying trips to Amsterdam. On the back of the fax are my hand-written notes of observations from that June trip, scribbles that are more than enough to spark memories that otherwise would never have been brought to consciousness again: pretty girls riding bikes to work, evening walks watching college students gawk at the red light women, a business lunch on the water discussing the impact of the Dutch East India Company on the world of chocolate. Other memories from that trip have never left me, particularly one great meal on the Damrak at a restaurant I look up on every trip to Holland, including my most recent trip there a year ago.

Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Anne Frank – Holland is a unique country whose personality is concentrated in the city of Amsterdam. My parents took my three sisters and another three offspring (including me) back to Holland in 1970, and the three youngest yet again in 1978. I remember my mom buying pottery from Delft and tulip bulbs to be shipped home and planted at the house in South Bend, Indiana. I returned many times to that city of canals during a collegiate year in 1981 for activities that shall remain undisclosed.

Amsterdam was the locale of the first family trip with our kids in 2001, a trip of windmills, water locks, art and history that, I hope, instilled the love of other cultures in my children that my parents gave to me. I’ve been so fortunate to be able to travel since my youth, and I now call several other countries places where I might still live someday, primarily Italy and France. Today, though, with two travel guides in hand spanning decades of memories, Holland fixes itself as a place of treasured memories woven into the fabric of our family history.

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Watching Your Daughter Grow Up At Dinner

Posted in Family, Travel with tags , , , on February 7, 2015 by David McInerny

Reservations were set for 7pm last night at a nice little jazz grill just off the University of Indiana campus. My daughter has worked at the NPR station there since graduating from the University of Kansas journalism school, and her responsibilities have grown from local news to a statewide show over that time. One reason for the road trip was for me to see her improved living quarters, more in keeping with a fledgling Katie Couric.

Dinner had to be pushed back in order to accommodate her long work day, but my daughter had plenty of good news. That morning she had been given her first White House credentials, and she had driven to Indy with a cameraman to cover the president’s speech. She described the secret service sweep as we dined on salad and salmon, and while the music played in the background of her story of the coverage, the image of her as a fifth grader showing stories to my father, a writer, ran through my head. “She’s got the talent,” he used to say.

Is if to accentuate that comment rolling in my head, she announced that she had pitched her first national story and was told by NPR Washington they liked it. It was a moment when a parent realizes that his child is truly making her own way. I decided to pay for dinner anyway.

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Sabatini in Rome

Posted in Family, Food, Travel with tags , , on December 22, 2014 by David McInerny

736041-1I usually wouldn’t find myself wandering an antique mall of my own volition, but I will confess that I don’t fight the opportunity when asked. I especially like the ones where there are booths with absentee owners, where you take your purchase up to a central cashier. The pressure to browse is nonexistent, and I get to imagine what kind of person would spend time and money collecting late Victorian piss pots and then decide other people would want to buy them. (If I’ve just described you, well, I’m sure it’s a fulfilling hobby.) Anyway, I tend to look at the old books on sale, hoping for some pristine gem, but people tend to take better care of old Brady Bunch lunch boxes than first edition Steinbeck’s twice that age.

This is not to say I haven’t made purchases. One of my favorites is a pretty black and white 19th century etching reproduction of the Duomo in Florence, Italy. I had been wondering if I wanted it when I saw the owner had labeled it “A Scene in Paris.” That clinched the deal, and it currently hangs in my office at work.

My last find was a wonderfully sentimental one. I spent a few years in Rome growing up, and my parent’s favorite restaurant was Sabatini in the Trastevere section which hugs the Tiber river on the southwestern side of the Eternal City. It’s a cozy refuge from the noise of Rome, filled with family-owned pizzerias and art shops, and with streets too narrow for cars, making it a pedestrian’s dream. There is only space for one small piazza, and on one end of this cobbled idyll resides Sabatini. Whenever we had visitor’s from the States, we always took them there for dinner. On my last visit to Rome, I strolled through Trastevere and Sabatini is still there, vibrant as ever.

In those days, dining and smoking went hand in hand, and many European restaurants placed colorful ceramic glazed ashtrays on the tables with the establishment’s name and address on it. Patrons were welcome to take them home, much in the way we swipe pens from hotels today and unwittingly advertise for them. Sabatini also had elegant terra cotta water pitchers on each table emblazoned with the restaurant’s vital statistics. My mom always loved them, but they must have been for sale, because I don’t remember one ever displayed at home. Or maybe they were too big for her to stuff into her purse when the waiter wasn’t looking.

Regardless, in Prairie Village, KS recently I was walking through an antique mall and looked into a booth with a fair amount of dusty old books. I stepped in and noticed that, being used as a bookend, was a Sabatini water pitcher. I don’t remember what is cost, but it wasn’t much. I would have paid anything within a country mile of reasonable for it. I keep it in my own bookcase now. It’s just a simple, mass produced hunk of ceramic, but I can’t look at it without remembering how much my mom looked forward to an evening at Sabatini. I guess that’s the whole allure of rummaging through an antique mall. You just never know…

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Saint Helena

Posted in Family, Travel with tags , , , , on October 13, 2014 by David McInerny

IMG_4322 How could I have known, a few short weeks ago, while enjoying the Eurasian city founded by Constantine, that life circumstances would place me today in Minneapolis at the Church of St. Helena, Constantine’s mother? Constantine was the first Christian Roman emperor and, after his conversion and founding of what is now Istanbul, his mother travelled to the Holy Land in order to establish Christian churches. In doing so she discovered the True Cross of Jesus Christ.

St. Helena’s parish in the Twin Cities is nestled on 34th Street, an area once riddled with McInerny’s in their formative years who attended the parish school and played along the shoreline of Lake Nokomis. The church itself is a marvelous structure, with the alter flanked on one side by a mural of The Nativity, on the other by The Ascension. The mural directly behind the alter depicts St. Helena with the True Cross. The semi-vaulted ceiling is made not of the traditional stone and marble, but of carved and painted lumber reminiscent of the Scandinavian craftwork that migrated with the Viking’s ancestors to Minnesota a century and a half ago. Across each of the massive crossbeams are painted the Beatitudes.

Beneath the ceiling, on this day, lie the remains of Stephen J. McInerny, my father’s youngest brother. Steve, being significantly closer in age to me than my dad (such was the length and breadth of Irish families back then), always seemed more like a cousin to me, if not an older brother. I certainly idolized him on the long summer visits when my dad would drive us up to Minneapolis from South Bend to visit the relatives. It was Steve who, through those languid summer days allowed me to sit and watch the Twins on TV with him, and instilled a lifelong love of baseball within me. And it was Steve who would bring stacks of Mad Magazine up to the sweltering attic at night where the Indiana kids slept, insuring we would stay awake another hour or so. One of the great compliments of my life was when grandpa came into the kitchen while I was eating cereal and stopped to look at me. “You look like a young Steve, kid,” he remarked, and I’ve never forgotten it.

St. Helena’s is full of people for this Mass, full of people who love Steve. His wife Madge, their children – Meghan, Austin, Nora and Patrick; his siblings, cousins, nephews and nieces; friends from his boyhood, adulthood and both, friends from his tenure in the Marines, and friends from work. Steve touched so many lives in his gooey-under-the-crust Irish way, and he will not be forgotten. St. Helena, we pray, present Stephen to our Savior, and please pray for all of us. Amen.

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9/11 Never Forget

Posted in Family, Travel with tags , on June 5, 2014 by David McInerny

Claire.art2On the afternoon of 9/11 I drove home from downtown Chicago, without a plane in the sky, and arrived to hug the family. Claire, my fifth grader, had been sent home early, with an assignment to plead parents to write a note of encouragement to be read when class resumed a few days later. I tripped across my letter to Claire today.

 

 

September 12, 2001

Dear Claire,

In 1978, I spent a year traveling overseas with Grandpa Ralph and Grandma Connie, because Grandpa was working in Rome. I remember then, as a young teenager, seeing the soldiers with machine guns in the airport when we arrived. Later, when we went to Israel, there were armed guards everywhere. They were there to prevent terrorism, Grandpa told me, although I didn’t understand. When I have traveled to Europe or South America on business, I have seen the same scene, although I never thought much about it. Even this past Spring, when Mommy and I took you to the Netherlands, there were soldiers in the airport and train stations, but I didn’t tell you why they were there, because I felt there was no need to explain what terrorism meant.

Yesterday terrorism was visited upon our country. Four planes, bound for Los Angeles and San Francisco, were hi-jacked. They crashed into the two towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and onto a field in Pennsylvania. It must make you feel a little helpless as you try to understand how something like this can happen. I feel a little helpless as I wonder how to explain it to you and your brothers. Yesterday we saw that there are a few people that do not believe that life is important, and they communicate their ideas through violence. This is wrong. Grandma and Grandpa remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Some of your teachers may remember the same about when John F. Kennedy was shot, as I do when the space shuttle exploded above the Atlantic Ocean. You will remember the horrible day yesterday, because these are events that, while terrible, good people use as a reminder to always try to make life a little better.

You will hear a lot of things about these events over the next weeks and months, maybe from friends, TV, and other places. Some of what you hear will be accurate; some will not. Remember to ask Mommy and Daddy about what has happened, and what is happening. We will explain the best that we can.

We feel a little helpless, certainly. However there are many things that we can do to help. I’ve thought of a few, and here is what I suggest:

  • Continue to pray for those who died, and for those who love them. God will help.
  • Don’t be afraid. Our government is powerful, and is already figuring out who did this.
  • If your school thinks it’s a good idea, find a school in Manhattan, and develop “E-mail” friends with a 5th grade class there. Let them know you are feeling like they are.

A few weeks ago Daddy was on a business trip, and I woke up in my hotel room one morning. I was drinking coffee, looking out of the window, and I was worried about whether I had done a good job negotiating a contract the day before. Then, as the sun came up and lit up the sky, I thought that not everybody gets to wake up high in the World Trade Center hotel and look at the Statue of Liberty. I didn’t know that in a few weeks no one would ever be able to say that again.   I’m thinking about the people I saw there for the few days I was there, working in the lobby, and the restaurant, or the other businessmen who came in to work there every day, and I wonder if they are safe.

The World Trade Center is now gone. More importantly, many people died yesterday, and this makes us very sad. Our great country is still here, though. Those few people who attempted to scare us, and who are jealous of our freedom, will not force us to change the values that have made this the greatest nation on earth. The Statue of Liberty continues to stand tall and proud.

Say your prayers tonight.

Love, Daddy

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