i cannot live without books.

some favorites (and the top three are on my list to read next)

this past summer my family and i visited thomas jefferson's home, monticello. it was beautiful and really amazing to learn about. jefferson lived such a fascinating life. on our tour, we went through jefferson's library and our tour guide told us about how, during a time of great financial difficulty, jefferson had to sell his huge collection of books. almost immediately afterwards he just started buying books again in large quantities. in a letter to john adams, jefferson simply explained, "i cannot live without books."

i wholeheartedly agree.

i really, really miss reading while i'm so busy with work and school. my roommates and i were talking last night about some of our favorite books and the books that we read as children. it made me so nostalgic and almost homesick in a way. i feel like the books i've read have completely shaped me as a person. i feel sad when i think about people who don't like to read. reading is such a rich and beautiful and multi-faceted experience. when you read a book, you're transported to another place and you meet people and have experiences that you would never have otherwise, and the great part is that you can share these experiences with other readers. when you read a book, it becomes a part of you. it touches your soul and your heart and your mind and alters the lens through which you see the world. i think that reading a good book is one of the most enriching experiences in the world.

i'm going to set a personal goal for next semester to make time to read. it's an important thing for me, and i think i feel so much happier and more like myself when i make reading a part of my everyday life. time management can be really difficult for me, but i'm going to make this happen. and you can bet when i go home for christmas i will be reading my brains out. (does that even make sense?)

basically this says it exactly: "real luxury is time and opportunity to read for pleasure." -jane brody

here's to books!

i love you, america

there's been a lot of excitement tonight.

honestly, i'm glad the election is over. i sometimes make light of politics, and i often have a hard time being as invested in political issues as i should be. this is probably because i am not incredibly personally interested in many of the issues, and also, the pettiness and arguments that always seem to accompany political dealings are a real turn-off for me. i get really tired of the negativity, from campaign ads to facebook posts, so i couldn't wait for this day to be over and the election madness to fade away. but as much as i dislike many aspects of politics, i really do believe that it's important to be politically aware and active. i've done a lot of research on the candidates and the issues and i was excited to do my duty and cast my vote!

in watching the election results tonight and the following responses on social media, i was pretty sad to see the reactions of people i know. it must be hard to believe so much in a candidate and watch them lose, but again, i was disappointed to see so many people respond with negativity. i'm excited for the next four years and i'm happy for our president, but mostly i'm just grateful. other people around the world live under dictators, tyrants, and terrorists, while we have the right to vote! for our president! that is so amazing to me! i'm so grateful for the rights and freedoms i enjoy, and i feel so blessed to have been able to participate in this election. regardless of political views or preferred candidates, i hope we can all take a moment to consider how blessed we are in this beautiful country.

and if you want to join me in getting really sappy, watch this. i might have teared up. judge me.

art appreciation

the connoisseur, norman rockwell, 1962

i was recently at an event in the HFAC on campus with a friend and some of her acquaintances. we were walking around the art galleries and looking at the various works, and i heard several of the comments i often hear in regard to modern art. i'm referring to statements like, "i could've made that," and "i don't think this is really art." someone asked me my opinion, as an art history student, on modern art. i gave them a quick response with my thoughts but i've been thinking more about this recently. i used to have a hard time appreciating modern art as well, but as i studied it in my art history 202 course last semester, i really gained a much broader perspective on the subject, and i've grown to really appreciate modern works of art. here are some of my thoughts on the matter.

i think with all art, but especially modern, a lack of appreciation is usually due to a lack of understanding. i think especially with modern art, people just look at the final product and don't really consider what the artist was trying to say or what thoughts they were trying to provoke. if you look at modern art in this way, no wonder you wouldn't like it. it's rarely a pretty little picture, but that's not the point. modern art is all about redefinition. it's all about the thought. the statement. what is art? what is an artist? what is an audience? modern artists didn't set out to paint the most masterful picture or sculpt the most intricate statue. they set out to challenge our very definition of art, and they have. i always laugh to myself when i hear someone say, "this isn't art," because that's the very thinking that modern artists want to question. what exactly defines art? i also chuckle to myself when i hear people say, "i could've done that." that's the point. you could have. anyone could have. but no one else did. no one else had ever done that before, and that's what makes it remarkable.

in addition, modern art is often about the process, not just the product. people don't look at a jackson pollock, say, "well that's all very fine and well," and move along. they think about how he poured and dripped his paint, walked all over his paintings, and used egg beaters and turkey basters and his entire body. when you look at a helen frankenthaler or a morris louis painting, or any other modern work, you should do the same and consider the process. modern art has challenged the definition of art, but also of art technique. new mediums, new methods, new applications, have all been developed and these have completely shaped the creation of art today.

think about it. nobody today would look at an impressionist painting and say, "i don't think this is really art." but that's exactly what people said when it was contemporary. people didn't understand it and so they wrote it off. but impressionism challenged the definition of art in the same way that modern art now strives to do. before the impressionist movement, no one considered those loose, painterly, and abstract "impressions" to be real art. but now those same impressionist works are among the most famous and adored artworks of all time.

i'm not saying that modern art is the greatest and that i completely understand and love it, but i do think it's highly underrated and even less understood. mostly what i'm trying to say is just that, as in all aspects of life, we should seek understanding before making judgements, and in doing so we may grow to appreciate much more than we already do.