Ny Carlsberg Glyptoteket

Dear Liza,

You will know from your Danish lessons that this wonderful art museum in Copenhagen is pronounced “Noo Carlsberg Gloop-toe-tek”. It houses the private collections of Carl Jacobsen, who founded the Carlsberg beer company, and his son. They were both lovers of art and used their fortune to collect and house it.

The building itself is amazing, with vast domed spaces alternating with smaller rooms to show off different kinds of art. The solarium is a Victorian-era greenhouse with sculptures mixed in with ferns, which was a miracle on a cold, windy April day.

This was a Girl’s Day at the museum, as Grandpa Nelson, your dad, and Jasper were not interested. And believe me, there is nothing worse than going through a museum with people who don’t want to be there.

We started with ancient art from the ancient Middle East , which was interesting without actually being pretty. (Say what you like, but I can only look at so many Roman heads).

The fun started upstairs, with the Impressionists. You and Auntie Bridgett started talking about the art. “What’s going on in this picture?” She would ask.

You’d tell her what you saw, and from there you two would have a wonderful conversation about the composition, color choices, symbols, and subjects of the works. You talked about gestures and lighting in “Socrates and Aphasia” and story in “In the Beech Wood”.

I was amazed at the good questions you asked and how much you could see in each work. I also loved watching you, Bridgett and Auntie Katie get into your discussions. There was lots of silliness and love mixed in with all that art.

It did this Grandma Judy’s heart good.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Cousin Invasion!

Dear Liza,

Our visit had been busy, but when Auntie Katie, Jasper and Kestrel showed up, the energy level went to the moon! You three wound yourselves around each other like a bunch of silly eels and jumped and shimmied down the streets of Horsens.

Climbing on fountains….

Finding the first signs of spring….

and generally making up for the years since you have all been together.

You found the public play areas and trampolines, bought lunch for everyone at the grocery store, and even managed to get Cousin Jasper a bump on the chin bad enough to go to the hospital to close it up. But as you can see, he was fine in time for dinner.

And after a few days of finding new ways to wear yourselves out, it was time to head to Copenhagen! We all piled on the train and enjoyed the scenery,

Conversation,

And just being family together.

And now we will find some new adventures.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Into Horsens

Dear Liza,

After four delightful, exhausting, art-filled days in Paris, our vacation changed gears. Your mom and Bridgett stayed in Paris, Katie and the kids went off to see friends in Germany, and Grandpa Nelson and I headed to Denmark to see you and your dad.

Our plane got in very late, so our first experience in Denmark was a good night’s sleep. (This is more important than you might think).

There are so many wonderful murals in Horsens. Two of my favorites are a robot hand freeing some birds, and a young man reading to a friend. I like that the murals reflect peace and friendship rather than anger or violence.

The next morning, you took me on an adventure to show me all your favorite places in town. Horsens is small, just about 61,000 people, and is very tranquil and safe.

We bundled up because it was very windy and just above freezing, though bright and sunny. The Industry Museum has a great play area with some challenging climbing structures. You lured me up four levels to this net-walk thing that led to a nutsy spiral slide. It put my Adventure Grandma muscles to the test.

By the fjord, you posed with this wonderful statue of a little girl sitting on a polar bear’s shoulder. I love the way she is patting his cheek.

After a few hours walking in the wind, we were worn out and had some down time. Grandpa Nelson and your dad kept talking.

We headed off for a drive to a beachside town called Julesminda. There, you showed me a climbing challenge I had to pass on. Steep, very narrow cages bridged the gap between tiny platforms disguised as fairy huts that climbed right up the side of a hill. I enjoyed watching you, but my nerves (and joints) failed me.

Later that day we drove up to the Highest Point in Denmark, called the Mollehoj. It is 561 feet high, which is not very high, actually. Mt. Tabor in Portland is 636 feet.

A thousand years or so ago, it was the burial place of Viking kings, but modern Danes carefully moved the kings elsewhere and built a tall tower (to make the high place even higher).

It is a fine place for a windblown selfie and a sweeping view of the surrounding landscape.

What a wonderful first day in Denmark!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Family in Paris

Dear Liza,

After a few days in Paris, walking and seeing and eating, we got to add another verb… hanging out with family! Auntie Katie and Cousins Jasper and Kestrel joined us as part of their own whirlwind visit to Europe.

Auntie Katie and Auntie Bridgett both love comics, so they found Aaapoum Bapoum and had a nice conversation with the fellow who runs the place. It was wonderful seeing all the comic characters we know (and a whole bunch more that we don’t know) speaking French.

After a while, some of us moved on to a quiet café, and spent a long afternoon chatting and introducing Jasper to Grandpa Nelson’s favorite French food, the Dame Blanche. You know it as a hot fudge sundae.


And that night at dinner, the family got even bigger! Auntie Olga came to enjoy a week in Paris with us.

The next day found us all at le Jardin de Luxembourg. We had taken snacks and wandered about, finding tiny bits of spring just beginning to pop up. Katie and Kestrel worked on a story we started, then headed off to the sailboat pond.

This is something that Parisian kids have been doing for generations, renting little sailboats and sending them off across the pond. Who knew you could have so much fun with just a boat and a stick?

Cousin Jasper wanted to head off in search of Space Invaders, so I went along. This is a game started by an artist who applies little tiled images to buildings. The object is to wander the city, find and photograph the images, and see how many you can get.

It was a fine adventure, plowing through the crowded streets of Paris in search of things most folks didn’t even know were there. Keeping up with Jasper at full speed sure got me my exercise for the day!

At the end of a long, happy day, we headed back to our own quiet rooms and recharged for the next adventure.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Art on the Street in Paris

Dear Liza,

There is a lot of art in Paris’s gardens and art galleries, famous museums and even rich people’s apartments. But what I noticed a lot this visit was the art on the street. Grafitti, stickers, and commercial installations give a lot of flavor to a city like Paris, where politics and art is as close as the street corner.

These stickers are on many lamp posts, encouraging us all to eat a plant-based diet. The slogan at the bottom says, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come”. Having recently changed to a more plant centered diet myself, I would encourage this, as well.

I like this small, pale sticker attached to the traditional street sign. In the equivalent of a whisper, it says, “I exist.”

We found this Sharpie message on the Pont Neuf. It is a disapproval of the French President’s new retirement policies and a play on an old piece of absurdist art. It says ,“This is not a macron.”

And then there is this five-story fiberglass statue of artist Yayoi Kusama, standing in the median strip of the Rue du Pont Neuf on the Right Bank. In a promotion for Louis Vuitton, an expensive fashion designer, she stands outside their main store, painting her signature polka dots… on everything!

You just never know what you’re going to run into on the streets of Paris.

Love,

Grandma Judy

…And Onward to Paris!

Dear Liza,

After a very full three days in Utrecht, with more adventures than I had time or space to tell (I will save those for a slow day sometime in the future), we caught the TGV (train grand vitesse, or Very Fast Train) south to Paris.

We needed to take the regional train back to Amsterdam to switch to the TGV for Paris. We had some time to play with, so we stepped out of the station to find some pastries. I’ll tell you, in Europe, train stations are like cathedrals!! Have a look.

Our trip to Paris took a few hours longer than planned, however, because of a back-up of train traffic. I thought it was because of the general strikes that have been happening in France, but the official story is that there was a wire that got damaged somehow. Whatever the reason, we had time to get to know some of our fellow passengers. Thanks, everyone, for making a long trip fun!

We took the number 4 Metro from Gare du Nord to the St. Germain de Prés neighborhood and walked just a few blocks to the Crystal Hotel. The lobby is very stylish, with this horseback warrior woman keeping us safe. Tristan checked us into our small but comfy room.

We were hungry and tired. Our old favorite place from long ago visits, Le Café de Beaux Arts, is just down the block. French Onion soup and a few glasses of wine put us right.

Auntie Bridgett’s new traveling buddy, Miffy, got into the act as well. Miffy is the creation of Utrecht designer Dick Bruna and is exactly as old as Grandpa Nelson, being created in 1955. She is now world-famous, fits in a pocket, and is fun to pose.

Once we were fed, we realized how tired we were, strolled back to the hotel, and crashed. Exploring Paris would have to wait for tomorrow.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Visiting Vincent

Dear Liza,

Vincent van Gogh, one of our favorite artists, only lived to be 37 years old. He didn’t even decide to be a painter until he was 32! Most of his paintings were done in the last year of his life, many at the mental hospital in Rémy, France. He would sometimes paint more than one painting every day.

We found this early work called “Portrait of a Farm Woman”. I can see that Vincent was still painting mostly in the browns and grays he had learned from his uncle in the Netherlands.

Later, after his time in Paris, Vincent used more and brighter colors. He did this colorful, animated “Portrait of a Man” in 1889. The way the fellow’s head is on crooked makes me wonder what sort of character he was!

This is my new favorite Van Gogh painting. The bright blue sky and pink blossoms are so pretty, and you can see the sunshine and shadows moving on the ground under the tree. It is like seeing a breeze.

I love this painting, as well, because I have crossed little bridges like this in Amsterdam. The style of bridge that is very popular in the Netherlands. Since the land is so wet there and the people make canals to help drain the water away, bridges are designed to be both inexpensive to maintain and easily opened for boats to go through.

I also like the blues of the water and sky, and how he shows the ripples in the water where the women are doing the laundry. The ripples sort of tie the man in the wagon to the ladies washing, saying “they are all a part of this place.”

There were more works of art than I could photograph, and more than I can tell you about here. Maybe you and I can travel to the Kröller-Müller Museum some day and I can show them to you. I’ll even buy you lunch!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Heading to the Kröller-Müller Museum

Dear Liza,

Our first adventure in Utrecht was getting out of the city and heading to a tiny town called Ede (pronounced ‘Ada’), by train.

Then we took two different busses to the De Hoge Veluwe Dutch National Park to find the Koller-Muller Museum. These works of art are all in the private collection of the late Helene Kröller-Müller, who bought art all over Europe. Price didn’t seem to be an object.

We were there to see an enormous private Van Gogh collection, but we saw a lot of other things first.

Surrounding the museum are many wide acres of green space, which Mrs. Koller-Mueller filled with dozens of major sculptures. This one, Meneer Jacques, would re-appear later in the day.

The wind and rain were impressive as we waited with other chilly folks for the museum to open.

The featured artist was Fernand Léger, a French artist who studied with Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso. He had a cubist style that was different from either of his mentors, and I found it charming and playful.

We also found a few rooms with Piet Mondrian’s paintings. This Dutch painter has always been a favorite of mine, because so much of his work looks like delightful patchwork quilt.

His early works are more pastel-ish, and his later works become more primary-color oriented. I like them all!

We discovered a new artist (for me, anyway), Charley Toorop. She was a Dutch woman who painted bold, unflinching self portraits. They were not “pretty” or feminine. They were simply beautiful, at all the different stages of her life.

I love her image of herself as young soldier, just after the First World War, where she lost many friends. Later in life, her hair has greyed and is worn longer, but she still looks straight at the viewer. She looks like a very honest person.

By this time we were a bit footsore and very hungry, so we stopped at the cafe (named after Meneer Jacques , the sculpture out front) for chicken wraps and salads.

Before we ate, I lined up the flower vase, a candle, and my wine glass. Seeing art always puts me in the mood to make art!

We had more arty adventures after lunch, and I will tell you about them tomorrow.

Love,

Grandma Judy

5,002 Miles in 9 Hours

Dear Liza,

I’ll be seeing you in Horsens in a week or so, but for now, we are in Utrecht, The Netherlands. We caught a flight that went directly from Portland to Amsterdam, so we didn’t have to change planes. That meant that for 5,0002 miles, we sat.
And sat.

And sat some more. There was a dinner, (better than expected), and lots of movies to choose from (“The Lady Eve” was disappointing, “Babe” was adorable.) Sleep was difficult.

But this morning, ready or not, we landed in Amsterdam. After walking for what felt like miles down corridors, getting the luggage and presenting our passports, we were well and truly in the country!

Hooray!!

But we didn’t want to be still. We wanted to get to Utrecht, where we had never been before, and see what there was to see. Grandpa Nelson and Auntie Bridgett figured out how to buy train tickets from the machine, and we enjoyed the modernist vibe as we headed down the moving ramp to the platform.

The train ride was totally quiet, as we had accidentally chosen a “Silence Stilte”, a quiet car. It was probably for the best, anyway. We were exhausted and the scenery filled our brains.

We disembarked at Utrecht Central and, following Grandpa Nelson’s directions, we ambled past the farmer’s market, hip shops and yummy-looking restaurants to find the Leonardo Hotel, our home for the next three days. We stretched out (I even napped a bit) and then headed out in search of adventure.

We discovered that Utrecht is a wonderful mixture of buildings from the 1600s and the early 2000s, ancient bricks and stone overlaid with neon and cartoons.

The canals that help drain the soggy soil and deliver goods to warehouses now provide homes for ducks and ambiance for visitors.

We found Meneer Potter (Meneer means Mister) and had delicious salads and bread and wine. Our night’s sleep was bumpy because our body clocks were still mixed up. We all woke up about 3, were awake for a few hours, then dropped back off to sleep.

Saturday morning we woke up groggy, but ready for a whole ‘nother adventure.

Stay tuned!

Love,

Grandma Judy

The Tibbetts Family : New Friends at Lone Fir

Dear Liza,

Now that the weather is less awful, we are getting out for walks. We stopped by Lone Fir Cemetery on my birthday, to visit the dead people and get some perspective.

We visited our favorites, of course. Dr. Hawthorne, who treated the patients in his mental hospital with uncommon respect, the Fleidner family, who built a building that still stands Downtown, and Lou Ellen Barrel Cornell, who lead an unconventional life.

(Photo Credit : Find a Grave website)

And we met some new folks. This tall monument has always caught my eye because the family name, Tibbetts, was used by local author Beverly Cleary for one of her characters. This time, I took pictures of the stones around the tall marker and did some research on my favorite research site, The Historic Oregonian.

In his obituary, we learn that the patriarch, Gideon Tibbetts, was familiarly known as Father Tibbetts. He was originally from Bangor, Maine, and married his wife, Mary, in Indiana. Their company of wagons took nine months to cross the country from there.

They rafted down the Columbia and originally settled in Corvallis, then moved to Portland.

They started their family, but childhood diseases took four of their six children between 1853 and 1859. I cannot imagine the sadness.

Gideon bought and developed property east of the Willamette, creating Tibbetts Addition, which covered the area from the Willamette River to 20th Street and between Division and Holgate, just south of Ladd’s Addition. This area is now known as the Brooklyn neighborhood. Two streets in that area, remember him: Gideon Street runs along the railroad tracks, and Tibbetts Street runs east-west between Powell and Division Streets.

Mary outlived Gideon by 14 years, living well in their family home. I am still searching for information of her two surviving children. Her daughter, whose name I haven’t found, married a Judge Kennedy from Walla Walla Washington.

As much as I appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit of early Portland, the practice of individuals (Like Ladd, Couch, Tibbetts, and others) organizing their own developments within the city is what lead to our weird street numbering system, which needed to be adjusted in the 1930s.

Every time I get to know about a previous Portlander, I learn more about the city and how it grew. And there’s 180 years worth to learn!

Love,

Grandma Judy