(Just Another) Melange Monday

Since I haven't written a Monday melange post in a little bit, I thought I'd tackle one this week.

                                

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I'm always a little behind in movie-watching: I've just recently seen (on DVD) Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. If you haven't seen it, I'd highly recommend it. Being a rather huge Doris Kearns Goodwin fan (the screenplay is based on her Lincoln biography), I was amazed at the issues that Lincoln faced in the last months of his life and how relevant they still are, even with the minor historical license Spielberg took in the film. Getting Congress to act on ratifying the 13th Amendment, concluding the Civil War (which went on far longer than anyone had anticipated), dealing with his wife and children (at times Lincoln almost seemed as if he were a single parent) - I found all of this had a present currency with some amazement. There is no doubt Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field were impeccable; I found myself riveted to the screen the entire time. It's been just shy of 150 years since the end of the Civil War, and we're still dealing with voting rights issues in the South, not to mention the rest of the related post-slavery social issues. Lincoln was a flawed, brilliant man of immense patience. Definitely rent the movie.

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I have just started reading A Short Life of Trouble: 40 Years In the New York Art Scene. It's Marcia Tucker's memoir, the first woman to be hired as curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, as well as founding The New Museum of Contemporary Art, also located in New York. I am still in the first chapter and already she is setting herself up as a curious, purposeful woman with a strong will. I like her already. And I really like the book's title.

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Finally, there's a Ravelry conversation happening about self-publishing vs. publishing by others that always seems relevant to me. While I absolutely love the complete freedom of self-publishing, I also am in no way giving up on third party publishing, the recent yarny gatekeeper incident notwithstanding. I have always maintained that for me, one process feeds off of the other. Having my designs be part of other's publications, and interacting with their respective processes, allows not only for some (albeit limited) structure, but for those decision makers with whom I share the same aesthetic sensibilities, a place to interact with sympathetic people in my profession. It doesn't mean that we always agree, and I think that's a good thing. Getting outside of my own designing head leads me to see other possibilities. What I cannot abide is a whole lot of heavy-handed top-down structure which, I fully realize, is somewhat unavoidable. I am definitely still working out within myself the right balance between doing things for myself and working on projects within existing structures. 

The good thing? I have plenty of time to figure it out.