Thursday, February 07, 2008

Looking for Dogs and Adele

On trips, Alice always looks for dogs. Saw the most on Madison Avenue in New York City. Cold and rainy there. Los of dogs with coats and cold feet. One very sad pair were being dragged along near E. 70th St - no time for sniff stops! - by two guys who talked between themselves, one eating something out of a plastic container. The big yellow lab wearing a mussle gave Alice a "Save me!" stare as he was dragged across Madison Avenue.
Alice said I would not like where she was going. I believe her now.
But, she said some places I would have liked, but dogs are not allowed there. Best place was at a museum's Viennese cafe with wood floors, upholstered seating, nice fire, and lots and lots of sausages!!! Sehr gemütlich.
Down in the museum basement were picture drawn by Viennese schoolchildren to commemorate the trip to America of Adele's golden painting. Here are two dogs supporting her choices in American food - complete with a golden Golden Arches logo! She also puts on American clothes and drives modern vehicles! One child put her in jeans and a t-shirt standing on a meadow, placing her heavy gold dress to the side with a photo of the Rockies or the Sierra Nevada mountains in the background. Alice's favorite was one with Adele in a spacesuit on a planet like St. Exupery's Petit Prince. Black stars and hot sun behind.
The story of how Adele's gold painting came to American, I think, really has to do with music. In Vienna before WWII, opera singer Fritz Altmann and composer Erich Zeisl were good friends. Years later, Fritz's widow Maria and Erich's grandson Randy Schoenberg met in Los Angeles. Randy is a lawyer. Maria is a niece of Adele. Alice is sure Randy and Maria both have heard many times Erich's Requiem Ebraico which Alice has sung in San Francisco and at Stanford. How right that Erich did so many "technicolor" film scores in the 1950's while Adele's gold portrait is beyond technicolor.
Art lives. And, real friendship lives forever.