Archive for October, 2009
Lynne Cheney on Art
In a new Huffington Post article, late night talk show host Craig Ferguson recounts a conversation with the Cheneys during the 2008 White House correspondent’s dinner. Among the topics of conversation, fine art:
“On meeting the Cheneys, Ferguson recounts that his wife discussed art with Mrs. Cheney, who proudly described the Picasso sketches she owned. When Megan [Ferguson's wife] asked Cheney where she hung the artwork, Cheney’s response stunned them:
“Oh we don’t,” replied Mrs. C. “They’re nudes, and we have grandchildren. We don’t want them to see them when they come over.”
“But they’re Picassos,” protested Megan.
“But they’re nudes,” smiled Mrs. Cheney dangerously.
Hair care during pregnancy
I blame the pregnancy message boards. At the outset of my first pregnancy, I was blissfully oblivious to the potential hazards of shampoo. Then, the posting was clicked: “Shampoo?“, then, the link followed: “Pregnancy Alert: Shampoo Ingredient Could Damage Developing Brain Cells“. It should have carried a warning: “Danger! Can of worms about to be opened“! Because what unfolded was a long lesson in the vile substances in personal care products that could, key word: could, have the potential of harm to a developing baby.
If you think about it, our skin is our largest organ, so concern about hazards during pregnancy should not stop with what we simply ingest. We do, like it or not, absorb many additional things through our skin, intentionally or no. Here’s the main thing to take away from the link above: shampoo often contains an ingredient called methylisothiazolinone, a substance that acts as an antimicrobial agent, to give the shampoo a long shelf life. Here’s the thing, though: methylisothiazolinone is a neurotoxic chemical. It really shouldn’t be used in shampoo at all. But it shows up in far more than just shampoo. The Household Products Database has it listed as an ingredient in a wide variety of products: house paint, shampoo, conditioner, hand soap, hair color…….See the list here.
In addition to the Household Products Database, coming to the rescue to help us sort through the maze of ingredients on our personal care products is the Cosmetics Database, who warn: “Major gaps in public health laws allow cosmetics companies to use almost any ingredient they choose in everything from sunscreen and mascara to deodorant and baby shampoo, with no restrictions and no requirement for safety testing. To help you navigate your store’s aisles, Environmental Working Group researchers have scoured thousands of ingredient labels to bring you our top recommendations for what not to buy — products with worrisome or downright dangerous ingredients that don’t belong in your shopping cart or on your skin”.
They do a commendable job of rating personal care products based on the safety of their ingredients. And it’s clearly not just methylisothiazolinone that is of concern here. The database also singles out Placenta, Lead, Fragrance, Animal Parts, Hydroquinone Skin Lightener, Nanoparticles, Phthalates, and Petroleum By-products as the ingredients causing the highest concern. Yes, these products really are in the personal care products we use every day without question.
But no despair necessary: being pregnant does not condemn one to a 9 month avoidance of personal care products. My picks for a low-chemical personal care routine, having already done the work of hashing through the Cosmetic Database’s findings and trying a wide range of the green-lighted products:
Shampoo: Burt’s Bees – widely available; does a good job with far fewer ingredients of concern.
Conditioner: Aubrey Organics – for my fine, dry, wavy hair, the Island Naturals conditioner can’t be beat.
Cosmetics: 100% Pure – amazing products. The tinted moisturizer, eye shadows, and blush all get big thumbs up.
Skin creams and shower gel: California Baby – I hate to say it……….as good as Kiehl’s. It’s true. The Calendula cream kicks Kiehl’s Abyssine cream’s butt, and it’s so much kinder to the wallet. And with far fewer ingredients of concern.
Nail Polish: Priti Polish – nail polish and remover is one of the leading offenders in chemical content. Priti, astoundingly enough, offers a great product without the harsh ingredients that throw out the red flags.
As far as hair color goes: Better to wait until after the first trimester, and thereafter, better to go to a stylist, who can apply the coloring so that it does not make contact with your scalp.
Art at Auction: Eyes on Shannon’s Oct. 29 sale
Be still my heart: Shannon’s twice annual sale of American Art is coming up on October 29th, and, judging from the newly posted online catalog, there are some wonderful gems coming up for auction. Shannon’s, to me, also represents a kind of bellwether for the American Art market, and so I will be watching it closely.
Looking back to the auctions of late summer and early fall that featured American Art, I noticed a pattern amongst the unsold lots — a good many of them fell in the estimated range of the upper four figures to lower five figure paintings. That is, what seems to have been missing from these auctions is a large pool of buyers of the 10k painting. Shannon’s Oct 29 auction, however, includes a large number of works estimated in this range, and I’m hoping that the volume and quality of these works are enough to draw the 10k buyer out of hiding.
Case in point: Lot 82, Allen Tucker, New Mexico Landscape, 1925.
Tucker, an artist known for his expressionist landscapes which strongly echo Van Gogh, is hot. He was an artist based in New England, where he painted the majority of his work. He did, however, make painting trips to the Taos art colony in the 1920s, a period in New Mexico art that is also hot. I cannot find, among his auction records, another equivalent example of New Mexico subject matter, but I can tell you, this pairing is on fire. Throw in a conservative auction estimate of 8-12k, and if that doesn’t bring out the 10k buyer, then I will, on the spot, declare them all dead.
Morning Sickness: A Rant
I try to make healthy, balanced and sustainable food choices. That is always my goal in shopping and cooking and selecting restaurants. And one would think, wouldn’t one, that during pregnancy, this goal would only be that much more important? One would. Think.
But here is a sampling of a typical pre-pregnancy menu in this household: Pot Roast of locally raised beef and garden veggies, local greens salad with homemade bread. Or lamb chops with a balsamic reduction and local blue potato wedges with garden squash pie.
Now, during the worst phase of the first trimester: Pizza and cookies. Fast food hamburger and fries. Major-chain restaurant spaghetti and meatballs. Velveeta Shells and Cheese. Seriously, the best (healthy balanced and/or sustainable) that I can do for a satisfying meal is a loaded baked potato, fruit and a green salad, but preferably prepared by someone else. And then I’ll need a cupcake in a couple of hours, and another before bed.
The culprit here: morning sickness. The very mechanism that is designed to help me make safe food choices is the stick in my culinary spokes. Before I was ever pregnant, I envisioned morning sickness as passing waves of nausea, punctuated by some vomiting. The version that I’ve gotten, though, is the constant seasickness that has changed my entire relationship with food. I know that it is temporary, but I am appalled at my food choices lately.
I realize that the biological point of morning sickness and the weird cravings/aversions is also to help my body gain excess fat to store, as well as to keep a safe distance from potentially hazardous things like raw meat. But the things that I’m craving have their definite downsides: The processed food with the preservatives and additives and high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils and food coloring and…….ech……just making myself feel ill. I’m sure you get my point: When you rely on food that someone else has made for you, and that relationship is a distant one, you tend to ingest a lot of crap that is not beneficial to your own body, let alone a tiny vulnerable bean growing inside you.
When I first found out about my first pregnancy, I quickly ordered the book “Eating for Pregnancy” to make sure that my nutritional i’s would be dotted and t’s would be crossed. I never made a single recipe from the book, though – as soon as morning sickness kicked in, I couldn’t even look at a recipe, let alone shop productively in a grocery store. I lamented to my OB, who assured me that my former pre-pregnancy diet would be enough to sustain my body through the first trimester. “If you ate well before you were pregnant”, she said, “you’ll be fine”. I hope to heck she’s right.
Picks from my Ebay Watchlist
Another small round of what’s caught my eye amongst the offerings in Art on Ebay lately:
Maybe I’m just a sucker for paintings of birch trees, but that issue aside, this is a fantastic early 20th century New England painting – the use of light is superbly rendered, and the subject matter of landscape with creek and cattle is charming. Hamilton is an artist without extensive auction records, but his auction record of $912 in 2002 was for a painting that, in my opinion, was only about 1/2 the painting that this is. At the opening bid of $500, it is a beautiful bargain.
I wasn’t at all familiar with this contemporary artist when I first saw this piece. The seller does a very thorough job though, in his description, of including pertinent information and links to the artist’s work, so I caught up quickly. Wow! Portraits from an alternate universe indeed! So delicately rendered in the anachronistic style of the Victorian daguerrotype, but his subject matter is so weird…….I love the juxtaposition. Reminds me of one of my very favorite artists of the 20th century, Frank Holt. Looks like Louie’s similar pieces are selling in galleries in the 2-4k range. This is a rare opportunity to purchase one on the secondary market.
Maurice Tanner is one of those artists that, if you’ve seen and noticed one of his paintings, you’ll be able to spot another one from across a crowded room. He had a very distinctive style, and his subject matter almost never changed. I imagine that he had a permanent post on one particular peak in the Smoky Mountains for the bulk of his career (the painting is listed as Brown County, but it is indeed Tennessee). But that shouldn’t diminish the individual paintings themselves, they are, without exception (from among those I’ve seen), beautiful. They are the kind of paintings that are a pleasure to look at – muted colors, strong use of light, but always a slight haze. As of now, Tanner is an artist without auction records. But I do predict a day wherein it will be hard to believe that a sizeable painting of his could be had on Ebay for a mere $150. There seems to be no slowdown in the market for 20th century Southern art – snap it up before the market catches up!
Pregnancy: a new category at CIE
If I could choose one event in my life that, more than any other, furthered my awareness of product ingredients and how they affect the human body, it would have been my pregnancy in 2007. Most newly pregnant women are pummelled with the basic information on what to avoid during pregnancy, and in most cases, these things were no surprise: raw/undercooked meat, smoking, illicit drugs, unpasteurized cheese, cat litter……….but aside from the pamphlet list that you get from the doctor, there are actually very many more products and drugs and airborne things to know about; something that I learned slowly over the course of the nine months before the Little One’s birth.
Just this morning, MSNBC ran a bit about the rise in autism rates; it was 1 in 150 during my last pregnancy. Now, just 2 1/2 years later, it is 1 in 91. Although no one can or wants to say definitively what is causing this rise, I think most of the scientific community agrees that, in addition to the genetic factor, it is a result of multiple toxic exposure during pregnancy. Therefore, limiting such exposure when we are trying to conceive and when we are pregnant is the goal here. But how to go about doing that? That standard doctor’s list is a good place to start. I will do my best to continue it here in this category over the coming months; and I am now invested in the subject as well — we are expecting our next little bundle in May.
A Less Toxic Tomorrow?
If you’re like me, you were caught pretty off-guard over the big headlines the last few years regarding toxins in our everyday lives: Melamine in pet food, Bisphenol-A in our plastics, lead paint on our toys………and because I was caught off-guard, I was furious. Prior to our pets dying, I had heard not even a whisper of the potential for my cat’s food to contain a life-threatening toxic chemical, and plastics…….well, we live in a plastic society, for chrissakes, even a good recycler/reuser such as myself was not aware of the dangers of releasing toxic chemicals into whatever the plastic’s contents if it was heated, or gasp……reused too often.
And these were things that I and my family and my pets had previously taken into our bodies without the slightest sense of the havoc that they could wreak. Infuriating. All the more infuriating because I know that for every big headline/melamine/BPA/lead paint story, there are a hundred more that we still don’t know about. And manufacturers who knowingly use such toxic chemicals have not been adequately regulated by a looooong shot. Just taken to task after the fact, which is really not a help to us at all. In fact, I really don’t understand why people, en masse, aren’t far more outraged than they are.
At least help is on the way, in the form of a plan designed to actually regulate the manufacturer’s use of toxins in those products that many of use freely and willfully every day without question: “The Obama administration last night unveiled the broad outlines of a proposal to overhaul the regulation of thousands of chemicals used in consumer products and the workplace, calling for more testing and greater authority to restrict toxic products. The plan, which would require legislation, would replace an existing system that is widely seen as ineffective – so much so that it did not allow the government to ban asbestos, a known carcinogen, decades ago”.
Thank you, Obama administration. This is a gift to my family, my pets, and all of us here in the US. This is exactly how the government needs to take care of its people. Thank you.
