Diary

I seem to have reached another drought in finding books that I want to read. I started on a Vivian Maier biography but am underwhelmed and am giving up. I still find Maier quite interesting, and the problem is that her life was sort of unique and doesn't fit the standard categories that people associate with fame. It really is a fluke that she was ever discovered, and there is no evidence that she expected to become famous. The underlying story is that her grandmother, Eugenie, became pregnant by a farmhand in France and moved to the U.S., leaving behind her daughter, Marie. Marie later came to the U.S. and got married, but was completely dysfunctional throughout her life, married badly and never took proper care of her children. She took Vivian back to France with her for a few years, which seems to have influenced Vivian's identity. From what I've read, Vivian and her brother were completely neglected, but their grandmother, Eugenie, probably influenced Vivian considerably. Eugenie worked for many years as a cook for extremely wealthy families at their gigantic mansions on the East Coast. Somehow, Vivian internalized the idea that really rich people were important and that photography was a high-status endeavor. The problem is that Vivian's immediate family was so dysfunctional that she got little direction or support and ended up drifting for the remainder of her life. She had almost no contact with family members for decades, but, working as a nanny, some of her maternal instincts were probably satisfied. She seemed to bond with one family in Highland Park, Illinois, but when the children grew up she left and got another job. Some of the accounts of Maier from people who knew her then seem a little contrived. It seems likely that some of her former employers may have airbrushed their impressions of her after she became famous. The underlying facts seem to indicate that she was a marginalized low-income person who was usually ignored. The main problem, I think, is that she had no friends, did not remain in contact with relatives, and never gave a written or verbal account of her conception of her life to anyone. There is plenty of evidence that she had some psychiatric issues. She was definitely a hoarder. Why would she take thousands of photographs and not print most of them? Why were many of her rolls of photographic negatives never opened? While, on the one hand, she did seem to have a life strategy and enjoyed taking photographs, she seemed, outside her work as a nanny, to be a very poorly-adjusted recluse carrying enormous psychological baggage from her earlier life. In my view, Maier really was a top-notch photographer, and I don't mind that people have capitalized on her financially, but there does seem to me to be a deeply tragic underlying story that may already be slightly inaccessible.

The temperatures have been fluctuating here, but it is generally warming up. My telescope is set up and I may do some stargazing soon. I made a full circuit on the Cadwell Trail yesterday (it was flooded earlier), and the birds are returning. There were more beer cans behind the Congregational Church in Pittsford last week. I had told the Recreation and Police Departments about it, and they ignored me, so I went to the Pittsford town office and left a note. I will no longer be picking up beer cans there and will just avoid that portion of the trail if they start building up again. Part of the problem is that the Congregational Church is near the two liquor stores in Pittsford.

I can't tell you how sick I am of hearing about Donald Trump. The good news is that I don't see how he can extract himself from this mess of his own making. What is really amazing is that Republicans still generally support him. Of course, this has partly to do with big money and cronyism, but I am dumbfounded that people voluntarily support a stupid criminal with dementia who doesn't have the slightest idea what he's doing. If people were rational, there would be a day of reckoning about the Trump phenomenon, but it currently looks as if more inflation and a weaker economy may be necessary first.