Salish Park

My copy of The New Yorker failed to arrive in the mail last week. This is the first time it’s happened in the one-plus year I’ve been living here and that is amazing to me. When I lived in Brooklyn I didn’t even bother to get a subscription to anything. Getting mail to reach me there, that was a real touch and go thing.

Today what came in the mail was a rebate check from Sandisk for a CF card I bought in the summer. It was for $20 and that was nice but my name was spelled wrong on the check where it said Pay to the Order Of. I called the 1-800 number and the lady said I’d have to send the check back to them and maybe I should just try to deposit it (hope the bank doesn’t notice?).

Anyway, by missing last week’s issue of The New Yorker, I missed this article on Jerry Shore. But then the magazine probably didn’t have a slideshow of his photographs.

It occurred to me while looking through the collection at MOBA that a. agreed, here’s some stuff that’s not so easy on the eyes, b. but then that’s true of a lot of the stuff I see in Chelsea too, c. I don’t get art.

This month I’ve been seeing a lot of my brother D and his wife—in Vancouver when we were there for our grandfather’s funeral and then in Maui for family vacation. One of the things we talked about during this time was buying art. He has been a doctor for a couple of years now so they have some money to spend and something they’ve been thinking about was investing in a picture they could hang in their living room.

Being that I’m a big fan of photography it was naturally my thought to suggest they buy themselves a nice photograph. Helpful to my cause was an article on investing in photography that appeared on fortune.com last week. It said Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico sold at auction last month for $609,000. My sister-in-law asked if Ansel Adams was that guy whose pictures I wanted to see when we were in Las Vegas last spring. (There was an exhibition at the Bellagio when we were there.) She asked what was so great about this photograph, same thing for some Stephen Shore photographs that were more in their price range. I found myself spouting stuff in response but then stopped before I embarrassed myself some more.

One day in Maui we went to a mall called the Shops at Wailea. Downstairs from the Louis Vuitton store was a gallery that sold pictures by an artist named Wyland. My brother and his wife liked the one of a swimming turtle, a giclee on canvas. The lady said it was made with a high-technology camera so that’s why it had that glow. My brother and his wife thought about it for awhile but in the end they decided not to buy it.

Having heard you can’t visit Maui without experiencing a luau, my brother made dinner reservations for us at the Old Lahaina Luau, listed under Best Luau in the March 2006-2007 edition of Maui Best Guidebook. There was an all-you-can-eat buffet with pork and poi and other kinds of traditional Hawaiian food and afterwards during coffee and dessert there was hula dancing. At the end you could get your picture taken with a hula dancer. Total cost per person, $89 plus tax, includes open bar.

Things to eat in Hawaii: shave ice, pineapple, mixed plate lunch. Lemons at the Star Markets are $1.39 each. At the Grand Wailea Resort & Spa a turkey and cheese sandwich costs $12. Valet parking is free.

Poolside at the Maui Schooner “Resort.”

Outside the grocery on South Kihei Road. We’re in Maui for the annual family vacation. There was some question of whether the trip was going to happen when my grandfather went into the hospice earlier in the month. He passed away last Saturday and the funeral was on Wednesday.