Kidbits and Updates

Each is not a whole post, but together it's a lot of catching up:

• Last week, Sis and I went to a compass class with some of our GS friends.  And it was taught by a friend we had made at Hog Island last year!  So great to see her again.  I learned so much. I did not know how to read a compass.  Hold the compass flat in your hand, with the curved part at your wrist and the printed red "travel arrow" pointing out from your palm.  "Turn on the compass"--I know, it's not electronic--means to put the "red in the shed," i.e. move the "compass housing" so that the red part of the needle that always faces magnetic north moves into the outlined arrow or orienting lines/arrow.  Now you can tell what direction you are pointing by whatever direction and degree lines up with the travel arrow.  You reverse it to go in a particular direction.  Want to go Northwest?  Move the compass housing to put NW at the end of the travel arrow, move yourself to put the "red in the shed", and walk in the direction of the arrow.  At least I think that's right.  Sis was much better than I was.  I know there is so much more to orienteering but it was a great start.  I'll practice at Hog Island again this summer.
• We went to three orchestra concerts last week, one for our school and two where the kids from our orchestra were invited to play at other concerts to help round out the sound.  They played "Vida La Viva," a bit from "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik," "Shadows," and . . . something else.  I love hearing my kids play . . . and it was even bittersweet to hear the little ones play "Hot Cross Buns."  Sis and Bud have come a long way.  And they'll both be playing in the orchestra again next year.
• Piano duet.  Yep, Bud and I are finally playing a piano duet.  I had stopped taking piano during CPE but am starting up again for the summer.  And so we actually did some planning during Monday's lesson.  I'm dusting off "Finlandia" and "The Entertainer" (both easy piano) and then learning my part of "Vida La Viva."  Yes, the Coldplay song.  Just like Bud played in orchestra.  I know it.  He likes it.  And one of the parts is just my speed.  Only challenge is that I don't really count when I play, just play by ear to the tune I know, which makes it almost impossible to play in the right spot with a duet partner so I'm practicing counting.  Whew.  But the playing has rejuvenated Bud, who spent last night playing "Phantom of the Opera," "Prince Sidon," and other songs.  One of my favorite sounds in the world.
• Bud has had a few kung fu performance in the last few weeks, which is not our usual performance time (May and October are the big competition times; January/February are the big Lunar New Year performance times.)  He performed at Quassy Amusement Park, a small, old local park with rides and games next to a lake.  The performance went well, but the team had even more fun wandering around together and going on all the rides--swings, tilt-a-whirl, this big boat that swings like a pendulum, tea cups, another ride that flips and holds you upside down.  I enjoyed the lovely weather and riding the carousel.  Oh how I love a carousel!  Bud even rode with me towards the end of the day. 
• And he earned his Black Belt right before we left for Italy.  The school hadn't been doing belts for the team (it's more of a karate thing than a kung fu thing anyway) and so their Master gave the team the chance to earn their belts.  Bud practiced for weeks, on top of his years of kung fu, and he earned the black belt, embroidered with his school, and a beautiful plaque to go with it.  We're so proud of him!
• INDIGO GIRLS!  Last week, we all went to hear the Girls in concert in New London.  We arrived early enough for dinner (mac and cheese pizza, chix and broccoli and bacon pizza, pasta pomodoro, great salad and yummy cakes) at this great local pizza place, Two Wives--and the only men in the building were Bud and those on the staff!  Everyone was there for the concert, which always draws about 95% women.  Most of them were our age or older--and not even all of them were dykes!  Of the five others I knew there that night, only 2 were lesbians.  But they were moms of twins, just like us.  Gotta introduce the kiddos to the culture, you know?  It was great--they played most of our favorites.  We got home really late, but we didn't care.  Besides, it was Mother's Day weekend and there's not much these two moms like more than a Girls concert.
  
• Mama and I gave ourselves our big Mother's Day present:  we went to the Met museum all by ourselves, leaving the kids at home on Saturday.  I had wanted to see the Thomas Cole exhibition and it was closing on Sunday, but the kids didn't want to go.  And after three orchestra concerts, the Indigo Girls, the compass class, and a kung fu show, we decided they would probably enjoy a day at home much more . . . and we might enjoy the moms' night out all by ourselves.  And we did!  There was some traffic heading into the city on Saturday afternoon, but we talked all the way there.  The Cole show had some great pieces--Course of Empire, Oxbow River, a little trompe l'oeil with an oil sketch of a landscape, a view of Florence in front of which I no longer needed to say "I'd love to take you to Italy!"  There were also paintings by Claude Lorraine, de Loutherbourg, Turner, Constable, including cloud studies and Hadleigh Castle.  The concept of the show--Cole was influenced by European art and travels--was nothing new, but it was pretty.  We also liked the parallel show about Americans in Italy--with sketches and drawings and watercolors by Sargent, Elihu Vedder, and Maurice Prendergast.  We especially liked the Venetian views.  We enjoyed a ham sandwich on a baguette, rich chocolate cupcake, and a cup of coffee in the American courtyard, treating this trip into the city like we did Italy by taking it easy and enjoying ourselves, slowly.  The last show on our list was the French gardens show, tracing the rise of public gardens and private gardening as a hobby after the Revolution and through the 19th century.  There were still lifes by Fantin-Latour, Odilon Redon, Mary Cassatt--I loved her lilacs--and Caillebotte's chrysanthemums.  There were also many women-in-the-garden scenes by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cassatt, and Morisot, though little discussion of the trope.  There were watering cans, hand rakes and trowels, and maps of gardens, including a great panorama postcard of the Tuileries with all these wonderful snippets of people.  It was a lovely show.  I think I might be getting excited about going back to Paris someday, with the kids, once they've had more French.  As we perused the shop--I got the gardens catalogue but not the Cole (I have the one from the very-similar Wadsworth show I saw when I came back to NYC in fall 1994 to see Glenn Close in Sunset Boulevard--when I stayed with Mama in her dorm, actually.  Full circle.)--I saw mention of a Visitors to Versailles show and so Mama and I trekked up to it.  Great 18th-century court costumes, dec arts, and even a room devoted to an early 18th-century visit by Siamese ambassadors from the court of Ayyuthaya who brought gifts and wore special hats. Yep, Thailand.  Circle again.  We absolutely skipped the Heavenly Creatures and the Catholic Imagination show; well, sort of.  It was spread out through the Medieval court on the first floor so we passed by the overdone fashions and big crowds on our way to other exhibitions.  It was a dramatic place to stage the show, with all the Catholic art of the Middle Ages, but I am completely uninterested in modern fashion. Give me those 18th-century court gowns any day.
• We saw Avengers: Infinity War.  Loved it.  It's past the point where I worry about spoilers; by now the details are well known.  Of course, it's the deaths that got everyone.  And we all seem to have the idea that most won't stick.  But I'm guessing they'll surprise us--it's too easy if Scarlet Witch somehow breaks the Soul Stone from the inside or Cap sacrifices himself for Bucky (and them all) and switches places with everyone in the Soul Stone.  I don't think he'll survive the next one, Cap.  And I think Black Panther, sweet Spidey, and all of those who disintegrated will be back. Doctor Strange knows exactly how it will all pan out.  No resurrection for mischievous Loki, though.  He was one of my favorites.  And I think Gamorrah will get, who I think entered the Stone as Thanos's sacrifice, will get out, too.  And all of that in time for the new Guardians, Spiderman, and Black Panther movies!
• Sis got her braces off!  She was so excited that she took a bag of popcorn with her to the appointment and had been planning her candy consumption for months.  Mama brought her a bag of jelly beans, gummy bears, Star Bursts, Carmellos, jar of caramel sauce, two bags of popcorn from Trader Joe's, and I don't know what else.  She now has a clear retainer.  And says her mouth is "soft!"  Bud will get his braces in a month (he lost his lost baby teeth later than she did)--I teased the orthodontist that he could just recycle the brackets and give us a discount. 
• CPE is wrapping up.  I have 62 hours left, a final evaluation paper (already at 10 pages), and three more essays.  Whew.  I witnessed a funny moment last week.  The priest startled a sleeping patient who then tried to get out of bed.  I fetched a nurse.  The patient kept saying, "I need to get to my business." (You could tell he meant work.)  The nurse said, "You can do your business here in bed."  "It isn't funny business!" he replied.  We all started to giggle.  The nurse said, "I can't believe you said that in front of the priest!"  The priest was laughing harder than all of us.  More on CPE later.  It's my day off!  Which means some Zentangle, crocheting, blogging, and watching reruns of "Arrow."

Catch Up: Two Weekends Ago

As much as I posted about my CZT experience last week, I didn't tell you about our excursions around Providence, a city none of us had visited before.  Unfortunately, the 30-degree/40 mph/snow squalls weather wasn't conducive to any outdoor activities such as Slater Mill, Coggeschwall Farm, or the Roger Williams Zoo that was most recommended to us.  But we did do a few fun indoor things, starting with the Culinary Museum on the campus of Johnson and Wales.  A history of American food and restaurants, mainly, we saw a great exhibition on diners, complete with diner car and fake food.  There was also a section on soda shops, one on the evolution of the stove (from hearth through cast iron and beyond), and another on outdoor cooking, including the Girl Scouts!  We marveled at the exhibition of sugar sculptures--real actual sugar work on display with this amazing lattice.  And a tiny space on the history of foods in ancient China, Greece, and Rome (I think.  Might have been some Aztecs, too.)  The only downside of the whole place?  No cafeteria!

So we searched for local places and Mama found this amazing old hot dog stand, officially called the Olneyville New York System Hot Wieners and Sandwiches.  There were neon signs, chrome bits, wacky signs (buy 1 for the price of two, get second free!), older male staff full of characters, and even bar stools just like the ones in the exhibit.  We had their hot dogs--which are wieners with flat ends in a steamed bun covered in some kind of ground meat and raw onion plus a smattering of seasoning somewhat like nutmeg--and french fries and cheesesteaks and a coffee milk, Rhode Island's signature drink made with coffee syrup.  It was all a riot of local color.

That evening, foregoing another meal, we wandered around downtown near our hotel, the Hotel Providence.  There was a craftsy store (full of artsy things, NOT a craft store), a used bookstore, and two Korean-Japanese places with one that sold bubble tea and other drinks.

LOVED this at the craftsy store Craftland

Exhausted, we spend the evening watching mediocre television--introduced the kids to "Deadliest Catch!"

 Before my Zentangle class began on Sunday evening, we spent the day around town.  Mama and the kids dropped me off at First Unitarian of Providence, which is a 200+ year old congregation in a lovely old building on an amazingly preserved historical street called Benefit.  (We had also marveled at historic Federal Hill the day before.)  I only heard some of the typically Unitarian service because I was distracted by the architecture.  It had the usual somewhat awkward but enthusiastic UU singing (our hearts are there--with so many aging hippies--but we aren't always such great singers in a group and we can rarely keep time) and a sermon about prayer which, also in UU fashion, skipped over the "to whom it may concern" acknowledging how fraught that was for us to focus on how it affects the praying person.  Then there was coffee hour--with real china cups in the early 19th-century parsonage and a book sale!  I felt right at home and missed my own UU congregation, which we haven't seen in awhile.


Mama and the kids did come across their own spiritual message:  the sign at a church down the street said "I find your lack of faith disturbing. --D. Vader"  LOVE IT.



We went to the museum of the famous Rhode Island School of Design, which is free on Sundays.  We wandered some of the galleries, focusing on the period rooms with all of their dec arts.   Mama even analyzed an 18th-century chest for us, you know, having built a replica herself. Sis noticed right away one of the "real" Gilbert Stuart paintings of George Washington.  There were also paintings by Hudson River landscapist Cole, portraitists Copley and Sully, and also the sculpture Nydia the Blind Girl by Rogers and busts by Powers.  We didn't spend too much time in the modern wings, though we nodded at the Warhol cow wallpaper, Rothko, and Twombly.  The kids were starting to sink, Mama was antsy to miss the weather on the drive home, and I was ready to start CZT class.

So even though it was a very short introduction to Providence, we enjoyed ourselves.  And eventually we'll get back for the zoo!

Birthday Weekend

It was a wonderful birthday weekend, made special by family and friends.  Thanks to Gommie, Aunt Banana, and Lambeth for calling with birthday wishes.  

Friday:
I had a little holiday coffee Friday morning, inviting many friends over for treats.  I don't like to be all alone around my birthday and have long hosted my own little get togethers.   Only a few friends could make it, but we had a jolly time together, setting the spirit for the whole weekend.

That evening was the annual big holiday party.  Mmm, mmm good:  

• Steak, green beans, baked potato, slab bacon, with Peter Luger sauce 
• chicken tikka 
• spinach dal 
• chicken taco 
• corn and mushroom taco 
•  Italian sausage pasta 
• spinach pizza 
• prosciutto, mint, and mozzarella pizza
• pesto orchiette
• Turkey and stuffing bread 
• porchetta slider
• cheese burger
• Smoked tofu noodles
• chicken sausage and pancake corn dogs 
• scrambled eggs with tater tots 
• s'more doughnut
•  cappuccino doughnut
• homemade Twinkie 
• homemade Ho Ho
• homemade chocolate cream Ho Hos
• Captain Crunch marshmallow treat
• Fruit Loop marshmallow treat
• homemade malomar bar
• Concord grape pop tart
• alcoholic creamsicle drink
• alcoholic holiday julep drink

Saturday:

We awoke early to head to Boston where we would see the exhibition, Class Distinctions:  Art in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer, at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.  I have always loved Dutch 17th-century painting and even minored in it as part of my graduate school studies, taking classes even with Simon Schama (who broke his leg during our semester!)   Genre paintings are my favorite and so knew there would be a lot to like in this show.

We got there around 11 a.m., and went straight to the exhibition.  It was crowded, as expected, but not so much as to be unenjoyable.  We talked to the kids about the 17th century, the rise of the middle class, Dutch trade and merchants, conventions of landscape painting (the brown-green-blue progression) and portraiture (pendants, status markers), and practiced "reading" what was happening in the various genre paintings.  There were many wonderful paintings--not only Vermeer and Rembrandt, but by Hals, Ter Borch, de Hooch, Steen, Maes, Metsu, van Ruysdael, etc.  The names meant little to the kids, but they liked some of the paintings.  Mama and I felt like we were walking through an art history text!  We had a midday snack before looking at some of the 20th century works by Pollock and Picasso at Sis's request and then browsing the bookstore.  Had to get the heavy art catalog!  

Then it was off to our second stop:  early dinner at the Publick House, where we'd eaten the before our Girl Scout overnight at Old Sturbridge Village in March (four days before my surgery.)  Again we sat by the huge and lovely fireplace, unlit in our remarkably unseasonably-warm December weather.  I had a full turkey dinner plate with butternut squash soup and Indian pudding; Mama and Bud had lobster pie and clam chowder and raspberry tart, while Sis had chicken pot pie with apple pie.  It was a lovely meal sitting in the old space cheerfully decorated for Christmas, setting the mood for our next outing.

Yep, Candlelight at Old Sturbridge Village!  We hadn't been since 2012, having been three years in a row, so it seemed new and unfamiliar to the kiddos.  But for Mama and I, it was much the same;  tastings of cider, gingerbread, plum pudding, roasted chestnuts; demonstrations of tinsel making (but we never found the cornucopia making); riding the horse-drawn carriage; and watching the roaring bonfire (and each practicing taking photos.)  I liked the carol-singalong, which was a first for us this year.  Sis and Bud loved watching the potter at work, making cups and candleholders out of lumps of clay.  The potter had a wonderful kinda grumpy rapport with all the kids standing around--saying that he wasn't an artist and only made things to be useful not beautiful, that no farmer wanted to find clay, that he would have rather been a sailor, and so forth.  All the while his fingers pressed and worked the slippery stuff.  We each got to select a free clay ornament:  teapot, bunny, goose, and heart.   

We stayed much longer than we expected, almost closing the place at 9 pm, which means we got home very late.

Sunday:  

We were up early for church; I was the assistant RE teacher.  After that, we had a seafood lunch and . . . Mama and I slept for 3+ hours while the kids played!  We didn't mean to nap the day away.   Later, we finished the day with dinner and the original Miracle on 34th Street.  

Museum-Tree Trek

We made our now annual pilgrimage to the city to see the museum holiday trees--the creche at the Met and the origami tree at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).  And we listened to our first spate of Christmas carols on the way, starting with the standard first one "All I Want for Christmas," then "Christians and Pagans," "Do You Hear What I Hear?", "Do They Know It's Christmas?", "As Long as It's Christmas," "Put a Little Love in Your Heart," "We Need a Little Christmas," "Baby, It's Cold Outside," and others.  

Besides those two trees, we had a few extra stops at the Met, mainly the gorgeous textile exhibition tracing the cultural exchanges via fabric in the early modern period, Interwoven Globe, that I had wanted to see.  Photographs don't do the skill justice--you can see the colors and patterns, but, until you're standing in front of the real thing, you can't appreciate the individual stitches or painting that goes into the creation of chintzes and damasks, silks and cottons, Indian and Chinese trade textiles.  Plus, there were several 18th-century gowns to ogle.  The kids wanted to see the Greco-Roman galleries, to look for mythological subjects,  and stumbled across an actual Percy Jackson scavenger hunt that we went on.  We found all the cards in the brochure and several others on our own, including this Artemis and the stag--the kids really know their myths!

On the way to the creche, we wondered through the Julia Margaret Cameron photography exhibition and the Silla/Golden Age of Korea show.  We spent some time at the creche talking about how long it would take to unpack and install it.

And then we went for lunch.

And headed to AMNH, which was a madhouse.  But the origami tree, themed on "Wicked, Wild, and Wonderful" alongside their poisons exhibition, was marvelous.  I liked the owls, seen here, and the Sherlock Holmes deerstalker cap.

They even had Macbeth's witches.  Clever as well as creative.

Of course, we visited the rabbit diorama in the Hall of North American Mammals and walked through the old Pacific Northwest Native Americans gallery half a dozen times.  

By then, we were ready for home and took our usual route up Broadway and the West Side Highway to head to Connecticut, with the most beautiful pastel sunset in our rearview mirrors.

And about 70+ Christmas trees on cars headed in the opposite direction!

Fall Faerie Fun

It's Faerie Village time again!  We've been for four years now, exploring the grounds of the Florence Griswold Museum in search of all the little faerie houses tucked away (2009, 2011, 2012--we skipped 2010, which was scarecrows.)  This year, the theme was the "Wizard of Oz," more from the book than the movie, which was fine because we'd read it a year or so ago.  The kids are older now and so we let them rn and roam around on their own, knowing they wouldn't wander off or touch anything.  As in earlier years, my favorite houses were those made of natural materials, those tucked into the shapes of trees or the land, and those under the giant oak.   The kids aren't as particular or predictable in their preferences.  

After enjoying all the faerie houses, we went for lunch at Pizza Works, the train station pizza place.  And Sis actually ate pizza, which has long been a food she wouldn't touch.  But she ate three slices of bacon cheeseburger pizza!  We were so excited, even though that pizza isn't always available.  Bud and Mama shared a bacon clam pizza while I liked pesto mushroom.  There was chocolatey Derby Pie and caramel apple pie for dessert.

See Dorothy's house on top of the tornado?

"Follow the Yellow Brick Road . . . . "

I loved the Munchkin village under the big tree, which was made by local elementary students and their art teacher.

More doors and ladders . . . .

My paternal grandfather would dry gourds; Goo has, too.

Can you see the tiny pincushion?  There was a checkerboard elsewhere.

In the City That Always Sleeps Late

We went to Washington, DC this weekend, primarily to see the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at the National Gallery.  But we also squeezed in a few good meals and other sightseeing activities both in DC and beyond.

Friday

We took the kiddos out of school early so we could beat the traffic into DC.  Armed with lots of snacks and many audiobooks, we drove through Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland before reaching DC.  (I don't think we actually entered Virginia, but I'm not certain.)  We made only one major stop, at Booth's Farmer's Marker outside of Wilmington; it's a collection of stands inside a large building, mainly owned and operated by the Amish.  Which means we had to explain the Amish to the kids--since they haven't seen Witness!  We bought some jams, some baked goods (mmm, pound cake and Amish butter cake), potato chips, a pickled tomato, a container of Amish baked lima beans, and lunch--typical diner food followed by pie and homemade tapioca pudding.  We eventually got into DC and checked into our hotel.

Saturday

We were up and at'em very early, only to find that nothing seemed to open before 10, which felt rather late.  We took pictures on the Mall while waiting for the National Gallery to open so we could see the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition, or what Bud kept calling "the art show."  It was a lovely exhibition, with many works I'd seen at the Tate or in other Victorian shows.   The labels weren't very consistent in information, but I could fill in the gaps for each painting by telling the kids about the realism in detail (especially plants!), literary preferably medieval  subject matter, overt symbolism, and all those big-haired models-cum-artists'-wives.  I'm not sure the kids really took to the PRB, at least not as much as to the Impressionism and Fashion show.  Sis liked a few of the images of Jesus, like Millais's Jesus in the House of His Parents; Bud wanted the stuffed wombat in the gift shop!  He also liked Millais's image of The Huguenot on St. Bartholomew's Day.

We skipped the rest of the museum in favor of lunch at the National Museum of the American Indian, the best food on the Mall:  wild rice salad, hominy and asparagus salad, aqua fresco (tamarine, red currant, and guava), fry bread with honey, garbanzos with aji peppers, squash with aji peppers, spring green beans with pork, roasted sunchokes and nettles, arroz con negro, yucca cake with black beans, bison steak, roasted salmon, tres leches cake, orange cake, and lastly maple pudding.  Oh, and Sis had chicken fingers!  Afterwards, the kids played in the rainbow cast by the prism in the wall of the main gallery while Mama and I figured out the rest of the day.

So, we went to the Museum of American History and saw several iconic favorites:  Lincoln's hat (Sis's favorite), Dorothy's red slippers (Bud's favorite), Kermit the frog, an old Apple II, an old cassette Walk-man, and the dresses of the First Ladies.  I also liked seeing Julia Child's kitchen.  We all played "I spy" with "America's Doll House."  And we all were struck by the giant flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the "Star-Spangled Banner."  Of course, it's no longer just hung in the foyer, as when I saw it back in the early 80s, but has its own exhibition space, complete with a real rocket.

We spent the afternoon in the hotel, resting and napping, then ordered dinner from Hill Country BBQ.  Yum!  I know we'll be in Texas soon, but it was nice to have some authentic Texas food--collard greens, pinto beans, baked beans, potato salad, green bean casserole, sausage, brisket, chicken, banana pudding, and even white bread!  They also had Big Red, which I remember from childhood (we made strawberry ice cream with it at camp!).  

After dinner, we headed to the monuments.  Sis and Bud really wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial, so we were there at sunset.  And it was a beautiful evening.  But I didn't like all the steps--funny how fear of heights can hit me at such odd times; I could barely enjoy being at the top of the memorial. We then walked to the Vietnam Memorial, including the statue to the women, and then WWII, where we talked about how their maternal great-grandfather fought in WWII in Europe.  We reiterated the purposes of memorials and stressed that they had to act respectfully, though several huge groups of kids weren't.  The city is so pretty at night, beautifully well-lit.  And the kids are so rarely out at night.  It was a late one for us, but well worth it.

Sunday

Again, we waited and waited for our morning attraction to open--the pandas at the National Zoo!  We'd been once when the kids were seven-months old to see the seven-month-old baby panda and then again a couple of years ago before the "baby" panda went back to China.  I don't believe the kids remembered either trip, but I think they'll remember this one.  Especially because Tian Tian came right up to the front of his enclosure to munch on some bamboo--we could even hear his teeth cracking the outer sheath.  We didn't stay long at the zoo but did ride the new Conservation Carousel, which is solar powered!  The kids rode it twice (adults just once) and then had fun petting some San Clemente goats.

After lunch on the go and a few hours in the car, we arrived later than expected at Valley Forge.  We still managed to explore the huts the soldiers lived in, visit General Washington's headquarters, drive through much of the park, see the artifacts in the Visitor Center display (gaming pieces, surgical tools, shoes, etc.) and visit the gift shop (I bought some tours for our historic house activities; the kids and Mama collect pins--and smooshed pennies.  Sis got some postcards for friends and her teacher).  My Revolutionary War history is spotty but improving, but I do know more than a second grader!  For now.  

The rest of the day is a blur of traffic, rest stop food, and more audio books.  More of a wimper than a bang but still a great weekend.

Meet Me at the Met and Other Fun This Weekend

Saturday found us in the glorious halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, primarily to see "Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity."  We loved the combination of paintings by Monet, Degas, Tissot, Caillebotte (okay, so they weren't all Impressionists, but the word sells tickets!) and the crinolined and bustled fashions of the second half of the 19th century.  Bud, who recently read a biography of Monet, was glad to tell us all about Monet's wife Camille as well as the exhibition of 1871 and plein-air painting.  Sis especially liked Monet's "cotton candy" painting of a woman in white with a parasol on a hill.

We also walked the 19th-century galleries, where Sis wanted to see Degas's statue of a dancer.  She stood mesmerized for awhile, liking the cloth skirt and ribbon of the otherwise bronze figure.  Bud kept asking us to describe the subjects of painting so we finally would send him to read the labels.  For the painting in the above photo, of the massacre of the Innocents, the label really didn't help him understand the dead children or bereft mothers.  Interesting to note that the Met situates its labels at the height of an 8-year old, also probably that of a person in a wheelchair.

We had lunch on the (somewhat chilly) steps, though many of the fancy gourmet food carts have left--no cupcakes, no shakes, just New York hot dogs, which were good enough for Sis, Bud, and Mama!

Back inside, led by a banner on the facade of the building, we tracked down the newly-opened "Photography and the American Civil War," with his collection of carte-de-visite portraits in lockets and frames, battlefield images of casualties both dead and injured, and equipment such as cameras, braces to hold subjects' necks still, and stereoscopes, which were the kiddos' favorite.

We headed home soon after, with a swazu over to Columbia.  We picked up some huge slices of Koronet pizza and ate them in front of Butler Library, where Mama and I met way back when.  The kids love hearing that story over again and marveled that we could point to the exact stone bench (really more of a wall) where I was sitting eating breakfast when we were introduced by a co-worker.  We'll have to go back for a longer visit next time, to hit some of our other favorite spots again (we took them once before, but they were probably too young to remember the library stacks, the Hungarian Cafe, and St. John the Divine.)

Saturday night, our babysitter came so that Mama and I could go to see Audra McDonald in concert with last-minute, half-price tickets.  I'd seen her before, both in Carousel and Ragtime, and was looking forward to it.  And we loved it!  We had great seats, front row center mezzanine.  Most of the songs dealt with the meaning of life, such as "Make Someone Happy" and "First You Dream."  But, including those, I didn't know most of the songs, several being 1930s musical standards which isn't my forte.  She "got over herself" to sing "I Could've Danced All Night," but she encouraged us to sing along.  She sang about flying--and played the piano--in honor of her father who died five years ago in a plane crash.  She was inspired to add "My Buddy" by an 86-year old veteran singing the song in Harvard Square; she sang some lullabies because her daughter wouldn't listen to them, saying her mother's singing "made my ears cry."   The song about the effects of September 11th on one person, "I'll Be There," made us both cry.  And we laughed hysterically, truly to the point of tears, when she sang her German art songs with lyrics from, of all places, Craigslist!  There she was operatically singing about finding a particular type of Hudson Valley pickle because "some dipschitz though out my bottle!"  I wasn't as affected by her song "Go Back Home" about the Scottsboro Boys or "Some Days" from a James Baldwin poem, but I really liked the poignant chorus and story of "Stars and the Moon," about being promised true love yet wanting a yacht and champagne.  And her version of "Moment in the Woods."  She closed with a song first sung by the person she considered the best singer ever--Judy Garland's "Over the Rainbow."  No Porgy and Bess, no Carousel, no Ragtime.  And it was all wonderful nonetheless.  Mama and I glowed the rest of the weekend from having done something so adult, so enjoyable, so much like we used to, so memorable.  We picked up Indian food on the way home and chatted late into the night.

Sunday was spent mainly at church--we were in charge of snacks, bringing homemade brownies, cheese and crackers, veggies and dip--as we had both morning service and I had a small group ministry meeting of parents of young children in the afternoon.  There we discussed, passionately yet sensitively (also rather liberally), the shooting tragedy in Newtown through the lens of parenthood.  I just joined the group but felt really comfortable with everyone and am very glad to have found a niche at church.  Meanwhile, Mama and the kids made wooden pinball machines at a local museum and went for a short hike.

We ended the outing with some frozen yogurt--tart or lychee or strawberry yogurt with fruit toppings, caramel sauce, raspberry sauce, coconut, almonds, mochi, gummies, maraschino cherries--we had more toppings than yogurt!  A sweet end to a great weekend.

Time Travel

The Cloisters from the Western Terrace

The Cuxa Cloister

The Rabbit in the Unicorn Tapestries

The Unicorn in Captivity

(all of the above taken without flash by my phone; every time I take a picture, I remember the ad, "If it rings, it's not a camera.  I'll see if Mama will upload her pics from her fancy camera!)


Yesterday we traveled through time and space via The Cloisters, the medieval art branch of the Met, in northern Manhattan.  Mama and I hadn't been in years, the kids never, but we were drawn by the exhibition of the famed Lewis Chessmen.

Better known as the inspiration of the set Ron and Harry play in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Sis and Bud had a great time admiring the intricate walrus ivory pieces, with their unique details.  The kids even drew their favorite pieces.  We learned a lot about chess, from its origins in 6th-century India where elephants were main pieces--these later became bishops when the game moved into Western Europe; how Rooks/Castles replaced Warders, and the subset Beserkers, who are often show biting their shields; how rules change--the King used to be able to move 4 squares in his opening and the Queen could initially jump other pieces; how ivory chess pieces were made in Trondheim, Norway, in the 11-12th centuries and moved West through trade to Scotland, where this horde was found in the early 19th-century--the man who first dug them up thought they were elves!

The kids continued to draw throughout the museum, with Mama's guidance in forming shapes and sketching--a wall painting of a lion, an archway, a crucifix, and stained glass windows, enjoying how much the whole place felt like a medieval castle.  We even went outside in the damp fog to take in the view of the Hudson from the Western Terrace.  We could enjoy the "ramparts" of the museum but could only barely see the outline of the massive George Washington Bridge (GWB).  The other outdoor spaces--the two cloisters filled with plants--were closed for the winter, but I still enjoyed sitting in the Cuxa Cloister, with the scent of potted hyacinths and rosemary, plus citrus and olive trees.

Bud was bothered by the tomb effigies, even after we explained that the skeletons were long gone.  He just couldn't appreciate the chain mail and shields while thinking of them as tombs. We did notice, however, that most of the sepulchres had dogs at the feet of the departed; one elaborate tomb also sat on lions and a sheep, with a bunny nearby.  We also marveled at the extensive damage to one sculpture's face due to touching over time--dark, shiny, and lacking detailed compared to the face of the sculpture out of reach.

Sis liked the Unicorn Tapestries (and here), particularly because of the rabbit in one of them.  We listened to a visiting art history prof give an awful, incoherent, and incorrect explanation of the tapestries to his class of bored college students; when he left, I told the kids all the other interpretations of the works of art.  "Bad" or lazy or simplistic art history--especially because in this case he provided a rigid religious interpretation, ignoring the two tapestries that didn't fit (which scholars believe belong to a secular metaphor of the unicorn as lover), and then discounting a question by a student about other unicorn tapestries, which he'd never heard of (in Cluny!  See the novel The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracey Chevalier)--drives me nuts (like DaVinci Code).  They especially liked the unicorn's horn (actually a narwhal tusk) on view.  We also spent some time admiring The Merode Altarpiece, with Mama and I plumbing the depths of Art 101 for all the symbolism in the detailed piece.  Sis liked the baby Jesus flying to Mary on the mini-cross!  We also examined more than one Lamentation and Pieta, giving us a chance to review the Easter story with the kids.

But that's next weekend!