Lucy Turner Joy, by Anders Leonard Zorn, 1897

We landed it to LA last night. We scored a decent rent-a-car, a white Camry, with only 107 miles on it. Sweet! I christian it the new Clark Griswold Wagon Queen Family Truckster. We got our motor running, and headed out on the highway. We were looking for adventure in whatever came our way. We found it soon enough, stop-and-go traffic on the 405 at 8 PM. Like a true nature child we were born, just born to be wild.

We made it to CalArts and caught the tail-end of a parents and graduate students barbeque. We met some of Dan’s classmates and we got to see Dan’s studio. It was pretty interesting and I did get pictures.

We met with the insurance adjuster Wednesday night. Last weekend, our next door neighbor, Art the architect, pulled us aside and told us that he and all our other neighbors are getting new roofs. When he asked his adjuster what hail damaged looked like, the adjuster pointed it out on our roof. So, we are getting a new roof, awning and gutters. The awning and gutters were only a year old. So much for lifetime warranties. I just hope that the repair work doesn’t take as long as last year.

Pictured with this post is a photo of a painting from the Saint Louis Art Museum. I chose this graphic anticipating a certain dichotomy between stately Saint Louis and the City of Angels. The following text is the museums description of the painting:

The Swedish artist Anders Zorn enjoyed great commercial success as a painter of the rich and famous in fin-de-siècle America. In the mid-1890s he visited Saint Louis where he received commissions to paint several prominent notables including the sitter here who was the wife of a local cotton broker, Duncan Joy. The painting highlights Zorn’s virtuoso Impressionist brushwork. The sitter relaxes on a green armchair while her left hand plays with a ribbon on the sleeve of her dress.