Monthly Archives: March 2015

Urban Renewal – Before and After

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We haven’t just been vacationing in our nation’s capital. Both before and after our trip, we have been preparing to redo half the main floor, more specifically the front hall, living and dining rooms. All these rooms have textured plaster walls, arched ceiling to wall transitions and arched entryways, in addition to stain glass windows and other neat architectural detail. Together, these rooms represent the showy side of the house. They were newly painted, when we bought the house. We’ve lived in this house for over thirty-years, raised two boys in it and all the while have never painted them. I think that it is about time now. The first step was to empty them of all the stuff that had accumulated in them over the years. We got most of it out before we left for DC, leaving only essential pieces of furniture or like the two couches, those pieces too large to move. We finished removing the rest this morning. The plasterer showed up and seemed impressed with all the work that we had done. He originally bid the job at his hourly rate. I think that he expected to have to work around all of the stuff that was in these rooms when he last saw them. He had allocated three days to repair all of the cracks, finishing this Friday. Looking at the progress that he made today, I bet that he ends up finishing early and then it is on to painting.

Happy Birthday Chris!

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Popular Photography Cover

Popular Photography Cover

As previously described, my brother Chris had his photo on the cover of the January issue of Popular Photography, as part of their annual photo contest . If you remember, the magazine actually prints two covers, one for the newsstands and the other for subscribers. His cover photo appeared on the subscriber’s issue. At the time, Chris had asked me to put a call out to see if anyone I knew had a subscription to this magazine, with the hope that I could beg, borrow or steal a copy. My search turned up empty, but Chris was able to get an issue for himself, by subscribing. That was in early December. Come Christmas, and what do I find under the tree for me? A gift from Joanie, she bought a copy of the magazine on e-Bay. I would have never thought of doing that. I counted and his picture shows up not once, not twice, but five times in the magazine. There is the cover photograph, of course and the photo is also printed in the contest article, without all of the writing, where it is featured as the Landscape/Nature winner. It is also included in a mosaic of select contest winners that appears first in the table of contents and then again on the contest article’s title page. The fifth time that it appears is in a review of an Epson printer. It is the sample output. The editors must have really loved his picture!

Happy Birthday Mom!

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Mom as Pilot

Mom as Pilot

Mom as Pilot

Mom as Pilot

Today is my mother’s birthday, although she died in May of 2011, I still miss her. I love her and I choose to remember her here. I’ve included two pictures of her with this post. They date from before I was born. She was young back then, but still lived a long and fruitful life. She is dressed as a pilot and later took off in this biplane, as a passenger. I chose these two photos, because they epitomize her adventurous spirit. She never turned away from a challenge or backed away from a fight. She always faced life with courage. Happy Birthday! I love you!

Last Day in DC

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Sunset on the Mall - Washington Monument and the Smithsonian Castle

Sunset on the Mall – Washington Monument and the Smithsonian Castle

This was our last day in DC. We checked out, but left our bags at the hotel, leaving us free and unencumbered to play tourist for one more day. Today’s destination was Georgetown. We took Metro to Foggy Bottom, which if I remember correctly from my Little Abner is where the state department usually hangs out. Funny how Americans like to take their political news with a liberal dash of humor. It used to be from the funny pages, with the likes of Little Abner, Pogo and Doonesbury. Nowadays, we rely more on late night TV, what with Jon Stewart and his kin. We had breakfast near there at a nice little patisserie called Bread and Chocolate and then walked into Georgetown proper, which is sort of the college district in DC. We started with the Old Stone House, the only surviving pre-Revolutionary building still standing in Washington. We also saw the C&O Canal. Anne wants to bicycle its towpath, like some of our bike buddies have done. The high point of the day and also the highest point that we hiked to was Dumbarton Oaks. It had a relatively small museum, but also a very well-appointed collection of antiquities, from both the old world and new. We also toured its gardens, which represents the only sight that we have had to pay a fee for all week. We hiked for just a bit in Rock Creek Park, but got lost again. We were really getting a little tired of always getting lost, but we ended up on Embassy Row, which was more than consolation. We saw dozens of embassy, both big and small, as we marched down Connecticut Avenue to DuPont Circle. We grabbed a quick late lunch there before we ran to the train and caught the next arriving train with just a minute to spare. The turnaround at the hotel was equally efficient and we arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. And guess what? Our next door neighbors were waiting there at the gate for us to go home too. Joanie was kind enough to pick us up.

Apotheosis

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Apotheosis of George Washington and the Donut

Apotheosis of George Washington and the Donut

Saturday, we got an earlier than normal launch. The weather today was beautiful, the pick day of our trip. Our first stop was the Eastern Market, a farmer’s market, but also a Mecca for artists, gift shops and tourists. We had breakfast at a corner coffee shop that featured communal tables and an abundance of crockery. We toured the Library of Congress and then the Capitol building. According to Anne, we were on Dan Brown’s “Lost Symbol” tour. A central feature of this Dan Brown novel is the Apotheosis of George Washington, which is a fresco at the top of the ceiling of the Capitol dome. You can partially see it through the ‘donut’, another artifact of the dome’s restoration. After the Capitol tour we went to see the Supreme Court, which was not in session. In fact almost all of DC was not in session today. On our way over to the National Botanical Garden, we were passed by what I took to be were two congressional aides. As they passed us, I heard the guy ask the girl, “So, he is willing to let 5,000 people get laid off, just to make a point?” After the gardens we had a late lunch / early dinner. We waited for sunset on the Mall, then hopped a train and called it an evening.

Freaky Friday

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Malachite, Congo

Malachite, Congo

Freaky Friday, the first day of spring, with a snowstorm and a solar eclipse too, all in one day. We wouldn’t have seen the eclipse anyway; it was way out over the Atlantic. We couldn’t even see the sun. It was a very wet day. We took the hotel shuttle to get to the Metro and stay out of the oobleck, which is not a ‘problem’, no matter that the spell checker thinks I meant that by oobleck. Breakfast was in the Crystal City underground mall again. This time we ate at Au Bon Pain. A good pain that is what I was feeling when I got up this morning after yesterday’s exercise. Today is definitely going to be a museum day. The weather can’t decide whether to snow or rain, it seems to be doing a lot of both.

We started with the Natural History museum and then closed our museum day with a return to the National Gallery. In between these two museums is the Pavilion Cafe, it is in the Sculpture Garden, where we had lunch. This was the best museum food that we have had and the mulled wine was great! Overheard in the Human Evolution exhibit, “What I don’t like is the way they present it as if it was gospel. It’s just a theory isn’t it?” “Crocodilians, Crocodilians, One is short, one is tall, Crocodilians, Crocodilians“, sung by a four-year-old girl in the Bones exhibit. What Anne said to me, after I told her about all the great pictures that I had taken in the Minerals and Gems exhibit, “That was very gneiss of you. I won’t take you for granite. Shale we go now?”

We had supper at a Crystal City roadhouse that’s an oxymoron by the way; it was time for a show. How about some silent Shakespeare? “Much Ado about Nothing” was being performed as an unspoken dance concert. Sort of like an instrumental version of your favorite songs. If that’s not enough, the story was transported from period Spain to Las Vegas and the fifties. Still it worked and was a lot of fun. It was performed by SYNETIC Theater, one part Synthesis and the other Kinetic.