I'm starting it off with some family pictures: Gail my college roommate with her husband Jim and their daughters, Audrey, who can be coquettish and charming, and Amelia, the little explorer. Skepticism towards strangers is a quality I admire in young children, and I enjoyed the process of their warming up to me by the time I had to leave. A family diptych:
I stopped to visit Gail and family both weekends en route to and from a personal and professional development retreat in very southern Maine. Here we are:
And here's the whole family including Gail's parents:
Everyone remembers the story of the first time Gail and I spoke on the phone, her slight trepidation at being a Bostonian with a roommate from Alabama, only confirmed by my making the standard joke, "I like both kinds of music, Country and Western." She said later she was much relieved when in the same conversation I mentioned having an L.L. Bean rug and wondering if we had space for it in our room.
Speaking of freshman year, I went to lecture in the class of my art school friend Matt Templeton at Suffolk, the New England College of Art and Design. It was near the end of term and I think everyone was exhausted, but it was fun to do "Business School for Artists" in the context of a class that is essentially designed to help freshmen decide if they want to study the fine or applied arts (i.e., painting or graphic design).
Matt videotaped the class, and when I learn to retrieve video stills, perhaps I will have more varied documentation. After class, I legged it to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, on strong recommendation from Gail's garden-loving mom, to see a three-day annual show called "Art in Bloom." Local gardening and flower groups or shops interpret various works of art in bouquet form. Here are some examples, the Botero (the next to last) a favorite:
While at the MFA, I went down memory lane and visited the gallery where the Museum Legs chapter First Friday is set. With regard to royal children scurrying around with royal dwarfs, in proximity to Mannerist depictions of the dying Christ, exhibits 1 and 2:
This is the larger room, though you can't get the feel without Billy Ocean and the teeming, dancing groups of (Karen's phrase) "divorcees in bad shoes."
That Tuesday, Mo, a new, New York friend, picked me up to drive to York Harbor, Maine, for the workshop, a place you can, among other things, turn aspects of your life into Jungian symbols, to great effect:
It was a beautiful setting, where we were treated to a near complete spectrum of New England weather -- shown here, the breezy, bright sun, rather than the hail forecast:
Our fearless leaders from Dialogos:
And, an approximation of our lovely group of women attendees:
This was part of a very panoramic-formatted photograph in the inn's hallway. I would include lovely pictures I have of the actual participants, and I doubt people would mind, but on principle, I'll not. Here's the lighthouse view near where we went to the lobster pound the last night:
Returning to "civilization" where Jungian symbols are also actors and much of life is in the fray, I accompanied Gail, Jim, and the girls to a Kentucky Derby party where I was summarily robbed of the coveted last place finish prize. My horse came in next to last. (I find it is part of good manners of being a tag-a-long to a betting party to perform very poorly, or so has been my entirely accidental strategy at two different Oscars parties.) How fantastic is this horse:
It doubles as a flashlight:
Whoever wins it, wherever they are in the world, they get it back to the hosts in time for the next year's party, with the urgency of businesses filing year end paperwork with tax consequences.
The girls are not allowed much television, and they were absolutely delighted with the colors and fanfare of the horses. Amelia spent the race up on her knees, hands above her head, mostly clapping. Audrey has slightly more television experience. (Gail said someone asked Audrey once what she likes on tv and she said, "I like to watch Mickey Mouse. And people talking." Gail explained that "people talking" was her impression of all adult programming across all genres.)
The next day we ventured out through Harvard Yard (here in front of the statue of John Harvard that Audrey likes without ever feeling a sentimental or superstitious need to rub his foot for luck):
Still life of sleeping baby in the double-wide:
Audrey with her uncanny, oddly photogenic doll, Audrey Boo, whose hair, Audrey will tell you, is "white, like the doctor and the tailor."
We ventured over the a street fair and got there toward the tail end. The keeper of the bouncy castle agreed to let Audrey go in, even on the late side, but Audrey is cautious by nature and by the time she worked up her courage, it was closing time. So, we sat in these folding chairs, were given free popcorn in end-of-the-day generosity, and watched the bouncy castle be deflated. This is an oddly compelling thing to do, and part of access to that childhood feeling of rightness and simplicity in the world:
Audrey was inspired by nearby music and started dancing. Not pictured, I taught her a dance move: "up to the sky, down to your shoe" -- the John Travolta classic Stayin'Alive, Saturday-Night-Fever, finger-pointing hip waggle. Later that night at dinner, Audrey started miming and whispering with her coy smile, "up to the sky, down to your shoe."
Audrey Boo in her curious, arrestingly photogenic state. (Her eyes do not close.)
And with her faithful protector:
That weekend, one of the chief water mains in Boston broke. Strangely, Cambridge was unaffected because it gets its water separately from a reservoir. I totally forgot this and so when I went to the train the next morning, it was downright difficult to find a cup of coffee. Here is a picture of "Starbucks at Rest" across the street from the train station. They were only selling bottled water and pastries.
I stopped in Providence on the way back, and returned to the city.
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