Art

Eric and I drove to Philly for the last three days of the week. We went to see the "Cezanne and Beyond" exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We stayed at a really crappy hotel. Its sole claim to fame is that it is within walking distance of the museum. We found another good thing when we walked across the street to the Rodin Museum. It is modeled after the Musee Rodin in Paris.  Eric had told me about that museum before I visited there the first time in 1989.  Both museums are worth visiting. The two things I remember most about the Paris museum was the wonderful grounds with rows of plane trees and families wandering the grounds. The second thing was that I didn't have the French hand numbering system down. How do you say that? In America we hold up the pointy finger to mean one, as in "I would like one ticket."  Un is still hard for me to say right.  Of course, those of you who have been to France know that the thumb indicates one.  The pointy finger is two. I gave my extra ticket to the woman in line behind me. Un, Duex por moi. See, I still don't speak French. By the way, Mahler's bust is at the top of the page and Zola is to the left. Don't know if he was pleased with this.

The Cezanne exhibit was great. We spent some time in the Expressionist part of the museum before we got in line. Man, the line was long but fast moving. The people inside moved more rarely. The idea is to have a Cezanne picture surrounded by picture that it inspired. You see the bathers on the right. There was an installation of several pieces that reminded you of the bathers that was inspired by the painting. And there was a red painting with darker red lines running through it. That was the outlines of the figures in Cezanne's painting. Picasso, Matisse, Jasper Johns and many others were included. I thought it was fascinating.

When we got home, I worked a bit more on the side yard. It is almost clean. Today I got my hair done. Cindy worked in the yard as I slaved in the chair with the slowest hair dresser in nine counties. Still, Cindy is the fastest, hardest worker around. She had bags filled with leaves and debris from the vegetable garden and this little planting area between our driveway and our neighbor's drive. When I was raking yesterday, a woman stopped and told me that she loves to see what my garden will do next, it is always so beautiful. I told her that I just rake here. My sister-in-law is the woman with the vision. And the muscles.
We started Doctored Evidence on our drive north to Philadelphia. I soon realized that this wasn't something that would catch Eric's imagination. We moved on to a Reacher book. Doctored Evidence is a mystery that takes place in Venice. It moves slowly and ends quietly. I enjoyed it. The detective is happily married to a woman who loves to cook huge meals for lunch and, sometimes, dinner. He describes them in mouth-watering detail. She also loves to read and makes connections between her books and life. Love this woman. So does he. How rare to have a happily married police officer. 

Somewhere along the line I also read Cracking the Code. The code being cracked is the code spoken by Republicans that have Americans in such a trance. The author is an Air America talk show host. So he leans to the left and is observing the right. But in a nice way. This is all old information about how people receive data in different ways (different senses - feeling, hearing, seeing, etc.) and how you need to address these different senses to get people to receive what you are saying. He talks about framing the message and future talking. Future talking is about putting people into the future and then bringing them to it through your message. I was wanting to think this was going to be all bullshit when I started reading, but I've heard these thoughts enough in my career to give it all some validity. In those cases we were talking about getting your point across in business. Same thing. I hope Dems read this and understand how to manipulate as well as the princes of manipulation.  
Finally, I am preparing for Adrian's visit at the end of April. Don't you love this picture of him? It was taken at my birthday celebration 1.5 years ago. Anyway, Cindy mentioned going to a National's game sometime this year. I thought that this was a great opportunity to go, so I got tickets to see them play the Cardinals. And then I had been thinking about visiting the other close ballparks, so I got tickets to see the Angels at Baltimore and the Nationals at Philly.  It was supposed to be the Mets at Philly, but those games were sold out. This should be fun. It was always going to be good to see Adrian, but he doesn't care to travel around that much. Baseball gives a reason. Dean and Fred would say that it is the best reason.