We spent some time last week when we were in Washington in the National Gallery of Art.

It is a fascinating place. I could wander around in there for days but I would need one of those electric chairs that some company on television is giving away to everyone for free.

I decided to focus on the faces I saw in the artwork and then accompany them with Jonathan Butler’s great song Many  Faces.   I hope you enjoy the result. You can click on the music and then the photo thumbnail for the slide show experience.

Faces In Art and Culture

Play – Many Faces (Album Version)(1)

Last weekend while we were visiting my daughter and her family in Leesburg we went to a Little League baseball game.  Jordan, my grandson, plays on the Boston Red Sox which makes me very happy because I grew up in Westboro, Massachusetts following the exploits of Carl Yastrzemski  “Yaz” , George Scott, Carlton Fisk “Pudge” and the rest of the gang.

We don’t have enough time or space here to get into that but let’s just say I  had a little “eye condition” when I saw Jordan out there in his Red Sox uniform.

But then I saw the vultures.  Because, apparently, Leesburg, Virginia (in Loudoun County one of the richest counties in the US)  has a problem with vultures.

There were plenty of them at the game on Saturday.  I thought they were hawks but one of the parents on the bleachers (you can find out a lot of good stuff on those bleachers!) helped us out with the bird ids.

I was hoping one of them would swoop down at an opportune moment and carry the opposing pitcher over the center field fence but we did not get a break in that department.

Besides, someone on the other team might say “Well, what if a bird jerked your grandson up into the sky!  How would you feel about that!?

Well.  You have a point.  I guess it would depend on whether I got a really good shot of it without any blurring or people in the background acting crazy or throwing up.

I like my backgrounds to be fairly clean and well balanced.

Anyway, we had a nice time at the game.  Jordan and his Boston Red Sox were behind ten to nothing but came back and tied the game 11-11 before it was over.   The best thing to do when you get behind in a game like this is to tell your players to steal every base (including home plate).   Nobody really needs to hit the ball.  Just steal the base and the game while the other team’s catcher is busy throwing the ball into the outfield.

And possibly over the fence if he has a really good arm.

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The Fisk Foul Pole

On June 13, 2005, the Red Sox honored Carlton Fisk and the 12th-inning home run that won on October 20, 1975 in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series by naming the left field foul pole where it landed the Fisk Foul Pole. In a pregame ceremony from the Monster Seats, Fisk was cheered by the Fenway Park crowd while the shot was replayed to the strains of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.

Abraham Lincoln died on April 15, 1865.

And, purely by coincidence, we showed up at Ford’s Theatre where he was shot on April 15.  It was a cold and rainy day.  And I knew from the beginning that it was not going to be much fun.

Actually it started out alright.  Beth and I were standing outside the building in the rain talking with a lady who had just been to Baltimore and the aquarium up there.  I asked her if she had been to the new dolphin show.   She had been and she recalled  seeing the photos I took of the two birds and the dolphins.

But it was downhill (or sideways maybe) from there.  We went inside for a short program and when it ended we went across the street to climb some steps to see the room where the President had taken his last breathe and left this earth.

But somehow we got hooked up with Kip Pierson (see photo at Fords Theatre.org) and started walking around the area in the rain while he talked in some detail about the detective work that followed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  Because there are a number of buildings in the area that housed the players in this famous drama.

http://www.fordstheatre.org/

It was such a dreary, wet, cold day I really felt like we were transported back to that tragic  time and place.  Well, actually we WERE in that  place already.

So the heavens were weeping and I was getting wet and somber as well.

Later in the evening we returned to Ford’s Theatre for a show.  There was lots of singing and very little dialogue.  I’m in favor a musicals that intersperse their music with dialogue.  It tends to balance things out a little and this was, after all, not a concert.

But Beth loved it.  And some of the participants were very talented.  But I had restless legs throughout the program and was dying to get out of there.  I kept looking up at President Lincoln’s sitting area where he was shot and thinking ” This has been a trying day but I guess it was a lot worse for you Big Guy.”

The President had been in a jubilant mood earlier in the day feeling that the war was over and he had taken his wife for a carriage ride.  I can see him now as he shares his joy with her and hear the sound of the horses as they move on the pavement.   He’s talking to her about going back to Illinois to practice law.  And then he takes her to the theatre. . .

I felt like a slightly waterlogged, small person but I was glad we were there in the presence of such greatness. I feel like there is only one direction to go in this life. And that’s UP.

But sometimes it really seems like there is too far to go and too little time to actually get there.

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Here are some other photos I took while we were in DC that seem to fit in here. Just click on   photo thumbnail for a slide show presentation.

America

On our first evening in DC we had dinner at a fine restaurant called The Monocle and then walked over to the Capitol building.  It was a cool evening and quite comfortable.  The lights in the dome could be seen in the twilight and cloudy skies.  And the flowers were out in force this week here in Virginia  so they added quite a bit to the view.

Click on photo to enlarge

There is a room for musical instruments in the American History Museum at the Smithsonian and we made sure to visit it last week while in the area.

The museum’s music collection contains more than 5,000 instruments of American and European heritage.   We found several on display including this Five-course Guitar by Joachim Tielke.

Tielke was one of the most outstanding guitar makers of all Europe in the 17th and early 18th centuries.  His guitars were decorated with rich materials such as ivory, tortoise shell, ebony, gold and silver, mother-of-pearl and jaracanda wood.

He created floral decorations surrounding mythological scenes.  His work represented the height of German craftsmanship and was comparable to works done by the masters of the Italian Renaissance.