jimsjournal
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This feels to me as if it is the first weekend in September, even though it is the second one. That first weekend didn't feel like either August or September, it was Labor Day weekend, kind of a divider that stands alone, between August and September but belonging to neither. Saturday was gorgeous, pleasantly warm with clear bright blue skies. Today is more overcast with a chance of rain. That would be good; we really could use some rain, but then the sun comes out from behind the clouds... and then the sky becomes overcast again... but where's the rain?. A few weeks ago I had an entry about going to hear Diane Blue perform over in Newport. (And if you like blues or R&B, you really should check her Web site.) There is a great article about her now up on BostonBlues.com. I knew her back in her corporate days (when she was a very sharp systems analyst) and think it is so cool that she decided to follow her own path. Saturday morning was bright and sunny. After coffee and breakfast and reading the morning newspaper over another cup of coffee, I set out for the Peace Dale Library to spend some time helping to sort donated books for a fund-raising book sale run by the Friends of the Peace Dale Library (next Saturday, 9:00 a.m until 2:00 p.m.at the library).. Came back home, did some yard work, made some chicken salad for lunch, ate lunch with Nancy (outside, it's still summer), did some more yard work, then went off to the Pettaquamscutt Historical Society to see their exhibit "Pictures for Pleasure & Profit; Images of South County, Rhode Island 1850s-1950s." This exhibit has been up for months and only now that it is coming to an end do I manage to get myself there to look at it. The reason I picked today (besides it being a last chance) was because the curator was giving a talk about the art and the artists. I had just managed to go through most of the exhibit before the guided talk began, so that I could better absorb the information in the talk. Some of the works at the beginning of the exhibit had reminded me very much of works by painters in the Hudson River School (the way light is depicted, a fondness for storms, etc.) only to have the curator tell us that some of those artists (such as Alfred Thompson, Bricher) were, indeed, considered to be members of the Hudson River School. (This is probably because, having grown up in Kingston, New York, my first exposure to actual serious paintings was on grade school trips to the Senate House and Museum (the Senate House being the former home of merchant Abraham Van Gaasbeck where delegates from throughout New York met in 1777 to form a free government and where the first state senate met for two months -- until British troops torched the city -- fortunately Van Gaasbeck's house was made of stone -- where I got to see some paintings by John Vanderlyn, a Kingston native, and paintings [or reproductions?] by regional painters.) Anyway, it was an interesting exhibit and an interesting lecture. The exhibit was divided into three segments: the Narragansett area (which included a number of seascapes), the Manuck area (which included a number of works by members of the Hale family (Edward Everett Hale, perhaps best remembered today as the author of "The Man Without a Country," and his artist sister Susan and his artist children, Philip Leslie Hale and Ellen Day Hale -- and their Matunuck home has been acquired by the Pettaquamscutt Historical Society and they plan to open it as an historical museum), and the third segment of the exhibit (if I haven't confused you enough with my nested asides and parenthetical ramblings) consisted of artists and artwork from the rest of the county (mostly Wakefield and Kingston). Although I probably spent too much time at the historical society building, hanging around afterwards chatting with the curator and a couple of others who were busy researching and writing a planned book about the various artists whose works appeared in this exhibit, I still managed to get in a late afternoon run, three and a half miles on the bike path. Felt fine, no pain. Today I tried to get in another run, just three loops around the neighborhood, one mile each, but I only got a couple hundred feet down the street when I had to stop because of pain in my right calf. I have finally gone to see an orthopedics and sports medicine specialist and he told me that if it doesn't hurt, do it... but if it hurts, then stop. So I stopped running and walked back home... and went out for a fifteen mile bike ride instead. That didn't hurt (but it sure made me tired... well, that plus about an hour of yard and garden work).
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