She’s become addicted to the luxury/intensity of having the history of art to herself. She stays for an hour and a half or so, until other people dare to show up and share the goods.
I swear there’s almost no one there at ten AM on a cold weekday, so you just sashay about with an idiotic smile on your face as one unbelievable gallery after another beckons you. You hum Bach’s Cello #1 and the paintings hum back. Their lifeblood is bright red. They are right at you.
Even deathly pale their lifeblood is bright.
It’s you, the copyist, and the echoing halls.
Outside, UD takes heart from the writing on the side of the Archives.
Permanency. YES!
Although just in case I’m keeping a few of these pennies in my pocket.
Winner and Still Champeen. Visits to the Archives always bring tears to UD‘s eyes, despite a certain amount of scoffing from Mr UD. (“Do they have benches where you can kneel in front of the documents?” he asked on my return.)
Imagine this scene in the insanely crowded Uffizi! Impossibile.
I’ll have the same quality of art as the Uffizi, free of charge, with one after another gallery to myself, please.
All topped off with a Teaism chai, and ginger scones.
From the promotional literature for new assisted living apartments a mile away from Les UDs.
McCaffery and Solera Senior Living have partnered to co-develop The Modena Reserve at Kensington, a 135-unit luxury independent, assisted living and memory care community. Located in the high barrier to entrytown of Kensington, Maryland, and adjacent to the historic Kensington train station offering direct access to Washington D.C….
2. UD had a consult this morning with a pulmonologist. Faithful readers know UD has episodic bronchitis. She hasn’t had any trouble for months, but she decided as a precaution to talk to a specialist. Here’s a bit of conversation from him.
When I joined this practice ten years ago, I thought the partners wanted me because of my impressive education. Harvard College, Hopkins med school, Harvard internships… But when I made partner they told me ‘Franklin, we hired you to be our shabbos goy.‘
The sun throngs her window (I stole “throngs” from Philip Larkin); her wee nuclear family sits directly to her left on the train. Extended family insists on living in Boston, so the Polish-ish Christmas must happen there.
You know if you read this blog that UD dislikes grubby old Boston, and slogging to that city in the dead of winter seems especially stupid. But.
I listen to Julia Lezhneva for much of the trip, which also features blueberry muffins and, this year, a book about India. After New Year’s in Venice, Les UDs fly to Rajasthan.
But after unveiling her National Portrait Gallery portrait, Oprah had dinner at the same place La Kid booked for her office Xmas gathering. So La Kid gazed at her a lot.
Lots of questions about the very dangerous man who somehow escaped police custody at George Washington University Hospital and has now put the whole campus in lockdown/shelter in place.
A post-football-game brawl in UD‘s Bethesda between between fans of the two high school teams (it’s not clear if players were involved) really failed to rise to prevailing American standards. The brawl featured UD‘s high school (Walter Johnson) and its traditional rival (Bethesda Chevy Chase), and managed only this much beyond the usual thefts and punches:
[T]he principals [of both schools] wrote that there has been mention on social media that a student may have been in possession of a weapon.
And hey that might not even have been a gun…
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Anyone who, like UD, follows the national trend of shootings during as well as after high school football games knows that ‘thesdan culture is way behind football mad/gun mad Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, South LA, Baltimore, and other hot spots. These places kill people during/after football! And it’s becoming a routine part of game day! ‘thesda’s just taking baby steps and UD‘s thinking it’s the parents’ fault for not having enough guns lying around the house for an easy grab when you get home pissed off cuz you lost.
Well, as you probably know, lots has already been done. Look at professional soccer if you wanna know where we’re headed. Massive fights and carnage means that in some places games are played in empty stadiums. It means police state level security, including elaborate surveillance of/barring of known trouble makers. It also means 100% young male audiences, as women, older men, and children flee screaming from the violence, which is to say that the very worst demographic has now been isolated in stadiums and thus you’re practically guaranteed violence.
Of course Europe doesn’t have all our guns. In Europe they have to content themselves with beating the shit out of each other and burning cars. Here we see what our firepower superiority implies: Forget fighting. Just go ahead and massacre the other team.