11-Sept-99 Art show
.
.
.
Sunday started overcast, with rain forecast for the afternoon. I took advantage of the lack of rain to clean off all our old bird feeders. Scraping with a twig and hosing them down was a good start. Scrubbing with a nylon pad finished the job; then up they went on the kitchen windows. Now I'll have to remember to fill them every morning.
In midafternoon we went over to Cambridge, picked up Anne, and all went over to the Cambridge Art Association. The opening reception for an exhibit of pairs, two related works per artist, was this afternoon. Charley has a pair of photos in it. He's been doing extreme close ups of people, mostly so close up, and printed so big, that it's hard to tell just what they are.
Another pair I liked was two sculpture self-portraits, one about life size in rust colored steel plates and one much larger than life in found objects: mustache and beard were push brooms, the middle of the face was open space and the sides were outlined in rope holding the mouth part up. Another pair was really four small (about 4 by 6 inch) black and white photographs, entitled “On and Off.” One photo showed an electric outlet with a cord plugged in, everything in crisp focus, with a beautiful range of tonality and a nice S curve to the cord. Another was completely white. A third showed the outlet and the cord unplugged. The fourth was completely black.
Monday the weather was gorgeous. After a late holiday morning we went out to Building 19, mostly because Arlene was looking for some pansies to put in the garden to overwinter. We did find a flowerpot of them on a rack outside the door. Inside I got three pairs of pants and a couple of books (The Last Best Thing and a book of essays by Rushdie). Then we found a table full of language tapes and went wild. At 99 cents each, I'll get my money's worth if I only learn how to say hello and thank you in Czech, Korean, Vietnamese, Finnish. The Russian tape might not have much I couldn't learn from my Mac language program, and the Yiddish one will probably mostly be good for listening practice.
From there we went to Sherborn, where Anne has been exercising horses. 
She was standing in front of the barn with a black horse named Madison whom she had just finished grooming. We looked around while Madison chomped on some grass. Since Anne has been talking a lot about riding, we were happy to see where the place is and what it looks like.
Heading out to Audubon's Broadmoor sanctuary, we passed Windy-Lo nursery. It's a big place with a huge selection of plants and attractive gardens of its own.We stopped and got some bulbs -- you have to plant a few more bulbs every fall, don't you?
It was getting late enough that we weren't sure we'd be able to walk all around Broadmoor, but we covered a lot of ground anyway. We went back on the boardwalk through the marsh, out to the old orchard area, and along the border trail. We got a reasonably good look at a Cooper's hawk and lots of chickadees and mallards. All in all, it was a good balance of shopping with real outdoors for the weekend.
 | ||||