Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my 69th birthday.  It's the beginning of the 70th year but I will not call my blog "Year70."  I am thinking about a new title for a new year.

I can look back over the last year as a gift, the "Gift of a 69th Year." I found plenty to do in my retirement.  I travelled alone to Brown County, Indiana and to New York City.  I helped our children and grandchildren in Princeton, New Jersey and Gladwyne, Pennsylvania at busy times in their lives, including two weeks welcoming little Alex Conway in January.  I was able to see dance recitals, baseball games,  a chorale concert and a baptism.  Jim and I had great adventures travelling to San Diego, Indian Shores, Florida, and Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi along the lower Mississippi River Road as well as beach weeks in South Haven and Holland, Michigan.

I sang, played the organ, learned about art, and read lots of books.  I blogged and will "publish" this blog on Blog2Print for my own memories. 

My health was good except for this latest bout of insomnia; Jim had several issues, but is doing better now.  We lost Jim's mother which is both a relief and a void in our lives.  I have no desire to live to a very old age if it means dementia.  Limitations are to be expected.  I don't spend much time thinking of the future but I do note the ages of those whose obituaries are published. 

Next year?.  I hope to keep travelling and visiting children and making music and reading and learning.  I am obligated to do one more year of being an art museum docent.  And then we'll just see what else might come along.  

I lit a candle at the Grotto this morning with prayers for my own mental health and strength and the ability to live with joy and to serve others.

A glass of Pennsylvania wine

How much do you want a glass of wine?  Well, it seems that we really did and the harder it was to come by, the more we wanted it.

We are on our way home from Gladwyne, Pennsylvania where we witnessed Alex's baptism.  That is what I should write about and not this.  We stopped in Donegal for the night at a Holiday Inn Express, a very familiar stop for us.  Sadly, our favorite bar, Main Event, has closed.  No more great burgers and glasses of wine filled to the top.  When I gasped at her pour at our first visit, the waitress said, "You're in the country now."

The innkeeper suggested a family restaurant but I asked for a suggestion where wine was served.  She said to try Out of the Fire Café.  Another traveler said that it was a bit pricey but great.  We were shown to a seat, and looked over the menu.  The waiter saw us turning it over, looking for a wine list, and told us it was a BYOB establishment.  We asked where we could get a bottle of wine and we thought he suggested a 7-11 down the road but warned us that most of the wines were sweet.  That was a puzzling remark.

Down the road we went, stopping where we saw a Beer Distributor sign-but it was beer only.  The proprietor left his TV watching to tell us that there was no 7-11 down the road but the road itself was called Pa711 and there was a wine place a bit farther on.  When we got there, it was closed, but the proprietor of the beer place next door to it offered to open it for us.  Yes, most of the local Pennsylvania wines were sweet but we found a bottle chilled that seemed suitable-for $16.99--at least  a few dollars more than we usually spend.

We purchased it and at that point decided we were not going back to the Café to pay over $30 for each dinner and a corking fee.  So, MacDonald's it was--great burgers and fries in our room with a very nice wine to enjoy as well. 

A Busman's Holiday

Louise Nevelson

My docent duties at the South Bend Museum of Art were cancelled so I was left with a morning open for adventure.  I decided to visit the Midwest Museum of Art in Elkhart, Indiana, a place that has been on my local "bucket list" for a while. 



Grant Wood

It was a pleasant 30 minute ride on mostly country roads to 429 North Main Street, a converted bank building in downtown Elkhart. I knew it was a pretty informal place when  the woman who greeted me couldn't seem to open the cash register so she told me to pay my $5 later.  I looked briefly at a Lincoln exhibit and then went on to the  galleries named for Richard and Jane Burns.

A work by Ed Paschke caught my eye because we have his strange portrait of a tattoed woman at the South Bend Museum of Art.  He is a Chicago artist--not surprising to find his work in Elkhart.  What was more surprising was to see works by Nevelson, Albers, Calder, Warhol, Rauschenberg,  Red Groom, Robert Indiana, Elaine De Kooning, and Grant Wood also hanging in the same galleries.. 


Ed Paschke

The docent who welcomed me asked if I had any questions.    When I mentioned how amazing it was to have these well known artists represented in their small museum, she said that she had scorned visiting the museum when she moved from NYC and said what will they have in the middle of those corn fields?  Pictures of corn growing? Now, she volunteers almost daily and her enthusiasm was obvious.

There is a large room upstairs with many lithographs of works by Norman Rockwell.  Some are the famous Saturday Evening Post covers but others were illustrations for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. 

Overbeck Pottery

 I was not as interested in them as I was in the next alcove which featured Overbeck Pottery, works done by three sisters in the early to mid 20th century in Cambridge City, Indiana.  There were six sisters in all, one who was the housekeeper, one who was the business manager, and one who was an early teacher of the others but died in 1911, the year the studio was founded.  Only one of the six married and had children who apparently still hold the secret to the glazes used.  I enjoyed their pottery and "grotesques" or little exaggerated figures, but also the idea of these  self-sufficient and creative women working in a small town in Indiana whose works won prizes and are displayed and valued in many places.

Anthony Droege

Later, Brian Byrn, the curator and as he said, the only curator, answered a question I had about white space in a painting.  He said it was intentional and probably was a magazine cover with space left for the title and contents just like the Norman Rockwell lithographs  He was eager to tell me about the Still Life exhibit--100 years of still lifes--both representative and abstract--that is just opening.  I was happy to see a Anthony Droege painting--again one of the artists at the SBMA. 

I browsed in the gift shop and decided to buy two tiny vases as a souvenir.  Byrn introduced me to the woman who wrapped my vases carefully.  Her name?  Jane Burns, the name on the gallery.  I was touched and said that while touring the museum, I was thinking about those who gave the money to buy this art and what a fine thing that was.  And here she was, wrapping my small purchase--and I could thank her personally.