October 12th, 2016 | Architecture and Design, Friends, General, Memory, Travel, United States, visual arts
There were dropped jaws and more polite phrasings like, “What has persuaded you to make this move?” when I told people that I was moving to Iowa, in 1985 for a job as curator of education at the Des Moines Art Center. “Big careers are made in smaller museums,” I often...
July 17th, 2016 | Cooking, Kitchen and Table, Genealogy, General, Memory
Dinner time in Cleveland Heights was always a well-orchestrated event. Ma had dinner well in process by the time Dad arrived. My sister and I set the table. After dinner, while my mother wrangled my brother into bath and bed, my father washed the dishes, which is to...
July 5th, 2016 | Friends, General, Politics, social media
It is July and Cleveland is battening down the hatches in anticipation of Tornado Trump. The Drumpf has been sitting pretty as “presumptive nominee” since early May and Ted Cruz’s disappearance after the Indiana primary. Hillary could not rest easy, as it were, until...
June 12th, 2016 | Europe, General, transportation, Travel
Was getting a bit worried we weren’t going to get out of Budport. No, not a bar for rowdy boys but Budapest Airport aka Liszt Ferenc Airport. We are charmed that the airport is named for one of Hungary’s creative greats. Sort of like Rome’s Fiumicino...
June 11th, 2016 | Europe, General, Travel
The evening on the Danube, buildings floodlit and bridges a-twinkle, was the cruise’s grand finale. As Captain Igor set a course downstream, the breeze, after an unseasonably hot day, lifted spirits as well as locks of hair damp with sweat. We passed Margaret’s...
June 9th, 2016 | Europe, Friends, General, Travel
As we approached Vienna, the sun shone steadily and the Danube momentarily reflected blue. We passed through another lock, dropping to match the water level to the east, watching as massive gates swung toward us, a vertical opening that widened and widened, a sort of...
June 8th, 2016 | Europe, General, Travel
They moved with power and precision underneath that great Baroque ceiling as riders sat in near perfect stillness. They ranged from the sooty gray to nearly pure white, manes sometimes braided up, fetlock-length tails blunt-cut at the bottom. Uniforms signaled...
June 6th, 2016 | Europe, General, Matters of the Spirit, the world and Mother Nature, Travel
I was alone in the church, and the two people I saw as a reached the summit had gone when I came out. A slight breeze tousled my hair away from perspiring neck, a mother’s caress; I was still slightly breathless after the climb. Birds sang and the sun shone on...
June 4th, 2016 | Europe, General, Travel
Under the metallic light in Regensburg on this March-like day in May, the Beautiful Blue Danube flows southeasterly with vigor. The water is definitely not blue; mostly it is greenish with brown reflections, and glints of pewter on the wavelets. Regensburg is crawling...
June 4th, 2016 | Europe, General, transportation, Travel, visual arts
We are cruisin’, really bookin’ down the Am Europakanal (aka the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal) toward Regensburg and our hook-up with the Danube. The water rippling by in he damp, gray chill is all I can hear–although a few kilometers back the birds were...
