Air travel is miserable — that goes without saying these days — and rarely is it more so than on a 9-hour flight to Venice. Even worse, making the trip on what appears to be an antique 767: table trays that are broken; seats that do not recline; and there are no USB ports — what is this, a Conestoga wagon even?
Yes, we’re off again, this time to Italy. “Where in Italy?,” you might ask if you’ve never met my lovely first wife [LFW], because the answer is invariably “All of it, Katie,” and we’re starting in Venice. [1]
We started packing yesterday. In what is now the Cutest Photograph on the Internet™, Cecil the Pest helped by packing his elephant:
He is An Goofball.
The flight was long, of course, but there were Alps:
Hartsfield-Atlanta may be efficient and huge, but does it have water taxis?
The ride into town, so to speak, was fun, zipping along in the boat, bouncing off waves and wakes. We arrived at the Grand Canal, and yes, it’s grand.
We are traveling with Gate 1, our first time with this group. (You may recall that last spring we did the Danube with Viking River Cruises.) We have been put up at the Hotel Bellini, on the Grand Canal.
We strolled along our street, had lunch at Trattoria Pedrocchi, and strolled around some more along the Grand Canal and some side streets. I was greeted warmly by a lovely long-hair black cat, who plopped for a belly scratch. I did not get a photo of him/her, but around the corner was this regal beast:
She deigned to sniff my hand.
We headed back to check into our rooms, whereupon we crashed until the official 6:00 meeting with Ignazio, our tour manager. A lovely dinner at the hotel restaurant, and one last passeggiata along the canal.
Tomorrow: Murano and its appalling glass, plus San Marco Square and Harry’s Bar maybe!
—————
[1] This is our standard warning that we have four almost fully functioning adults living our house, so to those among my readers who are compulsive burglars—as my LFW seems to think you are—you can give that idea right up as a bad deal all round.
Note: this is being written after our return. Somehow there’s not an hour available for blogging when one is enjoying NYC.
Sunday
I charted our course for the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, and the easiest course was to walk over to 6th Avenue and hop on — you guessed it — the F train and head south.
As we strolled past Times Square, there was a cathedral on the sidewalk, you guys!
This is the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, and it’s a perfectly cromulent Catholic church, except it’s Episcopalian. High Episcopalian. Like stratospheric Episcopalian: the church’s nickname is Smoky Mary’s because of the use of incense in services. Plus a confessional and chapels and iconography and it looks like a Catholic church.
We were greeted warmly by a lovely lady who was either Scot or Welsh — I really couldn’t tell — who encouraged us to keep touring even though a “read” service was about to start, and when we demurred, took us into the parish hall to show us a couple of historic photographs of the place.
It was the first cathedral to be built using skyscraper techniques, i.e., steel girder scaffolding, etc.
We thanked her profusely and moved on. When we got to 6th Ave, aka Avenue of the Americas, we were delighted to see a street fair. (I don’t know that traffic was delighted, but hey, the streets were open, just not this one avenue.)
We browsed a bit and decided to head on down to the Tenement Museum as planned, then stop and shop on our return.
We’d been to the Tenement Museum the last time we were in NYC, and we said then we would return. The museum has taken a tenement building built in 1863 and restored parts of each of the six floors to tell the story of an immigrant family who lived there at some point. Each floor is a separate guided tour, plus there’s a neighborhood tour. The focus of it all is immigration and the immigrant experience.
Last time we did the ground floor tour, a German lager saloon, with a middle-class German-American family. The Lower East Side in the 1860s was the third-largest German-speaking city in the world at the time, behind Berlin and Vienna. Because of that wave of immigrants, we drink cold lager beer, not lukewarm ale.
This visit, we did the fourth floor Irish family, the Moores, who moved there from the infamous Five Points area (Gangs of New York territory) and found themselves the only English-speakers in the building. Although the privies in the back courtyard were connected to the sewer system, the building did not have running water or gas lighting in 1869. Bridget had to walk down the stairs to fill her bucket with water multiple times a day; we were handed a bucket with gravel in it to demonstrate the weight she would have had to deal with along with her baby and maybe a toddler or two.
The Moores only lived there for a year before moving closer to the old St. Patrick’s, a more Irish-Catholic neighborhood. We were shown the virulent anti-Irish sentiment of the time — they were vicious savages, not really human. Every image showed them as ape-like, primitive. Here’s a cartoon by Thomas Nast, published in Harper’s after an incident at the 1867 St. Patrick’s Day Parade:
Rum. Blood. Brutal attack. Irish riot.
You’d never know that there were only a total of 7-10 people involved in the actual incident.
So: immigrants from an alien (read: “Roman Catholic”) culture are depicted as violent, subhuman criminals. Thank goodness we don’t do that any more oh wait
Back to the street fair, where we both found things to intrigue us enough to purchase them. I did not buy another singing bowl, however.
Heading back across Times Square, the heat was oppressive, and suddenly the place looked a lot like New York:
We lunched at Sardi’s — yes, Sardi’s — and it was amazingly civilized. Quiet, calm, the waiter practically whispered. We ate with Mike Funt’s buddy Dick van Dyke:
I texted him the photo and he asked if that were Trump next to Dick, but it’s Michael York thank god.
Our matinee was The Band’s Visit, this year’s Tony Award winner for Best Musical. What a gorgeous show — low-key, sweet, heartfelt, human. I have a low tolerance for Bway pizazz, and this show was blessedly free of all of that. There was only one “big” number, and it flowed naturally out of a sweet love ballad from a lonely boy. Suddenly all the characters we’d met during the course of events were there, and we had a gorgeous choral swell… and that was it. No sequins, no glitz, no big orchestral crashing about, just the Alexandria Policeman’s Ceremonial Orchestra and the very human voices.
I highly recommend this show. It’s based on the movie of the same name, and the plot is deceptively simple: an Egyptian police band has been invited to Israel to play for the opening of a new Arab cultural center in Petah Tikvah, but due to the bus ticket agent’s Hebrew accent and the band member’s Egyptian accent, they are given tickets to Bet Hatikva — a nowhere place in the Negev Desert. The local cafe owner Dina takes pity on them and lets them stay with her and her brothers overnight. The next twelve hours or so we learn about each of their lives, and spoiler alert! they’re all human beings.
It’s just a lovely little show. See it.
Quick dinner at the Glass House Tavern before heading over to New World Stages for our final show. We really bonded with our bartender, Valerie, and the young man whose name we never learned. This is called foreshadowing.
Our last show was Puffs, or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic. It was a treat. In it, if you can imagine, three kids at the Magic School meet their first year and go on to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune caused by one of their classmates and his fight against the dark overlord. We are treated to every detail, every character, every nuance of the Harry Potter books and films from the viewpoint of the hapless Puffs. It’s adorable.
The parody is terrific, the young actors are skilled and hysterical, and the ending is sadder than you might think. Think of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead… at Hogwarts, only with quick changes, and you get the idea.
Finally it was time to head back to Glass House Tavern for a final nightcap and a dessert. We chatted more with our handsome young bartender about his hopes and dreams — having grown up in Manhattan, he wants to finish school somewhere else. When it was time to wrap it all up, I decided we should give our Metro cards to our bartenders. They were seven-day passes and were good for unlimited trips until Wednesday.
That’s when I found out that my back pocket was empty.
My wallet and my Waste Book were not where they were supposed to be, and there were two possibilities. 1.) They had slipped out at Puffs. (The Waste Book had slipped out at Travesties.) 2.) I had been pickpocketed.
We headed back to New World Stages. It was about 10:30, and of course the place was dark. “Let’s go around and pound on all the doors,” said my Lovely First Wife, but I pooh-poohed the notion. This was Sunday night; Broadway is dark on Monday. Everyone would have headed home to begin their days off.
We went back to the room, where I called my credit card people and suspended my cards. The next morning, we noticed a message. It was the theatre; they had my things, and we could pick them up at the stage door until 11:30. The night before. Ugh. I hate it when she’s right. But she was right.
Thank goodness I use my passport to get through airport security, or I would still be in Manhattan. On the plus side, I would have retrieved my wallet and Waste Book at this point. I’ve emailed the theatre asking them to use the cash in the wallet to overnight everything back to me and to keep the rest as a donation, but I haven’t heard from them yet. I’ll keep you posted.
Monday
We flew home and arrived safe and sound, albeit without a driver’s license or credit cards. The end.
Note: this is being written after our return. Somehow there’s not an hour available for blogging when one is enjoying NYC.
One last adventure from Friday night: we were returning from Symphonie Fantastique and, as is my practice whenever I’m in the Village at night, I could not locate the nearest subway stop. So we did what we always do, and that is head east until we hit Broadway. This time, we were on Houston St, and I know that’s a stop on multiple lines, so off we went. (In double-checking the map, it seems there was a station just north of HERE, the performance venue, which would have led straight to the hotel. Oops.) We eventually found the Houston/LaFayette station and down we went.
The plan was that we hop on any “orange” train that came through (i.e., B, D, F, or M), hop off at 34th/Herald Sq (three stops), transfer to an N, R, or W train, get off at 49th, and we were home.
What some of us heard was “get on a B or D train,” so when an F train pulled in, I hopped on and turned to see the rest of the party looking idly about her as the train doors closed.
As we pulled out, I looked a the couple sitting there and said, “Well, 40 years was a good run, I guess.” We laughed all the way to 23rd, which was their stop.
My phone had like 3% battery, so I used that to text the LFW that I would wait for her at Herald Square. I also took a photo and got off an Instagram/Facebook post so everyone could share in the adventure. Responses were hilarious.
I didn’t have long to wait until a D train pulled in — without anyone I knew on it. Ah, I thought, now she thinks only an F train will do, so I settled in for the wait.
Fortunately, the next train was an F, and there was my beloved Lovely First Wife. The rest of the train ride was uneventful.
Saturday
Our first stop was the Museum of Modern Art, aka MOMA. We saw two exhibits there. The first was Bodys Isek Kingelez: City Dreams. Kingelez worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then-Zaire), making what he called “extreme maquettes” of fabulous/fantasy buildings, images of hopes he had for his burgeoning country’s future. Gaudy and impractical, they provoke in an American viewer sensations of Vegas and Miami and Coney Island.
Everything is brightly colored. Everything is clean. Everything is exuberant.
I posted this city to the Alchemy Facebook group with the caption that this was my new plan for the burn; the hippies needed to step up their game.
The other exhibit that we saw was Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, 1965–2016. This one was odd. At first fascinating, it soon became just weird and impenetrable: her obsession with numbers and ratios and patterns and scientific randomization was just opaque. You looked at all the handwritten notebooks — pages and pages and pages of “data” — and you might as well have been looking at the Koran. Her work really gave off a “somewhere on the spectrum” vibe, but that of course is my personal response.
The actual pieces were nice, though:
No we didn’t stroll the rest of the museum: we’ve been before and had a show to catch. Plus, gift shop/bookstore time!
Look at this:
Penny shown for scale
A little leather case, and inside:
Four little stainless steel shot glasses! For $10, it’s a worthy addition to one’s burn equipment, I thought.
And then the notebooks, ohhh, the notebooks:
The white one with red squares — every page is like that. I have a challenge for myself on that one. The two in the rear are the smoothest paper I’ve ever felt; the sets in the front are lined journals. These last ones are Japanese, of course.
Normally I resist adding new Waste Books — I definitely do not need them — but these were beautiful and affordable: I think I spent $15 on the Japanese all told, and for my personal challenge, $8 was not too much for the grid journal.
Lunch, and then…
Travesties, by Tom Stoppard, is not an easy play. If I were asked to select a play from Stoppard’s oeuvre to direct for Broadway in this day and age, I think I would have gone with Jumpers, given its themes of shifting morality and brutal utilitarianism. But for some reason Roundabout chose Travesties and snagged Tom Hollander to play Carr, the central character and completely unreliable narrator of his memories of Switzerland during WWI.
As I said, Travesties is not an easy play. The language is thick, the ideas are thicker. Time shifts, time repeats, time resets. Stoppard flings limericks, Oscar Wilde, Karl Marx, Dada, music hall and more at us, fast and furious. This might explain the directorial decision to have the cast machine-gun their lines rather than take their time to make them accessible and — I don’t know — funny. Plus, it was so cold in the theatre that I was forced during intermission to go next door and by a Brooklyn hoodie. So that happened.
A short break, with dinner, and I don’t even remember where.
The evening show was Once on This Island, by Flaherty & Ahrens (Ragtime, Lucky Stiff, et al.) and it was magnificent. Circle in the Square’s stage has been transformed into a post-hurricane disaster area: sand, water, rain, wind, a downed telephone pole. The cast begins by picking up all the trash that’s been blown onto the beach; their pre-show cellphone speech was epic. The producers felt, quite rightly, that after the recent devastation in the Caribbean it would be tasteless to stage the show as prettily as the original production, and so the villagers are dressed in ragged, mismatched shorts and shirts — you know, like poor people; there’s a nurse (Lea Salonga) and a doctor from Doctors Without Borders. It leads directly into the islanders’ relationship with their voudou gods, which becomes much more of a thing in this production.
The plot is essentially Little Mermaid — the original, not the happy ending Disney version — and the beautiful cast delivered a powerful gut-punch of a show. As the islanders begin to tell the story of Ti Moune, four of them transform into the four gods of love, earth, water, and death who hover over the story like Homeric deities, only with a lot less spite. At first donning whatever is to hand to effect the transformation — a tablecloth, mosquito netting, boat paint — they return to the stage in full regalia and move the story along. There is some powerful powerful stuff going on in this production.
This show is a must see. Try to get seats in the far end of row D.
Cocktails somewhere, and then to bed. No subways involved.
This morning we headed down to Coney Island. I’ll explain why in a minute.
The train went out over the East River and slowed to a crawl, so I was able to get a shot of the Brooklyn Bridge, and if you look very closely you can see the Statue of Liberty in the far distance.
So why Coney Island? Forty years ago, I wed my Lovely First Wife in Roanoke, VA. When she and her hellion brothers were children, there was an amusement park called Lakeside, and you may well imagine that taking those four children to an amusement park was a trial and a tribulation, so it didn’t happen often. Naturally, if one of the siblings went to spend the night with a friend or something, the others would taunt him on his return by telling him that they had gone to Lakeside in his absence.
It was decided that it would be great fun to do that, then. After the reception, we headed back to the family home where we hooked up with the wedding party and relatives, and many of us headed to Lakeside, where we proceeded to ride all the rides. The roller coaster was particularly memorable, since the operator tumbled to the fact that we were a wedding party and let us zoom on through three complete cycles.
Thereafter, we celebrated major anniversaries by hitting an amusement park with as many as would join us: Six Flags, Disney World, Wild Adventures. When I planned this trip, the LFW suggested we go ride the Cyclone for our anniversary.
Coney Island:
It’s pretty fabulous. The weather was gorgeous, and it was not crowded at all. We noticed that the Muslim families were dressed to the nines — mothers in beautifully embellished hijabs, the little girls in sparkly ballerina dresses, men in exquisite suits. It was puzzling until I remembered that it was Eid-al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan.
I will pause to say that every time we’re in New York that the astonishing diversity is inspiring. You constantly hear other languages, see other cultures; at the Coney Island subway station, notices of schedule changes were posted in English and Russian. It’s fun and affirming that our country is, indeed, a nation of immigrants.
Our goal: the Cyclone.
— click to embiggen —
Another view:
It opened on our Eldest Son’s birthday, 90+ years ago.
There was literally no line. I had had some concerns that a wooden roller coaster was going to be a little rough on the old spine/sciatic nerve, but lo! they have super-padded the cars, so much so that we felt stuffed in. But it worked — the ride was thrilling without being painful. Happy 40th, honey!
Off to the Boardwalk:
The view from the pier:
We had a hot dog at the Original Nathan’s — so there’s someone’s bucket list checked off — and then headed back into the city to go to the Met Breuer, in the former Whitney on Madison Ave.
There we saw the exhibit Life Like: Sculpture, Color, and the Body.
A very challenging show: a constant dialectic between the classical ideal of beauty (perfection/white) and… whatever the artist/culture did in opposition.
But first, Jeremy Bentham. (Go look him up.)
For me, the exhibit resonated in many ways. For example:
First, the Praxiteles — the ultimate in physical male beauty. Young, fit, perfectly proportioned. What’s not to like?
Those who have been reading this blog for a while will know that I founded my burn theme camp, 3 Old Men, as a response to this image of ideal beauty, and here’s why:
forgot to write down the artist; Met doesn’t list the item online
We as a society are taught to avert our eyes from bodies that are not perfect: young, fit, ideally proportioned. But that’s where we end up, all of us. 3 Old Men rejects that impulse. We reclaim the image of the aging male body as one of authority and power. We got to where we are through trial and struggle, and we have things to teach and to offer.
So yeah, this exhibit had a lot to say to me. (And I to it, truthfully.)
Our show for the evening was Symphonie Fantastique, a Basil Twist performance, more about which in a moment. The point is that the venue, HERE, is in the Village, which means… BARS!
We went to Amor y Amargo. Oh my. It’s a tiny little place; twenty people would be a crowd. The owner, Sother Teague, is an amiable hobbit-like man, greeting everyone as they enter, bringing them menus, mixing the drinks. Everyone there hung on every word he said; one of the groups were clearly bartenders themselves, there to learn.
And the cocktails… What can I say? Perfection. I had a Sharpie Mustache, served in a little bottle with a mustache on it. It was brilliant, and I don’t remember what was in it.
I was bold enough to ask him if he could make a Smoky Topaz and advise me on it, but alas, he had no barrel-aged gin. So I made bold again and said that in Prague the same thing had happened and the bartender there had invented a drink that would please me in the same way — could he perhaps do the same? This was early, only just 6:00, so he did have the time.
I’ll have to be bold again and contact him for the recipe — he used genever, rye, both chartreuses, and it was glorious. I went back to the bar and showed him the recipe for the Smoky Quartz, the results in Prague, which also used genever as a base. That was cool, I thought.
I bought three bottles of bitters — ALL THE BITTERS, YOU GUYS — lavender, hopped grapefruit, and one called Saturnalia. I just liked the sound of that.
Our plan to was to head to Death & Co. a couple of doors down, but it was already backed up. We put our name on the list and then started walking over to Eldridge St to a new place that Sother Teague had highly recommended, the Bar Goto. He said that if he had only one night in town, that’s where he’d go. The owner is a former bartender at The Pegu Club, another on my list, so off we went. Of course, after a fifteen minute walk, as soon as we were seated, I was messaged that we were up at Death & Co. — I messaged our regrets. Next time.
Bar Goto was phenomenal, both cocktails and food. Highly recommended.
Then a cab over to HERE. Basil Twist is a puppeteer of renown, and his Symphonie Fantastique was a huge hit twenty years ago. This is a revival and has been reviewed very positively. Essentially, Christopher O’Riley, the host of NPR’s From the Top, comes out and plays the Berlioz symphony on the piano while behind him in a giant aquarium pieces of fabric and tinsel swim and swoop in striking lighting. This was our avant garde piece for the trip, for sure.
The first and last movements were the best. The slow movement is my least favorite slow movement ever, and the visualization did nothing to change my mind. The fourth movement, March to the Scaffold, was actually disappointing. There were some gorgeous moments, and overall it was worth the adventure.
So I left my card with a note to check out William Blake’s Inn. You never know when Basil Twist needs new inspiration.
We’re at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, waiting to board our flight to LaGuardia, a/k/a the Trash Heap, for a very long weekend in New York City. I have begun my preparations: allergy meds, Afrin, special air pressure earplugs. I hate flying. Its cramped and my ears hurt and I can’t hear for 24 hours after landing.
But off we go.
This is in celebration of 40 years of marriage to my Lovely First Wife, and so I’ve jampacked our schedule because that’s the way she likes to travel. Six shows, the Met Museum, MOMA, a trip to Coney Island. Probably a visit to the Tenement Museum.
I had researched the top craft cocktail places, leaving a tab open in the browser for weeks. Yesterday I decided it was time to make some choices — the list had 50 bars — so I scrolled down and copied names, addresses, and hours of operation for my top five or six.
Then I had the scathingly brilliant idea of mapping this in Google. Hey, I’m Benevolent Placement Overlord™ for the Georgia burns; I can do maps. I put our hotel on it. I did a layer and put all the theatres in it. I did a layer and put all my bars on it.
As I said on Facebook, does anyone else see the problem here?
::sigh::
After all these years of traveling, I have learned a new thing: wherever you think you’re going to end up at the end of the day, that’s where you want your bed to be. As it is, it’s a 20–30 minute subway ride from our hotel to any of the bars. Why are they all in the Village? Why are none of them in the Theatre District??
And I learned this shortly after the 3:00 pm deadline for canceling the hotel reservation.
So this is not going to be my Manhattan bar trip. Alas.
— — —
We arrived at LaGuardia around lunch, caught a cab into town (LGA is in Queens), and headed to our hotel, the Paramount on 46th/8th.[1]
Our room was ready, so we dumped our stuff and caught a cab to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
We had a street vendor hot dog for lunch, then headed inside. Our main goal was to see the Heavenly Bodies exhibit.
It’s staged in the Medieval Art gallery, so first we got to see some cool objects.
This is a Celtic brooch. So is this:
The shape and decoration of these items fascinated me because of their surrealist form; they look as if the metalworker just squirted out a form. I’d love to know more about the style.
Heavenly Bodies is a quirky exhibit, the best part of which is the runway of designer gowns/coats/cassocks based on the habiliments of the Church.
My favorite:
No, don’t ask me who did this. I wasn’t taking notes.
There are actually three parts of the exhibit. The second is in the downstairs Costume Institute, and there we found a opulent display of actual papal garments. (The third part is up at the Cloisters; we won’t be making the trip.)
Here’s part of a cape:
This is from a garment from an early 19th-c. pope. Look more closely:
That’s embroidery, not paint. At this point, we were a little repelled by the intricacy and enormous amount of work that went into these items, doubtlessly made in workshops by very poor people who were paid very nearly nothing to create these things. By the time we got to the papal tiaras, we called it quits and headed up to Modern/Contemporary Art.
There was a William Wegman exhibit with a charming video of him trying to get his Weimaraner Man Ray to catch a golf ball in his mouth and then drop it into a coffee can. It was hilarious but we decided to move on before the poor dog succeeded. We immediately heard the *clunk* of success behind us. Life.
I rather liked this:
by Bruce Nauman
There was an exhibit called History Refused to Die: Highlights from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Gift. It consisted of work by self-taught African-American artists from Alabama. So much to like:
“400 Years of Free Labor,” by Joe Minter.
Then there were the Gee’s Bend quilts:
There was so much more truth in these shabby, pieced-together masterpieces than the copes and albs and surplices and capes downstairs that it hurt.
Then it was back to the theatre district to meet up with my nephew Matthew, who works at Simon & Schuster converting print books to e-books. He had had a late lunch, and we had an early show, so we just had drinks and appetizers at some forgettable little place down there.
And then we had The Play That Goes Wrong. I booked it expecting a pleasantly silly evening a la the Farndale Avenue plays, but holy crap — this show is a force of nature. From the preshow antics (pro tip: don’t sit on the aisle in the first few rows if you are an able-bodied male) to the cataclysmic finale: every moment, every line goes horribly, horribly wrong. You think Noises Off was a shambles? Multiply that by 100 and you have some idea of what PTGW is like.
The cast is astounding, portraying members of a college theatre troupe who have somehow landed a berth on Broadway. “For those of you who were involved in the box office mix-up, we’re sure that you will enjoy Murder at Haversham Manor just as much as you would have Hamilton.”
The script is goofy as hell, with Murder being a lame send-up of Agatha Christie that we barely get a chance to follow as wall sconces refuse to stay on the wall, doors refuse to close (or open), props are misplaced, lines are muffed, and actors disabled. Some critics complained that it was all a bit heavy-handed, to which I say pttttfffft. Yes, some of the bits were a bit long, but the thing is as fiendishly constructed as anything Christie ever wrote. An actor running into a post holding up a bare-bones platform (“the study”) is funny; doing is a second time is funny; just avoiding it a third time is great — and then in Act 2, running into it and knocking it down, sending the platform (and the actors and rolling furniture on it) plunging — that’s comedy gold.
Anyway, have a couple of drinks and see it.
— — — — —
[1] For those who are not familiar with the layout of NYC, streets go across and avenues go up and down. Streets are East or West, divided by 5th Ave. You say the street first, then the avenue. Of course, New York messes with you by naming some of the avenues like Park and Avenue of the Americas, but they’re really just 4th and 6th. (Madison Ave is an outlier, having been carved out between 4th and 5th a long time ago for property development purposes.)
Carlsbad is three hours away from El Paso, but that is the closest airport you’re likely to find. To save money we took a flight with stops, and we probably will never do that again. The drive from El Paso up to Carlsbad is OK; I would probably make time to stop at Guadalupe Mountains National Park if we were to do it again.
The Caverns are magnificent, but again, if the elevator is out, consider your ability to hike up a mountain the size of the Empire State Building. (The park’s website will let you know if the elevator is not working before you go.) Take the King’s Palace tour — those rooms are not open to the general public. We didn’t see the Big Room because we were running so late. Time is not your friend on trips like these.
White Sands
Worth the trip and worth doing. I probably would book a hotel room in Alamogordo instead of driving on to Albuquerque as we did; I would have liked to go on the sunset walk on the dunes. Again, everywhere is farther than you think, and there is no civilization between here and there. If you set out for Albuquerque, there will not be a gas station or restaurants until you get there.
Albuquerque
Albuquerque is quite nice, with good restaurants and a charming Old Town. Prices on art and souvenirs are lower here than in Santa Fe. We highly recommend the Casas de Sueños as a B&B.
The Turquoise Trail
Yes, go up Hwy 14 and stop in Madrid. Plan to stay longer than we did. Lots of good hippie vibes there.
Santa Fe
Still one of our favorite places, despite the inevitable altitude sickness. The Plaza is fine, but if your time is limited then go to the Canyon Road galleries instead. Do not miss the Museum of International Folk Art. SITE Museum is cool. We did not get to Meow Wolf (a trippy installation experience) nor any of the pueblos — next time. Many good restaurants, but avoid Santacafé.
If you’re into woo at all, do not miss Temples of the Cosmos. Reservations are required. Plan ahead, and plan to spend 3–4 hours there.
— — — — —
We did rather more driving than I like on this trip, but FOMO and my LFW being what they are, it was inevitable. My preference and advice is to cut back on All The Things and stay in one place more so that you can take your time and see Moar Things there. Also, altitude sickness being a real thing, it’s better if you don’t exhaust yourself running from here to there. We all had prescriptions for Diamox, but by the end of the trip we had all abandoned it since the side effects were more or less identical to altitude sickness itself. Your mileage may vary, but my advice is to take it slow, drink water, and take naps.
We spent our last day mostly driving, up to Taos and back down.
The scenery was stunning, as usual:
Our goal was not Taos itself; we didn’t even stop in the little town. Our real goal was the Taos Pueblo. You may imagine our surprise when the road to the Pueblo was blocked because the Pueblo was closed for ritual purposes, just as our guidebook had assured us it would be. We paused for lunch and then drove on to the Rio Grande Gorge.
Oh my.
A geologic rift gave the river the chance to gouge its own gorge, and it has done so with gusto. According to a visitors center back on the highway to Taos, if the gorge were not self-filling with erosion it would be three miles deep at this point.
Yes, you can walk across the bridge. There are little balconies halfway across on which you can stand and take photographs. I made it out halfway to the halfway point, then retreated. Heights are not my thing.
And these were heights:
You could hike along the gorge, which we did for a while. Those whose sense of geological stability are different than mine kept walking up to the edge and looking over. I on the other hand explored a different kind of geological stability, on the other side of the trail:
We were on a schedule of sorts, so I kept an eye on the time and distance to our next stop, the Ojo Caliente hot spring spa. My phone had said it was only 30 minutes away, so imagine my astonishment when the car announced it would take 50 minutes. I pulled over and double-checked with the phone.
The phone said, “Turn left right here at this tiny road where you’ve stopped.” The car said, and I quote, “You are entering an area without navigation information. Please obey all traffic laws.” I turned left and we headed across country; the phone simply cut off the giant loop of the highway.
The hot springs spa is a nice little place. After I win the lottery and am flying to Santa Fe on a regular basis, we will often book a night or two up there: hot springs, massages, quality restaurant. What’s not to like?
We had 50 minutes reserved in a private pool, and it was glorious. The water was in fact hot, and the afternoon breezes were chill, and for the first time in a while I had no tension anywhere in my body.
Finally we had to get dressed and head back to Santa Fe.
Sidebar: a couple of years ago I got an email from this guy, a writer in Brooklyn, claiming that he was researching a book on procrastination and could he interview me about the Lichtenbergian Society? Sure, I said, and he called, and he was cool so I invited him to stop by the labyrinth if he were ever in the Atlanta area and meet some of the Lichtenbergians. He booked a flight, and so Andrew Santella came to Newnan, GA, to talk to a bunch of men about how procrastination is key to creativity.
Last month, Andrew’s SOON was published. Yes, we all know that Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy was published first (last October), but Andrew is a real writer and has like an agent and a publisher and has been on NPR and done book tours, so I think we can give him the win on this one. Plus, his book is a smartly written exploration of procrastination itself; mine is a guide to citizen artists on how to become more productively creative through structured procrastination. His is a very good book.
Anyway, when he found out we were headed to Santa Fe, he told me that his in-laws live there and if we had the time, to look them up. We did so, and our last event on our trip was meeting John and Gail for drinks at the Agoyo Lounge. They are totally delightful and we had a great time. Alas, none of us thought to take a picture documenting the event.
John and Gail left, and we decided just to order something to eat there. We were not disappointed: the food was very good there, much better than at Santacafé the night before, and we asked the server if the chef would come out so we could tell him so. He did, and he was pleased and bashful and just adorable. I also advised him to order rye for the bar so his bartender could make a proper Manhattan.
As a sidenote, it was flabbergasting that in every bar we went into, they were out of something. I can see how you might be out of your special infused bourbon — but why? — but how the heck can you be out of mezcal, or port, or draft beer? It was a mystery only partly explained by Santa Fe’s remoteness. I mean, the crab is flown in fresh every day — surely Galveston could slip a bottle of port or two in there as well?
Be that as it may, we went back to the condo, packed, slept, got up at 5:00 am, drove back down to Albuquerque, and flew home. Did you know that if you are a TSA PreCheck person you are not guaranteed PreCheck? That apparently it’s, in the words of the TSA agent I had to encounter, “random” as to whether it appears on your boarding pass? I’m pretty sure someone made a mistake here, and it’s not going to be me.
Later this week, after all my shipments come in, I’ll do the swag post. Tomorrow, maybe, the pro-tips post.
You thought there were a lot of photos yesterday? Today we went to the Museum of International Folk Art.
We’ve been there before, on our Cross Country Caper back in 2013, and I’ll be repeating some of my observations from then. That first time, I was unaware that they encourage you to take photographs until we were leaving, so there were only a few in that post. This time, it’s serious.
And we’re off. The bulk of the museum is the Girard Wing, the collection donated by Alexander and Susan Girard. As you enter that wing, there’s a wall of amulets.
I mean, a wall of amulets:
And then there are toy theatres:
A wall of toy theatres:
There are a couple of pieces, kind of lagniappes before you enter the exhibit itself…
Remember, all of this stuff is hand-made by hand.
These stray pieces are protective, guardians of the entrance.
And then you enter the exhibit:
Have a bigger look:
It’s the size of a Wal-Mart. And this, my friends, is one-tenth of the actual Girard collection.
So let’s start. I thought about doing the slide show thing, but I have literally over 100 photos and I don’t want you to miss anything, so start scrolling.
Kitty? Doggy? Adorable.
A whole cabinet of embroidered breastplates commemorating Latin American revolution
Hundreds, thousands of figurines in this room, all hand crafted.
Oh my gosh, I just noticed the little monkey with the guitar!
In making notes for my book — yes, there’s going to be a book — I draw your attention to the lack of “perfection,” i.e., academic notions of idealized form. None of these figures have any kind of verisimilitude; that’s not what a guitar player looks like in real life, and that’s certainly not what a guitar-playing rat looks like.
You know, just your average foil-covered nativity scene.
NOTE #2: Do you have notions of symmetry? Or do you, when you run out of one color of thread, just switch to another color and keep going?
I wish I knew more about this figure, but isn’t he great? Multiple heads and hands, and the hands are all holding… spoons. That other hand is either a hoof or wearing an oven mitt.
Dorp.
Almost all of the scenes in the exhibit are assembled from disparate sources. There’s only one of these detail-crammed pieces that’s done by a single artist:
Tee-hee.
Look at this one closely. What the curators have done is assemble three groups of figurines and grouped them in a forced perspective setting. The foreground is a baptism, and the joyful crowds outside stretch all the way across the plaza to the other church.
Yep, those are beads. Tiny, tiny, little beads.
Once again, a reminder that all these things are hand-made.
Unbelievably tiny things. You can see how — not even a quarter of the way through the room — your mind begins to boggle. ALL THESE THINGS, KENNETH, WHERE DID THEY COME FROM?
Again with the forced perspective, with larger figurines diminishing in size as we climb the mountain…
…to worship the baby Jesus.
NOTE #3: Use your traditions.
NOTE #4: Use the materials at hand.
Feed the giant polka-dotted chicken. NOTE #5: Why the heck not?
NOTE #6: Make a doll.
And there we are.
NOTE # 6: It doesn’t have to be complicated.
We actually own a rodent cousin of this feline — an old-school Oaxacan carving using dyes instead of paint.
Speaking of rodents:
Okay, this gets interesting.
This is a “yarn painting.” Shades of day camp!
Kitties!
NOTE #7: Doodle. Repeat.
NOTE #8: Eschew precision.
“How YOU doin’?”
“So I sez to him, I sez, listen, bub…”
If Maurice Sendak were Hopi…
NOTE #9: Decorate it.
Let us not ignore the fact that many of these artisans are quite skilled. “Folk” does not imply “primitive.”
Okay, let’s recognize the skill of the artists who assembled this gigantic exhibit. Remember, this Wal-Mart full of stuff is only one-tenth of the entire Girard collection. Someone had to pick through the gazillion pieces, choose the ones to include, and then decide how to display them. This case, for example, gives us heaven and hell. Behold:
See?
The whole room is screaming at you, “WHY THE HELL ARE YOU NOT MAKING ART??”
“Welcome! Sheep to my left, goats to my right. Just separate rooms, darlings.”
Okay, this one’s a little creepy.
A slightly less creepy version. I think what happened with the first one is that the artist got into a zone and put that third eye in there without thinking.
NOTE #10: Make it for children to play with.
One of my favorites from our first visit.
To be honest, this is where I started tripping. Which is appropriate, since this hand-painted fabric is from a culture that uses ayahuasca ritually, and these patterns are inspired by that.
When visiting the Girard Wing of the Museum of International Folk Art, always remember to look up. It won’t help with the tripping, but look up.
These guys.
This broad. (Mike Funt, I think Miss Ella needs to steal this look.)
Now *this* is a mermaid.
NOTE #11: When in doubt, make a cat.
Each of these is about as big as your thumb.
Let’s pause here to make a major point. You’ve been objecting in your head that all of this is fine and good but you yourself have no artistic talent, and this little carving would like to poke a jolly little finger in your eye and tell you to get over that. Look how clumsily this is made! But would you not be ecstatic if you had made something this joyful? (The answer is yes, yes you would.)
Ah, the masks!
Look at these:
Some are more “polished” than others, but all of them are true.
NOTE #12: Give it a face.
In case you forgot that Pinocchio is actually really creepy.
Exhausted yet? That’s just the Girard Wing. There are several other galleries, none of which are as huge as the Girard, thank goodness.
The basement area has a very nice exhibit on what constitutes folk art, with several objects set up with yes/no/maybe comments by museum staff members. And before you start objecting that you are an urban sophisticate and don’t really have a “folk” in you:
Coyote and Rabbit are not uninformed by modern cartooning.
In one of the upstairs galleries, there was an exhibit on Peruvian culture.
This painting is from an ayahuasca curandero. It is based on the visions that come to him while under the influence of the psychotropic drink.
Everything is alive.
We’ve seen this before, right?
A modern Peruvian artist riffing off of traditional patterns. (Yes, that’s a completely flat weaving.)
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that about half the Peruvian exhibit deals with social protest. I didn’t take any photos of the clothing worn by the youth resistance, but I will note that the knitted ski masks they wear feature the Anonymous mustache. Culture is permeable.
There was an exhibit of modern artists working from the folk tradition.
And then there was the exhibit of Tramp Art. I was unaware of the term, but it’s carving done by workers in the 19th–20th centuries in their spare time. Idle hands, and all that. It has nothing to do with hobos. Mostly it’s notch carving, and personally I find it very disturbing.
I like the embroidery here.
See those little things?
They are carved and bejeweled peach pits, all done by one man, mostly religious in nature.
You might say this is exuberant. I say it’s weirding me out.
A point I made in my blog post from five years ago is that given the opportunity, humans prefer and will create the most ornate thing they can.
That was our morning. We lunched at the Museum Mile Cafe — yes, there are three other museums on that hill — and I liked the drum they had out front.
After lunch, we headed to Canyon Road, which is lined with galleries. In strolling the Plaza the day before, I was struck at the awfulness of the art in the galleries there. Completely lackluster and insipid — not anything with the energy of the least item in the Museum of International Folk Art — and I feared we were going to find the same kind of pallid imitation of art on Canyon Road.
But fortunately, the good far outweighed the bad, and if I had won the lottery I would have spent a great deal of money. I don’t have any photos because mostly they discourage that kind of thing.
True confession: I came to Santa Fe determined to purchase art. I was very very attracted to several pieces and had to talk myself out of buying one of these bells (the shipping would probably cost as much as the art), but I finally found a piece that I loved and was within my self-imposed budget:
Let me explain. This is “Peace by Peace” by Kevin Box, and it is from the Selby-Fleetwood Gallery. Box does these lovely origami sculptures made of painted aluminum, and this small wall piece struck me and wouldn’t let me go. Do not be deceived: the white is aluminum, the black is bronze. The thing weighs a ton, and naturally I had it shipped. Do I know where it’s going to go in the house? No clue. I don’t care. It’s a beautiful piece; I accomplished my goal.
We headed back to the condo to rest a bit and then head to dinner at Santacafé, the “best restaurant in Santa Fe” as it proclaims in all its marketing. Alas, dear reader, it is not. In fact, it was the worst meal I have had at any restaurant with any pretensions to cuisine. What should have been an interesting tarragon pasta with shrimp in red sauce was astoundingly flavorless. As in, it literally had no taste that I could detect. Most unfortunate. (My fellow travelers had similar experiences with their entrees.) The desserts, on the other hand, were out of this world.
Here’s an interesting coincidence: the table had crayons, and having spent the day mulling over a new book exhorting you to do art because you can, I began to doodle. First I drew a labyrinth, then drew the Temple of the Rainbow Serpent to show my companions how the enlarged center spaces made the walk a completely different experience than the usual 7-circuit pattern. Our waiter, a bejewelled and pierced person, as he was bringing the checks, asked, if he might, what my connection to these patterns was. I explained that I had one in my back yard and had visited Temples of the Cosmos.
He proceeded to tell me of the labyrinths he had helped construct and maintained, and then mentioned a friend of his that he worked with, who now lives in England, who had done a lot of work with labyrinths: Sig Lonegren. Not sure I was hearing him right, I asked him to write down the name:
As he was walking away, it hit me. “Sig Lonegren!” I shouted after him — “He wrote the book!” He looked back, surprised and pleased. “Yes, he did,” he replied.
I wish I had remembered that it was from this book that I stole the theme for Prelude (no fugue) No. 6. (Lonegren numbered the paths of an 11-circuit labyrinth and posited a tone row based on the chromatic scale.)
[Backtrack for a bizarre coincidence story: as we were finishing up the tour of Carlsbad Caverns, we struck up a conversation with a couple whom we noticed had been dining at Yellow Brix the night before. They were originally from Florida but now live in Los Alamos. We said we were from the Atlanta area, and she said, “My sister lives in Newnan, if you know where that is.” Her sister teaches Spanish at LaGrange College. The Newnan Vortex strikes again.]
It was decided[1] that most of the party wanted to go to the Georgia O’Keeffe museum in the morning. They reported at lunch that it was, of course, phenomenal: a thorough look at her career, both at her creative process and her impact on the art world.
I, on the other hand, had other plans. Whenever we travel, I go to the Labyrinth Locator to see if there are any interesting labyrinths to walk. Santa Fe is crawling with them, but they’re mostly paving stone versions of the Chartres pattern, and I don’t have any real connection to that.
But then I found Temples of the Cosmos. Oh my. Leaving aside the woo factor, what an amazing feat! Sixteen installations, labyrinths and stone rings, spread across the property — what’s not to like? So I hopped in the car and drove back down the Turquoise Trail about 30 minutes for a 10:00 appointment.
I was warmly greeted by James, who left me alone to explore the property. I was the only one there all morning.
Here’s a quick tour.
Warning: there are two kinds of people in this situation. One, like my Lovely First Wife, wants to know every little detail about what she’s getting into. The other, like me, would prefer to explore and discover and be delighted as we go along. If you think you are going to visit StarDreaming and you are like me, you might want to skip down to my discussion of my experience there. On the other hand, I’m not going to be giving you that much detail.
TEMPLE OF THE SUN
Each temple has a standing stone with an engraved description which tells you what kind of space it is, any details about the stones involved and/or the construction of the temple, and the woo involved.
Here’s the entrance:
And the large circle of stones:
Each temple has an altar (or two or three) and a firepit, which made me want to be here when fires were going on. On the altars, people have left stones, trinkets, items that have enriched them.
TEMPLE OF DREAMS
I loved this one. (For many of these, I’m just going with a slideshow.)
Temple of Dreams
The whole thing was a row of standing and lying stones, aligned between the centers of the SUN and MOON temples.
Temple of Dreams
Temple of Dreams
Temple of Dreams
Looking back down the hill to the TEMPLE OF THE SUN. Notice the "arrow" of stones spreading out from the top of the DREAMS.
TEMPLE OF THE RAINBOW SERPENT
This one is a 7-circuit labyrinth, like mine, but the central cross area is hugely enlarged. These enlarged inner spaces completely altered the walk: less straight journey, more “goals” that you come upon.
All those big spaces had separate altars.
RAINBOW MEDICINE WHEEL
This medicine wheel has 28 points and is aligned with the great Medicine Wheel in Wyoming.
TEMPLE OF THE MILKY WAY
Temple of the Milky Way
Temple of the Milky Way
Made of black obsidian and pink calcite, this is a spiral labyrinth. I really liked this one.
Temple of the Milky Way
Notice the temple in the background. That's the way this place is: always something on the horizon.
Temple of the Milky Way
GRANDCHILDREN CIRCLE
One of the few temples I did not interact with.
PYRAMID OF LIGHT
This is the newest (and final) temple. It is stunning.
Pyramid of Light
40 tons of stone went into the construction of this solid pyramid.
Pyramid of Light
Standing stone & sphere outside the pyramid enclosure
Pyramid of Light
A closer look at the south face
Pyramid of Light
Three large crystals embedded in the south face
Pyramid of Light
Fossil stone sphere on the east face
Pyramid of Light
Sphere of rose quartz embedded in the north face
Pyramid of Light
Lingam stone embedded in the west face
I liked this detail: three firepits between the Pyramid of Light and the Temple of New Earth.
TEMPLE OF NEW EARTH
Temple of New Earth
Temple of New Earth
The path to the center is a straight shot, but there is an alternative and alternating labyrinth path that you may follow as well. I did both.
Temple of New Earth
Notice the careful stonework in the surrounding wall.
TEMPLE OF THE VIOLET FLAME
Temple of the Violet Flame
This is one of the few labyrinths I didn't engage directly in.
Temple of the Violet Flame
This is a square spiral labyrinth.
Temple of the Violet Flame
The altar.
TEMPLE OF THE HEART
Temple of the Heart
Temple of the Heart
The entrance to the labyrinth
Temple of the Heart
This is a spiral labyrinth.
Temple of the Heart
The center/altar is an enormous selenite crystal.
FAERY RING
This one was honestly one of my favorites, representing as it did the spirit of PLAY. Pure whimsy in every corner.
Faery Ring
Faery Ring
The approach
Faery Ring
Mermaid!
Faery Ring
Faery Ring
Faery Ring
Faery Ring
There appeared this series of posts with streamers, clearly leading across the arroyo to another area. Ah, I thought, I think I will let that area stay a mystery.
But then I gave in and followed them.
TEMPLE OF INFINITY
Temple of Infinity
Temple of Infinity
Panorama — beyond the circle of stones you can see the half loop of the infinity symbol.
Temple of Infinity
Panorama, cont.
Temple of Infinity
The most intriguing of the standing stones to me. Each standing stone had a smaller boulder at its base.
Temple of Infinity
I found it incredible that James moved and placed these huge plinths.
Temple of Infinity
The center stone and altar
There were curious onlookers.
I don’t have enough photos of the Temple of the Stars (although I know I took a 360 of it, it seems to have vanished from the phone), the Talking Stones, nor the Temple of Lightning to share.
There was a spot for those who might have been dragged there by their spouses:
TEMPLE OF NEW ATLANTIS
Temple of New Atlantis
This is an 11-circuit labyrinth.
Temple of New Atlantis
The altar
Temple of New Atlantis
TEMPLE OF MAGIC
Temple of Magic
Temple of Magic
Full view of the labyrinth, which is an enormous spiral. The thirteen standing stones are known as the 13 Grandmothers.
Temple of Magic
The entrance to the labyrinth, through trees
Temple of Magic
A gong in the entrance, one of several sound makers
Temple of Magic
One of the altars at the center
TEMPLE OF AVALON
This is a 7-circuit labyrinth and is one of the ones I did not engage with, mostly because I didn’t know it was up on the hill; I had already decided that the Temple of the Moon would be my finale.
TEMPLE OF THE MOON
Temple of the Moon
Temple of the Moon
Several of the older temples had this kind of sign in addition to the engraved steles.
Temple of the Moon
Looking across the stone circle
Temple of the Moon
Firepit in the center
Temple of the Moon
I can't believe I didn't get a close-up of the altar with the phenomenal sculpture.
My final shot is from the hill of the Temple of the Moon, just looking out over the western side of the complex.
So, what was my experience like? I spent two and a half hours there, walking labyrinths, listening to the space, doing the hippie woo thing. Obviously I’m not going into details about what happened there, but I want to say that there was an incredible energy to the place. The Temples of the Cosmos was the most thrilling environmental art I’ve ever been in. By the time I walked my third labyrinth, I was reeling from the energy flow. I felt both empty and balanced. It was the calmest I have felt in weeks.
I look forward to returning to this place for one of the organized events.
Eventually it was time to go. I had a nice chat with James back at his house, saw his studio — he is a pretty amazing artist on top of all this — and took my leave.
I met my fellow travelers at the Plaza and ferried them to lunch at Tomasita’s, a very good Mexican restaurant where we shared our morning experiences and also came up with a great indie movie idea. No, I’m not sharing it here. What, and give you the laurels at Sundance what properly belong to us? Pffft.
We walked from Tomasita’s over to SITE Santa Fe, the installation art museum we visited briefly the day before. There we saw the Future Shock exhibit, which had interactive exhibits, visual art, assemblage, movies, all of which had something to do with life in the future. I encourage you to click on the link and explore some of those images.
Back to the condo for a nap, and then cocktails at Secreto Lounge, the top-rated cocktail bar in Santa Fe. The cocktails were good, but not stellar. The one I was interested in was not available because they were out of some of the ingredients. It does not speak well of their planning abilities to run out of their “farm-to-glass” infusions/concoctions.
Dinner was at 315 — a fabulous meal with a fabulous cocktail called The Chamberlin: gin, Amaro Nonino, Campari, burnt orange syrup, and Angostura bitters. I shall be attempting to reconstruct this upon our return home. So far this has been the best meal of the trip.
Tuesday. After a final breakfast at Casas de Sueños, we set out for Santa Fe. Pro tip: take NM 14, aka The Turquoise Trail, instead of sticking to I-25. The scenery is the usual fabulous.
Plan on stopping in Madrid (pronounced MADrid) for lunch or just to shop around. Madrid is a former coal town that was sold to hippies back in the day — much like Jerome, AZ — and I wish we had spent more time there. We shopped in The Crystal Dragon, one of the original galleries there, and it is quite nice. Interesting jewelry and crystal stuff, all nicely hippie-woo. Much turquoise, of course.
I bought a lovely small bowl made of carnelian, which I forgot to take a photo of. (I’ll do a swag post after we get home.)
Santa Fe is only about an hour north of Albuquerque, so those of you who get your jollies watching me suffer through hours in the vehicle will have to learn to live with disappointment.
We headed straight for lunch at the Tune-Up Cafe, where the food is very tasty, although mostly Mexican which is not my thing. Perhaps you mileage junkies can get off on my trying to find something on the menu that wouldn’t bother me. I had a burger, which was good as well, but because of my increasing altitude sickness — and possible interaction with alcohol — I was unable to finish.
We checked in with our rental property people and headed back to SITE, a post-modern installation gallery, which we had passed on our way to the check-in:
The main exhibits were not open on Tuesdays, OF COURSE, so we will return tomorrow. However, the lobby had much that was fun and beautiful, and then this:
It’s an ATM in the sense that you can get money out of it, but mostly it’s art. What you see it doing here is spitting out a receipt that turns into a booklet once you follow the instructions on the wall:
This is a cool idea that I will be definitely stealing for writers at Backstreet Art. Full disclosure: I censored the photos for the sensitive among us.
Onward to Old Town:
First stop, the Cathedral of St. Francis.
It’s a beautiful church, still decorated for Easter.
Second stop, the chapel of the Sisters of Loretto:
Outside this former chapel are some neato wind sculptures:
The Sisters of Laretto ran a school for girls from the late 1800s to 1968. They built the chapel in 1873, and because of their limited land there was no room for a large staircase to the choir. The story goes that one day an unnamed carpenter showed up and volunteered to build a circular staircase. With “nothing but a hammer, a saw, and a carpenter’s square,” he built the staircase, then left without payment. The nuns believed it was St. Joseph (patron saint of carpenters, of course) who had heard their prayers.
To this day, no one can explain how this thing stays up without a central support. Really.
Even more, we learned from the narration that plays while you visit, the balustrade was added later when the nuns and girls found the ascent to be an unsettling experience. So imagine this thing without the balustrade.
I found it very difficult to imagine. The chapel is now run by a private company; admission goes to the Sisters of Loretto retirement fund.
In the gift shop, I found a cheesy angel that I will use in the labyrinth periodically. It has potential. Pics in the swag post next week.
Finally we checked in at our VRBO condo. This is the view:
At this point, I was full on sick, and everyone else felt like crap as well. Others went to Trader Joe’s for victuals, we ate a simple repast, and retired.
Last month, Andrew’s 
