~~~
Day’s Verse:
But [be] hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, just, devout, self-controlled, holding fast to the faithful word…
Titus 1:7-9
~~~

A good day today. I did not do as much homework as I might have liked, but not every day is cut out for homework. A girl from my Bible Study, Karissa, drove me out to an organic food store, where I purchased whole dried strawberries for $1/1.4 oz, 1.25 lbs of raspberry granola (I love granola!), Celestial Seasonings teas, a small bag of veggie-type chips, and two small containers of organic peanut butter. Frankly I consider the dried strawberries a wonderful find, and not in small part because they came from the Pacific Northwest. My mind is awash with things to put delicious chopped dried strawberries in – maybe even muffins or a coffee cake!

After that I felt too restless to write my paper about what type of rhetorical problem caused the Challenger accident, so I walked over to Institute Park with my trusty Canon S1. The mild weather meant melting snow, running water, and lots of opportunities. Then I found myself at the end of the park kitty-corner from the Worcester Art Museum. Then a little voice that sounded suspiciously like my Rhetorical Theory professor whispered into my ear that it was free for WPI students to visit the art museum! The nice ladies at the front desk confirmed that, handed me a map, and told me to start at the top and work my way down.

It was lovely. The museum is hideous from the outside, a forbidding cement block with ugly rusted stars tacked up for too long. But inside had tilework, an actual Medieval French chapter house rebuilt there, and a really cool gallery with the paintings done directly on the wall. The pictures in the link hardly do justice to the perkiness of the paintings, which reflect onto the hardwood floors somewhat and are both inane and enjoyable. I liked it very much. Also the Precolumbian carvings were amazing in their detail. In the early American section I sat for a while absorbing Looking East from Denny Hill. In person you can see the details of little people cutting grass in the foreground, bulls locking horns, and in the middle a white steeple sticking out of cultivated rolling hills. It is such a wonderfully quintessential picture, I almost wished I could step out of this sordid world and into what I knew would be soft grass, sweetly fresh air, and the sound of healthy people working hard.

Sadly, the museum closes at 5:00 (I barely saw the fourth and third floors! Certainly I will go back again, if only to sit quietly in the chapter house area), so I found myself standing outside at 4:50, realizing with dismay that my nice warm jacket (like the link, but cheaper and gray with black markings) was no match for the unanticipated rain falling with vigour. However, I forgot about the rain when I saw steam rising off the light in the parking lot. Today’s picture is the result. Then I hustled wetly back to the apartment, arriving just before my illustrious husband returned from his class. So it was a good day, not spent in the apartment and not wasted writing silly papers.

– KF –