Landscape of Virginia

This day is one of high winds and bright sun. What a joy to ride a bike in it. Someone asked me "do you still ride?" and I could honestly say "yes, I just rode today." Riding is such a good way to burn off extra energy and to go somewhere without burning anything more than calories. When I was young, I honestly felt that riding my bike around was God's way of giving me trouble and pain. Man has that attitude changed over the years gone by. I was a fat, husky kid who couldn't wait to get behind the wheel of his own car. My Dad put me behind the wheel once I turned sixteen. And I put away the English Racer three speed that I had been using to travel around with. I ignored it and it fell to the junk pile in no time at all. I turned that attitude around when I was in my early twenties and living in Philadelphia in Center City down near William Penn Hall (at least I believe it was called by that name) or the original site of the signing o...

I was able to get up to Philadelphia this past week, on Thursday I drove up from DC and spent the day looking at the alumni show at the Hamilton Building and also the Bank of America's permanent collection which cost a little bit. The alumni show was free and it also showed more class than the Bank of America's collection did in my opinion. They wouldn't let me photograph it but what my eyes saw was astonishing. There was excellent control of paint shown by one painting in particular. "Smoke Dreams" was a painting about opium smokers, and it wasn't a dark foreboding painting as one might picture, it was more of a light colored and also lighthearted view of smoking such a drug. The background has a couple of Japanese people engaged in a sexual maneuver but it's painted in a newer, more western manner and it wasn't at all distasteful nor did it make me feel uncomfortable while looking at it. In the foreground stands a woman who is certainl...