On the Road

Yesterday I took a trip up to NYC to hang out with an old friend and to see some art.  Was so tired when I got home that I just collapsed, so I'm writing this today.

My friend was Doug, who I first met when he was part of the group I used to sit with in Calculus class, my first semester in college, so he and I go back to even before the Italian House girls I saw recently.  We also had a class together my last semester at W&M, an anthropology class, but in between he had connections to other friends of mine, so I'd see him now and then.  He was much better at math than I was, eventually earning his Master's and Phd, and currently a full time math professor down in South Carolina.  Shortly after that first class we had together I declared an art major and took a different path.   If we ever have occasion to be in the same part of the world we get together and share stories of our fellow Tribe students and the highs and lows of being college professors.  He was staying at a hotel in the city, a little vacation, and invited me to join him for a museum visit.

One of the options he gave me was a Frank Lloyd Wright show at the Modern.  I'm no architect, but I have long been a Wright fan (see my last post on July 4th) and chose that one.  Usually I take the train up from the shore, and there was the complication.  There have been a slew of NJ Transit train derailments this year, including my very train in Penn Station, just a few days ago.  But they said it was running, so I took a chance.  There were some slowdowns as we approached the Hudson, but the train stayed on the tracks- so a success.  Walked the mile and a half to the museum, met him out front, and we had a delightful day of looking at art.  This show was mostly a collection of drawings from Wright's studio.  In my opinion he's best appreciated standing within one of his buildings, but they weren't going to move a whole house to the museum.  The drawings did demonstrate his design skills- if he never built a building I think he could have made it as a 2D artist.  But fun was over, and Doug kept me company on the walk back to Penn, and then I spent a half hour in the rabbit warren that is Penn Station before catching my train south, which once again stayed on the tracks.  (next week begins what the news is calling the "summer of hell" which will involve all kinds of train closings and rerouting while they hope to repair all the problems they've been having, so this may my last train trip into the city for a while).