Virginia Is For Families

I guess I should mention something about the Watermelon Festival in Careytown.    It was a social event and the street was crowded with people wandering around, eating, buying stuff and generally relaxing on a warm August day.

Bands were set up anywhere there was available electicity.  Here’s one playing in an alley.

A moment later my view was interrupted when by this group heading towards the mob.  I wonder what happened when they got there.  There was barely room for people who were walking.

I’m sorry.  But I just think that this was way more interesting on this Sunday afternoon.

This afternoon I went downtown to poke my head in Zach’s new apartment.  Also on the agenda was a visit to Cary Street and The Watermelon Festival.   But the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is right in the middle of these two things and so I was distracted by it and ended up in it for a few hours.

I didn’t realize that you can take photos of about 99 percent of the exhibits in there.  So I picked out a few things that I found interesting and took photos of them.  Then I took photos of the signs on the walls that told a little bit about these exhibits.  And I also decided to find out more about them on the internet and do some posts about them.

It’s pretty cool to see something that’s very famous and “bring it home” in a photo.  It might be just like the excitement people feel when they take a photo of someone famous.  I don’t know.  I never took a photo of anyone who was or is famous.

But I did find out about Sir Alfred Munnings.  Sir Alfred was actually still living when I was a child.  He died in 1959 after a long life.  During his life he suffered several difficult setbacks.  When not yet 21 he  was lifting a puppy over a thorn bush when a branch snapped back and a thorn punctured his right eye leading to blindness in that eye.  And his first wife tried to kill herself on their honeymoon and succeeded two years later in 1914.

During this time we see how dark clouds can have silver linings.  Because of his blindness in one eye Sir Alfred did not end up in the army and on the front lines in France.  In spite of problems with depth perception he was a wonderful artist and enjoyed painting the countryside and horses in particular.

Here is the painting that caught my attention.

Recently we went to the horse races at Colonial Downs near Richmond.  And one of the things most enjoyable about that visit was seeing the colorful uniforms worn by the jockeys and the matching regalia worn by the horses.

Sir Alfred once said that he began to live when he experienced these things.  Here is a lovely blog that writes about Munnings

http://www.linesandcolors.com/2008/07/18/alfred-j-munnings/

I spent some time this evening with my younger son Zachary. Zachary is the “baby” in the family. I have participated in the rearing of five children and Zachary was the one who was used as a beach ball when we left them all alone for a few hours.

Now he is 6′ 4″ and very strong so he doesn’t get pushed around too much. When he first went down to VCU a few guys tried him out. And he just picked them up and planted them in the ground. But he hangs out with a more civilized crowd these days.

That is because he has a lovely girlfriend named Ashley who has volunteered to help him with his education. And she is doing a pretty good job. They are going to be living next door to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for the next year. It’s a whole lot better neighborhood than where he lives now.

So I was hanging out with him this evening when he decided to tell me something “I probably didn’t want to know”.

Don’t you hate it when you kids use that line? Hopefully yours don’t use it. But mine does and it just does stuff to my physical being that really doesn’t need to be done.

Zach is working as a window washer with his uncle and he is making good money for a college kid. But he can be very absented minded. So he tells me about putting up his ladder and climbing to the second floor. Only he forgot to set the bottom of the ladder properly.

The ladder was situated on some moss and it just “slip slided away” as Paul Simon likes to sing. So then he tells me how he held on to the window sill a little bit to “break the fall” and then “rolled and tucked” when he hit the ground. Or maybe he “tucked and rolled”. I guess you have to tuck before you can roll.

He is such a good athlete that he managed to turn his body into a giant shock absorber as it hit the ground. No one part took too much stress and thus parts did not begin to snap, crackle and pop.

His uncle told him that he had “never seen anything like it in thirty years of window washing”.

And Zachary didn’t injure himself. He’s sore but he just fell from a second story window and is doing fine.

I wonder sometimes about the stuff that he doesn’t tell me about. And then I just say a prayer.

After he told me this story he proceeded to tell me about a young man who he played football with in high school. They graduated just two years ago. This teammate and friend was killed this past week when an eighteen wheel truck went through a stop sign and broadsided him.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends. And may all those we know and love be safe on the roads in the coming weeks and months.

Zachary and Ashley

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