Visits with two sets of good friends, May 2 - 5

   We drove the fairly short drive (250) from Erie to Binghamton, still in grey weather. We arrived at Kathy and Jay's in time for a nice lunch, which is a given when you stay with Kathy. Kathy and Barbara went to Barnes and Noble where she bought a much-needed U.S. road Atlas. (Ours is 2005 and missing about 20 pages, including half of Montana and all of Massachusetts.) We had a lovely dinner of speidis, salad and pilaf.
   The next day, Kathy, Mark and Barbara went to Raymour and Flanigan's, a furniture store, and....we bought a new mattress! We had no intention of buying one in Binghamton. We have been talking about the need for a new mattress for our house for over a year. It is hard to find the time to test mattresses when we are in Hyannis as we are always going or coming in a bit of a rush. Kathy and Jay have just bought a new mattress from Raymour and Flanigan and we had a great night's sleep on it, so we thought we'd just go and write down model numbers. But, the store said that they would deliver, free, to the island. We were incredulous and made them check with their headquarters as we did not think that the salespeople really understood that we live 28 miles out to sea. At any rate, we ended up buying a new mattress, much to our own surprise.
     Later we all went to Nick's Italian restaurant in Endicott for dinner and chatted the night away. (Watched Ted Cruz drop out of the primaries after losing badly in Indiana.)
     While in Binghamton we had very good news from Montana that Maura got the job at the middle school as a liaison between the school and the Missoula Mental Health authority. Yay!

Kathy, Jay, Mark at Nick's

     The next morning, we got up and drove, in the rain - again!, to Pittsfield, Massachusetts to visit Nan and Jim at their new house.
      We brought speidis and we had a nice dinner, although did overcook them a tad. Nan is working at a middle school in Lenox and Jim is working at Chesterwood, the summer estate of Daniel Chester French who designed and built the Lincoln Memorial among many, many other things, including the Minuteman statue at Old North Bridge in Concord.
     The next day, May 5, Nan and Jim went to work and Mark and I went to Williamstown to the Clark Museum. The drive was beautiful, about 20 miles, but....still grey weather. We have not seen the sun since we left Montana! We had never been to Williamstown which is a beautiful village with bucolic Williams College in its midst. The Clark Museum is great - just the right size for a few hours. We loved the collection of impressionists; the Clarks collected the largest American grouping of Renoirs. And, we saw some Monets and Lautrecs which we have never even seen copies of. So, it was a lovely morning.

An early Monet that we really liked, Clark Museum

Degas Dancers, Clark Museum

We forgot the artist! Clark Museum

Monet

Rodin's The Thinker

     We ate at the Water Street Pub in Williamstown and then headed to Lenox to meet Nan when she got out of school.
       The three of us then went to Stockbridge to the Norman Rockwell Museum of which Nan is a member. It was equally impressive and so different. We watched the film first and then toured the museum. We always knew that we liked and were familiar with Rockwell's work, but were quite amazed at the size of the paintings that produced the covers of the magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and Life. He was a hard-working and very prolific artist, producing over 4,000 works of art. The museum has all his covers for Saturday Evening Post in chronological order and it was a real walk-through of decades of American history.

Norman Rockwell's Stockbridge

    The special exhibit was illustrations by Mac Conner who illustrated books, ads and movies. He lived into his 100s and had never had an exhibition till this one at the Rockwell.

Illustration by Mac Conner, Rockwell Museum

      Afterwards we visited his studio which was moved to the site. That was also very interesting as you can see his props etc. and how his work evolved.  The studio is set up as it would have been in 1960. For example, he was working on a commemorative for the United Nations. It started with the U.N. flag in the center with three diplomats and lots of faces of people from many nations. But, he scrapped that in favor of a beautiful painting of faces and the major religions of the world. Instead of famous people, he put in faces of people he knew. His bushy-bearded postman became a Jewish rabbi. His wife, who had recently died, is in the top right corner holding one of their grandchildren. It is a lovely, poignant painting. He was basically a story teller.

Rockwell's Studio

Inside Rockwell's Studio. Note his wife in upper right corner behind Rockwell. Also note his model for his iconic painting of a little girl integrating a school in the south. His postman is the bearded rabbi. This is the painting he did in lieu of the U.N. and famous ambassadors.

Nan and Barbara, Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge

     Jim met us afterwards and we took a tour of the area including seeing where we stayed several years ago on our one visit to the area when we visited Tanglewood with Chris and Ken. We also went by Rockwell's house, quite a few "cottages" of the wealthy, the Kripalu Yoga Center and Shakespeare and Company. Then we went to the historic, beautiful old Red Lion Inn for a lovely dinner.

Red Lion Inn