Ingrid's Wedding

We went out to Rhoade Island in early September for Ingrid and Geoff's wedding. The weekend event was held by a small lake in the still deep forest of New England, not far from the sea. We stayed with friends and family in large cabins, taking walks and rowboat rides when the sun was out, hanging out in lounges and rooms when rain was falling. Hanging out led to the invention of a variant of Ingrid and Geoff's favorite sport...the variation coming from the use of rolling chairs to play ultimate as in "Ultimate Deskchair Frisbee" We ventured into downtown Providence to their favorite brewpub, drinking beer being a second favorite sport. The ceremonies were laced with informality a la Quaker meeting with lots to drink and eat and dance to afterwards. Fireworks above the lake around 3:00 am (was that the conclusion or just a midway point?) And yet in my mind's eye, a little girl plays in a playground (was it the brief months we spent in Atlanta?) and an older girl carries the dog Llana around the living room on a pillow on her head. Hmmm...who knows where the time goes. I guess it is all just part of the mathematical dimensions of spacetime. But not getting bogged down in theories, Ingrid and Geoff headed off to Banff to the mountains, lakes and open meadows that they love. May they have many more days, years, and lots of spacetime to engage together those environs.

Boston

Rode up to Boston on the train from Providence where preparations were in full swing for Ingrid and Geoff's wedding (I interpreted my job as one of "getting out of the way.") I walked from the South Side station over to the new Institute of Contemporary Art...the last time I had been in Boston it is was not yet finished. The building is cantilevered out over the waterfront of Boston Harbour. Yet more remarkable for me was the exhibit of sculpture by Anish Kapoor. His work with mirrors, voids, reflecting and refracting surfaces creates an interactive environment in which the viewer creates the art by becoming part of it. His best known work is the Bean in Millennium Park in Chicago but the enclosed museum walls provides a more intimate way of exploring his concepts of space. One of his most impressive works "Sky" was installed at Rockefeller Center in New York...again Anish plays with the sense of scale and the mystery of who we are, where we are, where are we going.
After that museum I just wondered the city...visiting the Athenaeum (founded 1807 as a subscription library and art museum). Besides its art works, it has about half the known collection of Washington's personal papers and Bibles which King George sent to the colonies to try to turn them from revolution to religion. Didn't work. So somewhat stunned by history and heat, I continued through the Boston Commons to the Public Library whose courtyard offered a shaded colonnade, sculpture, fountains and that sense of a secular/sacred space which is only found in cities.

Obama

We went down to Denver to hear Obama's acceptance speech with 83,000 of our closest friends. As it was getting dark and as the final lines of attenders filed into the stadium, five citizens (regular folks) talked about their reasons for supporting his candidacy. They were quite powerful as speakers...more impressive than the other more polished performers. The roar of the crowd at their and, later, Obama's remarks was laced with the understanding that enough is enough. In fact, enough for the past eight years has been way too much. But in the meantime, there's Stevie Wonder playing his own personal form of magic. Maybe that's the point "Hey, listen to the music, the beat is changing."