Traves Tangents

And all at once I was in Brooklyn… …where I am cat and apartment sitting. The apartment block has a *WORKING* mail shute. Yesterday I took myself off to Brooklyn Museum to feast on Japanese prints…(I see you JRR Tolkien)… …Judy Chicago’s ‘The Dinner Party’… …cute Egyptian tinies… …amongst other treats. Then a walk in Prospect Park… …another wonderful example of the City Beautiful movement (the book Huw lent me is proving a very good time investment). So much beauty- but the cherry blossom is out of this world.

I was going… …to add these to the previous post… …but I decided… …that the beauty… …of the garden… …deserved a post… ….all… …of… …it’s… …own.

Off to the art museum, which is… ….full of… …many… ….beautiful… …beautiful… …beautiful things. However, I’m a bit spoilt on the beautiful things front, with the Ashmolean, and other repositories of beautiful things on my doorstep. I really enjoyed… ….the local art… …especially this moody raptor…   …which gave me a flavour… …of New Orleans in the past.

  The water table is very high here in New Orleans, so most cemeteries are full of mausoleums rather than graves. There is a  life sized elk on top of a tomb that we drive by on every trip.  The Internet tells me that it is the tomb of Lodge no.30 of the Benevolent Order of Elks. Said order was actors benevolent fund, founded by the wonderfully named Charles Algernon Sidney Vivian, but it seems to have mutated into something like the Freemasons. I am very taken with the elk on his mound. If you’re going to have a tomb, go big I say. I wish I was able to take a better photo.

Yesterday we had a pootle around the Garden District. It’s the lowest point in the St Louis ‘bowl’, at ~ 8ft below sea level, about a mile below Denver. It’s very pretty… …leafy… …with lots of beautiful flowers. Then on to the seeming endlesss… …lakeshore… ….haunt of many a bird.

  It was hard to leave San Francisco, but I am really happy to be staying with my friend fr Auggie, of the Southern Dominican Province. This meant that it was easy to hop on the streetcar… .,,and head to the home of jazz… The famous French Quarter. To my great relief it is unseasonably cool here… …at around 28 degrees Celsius. I had red beans, followed by beignets for lunch… …and reflected… …on just how fortunate I am!

  It was my last day in San Francisco today, and I headed over to Japan Town. I hadn’t realised that it was the Cherry Tree Festival this weekend… …so the whole place was a bit of a zoo, including… …a rock band playing Taylor Swift covers in Japanese. However, I did have the chance to have a wander round… …and get a feel for the place… …in all its glory. And yes…there were STICKERS aplenty… …and reams of lovely writing paper…most of which is now in my carry on bag.