Travel Log-on-a-Blog

National Portrait Gallery Great Hall, facing south. Photograph by lynch_m_j a member of the NPG Group Pool on Flickr.com

My husband recently attended a pastor's briefing in Washington, D.C. and our family had the opportunity to accompany him and explore the city while he was in meetings. Since our motel was right on Capitol Hill, we decided to "hoof it" for the three days we were there. This turned out to be advantageous in more ways than one: it spared me from driving in the c-r-a-z-y traffic and it also allowed us to ooh and aah over the architecture in slow motion. Whizzing by the magnificent buildings in a car simply does not allow you to absorb the scale and grandeur of the structures.

Our first stop was the National Portrait Gallery. Of all the places in D.C. that we visited, this was my favorite. It was cool and restful inside and the crowds were not as large as the ones we encountered in many of the other Smithsonian museums. We were able to amble at a leisurely pace and take our time looking and learning.

This museum tells the history of our country via portraiture. It includes portraits of presidents and poets, important and lowly, noble and ignoble; all have had a part in making our nation what it is today.

We enjoyed listening to a guided tour which focused on art during the depression. The federal government actually hired artists to produce works of art and paid them $42 a month in wages. At the time, "starving artists" were just glad to get a steady wage. What was required in return was that the works they produced became the sole property of the portrait gallery.

The "America's Presidents" exhibition was the unanimous favorite of our family. It begins with the famous "Lansdowne" portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart. I did not realize that the museum nearly lost this treasure in the year 2000, when the owner who had loaned decided he wanted to sell it. Fortunately, a donor was found to keep it in its venerable position.

This collection of presidential portraits is the only one of its kind in the nation, excepting the White House. To look at the faces of each commander-in-chief made me feel as though I knew them all just a little bit better.

My son enjoyed the architecture more than the portraits. That was understandable--as you can see from these two pictures it is magnificent in every way.

Great Hall photo by talaba

Nature Study, The Elixir of Youth

Photo taken at Halleck Park, on our family nature walk.

"The old teacher is too likely to become didactic, dogmatic and 'bossy' if she does not constantly strive with herself. Why? She has to be thus five days in the week and, therefore, she is likely to be so seven. She knows arithmetic, grammar and geography to their uttermost and she is never allowed to forget that she knows them, and finally her interests become limited to what she knows.

After all, what is the chief sign of growing old? Is it not the feeling that we know all there is to be known? (snip)

I know how to 'make magic' for the teacher who is growing old. Let her go out with her youngest pupil and fall on her knees before the miracle of the blossoming violet and say: 'Dear Nature, I know naught of the wondrous life of these, your smallest creatures. Teach me!'"

--Anna Botsford Comstock (1854-1930) from her book Handbook of Nature Study

Art for Spring

Full Bloom by Anne Nye

Spring is the perfect time to highlight the floral work of Anne Nye, a contemporary artist that reminds me a little of Georgia O'Keeffe. Anne uses a unique layering process, combining painting with glass making. In her own words:

“My work, like my experience of life, is about layers.

I layer color over color and glass over glass, opacity over transparency. Just as joy layers over sorrow and today over yesterday, in my art patches of brilliant colors peek through darker ones like sweet secrets heard on a summer day, remembered in winter. So all my experiences come together in each work. Brilliant background colors express the joyous freedom of my childhood Idaho summers; layered with years of work and study, loss and gain. The tactile top layer expresses the now – taking us right up to the present, which will never be here again.”

I love the iris, which shows accurate detail and brilliant color. See more of her work here.

Sitting at His (BIG) Feet

My daughter snapped this picture of me last week-end when we were retreating with the lovely ladies from Des Moines and the surrounding small towns. These BIG shoes served as a prop in a monologue as a young woman sat at the feet of Jesus pouring out her life story. Notice the logo and the heart-shaped holes for the shoe strings. These women were so creative!

Life's Intersections

The wind whipped the car door out of control and it slammed into the Cadillac parked next to us, leaving a door "ding" behind. My husband wrote a little explanatory note and placed it on the windshield, along with our contact information so that we could make it right with the owner.

A few days later an elderly man called and identified himself as the owner of the car. To my surprise, he was not calling to ask us for damage reimbursement. He was calling to thank us for being honest. We ended up having a very pleasant conversation and I hung up feeling as though I had made a new friend.

It's interesting to think about how our lives intersect with others; sometimes the most trivial of events brings someone or something new and fresh into our lives. I like to turn it over in my mind at day's end, to take it out of my memory-pocket and enjoy it a second time.

What brings a smile to you at the end of your day?

Keeping House: Yankee or Southern?

I enjoy collecting quotes, both philosophic and practical. Lately I've been drawn to quotes about housekeeping, and I thoroughly enjoyed this one taken from the book Cold Sassy Tree:

Miss Love was washing a kitchen window that looked clean to me already. It seemed like every time I went down there, she was washing floors or windows, one, despite she'd cleaned the whole house good last summer. "Miss Love, I reckon you ain't heard about fall and spring cleanin'," I said one day. She had come out on the back porch to empty her wash water just as I headed for the barn. I said, "In between spring and fall, and fall and spring, ma'am, you just s'posed to sweep and mop and use the feather duster and like that."

"I like the Yankee way better," she said, bristling. I reckon she thought Mama had criticized how she did. "Up North, ladies do extra cleaning every week in one room. Brush down the walls and wash the floor one week, maybe wash windows and curtains the next, and so on. When they get that room done, they start on another. The house stays nice year round, and it's not exhausting like doing all the heavy cleaning at once."

When I told Mama, she said, "I'd rather get worn out twice a year than stay worn out all the time."

I recently heard the famous Flylady on a DVD seminar. She said that the custom of spring cleaning came about during the era of coal furnaces. After having the house closed up all winter, there would be black soot on everything and a thorough spring cleaning was a necessity. Flylady would come down firmly in the Yankee camp when it comes to housekeeping.

Do you have a housekeeping calendar that you live by? Are you a Yankee or a Southern homemaker?

Wisdom: Gathering and Giving

Wisdom is the pursuit of a lifetime, and it entails both gathering and giving. According to the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, the gathering process might include any or all of the following:

• Honing the ability to listen and hear wise things (some don't recognize wisdom when they hear it!)
• Acquiring wise counsel from elders or mentors
• Embracing the teaching of parents
• Treasuring wise words
• Engaging more life energy to the pursuit of wisdom than to the pursuit of wealth
• Tenacity in holding on to the good instruction that has been received
• Training the mind to think deeply and reflectively on the wisdom that has been gathered and gained, so as to add even more to the cache.
• Developing the habit of gathering wisdom each and every day

No one can be truly wise who gathers but fails to give. Like breathing, wisdom requires intake and exhalation. The giving or exhaling might look something like this:

• Speaking only at the right time and in measured words
• Actively transferring wisdom to worthy student(s) via informal or formal relationships
• Writing or making permanent the specific wisdom-work that has become your own
• Inviting others to partake of your bounty
• Carefully guarding a lifestyle that models wisdom without words

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I can trace seasons of my life where I have gathered, often followed by seasons of giving. I suppose a little of both happen in the course of most days, but sometimes there are longer and more pronounced seasons of one or the other.

It seems like I am in a "giving" season right now. I've prepared a dozen messages for public speaking all to be delivered within a seven-week period. It's both exhilarating and draining! It's also very, very humbling.

I remember the first time I spoke to a group of 100 ladies, about 17 years ago. I was used to speaking, but on a much smaller scale. This larger, unfamiliar setting caused acute nervousness and I had the typical stage fright symptoms of sweaty palms and dry mouth.

Shortly after that, I had my first baby and I stepped out of public ministry. Period. For ten years.

A funny thing happened when I returned to teaching and speaking: I lost the stage fright. Rather than feeling rusty or timid, I felt a new sense of confidence and enjoyment in the process of giving. After "losing" ten years of practice, how could it be possible to advance in my ability to share truth?

I attribute it to the fact that those ten years added incredible, maturing life experiences to the mental knowledge I had been tucking away. I now had living examples of both success and failure to add breadth and credibility to the things I was saying. I had grown, not just by studying but by LIVING.

My husband, who is a pastor and who often speaks 3 or more times weekly, was discussing this with me the other day. He has come to similar conclusions that I have. Studying for a particular speaking engagement is very important, but there is something beyond that discipline that enables us to truly benefit those who will listen to us. It's a lifestyle of wisdom: gleaning it day in and day out, here a little and there a little. It's a lifestyle of reading and praying and crying and laughing and eating and drinking and working. There are many people who do these things every day, but the one who gleans those experiences for wisdom will have a fully loaded treasury from which to draw, to benefit himself as well as others.

"Spread the wealth around" may not be good advice for the economic health of a nation, but it is very good advice for those who are dealing with a commodity more precious than money--wisdom.

How have you gained or given wisdom this week?

"Happy is the man who finds wisdom, And the man who gains understanding;
For her proceeds are better than the profits of silver,
And her gain than fine gold.
She is more precious than rubies,
And all the things you may desire cannot compare with her.
Length of days is in her right hand, In her left hand riches and honor.
Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
And all her paths are peace.
She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her,
And happy are all who retain her."
Proverbs 3:13-18 (NKJV)