Thinking large while on an art safari in the Asphalt Jungle:
• What a difference in energy level, mountains vs city. It is invigorating watching all the mostly young and smartly dressed men and women stride purposefully along New York’s numbered streets to whatever apparently-important destination awaits them. As a whole, they do not look like joyless urbanites. They seem to wear many shades of black.
• I had to recalibrate my lunchtime menu orders while we were in the city. I kept getting twice the food I expected, no doubt a reflection of the modestly-sized sandwiches they serve in restaurants back home. In New York City, they want to put meat on your bones. In the mountain south, the emphasis is on carbs in your belly, one burrito at a time.
• This was my first visit to the Museum of Modern Art. I have contemporary tastes, so I thought I would eat this place up like creme caramel. Instead, I was surprised how quickly I tired of the high-concept installations and canvas after canvas with idiosyncratic splashes of color. Don’t get me wrong, I like abstract art and would like to make more of it myself. But my brother-in-law Robert was right: conceptual art makes your brain labor in a way that Cezanne does not.
• Speaking of Cezanne, he paints fruit as ruddy red radioactive treasures, stolen from the Garden of Eden and set aside to ripen in his Bowl of Knowledge. It is too bad that Cezanne did not serve as God’s Creative Director, as it would have made for a more vibrant and interesting world all around.
• Funny how after your fourth or fifth cab ride in Manhattan, you begin to get used to the sudden stops, swerves and three lanes of traffic that merge into one at a moment’s notice. The accident-free flow of cars seems to follow the same law of nature that governs how water cascades over the rocks in a river, carrying along fallen leaves and water skimmers without damaging them. The cab drivers sense the flow and go with it.
• Nice that you no longer have to fumble for cash in New York cabs, as they now accept debit and credit cards. The new problem is figuring out the right way to swipe the card through the reader as the driver waits and waits for you to wade through the technology standing between him, his payment and his next fare.
• Regretfully, I didn’t take one artsy photograph in New York. Next time, maybe.
The US Postal Service introduced “Forever Stamps” in 2007 — these stamps can be used for first-class postage at any time, whatever the current rate may be. The first-class rate just climbed to 45 cents, an increase of one whole cent. (Do you remember what a cent is? It’s that brown thing that you throw into a dish next to the cash register.)
To its credit, the US Postal Service has issued only one stamp with a 45-cent denomination (a “Weather Vane” stamp) — the rest are Forever Stamps and one-cent makeup stamps. Hopefully, as it transitions to Forever Stamps, our Post Office will stop wasting our money printing makeup stamps.
I say this knowing that the waste in the US Postal Service is measured in millions, whereas the waste and fraud in military spending and medical care is in the billions. Too bad that we taxpayers can’t cover those costs with Forever Money.