30. Two art museums

Week 30 2/17/16

Stop #1 was the Davis Museum at Wellesley College. The current exhibit is The Game Worlds of Jason Rohrer who was a brilliant game theorist and developer. We tried some of the interactive displays including a game that projected onto the wall. Several games were not working the day we visited. I wasn't familiar with any of these games or the developer before viewing this exhibition which is "the first museum retrospective dedicated to the work of a single game developer."

 

We also viewed some of the more conventional art in the museum including Shakespeare Illustrated and the study gallery, but more than half of the museum is closed for renovation.

After lunch we headed for the Danforth Museum in Framingham. Our daughter Julia had worked there for a summer. Her project was with acquisition of the Meta Fuller collection, including condition reports and supervising a group of students who organized the collection. This artist specialized in sculpture depicting the African-American experience. The collection included unfired clay pieces and tools. Paul and I found some of the tools on display.

Another exhibit at the Danforth was called The Memory Palace: Domesticity, Objects, and the Interior. I didn't realize that I was not allowed to take photographs, even without flash, so these are illegal. I stopped after I was told to. This is by Lindsey Beal and called Venus Figurine. The torso inside the bell jar is made of handmade paper.

These are from The Domestic Series by Leslie Graff. Many of the collected family aprons appear in the paintings.

29. Medway Trail Club

Week 29 2/7/16

We were excited to go to the first outing of the newly-formed Medway Trail Club. The coordinator, Jim Wieler, estimates that 50 people came to a clearing on a trail that is near Adams Street and the side of Medway High School. This is a warm winter day, but some people went ahead with the planned bonfire anyway. We drank hot coffee and chocolate and ate cookies and banana bread between hiking, snowshoeing and skiing. Paul and I saw many familiar faces and are looking forward to more events like this.

If you read post 28, you will not be surprised to know that I didn't try to ski today. But we borrowed my fathers snowshoes (unused with the tag still attached) and had a wonderful time trudging through the woods between Adams Street and Choate Park. I traveled alone but met many people along the way.

Here are some photos of the day, taken by Jim Wieler.

28. First Real Snow

Week 28 2/6/16

We were both needing/wanting a little exercise today, so we pulled our X-country skis out of the barn. It was beautiful in the back field and probably equally beautiful in the conservation land and trails beyond that, but I was a failure at skiing this year. I'll need to do more yoga to work on balance because I kept falling. I could tell you that this was due to snow build-up on the bottom of my waxless skis, and that would be partially true. Here is a picture of me.

Paul, on the other hand, did very well. He circumnavigated our field a few times and I think he went across the hedge row to the trails behind. I think Paul looks very happy here!

27. College Rock - but no music

Week 27 1/30/2016

Hopkinton MA has a Trails Club with quite a few mapped trails in several areas of town. Paul has been to College Rock many times. People use it for rock climbing, and off-road bikes use the trails in this area. There is a lot of graffiti on the rock, and the kiosk has been vandalized, but this is the only damage we saw on this hike. There was almost no litter on the trails. I can't find any information on why this is called College Rock. Maybe college students painted their college or frat symbols on the rock at one time. There is a College Road nearby but I don't know which one was named first.

Some of the trails were very well cleared. This may have been for the benefit of the bikes. It looks like the trails were cleared with a leaf blower. Strange. 

Along the way, near the Farm Trail, we encountered a horse farm. We liked this homemade see-saw in the clearing behind the farm.