Admiring the bones at MASS MoCA…

I loved spending time at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA).  The exhibits we saw were sometimes fun, sometimes beautiful and always thought-provoking and I thoroughly enjoyed them.  I will try to get some time to give you a taste of them later this week.  But something I truly love about the museum is the building itself.  It has a long and interesting history that I won’t go into here, but if you would like to learn more about it, you can by clicking on this:  History of the Site.

The building itself is a work of art and I took many (WAY too many) pictures of bits and pieces of it.  That is what I am going to post today.  I told Carrie that even if the place were totally empty of all the artwork within its wall, I would still want to hang out there.  And I meant it.

Taken inside the Sol LeWitt exhibit.

Hunting in North Adams…

If you read my last post, you know that my daughter Carrie and I took an overnight trip out to North Adams, Massachusetts, which is a town located in the Berkshire Hills near the Massachusetts – New York border.  North Adams was an old mill town back in the day.  These days it is a town filled with a lively art scene primarily because of the opening of the wonderful Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in 1999.  While we were in North Adams, we stayed at The Porches Inn, which is right across the street from the museum.

All of my photos this week for Ashley Sisk’s Scavenger Hunt Sunday are from that trip.  The prompts for this week are:  Time to Eat, Getting Ready, Playtime, Sweet Dreams and Scrub-a-dub.  I did have to stretch the limits a little, but I managed to get something for each prompt.  And here they are:

As part of the turn-down service at Porches, we each got a couple of these lovely little handmade chocolate mints.  It was Time to Eat!

At MASS MoCA, there was a section of the museum that was having new walls put up and painted.  They were Getting Ready for a new exhibit.

For me, and for Carrie too, I think, going to places like MASS MoCA is like Playtime.  Here, Carrie is posing at the end of one of Sol LeWitt's wonderful huge paintings.   I really liked the reflective quality of this particular one.

The Porches Inn is a really neat place to stay.  It is built in old block of Victorian Row Houses that are located right across the street from MASS MoCA.  Here's a photo of our room.  The rooms are decorated with retro furnishings that are very attractive and fun.  And the beds are très comfortable.  Mine certainly allowed me to have Sweet Dreams.

The bathrooms at Porches are also very nice.  Ours had a claw-foot tub and a large shower with a rainforest shower thingy.  Here is a bit of the tub.  If there were three men in it, it would be like the old nursery rhyme,  Scrub-a-Dub Dub, Three Men in a Tub.  I actually think it's Rub-a-dub dub, but who's really keeping track.

 

We had a great time and I hope we'll be back at some point in the future.  I am not done with all my photos from this trip, so be prepared...there's more to come.

Linking to Ashley Sisk's Scavenger Hunt Sunday.

Snowy fences...

My daughter Carrie and I took a little jaunt out to North Adams, Massachusetts for a little overnight in the very cool Porches Inn.  The real reason for our trip was to spend a day at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA).  Here's a nice snowy fence scene we saw along the way...

LINKING TO FRIDAY'S FENCES.

This Vehicle Stops for Barns...

Yesterday, for some reason, I was determined to get a photo of a barn in East Brookfield that I really love and pass on my way to and from church.  I didn't remember to stop on the way to church, so I had to do it on the way home.  Turns out, I had to go around the "block" three times in order to ditch the cars that were following me.  I'm surprised that the people across the street from this barn didn't call the police thinking I was some kind of stalker or something.  Even with three chances, I didn't get a really good shot off because, lo and behold, third time around, there was a car coming up pretty quickly in the distance.  I thought I could do this all day and never be free of traffic so I went with what I managed to get.  Here it is:

Later on, I was looking through my Facebook page and saw the following photo on "FotoBridge" one of the photography pages I like on there:

I found the discussion about this window sticker pretty interesting.  Instead of finding the humor in it, most people fretted that it would give away that the person in this car has a car full of expensive camera equipment and doesn't mind advertising it for all the thieves to see.  I guess I can see the point.  I don't generally leave my camera in the car but I guess if I did, I wouldn't want this sticker to advertise the fact that I do.  Still...this could have come in handy for me yesterday when I was trying to get a decent photo of that darn barn.

LINKING TO BLUFF AREA DAILY'S BARN CHARM.

Best laid plans turn into this and that...

I had every intention of participating in Ashley Sisk's Scavenger Hunt Sunday this week.  I really enjoy the challenge of coming up with something appropriate for the prompts.  But this week, I just never seemed to be able to get to it.  The prompts this week were candy, pink or red, love, kisses and smile.  You can see that it is pretty obvious that I never got to anything that even vaguely resembled those prompts.  But here's what I did take this week...or at least a few of the pics I took this week.

We went out for lunch one day this week when I had my camera with me.  So I took a couple of shots.  I think that it could be argued that that first photo could fall under the category of love -- at least for me.  The second one could be red if you're color blind or maybe candy if you really, really love pickles.

This next photo reminds me of the way I felt before I got my knee replaced.

And these days, I feel a little more like this:

...Because while I can't do much about that fact that I'm not getting any younger, at least these days I'm standing up straight.  And that's a good thing.

Black and white fences….

I took a lot of photos of the snow last week and looked through them hoping to find a fence, but there were no fences in the whole batch.  Must be that the snow was so high all the fences were buried.  Oh, well…  So I went back to our trip down to Florida and found a couple that I like and will post them today for Friday’s Fences.  These particular photos were taken somewhere off the Blue Ridge Parkway near Fancy Gap, Virginia.

LINKING TO FRIDAY'S FENCES.

Color in winter…

I think I know why a lot of people don’t like winter.  I think it has to do with the landscape being so dull and brown and colorless in comparison to landscapes in spring, summer and fall.  It can be pretty depressing.  But winter does have its color.  You just have to search around for it.  Granted, on a day like today here in Central Massachusetts, it would be hard to find.  It’s very dull, grey and foggy out.  But yesterday!  Yesterday was glorious!  The sky was blue, the air was clear and it was downright beautiful out.  I convinced Greg that we needed to go for a short ride after lunch and here are some of the things we saw.

And even at home, the air hummed with color.

  The white background just makes everything look bright.

I'd say that Nemo dropped about half a barn door of snow on us.

  But it was beautiful on that sunny day!

Digging out...

Just a few photos to show you how we fared during this latest storm, Nemo.  As it turned out, we were apparently in the "sweet" spot as far as snow fall amounts.  There are reports from between 25 and 31 inches here in this area.  Greg measured in our driveway and said he thought it was around 23 inches.  I think it's just a matter of where you measure.  But that's a lot of snow, folks.  Especially in one snowfall.  We are convinced that it is the single largest snowfall that we have experienced in our 30 some years here in Massachusetts.  

In any case, while it is a lot of snow, we are very glad that we didn't lose power.  There are about 400,000 out in the state, but we are not among them.  It was a surprise to us, considering they were predicting high winds.   But, hey, no complaints here!

So the travel ban was lifted at 4:00 p.m. today and we are free to move around when and where we want....if we can get the heck out of our driveway.  Greg is almost done with the snow blowing.  

He is not a happy camper.  Guess I can't blame him.

Nemo is here!

Well, we’ve been told that the Storm of the Century is happening today here in New England.  The prediction is that in our part of the state we will be getting from 18 to 24 inches of snow.  But if you look at the map, we may be in the 24+ area.  What can you do?  You might as well hunker down and enjoy the down time.  Mother Nature reigns supreme.

Clearly someone here is not concerned about the nefarious NEMO.

At 11:00 am, things weren't so bad.

At least we don't have to stand out in it all day like this birch tree.

I'll leave you with a pic the sunny side of my red tulips.

They don't give a hoot if it's snowing.

The power of red tulips…

I’ve been a little off my game lately and just haven’t picked up the camera.  So I figured the best way to remedy that was to pick up some red tulips at the grocery store.  Nobody can resist taking pictures of red tulips…well, at least I can’t.

Fence and fence parts…

The sad truth is that I haven’t picked up my camera since I went out to see Carrie in January.  It’s not that I haven’t wanted to, but the weather has been crummy and I have been busy.  I am hoping for a lull in the weather and the action sometime soon so that I can do a little picture taking.

In the meantime, I figured I got enough stuff from the Chestnut Street Cemetery when we were in Apalachicola to post another fence for Friday’s Fences.  So here’s another one along with a few pics of some fence details.

LINKING TO FRIDAY'S FENCES.