Sunday was my last day hanging out with Margot, we had a nice long play at the park where she found a huge branch to play with.
While we were playing at the park, I got some very happy news. My son, Kieran asked his girlfriend, Kourtney, to marry him last night! They recently celebrated their fourth anniversary, and when we had been talking earlier in the week about what he was going to get her as a present, he was very cagey. I should’ve suspected something was up! They aren’t sure when they will get married, Kourtney graduates from college in May and is applying for jobs. It’s going to be a busy year for them!
On my way back home I stopped at the deYoung museum to check out the new exhibits. On the way there I passed a Girl Scout troop selling cookies, memories! My sister bought a family membership to the deYoung and included me as her second family member so I get to go for free. As I think I’ve said before I love to be able to go to a museum and just concentrate on one or two areas for an hour or two instead of trying to see everything and getting completely exhausted. First I went to the Fashioning San Francisco exhibit of women’s high fashion and haute couture over the past 100 years. It’s not really my thing, but I did enjoy checking out the outfits, some beautiful and some bizarre. It was fun seeing what some the people attending were wearing as well!
The other exhibit I checked out was called Rituals of Care by the artist Lee Mingwei. This consisted of several interactive installations throughout the museum. I was most taken by The Letter Writing Project where people could write letters and either leave them at the exhibit or have them mailed to the person by the museum. There were three letter writing booths made of rice paper walls, creating an intimate space where one could sit on a cushion on the floor to write a letter. There were stands on on the walls where letters could be left for others to read. There was also an accessible letter writing area for those who could not negotiate the steps up into the booths. It was a very solemn, yet calm, feeling in the space. The Mending Project was made up of dozens of spools of thread, many of which were connected to mended items on the table. There are certain days when people can bring items in to be mended and sit and chat with the person doing the mending. There was also a room set up with dozens of paintings on easels. The artist had asked 11 other artists to reinterpret a painting called Peaceable Kingdom, then asked each of those artists to ask two other artists to do the same thing. It was really cool to see the wide variety of expressions of the painting.
Walking back to my car I passed a memorial to those who died in World War I. There were also several smaller stones marking the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day in 2018. I remember that day clearly as that was when I first visited Paris with my mom and sister. And now I’ll be going back there in a few days!!
