In this week’s Angelus News column, I give my take on a recent visit to Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation, a world-class collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Modernist paintings.
So overwhelming was the bounty that I ended up collapsed on a bench, gazing mutely for several minutes at a tiny Cézanne of a white plate, a bunch of grapes, and a single peach.
In other news, I am reading The Intellectual Life by Fr. Antonin Sertillanges, OP, first published in 1921–who says I’m out of step with contemporary culture?–boning up on Rembrandt and van Gogh for my Jan. trip to Amsterdam, ascertained from my airbnb host there that I can do a laundry at her place and put it on a drying rack, booked a shuttle bus from Tucson to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport for Dec 22 when I fly to NYC for Christmas, made a Walmart Superstore run for the Thanksgiving cookies and snacks I’ll bring to my friends in Santa Maria, CA, that week, watered the oleander out back, vacuumed the car, filled the birdfeeder for the finches, and on the advice of a friend from Maine just my age have started doing this Japanese exercise routine, only takes 3 or 4 minutes, called Radio Taiso.
According to an article I read, the whole country performs these exercises every morning in synch and then they are all cheerful and limber and live to be 120.
All together now!
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