Welcome 2014

A New Year will start in a few minutes in Europe - we have to wait six hours - in our thoughts we are with you and celebrate.  All our most positive wishes for a Happy New Year. Thank you for visiting my posts from time to time and thank you for keeping up the connections.  Friends should be like stars - you do not see them all the time, but you know they are there.

Change of Plans

In the last years we have had the pleasure of celebrating the New Year in Maine at the Atlantic coast.

We said good bye to the old year at sun set to the West on December 31 and went early to bed. Then we welcomed the New Year while the sun was rising from the East on the horizon.

We had a reservation again but the hotel called us because for several months heavy equipment is used night and day dredging the nearby harbor -  just in front of the hotel.

http://wellsbeachmaine.com/

We appreciated their warning and saw it for ourselves yesterday.  An easy decision -

this year we look at our old photos at home.

Wreaths

Today is the fourth of Advent which means the fourth candle on the Advent's wreath will be lit. http://german.about.com/library/definitions/bldef_cmas0323.htm

In the US the tradition is used in churches mostly.  Hanging a welcome wreathe on the front door during December is very much in the Christmas spirit.

There are no rules or limits to the decorating fantasies in choosing size, material and decoration. The two 'wreaths' on St. Ignatius church for example with their wreath shape fitting the windows….

In Manhattan we saw wreaths in the high rise office lobbies in unbelievable splendor, all sizes and colors.  But this wreath in a lobby surprised me nevertheless in its originality of a wreath interpretation.

The guard let me take a picture and it was then that I discovered that it was a Jeff Koons

art work from 2004 "Lobster Log".   Not at all a Christmas wreath but a year round welcome.

MOMA is a MUST

    

Whatever you prefer, quiet or lively, small or large, paintings or sculptures, you will find it in the MOMA.

Museum of Modern Art - founded in 1929 for 20th Century art.  Modern Masterpieces in every gallery.

Just 17 streets down from The Frick Collection but the difference between the two museums could not be greater. Both are an art treat.

  Eventually we felt our legs getting heavy and just wanted to sit down like our fellow museum visitors

at the video installation in the great hall.    www.moma.org

Traveling Girl in New York

                         

Vermeer's 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' is the magnet of the special exhibition in The Frick Collection

in New York (through January 19, 2014).  She is sometimes called the Dutch Mona Lisa.

Cold winds and snow could not keep the waiting line short in front of the entrance. As soon as we entered the Frick's family mansion we were envelopped in the warmth of the house. Not only the Masterpieces of the Mauritshuis but the outstanding paintings and sculptures of the Frick collection

kept us inside for two hours.  Warmed inside and out we left for the MOMA.

www.mauritshuis.nl

"Light and Learning"

December 12 and 13 are Study days in Boston College.  Then final exams and then Christmas break until the Spring semester starting January 13.

Among the campus libraries available, the most spectacular is Babst Library and Gargan Hall.  http://www.bc.edu/libraries/ugradsnewsletter/2010spring/article2.html

400 study spaces open 24 hours until December 21 when the doors will close. Now it is a large hall with a palpable intensity of 400 thinking and writing students.  

Will they get inspired by the stained glass windows in the different alcoves?  There is Archimedes  for Mathematics and  Michelangelo for Art History among the remarkable humans portrayed.

The scene from the Odyssey in the cave of the Cyclops may evoke some emotions!

Ready for Christmas?

The creche next to Babst library on the BC campus is now installed. A sure sign of the end of the Fall semester and final exams coming up.   Because of the mild weather no snow is covering the green grass yet and it seems out of season.  This evening we listened to the Christmas concert of the University Chorale and Boston College Symphony Orchestra and were given the chance of singing with them several Christmas songs.  

Hark! the herald angels sing: Glory to the newborn King! 

http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/music/calendar.html