On a cold winter's night

This week, I was in Boston, cold as I cabbed it from the hotel to work, and back.  The Amtrak station in Stamford is impossibly bright in the early morning before the sun has actually risen, and I find a spot where I can watch the board to see if the train will arrive on time.  I eye the line and dunkin donuts, but stick to my guns that it is like drinking gasoline and do not get any.

I wait until the appointed hour and walk over to the bridge above the train track.  A local train always comes in before the Amtrak train, and I look to see it arrive and leave before I descend to the freezing track below.  This week the train was only about 5 minutes late, but it was very cold and I found a bit of shelter in the stairwell.

Returning from Boston on Thursday evening the train was late leaving South Station, 'a slight delay' and I was waiting for it in the unglamorous back-bay station, which reminds me that urban renewal in 1976 wasn't all that fine.  The train is about 30 minutes late so I made my way back up the escalator and got myself a plain old-fashioned dunkin donut which is so heavy it keeps you full and warm for many a fine day.  Almost as good as a New York street pretzel for that purpose

 The train arrived and I found my way home.  I got a text on they way that said that I shouldn't be alarmed that a pipe had frozen.  The contractor had failed to insulate an outside wall, and a pipe burst and made a sponge out of the living room ceiling.

 Arriving home, there were many a bucket around and most of the water had been caught.  I jotted a note to the contractor with the news, and suggested that he might want to go after the subcontractor who had failed in his mission.   He called and said he'd make good.

There are five fans running in the living room now, drying out the ceiling which has a bout a dozen holes carved in it.  And ,  I am sitting by the fire enjoying being warm on this cold winter night amid this long cold snap.  Coldest week in 17 years.  So they say.

Rothko's magic lavender cloud hovers over an orange sea

The two Rothkos at the Yale University Art Gallery positively glow.

Send me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Send me your roofscapes.

Generations of Yale art majors painted the wonderful rooftops of New Haven.  The view from the Art Gallery is great, but the view of from the top of the old 'A&A' building, now the School of Architecture.  If any of my old friends have pictures of the paintings they did of the skyline way-back-when, I'd love to see them. 

Maud Cook

Went to the renovated, restored, expanded Yale University Art Gallery today.  Fantastic, so worth a journey.  Maud Cook is just as enchanting as she was when first I met her in 1972.  Maybe more so.  Here's Maud and another portrait by Thomas Eakins.

Tribute to Carl Sandburg: Fog

Fog

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and them moves on.

Carl Sandburg

A tribute to Robert Frost

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

BY ROBERT FROST

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.