Studio Ruthe

On the road again

Tomorrow morning I'm into the car and away to Chicago. I'll be gone about 12 days, and I've got plans for every single day including after I arrive tomorrow night.

It's an eight hour drive. I have as company a book on tape about Joseph Needham, he of the eighteen volume Science and Civilization in China. I've been listening to the first two CDs as I drove around yesterday and today. I think this will be great company for my long trip.

In addition to all my friends and relatives I'll be getting my Japan Rail Pass, which I almost forgot. Making plans for both China and Japan has been challenging. I'm sure it would be better to make two trips, but I don't have that kind of money, or stamina for two long plane trips.

After six days in the city I'm going up to Door County with Raja and several other friends who all go back 30 years or more. Should be a great reunion.

Good friends, good art. What more could I want?

Got up early this morning, picked up my neighbor, Mary, and drove to Columbus, Ohio to meet with raja and friends at the art museum, have lunch, see a very special art show. Not the Monet, which you might think if you followed the art museum link, but the Aminah Robinson show, Along Water Street. I saw her work in a huge show at the Brooklyn Museum in 2006 and was very impressed. She combines, drawing, paint and fabric to tell wonderful stories. You can see some of her work here. I've been nagging raja to meet me at the show since I found out it would be at the museum. Columbus is halfway for each of us.

It was a lot of driving, but we had a good visit and I loved the show; well worth the trip. I found it a little hard to say goodbye, but maybe we'll meet again soon, in Chicago. I'll be going there next month.

Driving, snow and public transit

Much of the week I was focused on snow that came on Wednesday and is continuing in wetter forms today. I was supposed to go for Hanukah candle lighting and dinner on Wednesday night, and I watched the snow collecting on the driveway with some apprehension. My car is garaged under my apartment. I back out of the garage, pull forward and make a sharp right turn up a slope in the driveway, an ideal setting for getting stuck in the snow.

I have become something of an apprehensive driver in my old age. I keep telling myself I know how to drive in snow. I come from Chicago; I've been driving in snow for fifty-some years, one time as 18 inches of the stuff was falling. I never let a little thing like weather stop me, until now. I persuaded my landlord to come and shovel the slope in the driveway, (he is supposed to do it, part of the lease) and I got out. On Thursday, even though it was still snowing, I took the car up the driveway without giving it a second thought, and couldn't figure out why I am being so fearful. Aging effect, I guess.

Learning to drive and getting my own car was very important to me. I always saw the car as liberation and drove fearlessly all over this country and in some other parts of the world. I don't feel that way anymore. I would cheerfully give it up if we had better public transportation. And while I'm on the subject: why can't we have high speed trains like they have in Japan. In fact, why can't we have all kinds of great public transit like they have in other parts of the world.

The distance from Tokyo to Kyoto is about the same as the distance from Pittsburgh to New York. The Japanese train covers the distance in about two and a half hours, and gets you to the center of each city. On my last trip from New York I left the city about 5:30 pm and I did not get home until 12:30 am. That was flying, not driving. Why is it that the Japanese can have these wonderful services and we can't?