5:26 p.m. - 2003-08-28
Mobile Museum
I just got back from the big trip to the Deep South! Yeah, you thought Huntsville was the Deep South, didn't you? Think again, my sweets. Huntsville might as well be up North.
It was a two day trip that felt like three weeks. Mobile is just so far away, culturally, if not actually physically.
I had a great time.
I made it to Birmingham in good shape. The route was far easier than the one Bruce and I usually take, and even though I was shaking as soon as I hit the city limits, I did some breathing exercises and within a few minutes pulled up in front of the gallery. It was the most amazing thrill - like a graduation of sorts. I can drive!!
So after some ecstatic dancing around, Wendy and I got in her car. It's a 10 year old Grand Marquis with no air conditioning (did ya' catch that? No air conditioning. We are in Alabama, folks. In August.) that Wendy refers to as "The Land Barge". In a few hours we were at the Mobile Museum of art, and a few hours later plopped ourselves on her friend Jo's doorstep, pajamas in hand.
It's too much to talk about coherently. So once again I fall back on a list of the highlights. They were:
1. A humongous moth we saw outside a gas station in Chilton county. It looked like it was covered in army camouflage.
2. "The Quilts of Gee's Bend", the show we went to Mobile to see. It was impossible to describe. Quilts made by the women of Gee's Bend, a poor town in the Black Belt. Ah, you should all go look it up on Google. It was very inspiring and beautiful. We also got to see "Voices Rising" a show of Alabama women's art. My friend Lucy had work in this show, and Wendy knew most of the other women.
3. Sitting at the Fairhope town pier with Wendy and Jo's son Joel, watching the sunset over the water. Sigh. It would have been insanely romantic if I had been with just Bruce and the goofy mullet fish hadn't been jumping out of the water every couple of minutes. Although Bruce would probably find the mullet romantic. Or at least scientifically interesting.
4. Ever heard of Fairhope, Alabama? Oooh, ya'll should go live there. It's a fabulous little art town. Very funky. Also very inspiring if you just bought a rundown house that you want to turn into an artist's extravaganza.
5. Wendy and I and the Land Barge getting caught in the most intense storm I have ever been in whle driving through Chilton County. It was terrifying. We had to pull over twice. The first time we stopped for about thirty minutes at a gas station, and the wind was so strong it was rocking the Land Barge. I've never seen such lighting and thunder. By the time we finally got home I was too wiped out to drive. Exhausting.
0 comments
