Ummagumma

Here we finally are at the end of the weirdest year I've ever lived through with my summary of a lot of the stuff I experienced but I didn't bother to blog about. The baseball season was cut waaaay short due to the pandemic.  The Atlanta Braves had a exceptional year, missing the World Series by losing the seventh game of the National League Championship Series to the team that went on to become world champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers.  I blogged about all that but I did not mention how strange it was to have no baseball back to follow in the spring and early summer due to the pandemic.  That must have led to a pent-up obsession I had for the Braves after the season ended.  It was far too short and far too great to end. So I ended up purchasing the latest version of Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP21), a PC major league baseball simulation game that I have enjoyed for many years .  I simulated the 2020 Braves season several times and they kicked butt in most of...

A jet streaks across the predawn sky.  It look like it might have snowed but that is just a heavy frost. No time at Twin Oaks changes so little as the second half of December.  Whereas there are still a few leaves, still a little color in the first half of the month, the hard freezes kill and make flora go dormant before Christmas.  This month we had a lot of Sandhill crane action, many flocks headed south.   Although their numbers changed a little each day, we usually had two female deer and two older fawns hanging out in our woods.  Actually, the adults had been doing that all year.  Most of the photos of deer in this series of posts are of the same couple of does.  They each raised a baby at Twin Oaks in 2020, perhaps the most hopeful thing you could ask for.  Being a home for new deer simply accentuates the nature of "place" on our land. Some days were incredibly quiet in my woods.  Several cardinals, bluejays, dove and quail on sun...

 

Proof of purchase. One of my new year resolutions in 2020 was to go with Jennifer to New York City and check out all the major art museums.  In particular, I was going to spend an entire afternoon with the Gerhard Richter exhibit at the Met .  It was the first time in decades that his work had been assembled in the United States in a single, large exhibit (see tour video here ).   Longtime readers know of my great admiration for Richter (see examples here and here ).  He is the most distinctive and diverse living visual artist that I know.  His early years in the 1960's and 70's were spent with both photo paintings and abstract work.  His large abstracts in the 1980's were innovative.  Today they are among the most expensive and sought after paintings in the world.  Richter is still a huge art and cultural phenomenon today.  So, not being able to see this exhibit and make that wonderful trip to the Big Apple for several days is one of the ...