Dec. 12, 2024, Lenox, MA – A year and a half after receiving a grim cancer diagnosis, not only am I cancer-free, but I feel younger and more spry than I did two years ago, which gives me the sense that I’m getting away with something! Or, maybe that’s just me being me – over-thinking everything, as unsettled by good fortune as by bad.
Since my reading of pop culture shows that we’re all about the journey, here’s the first leg, second leg, and below is the third leg.
(May 22, 2024) It has been an adventurous year for me, and here are snapshots of Caitlin’s trip north to drive me to Boston for my “three months out” visit with surgeon #1, followed by four days of restorative rest, awesome eats, and more walking than I’d done all year, at Caitlin and Jonathan’s swank townhouse in Virginia, just outside DC.
The statue below, and the National Portrait Gallery, were the only attractions attractive enough for me to want to get off my duff and leave Chez Falls – of course, the kids made sure the old man got there.
Caitlin and I became enamored of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, introduced to us by David McCullough via The Greater Journey, which we read at the same time a while ago.
I became aware of “Grief,” after reading “The Education of Henry Adams.” Henry Adams, great grandson and grandson of presidents, was a recent college grad when his father brought him to London in 1860, as his private secretary, while he served as Abraham Lincoln’s ambassador to the Court of St. James.
One of these days I’ll publish snapshots from the National Portrait Gallery and the train trip, maybe. Oh yeah, I enjoyed all three floors of the gallery in a wheelchair, helmed by the mysterious Lady in Red. I gladly dropped into it after the hike from the Metro to the gallery (it’s next to where the NHL Caps play)!
Home via Amtrak, with Maureen and Bill taking care of the Rensselear-Lenox leg.
P.S. What I find most wonderful about the statue is that there is no name anywhere near it, no symbol of any religion; but there is room for a score of people to gather, regardless whom or what they may need/want to grieve. As directed by Adams, Saint Gaudens made it so that viewers cannot tell if the shrouded figure is female or male.
Robert Gould Shaw Memorial
P.P.S. Saint-Gaudens most famous sculpture is the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, located at the entrance to the Boston Public Gardens, which was wrapped up and being worked on when we stopped to visit before leaving town, alas. The hit movie “Glory” is about Capt. Shaw and the African-American 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Shaw spent his honeymoon at his bride’s family estate in Lenox, which is about a block from mine!