"There's no place like home..."

"Country Mouse" and his wife and youngest daughter made it back home from the "Big City" last night!  There's no place quite like home.  The trip to New York was incredible, and we were able to see most of what we were hoping to see - the Empire State Building, the 9/11 Memorial, Rockefeller Center, Central Park (including Tavern on the Green and the Balto statue), Times Square, Broadway, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the "Met"), the Natural History Museum, the Dakota (where John Lennon was shot and killed), the Love Statue, the Charging Bull statue (and the Fearless Girl statute too), Wall Street, Battery Park, Ellis Island, the Statute of Liberty, and yes, the no longer infamous (at least in our mind) NYC subway system!  We tasted perhaps the best Banana Cream Pudding that I have ever tasted at Magnolia Bakery.  We paid $4 for a Diet Coke (and argued with the street vendor who tried to jip us by giving us a can instead of the bottle that we paid for).  We ate some great food.  We saw a great musical (Wicked).  Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Bronx.  New York City is an amazing place.  But there is still no place like home. 

The trip to New York reminded me yet again of one of the themes that I have come back to a number of times in this blog - expand your boundaries and test your horizon.  I have never been a big fan of art.  Just ask any one of our children about the time we visited an art gallery on a trip to Bern, Switzerland, more or less because it happened to be a rainy day and we had nothing else better to do.  I saw a sign on the wall next to a painting that said "Picasso" and recognized that he was a famous artist (okay, I am not that big of a blockhead).  I commented that the painting was kind of strange and had a lot of blue color in it.  Our youngest daughter told me, "Duh, Dad.  It's from his blue period."  Wait, Picasso had a blue period?  The next Picasso was mostly yellow, so I quickly stated, "This must be from his yellow period."  Nope.  I guess he didn't have a yellow period (but in my defense, apparently he did have a "rose period").  Anyway, I decided to take a visit to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) and really tried to enjoy it (and not make too many dumb comments).

For the most part, I thought the Met was pretty great.  We ended up in the "Modern Art" section, and some of the paintings were a little bizarre, but some of the paintings were really incredible.  I tried my hardest, but I just couldn't refrain from making a comment on one painting, which was called "Photo is the color of my dreams" by an artist named Joan Miro.  I just don't get it.  The entire painting is the word "Photo" painted in one corner of a large square canvas, with the phrase "This is the color of my dreams" in French (I think).  That's it.  The accompanying description made a rather big deal about the fact that the artist also painted nearly invisible lines, "like a primary school student would use to write straight".  Wow.  I wish I would have saved some of our children's kindergarten paintings, we probably could have made a fortune!  All kidding aside, for the most part, I really enjoyed our visit to the Met.  And I am sure that some people - perhaps true art aficionados - really understand and appreciate Miro's painting too.  It's just not quite for me, at least for the present time.

So it's good to broaden your horizon.  It helps change your perspective.  I know our visit to New York and "Photo is the color of my dreams" changed mine.  But, I will say it again.  There's just no place like home...