Movin' on

We left our new best friends in Columbia, MS on Saturday and had a two hour drive to Mobile, AL. It was a much more interesting city than we expected. It has a real New Orleans feel to it with the ironwork balustrades and still a bit of a hangover from Mardi Gras (Mobile people say that Mardi Gras first happened in Mobile. It had some interesting old homes and a great art museum.

The Mobile Museum of Art is the largest art museum along the Gulf Coast from New Orleans to Tampa. This was kind of serendipitous. Linda Kenney told us if we got to Mobile we should go to the --- show at the --- museum. We couldn't remember what the --- was, so we assumed it was the art museum (actually it was the Pompeii exhibit at the Science Museum--we'll have to catch that when we go through again at the end of March). This is a fairly small art museum, but there were 6 great exhibitions taking place. There was a photo show displaying 40 works by Ansel Adams, great black and white photos of the grandeur of national parks and other Western scenery. There was also an exhibition with 51 of Linda McCartney's photos of the sixties, mostly shots of the Beatles and other famous musical groups. Another was photos by William Christenberry who has been taking photos of Alabama scenes over 40 years. He would take a picture of the same building every few years. For example, there were about 6 photos of a restaurant from the time when it was active and prospering through its gradual decline into just a pile of rubbish overgrown with kudzu. Another exhibit was "Howard Cook: Drawings of Alabama," 45 pencil and crayon drawings the artist did in 1934. "In Concert," by Annette Brown, who's kind of a modern Linda McCartney, with about 50 photos of modern rock stars. And "Portraits of the Founding Fathers," which was a collection of historical paintings.

We are now in Orlando. Yesterday we took a long bike ride, enjoying the sunshine and warmth. It is great to be free of responsibilities for a few days. Today we have a meeting from 9am to 3pm with FIND which is the Florida Interfaith Network in Disaster.