Les had read that there was a local art festival in Centennial Park, so we went to check it out. After many years of attending and fighting crowds at the huge Ann Arbor Art Festival, it was actually a breath of fresh air to not only have fewer artists to look at, but also to have fewer crowds to squeeze through. And the quality of art was just as good!
One of our favorite artists was the couple Lucius & Lenda DuBose. Lucius has some fabulous bird prints that we were immediately drawn to, but they are also wonderful people who we enjoyed just chatting to for 20 minutes about birding, art, and print-making. We hope to see them again in the fall at the bigger Nashville Art Festival. We want to buy one of their prints for Les’s mom, but we need her here to help pick it out.
We did buy a gorgeous wood cutting-board after our onion-flavored watermelon fiasco of a week ago (see Signs of Summer post), but managed to mostly just really enjoy walking around without consuming too much.
To further our urban hiking experiences, we decided to walk from Sitar Indian Restaurant in the Vandy area to the Ryman Auditorium downtown. It’s a little over a mile and half and probably about 20 blocks. It doesn’t sound very far when you say it that way, but it seems far when you’re driving it because you’re going from one side of town to the other. It definitely seems even further when you’re walking it because you get out of the city, over the highway, and you feel like you’re in a land between two lands. The walk there was fine and interesting and enjoyable, but the walk back after the concert was quite rainy and Les couldn’t see a thing through his splattered glasses. I kept saying, “Hey, we’re creating a memory here!” but I was seriously regretting our decision to walk to the show, especially as our clothes got wetter and wetter and heavier and heavier and it seemed like the entire return walk was uphill. We thought about taking a taxi, but we couldn’t remember whether the roof light was on or off if it was available (I now know that if the number light is lit up, the taxi is available; if the top light is off, the taxi is in use) so we just trudged on.
When we finally got to our car, we felt a great sense of accomplishment, but decided that next time we would definitely take an umbrella at least . . . or drive.
My Erasure “5 Things” are:
1. The songs translated surprisingly well into acoustic, countrified versions. I didn’t know many of the songs, but Les (who did know most of the songs) was impressed with how good they sounded as country songs.
2. The crowd was wildly enthusiastic. For once, I felt like I could sit back and not clap at all and still be assured that there would be multiple encores.
3. The balcony is THE place to sit in the Ryman – great view, more elbow room, great sound.
4. Andy Bell said that he was so happy to be performing that he just had to lick the stage. He did, and told the crowd that it tasted just like strawberries. He’s darling!
5. They ended with Respect, which got everyone up and dancing and singing along very dramatically. This music just brings emotive singing-along right out of you!
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