Why the Yankees Beard Ban is a Good Idea!

 

In 1973, George Steinbrenner (1930-2010) bought the New York Yankees. Three years later, he instituted a no-beards policy Yankees players. Steinbrenner was not a nice man, but he did restore the team to its past glories–11 American League championships and seven World Series.

 

Whatever you might think of Steinbrenner, he put his money where his (big) mouth was rather than pocketing profits like so many MLB owners these days do. He was never the richest MLB owner, but no one ever heard him cry poverty. (How unlike the Pohlad family that owns the Twins and insists they are a “small market” risk, though they are baseball’s  8^th richest ownership group!!)

 

George Steinbrenner was a conservative Republican whose no-beard rule was initially a reaction to the long hair/hippie look of the 1960s and 1970s. The policy has never been reversed. If you want to collect big New York bucks, ya’ gotta shave.

 

The Steinbrenner ban has been called anachronistic, an assault against freedom of expression, and a whole bunch of other things. It has never been called a good idea–until now! It turns out that old George was a wise arbiter of taste. He has saved home team fans from some of the worst beards ever to disgrace a human face.

 

Warning: The beards below are not just ugly, they’re downright scary. If you have small children, you should keep the below images hidden until they go to bed. A mere peek could distress their sleep worse than the monsters living under their beds. You too should limit yourself to an image or two at a time. It’s embarrassing when full grown adults need stuffed support animals to ward off nightmares.

 

Mike Fiers apparently fancies a post-MLB career in mathematics. He’s wearing the beginnings of a Fibonacci spiral on his face.

 

 

Jake Fraley will make you scurry to high ground to keep watch for invading Norsemen. Stay alert so you can flee with your family before they land.

 

 

Sergio Romo is retired now. He is presumably in search of Pancho Villa to help reclaim Aztlán on behalf of Mexico. 

 

 

 

Brian Wilson scalped an Amish guy.

 

 

 

Justin Turner isn’t human. He’s actually a deranged, possibly rabid leprechaun. 

 

 

 

Have you ever seen the movie Deliverance? Kevin Quakenbush was in it. Cue the banjos and run! 

 

 

If President Chester Arthur had added a full beard to his bushy sideburns, he would have been Brian Schlitter’s doppelganger.

 

 

 

 

Josh Harrison is what ‘bots will look like after the AI revolution conquers humankind.

 

 

 

Will someone please tell ZZ Top that their missing brother is hiding in Colorado under the assumed name of Charlie Blackmon?

 

 

 

It doesn’t get any more disturbing that Brandon Marsh. He was voted Most Likely to Became a Psychotic Murderer by his peers at the asylum. 

 

 

 

 

 

Now do you see why the Yankees ban beards? 

Murder Your Employer is Wicked and Funny

 

 

Murder Your Employer: Book 1 MacMasters Guide to Homicide

By Rupert Holmes

Avid Readers Press, 2023, 388 pages.

★★★★

 

Who hasn’t thought, “I could just murder my boss?” Most people really mean they just want that boss to go away–preferably to a different solar system. But what if you actually meant it?

 

Murder Your Employer is a wickedly funny book filled with puns, ironic names, and ways to dispatch human targets. Some methods would make Rube Goldberg proud. The MacMasters Conservatory for the Applied Art is a Hogwarts for homicide. None of the students know where it’s located. If they are accepted, handlers meet them, blindfold them inside a windowless van, and drive, fly, and sail for several days in circuitous ways. Is the campus in North America, England, Eastern Europe, China, or just around the block? They will never know as they cannot leave the cloistered, sprawling campus and will exit the same way they entered. MacMasters has it all: a professional staff, a science center, laboratories, a market, a lake, athletic fields, a bamboo forest, hinged and unhinged fellow students, a castle, and gardens. Exercise care when visiting the gardens. Some plants are designed to “delete” (i.e. murder) an employer.

 

It's very expensive, but one of the four main characters, Cliff Iverson, has been sponsored by an unknown benefactor. Think Great Expectations with a nasty twist. He was rescued by watchful MacMasters staff after bungling an attempt to push his boss, into the path of a subway train. Cliff worked as an aeronautics engineer for Woltan Industries, but was fired by Merrill Fielder for pointing out a flaw in the design of a new aircraft that could kill hundreds. Fielder only cares about how profits would sink if the plane was taken off the market. He was also responsible for the suicide of one of Cliff’s close friends, hence Iverson believes Fielder worthy of deletion.

 

MacMasters holds sanguinary values, but it is not amoral, which is why some students are uniquely dismissed. Four “Enquiries” must be answered satisfactorily before a plan to delete an employer is approved: “Is the murder necessary? Have you given your target every last chance to redeem themselves? What innocent person might suffer from your actions? Will this deletion improve the life of others?” The narrative is told via Iverson’s journal and from the voices of two other students and that of Dean Harbinger Harrow. The time period is not specified, but internal clues suggest the early 1950s.  

 

The other two students are Gemma Lindley, who works in the health care industry. Her boss at St. Ann’s Hospital, Adele Underton, is a gorgon and blackmailer. Adele steals all of Gemma’s ideas and passes them off as her own, uses Gemma as her personal lackey, and does virtually no work of her own. About the only people who tolerate her are men she attempts to snare, though most don’t last long.

 

We also meet “Dulcie Mown,” who strikes everyone as familiar. She’s actually Doria Maye, a fading but attractive actress who dearly wishes to delete Leon Kosta, a movie producer who sleeps with every aspiring actress and makes Harvey Weinstein seem a candidate for the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He has it out for Maye because she rebuffs his continuing carnal advances, refuses an order to have sex with an executive to seal a business deal, won’t give her a role from a script she discovered, tells her she’s a has-been, and wants to demean her by making her do cartoon voices. Kosta also employs a spy to watch Doria and tries to ban her from the studio lot.

 

Could the world do without such creatures? MacMasters enrollees had better hope so. It has the ultimate pass/fail system. Students undergo a rigorous curricula in everything from weapons training, handling reptiles, and deadly uses of erotica to concocting untraceable poisons, devising disguises, and feigned incompetence–the latter a useful skill if, for example, you wish to dispatch someone with a bow and arrow. They must produce a “thesis,” individual plans for executing their bosses. That thesis is only complete when they do so; if they are unsuccessful, a MacMasters staff member will delete the student with a painless injection!

 

Author Rupert Holmes has also worked in films and penned “The Piña Colada Song.” This novel is a bit like that novelty tune: clever, goofy, and sometimes cheap. I loved it!

 

Rob Weir

The Briar Club: Another Great Read from Kate Quinn

 

 

The Briar Club (2024)

By Kate Quinn

William Morrow, 432 pages

★★★★

 

The Briar Club is another affirmation that Kate Quinn is one heck of a writer. In her latest novel she takes us the Washington, D.C. in the 1950s, a time of both optimism and the Red Scare. The title derives from Briarwood House, ousHousea boarding home for women. Leave it to Quinn to personify the house without making it sound hokey. The house “speaks” to readers in interstitial chapters, an important mystery-building device.

 

Quinn excels at characterization. Briarwood House is run by Mrs. Nilsson, who is so grumpy and rulebound that boarders nickname her “Doilies.” To say that she cuts corners does an injustice to right angles. Her husband’s absence is somewhat enigmatic, but young Pete and his maligned, cross-eyed sister Lina also live at Briarwood and are as delightful as their mother is acerbic.

 

Quinn populates Briarwood with a cast that brings mayhem, sisterhood, and color that contrasts with the stodgy grayness of Doilies. Grace March is the first to add touches of lightness. She’s gregarious and the proverbial “pistol,” a rulebreaker who can charm with offers of sun tea. Choose your metaphor for Grace’s room-freshening project that evolves into painting vines that extend down the staircase from her fourth floor rental. When Mrs. Nilsson is absent for her weekly card game, Grace holds impromptu parties in her room that become ever-more-elaborate dinners in which each resident, Pete included, cook a specialty. You could add “by hook or crook,” as no one has a lot of money. One of the book’s more unusual features is the inclusion of recipes–from colcannon to strawberry fool–used by the Thursday night cooks.

The other core residents are Nora Walsh, Reka Muller, Felicity Orton, Beatrice Verrette, Claire Hallett, and Arlene Hupp. Quinn gives each her own chapter that provides deep background. Grace is the pivot around which most things occur, including men sneaking in and out, a no-no in Doilies’ book. Nora is there to escape from her family, including her crooked cop brother who steals from her. She works at the National Archives and finds herself pursued romantically by Xavier Bryne, who is either a gangster or a “businessman.” Reka, once Professor Muller, is a widowed Czech refugee struggling to make ends meet by shelving library books whilst grumbling over the constant bawling of Orton’s baby. (“Fliss” is English and her American doctor husband is stationed overseas.) Bea is a junior high phys. ed. teacher who pines for the days when she was a star in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. (Think A League of Their Own.) For their parts, Claire works for Senator Margaret Chase Smith, which irks Arlene, a diehard nationalist who works for the House Un-American Activities Committee and thinks Rep. Joseph McCarthy is a hero.

Count on everyone having secrets they hold close to the vest even while bonding with each other (except the snitty Arlene). Among the things that makes Quinn an engaging writer is that she parcels out information in drips rather than rushing torrents. She also makes ancillary characters come alive, even those with mere cameos. In The Briar Club, most of those in supporting roles are male, with the notable exception of Sydney Sutherland, the wife of the social-climbing Barrett who hopes to be a communist-hunting U.S. Senator like his father. Other men who play roles in The Briar Club are Pete, Xavier, a hood named George, Nora’s male family members, jazz musician Joe and his Black friend Claude, Bob McDowell, and FBI agent Harland Adams who dates several of the Briarwood House women.

If this sounds complex, allow me to tantalize you with more: criminal gangs, Gustav Klimt, an overwhelmed mother, women trying to break the 1950s glass ceiling, stolen tomatoes, baseball, battering, forbidden love, a Betty Crocker bakeoff, Operation Longhorn, two in-house murders, spies, and a surprise ending that leads to an even more unexpected coda. All of this takes place against the Korean War and the rise and fall of McCarthyism. It is to Quinn’s credit that none of these seems labored or didactic, even when Quinn slips on occasion with a few details that seem too modern.  Add splashes of humor and The Briar Club is like The Thursday Murder Club meets a satire of the 1950s, murder, espionage, and proto-feminism.

Rob Weir 

 

  

Steampunk Quilts? You Betcha!

 

 

  

StitchPunk (through July 13)

Domestic Partners (through June 15)

New England Quilt Museum

18 Shattuck Street

Lowell, MA

 

On a recent trip home from Maine Emily wanted to stop at the New England Quilt Museum (NEQM). I was only mildly interested and planned to walk about and take photos instead. Into every life a little rain must fall and, in my case, threatening weather was a good thing. I went inside the NEQM and adored the two featured exhibits.

 

 

 

StitchPunk is, of course, wordplay on Steampunk, but it was also a marvel of imagination and creativity. First, though, let me say a few words about steampunk. It was all the rage in the late 1990s and into the first decade and a half of the 21^st century. The term is associated with dreamers and science fiction writers who use the trappings of the Victorian world, but replace modern technology with shiny brass gears and steam power rather than our current (pun intended) reliance on electricity and petroleum. Steampunk ardor has cooled a bit, but it still has allure. Its critics associate it with hipsters doing hipster things and those who dislike science fiction for its assumed lack of “science” and its alleged animus toward “progress.”  

 

 

Courtesy of a book by Simon Webb titled The Real World of Victorian Steampunk, I’m prepared to tell such people that they are nuts! Do you remember that Elon Musk design for a vacuum tube rail system? A steam-powered version was successfully demonstrated in 1867. In1903, the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane, right? Nope! Several steam-powered airplanes got off the ground in the 1880s and 1890s and traveled further than the flimsy gas-powered wood and canvas box of the Wrights. Solar power was proved a good idea in 1878, and in the same century steam-powered buses,  ocean-going boats, telephones, and fax machines were operational. So too were electric cars capable of reaching over 150 mph and the prototypes of Skye and computers. The very world of oil and gasoline to which fanatics so zealously cling came to dominate for the same reasons they remain: the discovery of oil led self-interested investors to promote machines using it and demote steam machines, some of which were superior. So there!

 

The show at the NEQM doesn’t seek to rekindle such battles, rather it focuses on stitchers and quilters who wanted to do create unique and unusual fabric art. Like steampunk writers, a lot of what they do upsets traditionalists. Is it a “quilt” if it contains wire, dryer vents, gears, hardware, jewelry, mannequin faces, and glass jars? Why not? As the below pictures show, it’s cool stuff no matter what labels you want to slap on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would suppose the wooden marionette fashioned by Bruce Rosenbaum, Isaac Singer: The Time Stitcher doesn’t fit rigid definitions either, though many of the pieces you see are decidedly sewing-related. (If you don’t know, this is the Singer associated with a famed line of sewing machines that still bear his name.)

 

 

 

 

 

You only have a few more weeks to catch Domestic Partners, which is more on the calm side–in both design and intent. Fiber artist Dawn Allen pays homage to the farm animals of her youth as well as domesticated companions, and woodland critters. Her show skirts the borders of “Ahh, cute!” but in a good way.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rob Weir

Thinking ‘Bout Sports

Right now every sport except gridiron football is in high gear. I’ll overlook the fact that basketball and hockey should have crowned their champions at least six weeks ago if I get a break from the NFL. Can’t stand the latter! I’d much rather view real football (aka/soccer) than watch steroid-enhanced monsters slap each other on the butt and pretend to play an exciting sport that ends in 6-3 scores. 

 

 

 

In the National Basketball Association I’m rooting for the Boston Celtics, who have the most talented team in the NBA. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Indiana Pacers or the Western Conference champ upsets them. The Celtics can be maddeningly  lethargic and play as if they are disinterestedly mailing it in. This is particularly the case of Jaysson Tatum, who gets by too much on reputation rather than his box scores. I hope he wakes up and wins his kudos. If he doesn’t, it’s not out of the realm of possibility the Celtics might move him rather than give him a max contract. 

 

 I’m rooting for the New York Rangers to win hockey’s Stanley Cup, though my head tells me they won’t get past the Florida Panthers. I’ve nothing against the Panthers, except that they play in Florida. I refuse to root for anything or anybody from that IQ-challenged state. (I don’t even like the weather!) If the Rangers fall, I really hope  the Edmonton Oilers win the Cup. It’s been 31 years since Canada hoisted a Stanley Cup and it will go wild when a Canadian team is finally triumphant. Few in Sunrise, Florida will look up from their pina coladas if the Panthers to win. 

 

 The Major League Baseball Season is nearly one-third finished with its162-game season. Fans still seem to like the pitch clock, but MLB continues to face challenges. One of them is the luxury tax, which was supposed to bring parity. It has not. May is almost over and just 11 (of 30) teams have a winning record. Eight are in large media markets, with only Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Cleveland representing so-called small markets. 

 

 MLB has produced some surprises. I did not expect the Yankees to be in first place or the Red Sox to have a winning record. I love the fact that Tampa Bay and the Houston Astros have sucked. Tampa often plays “dirty” baseball and everyone knows about the “cheating” Astros. I also delight in seeing the Twins and Angels struggle, Minnesota because they are perennial tomato can playoff fodder for real contenders; the Angels for pathetic management that has wasted the career of Mike Trout. 

 

 I’ve been heartened by the success of Cleveland and Kansas City, though both need to start putting butts in the seats or pressure will mount to move them. This is also the case in Cincinnati, Miami, and Pittsburgh. Instead of expansion—heaven forbid still another wave of AAA ball masquerading as the big leagues–MLB needs to either institute a salary floor or move failing teams. Montreal ought to be choice number one; it’s twice as large as Charlotte, another frequent candidate. (BTW, Nashville has a more rabid baseball base than Charlotte.) 

 

 MLB has decided to abandon Oakland for Las Vegas—desert heat, hookers, and gambling, what could go wrong? I’m glad that Oakland is giving MLB the middle finger to the tune of just 6,000 fans per home game; there’s no reason why fans should line the pockets of the greedy. I’d love to see the Dodgers fall flat as they try to buy a World Series. They won’t though; they’re just too good. 

 

Pro sports need new awards categories. The Cleveland Guardians probably won’t win the World Series, but Stephen Vogt should be Manager of the Year for keeping them in the running and for taking over from Terry Francona, surely a future Hall of Fame skipper. 

 

 There should be a Most Outstanding Player for whomever is the best at their craft, and the Most Valuable Player should be reserved for the one who truly means the most to a team. For instance, Mike Trout is as perennial MVP candidate, but is he really all that “valuable?” Each year he won or was considered, the Angels finished near the bottom of their division. Did they need Trout to finish fourth? 

 

 I’ve been thinking about this during the NHL season. If you are voting on the best player in the NHL, you start considering Nikita Kucherov, Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, Auston Matthews, Leon Draisatil, and Connor MacDavid. Only the last two are still playing for the Cup. However, the most valuable is Artemi Panarin of the Rangers. It’s impossible to imagine New York’s success without him. 

 

 By the way, the most valuable player on the Celtics is Derrick White.

 

 Several other general thoughts:

       Can people just give Caitlin Clark a break? She’s played only a handful of games in the Women’s National Basketball League and gets flak for not being dominant. Gee, how can that be? She only went from college ball to competition against the finest female competitors in the world! What she has done is triple attendance everywhere she has played.

·          Shame, shame, shame on black commentators and players pulling the race card on Clark! Is it her fault that others see her a proverbial Great White Hope? Or that endorsements have come her way? Isn’t the real villain the NBA, which provides half of the WNBA budget? Let’s see, Clark is the consensus #1 pick and makes $76,500; the minimum NBA salary is $1.1 million for pine-riders!

·          Think the networks regret shelling out over $7 billion to broadcast NASCAR? Auto racing has devotees who go to the track, but it’s a terrible sport for TV.

·          Golf is even worse on TV. Plus, the PGA/LIV split has really taken a divot out of its viewing audience. 

 

 Rob Weir

Small Towns: Cheshire County New Hampshire

 

In Southern New Hampshire nearly every settlement from Keene in the east to Manchester 69 miles westward is small. Keene is a vibrant college town of roughly 23,000 people, which makes it a metropolis by the standards of Route 101. The next biggest place is Peterborough, which has 6,400 residents. It's famous for a folk music venue that has operated for many years and for the MacDowell residency program where visual artists, writers, architects, and other creative people gather in the woods to collaborate and work on their projects. MacDowell was where Thornton Wilder wrote “Our Town” with Peterborough as his model. However, I would like to concentrate on three smaller towns: Dublin, Harrisville, and Hancock. 

 

 

 

Perhaps you’ve heard of Dublin population 1,500 and can't recall why. If you have ever picked up Yankee Magazine or the Farmer's Almanac, they are published in Dublin. The center of town is a classic New England white village, the exceptions being the fieldstone library and the red Yankee Magazine building. Dublin is in the middle of the Monadnock region, a region in which to enjoy nature and then kick back in a town dotted with small inns and restaurants. There are three large lakes within the town limits, the largest being Dublin Pond. It's also home to the genteel Dublin School, a private college prep institution of just 170 students spread across more than 500 acres–roughly three per student! Dublin has long been an unconventional town for New Hampshire–more crunchy and arty than sawdust- and plaid-covered. It has quite a few devotees of the Baha'i faith, courtesy of a 1912 visit from Abdu’l-Bahá, the Persian-born son of the founder of Baha'i. In the summertime it hosts the Walden Music School.

 

 

 

If you drive up the hill by the parking lot of Yankee Magazine Publishing and travel about 5 miles you will come to Harrisville. It has a special place in my heart, because when I was an undergraduate at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, the very first book I read in a labor history class  (my eventual graduate school specialty) was Factory under the Elms by John Borden Armstrong. It profiled Harrisville and taught me a lot about then-alien concepts: macroeconomics, the immigrant cycle, demographics, and ethnographic history.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harrisville was–and is–a textiles village. It was named for Milan Harris who opened the first woolen mill there. It is a picturesque village of just 984 people and much of it looks as it might have appeared in the 19th century. There are old brick and stone factories, mill ponds, canals, and raceways that provided water power to run the machines. Think Lowell, Massachusetts in miniature. Much of the town has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and Harrisville Designs still produces yarns and cloth for purchase at the factory store. Harrisville is a friendly place, but because it is so small it depends on a few people doing a lot of things. I struck up a conversation with Frederick, who was repairing windows sills and pointing bricks and blocks. He is one of just two people who oversee the historical complex. His partner Cat, a graphics design artist, was gracious enough to put aside her work preparing upper stories of factories for housing and business conversion to show Emily and me around the old mills. “Old,” though, is a bit of an oxymoron. There are historic photos to be viewed and a relatively large weaving and twisting room still using classic textile machinery, but much of the post-industrial space has been beautifully renovated. Bringing retrofitted buildings into the 21st century has required removing walls, installing modern furnishings, and replacing inefficient energy sources with solar power, heat pumps, and up-to-date furnaces. Harrisville is a fascinating place just to walk around and imagine yourself in a different time period. It even has a general store that pretty much takes care of all local needs from crackers to coffee.

 

 

 

Hancock was actually our primary goal for the day because it is home to the Farm at Wolf Pine Hollow. Every May it becomes a riot of color because its 118 acres are planted in more than a half million tulip bulbs. The village proper has 1700 people but they are spread out and the center looks as if there couldn't contain more than a few hundred. Hancock is quiet and operates at a casual pace. There are several cafes, but don't expect fast service. Somewhere it has a bell fashioned by Paul Revere, but that didn't seem exciting enough to seek out. Like most of the towns in Cheshire County it’s located in watersheds of the Ashuelot and Contoocook rivers, hence there are lakes dotting the landscape, including extensive Nabanusit Lake.

 

Cheshire County New Hampshire is a place where you go to operate in slow gear. That is unless you wish to climb the Monadnock ridges or burn energy paddling in the ponds. We opted for taking our time to poke about, stop, and enjoy the views.

 

Rob Weir

Chihuly Collection a Must-See

 

Chihuly Collection

Morean Arts Center

720 Central Avenue

St. Petersburg, Florida

 

There’s scarcely a major art museum in the country that doesn’t have at least one piece of glass from Dale Chihuly. If you’ve been to MFA Boston, there’s a soaring installation of green spikes in the restaurant space and foyer that fronts the American wing. It has been variously described as a giant icicle, a bottle brush, or a thin evergreen tree. Those who live in Western Massachusetts can also see a Chihuly’s composition of entangled tendrils in the lobby of the Mt. Holyoke College library.

 

There is a special thrill in seeing a lot of Chihuly’s work in one place. To do that, you have to go places such as Las Vegas, Oklahoma City, Seattle, or Florida. I recently took in the Chihuly Collection in St. Petersburg, Florida, which is part of the city’s downtown Morean Arts complex. I was enthralled.

 

Chihuly hails from Washington State and, to his legions of fans, is considered the dean of modern blown glass in the United States. After dropping out of college, he returned and obtained his bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington and an M.S. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also established a university glass arts program said to be the first in the country. (Some dispute that.) He also has a New England connection in that he obtained a second masters, a MFA, from the Rhode School of Design. Chihuly holds numerous honorary degrees and has been showered with awards and honors around the globe. He even worked for a time on the Venetian island of Murano, where I’ve been lucky enough to visit.  

 

Before delving into the St. Petersburg collection I should note that Chihuly has his detractors. I’m not sure if it’s still true, but for a time he held the distinction for having the largest blown glass piece in the world. For some critics that was emblematic of Chihuly’s penchant for showmanship over artistic merit. It probably doesn’t help that Chihuly exudes a piratical look with a patch over his left eye that is the result of a 1976 auto accident in London that blinded him in that eye. (It was ironically the result of smashed glass.) More to the point, though, it left him unable to use a blowing tube. In other words, he designs his works and consigns it to others.

 

Personally, I’m not a fan of the work at MFA Boston and am put off by the snaky evocations of the one at Mt. Holyoke, but I’m happy to place Chihuly at the forefront of American glass arts. Most museum glass displays bore me with their rows upon rows of cut crystal, decanters, bottles, vases, and showy centerpieces for rich people trying to impress other rich people. Chihuly’s work is more organic, energetic, and vibrant. Much of it exudes life as well as light. The St. Petersburg collection consists largely of selected works from various series he has worked upon.

 

One of these is of baskets, some of which were inspired by the Navajo or Japanese design. Quite a few are simply products of his imagination. These are the first thing you encounter at the Morean. 

 

    

 

I am very fond of his evocation of the sea. Some of the most impactful pieces are seen from below as you gaze upward at ceiling-mounted displays. It’s as if you are underwater amidst a bed of shapes, foliage, and colors.

 

 

Speaking of colors, Chihuly embodies the ethos of Japanese minimalism in a stunning collection of spheres, orbs, and globes resting in a boat-like receptacle like giant marbles. Some spill out and we see how perfectly they are formed and polished. They refract with such exactitude that the eye sees a spectrum of color. 

 

 

 

 

It’s a personal taste to be sure, but my least favorite are his chandeliers, flowers, and hanging lights. Some of these evoke Persian art; others are faintly Art Deco. Not that I turn down any one of them as a gift!  

 

St. Petersburg is loaded with museums, but I recommend you make the Chihuly Collection a must-see if you find yourself there. (For the record, it’s the only place I could imagine living in the entire state!)

 

Rob Weir