We spent today in Jacksonville, FL (JAX) and we think/hope it was our last day of winter. People in JAX have been telling us this is the coldest weather they’ve had all winter. Well, thank you for sharing your cold weather with us! We still needed warm clothing today, but it was sunny and pleasant outside–for late winter. There’s another freeze warning out for tonight for JAX, but we are heading for Jupiter tomorrow and it better be warm! Jupiter is just north of Miami, and that’s pretty far south for winter to visit.
We enjoyed our afternoon field trip to the Cummer Museum of Art and its gardens. It’s rated as a gem by AAA, and we agreed. We saw very nice artwork.
By the all-American sculptor, Remington, of course. This piece is “Bronco.”
This is a picture of Mt. Washington in NH. We were at the top of Mt. W. in October 1972.
This room displayed some of the modern art. The photo at the left honors African Americans who struggled to achieve the right to serve in the military in WWII. Notice the piles of old AM radios on the floor beneath that painting.
The portraits below were done by Andy Warhol. They are:
Left to right, top row: George Gershwin, Gertrude Stein, Franz Kafka, Louis Brandeis, and Golda Meir. Left to right, bottom row: Martin Buber, Albert Einstein, Sarah Bernhardt, Sigmund Freud, and the Marx Brothers.
No Campbell’s tomato soup can in sight.
The picture below is by Normal Rockwell. I found the story behind it bittersweet. The woman needs to go to the Mayo Clinic for some detailed tests, so she and her husband decide to treat the journey as a vacation. They talk about it excitedly with their friends and finally make the trip. The woman knows something is seriously wrong with her, but decides to spare her husband and keeps that knowledge to herself. The husband finds out that his wife is seriously ill, and decides to keep that information to himself to spare her. Shades of “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry.
This should probably be titled “True love.”
After viewing the works in the gallery, we went out to the gardens. The azaleas were in full bloom and the designs of the gardens were beautiful to see and relaxing to walk through and enjoy.
The English garden. Spanish moss is growing in the tree on the left. The tree hasn’t leafed out yet–it’s been too cold!
The Italian garden.
This is a huge live oak tree.
And this is the live oak from the inside. Live oaks are monstrous, majestic Southern trees. I wonder how old this one is.
Between the museum and the gardens, we saw a wall decorated with fish sculptures.
After the Cummer Museum, we went to see Fort Caroline. The short story is: The Fort was originally established by the French, who hoped to develop the entire eastern Florida coast as a mercantile enterprise. The Spanish came and massacred the French. The French (not the dead ones) got mad and came back to massacre the Spanish. After that, the Fort was abandoned. My opinion: This is a perfect illustration of the waste of wars.
There is written history of the existence of the fort, but no artifacts have been found. The National Park Service has re-created a fort to provide a feeling for what things might have been like, but there are no claims of authenticity for the recreation. Our tax dollars at work.
The fort is actually (and historically) triangular. Speaking of no authenticity, it doesn’t look like any fort we’ve ever seen before and I doubt if it would provide much protection from any enemies.
The (non-authentic) cannon was aimed at the gate, not at the river. I guess it kept enemies from getting in by land. No gunnery was pointed at the river on the other side of the fort. Definitely not authentic.