November 28 -- afternoon

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I bought a coloring book at Tattered Cover.  I've been hearing for a while that people find coloring to be very peaceful and meditative.  One of my friends has been urging me to try it.  I read reviews on Amazon several weeks ago.  Some people don't like thick printed lines in their coloring books.  Some don't like itty-bitty tiny spaces to color in.  I bought a book that has a wide variety of different styles of pages, so I could experiment and see what *I* like...........

But I had nothing to color with.

So I found an art-supply store about a mile and a half from our hotel, and hiked down there in the afternoon.

I went close to the state capital.

Closer crop of the above -- you see what I mean about lots of pigeons.  (Wondering, now, if they have any falcons nesting on the big buildings.  They certainly have enough pigeons to support some falcons!)

My path to Broadway (on which the art-supply store is located) ran through a park.  We are looking south at the library (the green and red bits at left) and the art museum, which is in the sort of kite-shaped thing just right of center (behind the marble columns and things) and in the sort of castle-y gray thing at right.

This is the way the camera remembers this stuff.

This is much closer to what I remember seeing.  That castle-y thing at right reminded me of Lord Farquod's castle (from the movie Shrek).  Tall, crenelated (sort of), monolithic gray, with few windows.  Having spent time in that part of the art museum, I can say now that I think it works pretty darn well as an art museum!

The state capital is east of us.

Right across the park, to the right of us, is the county building.

Here we are almost directly in front of the capital.

I have made it down Broadway to Meininger's.  It was kind of a creepy walk.  Hardly any pedestrians, but plenty of apparently homeless individuals, sitting on park benches, sitting on other benches, sleeping underneath overhangs on buildings......  If there had been a lot more "ordinary pedestrian traffic" I mightn't have felt uneasy, but when there were 5 or 10 homeless people for every person who looked like they had a plan in life, well, I thought it was creepy.



There were lots of people in Meininger's who looked like they had plans.  I picked out some colored pencils, and a sharpener.  I enjoyed color and pattern.  These were big -- an inch in diameter at least, I would guess.

These were at least as big as the round ones.

I didn't stay in the art-supply store, luxuriating in possibility, because the walk back was long-ish, and cold and gray, and packed with disconcerting persons.



I admired a fancy former auto dealership.

Look what's next door!  A curvy monolithic red-brick building.  Pretty much antithetical to the older building.  And yet -- they seem to get along.

Here's the library (and those jagged bits at left are part of the art museum).  This stuff is 15 minutes (on foot) from the hotel.  Just have to make it through the park which has a bunch of homeless people.  (I did not encounter anyone who seemed threatening.  Only one person spoke to me, and that was to ask for cigarettes, which I do not ever have with me.  Maybe I'm unreasonable to not like having to walk, alone, by so many seemingly indigent people.)

Dramatic sky, through the hotel-room window.

As it turned out, my evenings were filled with backing up pictures, trying to stay on top of my volunteer work, and my regular getting-ready-for-bed activities.  I never got the colored pencils out of their shrinkwrap.

I mean to try them at home!

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