spring marches on and a trip to the theater

While I still have not had the time to get back to digging and planting the four tomato plants I bought Monday, I did walk around the yard and the shop yard taking pictures.

The pink climbing rose on the white crepe myrtle tree beside the garage,

the bluebonnets in the front yard,

the red bud tree I planted in front of the shop,

and the wisteria on the shop yard fence is just starting.

One of the things we tried to do Monday when we went shopping and bought the new washer and dryer was turn in the last of our old electronics that had been sitting around (an old iMac, two keyboards, and a printer) for recycling at Best Buy, only the store had closed so Wednesday we drove to the one in Sugar Land that was next to the Costco, our other destination, where we stocked up on a bunch of stuff. Today, the trunk of the car is filled with the flattened cardboard boxes from SHARE yesterday. I usually take it straight to the recycle container but it was drizzling when I left and I've got quite a bit of cardboard myself, like the box the water heater came in, so I'll add all that and do it today. The drizzle was supposed to be a storm front moving through bringing cool weather. If it rained, it didn't rain on us but it was a bit chilly this morning though two days from now we'll be back in the low 80s.

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My daughter Sarah works at a print shop and they do the printing for schools and businesses and theaters, etc. One of the theaters is the small theater-in-the-round, Main Street Theater. She occasionally gets comped tickets and so last Sunday she took my sister and me to see the current play by Thomas Gibbons, who (paraphrased from the playbill) explored the impact of race and racial equity on society through his play that was inspired by actual events that took place at the Barnes Foundation, “one of the world's greatest collections of impressionist, post-impressionist, and modern art”.  Permanent Collection is about an eccentric collector of Impressionist paintings and his Morris Foundation/gallery that upon his death he bequeathed to a black college and a new black director. The stipulation of the will, however, said that the displays could not be changed ever. The new director wants to display some of the African art that is in the collection as well as some of the other art kept in the storeroom that no one ever sees. He clashes with a white employee who has devoted his career to this collection (and perhaps thinks he should have been named the new director instead of an unqualified stranger) and wishes to honor the terms of the will, no changes to the gallery or art displayed. The undercurrent, of course, is that of racism and while the white employee claims he is not a racist, insulted to be called racist, that his objection is based on the educational value of the display and honoring the wishes of the founder, he still says things, makes a proposal that made the audience gasp. On the other hand the new black director seems hypersensitive to subtle acts/words of racism and quick to make the charge, understandable as the opening shows him being pulled over by the cops on his way to his first day at the Foundation for driving while black in his Jag which could very well have led to his death by cop as so often happens in real life. The white guy resigns, lawsuits are filed, protests are staged and in the end nobody wins because attempted negotiations fail, neither side gives in, the foundation goes bankrupt, the director is replaced by the creator's black personal assistant, and the collection is moved to another part of town albeit with no changes. The idea of the play that caused the head butting was who now owns the art/gallery and what rights do they have related to that ownership? Does the original owner who collected the works, established the Foundation, set up the gallery and controlled how the collection was displayed and who could view the art and when, have permanent control in perpetuity after his death (it was after all stipulated in the will that the display of the collection could never change) after bequeathing the Foundation to another institution when half the collection remains unseen in the storage room? The play was very good and had a 'talk back' session afterwards that we didn't stay for since we had at least an hour's drive to get back home.