The Year of Months

We continue our Year of Months on Valentine's Day. Alice Walton (the only daughter of Sam, and the "wild" child ) build the art museum Crystal Bridges in 2011 (opened 11.11.11) for about $1.2 billion, and has filled it with her own art. The museum sits on 150 acres of the old Walton family backyard in Bentonville, AR, and is, quite frankly, beautiful.  But, as always, we started in on a United flight out of Houston. This time a small Embraer that is an easy plane to get to like. (If you can wrangle an emergency exit row) On the plane The airport serves Bentonville, Fayetteville, and Springdale in Northwestern Arkansas. It was a little father from the hotel than I had thought it would be, but our Uber driver did give us a tour of the area, driving us by all the new Walmart properties (with our permission, of course). Truly astounding. The hotel, called the 21C Museum Hotel , part of a small chain, was a very short walk from the museum property. Vie...

It seems that Texas History is forever being talked about, and disputed. One thing that all us Texans know, however, is that the Texas Declaration of Independence was signed in Washington on the Brazos on March 2, 1836 as the brave defenders of the Alamo in San Antonio were about to lose their lives. So we took a road trip as part of the Each Month of the Year trip. It was a pretty day, and a nice drive up the museum. Washington On The Brazos , the city, is long since gone (mainly because the good citizens of that city bet on the steam ships and a ferry crossing rather than on the railroads. Whoops!) but the site now has a museum and an old house that was once the home of the last President of the Republic of Texas. (Y'all knew we used to be a republic, right?) We did get a t-shirt: and saw some heritage pigs: One interesting aspect of the museum is that they are not trying to sweep the legacy of slavery under the rug.  They talked openly about how one of ...

The start of 2020 is the start of a new adventure, as mentioned earlier. We did spend New Year's Eve in New York City, but we did not go to Times Square. We stayed in The Standard hotel down on the High Line, and had a very nice dinner at The Cookshop, a place MSEL found on Frank Bruni's list of favorite NYC restaurants that he visits. We had party favors, and a glass of free champagne. It was fun, and delicious.  And we saw many shows. The Tap Dancing Nutcracker (and other vignettes)  from the Dorrance Dance Company. We saw Moulin Rogue (The Broadway Musical) We saw Little Shop of Horrors and we saw David Byrne's American Utopia.   We saw Fancy Art and the Empire State Building, all lit up.   and a roiling sky, when we had to say goodbye. A nice start to the year.