from hotel window, Fredricksburg VA

(8.5x11)

(8.5x11)

Cathy Gatland's post on Wednesday reminded me of these ballpoint-pen drawings I did from a hotel room in Fredricksburg, Va.

This is the kind of thing that happens to me regularly: I was driving to Asheville, NC, in my new car to see my brother and take a watercolor workshop, when, late Saturday afternoon, as I was driving on I95 my car started decelerating. Pedal to the metal, but she no go.
There were two lanes of merging traffic on my left, and two lanes of merging traffic on my right, and I thought for sure I'd be rear-ended before I could get over to the shoulder.
Then, miraculously, a police car appeared in the rearview mirror; he stayed behind me until I pulled over, beneath an overpass.
I waited in the car for a towtruck and was towed to the dealer, which was closing for the day and closed Sunday. (The police and the safety patrols who cruise that area were all so kind and solicitous; it was only later I realized that it may have been because those snipers were on the loose then, in that area.)
So I was stuck in Fredricksburg until at least Monday ... Turned out to be longer, but that's a tirade for another day.

I did finally make it to Asheville--in a rental car. Perhaps in a later post I'll tell you about how I drove the rental into a ditch in the Smokey Mountains and was extricated by three cars of (very nice and calm) men.

I guess I must've left my art supplies in the car, and all I had to draw on were these blank pages from a book of Irish myths I was proofreading and the pen from hotel room desk.


A friend is coming to visit for a long weekend, so I may not be posting for a few days.
A reminder to myself:

Just Keep Quiet and Nobody Will Notice

There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges,
Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies.
I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,
Because I think that is sort of sweet;
No, I object to one kind of apology alone,
Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own.
You go to their house for a meal,
And they apologize because the anchovies aren't caviar or the partridge is veal;
They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests,
And they apologize publicly for their wife's housekeeping or their husband's jests;
If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn't by Scott,
And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot;
They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can,
But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American.
I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them,
I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spend in contradicting them,
Because you are very rude if you let them emerge from an argument victorious,
And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious,
And what particularly bores me with them,
Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them,
So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf,
Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.

Ogden Nash