Blue Planet Journey

Playing our ukuleles on the intact Renaissance-era city wall surrounding Lucca, Italy.   Ci ty wall surrounding Lucca , Italy. One of the joys in playing the ukulele is that, because of its size, you can take it with you when you travel. So far, airlines have been good about allowing us to bring our ukuleles on board, placing them in the overhead compartments. We use soft cases, so the space used is a bit more flexible than when using a hard case, although we have to be careful that they don't get smashed when a heavy roll-away is thrown in the same compartment. Caroline started playing the ukulele soon after the Covid-19 pandemic shut everything down in 2020.  I started playing the guitar again, to accompany her, but a few months later I picked up her uke and I was hooked. Wesley started soon after, followed by Mignon. Caroline begins to play the uke, March 2020. Initially, I accompanied Caroline on the rhythm guitar. By December, Caroline, Wesley, and I were all playing. In ...

  Caroline and I were passengers on a transatlantic cruise (Florida to Barcelona) on the Royal Caribbean ship, the Wonder of the Seas .  There's a lot of art onboard, as you might expect from a floating hotel and amusement park. Each stateroom has some artwork, of course, but there is also art in the common areas: hallways, stairwells, and places where people congregate. This blog is devoted to displaying some of the art that I saw practically every day, and usually multiple times per day, as I walked up and down the hallways and the stairs. I don't claim that this sampling is any kind of random selection. However, I was struck by this recurring theme... unsmiling, young, mostly white women. Why this selection?  Who picks out this art?  Men and older women were rarely featured.  Of course, art doesn't just get hung on walls.  I found it in the presentation of food, patterns on the carpet, and even in the playground. I don't know what the women's r...