Urgently needed break for art and nature

Since recent events, many frightening and some very heartening and exciting, are consuming a lot of attention and activist energy, I thought it was time for an art break.  A trip to Princeton University Art Museum, to be exact.

Current major exhibit is of Indian art, from the 16th and 17th centuries, with technical notes as well as narrative explanations. In there I bumped into two friends, and had a great visit.  

 We are all on the same page politically, and plunged into a mini meeting!  I was wearing my pussyhat pin and explained I don't do well with hats.  They had evidently just been saying something like that, too, and were interested in my pin.

Upshot was that I gave one friend a pin from the extras I now carry in my purse, and she pinned it on immediately, very happy with it, and with the safety pin part of the design.  I explained that it was two messages in one pin. 

They were not yet aware of the safety pin movement, so now they are. And the other friend who said she was not a pussyhat pin wearer, decided that she would put safety pins on her outfits from now on, to declare herself a safe person.  So this was a very happy meeting all around.  I feel like yeast!

Then I went off to the other galleries, to see a wonderful show about things bigger than ourselves, the sky, space, huge paintings and prints and anime of massiveness and response to overwhelming events. 

 Very instructive to see right at this moment.

And a visit to the early Roman and Greek gallery, to admire again the tesselated pavement from ancient Antioch.  It's one of the items I always pay my respects to in the museum.

This is where I force information on you, dating back to my days of studying classical Greek.  Tessera, also written as tettera, is the Greek word for four, or square.  Hence tesselations.  I like that the Greeks had alternative spellings and pronunciations for this word.  Maybe it was the passage of time that did it.

Moving right along...feeling very much better for seeing the art and the friends, on the way out, I noticed the forsythia in bloom, early, must be a sheltered spot outside the museum.  

And looking the other way, the background of the big Any Body Oddly Propped installation, outside the Museum, with people for scale.

Good, if freezing cold, afternoon. The longish walk to and from where I'd parked counted as my day's walk today.