Music for Sunday - Dinosaur Jr.

I've sneaked this in for you but please find the two photo posts of my visits to Amherst and Mount Holyoke College, below this!

I've been posting a lot about Amherst and surrounding towns of South Hadley (home of my daughter's school Mount Holyoke College) and I wanted to tie a local band to the whole thing. I thought about The Neilds who are local folk due. They're excellent. But my favorite Five College Band is Dinosaur Jr. which hatched at my alma-mater UMASS.

This is actually a prett laid back performance from frontman J Mascis and his band. You're lucky I didn't try to make you listen to one of many earspliting clips from their performances at clubs in the area.

This clip shows the campus pond and the area around it where concerts are held. This is an old one; before J Masic and I went totally grey. Dinosaur Jr. is UMASS all-over. Though the kids over there have gotten either all tatted up or very preppy clean-cut. Where's the revolutionary spirit? ;-) It's all a grand conspiracy, I tell ya!


Looks like I'm a Valley Girl for the long-haul. I can imagine all sorts of places I want to travel to. But I can't imagine not coming home to The Pioneer Valley.

Shadow Shot Sunday & Part Two of my Amherst/Mount Holyoke College Day Trip

See Part One here.

Shadow Shot Sunday is being brought you to by The Pagan Sphinx blog this week, for a change of pace.

I went down to Mount Holyoke to surprise my daughter (SG1) and DIL (The Beloved) with a visit and maybe lunch and stopped several places along the way to take pictures. But there are just too many stops and too many photographs to document them, I'll post these for Tracey's Shadow Shot meme. I eventually meandered my way down to the campus. It was like summer today. Sunny and clear and hot. The First day all week that's been really nice.


During one of my stops, I discovered I'd forgotten my cell phone and couldn't call the girls to tell them I was in the area. So went about getting lunch on North Pleasant Street.

click on all photos to enlarge to a nice size

and ate it on a bench in front of this fountain. After lunch,I continued to travel through downtown traffic and down rt. 116 to my daughter's campus to look for her, sans cell phone. But not before I stopped and snapped these photos.

Mary Lyon Hall

Iron fence shadow in front of Mary Lyon Hall on the Mount Holyoke College campus South Hadley, Massachusetts
I then came upon this festive scene. Nice but it will be like trying to find a needle in a haystack with all these kids spread out over the expansive lawn

But there they were! So I asked them to pose, which they did with ease, dontach think? :)

My girl is radiantly happy. It's spring. She turned in her thesis today and she's in love.

Thanks, Tracey from Melbourne, for hosting Shadow Shot Sunday

A Visit to the Smith College Museum of Art

Smith College Museum of Art

Robert Motherwell

This college campus museum, in bucolic western Massachusetts, is one of our local art treasures. With a nice sampling of art, it offers more than the typical number of art works by women. Here is a sampling of the works I most enjoyed. I threw in two of Robert Motherwell's paintings for Steve. Examining the Motherwell paintings in real life (for the first time; because truthfully, I used to just walk pass them) gave me a greater appreciation of his work. I still can't say I'm a huge fan but I do see the emotion in them and sometimes even playfulness and glee.

I apologize for the glare on the photos of the paintings. It was difficult for me to avoid due to both a lack of expertise with a camera and the lighting in the building.

Hopper
WP told me that this Northampton, Massachusetts mansion was the setting for the film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Janet Fish

Alice Neel

Robert Motherwell

Degas

Seurat
Woman with a Monkey

small panel of a study for A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Beaugereau

click to enlarge and notice the details
(I loved this one)

Emma Amos

One Who Watches
1995

(another favorite "new artist discovery")

Carmen Lomas Garza

The Blessing on Wedding Day
1993

Mary Bauermeister
Eighteen Rows
1962-1968

Margarita Azurdia
La Libertad
1970-1974

More photos of this visit can be viewed on my Picassa web album.

I hope you're staying warm and dry. And if you live somewhere sunny and mild, I don't want to hear about it unless I can come visit! ;-)