More DAY 3 - But leaving heavier subjects behind, also on this day we visited the Courtauld Institute, home of Manet's Bar at the Folies Bergere. Some paintings you have to press your face up against to really appreciate. Late nineteenth century works such as these where the brushstroke really matters are among them. And if ever there was a perfect feminist painting by a man, this is it (you have to imagine that you are the man in the mirror to the right making the waitress miserable). Incidentally, I wonder if Manet got royalties for this painting from Bass and Veuve Cliquot? I had no idea product placement went so far back.
But the best part of this Monday, and what made it really London, was evensong in Westminster Abbey. Interesting that as you walk in the newer north entrance, staring down upon you in stone stand are not ancient saints, but Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer along with other 20th cent. martyrs. And being inside the most magnificent church in the English speaking world was uplifting to say the least. Go to "Panoramic Views" on this site and you can basically see what I saw, only better. Darn internet. Did I even need to go?
Yes, because you can't pray evensong on an internet site. How fitting to recite evening prayer (Cranmer's best service) right next to "Poet's Corner," where either in sculpture or engraving most of the great English writers and poets and musicians are commemorated. Westminster also has prominent icons. A reminder that beauty (literary, musical or visual) finds its home in the Church... or at least it would had the Protestant Church not sent her packing. Cheers to the Anglicans for keeping that nasty Reformation iconoclasm from becoming an enduring trait.