I drove the 20 minutes to the Parker Road station. I bought my day ticket while the cold wind blew. The train was full of resting people. I was not certain if the riders included homeless people, though I suspected they were among the numbers. When the train headed out at 7:28 a.m., the ride was uneventful to downtown Dallas. I walked to the courthouse and went through the metal detector. Then I went to the check-in room on the second floor to check in as a volunteer judge for the Dallas High School Moot Court competition. This is my third year to volunteer. The orientation went just about as always, with one exception. My cell phone decided to begin paying a loud song. I did not have the phone set on a song, but had only been using it to read the mock trial materials. I had had to read the mock trial materials on my phone because instead of bringing the nice notebook of materials which my assistant at work prepared, I had instead by accident brought a different folder. I also should have turned down the volume, I suppose, but I managed to get the phone off and not turn red.
I like to volunteer for the first round of the first weekend of this competition. Usually, there is a disparity of teams between the highly-skilled and the lovable-but-less skilled advocates, making scoring easier. It is all a good way to spend a cold morning in January.
This time the competition I judged (along with 2 other scorers and a "hearing judge") was a close competition. Though one school was better than the other, the kids all did great. By Noon I had finished my task.
I took the train and walked to the Dallas Museum of Art, through a very brisk chilly wind. I met my wife there so that we could see a couple of exhibits there. We very much liked the exhibition of Ida O'Keeffe's work. The narrative of the exhibit contrasted her with her more famous sister. While Ida was clearly talented and developed into a fine painter, she lacked the time to paint and the support of an influential gallery insider to promote her work--things her sister Georgia had through Stieglitz. I thought of this less in a Georgia v. Ida sense, but instead what an amazing thing that Ida O'Keeffe supported herself, created some amazing work and relied pretty much on her own self-sufficient skills. I know her life was a difficult one in some ways, but it seems to me that she got a lot done with far fewer advantages. I loved her lighthouse series. I was intrigued with how many cities she got to visit despite limited means.
We liked other exhibits as well--a collection of art by women artists, paintings from the McDermott collection of impressionist, post-impressionist and modernist works, and works by the German artists Gerhard Richter and Gunter Forg. the Forgs were quite inventive. I was only a bit amused by the lightly bohemian woman whose Texas accent was heavier than mine who exclaimed to the guard how she did not get the monochromatic paintings at all. For my part, the experiments with color and brushwork in the multi-colored abstracts was fascinating.
We drove me back to my car through heavy traffic. At home, I changed from my business suit. Then I picked up the back yard a bit, in biting cold. I threw Beatrice's carrot and she retrieved it a half dozen times. For dinner, we went to Market Street, where I had a platter with chicken breast, turnip greens, kernel corn and a dinner roll.
Tomorrow is to be colder but less windy. I usually prefer that. We watched "Doc Martin" on PBS. This was a good day.
from Dreamwidth, because two posts of the same text are twice as nice