Tom Recommends

Last but not least. Our pastor Father Rob was on vacation this past week. so he asked me to write an entry for him on things to recommend. He writes these on anything and everything, and you can check them out at Rob Recommends. So, here was my entry while he was out of town.

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While Father Rob is taking a much needed vacation, I’ve offered to step in and do something I enjoy, talk about things I like (who doesn’t want to share what makes them happy). Last week my teenage cousin Phylicia came to visit from Connecticut, and we did a few of the sights in both Baltimore and Washington.

While in Baltimore we went to the National Aquarium (not the National Aquarium in DC, did you even know there was one?), which was fine (we spent about 45 minutes there), but the shining time for us was our visit to the American Visionary Art Museum across the harbor (where we spent 2 hours). This museum holds all sorts of different works of art, with paintings, sculptures, entire rooms made of sequins and beads, quilts, wooden toys and a life-sized chess set (Phylicia and I stink at chess, so we left the pieces where they were).

The museum is made up of three different buildings, the main building housing most of the exhibits. A middle warehouse with the chess set and a few sculptures along with a great “wooden meditation chapel and wedding altar” (I’d call it a jungle gym). The third building has a long line of wooden automatic tows, so you can push a button and watch the toys move. The third building also houses cars run during their annual Kinetic Sculpture Race (these look almost like floats but have to be man-powered and run over road, sand and in water, we may have a youth group trip to see this next year).

The artwork is by little known artists who just have some amazing talent. If you go sometime soon I’d definitely recommend making it to the third floor to read and see the 36 embroidery pieces chronicling a Jewish woman and her family through the German occupation during World War II. This was a heartbreaking and moving exhibit.

The next day Phylicia and I went into DC. We enjoyed the National Zoo (especially the new cheetah cubs). We then headed down to the Tidal Basin in Southwest DC, across from the Jefferson Memorial for a paddle boat ride. Here’s a pretty cheap ($8 an hour, though you’ll never be out that long) and fun way to see the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington Monument. You hop in a little boat and paddle around with a view of the monuments from the water, just talking and seeing the monuments, bridges and nature around you. The tidal basin is pretty small, so you’ve seen almost everything after 40 minutes, but it’s still a relaxing time where you just watch life around and talk to each-other.

After Phylicia left I had to entertain myself somehow, so I began reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons. While I haven’t finished yet (about 150 pages to go) I can already recommend this to anyone looking for a new author to try. Dan Simmons is new to me, but I may soon be reading everything he’s written.

This is a Hard Science Fiction novel (Hard Sci-Fi is stories in the future based on actual science and physics, for example, you can’t fly between planets in anything less than years). The book follows 7 pilgrims as they return to the planet Hyperion.

What really sets this book apart for me is the way it’s told. There are very strong religious themes. Each pilgrim shares their own life stories, with each story seemingly written by a different author. In one section a poet is the character telling the story and it took me a while to get used to the flair and writing style.

To be fair, this is one of four books in The Hyperion Cantos Series. I also should warn that there is definitely some explicit language, as well as people suffering serious doubts about their spirituality. However, one of the pilgrim’s stories actually brought me to tears (sobs actually), which has not happened with a book for a very long time.

Peace,
+Tom

posted by Tom at 9:33 PM