The frugal travels of a vagabond

The USS Constitution, launched in 1797, is the world's oldest floating commissioned naval vessel; she is most noted for her contributions in the War of 1812 against Great Britain, when she captured numerous merchant ships and defeated 5 British warships

The Warren Tavern, founded in 1780 and named after General Joseph Warren, one of the revolutionary leaders killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill, is reportedly one of the oldest pubs in MA and one of the most historic watering holes in the country

The Old North Church, built in 1723, is the oldest standing church building in Boston; it's the location from which the famous 'One if by land, two if by sea' signal is said to have been sent prompting Paul Revere's midnight ride of April 18, 1775

The Leonard Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge, completed in 2003 as part of the Big Dig (the most expensive highway construction project in US history at the time), spans the Charles River and connects Boston and Charlestown

The skinniest house in Boston, across from Copp's Hill Burying Ground, is 4 stories but only 10.4 feet at its widest point facing Hull St tapering to 9.25 ft wide at the back; the 2 bedroom, 1 bath home with 1165 sq ft sold for $1.25 million in 2021

Two centuries after the original signal lanterns alerted colonists, President Ford began the nation's bicentennial celebration by lighting what is called the Third Lantern as a new signal to guide our country with hope and fortitude into its third century

The 1759 Johnston organ in the Old North Church was the first constructed of parts totally sourced within the colonies; nowadays, the bellows operate with electricity but, in the event of a power failure, it's still possible to use the original hand pump

This equestrian statue of Paul Revere was modeled in 1885, then cast in bronze in 1940 for this installation; depicting Revere's famous midnight ride, the statue (Old North Church in the background) is one of the most photographed spots in all of Boston

The Paul Revere House, built c. 1680, was his colonial home during the time of the American Revolution; the oldest house in downtown Boston, it was one of the first historic homes in America opened to the public when it began receiving visitors in 1908

Faneuil Hall, built in 1742, has been called the Cradle of Liberty for it was here that colonists first protested against the Sugar Act in 1764 and established the 'No taxation without representation' slogan

The Old State House (1713) is renowned for hosting the first elected legislature in the New World; it is the oldest public building in Boston and today hosts a museum where visitors can see John Hancock's coat and tea from the Boston Tea Party

Boston Common was used as a camp by the British before the American Revolutionary War, from which they left for the Battle of Lexington and Concord; Frog Pond is home to the summer spray pool but is transformed into an ice skating rink in winter

Boston Common marks the start of the 2.5 mile Freedom Trail which is easily followed thanks to pavers on the sidewalk; this bronze 1869 equestrian statue of George Washington sits in Boston's Public Garden, directly adjacent to Boston Common

The original King's Chapel (1754) bell, cast in England, was hung in 1772 but cracked in 1814 and was recast by Paul Revere; it's the largest bell cast by the Revere foundry, the last one cast during Revere's lifetime, and has been rung at services ever since

John Hancock served as president of the Second Continental Congress and was the first and third Governor of Massachusetts; before the Revolution, he was also one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, having inherited a mercantile business from his uncle

The Boston Latin School was established on April 23, 1635, making it both the oldest public school in the Americas and the oldest existing school in the US; on its original site is the old Boston City Hall, completed in 1865

The Old South Meeting House, built in 1729, gained fame as the organizing point for the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773; five thousand or more colonists gathered at the Meeting House, the largest building in Boston at the time

Sam Adams's 1768 Massachusetts Circular Letter calling for colonial non-cooperation led to the city's occupation by the British resulting in the 1770 Boston Massacre; Adams had been a brewer, leading the Boston Beer Company in 1985 to introduce Samuel Adams Boston Lager

I entered the museum through the rotunda of the 1941 National Gallery of Art West Building (the original building and made of pink TN marble); an underground tunnel connects this building to the I.M. Pei-designed East building

The tunnel between the National Gallery of Art West and East Buildings features a cool waterfall as well as the largest, most complex light sculpture by Leo Villareal featuring 41,000 LED nodes(there's also a large gift shop and cafe)

Madame Picasso, Pablo Picasso, 1923; the East Building houses the Gallery’s growing collection of modern and contemporary art; a just-completed $70 million renovation adds 12,250 sq ft of new exhibition space

ONE through ZERO (the numbers), Robert Indiana, 1978-2003; I always thought zero was the smallest number so how does Indiana rationalize calling this work ONE through ZERO?

Still Life with Pineapple, Henri Matisse, 1924; planning for the East Building began in 1968 — on a site set aside by founder Andrew W. Mellon in the 1930s for the Gallery’s future expansion

Green Marilyn, Andy Warhol, 1962; completed just a month after her suicide in 1962, Marilyn is part of one of Warhol's most iconic series; works from this series have sold for $4.5+ million

Sacrificial Moment, Mark Rothko, 1945; after seeing this work, it's easy to understand why Rothko went to painting blocks of solid colors; I just fail to see the talent here

A Corner of the Moulin de la Galette, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1892; scion of one of France's great aristocratic families, Lautrec suffered physical maladies and stunted growth due to genetic factors and was encouraged to draw during his convalescence

Glass Stratum, Robert Smithson, 1967; I've seen pieces much better than this from Bob and David!; it would be fascinating to understand the dynamics of how pieces get selected for the Gallery

Look Mickey, Roy Lichtenstein, 1961; this work is notable for its ironic humor and aesthetic value as well as being the first example of the artist's employment of Ben-Day dots, speech balloons and comic imagery as a source for a painting

Still Life with Milk Jug and Fruit, Paul Cezanne, c. 1900; I was relieved to see the East Building didn't contain solely modern works but also included works from European masters

Glass Case with Pies, Claes Oldenburg, 1962; I work with very simple things that I come across while walking to work, Oldenburg explained in 1964, such as a certain kind of pastry or certain kinds of displays or presentations

Balm, Bridget Riley, 1964; Riley's mature style, developed during the 1960s, was influenced by a number of sources, including the French Post-Impressionist artist Georges Seurat

Ex. 5 - Mind's I: Translation #12, JESS, 1965; when I visited DC earlier in the summer the East Building was still closed with work ongoing to repair significant structural weaknesses in the building's design

Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), Jackson Pollock, 1950; though the work contains no lavender, the webs of black, white, russet, orange, silver, and stone blue industrial paints radiate a mauve glow that inspired Clement Greenberg to suggest the title

The Farm, Joan Miro, 1921-22; Miro described this piece as a summary of my entire life in the countryside; it was given to museum by the daughter of Ernest Hemingway (he had purchased it for 5000 francs as a present for his wife)

A Black Bird with Snow-Covered Red Hills, Georgia O'Keeffe, 1946; the National Gallery is one of the largest museums in North America and art lovers could easily spend an entire day here

Ground Swell, Edward Hopper, 1939; this work was in the collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art from 1943 until it was purchased by the National Gallery of Art in 2014 when the Corcoran dissolved

Classic Landscape, Charles Sheeler, 1931; Sheeler has painted the classic landscape of the modern age: streamlined, machine-made structures (a Ford car plant) situated in a nature that has been irrevocably transformed by the progress of industry

The New River Gorge Bridge, completed in 1977, is the longest single span arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere and third longest in the world; the bridge is the third highest in the country and is featured on West Virginia's state quarter

I did 3 hikes when I visited the Gorge saving the Kaymoor Miner's Trail for last; that trail goes from the rim of the Gorge down 1000+ steps to the old mine (I went a little farther to the river itself) and then back up again

One of the largest and most productive mines in the Gorge, Kaymoor produced almost 17 million tons of coal from 1900 to 1962; whitewater rafting on the New River began commercially in 1968 with some of the best rapids (class III-V) in the eastern US

The first confirmed breeding pair of bald eagles in the New River Gorge established a nest in the winter of 2009-10; they came back to the same nest the next year with the number of bald eagles growing over time to almost 40 last year

The River has exposed 4 seams of coal, considered among the best bituminous coal in the world; the smokeless coal from 50+ mines here once fed the boilers of the nation's trains, factories, and power plants, and its coke fueled the nation's iron furnaces

The New River Gorge Bridge is made of COR-TEN steel; the unique quality about this steel is that it does not require the bridge to be painted saving millions of dollars over the years; country singer Hank Williams died in nearby Oak Hill

New River Gorge National Park is the country's newest national park (2021); the misnamed New River is one of the oldest in the world (360 million yrs) and, like the Nile, unusually flows south to north from originating in NC to emptying in the Ohio River

The Kaymoor mine at the bottom of the Gorge was connected to the town at the top by a single-track, gravity incline, which lifted workers and equipment up a 1,000-foot slope at a 30° incline; 200+ coking ovens operated at the mine during WW1

The Gorge is home to the world’s biggest BASE jumping festival: Bridge Day, held annually the third Saturday in October; on that day you can rappel from the Bridge or opt to walk across a 24 inch wide catwalk suspended 25 feet underneath the Bridge

The National Park includes 53 miles of the River; when driving across the New River Gorge Bridge you have limited views and can't appreciate the height of the bridge nor how spectacular the bridge is beneath you

Nearly 50 coal towns once existed in the Gorge with railroads built along both sides of the river to ease transport; hellbenders, a rare type of gigantic salamander and the largest in North America, live in the Gorge with some reaching 2 feet long

Portrait of a Young Woman, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1633; a larger portrait of this unknown young woman, also painted in 1633, is in NY's Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Square of St. Mark's, Venice, Canaletto, 1740s; for Canaletto, the Piazza San Marco was the quintessential view of the city, and he painted the square dozens of times from a variety of vantage points

Don Vicente Isabel Osorio de Moscoso y Alvarez de Toledo, Conde de Trastamara, Francisco de Goya, 1787-88; I loved the cute dog trying to get the attention of this young boy with a very long name

Still Life with Flowers and Fruit, Jan van Huysum, ca. 1715; the most successful flower painter in history, no other painter could match van Huysum's technical virtuosity or his ability to create luxuriant arrangements of fruit and flowers

Louis Comfort Tiffany, Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, 1911; Tiffany commissioned Sorolla to paint him and his dog, Funny, while at Tiffany's Long Island estate; it is unusual to see Tiffany on this side of the canvas

Garden in Taarbaek, Edvard Munch, 1905; this seaside resort (this view is probably from his hotel room) on the outskirts of Copenhagen is presented in one of Munch's most serene compositions

SunForceOceanLife, Ernesto Neto, 2021; this temporary exhibit ran through September 2021 and allowed visitors to explore a complex labyrinth of interactive pathways, all while suspended in mid-air

Jeanne Pissarro, Theo van Rysselberghe, 1895; much more than the other Pointillists, this artist was devoted to portraiture; he also owned Signac's The Bonaventure Pine which is now part of the Museum's collection

The Harvesters, Charles Angrand, 1892; the LAVA Awards are held annually to honor excellence in books relating to the principles of liberty, with the Charles Angrand Award being the grand prize award for artwork

Rue Ravignan, Paris, Maximilien Luce, 1893; using a high concentration of small dots, Luce transforms this Montmartre street into an eerie scene tinged with a melancholy atmosphere of emptiness and isolation

Young Woman Powdering Herself, Georges Seurat, 1889; the artist is best known for devising the technique known as pointillism; his large-scale work A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is one of the icons of late 19th-century painting

The Road, Achille Lauge, 1893; the Pointillists believed that juxtaposed dots of pure, complementary colors - ie blue and orange - meticulously applied to the canvas produced a more shimmering, vibrant effect on the eyes than colors mixed on a palette

Brumas (Mists), Olga de Amaral, 2013; Amarai's radical experimentation with color, form, material, composition, and space transforms weaving from a flat design element into an architectural component

Sunset on the Lagoon, Venice, Henri-Edmond Cross, ca. 1903-04; I've always been attracted to works by the Pointillists for their ability to colorfully portray scenes just by using perfectly placed dots of paint

Girl Reading, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, ca. 1890; the innocence of childhood fascinated Renoir who was famous for his radiant paintings of children; the tenderness and warmth seen here are characteristic of Renoir's best work

SunForceOceanLife, Ernesto Neto, 2021; this crocheted work filled with plastic balls was like an adult version of a McDonald's playland; it illustrates that art isn't always static and can come in many forms

SunForceOceanLife, Ernesto Neto, 2021; one of the artist’s largest crochet works to date, this piece takes inspiration from his long-term commitment to the art, culture, and traditions of various cultures that form Brazil

The New England Aquarium opened in 1969 and hosts 1.3+ million visitors annually; it's conveniently located on Boston Harbor and has a stop on the Blue Line of Boston's subway system

This harbor seal looked so sad!; I would much prefer seeing him out in the wild where we could visit each other without the glass barrier; I can remember visiting here as a child and do recognize the educational value in such a facility

Myrtle, the Aquarium's green sea turtle, has lived here since June 1970 (I probably saw her when I visited as a kid!); she is 90+ years old, weighs 500+ lbs, and eats lettuce, cabbage, squids, and brussels sprouts

The 4 story, 40 ft wide Giant Ocean Tank was built first and then the Aquarium was completed around it; when it opened in 1970, the 200,000 gallon Giant Ocean Tank was the largest circular ocean tank in the world

The weedy seadragon can be found across southern Australia including Tasmania; they have been successfully bred in captivity at a few aquariums, including the Georgia Aquarium and Monterey Bay Aquarium

I had looked forward to seeing the giant Pacific octopus here in the Olympic Coast exhibit but it had died; the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary protects 135 miles of shoreline along Washington State (it seems an odd exhibit in Boston though)

Blue-spotted maskrays are generally found from Indonesia to Japan and around Australia; these pups were born here at the Aquarium and are being raised by staff until they are 18 months old when they'll join the other rays in the Touch Tank exhibit

You might think that all lobsters are bright red, but they only turn that color after they've been cooked; lobsters are normally a blend of brown, green, and red, although some lobsters, like this one at the Aquarium, are blue (1 out of every 2 million)

Southern rockhopper penguins live in the subtropical waters around Antarctica, notably on the Falkland Islands; they are classified as vulnerable with the population declining by 33% over the last 30 yrs

The epaulette shark is a species of long-tailed carpet shark found in shallow, tropical waters off Australia and New Guinea; rather than swim, nocturnal epaulette sharks often 'walk' by wriggling their bodies and pushing with their paired fins

The vulnerable Northern fur seal is being adversely impacted by climate change, having to travel 35% farther now to feeding grounds than it did 40 yrs ago; most breed in the Bering Sea but their range extends to Baja California

The leopard whipray, found in the Indian and Pacific Oceans from the Andaman Sea to the Coral Triangle, is caught for its meat in Indonesia; the Aquarium has an IMAX theater where I watched Turtle Odyssey but it wasn't worth the $10 extra

The yellowbanded pipefish inhabits waters around the Coral Triangle, including the Philippines, Indonesia, and northwestern Australia; this colorful species is ovoviviparous, with males carrying eggs and giving birth to live young

The ropefish is native to West and Central Africa and possesses a pair of lungs in addition to gills, allowing it to survive in very oxygen-poor water; it is threatened by habitat loss through palm oil plantations, deforestation, and urban development

The goliath grouper can be found living along the coast of FL, through the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the eastern part of the Atlantic; they can grow to be 8+ ft long and weighs in at 800+ lbs during its 40 year lifespan

The lined seahorse lives in the western Atlantic Ocean as far north as Canada and as far south as the Caribbean, Mexico, and Venezuela; lined seahorses feed mainly on minute crustaceans and brine shrimp, which they suck in through their snout