Girl with Pearl Earring/Man Hiding from Camera

Girl with a Pearl Earring, Johannes Vermeer, c. 1665

Yesterday was the anniversary of our first date, which we always mark by going out to lunch.

The plan was to go to San Francisco to see the "Girl with a Pearl Earring" show at the de Young Museum and to have lunch at the Legion of Honor museum cafe.

It's a big show! Many prints by Rembrandt and other artists.  Usually, I gravitate to paintings, not prints--gimme the big oils, the color, the scope.  But the prints are wonderful--small, finely detailed portraits of peasants, artists, and noblemen that invite study.  I spent a lot of time with them, even the landscapes:

The Landscape with the Three Trees, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1643, etching, drypoint, and engraving.  Do you see the pair of lovers on the lower right?  Neither do I.

The Shell (Conus marmoreus), Rembrandt van Rijn, 1650, etching, drypoint, and engraving

Peapods and Insects. Jan van Kessell II, c. 1650, oil on copper.  This was Jerry's favorite, of course.

Then I got to the extensive show of paintings by Rembrandt and others, enough so that that part of the show could be an additional outing.  There's only one Vermeer, the pearl-earring girl, but it's worth going to see.  What a luminous, moving portrait it is!  It's a small painting in a big room, set off by itself, reminiscent of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.  But without the crowd (although the show was crowded overall, even on a weekday).

We made our way to the Legion of Honor, where we had "grass-fed hotdogs"  for lunch (what in hell is a grass-fed hotdog?  A bunch of hotdogs in a field, grazing?).  Gave up on a walk at Land's End due to a sharp wind and billowing fog and made our way back to Berkeley.

Several blocks from our house, I spotted Marion Merrill, my boss years ago in the UC Berkeley Entomology Department, sitting at a bus stop.  We swooped in and collected her and drove her to where she wanted to go. She's almost 90, feisty and indomitable, like being near-blind and unable to drive.

Marion was a witness to that date 37 (or was it 38?) years ago.  I remember sitting in her office having a minor anxiety attack about what on earth I was going to talk about with this cranky professor.  She peered out her office window at the car as we drove out of the lot.  She said I looked scared.

I had Jerry take a picture of us yesterday:

Marion and me, March 12, 2013

Then--weren't we dutiful?--we went off to Berkeley Bowl, where Jerry had his resigned-to-a-mission-to-hell look.  I tried to capture it:

No dice.