It took me six days to hitchhike from Saginaw

This is a photograph by my friend Mary Jane O'Malley ...

Taken at Oakwood Cemetery, which is Troy's version of the extraordinary Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn (which gets 5 stars in Yelp.  Who knew?).  I hope she doesn't mind me using it.

Memorial Day ...

A nice day for introspection, drinking some coffee, reading the newspaper, eating some shredded wheat, hanging around the studio, listening to some Simon and Garfunkel (which I can't stop doing, intermittently, ever since seeing a documentary a couple of months ago about the making of Bridge over Troubled Water), plus some other stuff.

Speaking of the newspaper, Dominique Browning wrote a lovely essay for the Travel Section of The Times about walking 65 miles of the Welsh coast in five days.  Mostly in the rain.  Talk about introspection ...

Anyway, it can be read here, and I enjoyed it very much with my shredded wheat and my coffee.  Reminded me of my buddy Lance, who dropped everything and walked the Appalachian Trail a couple of years ago.  Except Ms. Browning, who was once the editor-in-chief of House and Garden (and who, during her reign, was to chintz what Anna Wintour is to taffeta), stayed in bed and breakfasts.

As I type, the boys are singing Homeward Bound.  Talk about introspection ...

Mary Jane's a lovely woman with red hair.  Do you think the photo, in some way, could be considered a self-portrait?
Your thesis being that the statue is her and the autumn foliage represents her hair?
Yes.
No.
Come again?
No.  It's not a self-portrait.  Excluding, of course, the intellectually glib suggestion that every photograph is a self-portrait.
Why not?
That's an angel, right?
Yeah...
Angels are all men.  No women allowed.
That sucks.
Yes it does.
Why do I get the feeling that when they were laying out the general ground-rules for the relationship between heaven and earth, there was nobody in the room but men?
Theology's a bitch, man.
Yes it is.