Счастливых праздников! Taking leave...

Having ourselves a modest little Christmas

As the year draws to a close, it's time to step back and look at how things have transpired over the past fifty-two weeks. And all things considered, it hasn't been a bad year. We ended a successful and enjoyable two-year tour in Shanghai and returned to the familiar confines of Falls Church via Bremerton, Washington. During the year I was able to witness several volcanic eruptions up close (on Sakurajima 桜島 in Kagoshima 鹿児島 during the Lunar New Year), and realized two long-held travel ambitions: to finally visit Thailand (which we did in June) and to drive across the U.S. (accomplished at the end of August and into early September, taking in Yellowstone National Park, Mt. Rushmore, a Cubs game at Wrigley Field and Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater en route). Most importantly, everyone here is in good health, and hopefully will remain so for a long time to come (knock on wood). Sure, there was the unpleasant surprise of having been unceremoniously pulled out of Lithuanian and placed instead in Russian, a language I never had an interest in learning and have struggled to master on a basic level since Labor Day. Still, I have made progress and am probably where I should be at this point in my studies, so I'm confident I'll eventually pass the final hurdle obstacle exam, and move to Vilnius as scheduled in early May of next year. 

Lithuania may have been part of the Soviet Union, but culturally it isn't Russian. Which is why I chose not to take part in the Christmas festivities organized by the Russian section last Friday. Instead, after a morning of listening to how form sentences in Russian using the present progressive tense, I rode the shuttle to the main State Department building, then took a walk along part of the Mall, passing the World War II Memorial and the Washington Monument, to the Freer Gallery of Art, next to the Smithsonian Castle. The Freer and the adjoining Arthur M. Sackler galleries house an impressive collection of Asian art, and I've visited several times. However, the Freer Gallery will be closed for renovations from January 4, and will not reopen until sometime after 2017 (the Stackler Gallery will remain open during that time, however). With time running out, last Friday afternoon seemed a good opportunity to check out the Freer's Japanese collection one last time. The current exhibitions, Bold and Beautiful: Rinpa in Japanese Art and Bold and Beautiful: Rinpa Screens, are centered around works of art from the Rinpa 琳派 school of Japanese painting. These exhibits are tied in with the ongoing Sōtatsu: Making Waves exhibition downstairs at the Stackler, which my family and I visited on Veterans Day. Seeing the various ceramics, paintings and screens on display (and using the time to better appreciate Sotatsu's Waves at Matsushima and Dragons and Clouds) proved to be perfect antidote to the stress that results from trying to understand how and when to use the accusative, prepositional and genitive cases.

How I feel everyday after five hours of Russian classes

Early 17th-century tea bowl by Hon'ami Kōetsu 本阿弥光悦

A pair of sliding door panels from the early 18th-century by Ogata Kōrin 尾形光琳, featuring a scene from The Tales of Ise 伊勢物語. 

That was a week ago. Today I had Christmas Eve off, thanks to a presidential proclamation. Well, technically, only a half-day free, but the Russian section didn't schedule any classes this morning, so there wasn't any point to going into FSI. Instead, I used the opportunity to ходить в природе, "walk in nature". I couldn't have picked a more opportune day for doing so. This winter has been unseasonably warm, and today was a record-breaker, the warmest December 24 ever recorded in the Washington, D.C. area, with temperatures in the low 70's (normally they would be in the mid-40's). Jim Inhofe has been strangely silent this season. 

So I left the apartment early this morning (with the girls still asleep) and drove to Black Hill Regional Park, located forty minutes from Falls Church in Boyds, Maryland. It was an easy walk in the park, covering 6.8 miles (10.9 kilometers) in 2½ hours. Black Hill is noted for its meadows which attract hundreds of monarch butterflies during their semiannual migrations in April and September. The butterflies have long since moved on, and the leaves have fallen from the trees, but the park is still starkly beautiful. It felt great being outdoors today:

The park surrounds the 500-acre (202 hectares) Little Seneca Lake. The view from the back porch of visitor center. 

The mineshaft from an 1850's gold mine

On the Black Hill Trail

The only animals seen today were crows, geese and squirrels, but something else left this behind on the trail.

A bridge over Little Seneca Creek

The remains of a water mill, dating back to 1810. This one pressed flax seed in the production of linseed oil before it closed in 1895. 

Little Seneca Creek

No explanation is given for these stone ruins

Crossing Lake Ridge Drive

The sign says it all

Pausing by the lake

A pair of geese enjoy the warm weather

The last section of the trail becomes asphalt

A farm across the water

I'll be taking the next week off, a much-needed break from Russian, though I do intend to set aside time for review each day. As my break begins, I wish all of you and your families the happiest of holidays this season!

How illustrating

The second (and last) chance at passing my Mandarin Chinese exam is fast approaching - I've been studying even harder and more frequently, working on improving my still-poor listening and speaking skills. I've also sought counseling in an attempt to overcome the very real anxiety I'm feeling about a testing regimen designed not with people like me in mind. Still, everyone needs a break now and then, and this afternoon I paid a visit to my favorite of all the museums in Washington, D.C. - the National Museum of Asian Art, or to be more specific, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. Today was the third time I've dropped by the Sackler and/or the Freer Gallery of Art, the two galleries that make up the museum. As someone who 对 Japanese art 感兴趣, I generally prefer to check out the Freer, which has one of the best such collections in the United States; the Sackler, meanwhile, is most noted for its "Arts of China" collection. However, the Sackler is currently running an exhibition entitled "Hand-Held: Gerhard Pulverer's Japanese Illustrated Books" through August 11. As a brochure describes it:

Woodblock-printed illustrated books became key sources of knowledge and entertainment in Japan during the Edo period 江戸時代 (1615-1868). Working with renowned artists and authors, enterprising publishers produced compact, inexpensive paperbound volumes that were sold and circulated throughout Japan. With beautiful, intriguing, and entertaining subjects, books brought reading of words and images to the masses, creating a communication revolution similar to electronic media today. Highlights from the Gerhard Pulverer Collection now in the Freer Gallery of Art, including rare private editions and bestsellers such as Hokusai's 葛飾北斎 "Manga" 漫画 sketchbooks, are shown together for the first time since the museum purchased the collection in 2007. 

I  couldn't have said it any better, which is why I didn't even try. Suffice it to say that the works currently displayed, while relatively small in number, were extremely interesting, while the well-written notations helped make it clear how advanced a society Japan was during the Edo period (the Tokugawa era 徳川時代 was a time when those arts that we think of as being so quintessentially Japanese flowered and prospered). In addition to the above-mentioned Hokusai sketches, I also enjoyed taking a gander at books illustrating classic novels such as The Tale of Genji 源氏物語; travel guides written during a time the shōgunate 幕府 restricted the movement of the majority of the common people; and, naturally, the four examples of erotic imagery known as shunga 春画, one of which illustrated what must have been one of the first examples of "tentacle porn" ever put to print, The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife 蛸と海女.

Unfortunately, I can't show you any of this, as photography wasn't permitted. Obviously, if you have any kind of interest in Japanese woodblock print illustrated books, you should stop by the Sackler Gallery to check out the exhibition.

As for the test - the odds of passing I put at 50/50 at best -, if I don't reach my goal, I suppose I can always place the blame for failing to do so on distractions like today's. 

These were the only photographs I was able to take inside the gallery before a security guard politely informed me that photography wasn't permitted. The above scroll (dating from the late 18th century) is entitled Women Airing Books and Clothes, and depicts several women doing just that, an annual autumn ritual known as mushiboshi 虫干し.

A nearby room had an impressive collection of statuary from South Asia, including these two works. There was also an exhibition called One Man's Search for Ancient China: the Paul Singer Collection. However, by this point in my studies, I'm pretty much sick and tired of anything Sino-related, so I gave this one only a cursory walk-through. Still, I would minding having an apartment like the one Singer lived in, which was stuffed with over 5000 objects collected over a seventy-year period. 

I don't think my wife would be too pleased, however.