One day it might be a delight to start one of these posts without feeling the need to say something about what a week it’s been, but let’s see what delights I found it anyway. This unfortunately isn’t going to be that week, and I’m typing this while seeing stories about the shooting at the Independence Day Parade in Highland Park, Illinois so it sure as hell isn’t going to be next week either. But to keep from curling up in a permanent ball of despair, let’s see what good I was able to find in the world last week.

• I had several joys going to the Baltimore Museum of Art last week.
  • I had a floating holiday to use up before the end of June, so I took off work on Thursday. I’ve been meaning to get to the Baltimore Museum of Art to see the Guarding the Art exhibit, and since it closes on July 10 I decided I better use my day off to get over there. The exhibit is a really cool idea that I’m sure a lot of other museums are destined to copy. They hired some of their security guards to curate an exhibit of artwork owned by the museum. It was interesting to see what people chose. Some were pieces of art that related to their lives or things going on in the world. Some were pieces they found humor in, especially as it related to their jobs as security guards. After being unable to find Puerto Rican artwork in the collection, one person selected three small ancient statues and left the fourth pedestal in the case empty as a statement to encourage museums to be more representative in their collections. I liked reading about why each person selected the art they chose for the exhibit and being able to see some of the museum’s artworks in a new light.
  • This was my first trip to any museum since COVID happened. Even though I can walk to the Baltimore Museum of Art from my house and they have free admission other than for special exhibits, I don’t get over there often enough and certainly not since I still barely do anything indoors. Anyway, I specifically went to see the Guarding the Art exhibit and the special Joan Mitchell exhibit, which is ticketed. My last time there was shortly before the pandemic started and didn’t expect that a whole lot would have changed in that time, but I found some new permanent pieces that I liked as well as a Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love exhibit I didn’t know about. I had never heard of him before. He is a contemporary artist who was born in Pakistan, but lives in New York. His artwork centers around South Asian queer people. I was very taken with it. He has a very specific painting technique that I was fascinated by and would definitely be able to pick out even though I don’t really know that much about art. The exhibit is there until October, so if you’re in Baltimore go check it out.
  • I also really enjoyed the sound of being back in a museum. It’s something I had never really thought about before, but there is a certain sound of walking around art galleries on their wooden floors that involves the echo of your steps and the creaking and popping of the wood floors that stands out in the space particularly when a gallery is not crowded. It’s consistent across so many museums and I realized is part of what I associate with the museum going experience even though until I was away from it for so long I never stopped to think about it.
• I got an advanced reader’s copy of Mad Honey, the new book co-authored by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan. I could not put this book down. I read it for like 5 hours straight and only stopped because I really needed to go to bed. Had I started it earlier in the day I would have finished it in one sitting. As much as I read it’s been a long time since I read a book that I couldn’t put down like that. Also, I encourage you to avoid reading anything about this book ahead of time because I fear that at some point people are inadvertently going to start giving away something that happens about halfway through that I did not at all see coming and made me say “holy shit” out loud as I was reading. It becomes very woven into the second half of the book, so I can see people start to give it away without even thinking about it. I would almost feel bad telling you there is a twist, but by now Jodi Picoult fans should expect that.
• My friends had people over for a pool party and bbq to celebrate the Fourth of July, although we did it on the 3rd instead so that it wasn’t a work night. Their neighbors usually shoot off fireworks, but since we were doing the party not on the 4th I wasn’t sure if I would see any fireworks this year. They too seemed to have their party on Sunday and set off fireworks, so I was happy to get a fireworks fix in.
• One of my other joys at the party was at one point I was the only adult in the pool with all the kids. I was playing with some of them. A couple of them were hanging on me and one of them said to the other you have to share the adult. It cracked me up.
• This past Friday my New Music Friday post was about Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul”, and I mentioned hearing it first in the Switched on Pop podcast. I decided to save this tidbit for my delights post instead of writing about it in my music post. I was having such fun listening to it because there were so many times I was thinking something and then they would start talking about exactly that. For instance, how I already mentioned that as soon as I heard the first snippet I thought it sounded exactly like Robin S.’s “Show Me Love” and then they talked all about that and how the songwriters for that song were given credit on the Beyoncé song. Then they started talking about why they got credit even though it’s not actually sampling the song, and I was like Blurred Lines case. Then boom that’s what they were talking about. There was a lot of me shouting yes and pointing wildly at my phone while I was on my walk. I get way into podcasts sometimes. I feel like there must be people who drive by me on their commute every morning and think to themselves there’s that crazy woman again. Anyway, a podcast episode obviously about music given the podcast that also weaves in some copyright discussions is tailor made for me. I am such a nerd, but hey I love what I love. And now I can add this example to my arsenal the next time I teach a workshop to students on music copyright.