Brooklyn, New York
March 17, 2019
Davidson beat St. Joseph's on Friday, but on Saturday, we couldn't shoot a lick and lost to St. Louis. Those two teams were picked to be the top teams in preseason rankings, but didn't do that well during the season. St. Joe's did beat us in Pittsburgh. We won in St. Louis. St. Louis won the tournament, and so has gone on into the NCAA games along with VCU, the regular season champions. (Davidson came in second, higher than expected. A 24-win season is nothing to sneeze at.) VCU lost their first A10 tournament game on Friday. Davidson is the only team to make it into the semifinals all five years that we've been in the conference.
I had a ticket for the tournament finals on Sunday, but I had already been to more basketball games than a non-sportsfan like me can tolerate, and I didn't much care about the outcome. Little did I know at the time that there would be two basketball games left in Davidson once I got home. The men played Lipscomb in the first round of the NIT. By then we had really only six players who were still in any shape to play, and one starter was very limited in his minutes. We played some of our best basketball the first half and into maybe ten minutes of the second half before our guys ran out of gas. Lipscomb has nine players who play for ten minutes or more, they shoot well, and they defend aggressively. It's a wonder our guys did as well as they did for so long. They would have been in no shape to play the next tournament game. On Wednesday, the women played Marshall in the first round of the WBI. They got behind, but made a good comeback. Except for an apparently bad call with seconds to go, they would have won the game. So I, non-sportsfan that I am, attended four post-season basketball tournaments. I've even watched a little of the NCAA tournament, pulling for the Wofford Terriers, our old compatriots in the Southern Conference. If I notice when Gardner-Webb, VCU, St. Louis, and even UNC (because I am a Luke Maye fan—local kid—are playing, I'll watch some of those games.
So back to Sunday in Brooklyn. (This is turning out to be more of a blog entry than a page of pictures.) As I ate from the breakfast buffet at the hotel, I contemplated what I might do during the day. About 9:30 it occurred to me that since it was March 17, the obvious thing to do would be to go to church at St. Patrick's Cathedral, but probably already too late to get there on time. I didn't even check to see when the parade started. But I had put on a green shirt that day. (My parka was green anyway.)
The weather yet again was very nice, though a little cooler, so I decided to head out to the area near Brooklyn Bridge and wander around. I had not planned to walk across the bridge, thinking it would be too cold, but with all the people crossing, I could have been relatively warm in the middle of the crowd. But I decided instead to go back to the subway and have more time at a museum.
On the walk back from the bridge, I had a view of the Manhattan Bridge.
I decided on the Museum of Modern Art. I had not been there in many years. I'll save the Brooklyn Museum for another trip. There are many famous paintings at MoMA. Here are a few of them:
I saw the Matisse painting "Dance" when Pete and I were at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. (Coincidentally, we also had visited the Hermitage in Nashville together.) So when I saw this painting at MoMA, I thought it looked familiar somehow. It turns out, as I read from the sign there, that this was a study Matisse did to work out the composition for the "real" painting in Russia. The colors are more vivid in the latter as well as there being some more detail. We can be glad both are on exhibit, though one must do a bit of travel to take in both.
A movie was projected through the glass balls. I thought for a photo the setup worked better for me.
I don't know why they had a helicopter hanging in the museum.
This was probably my favorite painting there that I hadn't heard of. I didn't note the name or artist, though.
It is much more stunning in person.
I had time to see everything that was on display. They have areas closed off for construction, so there will be more to see if/when I go back.
I rode the D Train back. It comes above ground and crosses over the Manhattan Bridge. I decided to catch as bus back to the hotel from the subway station. As I waited for it, I took one last photo of Brooklyn.
<- Thursday: The Transit Museum