Barefoot Tap Dancing

The evening's first priority was collecting my "purple gold" in Church Hill.

That's how the Dad from whom I was picking up my Girl Scout cookies referred to my three boxes of Samoas.

"You were smart to order these early," he said, sliding the boxes toward me.

Not smart, just experienced when it comes to my favorite Girl Scout cookies.

And since I was right there, how could I not have a glass of wine at the Roosevelt?

Swilling White Hall Cabernet Franc while a friend told me about his wildly colorful trip to Charleston, I heard about much good food, many alcoholic over-indulgences and a decided lack of sleep.

Oh, well. As a friend likes to say, we can sleep when we're old.

The grape was calling for some food and what better than the crispy fried pig's head terrine over red cabbage buttermilk slaw?

That golden brown shell encasing who knows what tasty head pieces benefited even more from the tang of pickled mustard seed.

A new bartender was introduced to me, along with my only requirements ( a straw for my water) and we chatted a moment.

He attentively checked back to see if I wanted more food.

You know, I wasn't going to do it, really I wasn't, but when prodded I quickly caved and ordered a piece of coconut cake.

I thought I heard the woman next to me make a little moan when the cake was put in front of me.

Honestly, I couldn't tell whether it was a knowing moan (as in, she'd had it before) or an anticipatory moan (as in, I must have that).

In either case, I savored every bite of the dense yellow cake and fluffy white icing while she stole covetous glances my way.

It was about then that the bartender came over with a look of relief on his face.

Turns out he remembered me from Avenue 805 years ago. More than a few.

Now that's a guy with a memory.

But I couldn't linger and reminisce because I wanted to catch Scott Phillips' show, "9 & 3 Static Series," opening at Eric Schindler Gallery.

It was nice going early because that gallery can get so mobbed and tonight it wasn't.

The eleven paintings mixed narrative with abstraction, meaning a close look inevitably yielded all kinds of "found" images amongst the effusive use of color, layering of paint and deliberate brushstrokes.

A closer look at "Firebirds" uncovered a horse and a forest of hooded figures.

"Playboys" gave up lines of automobiles and a man at a table, among dozens of other things.

"Clearing," a simply beautiful work with a central rectangular focus area, had lines of soldiers and a couple dancing hidden in the painting.

Looking at the intricately detailed works, I felt certain that Scott Phillips must have done a lot of doodling as a kid to develop the patience clearly needed for so many layers of imagery.

When I headed back down the hill, it was back to J-Ward to leave my car.

Gallery 5 was hosting an event called "Paint the Music" and precisely because it had gotten no attention, I was curious about it.

The event page had warned attendees to be early because the first fifteen minutes were really special, whatever that meant.

But I followed instructions and arrived to find a growing crowd.

I took a seat near the front, next to a couple who greeted me warmly for joining them in the front row.

When I asked why they were there, the girl said she was an abstract painter and photographer and Fridays were date night for her and the boyfriend.

She'd read about the show and decided it sounded compelling enough to qualify for date night.

So I left them to their date and looked around.

What was interesting was that I didn't recognize a single person except the bartender, Pete.

I should have known something was up when I saw no bikes outside and not another walker besides myself heading over.

Toto, I don't think we're in Gallery 5 anymore.

Except we were, just at a show organized by an out-of-towner.

That would be Dan Fisk, a musician based in D.C. (which we all know usually means NOVA), who had organized his fourth "Paint the Music" right here in River City.

It was a novel concept: a musician would play a song and a painter would create a work based on that song.

There were four painters and four musicians and we were introduced to them all in short order.

Bryce McCormick sang "Fallen Creek" while Robby Norton began applying green paint with a palette knife to his canvas.

All at once, the smell of paint wafted by my nose.

Jared Jones brought another guitarist, Luke, to help him out on "Love Again" while Laura Page approached her canvas, already painted in a vibrant blue with white curving lines on it.

She seemed to have a head start.

Next came David Bromley with Dan playing guitar and singing "Heart Lies" while Bryce backed him up on keyboard.

Dan explained that Bryce hadn't known Dan's song until last night when they met and he played it for him.

Meanwhile David got to work on his blank canvas.

Last up was FarAway (Sara Davenport and Brian Franke) doing "Somehow" with Nikki Galapon facing a canvas already painted gray and with the word "somehow" stenciled at the bottom.

"Enjoy the live painting," we were instructed and the show began in earnest with the smell of paint thick in the air.

Bryce's set was first and he told us he'd written a song a day for a year as a "writing exercise."

Oh, you mean like blogging every day?

He had a Stevie Wonder quality about his mannerisms and delivery, and it was clear he'd come from VCU's jazz studies program.

Well, not so much when he sang the hysterical "You're so fly, girl," and detailed his nerdiness, but by his effortless talent.

He did one of the 365 songs, "One Hundred Years From Now," and it was one that had made it on to his album.

Introducing two songs about females ("but in an observant way"), the first, "Annabelle' was about a pretty girl he saw in Can Can eating lunch by herself.

"Mary the Librarian" was full of advice to take her out drinking and dancing on bars to cure her lonely library lady status.

Jared and his band buddy Ryan came next and the painters painted on behind them.

They began with "Heartbeat," a song Jared had gotten in trouble for after telling an interviewer about the relationship that had caused him to write the song.

Unfortunately, the ex had read the piece, recognized herself and chewed him out for it at a show.

"It was worth it," he shrugged. I bet it was.

They played some songs from the band they're both in  - Lust, Not Love- like "Matter of Time" and "Natural Love" and I got the feeling Jared's spent some time with the ladies.

But they also did two well-executed covers, including Sade's "The Sweetest Taboo" and MJ's "Human Nature."

Dan's set was next and he got things off to a rollicking start with "Barefoot Tapdance," as apt a metaphor as any I've heard lately.

Asking the crowd if anyone watched "90210" he got some affirmatives.

"How about the new "90210"? he clarified. Crickets. Not a one responded.

"Yea, me, neither. And this song was used on that show. So I haven't seen my song on TV."

That song was "A Thousand Life Songs" and it had the kind of warmly, evocative sound that probably suited TV perfectly.

After another poll, he did "Disappear," a song about going to an ex's wedding (someone had, but as the singer).

FarAway was a duo of boyfriend and girlfriend and he sported the first real facial hair of the evening.

I felt much more at home then.

They began with a song that Brian had performed at the first "Paint with Music" last July in D.C.

"I'm Coming Around" was introduced by Sara as, "About Brian, weirdly enough."

Saying to the group that it was "our breakup song for the evening," Sara piped up and said, "Don't break up with me tonight."

Very sweet.

Brian's "You Got All You Want From Me" would probably elicit a chewing out if the girl knew about it, too.

Sara, a VCU alum, wrote "Whisky Between Us" and checked on the whisky-drinking habits of the audience.

"I'm going to Tarrant's after the show and get some," she stated flat out before doing the song about a break-up with a Richmond boy.

Most RVA line: "Sing a song about freight trains at dawn."

After that one, she gave the artists fair warning that they had two more songs before the end.

"I hear some whining back there," she joked.

For what they called a Lumineers-like song, the crowd was taught how to do stomp-clap with Sara leading us.

"Amanda with a Wink" was about a girl in a sundress who'd requested a song from Brian.

And we all know how susceptible to girls in sundresses musicians are.

"A hard-earned day is a hard-earned night," they sang, their voices harmonizing nicely.

When they finished, that was the cue for the painters to pick up their canvasses and move them to the other room for display.

They ran the gamut from a woman's head to facing seahorses to the moon separating two girls to the sun bursting over the word "somehow."

All created in the two hours we'd been listening to music.

I felt so inadequate.

Here they'd poured forth their artistic souls and all I'd poured forth was my energy at experiencing them.

Come to think of it, I'd done just what they'd wanted.

Somebody's got to listen to all that painting.

To Live This Life

Almost back in the saddle again, with only an occasional reach back.

Things got rolling at the Library of Virginia for Poetic Principles, a reading by Joshua Poteat and Henry Hart.

Arriving in the Library of Virginia garage, it was just me and one other woman and the parking attendant knew nothing of a poetry reading.

In the elevator going upstairs, we wondered if we'd both gotten the wrong date.

It seemed unlikely.

She introduced herself ("Hi, I'm Carol") as we took the elevator up.

Fortunately, there was a poetry reading when we got there, but we were the only attendees.

I've been an audience of one before, so I have no problem being an audience of two.

Eventually others arrived, meaning Carol and I had not been mistaken.

Best line overheard as I sat waiting for the reading to begin?

"Ever hear of the singer Elliot Smith?" a 20-something guy asks of a girl entranced by her phone. "He sang really sad songs."

Nope, she replied, going back to her phone.

Silly me, I'd have thought Elliot Smith would have been a terrific conversation-starter at a poetry reading.

Eventually Josh Poteat began the reading by thanking us for coming rather than going to the Byrd Theater for author Tom Robbins and a screening of "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."

I've heard him read before (in fact, I have one of his lines of poetry etched into a piece of collaged wood hanging over a doorway), but he was reading new stuff tonight.

He dedicated "Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature" about the strange names given Puritan children by their crazed parents (favorite line: "Make sweet what's given") to his wife.

From there, he spoke of a project where his inspiration came from the city of Richmond and the 1900 Sears & Roebuck catalog.

Wonderful imagery arose from poems with departmental names.

"Department of Telescopes" provided, "There in the night orchard of the clumsy city."

Oh, but we can be such a clumsy city sometimes.

In "Department of Taxidermy" came, "When there is another darkness, I'll admit it."

Between poems, it occurred to him that this was not a feel-good kind of reading.

"These are kind of bummer poems," he confessed. "Richmond isn't as bad as these poems make it sound."

Actually, Richmond is pretty cool if you ask me. Not perfect, but better all the time.

He introduced "Department of Masonry" by saying, "This poem begins with death metal bands and ends with me pouting in the backyard."

If that isn't the defining range of a whole generation of men, I don't know what is.

Best line: "It isn't enough, but I'll take what I can get."

About an unfinished poem concerning his obsession, the slave Gabriel Prosser, Poteat admitted, "This poem could be 120 pages long and that's a bad sign."

What was good were lines like, "The houses didn't know enough to be afraid" and "Help me, moonlight."

In "Department of Hymnals," we heard, "The night has used itself up" and "There's nothing I won't do to live this life."

I am particularly taken with the passion of the latter line.

Just before starting "Lighting Department," he said, "Thanks for coming and I hope I will see all of you again someday."

My guess would be at the next poetry reading.

Next up was Henry Hart who referred to Carol, the woman I had met in the garage, as "the guardian angel of poets."

Turns out Carol was Carol Weinstein, she who funds the series Poetic Principles and supports residencies for poets to work.

You know, that Carol.

Hart began with what he called an old poem, "A Gift of Warblers" about the art project he'd made for his grandfather who was always supportive of his poetic leanings.

"Janet Morgan and the Moon Shot" was about the moon landing in 1969 and had the line, "Discovering grace still depended on shifting weight."

"Mystery Play: November 22, 1963" was about his performance anxiety at being in the school musical when he couldn't sing.

"You know how some teachers like to torture students?" he said as if it were fact.

I didn't but he's a teacher, so I took his word for it.

Best line: "His face had hardened to a ridgeless nickle."

I've seen the ridgeless nickel look and it's not one I want directed my way.

A poem about his mother's occasional need to escape her three sons was called "Independence Day" with the line, "All summer she dreamed of storms."

"I doubted everything but luck" came from "Crossing the Gobi Desert Summer 1900," a poem about days lost crossing the desert.

When he finished reading, he offered to take questions, but none were forthcoming, so we scattered like crows.

I decided to go east to the Roosevelt for dinner, arriving to find I was one of scads of people who had made the same decision.

Every table was full, every bar stool was taken and there was a six-top ahead of me waiting for a table.

Even so, Sam Cook's "Chain Gang" was rising above the level of the chattering masses, so I wasn't going anywhere.

Since I had just come from hearing lines like, "Wind droned like bees," I took the drone of chatter for something more appealing and sat down on the waiting bench.

I was perfectly content crowd watching when a server offered to bring me a libation, swearing he had nothing else to do at the moment.

Not long after, a girl at the bar spotted me and reminded me she'd waited on me at Bistro Bobette.

She especially remembered a man I'd come in with, according to her, someone with a very dry British sense of humor, and I had no idea who she meant.

Still, it's always nice to be remembered.

White Hall Cabernet Franc was delivered and sipped until, as if an alarm went off, suddenly tables and bar stools were emptied.

Starving by then, I looked at the menu for new dishes to try, eventually deciding on rice grits, risotto, ham, crab and purple cape beans.

When I placed my order, bartender T. looked at me like I was crazy.

"Really, Karen? Risotto? Didn't you just get back from Italy?"

As I tried to sputter a justification, he went into full placating mode.

"No, no, that's good. You've got to wean yourself off slowly. You're doing the right thing."

I laughed out loud at that, but didn't have the heart to tell him I'd almost ordered the gnocchi as well.

Just as I was finishing the lovely combination of flavors, Chef Lee came out to chide me.

"You went to Italy for two weeks and you come here and order that shit?" he teased, pointing at my empty risotto bowl. "It's not going to be any good."

Of course, it was very good, but I understood his point.

To make peace in the kitchen, I promptly ordered Lee's chicken skin slider with kimchee mayo and pickles, hoping to use southern to knock Italian out of my head.

Kind of like rebound dating after a bad breakup.

As Neko Case's "Favorite" played, I ate fried chicken skin with my fingers, the better to reprogram my brain and taste buds.

That, my friends, is how I replace the pleasures of Italy with those of Richmond.

Poetically speaking, that's the way to make sweet what's been given to me.

My Only Weakness

Everybody has a story. It's that simple.

Tonight's story began at UR for the screening of  "To Render a Life: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and the Documentary Vision."

It was being shown as a tie-in to the "The Social Lens: Photographs by Dorothea Lange and Her Contemporaries" exhibit which I'd already seen.

When I walked in and took a seat, I was immediately invited to move closer to two other attendees, so I did.

Hell, if strangers want me to sit closer to them, I'm happy to.

The woman's face looked familiar, so I used a few well-placed inquiries to find out why.

Turns out she's lived here nine years, is on the board of Firehouse Theater so I had no doubt seen her at performances.

One story down and the movie hadn't even started.

The film's purpose was two-fold: to consider the classic 1941 book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" by James Agee and Walker Evans and to document a present day family living in rural poverty.

So in 1988, filmmaker Ross Spears spent three years documenting a family living in abject poverty just twenty miles south of Charlottesville.

Using excerpts read from Agee's book, he set the scene.

We see a Harvard class hearing a lecture about the wonders of the book (and since this was 1988, none of the students texted or looked at their phones) from a teacher whose class is at capacity every year.

We see the Washington Post's book critic, Jonathan Yardley, talk about why he doesn't like the book.

Howell Raines, the former executive editor of the New York Times, talks about its significance.

But the heart of the film comes from the three years the filmmaker spent with an extremely poor family documenting their lives from 1988 to 1991 and interspersed with readings from Agee's book about the poor rural families he and Walker Evans documented back in the 1930s.

Evans' intent as a photographer was always to stay invisible and Spears does the same.

With a voice reading from the book about the distinct smell of poor, white Southern houses, the camera glides over shots of roaches and flies on food and furniture.

It's disturbing and it's factual.

As one social documentary photographer says during the movie, "Taking pictures of suffering is a way to scream."

The film could have been construed as one long scream.

The family followed in the film lives off of one part-time income with no running water or indoor plumbing (and this is 1988).

Except for the father who did a lot of manual labor, they're all overweight, some approaching morbid obesity.

Both the husband and wife have missing teeth and she's only 48 and he's 55.

Their faces look so much older, clearly a result of a hard life.

But like the social documentarians of the '30s, this is what people look like when they live these lives.

And I'm betting that to the students in the room, 1980s poverty was as obscure to them as 1930s poverty.

After the film, the director spoke and took questions.

Ross Spears admitted that he'd grown close to the family he'd filmed and gave us updates about them today.

One woman said, "Thank you so much for this film. I wish everyone I know could see it."

I've no doubt that that was the same feeling expressed by people who saw the 1930s photographs of people scraping through the Depression.

When asked how difficult it had been to get the family to agree to the long-term shooting schedule, Spears was clear.

"Everyone has a story to tell," he said, "And they want to share it. Social documentarians are fortunate enough to be there when it happens."

Satisfied that I had what it takes to make note of what's happening, I left the labyrinthine UR campus for Church Hill.

Despite the later hour, The Roosevelt was hopping when I arrived but a kind soul let me take the one empty bar stool next to him.

Bartender T. offered up some Gabrielle Rause Vin de Gris, but I let the rainy weather dictate a red, opting for White Hall cabernet franc.

The guy on the stool next to me turned out to be a childhood friend of the kitchen brotherhood, so one of them introduced us and I now had company.

When his pork shank with buttermilk spaetzle in a mustard sauce arrived, he was generous enough to share a bite.

Since when do I take pig from a virtual stranger? Since, I don't know, always?

Next he offered up a bite of his flap steak with cheddar bacon mashed potatoes and housemade A-1 sauce, which I was just as happy to avail myself of.

Naturally when my beef shanks and gnocchi arrived, I offered him some, too.

In return, I asked him for his story, gleaning that he lives in Roanoke, was here on business and always has a good time when he's in Richmond.

While I was eating my cheeseburger (cheddar, bacon onion jam), a first for me at the Roosevelt, a guy a few seats down the bar caught my attention and began a conversation with me.

He, too, was drinking the White Hall, but unlike my Roanoke neighbor, he didn't offer me any of his food (tonight's special, the grilled tuna) because he'd already finished it.

A few well-placed questions and I knew he lived a couple of blocks away, hadn't been in the Roosevelt in months and came from upstate New York.

We chatted enthusiastically about how rental properties tie you to an area, the benefits of learning a trade (say, electrician) and how much there is to do culturally in Richmond.

In a comical moment, one of the sous chefs walked by saying, "Key lime pie, it's my only weakness."

I doubted that, questioned him and discovered that it's his only food weakness.

I overheard a guy saying he was going to the nearby market where they carry, "Head wraps, cigarettes, Dom Perignon and cell phones."'

Sounded like a hell of a market selection to me, but when asked, said I didn't need anything.

When he returned, he had a tale of seeing three, well, never mind, but he had a story.

Because everyone does and we all want to share ours.

You could say telling my story this way is my only weakness.

Okay, it's the only weakness I'm going to admit to tonight.

Leave the Light On, Darling

I do not know my way around Charm City.

Heading there on the BW Parkway, we passed a flashing highway sign that said, "Speed Enforced...Smooth Operator."

Call us idiots, but we had no idea what that meant or why it would be on a sign.

Despite four trips to Baltimore in the past three years, I was useless as a navigator on today's odyssey.

Oh, we got there just fine, but ended up doing the Grand Tour of Baltimore neighborhoods once inside the city limits.

Wouldn't you just know the only ones we didn't hit were Canton and Fell's Point, the two areas I know.

We passed row houses with marble stoops in almost every neighborhood. We admired rooftop decks with views of Camden Yards.

Somewhere after the Greek neighborhood but before the Latino neighborhood, we passed Corn Beef Heaven but didn't have the sense to stop.

Or later, any idea where we had seen it.

Didn't a wise man say that it's the things you don't do that you regret?

When we discovered Corned Beef Row, we couldn't find the corned beef. Luckily, we kept our humor and kept going.

It only took one heavily-accented gas station owner, one not-nearly-scruffy- enough art student, one tattooed girl walking a dog and one female mailman to set us on the right path.

Days, weeks and months later, we arrived at the Baltimore Museum of Art, home to an incredible collection of Matisse works.

Given our delayed start, we wasted no time in scoping out the Cone Collection.

Claribel and Etta Cone were Baltimore residents who had a life-long passion for collecting Matisse's work.

And money, apparently. Lots and lots of cash.

Included in one of the galleries was a flat screen with a virtual tour of the sisters' 1930s Baltimore apartment.

By touching the screen, you could enter rooms, walk down hallways and open doors where every inch of wall space, bathrooms included, was covered in art.

I aspire to be a Cone sister.

There's nothing like walking galleries filled with Matisses of every size and color palette with another art geek.

We would have made normal people gag with our non-stop art references.

There were two Giacometti sculptures of human figures, one that made me weak in the knees, and both much bigger than any others of his I've seen .

"Man Pointing" had the rough-hewn look of so many Giacomettis, but a real presence. You wanted to follow his finger.

"Headless Woman" was as smooth as glass and truly a stunning representation of the female form, if a bit attenuated.

The artist said that his female figures represented the way he felt when he looked at a woman.

I'd say that it's the way a woman would want a man to feel when he looked at her.

The time passed so quickly that we only had time for a little European art and the American period rooms before a guard warned us it was almost closing time.

Hoping to unobtrusively linger, we slipped into an empty American painting gallery only to have the lights flickered, indicating they were serious about closing time.

Fine. Close your museum before people are ready to leave.

Not to worry, we took the stairs down to Gertrude's where we had a reservation at the bar for dinner.

Our bartender immediately got our attention with his Moonshine Manhattan, an alluring combination of Corsair Wry Moon un-aged rye whiskey, blood orange bitters, white sweet vermouth and a Luxardo cherry.

Because the Wry Moon rye is un-aged, technically it's moonshine, which made for my second moonshine this week should anyone be counting.

Going forward, Friend chose the White Hall Cabernet Franc and I the Paul Jaboulet "Parallele 45" Rose.

The bartender gave me major props for my pink choice, acknowledging that he was a fan.

"Good choice. I've been drinking that all summer," he endorsed.

Getting lost and ogling nudes make a person hungry and we were starving.

P.E.I mussels were a logical place to start, especially because of the unique broth of Loose Canon Ale and grain mustard with Andouille sausage.

I liked the broth a lot but my beer-loving friend loved the broth and sopped long after I'd given up.

Mmm, beer.

A huge seafood salad of mixed greens with lump crab meat, scallops and shrimp  was offset with BBQ pulled pork sliders with chow chow on brioche buns.

"You really can't have too much pig, can you?" my friend asked rhetorically.

No, but I really can't have too much art, either.

We drove home through a driving rainstorm that turned 95 into an endless parking lot with brake lights everywhere.

Even so, it couldn't take away from a perfectly charming day sipping moonshine in Charm City.

Our only regret was that the lights went out too soon.