Pilgrimage to Virtue and Back

"Much virtue in herbs, Little in men."~ kitchen trivet in my childhood home

No camera, no fanny pack, but still playing tourist today.

The afternoon began with our Richmond visitors helping support the educational mission of the Smithsonian Institution.

Translation: we started with lunch in the courtyard cafe of the National Portrait Gallery/Museum of American Art and that's what our receipt said we were doing.

It wasn't about the food; we availed ourselves of an extensive salad bar, loading on every marinated combination we could find (peppers, Mozzarella, tomatoes, artichokes).

It was a little about the tradition; childhood trips to the National Gallery often involved lunch in their museum cafe, unappealing as it was. In the best childhood tradition, we also finished with chocolate pudding today, a museum cafeteria standard if ever there was one.

It was mostly about the Kogod Courtyard that connects the two museums with its soaring elegant glass canopy.

Sitting in that huge courtyard under sunlight filtered through a curved glass roof is a unique pleasure. Nearby less than an inch of water runs over a slate section of the floor, making for a delightful sound and the world's shallowest public fountain.

At least until a nearby diner's phone rang.

"We're in Washington," the very portly and conservative man in the red sweater explained. "We spent the morning at the Spy Museum. Ask me anything."

Okay, how come you think it's polite to have a loud conversation one table from us while we're trying to enjoy our midday meal?

From there we went to see "Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage,' a departure from her usual photographs of people.

Instead she had captured the essence of famous dead people through their things.

Things like photos of Freud's couch. Emily Dickinson's herb pressings and stuffed birds (a little distasteful honestly).

Virginia Woolf's stained desk (her husband Leonard having said it was "not merely untidy but squalid"). Thoreau's bed frame. Emerson's books.

Not dead exactly, but positively riveting were photographs of "Spiral Jetty: Great Salt Lake," an earthwork created by Smithson.

The curlicue of earthworks was a thing of beauty and even more notable because shortly after he finished it in 1970, the water rose and covered it for thirty years.

When it re-emerged, Leibovitz took pictures of it but now it's completely submerged again.

The wonder of that has returned to me any number of times since we left that gallery.

Leaving the show, I considered what objects might make good photographic subjects to depict a departed one's life.

"In Vibrant Color: Vintage Celebrity Portraits from the Warnecke Studio" had early color photographs of military, sports, music and Hollywood stars.

Probably the most beautiful was one of Lucille Ball at age 33; she is lovely, colorful and impossibly young.

Orson Welles, Roy Rogers (with his pants pulled up practically to his armpits) and Louis Armstrong all looked to be in their prime.

The overly saturated colors were a testament to the multi-step process before color film was in common use and gave a vintage "Life" Magazine quality to them.

We breezed through the  Presidents exhibit, stopping long enough to appreciate some particularly outstanding Presidential portraits.

Abstract expressionist Elaine (not Willem) de Kooning's depiction of JFK is full of chaotic green brushstrokes and a face that couldn't be more handsome (leave it to a woman).

Norman Rockwell's "Nixon" somehow makes him look like a laid-back and congenial Chief of Staff. It was no surprise to read that the artist intentionally flattered the beleaguered President in the work.

Clinton had been done by Chuck Close, so I had last year's VMFA show of Close works as a familiar reference for the many-faceted face of Bill.

I was especially taken by Oliphant's bronze of "George H.W. Bush as a Horseshoe Player." With its attenuated limbs, hapless look and obvious modeling, it could have been a Giacometti.

And who knew the world's biggest political cartoonist was also a sculptor? Not this art geek.

Last but not least was the morbidly fascinating "Memories Arrested in Space, a Centennial tribute to Jackson Pollock."

Gathered together were letters to the artists, a telegrams telling him he'd sold his first painting, a program from his first exhibition and loads of black and white pictures.

Considering the name recognition of Pollock, it's easy to forget his career from first to last exhibition was a mere twelve years.

I'm just not sure it's worth it to burn so brightly for such a short time. I think I'll take less talent over a longer less turbulent period.

To avoid the turbulence of 95-South, we opted for dinner at Alexandria s Virtue Feed & Grain ("A loud fun bar" the menu calls itself) in the old Olsson's Books and Music.

I'd chosen it for its Restaurant Eve connection as well as the menu section devoted to "Weird Stuff."

Naturally weird stuff was the first thing I ordered.

Crubeens, the Irish street food made of boiled down pig's feet with mirepoix, was crispy on the outside and full of gummy pig goodness inside.

Set on top of a house made whole grain creamy mustard, the rich trotter meat benefited from its contrasting condiment.

The Irish-themed menu next delivered Irish pigs in a blanket, meaning bangers in a pastry crust ("About  the size of a Hotpocket," our friendly bartender informed us and he looked like he knew Hotpockets well).

One bite of the crust's buttery flakiness and I had to think there was a pastry chef involved.

Don't get me wrong, I love all sausage and that includes bangers, but that crust was a work of art.

Cockels and mussels ("Alive, alive-o!") arrived in a butter sauce so rich it was obscene.

It also required a bread basket to absorb it with once all the fruit de mer disappeared.

Besides, the O'Donnell half of me was reveling in being in a place with Irish-style food of the highest order.

Everyone in my party was thoroughly impressed with the music at Virtue, too; Pinback, Band of Horses, the XX and even a Dr. Dog cover of an Architecture in Helsinki song made for a stellar soundtrack atypical for a restaurant.

The Sweet Fix of the day was a chocolate creme pie with strawberry Chantilly and jam, sort of a an upscale cousin to our lunch's trailer trash chocolate pudding.

The enormous and thick slice of pie contained a creme filling with so much butterfat that it bordered on non-frozen gelato.

The Chantilly's flavored creaminess was the only delicate part of this dense and dark dessert. And we were fine with that.

 "Goodness and mercy will follow," the menu said at the bottom and what I think they meant was goodness will be served and mercy on your arteries will follow if you don't eat at Virtue too often.

I think mine are safe; it's a little out of my usual dining territory.

When we finally waddled out, we were feeling highly satisfied if not overly virtuous.

Maybe it's time for a trivet more relevant than my Mom's.

"Much virtue in butter, Irish food and some men. Little in moderation or restraint."

There's the object that can be photographed to represent me when I'm gone.

Passing the Scrapple Test

Breakfasting in the morning is overrated, at least on Saturdays.

No surprise, I slept through the B & B's breakfast, but it was with no regret because the man who'd walked me to Bar Pilar last night, Tom, had recommended St. Ex (as in Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the French aviator and author of "The Little Prince") for brunch.

And, boy, did I need brunch after last night.

St. Ex was positively bustling when I walked in around 12:30, but, as is often my luck, there was one stool waiting for me at the bar. It was right in front of the taps, so eating space was tight, but it was good enough for me.

My server at Bar Pilar, which is owned by the same people as St. Ex, had told me she preferred BP's brunch menu, but I couldn't very well eat at the same place the very next day, now could I?

It was enough that I was eating on the same block again.

The brunch menu yielded an immediate choice, although it was listed under "lunch stuff"rather than "eggs and such," and this was clearly my first meal of the day.

The Smith Meadow Farm scrapple sandwich (two eggs, American cheese, lettuce, tomato, Texas toast with fries) had my name written all over it.

When I told the bartender my stomach's delight, he raised an eyebrow and asked, "Do you know what scrapple is?"

I laughed out loud. "Yea, I do," I said. "But why are you asking me that?"

He said that they are required to ask because so many people order it without knowing what scrapple is and then are horrified when it arrives and they see it.

Not me.

"They think it's just a cute food term or, like one girl said, it's scrappled eggs or something. I don't know, but we have to ask now."

I assured him I knew what I was getting into, so I passed the test and he left to put my order in, giving me a thumbs up as he went.

The guy on the next stool turned to me and asked, "Scrappled eggs? What the hell does that even mean?"

Not sure myself, I said that along the same lines, there were probably even more people who didn't know what head cheese was and would be just as horrified at its arrival.

In his clipped British accent, he responded, "Of course, scrapple and head cheese are really just code for "nasty bits," aren't they?"

My nasty bits were delicious, although I opted out of the lettuce and tomato.

The thick Texas toast was the perfect vehicle for the squares of scrapple, cheese and eggs that topped it; I left a few fries, but that was about it.

Humanity restored.

My second stop of the day was the Museum of American Art/Portrait Gallery over on 7th Street and I had the good fortune to get a parking space right in front of it.

Literally, I parked by the front steps. Such luck on marathon/Cherry Blossom weekend bode well for me, I thought.

I was there to see "To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America," a show about manning the home front during WWII, focusing primarily on the little-known painter Ault, with some Rockwell Kents and Hoppers thrown in for good measure.

Much like Gauguin escaping Paris for the wilds of Tahiti, Ault abandoned Manhattan for Woodstock, New York, seeking the isolation of the country with his wife and muse, Louise.

A dark personality, Ault was not the untamed artistic sort.

Every day, he began by tidying his studio before he allowed himself to begin painting. In some cases, he then painted the tidy studio, with or without himself included.

His paintings avoid storytelling, instead stating images and leaving it at that.

Many were of an intersection in Russell's Corners, painted day and night, summer and winter. No figures are ever present, nor any brushstrokes to be seen.

"Old House" showed a field with a haunted-looking house in it, but the structure seems to float on the grass rather than being firmly attached to it.

His masterpiece, "January Full Moon" shows an old barn in moonlight; it is nothing more and yet there is everything to be appreciated in its stoic beauty under a bright moon.

There was only painting in the show from after the war years and in it, Ault seems to demonstrate that a new world order has superseded the old.

His purely representational wartime paintings yield to one of abstractions, perhaps as a metaphor the the promise of the unfolding but unknown future.

The world he knew was coming to an end.

I'd been unaware of George Ault before reading about the opening of the show a few weeks ago, but after an hour with his works, I felt a sense of a man who created secure and enclosed worlds of lonely calm from inside a tidy studio, safe and secure and, like most Americans, not sure of the war's outcome.

It was a lesson in the 1940s.

My final treat to myself was in the same building, but on the Portrait Gallery side.

"One Life: Katherine Graham" was only one gallery, but so full of artifacts and photographs that defined an era, that it felt like more.

Photographs of the Washington Post publisher spanned her colorful life.

She was there as an eager, young reporter at the San Francisco News.

Another showed her radiant in a wedding portrait to her beloved Philip Graham ("He combined the parts of her life that she had always felt were separate. Here was a man who was intellectual, attractive, witty and charming." Excuse me, are there any more like him out there?)

Her stint at the Post began in the pre-women's rights-era, so many photographs showed her as the lone woman at all-male editorial and board meetings.

Her mask from Truman Capote's Black and White Ball was there, as was the wooden wringer Bob Woodward had given her as a reminder of the travails of the Watergate investigation.

The Pulitzer Prize for her autobiography (and favorite read of mine), Personal History, sat next to her mask.

Just as impressive as her prize was the first page from her biography, written in longhand on a yellow legal pad.

As old-school as I can be in a few ways, I can't imagine so daunting a task as to write out one's life on paper.

How much easier it would have been if she'd been able to keep track of her life online with daily posting.

Blogging as autobiography-in-progress, so to speak.