Three Beautiful Things 03/01/16: National Gallery Photo Exhibit, Really Great Beer, Three Bottles on the Shelf!

1. I drove down to Union Station, parked the Sube in the parking garage like I'd done it 10,000 times before, made my way to the National Mall Circulator bus, and visited the National Gallery of Art to see an exhibit entitled, "Celebrating Photography at the National Gallery of Art: Recent Gifts".  It's an eclectic exhibit, featuring many styles like portraiture, post-modern approaches to landscape, street photography, and others. I'd never seen a street photograph by Richard Avedon before and his picture of a woman holding a folded over newspaper with a screaming headline reporting the death of JFK -- its title: "November 22, 1963 in Times Square" -- arrested my attention as did Paul Graham's series entitled "Pittsburgh" and Deborah Lusters' portraits, a collection called "One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana". The National Gallery of Art provides Lusters' collection online, here.  Here is the Avedon picture that stopped me in my tracks:

2.  When the Deke left school today, she was wound up, in a good way,  after a solid conversation with her principal. The Deke is discovering she has more support in her difficult situation at school than she originally thought. It's a relief.  The Deke jumped into the Sube and suggested we go to the Old Line Bistro for a beer or two and that's what we did. I was psyched when I saw D. C. Brau's deep and abiding imperial IPA, On the Wings of Armageddon, was on tap and the Deke sampled, loved, and drank a couple snifters of Stone's gorgeous 12th Anniversary Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout, out as part of Stone's Encore Series to commemorate the brewery's 20th anniversary.  We didn't stay long.  We didn't drink much. But, we had one of the best sessions of drinking beer ever because the beer and our conversation was so good.

3. I took a little taste of the Deke's Oatmeal Stout and sprang out of the bistro into the adjoining bottle shop to see if there were bottles of this Bittersweet Chocolate available.  There were!  Three of them! I went all out and bought all three of the 22 oz bombers so we can enjoy this beer at selected moments on three occasions in our future.  I love being able to buy these beers that don't come out very often.  Needless to say, the Deke was pretty stoked when I returned to our table with three bottles in the bag.