Friends!!!

Yesterday my friend Yams was visiting from Israel. We met when Yams moved into the coop my ex-husband and I moved out of and we've stayed in touch since then. Yams is an actor, a puppet maker, and a fellow not-yet-published children's book writer. We decided to meet up and go canoeing along the Charles River in Cambridge. He brought along his traveling companion, a delightful Jewish Israeli actor/director visiting the USA for the first time. We used Charles River Canoe and Kayak for our three-person canoe rental. It was lovely and we saw an unidentified bird. I think it's a great blue heron?

The rental kayaks.

My friend and his traveling companion.

All of us in the kayak.

What is this bird?

We made it! Triumph!

After canoeing the three of us went to the south end for dinner and were joined by Yams' sister's friend who is a Catholic MIT graduate from Egypt who left because the environment for Christians there is incredibly unsafe.

Today I went with my friend Olive and her daughter (former nannying kid) to the MFA. I really like that this is becoming our thing to do together. It's nice to have friends who enjoy going to museums. My favorite part of the museum today was "Wisdom of the Poor: Living with Pigeons" made by Chinese artist Song Dong in 2005.  It's a house you can actually climb around in and I love interactive art so that made me happy:

My next favorite was "The Visitation" by Italian sculptor Luca della Robbia in 1445(ish). The coolest thing about this is how it was constructed - four pieces balanced and held together by their own weight with the gaps hidden in the folds of the garments: