A visit to the 12th century

This image by Petra Rohr-Rouendaal is from the 1999 edition of "Pillars of the Earth."

I don't recall why I picked up a copy of the historical novel "Pillars of the Earth." Perhaps a friend recommended it. Maybe I saw it on a best-seller list.

The book sparked an interest in Gothic cathedrals that changed the way I planned my travels.

"Pillars" is by Ken Follett, who was previously known for his thrillers. He published the historical novel in 1989.

When I was in the Air Force in Europe in the late 1960s, I spent a lot of time exploring Europe. Like many others who visit Europe, I dutifully spent time visiting cathedrals -- Strasbourg, Cologne, Freiburg and others -- but they were hardly a major focus for me.

Then I read "Pillars." It's a lengthy book, and when I'm interested in a novel, that's good. It is methodically researched. Set in the 12th century, "Pillars" unfolds in and around the fictional town of Kingsbridge, England, and is about the building of a an early Gothic cathedral and the stonemason, Tom Builder, who designed it and supervised its construction. But there's so much more to the book.

"Pillars" tracks the development of Gothic architecture, which followed on the heels of Romanesque architecture, against the backdrop of real historical events. Generally speaking, Romanesque churches featured large barrel vaults that resembled classic Roman arches. One quick way to distinguish a Romanesque from a Gothic cathedral is to look at the windows. Romanesque cathedrals have smaller windows with rounded tops. Gothic cathedrals feature soaring arched windows that are larger, allowing more light to penetrate the interior. Gothic cathedrals also are famous for their flying buttresses, necessary to keep the weight of the roof from forcing the supporting walls to collapse outwards. (Romanesque architects had earlier solved that problem by employing much thicker walls, which limited light from penetrating to the interior.)

You can see a classic Romanesque cathedral in the German town of Speyer. Chartres cathedral in France is a good example of a Gothic cathedral.

Before "Pillars," Follett had previously been known for writing 20th-century thrillers, only a few of which I had read. "Pillars of the Earth" became his best-selling work. (He wrote a sequel, "World Without End," in 2007, and while I enjoyed it, it was not as good a read as "Pillars.")

If long novels set in medieval times are not to your taste, you're in luck. Starz TV has just begun airing an 8-hour miniseries based on "Pillars." I've seen the first two episodes, and while you'll miss much detail and historical background, it's worth watching. If you're not a Starz subscriber, you can find episodes on the cable network's Web site at Starz.com/Pillars.

Swimming with cows

Antigua, 1977 (Don Dale photo)

Yes, that's a photograph of a cow, on a beach, in Antigua.

(And, yes, it's a lousy photograph. On our first day at sea aboard QEII in 1977, the shutter-spring snapped on my Pentax Spotmatic and I was reduced to using a backup Polaroid camera for the rest of the two-week trip.)

Antigua (pronounced An-TI-guh) is in the Leeward Islands in the eastern Caribbean, about 17 degrees north of the equator. The tourism bureau boasts that the island has 365 beaches, one for each day of the year. Many are isolated, offering total privacy.

Walter, my traveling companion, and I had a plan. On the morning we arrived in the port of St. John's, we found a taxi driver and asked him to take us to a secluded beach where we could go skinny-dipping. The driver said he knew of just the spot. After a ride over increasingly rough roads, we arrived. The driver agreed to return in a few hours to fetch us, and then he left.

The beach was beautiful, and indeed truly remote. There was not another living soul in sight for as far as we could see.

But there were cows. Some were wandering on the beach. Some were wading chest-deep in the blue Caribbean.

We plunged into the water stark naked among the livestock. The beach was just what we were looking for and we enjoyed ourselves, being careful, as I recall, not to annoy the cows. They, in turn, didn't seem to mind our presence.

True to his word, the driver returned at the appointed hour, picked us up, and delivered us back to St. John's. (I'm not sure what we would have done had the driver not come back. The beach was certainly isolated and as far from civilization as you can get on an island that's 14 miles long and 11 miles wide.)

That evening at dinner on the QE2 we had an interesting story to tell about our adventures in Antigua. No, strike that: We had the most interesting story to tell.

That day on the beach with the cows in Antigua was just one more delightful travel adventure.

Serendipity happens, Part 2

(Don Dale 2006 photo)

Sometimes when you're traveling, memorable things occur by happenstance.

The image above is one more illustration of just that. It happened on a 2006 trip to Europe with my friend Mark. I've mentioned Mark before. He was one of my successors as news director at WTVR TV, many years after I left the station. One of the best compliments I can pay him is that he's a great traveling companion, and by that I mean that he is content to stick together on days when that suits us both. Or not.

We had dinner one evening in Florence at an overpriced restaurant complete with an arrogant waiter and food that fell far from living up to expectations. In a region of Italy where almost all of what we ate was fresh, exciting, delicious and memorable, the evening could have been a regrettable experience.

But it wasn't.

Serendipity made it special.

That's Mark on the right in the picture. We were seated next to three people, three generations, of Florentines. The grandmother has her arm hooked through Mark's. That's her son on her right, and across from them is her granddaughter.

I don't recall how the conversation began. Perhaps it was just a matter of saying hello. Neither Mark nor I spoke anything more than phrase-book Italian. The grandmother knew no English at all. Her son spoke a few words of our language, but the granddaughter's English was passable.

When the grandmother learned that we were Americans, her face lit up -- for reasons that were never clear, she really liked Americans -- and she began a conversation that her granddaughter had to struggle at times to translate. Mark and I talked about our journey to Florence, Sienna, London and Amsterdam. The grandmother told us that they were celebrating her granddaughter's birthday. The conversation was difficult, but that didn't stop us. We all tried our best, chatting amiably and enthusiastically, if inefficiently, through our meal.

I have often wondered why the grandmother was so enthusiastic about chatting with us. I wondered too if the granddaughter -- whose special evening it was -- ever resented what she might rightly have seen as an unwelcome diversion. But as we paid our bill and prepared to leave, both Mark and I expressed our true appreciation for their company.

You can never tell when something memorable will happen on a vacation. Sometimes the day will go by and nothing out of the ordinary happens. At other times, there are sweet surprises. That night in the summer of 2006, serendipity brought us into the company of three interesting people and added one more pleasurable memory of our stay in Florence.

In remembrance

This point of the monument extends over the Keizersgracht canal. It represents the present, and faces the National War Memorial on Dam Square in the center of Amsterdam. (Don Dale 1995 photo)

I had never seen anything like it before.

I had some time on my hands after Walter and I arrived back in Amsterdam in 1995, after our cruise on the Rhine and the leisurely drive back to Amsterdam.

I had read about the monument -- in the Richmond newspaper in September 1987 when it was officially unveiled and in the Amsterdam guidebook I had bought in Richmond just before our trip. I wanted to see it for myself.

With little difficulty, I found the Homomonument, a tribute originally to gay men and women who were persecuted and killed by the Nazis during World War II.

The Homomonument comprises three pink-granite, equilateral triangles connected by an inlaid band that creates a fourth and larger equilateral triangle. The three smaller triangles symbolize the past, the present and the future.

Why the emphasis on pink triangles? During the war, gay men who were sent to Nazi concentration camps were made to wear pink triangles, one on their jackets and another on their pants. They were larger than the symbols others in the concentration camps were forced to wear, so that they could better be seen from a distance. Even in the camps there was a hierarchy, and gay men and lesbians were considered the worst of the worst.

The Homomonument was a long time coming. Efforts to establish some sort of commemoration of the Holocaust's gay and lesbian victims began almost immediately after the war ended. It took 40 years and an enormous change in attitudes toward homosexuality, first in Europe and then in the States, for the monument to take shape. In the 1970s, gay men and women began to speak out, to discuss their orientation openly, to fight for their human rights and to demand their places in society's mainstream. They began to wear the pink triangle as a symbol of pride, reversing what the Nazis had meant to establish as an emblem of shame.

It took years more for funds to be raised for the Homomonument. In the end, the government of the Netherlands paid a large portion of the cost.

The Homomonument is adjacent to one of Amsterdam's major canals, the Keizersgracht, not far from the Anne Frank House. Today it is seen as a commemoration of all gay men and women who have been or still are being persecuted. It honors those who have struggled for freedom and human rights for those with a sexual orientation that differs from what was, and let's be accurate, still is in many places, considered "normal."

I stood alone at the Homomonument for some time on that sunny, warm day in the summer of 1995 and considered the amazing changes I had witnessed during my lifetime. I watched as single men and women, couples, and groups came, presumably, to do the same. Some brought flowers. Others brought no more than their own private thoughts.

It was a peaceful place, a beautiful place, for contemplation. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before.

Eating as art

The Waldhotel Sonnora in the tiny town of Wittlich, Germany, is seen from its rear garden. Waldhotel translates as "forest hotel." (Don Dale 1995 photo)

La mejor salsa del mundo es la hambre.

So wrote Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 400 years ago in "Don Quixote": Hunger is the best sauce in the world.

It's true. I can remember a dinner of chicken-fried steak with cream gravy, mashed potatoes and green beans that I ate in basic training in the USAF in the summer of 1966. It sticks in my mind because I was ravenous. We had just returned from a week of camping out in the Texas boonies, eating C rations and drinking coffee boiled over an open fire. That chicken-fried steak in the chow hall was the first real meal I'd had in seven days, and it was powerfully delicious.

In my previous post I wrote about eating at a Michelin two-star restaurant, Au Crocodile, in Strasbourg, France. On that 1995 trip, my friend Walter and I ate at three Michelin-starred restaurants in three countries.

The 1995 Michelin guide noted that it awarded one, two or three stars to restaurants of "particularly fine quality" and cautions that patrons "will pay accordingly." One star goes to very good restaurants in their category, two stars go to restaurants featuring "excellent cooking, worth a detour," and three stars are awarded for "exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey."

The three Michelin-starred restaurants we ate at were the previously mentioned Au Crocodile, the Waldhotel Sonnora in Wittlich, Germany, and Christophe in Amsterdam, Holland.

All three meals were impressive, probably the best I have ever been served, and all were ridiculously expensive by my standards, in the range of $100 to $200 each in 1995 dollars, which is about $150 to $300 today. Each, however, was worth what we paid.

But I can remember only bits and pieces of each experience. I should have kept a journal.

Our choice of Christophe in Amsterdam was based on a recommendation from a friend of Walter's partner, who was in Amsterdam to conduct "La Boheme." If I'm recalling correctly, Christophe merited one Michelin star. The restaurant, nestled along one of the city's famed canals, was nothing special as far as interior design is concerned, but I do remember the meal being amazing. Walter and I ordered the same entrée, which, if memory serves, was beef. What I do remember vividly was the delicious sauce. Both of us puzzled over its distinctive ingredient, but we couldn't quite put our finger on it. We later found out from our waiter: ground olives. Amazing.

In Strasbourg, we stumbled upon Au Crocodile by accident as we were wandering through the area around the cathedral. We stopped to read the menu in the window, and the proprietress came out to greet us. She welcomed us to come inside to look and told us that, yes, we could get a reservation for that evening. I recall little about the meal except for the staggeringly delicious selection of local cheeses. I had never before tasted such cheeses. I do remember that the table was set with pink linen and heavy silver. When I reached for the sugar bowl, it was so unexpectedly heavy that I almost dropped it.

And I recall the quiet, elderly couple at the table next to us -- she in a mauve print dress with coordinated hat and gloves, he in a dark three-piece pinstriped suit, and both looking like elegant extras from a 1930s French film. He smoked throughout the meal, ashes dribbling down his front. I was captivated.

Our final gourmet stop was a restaurant for which we'd made reservations via fax long before leaving the States. It was at the Waldhotel Sonnora in the tiny German town of Wittlich, not far from the town where I'd been stationed in the USAF 30 years before. I do not remember whether it had two or three stars. Here, unlike the other two restaurants, none of the dining-room staff spoke English. To help us decipher the menu, the maître d' summoned a young woman from the kitchen who was clearly embarrassed to be brought into the dining room. Her English was passable, about on a par with my German, but she was eager to help.

I recall little of the gastronomically spectacular meal except for the frog legs. They were excellent. And, yes, they tasted like fried chicken. I do recall that we ordered extravagantly expensive port to finish off our evening. We took our glasses out to the terrace overlooking the garden and sipped slowly and talked quietly in the night.

Those three meals were a decided anomaly for me. I have never before or since eaten so well, so elegantly, and so expensively. And I shall probably never do so again. But the memories are priceless.

Amsterdam to Basel and back

Kölner Dom (Cologne Cathedral) looms on the horizon on a Rhine River cruise in 1995. (Photo by Walter Foery)

There was one more cruise on my agenda, although it was a river cruise in 1995 on a much smaller vessel. My friend Walter and I combined a visit to Amsterdam, where his partner was conducting the opera "La Boheme," with a six-day cruise on the Rhine River to Basel, Switzerland, on board a ship named Britannia.

The Rhine River begins at a glacier in the Swiss Alps and flows north for approximately 800 miles, so we traveled against the current. Our cruise, for all practical purposes, covered the navigable length of the Rhine. Built in 1971, the Britannia has about 90 cabins and can carry some 180 passengers. The size of Rhine cruise ships is limited by the river's locks and bridges.

Britannia was, therefore, smaller than any ship I had cruised on before. The entertainment, food and accommodations were downscaled as well, and any comparison between Britannia and, say, QE2, would be unfair. Nonetheless, it was pleasant enough to travel on her, and the connections with her smaller crew and fewer passengers were more personal.

Walter and I were also among the few passengers whose native language was English. The crew's English ranged from nonexistent through passable to fluent, and my German, learned mostly in bars during my three years stationed in Germany, was middling at best. I was, however, surprised when I boarded and said "Guten Tag!" to the gangway attendant. He handed me a cruise itinerary in German. I switched languages and asked for an itinerary in English. He told me that my accent was so good -- I can sustain a decent German accent for at least two words -- that he had assumed I was German.

Walter and I quickly sussed out who among the passengers could speak English, and I did strike up conversations in German with passengers who were exploring their own country. I discovered that if I stopped thinking about it so hard and just talked, a lot of the German I had learned 30 years before came back to me.

We spent the Fourth of July on board Britannia, me wearing for most of the day a T-shirt with a small American flag on the pocket. I was surprised when I woke up on Independence Day to see that the ship had been decked out in red, white and blue bunting and a large banner proclaiming the holiday. I think that was the day that Walter and I asked the dining-room steward if the chef could prepare cheeseburgers and fries for our lunch. He happily, if not altogether successfully, accommodated our special order.

For the first few days of the cruise, the scenery was not quite what I expected. I had taken day trips on the Rhine 30 years before along the magnificent stretch of the river from Bingen to Koblenz. But as we began our cruise in 1995, we saw industrial sites and cities that had turned their backs to the river, much like the scenery on a train trip from Richmond to Washington, D.C.

But then the famed Rhine River castles, built by feudal overlords to protect their lands from marauders, made their appearance. The mid-Rhine is famed also for its lush vineyards and for its legends. One of the best known myths is of the nymph who lived on the Lorelei rock She is said to have lured fishermen to their destruction by singing, until she too was overcome by love and plunged to her death. A bronze statue of the nymph overlooks the river today. And everywhere were ancient castles, more than in any other river valley in the world. This was the stretch of the Rhine that made the whole journey worthwhile.

The most memorable stops were in Cologne, where we visited the famed Gothic cathedral begun in 1248 and not completed until 1880 (it's the largest Gothic church in northern Europe); Speyer, with its Romanesque cathedral dating to 1030 that was extremely influential in the development of church architecture in the 11th and 12th centuries; Koblenz, located at the confluence, known as the Deutsches Eck (German Corner), of the Rhine and Mosel rivers; and Strasbourg, which is on the French side of the river and is the site of a Gothic cathedral whose origins can be traced to the late 4th or early 5th century.

We managed to obtain last-minute reservations for dinner in Strasbourg at Au Crocodile, which, if memory serves, rated at least two Michelin stars at the time. There we had one of the most notable meals of my life.

We spent only one night in Basel at the end of our journey on the Rhine. Then we rented a car for a scenic drive up through, among other places, the Black Forest, with overnight stops at an inn in a picturesque village near Karlsruhe, in Bitburg (where I had spent three years in the Air Force), and Antwerp, where we had a wonderful dinner featuring a galvanized bucket of fresh mussels. Then it was back to Amsterdam for opening night of "La Boheme."

Destination: West Indies

RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 (Jim Champion photo)

In 1975 I discovered the joys of travel on a cruise ship.

It began in the early 1970s when my friend Walter and I decided we'd like to give cruising a try. We plotted and planned, read brochures and travel guides, and decided to try an April departure from Norfolk on a Greek ship, Queen Anna Maria.

Over the years, I've forgotten what stops we made, but a menu I snagged from dinner on April 15, 1974, says our destination was the West Indies. Two memories do remain with some clarity, however: the simply amazing experience of sailing, and the food. Anna Maria was not a new ship. She was launched in 1956, christened by Queen Elizabeth II as Empress of Britain. She was 640 feet long, had one funnel, one mast and twin propellers. In 1964, she was sold to the Greek Line and renamed Queen Anna Maria.

(Two years after we sailed on her, she was sold to Carnival Cruise Lines and was re-named yet again, becoming Carnivale. She was sold and re-named several more times before 2008, when she was beached in Alang, India, to be scrapped.)

The chef's suggestions from that Monday-evening dinner on Anna Maria were emblematic of cruise-ship excess: cream soup Pritaniére, poached pike Dieppoise with Hollandaise sauce, veal cutlet with sweet cheese, glazed squash, mashed potatoes, Sicilian salad, and strawberry shortcake. Other entrée choices included Greek baked lamb, paella, and leg of pork. Unfortunately I neglected to save menus from breakfast, morning bouillon, lunch, afternoon tea, and the midnight buffet. To my then-inexperienced eyes, the amount of food available seemed overwhelming.

Once Walter and I had experienced traveling by ship, we spent the remainder of the decade vacationing on liners that visited probably half of the islands in the Caribbean, plus Bermuda and the north coast of South America.

In May 1975, we sailed to the Caribbean from San Juan on Carla C, a voyage that was marked by the overwhelming number of teenagers from Puerto Rico who were celebrating their high-school graduation. And in October 1976, we sailed on Mardi Gras to Bermuda.

Our Caribbean cruise adventures ended with a sailing on Queen Elizabeth 2 in November 1977. She was the greatest, without a doubt. A Cunard liner, QE2 was designed for transatlantic service from Southampton, England, to New York. She served as the flagship of the line beginning in 1969. Built in Clydebank, Scotland, she was considered to be among the great transatlantic ships before she was succeeded more than four decades later by Queen Mary 2. When last I heard, QE2 was moored in Dubai, awaiting an uncertain future.

In the decades following our adventures at sea in the 1970s, the cruise industry burgeoned almost unimaginably. Today, there are more cruising opportunities than you can shake a stick at.

But my vacations on magnificent ships ended with my trip on QE2. There are worse ways to put paid to a decade of extraordinary experiences at sea.

I didn't lose my love for cruise ships. No, the reason I stopped was far more prosaic, occasioned by a shift in spending priorities.

In 1980, I bought a house.

Jack and Jackie, Abe Lincoln, and the Reduced Shakespeare Company

What a pleasant surprise it was to see the plaque in the picture above when we sat down to dinner Friday night at Martin's Tavern. (Click here to see a larger version of the picture.) The restaurant, in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood, bills itself on its Web site as "one of the few Washington, D.C., establishments at the heart of the city since the Great Depression."

My friend Walter, who lives in Connecticut, and I have met in D.C. each summer for the past few years. Two years ago, our friends Dottie Lu and Les, who live in southern Maryland, began driving into D.C. to meet us for an evening. We've known Dottie Lu since the 1960s, and her partner, Les, has been a welcome addition to the gatherings.

This year, Dottie Lu and Les joined us for an enjoyable two-hour Segway tour that visited spots in D.C. associated with Abe Lincoln and his assassination. I had written a paper in college on the purported role of boarding-house owner Mary Surratt in the assassination plot, so I was eager to see her house, which still stands in what is now Washington's Chinatown. Other interesting stops on the tour were Ford's Theatre, where Lincoln was shot, and the Petersen House across the street, where Lincoln died the next morning.

(History buffs will remember that at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who was present in the house when Lincoln died, announced, "Now he belongs to the ages.")

We had left to Dottie Lu and Les the decision about where to go for dinner. Their choice was Martin's Tavern. When the Segway tour wrapped up shortly after 9 p.m., we headed to Georgetown. All four of us were surprised to be seated in the booth in which JFK had proposed to Jackie. Dottie Lu told us she had requested the "best table in the house" when she had made the reservations months before, but she hadn't known that we'd be in this particular booth.

The table made the evening even more memorable for me. So did the food. I opted for a tavern special, Brunswick stew, expecting what I would get if I ordered the same thing in Richmond. The Martin's version, while quite different, was unexpectedly good. Instead of a thick, eat-it-with-a-fork stew, what Martin's serves is more akin to a soup. Although it was made with the usual fresh tomatoes, corn, butterbeans and chicken, the broth was thinner and laced with butter and cream. I tasted it with trepidation and then ate it with gusto -- and with the most delicious bread I've had in ages.

Other highlights of my weekend in D.C. also centered on food, especially a pizza Saturday night at an Italian restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue. The menu listed a pizza Margherita. On a trip to Florence several years ago I tried one at a tiny place near the train station. With a crispy, thin crust and fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, basil and extra-virgin olive oil, it was one of the best pizzas I had ever eaten. I had two more on successive days. But the pizza Margherita at the Washington restaurant included tomato paste. Nuh-uh! Not what I wanted. But there was a create-your-own option, so I selected a white pizza with diced tomatoes, mozzarella and basil. Voila! An excellent pizza Margherita -- or at least as close to it as I have come in the States.

I also enjoyed a performance at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theatre of "Completely Hollywood (abridged)" by the Reduced Shakespeare Company. Or should I say I enjoyed what I got to see of it? For another take on the performance, be sure to read my friend Walter's blog entry titled Two Strikes and You're Out and a follow-up titled Manning Up.

The Reduced Shakespeare Company apparently has a Google alert on its name and quickly responded to Walter's scathing criticism of the performance with a tweet to its followers. Don't miss the post-tweet comments to Walter's two blog posts: they're probably the best parts. After reading his first post, RSC described Walter as an "a**hole." That was a shoot-from-the-hip criticism that, while true from RSC's point of view, does Walter a minor injustice. Like onions, we are all made up of many layers, and I am familiar enough with his varied and interesting layers to ignore gratuitously insulting opinions.

For example ...

One day while we were in D.C., I showed up for lunch wearing khaki shorts, a purple T-shirt and white tennis shoes. After I insisted that Walter explain his incredulous look, he told me I was dressed like trailer trash. No problem: Walter is often disconcertingly direct, and his comment rolled off like water off a duck's back. All I had to do was silently repeat my usual mantra: Consider the source.

The Reduced Shakespeare Company would have been wise to do the same.

NOTE: In my blog post of July 2, I wrote: "[D]oes anybody really expect that people will flock to the [Virginia Museum of Fine Arts] on Christmas, New Year's, July 4th and Thanksgiving, days on which VMFA has historically been closed? Not me. My guess is that you'll find very few, if any, people at the museum on those holidays." I was wrong in my prediction. I am told by my sources at VMFA that more than 1,000 people showed up on July 4.

Four stars

Alfred Drake as Curly and Betty Garde as Aunt Eller in the original 1943 Broadway production of "Oklahoma!"

By the time I met him in the early 1980s, Alfred Drake looked nothing like the young man he had been in 1943 when he starred as Curly in the original Broadway staging of Rodgers and Hammerstein's groundbreaking musical, "Oklahoma!"

Instead of a fresh-faced, up-and-coming actor, he was now paunchy and pushing 70. He was also pushing a play called "The Hiding Place." Drake had written the script and convinced Virginia Museum Theatre Artistic Director Tom Markus to stage it in Richmond. The show was a flop. Backstage staff referred to it derisively as "The Hidey Hole," and audiences, as they say, stayed away in droves -- except for season ticketholders and others who remembered Drake from his roles in musicals such as "Kismet" and "Kiss Me Kate."

I spent a lot of time with Drake during the run-up to VMT's production of "The Hiding Place," which he directed and in which he played the leading role. He was not an easy-going man by that time. In fact he was downright prickly. My job was to drum up publicity for the show. It wasn't easy: Reporters and editors with graying hair were the only ones who knew his once-famous name.

Drake was the exception to the big stars I worked with at VMT. I have never been enamoured of celebrities, perhaps as a result of having interviewed too many of them in my earlier career as a TV reporter. Sure, I was often impressed by their body of work, but I rarely looked forward to hanging out with them.

Helen Hayes was a major exception. Miss Hayes -- I can't bring myself to call her Helen, given that she was about 80 when I met her -- had won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. She was also a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Arts. Renowned as the First Lady of the American Theater, she had played everybody from Queen Victoria to Amanda Wingfield. Her husband, Charles MacArthur, was the co-author of the play "The Front Page," which was later made into "His Girl Friday" and several other films.

Tom Markus had persuaded Miss Hayes to come to Richmond to accept VMT's award for contributions to the American theater. It was at a small gathering of reporters in the museum's library, after the working newsmen had neared the end of their questions, that I asked her about her late husband.

"I read somewhere about your husband and a bag of peanuts," I said. Her eyes began to sparkle and a warm smile lit her face. And then she told me the story.

"It was during the 1920s, during the Depression," she told us. "Charlie once took a bag of salted peanuts out of his pocket and poured them into my hand. 'I wish they were emeralds,' he said to me. It was a funny and touching moment.

"Many years later, after we both had had some success in the theater, he surprised me on our anniversary by pulling a small bag out of his pocket and pouring emeralds into my hand, saying, 'I wish they were peanuts.'"

Helen Hayes was a star of the first magnitude, and it was a pleasure to meet and talk with her.

Two other recipients of the VMT award also made deep impressions on me. Mildred Dunnock, who had starred in the original Broadway production of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" in 1948, was a tiny woman of quiet dignity. In our conversation on the day she was honored, she didn't want to talk about her past triumphs. Instead, she wanted to know about Richmond, about VMT, and about the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Every time I tried to steer the conversation toward her roles on Broadway, she graciously, but firmly, changed the subject.

John Houseman was equally gracious and dignified, but he was completely willing, perhaps even insistent, on talking about himself. There was much to talk about, from his collaboration with director Orson Welles in their days with the Federal Theatre Project through to the production of the movie "Citizen Kane." By the time I met him in the early 1980s, he was far more famous, however, for his commercials for the brokerage firm Smith Barney and for his starring role as Professor Charles Kingsfield in the movie "The Paper Chase." He won an Oscar in 1973 for that one. We had a pleasant lunch in the Members' Restaurant overlooking the Fan District, but I could hardly get a word in edgewise. Houseman was a great raconteur, and I listened with rapt attention to his tales.

I loved my years working in publicity and advertising for the Virginia Museum Theatre. I learned much about the business of entertainment, and I remain an eager fan of live theater. I also treasure the extraordinary opportunity I had to meet some remarkable people.

Independence Day 2010

(Don Dale photo)

Peaceful time on the Rappahannock River, excellent burgers and hot dogs, and good times with family marked Independence Day today for me.

I suppose it's a natural outgrowth of having spent time in uniform, but I have a special fondness for holidays like Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Veterans Day. And there's no better way to celebrate than with family.

Now that I'm back in Richmond, I can hear the music of a live rock band faintly in the distance and smell the aroma of charcoal grills emanating from somewhere in my neighborhood. There's a party going on as the day turns into evening.

Later tonight, I'll be able to stand on my front porch and watch the fireworks after the Flying Squirrels wrap up their game with the Erie SeaWolves at The Diamond. The ball field is so close that the noise will be akin to that of a battery of howitzers blasting away, and Cassie the cat will hide behind the sofa. But it'll be a good ending to a good day.

Still seeking greatness

Alex Nyerges began work as VMFA's director and chief spin-meister on Aug. 1, 2006. (Photo by Katherine Wetzel, (c) Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)

I worked for five directors during my 32 years at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. I've already written about Peter Mooz, the director who hired me in 1978. That leaves four -- two of whom were good and two of whom were ... well ... ordinary.

Keep in mind that my perspective on these four directors was that of a middle management employee and that my evaluation of them is merely personal opinion.

Paul Perrot, one of the good ones, arrived in 1984. He came to VMFA from the Smithsonian Institution, where he was Assistant Secretary for Museum Programs. VMFA was at that time in the middle of constructing its West Wing, which opened in 1985 and houses collections given to the museum by Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon and Sydney and Frances Lewis. The two collections couldn't have been more divergent: The Mellon side of the wing houses French art and British Sporting Art, and the Lewis side houses Art Nouveau and Art Deco masterpieces and an exceptional collection of Post-World War II American art.

Most decisions about the wing had already been made by the time Paul arrived. So he devoted much of his time to the infrastructure of the existing museum -- the backstage aspects, including electrical systems, heating and air conditioning systems, and structural problems. What he found was appalling. Much of the unseen portions of the museum had been sadly neglected for years. While construction continued on the eye-popping West Wing, Paul found money and resources to modernize what already existed. It was, I believe, his greatest contribution to VMFA.

Let me give you an example of his attention to detail. I was walking through the galleries one summer morning on the way back to my office in the South Wing when I came across Paul and the museum's building and grounds manager in what was then called the Mediterranean Court. The centerpiece of the area was a large, shallow pool surrounded by pots of papyrus plants. Paul, wearing his trademark seersucker suit, had taken off his shoes and socks, rolled up his pants, and waded into the shallow pool.

As I got closer, Paul picked up a handful of the gravel on the bottom of the pool and held it out for the building and grounds manager to sniff. The smell was not good: it was musty, with an aroma of decay. "Fix that," he told his subordinate. Then he picked up his shoes and socks and headed back to his office, leaving wet footprints in his wake.

Paul left VMFA in 1991 to become director of the Santa Barbara (California) Museum of Art.

Katherine Lee was named VMFA's director in 1991. She came to Richmond from Chicago, where she was a high-ranking official of the city's Art Institute. Katherine was the first female director in the museum's history. She cut back on the number of senior staff who reported to her directly and instituted what many staffers began calling "the blame game." For the first time, the museum became a bureaucratic institution. Innovation slowed, and imagination was quelled. Katherine's management style seemed to me to be one in which any innovative idea was first assigned a "designated blamee" in case of failure. Gradually, the stream of ideas slowed from a torrent to a trickle.

Katherine left VMFA in 2000, with the new 2010 wing on the horizon and not enough money in the coffers to begin the project. Katherine's personality, some senior staffers thought, was not such that she felt comfortable soliciting major donors. She left to be director of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Later in 2000, the museum's trustees picked Michael Brand, a young, talented Australian on his way up in the art world, to be the next director. Michael was one of the good ones, completely supportive of the staff, encouraging new ideas and eager to begin implementing the process of doubling the size of the museum. He was as masterful with prospective donors as he was with the media, generating excitement and enthusiasm for the museum's $150 million expansion. He stayed at VMFA for only five years, until 2005, and left to become director of the richest museum in the world, the J. Paul Getty Museum in California.

It wasn't until 2006 that a new VMFA director was named. He is Alex Nyerges, who had been director of the Dayton (Ohio) Art Institute since 1992. When the trustees announced his appointment, the first thing staff members did was to look online to learn more about the DAI. The front page of Dayton's Web site showed a splashy picture of Princess Diana to promote an exhibition of Diana memorabilia. Some thought it was a sign that Nyerges' focus in Richmond might be more on flash than substance.

Sadly, I believe, that was the case. His aim, it seems to me, was to increase attendance at all costs. I have no problem with seeking higher attendance, and flash can easily live side by side with substance. But two aspects of Alex's approach to running the museum give me pause. He recently announced that VMFA will be open 365 days a year. That's an attention-getting move, but does anybody really expect that people will flock to the museum on Christmas, New Year's, July 4th and Thanksgiving, days on which VMFA has historically been closed? Not me. My guess is that you'll find very few, if any, people at the museum on those holidays. It was decision made for show, not need.

Alex has also developed a reputation as a spin-meister. He has said that VMFA is now one of the Top Ten comprehensive art museums in the nation. Many look askance at that claim. What does it mean? And is it true? Also, in newspaper articles after the recent Grand Opening weekend, Alex was quoted as saying nearly 30,000 people had visited to celebrate the expansion. From what I can find, his numbers were wildly inflated. Spin can be an effective tool -- until you're found out.

With the opening of the museum's new wing in May, the stage is set for greatness at VMFA. National critics and the public alike have had high praise for the architecture and the logical and dazzling way in which the collections are now displayed.

What VMFA needs now is another great director in the mold of Leslie Cheek Jr. During my tenure, I worked for two good directors and two who were run-of-the-mill. I'd dearly love to see another director who could be called a visionary and effective leader.