The next tennis generation....

Austin...

      

Hayden.....

July 25, 1989 (Princeton Packet, NJ) July 25, 1989 – Princeton 12-year-old Aaronson getting set for tennis nationals

“I like tournaments and the competition,” Aaronson said.  “I look forward to playing in the tournaments a lot.  I like winning the trophies.”

            Aaronson has enjoyed success at such a young age because he got started young.

            “I started by hitting with my parents when I was seven,” Aaronson said.  “Then I took lessons with a guy in Alabama.”

            Since moving from Alabama to Princeton two years ago, Aaronson has been involved in the Princeton Community Tennis Program, as well as taking lessons from John Wunder at Langhorne (PA) Sports Club.

            Right now, he enjoys playing in as many tournaments as possible…”He has to be the one that decides,” Arthur said of the busy schedule.  “All we can say is, “Do your best and don’t feel like you have to win.”

___________________

March 23, 1941 (Cedar Rapids Gazette, Iowa) -  Dick Sampson heads Cornell Net Team

(Austin's Great Grandfather)

_______________

Austin Aaronson - Winner of the 10 & under Tournament on March 12, 2022 @ JTCC

___________

          Watching from the sidelines at the JTCC (Junior Tennis Champions Center) in College Park, Md, last Saturday, we saw Austin play and win a 10 and under tournament. Hayden had encouraged us to come this weekend so we could be at the tournament. It was as if we were reliving Hayden’s youth again, and especially his tennis life which began when he was 7 years old.  I realized that Austin is the next generation in our family with a love of competitive tennis….and he’s only just begun.  I can already picture the bigger tournaments that lie ahead, the summer tennis camps, the school and college tennis teams, which will follow. That was Hayden’s path, until he grew up. Now he shares it all with his son.

            “I am 8 now, Grandma,” Austin told me the minute we arrived at his house last weekend.  He reminded me more than once.  I wanted to say “ I wouldn’t ever forget how old you are...”,  but I liked hearing him practice saying he’s 8. 

            

            Austin’s great-grandfather, Richard Sampson (my Dad), was a natural athlete who played college tennis and continued to enjoy the game until he was in his 80’s. His other lifelong passion was golf. We always told Hayden, that his natural ability for sports came from his grandfather. Hayden was the grandson who shared his love of tennis and that made him special.  Hayden even picked up a golf club from time to time and, with a bit of coaching, could swing it like a pro much to the delight of his grandfather.

Hayden & his grandfather, Richard Sampson

            Austin, who has a natural ability for tennis, is playing well with a competitiveness we had not seen before. It’s a joy to watch Hayden coaching him, talking to him about all the tennis “greats” and working with him to develop good sportsmanship and an acceptance that you aren’t always the winner. “Do your best…” was our mantra with Hayden…and now we all remind Austin of the same. Art and I are reaping the benefits of all those years of Hayden’s tennis lessons, traveling to the tournaments,  offering advice on how to handle losing, and sacrificing financially for the topnotch tennis camps.  “It was all worth it,” we say now, and it was.

 

            Austin is loving tennis lessons, summer camps and tournaments at the Junior Tennis Champions Center (JTCC) in College Park, Maryland, which is just a half hour drive from his home in Capitol Hill. I notice how confidently he walks in the front entrance by himself and navigates through the many indoor tennis courts to where his class meets. It’s almost as if he’s been going there all his life.  With a history of training many of the top US tennis players since it was founded in 1999, the walls along the JTCC corridors are lined with dozens of colored photos of well-known tennis champions and upcoming young players.  

            Every time we visit the JTCC we comment on what a vibrant place it is. The excitement is palpable.  I notice how ethnically diverse the young people are when we follow Austin trekking through the maze of courts that are filled with active African American, Asian, Indian/Pakistani and African tennis enthusiasts.  It is apparent that tennis is no longer the staid and “lily white” sport of the upper classes but has now reached far beyond its elite status.

            Saturday Austin had three matches with 10 and under players…the first with a blonde blue-eyed girl who had sleek forehand strokes and made him work for his win. Austin used his “killer backhand” effectively.  Hi next opponent was an Indian/American boy who was not a strong player but trying his best as his father paced alongside the court trying not to coach as that is not allowed.  Austin’s third opponent was a Chinese/American girl who was not the most coordinated, but was supported by parents and siblings who watched with enthusiasm from the sidelines.   Meanwhile, Austin’s best buddy Niam  watched along with his parents.  Evidently, Austin has been a catalyst in getting some of his friends to join the JTCC and start tennis lessons.

 

            As we walked back down the hallway with Austin proudly wearing the gold medal around his neck, I thought perhaps someday his photo might find a place on the wall along with the other JTCC “greats”.

 

            

And the winner is... 

            

 

 

            

 

 

 

            

Beyond the news...

         Watching the shocking, sudden withdrawal of US troops from Kabul on television last August, was heart-rending. Scenes of Afghans desperately scrambling to escape the Taliban remain vivid in my mind despite it having happened seven months ago now.   When I heard that some of the thousands of Afghans who made it to the US would be resettled to Asheville this winter, I felt compelled to get involved.  I volunteered to be an ESL tutor again, something I had done when first coming to Asheville teaching English to Hispanics.         

I’ve got a good one for you, Kristina!
( the subject line of an email I received in mid- January from Erin, the ESL Coordinator of Literacy
Together)

Yesterday I evaluated a lovely 31-year-old quite fluent Afghan woman who is here with her mom. She speaks Pashto and Dari and wants to improve her English so she can get a good job. In Kabul she worked at the Supreme Court, something with computers. She's about to move into a home in Montford with her mom, another young Afghan woman, and that woman's young (11-year-old?) niece….would you like to meet her at her home for tutoring sessions? The one I have in mind for you is named Tamana.

***

 

            On my first day of tutoring, my student, Tamana Hamidi, greets me at her new home in Montford, an historic residential area of Asheville.  We exchange “good mornings” and “how are yous?”  Tamana looks disheveled and sleepy but she assures me that she has been expecting me and is ready for her English class. 

             “I stay up late at night,” she explains in fluent accented English, “because I talk to family in Afghanistan.” 

            I know Kabul is 9 ½ hrs. ahead of Asheville and that the situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban, is worsening daily. 

            Tamana is short and full-figured, with long brown hair and piercing intelligent black eyes. She is Muslim but doesn’t cover her head.  Immediately I notice that she is independent, assertive, and smart….a proud, modern Afghan young woman from Kabul. She only seems self-conscious about her weight and tells me that all Afghan women are thin….but not her.  She gained weight during her second pregnancy and never lost it. When she divulged that her husband had divorced her and taken her two young daughters, 3 and 6, away from her, I caught a glimpse into her tragic and harrowing life. (No wonder she put on weight…) She has told me more than once, that she hasn’t seen her children in a year and a half and doesn’t know where they are or who is taking care of them. I now am aware that this is on her mind all the time and is the source of her tremendous stress. I am sure it has been that way for her even before she came to the US as a refugee. 

            When I meet with Tamana twice a week, the house is often quiet and everyone is asleep.  Other days, Maliha, Tamana’s mother is up and dressed in a long skirt and the hijab. She smiles warmly and always says “good morning”and “how are you today”.  Tamana tells me Maliha  had some English classes on the army base in Wisconsin where they lived for 5 months until they were assigned to Asheville. Her mother will have her own ESL tutor. Shabnam and her niece Sana, who is 11, also live in the house although they aren’t related.  They met on the base in Wisconsin and agreed to live together and be “family” to each other.  Saba started public school just last week and Tamana told me they all were up early to see her off and wish her good luck. 

            Tamana is fluent in English because she lived in San Diego, California with her husband for two years before returning to Kabul. She studied English from 7^th grade through high school. She has an “ear” for languages and pronunciation.  Now she finds herself head of the household in Montford translating for everyone. She is often called upon by Erin at Literacy Together and other American volunteers with Catholic Charities and Lutheran Church Charity Services to help interpret for refugees with no English.

            Tamana speaks lovingly of her 65-year-old mother who left her entire family in Kabul to come to the US with her.  Tamana described her family and how they all live on one compound in Kabul -  all five brothers and wives and their children together. She is the only daughter. No mention was made of her father and I don’t ask.  Maliha, took care of many of the grandchildren and had a full life.  Now she lives in a quiet little house in Montford/Asheville, North Carolina with no one to care for.  Tamana is the one who looks out for her. 

            There is so much I already admire about Tamana and the women she lives with.  Not knowing anything about Afghan culture I observe.  They are always polite and appreciative. Tamana says thank you constantly whether in class, after class or in her texts to me.  She takes her English classes seriously and prepares her homework despite everything else she is doing as she settles into a new life in Asheville. Her immediate goal, she told me, is to get a full- time job, take more English classes, and eventually become a citizen. (I have been told that the Afghan refugees are here on “humanitarian visas” and can work.)

            I have not asked Tamana why she escaped to the US in August.  But I sense that what lies behind the goals she talks about, is the determination to find her children and get them back. Perhaps earning money, improving her education and ultimately becoming a US citizen will help her do that.

 

            When I leave the little brown house in Montford to drive home, thoughts of Tamana, her life-story and the still-vivid scenes of the desperate escape of Afghans last August, stay with me.  None of it is easy to set aside because I have never experienced anything remotely like what refugees, such as Tamana, live with. 

             I know how for most Americans the news about Afghanistan is something they might watch and then go on with their own lives.  Having a personal connection with Tamana through our tutoring sessions together, make those headlines real for me.  What I am learning is difficult to forget.

 

             

Wedding Thoughts and Two Anniversaries

    

On display at the Avenir Museum as of Feb. 1, 2022 - through mid-summer 2022

            It is February ... the month of my two wedding anniversaries.  It seemed coincidental that last week I received an email from Megan Osborne, Assistant Curator & Collections Manager of the Avenir Museum of Design and Merchandising in Ft. Collins, Colorado telling me that my wedding dress is on display now that the museum is open to the public. Would I write a  short piece about the dress to be included in the museum's February bulletin?  

             Just two years ago in February I donated my wedding dress to the museum and learned that it was one of the last accepted donations before the museum closed for Covid-19.  It has only opened 2 years later and today my dress is in the entry to the museum in a glass case highlighted as a "new acquisition".

            Writing a 600 word essay about my wedding dress reminded me of how many times I have told  and written the story of my two wedding ceremonies and how I came to wear a custom made dress which ordered in Athens, Greece in January 1975.  

For the Avenir Museum February Bulletin.... 

            Ever since I married in 1975, I celebrate two anniversaries – February 16^th and February 22^nd.  This is because my husband and I had two ceremonies. Unusual…but it happened.

 

            Little did I know that when I took a job as the librarian at the American School of Asunción in Paraguay, I would meet and fall in love with the Social Studies teacher.  Within a year and a half we were planning a wedding which turned into two. Our original idea was to be married by the ship’s captain on the Eugenio C, an Italian ocean liner we were booked on, bound for Naples from Buenos Aires. A trip around Europe and North Africa was to be our honeymoon. When we called our parents to tell them our plans they were not pleased. They wanted to be at our wedding. So, we compromised by taking our honeymoon first, and then coming home for two different weddings with each of our families.

 

            We were married in Orange, Connecticut on Feb. 16, 1975 by a rabbi in my sister-in-law’s home.  My mother-in-law found the only rabbi in Connecticut who would perform the ceremony because I was not Jewish. I wore my Grecian dress for the first time, and walked down the stairs on the arm of my brother-in-law. My wedding was the first Jewish wedding I had ever been to. 

 

            A week later, we traveled to my parents’ home in Mexico City where they lived at the time.  My Mother hired a caterer to make an elegant authentic Mexican luncheon for 40 guests, most of whom were US Embassy friends and some relatives from California. For the second time I put on the Grecian dress, took my father’s arm, and walked down the long hallway of their modern house. The Unitarian minister in Mexico City presided over the ceremony held in front of the circular fireplace.  The next day I packed the dress in my suitcase and we traveled to Santiago, Chile where we had jobs waiting for us at the International School.  We were finished with weddings.

 

            The handmade ivory wool dress I ordered in a dress shop in Athens while on our travels, turned out to be perfect for snowy Connecticut in February and cool Mexico City in winter. If we had been married on the ship as we had wanted, I never would have worn a Greek wedding dress with a story behind it.  As it turned out, our travels through North Africa, Greece, and Europe gave us time to shop for a dress, wedding ring, and party favors.  The international touches for our two celebrations reflected much about us as global citizens.

 

Excerpt from a letter written to my parents on January 11^th, 1975 – Athens, Greece

…the wedding dress is being made for me here and is simply out of this world….It cost a fortune but for 2 weddings we rationalized it.  It’s long ivory wool with heavy gold embroidery  …and an embroidered short vest which fastens under the bust.  It is typical Grecian design and truly a work of art.  It is worthy of being put in a museum someday.  I shall hand carry it all the way to New York and then to Mexico City…

 

            My prophecy came true now that my Grecian dress resides at the Avenir Museum of Design and Merchandising in Ft. Collins, Colorado.  What a long way it has traveled from Athens in 47 years. It is fitting that it should be on display for others to enjoy in the years to come.

________________________________________________________________________________

         It is now clear to me that I will be telling this story for the rest of my life.  The thoughts about my dress now being on display for others to enjoy and my story being "public" has made me realize that the circle won't be complete until I actually see it on display at the museum where it will be from now on.  Now we are making plans to visit the Avenir in June in Ft. Collins and once we have done that we will have come full circle.  I am delighted and at peace with the feeling that I have left something special behind for others to talk about and enjoy.

https://chhs.source.colostate.edu/avenir-museum-collection-feature-my-wedding-dress/

 

 

 

The Mix Up...

        

                                                                        Richard and Kris

         All families have stories of real events that are told over and over again. The most dramatic story in my family happened in February 1949 in a hospital in Lima, Peru where my brother, Richard was born. This was Mother’s second child to be born abroad as she had had me in Santiago, Chile in  September, 1945.

            Recently while rereading letters Mother wrote home from Peru to her family in Des Moines, Iowa and I came across THE letter in which she wrote about what happened.  I had only ever heard her tell the story for many years.  Here I was... reading what had happened in her own words in a single spaced typed letter on onion skin paper, faded after 70 years.

The Story begins...

 

            It was summer and Carnival time in Lima. That meant a three-day holiday of celebrations throwing water balloons, confetti and streamers.  Mother stayed in the hospital for the required 8 days following the birth of my little brother on Feb. 20^th.  On the day she was released, my father and I were waiting for her as she came out of the hospital. A nurse held the baby wrapped up with his head covered.  I sat in the taxi hugging my mother who held the baby and as I peaked under the blanket. Once home, my father carried the baby up to his crib and Mother went to her bedroom to rest.

 

            (From the March 1, 1949 letter )

              Everyone was much excited. Rich kept tiptoeing into the baby’s room and coming back with comments like, “This kid’s sure got dark hair.”  

            “Oh, just oil on it,” we said.

            “He’s got a receding chin, ” which I denied.

            “His nose is sure big,” which I thought was a joke.

            About a half hour later, Kris wanted to hold the baby, so I said all right, “Come in and sit on the bed and you may.”

            I went in to the crib and started to pick up the baby –“This child’s got black hair!”  I exclaimed  “This isn’t our baby!” I picked him up and looked and looked - -thinking at first the light in the room was bad or something.  

            Rich was fit to be tied – “Jesus, if you think I’m going to raise some Peruvian kid….”

            I was just aghast.  Could it really be that we’d brought home the wrong baby?

 

            Rich raced next door and got our neighbor to go with him to hold the baby.  Off they flew (in a taxi) to the hospital.  They said my doctor was just on his way over to our house as they arrived; the hospital had discovered the mistake and the maternity ward was in an uproar!  All the doctors of the hospital were there.  It seems after feeding that morning, the babies had been put back in the wrong cribs, and the nurse had not looked at the identification bracelets when she’d given us this one--- She got fired for her mistake.

            Everyone at the hospital was glad they were two American babies.  I guess a Peruvian baby would have gotten them into all kinds of lawsuits. We didn’t care about making a fuss, we just wanted our own child!  The other baby was another Panagra* child, it so happened.  Half hour later, when they brought my little redhead home, I can tell you I held him close and just cried with relief!  And did he ever look beautiful.  We commented all day how much better he looked in every way than the other baby.

            Thank heaven, I have redheaded children!  After this, I’ll never have any faith in hospitals.  They sent baby Richard home with his identification bracelet still on, because they wanted me to see it for myself.  Well, that’s how we came home from the hospital – It’s a story, that the more you think about the more horrible complications you can imagine might have happened.—

 

*Panagra Airlines is the company my father worked for.

 

            Our “case of the mixed up babies” had a happy ending.  My brother has lived with this story all his life.  At times when he was naughty or exasperating we would say, “we should have kept the other baby”…but we always teased him with love. Early in our lives my brothers and I were aware of being different from others around us.  As redheads,  growing up in Chile, Peru, and Argentina, Mother said she could never lose us in a crowd. If Richard hadn't been born a redhead who knows what might have happened... 

The Sampson - Kristina, Richard, and Fred

                                                                            Kris & Richie

 

The Silver Tea Set...

           

          Now that the Peruvian tea set is gone, I have moments when I wonder what Mother would think if she were alive.  Would she have let it go as easily as I did? Rereading her story of the tea set, it was clear that she valued it more than anything else she owned. She guarded it everywhere she lived, through every move, and even put it in the car when she and Dad evacuated Hilton Head Island during a hurricane warning. 

            After keeping the tea set wrapped in flannel in a drawer for the last 10 years since we have lived in Asheville, I took it to Brunk Auctions in Asheville.  They estimated its value between $3,000 - $4,000.  The description of it that appeared online at their September 2021 silver auction read:

Sterling Four Piece Tea Service, Tray and Strainer

Peruvian, 20^th century, pear forms with composite wooden spacers, marks for

 Camusson Silver Co. (Carlo Mario Camusso, Lima, Peru), no monograms,

136.11 oz. T., 10-3/4 in. Coffee pot and matching teapot, covered sugar,

 creamer, strainer with base and 24-1/2 in. two handle tray,

 cracks in spacers, teapot with base dent, tray with dents, all with light scratches.

 

          The tea set sold for less, and by the time I paid the commission fee the total was under $2000.

I was shocked when the silver specialist, who examined it thoroughly and wrote the description above, told me that the silver market is full of tea sets no longer used and many, such as this one, would most likely be purchased to melt down the silver.  I didn’t want to think about that.

            I saved Mother’s Jan. 26, 2010 email to me, in which she told the history of the tea set. It began…

When we lived in Lima in 1948 - 1950 there was nothing to buy except a few silver things.  We bought the tea set before we left Lima.  I chose a plain design and was told it was pure silver. For some reason I was sure I’d need to have one as the wife of a diplomat in Buenos Aires

 

Over the years we always put the valuable things in the round top trunk as we moved from country to country.  That is where the silver tea set went along with the Clock.  As the years went by, I entertained the American wives with teas, and served after dinner coffee in the coffee pot at diplomatic dinners.  The set never sat out but was always locked away, in case a “ladrón” might see it and climb through the French doors in our Lima, Buenos Aires, São Paulo and Bogotá houses and steal it. The best polisher I had was our house maid in São Paulo.  How she made it shine as she sat in the kitchen, barefoot, listening to soaps on her little radio.

 

After we retired and moved back to the U.S,. I always guarded the silver tea set, never keeping it out and never letting the packers pack it.  When we were packing our most valuable things, that tea set was at the top of the list…although life in the US never called for a silver tea set.  The first time I lived on Jordan Road in Washington D.C. and asked some neighbor ladies for coffee one morning, I used the silver coffee pot on the silver tray.  A real mistake! That was not done on such an occasion.  Even in Asheville, I would polish the tea set sometimes but kept it hidden.  

 

As the years went by, polishing the tea set was too hard when it turned black. When we moved into the Fairways (assisted living) at Carolina Meadows I could not take it and sent it to granddaughter, Megan, in California.  It stayed in the box in her attic and was never used until Kristina asked for it and it was mailed to her in Vermont.

 

Kris, you can write the last chapter.  Here it is…

 

While living in our house in Vermont I was glad to see the familiar tea set again.  Art polished it until it gleamed and we put it out on the built-in buffet in our dining room to admire.  I may have used it a few times as we started a custom of entertaining friends and neighbors at tea instead of dinner.  In 2011, we moved to Asheville, and the tea set was packed and came with us.  But, at our Biltmore Lake townhouse there is no sideboard or buffet to display it. I put it all in a big chest of drawers in the guest room.

 

After Mother died in 2014, I would get out the tea set from time to time just to look at it.  It brought back memories of my childhood and particularly of Mother.  Then I would put it away.

 

Last summer the task of polishing the tea set became too much work even for Art.  I knew none of the grandchildren nor their children would ever use or want it.  As I was exploring how to get rid of it, a friend told me about Brunk Auction house which happens to be in Asheville.

 

I was relieved when the tea set sold and a check came in the mail. I wasn’t sure how Mother might react to that.  However, Art and I are at a stage where we are letting go of things that we will not have room for as we downsize to move to a retirement community. Then I remember how Mother and Dad did the same thing.  I was there to help them and things I remember Mother treasuring , she simply and easily gave away.  I never have forgotten that and use that as my model for moving on.  After all, things are far less important than memories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

            

 

In America: Remember - Washington DC

         

              The 713,000 tiny white flags gently blowing in the breeze at the foot of the Washington Monument, revealed a truly realistic sense of the scale of lives lost during the recent Covid-19 pandemic. The installation opened on September 17^thand just closed on October 3^rd, 2021. Created by artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg, and installed on 20 acres of the National Mall, it was titled In America: Remember. The large scale of all the flags carefully aligned and set in the ground in perfectly straight rows, was meant to draw attention to those who have died of Covid-19. 

 

            While on a trip to Washington DC, I visited the installation twice.  On two different days the total number of deaths on a large billboard at the entrance changed by hundreds. There is no more graphic portrayal of this American tragedy than being surrounded by a sea of white flags, each memorializing one human being.  When the sun shone the flags sparkled like stars.  It felt as if the spirits of all those gone were there.  The flags surrounding the perimeter of the various sections had names and messages on them left by loved ones but most did not.

 

            Firstenberg uses art to focus on social issues in the world.  Having spent many years as a hospice volunteer, she took art classes later in life and found she had talent and liked it.  For her, art was a way to focus on getting across a particular message.  While she had experience with smaller installations using flags,  this year, she felt that so many deaths from Covid happened in isolation that she needed to bring acknowledgement to them.  She obtained permission to use the most central place in the nation’s capital…the National Mall. She planned and ordered more than 700,000 flags, and with the help of volunteers her vision became a reality.

            During my second visit, the day before the installation was taken down, I stood with my 7-year old grandson gazing across the sea of flags imagining how he might remember this sad moment in US history when he is old.  At first he stood next to me gazing in awe across the landscape of flags, until his childlike joy of walking up and down rows and lying down amongst the flags reminded me that he is still only 7 years old. 

https://suzannefirstenberg.com/artist-bio-suzanne-firstenberg/

Art and Travel Memories

     Why have I never heard of the Norwegian artist Nikolai Astrup, despite having spent a summer in Bergen, Norway? Born in 1880 in the municipality of Jolster,  200 km north of Bergen, Nikolai Astrup lived his entire life in this scenic part of Western Norway painting the natural world around him. These thoughts came to mind as I recently visited the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass. “Nikolai Astrup: Visions of Norway” is the first special exhibit since Covid. Even more noteworthy is the fact that it is the first time this artist’s work has ever been exhibited in North America.

            “If only we saw the world in our youth with the wisdom we attain with age,” I thought to myself, as I walked slowly through the Astrup exhibit remembering a long ago travel experience. I was 23 the summer I lived with a Norwegian family on the rural outskirts of Bergen. Unprepared for the culture, language, and history of where I was going,  my job was to keep track of a group of American students on a summer abroad program. Norwegian was a difficult language, and young Norwegians, unlike American teenagers, liked hiking and being outdoors. So the most frequent question my high school “charges” asked was, “Where is the nearest mall?” 

 

            I hadn’t thought about that summer for decades, until I saw Nikolai Astrup’s paintings. It was then, that I remembered the breathtaking mountains, forests, bodies of water, simple farm buildings, wooden houses and small churches and gardens in Western Norway. Painting with bold thick brush strokes on large canvases draws you in just as the real landscape does. Astrup painted what he saw around him in a place he lived his entire life, often creating the same scenes during different seasons, times of day, perspectives and angles.  He could look at a familiar view and see something different every time. This is what makes his paintings charming and almost mesmerizing.

 

              Much more can be said about Astrup and what influenced him throughout his artistic life, but I have learned that he is the most well-known artist in Norway even though he died almost 100 years ago. Norwegian homes have prints of Astrup paintings on their walls. 

 

            Now that 85 of his works are being exhibited at the Clark, he is bound to become known outside his homeland.  I, on the other hand, am struck by the desire to return to Norway. Fifty years later, I know I would look at the landscape differently as Astrup did in his paintings, and I would visit the Bergen Art Museum, something that was definitely left off our Norwegian itinerary the summer I lived there so long ago. 

                                                          

The Clark Institute of Art in Williamstown, Mass

 

 

 

            .