Thursday, Sept. 19

Up around 8 a.m. I didn't immediately exercise after breakfast, but lazed for a while. In the meantime, Hubbie accompanied Mother to our house. She was in a mood to get right in the kitchen and go to work, so I gathered veggies for making my version of New England stew.

While she prepared carrots, celery, onions, and banana peppers, I sauteed stew beef in olive oil and spices, and Hubbie quartered a head of cabbage and peeled potatoes.

I put all the ingredients in the large slow cooker, layering them first with the beef, then the veggies Mother prepared, then the potatoes (quartered), and then the cabbage. Poured cans of low-sodium beef and chickens broths over all, and let the meal cook all day.

After that, I washed green beans from the garden, and Mother snapped them. I seasoned them and set them to simmering. These are probably the last of the beans from the garden. The okra has slowed down, too, but the banana peppers are still coming on strong.

While this was going on, a young lady knocked on the door. Her car had run out of gas, and she was parked in our driveway. She needed to get to class at the college down the road, so Hubbie drove her. After her class, she walked back to our house (less than a mile), and Hubbie put lawn mower gas in her car, so she could get to the nearest gas station. He also gave her a little money to put enough gas in her car to get home.

She told him she was divorced, with three kids, and she's studying to become a psychologist. She assured Hubbie that she would get paid tomorrow and would come by our house again tomorrow to repay the money, but Hubbie told her to forget it. Her car's tires are bald, so he said to apply the money toward getting new tires.

Finally, I got around to doing stair stepping exercises, though I skipped the resistance and weights session. It was lunch time by the time I came back downstairs. Before I went up, I put potatoes in the oven to bake. These were some that were about to go south, so to keep from throwing them away, I decided they'd make a good lunch. And they did.

Mother went back to her puzzle afterward, Hubbie ran errands, and I did this and that around the house, and then settled in to read newspapers.

Later, I put a recipe of cornbread and a can of biscuits in the oven, and served supper at the usual 5 p.m. hour. The stew is a favorite and was delicious tonight. There's enough for supper tomorrow night, too.

Hubbie accompanied Mother home afterward, and then around 7:15, we went to the college where I swim to attend a lecture program. The speaker, a digital artist, presented a program about his life and work. In 2002, he was mistakenly put on a terror watch list due to racial profiling, even though he is an American citizen.

After that, he made his life an open book, reporting his every move in minute detail, through postings and photos (to the point of comedy), to an FBI agent he kept in contact with. He has based some of his artistic installations on this incident.

He also spoke about how art has translated into practical applications. One example he noted was an artist who decided to go around his town with a camera mounted on a tripod on top of his van and photograph streets. This exhibit was later applied to Google maps.

Another artist studied the elements of hazardous waste dumps, and discovered that a type of sunflower has the ability to absorb lead. So he and his helpers donned protective suits and created an art project at a toxic waste dump using the plants. Now, this type of sunflower is used to make lead-contaminated soil safe.

He also spoke of artists who create camouflage for the military. For the Vietnam war, camouflage was of course in colors of green and beige to match the terrain. For the war in Afghanistan, though, artists created a two-color grid "desert night camouflage," in order to fool night vision goggles.

So often these days, art is at the whim of the economy and is one of the first things to be cut or diminished in schools. But this speaker confirmed my belief that the arts are essential. From great artistic creations come great advances for humankind.

Back home afterward, we watched a couple of episodes of "One Tree Hill."