On Friday, Clif and I went to Oakland and Waterville for lunch and art. (Oh, the joys of being retired. We can go any day we choose.) For Christmas we had received a gift certificate to Riverside Farm Restaurant and Wine Market, which serves fresh, tasty meals. The day was gray, but the following photo gives some idea of the beauty of the place.

And the welcoming but snowy entrance. (It is January in Maine, after all.)

Inside, it was warm and cozy.  Clif ordered a burger, and I ordered a chicken pesto sandwich. Both were delicious. When we were done, not a bit of food remained on our plates.

Not far from where we sat, two elderly women and a much younger woman were discussing hummus. (A granddaughter out with her grandmother and a friend? We didn’t ask, of course.)

One of the elderly women observed, “I wouldn’t have eaten hummus when I was younger.”

The younger woman replied. “I used to be afraid of it, but now I love it.”

A good example of how taste changes. Once upon a time, I wouldn’t eat pie. It just looked too messy to me. Now, I love pie with a passion that is almost beyond comprehension. And there are so many other foods I have not only learned to like but have come to enjoy—turnip, carrots, cilantro. I’m still working on peas.

After lunch, it was on to the Colby College Museum of Art.  A quick aside and a note of gratitude: Central Maine, where Clif and I live, is small and rural. Our town’s population is 6,000, and many surrounding towns have even fewer people. However, we are within easy drive of three fine private colleges—Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin—and they all offer many cultural events. Nearby, we also have Railroad Square Cinema, which shows independent films and the Theater at Monmouth, which features classic plays every summer, two of which are usually Shakespeare’s. Clif and I often reflect on how lucky we are to live in a rural community yet still have many cultural events to choose from.

But back to art: The Colby College Museum of Art is the largest art museum in Maine, and admission is free. The museum’s focus is “on American art, and commitment to collecting and exhibiting contemporary art.”  They have a large permanent collection, and they also feature various exhibitions with art from away, as we Mainers might put it.

William Zorach’s Mother and Child greets museum visitors, and as I find snow and sculpture to be an irresistible combination, I had to take a picture.

Unfortunately, on Friday, the museum was in the process of taking down its Whistler exhibit and installing a new one:”Turning Back, an exhibition of 164 photographs by acclaimed photographer Robert Adams…”  This exhibit will be on display at the art museum beginning February 2.  (We did get a sneak preview as we were allowed to go through the galleries where this exhibit was being hung.)

Never mind. We still enjoyed looking at work from the permanent collection. And February 2 isn’t that far away. We will be back to see the photography exhibit, and we even have enough left on our gift certificate for another lunch at Riverside Farm Market.

A finest kind of thing to do on a winter’s day.