Then we went and got groceries. The freezer was nearly empty, so it was time to load up on frozen vegetables and the 'fizzy water' we like so much, flavored with the special syrups, was gone. So those tasks done, Julia asked if I wanted to watch one of the DVDs we borrowed from the library.

I thought, "Oh, let's have a go at _Horatio's Drive_. It might distract me." And it did. As we watched the amazing tale of the nation's first cross country automobile trip unfold, I didn't think of the sinus pain unless we'd paused it for a pee.

What a difficult trip that was, as the car was always breaking down, and they had to wait for the train to bring replacement parts, or they'd get lost. The guy who took on the dare for a 50 dollar bet, Horatio Nelson Jackson, sure had an optimistic spirit despite all the difficulties.

That DVD done, and its distraction having worked well, I thought we'd go ahead with the second program, about Norman Rockwell. This, too, kept my mind completely absorbed.

It was a kind of full circle moment for me. Having grown up in a family that wasn't greatly cultured, the only art that I ever knew about growing up was that of Rockwell's. After I'd 'left the farm' so to speak, and went on to college to study art, his images seemed all of a sentimental drivel. So it was good for me to revisit them again, with the perspective gained from this program. Rockwell himself didn't have an idyllic childhood. One speaker mentioned an incident he'd seen in the New York city neighborhood of a drunken wife beating her husband and how disturbing that was. So he came into adulthood not wanting to deal with disturbing subjects. He always wanted his art to please others. In his later years, with the encouragement of his third wife, he got into some more daring subjects. But mostly, he liked to depict a world he wished existed. It was a vision greatly loved by the middle class Midwestern American public, and his art was wildly popular to those who 'didn't like art'.

I thought in contrast of another artist, Mark Rothko, who even sought to NOT please his audience, to place images to disturb the dining public in some assignment he'd taken on. That art later ended up hanging elsewhere. Now there are galleries for each of these artists. I can't remember if I saw any Rockwell's at the Smithsonian's American Art Museum, perhaps some of his portraits of presidents. But he's got a whole museum all to himself in the Stockbridge city he settled in to spend the rest of his life.

Idyllic scenes aside, that town was chosen because it had a good psychiatric hospital for his second wife and whose doctors Rockwell himself might have consulted, as he was known to have depression on occasion. But hopefully, creating his art made him happy. Or else why do it? It has to fulfill some need of the artist, other than a big fat illustrator's paycheck.

In any case, Rockwell's art deserves a place in history. His scenes show a America that in the fifties and sixties, people wanted to believe in. Maybe those who like them like the sort of security his paintings give them.

So it was an interesting night. I went to bed, trying to think thoughts that would distract me, as the shows had done. Finally I had to get up to write about them. Perhaps this was Rockwell's motis operandi, too. He sought distraction from anything troubling when he created his scenes.

And now, having taken down my thoughts, perhaps I will be able for the healing 'distraction' of sleep.