Rural Illinois is experiencing its snowiest winter in years! Lucky me! I get to experience full on winter while I await that doggone Italian Visa! I must say, on days like these, Italy feels like a pipe dream!

But look at the beauty of winter in the cabin!

All highly recommended!

Not far from where I’m temporarily living sits the little city of Terre Haute, Indiana. I’ve traversed this place by car in the past, going from Seattle to Ohio a long time ago, and from Denver to Pennsylvania even longer ago. But I never stopped and had a look.

Home to several institutions of higher learning, Terre Haute, like all cities, has an interesting past. In this post I show you just a few of the architectural feats that caught my eye.

I was in Terre Haute specifically because I wanted to see the Swope Museum and one of the paintings in its collection. I once discussed this painting in a scholarly article I published on the artist Robert Weir, and had only seen photographs of the painting. I’ll be posting on it soon.

Sheldon Swope was a very successful man in Terre Haute with enough money to establish a museum in his lifetime devoted to collecting American art. He built the building seen above and below and named it the Swope Block. Pretty impressive!

The Swope Art Museum, open and free to the public since 1942, has works by Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, Janet Scudder, Andy Warhol, Ruth Pratt Bobbs, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg, and many others.

The building below is Terre Haute’s is the county seat of Vigo County, Indiana. Its elaborate architecture speaks to a wealthy past. Located along the Wabash River, Terre Haute its one of the largest cities in the Wabash Valley and is known as the Queen City of the Wabash.

Still perched on a lake in rural Illinois, waiting to be issued an Italian long-term residence Visa, I am reading my weight in books.

Probably the best novel I’ve read set in Renaissance Italy. And I’ve read them all!

One can read this novel and know that it accurately portrays the events and figures of the time in which it is set. I hate it when books, movies or tv series say they are historically based and then take all kinds of licenses with the actual facts of the stories. The Medici comes to mind. I couldn’t watch it, it was so ill-informed.

And another great read is the following. It has an entirely different flavor and is connected to the unsolved art heist at the Gardner Museum in 1990. Loved this book too!

And then there was Maestra! This book is exactly up my alley, down my street, whatever you like. I loved it! Highly recommend!

May the new year be filled with peace, beauty, and birdsong for us all. And for me: an Italian Visa! Buon Anno Nuovo!