Happy Birthday, America!

FIRST THINGS FIRST:
HAPPY JULY 4th, to the Land of the Free, America and the Home of the Brave.

O! say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming.
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

* * *

And now, back to business:

A temporary cure to my Manhattan-withdrawal:
I have always loved the city of San Francisco...

Scribblings...
While at SF, I met up with a friend from Columbia and we talked about my visit to the SFMOMA. I had wanted to go there to sit and look at some art pieces, brainstorm for a new story & people-watch - this being something I had done very well at the NY museums. However, the atmosphere at SF was much more different and much more casual, in fact, it was too casual that I got none of the above done, except admiring some pieces by Diego Rivera and Matisse... We ultimately decided that in NY, there was an unspoken etiquette of how one would "admire" the art, usually assuming a pretentious air of understanding what it is (I am a victim of that). She, the art history major, put her observations down simply - Art in at the Bay Area seems to assume understanding & creation of art in the most organic sense; Art in Manhattan however, assumes an air of theory and conceptualization and that art has to be thought of rather than "letting it flow" (ironically).

Is it true? I can't say for sure as I am but an amateur museum-goer, bred in museums of Manhattan (and to some extent, Boston) to scrutinize art as it is and accept it as a masterpiece. (Although, when I saw a urinal exhibited as art in SFMOMA, I laughed out loud realizing that this very piece was why I had never really tried to understand "modern art".)