Brochures, Salads and Sake…

Yesterday was one of those days of mixed up activities…all fun.  I started by going to Waller Hall on Willamette’s campus

This building was built about 1864 and has served many uses for the university over the decades (including residence early on).  The money for the initial building was raised by A.F. Waller, missionary minister and circuit rider, who also built and lived in our house.  The bricks for Waller Hall were made from the soil on the construction site.  Currently the building houses administrative offices of various types, and Sharon and I were meeting with  Emily Oliva who is designing the brochure for the Lord and Schryver exhibition opening at the Hallie Ford Museum in June.  We met Emily in the conference room

which has this rather terrific view of the cupola

and then stopped briefly in photographer Frank Miller’s office to see his nice view

before I went on to lunch with Irene at the Cherry City Cafe…new on the Salem scene.

We each had a salad with freshly grilled (and still warm) chicken…

check it out…nice staff, good food.

I forgot to take photos of my garden tour at Irene’s beautiful garden (sometimes I forget to be a reporter)…and then the last activity of the day was a sake tasting at Bush House Museum…a thank-you party for donors.  Now maybe tasting sake in a Victorian house sounds odd, but actually there was quite an interest in things Japanese at the turn of the 20th century.  Here’s a photo made in Salem by Sally Bush (who lived her life in Bush House) from about 1910 which substatiates her interests in things Japanese

…and so we tasted sake in the dining room (the staff was moving pretty fast)

while in the library there was music

and in the parlor calligraphy

Sake is delicious!   But, at last, off home for dinner… stopping on the porch to check the amazing wisteria

whic reminded me of my artist-in-residence time at SAA last year when I used the fantastic grounds of Bush Barn and Bush House Museum as my source material…including this wisteria