Amherst Green

This is a shot of a small part of the Town Commons at Amherst, Mass. It extends behind me as I was standing, but the light was poor and much is under reconstruction. The bus on the right (see it large) is headed to the town of Sunderland to the north; it's part of the PVTA transit system connecting the entire Pioneer Valley. In the background is Converse Hall at Amherst College.

We had just seen the stunning movie, The Mill and the Cross, which is based on a painting by Pieter Breughel the Elder, The Way to Calgary. With almost no dialogue the movie superbly recreates the milieu and the mood of the time--the mid-16th century.

My favorite Breughel painting is Hunters in the Snow. It and the Way to Calvary are in Vienna, in the large Kunsthistorisches Museum, along with nearly one-third of all Breughel's paintings--reason alone (in my view) for a trip to Vienna.