Sandra Orienti

This book holds a special place in my collection. I bought it during my senior trip to Washington, DC, when our tour bus stopped at the National Gallery -- to eat lunch in a basement cafeteria. We were on a strict time-table, and the line was outrageously long. I took a quick five minutes to rifle through a table of art books and found this tiny little volume -- just a short few pages of text, but more than 50 color plates. It was in my price range, small enough to carry around, and most importantly, contained a reproduction of the Degas print on my dance teacher's wall, the one that caused me to fall in love with the artist and get interested in art at all. (Apparently, the original is in the Jeu de Pomme in Paris.) And then, not knowing when we'd eat again, I got in line for an unmemorable, expensive lunch. How foolish. We always eat again, and I could have had enough time to pop in to a few rooms of the Galleries, see some of the world's great treasures. Indeed, I have eaten countless lunches, grown fat and tired, but I have never had the opportunity to return to the National Gallery. A sweet little reminder of dreams and opportunities squandered. -cg… (meer)