As an 18 year old high school student, I was able to snag a free seat on a field trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, just a little trip to Boston from

As an 18 year old high school student, I was able to snag a free seat on a field trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, just a little trip to Boston from my hometown of Claremont, NH. In 1998, my high school had just lost its accreditation, I had just flunked pre-calculus for the second year in a row, and I had absolutely no direction in my life. Three months later I would be kicked out of college for a 0.6 first-semester GPA, to begin the very long, awkward journey of finding myself. This takes many more years before the first success. But that trip to this museum, one included on this website as a virtual tour, planted a seed, deep down in my mind that would take years to spout. The museum is a Venetian palace, and at the center, draped by shadows that lurch outwards from receding hallways, lies a majestic courtyard, adorned with crenulation and dentils that mesmerize and steal the time from day. A trashy townie punk stood there aghast that beauty could render so closely, and knew there for maybe the first time that a world beyond home awaited. I never got a chance to thank the man that let me sneak aboard that bus, but many times already I have felt the spirit of sharing to an outsider that access, and evermore will I continue for it is only during these moments that we can so easily take stock of what we've been. Support the arts.