Finally for now, just to remind ourselves

The Christian Science Monitor for December 30 carries the message that

[w]hen war and natural disaster saturate the news, it's easy to forget that beauty can still be found.

The article is about a new installation by "the renowned large-scale artists Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude." It will consist of 7,500 "gates" bearing "shimmering flags" of saffron-colored nylon panels laid out along 23 miles of pathways through New York City's Central Park for 16 days in February.

A visitor to Central Park this February is not likely to forget the experience, and a later visit will bring it to mind again. In this way, beauty carries on, even without the physical expression of it.

Yes. I first became aware of Christo in 1976 at the time of "Running Fence," a 24-mile long fabric wall running west through central California to the sea. The installations are always temporary, always environmentally-sound and carefully planned, always publicly-accessible. They frequently recycle the materials. They are always on a grand scale. And always, each in their way, quite startling and quite beautiful.

I've never seen a Christo/Jeanne-Claude installation, only pictures of them. And even then, the memory stays. I wonder if I can make it to New York in February.