The weather is so great, and I'm not just talking about the fact that it's the third gorgeous sunny blue 65-degree January day. I mean the weather is not decided on by committee, or savvily targeted to the lucrative 12-22 year old market. It doesn't disappoint you when it returns to partisan-politics-as-usual. It's completely natural and essentially unpredictable and you have to love it.

Inspired by yesterday's sunshine, E and I got out of town and drove to Baltimore "Charm City" Maryland. (Can anyone tell me how Baltimore got that nickname?) First we checked out the American Visonary Art Museum.

What is visionary art?

Like love, you know it when you see it. But here's the longer definition, straight out of our Mission Statement: "Visionary art as defined for the purposes of the American Visionary Art Museum refers to art produced by self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself." In short, visionary art begins by listening to the inner voices of the soul, and often may not even be thought of as 'art' by its creator.

The current exhibition is called War and Peace; there are 3 distinct sections, one about specific wars, then "Armageddon" and "Paradise" (which is meant to cheer you up after all the horror you've just digested). The highlights for me were the Tom Duncan sculptures that illustrated anecdotes from his childhood in England during WWII, and the Howard Finster menagerie of farm animals, dinosaurs, Cadillacs and shoes.

But my favorite pieces were parts of the permanent collection, including Emery Blagdon's "healing machines" hanging from 3 stories high within the central staircase; a model of the Lusitania made from 180,000 toothpicks; a robe embroidered by an institutionalized woman named Merlynn, who scavenged fabric and thread from laundry rags; glossy heads and jewelry boxes made from matchsticks; mosaics by the "Baltimore glassman." I was profoundly moved by the art in this room, so intense and so personal and so real.

We were feeling a bit peckish after the museum, so we walked around the harbor to Fell's Point, and went into the famous Bertha's Mussels. We were distressed to find that Bertha serves no french fries, so we drank 2 pints of Bertha's Best Bitter, ate a fish cake and a 1/2 pound of steamed shrimp, and left.

We found french fries in a little bar off Broadway, the Hook Line & Ax. Young men watched the football game and older women played Keno. The walls were lined with firefighters' helmets, patches, and photos of engines. At first we wondered if it were some post-911 marketing ploy, supposedly patriotic yet actually opportunistic and cynical. It's a foolproof ploy, since anyone who would call it cynical would be called unpatriotic. But then we decided this bar had been a firefighters' joint for longer than that. (Think about the name.)

One friendly, petite blond woman with a husky smoker's voice appeared at first to be about 20, but on closer inspection seemed to be in her 40's. (E, who was closer to her than I, swears she was in her 50's.)

While we devoured our food and beer, we talked about the art we had seen, focusing on the difficult question, what is art? My position was easy to explain, since I have a broad definition of art, extending it to items found on the street and and presented out of context as art. This position is hard to defend, though. "What about bad poetry?" E asked. Bad writing is bad because it's cliched. The ideas and themes don't have to be original for it to be good, but the delivery should be original. We had still more questions: What role does intention play? Is an extremely prolific artist interesting because he is prolific?

Somehow E knew I would like this idea.