Non-Bakken News -- December 12, 2016

For the granddaughters. Nothing on this page about the Bakken. If you came here for the Bakken, scroll down or to the sidebar at the right.

Art. One of the unexpected pleasures in north Texas -- the fine art museums in DFW. In The Wall Street Journal today, the Kimbell is mentioned. The Kimbell is our favorite. In addition to a very nice structure (two buildings, in fact), it has one of the best restaurants in town for lunch. The lunch is very inexpensive. The museum has a number of important and wonderful pieces but their expertise is in temporary exhibits. The generally have several temporary exhibits each year, partnering with one other American fine art museum. I am always impressed by the huge turnout these exhibits enjoy.

“The Brothers Le Nain : Painters of Seventeenth-Century France,” at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, anatomized three other favorites of 17th-century specialists: Antoine, Louis and Mathieu—“the first artists’ collective”—who signed everything simply “Le Nain.” We discovered that, though best known for eerie images of peasants, they also painted ambitious religious scenes, portraits, charming children and Caravaggio-inspired ne’er-do-wells. We even learned to see what distinguished each brother’s manner, despite their collaboration.

And then again, another call-out to the Kimbell, currently showing and which we have seen three times (I plan to go one more time, taking Sophia with me):

At the Kimbell, “ Monet : The Early Years” offers testimony to this celebrated painter’s prodigious gifts, from the start. An impeccable selection of broadly brushed landscapes, seascapes, still-lifes and figure paintings, made mainly when he was in his 20s, attests to his faultless eye for tone and matchless ability to suggest light and atmosphere.

It begins. Elizabeth Warren's constituents say "no" to a Muslim cemetery. In The WSJ.

Geography. Today's there's a headline article over at Yahoo!Finance about Nanking, China, a "second-tier" city in that country with a population of over 8 million, similar to that of NYC. The best thing I ever did with regard to geography on the blog was "fix" a picture in my mind of what China "looks like." Nanking? Where is it? If it were on the US map, it would be a suburb northwest of Charleston, SC, (Shanghai) up the Yangtze River. Maybe similar to Summerville, SC, where we lived for several years. 

Autos. Was there ever any doubt? Over at Bloomberg - Mercedes-Benz poised to topple BMW as world's luxury-car king.

Mercedes-Benz has built an all-but insurmountable lead over rival BMW in the race for the title of the world’s biggest luxury-car brand, and that sales momentum looks set to continue through at least 2018.

Surging demand for sport utility vehicles including the GLC helped Mercedes deliveries jump 12 percent in the 11 months through November, more than double the pace of growth for BMW AG’s namesake brand. That left Mercedes more than 69,100 cars ahead of BMW for the period, making it all but certain of regaining the sales crown this year.

Relegating once-dominant BMW to the No. 2 rank for the first time in more than a decade, Mercedes is likely to sustain its strong delivery pace in 2017 thanks to a new version of the E-Class sedan rolled out last March. BMW will be held back by the changeover to a revamped 5-Series, which competes with the E-Class, while a new X3 SUV will come out too late next year to make much of an impact, said Commerzbank AG analyst Sascha Gommel.

I've owned one Mercedes in my life, back when we were stationed in Germany. A utilitarian sedan, "a heavy Chevy." At the end of my tour there, we drove it up to England, where we drove it for another three years. After that, after six years I gave it away to a Cambridge mechanic, for free. I bet it's running better than ever.  Which reminds me, I gave away my 10-year-old Chevy Nova to a mechanic in North Dakota when I received orders to Germany some years earlier. And years later, I gave away a "land rover" of some sort, when we were in Alabama, I forget the make/model. Our older daughter learned how to drive with that five-on-the-floor stick shift. Many stories could be told. And several years ago I donated a Chysler minivan to some charity. And, no, I did not claim the deduction; just gave it away after ten years, 198,000 miles of faithful service. I could never sell a car that is "old" and with a lot of miles; I would feel guilty if it broke down just after someone bought it. And there were a lot of young airmen who needed the car more than I did.

When I first saw a convertible, Mercedes sports car in Vienna, Austria, many decades ago, that was my dream car. It still is and always will be. But we did have two Saabs when stationed in Germany the second time; the dollar was incredibly strong; Saab catered to US military. I know I sold one in Germany before leaving for Turkey; I sold the second one in Turkey. Wow, that was a challenge, with Turkish beyanami laws.