You wouldn’t know it from this joint, but there’s been much afoot here at corporate headquarters and elsewhere lately.
Category: Other
For this month’s Chronogram I profiled the Crimson Sparrow, a new restaurant in Hudson co-owned by two alumni of WD-50, among other places. It’s well worth a visit if you’re in the area. In other news, I was going to write about the smoked chickens, but the real highlight of last night was the fact that this brilliant woman gave me a haircut after dinner: The Jewfro is no more. It’s the first time in…
I get books in the mail from various publishers as review copies from time to time, and they run the gamut from wonderful things that I’d actually buy to things that make me laugh and/or gag in disbelief. Shelf space is limited, so I thought I’d start occasionally giving away some of the worthy titles that I just don’t have room for. First up is Menus for Chez Panisse by Patricia Curtan. It’s a book…
I’ve been thinking about Steve Jobs tonight, obviously. I have never owned a computer that was not an Apple. I worked somewhere once where I had to use a PC, and the UI experience was like being forced to wear some sort of Medieval torture helmet while trying to operate a computer; every operation was counterintuitive and frustrating. Nothing was where it belonged. Apart from my fundamental incompatibility with the Windows OS, at the end of the day I think I understand why I hated it so much: it was ugly. And that’s why I, like so many others, love Apple so much and are deeply saddened at his death (at 56, a year younger than my Mother was and from the same disease that took my Father-in-Law). It’s because his work was so beautiful.
Japan has been on my mind a lot lately, though unfortunately for terrible reasons. Given the many areas in which Japanese culture has influenced me–ceramics, cooking, and to a lesser degree painting–there’s not another country that has made such an impact on me, at least one I’ve never been to. Italy taught me to cook, and France taught me about wine. Japan is more of an aspirational influence, a strange attractor that shapes my cooking and serving from afar.
The chuckwagon is off the rails until after the show opens, so for your further edifitainment I offer another little dollop of the funny… …and another entreaty to give all you can to deliver unto President Obama a place to stand, and a congress that will be a lever long enough to move the world.
One week to go… if you haven’t donated yet, or recently, remember that besides Obama there are many downticket races across the country where the margins will be tight and the results will make the difference between mere defeat and an abject, total humiliation and repudiation of the policies, politics, and abuses of the last 8 years. This site has excellent information about these races. Let’s leave the Republican party broke, discredited, and evermore the…
I did another guest post over at TNS last night, so go there if you haven’t been yet. For the sake of some content over here, and because Zoomie asked nicely (and gave me my first and only blog award a while ago) I’m putting up a shot of the sunflower labyrinth that I did at a sculpture park in upstate NY this summer. It’s 82 feet in diameter, so if you draw a square…
The summer of back-to-back-to-back-to-back physically and mentally demanding projects is over. There are some chores left, but nothing monumental. It’s such a pleasure to look back instead of forward on all this work. And it’s great to be home. The pyramid went together easily, and painted up nice and garish- as befits a piece for a big rock festival. It was on the hill in the VIP area, so a bunch of bands did interviews…
Not so culinary; the family was in Chicago partying with Grandma so I used the week to rebuild our shower from scratch. The job was so consuming, and the time so tight that I reverted to bachelor-animal mode, eating junk (and not that frequently- I often skipped lunch) that I loaded up on right after dropping them off at the airport. I didn’t even go into the garden all week, despite the attention it desperately…