Fishing in an Ancient Tenement in Manhattan?

This is from a blog that had only 5 entries.  Wonder where Giles Anthony went?  Would love to hear more.

Loving BLDGBLOG these days.

Short version of long post below, courtesy of Einstein.

A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.

Maira Kalman's Principles of Uncertainty

This is old news, but it is timeless...because it is Maira Kalman.   And, if you haven't seen it yet, it is new news. Right?

A blog that turned into a book that is supposed to come back this year to be a blog again and, we hope, another book.

The Principles of Uncertainty, Maira Kalman

Julia Cameron and the Girls, heading blog, with the Parasol

For the wonderful Jonathan, a correction: Alice, I believe, is above--sitting in the chair? (if the notes that accompany the graphics are right). The other girls with parasol, who grace the top of the blog, are by the magnificent photographer Julia Cameron.  They are beyond glorious, having ascended into the realm of truth&beauty, yes?

Just figured this out, whilst sourcing the Clara Bow photo below (also saved for the photo shoot of several months ago). At the moment I realized my mistake, I knew that you must, somehow, have known it was not Mr. Carroll's photograph, not Alice. 

So. 

I think, now, I shall try to be less hasty and far tidier when cataloging photographic inspiration and citing sources and such. Let us hope that this comes true, and does not go the way of my frequent resolutions to be better at folding laundry or learning how to cook like Alice Waters. {I always remember the wonderful quote by Iona Opie about climbing the glass hill.  Ah!  Truth and Beauty and Housekeeping.}  

Bliss and the Right Brain

Seems, at the moment, that all roads keep leading back to TED, which I had never heard about until a few weeks ago.  Here's a fascinating rumination on the possibly temporal nature of left-brain dominance in English speakers. Even has a soupcon of nirvana thrown in.

Good stuff, courtesy of Dr. Taylor.

SIWINY: Supposing I Was In New York... The Lucid Truth

My greatest folly, when the children were much younger (kindergarten-ish) and I could go to bed at 1:30 and get up at 5:30, for months on end (and I wondered why I fell asleep at traffic lights, with the back of the van rocking and rolling behind me...books, toys, children, noise...and still, it was a moment of rest, being at that traffic light)...anyway, back to the folly: it was to have the New York Times delivered to my doorstep (actually, driveway) long, long before it was in every Starbucks and on every screen. It was folly because, in truth, we absolutely did not have the extra $24.95 a month (or whatever it was) to spend on something so frivolous. ($24.95 used to buy a lot of pasta & canned tomatoes.) Now, please understand, news is not frivolous, but--at the time--the San Jose Mercury News was a lovely little paper (and it would get even lovelier, before bubble burst and all changed) and it cost only pennies, because we live in a tiny little burg in San Jose (which is, sort of, just down the street from San Francisco, above photo). But the New York Times was where I wanted to be, every morning, at 5:30, with my Mr. Coffee coffee and my cute husband leaving for work and the kids not quite up yet, so that there would be an hour of peace....

{Disclaimer: my kids will find the part about getting up at 5:30 a.m. very hard to believe, and even more impossible to remember (they weren't up yet, right?), but I am still married--26 years on June 5th--to the cute husband, who can provide verification.}

Anyhow, the whole reason I got into this nonsense is to tell you that, for more years than I care to remember, I have had a "to do" list of what I would be to doing if, and certainly it would be a hard act to pull off if I actually were, but just if--supposing I was in New York--what would I be doing this week? Hey. A girl can dream, right?

So, this week, I would: breeze by the Noguchi Museum to see

"Design: Isamu Kenmochi and Isamu Noguchi," especially since the exhibit closes on Sunday.

And I would run quick, like Carrie Bradshaw carrying her Manolos' (my kids will find this even harder to believe) in one hand and catching a taxi with the other, to see "The Eccentricities of a Nightingale," at the Clurman Theater, because a.) Charles Isherwood says it is, indeed, "the rare staging of a Williams play that delivered his poetry and his emotional power intact;" b.) it closes next Saturday; and c.) this is something not to be missed: "Mary Bacon's performance as Alma Winemiller, the minister's daughter with a soul fit to burst, rivals anything I saw this season for complexity, delicacy, and lucid truth." (Charles Isherwood). That's what I'm after. Lucid Truth. (Please note: I shall slip my Manolos' back on before entering the theater.)

And then (because I had all the time in the world, this being only a dream) I would swing through the Jewish Museum to see "Action/Abstraction: Pollock, De Kooning and American Art, 1940-1976" (thru Sept. 21), run to the MOMA to see "Take Your Time, Olafur Elisson" (thru June 30), after which I would--channeling Mr. Elisson's karmic quietude--do a walking meditation straight to "The Genius of Japanese Lacquer: Masterworks by Shibata Zeshin," Japan Society, thru June 15.

Does that leave me time, in my dreams to catch Mapplethorpe's Polaroids at the Whitney? OMG. I hope so.

Wherever You Go There You Are

"How you set out 

on an adventure will

 pretty much dictate

 how you continue."

Cate Blanchett 

Vogue/07

Neurogenetics: Your Red and My Red may Really be Different than Their Red.

A few weeks ago, there was a remarkable article in the Science Times (NYT, 29.04.08), in which Dr. Arno Motulsky was interviewed.  As a teenager in Germany, Dr. Motulsky spent years trying to emigrate to the United States, and--like Walter Gropius, see Bauhaus idolatry below--he was fortunate to be able to do so:  in his case, the window between staying and going boiled down to a mere 10 days.  "If my visa had taken any longer," he recalls, "I wouldn't be here...I would have ended up in Auschwitz, like most of the people I left behind."

It's a good thing, for all of us, that he got here.  

In 1957, Dr. Motulsky asked a question about the negative interaction of two drugs with a set of enzymes produced by certain human genes that "set off a revolution in research."  What does this have to do with design?  In the simplest terms: the good doctor goes on to discuss how one of his new projects relates to human color vision, and a recent finding that "the same exact red color is perceived as a different type of red, depending on a person's genetic makeup."  Amazing, yes?

"Q. What's the point of knowing this?"

"A.  It's exciting to learn that because of heredity, different people can see the same thing differently.  I think this may prove useful in studying more complex brain functions.  

If this were 20 years ago, I'd focus on neurogenetics. 

What's going on in the brain, that's the last frontier."

Doesn't get much cooler than that, as far as I can see.

Rauschenberg, on the momentum of interesting ideas.

"Screwing things up is a virtue," he said when he was 74. "Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can't read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea."

Robert Rauschenberg: "...you're born an artist or not."

I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop...At the time that I am bored or understand--I use those words interchangeably--another appetite has formed.  A lot of people try to think up ideas.  I'm not one.  I'd rather accept the irresistible possiblities of what I can't ignore...

Anything you do will be an abuse of somebody else's aesthetics.  I think you're born an artist or not.  I couldn't have learned it.  And I hope I never do because knowing more only encourages your limitations."

"Robert Rauschenberg, Who Redefined American Art, Is Dead at 82."  NYT 14.05.08

Sitting Here

....it's all right here
and will be, that
world is wonder,

being simply beyond us,
patience its savor,
and to keep moving,

we love what we love,
what we have,
what we have to.

I don't know--
This fact of time spinning,
days, weeks, months, years....



"Sitting Here" by Robert Creeley
from Jonathan Cott's wonderful book, "The Roses Race Around Her Name: Poems from Fathers to Daughters"

Weimar: "Where else can you find so many good things in such a small space?"....Goethe

"There is no past, to which one may look back, there is only eternal newness, which shapes itself from the broadening elements of the past." 

The Glorious Illustrations of Alexandra Boiger

Alexandra's illustrations are perfectly sumptuous...and her tribute to her sister is beyond beautiful...

Alexandra Boiger Illustration: FOR ULRIKE