Jun 24, 2011
Jun 23, 2011
Jun 19, 2011
Jun 15, 2011
Jun 14, 2011
june
As months go, June is unassailable. It holds the longest day, the lushest greens, the sweetest peas. Its calendar heaves with commencements and betrothals. Roses bloom and strawberries blossom only in June. Fireflies flare against June's night skies alone. Its birthstone is the pearl! Fresh and unfettered, June knows nothing of the clawed, parched trail of summer days to come, and returns, every year, as deeply and perfectly June as ever.
Jun 9, 2011
sprezzatura
We try to solve very complicated problems without letting people know how complicated the problem was.
[thx josh]
Jun 4, 2011
ved stranden 10
the one thing you never do (or at least i never do) before arriving at a field site is check to make sure i'm not arriving on a public holiday. thursday was the day of the ascension in denmark, a public day of rest followed by the pseudo-holiday that always shows up whenever the possibility of a 4-day weekend arises.
a holiday for the field site is a holiday for me too. i spent much of the last 48 hours, both of which featured impeccable weather (warm, bright, clear, dry), taking naps under trees, by the waterfront, and in parks, all of which copenhagen is abundantly provisioned with.
late in the day, i took the bike over the bryggebroen that connects vesterbro with the islands brygge, and then along the waterfront path heading in the direction of christianshavn. the city built, some years ago, a public swimming facility here (havnebad), and on a hot summer day the danes come out in force. almost all i heard spoken was danish, which suggests that there were hardly any tourists. why aren't they here? i asked myself (later, when i unwisely cut through part of strøget, the shopping street, to get home, i figured it out: all the tourists are at H&M). the only obviously non-danes i saw were a few asian and eastern european folks with large bags filled with recycling. bottles and cans spent no more than a few minutes in trashcans or on the ground before they were picked up. think paris plages but less hokey, with more blonde people, and fewer empties. there were also many souped-up powerboats. i saw several <12-ft fiberglass craft with 300hp outboards on the back, and the water was filled with the sound of acceleration and boats bouncing on the chop.
after that, a peaceful ride through the assorted piers and docks of christianshavn, which revealed numberless vistas of people sitting around cloth-covered picnic tables stocked with lots and lots of wine and real wineglasses. norbert elias notes, in a somewhat different context, that civilisation is indicated by the use of cloth and glass.
then there is ved stranden 10. at 8pm, the sun still a hand's width above the city roofs, i stopped by to take a look at a shop whose windows were filled with bottles labeled in a style even a relative novice in natural wines, as i am, recognises as being of a type: no bright colours, untraditional, scrawly handwriting often in evidence. inside, carefully selected furniture, lots of copies of monocle and the new yorker, and a long list of wines by the glass that included a vin jaune from the jura, an oxidised yellow wine (i never see this on lists of wine by the glass). all good indications.
i got a glass of the vin jaune and went outside to read by the water. when the glass showed up, it came with a few pieces of 2 year old comte that were soft, ripe, sweet, and nutty. the wine was incredibly delicious, perfect for the weather, and complex: rich, mouth-filling, lightly oxidised, plenty of acid, the bite of alcohol, the flavour of all sorts of summer fruit, the odd, unsettling but also comforting aroma of a geueze. i've never had anything like it and it was especially perfect because completely unexpected. upon inquiry, it turned out to be a 2002 vintage from jean-françois ganevat, one of 12 bottles in denmark. it was nice that it took some investigation to figure this out, because ganevat is another of the hero winemakers of the natural wine nerd movement.
another beautiful, unassuming* place, like frederiks have. and their coffee program is supervised by the coffee collective. very nice.
* "Kun vine, som vi selv sætter pris på at drikke, såvel i langstilket krystal som i sennepsglas, finder vej til sortimentet."**
** "Only wine we like to drink, either in long-stemmed crystal or in a mustard jar, finds its way into the selection."
Jun 2, 2011
freedom, choices, style
You're bringing an informed aesthetic point of view to a visual problem. You have freedom, so you have to make choices—and at the point when I make a choice, the building starts to look like a Frank Gehry building: It's a signature.
Jun 1, 2011
ttfn
will i ever again plan to move to a different apartment on the same day that i leave for a field site for 7 weeks and on which a major paper i owe the department comes due?
you can, therefore, imagine what the last week has been like.
i never know who reads this but say hello if you happen to be close to denmark, sweden, the UK, or norway in the next 7 weeks.
May 26, 2011
rewards
a cool, dry evening with new yorkers and atlantics, after a humid day featuring the transportation of many boxes. (that's not water in the canning jar).
May 23, 2011
fame
without the perks, plain ol' fame and fortune just ain't worth the trouble.
also see the tarahumara and peter latham.
May 20, 2011
flottille
via etienne cliquet
for more cool stuff that also uses capillary action, see george whitesides's wonderful paper-based analysis devices. appropriate technology, elegantly implemented.
for more cool stuff that also uses capillary action, see george whitesides's wonderful paper-based analysis devices. appropriate technology, elegantly implemented.
May 19, 2011
May 18, 2011
May 16, 2011
May 14, 2011
May 13, 2011
May 11, 2011
May 10, 2011
i too have stolen a cake
"To summon a thing that is not there at all, to call it by speaking its true name, that is a great mastery, not to be lightly used. Not for mere hunger's sake. Yarrow, your little dragon has stolen a cake."
Yarrow had listened so hard, gazing at Ged as he spoke, that she had not seen the harrekki scuttle down from its warm perch on the kettle-hook over the hearth and seize a wheatcake bigger than itself, She took the small scaly creature on her knee and fed it bits and crumbs, while she pondered what Ged had told her.
"So then you would not summon up a real meat-pie lest you disturb what my brother is always talking about—I forget its name—"
"Equilibrium," Ged replied soberly, for she was very serious.
"Yes, but when you were shipwrecked, you sailed from the place in a boat woven mostly of spells, and it didn't leak water. Was it illusion?"
"Partly it was illusion, because I am uneasy seeing the sea through great holes in my boat, so I patched them for the looks of the thing. But the strength of the boat was not illusion, nor summoning, but made with another kind of art, a binding spell. The wood was bound as one whole, one entire thing, a boat. What is a boat but a thing that doesn't leak water?"
"I've bailed some that do," said Murre. "Well, mine leaked, too, unless I was constantly seeing to the spell." Ged bent down from his corner seat and took a cake from the bricks, and juggled it in his hands. "I too have stolen a cake."
"You have burned fingers, then. And when you're starving on the waste water between the far isles you'll think of that cake and say, Ah! had I not stolen that cake I might eat it now, alas!—I shall eat my brother's, so he can starve with you—"
"Thus is Equilibrium maintained," Ged remarked...
ursula le guin, a wizard of earthsea
May 9, 2011
travel and leisure
He was not only the greatest traveller I've ever known (because he was the truest), he was also one of the happiest people I have had the good fortune to meet. I'm sorry not to know what has become of him, though, to be honest, I'm not really sorry, I only feel that I should be. I'm not really sorry because today, ten or more years on from that brief period in which I knew him, he must be a grown man, stolid, reliably fulfilling his duties, married perhaps, someone's breadwinner—in other words, one of the living dead.
fernando pessoa, the book of disquiet.
May 8, 2011
beginners
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You've just gotta fight your way through.this was posted and reposted everywhere, but that doesn't mean it's not worth reposting again. on this see jackson pollock, arthur ganson, and robert irwin
ira glass, on telling stories (but really on everything)
May 5, 2011
May 3, 2011
long-term thinking
Every human action gains in honour, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come ... Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever ... For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, nor in its gold ... it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture.
john ruskin, the seven lamps of architecture(the lamp of memory)
khichdi, khichri, khichuri, khichari, kedgeree
large quantities of parsley and a healthy dose of turmeric and cumin are crucial. good with smoked mackerel, but maybe even better with the original, but hard-to-find, smoked haddock. our people are working on it even now. bowl by judith motzkin, maker of the awesome bread device. for more on kedgeree, consult pages 305-327 of john thorne's superb pot on the fire.
May 1, 2011
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