May 1, 2006

Albert Barnes on art education

From a radio address by Albert C. Barnes on the establishment of his foundation.

"Stated in simple language, the fundamental ideas of our educational program are:

Art is not a phase of life apart from work-a-day world, to which one may turn in moments of leisure or perhaps in the name of so-called 'culture', or in a spirit of worship. In the Foundation's courses art is taken out of its usually detached, esoteric world and is linked up with life itself, because all the qualities which give painting its value are those which are found in various phases of everyday life; and art has value only because it expresses those qualities. In other worlds, 'art is a fragment of life presented to us enriched in feeling by means of the creative spirit of the artist.'

We do not teach students how to paint, for that would be like teaching an injured person how to scream. We teach them how to learn to see; that is to perceive the meanings in events of everyday life, as well as in paintings, sculpture, music, furniture, objects in wrought iron, trees and flowers.

We try to eradicate the almost universal, bad, confusing habit of looking at a painting for what it is not intended to be - information about subject matter, reminiscence, likeness to familiar objects, etc...

We endeavor to create new habits of perception by means of objective observation of the relationship of line, light, color, and space that constitute form. We study the artist's language and how at all periods of time it has been affected by his environment in other words, we study the great traditions."

Is this kind of pragmatic idealism dead in today's world? Haven't thought about it enough to straighten out my thoughts but there it is, some food for thought.

More about the Barnes foundations in this episode of Weekend Edition aired a few years ago. On an stranger note it is said that Barnes' ghost still wanders the halls of the galleries he built.

May 2, 2006

Consider the Lettuce Maker

In Japan most restaurants feature lifelike plastic displays of the the various items on the menu. Low end restaurants use prefabricated dishes heaped with noodles or sushi or veggies, but better restaurants will actually have their dishes custom sculpted. The realism is startling. Soups practically shimmer, rice is slightly wet as if fresh from the pot, edamame come complete with plastic fuzz. At a Mexican restaurant in Osaka a display of tortilla chips featured individually molded pieces complete with a slight dust of salt. Artificial noodles sometimes drip from their bowls onto plates. American places show hamburgers complete with individual plastic sesame seeds on the bun. I asked everyone I knew about how such individualized displays were made. "Plastic food is art and science," my friend Daiki explained. He told me of high end studios where apprentice artists worked their way up from the lowly lettuce to American food and finally to fish and octopus. "Of course only masters create delicious looking octopus."

A few years ago while in Tokyo I sought out one of the most famous studios in the Kappabashi district and managed to talk my way in. Specifically I wanted see the apprentice lettuce makers in action, and after some confusion I was led by a secretary to a big windowless room full of small desks with men and women hunched over them. Over in the back sat an old man wearing a dirty smock over a dark suit, his workspace covered with paint tins, bits of plastic, and sharp modeling knives. Several pieces of lettuce in various states of completion had been carefully positioned on a plate. Before I could get started in precise English he explained, "to you, all lettuce looks same, but variety is infinite and each piece is unique. Our competitors try to copy life perfectly which is of course impossible. They make molds. Ha! I look at these an am ashamed. We do not even look at photographs. Our employees visit restaurant, eat each dish without taking notes. Afterwards our memory is the guide. We return to eat if we forget this thing or that. For lettuce to look like lettuce or fish to look like fish it must be better than reality but it also must be imperfect. This is the most important thing. If you make things perfect of course they will look fake. Think of American women and their plastic breasts. Of course breasts are never the same size! "

I asked how long he had been making lettuce. "36 years" was the quiet answer. I asked if he ever wished to do something else (a woman nearby was putting the finishing touches on a pastry that looked like a jelly donut). Of course I am a master, once I made a snake for a Chinese restaurant so full of life it was removed from the window for scaring customers, but lettuce is my passion. I would never start an artist on lettuce. Only someone with years of experience can get it right. Our artists start with rice which not easy, rice is just as difficult as anything else, but people are easily fooled with rice. And then maybe they move on to meat. Only then do sit with me and learn lettuce."

"And then they go on to fish," I added helpfully...

"After lettuce they can do anything," he smiled.

May 3, 2006

Where I go when I sleep

I was responding to a friend's query about Pakistan the other day when I came across this image in my files taken way back in 1991... A girl in white was standing in the foreground but it was a long exposure and she had only paused for a moment before wandering home. Not even a bit of a blur remains... so it's a failed shot, but the place often comes to me at odd hours of the night.

May 3, 2006

Sergey Maximishin


I love the camera in this image from Afghanistan by photojournalist Sergey Maximishin. More images from Afghanistan from Mr. Maximishin can be found on the stories section of his website. Be sure to check out his recent North Korea set.

May 4, 2006

The City at Night

I walked home to Brooklyn from Central Park South tonight... about 6 miles. The city was rainy and quiet and strange. Even the rain was preternaturally misty, a downpour without raindrops. In front of Rockefeller Center a woman with a red cape brushed past, soon after a man leading a white horse walked against traffic up Fifth Avenue. Through the window of the empty 24-hour Macdonalds (the one in front of the Empire State Building) a worker stared up at a framed painting of whales in outer space in rapt contemplation. Whales in outer space is the theme of the restaurant; anything to sell a burger I guess. Oblivious to the rain, three men in tuxedos chased each other around in Madison square park and then for a long time it felt as if the sidewalks were totally empty.

On Leonard and Broadway a cab slowly followed me down the street perhaps hoping I would tire of walking, the driver blasting Arabic prayers inside. I did not slow down. A few moment later a flurry of cabs passed each one empty, each one slowing and then speeding up when I did not raise my hand. Seeing each driver I felt I could almost hear their mumbled thoughts ala Wings of Desire. But by the time I hit the Brooklyn Bridge those imagined inner dialogs went silent. The brige was deserted. By this time the rain had cleared and the clouds were hanging low over the river--and the loudest sound was that of the East River rushing by beneath.

Walking down Henry Street most of the lights in the brownstones were off save for one or two people tapping away at their computers always on upper floors. On my street a teenage couple was making out on the next stoop. I tried not to disturb them, but a jangle of my keys sent them scurrying... and now of course time to close my eyes. Good night New York. Good night.

May 5, 2006

Document

The "spy page" of my mother's address book, circa 1956 when she was 11 years old. She was D.M. The guy she liked was L.S., aka Leonard Stango. Stango is a fairly unusual name and a little searching around reveals a Leonard Stango of my mom's age in Corona, NY which is one of the places my mom lived as a kid. There is a another Leonard a few years younger than me in the same location. Did he stay there, marry and have a son? I've often thought about calling and seeing if he remembers anything about my mom as her childhood is a blank to me. But then of course I would have to explain her death which would be difficult and perhaps an unfair thing to put her childhood sweetheart... would I be unfairly disturbing his memory? Anyway I've never done it... but perhaps I will one day.

May 6, 2006

Petty Booka

AAARRRRRGGGGG!!!!! Tragedy! I missed Petty Booka's recent New York gig. I fell totally in love with the Booka girls years ago when I heard them sing My Baby Don't Dance To Nothing But Ernest Tubb at the Silverlake Lounge. Sigh I suppose I'll just have to put Ukulele Lady in heavy rotation and resolve to be more vigilant about concert dates.

May 7, 2006

Bathing Beauties


bigger

Those of you who have visited the house know of my minor obsession with vintage panoramic images. The American Memory Project houses a rich selection of panoramics including some of my favorite subjects: beauty contests, disasters, motorcycle clubs, and presidents.

May 8, 2006

Lisa's Seutonius Series

Tonight I discovered the blog of Lisa Eisenbrey and I did something I rarely do which is read it all the way through. (Hello there Lisa if you happen to be reading this, you made me a) laugh b) miss Austin). The whole blog is great, but I was particularly taken by her Seutonius series (Caesar V, Caesar IV, Caesar III, and Caesars I & II) which distills The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius into amusing lists. (More on Suetonius at livius.org).

Often historians interpret these emperors' erratic actions as madness or inbreeding and of course that was sometimes undoubtedly what was going on, but my thought is this: Is it possible to look at the lives of these some of these emperors and not see madness, but a kind of extreme logic born of a life in which you are told you are a living god ruling over the known world. Aren't many of the extravagences and cruelties of these men simply the capricious whims of the id unchecked by the ego? Don't all ugly bald men like Caligula secretly want to kill the handsome well coifed men they encounter?

May 9, 2006

Bloodlines

When I become friends with someone I am always interested in going through their family albums and looking for faces or traits that appear generation after generation. A childhood friend came from a family of women with large floppy ears and arrow straight noses. The other features would be re-arranged, but the ears and noses were on face after face. In my own family my father and I are of my grandmother's line and are marked by our noses, and expressive eyebrows (my son has the eyebrow as well, but so far seems to be of Jenn's dad's line) whereas my brother is of my great grandfather's line of tall men with of strong chins. Some photographic evidence below. The images below are of my great grandfather, my grandfather, my uncle, and my brother.

Whose face do you carry?

May 10, 2006

3 Things My Son Has Eaten With a Smile on His Face

1. Seaweed and cheerios.
2. Caviar and cheerios.
3. A dead bumblebee.

May 10, 2006

Proper Attire

As I'm on a digital archive kick, check out these early Korea photographs from the New York Public Library's digital gallery. I found them while doing research for my wife's secret web project. The first is labeled "Woman's correct street costume-1906". The second is labeled "trial" with a date in the 20's although it looks to be earlier.


May 11, 2006

A few free links

These small art books are super cool. The remind me of grownup little big books. The company also produces cool flip books.

Jonathan Gitelson's portfolio site is a delight. I especially like his wave project.

Similar to the site above, Stephen Gill's site is great fun.

It took me a couple of times through to understand Colleen Plumb's image selection. Her site is full of small photo jokes.

If you can get past the super annoying navigation, Michael Northrup has a couple of nice Southern trailerpark gothic images.

May 11, 2006

Rut Blees Luxemburg


I recently asked a friend of mine who is a fairly serious photography collector about artists who have caught his eye recently. "Rut Blees Luxemburg," he answered, and showed me a few prints of her images from Dakar. I found them intriguing. You won't find one site with a good catalog of her photographs, but a google image search will find many of the better known images.

May 12, 2006

Storm

It's pouring rain. Lighting but no thunder. The trees are whipping around and scraping the windows. My kind of night.

Thinking about: a quote my wife often repeats, "There is no distance in memory."

May 13, 2006

Comet Hyakutake

This is from a journal dated March 1996.

I saw the comet again tonight.

Carlyle called at sunset and asked if I wanted to go out and look for it. She said she knew I was the type of guy who would want to see it. She was right, I had already driven out beyond the city lights to find it twice, not the type of thing I would miss, but I didn't mention my previous excursions. "Let's find it together," I said. "Goodie," she exclaimed. She was the type of girl who could get away with a "goodie" now and then.

I picked her up at 11 and we drove out onto the PCH to escape the LA city lights. In her deep Alabama drawl she told stories about her father, about her broken down Cadillac that smelled of cat pee, about growing up in Alabama, and about this guy Ronnie she used to date. She said he would wear all black, and she would wear all white and they would go into bars like that and drink until they couldn’t drink anymore. Ronnie was dead now. She carefully enumerated all the reasons she missed him and about how she felt him watching over her, "He's an avenging angel. Bad ass," she whispered, before changing the subject to how she felt she would be famous someday. "I know I will," she said, "I just know it."

I was listening, but only half listening, I was thinking about how we carry around memories of people...how you can know someone for years and not notice them until they’re gone, or you can meet someone on a train for five minutes, and they can change your life forever.

We had been on the road for almost an hour now and were somewhere past Malibu, the sky was getting really dark. I could see the stars through the windshield. She had stopped talking but I hadn't noticed.

We drove off the highway onto the sand of a dark beach. I shut off the headlights and Carlyle giggled nervously. The comet was easy to spot even from inside the car. It was right up there as sure as anything and I was newly amazed because all my life comets have been a minor obsession and I couldn’t believe that I was actually seeing one without binoculars. We walked along the beach and I pointed out stars and constellations, but Carlyle didn’t seem to care. I asked what was wrong, "Oh nothing," came the answer.

After a long silence she murmured, "It’s him, isn’t it?" I had no idea what she was talking about but she explained, "it's ok his presence is strong tonight. You feel him too." Accepting her logic I said nothing and looked at the comet and the stars and the moon and felt thrilled for a while. In my giddiness I laughed and said that the comet was brighter than it had been the a few nights ago. She asked me what I was talking about, and I admitted I had seen it already. This was a mistake and she stomped off towards the water. Even with the waves breaking I could hear her crying. It was really dark.

After a while, I heard her walk across the sand, and get into the car. She flashed the headlights to hurry me up blinding me temporarily.

We drove home in silence which didn’t bother me, but I put on the radio to lighten things up. The DJ on KCRW was playing Mississippi John Hurt, one of my favorite blues singers, and sound of his quiet voice got all mixed up with the sound of the wind coming through the window. It all felt nice in my head and my mind was wandering all over the place, but I kept coming back to thinking how grand it had been to see the comet on the dark beach and that Carlyle would one day forget being upset and remember only the sky. I wondered how I would remember it.

When I was four or five my parents woke me up at midnight to see a lunar eclipse. Now I don’t remember the eclipse at all, I just remember being picked up by my dad and sitting on his shoulders and my mom tickling my back.

When my head starts going like that, time flies. We arrived back in no time and I drove Carlyle to her little house in Huntington Beach. I didn’t want the night to end on a bad note, so I kissed her on the cheek and said, "I hope you enjoyed seeing the comet." She got out of the car and started walking into the dark.

"It wasn't anything," she called back, "it was just a blur."

May 13, 2006

Frank Sinatra Has A Cold

Square America has posted some fantastic vintage nightclub photos over at Swapatorium.

The images brought to mind "Frank Sinatra has a Cold" by Gay Talese which is often cited as one of the all time greatest magazine stories. The piece originally appeared in the April 1966 Esquire. If you don't know the article, I recommend first listening to Act IV of the This American Life show titled Sinatra featuring Mr. Talese reading an excerpt from his essay. Then when you are done, read the full article (pdf download, web version). Once you've heard Mr. Talese, you'll read the article with his rich voice and word cadence in your head. The article is fairly long so I recommend the pdf version.

May 15, 2006

A note about Babar

I love Babar as much as the next guy, but when Jean de Brunhoff stopped illustrating after 7 boooks and his son Laurent took over, the series went downhill. Babar's Cousin: That Rascal Arthur?! Come on. Please.

Now I know where the idea for cousin Oliver was hatched.

May 15, 2006

Puddle Jumper

May 16, 2006

Ole Worm


This recreation of Ole Worm's one room museum by artist Rosamond Purcell pretty much made my day. (via the Kirshner Society) Images of Museum Wormianum always seem to inspire a certain gothic sensibility in artists.

May 17, 2006

Why.

1. Why did my parents make me take ice skating lessons in Houston where the temperature rarely drops below 80?

2. Why, even at the age of 4 and a half, did I allow myself to be put into a bunny outfit?

3.Why was I so damned slow?

4. And why, when all the other kids had skated far far ahead of me, did I decide play to the crowd by turning and doing series of hops, eventually passing the other bunnies now headed in the opposite direction, causing the girl I liked, Kelly Jackson, to call me Fooey Bugs and wrinkle her nose at me for the rest of the summer?

May 18, 2006

Tip for Entourage Users

If you use Entourage 2005 on OS X 10.4, Microsoft has quietly released a major upgrade.

Once you've installed the update, start the program, nothing looks different, but go to the preferences and select Spotlight and click the option to "include entourage items in Spotlight search results' and hit the rebuild button.

Whammo. Your old email just got much more useful. Now instead of waiting minutes for entourage to churn through your email when you hit find, you can have results in seconds in spotlight. Your email database has just gone from being an inert repository to an incredibly rich resource. Of course it depends on how long you've saved your email (I have religiously upgraded my databases since pre-internet all text BBS days) but even if your database is small it's nice to have instant access to everything by plugging in a few search terms.

Another benefit, you can now sync Entourage with the Address Book and iCal. Yippee.

May 18, 2006

General Mariano Escobedo International Airport

Do you ever find yourself writing something you're really into, put it down for a bit, and return to find total crap? That was my experience tonight so consider yourself spared of a page of heavy BS.

In the meantime, another old journal entry:

Monterrey, December 16, 1996

6:30AM Dreams of time travel and train wrecks last night. I’m sitting in the airport lounge watching Sylvester the Cat chase Tweety Bird (in Spanish). All airports should be so equipped. Oops Sylvester just got blown up. Again.

May 18, 2006

North Korea Images




My brother-in-law Paul has once again come up with some links to North Korea snapshot galleries.

Artemiy Lebedev posts 4 galleries of images on his website (one, two,
three
, and four).

There are several good DPRK sets on flickr: Matthijs Gall, Mark Wang, Veronica Pinter. nuwex, prime8z, Fraser Lewry, Liz Ralph, John Goodman, and staypuff.

And finally blogger Daniel Shorr's pictures and blog account of a recent trip. (in the blog archive scroll down to the bottom and work your way up).

I hope to do some photography there in the relative near future.

May 20, 2006

Dispatches

Snippets of recent IMs and recent conversations:

MH: here's a general question for you, an early adopter:
what do i not have that i should look into aside from a cost effective sound and video server for the whole house

RG: ?

MH: Think about it.

RG: Umm. Photo printer?

MH: mmm - i can print photo's on my printer, but don't know if it is good enough. I think the answer is: (dramtic pause) survival kits, a fail-safe exit route, rally points, ingot stashes, and property in wyoming or panama to retreat to when the apocalypse hits

RG: your problem would be getting out... in LA there aren't so many options and if the shit was really going down it would be hard to get out

MH: already have that covered, my friend

and so on
..................
RG: You know how I wasn't supposed to be cutting the baby's hair... well I've been cutting it... just little trims here and there and you haven't noticed...

Jenn: You've been cutting his hair behind my back!

RG: Just around the edges where's it's in danger of mulleting out.

Jenn:So why are you telling me this?

RG: Well... I slipped with the clippers... he moved his head, and well, now it pretty much looks like he's prepared for a lobotomy. But you know, it will grow back fast...and he has lots of hats. He looks great in hats.

Jenn:RAUL!

and so on
..................
RG: My problem is that I don't have a graduated sense of the world. I either love something or I hate it, it's binary. Cheese-Makes me want to die. Cats-Grr. Hate is too poor a word. White brick buildings make me want to throw myself in the East River.

TR: Aren't you being a little dramatic. Are you saying you have a strong opinion on everything. How about... graph paper.

RG: I LOVE graph paper!

TR:The Manhattan bridge.

RG: Bleah. Hate it. Functional and uninspired.

TR: So there's nothing that you say, "well that was just ok."

RG: You're not understanding... it's not like an opinion with me it just is. White or black.

TR: That's incredibly obnoxious.

RG: I know. I hate this about myself.

and so on

May 21, 2006

In Between Days


This afternoon Jenn and I were able to sneak out and catch a screening of In Between Days at BAM by director So Yong Kim. From the reviews I had expected a film delving deep into Korean-American culture but I think the reviewers didn't really get it... it wasn't a film about immigrants— it was a film about teenagers... The cultural notes helped define the characters but were ultimately peripheral. Like most good films about teenagers it is about teenagers who are in love, who can't say what they feel, and who keep hurting each other. It’s a quiet story told mainly in close-up picking up small and telling glances where the spaces between words are more important than the words themselves. The film is directed with a sure hand and the director managed to coax utterly realistic and emotionally hard-hitting performances from a cast of untrained but talented actors.

My wife missed the lack of establishing shots or wide shots and said the movie sometimes felt claustrophobic. She was also sometimes confused as to where she was in the story, this is a criticism she often has of female directors who she notes always seem to go for the gut with lots of close-ups. I was only slightly bothered by this although it’s a fair criticism. Most people have been conditioned to read films in a certain way... They need breathing room. This film would often track directly from one moment to another hours or days later without any of the standard transitions... I read this as poetic mindscreen... This is the way we remember things: Someone breaks up with you. That person calls. You are eating together. In your memory the moments run together without any in-between bits. Onscreen the result has an emotional intensity to it. The only breaks in the movie were sequences I read as dream sequences.... Voiced-over letters to an absent father read or whispered by the main character Aimie over grainy shots of empty landscapes. I thought this was lovely. Worked for me.

The film was shot on digital often with little light and it looked amazing-beautifully bleak. HD opens up realms almost impossible to shoot on film and especially with such a small crew. The sound design was also flawless with ambient noise calibrated to precisely play against the character’s emotions. The director spoke afterward and noted the crew size was often limited by the number of people who could fit in a single car—6. The crew was sleeping in the apartment being used as a set. The girl's room in the movie was the room she was sleeping in. Morning shots were morning shots and so on. Sort of a dogma film without the dogma. As someone who worked on movies where the crews generally numbered in the 100’s with endless layers of bureaucracy, personal filmmaking this with this level of finish and style is inspiring.

I don’t believe In Between Days has distribution yet, but by all rights it should. Look for it at festivals and later on DVD.

May 23, 2006

Notes on Blogger vs Movable Type vs Wordpress

Warning geeky post. Most regular readers are excused.

For over a year now I've been meaning to switch the engine behind this blog from Blogger to Moveable Type. While Blogger is dead simple, it's development ground to a halt after the Google acquisition. Features now standard on other blogging systems like the ability to add a "previous" link to the bottom of a page, categories, and the ability to sort archives in ascending order are all MIA. Moveable Type pioneered many of these features and I am comfortable with the system as this is what I use to run my photoblog, but importing from Blogger is tricky especially if you want to preserve comments due to Blogger limitations.

I've been pretty happy with Moveable Type and it has steadily been improved over the years but I've noticed a falloff in 3rd party plug-ins and hacks recently... MT's sometimes hairy installation and confusing upgrade process are the system's main barriers to entry especially for non-techie users....but after everything is installed MT is fast and flexible. All this is a long way of saying I just haven't gotten around to switching because of the hassle involved.

Recently a friend recommended Wordpress, she had upgraded recently and had found it a smooth & easy process. I had tried Wordpress a few years ago and found it buggy, but recently I've been seeing lots of nice Wordpress based blogs so I decided to give it a spin. True to it's publicity I had Wordpress up and running in about 5 minutes. A few minutes later it was importing this blog and surprise surprise everything was imported correctly (the only issue was that it reverted a few customized settings in the original Blogger blog to their defaults after the import).

While the new version of the blog isn't up yet, I've been going back and forth between the systems all week. I'm biased by my familiarity with Blogger and MT, but here are some notes on the three systems for those of you thinking of switching, upgrading, or starting a new blog. All my notes are for people installing the blogs on their own webservers.


-Both MT and Wordpress store all your entries in a database on your own server. Blogger saves your entries on a google server but outputs the actual pages to your sever. MT has the option to generate static pages or the dynamically create pages. Wordpress can only generate pages dynamically. The advantage of the Blogger method is that even if your webserver dies completely, you can always republish the content elsewhere, the odds of Blogger/Google losing all your posts are small. If you server dies with Wordpress or MT and you aren't backed up offline you've lost everything. The disadvantage of the Blogger method is that if Google has a hiccup, you can't post to your blog.

-MT has the easiest and simplest export option (It has a one click option to output all your entries to a nicely formatted text file which can be easily imported later). Exporting with Blogger or Wordpress via a custom template is not difficult if you know what you are doing, but there are no easy presets for novices. There are a couple of WP plugins to create text files but all of them have issues. These are two of the best I've found: Script #1, Script #2

-Wordpress has the best import features hands down. It allows you to import blog entries from a number of systems and seems to do so flawlessly. Even comments are correctly handled. MT's allows you to import from a text file, but that file must be in the MT's format. Obviously it imports it's own export files perfectly, but I have yet to find a perfect solution for getting Wordpress or Blogger to output files that can be easily read by MT. The main issue is comments which always seem to get screwed up. Blogger doesn't have an import function-it simply doesn't exist. I once helped a friend write a little PHP script to email each of his WP entries to Blogger via Blogger's 'Mail-to-Blogger' function. It was a bit of a kludge but it worked, it would be easy enough to do this to get a MT database into Blogger as well. Comments would be lost.

-If you want to customize the mechanics of the blog, you have an extremely limited set of tags in Blogger and it's impossible to get under the hood and add a missing function like yearly archives [blogger's tags]. There is no plugin mechanism. Given Blogger's lack of development (there have been no major functional upgrades in almost 2 years) you're pretty much stuck. Moveable Type and Wordpress both have richer tag sets [MT Tags, WP tags]. Both are also highly customizable via plugins. In MT perl is the preferred plugin language, in Wordpress it's php. Both allow you to use php in page templates. The big difference at least to the user is that MT plugs are accessed through easy to read tags. Wordpress modifications are php code and are accessed by bits of php code which can be difficult to read. Another drawback of php as used in Wordpress with dynamically generated pages is that a small typo can make the entire blog simply disappear until the error is fixed. Even the admin interface can vanish. Because MT can generate static files, your blog will still exist if you make an error, you just can't post new content. Another Wordpress issue: on some servers you will need to fiddle with htaccess files to creating google friendly permalinks.

-You can style pages in all 3 systems using CSS. Blogger basically only has a single template which it uses for everything. MT and WP both allow you to style archive pages and individual pages as much as you wish.

- All three systems now have good standards compliant templates to choose from. On the web countless scores alternate templates are available... good, bad, and horrible. Design-wise I like the Blogger default templates best although all of them are overused. Moveable Type and Wordpress default templates are more functional with the crucial additions of both search and categories.

-The biggest difference between systems to the reader of your blog will probably be speed. Perhaps because both Blogger and MT generate static pages, those pages load much faster than the same pages generated by Wordpress. But it's not just the pages that are slower, it's also the admin interface and the speed with which the blog updates (If you set MT to dynamically generate pages it is still much faster than Wordpress on the same server with the same content). In my case Wordpress pages often took several seconds to load while MT/Blogger pages were almost instant. There are sites devoted to Wordpress speed tweaks that do improve things. The biggest improvements came when I installed a caching plugin.

-Perhaps I am just being dense, but I found the Wordpress archive schema difficult to wrap my head around and spent way too long massaging urls so that they appeared the way I wanted (I want urls for the new blog to match those of the old so that people's links don't break). I've had no problems in MT making the archives conform to my wishes. Blogger's archives aren't super-customizable but a simple admin interface provides several easy archiving options.

-Two Wordpress selling points of note 1) it is open source so if you're a gearhead you can tinker endlessly and 2) it supports Widgets-small modules you can add to your sidebar and move around with ease.

-Both Blogger and MT play well with google. For reasons I don't fully understand wordpress pages are googled less well, especially interior and archive pages. To test this I set up 3 blogs using default templates on the same server containing sentences with unique nonsense words and linked to them externally. Two weeks later I googled. Items on all 3 index pages were googled (MT first, Blogger second, WP third). Searching for words in archive pages, the WP results where missing completely.

-Wordpress is much better at dealing with comment spam in the default configuration. MT can be brought up to speed with plugins (the Askimet plugin ported from wordpress is particularly effective. Blogger's spam controls are invisible to the user and uncustomizable, but I have to admit they generally work fairly well blocking most SPAM before it arrives. All systems allow for moderated comments.

So what are my conclusions:

I recommend Blogger to most people who lack coding or designing experience. It's easy, it works, and it's hard to break.

I recommend Wordpress to those of you who like to tinker, especially if you are into php. My issues: difficult to read code, confusing archiving, and lack of text export are all offset by Wordpress' almost infinite customizability and it's active community. I was tempted by the huge number of user plugins and easy to use widgets but ultimately I was looking for a balance between control and simplicity.

My choice was the one I started with, Moveable Type. Movable Type is perfect for people who don't care to fiddle around under the hood as long things work reliably. Installation is the only real issue. Otherwise I like the clean code, the speed, the power, and the easy archiving. I have found plugins to work around most of MT's limitations. And I came up with a solution on how to get my Blogger posts & comments imported-- first I import from Blogger to Wordpress which grabs the comments correctly and then I export to MT via a plugin. Now if I could just stop comparing the systems and actually do the work of putting up the new blog.

May 23, 2006

One Three Journal Project

Journal #1 is out the door and headed to Kilkenny, Ireland.
Journal #2 will be out the door tomorrow and will make it's first stop in Hoi An, Vietnam.
Journal #3 will be ready by weeks end. I think it will start it's journey in Portland, Oregon.

All 3 should will be wandering for about a year if everyone plays their part. Can't wait to see what happens.

May 23, 2006

Around Red Hook Today



May 24, 2006

Eating Apples

Here is the thing nobody tells you about being a parent... well at least no one told me: One morning you will be up at the grim hour of 5:43AM and through a miasma of sleep you will see your smiling son pick up an apple with both hands and begin to eat it.

It is the detail of the hands that, in an instant, triggers a concentrated rush of memory. In a wink you are not some groggy 39 year old guy standing in his boxers in the middle of his kitchen watching his son eat an apple, you are a kid excited to be holding that sticky apple, turning it round and round with both hands as you nibble away the bitter skin to extract the sweetness inside. You are inside this moment and it conjures up an entire era you had long forgotten. The smell of your mother's kitchen. The brown carpets of the 70's. How you used to start eating apples standing up, but would eventually plop down cross-legged concentrating on the task at hand. Suddenly stingingly awake and awash in an extreme almost overwhelming empathy you feel very much alive. It is 5:46AM.

These leaps in time happen with discombobulating regularity and are always triggered by the tiniest things: our son waving his fingers against the fading light at bedtime just before he slips into a dream and the hand falls to the pillow, two kids on the playground crouched down over a fallen pigeon's egg, the collection of pine cones, or the way his mother holds his head comforting him when the world is not going his way. Each little flashback not only connects you to your kid reminding you to be a little more patient and a little less harried, it connects you to yourself, and that is the most surprising thing of all.

May 25, 2006

Delicious New York

Blog reader Kendra emailed today, "I'm coming to New York for a Memorial day weekend. Where should I eat? I'm looking for something a little bit offbeat. Asian maybe? Something we can't find here in Tulsa and not super expensive."

Well Kendra, the question is broad (so many options!), but here are a few suggestions that immediately popped into my head.

(in no particular order)

1. The Kuma Inn - 113 Ludlow Street, 2nd Floor. (212) 353-8866
Every time I eat at the Kuma Inn my dinner guests get a little wild eyed with glee. Everything at this Asian Tapas bar is absurdly yummy. The grilled items are especially drool-worthy. Cash only. Reservations recommended.

2. The Yemen Cafe - 176 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn
My own neighborhood is a bit of a restaurant wasteland with many places for passable eats, but few that really knock the ball out of the park. Enter the Yemen Cafe... the kabobs, the lentil soup, and the Yemeni salads are all just about perfect. I always bring out of town guests here and they always leave happy. Cash is king.

3. Pat Pong - Pat Pong, 93 East 7th (212) 505-6454
Thai-Hungarian? Sounds good-awful, but how wrong you are. Turns out kielbasa is just the thing certain Thai dishes need. Order the yum-nuea beef salad, of the scores of yum-nuea's I've had at Thai joints around the city this is one of the few contenders. another review here

4. The Good Fork - 391 Van Brunt Avenue, Brooklyn.
This one might be a bit difficult to find for an out of towner as it's in Red Hook which is subway inconvenient. I ate there my first time last week, but the place instantly went to the top of my list. The best description I've heard of the menu is "Korean inspired diner food." Don't know if that sounds appealing but everything on the menu is knock-you-out delicious. Make sure to order the dumplings. Menus available online.

5. Momofuku - 163 1st Ave (btw 10th & 11th)
I haven't eaten there yet, but Jenn has been raving about Momofuku, a newish Korean noodle bar.

6. Nha Trang- 87 Baxter St.
Vietnamese restaurants in New York have nothing on their counterparts in Houston or San Francisco, but I imagine they are better than anything you can find in Tulsa (do they even have Vietnamese restaurants in Tulsa?)... It's hard to go wrong at Nha Trang where I've rarely had anything less than super-tasty meals. And whatever you order make sure to wash it down with their home made limeade. So good.

Is 6 enough? I could go on, but go through this list first. If you need more suggestions just shout for more... (and fellow New Yorkers are welcome to add their own favs).

May 25, 2006

Jets


Ummm. Why have military planes been circling in formation over Brooklyn all day long?

May 27, 2006

Late Afternoon, Garze

Do you ever miss the light of a particular place? It was misty and humid today in New York City and I was missing the clear light of Garze where late every afternoon you get these great long shadows as the sun sets below the horizon.

May 28, 2006

By-line

I've been enjoying a bit of Hemingway tonight... A few first paragraphs...

Trout Fishing in Europe, November 17, 1923
"Bill Jones went to visit a French financier who lives near Deauville and has a private trout stream. The financier was very fat. He stream was very thin."

A.D. in Africa: A Tanganyika Letter, April 1934
"To write this sort of thing you need a typewriter. To describe, to narrate, to make funny cracks you need a typewriter. To fake along, to stall, to make light reading, to write a good piece, you need luck, two or more drinks and a typewriter. Gentlemen, there is no typewriter."

On the Blue Water: A Gulf Stream Letter, April 1936
"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter. You will meet them doing various things with resolve, but their interest rarely holds because after the other thing ordinary life is as flat as the taste of wine when the taste buds have been burned off your tongue. Wine, when your tongue has been burned clean with lye, feels like puddle water in your mouth, while mustard feels like axle-grease, and you can smell crisp, fried bacon, but when you taste it, there is only a feeling of crinkly lard."

May 30, 2006

When you know things


When your wife is in the emergency room, very sick, and very much in pain, and when the nurse can’t find a vein to draw blood and has to make repeated jabs with a long needle including one in between the knuckles, this is when, you as a husband, start to worry in earnest.

But then, between the grimaces, you see a smile flicker across your wife’s face, and when the nurse runs out to find another needle your wife turns and smiles and says, "I just had the thought, ‘maybe she can’t find the vein because I’ve been kissed by a vampire. My transmogrification has begun.’" This is when you know everything will be ok.

May 30, 2006

ER tips

Many thanks to everyone who emailed. Sorry to have scared some of you. Jenn is still feeling lousy, but improving... Emergency Rooms are never fun, especially in New York, but all in all things went as well as can be expected. I'm always in awe of the doctors and nurses who work these jobs, I have no idea how they manage to sustain the energy and focus needed to deal with moment to moment stress of patients in crisis and worried family.

In case you ever find yourself having to rush someone to the hospital, here are a couple of things I learned today. Perhaps one will stick in the back of your mind somewhere in your time of need.

1. Grab some food (bananas are perfect) and a bottle of water. Often feeding patients is prohibited because of the meds being given, but often food is ok, and there is usually no nearby place to get food. Also you need to eat too.

2. If you have time put an extra pair of clothes the bag.

3. Bring something to read. Even in the most dramatic situations there will be hours of downtime with nothing to do.

4.Try to write down as much hard data as possible... Times of fevers/chills/temperatures. This way you can be precise when rapid-fire questions are being asked.

5. If the place isn't crazy busy, it's never hurts to ask for an extra blanket/pillow/water etc.

6. Be nice. Remember people's names. You wouldn't believe how many people I saw today being incredibly rude to the staff. The worst offenders were family/friends. A little niceness goes a long way. Remember there is always someone else in there with a more critical emergency.

7. If you are discharged but the doctors tell you to "come back if things turn for the worse again", get your doctor's name/number. This way you can won't find yourself trying to track down the numbers/names if the patient worsens. Also if you have to be admitted a second time it's a good idea to have the new doc talk with the old one.

8. It's probably not cool to ask the cops escorting in a very sick prisoner, "What was he in for?"

9. If your wife declares she is feeling much better it is best not to joke that if she were on TV medical drama this would be the point that she would flatline and someone could come in with palettes yelling "defib!"

10. Wash your hands when you leave.

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