loveitallabove

Would LOVE to get to the Morandi show at the Met before it goes down...not likely though. It is one of those once-in-a-lifetime things...they do pass. A few things I wanna note: 1. In a beautiful review in the New Yorker Peter Schjeldahl writes: "Even his effulgently pinkish floral still-lifes abjure virtuosity, though they beguile." what?! thanks for the tear and share, Dad. loved the review, really; but that line got another tear out and got taped into my moleskine . 2. Following is the credit for the exhibition: The exhibition is made possible by Jane and Robert Carroll. Additional support is provided by Isabella del Frate Rayburn and Maurice Kanbar. Maurice Kanbar ?! Gotta find out what's the story there...Maurice? 3. Further as to the credits, it reads: The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and MAMbo—Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna . "MAMbo—Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna"?! WINNER: Best Acronym of the W...

On the whole write-down-the-words-you-don't-know and look-them-up-later, like-you-learned-in-high-school thing...and like other luscious works, like Lolita , there're some words in Middlesex what are even sexy when described at m-w.com . Main Entry: gib·bous . Pronunciation: \ˈji-bəs, ˈgi-\. Function: adjective. Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin gibbosus humpbacked, from Latin gibbus hump Date: 14th century. 1 a: marked by convexity or swelling b of the moon or a planet : seen with more than half but not all of the apparent disk illuminated. 2: having a hump : humpbacked. Main Entry: bowd·ler·ize Pronunciation: \ˈbōd-lə-ˌrīz, ˈbau̇d-\ Function: transitive verb. Inflected Form(s): bowd·ler·ized; bowd·ler·iz·ing. Etymology: Thomas Bowdler †1825 English editor. Date: 1836 1 : to expurgate (as a book) by omitting or modifying parts considered vulgar 2 : to modify by abridging, simplifying, or distorting in style or content. Main Entry: louche \ˈlüsh\. Function: adje...

Life is funny. The Museum had a really successful opening last Saturday evening with some 100 people or more at the downtown building. My family was there, excepting that my wife K was back in New York, for Sacha J.'s wedding. On Saturday evening she was out on Long Island with our dear friends A & A who are expecting. Yay. My dad came out for the opening. And so he got to hear the daughter of his dear friend Marty Rabkin speak on behalf of the University of California. Dad went to Fieldston with Marty -- funny that my father should find Marty's daughter as part of a program developed in part by his son. Marty also dances with my dad's nephew (my cousin)...but that's a whole different story . Frances Dinkelspiel , V.P. Board of Trustees, MAGNES Michelle Rabkin , Associate Director, Arts Research Center Nana Ursi, Li'l E and his friend Tom Carter , doing hands-on activities My dad and Seymour Fromer, Founder and Director Emeritus, Judah L. Magnes Museum , B...

Wired.com : How did the Atheon begin? Jonathon Keats : I heard about the Beyond Belief conference in 2006 . Richard Dawkins was there, and Steven Weinberg, and Neil Degrasse Tyson. They were trying to figure out what science might do to provide an alternative to religion. There wasn't a consensus, but there was momentum towards the idea that science could do everything religion could, that it could be everything religion had been. What would the form be, I wondered, of a church to science? What would happen within that church, in the most literal terms? And what would the fallout be if religion became scientific, and science a surrogate for religion? Wired.com : Do you actually take the worship of the science seriously, or is it a parody? Keats : I hope not. If it's interpreted as one, I will have failed. It's not a parody any more than a thought experiment is a parody. Wired.com : Are you promoting science as a religion? Keats : No. I'm just the cheapest labor availabl...

...really great.

...the view from our Hilton Anchorage window - goodbye Alaska.

...it was closed.

The Mayer Lehman family, Tarrytown, New York, ca. 1888. Herbert and Irving Lehman are in the front row. Photo courtesy of the Herbert H. Lehman Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York. Man, it's a trip to think about how long history has taken and Lehman trades hands in like a day?!......O.K., whatever, where's Drexel Burnham? Dean Whitter? That's all lots of history book stuff made up of people and institutions, etc, etc... But wasn't there some deliberation before those things sunk, got absorbed or whatever? Time is collapsing in upon us. What a thrilling time to be alive! Thanks, Frances Dinkelspiel for prividing even more historical context in her piece in the L.A. Times -- kinda makes you feel like yesterday's today. Frances is author of the forthcoming book Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California . Oh, and if you want to set up your own shrine to all this speed of light stuff, go se...

...with a long-ass bio, cartographer, photographer & Director of the Museum of Science, Boston ?!...from 1939-1980!

Really?!....what a trip.

Here is the avatar springs coronet (A.K.A. Melissa Rosengard, costco photo contest winner and former head of the Western Museums Association ) presenting LIVE at the WMA Conference in Anchorage, AK. So far this has been a great show! Thanks, Melissa, for turning us on to The Institute for the Future . ..the Palinicity is scary up here in Alaska, though. I feel as if I am in a bunker, in-the-thick behind enemy lines amidst the culture wars. I don't blame Alaskans, per se , more Sarah Palin's willingness to run as a vice president of the United States.

A little bit of history. How can you not be a little bit of history?

3. Last night I found myself at an avant-garde dance performance. Not my usual Saturday evening pass time, and my mind wandered as the evening progressed. At one point I started thinking about David Foster Wallace. speculating if he would possibly glean meaning from the dancers festooned in plastic shopping bags as they twirled around the stage. I can only speculate that brilliantly gifted humans such as him, Spaulding Grey, and countless others, could not bear the terrible beauty that they saw so clearly and tried to alert the rest of us to. I'm so sorry, so sorry, we have lost him. Submitted by: Zulu as Kono 8:36 PM PDT, Sep 14, 2008 LOVE IT ALL ABOVE, people. find the time to pull away and say, "Love it all above." Let the mantra rise you up and raise the bar and may you say, "Love it all above." Do not give in. Adore an article and let the rest be part of the great giving in. Love it. Love it all above. How sad that our very best a brightest "chec...

Frankly, Hillary deserves better, but the Palin is so necessary. This must be stopped.

What a BRILLIANT line...who'N the FFF is this?! Thanks, Tosh , for making this Virginia Plain... Who eFFin' the FFF Jobriath is....?

Click the pic to read "16 Reasons Why Sarah Palin Sucks" and click the link here to read Billy Smash. Dig the New Breed! Here's what Billy say: Palin-icity: The trick of being an expert on something due to its proximity Hey Thanks Sarah Palin ! Thanks to your repeated claim to foreign policy experience due to Alaksa being close to Russia, I too can claim expertise in a countless number of things that I have no fucking clue about. Pressed about what insights into recent Russian actions she gained by living in Alaska, Palin answered: “They’re our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.” So if you have any illnesses you need identified, go ahead and ask me. I’m not a doctor and I have no clue about science or medicine, but I do live near a doctor’s office. I see it every day. Thanks to the Palin doctrine, I also prepared to represent myself in all legal proceedings. There are many lawyers near my home. Thanks...

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has appointed Tom Campbell as the new Director. YAY!! I worked with Tom when he very first arrived at the Met and I was on the team that helped make the Ratti Center happen in its final stages. He is a scholarly and tenacious guy and a GREAT pick. A real 'dark horse," though. Few on the inside thought he was one of the very strongest candidates, I think -- maybe they were being coy. Right now, I am most thrilled in how it is an endorsement of young leadership. May 17, 2008 2:40 pm US/Eastern New Leader Is Youngest In NAACP History NEW YORK (AP) ― The NAACP chose 35-year-old activist and former news executive Ben Jealous as its president Saturday, making him the youngest leader in the 99-year history of the nation's largest civil rights organization. Daniel Sokatch Named CEO of Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties April 9, 2008 (San Francisco, CA) – Daniel J. Sokatch has been named Chief E...

Man, I ain't gonna read that On Language column NO MORE. And I think he shows up for synagogue where my dad and sister go sometimes. If I see him there, I'm gonna kick him so hard inthe shins that he'll recall the physical pain like an emotion, or a smell. "In willingly taking up the two-edged sword of maverickism; in spelling out his frequent fights against the sclerotic, cozy two-party establishment; in zinging that 'big-spending, do-nothing, me-first-country-second Washington crowd'; in choosing an exciting new running mate even as Obama was splashing about in the news media adulation of his smoothly delivered acceptance extravaganza, McCain stiffly stole the clothes of change. That last paragraph befits a speechwriter’s peroration, not the soberly sage, almost bipartisan analysis I originally intended. Note the incidental pop at 'media adulation,' a red flag to the arugula-munching 'panjandrums of the opinion media,' in Arthur Schlesinger...

“The trouble, in my opinion, with corporate America today is that everything is thought of in quarters,” Mr. Kravis said in an interview with the American Academy of Achievement several years ago. “Analysts push them: ‘What are you going to earn this quarter?’ We say to the management of companies: ‘You are here today. Where do you want to be five years from now, and how are you going to get there?’ ” I knew that the country's profound idolatry surrounding the Dow Jones Industrial Average was detrimental, but I hadn't also considered the remarkably deleterious effect of the observance of "the quarterly result"...thank you Mr. Kravis.

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This picture, it is not me. It is entitled, "Alessio vs Middlesex" ...and it is from Hitchcockian's Photostream on flickr . It takes a lot of work, reading...to finish Middlesex , I guess. I am getting nearer to the end. And it still feels like one of the finest works of American fiction I have ever had the good fortune to spend time with...American fiction? International fiction? Was Lolita American fiction or international fiction about the American ideal? There's a lot of connections here -- the necessarily circular narrative, the sense that you know how it ends before it begins (careful, I have not actually finished Middlesex, though it has ended itself several times within the same book...like Lolita which commences with its own culmination -- a feeling so succinctly captured in the film...Shelley Winters, Sellers as Clare Quilty, the nefarious , insipid and insouciant Clare Quilty -- oh my FFFFin' gosh. get in a the g'dern car and drive, Humbert ...

SF artist makes a temple to science Posted by Lisa Katayama, September 5, 2008 2:27 PM Do you feel like biology and physics have done more for you than Allah or Jesus? Observing that "the essence of religion is stained glass and song," San Francisco-based artist Jonathon Keats is transforming a two-story Berkeley building into a makeshift temple for people who worship science called the Atheon. Instead of telling the story of baby Jesus, the Atheon's stained glass windows will show cosmic microwave background radiation made from NASA satellite data. And since the interior of the building is still under construction, templer-goers will have to either pray from the sidewalk or in front of a glowing web site from their computers at home. Keats even made a song of worship; he collaborated with Virginia astronomer Mark Whittle to come up with a canon of sounds from three hypothetical universes called Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? They won't be playing it live...

I am in the middle of an e-mail exchange with Douglas Rushkoff and I FFFFin' love it!

I remember too vividly seeing Joey Ramone around the Lower East Side when I lived there. Because Joey Ramone was why I lived on the Lower East Side. Thanks Francesco Spagnolo for the link.

Now see Princess Padmé (right) confused by seeing both Senator Palpatine (center) and the Emperor (left) together. This is an ancient trick of the sith -- to split in two and dress in pastels to confound the unsuspecting. Poor Padmé. Palpatine -- Must I remind the Senator from Malastare that negotiations are continuing with the separatists. Peace is our objective here…not war. The Senators yell pros and cons. Mas Amedda tries to calm things down. Senator Padmé Amidala, with Captain Typho, Jar Jar, and Dormé, maneuvers her pod into the center of the vast arena. Padmé -- My noble colleagues, I concur with the Supreme Chancellor. At all costs, we do not want war! The Senate goes quiet, then there is an outburst of cheering and applause. Palpatine -- It is with great surprise and joy the chair recognizes the Senator from Naboo, Padmé Amidala. Padmé -- Less than an hour ago, as assassination attempt was made against my life. One of my bodyguards and six others were ruthlessly and sen...