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Vocabulary Words from "The Golem and the Jinni"

per·fid·i·ous adjective \(ËŒ)pÉ™r-ˈfi-dÄ“-É™s\ : not able to be trusted : showing that someone cannot be trusted ei·det·ic adjective \Ä«-ˈde-tik\ : marked by or involving extraordinarily accurate and vivid recall especially of visual images ric·tus noun \ˈrik-tÉ™s\ Definition of RICTUS 1 : the gape of a bird's mouth 2 a : the mouth orifice b : a gaping grin or grimace Origin of RICTUS New Latin, from Latin, open mouth, from ringi to open the mouth; akin to Old Church Slavic rÇ«gÅ­ mockery First Known Use: 1827 el·dritch adjective \ˈel-drich\ Definition of ELDRITCH : weird, eerie Origin of ELDRITCH perhaps from Middle English *elfriche fairyland, from Middle English elf + riche kingdom, from Old English rÄ«ce — more at rich First Known Use: 1508

Sad Days at Exploratorium

Guerilla tactics: Recent staff cut backs at The Exploratorium, after opening new facility (2013)

A Life in Art: Beyond Belief and Nostalgia

The below was a first draft...finally posted by the CJM on its blog here: http://cjmvoices.blogspot.com/2013/08/modern-nostalgia.html Beyond Belief makes me nostalgic. It is an exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum right now. It is also the opening track on Imperial Bedroom by Elvis Costello - not the first record I owned, but maybe the first record I owned , and knew every word in a way where I thought I was the only one in the world who knew every word. It was the summer of 1982 I was 13. My Bar Mitzvah was that year, and I knew I'd be leaving public school that next year to begin a private high school. My performance in school had been less than sterling but my interests at home reflected a different kind of kid. I would steal away from the stiflingly humid Maryland summer heat into the one room that had air conditioning in the nineteenth century farmhouse in which I grew up. It was the guest room beside my parents’ bedroom. On the shelves were my mother's m

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

I cannot tell whether I hated this book, could just barely bear it, or what. I was consumed by the idea that it had won the Booker Prize , and really there was something about the studied conversational language that carried me forward through to the end. There were painful, truthful elements about pain, infidelity and lifetime friendships that rang true across the plaza like a church bell. Still, I think maybe it was abysmal. But I am a Jewish professional, as a Deputy Director of the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and so I felt some sense of obligation to get to the end and more fully grasp over what the author was puzzling. A few quotes made me want to fold down the page and refer to them later: [Parenthetically the author writes,] “(he would have said his faith but Finkler was Finkler and Finkler had no faith)” p. 56 ‘So this museum…’ Finkler said, when the table was cleared. Hephzibah inclined her head on his direction. ‘…don’t we have enough of them already?’ ‘Museums in gen

RMB City by Cao Fei

Notes 'n Links for Me: Obrist's Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Curating (Part I)

Below are notes from reading Notes from Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Curating (But Were Afraid to Ask)   by  Hans Ulrich Obrist , as a sampling of references I wanted to collect links on... "...William Sandberg, the greatest of all post-war museum directors..." p. 38 Marcel Janco 1895, Bucharest, Romania - 1984, Ein Hod, Israel Portrait of Willem Sandberg   Brown chalk and felt-tip pen on paper 21 x 15.8 cm Gift of the Janco Family, Tel Aviv © Dvora Janco, Tel Aviv Accession number: B93.0728 The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes--and Its Implications [Paperback] David Deutsch   (Author) ...Suddenly so much in the art world is revolving around money; while on the other hand, parts of the art world have nothing to do with money.  It's like the parallel worlds, as David Deutsch describes in The Fabric of Reality....Today there also exist two corresponding kinds of artists: those who mainly sell art, and those who

The Eyes of Leonardo by Ingrid D. Rowland