And still more NYC blogging

Laura examines a Rothko at the MOMA. Nice paintings for sure, although my own tastes in abstract expressionism have gravitated toward Barnett Newman. These strange deceptively simple works still speak in a way that is very rare in art.

More NYC blogging

Alexi enjoys an iced green tea at Canteen 82 (83?), purveyors of a mighty fine xiaolongbao. It's very gratifying to have an adventurous foody as offspring!

The High Line

I had read about The High Line in the New York Times, and based on the review I expected it to be pretty cool, but seeing it in person exceeded every expectation. It was the highlight of my recent one-week trip to NY.









The designers of the High Line took an old elevated railway in Chelsea and converted it to a trail through an urban prairie garden. Everything about it works. The High Line manages to look simultaneously overgrown and anarchic and, well, simply lovely, like a cottage garden flowing above the city streets. Walking along, your eyes and ears are continually drawn from the plantings and your fellow strollers to the sights and sounds of the city around you (and the city views are spectacular here), but since you are in a sense floating above it all, there is a curious sensation of being both a part and apart.

The view from the street...


















You might suppose that flowers and greenery would only call attention to blight and ugliness. I incline toward finding beauty in urban industrial decay anyway, but I think most people will find that the High Line makes everything around it look better.

Go and see!

(Thanks to LMK for some of the photos.)

The Muse of History

Here I am, bemused, while enjoying a glass of house chianti at Pisticci in Harlem, in the company of the muse of history and namesake of cliometrics (or quantitative economic history for you uninitiated).

Prop 16 goes down

So PG&E's bald-faced attempt to buy a CA state law that would protect their electricity monopoly has gone down to defeat, despite the fact that they outspent their opposition 500-to-1. I suppose I should take comfort in the wisdom of democracy, rather than being depressed about the 47.5 percent who voted "yes"...

Preparations

Karel Čapek's The Gardener's Year is an absolute gem of a little book. First published in 1929, it consists of the Czech author's amusing and amused observations about gardening and gardeners. Of course gardening also serves as a very workable metaphor for various aspects of the human condition. Consider Čapek's short chapter "Preparations," tucked between November and December, on what transpires beneath the soil as the plants appear to go dormant for the winter:

Sometimes we seem to smell of decay, encumbered by the faded remains of the past; but if only we could see how many fat and white shoots are pushing forward in the old tilled soil, which is called the present day; how many seeds germinate in secret; how many old plants draw themselves together and concentrate into a living bud, which one day will burst into flowering life--if only we could see that secret swarming of the future within us, we should say that our melancholy and distrust is silly and absurd, and that the best thing of all is to be a living man--that is, a man who grows.

The translation, by M. and R. Weatherall, is similarly lovely throughout.

Heliotropism!

By night the blossoms of our beautiful native flax Linum lewisii close and droop; come morning they lift their heads, open up, and stare into the sun. Which is a nice thing indeed if your front yard faces eastward.

Rediscovering some old faves

I bought Gary Burton's Dreams So Real on vinyl when it first came out in 1976 and it quickly became one of my favorite albums, but I had not really listened to it much in many years. All that changed with my recent visit to the used jazz CD bin at Rasputins. Nearly 35 years later I could still hum along to every solo. The rap against ECM Records has been that they are purveyors of soulless new age Euro-jazz, but this album still has a nice little edge to it. The band is tight and proves the feasibility of producing plenty of energy through cool fusion. Pat Metheny turns in some nice work, but among the accompanists it is Steve Swallow's driving bass line that keeps things moving. More than anything, the album showcases vibraphonist Gary Burton, whose playing ranges from lyrical and sensitive to mind-boggling... can he really do that with "just" four mallets?

On the same trip I picked up The Best of John Coltrane (Atlantic 1970). The title is misleading: all of the tracks here were recorded with his quartet over a two-year period (1959 and 1960). On the other hand, you can't argue with the music. Coltrane as soloist, composer, bandleader, conceptualist, visionary. McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones tearing it up. Aside from the recording quality, it's hard to believe this music is now a half-century old.