Georgia Rolls
When I got into Charlotte, it was time for dinner, so Karen and Gerry and I went out to a local sushi restaurant. My usual approach to sushi consists of a plate of raw salmon and a bowl of rice on the side, but these guys had the most elaborate menu I’ve ever seen, and it was impossible to resist. Gerry ate a pile of shrimp tempura decoratively arranged on top of a pile of spinach in order to resemble one of the explosions at Pearl Harbour. I had some California rolls made out of smoked Georgian catfish. They had been rolled in corn flakes and lightly fried on the circumference. It was, I must say, surprisingly good.
Rapid Prototyping Jewelry
One of Gerry’s colleagues is well known for his sophisticated uses of rapid prototyping technology, where a laser is used to set resin in consecutive passes that build up complex objects. The objects are sufficiently complex that they can be made with moving parts in a single printing, provided the 3D models have been constructed carefully enough in their details. We looked today at an exhibit of resin jewelry, including pieces that had ball and socket joints, various elaborate insertions, and metal plating. Most surprising to me were a set of four-inch-square broaches, or perhaps more accurately nipple plates, designed to be pinned on top of the breast.
1960s Lunch Counter Protests
McCory’s lunch counter was the site of a series of protests by a group of African American men in the 1960s, resulting, according to the sign out front, in the first people who spent time in jail rather than paying fines. This strategy was subsequently adopted throughout the South. Gerry and I went there for brunch today: they still have the original lunch counter and the seats, recovered when the store shut down and the restaurant opened.
http://visityorkcounty.com/partner/92686/3123/friendship-nine-lunch-counter-at-old-town-bistro/
Rust Red Bird
I spent some time this afternoon sitting out on Gerry and Karen’s lovely new screened-in deck, listening to birds singing and cicadas shrilling, and watching a busy red squirrel. Whether or not all this activity contributed to the quality of the documents I was working on is another question, but someone who stopped by was a bird I’d never seen before, slightly longer than a robin but rust coloured all over, with a long tail and a long beak. I tried to find his image on the interweb but to no avail. He sang a couple of times, and it sounded just like the scream of a diminutive gull. Perhaps it was after all a white bird that had been rolling in the local red dirt—Gerry has a pile of it beside his driveway, brought in straight, I would opine, from the surface of Mars.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Bethesda
I am at the University of Maryland to attend the annual Digital Humanities conference, but before we begin, I had a chance to spend a few hours today with Poshen and Ritchie and their daughter Michelle, who just turned six in May. Poshen and I went to grad school together in the late 1990s when we were both doing our MDes degrees, but after she and Richie got married and moved to the States, we’ve stayed in only intermittent contact. Now she is working as a designer at Johns Hopkins, and he is a senior epidemiologist for a consulting company in Rockville. They came to pick me up for lunch and we drove to an attractive area of Bethesda known as Bethesda Row, which is one of the “walkable town-like neighborhoods.”
Penang Restaurant
We went for Malaysian food, and I have to say everything was delicious. I tried to locate something intelligent online about the restaurant, but their site was down and I found the variety of reviews intimidating. Someone didn’t seem to like that they had food from all over the place, but I do enjoy a little transparently thin Nan bread followed by curried seafood and a delicious lamb stew. For dessert, something I’d never even heard of—a rice pudding made with black rice. Poshen tells me that black rice is a staple in Taiwan and is considered very healthy.
Bethesda
Wikipedia says that the city (about 55,000 souls) is a bit unusual in that it isn’t incorporated, so it has no official boundaries. Home of the National Institute for Health and a lot of institutions related to the American navy, it is also listed as one of the best-educated cities in the U.S. We spent some time at the bookstore, where Michelle read some books with her Mom and then one with me: Goodnight Moon. On the ride home, she also printed all our names and provided some very good drawings of many hearts, a lollipop, a flower, a bag with a heart on it, a chicken wearing a jacket, a face of a bear, and me.
Penang Restaurant
We went for Malaysian food, and I have to say everything was delicious. I tried to locate something intelligent online about the restaurant, but their site was down and I found the variety of reviews intimidating. Someone didn’t seem to like that they had food from all over the place, but I do enjoy a little transparently thin Nan bread followed by curried seafood and a delicious lamb stew. For dessert, something I’d never even heard of—a rice pudding made with black rice. Poshen tells me that black rice is a staple in Taiwan and is considered very healthy.
Bethesda
Wikipedia says that the city (about 55,000 souls) is a bit unusual in that it isn’t incorporated, so it has no official boundaries. Home of the National Institute for Health and a lot of institutions related to the American navy, it is also listed as one of the best-educated cities in the U.S. We spent some time at the bookstore, where Michelle read some books with her Mom and then one with me: Goodnight Moon. On the ride home, she also printed all our names and provided some very good drawings of many hearts, a lollipop, a flower, a bag with a heart on it, a chicken wearing a jacket, a face of a bear, and me.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Tucson
It was a bit of an adventure getting here. I got up at 7 am to finish packing for an ostensibly noon flight that actually left at 4 in the afternoon. That flight got me as far as Denver but then I had to wait for a plane to Tucson. I finally go to the Doubletree hotel at about 1:00 in the morning. Did I mention it is beautiful here, with actual sunlight that seems to have a warming function?
Planes from Brazil
One of the women at the airline desk gave me her theory as to why United is always so fraught with delays, which in this case required an engine part. She said, “well, these are Embraer planes. They’re built in Brazil. They don’t do well in the cold.” That sounded reasonable to me, but when I suggested it to my colleague Mo, she said “It’s always cold at 40,000 feet.” Fair enough.
Orange Trees
So it’s one o’clock in the morning and I look out my second story window and there is an orange tree there full of ripe oranges. This morning, I see it is one of a row of hundreds of trees that line the compound. I once heard from a colleague who’d moved to California that expat Canadians are always crazy for oranges, until they’ve spent a few years shoveling up the fruit and throwing it out. Nonetheless, I am crazy for oranges. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that the orange juice at breakfast was ghastly—thin with no flavour.
How Many Cactuses?
I guess that should be cacti. In any case, I took a few minutes at lunch today to stroll around the hotel, which is designed on the rambling model, something like a dozen two-storey motels strung together. In the course of circumambulating the building, I saw no fewer than 5 different species of cactus.
I picked a grapefruit
Stop the presses. I reached up and picked a grapefruit off one of the trees on the path between the meeting room and the swimming pool. It isn’t quite ripe, but I set it on the desk in my room when I went out for dinner, and when I got back, the whole room smelled deliciously of grapefruit. Who knew these things were so aromatic?
Ansel Adams
He lived from 1902-1984 and when he was in his seventies, he helped set up The Centre for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. We went to tour it last night and were reminded that a lot of the creative part of creative photography takes place in the dark room. So now I am left wondering how many of his amazing effects of shadow and light were actually burning and dodging. http://www.creativephotography.org/
Arizona – home of turquoise mining
Who knew? Maybe everybody except me, but the Navajo in Arizona and a lot of other people too have mined turquoise here. You strip mine it, apparently. Many of the historic mines are closed now, but a few are still running, producing 20% of the world’s supply of turquoise. Much of the rest comes, who knew? From China.
Planes from Brazil
One of the women at the airline desk gave me her theory as to why United is always so fraught with delays, which in this case required an engine part. She said, “well, these are Embraer planes. They’re built in Brazil. They don’t do well in the cold.” That sounded reasonable to me, but when I suggested it to my colleague Mo, she said “It’s always cold at 40,000 feet.” Fair enough.
Orange Trees
So it’s one o’clock in the morning and I look out my second story window and there is an orange tree there full of ripe oranges. This morning, I see it is one of a row of hundreds of trees that line the compound. I once heard from a colleague who’d moved to California that expat Canadians are always crazy for oranges, until they’ve spent a few years shoveling up the fruit and throwing it out. Nonetheless, I am crazy for oranges. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that the orange juice at breakfast was ghastly—thin with no flavour.
How Many Cactuses?
I guess that should be cacti. In any case, I took a few minutes at lunch today to stroll around the hotel, which is designed on the rambling model, something like a dozen two-storey motels strung together. In the course of circumambulating the building, I saw no fewer than 5 different species of cactus.
I picked a grapefruit
Stop the presses. I reached up and picked a grapefruit off one of the trees on the path between the meeting room and the swimming pool. It isn’t quite ripe, but I set it on the desk in my room when I went out for dinner, and when I got back, the whole room smelled deliciously of grapefruit. Who knew these things were so aromatic?
Ansel Adams
He lived from 1902-1984 and when he was in his seventies, he helped set up The Centre for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. We went to tour it last night and were reminded that a lot of the creative part of creative photography takes place in the dark room. So now I am left wondering how many of his amazing effects of shadow and light were actually burning and dodging. http://www.creativephotography.org/
Arizona – home of turquoise mining
Who knew? Maybe everybody except me, but the Navajo in Arizona and a lot of other people too have mined turquoise here. You strip mine it, apparently. Many of the historic mines are closed now, but a few are still running, producing 20% of the world’s supply of turquoise. Much of the rest comes, who knew? From China.
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