Charlotte and Rock Hill

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.