19 March 2020

big times

these are clearly such big times that i feel i ought to be blogging, but it's kinda overwhelming when there's talk of 20% unemployment (it was just short of 25% at the depths of the great depression), with st patricks day parades and all cancelled in ireland and everywhere else, while restaurants, bars, atl utd matches, symphony, the botanical garden, museums, and what not are nearly all shut down indefinitely --- vegas is shut down so kevin won't be playing for at least two months --- san francisco, nyc, and other places in "lockdown" (although it's not like they'll shoot you if they find you outdoors --- not yet anyway --- i can still walk to the grocery store and macs and around with the dog), but everything is about "social distancing" --- midtown is like it usually is over the xmas holidays when everybody leaves town ---  nevermind the tragic state of my 401k, although i recognize that the real tragedy is those with no 401k or anything else in the way of retirement savings to piss and moan about to begin with --- and when the republicans start talking about the [really urgent] need to just give people some money (the latter being a contrived notion in the first place, especially when one remembers how valuable cowrie shells were at one time), you know that the wheel is turning --- this is a year like 1860, 1941, 1968, when there was a great big revolution in our way of being


11 March 2020

animals

they keep me semi-sane

a good read!

yesterday, i made my quarterly pilgramage to the city's best book store, at the carlos museum at emory ---

this has to be the pick of the litter --- wonderful little synopses of various dyes, pigments, and what not, with a history of color woven through --- i knew about prussian blue and cochineal, white lead and titanium, but mummy brown and vanta black, e.g., not so much

beautiful photography, like this of lead white
 orpium and malachite
and instructions on how to make a few, including cochineal and lead white

06 March 2020

keep on building

i guess the project here at the southeast corner of p'tree and eighth is a go ----  next year and a half will be a pain in the ass for the neighborhood

the people in the south tower are not happy ---

01 March 2020

an excellent read

i was gonna post some images, but i managed to lose them all between the phone and pc --- they weren't all that in the first place --- this book, however, is the bomb --- i rarely read a book twice, but . . . .