Archive for September, 2009

Eruv Yom Kippur.

Butter, nova lox, eating

the last bialy.

Passport in hand and GPS in car, I crossed the river into Newton. The quest was to see The Two Silences of Heaven and Earth, an exhibition of photos and paintings by Sung Won Yun at the Andover Newton Theological School.  Not a place that’s on my regular schedule of visitation.  Traffic was biblical but the Andover Newton Theological School was quiet and deserted, and the Wilson Chapel was clean and well-lighted, glazed without being glassy.

To say that this photo of one of two of Yun’s paintings on view doesn’t do it justice doesn’t really do justice to the idiom “doesn’t do justice to” but since it’s all I took and I can’t find anything online, it should give you an idea and perhaps send you to Newton to see it for yourself.

The botanical and cellular imagery exists at a scale that requires you to get right up close to the painting (thankfully its not glazed like the photos) which is well worth doing.  It reminds me of some of the work in the DeCordova’s show Drawn to Detail, blogged here at limeduck almost exactly a year ago.  To quote from the artist’s statement,

These recent works create micro-organisms that seem to float in their own universe, a spatial construction with infinite temporal layers found in all organisms, spanning from a primordial period to the present moment. Such a trajectory suggests an apparently infinite arc of time. As the layers accumulate, meaning emerges and finds a new integration which points to an overarching synthesis. I feel the same event happening repeatedly in time, creating new meanings:  the micro-organism, portrayed as floating in an infinite universe, interacts with a dynamic trajectory linking past, present, and future.

Also on view were several photographs of Iceland which were subtle and beautiful, playing with the reflectivity of water and the scale of the Icelandic landscape.  I hope to see more of Yun’s work sometime, maybe in a more accessible setting more amenable to showing photographs.

Hungry from art-peeping and at sea in Newton, I let the GPS bring me back to Bread and Lily, where I was rewarded with a delicious roasted salmon dish with a salad of green apples and lettuce.

Against my better judgement, I also indulged in a peanut butter iced cupcake with a reeses cup embedded in the top.  It was gone before I even thought about photographing it.  Owner Ben Cutler was friendly and helpful as ever, touting B&L’s new Fall menu.  Well worth the detour on a perfect New England Fall day.

Perhaps it’s fitting that on this preliminary Boston election day it’s time for another Bacon Technology Update.  Alert porkavore Tangyslice gave me these last week:

Just so there’s no misunderstanding, let’s be clear: there is no actual pork – or actual mint for that matter – in these “bacon mints.” They are entirely synthetic and could probably be kosher if they were in fact food.  That’s what they are not.  Here’s what they are: baconesque.

They are uncannily reminiscent of bacon and yet utterly devoid of true bacon nature.  Miracle of science or sign of the apocalypse?  I’m not sure but after uncharacteristically poor service at Toro, I left the with the tip.

Acela express
Two train on the one train’s tracks
Rise to Verdi Square

Alert micturator N brought this to my attention from the xkcd blag (no, it’s not a blog, and this is not a blig), although I suppose it’s something that men just know:  If everybody uses the urinal farthest away from anybody else using one, some number of urinals (assuming they are all in a row) fill up (sic) more efficiently than others, also assuming that nobody will use the urinal directly adjacent to another pisher.  Otherwise, apparently, Interolerable Awkwardness ensues.

While pondering the mathematics of this (sample factoid: there’s a mens room at Fenway park that has 29 urinals and not a single mirror) I realized that similar behavior happens on subway cars, at least subway cars that are not already packed to the gills and subway cars that have rows of seats with some demarcation, rather than unmarked benches.  (Don’t get me started on the disconnect between the size of the average subway seat and the average American butt..) Anyway, most people try to sit such that they are not rubbing elbows (or other parts) with strangers, and even though a one-seat border zone is probably sufficient, most folks will sit as close to the middle of an empty stretch of seating as possible.  Especially those who like to give their bags their own seats and those who prefer what I’ll call a wider stance when sitting on the train.  You know who you are.

If there are three seats open between two fellow travelers, the choice is clear, you sit in the middle.  If there are just two, you either sit next to one or the other person or just stand.  Four empties are about the same as three, but when there are five empty seats between people, things get interesting.  (These calculations of course ignore the seats marked for handicapped people, just like the rest of the riders do)

X _ _ _ _ _ X
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Well, if you want maximum lebensraum, you’ll sit at spot 4, but that creates two patches of two empties each, and makes it impossible for anybody else to sit without being next to somebody.

X _ _ Y _ _ X
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

It would be more public-spirited to sit at 3 or 5, allowing more more person to sit at 5 or 3 and still maintain alternating buffer zones.

X _ Y _ z _ X
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

So if you happen to ride the train at an hour or direction that gives any choice of seating at all, consider if your seat selection maximizes space or awkwardness.