Biked out to beach, Ft. Tilden State Park, the weekend before last. More people than in previous years but still pretty empty.
Then up from the Manhattan bridge to Newtown Creek Sewage Treatment Plant that has a "nature path".
On the way back I stopped by the new Brooklyn Kitchen location (Meeker and Withers). The store now includes The Meat Hook butchery. Very happy bunch of butchers they are.
Wanna go to El Museo with me this weekend?
"Theodore Roosevelt" by Marius De Zayas
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Web image found during my De Zayas search.
The Graduate. Just want to listen to Simon and Garfunkel all day
Night at the Opera, my first Marx brothers movie. I think Harpo is my favorite. He has such a tenderness about him. Or maybe that I am watching someone who is truly enjoying themselves and is totally absorbed in what they are doing.
Portrait by Santi
More night light photos
From A Universal History of the Destruction of Books
"Its a common error to attribute the destruction of books to ignorant men unaware of their hatred. After twelve years of study, I've concluded that the more cultured a nation or a person is, the more willing each is to eliminate books under the pressure of apocalyptic myths. In general, biblioclasts are well-educated people, cultured, sensitive, perfectionists, painstaking, with unusual intellectual gifts, depressive tendencies, incapable of tolerating criticism, egoists,
mythomaniacs, members of the middle or upper classes, with minor traumas in their childhood or youth, with a tendency to belong to institutions that represent constituted power, charismatic, with religious and social hypersensitivity. To all that we would add a tendency to fantasy. In sum, we have to forget the stereotype of the savage book destroyer. Ignorant people are the most innocent."
thanks S
Fri: Fairly uneventful debate.
Sat: S took me to see my first performance at the Kitchen. It was called Anger Nation. I enjoyed the textures of video and sound.
Sun: Workshop at 3B. Its rare that I can spool a full and neat bobbin on the first try.
PS be sure to peep this yen folding via FF
S and I were riding around Williamsburg and Greenpoint and came across this little park by the East river facing Manhattan. More photos here
I went to my friend, Tanya's, 5 floor walk-up Chinatown apartment this weekend to celebrate her birthday. There was a three piece band in her bedroom which included an upright bass, an accordion and a guitar.
french pressed cocktail
Friday evening I went to see my first ballet, La Bayadère, at Lincoln Center. There was love, betrayal, drugs and death- the natural order of things. My favorite scene was the first and only of Act II. In an opium fueled dream, 24 ballerinas wearing white tutus slowly emerge from vegetation, one following the previous. I can't quite find the words to describe it. They were like graceful insects.
Sunday I lunched on a boat that meandered in the water surrounding lower Manhattan with some family visiting NY. We saw some of Olafur Eliasson's waterfalls. I think it would be best if I set out to see them all in the same evening-maybe at dusk. Like Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Gates project from '05, I think you have to really engage with the piece as a whole.
Sunday evening I attempted a game of Scrabble in Spanish with all Ws used as as Ñs.
Relaxing: there is nothing like it.
Study for drawing
I have been searching for instructions to build a floor to ceiling shelf that will best serve our needs and the space. There are a few books out there on building furniture but nothing close to what I am looking for. Below is a diagram of what I've designed and what we will attempt to build over the next month. More to come.... 
This past weekend I met my Dad's family in Helen. Just like the years of my younger youth, we stayed in a 10 bedroom cabin-complete with chapel- nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The cabin is on the Sautee Ranch, as in cattle ranch, and was originally built for a Cherokee/ Chatholic couple who managed to produce 14 children. As we were winding our way through the mountains towards our destination Friday night, our headlights found a sheep(a sheep!) running down the side of the road. This was most surreal for me! But on with the photos. I hope you enjoy.
Dad took us on a nature hike and we found an animal bone...which I brought home with me!
The weather was perfect
We had two visitors to the ranch who were kind enough to let us pet and feed them.
This is a female pot belly pig. 
Cherokee burial mount. If I remeber correctly, a young couple was buried here.
Much of Zoey's weekend was spent looking adorable.
At least 20 mins. of my weekend was spent rummaging through a bin of plastic dinosaurs. This one was the best.
Sidebar: be sure to drop by YDA and watch this great find.
Previously at the MET, Kara Walker now has an exhibition at the Whitney. She is well known for her silhouetted images that explore race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity. 
In 1997, at the age of 28, she was one of the youngest people to receive the MacArthur fellowship. In 2007 she was listed among Time Magazine's 100 most influencial people in the world of arts and entertianment. 
She now teaches for the MFA program at Columbia University. I will also shamelessly mention that her father was the Chair of the Art Department at Georgia State University, my alma mater. holler if ya heard...
Saturday, Santi & I went to a music festival on Randalls Island, NY. Blonde Redhead was the best and unfortunately we missed Arcade Fire. LCD Soundsystem was ok but I am not a big fan of 15 min electrorock jam sessions. Having said that they were very personable and overall better in person. A phone photo collage...
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Sunday night I took more night-time tree photos
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Monday, we went to see Rape of Europa, which I recommend. This film focuses on Hitler's obsession with art.
