recent tracks:

Personal News and Recommended Reading

(1) Personal News

• My paper will not be published, at least not in its home forum. Board business kicks into gear this week, as the old board begins to cede responsibilities to the new.


• I have begun earnestly looking into post-graduation employment, having been spurred by a recent panel on judicial clerkships.


• I am perhaps forgetful, but don't recall much of any significance occurring last week, proper:
  
  
  
  • Attended talk on death penalty work in Georgia, became properly incensed.
  
  
  • Attended talk on alternative careers to academia for those with graduate degrees (not particularly useful to me).
  
  
  • Attended talk by Venezuelan ambassador, who was a terrible public speaker, and from whom I learned very little.
  
  
• I spent a lovely Saturday in New York and Connecticut, happily connecting with Anna & Neal, Andy, Lauren & Dan:
  
  
  
  • Had lunch at Astro's, a diner near MoMA that served its purpose well.
  
  
  • Enjoyed MoMA; their collection impressed, as always (e.g.:
    
    • Dali: Persistence of Memory
    
    
    • Van Gogh: Starry Night
    
    
    • Monet: Waterlilies
    
    ). There were, however, some less familiar pieces that I particularly enjoyed (descriptions from MoMA guide):
    
    
    
    • As part of a project documenting children of refugees, Rineke Dijkstra (Dutch, b. 1959) initially photographed Almerisa, a Bosnian girl whose family had relocated to Amsterdam, in 1994. She continued photographing her approximately every 18 months, making eight color photographs of her over an 11-year period. The images maintain a consistent compositional format, showing an isolated figure seated in distinct interior settings, looking incrementally more modern as time passes. Almerisa (1994—2005) documents the girl’s development from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood, and records her progression through cultural and geographic displacement, tracing the transformation of a young, Eastern European girl into a
      thoroughly assimilated modern teenager of Western Europe.
    
    
    • ...Bill Viola’s Stations (1994) ... demonstrate[s] ways in which video artists in particular are able to develop narratives based on cyclical, organic, or illogical models of time. The monumental installation by Viola (American, b. 1951) is on view on the East coast for the first time. Stations comprises five video projections, each displaying a nude figure suspended in water, accompanied by a lulling soundtrack of underwater gurgles. Floating head-down, the figures slowly drift in and out of the image frames. Polished slabs of granite placed at the foot of each screen provide reflections of the figures, which seem to be swimming in pools of black liquid. With neither an ending nor beginning, Stations is an invitation to meditate on the cycles of life, death, and rebirth.
    
    
    • On the occasion of an exhibition celebrating African Americans in early photography at The J. Paul Getty Museum, Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953) combed through the museum’s photography collection, selecting 19th- and 20th-century photographs of African and African American men and women dating from the days of slavery in the United States to the present. Weems then rephotographed the pictures, enlarged them, and toned them in red, creating a series of photographs entitled From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995). Each photograph is framed under a sheet of glass inscribed with a text written by the artist and evokes the layers of prejudice imposed on the depicted men and women. Seventeen photographs from the series of 34 are included in this exhibition.
    
    
    • Plus some others...
    
    
  
  
  • Had a tasty Mexican dinner loosely in celebration of Andy's birthday (having been rejected by an Indian restaurant with a minimum expenditure per guest). Cancun Restaurant proved to have excellent and reasonably priced food (and margaritas), a combination we were not optimistic about finding. I note it mostly for my own future reference.
  
  
  • Then we were back on the train for Stamford, and rushed over to Norwalk to check out Lauren's and Dan's new apartment. A lovely place, and a good time.
  
  
  • Finally, the long drive back to RI...
  
  
• SEA and I remain obsessed with "The Wire," unable to help ourselves from speeding through the series. We're nearing the end of season two.


• I should return to work soon, and I've lost myself in all my silly lists anyway. But I still have to share category 2.

(2) Recommended Reading
"Pearls Before Breakfast" by Gene Weingarten resonates with me, and I find it likely that it will resonate, at least to some degree, with everyone who reads my meanderings. I have no commentary save to recommend.