The logic school has its annual protocol dinner, an elegant affair with candlelight, place settings, and semi-formal dress, ending with an evening at the philharmonic
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Thursday, June 02, 2016
Logic School
Beacon Hill, like many classical schools, ups the protocol function of lost education, i.e. conduct, manners, and social skills, usually highlighted with a ballroom dance in the high school
Carolyn and I look at these great kids and their events and wonder what it'll add up to down the road? How will they look back? Will these be lasting in some way? It all feels a bit like buying a raffle ticket at this point...
Saturday, May 07, 2016
"Put Some South in Your Mouth"
Gus' fried chicken and 3 samplings of ribs, which always meant pork there.
Rendezvous in the downtown for our first ribs in their intense dry rub style in a fantastic atmosphere that just evoked aMemphis rib joint.. full of Civil War history and the struggle of black Americans at every turn.
This lovely scene in the back of all the ribs getting charcoal treated. Day knew the owner who snagged us the best table in the house.
ourselves.
We lingered and the historical irony of enjoying an African-American run cigar lounge in the Deep South; pickers to vendors.
Denny - needs no comment!
Brother Juniper's was a pleasant space, filled with Orthodox icons and a mural of a Russian monastery - maybe the only Western space I've entered where divine symbols mark, much like the shrines in Cambodian-run donut shops.
Memphis is home to several mythologies, from Elvis to Pharoah to Russian Orthodox icons - death as the common element.
John and Day's lovely street along the Mississippi. We traveled to primarily visit Westminster Academy, the school founded by the Hodges more than 20 years ago to get inspiration for Beacon Hill, as well as take part in their gap year program - Center for Western Studies - where quality discussions and meals by retired profs are held in the home L'Abri style.
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Party Over, Oops, Out of Time
marrying at the south
side's Park Avenue Methodistwhere Prince tied his first knot a bit
later.
The Cities (including St Paul) were a great place to live - downtowns just minutes away from a rural environment along the Mississippi and a cluster of 5 large lakes within Mpls - really nice from an Angeleno's perspective.
Because of an arts-based corporate culture, along with unusually high education emphasis owing to the Lutheran college system, the Cities were remarkable for culture-vultures. More live theater per capita than NYC, we took in some great Shakespeare at the Guthrie.
And the innovative, excellent art gallery, The Walker Art Center,
connected to next door's theater complex.
I was so pleased that the local boy's Sign "O" the Times beat out
the boys of Ire's The Joshua Tree in the Village Voice's critics poll, as
did another homegrown band, The Replacements. Mpls struck me as an inhabited and vibrant urban space I never knew in suburban LA.
A fair amount of time spent at the Electric Fetus record store/headshop, where Prince visited last Saturday, apparently. The Cities in the '80s were a pop music mecca, later passing to Seattle.
But all the sentiment over fallen pop icons makes me consider how much media has replaced the church as a platform for meaning.
The Cities (including St Paul) were a great place to live - downtowns just minutes away from a rural environment along the Mississippi and a cluster of 5 large lakes within Mpls - really nice from an Angeleno's perspective.
Because of an arts-based corporate culture, along with unusually high education emphasis owing to the Lutheran college system, the Cities were remarkable for culture-vultures. More live theater per capita than NYC, we took in some great Shakespeare at the Guthrie.
And the innovative, excellent art gallery, The Walker Art Center,
connected to next door's theater complex.
+++++
A fair amount of time spent at the Electric Fetus record store/headshop, where Prince visited last Saturday, apparently. The Cities in the '80s were a pop music mecca, later passing to Seattle.
But all the sentiment over fallen pop icons makes me consider how much media has replaced the church as a platform for meaning.
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Jack 11
Jack turned 11 last week, cashing in on his neglected party, i.e. never happened, last year - Carolyn's first year as art coordinator- by a blowout trip to Harry Potterland at Universal. But lets start at the beginning...
But raising children has its own built-in nostalgia, with inevitable before and after photos, tracking, as a friend put it, the melancholy nature of time.
Facebook,
alarmed at the decline of personal, emotive content, now triggers
flashbacks - "where were you five years ago" - engineering the way we
relate to one another much like Hallmark invented Mother's Day and all
the other national hamburger/pancake/donut/etc celebrations these days.
But raising children has its own built-in nostalgia, with inevitable before and after photos, tracking, as a friend put it, the melancholy nature of time.
Evoking a yuletide atmosphere, this place will be probably enhanced when visited during a SoCal winter, with its snowy rooftops, Scottish wool scarves and sweaters & capes and hearty pub fare of stews and prime rib, roast chicken. Curiously, the romantic meaning of England always seems tilted towards Christmas, in terms of seasonal place - from CS Lewis & Tolkien to Downton Abbey - conjuring Dickens of A Christmas Carol for a new generation of admirers.
NYC Food & Art
We ate our way through the city, pleasantly discovering a renaisannce of baked goods & pastry, such as
Eric Kayser, the chain boulangerier of Maison Kayser of Paris with the reputation of the city's winning baguette, has several shops in NYC now.
Eataly, Mario Batali's emporium of regional Italian food was a busy maze of morsels and, like many spots, introduced gorgeous products with little table space to enjoy them - reminding that we were in a metropolis' real estate - hard to park a car or sit a body -rather than suburban LA.
Then there was Ippudo, the Kyushu-style, cloudy pork broth ramen foodie spot, raising cheap comfort food to a level of global destination. The chicken and pork buns were to die for.
Ramen is a Japanese way of preparing what is originally Chinese, unlike soba or udon, becoming a craze. In my opinion, LA has a more vibrant ramen scene, where you can still find dives, as well as trendy spots like Tsujita.
Thursday, April 07, 2016
Museums & Architecture
After a satisfying bagel with inch thick cream cheese, we walked along the Park to the Natural History museum(AMNH); a dead zoo, more or less, but forever loved by the boys as the site of Night at the Museum. Like the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the opposite side, these 19th century behemoths are cultural temples, similar to the old banks downtown, impressively flanking the great park; the Frick museum down the road originally a home.
++++
Museums are sometimes mentioned as secular sacred spaces with their trophies & icons, but Teddy Roosevelt's aim as New York governor - whose statue graces the AMNH front steps - was to, in a sense, curate nature; forever since US national parks registering as our cathedrals, landmarks.
The IMAX film exhibit linked Roosevelt's profound encounter with nature to the deaths of his mother and wife, both dying in the same house within hours. Afterwards, a pivotal camping trip with naturalist John Muir would turn the Sequoias, Yosemite Valley, and Yellowstone into national treasures - nature as momento in an act of mourning, bequeathing a national estate to future citizens.
+++++
The day before, Debby and Udo guided us through the brand new opening of Fulton Station in Wall Street,
almost as controversial (for $ and design) as nearby Oculus,
the expansive new transportation hub for Wall Street which felt like a modern Grand Central Station, in its cavernous public space.The Empire State Building for its interior splash and outdoor vistas:
+++++
The Fulton subway station had beautiful tile mosaics of the inventor's steamship,
reminding of the beautiful metro stops in Paris.
Magnolias were blooming in the park.
- - a view from the museum restaurant facing the park, after an energetic tour of the Italian renaissance - the museum's strong suit - by Nadja, starting with a neglected Della Robia glazed relief:
Museums and buildings all done in one packed afternoon!
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