Beyond Rivalry

Not sure how much we got -- between one and two feet, I think -- but it's pretty. And kept us busy most of the day shoveling ...

Our Thanksgiving was leisurely. Watched the Macy's parade and football and Miracle on 34th Street (the new version, which I much prefer to the old one, though I know most people don't), took a walk with the dog, and then commenced prepping and cooking the dinner, which took about an hour total (the Pommes Anna bakes for about 45 mins.).

The Crab au Gratin seems to have been improperly named. Technically, it's true, it was crab with browned breadcrumbs and cheese on it. But a more accurate name would be Crab in Sherried Cream Sauce. It was a Mornay sauce, with crab, sherry, Worcestershire sauce and Old Bay added to it, and so even after its 20 minutes of baking at 400F (with Ritz cracker crumbs and Parmesan cheese atop), it remained more a bisque or a dip than a solid mass. Still, it held its own on the plate along with the spinach sauteed with pine nuts and garlic and the Pommes Anna. And it tasted luscious.

Of course, I forgot to take photos of any of the prep or the finished products, until we were halfway through with them. In fact, we had eaten all the spinach already when I remembered. So below are photos of the remnants of our meal, including the Waldorf Salad and the Beringer chenin blanc, which we drank instead of the Riesling that we bought for the event and then forgot to chill.

We spent most of Saturday driving around a part of the state a couple of hours away from us, where we used to spend a lot of time. Our main destination was an herb farm's pre-holiday sale, and we stumbled into a Christmas craft fair in a small-town B&B. The rain, which began on Thursday, was alternately a light mist, scattered and steady showers, and occasionally a torrential downpour, and it gave a blurry, atmospheric feeling to our journey of revisitation.

Below, a magpie duck, sheep happily eating, JB the llama, and an herb shed and garden sale area ...

Carve a pumpkin online -- fun!

Also:

Scary Stock Ticker Jack O'Lantern (not for the faint of heart, or for those who can't "program and test [a] microcontroller")

Extreme Pumpkins (scroll down for many photos)

Pumpkincarving tag on Flickr

Pumpkin Carving the Martha Stewart Way (yes, having a cordless drill helps) and photos

(Photo by mysticmaggatha on Flickr)

Creative Design, Beautiful People. Too funny.

"As a beautiful person, I pretty much live a consequence-free life. I believe that's why I'm such a fearless designer. I can create disturbing, controversial imagery, and in the end people just say, Wow, she's hot."

What inspires me? "Death. Sunflowers." "A really nice handgun."

Watch Virginia Postrel's 2004 TED talk on Glamour. At first it seems there's not much here, but by midway, I was having to pause and backtrack to get it all, words and images.

I love glamour, particularly in its architectural and photographic forms. I find the Poirot series with David Suchet extremely glamourous -- the visuals, the voices, the music, the movements, the styling, the sensibility. Postrel says that glamour is about being transported from the real world to an idealised place, as through Art Deco streamlining. Trains, planes, and cars can be very glamourous, for this reason, as can arches, spiral or curved staircases, and other shapes that merely hint at something beyond.  Current movie stars and celebrities completely lack glamour for me, perhaps because black-and-white seems so much more glamourous than colour; Postrel says that glamour is partly about editing out the 'grubby details,' at which b&w is so adept, and colour not so much.

Some elements and 'locations' of glamour that Postrel mentions in this 15-minute talk are mystery; grace; someone like us but at the same time removed; evoking a perfect world; transcendence, transcending the everyday; concealing and revealing at the same time; translucence -- inviting us into their world without giving us a clear picture of it (barware, pearls, glass block); leading us towards some place, some possibility, but not reaching the real (skylines, the horizon); illusion; enchantment, magic; something that makes an object seem other than it is; a golden world, perfection: no wires or cords, no bills on the table, no mess, no defects.

Glamour can also be totalitarian and deceptive. Postrel says that Nazism was 'a very aesthetic ideology,' about cleaning up and making everything aesthetically pleasing. Glamour can be dangerous.

A remedy for the danger, perhaps, is to consider what gets edited away: "Unveiling the glamour has an appeal." I agree with that, too, which is why many of my photos are close-up industrial shots, shots of cords, wires, dead and decaying plants and animals, something that's beautiful, both pure and defiled, and not, perhaps, glamourous.

Malcolm Gladwell writes in the 20 Oct. New Yorker about University of Chicago economist David Galenson's theories of creativity, which Galenson divides into two types, conceptual and experimental. Conceptual geniuses bloom early, experimental geniuses later, not because experimental geniuses are late starters or because they are simply discovered late, but because "they simply aren't much good until late in their careers."

Speaking of Cézanne, the art critic Roger Fry says: "'More happily endowed and more integral personalities have been able to express themselves harmoniously from the very first. But such rich, complex, and conflicting natures as Cézanne’s require a long period of fermentation.' Cézanne was trying something so elusive that he couldn't master it until he'd spent decades practicing."

I think that's me. Not Cézanne, more like Wallace Stevens (49% of whose anthologized poems were written after he was 50), but not that, either. I feel I am practicing something intangible, and creative, sometimes enormously tiring and even monotonous in a certain way, without known product so far. 'Fermenting' and 'elusive' describe it well. Sometimes I feel very frustrated, mostly I feel excited to be part of whatever this experiment is, in some way, and to continue with the brewing metaphor, I feel that this is the vat where I need and want to be, though whether I am the brewer or the brewed (or both -- or neither) is unclear to me most of the time.

Later, in the context of patronage, Gladwell writes, "If you are the type of creative mind that starts without a plan, and has to experiment and learn by doing, you need someone to see you through the long and difficult time it takes for your art to reach its true level." Thank God for my patron.

NYC Photos are here.

Savannah Photos

Jekyll Photos