bug splatter

bug splatter
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Niwot, CO

stop that

stop that
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Department of Philosophy
CU, Boulder

post haste

Drifting On Along. (post-it note)
Originally uploaded by Sunlight Wings

Sales were disappointing. Part of the problem was that it wasn’t just documents that stuck to the board’s surface; dust did, too. Perhaps more importantly, there just wasn’t much demand for a better bulletin board.

Yesterday's New York Times, citing a 2005 article in the magazine The Rake relating an early misfire in the product development of the Post-it Note -- a bulletin board that was covered with the "underachieving adhesive."

I imagine someone's already explored Post-it notes as an antecedent modality to text messaging. So I'll steer you to the lovely expressions of the Post-it Note Art Posse Flickr Group instead »

yep. not old yet.

yep. not old yet.
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Quick hike after work.
Posting by cameraphone
from Boulder.

trumped

trumped
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Strolled through the Trump Tower lobby this
afternoon to see what they had going on. The
public space is shallow and barely there, a little
bit lush and punctuated with ikebana.

A bridal couple occupied nearly the whole of it
with their retinue, who fired their flashes and
sought out photogenic nooks. The bride was
luminous in her sari.

After we gaped a bit -- silently, stealthily, we
thought -- the bellhop sensed that we were
interlopers and chased us out the far doors --
we were unwelcome there. We were not Trump
enough.

Posting by cameraphone.

Wacker, transformed

Wacker, transformed
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Transformers 3, on location.
Wacker & Wabash
Chicago, IL

DIA, departures

DIA, departures
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Outbound for Chicago and an assortment of
conjugal comforts. (Yay.)

Posting by cameraphone.

no pictures, please.

no pictures, please.
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Queuing up for Ljova and the Kontraband at
Chautauqua, where the ushers really do usher
you to your seat and the guy behind me just said:
"And Isabelle Fletcher? She ripped tears right
from my head."

Regrettably, I don't know who Isabelle Fletcher is.

Posting by cameraphone.

Update: Have you heard these guys? They're remarkable and the show was a delight.

pass the ukha

Awkward transliteration aside, Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love (Io Sono L'amore) beautifully sates the foreign film trinity of food, sex and death and makes for a lovely Lady Chatterley-dodge from the swelter of a summer afternoon.

Swinton is brilliant, of course, as are the others.

Recommended.

(Plan to eat out afterward. Somewhere amazing.)

closed for raptor season

closed for raptor season
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Just the 3rd Flatiron. Royal Arch Trail is
still open, and it's a doozy.

Posting by cameraphone from
Chautauqua, Boulder, CO

lone wifi guy

lone wifi guy
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Pearl Street Mall, late last night.
Boulder, CO

and go we know not where

Shakespeare is hard. Every time I sit down to see some Shakespeare I dread the possibility of poor execution. Will this director, these players, leave me wondering what they’re saying? Feeling like a kneaded clod for not comprehending the four century old metaphors?

Which is why, when Shakespeare is done right, there is gratitude. A gratefulness that underscores and complements the full emotional range that the Bard unfurls with his brilliant book.

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s production of Measure for Measure made me glad like that.

I have no recollection of Measure for Measure before last night. I know I read it once. I slogged through most of the Riverside Shakespeare as an undergrad; even the history plays. But I can’t recall experiencing the oppressive weight and rage invoked by Antonio’s benightedness or the sweet relief of mercy measured out that flooded me last night. Nor do I recall being filled with grief and apprehension on hearing Claudio explain why death is a fearful thing.

I may have dismissed the play when I read it long ago because of its quaint mores -- the whole of the action hinges on sexual transgressions that are no longer life or death concerns. We do not execute men for impregnating women out of marriage; we file complaints when men in power request sordid sexual favors in exchange for political ones or we wait and call TMZ when they renege on their side of the deal.

The director Scott Williams doesn’t allow these old-world concerns to trip us up; they instead serve the core action of the play and provide just the tension required to keep the volley alive; just the strain needed to peel back the seeming and reveal the being. Nor does the director marry off all our players easily at the end -- his handling of the final scene between the Duke and Isabella is one of the moments of this production that makes it peer to London and New York productions -- Rupert Goold’s Macbeth and Sam Mendes' As You Like It come to mind.

Only the stagecraft was second rate and distracted from the whole; as did the decision to seat several rows of audience on the stage. Better that they lose the snowy soap flakes, give up a few ticket sales, and tuck away whatever that monstrous unused tubing was that floated over the stage like it was waiting for the Blue Man Group to come charging out and toss out the rain capes.

All the better not to distract from the central trinity of players in this production, all of whom answer to the strength that Shakespeare demands: Robert Sicular as the Duke, Chip Persons as Angelo, Lenne Klingaman as Isabella.

Klingaman as Isabella is especially remarkable. It would be easy to play a nun as pious and celestial, cold and untouchable; but the tiny Klingaman is rooted and real with the strength of an oak, a woman who preserves her power without apology and acts through it to make a difference for others without sacrificing herself. Antonio’s transgressions make perfect sense in the magnetic pull of her presence; as does the Duke’s sweet hopes to capture and own her.

That Williams saw an opportunity in the final scene to turn easy assumptions inside out and ensure that Isabella remains true to herself and that same strength that bathes her world with mercy and grace -- here is where the audience is changed and amazed.

And grateful.

p.o. a.m.

p.o. a.m.
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Posting by cameraphone
from Boulder, CO

ladies & gentlemen

ladies & gentlemen
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Rainier cherries peaked around 10:37
Mountain Time. Hope you managed to
get your share, because they're
indescribably delicious.

Posting by cameraphone.

like traffic signs

driveby #2. blurred.
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Punctuation, he said, was like traffic signs, too much of it distracted you from the road on which you travelled, and if you wondered, Wouldn’t writing be rather confusing without it, he would say No, it was like the constant wash and turn of the sea, sounding even more sibilant in Portuguese than in English, or like a journey taken by a traveller, every step linked to the next and every end to a beginning, or like the press of time, no sooner coming than going, never stopping in the present, which consequently never existed.

From the Economists' obituary for José Saramago, Portugal’s Nobel laureate in literature.

probably bionic

The gist of the discourse was that, if you wanted people to remember you and your work, you had to have a simple descriptive word or phrase that people could easily remember and associate that word with both you and your work; the hook, as they say in the advertising business.

Then he said, "For that purpose, I chose the word organic. If I were doing it today, I would choose a different word, probably bionic. One of you boys can use that."

Architect John Geiger, recounting a conversation with Frank Lloyd Wright that occurred in 1953, during his apprenticeship at Taliesin »

you must take the A train

you must take the A train
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Or the Burlington Northern.
Whichever's most convenient.

Cameraphone shot.

let all that breathe partake

let all that breathe partake
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Let music swell the breeze
And ring from all the trees
Sweet freedom's song;
Let mortal tongues awake
Let all that breathe partake
Let rocks their silence break,
The sound prolong.

My County 'tis of Thee,
Samuel F. Smith (1832)

Happy Birthday, America.

in these times

in these times
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Taste of Chicago

where I want to be

where I want to be
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Home in Chicagoland with my honey and
the boys (Charlie and Oscar, tabbies both)
for a long weekend.

Home because my heart lives with this crew,
even though I'm laying a new track down in
Boulder where I'm solo for now, until they
can join me.

I'm not liking the living apart piece at. all.

Posting by cameraphone.