immune to your consultations

People change their positions all the time, the way they change their wives.

Aid to Donald Trump, commenting on the would-be presidential contender's change of stance regarding pro-choice politics (Trump is now pro-life), in this week's New Yorker.

drive by

An animated gif -- or cinemagraph -- by Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg. Via Gawker »

make like a shaker and weave

Assembled and wove my very own Shaker barstool,
which sounds like a curious misnomer coming from
a religious sect the avoids alcohol. But the kit of
parts came from the Shaker folks all the way back in
September, which is when I made my first sad pass
at putting the pieces together. Mr. Hoo helped me at
last master the requisite sanding and dry fitting, and
then I tackled the woof and weft by my lonesome.

Comfy AND crafty. Bonus.

final dispatch

Diary (2010) from Tim Hetherington on Vimeo.

Photographer Tim Hetherington, the maker of this short film and the director of Restrepo, was killed today in Misrata.

looking for the pony

Commentary to follow.

Snapped at the Tattered Cover, Lodo
Denver, CO

(de)livery

Austin, TX

under glass

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is connected to the Peabody by a causeway on the third floor. I wandered over yesterday after I had my fill of the Peabody's fractured casts of the stelea of Copan and their marvelous Mayan greenstone, which is not entirely theirs at all, of course, but belonged to the good folks of Honduras once, some of whom were pictured beside the booty after it had been wrested from where their ancestors placed it millennia before, just before it was carted up by the folks from Harvard and shipped back to Cambridge for study.

Which got me to thinking about our compulsion to collect. Which is a dangerous thing for a museum junkie to start wondering about.

Without museums would we have as much cause to wonder about the wider world? Would a lack of museums lead us to be insular and inward looking and unconcerned about others beyond our boundaries? This is to be avoided. But what right do we have to uproot the treasures of other cities and peoples and place them under glass?

And then I wandered into the taxidermic galleries of the Natural History Museum. Case after case of collected creatures stuffed and arrayed incongruously on display. Prey beside predator, each soul unmoved by the presence of the other, staring ahead with glassy eyes. Each unrelentingly anxious, as if in answer to my question.

Taxidermic creatures, Harvard Museum of Natural History.

the Mayan word for wind

Ik'
Peabody Museum, Harvard University
Cambridge, Mass

the universe of curves

We have something in common, which is that we are belonging to the universe of curves.

Louboutin to the architect Oscar Niemeyer, as recounted by Lauren Collins in her profile of the shoe designer in the 28 March issue of the New Yorker.