Darren Smith Art

Darren is a close friend who has been an artist since I've known him.  I will be at this show.  Join in.

KALEIDOSCOPE By Darren Smith

Art Soiree: Hosted by Sandro & Tati

Friday, March 25th 7pm-10:00pm ($10 cover; RSVP to artsoireedc@gmail.com) L2 Lounge 3315 Cady's Alley NW Washington DC 20007 (33rd & M Street) http://theartsoiree.com/

Hill Wellford | 1933

There are a lot of Hill Wellfords around in my life these days, though I never met the one winning the race in the image below.

This is Hill Wellford setting a new record for the 440 at a time of 48.2 secs in 1933 (incidentally the current record set in 1971 by UCLA John Smith for the 440 is 44.5; the particular race is no longer run as the imperial distance has been replaced by the metric distance).

I like this image for its composition, detail and history.  Also if you look closely at Hill's face, his eyes are cast down at the finish line just as he is about to win the race.  His stature and determination blows the Duke fellow away.  Below is also the annotation on the image.

       

Click on any of the images to enlarge.

Essentials for the Home

When the weekend rolls around and I'm ready to kick back, there is nothing like popping the top off of one of one of these furry babies.

Rainbow

Snapped this Spring rainbow a while back.  I am sooo ready for Spring.

Photography | Travel

I took pictures of many properties and places during the last trip to Italy.  Someone handed me an Italian lifestyle magazine (Caesar, Oct 2010).  What do you know, they used my shots...

Check out more travel information and experiences on my blog at JDB Fine Hotels & Resorts

Venice

I love Venice.

Elton Hailey

Last month, a good old friend was buried in Arlington Memorial Cemetery.

Elton Hailey, was a close friend of my grandparents and family in general.  During the preparations for the memorial service, I was handed a large stack of photographs from his WWII experience in the Pacific and some vignettes of his youth.  Seeing a few details of his past shed light not only on his life, but the times in general.

Visit my Flickr page for a better presentation of the images themselves.

This street scene is not labeled, but it appears to be from the collection in the Pacific in 1940's.

Hailey as young man.

Seated, far left.


High school yearbook, Abilene TX, 1938.


Middle row, fourth from the left.


Elton took this photo.

Gaddafi - Fights to the End!

This was the front page of Washington Post this past Wednesday.  Yes, Libya is having some problems with its younger restless generation, but that wily Gaddafi clearly has things in hand.  Just look at him...

Oh whups.  Hey Post photo editors... I got a little confused about the gun-waving dude in the image in relation to the headline: it looks as though Gaddafi is ready to bring it.  Still though, I bet the Onion staff dug this.

Happy Belated Valentines Day

I noted these neighbors below who have had their Halloween ghoul up for about two years.  Last month he (she?) was dressed as Santa Claus --see the earlier post.

And I drove by today, and I was just tickled to find the ghoul with Valentines Day treats!  For Me?!

Duty Free

A close friend of mine declared Italy to be the land "where the simple is difficult, and the difficult is simple."  Here is a case in point.

"Yes, I would like one dried ham leg please to carry on the plane.  ...In fact, make it two."

These ham legs are located in the Duty Free at Venice airport (and situated between Mont Blanc accessories and Salvatore Ferragamo).  People were buying them for sure.

In the US, the Food & Drug Administration just does not go for open-air, hoofed, meat products like this. And Homeland Security has issued warnings about the connection between carry-on ham legs and risk of hijacking.

Time to Wake Up

Dawn arrives and so does a tranquil moment above the clouds.

Coffee

Get your life preserver, it's going to be a very productive afternoon.

Neighbors

I love these neighbors.

Their Halloween ghoul has been around for not one, but two years straight now without ever coming off the tree. And while the wind has stolen most of his garments, he still has the decency the celebrate most of the major holidays outside of just Halloween. Here we have some left over Christmas cheer.

Someone Had A Bad Day

Misha the Dog   : 1

King Kong         : 0

Look Out, Here Comes Buddha

"Buddha's hand." My suspicion is that before Buddha got a hold of it, this yellow thing was actually a lemon. Moral of the story: if you see Buddha, get out of there.

Also of note: this Buddha's hand is "Conventional."

Ladies

This is the cover of this month’s Woman’s World magazine, which I observed while in the checkout line of Safeway in Washington DC.  You can find it any place in the US.

This magazine ---about the “the world of women,” -- Do women read it? It's still in every super market. From my early days, I could remember my grandmother subscribing to Woman's World, but I just don’t recall it looking this strange. What exactly are the editors shooting for here?

• Anyone (man or woman) can be a "cover girl" with a delicate color correction
• You, the customer in the checkout line, are on acid again this fine Tuesday in February
• We (the magazine editors) believe a “woman’s world” should look a lot like the cover
• Or just the simple thought: “A great week, made easy!”

The following week, I get off the train in Milan, in a station.

Now granted, the Italians have some strange advertising persuasions of their own. But somehow it was hard to miss the impact of the Italian Triumph depicted here. Was I memorized? Absolutely:

As I walked down the platform, I noticed another ad, for some Italian toothpaste.

It occurred to me that perhaps the editors of Woman's World consulted on some of the design choices: the teeth appear appropriately white and this woman is apparently very content about that. It also looks like God is coming for a visit today. Teeth so white that you feel like you're traveling to another galaxy and God has your back. Far out.

Feel free to comment away...

Ah Pizza

Lunch today in Venice, Italy at Il Refolo.  Pizza and beer with friends on warm day in February.

Liz and I watched/saw Social Network, the film about the advent of Facebook and what happens to its initial key players. The movie had a lot of geek action about writing code, firing up servers, traffic volume and so one.  And there was no lack of dramatization either (like the portrayal of Havard's elite club social events).

Zuckerberg is ironically made out to be a pathetic sociopath with few genuine social acquaintances and a one-track mind toward expanding Facebook's reach and positioning himself at the center of the the network.

In relation to that, this HBR blog posting caught my attention.  The last line of the article is a jab at the very Harvard drop-out who co-founded the Facebook empire.

What Is Facebook, Really?

1:38 PM Wednesday February 2, 2011
by Jeffrey F. Rayport

"...By any conventional measure, Facebook could easily rank as the largest online publisher in the world. Sure, YouTube users now upload hundreds of thousands of videos to the site a day, but Facebook users uploaded 750 million photos over a few weeks during the holiday season alone. Google is a major player in the online publishing ecosystem, but in its core business Google points to content; Facebook actually hosts it.

Three remarkable realities account for the logic (and irony) of Facebook's absence..." (...Read more)

Mark Zuckerberg

Knife Surrender Bin

This image was snapped in London during a business trip last year.

Judging by the size of the bin, surrendering a knife must be a common occurrence, perhaps even daily (the bin was about 60 cubic feet, which should hold several hundred Rambo knives).  But since this bin is over flowing with everything but knives, I sense there may be some questions raised at next year's Greater London Knife Bin Budgetary Round Table.  Perhaps additional funding is needed to create a large-scale blade surrender awareness campaign.

Details of the program can be found at the BBC online.

Chelada | Product Development

This product reminds me of the Pontiac Aztec.

It's want happens when product development says, "You know we have a lot spare (fill in the blank here) in the Ohio production facility, what about mixing it with all that surplus (fill in the blank here), and marketing it as a specialized product?"  God probably made the platypus this way.  The camel is a borderline case also.


In the most recent product development miracle of this type, Bud Light has teamed up with Motts juice to create the Chelada (which I incidentally tried before putting the can on the ground to take a picture).

I know the “Clamato” drink has always confused some of you (image attached below).  It’s clam juice mixed with tomato juice and bottled and sold.   A perfectly natural combo  - Clamato.

Now you can get that incredible Clamato concoction pre-mixed in a can with Bud Light!   Also added are lime and salt.  I was not aware that Clamato was mixed with beer to begin with.


The math basically works like this:

((Clam Juice + Tomato Juice = Clamato!) + Bud Light + Salt + Lime) = Chelada!

 In case you are not familiar with Clamato, here's a picture.

Howling Forever

The preceding post is somber, so I'm following it with this one.

This is our neighbor's dog Kiko, who howls whenever he hears "Forever" by Chris Brown.  I mean, who doesn't?

Justice and Closure

Today I accompanied my friend Todd Beckett to the sentencing of the young man that ran him over and dragged Todd one city block.  (If you need the back-story, find out what happened here).

In the DC courtroom at 9:30 am, Todd confronted for the first time the convicted hit-and-run driver. A Salvadorian man of 19, who was little more than a high school senior, stood with his head hung. Todd had opted to attend and speak at the sentencing though it was not required. Todd's attorney made a short set of remarks.

When the judge allotted Todd's time to speak, Todd said a few words about his struggles and the tragic changes he has faced, but he largely relied on a written statement prepared by his longtime friend, Jennifer Goldstein, a federal judge. Jen addressed the statement to the court and over a few pages described Todd's character, his many athletic, intellectual, and personal accomplishments, and the type of man he is to his family, friends and community. The impact was huge. The courtroom was more silent than ever, people hung on ever word. The defendant was sobbing. The judge was transfixed and literally fumbled for words to reckon with what was said. Todd returned to his seat and sat down quietly.

Following Todd's statement, the defense attorney ineptly lumbered into his statement of how defendant had suffered and toiled with his actions, which implicitly drew a comparison to Todd whether he meant to or not. The defendant turned around to Todd with a very long face and wet eyes and said that he was sorry and remorseful of his actions.

What happened next amazed me: The judge had prepared a sentence for the convicted man. But it was plain to see that the convict was a little more than a child himself and he had a 11 month old baby. Through a series of short exchanges between Todd and judge across the court room, both agreed that prolonged jail time neither served any valuable lesson to the defendant, nor returned the young man to society in any shape to contribute or make anything of himself. So it appeared they (the judge with Todd's input) suspended the jail time entirely, put the young man in a half way house so he could work, mandated community service, and 3 years probation.

My impression was that that the judge had initially planned on imposing jail time. The result of that change will undoubtedly alter the course of convicted man's life.

Dickson Wine Bar | DC

The Post panned this place in a September article, but I had a great experience at Dickson last night with friends before catching a show at the 930 Club.


We had no reservation.  The place was completely full.  The GM made us comfortable at the bar and we tried several of their boutique cocktails: me the warm mulled cider thing that was really delicious.


Granted the flatbreads were not the star of the finger foods, the rest of the meal we shared was tight, personally I tried and liked the:

• Arugula salad, pears, parmesan, vinaigrette
• Bresaola dried beef from Stachowski Charcuterie (turns out I know Jamie. S from the Palisades Farmers Market)
• Berkshire Pork Belly Banh Mi (Sandwich)
• A Tuscan red wine

I would go back, the menu changes seasonally.  Here are the details:

Dickson Wine Bar
903 U Street NW (9th and U Streets)

Washington, DC, 20001

202.332.1779

Targeting like ...A Surveyor

I generally avoid commenting on anything political; I find nature and the galaxy a far more compelling topic for discussion.  But I do like the Onion for its satire, and I read the Post, the NYtimes and the WSJ when they are in front of me, mostly the business sections.

Today, in the Post's Style section, I came across a quote from the Palin camp that actually made chuckle.  It was their response to the shooting of Arizona Rep, Gabrielle Gifford and other US citizens in Tucson by a gun-toting lunatic, and any possible linkage to frequent combative language across party lines.  (Incidentally, my opinion is that there is no straight connection, but public figures should have integrity and understand how their conduct adds or detracts to civility in our nation).

Anyway, the Post's article, addresses both party's propensity to punch below the belt or incite public outrage whenever possible:

On Sunday, Palin's camp issued an awkward response: "We have nothing whatsoever to do with this," Rebecca Mansour, an aide to Palin, said in a radio interview on Sunday. "We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply cross hairs like you'd see on maps," like, she suggested, a "surveyor's symbol."

I took the antecedent to "this" in her statement to be "the shooting."  They were not suspects in the case, but I am glad they cleared that up.  And like George Washington himself, Palin must love the cross hairs of surveying.  Not retreating and reloading are common surveying parlance also.

Here is the rest of the article:

After tragedy, toxic talk in the media cross hairs

By Jason Horowitzand Lisa DeMoraes
Washington Post Staff Writers 
Monday, January 10, 2011

---

Since the post above a few people provided some links and graphics that fill in the back story:

When Marketing Was Easy

Liz recently commented that there was a time when you could simply say, "Ask for  _____"  And that was a marketing campaign.  What do you think about that?

Whoosh

My mother-in-law forwarded me this review of All Things Shining, a recent book by two distinguished philosophers, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly.  I have not yet read the book, but plan to.   As a DJ, artist and team leader, I can attest to the power and diversion of potent group experiences.

Read on...

---

OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Arena Culture

By DAVID BROOKS

Academic life encourages specialization and technical thinking, and, oddly, there are few fields in which this is more true than philosophy. The discipline that should be of interest to everybody is often the most impenetrable.

But occasionally brave philosophers do leap out of their professional lanes and illuminate things for the wider public. Hubert Dreyfus of Berkeley and Sean Dorrance Kelly of Harvard have just done this with their new book, “All Things Shining.” They take a smart, sweeping run through the history of Western philosophy. But their book is important for the way it illuminates life today and for the controversial advice it offers on how to live.

Dreyfus and Kelly start with Vico’s old idea that each age has its own lens through which people see the world. In the Middle Ages, for example, “people could not help but experience themselves as determined or created by God.” They assumed that God’s plans encompassed their lives the way we assume the laws of physics do.

For the past hundred years or so, we have lived in a secular age. That does not mean that people aren’t religious. It means there is no shared set of values we all absorb as preconscious assumptions. In our world, individuals have to find or create their own meaning.

This, Dreyfus and Kelly argue, has led to a pervasive sadness. Individuals are usually not capable of creating their own lives from the ground up. So modern life is marked by frequent feelings of indecision and anxiety. People often lack the foundations upon which to make the most important choices.

Dreyfus and Kelly suffer from the usual Cambridge/Berkeley parochialism. They assume that nobody believes in eternal truth anymore. They write as if all of America’s moral quandaries are best expressed by the novelist David Foster Wallace. But they are on to something important when they describe the way — far more than in past ages — sports has risen up to fill a spiritual void.

Spiritually unmoored, many people nonetheless experience intense elevation during the magical moments that sport often affords. Dreyfus and Kelly mention the mood that swept through the crowd at Yankee Stadium when Lou Gehrig delivered his “Luckiest Man Alive” speech, or the mood that swept through Wimbledon as Roger Federer completed one of his greatest matches.

The most real things in life, they write, well up and take us over. They call this experience “whooshing up.” We get whooshed up at a sports arena, at a political rally or even at magical moments while woodworking or walking through nature.

Dreyfus and Kelly say that we should have the courage not to look for some unitary, totalistic explanation for the universe. Instead, we should live perceptively at the surface, receptive to the moments of transcendent whooshes that we can feel in, say, a concert crowd, or while engaging in a meaningful activity, like making a perfect cup of coffee with a well-crafted pot and cup.

We should not expect these experiences to cohere into a single “meaning of life.” Transcendent experiences are plural and incompatible. We should instead cultivate a spirit of gratitude and wonder for the many excellent things the world supplies.

I’m not sure this way of living will ever prove satisfying to most readers. Most people have a powerful sense that there is a Supreme Being over us, attached to eternal truths. Though they try, Dreyfus and Kelly don’t give us a satisfying basis upon which to distinguish the whooshing some people felt at civil rights rallies from the whooshing others felt at Nazi rallies.

But Dreyfus and Kelly might help invert the way we see the world. We have official stories we tell about our culture: each individual is the captain of his own ship; we are all children of God. But in practice, willy-nilly, the way we actually live is at odds with the official story. Our most vibrant institutions are collective, not individual or religious. They are there to create that group whoosh: the sports stadium, the concert hall, the political rally, the theater, the museum and the gourmet restaurant. Even church is often more about the ecstatic whoosh than the theology.

The activities often dismissed as mere diversions are actually central. Real life is more about serial whooshes than coherent meaning.

We can either rebel against this superficial drift, or like Dreyfus and Kelly, go with the flow, acknowledging that the autonomous life is impossible, not seeking totalistic theologies, but instead becoming sensitive participants in the collective whooshings that life offers.

This clarifies the choices before us. This book is also a rejection of the excessive individualism of the past several decades, the emphasis on maximum spiritual freedom. In this, it’s a harbinger of future philosophies to come. Our culture is defined by arenas. Our self-conception just hasn’t caught up.

NYE 2010

We DJ'd at Darnell's Back Room.  Happy New Year people.

Smithsonian | East Wing

I shot this today from the underground walk way at the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington DC. Keep watching as the pattern goes disco after about 15 seconds.

Farm Time Lapse

I posted a camera that automatically takes a picture when it senses movement. I stitched the last round of images into a quick movie. Being an artist, I like seeing how much the barn changes in the light at different times of the day, the flowers move, and people show up now and then.  Beautiful in its subtlety.

Darnells | December

Felipe and I DJ'd Darnell's Backroom again last night. That place just gets better and better. For a small venue, there is a ridiculous amount of spirit in the people who show up on the Saturdays when we play.

For something real on NYE --with complete hands-in-the-air boogie time, join us.

New Years Eve

If you plan to be in Washington DC and want to boogie this new years, we are again hosting something worth checking out. This time at Darnell's --a place that proves to be ever more entertaining every time we DJ there.

The theme is not set up, but judging by every other NYE party we've thrown, it will be a spectacle and a lot dancing. So...the name and theme are in the works, but get organized. This space is not huge, so it will fill up entirely.

Here are some shots from the other parties we threw for NYE and more DJ pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/christopherbaer/sets/72157624829845467/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/christopherbaer/sets/72157624829757741/

Who Does the Mind Work For?

Those of you who have seen the movie Austin Powers, will know the meaning of, "Who does number 2 work for?!" as Austin is attacked by a spy while in the bathroom. (If not, visit Youtube to be enlightened).

My version of the line is one that I address to my own mind frequently "Who does the mind work for?" In other words, when your mind spins off on some tangent other than what you're doing, what gave it the right to run amok?

"Mind, get back here this minute, or you'll get a time out. I'm not playing around."

[Yes, I'm arguing with myself again, and I really hope I win this time.]

Focusing the mind is the root to being present.  Being present translates to enjoying or experiencing the moment.  When those moments are added up, the result translates directly to living.  Specifically, it's being alive and being aware of it.  My friend, Beatrice Pouligny, a Georgetown University academic and a shamanic healer, sent me this article today about research on the unfocused mind, which I am reposting.

---

Mind Wandering May Lead to a Bad Mood

 by Jeremy Hsu | From Live Science

For the sake of your own happiness, don't let your mind wander while reading this article. Setting the mind adrift from the here and now may lead to a worse mood regardless of whether the daydreams or thoughts are pleasant ones, researchers say. 

In fact, a wandering mind had a bigger influence on happiness than any other activity a person happened to be doing, according to their new study. Such findings confirm many philosophical and religious traditions, which teach about finding happiness by living in the moment, and train practitioners to resist mind wandering.

Humans have made good use of mind wandering to reflect upon the past or plan for the future, as well as to learn and to reason. But the study also showed that it comes with a powerful emotional cost, despite mind wandering appearing to be the brain's default mode of operation.

"We do hypothesize that it's a cause [for unhappiness]," said Matthew Killingsworth, a doctoral student in psychology at Harvard University and lead author on the study detailed in the Nov. 11 issue of the journal Science.

Killingsworth and Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert tracked the happiness levels of iPhone users by asking participants about their happiness at random times. Participants rated their happiness on a scale of 0 to 100 and included what they were doing, and whether their mind was wandering beyond the task at hand. (Yes, there is an app for that experiment.)

People's minds wandered almost 47 percent of the time, and were more likely to think about pleasant topics than unpleasant or neutral ones. Yet thinking pleasant thoughts made people no happier than focusing on what they were doing – and unhappiness spiked when thinking neutral or unpleasant thoughts.

Such mind wandering appeared to cause unhappiness even when people were doing the least enjoyable activities, such as daily work. A time-lag analysis suggested that mind wandering caused foul moods rather than the other way around.

Another surprise: Whatever people were doing had only a mild impact on whether their minds wandered, and almost no impact on the pleasantness of the topics they chose to think about. Mind wandering took up at least 30 percent of the time during almost every activity, including playing, exercising, praying and taking care of the kids.

So what was the only exception? Apparently people focus most intensely on making love.

"[Making love] was 10 percent [for mind wandering], which was the lowest," Killingsworth said in an e-mail. "The highest was 'grooming, self care' at 65 percent."

Source Article

Panna II | NYC

I have honestly been putting more thought into creating posts that are substantiative, relevant and interesting.  Alas, failure again: here's another cotton candy post about eating at a bizarre restaurant.

Last night I was fortunate enough to both dine at one of my favorite (and cheap) NYC experiences on the Lower East Side, and do that with my buddy Josh who happened to be in town.

Before you go much further, listening to Naladri Kumar might set the mood and help the pictures make sense.

Panna II, and it's evil twin next door (and a newer competitive triplet mutation downstairs) are known for the door men that argue for you to come into their seemingly identical Indian restaurants.  The restaurants are literally mirror images of one another, each with a rosy, christmas-light decor and very peppy, encouraging door men.  I can attest that the door on the right does in fact lead to a scintillating nirvana. I have never gone into the left doorway in 15 years of eating at this mind-boggling siamese establishment.

To the point, the Indian food here is excellent and inexpensive.  Beer or wine can be purchased at the deli next door and brought in.  If you have problems of getting over stimulated by saturated combos of color, music, and scent -avoid this place.  In fact, just stay out of NYC all together.  But if you are in for something different, delicious and visually unforgettable, go.  It's worth it.

Panna II

93 1st Ave (between 5th & 6th)
New York, NY 10003 | Tel. 212-598-4610
Read more about Panna II's history.

Executive Dumbells

There may be no end to the amount of mileage I could get out of the image below.  "...Executive Dumbells."

Build brawn with the poly-vinyl bronze-style arm weight filled with 6.6 pounds of sandy heft.

Birds in Winter

I shot this video today of black birds flocking in a farm field, which is common in the Wintertime.  The pattern of their flight is hypnotic.

Bedside Table | Book List

There is a lot on the bedside table to read right now. This morning I snapped a picture of what I am trying to stuff down the gullet along with a few comments about the ones I have actually dug into.

To read the print full-sized, just click on the image.  Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Gold Toilet Frolicking in the Leaves

This morning, the gold toilet showed up in the side yard again. I have not noticed it around much recently, work has been really hectic.

Liz and I try to coax it back into our bathroom, but every time we approach it, it takes off into the woods again.

Other sightings are thrilling also!