inside the grid

Being in Oregon, with Tee and at Wolf Creek Sanctuary, was nourishing. Tee has been to the hospital and doesn't want to go back. She is ready to leave us, and looking forward to her next existence. I asked "what?" and she had heard that once you're a human, you can't go back, intriguing as it might be to be a banana or ant. It may have been the sanctuary influence. Part of me could really be a hippie communard: meandering about, talking about life and love, taking naked showers in the sunshine, watching the skunk poke around in the evening, watching the wild turkeys poke around in the morning. Another part of me would really miss the galleries, the sidewalks with their destinations. I was reading Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust: a history of walking while I was in Oregon, and on the plane coming back. Lots of interesting observations, starting from walking but going to philosophy, literature, communication, social interaction, life, the whole gamut.

The sky was beautiful in Wolf Creek. You don't get big sky since there are mountains all around but the sun was glorious. The sunlight on the ridges was beautiful. The night sky with a full arc of stars was splendiferous. I love to be out under the night sky, probably a result of living in New York City where light pollution blocks viewing of all but the very brightest night sky objects.

The nourishment of the sanctuary and visit are hard to sustain in the onslaught of the workplace. Gotta get inspired.

gl/q part 2 and tee

The seond part of "Art works" edited by Richard Meyer and David Román for GL/Q was at the Whitney when I was there on Saturday. There's an essay about early feminist art journals that includes quite a bit about Tee Corinne's contributions. Other good stuff too. Not that I've read it or anything.

The Whitney show -- 75 years -- was wonderful, full of the icons of the last few decades. Also the video of "The holy artwork" by Christian Jankowski was in the video gallery. And the Calder circus, which I haven't seriously looked at for years, was in the lobby gallery and looked fine.

Yesterday started out slow but I went up to the Cloisters and got some solace from the fine art and the fine views from the terraces and the park. I walked out to find Park Terrace West where two couples of friends have moved recently. There are some lovely tudorish houses on West 217th Street. Sueyoung and Dwight's building looked quite nice, and I'm not sure which building is Daniel and Gary's. Other gays on the street.

go metadata!

First we talked about digitization, cultural objects, and potato salad; then we took pictures of Diane's license plate.

Maybe we could add social tags to this picture and see where the folks go. Maria and I wondered if we should do some experiments in social tagging.

(photo by Maria Oldal, taken 3 August 2006 outside South Huntington Public Library, after 4th LILRC Symposium on Digitization)