For Kendel: A & S Nomming on Saltie's Peach Galettes today

Get yo'self some...

Tanlines at the Whitney

Tanlines played the Whitney this Friday. A warm summer evening and the absurdly early start time of 7pm meant that tourists and curious passers by stopped and hung over the museum wall to watch from the sidewalk. The music induced jumping, whooping and heart-shaped arm signs from the aforementioned tourists and passers-by, completely un-museum-like but the perfect start to the weekend.

And congrats to H - Jesse TL's gf - who jetted off the next day to Pittsburgh to welcome her new niece. Two reasons to celebrate the last weekend of the summer.

my eye, C, H

oldies but goodies

the most beautiful new gift shoes from A

wind farm on the way to edinburgh just after new year

my old dear scotland kitty

two kids on the bus in brooklyn fake talking on the fake cell phones

men. men who design things.

sunset in lilliesleaf

at the mill in selkirk

our new american kitty

Edwin Morgan: "He radiated energy, yet was stringent, demanding. He eluded definition."

I passed a piper belting out tourist tunes in Union Sq on my way in to work at the end of last week and I smiled thinking that, even in the heart of Manhattan, I wasn't too far away from the Royal Mile. A few hours later I read in the Guardian that Edwin Morgan, the Scottish Poet Laureate and the poet that scored my (and many a Scottish teen's) high school English Lit classes, had passed away. It might strike some as kailyard nostalgia, but both sure made me feel homesick.

Morgan's genius lyrics Strawberries, King Billy, One Cigarette and Trio (amongst many, many others) electrified my sheltered mind at sixteen. Which other poet covers gay lust, sectarianism, witty concrete poetry, rape, class consciousness, identity struggle, and pays homage to the gritty industrial beauty of Glasgow while avoiding self-importance or precipitous misery - all within the space of one English class? Morgan's poems remain for me powerful examples of how words can really transform the way one thinks, wants to act, wants to write, and wants to remember.

R.I.P Mr. Morgan.

Trio

Coming up Buchanan Street, quickly, on a sharp winter evening
a young man and two girls, under the Christmas lights -
The young man carries a new guitar in his arms,
the girl on the inside carries a very young baby,
and the girl on the outside carries a chihuahua.

And the three of them are laughing, their breath rises
in a cloud of happiness, and as they pass
the boy says, "Wait till he sees this but!"
The chihuahua has a tiny Royal Stewart tartan coat like a teapot-holder,
the baby in its white shawl is all bright eyes and mouth like
favours in a fresh sweet cake,
the guitar swells out under its milky plastic cover, tied at the neck
with silver tinsel tape and a brisk sprig of mistletoe.

Orphean sprig! Melting baby! Warm chihuahua!
The vale of tears is powerless before you.
Whether Christ is born, or is not born, you
put paid to fate, it abdicates
under the Christmas lights.
Monsters of the year
go blank, are scattered back,
can't bear this march of three.

And the three have passed, vanished in the crowd
(yet not vanished, for in their arms they wind
the life of men and beasts, and music,
laughter ringing them round like a guard)
at the end of this winter's day

Andy Warhol's Cats

Made during the 1950s before Warhol became truly well-known for his Pop Art, these cats were part of a coloring book that W sent to prospective clients when he was a commercial illustrator. Each cat was made as a lithograph by W then made vibrant at coloring parties he held with friends. Love, love, love!

Novels for the Emerging Adult

Novels for the Emerging Adult

On way home via The Strand to pick up Mary McCarthy's "The Group" and Michael Chabon's "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" after reading The New Yorker's Book Bench , this week in response to the NYT article about Peter Pan 20-somethings who never want to grow up. Skeptical about the article, excited about the books!

At the Independent Curators International (ICI) Book Sale today

So many great art books!
Directions: 799 Broadway nr. Union Sq, Manhattan.

Paul Rudolph House

A & I went to see Paul Rudolph's "Modulightor" Building earlier this month, aka 246 East 58th Street. Rudolph bought the building in 1989 and the interior is officially "Late Modern". Unofficially, however, it's gorgeous. Bookcases line every surface to unreachable areas of the walls and ceiling, making one wonder how library lust for the top shelf books is ever quenched without accident. A collection of Transformers toys stand by the bed and, while helping myself to a glass of wine and some cheese (an unlimited supply comes with the $10 ticket) a black-eyed rabbit holds court in the living room.

There's no organized tour so guests are left free to roam the small home, stopping to ask the current owner - a good friend of Rudolph's with whom he bought the building and who owns the lighting store downstairs - questions about what living in the space is actually like. The kinetic assemblage of stairs, different horizontal levels and vertical walls, is magical. A & I got chatting to a Rudolph acolyte by the grand piano downstairs who told us about tours across the country in pursuit of his architectural hero. As we walked away in the summer evening gloaming, it struck us on nearby busy Lexington Ave that we hadn't heard a peep from the outside world once while in Rudolph's ocean-liner interior. Perfect start to a date night.

Open House at the Modulightor happen once every two months, next time in early October. See the Rudolph Foundation  website for more details.