New Friend

This little cat found us on our walk this morning.

Two Photos from NYC

The first picture was taken into the window at International Center for Photography, where Elliot Erwitt has a terrific show of over 100 images. He's always been one of my favorite photographers and is one of the few truly funny photographers out there.

Also at ICP is an exhibit about Ruth Gruber. She was a terrific photographer in my opinion, whose work has not been acknowledged until now.

The second picture above was taken on West 43rd Street as I was walking toward Times Square. Both were taken with my iPhone.

In the morning I went to MOMA and one of the exhibits I saw was Boris Mikhailov's exhibit, "Case History." I'm still trying to figure out what I was looking at. I'm planning on writing more about his work here in the future but for now here's a link to a review of the show in the Times.

Dinner at Ayurveda Cafe on Amsterdam at 94th. There's no menu, they prepare a different meal every day and that's what you get. You can also ask for seconds as many times as you want.

Police Report

This morning I'm writing a police report about my neighbor's dog, who has already earned three citations for attacking residents of the neighborhood. Can't go into more detail here for obvious reasons.

Twitter Comments on Vegan Living

Here's a quick sampling of remarks directed at vegans on Twitter today:

-- Q: How can you tell a person is vegan? A: Oh, they'll let you know.

-- i'm not a vegan because i don't believe in killing animals for food and clothing. i'm a vegan because i want to live forever.

-- Shut up, Moby: How the "But I'm a vegan" problem is ruining progressives.

-- I'm not even remotely interested in eating vegan products until someone can figure out a way to make them scream out in pain.

-- i just ate a vegan cupcake and it was great but i feel bad putting chickens and cows out of work in these hard economic times.

-- I hate it when vegan women treat men like a piece of tofu.

Come to your own conclusions.

Pennsylvania Pickerel Frog

This pickerel frog must have been killed shortly before we found him this morning on our walk around Cherry Valley. At first I thought it was a leopard frog, however when I looked it up, the leopard frog has similar markings but the background color is greener. The resting heart rate of a frog is about 60 beats per minute. When they go into hibernation, it slows to 2.

Yesterday I researched the heart rates of different animals that somehow or another have made their way into the Zorki manuscript. I had no intention of including animals when I began the story, but in building the world of the novel it just made sense and one by one they began to appear. Miles, the narrator, is vegan so naturally he cares about animals, but their mention is just an incidental part of the larger story. Here are a couple of my findings: Cat 150, Hummingbird 250 at rest/1200 when feeding, Pit bull 90, Pigeon 600, Mouse 530, Elephant 30.

Greetings From Provincetown

Just returned from a week at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in Provincetown. The workshop was on longform nonfiction articles, which according to traditional internet wisdom (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) are not of interest to today's readers. Not so, I found out, and I also found out a great source for the articles and a way to read them on your phone or Ipad: check out Longform.org and Instapaper.

Our instructor for the week, Alana Newhouse, managing editor of Tablet Magazine, ordered, er, suggested the other writers and I do some blogging, so I'm going to make an effort to post here regularly and see where it goes. Feel free to comment.

Norman Mailer called Provincetown the "Wild West of the East." In some ways I see his point, as in the nightly anything-goes parade on Commercial Street. Most scary thing I saw: a gaggle of old men dressed in babydoll drag. If I'd seen them as a kid I'd still be in therapy today. On the other hand, for as much as the open-minded-artsy image Provincetown tries to portray, the art on display all over town is hideously bourgeois, romantic, sappy, and, above all, safe. Paintings and photographs of sunsets, leaves, lighthouses, seascapes, ships, an occasional well-muscled man can be seen in every gallery and shop window. While a lot of them fly rainbow flags and tolerance slogans, there doesn't seem to be much of a reception for progressive art.