Fall Foliage turns to Abandoned Mental Hospital

A few weeks ago David and I took a drive upstate to get out of the city for a bit. Partway along the Palisades Parkway the all-morning lack of coffee hit him. So, we took the next exit for surely there'd be a place for coffee. But we found ourselves driving along quiet small lanes, drives, and roads snaking between houses, occasional developments, fields, over streams and among trees. And not even a strip mall promising coffee.

As we finally turned back toward the Parkway, we came through woods into the middle of lovely, obviously abandoned stone buildings with neatly shorn and expansive lawns between them. We stopped, curious, and invited by a handicap ramp leading to a boarded door with shattered glass panels beside it. Slipping in was easy.

And into a whole different world.

The Former Letchworth Village Institute for the Feeble Minded and Epileptic

It really was a village - built in 1907 as a model for long-term housing for the feeble-minded and war widows. The buildings are sturdy, and dry even though abandoned since 1995. Wide lawns separated buildings, and a stream separated the male and female sides. Only part remains abandoned. The girl's campus is now a school, and some of the grounds have been turned to a golf course - but wander through the untouched ones...

We read patient records left in the attic. We explored dorms with beds still standing. We climbed in windows, and out broken doors, and up stairs. Reviewed blue prints, and read letters prepared for departing staff when the state closed the facility.

Everywhere we walked our feet crunched on peeled paint and other detritus of time, but the place smelled fresh and felt surprisingly dry. It was well made.

Head there - I recommend it. Exit 14 off of the Palisades Parkway. And read more about its history here http://www.opacity.us/site16_letchworth_village.htm

David took this photo of me in the old administration building.

David, just after we entered via the broken window.

A question

I was asked about a year ago for an anti-Valentine's Romantic Regrets. (Gene always asks good questions.) Looking back in Facebook at the thread, my reply still feels true:

"I regret 5 years spent with someone I realized never trusted me.

(Wow. 5 years came down to 12 words that sum up all that excitement of falling in love, the self-doubt of being with a controlling person, the heart ache of feeling both wanted and rejected, and the ultimate liberation of realizing I do NOT need that.)
"

Amon Tobin - isam

One of the best things about the folks I work with is that they have a wide range of passionate interests. About 4 months ago, Juan, a co-worker, sent around a link to the upcoming Amon Tobin live show. I got a ticket and we met up with some of his friends for the show. Below is a composite Juan created:


Juan's photos capture a lot of the best moments in the show - it was a beautifully curated set of projections, and symphonicly composed with movements and themes that references each other throughout. Part of a week of great music.

Can you believe that it was a single projector that did all this? A projector, some very smart programmers, and a cubist set inside of which Tobin played the sets.

Here's a link about the making of it.

A poem to NYC by Elizabeth Bishop

Found in a friend's farewell email to his NYC friends:

LETTER TO N.Y.

In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:

taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,

and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,

and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,

and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.

—Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.

Elizabeth Bishop

9/11 Memorial

Just a few days after it opened, a friend from work got preview tickets for the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero. I haven't followed the site plans closely despite biking past the area with its high fences for the past several years. I was surprised at how affecting the memorial is.

Water constantly rushing down is both peaceful and urgent, but the hole is threatening - you can't see it's bottom and the walls cut sharply down for both - it feels like a threat and loss, a tunnel into the underworld. I found myself choked up at the grouping of names by one of the airlines, where someone had gone through and put a small set of airline wings into the names of each of the flight attendants or pilots, and for the three unborn children they had carried.

Guaranteed to embarrass

If cats can be embarrassed... this would do it. Even the model seems shocked to be there.

(Not exactly travel but found due to the relative boredom of hanging out while someone else is in the hospital.)

Possum!

We have a possum in our community garden!

Kind of adorable!

Possum-enhance (and thus revealed to be a pointillist creature)

The Neon Graveyard

One of the best things about being in Vegas for CES had nothing to do with the conference - it was a visit to the Neon Graveyard.

The Graveyard is a museum dedicated to preserving the history of Las Vegas' neon age. Back in the 50's and 60's when Vegas neon was hot, most signs were made by a single company with lease contracts so when the hotels eventually upgraded or went out of business - the signs came back. And piled up.

They are gorgeous relics of a different but not far past time, each covered in pretty toxic peeling paint and remnants of light bulbs, neon and wires.

They have so much character and speak to great aspirations for tomorrow, and by their size and effort to make suggest a sense of permanence we rarely build today. - and I'm aware that they themselves are less permanent than other things humans have made -

When you next visit Las Vegas, look up the Neon Graveyard, schedule a visit, and make the time to come. It's great.

Almost everything is neon - but that which isn't also came from a similar part of the history of Las Vegas.

CGI or reality?

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Wow. "The Third & The Seventh". This is the first time I've really felt like I can't tell CGI from real film. It's lovely - a full CGI piece, modeled, animated, and scored by Alex Roman, and is perhaps one of the best execution of the technology I've ever seen. There's no narrative - only the interplay of light, form and sound.

Fire Island

The photos say it - only in part.

Heading back home

I've been traveling a lot recently. Since June 6th I've been in Mexico, Chicago, Madison, Peoria, San Diego, San Francisco - with a couple of weekends and work days in NYC between.

One of the best stops on the trip was seeing my sister and family in Madison.



It wasn't the easiest part of the trip - they moved to a new home and I was helping with painting, packing, moving, and watching the kids. Ana, as you can see above, was also into helping out.

Her new closet includes a window - a perfect spot to play. I painted a mural for her inspired by one of the books her parents read to her.

Mexico City for work

Last Friday a new client asked for someone to head down to Mexico City to participate in research. So I am here. It's great - beautiful and spring-like. I've managed a bit of time to see things while here - the Anthropology Museum and the Virgin of Guadalupe complex.

WFH

Post-surgery, I'm working from home - and it's great to be bound to your computer by the sleeping cat on your shoulder.

Turi travels... to the surgeon!

I've torn my ACL - a ligament that connects the back of the thighbone to the front of the shin and basically keeps the knee stable when you're doing side-to-side activities.

How? Probably on my last ski trip when I took on something I wasn't ready for, or perhaps at the basketball tournament when I turned oddly and kind of collapsed - or at sometime further back like the bad ankle break a few years ago.

Plane crash in the Hudson

From my window at work I saw the plane floating down river attended by a circle of ferries and harbor police boats. It was ringed with flashing lights in the semi-dark of mid-winter later afternoon. By the time it came into view all we could see was a portion of the wing angled out of the water and a bit of the tail.


This image was found online.

Happy New Year!

I'm actually way far away in rural NH caring for my dad post-surgery - in essence chauffeur, cook, companion, and watchdog. It amazes me - deeply - how much time it takes to plan, cook, provide, and clean up from 3 meals a day and run the normal errands of a life when its not just oneself one is taking care of - and when you have to drive at least 30 minutes to do anything.

I do like it up here - the quiet, watching the lake freeze, unfreeze, glaze, powder, and crack as the weather changes, the cats getting into each other, cooking for dad, being away from the office, walking in the snow - but I think if I lived here I'd have to build myself a workshop or make a part of the house mine - and have a purpose to each day.

I guess 3 weeks of vacation/care-taking edges you beyond relaxing nothing-to-do-but-what's-right-in-front-of-you towards a questioning of what strings those moments together.

It has been fun as well to see Nugget experience his first snow, his first real time outdoors, and negotiating his first non-littermate feline relationship with my Dad's quite senior cat, Paquita.

Photo credit: Juan Botella, my brother-in-law, took a series of great close-ups of Nugget over the holiday. This is one of my favorites.

From a week with Dad

I've been working remotely for a few days with Dad. Nugget came up with me - and he's getting used to being outside and to another cat.

As always, great dinners.


Nugget exploring




The beauty of Fall

Wong Kar-Wai weekend

Gene came up from Boston this weekend for a midnight screening of The Ashes of Time and a great, intimate conversation with the director Wong Kar-Wai.

Louisville and the Ali Center

Silly photo from one of our work trips to Louisville - Fab, myself, Emile and Jason at the Muhammad Ali center.

frog BBQ and galdiator battle

I'm not sure who took the images - but they are a great representative sample of the evening - Amy's rooftop in Williamsburg, great barbeque, tasty drinks, and a n air-puffed gladiator battle station.



Nothing was stable, and all became less so as the night went on.

Watching the sport.

Delicious, though when I arrive much was already finished.

Happy frogs - though Mark has left for other endeavours since.