In Brief

Brief Notes


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"Long Live Marmite! Only the British Could Love It"

from the New York Times January 24, 2002: a page A4 article "Burton-on-Trent Journal: Long Live Marmite! Only the British Could Love It" "Being British, the company has had an appreciation of the public's divided loyalties between those who find Marmite revolting and those who think it sublime. One campaign, a television ad exploiting the […]

"Sophie Ristelhueber: Details of the World"

1/15/02 October 2,  2001 - January 21, 2002 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA Karen and I saw a few of Ms. Ristelhueber's photographs a couple of years ago at the Museum of Modern Art (New York). They were part of MOMA's annual New Photography selections. We were struck then by the power of her work. The current exhibit […]

Enron, Trust and Malfeasance

January 23, 2002 (revised 1/29/02) The collapse of energy giant Enron over the last six months has produced a surprising level of outrage especially for a cynic like me. As this drama continues to unfold, I have been trying to understand how Enron structured their business and made money. Until just last night I was operating on the belief […]

Greenland and Global Warming

Originally written 9/2/2002 When I looked down into the Grand Canyon for the first time, I paused only for a moment at its immensity and moved right onto a more self-centered thought, “How tiny human history is in all of this, and even further, how much less significant my own life must be by extension.” It is clear that human beings will not outlast Nature. An artic […]

Milt Rogovin - The Forgotten Ones

Written 10/12/2003 During one of our whirlwind weekends in New York, Karen and I went to the New York Historical Society (2 West 77th Street New York, NY 10024 http://www.nyhistory.org) to catch the last day of the exhibit, REMEMBERING THE FORGOTTEN ONES: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF MILTON ROGOVIN. This proved to be the best photography, […]

Uber Organ - Tim Hawkinson

December 1, 2001 Most contemporary art is a bore or worse. However, a visit to MassMOCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA) a year or so ago revealed a delight, Uberorgan by Tim Hawkinson. This installation filled the giant main hall at the museum, a room some 300 feet long and 75 feet wide with a ceiling height […]

Wet Pavement Conspiracy?

11/20/01 Several years ago I began to notice that many TV ads for cars featured swooping shots of speeding cars on mountain or desert roads, many with wet pavement. As time went along, I became fixated on the ads showing cars in desert scenes roaring over wet pavement. Movies also seem prone to wet scenes in Los Angeles. LA Confidentia […]

Whose Opinion (or Advice) Is It?

January 31, 2002 The Problem At a time when we are quite aware of the need for and value of transparency in the reporting of the activities of corporations (thanks most recently to the Enron affair), we could quite usefully extend this transparency metaphor to other parts of day-to-day life. The print press, TV, radio, and i […]