Various and sundry notes from the home office - Friday Edition.
1.) A bright yellow Eastern Goldfinch and his dowdy wife have been poking around my basil plants all day. I keep trying to take a picture but with no zoom lens it's not going so well. Great bird though and NJ is fortunate to have such a fine avian representative as its state bird.
2.) This "drought" or dry weather or whatever this hellish summer can be described as so far is responsible for some amazing tomatoes. I mean once-every-few-years-good tomatoes. My ramapos have such concentrated flavor compared to last years' soggy specimens. If you are not fortunate enough to have tomatoes growing in your yard, find a produce stand somewhere in monmouth county and get some, pronto. Also, my beets this year have tasted very concentrated. I guess I could attribute that to the drier weather, too.
3.) dpkg --get-selections and dpkg --set-selections just saved me about 1 hour of work on building out a server for a client from scratch. I think maybe I'll take that bonus hour and go over to Sickels' and get some cheese and prosciutto to go with my tomatoes.
Improv Everywhere (Star Wars on the Subway)
I'm so thankful that these guys exist and do their thing:
Paul Heaton - Pedals and Pumps Tour
The Housemartins were a kick-ass (albeit sanctimonious) '80s band driven largely by the vocals of PD Heaton who also fronted The Beautiful South. I was totally surprised to see a picture of Heaton in this month's issue of Adventure Cyclist but it turns out that he's doing a musical tour of the UK via bicycle to help support local pubs (which he notes are closing at an alarming rate).
note to self: Interesting intersection of interests there--cycling, community advocacy and beer drinking!
Anyway, here's Heaton moralizing melodically:
(download)
Five Books.
Did some email subscription purging this AM so I could stop receiving an inbox full of crap from costco and babies r us every morning. I ended up unsubscribing from about 14 different lists.
I did subscribe to one new list though, from Five Books.
I think this is my new favorite site on the internets. Now that i've got an ipad and am reading more than I have in years (or rather, reading more books/articles that are longer than a few hundred words), I'm looking for some good books to read and Five Books appears to be a great place to start when looking for good reads.
Sting's Symphonicities out today.
I'm ambivalent about Sting. On the one hand, he's an amazingly musical guy. On the other, he's a pretentious turd. He bluntly addresses the latter in today's article about him in the NYTimes. And demonstrates the former in today's release of Symphonicities. We should have the album for sale up on passionato.com later today.
This video gives you a taste of the arrangements:
Where to eat in Red Bank
I'm always stumbling at the last minute to pick places to eat here in town or make suggestions to visitors so I'm going to keep this list here for future reference. No particular order but these are all good. I'll try to update this post from time-to-time.
[list last updated July 12, 2010]
Dinner
Dish
Eurasian eatery
Dish
Eurasian eatery
North of the border
Nicholas (middletown)
Nicholas (middletown)
Trattoria
Boondocks
Breakfast/Lunch
The In-between
Elsie's
Sogo Sushi (probably good for dinner, too, but I mostly get lunch there)
Broadway Grill (also, probably good for dinner but it's where Kel and I meet for lunch)
Bar w/ good food
Jamian's
Places that are supposed to be good but I haven't checked out yet
Red
Bistro
Bistro
My pulse must beat with Nature.
For years (years!) now I have been reading Thoreau's complete journals. Sometimes I go months without reading them, other times i read them daily for months on end. The other night (the solstice actually) I came across this excerpt that HDT wrote right around the time of the summer solstice in 1851. It is by far the most resonate passage i've read in his journals and have never seen it quoted elsewhere. There is so much to unpack in this passage, each time I read it, it gets better. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do:
HDT Journals - June 22, 1851 -- I am sane only when I have risen above my common sense, when I do not take the foolish view of things which is commonly taken, when I do not live for the low ends for which men commonly live. Wisdom is not common. To what purpose have I senses, if I am thus absorbed in affairs? My pulse must beat with Nature. After a hard day’s work without a thought, turning my very brain into a mere tool, only in the quiet of evening do I so far recover my senses as to hear the cricket, which in fact has been chirping all day. In my better hours I am conscious of the influx of a serene and unquestionable wisdom which partly unfits, and if I yielded to it more rememberingly would wholly unfit me, for what is called the active business of life, for that furnishes nothing on which the eye of reason can rest. What is that other kind of life to which I am thus continually allured? Which alone I love? Is it a life for this world? Can a man feed and clothe himself gloriously who keeps only the truth steadily before him? Who calls in no evil to his aid? Are there duties which necessarily interfere with the serene perception of truth? Are our serene moments mere foretastes of heaven, — joys gratuitously vouchsafed to us as a consolation, — or simply a transient realization of what might be the whole tenor of our lives? To be calm, to be serene! There is a calmness of the lake when there is not a breath of wind; there is the calmness of the stagnant ditch. So is it with us. Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps. Such clarity! Obtained by such pure means! By simple living, by honesty of purpose. We live and rejoice. I awoke into a music which no one about me heard. Whom shall I thank for it? The luxury of wisdom! The luxury of virtue! Are there any intemperate in these things? I feel my Maker blessing me. To the sane man the world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure.
HDT Journals - June 22, 1851 -- I am sane only when I have risen above my common sense, when I do not take the foolish view of things which is commonly taken, when I do not live for the low ends for which men commonly live. Wisdom is not common. To what purpose have I senses, if I am thus absorbed in affairs? My pulse must beat with Nature. After a hard day’s work without a thought, turning my very brain into a mere tool, only in the quiet of evening do I so far recover my senses as to hear the cricket, which in fact has been chirping all day. In my better hours I am conscious of the influx of a serene and unquestionable wisdom which partly unfits, and if I yielded to it more rememberingly would wholly unfit me, for what is called the active business of life, for that furnishes nothing on which the eye of reason can rest. What is that other kind of life to which I am thus continually allured? Which alone I love? Is it a life for this world? Can a man feed and clothe himself gloriously who keeps only the truth steadily before him? Who calls in no evil to his aid? Are there duties which necessarily interfere with the serene perception of truth? Are our serene moments mere foretastes of heaven, — joys gratuitously vouchsafed to us as a consolation, — or simply a transient realization of what might be the whole tenor of our lives? To be calm, to be serene! There is a calmness of the lake when there is not a breath of wind; there is the calmness of the stagnant ditch. So is it with us. Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps. Such clarity! Obtained by such pure means! By simple living, by honesty of purpose. We live and rejoice. I awoke into a music which no one about me heard. Whom shall I thank for it? The luxury of wisdom! The luxury of virtue! Are there any intemperate in these things? I feel my Maker blessing me. To the sane man the world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure.
Pictures from a bright, hot summer day at Thompson Park
I brought my point and shoot LX3 with me for a walk around Thompson Park the other day. Here are a few snaps. One of my favorite places in Monmouth County.
make your own comic
Back from France.
We're back!
We had an awesome time walking around Paris and riding bicycles from village to village in Provence and generally just eating our way across France.
Will posts some notes and photos in the next few weeks. In the meantime, here are two snaps from Rue Mouffetard (i think this was my favorite street in Paris).
