bach's blues

Oscar Peterson in Berlin with Bach's Blues ...

old new york

Still on my sign binge (see here and here and here), via brain pickings, these wonderful photographs by James and Karla Murray with a typographic tour of New York City by night and New York City's disappearing store front by day.

*Photo credit/Photographers: James and Karla Murray/Newsweek/"Erney's Bike Shop, East 17th Street near Third Avenue, Manhattan (2003)"

out to sea

A new exhibition called Out To Sea: The Plastic Garbage Project is currently on an international tour with scheduled stops at museums in Germany, Finland, Denmark, and France.  The project originated in Switzerland at the Zurich Design Museum (ZHDK) and is currently showing at Hamburg's Museum for Arts and Crafts (MKG).  Tackling mankind's destruction of the planet with "useful," "everyday" plastic (we've currently produced enough to wrap the planet in plastic wrap 6 times over), the exhibit tries to bring to light plastic's damaging impact on the ecosystem since it doesn't decompose.  A review in English here at Spiegel;  also a photostream here.  In Zurich, 400 school groups have already visited, the first 1/2 of the exhibit "elucidating" ocean ecology, and the second 1/2, our heedless, perhaps obsessive use of plastics in our daily lives.

*Photo credit/uploaded by Spiegel,  Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe

Écolobus

Andy Riga rides Écolobus, an electric minibus that takes people around historic Vieux-Québec.

bouquet garni

How to make a lovely bouquet garni for your basic stew.  It's simpler than you may think.

off the beaten trail

A trip to the Orlando area without Disneyland:  the "frugal traveler" samples medianoche, mofongo, Audubon Park, even a spiritual reader, along with the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum Of Fine Arts -- also known as The Hurston.








*Photo credit/New York Times/Photographer: Seth Kugel/The Hurston, in Eatonville, Florida, about 15 minutes away, thanks to Interstate 4.

power of the future remembered

As we head forward into the New Year, Power Of The Future Remembered shown below.  It is one of many creative videos submitted for the 2012 remix contest, "The Sound of the Moving Image.  The Past Re-Imagined As The Future."  Contestants combined video from the Prelinger Archives and audio from the Free Music Archive.