The Community Chest cards were lowered in place by crane

He had been sent biographical notes and pictures of his fellow guests on the frozen fjord and been struck by the smile of a certain conceptual artist whose name, Stella Polkinghorne, was familiar, even to him. Her most recent media storm involved an accusation of an infringement of copyright that had never come to court. She had constructed for the Tate Modern a scaled-up Monopoly set on a playing field in Catford, each side of the painted board a hundred meters long, a space one could stroll about in, with near-life-sized houses on Park Lane and the Old Kent Road, accommodation one could enter to observe an unequal distribution of wealth. In the empty homes of the Mayfair rich, tapestries, woodcuts by Dürer, and discarded champagne bottles, while down the Old Kent Road, among the East End poor, junk-food wrappers, discarded syringes, a TV playing soaps. The dice were two meters high, the Community Chest cards were lowered in place by crane, the dog-eared banknotes made of plywood were in tottering twenty-five-meter piles on grass. In all, an indictment, it was supposed, of a money-obsessed culture. Do Not Pass Go was celebrated, reviled, photographed from the air by passengers on their descent into Heathrow. Children liked stampeding across the board in herds and crawling inside the top-hat token. The makers of the game began a legal case, which they dropped in the face of public derision and rising sales. A local business association on the Old Kent Road also brought a case, or said it would, and nothing was heard.

[Ian McEwan, Solar, 2010]

Prospect Park, June 1921

Courtesy of the National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site

Documenting America

To mark its one year anniversary in 1971, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unleashed over 100 professional photographers across America. It's goal, to carry out the country's first comprehensive documentation of its environment. They called the project "Documerica" and immediately made all photos available to the press, publishers, researchers, and the general public. "Available" today is a lot more available than it was in the '70s. Now they are being published online with the help of the U.S. National Archives, in what will ultimately be a 15,000 photo collection on Flickr.

Here, early street art, so widespread and unchecked that it covers the flat surfaces of New York's 1973 subway cars.

[Original caption: "Many Subway Cars in New York City Have Been Spray Painted by Vandals. 05/1973" - photo by Eric Callonius]

["Times Square Subway Station and Subway Graffitti 05/1973" - photo by E.C.]

Most interesting to me, in this overwhelmingly interesting series of photographs, is the liberty the photographers took with the term "environment."

You have the photos you'd expect from an EPA photo documentary, like this juxtaposition of new industry and old farmland:

["The Atlas Company Belches Smoke across Pasture Land in Foreground. 06/1972" - photo by Marc St. Gill]

And then you have photos like these:

["Washington Square in Greenwich Village, 05/1973" - Photo by E.C.]

["Climbing Out from the Head of Water Canyon, near the Maze, a Remote and Rugged Region in the Heart of the Canyonlands. Water Canyon is So Called Because of a Spring in the Canyon Which Furnishes a Good Supply of Pure Water, a Rarity in This Region. The Rope is Climbed by Using Mechanical Ascenders, Small Devices Which Slide Up the Rope But Not Down, 05/1972" - photo by David Hiser]

["Edward Austin, 64, Lives in the Black Portion of Fierco, a Small Town near Beckley, West Virginia, in Raleigh County. He Receives Black Lung Benefits and a United Mine Workers Pension, after Working in the Mines from 1925 to 1956. He Has 20 Children and Does Not Regret Having Them One Bit 04/1974" - photo by Jack Corn]

Here is the Flickr Page, where all photos can be viewed and downloaded in high res:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/collections/72157620729903309/

Excellent.

Family Photos

[happy baby]

Reba and baby JennyMess on the veranda, Marion Street, Lititz, PA, 1954.

Fort Greene Snow Land

Sledding hurts, but in a good way. Also of note is the snowperson detailing in Fort Greene Park (sass, mustaches, boobs!).

Baltimore at Bergdorf's?

Walking up 5th Avenue on my way to Central Park last Friday, a certain bosomy drag queen in a voluptuous red dress caught my eye...

...in the window of Bergdorf Goodman?Wait a minute. Divine? Is that you?

And hold up, Bergdorf...I recognize that robot family...

...and those creepy cocoon yarn things...And that GIANT PINK POODLE!

Last year, it was the New Yorker that commented on New York's love for the weird, wonderful world of Baltimore musicals. This year, it seems that one of the city's schmanciest window trend setters is using the vibrant creepiness of the amazing American Visionary Art Museum to showcase summer collections the likes of Chanel, Oscar de la Renta, and Michael Kors.

Even The Economist has something to say:Next stop, London? Oh Bmore, you make me proud. Here are ze rest of ze vonderful vindows:

Simon, Martin and Wood?

Judge for yourself...

[Bassman Chris Wood and Keystraordinaire John Medeski...or is it?]

...but it looks to me like our favorite self-aggrandizing TV visionary and defender of the good old days of journalism is moonlighting as the fingers leg of the avant garde jazz trio Medeski Martin and Wood.

[The receded hairline, those grand ears, the dark, sunken eyes and that huge forehead scrunched in intense, creative thought...]

Just look at those profiles. David Simon, I'm on to you.

Medeski Martin and Wood played in Bmore back on June 5th, and though my Friday night sun salutationfest overlapped with opener Wood Brothers, a favorite (must be my thing for ruggedly melty voices and upright bassmen), the show kept me rapt with its mixture of infectious funk licks and tight improvisation. Not to mention its Baltimore-themed doppelgangers.