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And we'll swim from these island shores till there's a fear of drowning
Yesterday I made a concerted effort to get out of the house for something that was not a doctor's appointment or a political event, though I have several of the latter on my calendar. I met Dean at the Harvard Business School in Allston and he showed me some of the small arts and treasures scattered throughout the campus: the sun clock outside the Class of 1959 Chapel and the water garden inside, containing the first ornamental carp I have ever met that did not boil up out of the water at me in hopes of snacks; the eight-sided mosaic of Tethys from Roman Antioch, set into the atrium floor of Morgan Hall and surrounded by spilling water, the goddess herself circled by fish and dolphins; the oak-and-brass horseshoe trading post of the Old New York Stock Exchange in the basement of Baker Library; the marriage-like bronze frieze of "Credit: Man's Confidence in Man," originally displayed at the 1939 World's Fair and now residing in one of the tunnels that link the buildings of the Business School and wider Harvard. We came aboveground into an exhibit on Edwin H. Land and Polaroid Corporation that I would like to revisit, assuming they'll let me back in when unaccompanied by someone with library privileges. I finished John le Carré's The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life (2016) on the way over and returned home with a copy of David A. Moss' Democracy: A Case Study (2017) and a signature from Dean who helped prepare a number of the cases. The flourless halva brownies from Tatte's are impressively dense and sticky and should probably not be eaten by people in the act of walking to catch a train, but here we are. For dinner ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel and I made Totally Inauthentic Dalcha (tamarind pulp yes, curry leaves no, substituted Aleppo pepper for red chili powder and as God is my witness I thought we had turmeric) with the lentils we had soaked since last night and the lamb chop in the freezer. I had some idea of watching a movie, but instead I wrote about one while the internet intermittently went out. Today has been mostly work and the news being mostly bad. Autolycus has decided that the best place in the apartment is sprawled across the keyboard while my hands are attempting to use it; he purrs at a pitch of extreme emotional blackmail, grooms my hands in hopeful distraction, and I fear has discovered that the volume on my computer changes when he steps on the function keys. He is a very good cat.
derspatchel and I made Totally Inauthentic Dalcha (tamarind pulp yes, curry leaves no, substituted Aleppo pepper for red chili powder and as God is my witness I thought we had turmeric) with the lentils we had soaked since last night and the lamb chop in the freezer. I had some idea of watching a movie, but instead I wrote about one while the internet intermittently went out. Today has been mostly work and the news being mostly bad. Autolycus has decided that the best place in the apartment is sprawled across the keyboard while my hands are attempting to use it; he purrs at a pitch of extreme emotional blackmail, grooms my hands in hopeful distraction, and I fear has discovered that the volume on my computer changes when he steps on the function keys. He is a very good cat.
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the marriage-like bronze frieze of "Credit: Man's Confidence in Man,"
Oh that's *adorable*.
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Rabbit, rabbit!
Oh that's *adorable*.
I kind of want them to have a fandom. Just, not Wall Street. Nobody needs that many Objectivist AUs.
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It looks really good so far. I'm just hoping it won't depress me by comparison with the present day.
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On that front, do you want to finally hit the Semitic Museum on Saturday afternoon? Failing that, I *may* see you on the Common Sunday, tho' I think I'm on the hook for ringing first.
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If I am not helping my mother clean the house for guests, sure! Otherwise, when can we plan on it?
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It was. Garlic, ginger, shallots, green cardamom pods, cinnamon, chile pequin (again, because I had no other whole dried chili peppers) and home-clarified butter were also involved. There were no survivors.
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I totally misread the second sentence of this as "I met [A] dean [OF] the Harvard Business School..." and was all set to ask you why you were meeting such a person. But I see I was mistaken. It all makes much more sense now.
Off to read your Patreon review now.
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He's asleep on my lap as we speak. I have needed to get up and get something to drink for the last half-hour, but there are special places in hell for people who disturb the repose of their cats.
I totally misread the second sentence of this as "I met [A] dean [OF] the Harvard Business School..." and was all set to ask you why you were meeting such a person.
I'm sorry! No, I have not decided to apply to HBS, nor do I imagine they would even accept me if I did. I am not an entrepreneur. I've added the link to Dean's website; he has no social media presence that I know about except Facebook.
Off to read your Patreon review now.
Enjoy!
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Flourless halva brownies sound amazing.
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They wouldn't have occurred to me because I usually just eat halva by itself, but they were ridiculous.
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The combination of the greenhouse and the water smells like the rainforest at the Franklin Park Zoo. I had not thought about it in years, but the sensory memory thumped me in the back of the head as soon as we entered. Fewer bird cries, though.
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Sounds like a balm of a day. (And cat.)
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*Googles*
Okay, also a cartoonist. This Dean drew Tangents, of which there are almost no examples online, which is a shame.
Sounds like a balm of a day. (And cat.)
It was nice.
(I am actually typing this with Autolycus climbing all over my arms. He forgots that he is no longer a tiny kitten and cannot curl up on my shoulder and hide under my hair. He gives it the old college try, though.)
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I like that style a lot. I know it went out of fashion as badly as monumental architecture, but it works for me. Especially widen the range of representation in your allegorical figures and it's valuable.
The scrap of speech was interesting, too - I wonder what on earth they were meaning by it, in 1939? I mean, why that, at the World's Fair?
It was a miracle of the modern age, I suppose. This is the most information I could find about the frieze online, confirming the only thing I remember from the museum label: that it was commissioned and displayed by the credit institution of Dun & Bradstreet. I'll look at it more closely when I go back.