Stained Glass Product Placement!

Spotted at the University of the South (Sewanee) with Ben King, ex-chaplain of the Episcopalians at Harvard. Spent the night round a far-place with his New Testament scholar friend, and was very entertained by his complimentary iPad – perhaps warranting the appearance of an Apple laptop on this piece of stained glass…

The Lady

The last weekend in New York I spent going to Liberty and Ellis islands for a closeup of the Lady with Melissa. She is a regal statue. I haven’t seen her up this close before, and the ranger was very good about telling us about her origins. It seems half the monuments in this country were set up by private citizens rather than the government – including this one (though a joint venture between French and American people, the American people having provided the pedestal through a trickle, then a surge, of donations). As a tribute to tacky American taste, the American’s first act upon receiving the whole thing was to peel the torch apart and turn it into a lighthouse, only to realize that the glass didn’t quite hold up to the weather like the copper did. Now it’s gold plated – the sculptor’s original design.

New York New York New York

I’m writing this on the bus as I trundle my way from New York to DC to see Samir. My internet access has been sporadic so I’m just typing out a summary – It’s been an interesting week. I could go on and on. But then New York stories always spool on and on -

• I got in on Monday with Janice to get to her Soho apartment on Labor day weekend
• Tuesday I found myself systematically trawling through the Bronx with Tony, a guy I met last summer at Redeemer Presbyterian who works at Columbia (teaching sociology) and Christianity Today (as a journalist). I met him in Brooklyn at a little cafe, where he whipped out a map of an uncovered portion of the Bronx. My task was to write down the name, address, leaders, phone numbers and neighbourhood attributes of all the religious places of worship on every street we went down, and then colour in the streets as finished when we called it a day. It was fascinating. We met with a pastor who literally built his church with his two hands, had lunch at a Mexican place where we argued briefly about whether the term “evangelical” was worth rescuing, then ran into a Puerto Rican lady who had built a neighbourhood garden with her husband. Along the way, we met a police car chasing down a drug-deal related shooting, and talked about Tony’s start in journalism in newly-opened 1980s China.
• I spent Wednesday morning with the good people of International Arts Movement – at breakfast in a lovely little French pastry shop, then I was off to view Matisse: Radical Reinvention at the Moma. Yeah, the Moma pretty much took up the rest of my day.
• Thursday I woke up groggily and hauled myself off to Housing Works Book Cafe, where I spent a leisurely afternoon typing up a review of the exhibition – fingers crossed it’ll get published; otherwise it will come up here, for sure. Then Janice had a friend over for pasta she had hauled over all the way from Boston and we got a little tipsy on the wine
• Friday I moved over to Rachel’s stunning midtown apartment, and we caught up over Dominican stew. It was Fashion’s Night Out in New York, so after drinks at a Soho bar we were milling about the ultra hip and stalking unabashedly into boutiques to partake in their free champagne and cocktails. Then we had dinner at New Malaysia, the best fix for Singaporean/Malaysian I’ve had in the States.
• Saturday I met up with Melissa to see Lady Liberty – a long overdue expedition, where I learned that the Americans, upon receiving the statue, decided it was not functional enough and knocked off the copper of the torch and turned it into a lighthouse, before realizing this severely weakened the integrity of the structure and hastily returned it to its original metal – only this time overlaid with gold. Melissa found some ancestors on Ellis Island, where I pondered once again whether the American Dream is, after all, a thing I want to chase (As seductive as New York can be, I don’t think it is….) And because it was September the 11th I went to St Patrick’s Cathedral at 7 to hear the memorial service, only to be struck with a splitting headache which made me desperately cab over to Janice’s to lie down for a bit.
• Spent a lazy Sunday morning making breakfast at Janice’s, then getting down to Redeemer’s Hunter College service to hear the legendary Tim Keller, who never fails to deliver. We’ve found Janice a church! Then Ramen with Janice and Rachel, this being my final night in the city.
• Monday, and I spent my last hour in NYC treating myself to some Brazilian pasta on Grand and Broad. I sometimes wonder if there was ever or will ever be a city like this city, but then I realize that this is the story of every metropolis of every time – only this is the New York of our time, and that there will always be great cities, where art and life and high and low and peoples from every corner and every nation gather to work and live and love and hate and dance and kill and laugh and play and cry. And that this one, in all its greatness, is not very different.

Money Buys Unhappiness

“ ’Tis the gift to be simple,” the Shakers sing. Catholic nuns and Buddhist monks take vows of poverty. Why? A new study published online in May in Psychological Science offers a hint. Money—even the thought of it—reduces satisfaction from life’s simple pleasures.

Studies have shown that a person’s ability to savor experiences predicts their degree of happiness. Savoring is defined as the emotions of joy, awe, excitement and gratitude derived during an experience. Psychologist Jordi Quoidbach of the University of Liège in Belgium and his colleagues divided 374 adults, ranging from custodians to senior administrators, into two randomly assigned groups. The first group was shown a picture of a stack of money; the control group was shown the same picture blurred beyond recognition. Then the participants were given psychological tests to measure their ability to savor pleasant experiences. The results showed that people who had been shown the money scored significantly lower.

… Full article here

Francis Collins: Rock, Meet Hard Place

I remember being at the Christian journalism conference two years ago with Nico and Anne and Samir, and we realized that at least three of the sister journals to the Harvard Ichthus had interviewed Francis Collins, including us. He’s the sort of guy who’s exactly in our corner: a kind of C. S. Lewis figure of Science – that is, a militant atheist turned Christian later in life, decorated for his achievements in Science and outspoken about his faith and a champion for the compatibility between Science and Faith. Unfortunately, his courage in voicing his (regrettably unusual) position means he is pretty much attacked by both camps : scientists and his co-religionists, uncomfortably straddling both camps, playing at peacemaker. Now director of NIH, which is in charge of doling out all-important research grants, he’s under attack again, this time from scientists determined to read conspiracy into funding decisions. This New Yorker article provides an interesting portrait of him and account of his conversion, as well as his subsequent struggles, including what’s transpired since Judge Lamberth’s decision to block further embryonic stem cell research.

image from the New Yorker

The Wandering Starts Again…

In a week! I’m in Boston just for another week before I head off again, this time down South.

Here’s the South, according to Wikipedia:

The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, Down South, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive region in the southeastern and south-central United States. Because of the region’s unique cultural and historic heritage, including Native Americans, early European settlements of Spanish, English, French, Scotch-Irish, Scottish, and German heritage,^[4] importation of hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans, growth of a large proportion of African Americans in the population, reliance on slave labor, and legacy of the Confederacy after the American Civil War, the South developed its own customs, literature, musical styles, and varied cuisines that have profoundly shaped traditional American culture.

Again, I’m getting quite a few handful of “What?? Why??”s from the good people of the Northeast… though it’s all more or less jokey. My answer, as usual, is “Cos I want to see it myself!”

So, the itinerary so far is Boston > New York City >Washington, DC > Chattanooga, TN (I’m going to Sewanee university) > Atlanta, GA > TEXAS (yes, I know there are a lot of cities in Texas, I’m not sure where exactly I’m going first)

Atlantis Syndrome

My mudderland! Under water! How??

photos from jaschocolate

Listen to the Singapore Flood Song by Mr Brown!

New York: What Next?

RABBITS are supposed to be easy to kill. The French dispatch them with a sharp knife to the throat. A farmer in upstate New York swears that a swift smack with the side of the hand works. Others prefer a quick twist of the neck.

It didn’t seem so easy at the rabbit-killing seminar held in a parking lot behind Roberta’s restaurant in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn in November.
full article at the New York Times


Slide Show
Recipe: Rabbit Loin with Bitter Greens

Recipe: Tuscan Rabbit Ragù

Holly Henderson for The New York Times

Rabbit leg stuffed with egg, bacon and offal. 

from the New York Times, global taste-makers of Yuppie International.

Isolation = Righteousness?

image source

The First Fish

Coral Fish 848-MN. Violett Pelikan Ink, Fountain Pen, Watercolour. 16th July 2010. 2.5″ X 3.5 “(6.35 cm X 8.89 cm), Strathmore Cold Press Watercolor paper. (c) Judith Huang.

So, by way of an attempt to make money, I am going to make little paintings of fish (and other objects) copied out of my Pictorial Webster’s: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities by John Carrera (though the colours are from my own imagination). This is Coral Fish 848-MN.

I am going to look into making prints of this on postcards and other saleable commodities – any suggestions would be very welcome. As for the painting itself, I may put it on ebay.

Let me know your thoughts on this and how much you would be willing to donate if I sent you a fishie!