IF - Flying

New Orleans

Laura and I are not the most impulsive people in the world especially when it comes to traveling but every now and again a last minute trip just comes together. We found out earlier this week that the very talented Andrew Bird was coming to New Orleans. We bought tickets for his concert on Friday morning and were on the road early Saturday. Eight hours of pine trees later we were in New Orleans.

The orange is the route down and the purple is the route back. The yellow circle is Angola.

We stayed at India House, a great hostel north of the French Quarter.
Upon arriving we took a cable car down to the quarter.

I was surprised at the sheer number of tourists for a non-festival weekend. The Mississippi River

On the advice from a hostel worker we ate at Coops Place which was across the street from the French Market. We shared a sampler plate of Jambalaya, Red Beans and Rice, and some tomato thing. It also came with a piece of fried chicken-which turned out to be the best piece of chicken we had ever eaten. We promptly order two more pieces. It cost $1 for an extra leg; that $1 was the most well spent dollar of my entire life. Oh and they had a couple of bulldogs in the back.

Bourbon Street

The concert was great. We found a good spot overlooking the stage. Bird is a violinist who sings folk-rock songs. He effortlessly switched between violin (picking and drawing the bow), classical guitar, singing, and whistling (by far the best whistler I have heard).

One of the cemeteries, all the grave are above ground due to historical flooding raising people from the ground.

On the way back we stopped at the Angola Prison Rodeo. Angola is Louisiana’s prison for those with life sentences and is located on 18000 acres next to Mississippi. We went primarily for the food which is grown, made, and served by the inmates. We had awesome gumbo and fried potato twists. We got into a long conversation with one guy who went by Gator. He was arrested at the age of 24 because he killed someone in a bar room fight. He was now around 50 and worked as a horse farrier. We couldn’t take any pictures inside the rodeo, but imagine a state fair run by convicts. We had a good time.

One of the prison back roads.

On leaving the prison we needed to use their ferry to cross the Mississippi. We got a little lost (did I mention this prison is huge) but managed not to get arrested, killed, or eaten (Google has the ferry location in the wrong place by the way). It was an awesome experience to be ferried across the Mississippi. The Ferry on the Mississippi River.

Getting a little turned around, we found a cool old silo.

IF - Germs

In the Wild West of the Micro Universe you’ve got to watch out for them bacteria wrangling Bacteriophages.

In other news, Laura and I are off to New Orleans tomorrow morning on an impulse concert trip. Details and picture to come next week.

Perot Museum of Nature and Science

Dallas is to get a Morphosis building and a new natural history museum, all in one project! Too bad we probably won’t be here to see it finished.

http://www.archtracker.com/perot-museum-of-nature-and-science-morphosis-arhictects/2009/09/

Mountains in Denmark

Though it is kind of long this is a really interesting talk given by a Danish architect (he is pretty funny too):

Herb and Dorothy

Laura and I met up with Grace on Saturday afternoon to go see the documentary “Herb and Dorothy” which was playing at the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth.

The film told the story of Herb and Dorothy Vogel, a couple who lived their entire life in Manhattan. He was a postal worker and she was a librarian; they lived in a very small rent controlled one bedroom apartment. What made them utterly fascinating was that they were also one of New York’s foremost art collectors. Since the 1960s they had been buying works from unknown and emerging artists in NY; they lived on Dorothy’s salary and bought art with Herb’s salary. By the time they decided to donate their collection the National Gallery, they had amassed close to 5000 works which was valued in the millions.

A few notes:

-It is rare in our society to have people so entirely dedicated to something with no though about profit or economic value. They never sold a single work, and their entire life was lived simply, modestly.

-They were as interested in the artists –as actual people/friends/ human beings- as they were in the art. They weekly made phones calls to numerous artists to see what they what new art they were up to and were seemingly constantly on the move to galleries and artist’s studios.

-They sought the beauty in the unconventional and the unusual. They were intent on seeing the thought and development of an artist’s work.

It was a well made documentary and will be well worth your time when it comes out on video (I don’t think it will be seeing many theater showings in Texas). Here is the trailer:

IF - Pattern

Three examples of the Golden Spiral pattern in nature.

And the inks.