I stepped into the muck with crocs, my foot instantly started sinking. The more I attempted to wriggle free, the deeper I sunk. As a former scientist prone to rather deep thoughts, I made a mental note to self, “the mud is rather cold and slimy and I’ve totally underestimated the suction forces of crocs in muck.” I slipped my foot out and dug out my crocs with my bare hands and proceeded to walk barefoot. The unusually high arch of my foot formed an air pocket that didn’t cave in like the ethylene-vinyl acetate foam material of crocs. I was born with mud walking adaptations and proceeded to ..read more

When listening to Kahn lecture about his Venice Congressional Hall design, it’s as important to listen to what Kahn didn’t talk about as much as what he did talk about. Kahn spent 6 years working on this proposal that would have spanned across the Canale delle Galeazze like a suspension bridge, with an expressed sloped post-tensioned concrete slab replete with two stair towers that would have risen from opposite banks of the canal. His proposal was ultimately rejected by city officials like Le Corbusier’s hospital, the Palazzo dei Congressi, because it didn’t work with the historic ..read more

In his essay “Laughing with Kafka”, David Foster Wallace outlines the pitfalls of literary analysis. “We all know that there is no quicker way to empty a joke of its peculiar magic than to try to explain it.” Some subjects are hard to communicate. There’s a futility in analyzing writing with writing. “This is a lot like the teacher's feeling at running a Kafka story through the gears of your standard undergrad-course literary analysis-plot to chart, symbols to decode, etc. Kafka, of course, would be in a unique position to appreciate the irony of submitting his short stories to this kind of hi ..read more

If you smoke marijuana in Amsterdam, it’s legal, but if you deal weed in Indonesia, you face 12 years of hard jail time… if you chew gum and spit it on the ground in NYC it makes a stain on the street, but if you’re caught in Singapore spitting gum, you’re fined $2000…. if you’re a woman in Saudi Arabia, you wear a burqa and cover everything except your eyes, but if you’re a Maori woman in New Zealand you expose your breasts and cover your pubic area with bunches of fragrant plant material. If you were black in Africa in the 1700’s you would be captured, enslaved, and transported to the Americ ..read more

From 1515 til the late 1930s, Dürer's rhinoceros woodcut image appeared in school textbooks throughout Germany. The level of detail Durer imparted to the rhino lulls one into thinking Durer knew what he was doing and the rhino was legit.  However, upon close inspection, you can see a small twisted fictitious horn on its back. Look more closely, and you notice Durer’s depiction shows the animal with hard plates that cover its body like sheets of spotted turtle shells, ruffled fabric scarf around its throat, a full breast plate of chest armor, and scaly legs. Exactly what kind of beast is t ..read more

For the past 3 months I have been suffering tremendous writer’s block. I’ve been contemplating a lecture delivered by Lou Kahn at Ball State University (Louis I. Kahn, "Architecture", 1971-04-14 - YouTube), which sounds like a sermon in metaphysics, a standup comedy routine called the Bicentennial Prayer by Richard Pryor (The Sermon_Richard Pryor - YouTube) which sounds like a sermon in critical race theory, and some strange idiosyncrasies in Albrect Duhrer’s famous rhinoceros wood cuts (Dürer's Rhinoceros - Wikipedia). If I were a PhD student, my thesis would be titled som ..read more

                          At the outside corner of the L-shaped Brion family cemetery he spent 10 years designing, in a spot where dead flowers used to be thrown away, Scarpa is buried standing up in knight’s position …"If there was an elegant way to die, it was his: he died in Japan in the land he had loved most, after Veneto where he first saw the light. He was wrapped in a great Kimono, an honour the people of that far off land reserve for their greatest sons and laid in a wooden box, a bed a cradle,” as the poet Ungaret ..read more

I was a couple months overdue for a teeth cleaning but dreaded visiting the dentist because I found out fully vaccinated friends were getting very sick. K. was remarking more persistently I was getting stains on my teeth and they seemed to be worsening by the week. So I booked an appointment.  Immediately after I arranged the appointment, I started regretting my decision. I got morose and asked my kids, “how will you feel when I’m gone? Are you going to miss me?” K. said, “Stop the guilt trips. You and the kids went to the dentist in the height of the pandemic, when there were no ..read more

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Forests around Vienna “We used the North Trail and found it to be very peaceful with very few other hikers. The steady elevation gain makes for some good exercise but nothing too strenuous if you are in reasonable shape. There are some excellent views and beautiful landscapes to enjoy - you won't regret your time hiking on Turtleback Mountain!” The Tripadvisor site for Turtleback Mountain boasted many reviews similar to the one listed above plus a 4.5 star rating. Additionally, the travel guide I borrowed from the library featured a romantic photo of windswept grassy knolls overl ..read more