Senegal 2010

The Senegalese are among the friendliest people in the world. Given the challenges they face as a people, this is magnified ten-fold when considering the grace with which they shared their homes and hearts with us this past week. Below is a rather large sampling of still images from our week-long visit to work with…

Dakar

View Larger Map As I write this, I am taking meds to fight off malaria. I am leaving for Dakar this morning for a week and the meds are a final, though ongoing, step in a series of vaccines administered to me en masse (The first of two rounds knocked me for a loop for…

Plaça de Catalunya: Baila!

This evening, I was heading to dinner in Sarrià when, to my surprise, upon entering the metro station @ Plaça de Catalunya, I found myself in the middle of a impromptu performance by some Cuban musicians – baila!!!

Kicking the Habits of Double-Glazing

The first week of living in a new place is somewhere up pretty high on the list of things that don’t get any easier with practice. Like a new anything, after the initial infatuation wears off, what’s left is this: the realization that what worked before is no longer valid here. Here, in a new…

The Irony of Beauty

This is an astounding metaphor for our culture and the gravity of our situation as lifeforms on a planet we know next-to-nothing about: enveloped by the inelegance of our current technology, with wires and all kinds of ugly schwack running up and down the walls surrounding and protecting him, Ed Lu is aboard the International…

Herskovits and the Heart of Blackness

A compelling examination of the career and controversy surrounding Melville J. Herskovits, the pioneering American anthropologist of African Studies and controversial intellectual who established the first African Studies Center at an American university and authored, “The Myth of the Negro Past.”:

Michael Pollan and The Botany of Desire

Author Michael Pollan says: The tulip, by gratifying our desire for a certain kind of beauty, has gotten us to take it from its origins in Central Asia and disperse it around the world. Marijuana, by gratifying our desire to change consciousness, has gotten people to risk their lives, their freedom, in order to grow…

BEEF

How to handle a whole side of beef: Meat Appreciation: A NYC Restaurant Honors the Whole Animal from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

Maurice Sendak : Where The Wild Things Are

Spike Jonze worked with Lance Bangs on this new documentary about Maurice Sendak, who wrote and illustrated Where The Wild Things Are, which is in post-production having been directed by Jonze. Click on the image to see the trailer for the documentary.

You’re a wolf

Sam Easterson used to work at the Walker. Here’s what he’s doing now: The Museum of Animal Perspectives (MAP) collects and displays wildlife imagery that has been captured using remote sensing cameras. Through the presentation and interpretation of this imagery, the MAP endeavors to expand the public’s capacity to empathize with animals and plants. Now,…