My writing on culture, science and technology has been published widely, including The New York Times, Slate, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Wired, New York Observer, Elle and Salon.com. I've written on everything from bathroom graffiti to evolutionary psychology, computer games to starchitects, and celebrity sex tapes to city planning. Here are some samples.
June 18, 2006
I Quibble
A pretty turn of phrase.
[I]t doesn't matter where you watch life from if your gaze takes in the whole world.Or, to quote Hemingway's Barnes, isn't it pretty to think so?
My life has shifted and so has my perspective. Travelling so much the past year--around ten trips if I'm counting accurately--and shuttling my life's possessions around, this is something I think about a whole lot. Especially as I go forward this year with my work, trying to balance off the need to benefit from certain surroundings with the value of getting, taking, even stealing perspective. You try not to judge, of course, and you avoid the chauvenism for big cities as much as rural hideaways. People have different needs and aptitudes. And abilities to habituate in various locales, whether that be the Sunshine Coast or Palo Alto.
Do I get to be greedy and want both?
Posted by Jeff at 12:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 30, 2006
Grant Wood Hereafter (Or, My New England Travels)
1350 miles, 7 states, 3 nights and 1 evening's hotel accommodation: I've just returned from a lightning tour of New England.
Here's the requisite slideshow, replete with abundant shots of the Hound in various stages of repose. Now if I was a true geek I'd Google Earth the itinerary, but even I've my limits.
It's a part of the world I've wanted to visit since picking up Walden, and I've long drawn the usual pertinent associations with Melville, Dickinson, Emerson, Frost and the gang -- not to mention John Irving and Stephen King. It did not disappoint, especially in the early going throughout the Berkshire Hills (Williamstown, Lenox, North Adams, Bennington) and Vermont's Route 100 and Green Mountain National Park. After New Hampshire, the only thing to get my pulse racing again was the electricity of Boston and a wet frolic in Harvard Yard, perfectly timed to follow graduation week.
My itinerary was a complicated exercise in toe-touching. I gave myself 6 days, not knowing where I'd stop along the way and for how long. As it turned out, the earlier half of the trip was by far the New England I will want to return to. Soon. Cape Cod, Maine and the usual suspects along the Eastern seaboard (Portland, Kennebunk, Provincetown, Newport) did really very little for me. Weather was mixed throughout but, wherever I was, it had a way of magnifying the sense of place.
Nowhere was this sense stronger than between the northern reaches of rural CT and the remote, densely forested stretches of Kancamagus Highway, NH. Here the trip was perfection. My photos do not really reflect these impressions as well as they might, but rest assured there was much more variety than I could have possibly captured along the way. Even with the weather constantly shifting, there was a painterly quality to the light, soil and foliage that is hard to describe short of saying I found myself in a kind of scenic afterlife as it might be rendered by Grant Wood.
I've never seen small-town Americana so appealing. Perfect touches of gothic foreboding throughout. I'll have to be on the look-out for getaways in this area. There is some serious cultural wattage in the summer theatre scene, not to mention relevant off-the-grid galleries like The Clark and MassMOCA. Colour me all kinds of smitten.
Posted by Jeff at 1:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack