On Vacation, 2009


"HARWICH - Bent over a laptop in the drivers’ seat of her car, Marcia King hunted for a signal. She wanted to connect with the outside world. Just for a few minutes. And then she could go back to her vacation.

"King’s summer home in Harwich Port, like many old Cape Cod houses, doesn’t have an Internet connection. But the Brooks Free Library offers free wireless Internet signal, pulsing out the door even when the doors are closed. King drives to the library parking lot nearly every day, joining other vacationers looking for a quick jolt of home, via the free Internet connection.

“You come here at 10 p.m. at night, and there’s a couple people sitting in the parking lot,’’ said King, who travels from Maine to live on the Cape for two months each summer." (Boston Globe)

I remember a pre-internet vacation one summer with my family on Nantucket, when all hell was breaking loose back at the office. No cellphones, no phone in the rented cottage, a one-mile bike ride into town to a public phone. There was no expectation of constant updates and input, and I had several built-in excuses why I "couldn't get back to you."

I did end up having a couple of long business calls on the public phone at the wharf while watching ferries of tourists come and go, and it was difficult to delete the business file from my mind completely, but it's certainly different - and, I think, worse - today.

Driving While Texting

At 60 miles an hour on a Missouri highway, a 16-year-old driver texts with a friend as a 17-year-old takes the wheel.

"On his 15th birthday, Christopher Hill got his first cellphone. For his 16th, he was given a used red Ford Ranger pickup, a source of pride he washed every week.

"Mr. Hill, a diligent student with a reputation for helping neighbors, also took pride in his clean driving record. “Not a speeding ticket, not a fender bender, nothing,” he said.

Until last Sept. 3. Mr. Hill, then 20, left the parking lot of a Goodwill store where he had spotted a dresser he thought might interest a neighbor. He dialed her to pass along news of the find.

"Mr. Hill was so engrossed in the call that he ran a red light and didn’t notice Linda Doyle’s small sport utility vehicle until the last second. He hit her going 45 miles per hour. She was pronounced dead shortly after.

"Later, a policeman asked Mr. Hill what color the light had been. “I never saw it,” he answered."

A fatal subway crash last year on the Green Line here in Boston was attributed to the subway operator texting a friend as the train blew through a warning light.

I use the subway a lot, and there's not a lot I can do to make it safer, other than report what I observe.

But I sometimes take calls in the car hands-free .

After reading the above story in today's New York Times, I'm going to have to re-think whether any calls are imortant enough to take while I'm driving.

I don't think so.

Lillian Bassman



Lillian Bassman was one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, and, finally, there will be major exhibitions of her photography, as well as a book from Abrams this Fall.

She became disillusioned with the dumbing down of women's fashion that began in the late 1960s/1970s, and walked away from it all.

Now 92, and living in Manhattan, she's finally about to be properly honored.

The images above are from the early 1950s, for Olga and Warner lingerie; much of her work was commercial, for Harper's Bazaar.

"It is easy to see why Ms. Bassman would have found little appeal in the uniform of the sexual revolution, first the childlike clothes of Mod style and then the hippie’s caftans, which seemed intended to counter the mass libidinal energy that had been the whole point. Hers was a world of adult sexuality that wasn’t ranted about. And the new breed of models coming of age in the late ’60s and ’70s unnerved her as well." (New York Times)

Energy Shots


A dispatch from the Antelope Freeway Health Desk, courtesy of the New York Times:

"The power drink of the moment costs 20 times as much per ounce as Coca-Cola, comes in a tiny bottle and tastes so bad that most people hold their noses and down it in a single gulp.

"Near the University of Maryland the other day, students thought nothing of paying $3 or more for a shot. That is $1.50 an ounce; at that price, a 20-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola would sell for $30.

“'It helps me stay up all night when I have work to do,” said Matt Sporre, 20, a sophomore chemical engineering major who said he drank shots three or four nights a week when school was in session. “Those things are going to be the death of my generation,” he added. “Too much caffeine.”

"Mr. Sporre and several others students said the shots worked well in combination with Adderall, a prescription drug for attention deficit disorder that is popular on college campuses. The Adderall helps them focus, they said, and the shot keeps them awake."

Glastonbury 2009



So much has been written about how the original Woodstock Music Festival has never been equaled as a rock and roll spectacle, that it's possible to lose sight of the fact that these kinds of giant festivals continue to happen, forty years on.

Perhaps the modern festivals lack the world-class collection of talent that the original Woodstock had, and maybe they're not quite so large.

But based on the evidence provided by these photographs of Glastonbury 2009, which concluded last week in the United Kingdom, it looks like festival promoters have figured it out how to do it right.

The BlackBerry As Cartoon Thought Bubble


At business meetings, I use my BlackBerry to take notes from time to time. This frequently elicits disapproving looks, and after reading this article in today's New York Times, I think I can begin to understand why.

"'You’ll have half the participants BlackBerrying each other as a submeeting, with a running commentary on the primary meeting,' Mr. Reines said. 'BlackBerrys have become like cartoon thought bubbles.'

"Some professionals admitted that they occasionally sent mocking commentary about the proceedings, but most insisted that they used smartphones for legitimate reasons: responding to deadline requests, plumbing the Web for data to illuminate an issue under discussion or simply taking notes."

I'm probably not going to stop taking notes on my BlackBerry in business meetings, because it is more efficient for me to do so, and I think it's only a matter of time before it is no longer seen as a distraction.

Just Manny Being Manny


Manny Ramirez, still serving his 50-game suspension for using banned substances, paid a visit to his teammates in the LA Dodgers clubhouse the other day, in violation of MLB policy, and had a typical Manny comment:

"I didn't kill nobody, I didn't rape nobody, so that's it," Ramirez said. "I'm just going to come and play the game."

Boston fans, in the Comments section of the Boston Globe, of course had some pointed reactions to this:

"I didn't kill nobody, I didn't rape nobody"
The man child puts it all into perspective for us. Manny, we are fools to judge you..... you moron.
Posted by jdub June 10, 09 06:37 PM

I wonder how much the LA fans like the whole "Manny being Manny" show now. Total "We told you so!" moment.
Like my ex-Wife....we had some good times, I have some great memories...but she's someone else's problem now.
Posted by Chris June 10, 09 07:13 PM

There's gotta be a couple of unsolved murders and rapes in L.A....since you brought it up Manny...where were you?
Posted by Artiepus June 10, 09 07:41 PM

Defense lawyers everywhere should take note of that for their clients:
"Your honor, I stand here accused of stealing a car so I could sell drugs. But yo, check it out. I didn't rape nobody. I didn't kill nobody. So that's it."
Posted by JimR June 10, 09 08:03 PM

Obey Shepard Fairey - Supply And Demand

I recently visited the Shepard Fairey "Supply And Demand" exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.

Though his name may be unfamiliar, I suspect that his viral image of Barack Obama will not be:


I first became aware of Shepard Fairey in the early Nineties, when his “Obey Giant” images began appearing on buildings, bridges and a wide range of other urban architecture in Providence and Boston.




After my exposure to the breadth of his work, seen and considered in a museum setting, I’ve concluded (with many others) that Shepard Fairey is this generation’s Andy Warhol, only better.

His images of Rock And Roll people were one of my favorite parts of the exhibition.

Here's cover art he did for the recent Led Zeppelin reissue:


And here’s Debbie Harry:



Learn more about Shepard Fairey here.

Showtime's "Nurse Jackie"


"This show tells us what anyone who has ever stayed in a hospital already knows: that nurses, not doctors, are the cornerstones of the patient experience. More to the point, it keeps up with the speed of everyday life. The sorts of moral dilemmas that would take up an entire episode of "Grey's Anatomy" - organ donation, assisted suicide - pass by here without a blink. Characters make their choices, then move on. This is a show about consequences, not actions." (Joanna Weiss, Boston Globe)