This is crazy, A 3,000 year tradition of maintaining a white chalk figure really only visible from above.
It’s chalking day, a cleaning ritual that has happened here regularly for three millennia. Hammers, buckets of chalk and kneepads are handed out and everyone is allocated an area. The chalkers kneel and smash the chalk to a paste, whitening the stony pathways in the grass inch by inch. “It’s the world’s largest coloring between the lines,” says George Buce, one of the participants.
Seth Godin’s blog is worth checking out every day, but today’s post, A Useful Definition of Art, I particularly like:
Art is a human activity. It is the creation of something new, something that might not work, something that causes a viewer to be influenced.
Art uses context and culture to send a message. Instead of only a contribution of beauty or craft, art adds intent. The artist works to create something generous, something that will change us.
Art isn’t painting or canvas or prettiness. Art is work that matters.
It’s entirely possible that you’re an artist.
Everyone can be, if we choose.
His podcast, Akimbo, is quite good also…
Hard to believe 9/11 was 18 years ago. We lost a bunch of friends…
If you have Google Photos you know that Google has an algorithm that identifies certain photos and automatically “enhances” them for you. I don’t know if the algorithm likes sunsets or it’s just because our vacation is on a great sunset beach (so I took lots of sunset pictures), but I got a ton of enhanced photos. These are all basically the same picture from the same vantage point on different days.
One of the great things about Skaket Beach is the crazy tides. At low tide you can walk straight out about a mile. I like going on Google Maps and taking a screenshot of my location…
I wasn’t in a boat, I was standing on sand.
Om Malik has an interesting eclectic blog as well as a great url (om.co). He’s from New York but now lives in San Fran as a tech VC partner. It’s for paragraphs like this, about a visit to NYC, that I read his blog. It’s the strong smell of hustle…
Back in my (current) hometown, I saunter. Here, like a pitcher who suddenly finds a reserve of energy in the middle of the season, my pace picks up. I smell the summer as I move. You know the smell of New York: a heady blend of stench from the gutters, cigarette smoke, and sidewalk stalls selling everything from hotdogs to kebabs. It’s the strong smell of hustle.
And apparently, the Mayor has declared Le Labo Santal 33 the official fragrance of the season. Every girl walking on the street leaves a whiff of it behind. All the beautiful ladies (and they are all lovely) are lost in their own worlds, listening to their AirPods, which seem to be more commonplace now than white sneakers were a few seasons ago. It is no surprise that Apple’s earnings from wearables and accessories are going through the roof.
He’s also a photographer. He splits that pastime into a separate blog:
Sidewalk truth…
Thankfully not my subway stop…
Steve Fischer's Random Blog 