Square meals and round

Yesterday we walked a mile or so through gorgeous weather down to the Morgan Library, always a high spot.  The featured artist was Josef Albers, whose spare work was technically exciting.  Squares of oil paint on paper, studies for his Homage to the Square, which is really just a series of paintings of juxtaposed squares.

He carefully worked out his compositions with subtly varying colors and sizes of squares, calculating their dimensions and comparing one to another – it really appealed to the proto-scientist in me; he was experimenting just as surely as if he were working in a laboratory with test tubes.

The absolute essence of minimalism:  How does this color feel?  How does it feel next to this one?  Maybe the man on the street wouldn't get much out of the series.  This guy off the street loved it.

We went to the dining alcove and shared a plate of little sandwiches and confections, and then of course hit the museum shop.  I bought a book bag – the one I just bought at the MIT Coop is fractionally too large for my bicycle panniers.  I can stuff it partly in, but then it can pop out when I hit a chuck hole – not something you want to do more than once, with a computer in the bag.

We walked back uptown to the New York Public Library, where they have a fine show celebrating "Lunch Hour NYC," about how that meal and time has changed over the centuries.  A lot of fun stuff about the late lamented Automat, which I loved so much as a kid.  (That memory is starting to date you – the last incarnation closed in 1991.)  They opened a century ago.

Of course we had to head for lunch after that, and we went to our usual haunt in that area, Le Pain Quotidien.  We got a fairly quiet corner and enjoyed sandwiches, mine an open-faced curried tuna salad with apple slices on a big round of rye.  Then we made our way back to the hotel to work and rest for awhile.

For dinner we just hit the bricks, and within two blocks found a Japanese barbecue, Gyu-Kaku, which was wonderful!  I'd been to one in LA about ten years ago, but Gay had never had the experience.  It's a dry version of the shabu-shzabu "hot pot," where you dip raw meat and vegetables into hot oil.  In gyu-kaku, there's a central pit with a barbecue grill, and you put slices of raw meat and vegetables over the coals and roast them to your liking, and then dip them in a variety of sauces.  I like it better – less guilt, but equally delicious.  I had an iced plum wine with it, a pleasant indulgence.

Took a picture of the moon outside the restaurant.  



Home before ten to sleepily watch TV.