Things I learned on my summer vacation

“I have two wolves in my heart. One is loving, and one is vicious, and they’re at war with each other. The grandchild is saying, Which is going to win? And the grandparent is saying, The one I feed.” [Source.]

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Rihanna has a fashion line.

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“Meat Detour Ahead.”

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“Ponding Water Possible.”

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They don’t make children’s wagons they way they used to. Today’s wagons have creature comforts.

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Gravity Hill, Pennsylvania: “Cars roll uphill and water flows the wrong way.” Uh-huh.

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“New England is only in New England.”

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Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey, is at some points the cross-country twin of the Westfield Topanga mall in Canoga Park, California. Compare the mall entrances alongside GSP’s Ruby Tuesday and WT’s Cheesecake Factory. What explains this magic? Westfield.

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My mom and I always choose crab cakes. But I knew that already. (Legal Sea Foods FTW.)

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Chock Full o’Nuts was—once again—on sale at Shop-Rite. Twelve cans to bring back to a world devoid o’Nuts.

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In the Port Authority Bus Terminal, I did not learn what the man with his midsection pressed to the Dyson hand dryer was doing. Nor did I want to.

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A glance at Joan Miró’s object assemblages — Object, for instance — is enough to see that Miró must have influenced Joseph Cornell.

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So many of the paintings at MoMA appear to have dated in ways that far older works have not. I thought of what Emerson said of Plato: “This perpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art.” Some modern art is no longer so modern. Miró is.

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The motion-activated Dyson Airblades in MoMA’s men’s bathrooms are a mess. Water comes from a middle spout. To the right and left, hand dryers. Position your wet hand the wrong way and the dryer sprays water droplets up toward your arm and face. Move your hand too far to the right while drying and a motion-activated soap dispenser kicks in. I was quick enough to dodge the soap that would have dropped onto my shirtsleeve. How can a museum with an exhibit of objects that embody good design have such lousy fixtures in its men’s bathrooms? Elaine reported no such fixtures in the women’s bathrooms.

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One set of MoMA bathrooms adds “Self-Identified” to the placards MEN and WOMEN.

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There’s a guard at the Museum of Modern Art who sharpens his pencil with a handheld sharpener while standing guard.

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It’s possible in MoMA to have a long, wide-ranging, exceptionally pleasant conversation, about everything from rents to design to the influence of weather on museum attendance, with — was he a docent or a guard? I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, so that’s all I’ll say.

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From 1943 to 1947, the Council on Books in Wartime produced Armed Forces Editions, inexpensive paperbacks for distribution to the troops. Among the titles: Great Poems from Chaucer to Whitman (ed. Louis Untermeyer) and A Wartime Whitman (ed. William A. Aiken). In other words, Whitman was a quintessential American poet.

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The Marcal Paper factory in Elmwood Park, New Jersey, burned to the ground earlier this year. The factory’s rooftop sign was a beautiful sight from Route 80.

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American Heroes Smokehouse is a barbecue restaurant with a great backstory. And great food. I wrote a review and said that we ate like happy maniacs. Elaine wrote a review, without reading mine, and said that we ate like raving lunatics. Thank you, Lu and Jim.

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[Mark Trail, May 14, 2019.]

Not me.

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Phebe’s Tavern and Grill has been in business on the Bowery since 1968, before the days of salmon burgers and quinoa salads. The building dates to 1920. Good food, modest prices, the plain wooden floor of an old establishment.

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The Bowery is quite different from my mental image of it, formed from Weegee photographs and the great movie On the Bowery (dir. Lionel Rogosin, 1956). In front of the Bowery Mission, three doddering men looked woefully out of place.

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I was happy to see Joe Brainard’s work at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, but found little difference between seeing the drawings, paintings, and collages themselves and seeing reproductions in books. Is that good, or bad? Beats me. But I love the wit, cheer, and modesty of Brainard’s work.


[Joe Brainard, 30 Squares. 1975. 13 1/2″ × 10 1/2″. Photograph by Michael Leddy. Click for a larger view.]

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What I don’t love: hearing up close the transformation of art into dollars. “Thirty”? That means $30,000. Do those who have come to a gallery only to look typically feel invisible?

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Route 9 is a Massachusetts version of New Jersey’s Route 46.

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J&M Diner in Framingham, Massachusetts, is diner heaven. Breakfast food only, served for breakfast and lunch. I chose bacon and eggs. Elaine chose the sweet potato hash. We both chose well.

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Ben is a wonderful host. But I knew that already.


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Ben’s work is more interesting than I knew.

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The Frank Pepe’s in Chestnut Hill is a superior Frank Pepe’s. (Quality varies greatly from location to location.) The oven at Frank Pepe’s is about the only use of coal I will defend. White clam, quattro formaggi, and spinach, mushroom, and gorgonzola: bliss.

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Naco Taco is a food truck that sits all day, seven days a week, on Boston’s Newbury Street. A torta ahogada cut into four pieces makes a nice little prelude to dinner.

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Glen Baxter has been translated into Spanish: Casi todo Baxter: Nuevas y escogidas ocurrencias.

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A thoughtful library touch, posted in the bathrooms: a page of call numbers for “sensitive subjects.” “We’re always here to help,” says the page, “but sometimes it’s hard to ask. We hope this sign will help you find what you need.” Yes, we go to the library while on vacation.

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Why did Elaine and I never think of going to Sol Azteca? Guacamole, nopalitos (cactus), mole poblano, puerco en adobo, and chicken tostadas.

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Triumphalism aside, the monologue “Growing Up Italian” is startling in its accuracy. Fig tree: my mom recalls one. “Watching the house”: that was my grandparents’ thing. The holiday menu, ending with fruit and nuts: exactly. We heard this unidentified recording on Festa Italiana, from Gannon University’s WERG FM.

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Somewhere in Ohio lives a Bentley owner with the license plate G POUPON.

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Talia knows the cadences of the alphabet song. Bah bah, bah bah, bah bah bah.

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2261.8 miles : 49.7 MPG (lots of wind) : 53 MPH.

More things I learned on my summer vacation
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