Thanksgiving Break 2011

Well folks, the rumors are true. I was able to escape to the East Coast for a few days with Sarah and we spent the Thanksgiving holidays in New York. It was incredible and it ended all too quickly. Below are a few pictures from our jaunt, not necessarily in a particular order.

This is the Vanderbilt Mansion, in Hyde Park, New York. It sits atop a bluff overlooking the Hudson River and a 700-acre property that was deeded to the National Park Service by the Vanderbilt family over 70 years ago, and remains almost completely faithful to the original design and decor. This is runt among the family's 40 mansions scattered around, weighing in at a measly 50,000 square feet.

This is the cascading spill-over from the dam nearby Yorktown Heights. The water is New York City's reservoir, clean and green.

Central Park is a grand place on a surprisingly pleasant afternoon in late November. Seen here are the model sailboats on the pond, looking towards Upper East Side.

Shown here is the Interior of St. Thomas' Cathedral, a pleasant and less popular attraction in the hustle of Manhattan, mostly empty, serene, ornate, and punctuated only by the periodic passing subway deep in the ground below.

On the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, a large assortment of the Macy's Day Parade balloons are brought out for public viewing surrounding the block of the Natural History museum. Seen behind us the Spiderman and Ronald McDonald, currently taking a nosedive.

Not surprisingly, Times Square was packed and over-illuminated. It is somewhat surreal.

We managed to fit some culture into our packed schedule, visiting the MoMA for a bit in the afternoon. Sarah is noticeably a connoisseur of the arts.

Skiing

Fam: it was great to see you all this weekend. Thanks for the memories! A terrific time was had by all.

A majestic flight

Today I said goodbye to Grant for the next 22 months. I surprised him in his room with breakfast burritos from Rancherito's, mango juice and Ritter Sport bars. A proper send-off, I must say (and I agree with Mom... definitely one of the perks of working at the MTC). He's on the plane now, off to a distant land where he will reign love and peace. To a mission well served.

Celebrity Playlist 4.0

Well ladies and gentlemen, it is here! The most comprehensive and stunning playlist I could possibly produce, reflective of the right now in my life (Unfamiliar with a CP? Read my old blog entry about the CP 3.0). Want it? Come and get it... my views on music piracy are generally relaxed when it comes to these mixes. Make yours, and I promise I'll listen intently if you share it.

Nothing Can Stop Us (If We Stick Together)
1. "Hall" - Baths
2. "Baby" - Bullmeister
3. "Lost Dream" - Digits
4. "Sticks & Stone" - Jónsi
5. "Ready For the World" - How to Dress Well
6. "Cover Your Tracks (Teen Daze Remix)" - Young Galaxy
7. "Loner" - Stay Ali
8. "4 Me (Beaumont Remix)" - Cassette Club
9. "Into the Clouds" - The Sound of Arrows
10. "Young Blood" - The Naked and Famous
11. "Heart" - Blood Diamonds
12. "Sunkissed" - Muffin
13. "Crazy Enough (Diamond Cut Remix)" - Cullen
14. "I Can Make the Pain Disappear (Monsieur Adi Remix)" - Fear of Tigers
15. "Shook (Mobb Deep v. Sigur Ros)" - Emancipator
16. "Pascal (The Scottish Enlightenment)" - Dan Lyth
17. "Til Kingdom Come" - Coldplay

Oooh, he must have turned awesome sometime in the night...

He's leaving for Chile in a week. He has the finest East County demeanor, no contest. Stay true, brother G.

Across the Water and Into the Sky

As I saw it, yesterday.

Art and imbalance

In Alain de Botton's “The Architecture of Happiness,” there is a passage as follows:

“We are drawn to call something beautiful whenever we can detect that it contains in a concentrated form those qualities in which we personally, or our societies more generally, are deficient. We respect a style which can move us away from what we fear and towards what we crave; a style which carries the correct dosage of our missing virtues. That we need art in the first place is a sign that we stand in almost permanent danger of imbalance, of failing to regulate our extremes, of losing our grip on the golden mean between life's great opposites: boredom and excitement, reason and imagination, simplicity and complexity, safety and danger, austerity and luxury.

If the behavior of babies and small children is any guide, we emerge into the world with our tendencies to imbalance already well entrenched. In our playpens and high chairs, we are rarely far from displaying either hysterical happiness or savage disappointment, love or rage, mania or exhaustion – and, despite the growth of a more temperate exterior in adulthood, we seldom succeed in laying claim to lasting equilibrium, traversing our lives like stubbornly listing ships on choppy seas.

Our innate imbalances are further aggravated by practical demands. Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored. Society ends up containing a range of imbalanced groups, each hungering to sate its particular psychological deficiency, forming the backdrop against which our fervently heated conflicts about what is beautiful play themselves out.”

The book is more narrowly concerned with the influence of art and architecture on us, as psychological and emotional beings, but I think there is a vaster reach to this idea than just the aesthetic environment we find ourselves in. The people we seek, the things we do, the dreams we have, the books we read, the places we go, the clothes we wear, the schedules we create, the relationships we make, the plans we share, the prayers we offer ... these are all indicative of the internal yearnings we have to correct our perceived imbalances. What do we find beautiful, grand, intriguing, noble, pleasant, virtuous, good, or even praiseworthy? Think about it.