№ 448. A Bucket List for an Extended Lockdown

The plague has the real world on lockdown. Thankfully, not the "Westworld."

Whittier Daily News

Here's a list of things to do during our extended free time:

1. Get involved in the community. Red Cross.

2. Visit museums.

3. Tour libraries, borrow and read books.

4. Plan the next trip. Pre-Visit or travel to countries and cities: Moscow Metro; Along Dusty Roads; and, Cool Hunting.

5. There's still free television, cable TV, Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV and other streaming services.

6. Brush up on or, at least, keep up with the unfolding current events. The pandemic will pass sooner or later. But we need to hit the ground running. We lost an entire month already. Ah yes, I faintly remember the concept of deadlines and conferences. Yup.

7. Keep in touch, stroll, curate the world, troll and stalk on social media. We could do this so well before the plague. There's so much more time to waste now.

8. House chores, laundry and sundry. Clean out the ref., that butter looks green.

№ 444. Virtual Tours in the Age of Covid

Max Gustafson

Here's a safer and cheaper way to travel while the world is on quarantine: virtual tours.

Soon, I think, we can reinvent the internet and involve the other senses in the virtual tours. For example, we can walk through the tour and touch the exhibits, if allowed. Or smell and taste them, if the curators want us to sample them.

Fast forward to science fiction reality about a hundred years from now. After this 2020 pandemic becomes an uneventful entry in history, I look forward to teleporting directly to any tourist attraction, museum, restaurant, concert on the planet or off.

Teleporting will dispense with a lot of the necessary inconveniences of travel in the present like check-in, immigration, pre-departure wait and baggage carousels. Viruses and other contaminants, like terrorists, can also be safely isolated in the ether before they reach their destinations. Some thought.

№ 408. Museum of a History of Ideas through Square Lenses

№ 69. Next Best Thing

If we can't fly to New York, we'll settle with this small gem: A curated tour.

№ 17. Grave of Fireflies

Every creation myth needs a devil.
Every devil craves an adversary
Who will slay him by the heel of her feet.

№ 16. Wrinkles in Time

J. Paul Getty Museum, August 2006. This guy
(I forget his name, probably a Greek philosopher
or Roman senator) looks like a distinguished
Magneto, without his helmet. 

“I don’t really think about that … I’m 34 but I remember when I first went to Los Angeles. I was 24 – an agent who was going to take me on at the time thought I was 35 … I quite enjoy the lines on my forehead because they show my life. That’s my history and I like to see that in other people. Like this wrinkle is due to some girl who broke my heart. I don’t want to escape it in any way.”--- Michael Fassbender (aka Magneto)

№ 12. Love After Love

Viewing Jackson Pollack at the MOMA, New York

№ 9. At the Post Office

On the last day of our trip last year, I bought these postcards from the stamps museum in Singapore. They arrived quite late---3 weeks after I mailed them in the museum. Airmail, although considered snail-paced now, still works! Real postcards look and feel better, too.

Maybe the post office is still relevant in the age of gmail.

Chapter 1: In the Beginning….

The email thread below began the big bang (or perhaps, more accurately, the small blip). The idea of a blog had been with me for years now. I just wasn’t prepared with the contents, visuals and the commitment.

As some force would will it, the edited conversation pushed this idea into the blogosphere. I stirred the primordial soup, ignited the burner and… 


*KABLAM!*