Friday Round Up: The "Maybe It Was Art After All" Edition

When I posted last week about the peace signs and other things I saw in the cracks in the sidewalks and streets, I was just having fun with it.

But a few days later an email landed in my inbox from Colossal, a website dedicated to "Art, Design, and Visual Culture," and one of the highlighted articles in the email was a piece about some street artwork by Rachel Sussman, called Sidewalk Kintsukoroi. It is based on the Japanese art of kintsugi, described as "...the ancient technique that traditionally involves the process of fixing broken pottery with a lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, resulting in an a repair that pays homage to the object’s history ..." -- except that Sussman used gold paint to fill in cracks in the streets. Actual gold, in actual streets. (That's not quite true; she used tree resin, bronze and gold dust. But really - gold dust?!)

Here are some of the pictures from the article:

So, hey - now I don't feel quite so much like a silly ten year old for my "cracked" observations. However, I don't think I'll be running out to buy gold dust anytime soon to fill in the cracks in our streets.

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Have you ever noticed how, after first hearing of an idea or a word or a term, it seems to pop up again and again? Like, for instance, how that email came to my attention right after my "art" post?

Some people call that coincidence; others attribute great meaning to it. I tend to believe that it's just that we don't notice stuff until it's already been planted in our heads somehow.

It turns out there's a name for that. It's called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, or alternatively "frequency illusion." You can read more about it here, if you're interested.

I love Google. That website is the first one that came up when I was looking for a quote I'd heard long ago that described what I was trying to say. I didn't find the quote I wanted, but I learned something new.

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Aside from that, I've been reading about political stuff in the world. And reading. And reading. Some day my bottom will turn completely flat from sitting in this chair.

The latest article of interest that I read is this one by David Frum in The Atlantic. Fair warning: It's long. But if you are wondering what ordinary citizens can do to save U.S. democracy from potential serious harm under the current administration, he speaks to that at the very end of the article. (The Atlantic is described by Wikipedia as "a high-quality review organ with a moderate worldview" and David Frum is a senior editor for it, as well as a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. Given his background, it's interesting to read his sobering thoughts on the current president.)

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I've gotten out for a few walks, although I had to start slowly again because I missed some time during the snowstorm's aftermath. But I did get a few pictures I liked.

This is the ice breaking up on our tidal river:

And I caught this crow in the edge of my shot, a happy accident:

We had a cloudburst yesterday followed by an enormous, brilliant rainbow that looked as if it was just above the houses in the next street. It faded from view so quickly that I barely caught it with my camera before it disappeared, like a faint echo of a song:

And that's it for this Friday.

If you made it to the end, thanks for reading!

Happy Weekend to all.