Stuck like a plum in a pound cake for a decade at the Philadelphia Inquirer, I wondered where to eat. Of course I cooked or defrosted and was lucky to have the progenitor of Whole Foods, Austin, Texas' Fresh Fields, walking distance from both my desk and apartment -- I lived right across the street from Walter Annenberg's Inquirer castle, a footstep commute. The Rodin Museum was a few blocks away, but you can't eat marble. Most of my colleagues had homes in the suburbs, so I rarely got invited. I didn't understand why they were there, … [Read more...]
Writing: My 9/11 Time Machine
Like many of my colleagues, I am quesy about the full-scale media attack on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Of course, I understand the civic need to weight the event and personal need to recount our losses, but I am less sure about the form any media memorial should take. Still, I'm going to take a risk and post a piece I wrote right after 9/11 for the Philadelphia Inquirer, if only to demonstrate to myself how words can erase a decade. I was then a back-of-the-book arts editor, and though departments dissolved as we all pitched in to … [Read more...]
MoMA Raises Price Again, Slits Own Throat Again
On September 1, walk-in admission for adults at New York's Museum of Modern Art goes from $20 to $25, from $12 to $14 for students. Art lovers under 16 are still free, and here's the press release. First, transparency: yours truly has done and still does freelance work for the museum. Yet I'm sure you know where I come down on this. MoMA is a business, a not-for-profit business to be sure, but still, a business should never chase customers away. Perhaps its tax-exemption should be applied on a sliding scale: the higher the price of … [Read more...]