Iditarod Dog, etc.

Joe: We’re still moving in the right direction! Meals prepared by Chef Joe this week included pork roast, crown roast of lamb with perfect fried potatoes, and (oh my gosh!) homemade pasta with homemade duck sausage in a mushroom cream sauce! We also had a very nice meal at Logan. Tote dat roast! Lift dat fork!

Art History Corner: I love “30,000 Years of Art” by the Editors of Phaidon, the same people who gave us E.H. Gomrich’s “The Story of Art”, first published in 1950. I haven’t found a review by someone with bona fide art histerical credentials yet, but this review by Morgan Meis touches on the “more art, less talk” issue I’ve been on about for years (Don’t strike me down with a thunderbolt, Ilene!):

http://arthistorynewsletter.com/blog/?p=650

This “artist and writer” says, “I imagine a group of art historians sitting around a table with a sixth or seventh bottle of wine giggling to each other like schoolgirls. ‘Take that, art theorists! We give you a book with all art and no theory. We give you a book that says nothing and simply is what it is. We give you description and description alone. Its subject matter? The entirety of the history of art. Take that!’” Hah! I don’t think you know many art historians, Morgan, my friend. They’re all theorists, much more interested in words, their words, than art. I imagine a group of art historians sitting around the table with their sixth of seventh pot of tea, saying, “Grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble. They’re cuttin’ us out of the loop! Art history has been such a lucrative career ... until now!”

Here’s an article on the NPR site with beautiful photographs (I LOVE the Lioness Demon):

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17936982

Iditarod Dog: I kept checking wunderground.com weather to pick the best time to take Coney out for a quick walk so she could do her thing, biologically speaking. The weather kept getting worse! We finally left at 3PM when it was a sunny 3 degrees, with a wind chill of -20. We broke out all the gear, from double layer hat to Sorel boots rated to -25 degrees. Coney was sporting her fashionable Black Watch plaid trimmed Fido Fleece coat and royal blue Fido Fleece booties. I finally read the bootie documentation after having these babies fall off Coney’s feet numerous times (you wouldn’t think you’d need documentation for booties, would you). The secret appears to be in the first instruction, “Place toggles facing out from dog’s legs.” I was on Bootie Watch duty, and all four stayed on for our entire 15 minute jaunt. The documentation says that most dogs take about ½ hour to acclimate to the booties, but they neglect the most important instruction: give your dog at least one treat for each bootie you put on. We had played around with the booties the last time we had sub zero wind chills, so Coney was ready to go after our photo shoot at the starting line. She trotted along the road, seeming to appreciate the bootie benefits. At certain points on our route, it would’ve been nice to have doggie Stabil-Icers Lite, but Coney knows where her feet are, as they say, and she recovered quickly from the slips. What next? Stay tuned for the Skijoring Report! Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!