A & B.

A is for Azalea, B is for Bucky.

Board of Education member: Rock Creek Hills Park not "adequate size," so Montgomery Hills site would be needed, too.

Françoise Carrier, Chair of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Planning Board, attended the April 17th meeting of the Montgomery County Board of Education. There, Board of Education member Laura Berthiaume told Ms. Carrier that, due to the small size of Rock Creek Hills Park, if Montgomery County Public Schools were to take the park to build Bethesda-Chevy Chase (B-CC) middle school #2, then it would soon become necessary to build a third B-CC middle school, on the site of the former Montgomery Hills Junior High (currently the Yeshiva and Torah School of Greater Washington).

You can read their exchange on Kensington Patch.

To help spread the word, after you click through to the blog post on Patch, click on the Facebook "recommend" button on that page!

On average, each bike has a fork.

A mysterious video of what appears to be a pushmi/pullyu tandem bicycle has appeared on the Facebook page of Paul Component Engineering (There's no way to embed, or even to link to, the video here; you need to click through to their Facebook page, and then find and click on the video, which is entitled "Trust us. We're professionaaaaaaaahhhhhhls.").

On the other hand (h/t: cycleexif.com), Olli Erkkilä's beautiful and poetic Graduation Project at the Institute of Design in Lahti, Finland was a "forkless" cruiser:

A & B.

A is for Azalea; B is for Bucky (and ball).

Mr. Shteyngart comes to Washington.

One of America's great living writers will read in Washington DC this Friday: Gary Shteyngart appears at the Folger Elizabethan Theatre, April 20th at 7:30 PM. 

That's at 201 East Capital Street, SE, Washington DC. Tickets available here.

Simple Stories & Complex Narratives

Read my new post, reflecting on the question, "If your organization is seeking to solve a complex problem, must it always share complex stories?" Inspired, of course, by Invisible Children's Kony 2012, the most viral video ever.

I don't happen to think simple stories are needed to share complex narratives. (I use "narrative" to refer to the larger story and frame, and "story" as the small episodes and moments that encapsulate the larger narrative.) People are emotionally complex, live complex lives, and can relate to authentic, emotionally complex stories. The longevity of The New Yorker, the popularity of This American Life, the respect and attention paid the deeply reported journalism of ProPublica attest to our willingness to thoroughly engage with complex long-form narratives.

Read the complete essay here.

Would you want wings?

On April 5, I attended an Ask Roulette event. As they describe the event, "During Ask Roulette, strangers ask each other any question they want, big or small, in front of a live audience." The questions included, "Which is better: to be the Dumper, or the Dumpee?" and "If you had to live in a room with a barn animal, which animal would you choose?"

One gentleman was asked, "If you could have wings that allowed you to fly - real wings, not just flap-your-arms-and-fly wings, but real wings that could be retracted - would you want them?" He pondered the question for a long time, and replied, "No. One night in college, my buddies and I were out, and a friend tried on a pair of angel wings. And seeing him with those wings really freaked me out. So, no; I would not want wings."

The moderator was shocked - and refused to accept the answer! He turned to the audience, and announced, "Come on, let's get away from experience. This isn't about experience! Who here would want wings? Come on!" Either truthfully, or succumbing to the normative pressure, the vast majority of the audience raised their hands and nodded: Yes, yes, of course, we are like you, and we would want wings.

The answerer was defeated.

It IS about experience! That is exactly what life is about! That man's experience is crucial, and so interesting - how cool is it that someone in NYC once had such a negative reaction to seeing someone wearing a pair of wings that he himself would never want them, even if it meant he could fly?!

"I am here tonight to support the recommendation of your staff... I will not repeat any of the points they have made."

My testimony at last night's meeting of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Planning Board is available.

James Charles Marshall, 1923-2012

"You come running in on platform shoes
with Marshall stacks
to at least just give us a clue..."

R.I.P. Jim Marshall.

Spring flower-blogging!

(Tulip.)

Mr. Feffer goes to New York.

With all due respect to Ms. Ginevra de' Benci, when it comes to the arts, one of the best things about Washington D.C. is the Capital Fringe Festival, and, for each of the past three years, one of the best things about the Capital Fringe Festival has been the plays of Mr. John Feffer.

For one night only, on Monday, April 23rd, NeuroCooking friends in the New York City area can see Mr. Feffer play seven characters in his 2011 work, "The Bird" ("In search of adventure in Poland 1989, a young man discovers a female assassin, a Jewish skinhead, a mysterious bird, and the end of innocence.").

That's at the Tada theater, 15 W 28th St, New York, April 23rd, at 8 PM. Tickets here.

Mozart & Stravinsky, in July & August.

Tickets for this summer's two productions by the Wolf Trap Opera Company at the Barns of Wolf Trap – Don Giovanni & The Rake's Progress – are now available.

Looking to fill an Easter basket?

Consider a chocolate skull, cast from an actual human skull!


image credit: Cakehead Loves Evil