Month / April 2006

by Edward Champion

Saratoga Gets Its Rocks Off

saratogarocks.jpgMetroblogging SF has the scoop on some extremely wacky rock sculptures down in Saratoga. Apparently, the municipal government believed that stacking rocks in the middle of a traffic island would be a fantastic idea. The idea here was to promote public art, but Simon Rodia this clearly wasn’t. The rock structures were ugly and were situated within a foot of the actual road, meaning that a rock from one of the structures could easily fall into the road or smash a windshield. The cost to erect this lawsuit-waiting-to-happen was $40,000. The cost to remove it is $15,000.

In other words, the City of Saratoga has now wasted $55,000 over a good deal of rocks. Hopefully, future efforts at public art will face greater aesthetic and financial scrutiny.

by Edward Champion

And More Links

  • The home where Dickens completed Bleak House has been partially damaged in a fire.
  • Marion Meade takes on Dorothy Parker. (via Chekhov’s Mistress)
  • Don DeLillo’s new play Loves-Lies-Bleeding gets some coverage. Is it okay if I crack a few Henry James jokes? (via Sheila Heti’s #1 Fan)
  • Over at I Love Books, folks are ranking Ulysses‘ chapters by their comprehensibility.
  • Jim Crace digests Francis Fukuyama. (via Jenny D)
  • Laila points to Haze, the latest Campo Santo production. We’d go, but not only are we profoundly exhausted, but there’s this horrible tax thing we’ve got to take care of this week.
  • Holy shit! Lizzie Skurnick hasn’t disappeared from the face of the earth!
  • Profile of Sengealese novelist Aminata Sow Fall.
  • Sheila O’Flanagan: “I enjoyed the suits and briefcases and high heels. Then I got this urge to write.”
  • Caitlin Flanagan, perhaps the only woman boosting Eisenhower-era values in the 21st century and a writer mistakenly identified as “intellectual” by the likes of the Atlantic and the New Yorker, blogged at Powell’s last week: “We laugh at the conformity that led to the ‘squareness’ of the Fifties, but we often forget to honor that decade’s emphasis on character, conscience, and civic responsibility that led to some of the great social achievements that followed, including civil rights and the women’s movement.” In fact, it was this emphasis on “Occupation: Housewife,” a woman’s second-tier status to a man (conscience!) and the “civic responsibility” of doing nothing more than cooking and cleaning that led women to call bullshit on the idea that they were somehow lesser than men. That anyone could “honor” this, without citing a single reason why, much less restrain laughter at celebrating such antediluvian values in the 21st century, is perhaps a vital clue that Ms. Flanagan is out to lunch, out of touch, and wholly unqualified to write for any media outlet.