On Richard Halliburton's "Glorious Adventure"

First published in Tin House #45, Fall 2010.

I first came across Richard Halliburton during a layover in Brooklyn on my way from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to New Orleans. I was moving because I’d failed to find work as a deckhand in the Caribbean, my goal for the winter. The main problem was I knew nothing about sailing--an issue that never stopped Halliburton, an adventurer who was eventually lost at sea while trying to navigate from Hong Kong to San Francisco for the 1939 World’s Fair.

Brooklyn isn’t on the most direct route between Puerto Rico and Louisiana, but it’s where my stuff lives--one shelf in a friend’s living room, a plastic bin in her basement. I drop by a few times a year to exchange sweaters for shorts, T-shirts for thermals. Living out of a backpack is a great way to make stories, but it does not encourage exploring your roots. When, in my reading, I found hints of a gay man born in 1900 who swam the Panama Canal, crossed the Alps on an elephant, and made the first recorded winter ascent on Mount Fuji, I was determined to read every word he’d written. It felt like finding a picture of my great-grandmother and recognizing my eyes in her wrinkled Irish face.

Not that I’ve done anything half as grand as Halliburton. At nineteen, he left Princeton for a semester to work on a merchant marine vessel bound for Europe; I left Cornell at twenty-one to go cross-country for a few weeks on a Greyhound bus. Not quite as romantic. But I recognized a longed-for spiritual ancestor in the man who wrote, “Those who live in the even tenor of their way simply exist until death ends their monotonous tranquility.”

Finding his books turned out to be a journey in itself. The Glorious Adventure languished deep below the accessible parts of the Brooklyn Public Library, its wandering heart momentarily stilled by the vagaries of popular acclaim. If the punch card was accurate, The Glorious Adventure had been borrowed twice in the last sixty years. The thick, ragged pages were cold from their long interment, and as my finger traced the map drawn on the endpapers I felt I was holding the relic of a saint. Saint Halliburton, patron of fagabonds and hobosexuals; of traveler kids with dogs and dreadlocks; of myself and my friends.

A classicist who longed for critical acclaim as well as popularity, in The Glorious Adventure Halliburton traveled the route Ulysses took in The Odyssey. By attaching himself to a great historical figure, Halliburton hoped to be elevated beyond the derisory title of “book club writer” with which he was labeled after the publication of his first work, The Royal Road to Romance. In many ways, The Glorious Adventure, despite being published in 1927, could be on the current nonfiction bestseller list. Our protagonist, bored with the modern condition, shakes off monotony and reconnects with what is vital--except in Halliburton’s case, the softening effect of urban life had to do with talkies and roadsters, not iPhones and McDonald’s.

The Glorious Adventure opens with Halliburton stultifying in his Manhattan apartment, jealous of “every sailor that would wave farewell to the sky-line of New York, and turn his salt-stung face to some strange enchanted land beyond the far horizon.” Within a chapter, he and his “friend” Roderic are attempting the first recorded ascent on Mount Olympus in modern history. (Halliburton was a man who did nothing in half measures.) He goes on to swim the Hellespont, spend a night in the cave of Polyphemus the Cyclops, and attempt to run the route that killed Pheidippides and created the modern marathon.

Though some have criticized The Glorious Adventure for purple prose, it has that irrepressible sense of hope and wonder that abounds in travel literature of the Roaring Twenties and disappears with World War II. In the opening chapters, he worries that a massive thunderstorm is the result of offending Zeus. When Roderic scoffs at this idea, Halliburton writes,

Yet even if he were right and rid of all illusions, and even if I were only inspired by crazy dreams to crazier action, was I not the richer of the two for having indulged myself in the poetic notions of that fine old Greek god faith? Its fancy, its grace, its lyrical appeal . . . these things the rationalists can not know or love. They have their faith of reason, but their hearts still have no language.

In other adventures, Halliburton broke into the Taj Mahal, crossed Africa by prop plane, and lived in Devil’s Island, the infamous French colonial prison. His works inspired generations of travelers and writers, perhaps most famously Susan Sontag, who wrote, “Halliburton made me lustfully aware that the world was very big and very old; that its seeable wonders and its learnable stories were innumerable; and that I might see these wonders myself and learn the stories attached to them.” Yet despite the carefree tone that enchanted Sontag and others, Halliburton was endlessly worried about two things: the respect of literary critics and the mercurial rise and fall of his bank account. Reviewers wrote off his early books as juvenile and overblown, fit only for women’s tea clubs. Yet they were wildly successful, with both The Glorious Adventureand The Royal Road to Romance spending years on the bestseller lists. His later books, more universally praised, never sold quite as well, though perhaps this has more to do with the economic situation of the 1930s than any intrinsic change in his writing. It seemed he could never have both critical praise and popular success, and despite his boastful, boyish persona, his ego was fragile. He labored over each harsh review and rejection letter, driving himself to ever more elaborate and dangerous stunts that were ever more removed from the joyful and self-directed wanderings of his early work.

Halliburton lived a particular species of the American dream, the life of a profligate traveler, constantly setting off for new horizons. Yet there was a nightmarish quality to this peripatetic life, demanding as it did always more; nothing would ever be enough. He came from a genteel southern family of the affluent yet striving variety: his father was a civil engineer turned Tennessee land speculator, his mother a music teacher. He attended private school and Princeton. Yet his family’s wealth seemed only to allow Halliburton a view of how much further up the social ladder he might still climb. Sitting on the lowest rung of the highest tier, he hungered for more. Here is the dark side of meritocracy: the inability to ever be content.

Money treated Halliburton like he treated the world: it flowed through him, never staying for long. His parents financed his first adventures, and though he later supported them for many years, his letters to friends, well-off relations, and publishers were full of demands and pleas for more money, advances on books not yet written, and higher percentages of royalties. The life of the freelancer seems to have changed little in the last hundred years.

Halliburton was not oblivious to his fiduciary ineptitude, and after the success of The Glorious Adventure, he instructed his publishers to sink most of its revenue into investments. This was 1927; two years later, his one shrewd financial move would be checked by the stock market crash. In the end, he begged money from everyone he knew to build The Sea Dragon, a traditional Chinese-style junk that he planned to sail across the Pacific. Friends and professionals alike told him the boat could not handle the trip, but his need for both money and acclaim would not let him turn back. On March 23, 1939, he disappeared at sea and was presumed dead, though neither his body nor the wreck was ever definitively identified. Like many caught in his spell, I still imagine meeting Halliburton, gray-bearded and strong, a guy on each arm, living on the beach or in a Parisian pension, his light undimmed by the passing of a century, recounting the tale of his adventure in the lands beyond death.

Papers, Please! The GOP Wants to be Sure You’re a Citizen

First published on Global Comment on August 9, 2010. Read the original with comments here.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he’s open to requiring parents to prove their citizenship in the birth room (a logistical nightmare for hospitals), in order to prevent illegal immigrants from having children who would qualify as American citizens. He has good company – while similar bills looking to repeal sections of the 14th Amendment are born and die quietly in every session of Congress, this year, many prominent Republicans are jumping on the bandwagon.

The 14th Amendment contains many sections, but it begins “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” This was written into the constitution to prevent slavery, or the creation of any other permanent underclass of resident noncitizens.

Day by day, the GOP moves ever closer to eviscerating the 14th Amendment and bringing about the world of 1984.

Double plus bad.

For decades, people in the United States have carried ID to buy cigarettes, get into R-rated movies, and try to wheedle free drinks out of sympathetic bartenders on our birthdays. But not for much longer. Aside from bringing your papers to the hospital, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer wants (brown) people to prove their citizenship when stopped by the cops. If senators like McConnell (and John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Boehner, and a host of others) and governors like Brewer have their way, carrying papers will become the American way of life.

To prepare for this eventuality, here is a handy dandy list of a few other times that Republicans will soon require proof-of-citizenship:

* When buying a Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias or Christina Aguilera CD – Illegal immigrants want nothing more than to steal our precious resources of Spanish/English crossover successes. As an added bonus, this will crack down especially hard on gay illegal immigrants.

* When buying a margarita, daiquiri, or mojito – Both tequila and rum are strong indicators of anti-American tendencies. Thanks to heavy lobbying by the alcohol industry, any cocktail over $15 will be automatically exempt, and a sorority or fraternity pledge card will count as proof in this situation.

* If your last name ends in an “o,” an “a,” or a “z” – All American keyboards will also be outfitted with silent alarms, which will be activated any time someone uses the insert symbol function to write the letter “ñ.”

* When attending a Democratic function – Illegal immigrants are drawn to Democrats like flies to meat. Squishy, soft-on-crime, bleeding heart meat, to be exact. In order to prevent identity theft, three different forms of ID will be necessary.

* When attending any movie starring Antonio Banderas, Penelope Cruz, or Javier Bardem – While all three are Spanish, Congress is also debating a bill to declare Spaniards as “close enough” to being illegal, anyway. Any movie with Spanish subtitles will also be patrolled.

* When entering a mosque or Catholic Church – Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the new security state, this measure will also require an end run around the First Amendment to define these not as places of worship, but as illegal immigrant training camps.

* When ordering at Chili’s – Unless you order the baby back ribs, which shows you are a good American who has been kidnapped by terrorists and forced to eat their strange delicacies. Don’t worry, the FBI are on their way.

* When buying a café con leche – In a stunning about face, Republicans will now embrace the French, insisting that good Americans call this “café au lait.”

* At all times. – You’re safer this way. We promise.

The Blind Pig

First published in The New York Times on August 8, 2010. Read the original here.

At the Blind Pig, Joseph Frase, the chef and an owner, smokes his own sausage in the backyard — appropriate for a restaurant in Louisville’s Butchertown neighborhood. His menu reflects the working-class history of the area, with upscale renditions of pan-European peasant fare like spaghetti alla putanesca and shepherd’s pie. Unlike their humble ancestors, however, the dishes at the Blind Pig use simple preparations to highlight the strong, natural flavors of the ingredients.

“We pay a little more attention to the more traditional qualities of food,” Mr. Frase said, “instead of trying to do something new or inventive.”

And, indeed, “housemade” and “fresh” are two of the restaurant’s primary bywords. “The only thing in our freezer is ice cream,” our waiter told us joyfully during a recent visit, before explaining how best to sample the housemade bitters (including flavors like celery and coffee). The drinks menu highlighted classic cocktails like a French 75, but also featured a strong list of beers whose regions of origin are listed as well.

Before opening in March, Mr. Frase and Michael Grider, a co-owner, gutted the space. The floor joists found new life as tables, while the building’s original facade was rescued from the basement and the reclaimed wood was transformed into a bar. The art on the walls is by the assistant manager. This sense of place and pride — of craftsmanship and quality — is at the heart of the Blind Pig’s deceptive simplicity.

The most prominent medium for the attention-to-tradition philosophy is meat — more specifically, pork. Indeed, the (literally) strong of heart can eat an entire meal of it. Start with a smooth, dense ramekin of pork rillettes topped with a thick layer of duck fat; follow that up with a heaping portion of sausage, duck and white bean cassoulet; finish with a dessert of vanilla ice cream fritters and pecan-bacon brittle; and wash it all down with a bacon-infused Manhattan. (Is it possible to have a pork hangover?)

For the less piggishly inclined, the lamb-and-bison shepherd’s pie is well spiced and topped with a crisp layer of creamy mashed potatoes. The chicken bouillabaisse fell a little flat, its light flavor too delicate to compete with the hearty savoriness of the other dishes. But, then again, who orders chicken at a place called the Blind Pig?

The Blind Pig, 1076 East Washington Street, Louisville, Ky.; (502) 618-0600; theblindpiglouisville.com. An average meal for two, without drinks or tip, is about $60.

Birth Tourism: The Newest Red Herring in the Anti-Immigration Arsenal

First published on Global Comment on July 23, 2010. Read the original with comments here.

Earlier this year, The Marmara Manhattan, part of a Turkish hotel chain, began offering a package to expectant mothers. For between $5100 – $15000, visitors got a two-month stay, prenatal consultation, crib, and items for both mother and newborn. They say they’ve already sold 15 such packages. This is the cutting edge in birth tourism, the practice of visiting countries to give birth to children who will then be citizens. And though it involves a tiny number of women, it’s about to be a big deal, if the anti-immigration crusaders of The Tea Party have their way.

In late May, Rand Paul told a Russian news program that America is “the only country I know that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen.” While it may be true that we are the only such country Paul knows, we are far from the only country with birthright citizenship laws. Yet as anti-immigrant sentiments become more common in developed nations, that list of countries is shrinking. It’s been suggested that recent changes in the birthright laws of England, India, Australia and other countries have been undertaken to prevent birth tourism. In a contentious 2004 referendum, 80% of Irish voters rejected birthright laws over concerns about “citizenship tourism.”

And more and more American politicians are beginning to share their fears. State Senator Russell Pearce, best known for sponsoring Arizona’s draconian immigration law SB1070, has proposed a state bill that would deny citizenship to any child born in Arizona unless one parent can document their US citizenship. Randy Terrill, a Republican Representative from Oklahoma, has introduced a similar bill in his state. Under current laws, Terrill told NPR, “children of invading armies would be considered citizens of the U.S.” Fear-mongering at its best.

The media, it seems, is following their lead. Just last week, The Washington Post published an article entitled “For Many Pregnant Chinese, A U.S. Passport for Baby Remains a Powerful Lure.” The “many” of the title is questionable, however. The article admits there are no hard numbers, and the company they spoke to estimated they had helped 500-600 women in the course of five years – not quite the flood of wealthy Chinese birth tourists the title conjures up.

In April, ABC News carried an almost hysterical segment on birth tourism, which used rampant speculation in the place of facts. “Of the 4,273,225 live births in the United States in 2006, the most recent data gathered by the National Center for Health Statistics, 7,670 were children born to mothers who said they do not live here. Many, but not all, of those mothers could be ‘birth tourists,’ experts say.” [emphasis added] By their own admission, that makes birth tourism responsible for a whopping .001 percent of all births at most.

Using the tiny number of birth tourists as a front, birthright laws are coming under a full-frontal attack by the Tea Party. And why shouldn’t they? Isn’t this just an easily exploitable loophole in our immigration policies?

In short: no. Birthright citizenship is an incredibly important part of the social contract that is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Without it, the stage is set for the creation of a permanent underclass of workers that have no recourse for citizenship, even down through generations. It was designed to ensure that slavery could never again happen in the US. The citizenship laws that have replaced explicit birthright laws in much of Europe require an ancestor with citizenship for a child to gain citizenship of their own. This creates a situation where immigrant populations can be trapped as resident non-citizens forever.

In fact, attacks on birth tourism are simply red herrings designed to mask a larger assault on immigrants in this country. The image of rich foreign families coming over to give birth is easy to demonize. As The Washington Post article put it, “these Chinese parents fly in on first-class seats.” It is simpler to attack these families than it is the true face of birthright citizenship: the children of poor, hardworking immigrant communities in the US.

For Paul, Terrill, Pearce, et at., the real fear is not the small number of women who may come to visit the U.S. to give birth (and, in eighteen years, have their family sponsored for citizenship), but rather the women and families who are already in this country.This is but one small part in a larger Tea Party initiative to chip away at the rights of all immigrants in this country, legal and illegal.

Thankfully, amending the Constitution is a difficult and unlikely process. But as more and more state level officials jump on the anti-immigration bandwagon, we can expect to see an uptick in local bills that require proof-of-citizenship to access pre-natal care and birth-related services.

My Country, My Train, My K-Hole

First published in The Morning News on June 30, 2010. Read the original here.

The train from Chicago to New Orleans passes through Kankakee, Homewood, and Yazoo City; names that evoke images of wagon trains and episodes of Dr. Quinn. I don’t know most of this country.

Were I to draw a map, the Northeast would be ponderously detailed; Chicago would float in limbo; and California would consist of San Francisco and L.A. smooshed together between beaches and pot farms. The rest would be a mess, cartography by way of Cubism.

I’d like to say riding the train taught me something about this country; that my seatmate (probably, to ensure maximum movie potential, my elderly, black, female seatmate), told me about growing up on a farm in Yazoo City, or the first car to come to Homewood. But she slept most of the ride, and the only words we exchanged were a cordial “Have a safe trip,” when she got off at Jackson.

The train cut through towns at dawn and dusk. I saw dirt roads and business districts, stretched my legs in Memphis, and watched the moon rise through the snack car window. Sans context, without my mythical seatmate’s ur-narrative of rural childhood, the Mississippi—that long north-south axis of Americana—sprawled alongside me, meaningless.

Just the way I like it.

I don’t love trains because they teach me about America. I don’t love them because they connect me with a country I have never known. I love them because they disconnect me from everything else. When the train pulls out of the station, it’s like a plug being yanked from a socket. There is a moment of psychic tightening, as the invisible tether of responsibility pulls taught.

WAIT! I should be online! Connected! Accounta—

A silent snap, and I’m free.

* * *

Pop Quiz!

If you read the above carefully, absorbed each word, didn’t skim or skip a single line, you read 286 words (or 285.5, depending on how you count “accounta—”). Over the course of those 286 words, how many times did you check your email? Look at Facebook? Send a text?

Divide those two numbers, and you’ve got your attention index. Mine is measly. Even while editing my own writing, I got distracted 4 times, which means I can pay attention for an average of 71 words. That’s about as long as the chorus of your average pop song. Lady Gaga’s “Telephone,” perhaps the current definition of pop song, comes in a little long at 81 words, and an uncountable number of auto-tuned noises. One imagines those extra words enable her to get across the post-modern Derridean influences she mentions so often. “Out in the club / and I’m sippin’ that bub / and you’re not gonna reach my telephone.” Take that, you hidebound structuralist motherfuckers.

According to a survey by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), 4.1 percent of American adults have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Yet according to an informal survey of People In My House (PIMH), 100 percent of American adults claim to be “totally ADD” all the time. Don’t dismiss PIMH because it consists of three stoners and a mouse. I think they have a point.

Like money, attention is something we must pay. Perhaps the 4.1 percent of us recognized by the NIMH are simply those who exist below the attention poverty line. The rest of us have more, but rarely an inexhaustible supply. Our wallets bulge and thin depending on the day, and we use Adderall like a game show lifeline. By choice or accident of birth in the contemporary U.S.A., most of us are living far beyond our attention means. The blips and bleeps of our phones and computers, the necessity of working far from home, the number of people we know or, in the case of celebrities, feel like we know—we pay for all of it.

I am as profligate with attention as I am spendthrift with money. I am a freelance writer, which means I am constantly hunting for the next story, the next job. My necessary evil is networking—that vile word that calls up whitened teeth in bad suits, executives drinking expensive wine and orgiastially congratulating themselves. Also, I move constantly. In the past year, I’ve resided in three different places in New York City, three in Puerto Rico, one in New Jersey, and one in New Orleans. I’ve also gone on eight road trips, lasting between three days and two weeks, during all of which I’ve worked on my laptop, on my iPhone, and (in moments of true desperation) on paper. Currently, I’m packing to move back to New York. I might be the extreme end of the curve, but I’m not alone. According to a Census Bureau report in 1993 one in six Americans moved every year.

Focus is something I experience mostly via its absence. On a daily basis, I mine the furthest extents of my mind for a little bit more. When it comes to paying attention, I’m like that person on line at the grocery store, trying to buy toilet paper with pennies. I am a dry well, a clear-cut forest, an overdrawn checking account.

A long train ride is the equivalent of being in debtor’s prison. There is no internet, and for vast swaths of the country, no cell phone reception. Changes of scenery are limited. I went to the bathroom to put on pajamas and fart before bed. Around sunrise, snoring drove me to the lower level of the snack car, where my only company was the woman who sold coffee and the man with whom she was flirting. She called me “sugar” and “honey” and “baby,” all within a conversation that couldn’t have lasted a minute. I basked in refracted endearments while a sullen teenager wandered in, looking for a dark place to play her Nintendo DS. I watched an old woman walk a colicky baby back and forth through the cars; one full lap took about 10 minutes. That was the extent of my world, a limited set of choices as lulling (in its own way) as the rhythm of the wheels beneath me.

The train is a liberating K-hole, a moment of suspended animation where it’s entirely acceptable to not answer phone calls, not check your email, not speak to anyone, not go outside, not finish that proposal, not order new checks, not call your father, not work out, not shower, not change.

There are an endless number of things you can not do.

* * *

Some time in the night, the woman in front of me turned and tapped me on the knee.

“Do your sockets work?” she asked. Every seat in the train comes with a pair of electrical outlets, another way in which trains are infinitely superior to cars or planes. Except in this case, my outlet was dead. The entire car was without power.

I was seized with panic. Stalking electrical outlets is the closest I get to regularly hunting for sustenance. Access to electricity is a necessity in my life. I move through the world with a portable shackle, always looking for the next place to tether myself.

Then I realized that for a rare day, I didn’t need to plug in anything. Not even—or perhaps especially—myself. Let my computer die, my iPhone power down. The world wouldn’t end simply because I couldn’t read about it on Facebook.

So between Chicago and New Orleans, I read a book. It was a silly, poorly written piece of science fiction, but I read the entire thing from start to finish. I read my way through Kankakee, Homewood, and Yazoo City, from Illinois down through Tennessee and Mississippi. I took a few breaks: to nap, to start this essay. Mostly, however, I just read. Pages slowly drifted by as some passengers exited and others boarded.

For the first time in a long time, I never once stopped to question who a particular character was, or why they were calling their mother. I never needed to flip backwards to find the spot where my attention had drifted. With every page, it felt easier to keep my focus in one place. The lingering desire to respond—to my phone, to my email, to my surroundings—dissipated. Nineteen hours drifted by slowly. No, “slowly” isn’t the right word. “Leisurely.”

I’m no Luddite. By the time I landed in New Orleans, I was desperate—desperate—to check my email. Given the option, I have the internet close at hand 24/7, to keep up with friends splashed around the world, jobs with no physical location, and Lindsay Lohan’s every move. Which is why I need those places where I have no choice, to limit the lizard-brain that wants constant stimulation. The three, or four, or six hours it takes to traverse the country by plane simply aren’t enough to quiet the desire to multitask. For city-dwellers like me, there are few other moments in life when we are outside the option of cell phone or Wi-Fi service—an option that feels more and more like a requirement every day. Having your phone off is seen as a moral failure, an antisocial tendency that is suspect at best, if not a downright indication of psychosis. I live in fear of the day I get reception on the subway. I dream of the Orient Express, of Atlantic steamers, of camping trips in remote forests—places where my reserves of attention can be filled, so that I can return refreshed to Twitter and Facebook, the subway and CNN, all 14 of my magazine subscriptions and the innumerable blogs in my RSS feed.

I leapt off that train like a Vegas rookie, pockets bulging, ready to be fleeced. Without a doubt, I’ll soon come crawling back, twitching, Tweeting, and bleeping like an epileptic robot desperate for respite. The train will be waiting to pull my plug and set me free.

In New Orleans, New Life By the River

First published in The New York Times on June 27, 2010. Read the original, with photos, here.

For residents of the blue-collar Bywater-Marigny area of New Orleans, access to the Mississippi River has been blocked for years by decaying industrial buildings. But it won't be much longer, thanks in part to R. Allen Eskew, an architect whose firm has been hired to turn a mile and a half of piers and wharves into a riverfront park to open in fall 2011, Step 1 in the nearly $300 million Reinventing the Crescent plan.

The park is one of many projects, small and large, growing in the fertile soil around the Mississippi. Amid colorful shotgun houses (left), tucked away on streets named Piety, Desire and Independence, a wealth of cafes, boutiques and bars offer a calmer alternative to the excesses of the French Quarter, just upriver.

Satsuma Cafe
3218 Dauphine Street
(504) 304-5962

Satsuma, which opened last year, takes its name from a popular local citrus fruit. The menu changes regularly, but you can't go wrong with their pancakes of the day ($5) and a cup of smooth chicory coffee ($2).

Cake Cafe & Bakery
2440 Chartres Street
(504) 943-0010
nolacakes.com

Nothing says New Orleans, city of excess, like a boozy cupcake. This cafe has multiple varieties - flavors include Champagne, mimosa and Sazerac - which can be ordered by the dozen ($25). Or drop in for a nonalcoholic version ($1.75), in flavors like wedding cake and red velvet.

The Lost Love Lounge
2529 Dauphine Street
(504) 949-2009

For some relaxed night life, head to this dim and sprawling dive bar, which opened in March. Lost Love features $2 High Life specials and a small Vietnamese snack menu. Five dollars will buy a sizable shrimp spring roll.

The Bargain Center
3200 Dauphine Street
(504) 948-0007

Down the street, a hodge-podge of antique furniture, paperbacks, and vintage costumes sprawls on the sidewalk like a life-size Joseph Cornell diorama. Welcome to the Bargain Center, a cavernous thrift shop that sells everything from Jadeite teacups ($10) to a handmade "Cajun camp style" dollhouse ($200).

Chemisière Louisiane
3811 Chartres Street
(504) 948-9989
chemisierelouisiane.com

In May, David Dartnell opened this 3,000-square-foot boutique and studio, which houses his new clothing line of the same name. Designed for "women of the South," the fashions feature loose, lightweight fabrics and bright colors. Most items range around the $200 mark.

Storm King Turns 50

First published in The Daily Beast on June 4, 2010. Read the original, with photos, here.

In putting together Storm King Art Center’s 50th anniversary exhibit 5 + 5, David R. Collens faced a difficult task: designing a show that celebrated the sculpture park’s storied history, while also laying out a road map for Storm King’s next five decades.

Collens, who has been the director and curator of Storm King for more than 35 years, admits to not having done many group shows. For the anniversary, however, Collens worked with 10 artists—five with major exhibitions at Storm King already under their belts, and five mid-career sculptors whom he hadn’t shown before. The resultant exhibit, on view now through November 14, is filled with work by some of today’s most well-known outdoor sculptors.

Alice Aycock , Chakaia Booker, Mark di Suvero, Andy Goldsworthy, and Ursula von Rydingsvard represent the park’s history. To anyone acquainted with modern sculpture, their names conjure up distinct images: Booker’s repurposed tires and wearable pieces; di Suvero’s large-scale steel constructions. But it took more than just name recognition to secure a place in 5 + 5.

“I selected those five artists to represent people who really understood the landscape at Storm King and did something very different,” says Collens. With 500 acres of manicured grounds in the rolling Hudson Valley, Storm King offers a wide variety of sites for installation, yet many artists go no further than the area around the museum building. Collens looked for those sculptors who would do something more innovative.

Goldsworthy has taken one of the park’s existing stone walls and used it to create one of his natural compositions. Visitors are invited to walk the length of the wall (which Storm King calls a “sketch in stone”) and observe the way in which Goldsworthy seamlessly blends natural dilapidation and ephemeral construction.

But Collens’ curatorial vision shines brightest in his selection of the five new artists—John Bisbee, Maria Elena González, Darrell Petit, Alyson Shotz, and Stephen Talasnik. “It was time to pass the torch to a younger generation,” says Collens, an idea with which all of the more experienced artists in the show agree.

5 + 5 brings in not just new sculptors, but ones who embrace daring forms, innovative uses of the space, and original concepts for what outdoor sculpture can be. The show is stretching the dimensions of Storm King and playfully changing the ways in which works on display can coexist.

Sixteen platforms were designed by González to be arrayed throughout the grounds. When viewed from one, visitors on another will look to be part of sculptures in the permanent collection. For instance, from the vantage of platform three, visitors on platform four will look to be perfectly balanced atop Menashe Kadishman’s Suspended sculpture as González incorporates observers into the roles of artist and art.

In Stream: A Folded Dream, Talasnik has created a 12-foot-high, 90-foot-long structure made of more than 3,000 bamboo rods. Throughout the exhibition, it will serve as a backdrop for both music and dance performances, something Storm King hasn’t done before.

“It’s quite a counterpoint to stone and steel and other materials we have,” says Collens. In curating 5 + 5, he wanted to avoid just bringing “more metal into Storm King—[as] we have plenty of it.” The 10 selected artists use everything from metal nails, cedar, and granite to reflective plastic, rubber, and earth.

5 + 5 is as diverse for its sculptors as it is for its works. Talasnik, a visual artist by training, has only been showing sculpture since 2000, while di Suvero had his first museum pieces in 1959. And while the recent documentary Who Does She Think She Is? laments the woeful underrepresentation of women in most major museums, half the artists in 5 + 5 are female.

When asked if this gender parity is purposeful, Collens says: “From my perspective, I’m trying to find the best I can in terms of sculpture, male or female, national or international.” Though if there is one way the exhibit is lacking, it is in terms of geographic and ethnic diversity. All of the artists are American, Canadian or European (though di Suvero was born in China, and Gonzalez in Cuba), all but Goldsworthy live in the United States, and only two are people of color. Storm King, like the art world in general, still has some distance to go.

“I think we need to adapt and change like all institutions,” Collens says. If 5 + 5 is any indication, Storm King’s next 50 years are up to the challenge.

Storm King Art Center is located in Mountainville, New York. Visiting hours are Wednesday-Sunday, 10:30 a.m.—5:30 p.m. More information is available at www.StormKing.org.

Pigs' Blood in Cigarettes?

This gallery was originall published on The Daily Beast on 5/25/2010. Read it in its entirety, with comments, here.

As Vegetarian Week kicks off in the U.K., it’s more difficult than ever to observe it faithfully. From horse fat in fabric softener to crushed insects in fruit juice, Hugh Ryan locates animal products in 11 unlikely places.

1) Fabric Softener
What could possibly make your sheets feel more Downy fresh than a nice schmear of rendered animal fat? Dihydrogenated tallow dimethyl ammonium chloride—a roundabout way of saying fat from animals like horses and sheep—is used by some commercial fabric softeners to coat your clothes with a soft, fluffy layer of lipids.

2. Pink Drinks
Cochineal, natural red 4, crimson lake, carmine, carminic acid—call it what you will, but the additive that gives many drinks their distinctive pink color, from wine coolers to ruby-red grapefruit juices, is made from crushed South American bugs. The female cochineal insect has been harvested for dye since the era of the Aztecs. Depending on the way in which the insect is killed (methods include boiling alive, exposure to sunlight, steaming, and baking), it produces a range of reddish tints. It takes approximately 70,000 insects to make one pound of dye.

3. Wine & Beer
Some people drink like fish. Others just drink fish—or at least, the dried, ground-up swim bladders of fish. Isinglass, derived mostly from sturgeon and cod bladders, is used to clarify and remove impurities from many varieties of wine and beer. Small amounts of isinglass remain in the products when finished. For thirsty vegans, the website Barnivore maintains a list of animal-friendly wines, beers, and spirits.

4. Flu Vaccine
A variety of vaccine rumors and conspiracy theories abound. One true one, however, is this: flu vaccines aren’t vegetarian. Fertilized chicken eggs in the embryonic phase are used to cultivate the inactivated flu virus that is injected into millions of people every year. The vaccine was originally developed by the U.S. military for use in World War II, to help prevent a recurrence of the Spanish Influenza that killed 50 million people in the wake of World War I.

5. Cigarettes
The multitude of sins that can be hidden under the phrase “processing aids”—a catchall term for ingredients used to control tar and nicotine content in cigarettes—apparently includes pigs’ blood. New Dutch research from March of this year has found traces of porcine hemoglobin in the filters of some brands of cigarettes. In blood, hemoglobin bonds to oxygen to transport it throughout the body; in filters, it bonds to passing toxins and removes them from the smoke before it enters the lungs.

6. Lipstick
Some shimmery lipsticks owe their twinkle to a rather lowly source—fish scales. According to The Straight Dope, a syndicated question-and-answer column published in over 30 newspapers nationwide, herring scales, a byproduct of commercial food fishing, are processed into a product called “pearl essence,” which can be found in lipsticks, nail polishes, ceramic glazes, and other sparkly stuff. The fish are caught in giant nets and pumped into boats, a process that flenses the scales from their bodies, often while still alive. The scales are then sold to cosmetic companies.

7. Sugar
When it comes to sugar, the phrase “bone white” isn’t a metaphor. According to the non-profit Vegetarian Resource Group, cane sugar is often bleached using bone char from horses and cows, a.k.a. “natural charcoal.” Bone particles don’t end up in the final product; rather, the bone char is used as a filter, like a piece of cheesecloth made from ponies. An average sugar filter contains about 70,000 pounds of bone char from approximately 7,800 animals. To avoid bone char entirely, buy sugar derived from beets, not sugar cane.

8. Hormone Replacement Therapy
Premarin, the popular estrogen-replacement drug for menopausal women, takes its name from its main ingredient: PREgnant MARes’ urINe. Since 1942, female horses have been impregnated and fitted with the equine equivalent of colostomy bags. These gather their urine, which is then processed to produce estrone, equilin, and equilenin. Historically, the foals were eventually sent to slaughterhouses, though today, many pregnant mares’ urine (PMU) operations also act as traditional horse breeders.

9. Bloody Marys
Sometimes it’s the ingredients in the ingredients that make a product not vegetarian. Bloody Marys, the reliable brunch standby, are usually made with tomato juice, vodka, celery, and Worcestershire sauce, which contains anchovies, making it literally bloody. Some Bloody Mary recipes also call for beef consommé. There are vegetarian Worcestershire sauces out there, so just ask to see the label before you order.

10. Heparin
The anticoagulant drug heparin is derived from the slippery mucosal tissue found in pig’s intestines and cow’s lungs. Used to treat blood clots, it was originally isolated in dog livers in 1916, and has since been found in a long list of animals, including sand dollars, humans, camels, whales, mice, fresh-water mussels, lobsters, and turkeys. Its natural purpose in the body is still not fully understood.

11. Green Motor Oil
“Green” doesn’t always mean animal-free. Some companies have taken to replacing traditional petrochemical-based motor oil with cow fat. Companies claim to be able to make as much as one barrel of oil per barrel of tallow, as compared with the three barrels of petroleum needed to make one barrel of traditional motor oil.