Friday, April 23, 2004

The highlight of yesterday was definitely The Renwick Gallery. At about lunchtime there was almost no one in the gallery and I saw a sign for a tour. What happened was that on of the docents was in the gallery and ready to give a tour. Since I was the only one there at that moment, I was the only one on the tour until we reached the third floor. The main exhibit on the first floor is Right at Home American Studio Furniture. It's a terrific exhibit IMHO and some of the highlights are the furniture by Sam Maloof and Wendell Castle. Wendell Castle's Ghost Clock is a special favorite of mine and many other visitors to the Renwick. Another favorite is Kim Schmahmann's Bureau of Bureaucracy the craftmanship and humor in this piece is ten steps above. Others joined the tour when we reached the third floor and in the grand salon we saw the Treasures from the SAAM which is closed for renovation. One of the pictures which focuses on a visit to George Washington's grave has a hidden picture in it of the first president. Another visitor was taking a picture with a good camera and since I only had a disposable camera he said he would e-mail it to me. Then I shared with him and his daughter the highlights that the docent shared with me of the other areas they hadn't seen.
Lafayette Square was just delightful, warm and breezy, and a nice respite with a good view of the front of the Whitehouse (most people take pictures of the back) and then a visit to St John's Church to see where the president worships. A chai shake, was tasty, and the shortbread cookies were ok, at Teaism but what I had really wanted was cream tea. They didn't seem to know what that was and I wasn't up for going to one of the high teas at the hotels nearby. Today in their web site I found out I should have asked for afternoon tea but I didn't see that posted anywhere in the restaurant. They have Asian and Traditonal supposedly.

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

An internet prankster is pushing for a certain word, waffles, to be associated with John Kerry's web site. If enough people link this word to the site then it will rise in the ranks of the search engines. When people search on the term waffles Kerry's site will show up on the first results page maybe even in the top ten or number one. This is what happened last year with the whitehouse biography of president Bush when miserable failure was associated with it and then, in his defense, it was associated with great president by his supporters. A recent article in USA Today discusses this "political chicanery" about which Google's technology director, Craig Silverstein, states that the company's outlook is that there is no need to take any action since search results from such pranks are appropriate ones. Another point is that not many people actually search those terms. Interesting how some people choose to spend their time.

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

The Therapy Resources website was updated by March 29! There were a lot of new pages to get together and post but it all came together. The newsletter went out yesterday. There were very few bounces so far which is really good. One of the pages Cook Create Cultivate is about National Poetry Month and one of the suggested activities is Dream Flags an idea that is the brain child of three middle school teachers here in PA. There is a link to their web site and a link to this article in the Philadelphia inquirer about the project. The poems quoted in the article are impressive and they're from such young children.