Categories
flickr new york san francisco the ancient past

Thanksgiving remix

Flickr photo

Thanks­giv­ing 2006 came and went, attend­ed by friends, fam­i­ly and the cus­tom­ary dra­mas. An East Coast / West Coast feud flared up in the week before the hol­i­day. Gabriel (East) sent what some in the West per­ceived as "a sal­vo across the bow" in the form of a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion (a slide of which is pic­tured below). It con­tained a finan­cial-style analy­sis of Thanks­giv­ing: how Thanks­giv­ing East has per­formed over the past decade, trends, pro­jec­tions, and out­lines for future growth. Some saw this as evi­dence of a dia­bol­i­cal plan; I was naive and asked for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on specifics:

Dear Gabe, TYs (Thanks­giv­ing years) 2003–2004 were char­ac­ter­ized by broad guest sec­tor diver­si­fi­ca­tion. What is the like­li­hood that a diver­si­fied strat­e­gy, with expo­sure to the Shana­han sec­tor, for exam­ple, will be pur­sued in the future? Sec­ond­ly, to what extent will "val­ue" guests (e.g., McClo­rys and Preslers) con­tin­ue to anchor the port­fo­lio? Will you pur­sue more (poten­tial­ly) volatile "growth" guests in order to boost per­for­mance in the com­ing years? 

Gabe replied:

Gabe's projection infographic

Like oth­er mis­sion-relat­ed offer­ings, we believe that diver­si­fi­ca­tion is impor­tant for ensur­ing steady, depend­able per­for­mance in any envi­ron­ment to pro­tect against sec­tor-spe­cif­ic risk. But our com­mit­ment to diver­si­fi­ca­tion goes beyond our con­cern for the bot­tom line: indeed, we believe that it reflects our group's core mis­sion. We are con­vinved that when we serve a broad range of atten­dants and when our offer­ings range across the geo­graph­ic and social spec­trum, our Thanks­giv­ing is ulti­mate­ly stronger.I want to empha­size that we con­sid­er all of our par­tic­i­pants "core" can­di­dates. Alas, our com­mit­ment to value–illustrated by our proven track record of offer­ing Thanks­giv­ing at a deep dis­count to its intrin­sic value–means that we are not always able to serve as broad a con­stituen­cy as we would like. For exam­ple, many of our sought-after par­tic­i­pants fall out­side of our geo­graph­ic uni­verse; we are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in oppor­tu­ni­ties in California. 

Need­less to say, this kind of talk elicit­ed skep­ti­cism and cries of region­al pride among the West Coast­ers, feel­ings which became even more acute when addi­tion­al news arrived: The East Coast guest list had grown so large, so ginor­mous, that the hosts scram­bled to find larg­er accom­mo­da­tions for their dinner. 

Now [East Coast Thank­giv­ing] reports that their 2006 expan­sion plan has been so suc­cess­ful that they're relo­cat­ing to a BAR for their fes­tiv­i­ties. clear­ly the bar has been raised. are we going to let presler corp. out­do us at what we do best? we have to ral­ly around the turkey and show the east coast who rules this holiday.

Would cool­er heads pre­vail? Some West Coast­ers called for "focus."

i hate to say it, but this whole thing reeks of a ploy to take us off our game. start chas­ing the presler-yamadas with this whole thanks­giv­ing at the bar thing, and next thing you know you'll be doing blow off some stranger's anato­my at 5am while real­iz­ing that you for­got to even *buy* a turkey. we have to stick to what got us here. the fun­da­men­tals and an easy-going atti­tude that there's no rea­son to get stressed out because our moms are at least like a thou­sand miles away … focus, people.

Laying on of hands

Of course, Thanks­giv­ings of yore were char­ac­ter­ized by spon­tanae­ity that often resem­bled chaos. (See right. More here.). To this end, there were appeals to pull together: 

If Robert Alt­man taught us any­thing it's that great works of art are NOT cre­at­ed with scripts, busi­ness plans or Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tions. We will hon­or his tra­di­tion and fol­low our usu­al free-flow­ing, impro­vised pat­tern. We will cre­ate a rich­ly lay­ered Thanks­giv­ing that will touch on all of the major themes of mod­ern life in a heart­break­ing, at times com­i­cal, at times vio­lent, but always inci­sive way. Like Alt­man, we are not afraid of fail­ure. How­ev­er, it's also true that some great works of art were cre­at­ed with blow (John Belushi, the DeLore­an, Dwight Gooden) …

In the end, there was focus and togeth­er­ness on the West Coast, and, by all accounts, steady growth with div­i­dends in the East. A wise man once said: "Let love rule." It shall.

Categories
new york urban

NYT / JFK to Manhattan on foot

"Peo­ple don't know where they are any­more, " [the writer Will Self] said, adding: "In the post-indus­tri­al age, [walk­ing] is the only form of real explo­ration left. Any­one can go and see the Ituri pygmy, but how many peo­ple have walked all the way from the air­port to the city?â€

This is from A Lit­er­ary Vis­i­tor Strolls in From the Air­port, a New York Times account of writer Will Self's walk from JFK to his hotel in Man­hat­tan. Self walks 20 miles through a col­or­ful cross-sec­tion of Queens, tak­ing pho­tos and chat­ting about his phi­los­o­phy of per­am­bu­la­tion. Cars (and TVs and com­put­ers and so on) have imposed a "wind­screen-based vir­tu­al­i­ty," he says, effec­tive­ly cut­ting us off from the land­scape around us. The NYT writer name-checks psy­cho­geog­ra­phy in con­nec­tion with this dis­cus­sion, but doesn't elab­o­rate. Appar­ent­ly, psy­cho­geog­ra­phy is a com­mon, every­day con­cept in which every­one is con­ver­sant. (I would guess that it's not). Also dis­cussed: Self's seat-of-the-pants route-plan­ning (he relied upon native New York­er Rick Moody), and his expe­ri­ences in the less-trav­eled parts of the borough:

Not long after nego­ti­at­ing the Cross Bay Park­way over­pass, Mr. Self decid­ed to go "off piste,†as he put it, bor­row­ing the term used to describe [the act of leav­ing] groomed ski runs [to explore wild ter­rain]. He ignored Mr. Moody's instruc­tions and head­ed straight west on Glen­more Avenue, through East New York and Brownsville. Glen­more at this point slices through a long, grim stretch of low-rise apart­ments, pock­et-size auto-body shops, razor-wired vacant lots har­bor­ing high-strung dogs, and a sur­pris­ing num­ber of church­es, includ­ing one, Glen­more Avenue Pres­by­ter­ian, that fea­tured a Sun­day-morn­ing "Apoc­alip­sis†service."What could be more suitable?†said Mr. Self, who had just been dis­cussing the apoc­a­lyp­tic theme in his own nov­el and those of H. G. Wells.

A relat­ed per­son­al account: Once, in the fall of 1997, my flight had arrived late to JFK, and I was rac­ing to catch the last Delta com­muter flight to Boston, which was leav­ing from a dif­fer­ent ter­mi­nal. When I arrived at the curb, the secu­ri­ty guard told me that the shut­tle bus had just left, and that I'd prob­a­bly miss my flight. He men­tioned that the ter­mi­nal was "just beyond that big TWA hang­er over there," and I thanked him and set off walk­ing. Need­less to say, there weren't side­walks con­nect­ing the two, and I spent much of my time "off piste," scur­ry­ing along the shoul­ders of frontage roads and across park­ing lots. It was scary and fun, with planes peri­od­i­cal­ly screech­ing just over­heard, but I arrived just in time, and since then I've always want­ed a chance to do it again.

Categories
music

Music / Sad anniverary for the quiet Beatle

Today is the fifth anniver­sary of George Harrison's death, as I found out when NPR ran a sweet trib­ute to him this evening. Back when such things mat­tered, George was my favorite Bea­t­le. Why do such things not mat­ter any­more? I mean, real­ly, is there any ques­tion that is more reveal­ing than "Who is your favorite Bea­t­le?" Sure, it's dat­ed, but any ratio­nal, music-aware per­son should have one, and if they don't, well, that says a lot right there. Here's a cheat sheet for what you can expect from the peo­ple you ask, based on very unsci­en­tif­ic "research" …

  • If they say "Paul," you can expect some (most­ly super­fi­cial) charm, and a lib­er­al help­ing of cheesi­ness. Peo­ple who like Paul tend to see Sgt. Pep­per as the height of Bea­t­le achieve­ment, and they prob­a­bly enjoy "Yel­low Sub­ma­rine" and "sto­ry songs" about Bea­t­les char­ac­ters like Eleanor Rig­by more than "While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps" or "Nor­we­gian Wood."
  • If they say "John," you can expect seri­ous­ness, out­ward lefty pol­i­tics, a love of "mean­ing­ful" songs, and per­haps a dis­dain for both cheesi­ness and Paul. Peo­ple who like John, I would guess, sim­ply didn't like Paul to begin with, or liked him until they heard "When I'm 64" one too many times, and then dug around to see who wrote the lyrics to "A Day in the Life."
  • No one ever says "Ringo" in this day and age, and that's too bad. He's charm­ing, a good sport, and (I think) not as bad a drum­mer as peo­ple seem to remem­ber. I chal­lenge you: Lis­ten to "Rain" and tell me that Ringo is an insuf­fer­ably bad drummer.
  • George, final­ly, will always be the favorite of peo­ple who you want to know. He rep­re­sents humil­i­ty, first of all. He's nev­er mug­ging in the movies, and most­ly he looks some­what like you or I would look if we were thrown into the Bea­t­les com­mer­cial jug­ger­naut in the ear­ly 60's. On the cre­ativ­i­ty side, he wasn't Lennon/McCartney, but his gui­tar sound was an inte­gral part of the Bea­t­les appeal. It's always taste­ful, and he nev­er tries to get all Eric Clap­ton on any song, which is why I — for one — can lis­ten to rough­ly 50 Bea­t­les songs for every Eric Clap­ton song. Final­ly, George's solo stuff was way bet­ter than either Paul's or John's, and his low pro­file is endear­ing in a world in which the faces of rock stars' are per­pet­u­al­ly up in your grill.

Beatles, Taxman — from Alternate Revolver

[audio:http://www.douglemoine.org/files/beatles-taxman-mono.mp3]Lately, I've been lis­ten­ing to Alter­nate Revolver, a boot­leg album of demoes from the Revolver ses­sions. George's first con­tri­bu­tion to the Bea­t­les' cat­a­logue — "Tax­man" — is on Revolver; it's not my favorite Bea­t­les song, but it's a lit­tle more straight­for­ward and rockin' than lat­er George songs. Is it con­tra­dic­to­ry to com­mem­o­rate an artist by lis­ten­ing to a pirat­ed ver­sion of his/her work? Hmm. I'll ven­ture a guess that George would appre­ci­ate it, so check out Alter­nate Revolver's mono mix of the song, and toast the qui­et Beatle.

Categories
architecture inside art visual

Art / Robert Irwin, BS, and the importance of questions

Flickr photo

My nom­i­na­tion for All-Time Best Moment In An Art Doc­u­men­tary has to be the "Bull­shit!" scene in Con­cert Of Wills: Mak­ing The Get­ty Cen­ter. Abstract-artist-turned-land­scape-design­er Robert Irwin lit­er­al­ly calls bull­shit on archi­tect Richard Meier dur­ing an impor­tant Get­ty Cen­ter plan­ning ses­sion. [The object of their dis­agree­ment is Irwin's gar­den design, pic­tured at right. Thx, brew­books.] Design Observ­er's Michael Bierut sums it up nice­ly in an arti­cle called "On (Design) Bullshit:"

The [Get­ty Foun­da­tion], against Meier's advice, has brought in artist Robert Irwin to cre­ate the Center's cen­tral gar­den. The film­mak­ers are there to record the unveil­ing of Irwin's pro­pos­al, and Meier's dis­taste is evi­dent. The artist's bias for whim­si­cal organ­ic forms, his dis­re­gard for the architecture's rig­or­ous orthonog­ra­phy, and per­haps even his Detroit Tigers base­ball hat all rub Richard Meier the wrong way, and he and his team of archi­tects begin a rea­soned, strong­ly-felt cri­tique of the pro­posed plan. Irwin, sens­ing (cor­rect­ly, as it turns out) that he has the client in his pock­et, lis­tens patient­ly and then says, "You want my response?"His response is the worst accu­sa­tion you can lodge against a design­er: "Bull­shit."

If I recall cor­rect­ly, Meier is speech­less, and the mood of the doc­u­men­tary shifts quite sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Meier's per­son­al­i­ty and view­point had dom­i­nat­ed (is "dom­i­neered" a word?) ear­li­er scenes, he main­tains a sort of icy dis­tance in sub­se­quent scenes. (Dis­clo­sure: While I respect Meier, I'm not a fan of his work, espe­cial­ly the Get­ty, and the doc­u­men­tary makes clear that he is, umm, a dick). Irwin, on the oth­er hand, I've always loved, espe­cial­ly his dot paint­ings. I'm cur­rent­ly read­ing Lawrence Weschsler's biog­ra­phy of Irwin, See­ing Is For­get­ting the Name of the Thing One Sees, and it con­tains some use­ful back­ground and con­text to the "Bull­shit!" scene. It also com­pli­cates it; the more I read, the more Irwin and Meier seem to have quite a lot in com­mon. I'd always assumed that Irwin's vision was the irra­tional, organ­ic coun­ter­point to Meier's ratio­nal, geo­met­ric forms. The book makes clear that Irwin has quite a lot of the ratio­nal geom­e­try on the brain him­self. Per­haps they were just too sim­i­lar to get along.A large por­tion of the book is ded­i­cat­ed to Irwin's dis­cus­sion of his own process … My favorite pas­sage involves Irwin's expla­na­tions of the fits and starts that char­ac­ter­ized his out­put, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the dot paint­ing phase:

"Most of the time, I didn't have any idea where it was going; I had no intel­lec­tu­al clar­i­ty as to what it was I thought I was doing … Maybe I was just grad­u­al­ly devel­op­ing a trust in the act itself, that some­how, if it were pur­sued legit­i­mate­ly, the ques­tions it would raise would be legit­i­mate and the answers would have to exist some­where, would be worth pur­su­ing, and would be of consequence."Actually, dur­ing those years in the mid­six­ties," he dou­bled back on his for­mu­la­tion, "the answers seemed to mat­ter less and less: I was becom­ing much more of a ques­tion per­son than an answer per­son … The thing that real­ly struck me as I got into devel­op­ing my inter­est in the area of ques­tions," Irwin con­tin­ued, "is the degree to which as a cul­ture we are geared for just the oppo­site. We are past-mind­ed, in the sense that all of our sys­tems of mea­sure are devel­oped and in a sense depen­dent upon a kind of phys­i­cal res­o­lu­tion. We tag our renais­sances at the high­est lev­el of per­for­mance, where­as it's fair­ly clear to me that once the ques­tion is raised, the per­for­mance is some­what inevitable, almost just a mop­ping-up oper­a­tion, mere­ly a mat­ter of time."

Categories
kansas basketball

Kansas basketball / Jitters, a jinx, and a stinging loss

Ques­tion: What hap­pens when a young col­lege bas­ket­ball team with­out a proven low-post pres­ence some­how man­ages to secure a high nation­al rank­ing then faces a real­ly hun­gry, expe­ri­enced team? The Hawks found out two nights ago, get­ting their rear-ends tanned by an unher­ald­ed and obvi­ous­ly hun­gry Oral Roberts team.Where does this rank among the hard­est-to-swal­low loss­es in recent mem­o­ry? I don't want to go over­board here; it's not as crush­ing as the two NCAA Tour­na­ment ear­ly exits. It also wasn't as demor­al­iz­ing as los­ing to K‑State (at home) and Mis­souri (after lead­ing by 7 with a lit­tle over a minute left) last year. It's most reminscent of the 2004 home loss to Rich­mond, when the entire sport­ing nation could turn on ESPN to see the Hawks implode on their home floor to a team that wasn't even play­ing that well. ESPN didn't car­ry the ORU game on Wednes­day night, THANK GOD, but the loss rip­pled through the sports press in a way that always seemed to empha­size the Hawks sim­ply failed to look, umm, good. SI said sim­ply: "Oral Roberts out­played No. 3 Kansas the whole way."Question: How in the world does SI rank KU above a team like Flori­da, the defend­ing nation­al cham­pi­ons who returned every starter from last year? Did they want to avoid jinx­ing Flori­da for some rea­son? (SI added KU to its list of cov­er jinx­es). Maybe they set­tled on this arrange­ment before Sasha Kaun got hurt, and before CJ Giles pulled a Lawrence Phillips and got him­self kicked off the team?[1] Even so, how does any front line arrange­ment com­pete with Gator paint-dom­i­na­tors Al Hor­ford and Joakim Noah? We'll find out soon enough, I guess, since the teams will meet a week from tomor­row in Vegas. Gulp.[1] Wikipedia's abstract on Lawrence Phillips: "Lawrence Phillips (b. May 12, 1975 in Lit­tle Rock, Arkansas), is a for­mer pro­fes­sion­al Amer­i­can foot­ball and Cana­di­an foot­ball run­ning back who has had numer­ous con­flicts with law enforce­ment." Sor­ta says it all.

Categories
inside art reviews visual

Art / Olafur Eliasson in the New Yorker

Two win­ters ago, I trav­eled to Lon­don for work. It was cold as hell, as a witch's tit, as the blood that runs in Dwyane Wade's veins dur­ing the fourth quar­ter. The sky was deep gray, hard, heavy and for­bid­ding, and it felt as if it wasn't more than 10 or 12 feet above my head, ready to come crash­ing down at any moment. One after­noon, in a jet-lagged haze, I wan­dered over to the Tate Mod­ern, where it seems they always have some thought-pro­vok­ing instal­la­tion (for instance, Anish Kapoor's gigan­tic lev­i­tat­ing horn which blew my mind for a while), and as I descend­ed the ramp into the muse­um, I was struck by the absolute inver­sion of win­try, out­door Lon­don. I took lots of pho­tos, but none could real­ly com­mu­ni­cate the immer­sive aspect of Ola­fur Elias­son's work, called "The Weath­er Project." It was all reds and oranges, all warmth and mist, envelop­ing you in a hap­py, gauzy glow. Cyn­thia Zarin recent­ly pro­filed Elias­son for the New York­er, and she com­ments that the Weath­er Project cement­ed Eliasson's rep­u­ta­tion in the art world … (Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I can't find a link to the arti­cle online, but by all means dig through back issues of the mag­a­zine at the laun­dro­mat, if you get a chance. The arti­cle pro­vides inter­est­ing insight into Eliasson's process, and includes some fun­ny anec­dotes relat­ing to his impulse to immerse the view­er in an envi­ron­ment. For instance, in mid-long-dis­tance-phone-con­ver­sa­tion with Cyn­thia Zarin, he places his cell phone on the lug­gage con­vey­er belt at the air­port, lets it go around the carousel once, then picks it up and asks her what the expe­ri­ence was like. Hmm.).

Categories
architecture

Architecture / Front porches, refuge and prospect

Last sum­mer, NPR did a series on one of my favorite archi­tec­tur­al ele­ments — the front porch. An install­ment from late July cov­ered the use of the porch in con­tem­po­rary home-build­ing, specif­i­cal­ly in New Urban­ist (wikipedia entry) devel­op­ments, such as Sea­side, Flori­da and oth­er pseu­do-quaint "towns". (More on my prob­lems with New Urban­ism anoth­er time). The most intrigu­ing part of the show, for me, was an allu­sion to the psy­chol­o­gy of the home, and the fact that a large part of recent home-build­ing has focused on the home as a fortress, a defen­si­ble space, rather than a van­tage from which to observe and inter­act with the world. This was my intro­duc­tion to the prospect-refuge con­cept; prospect rep­re­sent­ing the abil­i­ty to sur­vey the sur­round­ing land­scape, and refuge serv­ing as a hide­away from the world. It's sim­plis­tic, but I like it and I believe it, inso­far as I can believe any the­o­ret­i­cal con­cept can describe the fun­da­men­tal needs of every­day life. Uni­ver­sal Prin­ci­ples of Design has a good overview, with lots of inter­est­ing relat­ed mate­r­i­al as well.

Categories
lit

Lit / Fall reading list

Flickr photo

Some­how a recent NYT Book Review con­vinced me that I need­ed to read this season's hott new thing, Spe­cial Top­ics in Calami­ty Physics by a much-blogged-about lit­er­ary debu­tante, Mar­isha Pessl. It's no Secret His­to­ry, if that's what you're look­ing for. It's not bad, but on the oth­er hand it's not espe­cial­ly deli­cious, nor smart, nor scary. It also con­tains a few draw­ings done by the author, none of which are very inter­est­ing; the draw­ings are ran­dom­ly scat­tered, not espe­cial­ly reveal­ing, and actu­al­ly in these regards, they sum up my ambiva­lence about the book. Also on the list: Noth­ing If Not Crit­i­cal, a col­lec­tion of art crit­i­cism by Time crit­ic Robert Hugh­es. In gen­er­al, I dis­like "crit­i­cism" as a genre because it so fre­quent­ly comes across as insu­lat­ed from, I guess, real­i­ty. The very few suc­cess­ful crit­ics suc­ceed because their writ­ing expos­es the object of crit­i­cism to new light, a fresh per­spec­tive — and the list is short: Lester Bangs and Robert Hugh­es, maybe Antho­ny Lane. Hughes's review of Julian Schnabel's auto­bi­og­ra­phy made me laugh out loud, repeat­ed­ly, even as I await­ed a den­tist appoint­ment: "Schn­abel is to paint­ing what Stal­lone is to act­ing — a lurch­ing dis­play of oily pec­torals — except that Schn­abel makes big­ger pub­lic claims for him­self." Ziing! Now that's crit­i­cism! In 2003, the UK's Guardian pub­lished an inter­est­ing bit on Schnabel's endeav­ors to res­ur­rect his career. Post Office by Charles Bukows­ki is both bet­ter and worse than I remem­bered it. I read it in my ear­ly 20's, a time when I could iden­ti­fy (or thought I could, any­way) with being down and out, so I admired the cranky tone, the dis­dain for the "straight" world and all the "suck­ers" who buy into it. Nowa­days, I would prob­a­bly qual­i­fy as a suck­er, and I can con­firm that the straight world real­ly is as bor­ing and soul-crush­ing as Bukows­ki presents it. As I was read­ing it, I kept think­ing: What would Bukows­ki do in my sit­u­a­tion? At the very least, he would stash a bot­tle of booze in his desk. And prob­a­bly duck out for a stiff drink or two in between meetings.Finally, the best of the lot is Eric Newby's (mis)adventure clas­sic A Short Walk in the Hin­du Kush. What hap­pens when two refined British gen­tle­men with no moutaineer­ing expe­ri­ence decide (on a lark) to climb an 18,000-foot moun­tain in Nuris­tan, a war­lord-con­trolled region of Afghanistan? The book chron­i­cles this mid-1950's boon­dog­gle, includ­ing Newby's means of trav­el­ing to Afghanistan — an auto­mo­tive jour­ney through Europe and the Mid­dle East. [A sad note: New­by recent­ly passed away. The BBC obit.]

Categories
cheese

Blondie's best

this is a pleas­ant lit­tle aged cow's milk cheese from a North­ern Cal­i­for­nia cheese­mak­er whose name I can­not recall. Rest assured, though, that if you're try­ing to eat as local­ly as pos­si­ble, blondie's best can safe­ly be on your gro­cery list. It's some­what like an aged jack, or an aged hip­pie, with that kind of mel­low nut­ti­ness, cut with a lit­tle tang. It's good on a crack­er but also works well in a sal­ad with some dried cher­ries and toast­ed almonds.

Categories
cheese

Appleby's Cheshire

with a wedge of appleby's cheshire in the house, one is always eat­ing good in the neigh­bor­hood. It's a Neal's Yard cheese, and so far in San Fran­cis­co I've only found it at Whole Foods. There are oth­er cheshires to be had in the city, and accord­ing to the grumpy pro­pri­etor of the cheese shop in my neigh­bor­hood Neal's Yard cheeses are over­priced, but to me Appleby's is the best tast­ing. It is the ched­dar of my dreams. I know you shouldn't keep hard cheeses in the refrig­er­a­tor, but I've always found that when left out, they take on a kind of oily sheen that I don't find very appe­tiz­ing. The cheshire, on the oth­er hand, gets bet­ter and bet­ter the longer it is left out. Fresh from the fridge it has a kind of firm but creamy tex­ture; when left out it takes on a delec­table crum­bli­ness that inten­si­fies the fla­vor. A piece of cheshire on a starr ridge crack­er is a meal for kings. The only prob­lem with leav­ing it out is that it can become a meal for dogs. Bis­cuit has to date swiped four blocks of cheshire care­less­ly left with­in swip­ing dis­tance on the counter. She always does such a com­plete job, leav­ing nary a crumb, that I often don't real­ize until a day lat­er. The dog is not known for her refined palate, but she makes an extra effort for the cheshire.