Rabbits of Gowanus

"These are angry, hardened city rabbits and possibly carnivorous."

Sweetness and light

Paris was amazing partly just because walking around and thinking about past and present and looking at things is so amazing. About the only thing I did my last day there was lunch with a friend and Columbia colleague near the beautiful Reid Hall (conversation included exploring the possibility that I might teach there in some future semester).

I do not have the gift of assiduous museum-going, and really my only goal was to hit this one, which quite lived up to my expectations. I am not a good photographer, but this gives a little bit of a taste of the wares on offer:




Afterwards, a cupcake from Bertie's Cupcakery! (The proprietor is ""The Girl" of DC Rainmaker fame, and also made some custom-designed cookies to celebrate my brother and sister-in-law's acquisition of their first boat, a Nimble Nomad named Gunny.)

No discredit to an excellent cupcake, but the best dessert I had in Paris was with A. at Le Stella (after a dinner that started with a green bean and parmesan salad, then scallops and sole): a vacherin glace of utter deliciousness!

I had another very good dessert that involved a sort of almond and pistachio foam with raspberries in it, and the other thing I ate several times and most enjoyed was the "filets de dorade" (sea bream), in one case with anchovy butter and in another with sauteed fennel....

Closing tabs

Benjamen Walker's theory of everything.

Hua Hsu on the rise of suburban Chinatowns.

Nice piece at the FT on the Hunterian Museum, an important location in my first novel.

Ode to a Shipping Label.

Mr. Men as social critique.

Last but not least, inside the London Pet Show.

Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America

Closing tabs:

This may come in handy one day.

Good advice from my former student Juli Weiner!

Sleep as science-fictional adventure?

I want to see this show....

(The Audubon image is from the Morgan Library website.)

Lops

More on rabbit show-jumping.  (Via Tyler Cowen.)

How to Keep Rabbits for Profit and Pleasure

A nice piece on the London Library.  (My grandfather had a lifetime membership, obtained in the early 1950s; he must have gotten more than fifty years of use out of it, but my frugal grandmother still sometimes expressed a wish that it could be transferable to me after his death...)

A medical study of the Haitian zombie.  (Via Hari Kunzru.)

The curse of the trochee?

A queen of light reading

I was sorry to see just now that Eva Ibbotson has died; I really love her books, especially her earlier historical romances. Michelle Pauli had recently interviewed her for the Guardian; their conversation included this exchange, which made me laugh:

A degree and postgraduate study in physiology at Cambridge University, inspired by a mistaken desire to follow in her father's footsteps, proved to be a "complete disaster" – except for a meeting with the man she would spend the next 49 years of her life with, an ecologist called Alan Ibbotson.

"You've no idea what it was like in the labs those days! Blood spurting everywhere! I had these enormous rabbits and I had to take their temperature and they didn't like it. Who would? I spent my whole year at Cambridge with my hair stuck up with blood and scratch marks on my wrists," exclaims Ibbotson. "Then, fortunately, in a very unmodern and unfeminist way, Alan said he thought he'd better marry me and take me away from science. I have to say I was incredibly relieved."

Furry things

The taxidermy of Walter Potter.