We started the week with Audrey going out of town for a night. Poppy and I managed to still feed each other, with Audrey returning after just one night away to speak at Yale. I desperately tried to get through all six episodes of Ken Burn’s new documentary on the American Revolution before Audrey got back, but I only made it through three of them. Luckily Audrey was a good sport and let me keep watching them after she got back, as she was curious, “how all this would turn out”.
I highly recommend that you read the narrative for the talk that Audrey gave at Yale. Her grasp of history combined with her thinking very deeply about how it applies to this moment we are in is important stuff. Her talk is titled Sputnik Deja Vu, and will help you realize that we are still living on the by-product of World War II. From what we eat, to what we teach in our schools, to the Internet and Artificial Intelligence—this moment is shaped by the trauma and spending of the greatest generation.
It is fall in NYC. I love the colors and crispness of it all. I love the slow fade from blue and green to black and white, with all of the oranges and reds in between. I am so very thankful we live in NYC. While I will always be very thankful for my California dreams over the years, the dreams and thoughts that live in the cracks of the shift in New York seasons are much richer and deeper. You just know you are alive here, where in California you will need constant reminder you exist.
One of the greatest rituals of our day is the walk in Central Park every morning. Poppy gets to be off leash, and Audrey and I get to start our day with some oxygen in our lungs, and views of New York landscapes in our eyes. The walk to and from the park gets us going each morning, but the ritual of our little corner of the park is magical. You can usually catch some glimpses of this with the photos we take and publish to Instagram, but specifically the back and forth that occurs in our dueling Instagram stories.
As I continue to map out the world of technology using APIs, making the web, mobile, and AI applications we use more visible and accountable, I can’t help but feel like early explorers must have felt trying to map the globe in the early days of exploration. This image from 1585, titled the Vanity of Vanities: Fool’s Cap Map of the World, has stuck in my head all week. These explorers had a much more literal and physical world to map out, but I think there are many parallels for how we see the world around us to consider as we make our way in this new virtual realm.
While making our way through Hell’s Kitchen to the park this week we ran into Audra the Rottweiler. She is a full-bred Rottweiler, while Poppy is “mostly Rottweiler”. But Audrey was beautiful and sweet. Her and Poppy acted like they already knew each other. Poppy sat in her side car while Audra sniffed and inspected Poppy and the bike. We don’t see many Rottweilers in the city, which echoes the email we got from our building this week to remind us that aggressive breeds like Rottweilers and Pit Bulls were not welcome in the building.
Audrey and I made our way down to the West Village this weekend for burgers at Hamburger America—which is the best burger in America. Hands down. I still love our Lovely’s smash burger in Hell’s Kitchen, but the Hamburger America single smash burger is perfection. After eating, we made our way to Village Records to acquire some new Jazz, and then walked through Washington Square Park and Union Square to Caffè Panna for some delicious ice cream—-making for an absolutly perfect weekend day in New York City.
"I still eat a burger at a counter with ketchup dripping down my face." - Scarlett Johansson
