Michelangelo: Works Of Genius

 Nearly a year ago, I moved into my current apartment.  It took me a few weeks to figure out how to organize and arrange my new space.  One part of the process was fairly simple:  I bought three Delta bike storage racks, enough for my six Mercians.  Two of those racks are the "Michelangelo" model and, if they aren't works of genius, they certainly are very practical and attractive.

It makes sense that such an item would be named for the man who gave us "David."  Interestingly, he all but denied that he was a painter:  He considered himself a sculptor and sculpture to be a superior art form.  In fact, he so disdained painting (including his own) that he wrote this about his "Creation of Adam" in the Sistene Chapel:

Michelangelo: To Giovanni da Pistoia
"When the Author Was Painting the Vault of the Sistine Chapel"

I've already grown a goiter from this torture,
hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy
(or anywhere else where the stagnant water's poison).
My stomach's squashed under my chin, my beard's
pointing at heaven, my brain's crushed in a casket,
my breast twists like a harpy's. My brush,
above me all the time, dribbles paint
so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!

My haunches are grinding into my guts,
my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight,
every gesture I make is blind and aimless.
My skin hangs loose below me, my spine's
all knotted from folding over itself.
I'm bent taut as a Syrian bow.

Because I'm stuck like this, my thoughts
are crazy, perfidious tripe:
anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe.

My painting is dead.
Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor.
I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.

(Translated by Gail Mazur)

So why am I talking about him today?  Well, in addition to having a bike rack named after him, he's one of my artistic heroes.  Oh, and it just happens that he was born 550 years ago today.  Some people and things really do get better with age.

What I Didn’t Carry

 In one of my earliest posts, I described what I carried—literally and figuratively—in my messenger bag.

In those days, four decades ago, I was too angry and stupid—and, I believed, too broken—to do anything, professionally or personally, that required me to interact with another human in a way that would require me to reveal my intelligence, talents or vulnerability—or lack of those qualities.

I can assure you, however, that during those days of dodging taxis, pedestrians, dogs—and, sometimes, myself—while pedaling slaloms through Manhattan traffic (Remember, there was no “bicycle infrastructure!) that as strange and, at times, illegal as my cargo sometimes was, it in no way resembled what Huntington, West Virginia police found in Kristopher Osborne’s by backpack when police stopped him, ostensibly for riding his bike without a light.

He was carrying drugs—as I did on at least a few occasions. But he also had a gun (For all I know, I might’ve delivered one!) in his knapsack, which was full of explosives.

What Are They Studying?

 It may be hard to believe, but the waters around New York City were once the most fertile beds in the world. Charles Dickens, in his journal of his American travels, marveled that the bivalves were so abundant that blue collar workers ate them for lunch.

(That, according to at least one food historian, is how the “oyster bar” was born.)

Anyway, harvesting them from the city’s waterways has been severely restricted for about a century. Since the late 1990s, however, attempts to re-introduce them have been successful. Still, health and environmental authorities warn against eating them.

Rats along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, apparently, didn’t get the memo . When an environmental group installed beds along the waterway, the rodents seemed to know that humans spend good money to wash them down with Chablis.  Le vin being unavailable, the gray-tailed grabbers made do with Eau de Gowanus.

So, I had to chuckle when I saw this:

Some students have planted oysters to study the health of the harbor. The sign warns against eating them. Pardon my ignorance, but I think that sign says plenty.