position

Georges Rousse is a French artist who installs perspective art in buildings that are in transition. Ellen Cassilly and Frank Konhaus of Durham raised the money to bring him to Durham and install art in some of the unused buildings around town. This blue square is in the Chesterfield building on the corner of Duke Street and Main. The art itself is minimalist, in my view, but the significance is great due to its placement. On the way to the installation, we all discovered a long-abandoned work environment. Linoleum floors, long, narrow hallways, gigantic metal desks, fluorescent lights, and frozen, oversized industrial clocks told us that it used to be a floor of administrative offices. I love that a photocopier was incorporated. (I *think* it is a photocopier...)

The circle one was my favorite. It was as if it appeared overnight, leaving scraps of another era intact:


The Chesterfield will be demolished someday soon because it is cheaper to use its foundation than to renovate the existing floor plans, electrical capacity, and plumbing. Durham is growing and its population doesn't desire a building like this. I would prefer that this be preserved in some way and I think it's more than nostalgia. We should remember our old work environments because they tell us where we used to be and where we are going.

The Independent's David Fellerath had an excellent article about it this week. The official site for the project can be found here.

convey

Well, I finally did it. I managed to make it over to Krispy Kreme when they were actually making donuts. In case you're not in the know, this particular branch is special because they supply all of the supermarkets, gas stations, and what have you, PLUS any other Krispy Kreme locations in the area. So they're making a lot of donuts. If you see a Krispy Kreme truck somewhere in the Triangle, in all likelihood it is carrying donuts that originated in this one production line.

These particular donuts were of the jelly variety. I spied some sort of red goo being squirted in by assistants. (They were too far away for my poor camera.)

This movie looks particularly crappy because it is shot through glass. (I've heard that they don't want people taking pictures so I went incognito.) The first part is the worst quality, but it's the most important: when the donuts, happily floating and cooking in hot oil, are flipped so that their other side can be fried as well. For some reason, seeing raw, limp dough puff into a beautiful treat is incredibly satisfying.

P.S. I am eagerly awaiting their pumpkin spice donut. It comes out sometime in the Fall and is very, very good.

P.P.S. Jeez - I sound like such a donut freak in this post. I'm not really.

roast

Ever since Montreal, my new thing is to eat a soft boiled egg in the morning. I have a new hi-tech egg timer and it works really well so I can get it just right. But you have to eat it with good bread or else it's not worth it. You gotta dip, man.

We didn't have any bread at all so I biked over to the local farmers market which is still going strong this time of year. There were a lot of tomatoes, herbs, eggplant and some squash is starting to come in now. And peppers. Here's Alex from Peregrine Farm roasting some peppers. Buy 2 pounds and the roasting is free(!) Then you put them in a paper bag, wait for them to cool down, and peel off the skins. Not pictured: butane tank.