Caleb Crain

Ice storm

I’m in New Hampshire, where an ice storm knocked out the power the day before I arrived. The power is back, but the ice hasn’t left. It’s hard to photograph. The brightness of the ice tends to wash out the image.

If you compensate for the brightness, however, the picture looks inaccurately dim. But even if I were to adjust contrast and exposure properly, I suspect that sparkling is a stereo effect—that what makes it distinctive is that the sparkles hit each eye slightly differently, and thus no monoptic image can capture it.

Another reason to hate deckle edges

If a book’s fore edges are rough, then you can’t paint delicate watercolor landscapes on them. (Hat tip to Exlibris-L.)

Life vs. Art

The cause of the gas-like smell in Manhattan today remains mysterious, though it’s said that it’s not dangerous. Cf. Don DeLillo, White Noise, pp. 116-17:

"It doesn’t cause nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, like they said before."

"What does it cause?"

"Heart palpitations and a sense of déjà vu."

"Déjà vu?"

"It affects the false part of the human memory or whatever. That’s not all. They’re not calling it the black billowing cloud anymore."

"What are they calling it?"

He looked at me carefully.

"The airborne toxic event."

Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn

Left: Looking down toward Atlantic Avenue from a courtyard two flights above it. Right: The vitrine of a store selling Islamic goods. Below: A prayer rug with a compass.

Carrying a hard, gem-like torch

Reviews have started to come in for Only Child, to which Peter contributed a memoir-essay, "Postcards to Myself" (an excerpt is available at the Random House website), and a couple have singled out Peter’s essay in particular: Publishers Weekly recently called it one of the "gems" of the anthology, and this week Time Out New York wrote that it is "superbly and achingly sweet."