coloratura shameful cuttlefish

I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse. (Diane Arbus)

Today I wrote a bunch of overdue letters to get things up to date.  The other night we went out for dinner to a famous steak house and I had an appetizer for my entree.  It arrive, steak tartar, which I simply adore, and I picked up a section to spread on my toast points.  The whole pile o' steak came with it.  I cut off an appropriate amount for the toast and put the smaller bit on, tried to bite it and the whole pile on the toast came off in my mouth.  It was loaded with sinew and gristle.  I borrowed my husband's HUGE steak knife they provided and I couldn't cut through some of the tough parts in it.  Steak Tartar, for crying out loud!  It should be meltingly soft, cut in uniform meaty sections off a piece of trimmed meat.  I couldn't eat half of it because I didn't want to be pulling long gristle strings out of my mouth..  But we were with people I didn't want to break a conversation with so didn't complain.  And that made me mad later.  So I was going to write a review but decided maybe this was a real aberration since I had ordered the same thing before and loved it.  So I sent an email to the restaurant.  I haven't heard back.  All I asked them is if buy some weird quirk I perhaps got the pile of stuff they had trimmed OFF the meat instead of the meat...  we'll see if they answer me.  All I want is acknowledgement because I won't ever go back.  IF I don't get that, then I may just write those reviews and tell you where not to go!

Snow monkey stole himself an iPhone and knows how to use it!  

UPDATE:  I received a call from the Executive Chef and talked to him about how substandard my food was and he was grateful I let him know, appalled that the line cook hadn't picked up on it, and offered a comp-  I declined, he insisted, so I gave him my address and will pass on the comp to good friends who love the place.  He was nice, I was nice.  Mission accomplished.

I thought we should take a quick trip through some current ceramic art.  Most of these people are still working and are in their late stages of production, but you can see the years of work in each piece:

Hara Kiyos

Victor Spinski

AnnieWoodford

Ellen Schon

Peter Voulko

Carol Long

John Glick

Beate Kuhn

And a little demonstration of one of the Korean masters pulling a pot

Icheon Ceramics Village in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, is home to over 300 ceramics studios where artists use traditional techniques to produce a wide range of functional pottery and artwork. Nearly 40 of the studios still use wood-fired kilns. This video filmed by the American Museum of Ceramic Art shows five ceramic masters from Icheon at work in their studios. 

This amazing current work by Montana based artist Giselle Hicks creates ceramic items which evoke the spirits of domesticity and romanticism. A bouquet of tulips. Flowers overflowing from a vase. A tabletop etched with stylized flowers and covered with ceramic folded napkins.  I love the Japanese indigo designs translated to table top.


And the beat goes on-  

Two people sent me this ad-  Sweet!  Taxidermy Useful Object Classes!  A real squirrel lamp I can build myself!  But I don't know why I have to tell them how old I might be, are old folks adverse to slicing into animals?  Oh.  I guess i answered my own question, and the fact is I do not want a frog ashtray.  So, join up if you want.  Just don't send me your squirrel lamps-  a picture will do.