Driving Mr. Albert

Albert Einstein
Washington, DC
____________________________________

While rummaging through the stack of CDs to find pictures of Bonn's jewelry I also found a number of images that, for one reason or another, never made it up to the flickr account. Some were just images I liked, others were supposed to have LJ entries associated with them.

Take this photograph of a somewhat messy statue of Albie, for instance. It was taken in Washington, DC several years ago on a night when Bonn and I spent several hours walking around the Mall area. We hit many of my favorite statues and monuments and found some new ones, like Albie here. It was a quite unexpected find, right on a main road but sufficiently hidden by large bushes and trees that if I hadn't climbed the few steps up to the platform where the statue and several benches were, we would have walked right by it and never known it was there.

The statue is large enough so you can sit in his lap and have your picture taken with him, almost as if he's reading to you. We chose not to do so, but the people who politely stopped long enough for me to take this shot did so as soon as I was finished.

Given the distance of time, however, I'm more likely to look at reference the book I just finished reading, Driving Mr. Albert by Michael Paterniti.

As the full title ("Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain") indicates, the book is about a cross-country road trip the author took with chunks of Einstein's brain sloshing around in a sealed tupperware full of formaldehyde. The thing is, though, that's only partially what this book is about. Given that Paterniti's other traveling companion, the doctor who originally removed Einstein's brain during his autopsy, is a more-than-slightly-odd character who doesn't do much talking with Paterniti, there's a whole lot of time and space to make up for.

Luckily, Paterniti is an extremely good writer who weaves together about 5 or 6 different story lines, as well as innumerable asides and tangents that seemingly come out of nowhere. It was one of those books where picking it up was far easier than putting it down and I was genuinely sad to see it end.

____________________________________

Like most of you I have no idea what's going on with LJ other than the economic side of things doesnt' look all that good. As endoftheearth pointed out, LJ has slashed it's staff and is deep in debt. (a similar article from c|net is here) And, thanks to bitterlawngnome's entry (here) I have backed up my LJ (including comments) and created a blog over at InsaneJournal.com. (username = fivecats) (although no entries have been posted there as of yet)

For those interested (and don't already know), I'm also available over at Facebook and Flickr.

I'm hoping LJ will weather through this, but I'm guessing that it won't happen without significant changes. (Can we all put up with forced advertising on all unpaid account pages?)

Still, if you haven't backed up your LJ, read bitterlawngnome's entry and back it up soon!

...