Welcome to New York ... now go move your car (2009 calendar)

New Yorkers who own cars and don't have off-street parking (which can cost as much per month as a small apartment in Cincinnati) spend exorbitant amounts of time trying to remember whether their car is parked on the side of the street that'll get them a $65 ticket if the street-sweepers come through. Street sweeping is suspended for 30 or more days a year, but few of us can remember which days it's safe to ignore the posted alternate-side signs.

I was inspired to design an alternate-side parking calendar by an atonal piano piece sandwiched into an otherwise enjoyable concert. I didn’t want to walk out (the pianist was amazing), but I didn't want to listen to the "music," either. So I assigned myself the task of devising a way to incorporate some of the photos I've taken of New York into a marketing piece for my husband's dental practice. By the time the piano abuse was over, I'd had the idea of doing an alternate-side parking calendar for 2009 with photos of our neighborhood around the edges. It had to fit on a single 8.5 x 11" page, include all my husband's office info, and give a URL where people could print more copies. It had to be attractive enough that people would cheerfully post it inside their front door or on their refrigerator.

The next day I laid out the calendar using the conventional format: 7 columns and 4-5 rows per month for 12 months. Alas, there wasn't enough space for pictures. Then I decided to apply some of the principles I'd learned in Edward Tufte's Visual Displays of Quantitative Information. I raised my hands and backed away from the computer (sometimes one must), and considered what information had to be included and how to organize it with the least possible visual interference. After much tweaking of font sizes, table margins, and text colors, I managed to fit all the necessary information plus quite a few photos. A scanned image is below; to see the calendar as a PDF, click here.  (The blog text continues below the scanned image.)

Tufte's Visual Displays of Quantitative Information focuses on organizing visual information so that it's comprehensible at a glance. Reading it will change the way you look at printed material and websites as well as the way you organize material on a page - even if you're only printing a flyer for a garage sale.

Print as many copies as you like of the calendar for your front door, your refrigerator, your glove compartment, and your friends. If you're curious about the images, the locations are given at  http://www.doctordurante.com/2009.htm.

HBO's John Adams & the monument to the Montgolfier balloon ascension

Those of you who saw the John Adams miniseries on HBO this past Sunday may remember the scene in which Jefferson and the Adamses watched the ascension of a balloon in Paris in late 1783. Even in an era when scientific discoveries were being made with astonishing rapidity, the development of the world's first flying machine ranked as an awe-inspiring event. Wikipedia has an account of the Montgolfier balloon ascension, with an illustration that looks very much like the balloon that appeared in the Adams series. (Nice to know the producers did their homework.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgolfier_brothers

One of my favorite 18th-c. sculptures in the Metropolitan Museum is a terracotta model over 5 feet high for a monument commemorating this ascension. It’s surmounted by a hot-air balloon and a figure of Fame blowing her trumpet. On its base, absurdly energetic putti (cupids) feed the flames that keep the balloon aloft. This is an exuberantly ornate work, one of the few sculptures in the Metropolitan that still makes me giggle with glee. If you visit the museum, look for it in the room directly behind Canova's Perseus, who now guards the main entrance to the Petrie Court. In my whirlwind tour of 4000 years of sculpture at the Metropolitan I always regret not being able to spend more time on this piece.

Incidentally, I was worried that the John Adams series would be yet another made-for-TV smear job, diminishing the Founding Fathers to the Neighboring Nitwits. However, there are enough substantial quotes from Adams, Jefferson, Washington and others to bring the series up to a thought-provoking level, and the production is very well done and extremely well acted. If you've missed it, HBO is rerunning the first 4 parts on Friday, April 4th. The 5th episode (of 7) will be broadcast Sunday April 6th.

Sorry about the blurry photo: the Metropolitan Museum doesn't allow flash photography, and doesn't have an image on its site that I can link to.