things i think about while powerwashing 97

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Hope you all had a restful weekend! I am coming off a wonderful Sunday with my friends full of pizza, farms and corn mazes.

I started getting a little more familiar with more traditional (?) American fall activities when I went to Purdue. Of course, I'd done pumpkin carving and trick or treating. But ... a corn maze??? Never in my life. But at Purdue I did about one a year. But not since 2019.

This weekend, I returned to the corn. The glorious corn. Reborn in the corn. One with the corn. Emerging from the corn like Botticelli imagining Venus rising from the sea foam.

As esteemed subscribers Leonard Liu, Akshay Pawar, Magdalene Lam and Stephen Davis and I entered the corn maze, I kept thinking about the wonderful corn maze that we had back at Purdue. The corn must have been ten feet high — and I remember it was famous for having some pretty elaborate designs. When Stranger Things was super big, they did a super elaborate Stranger Things design for the maze as well as some fun little sets. The best feeling about the corn maze was finally climbing to the observation deck and seeing the corn stretch into the darkness, the cold air stinging your face.

Nothing like that this time!

The tallest the corn got was probably seven feet high and is now the only time I've done a corn maze in daylight. The fun feeling remained, with each person trading off the map so we could see who could navigate the least well (NOT ME). It was a chill corn maze. Nothing like the epic ones in college. And I think that's ok!

This Connecticut weekend had more of a laid back fall vibe — complete with some excellent apple cider to boot. Sipping apple cider while seeing the brilliant fall colors in the distance, hearing some pretty decent local bands play. I feel like that's what the northeastern pumpkin patch life is about. Somebody please feel free to correct me. But it was just so relaxing.

Less relaxing was getting there. We decided to rent a car and brave and valiant esteemed subscriber Stephen Davis volunteered to drive us there. Getting out of Manhattan was ... ok. But getting back on FDR Drive might have been some second hell. Constant stopping. Aggressive drivers (Stephen became a man that day). I cannot recommend driving in the city at all but he is most certainly a changed man after that drive.

museum of the week: the museum of modern art

I'm admittedly writing this pretty late so I'll be super quick. I was drinking coffee at a cafe when I realized I was pretty close to the MOMA! And I wasn't gonna get another chance to do my museum of the week so I decided to bite the bullet and head in. Modern art is not my forte — staring at the shapes and squares gives me a bit of a headache trying to assign or discern the meaning of it all. So to kind of skip all that I went straight for the fifth floor, which is designated for art from the mid-1800s to the early 1920s. This is the move, fellow classical art enjoyers.

The art started with impressionism (featuring paints like van Gogh) and moved directly moved into pointilism shortly thereafter. I was initially confused but then I realized that impressionism was kind of about how small shapes (strokes) could make larger shapes — and pointilism was just a deeper exploration into that space. Pretty neat!

From then on I could make more sense of Matisse and Piccaso — using separate unites to create a single image. But it's still tough. Maybe this just isn't my forte!

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animal of the week

Spotting animals while camping is always fun if they're not trying to steal food. But what if they're just politely asking for it? Like this cat!

A very low quality submission for animal of the week: a bold cat I encountered while camping in Morgan Hill this past weekend. I had never seen cat eyes that icy blue. I also learned shortly after that the cat is a fan of pepperoni. — esteemed subscriber Fiara Llaguno.

Send me your animals at ryan@torrtle.co!