Pâtisserie of Lite

If you have not been to Paris in the past 100 years or so you have been missing out. Macaron’s (not to be confused w/ coconut macaroons) are the signature confection in The City of Light. Composed of a delicate pillow of meringue, almond and silky sweet fillings in a myriad of colors. You may even wonder if the city’s nickname was inspired just by this delight.

Pistacia Vera assortment

Never fear! In Columbus Ohio, Anne Fletcher has made a crossroads between US(a) and Les Parisiennes at her lovely  Pistacia Vera.

Door to door dessert.

Only recently have I known of this wonderful shop. Interested in my product, The Teastick, Anne contacted me for pricing and I casually mentioned the macaron desert I am marooned in… and just today, I received this elegant box of assorted macarons in the mail. Totally unexpected! I have now become the hero of the office (sorry Beth). My advice to you, if you are not travelling soon to Columbus (or Paris), is to get online and ship yourself an assortment from Pistacia Vera and become the hero of your friends and family. Thank you Anne and happy steeping.

Thanks to all the staff at Gamil, Gamila, The Visual Art Exchange, Artspace and many many more, SPARKcon had a huge weekend to promote local creativity of the Triangle.

Lots of people ask why we do it and what we’re trying to create. We consistently work from the values established in the original SPARKcon Comment -which resulted from facilitating hundreds of citizen at the first ideaSPARK.

However we found the real mission statement was truly eminated from those who participated, in a unified voice. After 4  years of thinking and planning, we see that our open-source approach to creating a talent showcase structure is a unique construction that works and empowers the community to show their stuff and connect.

Spark on!

*SPARKcon showcases local creative talent in the NC Triangle. For four days, Raleigh’s Fayetteville St, public spaces, clubs and stages will be filled with art, music, dance, film, fashion, design, proposals, and more. Celebrating local cultural richness and empowering action through an open-source approach to collaboration and cross-pollination, SPARKcon is not a funded city program or an economic development stunt. It’s completely grassroots and by the people for the people! Join us as we explore the creative spirit of the Triangle!

President Obama had a town meeting in Raleigh today. He was at Broughton High School speaking about healthcare. For some of us who didn’t get to go to the actual meeting, standing on the street waving at the presidential motorcade was the next best thing.

Meanwhile, in very close proximity and under the street, city workers searching the sewer system with a video probe found this compelling video of a life form feeding off of the nutrients flushed by the cheery folk of Cameron Village.

It seems like it’s time for a showdown to see who REALLY owns the streets outside Cat Banjo.

Jonathan Cohen (Meres One) has taken a 5-story, dilapidated factory building in Long Island City, NY and is converting it into a Graffiti Museum called 5 Pointz. All works on the outside of the building are curated by Cohen, and he plans to raise funds to create a non-profit organization to give lessons at “The Institute of Higher Burnin’.”

Pecha Kucha Training Bite

Pecha Kucha has become a very popular format for presentations and is intended to keep them short and sweet: 20 slides @ 20 seconds each. It was created by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein-Dytham Architecture in Tokyo. Wired has a good article on it. Events are coordinated on a global scale by Pecha Kucha Night. With its ultra-compressed format, it sorta seems like the “Twitter of Presentations”