Museum Pieces

I’m home sick today. Why, you ask? Because I did a stupid, tripping in the parking lot at temple yesterday and doing a faceplant. I’m home while my swollen knee recovers. But my sick day shouldn’t be your loss, so here are some articles on museum pieces, potential museum pieces, or things that might be found in a museum:

• Old Automobiles. The OC Register has a nice article on the future of the Petersen Automotive Museum at Wilshire and Fairfax. It seems there is new leadership at the Petersen, and they want to give the museum some love and drastically improve the exterior and interior exhibits. I’m looking forward to this; the Petersen has always been a neat museum.
• A 747 In Your Garage. While I was burning vinyl to MP3 this weekend, one of the songs I burned was Tom Paxton’s “I Lost My Heart on a 747”. It seems someone else lost their heart, for a Redondo Beach man is recreating a Pan-Am 747 interior in a warehouse in the City of Industry. He’s going so far as to get retired Pan-Am stewardesses to fully complete the illusion. Cool.
• Jewish Delis. The Los Angeles Times has proclaimed the Jewish Deli to be a museum piece. They are claiming that delis are out of style and too expensive. While I’ll agree that they haven’t been rediscovered by the foodies yet, the really good ones are still going strong. The ones that are dying are the marginal ones, and the ones people think of as just sandwich shops. In what I think is a related article, the VC Star is talking about the growth of Mediterranean grocers in Ventura County. This could just be a reflection of the changes in Judaism — just as Sephardi pronounciation has replaced Ashkenazi pronounciation, the Eastern European tradition and generation (exemplified by the traditional deli) has been supplanted by the Israeli and Middle-Eastern generation, thus increasing the need for Mediterranean grocers.
• Amish Computers. Planet Money has a short article on one of the booths at the Amish Trade Show: a booth selling computers to the Amish. The argument is that these computers do not connect to the Internet,  have no video, and no music. I’m guessing they don’t need patches that much either, as there isn’t much of a risk (yeah, right, just as the folks that believed they had isolated systems). More significantly, they are offering M$ applications, which are increasingly requiring the Internet. This should be interesting. Of course, the real question is: Why not just sell them all those 286 PCs that just run MS DOS. Those should have the basic business apps they want with no connectivity?

Music: Live In Australia, 1959 (Frank Sinatra & Red Norvo Quintet): “One For My Baby”