On July 15, about a dozen people walked into a cozy San Francisco restaurant with a window sign reading “private event” to savor foie gras, California’s newest forbidden fruit.  They paid $100 apiece for “a 10-course tasting of quasi-legal goodness,” according to the online notice for the“Duckeasy” event.  Two weeks after California’s ban on selling and producing the fatty duck liver, chefs are hosting clandestine events, offering it as a free side dish or selling it to regulars without listing it on the menu.  The 2004 law that went into effect July 1 is backed by animal-rights activists who say force-feeding ducks and geese through a tube to produce a fat liver is cruel.  Violators are subject to a fine of as much as $1,000 per infraction, and as much as $1,000 for each day it continues.  Daniel Mallahan, 27, a San Francisco resident and one of the Duckeasy dinner’s chefs and organizers, said the event fell within the law.  “We’re not charging for foie at all,” Mallahan said. “We’re charging for tickets to an event.  None of the foie is actually from the state of California.  That’s not really an issue.”  On July 14, the Presidio Social Club, a San Francisco restaurant, drew a crowd to savor a $20 seared foie gras slider garnished with pineapple and a main dish of steak with an $18 foie gras side in honor of Bastille Day.  The restaurant, once a barracks in the Presidio of San Francisco, a former Army post near the Golden Gate Bridge that is now a national park, is on federal land and immune from the state law, owner Ray Tang, 44, said during the dinner.  Hot’s Kitchen, just steps from the Pacific Ocean in Hermosa Beach, lists “The Burger” with foie gras as a“complimentary” side.  The dish, topped with balsamic thyme onions and whole-grain mustard, costs $13, more than double the other burgers.  Opponents of the law say serving the liver free gets around the ban since the legislation prohibits only its sale.  Supporters say it violates the law because customers know they are paying to get foie gras.  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-17/foie-gras-goes-underground-at-california-duckeasies-.html

In Manhattan's Midtown, Bryant Park offers not just cafe tables in the shade of its majestic London plane trees but master classes in fencing and "breakfast briefings" with local business executives . As if the throngs needed more than wild grasses and native plants to keep them coming, the High Line is negotiating to install the more visceral thrill of a 70-foot replica steam engine by artist Jeff Koons slung over a future section of the tracks.  Even the staid Metropolitan Museum of Art has joined in with increasingly interactive rooftop installations; this summer, Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno's Cloud City looks like a pile of cast-off helicopter windshields turned into an adult jungle gym.  The parks are city-owned and the Met is private, but they all belong to a city-wide trend of pumping up the volume at outdoor venues.  The Young Architects Program (YAP) organized by MoMA PS1 in Queens, now in its 13th year, offers young architects a chance to unleash their imaginations in a competition to come up with temporary designs.  This summer, the six-year-old New York architecture firm HWKN won the YAP competition with "Wendy," a 46-foot-tall, many-pointed blue star caged in heavy scaffolding.  Shade is provided inside the star on platforms accessible via steep stairs—stairs that after opening night were deemed too unsafe for use because the industrial fans suspended inside and rigged with misters make the interiors not only loud and wet but also slippery.  Seating of a sort is fashioned from swim-noodle foam wrapped around the lower scaffold pipes.  The architects worked with Pureti, a green-tech manufacturer (and winner of a 2011 "What's New" award from Popular Science), to develop a spray version of a titanium nano particle that, when activated by sunlight, oxidizes airborne particulates and converts them into water vapor and trace amounts of carbon dioxide.  A powder form for concrete is already in use at self-cleaning sidewalks in Malmo, Sweden, and the Jubilee Church in Rome.  YAP has turned out to be hugely popular for MoMA PS1; so successful, it has spawned YAPs in Rome and in Santiago, Chile.  There is some good news for everyday New Yorkers looking for outdoor activities that are a little less hip and hyper.  Now under construction, the landscape overhaul of Governors Island will include a Hammock Grove with 50 hammocks for swinging of a gentler kind.  Julie V. Iovine   See picture of Wendy at:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304373804577521204259129634.html

 Tile Club of Toledo

Since 1895, no more than 20 men have belonged to this club at any one time.  Membership is selective but not arrogant; a big commitment but inexpensive.  Guided by ritual, Tile Club meetings are much as they've been for thousands of previous Tuesday evenings: thick steaks are likely to be grilled in the fireplace, portraits will be sketched, songs sung, jokes told, backs slapped, and cards dealt.  After dinner, attendees' names will be recorded in the huge ledger, circa 1901.  “Many of the Tuesday-night discussions centered around the possibility of a museum, and the museum itself, when it finally took shape, became one of the club's primary interests,” notes a 1945 history of the Tilers' first 50 years.  Indeed, they raised a substantial portion of the funds used to establish the Toledo Museum of Art, of which George Stevens, a Tiler, became the director.  They begin strolling in after 5 p.m., most in suits and ties, and quickly dive into drinks, snacks, and conversation.  By 6, artists drift upstairs to the studio where they'll draw, perhaps a guest.  Downstairs, musicians led by pianist Jack Straub, an attorney, play and sing.  In the dining room by 7, they've clambered over wide wooden benches around the huge oak table designed by David Stine (charter member and the architect who gave us the Lucas County Courthouse, Scott and Waite high schools, and beautiful Old West End homes).  Wine and candles.  Someone circles the table, pouring cowboy coffee from a huge white enamel pot.  These walls are paneled with wooden grain chutes salvaged long ago from a grain-elevator fire and pried off the walls of the club's previous meeting place when they had to vacate it in 1955.  At feast's end, guests speak about themselves and are encouraged to tell funny stories.  After cleanup and farewells, a game of rummy begins and the diehards may continue until 9:30.  The idea for the club originated with the Tile Club in New York City, a group of 31 male painters, sculptors, illustrators, and architects, including Winslow Homer and William Merritt Chase.  Between 1877 and 1887, they met for fun and art, painting on ceramic tiles and taking excursions to draw.  Along the way, they popularized European trends such as plein air painting and Impressionism.  Tahree Lane  http://www.toledoblade.com/Culture/2010/04/18/The-art-of-friendship-Camaraderie-and-history-come-together-in-Tile-Club.html

You will find pictures relating to the Tile Club of Toledo on pages 10-12 of club member Jim Brower's book Mood & Mode, a Selection of Transparent Watercolor Paintings.  Jim also belongs to the Monday Morning Painters, and his pictures relating to that group are on pages 14-19 of Mood & Mode.   

Q.  What Ohioan served as a legal reporter, assistant prosecutor, law professor, Collector of Internal Revenue, Judge, U.S. Solicitor General, first Civil Governor of the Philippines, U.S. Secretary of War, Provisional Governor of Cuba, President of the U.S., and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court?

A.  William Howard Taft  (1857-1930)

During the Taft presidency, 1909-1913

·         He established a parcel post service that helped stimulate nationwide commerce and trade.
·         The sixteenth amendment creating a federal income tax was passed.
·         The Department of Labor was created to help the average worker by insuring things like workplace safety, wage standards, work hours, and unemployment insurance.
·         The 17th amendment was passed stating that U.S. Senators were to be elected by the people rather than by the state legislatures.
·         The states New Mexico and Arizona were added to the country making Taft the first president over the 48 contiguous states.
·         His wife, Helen Taft helped to coordinate the planting of 3,000 Japanese cherry trees around the Tidal Basin on the Washington D.C. National Mall.
·         He started the tradition of throwing out the first ball of the MLB baseball season.
http://www.ducksters.com/biography/uspresidents/williamtaft.php

After 40 years of award-winning service to the guests, students, staff, faculty, and alumni of The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, NY, the college’s Escoffier Restaurant closed permanently on Thursday, July 5, 2012.  The restaurant first opened in 1973, and it became known as The Escoffier Room in 1974.  The space occupied by the Escoffier Restaurant will undergo a dramatic renovation, led by the CIA’s Creative Director—Adam Tihany—and will reopen in the winter of 2013 as The Bocuse Restaurant.  At its annual 2011 Leadership Awards event, the CIA recognized Chef Paul Bocuse, now 86, as the college’s Chef of the Century.  It was this recognition that prompted the change in the college’s flagship restaurant.  According to Dr. Tim Ryan, President of The Culinary Institute of America, Chef Paul Bocuse is simply more relevant to both today’s CIA students and its guests who frequent the college’s restaurant.  http://www.ciarestaurants.com/diningatthecia/escoffier-restaurant/