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Les Phryganes de luxe d’Hubert Duprat In Architecture animale, Art Bio, Insolite 26fév 09 Les phryganes (Phryganea) sont de petits papillons de l’ordre des Trichoptères dont les larves vivent dans l’eau. La larve de Phrygane construit autour d’elle une carapace protectrice originale :tout d’abord, elle se tisse un habit de soie à partir des sécrétions de ses glandes salivaires. Puis elle le recouvre d’éléments hétéroclites, brindilles, petits cailloux et coquillages, récoltés au fond de l’eau grâce à ses pièces buccales et ses pattes antérieures. Au fur et à mesure qu’elle grandit, elle allonge et élargit en cône sa gangue protectrice, abandonnant derrière elle le bout trop étroit devenu inutile.

Things started going wrong for Florence about a thousand years ago, when a very important man named Hugo--a margrave, no less--decided he wanted to live in Florence instead of the then capital, Lucca, a decision which brought on a period known as The Golden Age of Florentine Art. Half a millennium later, A guy named Lorenzo di Medici started running the show and throwing serious money at local artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci (best known for his thrilling novel, "The Da Vinci Code") and Botticelli. Pretty soon, all the talk was about Florence: The architecture! The paintings! The sculptures! The ravioli!

As I write this, it is 5:20 p.m. here and 5:20 a.m. on the Eastern Seaboard. My watch is correct once again. I am halfway around the world. Here on the other side of the world, no one seems to think I'm dressed very well. Every second man I pass in the street wants to make me brand new a suit. So great is their alarm over my appearance that they assure me that one can be ready in just a few hours.

This extremely beautiful stretch of asphalt is the pier at Red Hook, Brooklyn. Actually, it's the parking lot. I tried to get to the pier, but the security guard would hear nothing of it, for reasons that remain unclear. If all goes according to plan, I will be stepping onto said pier exactly 80 days from now. Soon after that, I will reach the parking lot. But I have many miles to go before any of that happens.