Scents of spices breeze into the room where I sit and drink a ginger ale after a long day. There is a nice restaurant in my apartment building and the scents that they permit to escape are most delicate. This cardamom scent replaces the green wick aroma of the tree where plump robins gather.

Now that heat is here, my habitual perfume retires. It is a syrupy spice scent: absinthe and crème brûlée. What does summer require? The scent of quinine (in tonic water) and blueberry-mint sorbet, I suppose.

Which scent would make a dog howl like this majestic guard dog in a Chanel commercial?
- or make a woman adopt the balletic arm movements of this pretty girl?

Jeff Zeleny, longtime Obama-covering journalist, asked the President a four-part question at the White House last week. (More info about Zeleny, and a link to his question, at The Atlantic.) As the rest of the White House press corps giggled, he insisted:

During these first 100 days, what has surprised you the most about this office, enchanted you the most about serving in this office, humbled you the most, and troubled you the most?

Let's try it, shall we?

1. Surprised at the timing of kindness and hope when assuagement seems least likely and most needed. To those who smile and nod on the sidewalk, to longtime loves who smile at hard times, to new friends who boost me forward on my job hunt: un grandissime merci. Destitution never felt so luxurious.

2. Enchanted by the falling of the "Profzi scheme" -- the Ponzi scheme, or pyramid scheme, known as graduate school. The schooling I loved and left has no choice but to change or starve. I had to make the same choice one year ago: I chose to change, to leave academia, and pursue enchantment and cold lessons.

3. Humbled by the glory of springtime and the love of mon homme. Also humbled by wild animals, freshly published books on my goodreads reading list, and the thrill of watching Twin Peaks for the very first time.

4. Troubled by a cherry. 

On Friday, I took a friend to the Walker Art Center to gape at a cherry, weighing surely one ton, swinging from a crane. The big cherry flew over a lawn, hovered over a pond and was caught by workmen who fused it to the end of a large spoon.

As I write from my apartment, this funny homage to Versailles rests across the street. Between me and the cherry is a pedestrian bridge cocreated by John Ashbery, a poet. The beams of the bridge are pale blue and butter yellow, and one poem by Ashbery is wrought into the beams, to and fro.

In the USA, spare graphic art torn from the opening credits, which were designed by the amazing Saul Bass:

In the kitchen with Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, New York, 1969. 

Created by Train Horns

These vivid stickers from Minneapolis company Mello Smello used the technology of another Minnesotan enterprise, 3M. In the 1970s, 3M put two developments together: they blended molecules filled with fragrant oils into a soft fixant. A gentle scrape or rub of the matte coat and the molecules were released, filling air with scents evocative of raspberries, bananas, gasoline, computers, raisin bread.

My very first archive was a small binder of stickers, seen above and below:

Today is National Bird Day. Show us a bird that is native to your region

Not from my region, or even from this nation, but the songs and sounds of the lyrebird are fascinating. Love the sounds and camerawork in this clip:

Sweeter than that sickly aroma wafting over Manhattan:
Candy Land...the movie!

The game's manufacturer, Hasbro, wrangled a screenwriter and a director to make a major motion picture, reports Variety. What drama awaits us? Imagine Queen Frostine reigning the tides of the Ice Cream Sea... the education of Princess Lolly in the Candy Castle...busy Gramma Nut, tending a garden in soil made mineral-rich by the nearby Molasses Swamp...while, in a distant corner, Lord Licorice encroaches on the pristine Peppermint Forest.

The game already inspired two creative endeavors:

- Flickr member Peggy Dembicer covered an entire 1970s Candy Land board in beads. The photos show stunning detail:

Candy Land
Originally uploaded by Peggy Dembicer

- To those who denigrate this cheerful board game -- to ye who mock its seemingly simple salute to tooth decay and nervous jitters -- stand corrected by the programmatical and mathematical analysis of Candy Land, by LScheffer.

An excerpt from LScheffer's C++ study of Candy Land:

• You can win in just 4 turns - Queen Frostine, double purple, double purple, purple.  This only happens about 4 times in 100,000 games, though.
  
• Once in a thousand times, it will take you at least 204 turns to finish a 2 person game.

Time magazine reproduced today's schedule for NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
His first obligation of the day is this event at City Hall:

*11:00 AM  Reveals Sources of Mysterious but Harmless Maple Syrup Odors
Blue Room
City Hall
MANHATTAN
*Q & A to follow. The event will be fed live on switch port CTY3.

The maple-syrup smell wafting throughout midtown and downtown Manhattan has long flummoxed me. Paris smells of lavender soap and urine, Ann Arbor of baby powder and chocolate, Detroit of clay and vinyl; but why the sugary stench, Manhattan?

**UPDATE: Bloomberg announced that the smell comes from fenugreek seed processing plants in New Jersey! (AP story, 2/5/2008)
Fenugreek, a plant used as an herb and a spice throughout South Asia and the Middle East, is processed by Frutarom in New Jersey. It enhances the color and flavor of maple, vanilla and caramel-flavored products.
**

With its high caloric count, maple syrup is probably more efficient fuel than ethanol. Its production requires far less gasoline, electricity, water and pesticide than either corn or soy. Perhaps the stuff should fill tanks at artisanal, hand-tapped Canadian-import gas stations.

Maple syrup breeds neighborly warmth: "sugaring off" is a maple-syrup-themed party in regions where maple trees are big business. Collectors dash fresh maple sap onto the snow in streaks, which freeze into delicious hard candies; syrup is slathered over roasting ham, dripped atop ice cream and pies, and otherwise converted into fuel for the hardy folks in bitterly cold forests. People gather to sing and dance the night away in a sticky-fingered frenzy.

So, hey, Mayor Bloomberg: care to subsidize some maple syrup parties in Manhattan? Few festivities are as convivial and inexpensive as the sugaring-off.

Today -- Thursday -- was a French national strike against the government. All union members and sympathizers were invited to strike in all cities; rosters suggest that around 30% of workers went on strike, reducing labor in sectors ranging from transportation to postal to educational to legal. And to think that the financial disaster all started here in the U.S.!

Last fall, a big strike at Renault moved President Sarkozy to pump up his subsidy of the French auto industry; as a result, more workers are employed for longer hours. Yet Sarko was a little less dazzled by this strike, saying that "Quand il y a grève, personne ne s'en aperçoit." (When there is a strike, nobody notices it.)
This cheery man from Lille responded on his placard: "Et là, tu m'aperçois?!" ("And now, do you notice me?!")

Le Monde keeps a close watch, shoving aside their coverage of this huge strike in favor of stories about the bailout. Echoing their strong government, the French press covers the bailout plan qua endorsements of made-in-USA products; meanwhile, the American press focuses on the Republican opposition (today, the minority whip announced his hope for national bankruptcy by June, in order for his fellow Republicans to be able to wag their fingers at Obama and the country -- beautiful, guys).

The strike limited Le Monde's printing and delivery services, so in an unprecedented move, Friday's paper is online only and free for all. While American cities like Detroit and Seattle face the possibility of life without any daily print newspaper, France is trying to boost enthusiasm for its presses. All French citizens get a Sarkozy-sponsored gift for their 18th birthdays: a subscription to Le Monde.