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The Sandwich Monday crew is out of the office today, at a staff retreat where they're probably going to make us exercise. Still, here's a quick take on a new sandwich from one of our favorite spots.

The arrival of a new sandwich at Tudor's Biscuit World in West Virginia is a lot like that scene in The Lion King: Somebody takes the biscuit to the edge of a cliff and holds it out for all of Appalachia to behold, and all the animals rejoice, except the animals who end up on the biscuit.

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"Thanks for the inspiration @ASmith83 & @Sllambe - I'll take it from here... #tweetsfromhillary"

Retailing giant Wal-Mart Stores' annual shareholders' meeting this week showed signs of the company's recent turbulence, as protesters assembled at corporate headquarters to shout slogans and demands.

Despite a court-issued restraining order, the protesters, including workers who are on strike, decried low wages and called for better safety procedures for supply-chain workers. And some of their views were heard inside the meeting, as well.

The strikers were in Bentonville, Ark., with the support of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the labor group OUR Walmart.

Inside the meeting, the lineup of speakers included "former Bangladesh child garment worker turned activist Kalpona Akter, as Jacqueline Froelich reports for Newscast, from Arkansas member station KUAF.

Akter took the stage to deliver a speech recommending the adoption of Proposal No. 5, a measure that would give shareholders of 10 percent of common stock the ability to call a special meeting. Such meetings would be useful, she said, in crafting responses to incidents such as the recent collapse of the the Rana Plaza garment factory complex, which killed more than 1,100 people in Bangladesh.

After that tragedy, several large European clothing companies said they will band together to create a program for inspecting factories and ensuring safety upgrades to protect workers. Last month, Wal-Mart said it would not be part of that effort, preferring instead to create its own plan, as The Two Way reported.

That didn't satisfy Akter, who noted that repairs that would make the company's factories safer had been deemed too expensive, despite equaling "just two tenths of 1 percent of the company's profit last year."

"Forgive me, but for years every time there's a tragedy Wal-Mart officials have made promises to improve the terrible conditions in my country's garment factories, yet the tragedies continue," Akter said. "With all due respect, the time for empty promises is over."

Wal-Mart employs more than 2 million people around the world, according to the company. It generated sales of around $466 billion in fiscal year 2013. Friday, Wal-Mart executives unveiled a plan to buy back $15 billion in stock.

Despite appearances by celebrities Hugh Jackman, Kelly Clarkson, John Legend, and Tom Cruise, Wal-Mart's 2013 meeting brought serious concerns along with the company's celebration.

"This year's shareholders' meeting comes at a time of turmoil for the world's largest retailer, which finds itself dealing with empty shelves, labor unrest, bribery scandals and tumbling sales," as Daily Finance reports.

Two things jumped out at me when I visited the show "Encyclopedic Palace" at the Central Pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale. The first is that in a show that claims, according to the wall text, to "initiate an inquiry into the many ways in which images have been used to organize knowledge and shape our experience of the world," the work on display is openly indifferent to anything that might be called knowledge, science or learning. Instead the exhibition is a disturbing celebration of the work of mystics and self-styled visionaries.

On display are sance induced abstractions by Hilma of Klints, images from Jung's Red Book, Aleister Crowley's tarot cards, blackboard doodles from Rudolph Steiner and Guo Fengyi's Chi-Gong visions, among much else.

Is this the curator's idea of a good joke? In the age of climate-change deniers and unreasoned skepticism about human origins, I don't find it very funny.

Or could it be, is it just possible, that from the playful heights of the art world, the very difference between seeing and knowing, on the one hand, and fantasies of communication with sages on the astral plane, on the other, has become too difficult to make out?

The second thing that jumped out at me when I visited the Central Pavilion was the near absence of art.

There is a great deal that is of interest and value, to be sure. For example, the wonderful models of imagined buildings — 387 of them! — that Austrian artist Oliver Croy found in a junk shop in Vienna; or the thrilling collection of pictures made by a Russian tween, most likely for the purposes of his own onanistic pleasure. But these are stand-alones, one-offs, the private products of isolated individuals. They are not so much art as they are art's raw materials.

Art happens in community, in exchange with others, in participation with the ideas and work of others who share common questions, puzzles, fascinations.

I wonder whether the curator's indifference to knowledge and science is also what explains his apparent indifference to art.

Art and science are different, to be sure. But they have a common origin in our joint engagement with a shared reality; and each thrives only in the crucible of community. Where there is no knowledge, there can be no art. And where there is no art, there is not even the desire for knowledge.

A final note: there are a few works of bona fide art on display in the Central Pavilion. For example, there is Tino Sehgal's wonderful installation (discussed here last week), and there are also striking works by Tacita Dean, Ellen Altfest and Artur Zmijewski. For the most part, though, the show does not even try to target art.

It should also go without saying that these critical remarks about the show in the Central Pavilion of the Giardini are not intended to apply to the work in the different national pavilions. There is magnificent art at this year's Biennale. I especially recommend the work at the French, British and Romanian Pavilions.