L'Atelier Vert and Barbara Wilde

There are not enough good things to say about Barbara Wilde and her company, L'Atelier Vert. In the fall of 2002, I stumbled upon her website, fell in love with the words and the products, and was able to get in touch with Barbara, who proceeded to scour the French countryside and the flea markets of Paris in order to help me with a tableaux I was creating for the SFMOMA.

She is simply amazing, a joy to work with, and a genius gardener and "Thing-Finder" (as Pippi is wont to say).  She also writes beautifully. I just cannot find adequate words to express how terrific this person is.

Please take a look at her website, the wonderful things that you can buy from France, her terrific take on gardening, and on food, and a nifty video of an interview with the magnifique Barbara!

Simply the best.

Min Hogg, MFK Fisher, and Alice Waters.

Well, I was thinking today that if Min Hogg could fix up the world and MFK Fisher were still around to write about it, and Alice Waters could handily put together the meals (and I suppose MFK would have a jolly time scribbling notes about that), well, I think the world might be a better place.

Min Hogg is the brilliant editorial eye/source of most of the insanely fabulous everything that had been World of Interiors for many years. She left a while back, and WoI is still very good and very lovely and one of the two magazines I actually still subscribe to. (Well, add Wired. With Dwell. Gotta love Dwell. I want to live in just about every Dutch house they find. So I guess it's three magazines, now.)

Anyhow, somehow I was just pondering the charming effect that these three brilliant women have had on our universe, and wishing they could run a few things.

I'm hoping this post makes the vaguest bit of sense; I am supposed to be helping e. pack for camp, and it is time to go wash some more socks, so I am tossing this out there.

Happy Father's Day to Our Amazing Dad

The year's at the spring,

The day's at the morn;

Morning's at seven;

The hillside's dew pearled;

The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn;

God's in His heaven--

All's right with the world!

From "Pippa Passes," by Robert Browning,

in

A Child's Book of Poems,

which our amazing dad read to us, 

often, at the end of the day...

a buffalo, a book, and a brilliant thought

"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."

Thomas Edison

From a cool blog about blogging.  

And here's another good blogging source.  

Sort of goes on forever, this blogging universe.

I supposed this was a buffalo...what do you think?  It came from eBay, a few years ago, with a neato Native American doll.  About the same time the vintage Native American clay pot (to the right of supposed buffalo) arrived.

Transparency and the White Room

To have a window where you don't expect one: I love this.

When I was about seven, I remember looking at a magazine and seeing an incredible room, perfectly white--spartan, really, except for the lovely, textural addition of a warm white throw with long, woolly skeins (was it a sheepskin? probably...) on a simple bed.  And just to the right of, and above, the bed: a window...and the room was a room within a room, and the repetition and simple beauty of this--unthinkably exquisite, to my mind, it was. And still is.

I remember them being cubes, the rooms; the bed a rectangle; the throw, softly falling, almost triangular; the window a lovely, large square.  And all in the softest tones of clear, bright white and cream and bisque.

Made quite an impression on me.  Obviously.  It was a few years ago. Still want that room, I suppose, but having it tucked safely in my memory has been almost as nice (probably nicer, in fact, since I don't skew toward minimal in real life).  Very nice.

Fishing in an Ancient Tenement in Manhattan?

This is from a blog that had only 5 entries.  Wonder where Giles Anthony went?  Would love to hear more.

Loving BLDGBLOG these days.

Short version of long post below, courtesy of Einstein.

A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.

Motherhood

A moment, here, to say a bit about what we teach our children....a topic relevant, particularly, to our past few weeks, with three graduations in the family--Drew & Viv, from UCDavis, and Erik, from St. Christopher--and a wonderful upcoming adventure for Alex, who heads off for a month in Europe this August.

One of the things about motherhood, something I've thought of often in the past decade, is that when the children are little, and you are busting your rear to do a good job and keep them well fed and happy and in clean diapers and out of the electrical sockets, it is pretty easy to think you'd probably get an A, maybe even an A+, in "being a mom" (if you were still in school, and being graded, and I was only 2 years out of college when I became a mom, so I can assure you that I thought about this a lot).  

Then, somewhere in the middle of their sophomore year in high school (which our family has been through three times in the past 10 years), you wonder if, actually, you would even get a D. (D+, on a good day.) "Being a mom." Right. It gets crazy, and overwhelming, and sort of completely exhausting, motherhood. You wish they had been born with definitive instructions tattooed on their cute little backs, or something, anything, any directions...Please.  You wonder why you ever thought you were up to the job. 

Well, that is what happened to me, at least once or twice. Or more. 

But there are many brief shining moments, and longer sweet hours, and finally a couple of decades, and you look at it all and know that there isn't another job that pays this well, if you stick with it and put your heart into it.  

Jackie O. was right: the one thing you really, absolutely do not want to screw up is raising your kids. (Paraphrased, obviously.)  

No book I write, no article I publish, no logo I create, no job at the top of the corporate ladder, no nothing would be worth more than this, to me.  (Please remind me that I wrote this when the next carpool starts up, in the fall.)  We brought these people into the world, and--on the clear moments, of which there are many, I know this--it is the greatest thing one can do.  And worth a life's work. My life's work, anyway. 

Bottom line: I think I've taught them a few good things. There's always more one can do, but I've tried pretty hard, and my heart is always in it. I think they know that. They also know that their father loves them just as much as I do, and that--as Martha says--is a good thing. 

I hope they know that they mean more to us than anything. I hope they know that their grandparents taught us to love our family like this, that our siblings have continued the process with their children. I hope they know that we will be honored and deeply gratified if our children do the same.

Real bottom line: You simply can't put too much love into the world.

If I could teach them a few more things, things I would like, truly, to be better at myself, it would be to live every possible moment with generousity of spirit.  Be gracious and kind to others. Be gracious and kind to yourself. 

Listen. Hear. Your heart knows the truth. You will feel it.

Breathe, and breathe well, and be aware that what we have is now, what we want is right here, what we can do about it is to love.  

Take your time.  Feel the sun on your face...the sanctity of each breath...the genuine miracle that exists each minute that we are alive. It's just right here. Right now. 

And remember to put away the dishes. Like I said, things I wish I was better at myself.

Fabulous customer service from att. Yep. The phone company.

Okay, I don't know about you, but when I contact a company about a problem and I get a real live person on the other line who is fabulous and amazing and makes me think that customer service is a higher calling, I always want to tell someone about it. So, here goes.

Thank you, Nicole Victor-Agani, of at&t, for making me think that having 5 cell phones is not only NOT dumbdumbdumb, but brilliant and affordable. We like it that our kids can get in touch with us whenever they need to; therefore, it seems like a helpful thing to assist with their phone bills. At times, that has not seemed like a great notion. But today, when I called about an unwieldy $ number that plopped into my mailbox this morning, Nicole not only straightened out the problem (which someone else at at&t had promised to straighten out on the 21st of May, but--benefit of the doubt here--they must've forgotten the right keystroke)....Nicole also recalibrated our unwieldy family plan, spent the better part of an hour fixing things that I have, heretofore, been unable to get anyone to fix (let's talk about the MEdia works package that hasn't existed for years that at&t was still billing us for...I got off a call to at&t in utter frustration several months ago because the rep I was trying to work this out with didn't seem to understand that things that don't exist shouldn't cost money). Nicole was patient, kind, considerate, and told me the best story I have heard in months...about at&t refunding a large and unexpected bill to a soldier recently returned from Iraq...thank you for helping that soldier, Nicole, and thank you for helping us. And happy birthday. I hope your upcoming year is a fabulous as you are.  

You're a saint.

Maira Kalman's Principles of Uncertainty

This is old news, but it is timeless...because it is Maira Kalman.   And, if you haven't seen it yet, it is new news. Right?

A blog that turned into a book that is supposed to come back this year to be a blog again and, we hope, another book.

The Principles of Uncertainty, Maira Kalman

And Another Thing: The Mike Matas Blog

Okay, this little blog's lack of blogroll is a thing of the past. {Thanks to a fine tutorial from a genius who never makes one feel as though they have just emerged from the ancient tundra, having been in some sort of fitful snooze next to a fossilized woolly mammoth, while the age of the internet rolled in. Thank you, genius. Much appreciated.}

And, truth be told, the main reason I had to put up a blogroll (drumroll, please) was The Mike Matas Blog. Good Lord. This is visual aptitude taken to the nth. How can someone be this clever? Please click HERE for Mike's blog and spend a few minutes looking at the future. This is design at it's best.

Photo, above, by Mary Mattingly.

At Last, II

This is just a bit of what we're talking about when we're talking about W's.

Just a candid, taken at an unGodly hour of the morning, while prepping for a photo shoot.

Very Gallic.

Very Good.

'Nuf said.

Julia Cameron and the Girls, heading blog, with the Parasol

For the wonderful Jonathan, a correction: Alice, I believe, is above--sitting in the chair? (if the notes that accompany the graphics are right). The other girls with parasol, who grace the top of the blog, are by the magnificent photographer Julia Cameron.  They are beyond glorious, having ascended into the realm of truth&beauty, yes?

Just figured this out, whilst sourcing the Clara Bow photo below (also saved for the photo shoot of several months ago). At the moment I realized my mistake, I knew that you must, somehow, have known it was not Mr. Carroll's photograph, not Alice. 

So. 

I think, now, I shall try to be less hasty and far tidier when cataloging photographic inspiration and citing sources and such. Let us hope that this comes true, and does not go the way of my frequent resolutions to be better at folding laundry or learning how to cook like Alice Waters. {I always remember the wonderful quote by Iona Opie about climbing the glass hill.  Ah!  Truth and Beauty and Housekeeping.}  

Clarity, vision, and brilliance: A Mother's Love, A Tuscan Holiday

There is an intensely beautiful work, a short story by Lisa Brennan-Jobs, in the February 2008 issue of "Vogue."  It has one of my favorite new sentences of all time...

"We didn't have many things, but she is warm and we were happy." 

To have written this, about her mother, conveys such immense love...and in such a concise manner. It seems that Lisa has brilliance, vision, and clarity: gifts that her parents, surely, have passed on to her. I look forward to more remarkable work; I think we are seeing just the beginning of a wonderful career (and life!).

  

The Whole Kithouse and Cabana

Kithouse, Cabana, Backhouse, Shed:  I did some research on these a while ago (around the time I was planning to pitch a permanent porch/tent in the backyard...have the design completely laid out & ready to go...see early April "Summer Camp" post for quick musings on this. Personal reality check: summer camp in the backyard will probably have to wait 'til next summer).

Anyhow, this blog post from Dwell really covers the bases, and highlights several of my favorite links (found whilst looking for porch/tent inspiration) to backyard sheds and shelters.  Also, see Shedworking from the U.K.: absolutely fabulous.  Don't miss this amazing Beach Hut monument in Barcelona, either.  Sweet.

Imagine there will be more on this later, as I am currently extraordinarily enamored of this concept.  Hope to throw a few Boathouses and Lanais in, too.

Purple Onion Cafe: Los Gatos, California

Run, don't walk, to the Purple Onion Cafe on Main Street in Los Gatos.  

(Additional option: ride your bike...it's just off the trail...)

Lisa's Coconut Cake:  Best. Cake. Ever.

Steve's Sandwiches and Salads: To Die For.

Also:  coffee from heaven, good newspapers, delightful ambiance + 

lots of other fabulous sweets and savories to tickle your taste buds.

GO!  NOW!

(Sorry, don't mean to be pushy, I just feel very strongly about this...perhaps this sort of behavior is why my sister called me "the girl with the definite opinion.")

Bliss and the Right Brain

Seems, at the moment, that all roads keep leading back to TED, which I had never heard about until a few weeks ago.  Here's a fascinating rumination on the possibly temporal nature of left-brain dominance in English speakers. Even has a soupcon of nirvana thrown in.

Good stuff, courtesy of Dr. Taylor.

Nam Le: The Boat

This looks like it is a must-read, if only for "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice." Wonderful article by Michicko Katutani in NYT. 

Nam Le, it seems, has written the story that had to be written.  Growing up, after my father came home from the war, I marveled at the trials of the Vietnamese "Boat People," (as they were called by the evening news), and it was clear, to me, that many of these men and women and children must be heroes. 

From my cushy little suburban perch, comfortably (albeit not without the trials of the middle-American high school student) ensconced in Northern Virginia, it seemed apparent that the world needed, one day, to truly remember and honor to these heroes, and the nightmares they lived through.  

I have always hoped that someone would tell the story--the right way--and pay the appropriate tribute to those who escaped (or did not) the horrors of that sad, turbulent time, so that generations to come might rightfully pay homage to those who lived (or did not) through it all.  

Seems that Nam Le has done just that.  Seems that "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice" is the story, told the right way.  Seems like we should all begin to recognize that there are heroes in our midst.

SIWINY: Supposing I Was In New York... The Lucid Truth

My greatest folly, when the children were much younger (kindergarten-ish) and I could go to bed at 1:30 and get up at 5:30, for months on end (and I wondered why I fell asleep at traffic lights, with the back of the van rocking and rolling behind me...books, toys, children, noise...and still, it was a moment of rest, being at that traffic light)...anyway, back to the folly: it was to have the New York Times delivered to my doorstep (actually, driveway) long, long before it was in every Starbucks and on every screen. It was folly because, in truth, we absolutely did not have the extra $24.95 a month (or whatever it was) to spend on something so frivolous. ($24.95 used to buy a lot of pasta & canned tomatoes.) Now, please understand, news is not frivolous, but--at the time--the San Jose Mercury News was a lovely little paper (and it would get even lovelier, before bubble burst and all changed) and it cost only pennies, because we live in a tiny little burg in San Jose (which is, sort of, just down the street from San Francisco, above photo). But the New York Times was where I wanted to be, every morning, at 5:30, with my Mr. Coffee coffee and my cute husband leaving for work and the kids not quite up yet, so that there would be an hour of peace....

{Disclaimer: my kids will find the part about getting up at 5:30 a.m. very hard to believe, and even more impossible to remember (they weren't up yet, right?), but I am still married--26 years on June 5th--to the cute husband, who can provide verification.}

Anyhow, the whole reason I got into this nonsense is to tell you that, for more years than I care to remember, I have had a "to do" list of what I would be to doing if, and certainly it would be a hard act to pull off if I actually were, but just if--supposing I was in New York--what would I be doing this week? Hey. A girl can dream, right?

So, this week, I would: breeze by the Noguchi Museum to see

"Design: Isamu Kenmochi and Isamu Noguchi," especially since the exhibit closes on Sunday.

And I would run quick, like Carrie Bradshaw carrying her Manolos' (my kids will find this even harder to believe) in one hand and catching a taxi with the other, to see "The Eccentricities of a Nightingale," at the Clurman Theater, because a.) Charles Isherwood says it is, indeed, "the rare staging of a Williams play that delivered his poetry and his emotional power intact;" b.) it closes next Saturday; and c.) this is something not to be missed: "Mary Bacon's performance as Alma Winemiller, the minister's daughter with a soul fit to burst, rivals anything I saw this season for complexity, delicacy, and lucid truth." (Charles Isherwood). That's what I'm after. Lucid Truth. (Please note: I shall slip my Manolos' back on before entering the theater.)

And then (because I had all the time in the world, this being only a dream) I would swing through the Jewish Museum to see "Action/Abstraction: Pollock, De Kooning and American Art, 1940-1976" (thru Sept. 21), run to the MOMA to see "Take Your Time, Olafur Elisson" (thru June 30), after which I would--channeling Mr. Elisson's karmic quietude--do a walking meditation straight to "The Genius of Japanese Lacquer: Masterworks by Shibata Zeshin," Japan Society, thru June 15.

Does that leave me time, in my dreams to catch Mapplethorpe's Polaroids at the Whitney? OMG. I hope so.

Thoughts on a Shinto Office Armoire, from Gump's, and Suze Orman

Okay, I'm sitting here thinking that the Shinto Office Armoire in the new Gump's catalog would probably solve all my once and future problems.  Right.  It is lovely, and it looks so very invitingly elegant and supremely organizational and awfully orderly.  Things you want to be, right?  Well, things I always wanted to be.  And then I sort of begin to remember that there never has been (nor, do I finally--truly--understand, will there ever be) something I can buy that will make all of those dreams come true. And then I sort of wonder why it is that we all keep buying these things, or wishing to, which leads me to ponder how many hours women (and men) like myself spend, in their entire lifetime, thinking about/looking at the things we can buy to make our lives better.  And not buying them.  (How many hours do we spend not buying, daydreaming, supposing we should all have perfect homes unmarred by stacks or snacks or sticky-fingered people who usually happen to be under four feet tall?).  Equally alarming, perhaps, is the other thought: how many hours (and dollars) have we spent buying, and not quite figuring out that it's still not going to make all those dreams come true?  It's enough to make me want to set up my own personal hotline to Suze Orman.

It's all rather exhausting, on the whole.  A bit bewildering, also, since it prods me into admitting how much of a consumer I think I am not but I really am. 

Thank God the Shinto Office Armoire is almost $4,000 (and you have to wait 2 to 4 weeks for delivery, which always seems so long, doesn't it?  Except for the fact that it will reside in your now amazingly perfect little home office for the whole rest of your life, probably...).  Wait.  4K?  The numbers alone jolt me back into reality, and lightning fast calculations remind me that four thousand dollars is around six months' rent (give or take a few dozen burritos) for a college student (we have three in our family), or a year's tuition to a decent preschool in this area, or enough to feed a small family for many, many weeks (or months, depending on the circumstances).

Goodbye, sweet Shinto Office Armoire, and thanks for all daydreams. It was fun while it lasted.  

Wherever You Go There You Are

"How you set out 

on an adventure will

 pretty much dictate

 how you continue."

Cate Blanchett 

Vogue/07

Neurogenetics: Your Red and My Red may Really be Different than Their Red.

A few weeks ago, there was a remarkable article in the Science Times (NYT, 29.04.08), in which Dr. Arno Motulsky was interviewed.  As a teenager in Germany, Dr. Motulsky spent years trying to emigrate to the United States, and--like Walter Gropius, see Bauhaus idolatry below--he was fortunate to be able to do so:  in his case, the window between staying and going boiled down to a mere 10 days.  "If my visa had taken any longer," he recalls, "I wouldn't be here...I would have ended up in Auschwitz, like most of the people I left behind."

It's a good thing, for all of us, that he got here.  

In 1957, Dr. Motulsky asked a question about the negative interaction of two drugs with a set of enzymes produced by certain human genes that "set off a revolution in research."  What does this have to do with design?  In the simplest terms: the good doctor goes on to discuss how one of his new projects relates to human color vision, and a recent finding that "the same exact red color is perceived as a different type of red, depending on a person's genetic makeup."  Amazing, yes?

"Q. What's the point of knowing this?"

"A.  It's exciting to learn that because of heredity, different people can see the same thing differently.  I think this may prove useful in studying more complex brain functions.  

If this were 20 years ago, I'd focus on neurogenetics. 

What's going on in the brain, that's the last frontier."

Doesn't get much cooler than that, as far as I can see.

What do Julie Andrews, Francis McDormand, Holly Hunter and Gene Tierney have in common?

That there's a dearth of (living) mothers in almost every Disney movie is somewhat clear (when last I looked, which was, admittedly, long, long ago). Which got me to thinking, after another delightful & quick talk with a brilliant friend (with whom I've recently had some fascinating conversations)...where (in my humble opinion) are there movie mothers that are worth watching, again and again and again? Not just sainted, non-wire-hanger-bashing mothers, but rich, thoughtful, mothers - the good, the not-so-great, and the perfectly heartwrenching?  

So, for what it's worth, here are a few good mothers to watch...and I'd love for someone else to put their two cents in, someday...please feel free: this is just a start (a decent start, I hope)...

1. Francis McDormand in "Almost Famous" (actually, Francis McDormand in almost anything)
2. Holly "These are our salad days" Hunter in "Raising Arizona"
3. Every single mother (and non-single mother) in "Gosford Park"
4. Gene Tierney in "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" (just the thought of it makes me woozy with happiness and longing and that strange melancholy that the cinematography embodies)
5. Julie Andrews, pre-motherhood in "The Sound of Music," skip-waltzing away from the convent in her heavenly, wooly trachtenware jacket, equally fab skirt, and sturdy shoes
6. Ethel Merman in "There's No Business Like Show Business." (...am I remembering this right?  I had such a crush, at ten, on Donald O'Connor...can you imagine?)
7. Holly Golightly, a.k.a. Lulamae Barnes (teenage mother to the children of Doc Golightly), in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (whew...am so happy about this, as Audrey wasn't a mom in "Funny Face," all-time best Audrey--and with Fred, at that!--moment in my universe)
8. AH!  Mrs. Incredible....Holly Hunter, again!
9. God, I wish Judy Garland had been a mother in "Meet Me in St. Louis"...does it count that she sang "Under the Bamboo Tree" with her little sister?  That was sort of motherly, wasn't it?
10. Auntie Mame. Best mother a Patrick could ever have. Just ask Agnes Gooch...

photo, above, taken whilst blasting through 

Nuremberg in the 

summer of ott seven. baby and mother 

were guests at a glorious wedding...i was simply 

a passerby with a camera, in awe of color and moment...

Happy Birthday, Bauhaus

On this day, in 1883, Walter Gropius was born.  Without him, we wouldn't have had Bauhaus, those iconic modern door handles most of us take for granted (see photo of gray doors in the back corridor in Bauhaus Museum; most the photos inside this temple of Gropius are a little wonky, because I had a strong feeling--but I really wasn't sure--that maybe I was not allowed to take them...and there was a very stern, and definitely scary, Frau guarding the single door to the museum), and a bunch of other seriously good stuff.  

According to the current Wikipedia entry, Gropius really didn't draw much (great collaborative efforts with other brilliants ensued, surely, due to this factiod...which, for some reason, reminds me of Einstein's first wife, whom--I have read--helped a whole lot with his homework when they were married)...he barely escaped death in WWI... and he lost his only child when she was 18. 

And, to top it all off, he had to escape--under the false pretense of making a temporary visit to Britain--as the Weimar Republic collapsed under the weight of new horrors.  

If this guy could surmount all the obstacles thrown in his way, it should give the rest of us hope. 

Happy Birthday, Mr. Gropius.  

Rauschenberg, on the momentum of interesting ideas.

"Screwing things up is a virtue," he said when he was 74. "Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can't read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea."

Robert Rauschenberg: "...you're born an artist or not."

I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop...At the time that I am bored or understand--I use those words interchangeably--another appetite has formed.  A lot of people try to think up ideas.  I'm not one.  I'd rather accept the irresistible possiblities of what I can't ignore...

Anything you do will be an abuse of somebody else's aesthetics.  I think you're born an artist or not.  I couldn't have learned it.  And I hope I never do because knowing more only encourages your limitations."

"Robert Rauschenberg, Who Redefined American Art, Is Dead at 82."  NYT 14.05.08

"This isn't heaven...This is Cleveland."

Another Happy Mother's Day to the joyously visionary Joan Vigliotta: although this is not by James Marshall (whom you made us love even more, with all your wonderous words and pictures of yesterday aft.), it is still a baby.  It's also not in Cleveland: it's in Nurnberg.

We of Joy Look know where a bit of heaven can be found on earth: in Joan's dining room, stacked with books, annotated with post-it notes, abounding in love and the joy of literature...thank you, Joanie, for your vision.  It is beautiful beyond words.

Peter Sis, Mary Poppins, and Miss Rumphius

The Magnificents: Peter Sis, Katherine Tillotson, Joan Vigliotta (and, just to the right, Jane Wattenberg and Bev Hock....were that my iphone had a fish-eye lens, and could capture all of youse!) auch: the magnificents always also include Andrew Ogus und Margaret Simpson
"In a world where there are few possessions, where nobody answers questions, where nobody explains--I say this with joy, not sorrow!--children must build a life for themselves."

Please, please, please: if you read nothing else this year, read "The Wall."  Peter Sis has created a masterpiece.

Then, when you are done reading that masterpiece, go on to another one:  you can get "Pipers at the Gates of Dawn," (long out of print, but you know where to get it, and if you don't, email me)...the quote, above, is from "Only Connect," by P. L. Travers ("Mary Poppins") and is cited in "Pipers...." by the amazing Jonathan Cott.

Later, I will fill everyone in on how Miss Rumphius entered the picture (Katherine, are your ears buzzing?)....

Sitting Here

....it's all right here
and will be, that
world is wonder,

being simply beyond us,
patience its savor,
and to keep moving,

we love what we love,
what we have,
what we have to.

I don't know--
This fact of time spinning,
days, weeks, months, years....



"Sitting Here" by Robert Creeley
from Jonathan Cott's wonderful book, "The Roses Race Around Her Name: Poems from Fathers to Daughters"

Posthaste to Laurie...

Look's like the evidence is mounting:  maintaining a broad network of friends and companions is one of the best things you can do for your health.

I'd like to send my utmost appreciation to a friend who has been a veritable beacon of light (thanks, in large part, to her extraordinary compassion and awe-inspiring intelligence, which I mentioned in passing to her two hours ago over coffee.. the embodiment of non-ego, she continually brushes aside all compliments, and laughs...thank God): a dear and trusted companion who is a most magnificent human being.

{The new louis is very good indeed: pure art. The grill can wait: old Volvo's rock with or without hardware.}

Weimar: "Where else can you find so many good things in such a small space?"....Goethe

"There is no past, to which one may look back, there is only eternal newness, which shapes itself from the broadening elements of the past." 

The Glorious Illustrations of Alexandra Boiger

Alexandra's illustrations are perfectly sumptuous...and her tribute to her sister is beyond beautiful...

Alexandra Boiger Illustration: FOR ULRIKE

Salt: Soup, Attitude, and the Meaning of Life

Have just connected this to linkedin, and--on the very off chance that anyone scrolls this far down, clicks, and finds themselves looking at this blog--I humbly request your patience. This is all rather new to me: I hope to be adding a few bells and whistles (but not too many) in the near future, but I'm still learning.

That being said, the long-term goal of this little blog is to create something worth coming back to--some "thing" that is visually appealing, some words that are worth your time...some idea that sticks, whether it's for your home or your life or your next two and a half minutes.

In a nutshell:

I believe that life is wonderful and good and grand, but it is not easy. All that "wonderful and good and grand" is salted with moments (and sometimes months or years) of difficulty. I find myself (again, for it seems to be a recurring theme in anything I write) comparing life to soup. Tasty soup almost always has salt in it, doesn't it? In life, the salt may be of tears or sweat or the ocean behind our little house in Haliewa (circa 1961).

Salted with difficulty, life is not easier, but--if we allow it to be--it is tastier.

It would be quite nice to deliver, in this blog, good "soup" as often as possible. Yummy, worth waiting for; sweet, salty, memorable...worth coming back for. Blog soup that might add--even if in the most infinitesimal way--a little more meaning to life.

On that note...

Have been reading Viktor Frankl's book, "Man's Search for Meaning," again. In one chapter, he writes of a young woman--a fellow prisoner at the concentration camp--and the meaning she found, during her last days, in the lone branch of a chestnut tree outside her window. The entire section (entire book, really) is wonderful...a bit of it follows:

"An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature.

But there is also purpose to that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces...

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails...gives him ample opportunity...to add a deeper meaning to his life. {One} may remain brave, dignified and unselfish...man {has the chance to} either make use of or forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him."

What of the chestnut tree?

On the lone branch--the one thing the young woman could see through her window--were two blossoms. She often conversed with the tree--"the only friend I have in my loneliness." Frankl, anxious for her, and concerned that she was hallucinating, asked her if the tree talked back to her.

"Yes."

It is in the tree's answer that I find hope: brave, dignified, unselfish hope.

The salt from tears. The ocean in our backyard. Two blossoms on a chestnut tree. A good bowl of soup. Hope.

The answer from the chestnut tree? "I am here--I am here--I am life..."