Grey Days

Is there a name for those endless days this time of year? My head is so achy and heavy and that I cannot for the life of me think of one. I can think of names for other times of the year but not this one.So, needless to say the weeks have been a bit long. It always makes me think of the Shins lyric, "The years have been short but the days go slowly by". I was listening to the Shins on repeat while finishing up some things for a Cleveland Handmade show at Silverthorne Gallery. (If you are in the area it's up until the end of the month). Maybe it was all the time spent in a VERY cold attic, but I've been sick all weekend. I am so.tired.of.being.sick. This has been a truly rough January.

The picture above was taken through one of my favorite candlesticks.
I have had my eye on them for quite awhile. I imagined them looking lovely on the mantle, but the realities of very thin glass on a mantle above a ceramic tile hearth and two cats and at least one very clumsy owner, it was not to be. After I broke one just minutes after arranging them, it was clear they needed a new home. Luckily they fit on the window ledge of the very high leaded glass window in the dining room. It turned out to be good decision because looking at the way the light shines through them gives me a lot of pleasure.



I just finished this book and really enjoyed it. It's been a bit difficult to throw myself into a new book, after enjoying that one so much. This always seems to happen to me. I did score this at the library, so I'm trying to make a sewing goal for the month. Also, the I'm Not There soundtrack has been playing a whole lot around here. It's so,so good. In the meantime, I'll be checking Leya's blog to see what other people's solutions are to these days.

When We Covered Cleveland in Ivy

So, its not very Christmasy, but I guess it is very seasonal, particularly if you live in Iowa. I was catching up on Tiffany's blog when I came across this quiz. I decided to take it,and while I don't want to reveal my personal results it did get me thinking about this guy. I'm not just saying that because he's my very own congressman. Actually it reminded me of a really great Dave Egger's story. The published version was included in his short story collection How We Are Hungry. However you can read another really great version here. It might be a little silly, but I have to think that crazy idealism isn't such a bad thing.

Meanwhile we are turning the corner of one week until Christmas. I have a few more crafty projects up my sleeve. We'll see how many I get done. I had decided not to bake any presents, but then I saw this post and I'm all a flutter with ideas. I'll let you know what the next few days bring. For now,I'm just listening to this and looking at this:

I Live in the Twentieth Century

I live in the Twentieth Century
and you lie here beside me. You
were unhappy when you fell asleep
There was nothing I could do about
it. I felt helpless. Your face
is so beautiful that I cannot stop
to describe it, and there's nothing
I can do to make you happy while
you sleep.
- Richard Brautigan

One of my most favorite poems, I just wanted to share on this windy,rainy, November night.

velvet lily pads

We had the great fortune of getting a big bad of organic Pink Lady apples at the West Side Market for one dollar. A few were a bit bruised, but they were perfect for cooking with. Every time I take one out, I think "A dollar!" in my head, so happy am I of this great luck. I've been thinking of lots of delicious apple recipes, but as it turns out so far I've ended up making only one apple recipe twice because it was so delicious the first time. Dutch Babies are a tradition in Devin's family where they are baked plain and then topped with a delicious sauce of fruit, butter, and sugar. I came across this recipe with apples and had to try it. Typically it is made in a cast iron skillet, but we don't have one of those, so I just use a glass pie plate. You could also divide it up into individual portions using a muffin tin. The batter is almost identical to Yorkshire Pudding batter and I follow the rules of my English grandmother here- all ingredients at room temperature.

Apple Dutch Baby

2 apples peeled, cored and sliced
1 1/2 Tablespoon butter
1/3 C. sugar or honey (or more to taste and tartness of apples)
cinnamon to taste
3 lg eggs
3/4 C. milk
3/4 C. flour
1/4 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
In a skillet saute apples, butter, sugar,cinnamon until apples begin to soften.

Whisk together eggs and milk. Add to flour and salt and mix together.

If you are using a cast iron skillet you can just pour the batter right over the apples and pop it into the oven. If you aren't I like to melt a little butter in the pan I am using and place it in the oven for 3-5 minutes to heat up. Then I add the apple mixture and top with the batter.

Bake for 20 minutes.
Top with powdered sugar and cinnamon if desired.

I wish I had a picture for you, but it's most delicious when it's right out of the oven and disappears quickly, so...



I've been reading Abigail Thomas' memoir A Three Dog Life. The essays chronicle her life after her husband is in a terrible accident chasing after the dog in Manhattan traffic. After the accident, he lives in an assisted living facility existing in the most present tenses, unable to recall time after a few moments. I just wanted to share one of my favorite parts of the book, aside from when he calls dog's ears "velvet lily pads" which is so lovely and perfect.

Thomas is writing about the assisted living center's art studio where many of the residents spend time working on projects and finding new life through art. She tells this brief story: "There was a young man who had arrived at the Northeast Center angry and belligerent, as inclined to take a swing at you as not. He began showing up in Bill's studio and started to paint. Bill watched him become an artist, and gradually he stopped being at the mercy of his rages. He got well enough to leave the center and move to a group home. This is what he said to Bill before he left: "What is art, anyway, except not pounding on walls."

feng shui & Wendell Berry

I've been feeling a bit claustrophobic lately. Sometimes I feel as is I am being smothered by things. You'd think with the moving of the past years that we would have cut down on the things we've accumulated, and we did, but maybe not enough. I think part of this feeling came from finally getting all my project stuff out of the dining room, which has been it's temporary place for the summer, as the studio has been over 100 degrees. It felt so good to get it out of the way and to finally be able to see the surface of the dining room table and potentially eat there. However, the feeling began to fade as I faced my studio, which now has piles of things that need a place to be. Moving a mess from one place to another is not the same as eliminating a mess, nor is it as satisfying.

I've been reading a book of essays on the life and work of Wendell Berry.One of the essays, called The Art of Buying Nothing, is by Barbara Kingsolver. In it, she paraphrases Berry's standards for technological innovation.
1. The new tool should cost less than the one it replaces.
2. It should be at least as small as the one it replaces.
3. It should do better work.
4. It should use less energy.
5. Ideally it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence.
7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
8. It should come from a small shop that will take it back for repair.
9. It should not replace ot disrupt anything good that already exists, and thins includes family and community relationships.
I realize that many of these guidelines are easier said than done for those of us in the modern world. Berry, who writes his books without a computer saying, " I would hate to think that my work as a writer could not be done without direct dependence on strip mined coal." But it does make me think about all that STUFF we accumulate and spend so much time organizing, buying more stuff to facilitate the organizational process.

In the new Domino there is an article detailing a writer's experience with feng shui. Looking at the diagram of the 8 point feng shui system, I realized that our refrigerator was in our money space, and that I have been avoiding some seriously sketchy glass yogurt containers in there for a long time. Next to the fridge is a badly placed trashcan. Kind of as a joke, and kind of because you have to face those yogurt containers sometime, I cleaned out the fridge and rearranged some things in the kitchen. I also cleaned off the bookshelf that had becaome the landing ground for bills and mail (our career corner- it could use some help). There were quite a few other jobs that I'd been avoiding, but finally tackled filling bags with things to donate. We've been making jokes about how that clean freezer will help our prosperity. More than that, I think is that doing these things, maintaining order, eliminating things, makes me feel so much lighter. Whether you believe in the powers of feng shui or regard it as new age hype, I think that lightness sure counts for a lot.

chill in the air

There's officially a chill in the air, and it's beginning to feel truly like fall. Even though there is bound to be a few serious warm-ups before fall is officially here, I'm excited that the crazy 90 plus days are gone. It means that I can finallymove my ridiculous mess from the dining room back up to my attic studio. I'm excited. I had so much fun "making over" the attic on a $20 budget. I'll be glad to get settled in again, though I will miss having a dog at my feet. Ramona's domain is the downstairs. The cats are the boss of the upstairs. They would like to hide out in the attic, but they just get into spots where they don't belong and get their white feet all dirty.

This air makes me want soup, so there's some simmering on the stove. This recipe again. If I remember correctly, it was my last hurrah before spring was really here. I've been really hungry for something Indian inspired and I think this will hit the spot. I've been reading Madhur Jaffrey's Climbing the Mango Trees and I've been dreaming of curries as I drift off to sleep. Another great Indian memoir is Monsoon Diary. It really introduced South Indian cuisine to me for the first time. I finally got to try it on a trip to Concord, Massachusetts of all places. It was one of our many destinations during our "Spring of Interviews". We went into Cambridge one night and had an amazing meal. I was finally able to eat a dosa. Since then, I've managed to track down a local restaurant the specializes in South Indian food. If you are in the area, it's called Udipi (from experience I can tell you that it may be called Udipi wherever you live) There's a great grocery next door as well.
When I think of all of those trips, I think of great Indian food. We seemed to eat it everywhere we went. Concord, Seattle, Chicago, Connecticut.


I love a memoir that incorporates food, because food has such strong associations with our memories. I think of Indian food and I remember Massachusetts, that's the way it works. I was excited about Concord for more than Indian food. I loved Little Women more than anything as a girl. I read her biography as a fourth grader and just immersed myself in those Alcotts. I would carry around a notebook a imagine I had a garret to escape to to write stories in. Susan Cheever recently wrote a book about the lives of the many famous Concord residents. American Bloomsbury was interesting, although I felt like I was left wanting more. The lives of Concord residents are worth looking into though.

For now, there's soup.

splendidly

I'm reading Daniel Handler's books Adverbs at the moment.I'm really enjoying it, but it's structure as possibly interrelated short stories makes it difficult to follow as a before bed read. I always feel like I missing out on the more subtle relationships because I've forgotten them from the night before. It did manage to inspire my title though.

The weather here has been gorgeous. We went to the Huntington Reservation this past week. It was gorgeous.




We definitely enjoyed ourselves, but I suspect it was Ramona who had the best time.





The next weeks are going to be busy, but I have some more of my favorite recent pictures to share.

Not On Our Watch

This weekend we went to a town hall style discussion with the actor Don Cheadle and John Prendergast. Cheadle became interested in the crisis in Darfur following the filming of the movie "Hotel Rwanda". The talk was in support of their recent book, Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond. It was held in one of the historic theaters in Playhouse Square.


There's a lot to say and at the same time I feel quite speechless. When I was finishing my history degree on of my areas of concentration was the Holocaust. I remember at the time we were just past the Balkan genocide. It seemed impossible then, that we continued to allow such a tragedy. And then, here we are again.
Some things that can be done:
Write to your representative. A form can be found here.
Give
Call for Divestment. This is a really interesting topic that I didn't know a lot about until the talk. Learn about it here.
Lobby the Government. You can call 1-800-GENOCIDE to hear an update on your representative's actions and make a request that they help end the crisis. Or you can visit Genocide.net
The Holocaust Museum has teamed up with Google earth to give a satellite view of Darfur as well as photos and testimony. Really amazing project.

free.inspiration.

I have a bit of a hair obsession. I'm not really sure how it all began. I think that it has something to do with the transforming powers of a new haircut or new hair color.To me, getting a new haircut has a thrill of adventure attached to it. The very sentence "I like hair" sounds a bit ridiculous and flippant. But, I don't think it is just a cosmetic obsessions. I think that hair is the same as the clothes we wear or the things we put in our house. You can debate over the actual importance of these things, but they do matter in a aesthetic, inspiring way. So, a few years ago, I was really excited to discover the Hair Stories books put out by Bumble and Bumble.They are put out biannually and they cover various themes combining style and photography along with more technical articles intended for stylists. These books really appreciate the style value of a great haircut and move them beyond the typical hairstyle magazines with bad lighting and photos that are all about the cut and nothing about the inspiration or soul behind the haircut.

In the very first issue,they included an excerpt from Hemingway's The Garden of Eden,used as an example of why a woman cuts her hair short. " No decent girls had ever had their hair cut short like that in this part of the country and even Paris it was rare and strange and could be beautiful or could be very bad. It could mean too much or it could only mean showing the beautiful shape of a head that could never be shown as well."




At first the books were pretty difficult to come by. Of course, you know how motivated I am by scarcity, so it was pretty fun to track them down. They are free and are supposed to be available from Bumble and Bumble salons, but it's a pretty mixed bag whether or not you can find one. Some salons never get them, some reserve them for stylists only.But I have managed to get hold of all of them so far.The newest edition, is all about "The Bob" and also includes a dvd. (The last issue included a dvd as well including a retrospective of their fashion photography). Luckily, Bumble and Bumble is making it much easier to get a copy. Just go here.Request one. You will not be disappointed. As Bumble and Bumble press says, it's free.inspiration.

The Emperor's Children

I've been meaning to write a post about the book, The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud. I finished it a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. In light of recent events, the themes of the book seem even more relevant.
The book focuses on three friends about to turn thirty just as this century is turning.It examines their intertwining lives in Manhatten and the intellectual world that they inhabit. The book culminates with the events of September 11th, but Messud uses a light hand describing the events,focusing individually on the characters and assuming we know what we know about the events of that day. The impact of the world event and the lives of these often self centered twenty-somethings have a great deal in common. It is a loss of innocence, a realization of adulthood and responsibilty that cannot at all be avoided.

Before the country has to face it's own inevitablity,one the characters, Danielle reflects on all of the changes that have recently happened to them so quickly:
"All of them, all three of them: a year ago, they'd been still linked, inexorably and, they'd thought, forever. It was supposedly better this way- each of them had found her heart's desire- but did they laugh as they had done for so many years? Would they ever laugh that way again, or was it over, now, in the Realm of Adult Society?" (345)

it just flew

Wow. I'm not really sure where this week got to. It really flew by. We spent an entire afternoon at the Apple store trying to resolve some major issues with our Macbook Pro. We've had it for a year and it's been sent in for repairs 3 times, and is still a disaster. I am a pretty big Mac devotee, but this computer has been a pain. So after a stressful afternoon, we finally got a suitable resolution: a new computer. To be fair, this is actually not my accomplishment,but Devin's. Forseeing the impending customer service confrontation, I decided to bow out right from the beginning and browse at a book store instead. Many magazines and half a novel later, he returned triumphant.

We went to see Dave Eggers give a talk about What Is The What. We were the first to arrive and then his flight was delayed and then we stuck around for the book signing, so it was a long night. It was well worth it to see one of my favorite authors. He really spends time with each and every person at the signing. Something that you don't really appreciate until you are the one at the front of the line. He and Devin chatted a little about the non-profit Devin is starting and he gave a little advice and encouragement,which was really nice.

This weekend we are finally making the trip to Chicago to see our baby niece for the first time. It's pretty exciting to be an aunt and uncle. Ramona went to my parents last night to be dog sat for the weekend. There's always more coming and going there,so she really loves it,even if she is completely intimidated by the cats. So, we're off. Next week the "print shop" will be initiated, and the recent reads discussed.

Last but not least I decided to join the color posting week over at The Glass Doorknob . Todays color is red.