Notes from a small weekend: on things learned

*We had friends over for brunch today who live far away. Brunch is always better when all that is left on the plates is syrup tracks and everyone lingers as a second pot of coffee brews. I love starting the day that way.

*It was a quiet weekend of laundry and movies. Rain and books. Bubble paths and princess costumes.



*We played hard which, according to science, is good for us. This morning NPR's Speaking of Faith ran a really cool piece on the importance of play for all of us. If you missed it, here's a link.

*I read this book by Dr. Chopra this weekend about finding meaning in coincidence. I've read quite a few of his books, but this one may be my favorite. I try to be open to signs in my life, but lately I haven't known what to make of them. I was blessed early in my life to get big, very clear, writing-on-the-wall kinds of signs. But lately, things have been more subtle, and completely contradictory.

*I learned that {thanks to my husband} the Ellie Krieger spicy pita chip recipe is amazing. Great with hummus or chicken salad.

*I learned that Casper The Friendly Ghost is still lovely all these years later. My girl loves it as much as I did growing up. The Pink Panther and Woody Woodpecker are on Hulu too. And I was so excited to learn that HBO made a series Harold and the Purple Crayon based on the book series. It is adorable and available free on Hulu.com.



Harold draws solutions with his purple crayon any time he is in a jam. It's very deep actually and has me thinking a lot about how we, in large part, create our worlds....the architects of our own lives. I need to sharpen my crayons and think about what it is that I most want to create in my life.

*I was enchanted by this sweet wedding story in today's NYTimes. It's cheesy, but man it's sweet. The photograph by Robert Stolarick is what caught my eye.

Love this quote from the groom about meeting his future wife years after their high school romance: “It was the first time in 16 years that she looked at me the way she used to,” he said. “Some keys unlock doors. Some looks unlock you.”

Let's pretend we are still at the beach with...

A vacation in a pot:

Poppytalk had a great post about making a Beach Garden in a pot from Sunset Magazine. Just lovely.



Beach Reading:
I am reading Shakespeare Wrote for Money, Nick Hornby's collection of columns for The Believer Magazine and sequel to The Polysyllabic Spree. I am always a little sad when I finish his books. He's the kind of guy you wish you could have over for dinner.

I'm only a few pages into Their Eyes Were Watching God and I'm already underlining beautiful passages. For example, the powerful first lines of the book:

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men."

My husband has peaked my interest in Kazuo Ishiguro's novels {Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go, A Pale View of Hills etc.} I will let you know.

Pat Conroy's South of Broad comes out August 11th. I spent enough years in Charleston to recognize a character or two in his books, so it's worth a trip to the library to see the latest installment of elite life at the tip of the peninsula.

The new Victoria and Coastal Living Colors issues are beautiful eye candy. Also, this month's O has a great spread on books. Here's a link to their summer reading list. I've noticed several summer reading lists have included Dreaming in Hindi and Are You There Vodka, It's me Chelsey.

Beach House Style
When I go to yard sales, they hardly ever look like the "Tag Sales" where Martha Stewart finds cool beach glass and milk bottle vases. When frustrated by an unsuccessful attempt at finding cheap vintage, eye candy is always available at Farmhouse Wares.

I have been visiting this website for North Carolina's Cottage Chic Store for years.


It is great for window shopping.

What are you reading this summer? Any beach products you can't live without?

Cheers to you, Dads

I adore my father.
It's kind of ridiculous how much.
My daughter's father is an incredible human being, too. The bar was set high for my expectations for my child's father, and yet he always surprises me with all that he does for us.

My favorite thing is seeing the two of them together, my father and my husband, laughing hysterically, usually over a glass of red wine. So, this little column from Dottie & John about chilled reds for summer seemed appropriate today.



Cheers to you and to my father-in-law who has my love, too, as we laugh hysterically over cold Miller Lite.

**for more of Dottie & John, read their memoir Love By The Glass, one of my all-time favorite love stories.

How My Light Is Spent

Plateworthy (my husband - a literatura academic) walked into our home office on Monday night to find me reading in quickly fading evening light. He says to me, "Alright Milton, you gonna turn the lights on?"

So I ask him, "Is that how Milton went blind? Not some congenital thing?"

"Sure," he says. "He had to dictate Paradise Lost. The whole thing. Some other things too like (he says this smiling as if to make his point) the sonnet that begins 'When I consider how my light is spent' about his blindness." I love that he remembers this sort of thing -entire passages- even though Milton is not his area.

Then in seconds, he pulls Milton's Complete Poems and Prose from the shelf, flip flip and bam, there it is, Sonnet XIX, and it is lovely.

I love that he brings beautiful words into my life. It's like that line in Wonderboys, "She was a junkie for the printed word, and lucky for me, I manufactured her drug of choice."
I really get that. And a phrase like "how my light is spent" is something I could chew on for a few days. Warm chocolate chip cookies I never knew were there.

How my light is spent.

What an image, a phrase, a challenge.
Not just about blindness, but about how life is a brief light.
In.
Flicker.
and then
Out.

How will I spend it?
How will I share it?
What will my life illuminate?

I don't conserve my light either. I don't limit my attention to things that are good or beautiful. I don't always spend my light in ways that make me or any one else happy or the better for it.

But I should.
Because I am so damned lucky.



**if you enjoyed this piece, check out the albums of Orchestra Baobab. Perfect summer music in every way.

More Inspiration Fodder

Since I have the journals out, and since we're all mourning the loss of Blueprint and Domino, here's some eye candy for you...

Cut out from House & Garden, this one inspired me to paint our bedroom cerulean blue when we lived in Georgia 8 years ago. Now I just settled for a door this color, but I still love it. It's like Greece, and England all in one.


I adore this house from Cottage Living, I think.


House & Garden. Love the tone on tone matching vase and the close bunching of the flowers.

Love this. I think it's a paint ad, but I just see the movement.

Good grief. So sweet. I think I found this in Working Mother. The story was something from a husband's perspective about his wife and how she was her happiest, most mellow with her children.


My sisters and I would cut out old magazine pages and paste them onto these coloring book style scrapbooks at our grandparent's house. This page I kept. Love the movement, the 1950s fashion, the simplicity of it.

In the foreground I've posted a quote from a famous fashion photographer about photographing people in O Magazine. In the background, I have pulled this page from the Garnet Hill catalogue (which always delivers for great copy) because I've been thinking of getting a lemon tree for the house.

When I went to the Vatican in December of 1998, the lemon trees had all been moved inside and lined a hallway. The smell was amazing and the light came through the french doors all along the corridor making them look like shiny jewels.


I believe this one came from H&G (House & Garden). When I pulled it, I was more interested in the color contrast of pink and black, the roundness of the boxes against the square books than anything else. Very French, no?


This appeared in some Cookie or Wondertime. Not sure. I just thought it was awesome that they took a wall, put in shelves, painted the background and voila! dollhouse wall.


This one was from Real Simple with a great quote about how it's best to be in a modest cottage with books, family and old friends.


I pulled this years before I knew I would be photographing weddings, but it is perfect bridal inspiration. Love the lines- chin, swoosh of hair, eye line. Got to be a Chanel ad. It's text book perfect.


This one inspired me to line up plastic clear containers for all of the brio trains, crayons and little people.

This may have been from Organize and inspired me to get wire baskets for the fridge. I'm still hunting for the perfect wire rimmed basket like Kate Capshaw's character uses to get mail in The Love Letter. Speaking of Kate Capshaw...

I could not love this portrait of her and her daughter any more than I do. J'adore times 12.
Super photography inspiration, my friends.
The Gap often has killer photography. I still think about their 2001 commercial with Carol King and her daughter Lois Goffin singing a medley of So Far Away {} and Love Makes The World Go Round. I love that ad. So much clean space, hardwood floors, a black piano, her daughter singing, "So far away. Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore? It would be so fine to see your face at my door. It doesn't help to know your just time away," and Carol answering, "I can't stop believing love makes the world go round." I'm sure I rushed out to buy jeans as result. :)

But the most inspiring thing I have seen or heard in a long time was from President Obama today speaking to graduates at Arizona State after the University chose not to award him with an honorary degree. He said, "I come to embrace the notion that I haven’t done enough in my life. I heartily concur. I come to confirm that one’s title, even a title like president of the United States, says very little about how well one’s life has been led — and that no matter how much you’ve done, or how successful you’ve been, there’s always more to do, always more to learn, and always more to achieve.”

So, enough with the pretty pictures. There's work to be done.

Whatever You Love, You Are

I'm reading Molly Wizenberg's thoughtful, delicious, heartbreaking memoir, A Homemade Life {me reading is brought to you by finally giving up cable and TiVo}.

In the book, she mentions a Dirty Three album called Whatever You Love, You Are . It was the phrase that led her create her wildly successful blog Orangette and the book too, I suppose.

It has me thinking about this question of what I love. I'm working on a list which, after my family, is quickly followed by the almond macaroon cookie I had at Magee's on Saturday that was pass-out amazing. But then again, the question isn't who you love or what nouns you love, but what en general you love. Hmmm.

What do you love?
And, in turn, who are you?

It's like a fortune cookie game. If only they were almond macaroon fortune cookies.

In The Details

One of my favorite Christmas gifts I received this year is this little book, A Year of Mornings, taken from the amazing blog 3191.


I've written about them here several times, but if you haven't already, bookmark their new site for a year of evenings in the making.

The book is so lovely and I adore the dotted swiss part of the cover. It's a textual experience. In the forward, one of the authors, Stephanie Congdon Barnes, writes that the work helped her to perfect the art of noticing beauty and finding simplicity in her daily life.

"All that was loud—be it the cries of a child undone by his inability to tie his shoes, the storm beating at the window, the sight of the day's heavy workload, the weight of an emotional loss—was quieted by that click of the shutter.

It is my hope that our photos engender a culture of noticing, that they don't represent something lovely and out of reach to the viewer, but instead illuminate what is beautiful at her own breakfast table. People have described the connections between the photos as magic and cosmic. This, I feel, is not Maria's or my doing. The magic belongs to the viewer."

The magic in their work is the celebration of those domestic details that are there in most of our lives, in different manifestations, that go un-noticed. As Barnes writes, "the way the light was falling on the breakfast dishes, the rings of water on the counter, a drawing or toy left behind..."

Only now, I realize the enchantment of my grandparent's home was the attention to the details of the garden, the sewing, preparing food, striking piano keys, helping neighbors and taking time for private prayer. Someone was always up before the sun. Chocolate milk was heated on the stove for me in the morning. Butter was brought home for lunch that my grandfather made that morning. Grapes were grown on vines. Tomatoes were canned. Pillow cases were stitched with love. There was a romance to me about putting love into daily chores.

It makes sense to me that all places where people devote their existence to worship and meditation (Ashrams, Convents, Monasteries) suggest chores—scrubbing floors, chopping wood, carrying water. There is something spiritual about carrying out the tasks that the day requires. My mom always says that pulling weeds is great mediation time. I am actually enjoying working in my house with this in mind.

The past few months, I've felt the weight of emotional losses at the same time that I've been on the road, away from what Barnes describes as "the inexplicable calm of domestic life." I realize now that photography has been grace for me during this time, stepping stones in choppy water. It has helped me to stop, to notice and to hold on to glimmering sandcastles for a moment before they are washed away. Looking at photos from this time is bittersweet, like finding grains of sand in my shoes after a vacation I don't remember taking.


I am enjoying being with the details of my life that make me the most happy right now: my husband, my daughter, and little creative projects.

My hope is that when the holiday is over, I can continue notice more, be more present, be better.

Pop-Up Time

The shelving system collapsed in my daughter's closet last week, thankfully without anyone under it. After doing an inventory, it appears that it was the holiday book collection that put us over the weight limit. Even still, you can't have enough holiday books. Right? We are really enjoying working our way though our collection of holiday books, movies and music.


This week, we're turning the pages of:
Christmas At The Zoo.
You Are My Miracle
The Sweet Smell of Christmas
The Grinch
The holiday pop-up books from Robert Sabuda
The Berenstain Bears Trim The Tree
If You Take A Mouse To The Movies {aka The Popcorn Book in our house}
A Snowy Day
The Little Drummer Boy
Snow
Olive The Other Reindeer
Little Tree inspired by the sweetest poem by ee cummings

"The little tree had found his own special place that was waiting for him all his life." Chris Raschka

Here's a lovely list of holiday reading recommendations from SouleMama and another even better one here.

What are your favorite holiday books?

Healing Things

1. The Hotel Cafe Presents: Winter Songs



2. Cipriani Parapadelli Pasta

3. Photographs like these of the joy of being a momma.

4. Visits to places like this.

5. Inspired shopping guides for children like this one.

6. Simple suppers like ratatouille from the Moosewood Cookbook.

7. The promise of books unread. A list of the year's 10 best from the NYTimes is here.

10. Bolla Valpolicella - it's cheap, perfect red table wine for any occasion. Like a field trip to Roma.

11. Good friends like these who are taking time to live full time. Love their post here about making a holiday wreath.

12. Pink Christmas Trees.


13. Being home.


14. Songs of Joy & Peace from Yo Yo Ma and also this one from Sixpence None The Richer. Though, I have to say, if looking for a Joni Mitchell remake of River, look no further than Corrine Bailey Rae's version on the Herbie Hancock record River: The Joni Letters.

As I drove to court this morning in another county, snow was falling and I listened to Corrine singing,
"It's coming on Christmas. They're cutting down trees. Their putting up reindeers and singing songs of joy and peace. I wish I had a river I could skate away on." I know it's crazy, because I don't know her, but I say prayers for her from time to time knowing this will be the first Christmas since she has lost her husband: a loss I cannot imagine.

15. Old Ornaments


16. New Ornaments



Here's to peaceful winter evenings.

Old Friends

Waiting in a noisy restaurant, we went to the bookshelf where they keep books for children. My daughter started jumping up and down because they had two of her favorites, The Cat In the Hat and You Are Special. I handed them to her and she hugged the books and looked at them, amazed that they exist somewhere other than her room.

These were tattered copies with stray crayon marks on the title pages, bent spines, and no dust jackets, but she greeted them like old, beloved friends with a smile much bigger than during our entire time at Disney World. They were a piece of familiar comfort in a loud place.



When our food came and I returned the books to the shelf, she didn't protest. She knew her copies were at home, exactly where she left them, though probably under our sleeping calico.

But she talked about it later, how they had the books that she has, too. They like the books I like, and how maybe the next time we eat there, we can read them again.

Pen Pals

My new post for Skirt!

For Your Beach Bag

We're shaking sand out of our bags after my first week off in two years. It was a much needed break. I'm really sad that vacation is over. But, like Grandpa used to say, "I'm blessed with work," so I shouldn't complain.

Here are a few suggestions for your getaway:

I've been on the road a lot lately for work. My beautiful husband made me a mix that I first listened to at 6 a.m. on the way across the state. The first song, To The Stars, is from this album which everyone needs. The orchestration is amazing and the lyrics are like the most genuine love letter.
"Oh my darlin'
Dear I love you to the stars
love you from my heart"
click here to listen or buy.



I just read the new David Sedaris short story collection, When You Are Engulfed In Flames and though there are a few gems (particularly the first story "It's Catching" which made me laugh out loud) many of the stories chronicle awkward moments in travel that lack the depth in personal relationships that set his other work apart. It is worth reading, but if you have to choose just one, pick up his book Dress Your Family In Corduroy & Denim for the beach. A bonus is that you can probably find it on your bookseller's bargain table now.

I picked up these super comfy flip flops that don't hurt your arches.



And, no kidding, I found the most beautiful, fluffy beach towels at Marshalls on the cheap.

Before we left, I downloaded a couple of Yo Gabba Gabba and Backyardigans episodes for the video ipod which was a lifesaver during long waits at restaurants and during travel. It's a lot less cumbersome than the portable DVD player. Also, several PBS shows like Super Y are free podcasts. Check them out on itunes.

I hope you have a vacation scheduled soon, even if it's only to the backyard.

24.

Dorothy Gaiter and John Beecher. I love their recommendations, appearances on CBS Sunday morning, their WSJ column Tastings and most of all their memoir, Love By The Glass: Tasting Notes from A Marriage, which always makes me cry happy tears.

My husband once sent them a book and a self-addressed envelope to them to sign for me for a special occasion, and they did!

20.

These bookshelves have me looking at every nook in the house as a potential library. For more of the photos, click the bookshelves link above.



So beautiful! It's like Shakespeare & Co. Books meets Dwell Magazine.

31 Flavors

To kick off my 31st year, and this Blogiversary, here are some of the 31 things inspiring me today....

1. I adore Darondo. I first heard about him on this NPR piece. The music is amazing, but what I love MOST is the details in the liner notes of his album, Let My People Go.

He was opening for James Brown, cruising around San Francisco in a Rolls Royce, with a career on the verge of really taking off when he left everything to travel. When he finally returned to California after meeting his wife in the Fiji Islands, he became a physical therapist and helped treat people with music.

He writes, "I used to incorporate the music with the therapy," he says. “I'm very versatile so I'd sing everything to them; pop, country and western, jazz, etc. I worked with head trauma cases, amputees and folks like that. I'd bring my guitar in and watch miracles happen. Once, I told a patient of mine, who was in some serious shape, that she's going to be dancing by Halloween if she just listen to me and do what I say during therapy. The director and I fought about what I told her, but three months down the road she got up out of her wheelchair, did her little dance and lip-synched a Madonna tune, and then walked back over to her chair and sat down. That thrilled me so much and put so much love in my heart."

My favorite song on the album is Didn't I which you can hear if you click this link.

It will quickly become your favorite windows-rolled-down song for spring.

2. The coolest dollhouse ever.



3. My favorite author Jhumpa Lahiri's new book was released today!



4. Cinematic Orchestra makes me want to go take photographs.



5. Anthony Minghella's work continues to inspire me. What a tremendous loss. I think we own every one of his films and the accompanying soundtracks. The Charlie Rose site has some nice interviews with him available.

6. Hope for a more perfect union.

7. Artist studios like this one.

8. Writing out loud in every color of the rainbow with my favorite pen.

9. Weird Beard Weil's vitamin advisor. It's free. You answer questions and he tells you what you should be taking. Turns out, B complex is life changing for me. Who knew.

10. Pureology hair care. So worth it. And my Rite Aid started carrying it as well. My daughter says it smells like Candy Cams. This stuff, Aveda Hang Straight, is the greatest too.

11. Can lip-gloss really inspire? Hell yes. Especially if it's created by Goose's wife. (You know, Anthony Edwards. Top Gun. Goose? Work with me).

12. Romantic comedies like The Love Letter. Books, boats, coffee, lovin', jokes. What more do you need. And the porch. Good God, that porch. And Blythe Danner, who I adore.



13. Artist Moms like this one.

14. Dwell for Target. I picked up pink tulip decals and a matching night-light for my daughter and had to make myself stop there. So cute.

15. Spring clothes in yellow and kelly green.

16. Jonathon Adler's line for Barnes & Noble.

17. I've been listening to Nina Simone since 1993 when they used her album as a plot point in Point of No Return. It has been a staple in my record collection.
But at a recent Michael Buble show, (I'm still adjusting to the fact that the kids now call them "shows" and not "concerts") he did an amazing cover of Simone's Feeling Good that has reminded my why I love her and had me humming this song throughout the day ever since.

It's a new dawn,
it's a new day,
it's a new life for me,
and I'm feelin' good.

18-31 to come....

Phenomenal Women

Dr. Maya Angelou's 80th birthday is today. When I was 16, I lucked into two tickets to attend a reading with Maya Angelou. I wrote to her and invited her to come to our home for dinner after the reading. Can you imagine? I just put it out there. I was thinking, I love her. Of course she would like to be invited to dinner. Why not.

16 is great in that way.

She didn't respond to my letter, but I didn't care. I just liked sending her good words. She continues to send so many to me through her work.

I took my favorite English teacher with me to the lecture. She has since retired, but I still send her holiday cards and still love her to bits. English is not her first language and perhaps that is why she loves it and how she is able to inspire others to see it for new beauties that go unnoticed by the accustomed ear.

I used to dream of attending Wake Forest and being one of Dr. Angelou's students. But as I sat in the audience and listened to her speak, it was not all that different from reading her work or listen to her spoken word. In that moment, I felt this great comfort about books and the written word: that you can be a student of anyone who puts it down on the page from anywhere in the world.

Thank you to Mrs. B, and thank you Dr. Angelou for being such great women, teachers, friends.

Story Time

My little girl loves Lola at the Library by Anna Mcquinn and Rosalind Beardshaw.



Because of Lola, my not yet 3 year old campaigned for and received her first purple library card tonight.
It's a proud day.



For the first swipe of the library card, she checked out Minfong Ho's Peek, Jez Alborough's Yes,
Laura Numeroff's If You Give A Pig A Party and Taro Gomi's My Friends. They are all very sweet.

Snow Water

Yesterday's snowflake reminded me of a Michael Longley poem called Snow Water. In the poem Longley, a "fastidious brewer of tea, a tea Connoiseur as well as a poet, " asks the reader to bring him the gift of snow water to make his tea on his 60th birthday.

You can listen to him read it here. I love the quietness of the poem, like the gorgeous camera work in Snow Falling on Cedars of melting water droplets from leaves and pine needles.

We heard Longley read this poem in Sligo on his 64th birthday. The next day he gave an interview and talked about how his writing is changing as he ages:

"...I'm interested in getting simpler. I think that's the real challenge: to be polite and graceful and simple. The drift is towards being less and less “artistic” and simpler, and rising to, you know, the directness of the late self-portraits of Rembrandt or the last string quartets of Beethoven. I don't mean to say they aren't complex, in their conception and execution, but the effect is direct and simple."

This poem is great too about a family retreat home. "Home is a hollow between the waves..." is my favorite part.

Date Night Discoveries

I found the coolest, inspiring stationary from this neat company




and discovered a new-to-me writer, Tessa Hadley. I am really enjoying her book Sunstroke & Other Stories, but she has written several books getting attention including The Master Bedroom reviewed here . A quick search led me to this great interview with her about mothers who write.

A few quotes from that interview worth mentioning:

How old were your children when you started to write?

"Even when they were very young, writing was such a wonderful thing it kept me alive. Some aspects of motherhood -- especially very young babyhood -- can be so difficult, but I found if I could have three hours a day to step into this other world, it kept me going and I could enjoy my children. In that way, writing helped me be a better mother because I could escape for three hours and then go back to other things with real pleasure. With my second child, I had a "child minder" which felt very greedy, but that was my time. I couldn't justify it, but it was crucial."

From a practical standpoint, how has being a mother affected your writing?

"The topics I write about are hugely affected by motherhood. Since my life from age twenty-three through my thirties was completely taken up by motherhood, all of my ingenuity and interest have been focused on that. It's the challenge of trying to capture in writing the essence of women juggling home and work, women with babies, sexuality and young mothers, the division of labor -- that's been my story, and that's what I know about."

Any other thoughts on how being a mother has influenced you as a writer?

Click here for ordering information.

"A.S. Byatt has talked about women developing later as writers, and how maturity and motherhood are sort of a backwards route to writing. That was true for me. Although I look back now and know I was not that happy with writing in secret and being rejected by publishers, I'm glad I had that time. It was almost as if I needed a period of privacy and solitude to develop. It was a plus and a minus, but I wouldn't exchange being at home for those years." Tessa Hadley





And I packed my new finds home in this cracker jack:



Envirosax-
This bag rolls up like an umbrella cover into the size of travel Kleenex, perfect for your purse, to have any time you purchase anything. We have been using larger green bags for groceries, but this works for everything else, comes in great patterns and retails for about $7 bucks.

Bedside Table Fodder

This lovely image is from a new-to-me favorite blog devoted to finding and recommending good books. Stop by before cashing in the bookstore gift cards for some thoughtful recommendations that might not otherwise be on your radar.