Shop Around The Corner

If you are ever in the Lexington area (which now is the perfect time because the ponies are running at Keeneland ) people may tell you to check out Joseph-Beth Booksellers, the large independently owned bookstore/cafe. And, it is great. But the real jewel for bibliophiles is the lesser-known Morris Bookshop on Southland Drive. Just like a good writer, the owner has made thoughtful choices about what to feature and the children's section is my favorite in the world. It's hard to get out of there without spending money.


On today's visit, I picked up the Pollan and Leibovitz books photographed here. The other book, a memoir called A Homemade Life, was a gift from my dear friend Jen. I am really enjoying all three.

The author of A Homemade Life is a year younger than me which makes me want to get in gear and write that book I've always thought I would have written by now. I can't summarize it any better than the book flap which says that she, "recounts a life with the kitchen at its center. From her mother's pound cake, a staple of summer picnics during her childhood in Oklahoma, to the eggs she cooked for her father during the weeks before his death, food and memories are intimately intertwined."
Lovely and savory, it even includes recipes.

A Place of My Own, by Michael Pollan {of Omnivore's Dilemma fame} is about his quest to build a room of his own where he can go to create. The cover image is the work space he built. I can't wait to dive in. I am most interested in his discussion of how a space makes us feel differently about ourselves and our possibilities.

The Annie Leibovitz book At Work is so great. I love reading how she troubleshoots technical problems, like shooting against those pesky windows in the oval office or working with fans, just as much as I love the details she shares about what she was feeling when taking iconic images. I've been reading {her partner and literary giant} Susan Sontag's journal that I checked out from the library too and it's nice to look at them together, such different artists. I have a lot of trouble relating to anything Sontag says, but Leibovitz I can hear.

This is my favorite quote in At Work so far from the chapter titled "Being There":

"As much as I love pictures that have been set up, and as important as those pictures are to me, I'd rather photograph something that occurs on its own. The tension between those two kinds of photographs is at the heart of what I do. It's not a conflict, but sometimes it's useful to remember that things are happening right in front of you. You just need your mind and your eye."

It's hard not to gulp down this book, but I'm trying to slow down and sip one chapter at a time, to let it settle in and think about each story.

Morris Bookshop had all of the delighful Charley Harper ABC/123 books and games today and I wanted to take them all home. They don't look the same online or on television as they do in person. They really are beautiful and interesting on the printed page.

I settled instead on two children's books by M. Sasek, This is Paris and This is New York, which I really bought for me under the guise of getting them for my girl. There's an entire series featuring different cities.





Every page is like that moment with the curtain goes up after intermission and the stage has morphed into a new scene. There are stories within stories.


From This is Paris:
"You find these bookstalls on the embankment of the Seine. You can buy old maps and pictures here as well as second-hand books."

I love this page. Perhaps I'll make cropped note cards from it.

I think this drawing was done via time-travel and that is me standing there on my first date with my husband, looking for the collected poems of W.H. Auden. Most definitely.


Also from This is Paris: "This is the Jardin du Luxembourg. Jardin means Gardens. Here you can hire your own toy sailing boat."


From This is New York. The page reads: "Harlem is uptown. The police close many streets in New York so that children can play there."


From This is New York: "People walk uptown or downtown - dresses travel uptown or downtown and buses too."


From This is New York about skyscrapers. "New Yorkers adore to watch them grow." A page much more powerful now than it was when this book was published.

I hope your weekend is filled with things that inspire you.
Happy Easter. Happy Passover. Happy Spring.

To See You, To Hear You

I am sorry the posts have been sparse lately. So far, in 2009 I have been very, very blessed with work and travel. I am praying to keep up and at the same time not lose my enthusiasm for creative endeavors which are such an important part of how I organize (or pretend to order) chaos.

I am re-stocking inspiration. I know you are much more interesting than me. I would love to see you, to hear you -- your voices, your stories, your photos. Blogging can feel like a bit of a solo enterprise at times. Leave me a comment or link about what is exciting or inspiring to you these days.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope to post more in April.

In the meantime, here's a potpourri post to give you something to snack on:

Books

I'm still working through this insightful book, Thomas Moore's insightful A Life At Work


Moore writes, "A life work is a multicolored, tattered quilt. It is not simple, monochromatic, one-size-fits-all template that you simply adjust to. It may have gaps and holes and incomplete sections. It may not even feel like a life work, especially when you are in the middle of it. There may come a time when you can look back and see the sense in all the parts and glimpse a true life work, but even then it may be full of holes made by a long history of struggles."

He says that your life work doesn't have to fit into one job description. It appears in different aspects of your life and you don't have to choose just one. Amen.

------------------------------------
Films:

Looking forward to seeing the Sundance Festival darling, 500 Days of Summer



and Spike Jonze's take on Where The Wild Things Are.
Both look like movies with good soundtracks, too.

...this preview gets me with the boats, the sunflare, the sense that -as I have always felt- children understand the tension and the balance of it all. It reminds me of the Children's Defense Fund motto, "Dear Lord be good to me. The sea is so wide and my boat is so small."
-------------------------
Music
This week, my husband is teaching Pride & Prejudice, {which makes this English major nostalgic about being a student} so I've been listening to this soundtrack from the most recent film adaptation. It's really, really good for writing, cooking, editing photos, whatever you happen to be doing. Here's a link to my favorite song:

-----------------------
Food

Speaking of my husband {who has a passion for cooking} I've asked him to share a few of his quick-veggie-simple recipes here and asked him if I could videotape demonstrations of how to prepare the food and he agreed and said, "let's call it Plate Worthy." Love it. A new Plate Worthy series coming this Spring!

Can't get enough of Intelligensia Coffee which tastes amazing and also cuts out the middle-man putting money directly into the hands of the growers. I found mine at Fresh Market, but I know it's available elsewhere.

----------------

For those of you who have written that you want more essays, thank you so very much. I am working in that direction. I didn't realize how much I need that outlet until now.

Sea Shells

"John & Michael often spent summer days on the lagoon with the boys, swimming or floating most of the time, playing games with the mermaids in the water."
-J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan



I just finished this novel The Highest Tide. It's a lovely, quick read if you are craving salt water like I am. I tend to read about winter in the summer, the summer in the winter.

Love this portion of an e.e. cummings poem
Days of Innocence section 5:

"maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea."

Get Through This

I'm looking under rocks. Taking books off of the shelf. Searching everywhere for inspiration - for anything uplfiting. Everyone seems so depressed. Is it the economy? Are we all just sick of political commercials?

Here's a lighthouse or two making me think about all of the things about life that are beautiful and worth celebrating.
-Everything on this page is like heaven.

-I'm reading Living Simply With Children, though I wonder if I am simply living. I have some work to do in this regard, but it's a nice place to start.




I'd like to make some mini books for holiday gifts. This book arrived today in the mail and it is lovely.


-My sewing machine is back from repairs. Not sure I remember how to use it, but it's fun to think of the possibilities.

Anything inspiring you these days? Know any good jokes?
Is this thing on?

Crush

I have several crushes going these days, the first being on the ladies we found who help me clean the hardwood floors and bathroom. They are life. changing.

Here are a few others.

*Bright and sunny quilts from multiple Etsy sellers like these.



*Everything from Paper Source.

*A new favorite blog, Jen Lemen. Her work is soul candy.

*This blog and store, Shim and Sons, is delightful and I love her post on creative lunches for her little ones.

*One of the best reading/book blogs I have found in a long time, Nonsuchbook.


*This photo I saw on Stephmodo a few weeks ago is going on my vision board. We have a bay window crying out for this and a kitchen where one of these in a booth shape would be perfect. Know any carpenters?

*This TED lecture on Creativity from Amy Tan.


*And my biggest crush which began about 10 years ago, is my beautiful husband, who I missed so so so so much. When we got married, we said we would be like Paul and Linda and never spend a night apart. I hate it when I have to be gone.
It's good to be home.

Friday Inspiration: Life Is A Verb

An artist friend of mine, brilliant digital artist Donna B. Miller, created this beautiful book cover, so I had to check it out. I am eager to order
Life Is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally.

The book's author is a blog-star (holla!) and her readers are so excited to have a book to hold in their hands. Very cool!

Add that it's published by none other than Skirt! and I'm sold.

Filling Up The Well

A recent trip to the ocean began a much needed creativity refill for me. (I dream of having a sand path to my door someday. It is my favorite place.) I'm trying to find other ways to store up summer magic to get me through the winter months and enrich my creativity. We all must be thinking about this sort of thing right now because the eloquent Ali Edwards had a great post about the same thing and she also provided a link for Keri Smith's book How To Be an Explorer of the World (Oct. 2008) which sounds amazing and you can see a very cool interactive teaser by clicking here.

The same day that I saw their posts, my MIL gave me the coolest book ever - Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life. WOW! I have loved every page.



No kidding, on the same day, I get an email from Skirt! about Marie-Chantale Turgeon who has just published First Thoughts, "a collection of spontaneous thoughts on life, creativity, and being an explorer - a sketchbook, a personal collage of ideas and observations," with Blurb. You can flip through it here and it's a great example of self publishing. Oh the possibilities!


In between loads of laundry and unpacking files today, I tried to pick up articles, finish a short story I began reading earlier in the week and, in general, seek out other inspiration. More on what I found after bath time. My daughter is flying through the house....

A Quick Plug for Kind, Talented People

Our friend Kevin Johnston is appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on June 25th to promote his online show, The All For Nots.
Check it out.

My friend Jennifer Bradbury has published an amazing novel, Shift, and it's getting great reviews. Good summer reading from the coolest girl. Click the link above for the Amazon listing.

On The Road

A few notes from my virtual travel journal...
-an essay from Anna Quindlen about the fleeting nature of parenting
-a lovely recommendation for, "night music for when it's night, it's quiet and the kids are in bed."
-a thoughtful blog about creative parenting with a killer link list in the right hand column.
-my new favorite resource Bloesem Kids.
-another amazing photographer, Paul Johnson, gettin' it done. I mean, damn. Don't these images make you want to go on vacation, listen to Jack Johnson, paint a wall cerulean blue, get a sunburn, go dancing? Just me? (I painted my front door that color a few years ago. It still makes me happy.)

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!

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.

Potpourri Continued

I was thinking about some old Trisha Yearwood lyrics this morning, "Don't even want a drink. Give me some chocolate and a magazine..." Truely. Few things rival.

I hope that all of you are blessed with one moment a week that is yours - just yours. I'm still working on it. I am thrilled that substantial house cleaning cannot go on in the cottage while my daughter is asleep. This blog would never exist, I would never edit photographs, or bill any time outside of my office if the house was big enough that it wouldn't wake her for me to clean. I look around and there are a million things that I should be doing right now, but it is supposed to be quiet in the house, and that necessity forces me to take some time. This is a great gift to me.



Why is it that we can't just be without guilt that we should be doing something else, absent extraneous factors forcing us to take a breather? I personally put too many contradictory expectations on myself. If you can find a moment, I recommend spending it in one of these super cozy jackets:

.
with a packet of Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate in your coffee and some magazines. Speaking of which, did you hear that Blueprint will not be printing regularly anymore? This is the last issue for a while:


However, their blog, bluelines, is asking for reader feedback. Victoria is back, but the jury is still deliberating on whether it has the same charm as the last run.

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.

Because it's summer

Let's go to the Farmer's Market, listen to Pink Martini, eat some double chocolate chip Graeter's ice cream and not read the nutritional information. Why not.

Mail your favorite summer camper something with color, like these cards from Ink & Paper.



I found these (no kidding) scratch-n-sniff cards at the quirky Fred Flare.


Find a different-kind-of-read at Bas Bleu where their team has already made great book lists for every kind of reader and they have sweet little illustrations for the categories, like this:


To date, my favorite summer reads remain:
A Good House by Bonnie Burnard which may be out of print. Email me, you can have my copy.
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Interpreter of Maladies by Jumpha Lahiri
2 of the 3 of those were the author's first novel. Inspiring!

Where Inspiration Lives

Today's New York Times has a fabulous article on Graham Greene in Capri that is reminiscent of Hemingway's Paris to Pamplona trek in The Sun Also Rises. Check it out before it goes to the archives.

The most inspiring thing about the article to me was Greene's philosophy on writing: "I have no talent. It's just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.”

According to the article, his "bare whitewashed study" gave him just the Mediterranean solitude every writer dreams about. He set a minimum daily quota for himself of 350 words and claimed that he could accomplish more in 4 weeks there than he could in 6 elsewhere. Looking around at the Brio trains and crayons on my floor, I totally get that Graham.

Speaking of writing in solitude and inspiration, there's a new show on The Sundance Channel called Iconoclasts which partners two icons who discuss pivotal moments in their lives and careers. I've seen two episodes so far: Dave Chapelle and Maya Angelou, and Paul Simon and Loren Michaels. Both docu-style interviews were fascinating. Maya Angelou said that whereever she lives, she keeps a hotel room where she goes to write. Even in the sanctity of her peaceful Winston-Salem home, she needs to get away from the housekeeping.

Summer Reading List 2007: Kiddos Edition

The Association for Library Service to Children released their award winning books for 2007. Here's a link to the complete list.

The Caldecott winner, Flotsam, is a little advanced for my daughter, but it is great for 4 and up.

There are some wonderful book lists online from libraries that are specifically tailored to age groups.

The best one I have found, from the New York Public Library, is pretty comprehensive. The only problem is that the age ranges cover 5 years, so you end up with some books that are too young for your child and some that are too advanced. We are working on an ultimate Summer Reading List. Post to come soon!

Loveys Revisited

Someone at Ten Speed Press, the press that published Dirty Wow Wows and Other Love Stories: A Tribute to the Companions of Childhood, left a comment to this prior Teaworthy post that they are having a contest for Loveys. I entered my Ted and my daughter's Bu. (They are featured midway down the page.)

Ted (now 30) was my first Christmas present from my dad. Bu (now 2) was my husband's first gift to our daughter. Here they are:



Ted has become like the Skin Horse in The Velveteen Rabbit, teaching Bu the ropes of what it means to be loved, to be real, to a little girl.



"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." The Velveteen Rabbit

Storytelling

Storycorp (www.storycorps.net) travels the country collecting stories to be archived at the Library of Congress.
People sit down in a silver trailor in front of a microphone, put on headphones and tell a story from their lives. How brave. NPR plays one of their stories every Friday morning. It's so great, but I often miss the segment. I just learned that you can subscribe to the podcast for free. As Joan Didion's awesome new anthology reminds us, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live."
Here's the link:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4516989

Loveys

When A started her new school, they sent a list of what we had to bring each week. It was so endearing to me that they had this list of very practical things and at the top of that list was "Lovey" or "Comfort Object." I was so relieved to see that Bear would be welcome. (They do all sorts of great things to take care of the kiddos hearts and I just love them for it).
My nephew read from The Velveteen Rabbit at our wedding. We are a Lovey kind of family. I guess that's why this story on NPR appealled to me. I have not read the book yet, but it is definitely going on my list.

"Remember your favorite childhood companions? The stuffed animals you dragged through the mud, carried around by their ears, drooled on, dropped ... the ones now missing eyes or hair?

Although much abused and maligned, these companions — the blankets, teddy bears, stuffed bunnies and dolls — stuck by you day and night. Cheryl and Jeffrey Katz have created a tribute to these threadbare friends in their book, Dirty Wow Wow and Other Love Stories.

Below are two of Cheryl Katz's fuzzy favorites from the book.


A good rule of thumb when giving a gift is to choose something that you would want to receive. Even at three years old, Rebecca and her twin sister, Elyssa, had a sophisticated understanding of this principle. When their mother took them to the mall to choose a gift for their father's birthday, the girls chose Panda Brand.

Naturally, their father was thrilled with Rebecca and Elyssa's thoughtfulness, but admittedly uneasy with their request that he play with Panda and sleep with Panda. Every night. Not wanting to disappoint the girls or belittle their generosity, Dad honored their demands—until he developed a mysterious allergy to the bear. The girls, gracious as ever, offered to take care of Panda Brand for their father. And twenty years later, they still do.


Katie Kittenheart


When seven-year-old Alexandra spotted Katie Kittenheart in an upscale Pittsburgh toy store, she had to have her. Katie's startling blue eyes were hidden under an adorable puff of real white rabbit fur, so you could see them only by gently blowing on her. Though Alex didn't have a cat of her own, she possessed a modicum of understanding about feline grooming techniques, and she took to tidying up Miss Kittenheart with her own little human tongue baths. Small wonder that twenty-seven years later, Katie Kittenheart still looks alarmed."