We don’t know where we would be without duct tape, the ultimate solution for many a seeming disaster. Just when we think we’ve imagined its possibilities, a friend emailed an article from the South Africa Times’ about a bush pilot in Alaska who neglected to clean his 1958 Piper Cub after a long fishing trip. The…
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Page Goolrick’s dinner party goody bags garnered a lot of improvisations on the idea of “gifts for guests”, from great Comments to Lydia Wills’ innovative reversal of the traditional wedding (or any) gift. Constance Old, who was one of the lucky few to have actually been at Page’s dinner party, turned her goody bag into…
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via 2 or 2 things
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Ten years after it was built, my kitchen still looked great EXCEPT for the counter tops. The speckled black-white-and-gray granite that seemed so right at the time looked dated, and its pattern was too busy to use as a surface for the food photography we did in my space. My friend Holton Rower, who is…
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Thanks Pamela!
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Writing the post about Gever Tulley’s Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do) made us wonder about dangerous things adults SHOULD do in order to explore and learn about the world, figure out what’s what and live fully, just like Tulley thinks kids should do. And that made us think about the very…
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Gever Tulley, founder of Tinkering School for Kids, has published Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do), a book we’ve been waiting for, not just to give to the kids we know, but us adults as well, because the same idea applies: By exploring the world (maybe doing things we never got to…
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A friend emailed this cell-phone photo of a kindergarten room. HLP HATE is not a strange coded statement about “hate” as it might seem at first glance, but a child’s spelling of “HELP HAITI”: a thoughtful attempt to help, in whatever way possible …pennies, nickles, dimes, quarters… These little kids are envisioning… …the world beyond…
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Transmaterial: A Catalog of Materials That Redefine Our Physical Environment is a series of books – with a companion website – about intriguing materials for building and designing. Browsing spurs endless ideas and imaginings of what you could do with some of the more accessible materials like… Paper Softwall, lightweight, freestanding honeycombed paperwalls that can be arranged in almost…
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Late in the evening, I often find myself wandering into the kitchen like some sort of hungry bear or raccoon or a snuffling truffle pig, looking for a sweet to eat: not fruit, but something more powerfully dessert-like in effect. That’s when I devise odd, curiously delicious and satisfying concoctions that are the products of…
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The past few days, we’ve received emails and phone calls from friends recounting news reports from Haiti of solutions improvised in the most impossible of circumstances. A New York City search-and-rescue team used ceiling tiles to splint a broken leg. An Israeli surgeon used a ballpoint pen to perform a tracheotomy. A nurse at the airport…
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Vicki Beth Lynn has an eye for jewelry. She’s bought and sold lots of it over the years, especially the work of interesting designers from past and present. She knows dealers and jewelry-makers in Paris and London, and sells regularly to television shows and movies. (She also runs a multi-media production company but that is…
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Designer and contributor-of-brilliant-ideas Pamela Hovland recently improvised wonderful wrist-warmers out of an old pair of wool socks. Here’s how this inspired bit of repurposing came about, in her own words and photos: “I often wear wrist warmers while I’m working away at my computer as my hands are cold from the fall to the spring.…
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At ‘the improvised life’ we are big on signs; they make up many of the posts in the Surprise Box and I’ve written about how helpful it can be to tape a sign up on the wall of your office or bedroom to remind you of what’s really important (that we so easily forget), like…
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The recent post on innovative goody bags elicited some wonderful ideas from readers about gifts to send home with guests. Here’s ‘the improvised life’ contributor Lydia Will’s surprising variation on the theme: “Your post on Page Goolrick’s ingenious goody bags really hit home: It shifts the whole idea of a hostess gift and says to…
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Amidst the images of devastation and loss coming out of Haiti yesterday were some symbols of of hope. Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres), whose medical facilities in Haiti were destroyed during the earthquake, were able to set up remarkable inflatable hospitals as triage centers ministering to devastated Port au Prince. They were there, even…
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My friend Peggy Markel, who designs unique food and culture adventures, recently went on a scouting trip in Rajasthan India. She traveled from luxurious palaces to rustic countryside, taking in its monumental contrasts. For Peggy, food is always about context, and this little film shows a fragment of the culture she was exploring, as revealing as its food, and…
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Every winter around this time, hyacinths appear at my corner market: three just-sprouting bulbs nestled in dirt in an ugly plastic pot wrapped in gaudy paper. I treat myself to them because, liberated from their tacky dressing, they offer a glimmer of spring for a few dollars. Once home, I remove the shiny paper, hold…
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Kevin Kelly recently wrote about Anne Herbert, a writer he knew in the early ’80’s who edited CoEvolution Quarterly, the companion magazine to Whole Earth Catalog. She is most known for coining the phrase, “Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.” Kelly hadn’t been in touch with her in all this time,…
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