A while ago, we noticed a woman walking down the street with two brightly-colored hula hoops balanced on her shoulder. We ran after her to find out what she was doing with them, and where she was heading. She told us she was going to practice hula hooping, to which she was devoted. She called…
Read More“in my next life, I will be_________”
Public radio’s Studio 360 recently passed out fill-in-the-blank cards to their audience that said: “In my next life, I will be_____________.” Check out the slideshow of some of the responses they got. It makes us wonder: When could our ‘next life’ start? Was George Elliot right when she said, It’s never too late to be what you might have…
Read Moreawesome building blocks for kids + grownups (to d-i-y?)
Wary Meyers has the BEST eye for flea market finds. Dig this giant set of colorful interlocking building blocks he posted on his site. They have no known provenance. Says Wary: They could be old, could be new. My guess is this was an old collaboration between Josef Albers and Donald Judd. and Bill Ding.…
Read Moresmall space obsession: 182 sq ft apartment on 3 levels
A few months ago we clipped this picture of Steve Sauer sitting in the 182 square foot Seattle apartment he had renovated, creating three levels, and nooks for different uses, including two beds, a full kitchen with a dishwasher, bathroom with a shower, a soaking tub set into the floor, closet space, a dining table and…
Read More‘the improvised life’ in detroit, harlem and governors island
Over the past few months, ‘the improvised life’ has been contacted by some very interesting folks who are implementing our ideas into their work. Leslie Koch, President of the Trust for Governor’s Island regularly sends our posts to her staff to spark ideas for the island’s programming. The island is home to a number of…
Read Morephoto of the day
…the last bit of effort before reaching the peak, and seeing the view… via An Ambitious Project Collapsing “Climbing at Squamish in the 1970s, more here“
Read Moremystery tree structure contest winner!!!! (+ 25 great notions)
Our minds are boggled by the twenty-five wondrously imaginative entrees we got for our Mystery Tree Contest…“prototyping to the sky”…”a fitting room for very chic lumberjacks” …”infrastructure articulated”…YIKES! We were so hard-pressed to pick a winner, we ran it through random.org. The winning entry contains some interesting philosophical underpinnings (totally in line with ‘the improvised…
Read Morekeeping a dream book
Our dreams have become so frequent lately, we’ve been trying to figure out ways to “catch” and remember them. We keep a little notebook and pen on the night table, trying to train ourselves to write down the details, or even just the essential bits, before waking makes them fade. It’s a kind of discipline,…
Read Moredental floss shoe repair (thinking on your feet!)
Charles McFarlane, a friend who is a student at the Rudolf Steiner school (and who provided the material for the great post on World War II improvisations recently), sent us this inspired improv he spotted at school. “…when a friend’s canvas shoes started to separate at the sole, he used dental floss to chain stitch…
Read Morestephen hawking ps: musicians relearning how to play
No sooner than we published our post about Steven Hawking than we came across a great post on Neatorama about 5 musicians who had serious injuries that they were told – or they assumed – would end their career, from Django Reinhardt to The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia and Chet Baker. They all figured…
Read Morewise words from stephen hawking
We’ve had this quote by Stephen Hawking on our fridge for years. He’s the brilliant British physicist who is paralyzed by motor neuron disease, yet continues to work vigorously in his field. He communicates via a computer screen attached to his wheelchair. As commonly used words run across it, Hawkins move a cheek muscle to signal an electronic…
Read Moreweekend music and games: national jukebox + monopoly revised
Driving around the web recently, we found two swell free diversions for this weekend. Public radio’s Studio 360 recently issued a challenge to its readers to redesign the classic game Monopoly to make it jive with our current economic conditions, from ponzi schemes to market crashes. Listen to the thinking here, and then download the…
Read Morejapanese colored tape d-i-y inspiration/mood/idea board
We are big fans of masking tape for taping up pictures, ideas, and even making designs right on the wall, as our friend Holton Rower did in a Children’s hospital in Russia; – white, black, and blue painter’s tape are our favorites. We’d forgotten about the possibilities of using brightly colored and/or patterned Japanese Washi tape…
Read Morecontest reminder: name the mystery tree and win a prize
Don’t forget to enter our Mystery Tree Contest. Just tell us what you think it is in the Comments section below for a chance to win a signed copy of Sally’s award-winning cookbook The Improvisational Cook. To check out the wonderfully imaginative entries that have come in so far, scroll down to the bottom of the…
Read More“love cannot be, without love”
From the great Constant Siege. Related posts: robo-rainbow, cool video via chance encounter diy: words on walls yes!
Read Morepoems as gifts: don wentworth’s ‘past all traps’
Our friend Maureen Rolla sent us an email with two poems by her friend Don Wentworth, editor of the Lilliput Review, a print magazine dedicated to the short poem. They are from his recently released book Past All Traps. It was as though Maureen had dropped gifts into our laps. The first, above, about seeing…
Read Moreguerilla florist bella meyer: “flowers as natural art supplies”
Marc Chagall‘s grand daughter Bella Meyer got a Doctorate in medieval art history from the Sorbonne and has held a variety of jobs – designing props for the theater, working as a puppeteer – before stumbling on her true calling: floral design. After friends asked her to design a blossom-laden chuppah for their wedding, Meyer,…
Read Morecollapsible picnic tables and chairs (instant back yard)
Ellen Silverman was picnicking with family and friends in Riverside Park in New York City when she saw some folks nearby serenely sitting at a pop-up picnic table, which had they’d unfurled out of a case in just a few moves. From Ellen’s not-terribly-comfortable vantage point sitting on a blanket on the ground (which was…
Read Morebumper crop on the nyc taxi farm
Two summers ago we profiled an intrepid group of New York City car service drivers who planted three little farms on abandoned pieces of land right in the heart of the Bronx. They harvested abundantly and each of their wives took turns cooking weekly feasts for the assembled breadwinners (and cornwinners and beanwinners). We followed…
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