Shortly after the attacks in Paris hit the news, an image of the Eiffel Tower as peace symbol was tweeted and posted on Instagram. It is the creation of French graphic designer Jean Jullien, who described how it came about in a moment. “It was a reaction…The first thing that came to me was the…
Read More
We are heartsick about the attacks in Paris a city that, after one visit, makes a person feel like it is somehow theirs, so perfect are its memories. We have been casting about for some words that shed light on what seems like a time of such profound darkness…
Read More
The other day, our friends at Essex Farm laid a windfall of apple cider on us: pure liquid apple with pleasingly earthy undertones of seeds and stem, or perhaps a wooden cider mill. It was beautiful stuff but too much to consume before it would start fermenting. How to capture that “apple” for the rest of…
Read More
We have the word phallic in our repertoire, an appropriate word we can use at museums when pointing out that the artist was clearly obsessed with dick, but what about its counterpart? When you look at something and the folds are just so familiar and we all know what we’re looking at…What’s that called?
Read More
This mid-century moderne room of colorful flat-weave rugs laid end-to-end breaks from the usual restraint of moderne decor. Patterns of rugs create a space that is welcoming, cosy, colorful, and mutes the difference between seat and floor, no matter where you are. They emulate nomadic Arabic tradition, where rugs are used to create spaces to gather upon, and even the walls of shelters.
Read More
(Video link here.) Stoney Emshwiller was 18 years old when he recorded himself interviewing his older self in 1977. Thirty-eight years later, a 56-year-old Stoney answered his younger self’s questions, on film. Here’s a trailer of “Later That Same Life“, the astonishing film he is raising money to finish.
Read More
Desperately Seeking Susan was Madonna’s debut film. We hear she improvised this brilliant moment on the spot: “Susan”, arriving at the seedy uptown Port Authority Bus Terminal on 181st Street, prepares for her entrance into the city by using the restroom’s hand dryer in an unconventional way… We will never view hand dryer’s the same way…
Read More
Almost 50 years ago, Thomas Merton, a wild young man turned hermetic Catholic monk, wrote these astonishng words. The full quote is below, and really shows how extreme busyness can become a kind of violence.
Read More
Want a good night’s sleep, or help falling asleep? Reading a relaxing book really does help to shift your mind out of the day. Recently, our friend Merete Mueller told us her strategy…
Read More
It’s a new week….Need help getting offa that thing? We found this works great!
Read More
In 1829, a Belgian physicist devised a form of animation that is akin to our modern-day gifs: a spinning disk patterned with small repeating illustrations, attached to a handle that allowed it to spin and “animate” the imagery. Due to the rapid progression of technology, phenakistoscopes’ popularity lasted only a couple of years, yet they yielded…
Read More
After we published our roasted delicate squash recipe, a reader reminded us that the seeds are delicious too and can be roasted along side. Being lazy and hungry, we wondered if we could just roast squash slices with seeds intact. The result was addictive tender caramelized squash with crispy-chewy seeds.
Read More
Last weekend, we walked around Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem, on the homestretch of the New York City Marathon, to look at the signs local school kids had hung up to cheer tired runners on to the finish line. We found an astonishing one that summed up the whole thing.
Read More
Buried in a photo series about C-Mine design center in Genk, Belgium at Vosges Paris is an image of someone rubber stamping what we thought at first were paper placemats or cloths. Wonderful idea!
Read More
(Video link here.) In 1983, James Brown and band were playing the Beverly Theatre in Los Angeles with legendary blues man B.B. King. Halfway through the set, Brown asked “another fantastic people” to join him onstage: 25-year-old Michael Jackson watching the show ignognito in the audience. Brown’s words are as astonishing as Jackson’s 30…
Read More
A number of readers wrote to say that hadn’t been receiving their Daily Emails…and WHAT HAPPENED!!!! It was yet another manifestation of what appears to be our own private Mercury retrograde: planetary or other influences that have made our technology spin out of control, one thing after another. We were reminded of Thich Nhat Hanh’s great…
Read More
(Video link here) At Improvised life, we often preach saying YES….but here’s the catch: Sometimes saying yes to what’s right for us also means saying no to things we feel obligated to do…things we may do because of some old-fashioned guilt, or because others are making us feel like we “have to”. In a recent talk…
Read More
We passed Ateliers Dubois Antiques in Harlem a number of times in the evening when it was closed, pressing our nose against the window to look in and marvel at…its wallpaper: roughly painted sheets or ordinary 8.5-x-11-inch paper. Last weekend, we found the store open and wandered in to take a closer look. We got…
Read More
The Wall Street Journal has a series called “My Week” and we can think of no better to way to start off our week than a week in the life of artist Maira Kalman.
Read More
We spent a number of Halloween’s outfitting ourselves in improvised costumes, usually at the last minute, and LOVED suddenly taking on a whole other persona for one magic night. If you haven’t gotten your Halloween act together yet, and want some inspiration, here’s a compendium of forage-able ideas from artists and designers…Salvador Dali offers loads of…
Read More