The New York Times recently reported the research of Peter Wohlleben, a German forest ranger, whose book The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate Discoveries From a Secret World, has become a best seller in Europe. In it, Wohlleben, who has spent his life studying trees, describes trees as social beings with…
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Taking a cue from the divinely complex Mexican molé sauce, I devised a dry rub using its most essential ingredients: sweet and spicy chile, cumin and oregano. As an experiment inspired by the lump of unsweetened chocolate often added to molés, I added cocoa powder; it provides a chocolatey undercurrent that mellows the chili and pepper…
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The other day I bought a new Apple iPhone 6S. Its remarkable camera and interface were an instant joy, making content gathering for Improvised Life easier and more fun. But as long as I’d been using iPhones, I’d never spoken to Siri, Apple’s attempt at Artificial Intelligence. Before I’d fully set up the phone and had lain down for a nap,…
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Since I first wrote about the renovation of my 5-x-7-foot Harlem bathroom, a number of readers have written to ask just which five-foot alcove bathtub I bought that had the effect of the divinely comfortable vintage tub in my former space…and WHAT exactly was the trick I used to ensure that it would be a…
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The best performers and athletes in the world know something the rest of us don’t: Failure is not the enemy. Failure is fabulous. Failure —non-fulfillment, defeat, collapse — is not only inevitable, but necessary to get what you want. To try to avoid failure is to eschew progress; it’s trying to stand still in a…
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Our friend Thomas Ashcraft is an artist, naturalist, Electroreceptor, scientific instrument builder and radio astronomer who spends his time looking UP, recording the activity of meteors, fireballs, space dust and Transient Luminous Events — lovely and mysterious emanations of light — that have gained him some renown (bottom image) Here’s a wondrous accidental avian moment Tom’s…
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The past few mornings, our reading has been Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews with the poet Allen Ginsberg. Most of the interviews are very long, except one It asked a single question about how to balance working for obvious fortune and the creative life, concerns that resonate with just about everyone we know. Ginsberg’s answer totally blew us away. (We recommend…
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This lovely image and commentary Girl Knew York reminded us of the practice of applying “random kindness” not only to others but to ourselves, and Stephen Levine’s principle of “soft eyes”.
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This is one of my favorite ways of cooking shrimp: I peel and clean the biggest shrimp I can find, dust them with curry powder and pan-fry them. The curry powder coating curiously makes them as satisfying as deep-fried shrimp. They need little embellishment: fresh lime and cilantro will do, though a quickly-made Yogurt Sauce with…
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Years ago, when Sandy Gluck, a friend and talented cook was assisting me on some recipes, we hadn’t been able to find a great commercial curry powder: one as subtle and complexly flavored as those Indian cooks make themselves. So Sandy divined her way through an array of spices to make this marvelous curry powder,…
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Exploring images of La Maison Champs Elysees, a hotel in Paris’s right bank, we came across this wonderful linen slipcover that unites three upholstered chairs into a kind of sofa. Wonderful. How to do it?
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(Video link here.) This short video talk with the creative team of Nice Fish, playing at the American repertory Theater, is PACKED with potent words about the creative process. We love ever-brilliant actor Mark Rylance’s take on what happens when something’s going wrong…
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Bryan Landers, creator of the wonderful 3 Good Things app, has a lot of interesting ideas up his sleeve. At Medium, we found an article he’d written about making his own motivational phone wallpaper. His thinking is compelling and his method simple and easy. We tried it ourselves.
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With the news that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity had been definitively proved, The Daily Beast’s Michael Daly described some compelling aspects of the brilliant scientist’s creative process in How Mozart Unlocked a Galactic Secret. The gist for us: to be a scientist you have to be an artist and…
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We learned the hard way that how we used that first half hour or so that it can set the tone for the whole day. So we’re interested in how people we admire start their day. Mira Keras starts the day with her little girl GoGo making music with whatever is around. Pot lids and pineapples are…
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When I couldn’t sleep last night, I turned to a book I’ve been enjoying immensely over the past few months. Aglaia Kremezi’s Mediterranean Vegetarian Feasts is a cookbook full of stories and pictures, by a cook whose recipes I trust and value. It’s rich with the feeling of place, with recipes written in a way that invites creative…
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We love this hack on the most vin ordinaire of Ikea beds by stylist Meta Coleman in her home in Provo, Utah: paint it PLAID. It made us realize that the plain white Ikea Malm Bedframe is really a nice blank palette with many possibilities…
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Just about every creative person we know has something of a “monkey brain” that can run off in too many directions to get much done. So they figure out personal ways to corral and focus their minds to get their priority work done. Mira Keras’ recently came up with a compelling practice, that is also fun:…
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(Video link here.) This wonderful selection of clips from the 2002 BBC documentary Life On Air – David Attenborough’s 50 Years In Television provide a glimpse of beloved BBC nature adventurer Sir David Attenborough‘s unique, always-game approach to the strange and new; it is a fine model for navigating life. Our favorite is right in the first two minutes
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Australian competitive hurdler Michelle Jenneke dances to get ready to run hurdles, a routine that has worked for her for years: she starts with enthusiasm and momentum to launch into extraordinary movement, using the dance’s performance energy to get ready. It’s a superb example of creating a personal routine that uses excitement and imagination to focus and feed yourself for performance, or just about anything you do in life.
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