Kate Conklin coaches performers, athletes and thinkers to help them work better and excel. In this TEDx talk, she describes her unexpected path from studying traditional Bulgarian singing to investigating big questions about the creative life. They are well worth asking in the New Year.
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I love the pleasures of warm, just-out-of-the-oven breads but I don’t have much time to spend baking. My have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too strategy is to make a savory quick bread leavened without yeast and needing no rising time; I mix the batter in minutes and bake it immediately. Then I eat it warm, slathered with good butter. One of the…
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At A Cup of Jo, we spotted a terrific idea Stylist Meta Coleman employed in her son Henrick’s room at home in Provo, Utah: a black and white wall mural made from a C1900 photo. Here’s how and where she had it made:
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In response to A New View of Losing Years of Work, a reader named Ann sent us this perfect cartoon and commentary: I’m not sure this link* will take you to the place I intend. I want to link you to the cartoon that shows a man tied to a chair while masked men steal…
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I’ve taken to leaving books open all over my apartment so I can wander by and read or look at something that I’m mulling or want in my field of vision. It often feels as though gifts or messages from amazing people are scattered throughout my space…
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When Improvised Life went down over the holidays due to the web host’s mighty and prolonged fail, there was the possibility that data backups had been damaged and six years of work could be lost. Many readers responded with heartening messages and offers of help. Ever-wise performance artist Fast Forward (whom I became friends with years ago…
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During the Improvised Life’s recent extended technology fail, Editor-at-Large David Saltman insisted I watch Jerry Seinfeld’s interview of Barack Obama in the latest episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. NOT just to take my mind off my troubles but to put them in perspective when I was asking the big Whys? and What ifs? Saltman,…
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Improvised Life site has been down since December 26th and it’s been on a wild ride to get it going. Thanks to the extraordinary generosity of readers and friends, it looks like we’re going to be okay. We’ve learned many lessons and met some remarkable people, which we’ll report on in the coming weeks. We’ve still got a lot of work to do to make Improvised Life stable (and may experience more up-and-downs). But for now, we’re wishing you joy, health, creativity, abundance and love in the year to come.
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(Video link here.) Spirits of the Snow by artist Anthony Howe are handmade kinetic sculptures, previously viewed as outdoor wind machines, that Barney’s New York installed in their Holiday Windows last year. They are entrancing holiday mandalas
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On the first season of his satellite radio show, Bob Dylan gave a very Dylanesque performance of “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”. It’s around the web in audio format that is curiously wonderful to fall asleep to, an adult bedtime story for tonight.
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Loss is something that is rarely mentioned during the holiday season when everything is supposed to be just GREAT with little room for less-than-happy emotions. Yet I know a lot of people who are navigating loss and grief from events of the past year. What do you do when you are shaken by the passing of someone —or several people — you loved,…
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Ahh THESE are our idea of wondrous Christmas trees. No need to decorate them further: the house does it all, a magical platform for living trees.
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Casting about for an instant gift to give? Give your brilliant someone a subscription to Improvised Life, a month or year of inventive, mind-shifting tools and ideas for creative possibility-thinking, from home design and cooking to productivity and self-expression: our whole archive’s worth. Gifting is easy…
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In this potent 1 1/2 minute video, psychiatrist (and rabbi) Dr. Abraham Twerski shows a new view of stress, using lobsters as a perfect metaphor.(Video link here.)
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Just as I was scrambling to pack and send off gifts to far-flung friends, a very interesting box, and idea, arrived for me. Artist and dear friend Lisa Morphew’s yearly Christmas box came decorated with trees in red marker and…a poem. It had been printed out and taped on the OUTSIDE, the name of the poet,…
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A personal Meaning Index is not only a fine barometer for useless gifts, but also for the activities and people we chose to fill our lives with.
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Every so often, a friend calls to ask me what cooking equipment to recommend. LONG story! You’ll find an extensive list of equipment for a basic kitchen in A New Way to Cook, along with 700+ pages of essential techniques and recipes. For now, here are my tried-and-true favorites, from high to low and back.
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The cover by the great George Booth of the New Yorker’s Christmas issue nails the frenzied feeling of the holidays. Even Santa doesn’t have it together: all hell is breaking loose at the North Pole. Ian Frazier’s yearly poem Greetings, Friends puts it all into perspective. Check out this lovely bit:
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Rookie Magazine’s looks-like-neon sign diy made out of EL wire got us thinking about using THAT as our holiday lighting, with signs showing JOY, or a moderne neon Xmas tree, or WHAT IF? or other messages for the coming year. The battery-powered flexible glowing tube has the essential effect of neon without complex glass manipulation. The process is doable in a few hours: a fine weekend project.
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The other day, we came across some spectacular earrings: fur pom poms dangling from thin gold wires. WANT, we thought. And then, MAKE, which starts us researching materials and processes. We discovered that pom poms, both fur and fake, can be easily bought and hold huge possibilities for gifts. And then we found we’d unknowingly tapped into the zeitgeist.
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