Recently, a gift of two green tomatoes sparked a deep hankering: for fried green tomatoes and their elemental deliciousness, and their evocations of deep summer visits to the South long ago. So I cooked up a batch using the simplest method I know. I was startled by how intensely they made me feel the summer day. Here’s the method, and a few things to do with them, and a movie to watch while you eat them.
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The image of a Serbian Orthodox church inside an oak tree got us thinking about trees being used as churches. What are the qualities of trees that make them a place for sanctuary, reflection, rest, prayer. We found the answer in Jo Shapcott’s glorious poem “I Go Inside the Tree”…
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Recently, the always-surprising Elan Kiderman Ullendorff of Deep Sea Diving Newsletter featured stuff he found on Etsy by selecting “Highest Price” to hone his search results; he stumbled upon an extreme edge of the normally-placid site.
Nestled among “10 extremely expensive items on Etsy” is the Erotic Bouncy Castle and a brilliant life strategy.
Amid the daily deluge of bleak, enervating news about the effects of climate change, we’ve been noticing a strain of defiance: Messages that engender energy and activism rather than despair and paralysis. They offer a thought-provoking and heartening view.
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New York Magazine’s recent article about designer Todd Oldham’s house in the Poconos is a revelation: an over-the-top, completely original color-riot of a country house. Its many cool ideas are driven by an unexpectedly liberating design philosophy.
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As the stock market jitters wildly and the media speculates dire straits, we take comfort in this piece from Jeremy Siegel’s seminal book, Stocks for the Long Run, an essential reference for anyone wanting to understand investing. It’s the memo that brokerage firm Dean Witter issued to its clients on May 6, 1932 after stocks plummeted 85 percent from their 1929 high.
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It took over five years for Leonard Cohen to write Hallelulah, arguably his most beloved song. Although we’ve listened to Hallelulah many times, we did not get its simple message as powerfully as hearing Cohen’s words in an early interview, featured in the trailer of the just-released documentary about him.
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It is enough to have recognized some of ourselves in comedian Bill Bailey’s astute commentary on the British psyche (which applies to MANY others as well). When he segues into a wild riff on the expression “All things considered” at 2:37 in, we found our view of the world mightily expanded, AMAZING…
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When a talented perfumer I know let slip that he bought some of his base scents from Eden Botanicals, I went to the website immediately. The descriptions of essential oils were much like good wine writing, with notes about terroir and nuances of specific geographies, cultivation methods and fragrance notes. The offerings are a far cry from vin ordinaire essential oils I’d been accustomed to using for relaxation and healing: an order of magnitude more pleasurable, effective, illuminating…
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The most astonishing runway show we’ve ever seen is Shaheel Shermont Flair’s deeply improvised TikTok series made at his somewhat bedraggled home on Fiji. With the serious, stylized prance of traditional fashion shows, he models his mind-blowing fashions that offer astute, really funny commentary on way more than the runway.
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A post-it marks a quote in The Hummingbird’s Daughter, the beautiful battered novel we found in the Little Free Library near our house. We’ve been mulling its essential lesson about allowing things to happen for weeks. And thinking about artists who use chance in their work, giving up control to allow unexpected things to happen.
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In the first few chapters of The Whole Fish Cookbook: New Ways to Cook, Eat Think, chef Josh NIland changed the way I view fish I’ve cooked my whole life. He’s made a years-long study, testing every assumption, to arrive at a point of view that seems radical at first, and then makes perfect sense.
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The art consultant and dealer Peter Heimer’s postwar Berlin townhouse has all sorts of cunning details. We love the yellow daybed Heimer designed himself. The slanted pillows are brilliant, forming a comfortable backrest when reading or lounging. I’ve discovered that you can get the same effect with a simple DIY.
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Every birthday of late, wise man Kevin Kelly shares things he learned the hard way in, through living. The lists always offer big fat nuggets of wisdom and illumination, and many things to try. Our favorite addresses our frequent dilemma of not being able to decide between two distinct choices, usually when our linear brain is packed with logical arguments for each one that leave us boggled.
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Lately clothing ads coming over my transom have been featuring men’s shirts with an extra side button. When you put the usual buttonhole around THAT button, it pulls the shirt into an asymmetrical form-fitting wrapped number. Of course I immediately thought of how I’d do it myself…
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This lamp by English lampshade designer Mark Betty has this description “Lamp and Brown Paper (or whatever you want)” . The brown paper rolled into an asymmetrical cone and secured with a pin seems to have been made in a single gesture. Like all Betty’s shades, it has its own unique personality, as though it were alive…
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There has been a lot written about embracing your mistakes, but for us, Miles Davis nailed how to make it work, as recounted by a young Herbie Hancock in this tiny video; he experienced Miles’ approach in action.
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As I was contemplating the mighty big birthday I will be celebrating this week, I stumbled on this tiny video. Yeah, that’s it. Role models.
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For weeks, Czeslaw Milosz’ very personal anthology of poetry, A Book of Luminous Things has sat on our table to open anywhere for an unexpected view of our world. It’s made us realize that when we read a poem, it starts a conversation within us and with other things…
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Over the years, one of the very best purchases I have made were two bamboo Wave Room Screens, made of thin bamboo slats that unfurl to create an organic wave shape. They have proven to be endlessly useful. They are a relatively inexpensive, stylish, bamboo alternative to the beautiful, classic Eames screen.
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