Found at Lucinda Chambers instagram: Permission to NOT tile an entire bathroom wall, but just selected parts. Beautiful! As is her inspiration…
Read More
Found at Lucinda Chambers instagram: Permission to NOT tile an entire bathroom wall, but just selected parts. Beautiful! As is her inspiration…
Read MoreReeling from the news that our friend Cara de Silva had passed away, we cast about for solace for ourselves and for her close friends whom we knew were grief-struck, missing their daily conversations with her. Into our hands jumped Maira Kalman’s wonderful book “My Favorite Things”, opening to this by Lydia Davis…
Read MoreAll year long, Andrew Ross Sorkin has diligently and carefully reported on the wild and often dispiriting going- on in world through an financial and economic lens. We were heartened by his recent round-up of the most promising developments of the year, possibility-thinking made tangible.
Read MoreI want to make a New Year’s prayer, not a resolution. I’m praying for courage.Susan Sontag
The perfect accompaniment to the reflective week between Christmas and New Years is the Universe in Verse, an event masterminded by The Marginalian’s Maria Popova, to explore the question “What is Life?” through science and poetry. A gathering of extraordinary humans “celebrate the marvel and mystery of life, from the creaturely to the cosmic, with stories from the history of science and our search for truth, illustrated with poems spanning centuries of human thought and feeling”. It offers a mightily hopeful view.
Read MoreSoon after David Saltman called to read us 6 perfect words by Basho, the great Edo period poet, we stumbled on this image by Nahasawa Rosetsu, a painter from from the same period.
Read MoreLooking out at the park across the way, the wild rain and wind made the Christmas tree in the distance appear to sparkle with a kind of fiery iridescence…It reminded us of the unexpected magic that appears daily, even in difficult times, and what we need to experience it.
Read MoreBlue Room is a beauty of a New York Times video editorial by filmmaker Merete Mueller. It shows incarcerated men and women watching nature videos on loop, in a mental health experiment to see how seeing nature impacts their experience of isolation and the relentlessly bleak environments in which they must live. Its quietly powerful 11 minutes took us way beyond its subject.
Read MoreThere are good reasons I cannot NOT write about persimmons every winter. I love all the ways that they seem defiant, wild, beyond my control… I want others to find their way to the rare experience they offer.
Read MoreThey say that that if we want to get a good night’s sleep, our bedroom needs to be dedicated only to that and love-making and nothing that might stimulate thinking, even reading. But stumbling on photos of several artists in bed made us realize that we love, and miss, the idea of bed as relaxing, creative outpost and retreat outfitted with what we need to feed our heads and fuel creativity. That got us thinking about their use of big bedside tables…
Read MoreA snippet of a Hermann Hesse quote about trees sent us hunting for the whole thing. We stumbled on “Trees: An Anthology of Writings and Paintings”, a little gem of a book: thirty of Hesse’s watercolors with his essays and poetry about trees, for him, a symbol of transcendence and rebirth.
Read MoreThe other morning, I opened the blind just as the rising sun was turning everything golden and a double rainbow appeared over Harlem. It got me thinking about the word “miracle” and another citing of miracles by a 6 year old I know. And Walt Whitman’s mighty list.
Read MoreMy super easy turkey-roasting method is one of the many tried-and-true recipes larding Improvised Life’s vast archive, from cocktails to desserts. You’ll find an array of recipe ideas, strategies for making grand make-shift tables and settings, even toasts, poems and blessings… Not to mention these Thanksgiving favorites.
Read MoreOver the years, we’ve come to to view illness as a path that can, if we are lucky or open to it, provide a lot of illumination and healing. When we mentioned this to our remarkable physical therapist Rachel Miller Williams she nodded and offered this surprising view.
Read MoreAll of life is so fantastic. It's just, like, you go here and you get some ideas; you go there and get some more. You go to this restaurant and you get this fantastic thing. You go to that restaurant and they got that. It's just fantastic!David Lynch
During a particularly stressful and exhausting time in her life, Tricia Hersey had an epiphany: She started napping where ever she had a few moments. It was transformative and led her to research the idea of rest as a healing mechanism and form of resistance against societal oppression. It would become her ministry, and she The Nap Bishop.
Read MoreWhen a friend sent us news that legendary New Yorker cartoonist George Booth had died, we realized that his work has provided joy, comfort, and uplift throughout our entire adult life. In a single drawing, he managed to convey the wild complexity of ordinary lives through the simplest of details, embedded with a deeply life-affirming message.
Read MoreFor years, I thought this image was of a fireplace mantle and admired it for the swirly cutouts that softened the usual rectangle while maintaining a curious modernity. It’s an image from my file of wooden things quietly embellished with swirls, loops, curls, scallops. They give me ideas for my trove of uncut plywood, as do these from Brancusi, Blossfeldt, Margaret Bourke-White.
Read MoreWe recently stumbled on this video the great Chistophe Niemann created to accompany a clip from Terry Gross’ last interview with 80-year-old Maurice Sendak, a few months before his death. It is full of wise, achingly tender words. Our friend Maureen Rolla turned them into a kind of blessing.
Read MoreSan Francisco ceramicist Nina Saltman created an inspired riff on the Little Free Libraries that have popped up across the nation. Nina’s Little Pott Shoppe is a tiny outdoor vitrine that offers her handmade cups and bowls for free. It’s a way she can give away “seconds”— work with minor flaws— and bring joy and serendipity to passersby. She never imagined how much her little offerings would affect people.
Read More