Bunnyman, my 12 year old son, just loves school. His teacher starts talking and he mutes the video on his laptop, spreads a quilt on the kitchen floor, lays his head down, closes his eyes to catch up on sleep. His teacher continues teaching. It is a win-win-win because I sit nearby at the kitchen table drinking my morning coffee in the relative quiet taking notes for him thinking. I think about how to bring up his new school words and subject matter for later when he and I run errands and go to the grocery store and post office. Oh, look, I’ll say, to him when we stand in Produce, that lady looks like an archetypical mom buying an archetypical chicken. I wonder how many archetypical apples she needs for her two archetypical children if each child brings home four masked friends for a snack…(dicey work this math and me). Oh, Lord, Let there be a Lord. And if there is a Lord, Lord, speak to me in my love language and send me chocolates, a box of Kleenex and an empty UHaul with two strong masked men (of good humor) to help me clear my conscience for thinking ill of my rich neighbors with swimming pools that they’ve fixed with firehoses to soak their properties with the water (from their built-in sea water pools). Oh Lord, and please make me smarter. Make me not notice news so much and how these same my rich neighbors are so smart and parked large empty UHauls on our street to fill them with their house stuff in case there’s a fire evacuation order that comes down. Oh, Lord, I’ve done what I can, kept my kids safe (and extra calm) this week (extra credit please because we’ve even kind of gone to online school!). My Fortuny lamps in the living room will go the fastest. (Gold leaf on hand painted silk is like this). The oil paintings I painted over the last forty years will only feed a fire. The George Smith chairs and sofa in the old barn will be an amuse bouche for the fire (one for breakfast), my husband’s Spratling jug will be a silver cheesemelt. My young son’s teacher keeps on talking as he naps on, What’s the integer here? The teacher asks his class. I write the word integer down in my journal to work it into a conversation for later with my son and I will buy stamps at the post office. I’m stuck on the word integer now like how I’m stuck on all the extracurricular suffering these last months, kids in cages, BLM…hate worship, now come on! In the so-called richest country in the world? How does one measure riches, Lord? How can we pull together as a world? How to make people feel like they belong? Where is the deepest place, Lord? Is it our hearts? Maybe go ask Your father, God, Lord? Go ask Him/Her/They how we solve for basic decency and goodness? While your there, please ask Him how to solve for why?
THANK YOU LORD THANK YOU, a poet’s prayer
For the consideration of rain, and, too, thank you for trees, and too, to have thought of dew on a just-mown lawn under evergreens next to just so-placed midwestern lakes, dolloped blue, and too for sending us the thunder last night, for putting the internet on the ‘fritz’ on one of the last of summer’s eves, everyone of a sudden without their screens, and, by George happy to ‘hang,’ play board games, like the old days — before screens — because You had solved the puzzle of what to do, what to have for dinner – had divined already the idea of dinners — delivered — had made clean-up a snap with Your thought of dishes made of paper — how kind of You to have made life easy. Too, the sheer brilliance of You to have thought ahead into forever, to have filled my car’s gas tank into perpetuity to “full.” Best, yet of all Your inventions, to have created the blessed angel in charge of sound. The air lock one, the closed airplane doors sound, and me, on the inside, by celestial surprise a gift. Me, bumped up to first class, alone, the charming ‘bing-bing-bing,’ the ‘no going back bell chiming’ — a wry touch by You. Oh, You. And me — your ever-humble servant — leaving in minutes on an all expense paid trip won at the grocery checkout. The millioneth customer. My reward from a scratch and sniff game card at Ralph’s as I paid for chicken parts – organic — oh, what delight I had won a trip away for the next few weeks — or more — should You so desire – from all this domestic bliss. That, when and if, You should think to send me back home to ‘chaos central’ from my trip of a lifetime, say, around the world, that You might allow me one teensy weensy request, that I may fit into my jeans — my old Jordache jeans from college – and, that then — when, and if — my dear Lord – upon my return — after Paris, after London, after Carpi — that, going forward you might find me ample parking infinitum mid-Wilshire — at high noon – henceforth, maybe too, please find me someone to file my god-damned taxes forthwith – maybe with a more substantial refund in the mail — a six-digit-sum multiplied by twenty — from the last twenty years – so I may once and for all redo this hovel and that You might see to it that the tree trimmers up the street in the neighbor’s trees for the last six weeks might bust a saw — or two — or, better yet be sent on permanent hiatus for the rest of the year. Signing off for now, so help me God, your friend on earth, me. Amen.
Mary Jane Elgin: Ceramic Enchantment
Elegant.
Sited along the coastline of Eastsound, Studio #6 offers garden and cloud vistas that are intimately captured in many of Mary Jane’s breathtaking vessels. Spending hours at a time on leather-hard clay, Mary Jane cuts through her pieces allowing the spaces to bleed into each other, revealing a fresh, complex new balance.
The relationship of form, the tension and interaction between the exterior and interior spaces of a piece intrigues me.”
This past year I have been working on expanding my vision and techniques. I am enchanted with bringing more movement, spirit and fantasy into my pieces, breaking out of repetitious viewpoints and esthetics and providing my viewers with new visual roads to travel on.”
A native of Altadena, CA, grew up embracing the forms of the Craftsman Style which surrounded her. For two years Japan was her home while she studied weaving and sumie painting, all the while absorbing the…
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How Do You Become a Writer?
Someone’s read my thought bubble! Thank you.
What do you do?
Washingtonians are so career-driven that “what do you do?” is typically the first question people ask in this city. I find it difficult to articulate what I do sometimes. To say I’m a teacher seems limiting in some ways. To explain that I teach English leads to confusion. To answer that I’m a college professor receives stares of doubt. To say I’m a writer seems too grandiose.
What I did.
At age 14, my first job was through a summer work program, and I was assigned to be a janitor at a clinic. Picture me mopping floors in a figure eight stroke. Later in college, my first job was as a telemarketer, a very humiliating and painful job — people hang up or they shout, scream, call you names then hang up. After I quit that job, I worked as a shoe salesman at Florsheim. I…
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Sarah Howe – Loop of Jade
Full Disclosure: Met Howe at this year’s Sabotage Awards on a panel regarding the Culture of Criticism. Review copy provided by Vintage Books.
Review:Loop of Jade is Howe’s first collection, in part an account of the poet’s journey to Hong Kong and China to learn about her and her mother’s past, in part a set of imaginative lyric adventures taking in Kung Fu-tzu, Pythagoras, Titus Andronicus, LA Confidential, Cormac McCarthy and Chinese political blogging, amongst others. I’ve slated writers before for wielding their education like an overseer’s whip; Howe’s poems are close-read and empathetic explorations into each text that recognise their value as real-world artefacts above and beyond their capacity to bestow literary authority. The giddying breadth and scope of attention the book achieves is held together by Howe’s calm-but-engaged, precise-but-emotionally-present narrative voice, its open-minded, casually unshakeable dedication to presenting uncomfortable and occasionally devastating stories and ideas…
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Top 6 Wines That Pair Best With Your Child’s Crappy Behavior. Epic News for Parents.
Finally science we can use.
There is a lot of science that goes behind deciding which wine goes best with your chicken, seafood or steak dinner, but what if I was to tell you which wine would go best with the kind of day you experienced? The data is out, and studies now show that certain wines pair up best with different parenting situations and child behavior.
The world’s most renown wine sommeliers have released this list exclusively to us at Life as a Rambling Redhead. Lucky for you, we are kind enough to share this life-changing knowledge. Parents everywhere are rejoicing.
We just want what’s best for your sanity.
Listed below are the best Wine Pairings for all stages of parenthood.
1. Riesling pairs perfectly with an explosive poopy diaper.
If your newborn baby had an explosive bowel movement, leaving your hands literally shit-stained from the yellow substance we call “poop”, we suggest chugging a glass of Riesling immediately. Riesling…
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Textile Geometry – “Spring of Nüwa”
Who brings along a little time, should really have a look at the AW 12/13 collection of the young, chinese designer Yiqing Yin. With “Spring of Nüwa” she presents artful pleating, feather details and cut outs and creates wonderful organic volumes with layers of shimmering surfaces – like a romance meets a future world.
Very beautiful and very sophisticated.
Wer ein bisschen Zeit mitbringt, sollte einen Blick in die AW 12/13 Kollektion der jungen, chinesischen Designerin Yiqing Yin werfen. In “Spring of Nüwa” präsentiert sie kunstvolle Faltungen, Details mit Federn, Cut Outs, und erschafft wunderschöne, organische Volumen aus Schichten schimmernder Oberflächen.
Sehr sehr schön und anspruchsvoll!
Spring of Nüwa from Yiqing Yin on Vimeo.
Brandolini: Queen of Haute Bohemia
Genius!
Muriel Brandolini is a decorator in her own world – where all is beauty, dazzling the eye and feeding the senses. NY Times once crowned her “the newly minted arbiter of Haute Bohemian Chic”.
An emerald green silk velvet pouf centre stage in a living room.
Brandolini grew up in war-torn Vietnam after her Father’s death age 3. Quite a journey then: from chasing GI troops in 60’s Saigon for sweeties (where my aim was to establish a candy trade monoply on my street) to the ‘World of Muriel Brandolini’ published by Rizzoli last year.
Along the way she lived in Paris, modelled, arrived in New York with her 1 suitcase, got hired on: I can sell anything, married Italian aristocracy, worked for Vogue and found herself a decorating career after her rental apartment was photographed 11 times in one year. It reads like the back cover of a…
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maryrosesmyth 