(happy) memorial day

After we took a look at Wikipedia‘s entry about Memorial Day, we realized that, for us and many folks, the day has come to mean “the beginning of summer” rather than a remembrance of people who had died fighting in wars. We imagined losing someone we love that way and got a different view of…

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pbs’ oil spill challenge: what’s your solution?

The PBS NewsHour recently issued a challenge: post your ideas for stopping and/or cleaning up the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil spill on their YouTube site. They received 7,000 entries, with seriously good ideas woven through jokes about calling Macgyver and using duct tape. A few of the best are collected on the News Hours…

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how to serve fresh cherries…

Maria Robledo sent this photo from her iPhone with a short, expressive email: “Holton served these cheeries w the empty glass for the pits .  Liked the improvised moment” We like the improvised moment, too and the fun, useful little solutions that mysteriously come… We’ve noticed that once we started thinking about the idea of…

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alt-soap dishes

Whenever I go my artist friends Holton Rower and  Maria Robledo‘s house, I see “everyday” things turned on their ear. Like this square bar of soap placed in a too-small bowl in such a way as to shift the usual view AND be a practical way to not have soap sit in water. It reminded…

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canal house cooking: home cooks as indie publisher

The other day,  Maria Robledo sent over some cookbooks with a note: “2 women are doing this lovely diary type home cooking book and one is CHRISTOPHER HIRSHEIMER.” Maria and I both worked with Christopher years ago when she was the food editor of Metropolitan Home and then Saveur. Christopher is famous for having become…

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inspired makeshift: a year of personal fashion

Makeshift is a wonderfully expressive term for “making a shift”:  shifting your thinking to come up with a creative solution that accomplishes the task at hand in a unexpected way. When you find you don’t have something you need, you improvise a substitute or “shift” what you are making to accommodate it. Makeshift is one…

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