May 2011

a mother’s day gift that saves lives

All week long, we’ve been getting Mother’s Day gift ideas in our email box…mostly deals on cornball flower arrangements. Then we got one from Doctors Without Borders, the great international aid organization, about sending one of their e-cards for Mother’s Day, and using that $20/$50/$100 worth of short-lived-flowers money as a donation that will really DO something, in your mom’s name. We’re going with that. (It’s also another way to support Japan Earthquake relief.)

“The act of humanitarianism comes down to one thing: individual human beings reaching out to others who find themselves in the most difficult circumstances…

one bandage, one suture, one vaccination at a time.”

-Dr. James Orbinski, Former President, Doctors Without Borders International Council

05.04.11 | comments | in celebrations, community, family + friends, gifts, share, strategies |

vietnam’s culture of improvisation via charlie allenson (happy birthday charlie!!!)

Charlie Allenson

Our friend Charlie Allenson had a big birthday a few days ago, and we had big plans to give him a shout out that day and find ourselves, THE DAY AFTER, having been swept away by..everything. Damn. Charlie’s at the jazz festival in New Orleans so we thought we’d publish some of the very cool photos he sent us when he was in Vietnam recently. They are right up our alley of totally, seriously, charmingly improvised LIFE that seems to happen everywhere there, like the floating villages of Ha Long Bay. This house, above, appears to be floating on oil drums and styrefoam block. There is no supermarket; a market boat makes regultrips to each floating house.

Charlie leads workshops in adaptive thinking, so he’s got an eye for just that. We especially like read more…

05.04.11 | comments (2) | in buildings, cheap + great, outside, road warrior, services, sightings, travel, wheels |

role model ->defy expectations!

…spotted in Design Milk’s story on the Log Chop Bench.

We didn’t care for the final product but love the photo and this nugget: “The log was debarked and the seats were axed out by a professional ‘Lumberjill’”.

Lumberjill!!?? Googling it lead to the discovery that during World War II there was a branch of the British Forestry Service called the Women’s Timber Corps. They were called Lumberjills: read more…

05.03.11 | comments | in identity, outside, people |

calder via ‘world of interiors’ + ‘the improvised life’

Maria Robledo

The other day we got an email from our friend A.S.C. Rower, President of the Calder Foundation (we know him as Sandy). It’s subject line read: “More Noise Please!” The title of a poem by the late Steven J. Bernstein, a mutual friend, was the go-ahead for ‘the improvised life’ to feature posts about Rower’s grandfather, Alexander Calder, an idea that’s been in the works for a while. Calder, one of the 20th century’s greatest artists, known for his monumental and kinetic sculptures and mobiles, was possibly one of the world’s most inspired and relentless improvisers. When Sandy heard of ‘the improvised life’s mission, he thought it would be a fine fit.

We thought we’d start our ongoing Calder theme by featuring some pictures of the Calder Foundation space, excerpted from the current World of Interiors. They were made by another close friend and frequent contributor, Maria Robledo (who photographed all of Sally’s books, including The Improvisational Cook). The space, in New York’s Chelsea, houses a vast archive of Calder’s life and work including the ongoing catalogue raisonné, and supports the Foundation’s mission to deepen understanding of Calder’s work and scholarly work; it is not yet open to the public. (Note: The images published here are scans of the magazine and hence don’t have the luminosity of Robledo’s originals.)

We got A LOT of inspiration from the article and our recent visit to the foundation which affirmed our central operating principle: that an improvisational environment begets an improvisational mindset… read more…

05.03.11 | comments | in art, cool spaces, elements, family + friends, inside, inspiration blogs + sites, inspiration books + zines, paths + processes, people, walls + windows, working |

reminder: get out there an enjoy it

Mondoblogo

Mondoblogo recently published this cell phone shot of a “my cousin’s” house AFTER a tornado set down on Tuscaloosa, Alabama, with these words:

“He is a 1st year law student on full scholarship at U of A.
(Roll Tide)
He and his wife Ceci are lucky to be alive.
They were trapped in their bathroom until the Fire Department cut them out….
They literally have
NOTHING
left,
only the clothes on their backs…

I post this only because you never know
when something like this might happen to you
or someone you love.
So stop your griping, bitching and complaining
about the little annoyances in life
and get out there and enjoy it while you can,
for as long as you can.”

Then we came across this extraordinary Facebook pages of family pictures and documents found in the aftermath of the tornados, read more…

05.02.11 | comments | in before + after, community, paths + processes, quotes, rules for living, sightings |

knife rack as magnetic note board, recipe holder

Remodelista

Tucked into Remodelista’s recent Knife Rack Roundup was this image: knife rack as impromptu message board, holding a recipe or list, or billet-doux (a love letter).

Great!

05.02.11 | comments | in housewares, inside, kitchen, tools |