Our friend Maria Robledo LOVES her garden and makes the most astonishing, impromptu arrangements from her cuttings. We were charmed and delighted by the arrangement we found on her dining table recently: no vase, no water, just a spray and a cluster of flowers placed directly on the tabletop. The flowers stayed fine throughout several…
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A few hours after we posted REM singing “It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) as an antidote to Saturday’s crazy apocalypse drama, we found a message from our friend Fern Berman on our answering machine: “I think it’s the end of the world as we know it…
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In case you haven’t heard, Harold Camping, the 89-year old billionaire owner of Christian Evangelist Family Radio, says the apocalypse is going to begin this evening at around 6pm EDT. What to do? We found rock-and-roll to be a good answer and have been tweeting songs for the apolcalypse. We recommend playing REM really LOUD.…
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This weekend, Sally will be on public radio’s Splendid Table talking to Lynne Rosetto Kasper about her short list of favorite blogs and why she likes them. You can stream the interview or find out times it will air in area here. You’ll also find Sally’s recipe for Sugar Snaps with Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Shaved…
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Several people called us about HBO’s hour-long special “Talking Funny” in which four great comedians — Ricky Gervais, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock and Louis C.K. — talk shop for an hour. Our friends were all struck by how the “inside” of comedy echoes the process of making just about anything truly creative. Before we got to watch it,…
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We recommend taking 20 or so seconds to scroll down the great homepage Stockholm’s Berghs’ School of Communication exhibit of students’ work on the theme of Fear of Failure (click “Manifest” on the left). It is positively/actively therapeutic, a worthwhile digital affirmation/manifesto on the theme. In honor of the exhibition, the Berghs’ made a series…
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When we saw Remodelista’s recent post about Commune designer Chau Truong’s cool bed base made from concrete blocks, we actually climbed into that bed – in our heads. We discovered that it has the major design flaw we wrote about a few weeks ago…
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A friend recently alerted us to Lynda Barry‘s book What It Is: ” It is a book about writing that provides guidance on how you can re-discover skills you likely possessed before getting caught up in the notions of “good and bad”. It’s more than a book. It’s a public service. Barry is trying to help everyone reconnect…
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We clipped this amazing photo from the New Yorker a few years ago and have had it on our wall ever since. It was taken by Yumahara Hokume in the early thirties (googling Hokume curiously turned up NOTHING, so he/she remains a mystery). The woman in the photo reminds us a little of the picture…
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Stuart Mason Dambrot, ‘the improvised life’s resident concilientist|futurist has sent us many wonderful ideas since our first syncronous meeting on a New York City street corner. The latest, the work of designer Siren Elise Wilhelmsen, inventor of the Toast Spoons we recently blogged as well as Found, an oddly stylish stool put together from scraps found…
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Cara de Silva alerted us to this beauty of a video, of Yale student Kevin Olusola pushing the limits of a cello, and taking the music it makes up a totally new path. He bows, plucks and strums his cello, while accompanying it with beatbox, a hip-top derived use of voice as percussive/musical instrument. The music…
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Faced with the months-long renovation of their New York City coop kitchen, Josh Eisen, Ellen Silverman and their son Luca – who take eating and entertaining very seriously – devised a clever make-shift kitchen in their walled-off-from-the-construction living room. They had the workmen move in the
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Always on the lookout for more ideas for impermanent pop-up rooms within rooms, we were taken by a work by Zimoun, a sound artist/sculptor who builds different kinds of white noise into structures.We love his room of interlocking slabs of notched cardboard, made like a house of cards, and imagined building a smaller version that…
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via Peace and Love and Noticing the Details
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It is high season for ramps, the pungent wild leeks that grow throughout the Appalachian and Catskill mountains. Ellen Silverman sent us photos of the sublime ramp butter she was given by a friend, with an utterly simple recipe that will keep you in ramp heaven for days. She wrote this in her email: “Cyd…
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One week of the aurora borealis in 1:55 seconds…Nature’s special effects. (Shot in and around Kirkenes and Pas National Park bordering Russia) The Aurora from Terje Sorgjerd. via Manhattan User’s Guide
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One of our favorite mindgames is to think about what we can do without, or perhaps better put: What do we really need? We started doing it rigorously in the kitchen when we had to downsize years ago, and began to ask ourselves,”What equipment is truly necessary for the way we cook”. Not only did…
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A while ago, we posted an YouTube video of artist Theo Jansen’s astonishing Strandbeests, the huge, mechanical walking beests made of PVC pipe that are propelled by the wind. Jansen considers to himself to be grappling with a new form of life. In this video, he talks about the reproduction of the Strandbeests, and echoes…
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Improv Everywhere is a prank collective devoted to causing scenes of chaos and joy in public places, which they did at a recent Gel Conference. Their hilarious pranks are designed to shift your thinking, and what you take for granted. It made us wonder: Could we really disconnect if we wanted to? What do you think?…
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A friend called us recently to ask our thoughts on containers for planting her 10’x5’balcony in New York City. She wanted to have her plantings along one side of the terrace only, to leave the rest of the space clear to see the view and do tai chi. Attuned we started spotting some nice looking…
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