Recently, we stumbled on an article about StoryCorps, a nonprofit organization that records personal stories, airs some of them on NPR, and archives them at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. It’s a way to preserve personal histories as well as histories of the time, and of cultures. We imagined using it to document and preserve the memories of our ancient friends in Helvetia, a unique Swiss settlement in the West Virginia Appalachians. Although we DID record the memories of some of the folks there, we were somehow never able to get StoryCorps involved.
That got us thinking about many elderly family members and friends whose stories could easily pass by the wayside…like the 92-year-old woman we know who lived through the Great Depression, worked for Oscar Hammerstein, and had an uncle who ran the Tunnel of Love in Coney Island. When the great comic actor Zero Mostel danced with her once, he swooned and said “You smell like a newly sharpened pencil”. How could we let those memories slip away? read more…
Just about the time Hurricane Sandy was wreaking havoc on the United States’ east coast, heavy rains and high tides brought some of the worst flooding to Venice, Italy in years — almost 5 feet of water. Because the “acqua alta”, or high water, is a common yearly occurrance in Venice — and because Venice is essentially a rather temperate floating city as it is — sensualist Venetians have improvised numerous many pleasurable strategies for dealing with it. Imagine being able to swim in the Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square)…or just hang out, “taking the waters”… read more…
We found Emily Johnson through an architect a friend was working with. Emily’s drawings and plans were stunning. And although her focus was public spaces, the high level of her problem-solving abilities and imagination were apparent at the first meeting. We discussed our ideas with her. She suggested clever solutions to some of our design quandaries as well as people she knew that might help, from licensed architects to sign-off on final plans, to concrete floor finishers. She GOT what we were thinking.
Here’s what impressed us about Emily (and what to look for when interviewing any architectural plan-maker): read more…
Since we first got our copy of Christopher Hirscheimer and Melissa Hamilton’s Canal House Cooks Every Day, we’ve been inspired by its simple, straightforward, delicious and REAL recipes (we made their dry-brined roast turkey for Thanksgiving.) Right now, their Apple Tart recipe (below) is calling us.
(Video link here.) This morning, the great Manhattan User’s Guide (which is great WAY beyond Manhattan), posted something of a tribute to Rube Goldberg, the guy behind the term Rube Goldberg Machine: ”a comically involved, complicated invention, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation“ according to Webster’s.
What always delighted me about Rube’s inventions was that they were always designed to solve some utterly practical problem, but did it in the most imaginative — and mind-bogglingly indirect — way, all-the-while reminding you of the very real possibilities for invention using everyday objects.
Although I’ve have seen a lot of clever Golberg-esque machinations and artworks, I’ve rarely seen a person who was as true to Rube’s brilliant craziness as Joseph Herscher, who seems to be carrying the mantle with his wondrous Page Turning Machine. All he does to set it in motion is read more…
We have a strange aversion to wall-to-wall carpeting, finding it monotonous, one dimensional and claustral. But when we saw this clever carpeting made of stripey colors, we though, yeah we might could live with that.
Then we saw these stipes made out of floor tiles and realized the striped thing could be done with lots of materials, transforming them from something ordinary to something ELSE. read more…
One unexpected outcome of Hurricane Sandy for us was our new obsession with trees, after we saw some mighty ones toppled over and wondered how we could give them a second life. We hauled a bunch of huge heavy trunk parts home and have found ourselves wandering the park daily to check out the progress of the Parks Department in clearing them away, hoping to snag some slices of the massive 3-foot in diameter oak we wrote about. Most of it has been removed, save the huge trunk and roots. Today we counted the rings and figure the tree to have been around 150 years old.
A reader named Susie Flax summed up what it is that hooked us about the fallen trees in an email, along with a link to the very cool sliced tree trunk coffee table above, after our own hearts: read more…
…Artschwager’s “blps,” black punctuation-like marks..are intended to make their immediate environment, in the artist’s own words, more “see-able,” and they also offer a chance to pause and reflect.
We figure Artschwager’s exclamation points are a fitting image for Thanksgiving: reminders to pause and reflect on all the teeny miracles around us…
For the past couple of days, we’ve been getting calls from friends asking for recommendations for the Thanksgiving meal: the best way to cook the turkey, what side dishes, what to drink. So for all our readers who may still be at odds with what they are going to make tomorrow, here’s our round-up of favorite Thanksgiving recipes (which, taken together, make a perfect menu). And since we view recipes as rough formulas and idea generators, we encourage your to take them in whatever direction you want. read more…
(Video link here.) We were happy to see clever Snoopy pulling out a folding ping-pong table for his Thanksgiving crowd (along with an assortment of mismatched chairs). Covered with a cloth or kraft paper, nobody would know the difference.
He isn’t the only one cobbling together a table. It’s a yearly scramble for many people around the holidays. Our strategy: a bunch of little tables placed in such a way as to make a perfect base of a 4′ x 8′ sheet of plywood ( or two if necessary), which can be used for projects later on. Sawhorses also make great, flexible bases.
Recently, Lynne Rosetto Kasper of public radio’s The Splendid Table asked Sally to come up with some ideas for decorating the holiday table. (On December 21st, you can listen to a packed 6 or so minutes of ideas). Sally went right to her local farmer’s market to “forage” for visually beautiful, of-the-season items she could put right on the table, to create an instant still-lifes in lieu of, or in combination with, flowers. For Thanksgiving, she found fragrant quinces (above), apples and tiny seckel pears. The secret of their charm: Sally carefully picks through the crates to find fruits with their leaves still attached which evoke farms and orchards… (After the meal, they can be roasted or braised.)
And playing on an idea we posted some time ago of flower-and-vegetable arrangements, Sally plunked single radishes with their leaves in glass beakers and vases, for a suprising vegetal bouquet: read more…
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, we’ve been inspired by its simple, straightforward, delicious and REAL recipes (we made their 
to be a tonic. You can do it anywhere — subway, shopping mall, supermarket…It changes everything.
