After reading our post on painting fabric-covered furniture, Stacey Harwood sent us an email about her great “guest” chair. “I knew a white chair would not stay white for long in my NYC apartment so I bought some fabric markers and I invite our guests to sign it. I’m happy to say that it has been signed by some of our most celebrated poets: Mark Strand and John Ashbery are toward the top; Charles Simic is on the seat. You can also distinguish Jim Cummins, Susan Wheeler and Star Black (poet, collage artist, photographer). To the lower right is Gabriella Gershenson, a senior editor at Saveur. On the left is Deborah Landau and Richard Howard…”
Harwood’s husband, David Lehman is series editor of the annual The Best American Poetry books, which is how they come to have to many fine poets and writers as friends. Their blog is The Best American Poetry.
“It’s a wonderful record of the first two years in our apartment and truly a one-of-a-kind piece that gives us much pleasure.”
Harwood improvised a whole other order of guest book…
…
….That long list of poets made us poke around the internet to read some poems. Here’s a beauty by Mark Strand: read more…
We found this amazing image in The Big Picture’s wonderful photo gallery of lunar New Year’s celebrations, which began February 4, throughout China and many other countries; it is the Year of the Rabbit, according to Chinese Zodiac. It also marks the beginning of Spring festivals throughout China, like this one in a Miao ethnic group village in Xijiang Town in southwest China’s Guizhou Province. Around 1,000 people dined at a 280-meter-long table (about 300 yards).
We’d love to sit at THAT table (and wonder whose doing the cooking?)
Valentine’s Day is one week away so we thought we’d start thinking about it now, rather than our usual last minute scramble. Chocolate is, of course, the classic valentine, so we’ve rounded up our very best chocolate desserts and gifts, all homemade, all easy to make. Here are our recommendations, with annotations:
Homemade Chocolates for Improvising… a foolproof method for making sheets of fine chocolate spiked with unusual flavors and textures, like curry powder and sea salt; Marcona almonds and pimenton de la Vera; dried cherries and lavender…
The Spanish guerrilla collective flo6x8 has been making a series of benignly disruptive and moving actions in banks, as protest for what they believe is a corrupt system. They favor flamenco, with its varied roots most famously Andalucian Gypsy culture, as their means of expression, most often with dancing or singing.
Last December, flo6x8 slipped into one of the branches of Banco Santander in Seville. In league with a “radio station friend “, they broadcast wild flamenco throughout the bank. ” Then they started to dance, so joyfully and passionately that some of the bank’s customers joined in. (Check out the woman in the yellow coat trying to get the steps).
flo6x8 actions, shown in the many videos on their website, are compelling pieces of performance art, like this lone woman singing a haunting song acapella in a bank. read more…
Neil Gaiman‘s New Year’s Wishes from LAST year are surely some of the best wishes to bestow on those you love at ANY time of year…
As wonderful to hear, as to read:
May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art – write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. May your coming year be a wonderful thing in which you dream both dangerously and outrageously. I hope you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and you will be liked and you will have people to love and to like in return. And most importantly, because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now – I hope that you will, when you need to be, be wise and that you will always be kind. And I hope that somewhere in the next year you surprise yourself.
On New Year’s Day forty-five years ago, the sculptor Alexander Calder and his wife Louisa James Calder took out this full page ad in the New York Times. It was a fierce statement made in protest of the Vietnam War and caused quite a stir at the time. It is still a fierce statement and resonates as much today as it did then.
(With apologies for the not-great quality of the image. It is a scan of a photocopy of the yellowed-and-falling-apart original, clipped from the Times by Sally in 1966, and found in a forgotten archive. The ad was signed “Louise James Calder, Alexander Calder”, details that got lost in copying. We have been unable to find images of it elsewhere.)
Wishing you a wondrous New Year. We’ll be back on Tuesday…two thousand and ELEVEN!
(After the late show in the one-ring circus in a tent, just before midnight, clown noses, hats, noise makers and champagne are passed out to the audience…
…then, in a moment, the old year turns to new: JOY as clowns, performers – aerialists, acrobats, contortionists, jugglers - and audience crowd into the ring to dance)…
270 films from 2010 were spliced into one single, fabulous, illuminating 6 minute video, by genrocks (“I’m a girl by the way”)
“This year’s movies have legitimately transformed my idea of what is creatively possible. To commemorate, I’ve remixed 270 of them into one giant ass video.”
It’s amazing how much this video makes you “see” the past year.
About a year ago we wrote a post about all the things you could eat on, or with, potato chips. One, of course, is onion dip. In our version, it’s made with REAL onions, caramelized until brown (easy), cooled, and stirred into sour cream. It’s from Sally’s award-winning cookbook The Improvisational Cook, which will be relaunched in paperback on February 8th. We’re reprising the recipe here because it’s the perfect New Year’s Eve-and-after accompaniment to champagne and celebration; serve with excellent potato chips (we recommend rosemary-and-olive oil). read more…
Cara de Silva sent us this fab video as a gift after watching our Ode to Joy post. It’s the great Django Reinhardt performing “Christmas Swing” (December 1937, Paris) set to footage from “The Night Before Christmas,” a television special from the 1950′s, sponsored by the Bell Telephone Company, PA., featuring the Mabel Beaton Marionettes. Dig that swingin’ Santa!
One of the most compelling holiday trees we’ve seen in a public space is Yoko Ono‘s Wish Tree, versions of which have been installed around the world. She conceived of the idea in 1996 – though it’s actually an a very old practice – and it continues to reverberate. People are invited to write their wish on a paper tag and tie it to the tree. It can be done with any tree, anywhere, with any group of people. It’s much more powerful than a wishing well, maybe because you can read other people’s wishes…there’s an intimacy and connectedness to it. read more…
Maria Robledo sent us this email of a swell gift wrapping idea her family came up with: “Covering over commercial labels on gift boxes w a little paint and saving on wrapping paper!”
Just paint those boxes with a little acrylic paint. Gorgeous!
, which will be relaunched in paperback on February 8th. We’re reprising the recipe here because it’s the perfect New Year’s Eve-and-after accompaniment to champagne and celebration; serve with excellent potato chips (we recommend rosemary-and-olive oil). 
