ny times year in ideas 2009

The always illuminating New York Times Magazine Annual Year in Ideas issue is out, and we are guaranteed hours of interesting reading. Here’s a short-list culled from a wealth of subjects. The titles indicate only a fraction of the nuanced information in the article. My favorite is “Good Enough is the New Great”, an idea…

Read More

food gifts: homemade chocolates for improvising (recipe)

Shards of chocolate embedded with surprising flavors and crunchy elements make terrific gifts for much less $ than pricey “artisan-made’ chocolates. Here’s an easy, step-by-step method – and a couple of tricks –  for making unfussy homemade chocolates: a thin sheet of fine chocolate into which you’ve embedded surprising and delicious elements, like chopped Marcona…

Read More

our homemade food gifts on ‘the splendid table’

This weekend on public radio stations across the country, The Splendid Table, Lynne Rosetto Kasper’s wonderful food radio show, will be airing an interview with Sally about ‘the improvised life’ approach to Homemade Holiday Food Gifts. Check out Splendid Table’s website for show times in your area, download podcasts or stream the show. You’ll find Sally’s…

Read More

folkstreams.net and america’s wild improvisational roots

This short clip is from a film called Medicine Fiddle, about a unique hybrid music and dance form created by the convergence of French, Scotch and Irish fur traders and trappers, with Native American tribes in Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and Canada in the 1700 and 1800’s. These mixed-blood people are often called Metis. Their music is rural American…

Read More

grown-up chalkboard “art”

Sometimes when I need a diversion from writing, I poke around location scout Andrea Raisfeld’s website of interesting spaces for rent for photography locations. You can browse by type (apartment, barn, log cabin…), or description (contemporary, Modernist, Swedish…), or even by a feature (bunk bed, river, treehouse), and so on. I always find unexpected ideas there, like…

Read More

double-duty gifts with heart (and a card)

A few years ago, I discovered that the holiday gift my friends treasured most was a simple card telling them that I’d given a donation in their name to a charity. They were happy NOT to get more stuff, and be given something that was helping someone else. It was a way I could give…

Read More

hand as notepad

I started thinking about using my hand as a notepad, as I did when I was a kid, and began noticing people with notes scrawled and scribbled on their hands. The manager of the local fish market had phone numbers running up the back of his hand in blue ball point. At the Bauhaus show…

Read More

Posts navigation