The bold and many-faceted Howard Rheingold, who we blogged about yesterday, once did a little internet art piece that asked: “Why doesn’t everybody paint their own shoes?” Yeah, why doesn’t everybody? we wondered. Shoes are basically a blank palette; it would be easy enough to do. Then you could look down and see… Rheingold has…
Read Morehoward rheingold: on becoming (“life…forks every day, in every moment”)
Recently, Lydia Wills alerted us to an entry from Howard Rheingold‘s astonishing blog Howard’s Butt “about his rectal cancer experiences –about being cracked open. He is an amazing person…one of the earliest internet folks who knew it was going to change the world.” Rheingold’s writing sent us to his website and Wikipedia to find out…
Read Morealt-gift for mother’s (and other) days
The sentiment around Mother’s Day is a nice one but we’ve never been crazy about all the marketing of flowers, cards, candy that can go with it; they often seem in contradiction to the gist – of honoring and thanking your mother – by blending in the desperate shelling out of $$ to buy a…
Read Moremanny howard’s empire of dirt
A few years ago, Manny Howard was enticed by New York Magazine to try growing food in his Brooklyn backyard and sustain himself on it for a month. At the time, Manny wasn’t really committed to exploring the meaning of “locavore” (the magazine’s tack); he loves wild challenges of just about any kind (hunting boar…
Read Moreoff the radar
…we’re still trying to find our way back from the West Virginia Appalachians and the wild ramp supper, with the hopes of posting on Tuesday… Related post: Foraging for ‘REAL’: Ramps Etc (with Recipe)
Read Moreforaging for ‘REAL’: ramps etc with recipe
This weekend, I will take a few days off to go down to West Virginia to the Ramp Supper in Helvetia, West Virginia, a feast served family style in the community hall by the Farm Women’s Association – ham, beans, cornbread, slaw, applesauce, hash browns, ramps raw and cooked. Depending on the weather, the raw…
Read Moreclipped-together shelving pt. 2: cardboard boxes
Pamela Hovland, who is our BEST scout, found this cardboard box shelving system on Etsy. It’s a variation of the clipped-together shelving idea we wrote about earlier. It is to our mind a brilliant use of an ordinary cardboard box (which we’re thinking, could even be painted with rubber paint…) It seems to be the…
Read Moreclipped-together shelving pt. 1: wood (help needed)
We are always amazed by how we’ll have an idea and start thinking about it, trying to figure it out, and then start to stumble on echoes and iterations of it. We’ve been thinking about modular shelving that looks good and sleek and is sturdy but do-able, not too expensive…Why not stack boxes in various…
Read Morea daring path
via Core 77
Read Morewant to be a: hunter angler gardener cook?
Of late we are smitten with a rather homely blog whose content is so good, and its straightforwardness so compelling, that it overcomes its strangely distracting design and ads for cutting down belly fat. Hunter Angler Gardener Cook is Hank Shaw‘s site about being just that: “I fish. I dig earth, raise plants, live for food and…
Read MoreFling and Be Flung (Jackson Pollock)
Lately, we’ve noticed several odd and very expressive permutations of the word “fling”. Fling/flang/flung aren’t about flinging some THING across the room, but rather describe a PERSON being catapulted, by life…allowing ourselves to being flung, learning lessons, making discoveries, really living. First we read Anne Herbert’s wonderful post in Peace, Love and Noticing the Details:…
Read Morem&m wrapper dress (garbage is opportunity)
We find ourselves inadvertently collecting images of fabulous dresses made out of unlikely materials, like this beauty made by Cristina Liedtke from discarded peanut M&M wrappers. It’s on display at TerraCycle’s Green Up Shop, a pop-up shop set up in empty retail space in Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City. “To create the gown,…
Read Moregreen chickpeas (produce as house gift) + recipe
One of my favorite house gifts (to give or to get) is an of-the-season treasure from a good local market, like perfect cherries in early summer, or a bunches of lemon verbena for tea in August, or Meyer Lemons in late winter… These gifts require an eye on the market and a bit of luck,…
Read Moreleaving secret (or surprise) presents
Outside my apartment door recently, I found a glass plate covered by an inverted pyrex bowl; inside was a slice of a four layer torte, with a little fork. The card read “It’s probably better thawed out. (me too…).” It was from my neighbor Matthew Sporzynski, a paper artist whom we’ve blogged; he likes to…
Read Morewebpages as graphs, and a graph of what we (you) made
If you go to Webpages as Graphs, you can type in the URL of any website and see it slowly plotted as a graph, in a kind of magical animation. We did it with ‘the improvised life’ and watched in astonishment at the graphing of its nine months of life: it “blossomed” into what looks…
Read Moremore miso recipes: almond-miso spread + miso vinaigrette
Dana Joy Altman of Real Food Rehab blog emailed asking for a couple of recipes she’d heard Sally mention on public radio’s The Splendid Table recently when she was talking about ways to improvise with miso. We’ve come to view recipes as notations of ideas, examples of ways to use an ingredient or a techniques that can…
Read Morestrategy: instant consult via cell phone camera
Our friend Fern Berman told us how she’d gone into a sunglass store and started trying on glasses; like everybody, her mind got boggled by the selection. So she devised a way to get advice from her spouse, Faith Middleton who was in another state preparing to host one of her in-depth interviews on public radio.…
Read Morethe decision of your lifetime (miranda july)
miranda july’s perfect, rule-breaking website
Miranda July is a filmmaker, artist and writer whose work has been presented at many amazing venues like Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim Museum and The Whitney Biennale. We’re started to check out her work having been knocked out a really funny, charming, completely unexpected website she made about one of her books, No One Belongs…
Read Moresally talks miso on ‘the splendid table’ + grilled miso-glazed fish recipe
This weekend, Sally talks about improvising with miso, the versatile Japanese seasoning, on The Splendid Table, Lynne Rosetto Kasper’s terrific food show on public radio. She’ll cover the basics of miso, and give ideas for using this essential refrigerator staple. Click here to stream the show or find out when it will be aired in your neighborhood.…
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