Martha’s Museum: An Ode to Meaningful Collecting

J. Speed Carroll’s Martha’s Museum: The Precise Placement of Objects, is a film about his late wife Martha’s remarkable, very personal collections in their NYC brownstone. Through Speed’s narration, you enter the many stories and meanings hidden in Martha’s eclectic array of object from all over the world. It is an ode to meaningful collecting, at once a house tour of an original and an example of the way objects resonate with each other to convey unique messages.

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Vibration Fixes: Levitation Suits + Air Mattress Shock Absorbers

Over the past year, I’ve written about the many improvised solutions I’ve created to try to NOT feel the mechanical vibration that shakes me awake every morning. I even looked into making a rig like this “Levitation Suit”, a designer’s attempt at a 3D hotel bed. In lieu of being able to be weightless or levitate, my newest vibration-damping fix came via some readers who had the same problem.

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Celebrate The Splendid Table’s 20 Years of Food Inspiration

This weekend marks The Splendid Table’s 20th anniversary show. Lynne Rosetto Kasper launched the famous radio food show with a conversation with Julia Child about the 4th of July which you can listen to here. I am THRILLED to be included on the roster for this special show (talking about fresh cherries), along with Mario Batali (talking…

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A Sign from Mary Oliver

This wonderful sign is a fragment from Mary Oliver’s longish 3-part poem Evidence. As usual with her poems, there several passages that we could see on that sign board, which is, curiously, the kind used by churches.(Oh for a church where Mary Oliver is quoted and read.) Here are some beauties, which together, make their…

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Check Out Our Instagram @whynot_improvise

We discover SO many TINY improvisations as we wander through our days that we decided to start tracking them on Instagram. You can see the latest in Improvised Life’s sidebar, though you won’t necessarily know what it is. You’ll find the bigger view of our Improvised Life, with commentary, at instagram.com/whynot_improvise…Like the 50-cent Lil Debbie Cake, above,

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Practice: Quiet

A friend recently told us about her practice of taking an occasional day of silence; she shuts down intrusive electronics like her computer, tv, phone, and goes through the day without uttering a word. The neighbors in her smallish town know that when she wears a button saying “Honoring Silence”, they need to do just…

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How Analog Notebooks can Enhance Productivity

In the New Yorker’s recent Why Startups Love Moleskines, David Sax describes the popularity of the spare notebook that many tech-savvy people find superior to digital task software. M.I.T. students, academics, artists and other high-achieving entrepreneurs prize Moleskine notebooks, which come in variety of shapes and sizes, for their simplicity and efficiency.

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Mail’s here!

Our newsletters are a love letter to our readers: A collection of what’s happening and what we’re up to. Subscribing sends us right into your your inbox so you’ll have our quirky, thoughtfully-crafted content to read with your morning coffee. We know what it’s like to be bombarded by the words “please subscribe”. We hear we are worth…

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Use A Typewriter to Tap Your Poetic Subconscious

A public typewriter is stationed at Tompkins Square Park for whoever wishes to write on. It is the brainchild of the The Poetry Society of New York who original introduced it at the NYC Poetry Festival on Governors Island: The Typewriter Project’s mission is to investigate, document, and preserve the poetic subconscious of the city while providing a fun…

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