Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bait, flower, lobster, lobster pot, ragged sailor, rhode island on July 5, 2011| 1 Comment »
In case you find yourself with too many lobster pots, consider this approach, suitably embellished with the U.S. flag for the Glorious Fourth. (If you don’t live in the U.S., you could skip the flag.)
There is quite a variety of flowers here. The blue ones on tall stems in the front are called chicory by most people but Ragged Sailor in Rhode Island.
If you have any creative ways you have retired your own lobster posts, do leave a comment.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged eire, hawthorne, ireland, irish, james hackett, leprechaun, peat, poet, poetry, postaday, yeats on July 4, 2011| 2 Comments »
James is an Irish poet, widely considered part leprechaun. Every few years he comes to stay with his cousins for a couple weeks, across the street from my house. James is on the left in this photo, which I took at the Fourth of July parade.
James has two main modes of conversation: storytelling and poetry recitation. It is a pure delight to chat with him. As we waited for the parade, he narrated pages of Irish history, including dates, and recited from W.B. Yeats and our own Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others.
Earlier, he was sitting on his cousins’ front porch and saw a young woman he knows coming across the street. He was moved by the way she walks, as he told me, and with a kind of poetic spontaneous combustion, intoned on the spot:
Meran, fairest maid art thou,
Lovely is thy stride.
My heart goes out to thee
As ebbs the great sea tide.
But, ah, my kind Meran, I’ll not forget thee.
Nor the kind words you said unto me.
James has self-published a couple books of lore in his unique style. He and his brother, both lifelong bachelors, sell peat. On certain Sundays, James bikes 18 miles to the ruins of an old monastery, where he narrates the history for visitors. Then he bikes 18 miles home. In any kind of weather. James is 73.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthstone, cartoon, earrings, gem, holograms, Jem, Jem and the Holograms, jewelry, Luna & Stella on July 3, 2011| Leave a Comment »
I must have spaced out in the ’80s because I had no idea that Suzanne loved watching a cartoon show called “Jem and the Holograms.” The TV was in the basement, but still …
What’s really interesting is that when Jem tapped her star earrings she activated special powers. I leave it to you whether that explains these earrings at Suzanne’s business, Luna & Stella.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged archipelego, beach, fire island, ocean, salt, sand, sweden, waves on July 3, 2011| 2 Comments »
One of the great things about going to the beach with your toddler grandson is seeing it through his eyes and remembering your own early experiences.
I remember the first time I went to Fire Island and played in the tide pools on the broad, sandy beach. My brother and I didn’t want to leave, and my parents also seemed relaxed and playful.
This morning I asked my in-law children whether they recalled any early beach memories. My daughter-in-law remembered an overcast week on Cape Cod, where she and her younger sisters liked climbing on a rocky jetty that stretched out into the water along the sand.
Erik, growing up in Sweden, didn’t see a lot of sandy beaches but has lovely summer memories of the islands of the Archipelego — climbing on the rocks and exploring. He also spent a lot of time on the water in boats and remains an avid sailor.
Here is Erik’s nephew climbing the rocks on the Swedish seacoast as Erik did at that age.
Here is my grandson with his mom yesterday. He was crazy about the ocean. And although he is not quite walking yet, he held hands and ran like mad along the sand, shrieking for joy.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Behr, car, Chicago, color, colour, Home Depot, marianne moore, Martha Stewart, NY Times, poet, Turtle Top, Valspar on July 3, 2011| 3 Comments »
Suzanne began her retail career working summers just a few hours a week at a tiny toy store called Mouse House where her brother, John, had worked before. Between Mouse House and leaving college, there were at least two clothing stores and many restaurants. When she graduated from college, she worked for a popular clothing manufacturer in New York, in the merchandising group. One of her tasks was to make up names for lingerie colors. A particular color she remembers was a shade of pink that she called “flirt.”
The NY Times just published an amusing article on the accelerating trend of naming colors to evoke an idea or a mood. There is an art to it.
“At Valspar, located in a Chicago high-rise near O’Hare airport, colorists can meet in ‘vignette’ rooms that encourage storytelling. One resembles an outside deck, replete with a porch chair and mural of Wrigley Field. Ms. Kim assigns the colorists homework, like browsing certain magazines and blogs. One, called colourlovers.com, allows users to create and share their own palettes; among more than one million offerings are I Feel Sorry for You and When Time Ran Out. They also watch movies and visit stores. And a few times a year, they head downtown for a big brainstorming session at a loft building called Catalyst Ranch and its brightly colored meeting spaces, which are intended to help employees think creatively. …
“Taryn Look, 25, an actress, who was checking out Home Depot’s Behr collection the other day, rolled her eyes at some of the names. ‘I wonder how much these people get paid,’ she mused, glancing at Genteel Lavender, a color
she said she would rebrand My Gay Best Friend. But she did pause at a color named Lightweight Beige, and soon she was telling a story about when her parents met. Her father told her mother that he liked her in beige, and so she swapped her once-colorful wardrobe for one that was all beige. Ms. Look said she would rename the color My Mother, After She Met My Dad.” Read more.
This reminds me of the poet Marianne Moore being asked to brainstorm names of cars. She came up with Turtle Top, but the idea was not adopted.
Use the comments feature to suggest a name for a color? I’ll start. How about a sparkly blue called “Tanya Running through the Sprinkler”? Or a dark purple called “Black Fly Season.” Or a gold-orange called “At Last the Missing Manuscript.”
Not sure this will ever be my forte.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Actors Gang, arts, california, convict, ex-con, jail, offender, penitentiary, prison, prisoner, recidivism, Tartuffe, theater, theatre, Tim Robbins on July 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Today’s NY Times has an article on the cutbacks in prison arts programs and on the many ways they help convicts prepare to lead a better life outside. Tim Robbins and the Actors Gang is trying to raise funds to keep this theater program in a California prison alive.
“Two years ago, arts in corrections programs were a mainstay of prisons across the country, embraced by administrators as a way to channel aggression, break down racial barriers, teach social skills and prepare inmates for the outside world. There was an arts coordinator in each of the 33 California state prisons, overseeing a rich variety of theater, painting and dance. But these programs have become a fading memory, casualties of the budget crises.”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged block island, island nurse, mary d, mary d fund, mary donnelly, nurse on July 2, 2011| 1 Comment »
Pippa Jack at the Block Island Times reports today on a Rhode Island humanities grant for post-production work on a local film. The film is called “Island Nurse” and is about island treasure Mary Donnelly.
“The filmmaker, Sue Hagedorn, who is also a nurse practitioner, retired nursing professor and summer resident of the island, shot the intimate footage over the past two years, following Donnelly as she made house calls, visited with family, did non-profit work and remembered the past. Next she will film other people, collecting stories about the frail-looking but dynamic woman who has tended to the sick here for two generations.” Read more here.
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