It was a chaotic short week, wasn’t it? Here I’ve been juggling preschool applications (!!) and getting geared up for a busy fall. To cap it all off last night I did a sleep study at Cornell Weill (I’ve been tired a lot recently). Sleep studies are odd things; you get electrodes and wired up and then you sleep with someone monitoring you. As nice as the technician was (thanks, Pat!) it’s still very 1984. I came home early this morning to a full house (cleaning lady, babysitter, some friends stopped by for a visit). After everyone cleared out at noon, I took a sweet nap. When I woke up, the house was calm and quiet. And I just sat for a few minutes and watched the shadow move across the dresser while listening to the Zac Brown Band on Spotify.
I’m quoted in this very nice New York Times Sunday Styles article by Stephanie Rosenbloom on what New Yorkers did during Hurricane Irene!
Abbey Nova, a design historian who blogs at Designscouting.com, and her husband spent the weekend at their home on the Upper West Side with what Ms. Nova described as her stranded-on-a-desert-island list of people, which consisted of five other adults, three 2-year-olds (including her son, Alex) and a 4-year-old. Turns out, the Saturday of the hurricane was one of the nicest days she’s had as a New Yorker.
“Time definitely slowed down,” she said. On the agenda: naps, pizza, a screening of “Police Academy.” “It just reminded me of the importance of taking time out,” Ms. Nova said. “I think we sometimes overlook the community that we build. We’re busy with our jobs, we’re busy with our kids. To me what was remarkable and unexpected about this weekend was how I connected with my neighbors.”
IRENE. We ended up with an LED lantern, these awesome iphone travel batteries, and a shortwave radio/cell phone charger. I was particularly proud of the shelf-stable coffee and milk. On Saturday Leigh, Nancy and I had an UWS block party, moving from house to house with the kiddos (I made these cookies) and then, on Sunday morning, my sister made eggs and we all watched Police Academy. Sunday afternoon Tim, Alex and I went for a windy walk and ate ice cream. Freedom tasted good!
PS I’m sending love and light to all my friends and old neighbors in Vermont who are getting pounded by Irene.
One of my favorite parts of NYC is the laundries in every neighborhood that wrap up clean laundry in brown paper packages. I’m always catching a glimpse of neat rows of packages waiting to return to their rightful owner out of the corner of my eye.
Yesterday my sister and I walked through Central Park on our way to the East side where we were running some errands (you can’t see our huge Ikea bag in these photos but we were schlepping, for sure). We happened upon the Boat Basin, where you can rent remote controlled boats. I didn’t even know this existed (my sister couldn’t believe I’d missed the Gossip Girl episode…) and was totally entranced. We rented boat number 78 for 30 minutes ($11) and it was that perfect kind of summer fun that is part care-free (who ever has time to rent a remote controlled boat as an adult), part sunshine (I sun-burned my scalp in the process), part laughing with your sister in a way you haven’t since you were 12. Thanks, Tatie, for a wonderful afternoon.
I’m still electrified by my visit with Leigh to see the Savage Beauty exhibition at the Metropolitan. I could write a long review or link to the incredible press the show has gotten but I’m going to leave it at this: if you haven’t already, go see the show, if at all possible. I’m still thinking about objects and details of the installation. It has been lovingly installed, which is a somehow funny adjective to use, but, I felt very clearly that the team that installed the show personally knew Alexander McQueen. The show is a moving memorial to his life and work. I loved walking through the show with Leigh and her friend Angel — they noticed all sort of details in the clothes I wouldn’t have and I like to think I noticed some details of how it was installed that they hadn’t yet noticed.
The amazing head piece above is by Philip Treacy and I think it’s fair to say that of all the amazing objects in the show, this is the one that blew my mind. What I find so amazing is that Treacy has taken the cork sculpture out of the glass box. Such a simple thing that profoundly changes the experience of looking at the sculpture — since that kind of sculpture is almost defined by being in a pretty little lacquered case.
Go see the Bill Cunningham documentary, if you haven’t already. It’s a moving tribute to artistic vision and the power of consistency in any creative pursuit. It also left me with a vivid sense of the vitality of New York in the 60s and 70s.
I’m obsessed with the Royal Wedding, well because it’s a royal wedding. In 2011. Something really wonderful about that. Anyway, tonight Stephanie and I are getting together for a little pre-royal wedding viewing party. Tim and I gave up cable television six months ago, and mostly haven’t looked back so Stephanie was kind enough to have me over when news of my royal wedding obsession reached her ears. She put together an cute imaginary outfit for our get together and I couldn’t resist sharing it.
Are you around Friday morning? Come by the Cooper-Hewitt museum (91st & Fifth Ave) around 10:30 am, where I’m presenting a paper at the 2oth Annual Parsons/Cooper-Hewitt Graduate Symposium on the amazing 17th century paper museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo. Cassiano and a small group of contemporaries formed a society – the Academia de Linceus (The Academy of the Eye of the Linyx – how cool!?) and were among the first to use microscopes to look at the natural world and create detailed drawings. The symposium is free and open to the public.
My favorite restaurant in the city, Sfoglia, where I’ve celebrated babies and birthdays, accomplisments and defeats (the latter at the bar) just added a private dining space on the roof of their building. Ralph Gardner just wrote it up in his great Urban Gardner colum in the WSJ. The photo of the space (below) makes me want to throw a party (or be invited to one).
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On Home
A house is more than just a shelter from the storm. How we shape our homes, and how we behave within them, speak volumes about our history, our values and our way of life. - New York Times
Living is the greatest art of all. - Alfred Stieglitz
To have less would be in many cases to have more - more tranquility of life, more ease of mind, more knowledge and more real enjoyment. - Candace Wheeler
To be alive means to live in a world that preceded one's arrival and will survive one's departure. - Hannah Arendt Found Via Jessica Helfand
On Consciousness and Freedom
But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about in the great outside world of wanting and achieving. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
David Foster Wallace, Commencement address at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, May 21, 2005.
