Just got back from an absolutely incredible Jubilee! hiking trip out west with my Mama… we averaged 8 miles a day, hiking along misty river rainbowed canyon edges, skirting glacial freezing mirrored lakes, and counting infinite wildflowers along the trails. What a time… I’ll share more pictures tomorrow. Lovelove!
Category: Happiness
The Secret’s Out: Fish Sandwich Edition
Everyone who knows me well knows what I’m about to tell you. It’s one of my few deep, dark secrets… not mentioned at the food Co-op, kept under wraps at yoga, quieted up and hushed down until certain forces combine and champagne collides with the morning: I love McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish sandwiches. Like, LOVE. A Filet-O-Fish (formerly #9 on the combo list, now #11- which I have learned in order to avoid the ignominy of actually having to say “I’ll have the Filet-O-Fish, please” in line and have other patrons look at me like I’m gross) is not only the absolute best cure for a hangover, its strange and incredible squareness is at once crispy, salty, greasy, miraculous, and, yes, a little fishy. I have been shamed by this. Now, it seems: NO LONGER! We are not alone. See above. This, dear ones, is the cheese fish sandwich from Laketrout in Williamsburg (Brooklyn). It is an homage to both the classic MacDo’s Filet-O-Fish and the orange-drink Baltimore fish sandwiches of the chef’s youth: a perfectly executed crispy square of fish topped with a sideways square of cellophane cheese and what I can only imagine is the worlds most delectable tartar sauce. Pandemic! WMD! The secret’s out, thank goodness.
This image from the absolutely incredible Fish Sandwich centerfold in New York Magazine’s 2012 cheap eats issue. Read em and weep (for joy).
Governor’s Island Love
As if this life-size statue of liberty face, oysters on the half shell, picnics in big open airy spaces, ferryboats, elegant decay, and views of Manhattan laid out like a hot breakfast weren’t enough, read this article about all of the new upcoming awesome goins-on at Governor’s Island and get excited! 
ps. I love my Soludos.
Bless This Mess
Bless this sweet beautiful mess of ours. Bless fields and breezes and fiddleheads. Bless Emmlyou and Bonnie and Willie Nelson and Otis Redding and Elvis. Bless ham biscuits and deviled eggs, lobster rolls and clam shacks, fresh corn and—the great equalizer— fried chicken. Bless lemonade and cold beer and the Shirley Temple. Bless sunsets in the west and sunrises in the east, bless south Texas and south-western Virginia, bless New York City and everything that is not New York, bless the wilds of Maine and the mossy coasts of Georgia, the bounding scrubs of Mississippi and the raucous lush of Louisiana, the eternal flat of Dakota and the abiding rise of the Rockies. And bless California, for foretelling the future and gilding the none-too-distant goldrush Kerouac past. Bless porch swings and hammocks. Bless banjos and fiddles and dive bars and honky tonks. Bless dance parties and side roads, the swimming hole and the alternate route. Bless our mess and forgive us our debts. Bless us, America, and have a happy 4th of July.
Oh, yes, and God bless Andy Griffith.
Images from the incredibly wonderful Lost in America.
Take Me Out…
Aaaaaaaaand PLAY BALL! After hearing about the vintage baseball league that plays by 1864 rules out on Governor’s Island (more info here), we simply had to go. On a most gorgeous summer Saturday, Meags and Sweetheart and I packed up the bare essentials (champagne, bread, cheese, sunscreen) and hopped on the free ferry to go see some baseball. In short: it was awesome. 
The New York Gothams wore navy pants, pillbox hats (you can see the lineage of those wonderful throwback Pirates hats) and white tunics emblazoned with a gothic “G”. What they didn’t wear? Gloves. Maybe gloves hadn’t been invented or maybe all leather was earmarked for Union cavalry saddlebags, but by the 1864 rules, the intrepid fielders go barehanded. 
The old rules are slightly different— you can’t overrun first base, the pitches are underhand, the strike zone is from the head to the ankles, and (most noted) the barehanded fielders can catch the soft rag ball on one bounce and the batter’s out—but the game is the same, the joyous, methodical, rhythmic American wonder reminds you why the game took hold of us in the first place. In typical American fashion, nicknames abound (Crash, Monk, Bugs) and, perhaps the most nostalgic element, even the heckling is genteel…Can you picture a Yankee fan telling at the Red Sox “That was UNMANLY!”? 
All of this, on a divine day, with the newly regenerating skyline of lower Manhattan in the background? Perfection.
top and third image by Hiroko Masuike from this NYT article (we were interviewed, but didn’t make the cut…).
Tall Ships
After glimpsing them in New York harbor during fleet week, and seeing them streaming sails across the mouth of the Chesapeake, Daddy and I cruised down to Harborfest to see the stunning tall ships in all their furled glory. I told you I love ships. Gilded figureheads in the golden hour, fireworks amidst the riggings at sundown, all the ships in the harbor sounding their horns at once, a rude and glorious symphony—as from Whitman:
Chant on, sail on, bear o’er the boundless blue from me to every sea,
This song for mariners and all their ships.
ps. and a very happy birthday to Sweetheart… I can’t wait to share the celebration!
Play Ball!
Oh, New York Metropolitans, I apologize. Summer’s been here for about a month it seems and I’ve yet to go to a baseball game. This feels especially derelict given how far the sweet underdog Mets have come since last year’s walk-off-balk (and may I remind you that that was back when they had Jose Reyes? I say good riddance.): Johan’s no-no, Dickey’s almost no-no, and the thorough drubbing of the Rays this week. Well, Mets, I’m going to get my baseball fix tomorrow, but it’s not going to be at Citi Field (and gawd knows it’s not going to be at Yankee Stadium). Meags is in town and we’re taking the free ferry out to Governor’s Island to see the Gotham Baseball Club of New York take on Eckford of Brooklyn. Vintage baseball for modern times. Since the original New York Gothams of 1864 were heated rivals of the Metropolitans (and went on to become the New York Giants which in turn became the San Francisco Giants, oof), AND since Eckford’s original ballfield was just a crow-hop away from where I live, I’ll be rooting for Brooklyn as means of absolution. I’ll let you know how it goes. Let’s go Mets, Let’s go Ecks, and Let’s go summer.
1882 Metropolitan Nine image and Brooklyn Bridegrooms Image from the Library of Congress. Which is, of course, totally amazing.
Off The Map
When Sweetheart and I went down to Puerto Rico for his dear friend’s wedding to a native Puertorriqueña, we made the good choice to hang around for a few days after. Fortified with strange savory pastries dusted with powdered sugar and strong dark coffee on our way out of San Juan, we headed to the interior. Trekking into El Yunque rainforest to spend the night off the grid in a cabin perched atop a mile high mountain that used to be a tropical fruit farm=good plan. Upon our arrival, we each got a crooked walking stick and hiked up the jungle switchbacks, stopping along the way to pick camandula seeds (which the native Taina ladies used to string as necklaces) arriving at our cabin—tin roofed and on stilts—as the sun was setting. Our host- a sort of Apocalypse-Now-Roger-Sterling- showed us the machete (labeled “guest machete”), gave us this map, and melted into the underbrush. We made fire, cooked meat, peppers and rice, drank rum, played backgammon by candlelight, slept in hammocks, took rainforest rainwater showers and, when the nighttime thunderstorms broke into dawn, we followed the map to the Cubuy River falls. Not all those who wander are lost, but it helps if you have a map.
Gardenias
I just heard Mama say “Oh! A-HA!” and run outside. This bloomed just this morning. Oh, sweet Southern perfection in a cut glass vase. May you all have something as delicate and divine ushering in your summer weekend.
Rare Birds
It’s no secret we love nests around here, so obviously we went head over wing when we saw these newly re-released lithographs from the Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio. The story of the book is almost as lovely as the images- a girl sees John James Audubon’s work chronicling Birds of America at the 1876 World’s Fair, and she and her family decide that there should be a companion book focusing on the birds, eggs, and nests of their native Ohio. So? They make one themselves. A hundred years pass, their book languishes under plexiglass in a random corner of an Ohio museum for years until a young librarian finds it, falls in love with it and writes her own book telling the family’s story and preserving the images for generations to come. Rare birds all, no? 
Images and backstory from here. Lovelovelove.
Feather By Feather 