Mama Love

Just spent the weekend with my Mama, cooking and dancing and eating and getting dirty and doing projects and toasting champagne and I just love her so. Daddy found this picture, and it’s a pretty perfect Mama’s day snap- Mama’s holding my just-born cousin Charlotte- with my Grandmother and Charlotte’s Mama in the background. She’s just perfect in black frye boots and a denim maxi skirt that would pass muster on any L train, and me, I’m kicking it hard in turquoise chuck taylors (my brother picked them out and we had matching pairs). We are so much the same, she and I, and I am so thankful for that all of the time. Love you so, Mama.

Standard Time

How cool is this? German artist Mark Formanek builds a wonderful giant clock before our very eyes, filming the whole thing as workers change and set the numbers in real time. It took 70 workers and 1,611 changes to make it accurate, and the result is simply majestic. Here are some small videos of the clock in motion, and if you want the live clock on your desktop, there’s an app that syncs to your computer’s internal clock. Brilliant and functionally obsolete? My Favorite.

heads up from here.

The Novo Project

I’m loving the divine Miss Mia’s newest endeavor, The Novo Project. Mia is one of those magnetic souls, a student of the possibilities and the positive, a gatherer of beauty and feathers and magic. She’s one of those rare people who seems to burn a bit brighter and hotter than most everyone else- but not in a consumptive way, in the best way, the way that casts light and shadow, that shows a relief of what is and a glimpse of what could be. So, when she says that her Novo Project “will be sharing stories, profiles, and images that are tender / wise / outrageous courageous / quirky / beautiful / insightful of–––authors / artists / designers / educators / healers / athletes…etc.”, I’m inclined to stop whatever I’m doing and listen. Check it out here.

ps. I can’t get over how much Mia looks exactly like her mama here.

Live Art

Sweetheart’s dear friend Jared is known for throwing legendary parties. Sweetheart and I actually kissed for the first time after one of his rooftop soirees that featured a bamboo forest and a margarita machine. Needless to say, when Jared is in charge, love is in the air. So, when we headed south to his bride’s hometown, Rincón, Puerto Rico, for their wedding, we knew that it would probably be pretty epic. The whole shebang was absolutely impeccable, gorgeous, perfect, and seemingly effortless- from the fresh coconuts macheted open and filled with rum to the (literally) world caliber reggae band to the peonies and frangipani covering every surface to the… live painting. The brother of the groom flew this incredibly talented artist down and she created the painting above during the wedding reception. This was exactly what it looked like- hanging lanterns, orchids, giant copper pool of waterlilies in the middle of the dancefloor, the last of a sunset sky through nesting colonial arches framing the chuppah and going out to sea. Seeing the painting come together during the night was really, really cool. Naturally a wedding in a tropical paradise with a cast of good looking, photogenic, and wild characters makes for a good time, but who knew it made for good art? Maravilloso.Read more about the artist, Katherine Gressel, and her process here.

Tiny Bubbles

Nothing could make me thirstier than seeing this legitimate last-of-the-old-guard seltzer delivery man parked on our block. Now, after Sandro ruined Sweetheart’s relationship with the legendary Walter Beckerman in the great Brooklyn unreturned bottle dispute of 2006, our hand has been forced and we’ve gone the way of the soda stream. But, in the same way my heart sings when I get my knives sharpened by the knife grinder, there is somewhat of a New York romance with the seltzer man. May he live long and forever deliver bubbles to the outer boroughs.

A little light Russell

Hey! Is that Mr. Nipsey Russell the Cat doing a little bedtime reading in last week’s New Yorker? Certainly looks like it. When he’s not writing #1 hits, what else has Mr. Russell been up to? Getting in Trouble…Getting dressed up…

Hanging out with Hemingway…And just hanging out…What a busy guy. He’s got so much on his plate he’s looking to cast a replacement. Once he finds the right cat for the job, he’s really looking forward to taking a load off this weekend…

Yes, I like my cat a lot.

Thanks to Miss McKay for the New Yorker image, mugshot from here, Indian from here, Hemingway from here, Russell lounging is just Russell lounging, and Cat audition is from here.

Garden Party

Sweetheart and I just returned from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s amazing annual plant sale with this little red wagon load of delectable goodies for the backyard! Early Girls and Kirby Cukes, Packman Broccoli and Medusa Peppers, Rosemary, Thyme, and Lavande de Provence… like all gardeners at the beginning of the season, out wagon brims almost more with hope than with bounty. Luckily my ever-lovin-horticultural Mama is coming next week for any course correction if we city mice have bitten off more strawberries than we can chew.

ps. I always love the Botanic Garden, every time you go it’s different depending on the weather and the season. Today, the bluebell wood was in bloom. After last night’s hard rain, the trees were silent except for the occasional drop of water and the flowers were like a quiet sea. It was truly beautiful.

Ghost Party

For Miss McKay’s birthday she threw a Ghost Party in the sea islands. All in attendance were asked to choose and channel one of the many spirits of Cumberland, the most mystical and undoubtedly magical tide and mist limned island of the lot. This was certainly cause for a most unearthly celebration. We went to the boneyard and gathered armadillo skulls, deer jawbones, and miscellaneous backbones from the woods, and, like all good ghosts, everyone had a bone necklace and placecard.We went into the saw palmettos, foraged mossy branches and long fronds and festooned the room with bones, vines, and spanish moss.

We dressed as timacuan squaws and revolutionary war generals, the ghosts of great great uncles and bastard octoroon daughters, as ghost dans, zoave blockade runners, french pirates, notorious brides, and wayward travelers. The birthday girl herself went as fierce and beautiful Aunt Lucy who answered to no one and rode her horse with a crow on her shoulder, and Miss Mia made our portraits.

We ate shrimp and grits, drank champagne and rum, and played music and danced mystically into the night. It was perfection.So much love and supernatural joy to Miss McKay on this occasion of her birthday.

And infinite thanks and sharkteethbrujaja to the divinely talented Miss Mia Baxter, timacuan squaw and photographer extroidanairess, for the majority of these stunning images.

Happy May Day!

Even though it certainly doesn’t feel like the official beginning of summer, today is May Day! In honor of the pagan half-solstice and commemorating the birth of the 8 hour work day, we’ll be knocking off early and wreathing our brows with May crowns of newly-arrived bodega peonies and market lilacs (both spotted this week!).

Glorious old May Day images from the Ames, Iowa Hstorical Society.

Roll v. Wade

Bowling: Good!  Lack of affordable reproductive healthcare for women: BAD! This weekend was the NYAFF Bowl-a-Thon, where 200 pro-choice New Yorkers got down to business and raised over $70,000 to give underprivileged women across the city access to essential reproductive health and counseling services they would not otherwise be able to afford. At a time when women’s rights are increasingly (maliciously and inexplicably) coming under fire, when women are being demonized for wanting comprehensive health care, it feels good to do something that actually has a tangible result. Maude Lebowski would be proud. Stellar team names included: Plan Bees, The Morning After Pins, and (universal favorite) Roll v. Wade. Our team, Ladies of the Lane, dressed as Spanish senoritas, raised $2,743, and collectively knocked down all of the pins over ten times.  Feels good, looks good.

Infinite thanks to everyone’s support support so far, and, hey! We’re still accepting donations! Check it out (and get more info) here.

Nobody mess with the Jesus. Or my awesome teammates:

Lebowski image from here.