What Honky-Tonk Women Want

I’d love to have a deep red living room with dark built in bookshelves and a big open wall to hang this huge, awesome Alan McDonald portrait on, but, alas, I don’t. Though “dream apartment” is always on my wishlist, here are a few things that *someone* might consider getting instead to help maintain the lifestyle of the honky tonk woman. After all, we’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers. I won’t call it a gift guide if you don’t call it a comeback. Show me the way to the next whisky bar.

Heart this print from New York-based artist Jon Contino

Need Gillian Welch’s wonderful newish album, The Harrow and the Harvest, which is just as good on the indian summer open road as it is nesting in the winterdark.

Covet His/Hers/Ours Decanter set from Brooklyn’s own Love and Victory. You can also get His/His or Hers/Hers, or, if you’re like me and my “Three’s Company”, whiskey-loving roommates ca. 2006: Hers/Hers/His.

Crave raw forged steel trinkets that are as brutishly lovely as they are useful from CXXVI. Image from the divine goldust woodsmaiden.Want to live inside the cover of this record (get us a copy? good luck finding it- listen here, a gift from the fabulous Berlin Beatet Bestes). Or if you’re feeling really generous- perhaps a new accordion. Here are a few that look promising from Accordion Heaven.

Just Saying.

Fine Feathered Tree

We put our little city Christmas tree up late last week, and it’s been a source of constant joy to me since. The night we put it up, I had the girls over for Christmas Crafts (more on that later), and after a long boozy vegetarian dinner (for Smills the yogi) followed by the cracking open of the bottle of grappa I brought back from Italy, we sat in the glow of the tree through the wee hours and talked of the future and the past and of our little and not so little dreams. It was all so very wonderful. My absolute favorite part of the tree are all of the little birds, coming from all over my history to nest in the tree, feather by feather.

Thanks to Meags for the first picture of my tree, lovingly taken during her visit this weekend (we hugged each other with six of our friendship-octopus legs to make sure that we had two legs each free for champagne, of course).

Murray’s Extravaganza

When Rachel tells you that one of her oldest friends left his boring/unfullfilling/perhaps-soon-to-be-nonexistant white collar job to become a cheese monk at Murray’s, and that you should come over for his hand-picked cheese’n’charcuterie selections, run, don’t walk- first to the wine store and then- over to Rachel and Nate’s brand new Brooklyn digs to partake. Figs and elastic waist pants recommended.

Subway Mandate: We Want a Better World

My train stopped right here, deep downtown, practically under 1 World Trade, let everyone out and the paused for a moment with doors open as if it were sighing, and then continued to trundle its way along down the Brooklyn bound C local track.
Such a simple message. We Want a Bettter World. Was it written by the Occupiers? A blunt reminder of how far we’ve come (and how much is still lost) in the last ten years? A mandate in time for Christmas?  Whatever it is, it feels bittersweet, but it also feels hopeful. We Want a Better World. Me too.

Landmarked Gingerbread Brownstone, Floor-Through, DFP, Original Moldings

Today is the day that the Christmas season officially starts! Sweetheart and I are getting our tree today and the girls are coming over tonight for some hometown Colonial Williamsburg crafting (O it’s marvelous to be from Virginia, you can embrace pioneer spirit and make complicated decorations out of fruit and vines totally unironically), I’ve got Vince Gauraldi cued up, and also a strange and wonderfully joyous new-to-me collection of Swedish Christmas Carols I stumbled on delightedly from Door16 (free downloadable! God Jul!). With all of this in the works, how utterly perfect was it that my friend Renee posted this staggeringly lovely, utterly pitch perfect Gingerbread Brownstone on her wonderful (aspirational) food blog Kitchen Table Scraps. It’s like a scale model of my house! I can just picture Sweetheart and I carrying a miniature tree in through the basement door under the stairs… and I can almost see Nipsey Russell peeking through the spun sugar windowpanes through the gingerbread “window guards” (a nice gentle Brooklynese way of saying bars), in fact the giant “Whisk” installation might be right next door in the to-scale-Pratt-Sculpture-Garden. Bike Parking to the side.

We Came, We Saw, We Had Cheese

I’ve just made my bittersweet return back to New York from my family’s whirlwind columns-in-various-states-of-disrepair-and-epic-boozy-meals-tour of the Mediterranean. We Came, We Saw, We Loved, We had Cheese.
It was truly amazing. If anyone would like to see a few more pictures (including some of the best of our family taken in a long while) just come on over for a glass of fine aged grappa (none of this white lightning/firewater stuff for me thankyouverymuch) or a strange new amaro- the smuggling of which now has me set up perfectly for the holiday season that seems, immediately upon my return, to me joyously upon us! Such a life!

Under One Small Star

Under One Small Star

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I’m mistaken, after all.
Please, don’t be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world  overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at 5a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don’t rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage, your gaze always fixed
on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don’t pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.
Soul, don’t take offense that I’ve only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can’t be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can’t be each woman and each man.
I know I won’t be justified as long as I live, since I myself stand in my own way.
Don’t bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they might seem light.

Wislawa Szymborska

From Ravenel, whose capacity for loving and giving seems infinite.

Because it’s worth it


What if you had a pen name?
I would call myself “Sheldon Conch”

Sweetheart sent me a link to this AH-MAZING Marcel the Shell with Shoes On sequel while I was traveling with no internet, so I’ve been saving watching it… until last night. Marcel seems so much more empowered these days, it must be all of the love (we all love you Marcel).

And in case you missed the first installment of Marcel, here it is.

Nesting Itinerary

WordPress still won’t allow me images (gnashing of teeth! shaking of fist!), so here’s a little narrative:

Expecting a slew of guests for the holidays, sweetheart and I are working on making our Brooklyn brownstone as streamlined and lovely as possible. After my recent jaunt abroad, it’s hitting me that we don’t have very much time! Here’s what we did yesterday to try and make our bedroom nest a little nicer (full disclosure I’ve been obsessing over the amazing Jenny at Little Green Notebook, and this bedroom redux will have her fingerprints all over it… I heart a woman who hearts her staplegun):

-Took the old curtains down, took measurements
-Notice that though windows look the same size, one is two inches smaller than the other.
-Also notice that one is flush with the ceiling and the other is two inches lower. nice.
-Went to home depot, flirted my way into getting wood cut for headboard also realized that pre-made curtain rods for the shoe fireplace (yes, I have a fireplace- non-working- dedicated as a shrine to shoes) are either too short or too long blargh!
-Got some wooden dowels in an attempt to circumvent.
-Drove to East Village and picked up a free dresser for Sweetheart from Craigs List. Had him meet me so I wouldn’t be abducted. Told my Dad that, he was happy.
-Dresser has some pretty serious dings on it, but has good bones and actually nice hardware.
-Many drawers inexplicably full of glitter. NOTE: Glitter is the Herpes of the craft world.
-Drive home across the Manhattan Bridge with the dresser vibrating and rattling.
-Find an amazing parking spot right outside the apartment. Score!
-Neglect to take before pictures in zeal to get things moving!
-Remove drawers from his old dresser, remove old dresser carcass to kitchen.
-Remove my dresser drawers, and wipe the whole thing down (yuck).
-Move my dresser to the other side of the fireplace to prepare for moving the bed to the other side of the room (which I’ve measured will fit).
-Move a big old naugahyde chair and side table into the corner for “holding tank”.
-Move bed across the room.
-Become Aghast at dust bunnies under bed.
-Realize bed on other side of the room “fits”, but won’t allow dresser drawers to open OR bedside table on either side. Also makes the path from the door to the bathroom feel like one of those humane slaughterhouse animal chutes, no bueno.
-Abandon that idea.
-Pour Wine.
-Vacuum thoroughly.
-Move bed back across room.
-Move my dresser back to its old spot.
-Wipe new dresser down/try valiantly to remove glitter
-Apply about 1/4 bottle of dark Old English on it- it looks damn good. May your first dresser be a masculine dresser.
 -Put new dresser in dresser hole.
-Banish old dresser to curb. Still there today. A brief pang of “Brave Little Toaster” really, no one loves that dresser.
-Put Naugahyde Chair and side table back on opposite wall.
-Sweetheart begins to make dinner.
-I get out trusty drill and install custom cut rolldown blinds. Like a Champ.
-That’s done.
-I then try to screw into the fireplace. NOT HAPPENING. It’s made of kryptonite. I break my littlest drill bit. Now, really not happening.
-So- I realize I can screw into the mortar at either side, so I do this survival-desert island deal where I screw screws into the mortar, put a brad-type-nail perpendicularly into the wooden dowel/curtain rod and tie a string around the screw and around the nail. This, amazingly, works. Not a long-term solution, but it’s my version of a coconut radio.

The good news: A few steps closer to a streamlined bedroom that will be as “airy and spacious” as a brownstone basement allows.

The great news: The guests that are coming (Mama and Daddy among others) will bring a SEWING MACHINE and have already promised to fashion exquisite pillows, curtains, and valences. BAM.

If and when I ever get the power of pictures back I’ll post some pictures of the whole shebang!