farewell, and thanks

"You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it."

~ Robin Williams ~

memorial day

(photo borrowed from here)

A couple of days ago I found myself wandering through an antiques marketplace and came upon an old Smith-Corona portable typewriter from the early 1960s, the same model my dad had when I was a kid.  I've been thinking about Dad and that typewriter ever since.

May 30th was the traditional date for Memorial Day, back before an Act of Congress decided that federal employees needed more 3-day weekends. It's also my Dad's birthday, as well as the anniversary of my very first blog post, which fittingly, was all about Dad.

So as I sit here effortlessly typing my 384th post on a sleek, modern keyboard that goes, "clickety-click", instead of the "clackety-clack" of the old Smith-Corona, I'm thinking about my father who, though he would have marveled at how efficient the new world of communication has become, he surely would have hated it.

Dad was a journalist who worked in the now almost obsolete world of print. A newspaperman to his core, he loved the smell of ink on paper, devouring the news of the world page by page every morning and evening. When I was growing up in Queens, Dad worked as a copy editor at The New York Times. Our local paper (The Long Island Star Journal, and later the Long Island Press) was morning reading. The Times came home with Dad after the swing shift.  On Sundays, we'd get The Times, The Press and the Daily News. It's safe to say there was a LOT of reading going on in the Russell house on Sundays.

Back before Facebook, Instagram, text messaging and Twitter, people wrote letters - most of which were not limited to 140 characters. My dad was one of those letter writers. He corresponded with friends around the world just about every day, and almost always they were pounded out on that trusty Smith-Corona.

While Twitter and text messaging allows us to do all that, I can't help but prefer opening a real paper envelope, addressed in a friend's familiar hand, and reading a message that comes imbued with their very spirit.

some of Dad's letters

In honor of what would have been Dad's 99th birthday, I plan on writing a few letters to friends this weekend, and I hope to pass on the spirit of his wit and humor.

And one last thing: If he were still around today, I'm pretty sure Dad would be writing some great tweets.

a melancholy thursday afternoon

Fog

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking 

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

- Carl Sandburg

a gray saturday, and an exercise in gratitude.

Some days, we all need a little reminder that our cups runneth over…

martha doesn't live here

I love a well-run household. I have the greatest admiration for neatly organized and serene spaces where everything has a place, and everything is in its place.

Sometimes I dream of beautiful, clean, minimalist living rooms with all-white upholstery and freshly painted walls hung with a carefully curated art collection...

...Of kitchens designed to be beautiful and functional, all food stored in matching antique glass mason jars arranged artfully in antique wire trays and placed on earthy wood open shelving made from re purposed old-growth fir.

Years ago I was a devotee of the cult of Martha Stewart. I subscribed to The Magazine (archiving all the early issues, of course), watched The Television Show (eagerly awaiting for months the yearly Christmas Special) and hung on the Domestic Goddess' every pronouncement.

I actually believed I could do it all, just like Martha. I baked my own bread, sewed quilts for our beds, curtains for our windows, refinished tag sale furniture and made my own lamps, painted and rearranged and reorganized and once I even made my own wrapping paper. Of course I realize now that I was completely delusional. (More on that later.)

No one could ever measure up to Martha. She's larger than life. A living icon. A paragon of domesticity. She has Staff.

Comparing her to the Big Guy Upstairs, someone once said
Martha could have made the world in FIVE days:
Two Days to create staff,
Two Days to delegate,
and One Day to redo it all to Her standards.

To top it all off, the Domestic Goddess appears perfectly normal when you see Her in photographs. Well, mostly She does. Even Martha has days that don't go exactly according to Her plans.

But when that happens, She still manages to pull it together and makes sure everyone is at least color-coordinated.

She dotes on her animals, who apparently have such perfect manners (who would dare to misbehave?) that they are welcomed for dinner at the Plaza.

Although, some require a little tough love to let them know She's their mother.

Some say Martha has a dark side, but She says Herself that She cannot be destroyed.

Some have attempted to, but I wouldn't recommend it.

But I digress. I wanted to show that there can be Life After Martha. It's often not pretty, but at least it's real. And it can be accomplished with minimal staff. (Mostly of the four-legged variety)
Welcome to my post-Martha nightmare dream:

It may not live up to Martha's standards, but then...

Jack London and me, the 1897 gold rush and other random bits of flotsam and jetsam

I think of all the people and events I share a birthday with, Jack London is my favorite. I read The Call of the Wild and White Fang as a kid, but knew nothing about their author until a few years ago.
 London was the son of a "spiritualist" (his mother apparently channelled the spirit of an Indian chief) and an astrologer, who denied his paternity, causing Jack's mother to become temporarily deranged enough to shoot herself. She recovered and went on to marry a partially disable civil war veteran, but not before she turned the baby over to Virginia Prentiss, a former slave, for safekeeping. The family settled in Oakland, California where Jack went to elementary school, but by the age of 13 he was working 12 - 18 hours a day at a cannery. After borrowing money from his foster mother (Prentiss) he bought a boat and became an oyster pirate... at the age of 13.  
 Four years later, he worked on a sealing schooner bound for Japan, and returned to work various hard jobs before becoming a tramp. He served 30 days in jail in Buffalo, NY for vagrancy, where he was evidently treated like fresh meat by the inmates.
  After all that, at the ripe old age of 18, he returned to Oakland High School and then went on to UC Berkeley. At 21, he quit school and travelled to the Klondike where he gathered most of his material for White Fang and Call of the Wild.

Jack London's story is one of hardship, bad luck, bad choices, grit, determination and (ultimately or posthumously)  success. And even though he was dead by the age of 40, he lived more than many people do in twice that time. I don't know if that same urgency and drive to live a full life is a trait peculiar to Capricorns, or just those born on January 12th, but I'm glad to be counted in with that crowd.

So, here's to you, Jack...and all you other adventurers out there. Cheers!

the soul of a tree

(click on image to see more)

This is one of my favorite trees of all time. This giant old man maple rises up out of the narrow strip of soil between the sidewalk and the street, his roots forming a great mossy mound that has caused humans to repave around it many times over the hundred or so years of his existence. I'm convinced he watches over the neighborhood, so I greet him with a kind thought and pat his rough coat of bark whenever I pass by. Click here to see more.

feminism personified

"I think every woman should have a blowtorch."

~Julia Child

Bon apetit, Julia...and thanks for the inspiration!

your friday inspiration

band: Porkka Playboys, Finland

video: Antti Koivisto

Go get creative this weekend!

time flies whether you're having fun or not

Five years ago today I wrote my first blog post ever. It was a toast to my dad, on what would have been his 92nd birthday. My father was an amazingly strong influence in my life, much more than I realized five years ago, and I'm discovering more and more each year how that influence has shaped my life. He was a gifted writer, raconteur, self-taught artist and builder of things, and a piano player extraordinaire, who taught me to follow my dreams and to believe that those dreams would eventually take me somewhere worthwhile. 

Three hundred and thirty-seven blog posts later, I'm still following my bliss, and that meandering trail has taken me places I'd never have imagined.  Happy birthday, Dad.

"For me there is only the traveling 

on paths that have heart, 

on any path that may have heart.

There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge

is to traverse its full length.

And there I travel: looking, looking, breathlessly."

~ CARLOS CASTANEDA ~

on 2012: notes from an eternal optimist

I've been giving a lot of thought to the various prophecies about the world ending in 2012. Some of my friends are deeply troubled by these predictions and are taking steps to prepare for dire circumstances they are sure are coming. They see the strife and hardship and natural disasters and anger that has been building in the recent past and believe these occurrences to be a fulfillment of ancient and not so ancient prophecies that foretell the world ending in a great cataclysm of fire and brimstone.

Anyone who reads a newspaper could tell you it doesn't take a scholar to figure out that we could very easily destroy the world many times over with weapons we already possess.

I believe that in these ancient prophecies told and retold for countless generations, there is a kernel of truth.

Sometime long ago, it's possible that a gifted and wise person foresaw an end to a way of life that would eventually become unsustainable, and, as in a child's game of "telephone", the prediction was embellished and misheard, and retold again and again and again, until the message became something vastly different and very much darker, than the original version.

{cartoon borrowed from this site}

Eternal optimist that I am, I believe we're on the cusp of something big. The world is experiencing huge growth and change. And as any parent of an adolescent will tell you, rapid growth and change is not always easy. In fact, it can be downright ugly.

As the parent of two former adolescents, (who have turned out quite well, I must say) I can assure you that--should we manage to live through mankind's adolescence--the best is yet to come.

Here's a video that sums it all up much better than I can:

Wishing you peace, prosperity, health, happiness and good will in the coming year,
your ridiculously optimistic pal,
Petunia  

what are you waiting for?

word week, day 6

word week, day five

(photo by Dave Brown)

We must look funny to Someone,

Tumbling through the universe locked in a death grip with

   our tiny ball Earth and ripping her busily to pieces,

   trailing a stinking film of gas and pieces of satellites

   and mushroom and dust clouds.

Think of her new.

An unspoiled country lying open in the sun.

Think of oceans of beauty,

   instead of scattered puddles,

   muddy and drying up.

What can make the heart ache more than a billboard?

~Terry and Renny Russell

word week, day two

“Be Impeccable With Your Word.

 Speak with integrity. 

Say only what you mean. 

Avoid using the word to speak against yourself 

or to gossip about others. 

Use the power of your word 
in the direction of truth and love."

~ Don Miguel Ruiz

word week, day one

where do you think best?

For the last two weeks in December I avoided as many responsibilities as possible. I guess I needed a break from all the details and the multi-tasking and the planning and the money worries that filled my brain last year. Freelance work was on hiatus, so I put my brain on hold and tried to relax, and by the last day of my mental holiday, I thoroughly relished the rare experience of spending an entire day in my pajamas.

Now it's mid January already, and instantaneously the g-forces of all that deferred responsibility have slammed me back into my seat as 2011 shifts into high gear. All at once I have a million things to do, projects to complete and deadlines to meet, and thankfully, my freelance work has picked up (be careful what you wish for!). With all this energy flying around, I need solitude to organize my thoughts and make plans, and this is where I do it best:

At 5:45 am, the best place to think and ruminate on the day ahead is in the shower. Hot water running over my sleepy noggin and down my back washes all the sleep dust from my head, and for a few wonderful minutes my brain can wander aimlessly from one crazy idea to the next.

And while I'm on the subject of crazy ideas, you may have noticed I've started a few new projects. 

I've designed a new header and reorganized this blog by adding a new feature:

the daily photo, my a one year commitment to shoot a photo a day will now be located on its own page, which can be viewed by clicking on the photo in the sidebar. 

There are more things coming in the next day or so, including a new etsy shop and blog, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, where do you do your best thinking?

loneliness is a state of mind

A lovely little film and a novel perspective.

one tough mother

Among the clients I work for as a freelance photo stylist are a couple of homegrown, Oregon-based clothing and footwear companies.

Yesterday, the 80+ year old Chairman of the Board of one of those companies (Columbia Sportswear) thwarted a home invasion by outwitting the robber. This is not too unusual for Gert Boyle, who's known throughout the industry as a force to be reckoned with.

Apparently, she became suspicious of him right off the bat, as he was wearing a jacket made by these folks. When he pulled a gun and forced her into her home, she told him she needed to turn off the alarm, but instead tripped a panic button, which summoned the police who found her somewhat roughed up and her hands tied. The intruder ran out the back door and was captured later at a local McDonalds.

She really is one tough mother...and an inspiration, to boot!
(no pun intended) And by the way, I'm seriously thinking I'd like one of those tattoos.

sunday still life

Three lovely plums from an orchard nearby. 

I'm thinking of painting them someday.