packing life into 756 sf
My favorite dress-up cone has once again been updated. All I can say is: amazing!
"Don't park here, or I will totally stop spreading holiday cheer!"
I’m hoping he’ll sprout some awesome new accessories as the month progresses. I will be sure to keep you posted.
Also, I promise a more substantive, thoughtful (ok, or just longer) post soon.
A few weeks ago I went on an adventure with two friends to a farm in upstate New York. (I’m talkin’ the real upstate here folks, not Westchester. Or Washington Heights for that matter.) Annie, Cheryl, and I trekked up to Better Farm in Redwood, NY, for a little work hard/play hard vacation.
If you are silly, you may think carrying hay this way is smart. It's actually just a very effective method of getting hay stuck in every crevice of your body.
You can read a full description of our visit on the Better Farm blog. While you’re there, be sure to check out all the interesting work they’re doing.
I’m hoping the folks at Better Farm will work out all the kinks of converting a farm to a green haven and then fill me in when I activate Operation Retire on a 60-Acre Farm Outside of Philly. Hmmm, I probably have to have a career before I retire, right? Details, details…
As we’ve established in the Things of the Wrong Size discussion, I am not above being entertained by what some scroogey grinches might like to call childish. Consider yourself warned.
I live in a neighborhood in Philly with narrow streets. (As far as I can tell, in Philly that’s not a distinguishing feature, but bear with me.) On said narrow streets which are one-way and allow parking on one side of the street, if the no parking side of the street has a wide enough sidewalk, residents often park half on the sidewalk, half in the already-so-narrow-it’s-scary-to-drive-on-street. Now despite the fact that I drive a car with a model name that literally means smaller than normal, I still find driving down these narrow streets, further narrowed by creative parking, no fun. I really don’t want to smash your (or my, for that matter) mirror off! Please don’t park there!
Some clever homeowners on such streets strategically place objects on their sidewalks to prevent people from parking there. Usually the parking thwarters are planters or some nice patio furniture, but one happy house in my neighborhood sports an orange traffic cone. Except. This cone is all gussied up. I first noticed the cone in early October, and it was dressed as a pirate, complete with eye patch, tri-corner hat, and looking glass. I loved this cone pirate more than any adult woman probably should, and I may have been prone to insisting that my husband and I walk by it on our way anywhere, even if it required a detour. So imagine my delight when Halloween passed, and the cone didn’t go back to being plain orange, but instead morphed into a–wait for it–pilgrim cone!
Happy Thanksgiving from the Pilgrim Cone
My favorite feature of the pilgrim cone is the plastic hatchet, which unfortunately my camera phone documentation didn’t properly do justice. The cotton ball hair and giant collar are close runners-up, but perhaps the poor guy is confused about whether he is a pilgrim or a founding father? In any case, he brightens my Thanksgiving and now, I hope, yours.
P.S. I know I have many, many more serious things to be thankful for, and I truly am. For reals, yo. (Yes, I just used “yo” as a noun of direct address. You’re welcome.)
This morning I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and took a tour of the current exhibition Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective. The art was very moving, and I found the tour informative and engaging. I encourage anyone in the Philly area to check it out. Or if you’re a far-flung friend, come visit and I’ll take you!
Water of the Flowery Mill*
The tour got me thinking about the importance of names and identities, firstly because Gorky was born Vostanik Adoyan in Armenia, but when he came to the U.S. adopted his new pseudonym and claimed to be Russian. According to our tour guide, Gorky didn’t want to be thought of as a refugee fleeing the Armenian genocide (which, indeed, he was). He would even lie and say he was a cousin of the famous Russian writer Maxim Gorky. Any fact checker could have caught Arshile in the lie, because Gorky was a pseudonym for the writer as well. Maxim chose Gorky as a surname because in Russian it means bitter, which he thought was an appropriate adjective for his life and the state of Russia in general. Both men seemed to believe in the power of a name to change people’s perceptions.
The tour guide also told us an interesting story about how Gorky titled some of his paintings. One New Year’s Eve in his studio, Gorky was celebrating with André Breton. Breton didn’t speak English, and Gorky didn’t speak French, but over drinks Gorky’s wife interpreted for the two men, and they spoke at length about the inspirations behind many of Gorky’s works. Breton then suggested the titles for some of Gorky’s works including The Liver is the Cock’s Comb and How My Mother’s Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life.
The Liver is the Cock's Comb
Gorky and Breton also titled Good Afternoon, Mrs. Lincoln that evening. Our tour guide didn’t think the title has much to do with the subject of the painting and suggested that an interpretation error or too much drink may have been responsible for the title. This review of the exhibition in the California Literary Review seems to agree the title borders on nonsensical. But I’m skeptical. Given Gorky’s understanding of how a name changes perception, I think he wouldn’t have been one to give a work a throwaway title. I wonder what the real story behind Good Afternoon, Mrs. Lincoln is.
One final note on the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the importance of names. As members, my husband and I get lots of mail from the museum. When we got married, Andrew and I decided to hyphenate our last names. (That laborious decision is a story for anther time. And what a story it is!) Our November Museum of Art calendar arrived recently, and it was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Andrew McKinstry-Wu. I commented to Andrew, “Isn’t that ridiculous?” by which I meant, why would a couple who chose to hyphenate their last names also choose to use only the husband’s first name in their formal title? Andrew gave the envelope a quick glance and responded in an offended tone, “Yeah. Don’t they know I’m a doctor?” Luckily, he was joking, so I’ve decided to let him continue living.
Happy weekend!
*Image from The Metropolital Museum of Art website: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/11/waa/ho_56.205.1.htm
Any of you who know me in real life are all too familiar with my incontrovertible instinct to giggle at things that are the wrong size. My fascination doesn’t discriminate between miniature and over-sized items. Both pretty much guarantee me a cheap thrill.
Once a week or so, I plan to share with you something that is the wrong size. I hope this public service will spread my childlike joy to at least a few of you.
My sister recently returned from a trip to Europe, and, as she correctly guessed, I think this was the high point of her visit:
Big sister, big cup
Lest you think my interest in items of the wrong size is anything less than an obsession, I confess I actually already knew about this cup planter thanks to a post on Apartment Therapy which included the following priceless example of scale play:
Cuppa cat
And a second confession: I own a giant tea cup planter, generously given to me by my lovely mother-in-law (thanks! here’s hoping it didn’t cost $338!), that I didn’t feature here. I love my Paul Bunyan caffeine fix vessel-cum-windowsill herb garden, but let’s be honest, my sister and this cat are way cuter than basil.
I recently moved from NYC to Philly, but kept my job as a data analyst at an economic empowerment organization in New York. As a result, my love/hate relationship with Excel now unfolds on the stage of my remote desktop, emphasis on remote. A word of warning to all my fellow save-the-world-through-research enthusiasts: I find staring at numbers all day inherently isolating.
Me to data: How’s it going?
Data: MHCD11, 95100012, 8/1/2008.
Me: Humph!
In New York my coworkers tried to counteract the deleterious influence of all my hanging out with socially inept data, but now that I telecommute, I have no office mates to offer distractions or force me to use my words. So I am going to use my words here. I hope you’ll join me.
Topics of discussion may include, but likely will not be limited to:
Ok, I’ll try to avoid discussing the last point unless you’re really, truly, extremely interested—but I make no promises.
