cotton candy

Seems that mobile phone action is the same in age groups across cultures. Or so it was in the Jardin in San Miguel de Allende!
Need I spell out the metaphor? Like cotton candy, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, melt in your—well, maybe your hand— and vanish quickly and forever.

candlemass

Candlelike ballons for sale at the Paroquia in the Jardin

Plants for sale, along with fertilizer and pots, in the park.

Yesterday was Candalaria. The park was banked with displays of potted plants and bedding out plants and shrubs for sale. Everybody was walking home with flats and bags of greenery and flowers to put in their gardens. It is also a religious haoliday, so people visited the church as well.

comida in bed

Sopes in San Miguel de Allende

One favorite in my mother's household in Mexico is sopes. Kind of like a taco only better. Here is a recipe, though there is a lot of room for innovation. However, when piled with beans, cheese, fab avocado, and etc, what could be bad? And if my mother, 88, doesn't feel like getting up to eat, she doesn't have to, gracias a Rosio.

Rosio in the kitchen

little world

Coming in for a landing at Queretero

He was on his way to Honolulu, I was on my way to Queretero. We met in Dallas, and TGIFriday, at got to chatting. Hawaii was on his bucket list, he said, because he had stage 4 prostate cancer and was going to do everything he wanted to. Ireland was next. He told me he lived in South Carolina but was originally from a town in Rhode Island he doubted I'd heard of.
   "Oh yeah?" I said. "I have a place on Block Island and my daughter lives in Providence."
    He laughed: "I'm a captain on the high speed ferry."
   "From Point Judith?"
   "Yep. I'll see you on the boat if I work again this season."

candeleria

In the Jardin

In San Miguel de Allende, Candeleria, or Candlemas, is more of a pagan spring festival than a religious one (though it is that too). Maidens throng the streets in bright colors with garlands on their heads while the older folk buy flowers to plant in their gardens.
   I think I'll be ranked with the gardeners this year.

Up up and away

Taking off into the dawn. Landing in Dallas. Next: Mexico.


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Location:Dallas

news from all over

And I mean all over.
    Photog Keri Pickett has made something of a specialty of forbidden lands lately, with her umpteenth trip to Burma (she is interviewed on Burmese TV above) and then a trip to Cuba the first day it was allowed. Here's an article in the NYT that makes you want to go to Burma even more.
   Moviemaker Wesley Strick (old boyfriend) has been busy, doing a story about his ubertalented stepfather's burlesque popup book (best use of GIFs I've seen) and scripting a thriller opening this week, The Loft, first motionposter I've seen.
   Artist Jessica Rath opens her showA Better Nectar in LA this week, with human-sized honeycombs wired for sound. In other Ozark news, here are some great old photographs from Arkansas by Mike Disfarmer. Also, incredibly, there is a movement afoot to ban spanking in Missouri schools.
   In family news, Harry Kane made an outrageous documentary about his grandfather Walter's 100th birthday party. When I saw that I was limping around that badly two years ago, I instantly set about the process of a knee repair.
  And Hannah has debuted  another Calm-a-Mama product called Cheer, for the winter blues. That's it for now!

snor'easter

The view from here

John sends in a postcard from Block Island.

Yes, it did snow. A good ten inches, as a man would say—i.e. around five. Very disappointing. Subways have started running again, the roads are reopened. However, it's still howling in Block Island, and the power is out. And when last seen, my brother-in-law in Massachusetts was hunting for his driveway.

bobby

Bobby Alpert /Photo by Douglas Gasner

Love this picture of Bobby, drink (probably gin) in his hand, the good times boy.
   Love Bobby.
   He died of lung cancer this weekend.
   He tried to keep people away. "I am on my deathbed!" he protested.
   He wanted to be alone at the end as he mostly was in life.
   Douglas insisted on coming down to say goodbye. He saw him on Friday and said that Bobby kept closing his eyes and then opening them up to take a peek. "It was like he was hoping I would be gone when he he opened his eyes," said Douglas.
   As Douglas left the room, he said goodbye.
   "I'll see you," said Bobby. "I just don't know where."

i can't even

OK, I have so many things for my upcoming roundup that I don't have time to put them up before the dentist and renting the truck and moving the couch and having a dinner party. Monday, cats and kittens!

And done—at least til it goes to Block Island. Tnx, Pink!

like a charm

When reason fails, there's faith, and when medicine fails, there's miracle. Over the years people have prayed for my lungs, breasts, ears and now I've gotten a milagro for my knee. It feels better already! According to my doctor, I'm in good health, aside from needing to drop quite a bit of weight.
   Now, could somebody spring for some more body parts—say liver, kidneys and heart? Pretty please?

shall we blog?

Many people believe pictures of their kids shouldn't be on the Internet.

Well, here is the latest on the family front. Hannah's featured on this blog "I love what I do." There's a whole story on one of the New York Times blogs about how writing can be good for your health. But does that go for sharing on the interweb?
   I started this blog ten years ago, when I didn't really know what a blog was. So I made it up. At first I wrote mainly about my family and friends, using pseudonyms. I thought of it as a kind of soap opera serial. But then I got in trouble for that and started distancing myself. I decided to make the blog self promotion, about building and then renting houses on Block Island (this is the current wave in blogdom). Now it's kind of back to being what me and my friends are up too. Only with Facebook and the web and everyone blogging it is all public now, so I'm not really delivering any news. And of course I started several other blogs too, like The President of the Garden Club and Why  I Can't Stop Smoking. But nothing really ever took off.
  Now this blog has descended into a kind of record of where I was when, which is of little interest to anyone but me (although that has its value given my confounded memory!).
  So I don't know what to do. A decade is a long time.

out of hiding

Pretty hard to hide with a huge picture you took of your parents behind you on the stage at National Geographic with every photographer you've ever heard of in the audience. Oh, and a cover story on blast force.

in the news. sorta

This week's issue, courtesy of Johnny. Yes, that's Claudia's Surf City on the left. And for those who care, Claudia's  is booked out for the summer, except for August 28- September 4. Hannah's is totally booked. People like the higher price. And maybe the newer decor.

vassar girls abroad

Claudia and Danielle. Taipei, 1971

Learning another language and going to another country—the more exotic the better—can transform you. You probably have to be at an impressionable age, say between 18 and 25, when you don't  know exactly who you are yet as distinct from your family and culture. (There is a very funny article in the Onion about this called Search For Self Called Off After 38 Years.)
    You could be in the military or doing the Grand Tour or maybe just studying during a junior year abroad. I have friends whose lives were utterly changed—the woman who became a Tibetan Buddhist in Nepal and later adopted two Tibetan kids, the medic who served in the Vietnam war and made death into an art form, the kid who went to Africa and came back an adrenaline-junkie journalist for whom the smell of shit, petrol fumes and cooksmoke would always be perfume.
   I was studying Chinese in Taiwan, and my Vassar friend Danielle was visiting her parents, who were stationed there in the U.S. Foreign Service. I am not sure what effect it has to actually grow up trotting all around the globe as Danielle did—you'd have to ask her—but for me that six months abroad changed my brain. Along with taking acid and having a child, living in another language made me a different person. (No, I still haven't found myself either. Let me know if you run across me someplace.) It also gave me a serious case of wanderlust and a lifelong friend, Ping, who was a girl of my age in the family I stayed with in Taipei.
    Full circle, Danielle's daughter who is learning Chinese and working in Beijing is visiting Taipei. She will be staying in Ping's apartment. The apartment, like Taipei itself, has been transformed in the four decades since Ping, Danielle and I connected there—and so have we—but the process continues.

 

old tech, new tech

The scene

Inset of new additions

And also kind of medium tech, tech redux, low tech, outdated tech & etc. And by the by—Bill?—I could use a functional typewriter ribbon or two. . .
That refrigerator in the living room (often called "the beer refrigerator") (my nod to solidarity with my brothers and sisters in the developing world) is not self-defrosting, by the way. Defrosting a refrigerator is a skill that is being lost along with outmoded technology. For instructions, see previous post about my even older (and colder) refrigerator.

a fine time

View of the Compound (Johnny's barn) from Corn Neck Road. (BI Times)

Building of the fire. Bruegel eat your heart out.

 Ah. Ice skating on the property—could anything be  better? A great day on Block Island. A photo in the local paper created much excitement (and a few mis- identifications) on the Book, but here's the inside scoop from my brother-in-law.

View of the dunes from the Compound.

creatures of the imagination

Milla likes animals made out of vegetables and fruits, so we made some when she was here.
Here is a guy who makes beautiful work out of paper he finds on the  street.
Gil just got back from Cape Town and Zimbabwe. You can listen to his Cape Town Cutz here.
Here are a few thoughts from Mark Twain.
  The disconnect between what people are doing and thinking and posting on Facebook here and what is going on in Paris is giving me whiplash. Michele weighs in on the way creative people in France are feeling. As a former journalist and now teacher in a mixed high school, she observes societal tensions firsthand:
   "I have worked with 2 of the cartoonists that were shot, and with one journalist who is injured but alive. He can't talk (bullet in the mouth), but he can write.
It has been a couple of horrible days here. But today's demonstration was so big, so huge, so powerful that people (and me) feel better. Let's see what the next days will be... But it is very tense.
Destiny makes me a witness of all this in a very bad high school where students were unable to observe one minute of silence for the dead. We even heard some Allah Akbar during the ceremony, which was a real shock. It seems like the administration is so afraid that they don't' dare to do anything.
Love
Michele
Envoyé de mon iPhone"

postpostpartum roundup

I know, the Last Birthday Party was already 8 days ago, but the visual tributes are still pouring in. And so I am getting around to a reprise of the event. (Who wants to go outside today anyway?)
  And speaking of 98 Riverside, here is the obit of our famous literary forger in the Times.
  Today, Little Amy Silva, our own Fall Rivers, Ma., funeral director is having her first call-in show "The Silva Lining" on the end of life. You can call her TODAY between 2 and 3:00 pm at  (508) 673-1480 or listen to her streaming live on WSAR. Donna Ferrato and I, famously, did documentary "Five Feet Over" for Oxygen about Amy's decision to follow in her forebears' footsteps to become a funeral director rather than pursuing a career as a comic actress.
  Photographer Lynn Johnson's website (with a writing assist from you know who) goes live today just in time for several weeks of honors and speechifying at National Geographic in DC and FotoFusion in Palm Beach.
  This horrifying story in the West Plains Daily Quill about a pseudo terrorist attack in the town of Dora, Mo., population approximately 3.  Just shoot me. No! I don't mean it! Jeez, doesn't anyone have any sense of humor any more???
  And #jesuischarlie  (which we all absolutely are), got the following message from a friend in Brazil: "Today so set about shouting at Paris .i m whact TV and cry .so bad .all smart guy." Yes. So sad.
  

The Younger Set celebrates Hannah's Birthday

  
   

selfy-ish

Changping and I try to commemorate our ladies' lunch.

It's tough posing and pointing and shooting at the same time. Just ask Grandma.

resolutions

Not to be a bummer or anything, but it is that time of year again. For everybody. I just follow the  trends. My plan last year was to become more healthy and less bossy, and I went to the doctor today to see if I'm any better about the first thing. I already know I'm not much improved on the latter.
   OK, I vow to be a better listener this year as well.
   So let me hear you. What do you plan?

piece of cake?

And so, once again, the birthday girl reclined on the laps of her friends and mate, attended by her faithful hound, and ushered in a new year for herself and the rest of us.
To the fans: Sorry for not blogging for so long. Multitasking is harder for me than the birthday girl, apparently.

hannah's birthday 01.01.2015

cab with a view

Gridlock @48th and Ninth Ave, NYC

Forward, things weren't looking too good—stopped traffic, the meter clicking towards $15 for a short jaunt. But look up and —oh! A sunroof as big as the boxy cab. Take your pleasures where you find them. This concludes the lesson for the new year.
   And speaking of the New Year, I was on my way to Esposito's, aka The Pork Shop, to pick up a 22 pound ham for Hammah's birthday on January 1st. Be there. Or rather, here. And yes, there will be vegetarian fare. Ed promises Ronald Reagan's mac and cheese. He'll tell you all about it.
 
  

the way home

I wasn't the only one traveling after Christmas. Every table in the cafe car (regional from Boston to Washington) was taken. And now we are all home.

i want what you got

And Christmas Chaos commences. . .

"I want the dinosaur! "I want the horse!" "Ok let's share." Pajamas no problem.

From the Bureau of Better Late than Never. And, yes, I am back in NYC.

christmas eve

Then we settled our brains for a long winters' nap.

holidays

The holidays always bring me the gift of visitors. They visit the store windows, check out museums, bring me delicious food and head out loaded with Zabar's bags. This contingent has just left for Block Island and home. Always assuming the ferry is running!

taylor camp, kauai

When I lived in Kauai in 1973, there were a lot of other hippies there "living off the land"—i.e. on food stamps, other people's papayas, stolen pineapples from the Dole fields, coconuts from the palms in the graveyard, panhandling. I lived on the beach way at the end of the road on Waimea side. But when the park ranger would run us out of there, our little group (blonde Krishna, ex-prostitute John-John, queen Marty and the two Vassar girls) headed for Taylor Camp, way at the end of the road on Hanalei Side. There a bunch of hippies had fabricated fantasy treehouses of tie-dye and wood and found objects, and we could set up our little tent in peace.
   However, I am the person who, famously, hated the Woodstock festival, and I was not all that fond of the camp reputedly owned by Elizabeth Taylor's nephew either. For one thing the other folks  were not all that welcoming. Then there was the camp facility. I don't recollect the privacy wall presided over by Frank Zappa on the krappa above. All I remember is a toilet mounted on a platform in the middle of an open field. And the hepatitis shots we all had to get at the clinic after drinking from the stream nearby.
   But the worst part was the weather: Hanalei is the rainy side of Kauai, and we were living under an Indian print bedspread. Damp. And chilly since we didn't wear any clothing except maybe a shell lei or, for formal occasions, a loincloth. Bummer! So after a couple days we would pour water into the radiator of the Midnight Rambler (bought for $25), light some incense in the ashtray and head back to Waimea Side, home and dry, where the rangers were waiting.
   You can see possibly more accurate reports—yes, we were all on drugs—in a new book about Taylor Camp. There is also a documentary. John-John, Krishna, Marty—where are you now? The other Vassar girl I can locate.

my sources say yes, I will yes

There's a whole alphabet between no and yes. And then there are the noes that mean yes, the yesses that mean no and the yesses and noes that mean exactly what they say. But the world seems to be in such a mess (rape, hackers, wars, murders, illness, age—well, you know, yes?) that I am going to yes, I mean, yes, say yes. No more talking about ailments. No more negativity. Just. . .yes. To everything good. Yesss!

christmastime roundup

Atop the letter box in the lobby. Nice reindeer!

Ringading!
And in other news
Lynn Johnson has a story about child development in National Geographic this month. Check out the video with GoPro kidcam!
Hannah offers up a spreadsheet for your personal expense budget for the new year.
And here's your sexy horoscope for the new year.
Debby sends a cool link for a company called Magic Leap that one of her banks just became the CFO of. Open the link twice to see the little girl and the elephant.
Elaine's good friend, New York City's premier political consultant David Garth just died at 84. She always said she shoulda married him and would be sitting pretty in Cafe Des Artistes. Terrible that she died first.
On a lighter note, this is a hilarious New Yorker piece by friend Jenny Allen about how we can't remember anything any more.
Artist friend Jessica Rath opens her latest show soon of a human-sized honeycomb. Very cool.
More festivity: A hip-hop Nutcracker.
And finally, Happy Hanukkah. Tonight is the first night.

Neighbors tote the tannenbaum.

claudia gets cultcha

Just call me angel of the bayou.

The fact that I —despite living in New York City and actually appreciating art—so seldom get off my ass to view it has long rankled many of my friends and relations. My cousin Glenn has come up with a solution.
    For the past four years, she and her friend Michelle have taken a picture of me along when they explore the art scene in and around New Orleans to mark all of our birthdays. This year they visited bricklayer Kenny Hill's sculpture garden in Chauvin, Louisiana. And so, luckily for me, did I! We all loved it, a miraculous trove of outsider art deep in bayou country. One of these days I'll get there in person.

Michelle and me—and maybe Jesus?

holiday giving

A friend of mine who is a photographer (which one? you ask) (ok it was Chien-Chi Chang) asked me to donate to the Magnum Foundation, which is a not-for profit that funds photographers—not Magnum photographers (CCC, a Magnum photographer, emphasizes)—doing worthy projects for which photographers are seldom funded these days. He is trying to round up his rich friends but came knocking at the wrong door in my case. Well, I did donate a few bucks. And if you will do the same through Magnum Foundation more photographers will be able to go to the places no one wants to go and find out the things no one wants to know about people we never heard of—who are some of the most important human beings on the planet right now. We need these stories.

thank you, ganesh

The Elephant Parking God was with me today. This pic doesn't do it justice, but it is a very tight spot—maybe six inches on either end. A guy saw me cruising, gestured that he was leaving. Another guy saw the interaction and blocked the empty spot til I could get around the block and back (going through two red lights)! And they say New Yorkers aren't nice. . .

Santy Claus is TK

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news flash

Yes, Isaac can talk—at least to the extent of saying my name. Hannah says he believes I am always on the phone on Face Time.
In outrageous news, my friend Peter's family members survived a small plane crash in the Bahamas. He reports: "I just got word from my brother Tim in the Bahamas that brother James and his family survived a plane crash as they were flying in. Sounded pretty hairy. One person died.  Luckily, James (age 60!) is a serious mountain biker and in great shape and his son-in-law is a fireman; two guys you want on your team if your plane is going to crash in 6,500 feet of  water.... My brother's wife, daughter, and 18-month-old granddaughter were also on board.  Whew!"
   But the biggest news event that I have missed is the protest scene in my home town, New York, N.Y.  "So, Missourians want to know if you are going to take a picture of a New York license plate with a piece of tape across it and explain how ashamed you are to be a New Yorker," writes one Missouri friend, apparently piqued by a previous blog. Another, also somewhat miffed, writes"Guess NYC can join the club, "BREATHE IN NYC" and "SHOT ME STATE, MO". Got tape on your NY license plate?  It's mid 60's all over again." So sorry guys. Thought I made it clear in previous blog that all humans are guilty of being tribal.  Me and New Yorkers too. Let's work against it.

holiday pic

Their mother posed them. let's hope she got a better picture than I did. I just look at this and see me and my brother, also three years younger than the big sister. Boy that was a while ago.

off off season

But really, the season never ends for us homeowners. I have slotted returning tenants and am now writing up leases—changing the dates, prices and ages of the guests as another year passes. By next season, the footprints in the sand will have been smoothed away by the winds, and a virgin beach will await the summer lovers.

in hannah's room

Hannah's room was once again a scene of neighbors, kids and moms. For which we give thanks. Here is a link to what National Geographic photographers, including friends Maggie Steber and Lynn Johnson, give thanks for. An interesting selection.