Many of the blogs we read have direct practical applications to our lives; they give us ideas we can use in our home, office, traveling, relationships, work, self-image…
One category of blog is really for pure escapism; they offer us a break from our usual routine and vision. Of late, our favorite is Cabin Porn, pictures of cabins all over the world. Some of the images are accompanied by a bit of interesting commentary, like The Best Hut built by Jono Williams (and friends) in New Zealand.
“Built for less than $1500 using mostly scavenged or donated materials, the treehouse includes solar panels, rainwater collection, a gas-fired outdoor bathtub and a radio-controlled drawbridge.” read more…
Lately we’ve been wanting to expand our fields of vision a bit. We’re always on the lookout for new inspiration for the blog, but also just for shaking up our own thoughts and routines. After asking a couple of friends for some book and blog recommendations, we realized that we have the greatest resource in our own readers!
So tell us: what are you reading that inspires you? Whether it’s a new favorite book or one you return to often, a blog you keep tabs on or one you just discovered we want to hear about it. read more…
Every year, New York Times’ publishes a special issue of the Sunday magazine called The Lives They Lived, usually famous people who passed away the year before. The 2011 issue was subtitled “These American Lives: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Stories.”.
We read the stunning issue cover-to-cover, deeply moved, often in tears, haunted by what we read. We’ve been meaning to write about it ever since.
The most insanely beautiful piece is Uneasy Rider, an interview with comedian Mike DeStafano’s in which he describes the unplanned gift of a motorcycle ride to his girlfriend who was in hospice care. If you haven’t readyyour quota of free Times articles, this is the one to read, though it is well worth paying for. This excerpt is only a fraction of the astonishing story: read more…
Last week Mondoblogo posted two photos taken at Art Basel of wonderful geometrically-painted walls with doors (they are part of the blog’s illuminating challenge to identify what is actual “art” and what is not). The top is “Final Cut” by artist Ernst Caramelle. The second “a random door”…
We’re putting them in our file of cool ideas for painting a room with a door. read more…
Ever since we found this quote by the legendary choreographer Martha Graham on Elephant Journal the other day, it’s been haunting us, because we relate to SO much to it and because we DON’T relate to some of it, a curious mix.
“I believe that we learn by practice.
Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same.
In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one’s being, a satisfaction of spirit.
One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God.
Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire.
Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.” read more…
We really love artist Nicole Dextras ice texts series, especially this 6 foot high “VIEW” made out of ice and set out in the landscape and left to melt – a lovely, ephemeral artwork that changes our….view. You’ll find other potent ice texts and installations at her website, along with what amounts to “how-to’s” for making ice words. Dextras builds molds of individual letters out of wood, fills them with water, sometimes coloring them with food colors, and then waits for them to freeze before removing the molds…curiously similar to making a popsicle. read more…
In his 2010 New York Times series, Christopher Niemann nailed what we think about everyday when we leave the house: However hard we try to weigh knowns and unknowns, unexpected “stuff happens” in our lives and in those around us. Some of what happens is swell, and some is really hard. It’s how to respond to the hard stuff that interests us.
Recently, on Clayton Cubitt’s blog Constant Siege, we found two amazing quotes by friends who had been diagnosed with breast cancer within a few days of each other. We view them as extraordinary responses to the question “What to do when things get really rough and scary?”
From National Geographic’s 2010 Photography Contest. Perfect for now. We like remembering Christmas trees in the wild as we see them all spruced up around town.
It takes quite an eye for color to put together tiles in such a harmonious and charming manner, but if you’re not up to the task…just copy these great patterns… read more…
(Video link here.) When Amy Schoening told us about her friend and teacher Alonso King, founder of Lines Ballet, we went right to a video she made about him. King is clearly a transformative teacher, the kind of person we’d love to have as a mentor. His teachings about dance and movement are really teachings about life…its essential principles: being honest, generous, fearless in expressing your true self.
King sees his mission as a teacher as “waking up the sleeping artist in the student. The dancer is listening to his own internal teacher, and that’s what you want to wake up.”
As you may have noticed, we have a thing for images of people flying and leaping, free falling and sailing through the air – to where? – with no constraints. (Because it’s what we want to do). Today we found a delicious trove on John Foster’s Accidental Mysteries column on Design Observer...
(Video link here; start at 4:50) We had a non-stop day, working on a big project, then racing back to write a post many hours late…wondering if we might write about lateness, or busyness or not-living-up-to-our-obligationness, which so many people we know are trying to figure out. We were poking around the files, half-written posts, and bookmarked bits when we STOPPED to watch a video clip Cara de Silva sent us this morning with these words:
“This is a segment of a TED talk that I found profoundly moving because of the images and the speaker and the narrative. Somehow all together they go beyond the subject.”
On flixxy.com, Cara had found the 4 minute video that filmmaker and TED speaker Louie Schwartzberg had used as an example of what his work as a cinematographer using time-lapse photography had taught him over the years: gratitude. You can watch the whole TED talk, above, or let the video load and jump right into Schwartzberg’s film at 4:50 mins. read more…
