Desiderata

(Source: the makeup blogger)

Sarah posted this back in October, and I printed it out and taped it into the front of my journal, intending to memorize the whole thing. I admit I didn’t get far, but the first sentence has been resonating in my soul ever since. (And it reminds me of a favorite teacher, who loves this poem.)

Max Ehrmann’s words (he’s the author) are also in keeping with this week’s theme of quiet. So may you find some quiet, some cheerfulness, and all the other lovely things this poem promises, this weekend.

winter survival: the right accessories

The days were growing longer, but the cold was more intense. Father said: “When the days begin to lengthen / The cold begins to strengthen.”

—Farmer Boy, Laura Ingalls Wilder

Brrr. That’s me shivering, because I’m well into my second Northeastern winter, and while it began mildly (thank heaven!), the lows have started dipping into the teens with alarming regularity. Which means two things: 1) I’m loving that electric blanket J gave me for Christmas (though he uses it too – sneaky!), and 2) I’m relying heavily on my winter accessories. Down and wool coats are vital, of course, but my extremities would still be frozen (particularly on the morning commute) without the help of the following:

Scarves. The back of our front door sports a hanging rack full of coats and scarves – and the latter hang so thickly you can hardly see the door. My collection of fringed pashminas, chunky knit scarves, my new big red cowl and one thin-but-warm stripey wool scarf have earned me J’s nickname of “Scarf Queen.” It’s astonishing how a scarf or cowl can warm up my whole body by protecting that vital neck area (and preventing the cold air from snaking down into my coat).

(Bundled up in my red wool coat, wool scarf and new Crooked Paths beret)

Gloves. I love my knitted fingerless gloves (I have three pairs), but it’s too cold for bare fingers in the mornings now – and I lost one of my suede gloves recently. Which meant I was thrilled to find leather gloves at Marshalls (for $7!). They’re black with a chic bow at the cuff, and so warm.

Boots. When it rains, I wear my red wellies (they’re lined for extra warmth, and I’ve just discovered fleecy boot liners). But I also have suede boots lined with faux fur, and my chunky-but-weatherproof snow boots, lined with fleece. Warm feet=happy girl.

Hats. I knit my own, mostly – from a chunky cabled red Habitat to some thinner berets made out of Madelinetosh DK. With some worsted-weight beanies and berets in between. I have short, fine hair, and it needs help keeping my ears warm in this weather. (I also own a cloche or two, a la Maisie Dobbs, but I’m always afraid they’re going to blow off when the wind whips down the Common.)

Tights. I never saw the need for sweater tights till last year – and now I have three pairs. I’ve also stocked up on “regular” tights, mostly plain or textured ones in black and gray. When it’s cold and/or wet I prefer skirts with boots and tights – no damp and draggled pant hems to worry about. And that one thin layer does wonders to keep my legs warm.

What are the vital accessories you reach for every winter?

feeling quiet

There’s lots going on around here, behind the scenes. Lots of reading (as always) and book reviews; a fair amount of freelance work; still catching up on laundry and sleep from our fabulous (and yummy) trip to New York; finally taking the Christmas decorations down. And some hard stuff, too: family illness on both sides, and the news of a seven-year-old boy’s death from leukemia. (We didn’t know Liam, but his family goes to our church in Texas and I used to work with his grandmother, and many of our friends are grieving.)

We’ve also been (finally) getting some snow – which I love (in small amounts) because it blankets the world with that quiet, clean, fresh feeling of peace. And I’ve been feeling like it’s time to take a step back, to post regularly but not daily for a while, to take some time for silence, to rest and think and write without having to hit “publish” or schedule a post for each weekday.

With that in mind, I’ll be blogging three times a week, instead of five, for a while. I’m not going away – just making space for a bit of quiet, a shift to help me rest and find some new ideas, and (I hope) to find some peace.

See you on Wednesday, friends. And thanks for understanding.

New York highlights

As previously mentioned, my husband and I spent the weekend eating our way through New York City – or through parts of Manhattan and Queens, at least. And while I savored every bite of every meal we ate, there were many other highlights from J’s first (my third) trip to the city.

While waiting to meet Allison on Saturday afternoon, J and I crowded into FAO Schwarz and exclaimed over Quidditch supplies, stacks of books, stuffed animals galore and a wall of board games. And then we watched two professional piano dancers perform four songs on the giant piano – just like in Big! (They ended with – I kid you not – Bach’s Toccata and Fugue. So. Impressive.)

I also met an old friend in the Lego section:

The Met is always a highlight – but I really loved watching J’s jaw drop in amazement at some of the things I’d seen before and wanted to show him. (I love playing tour guide.) He particularly enjoyed seeing the knights:

We hit some of the tourist hot spots I’d never seen before – the Plaza, Rockefeller Center (that skating rink is smaller than it looks in the movies!) and Macy’s on 34th. And, of course, the Lego store, complete with gigantic dragon:

He’s all made of Legos, and he’s “guarding” a Lego replica of Rockefeller Center (with a tiny replica of himself sticking out of one building). So cool.

On Monday before leaving, we went back to the Strand, where I managed to buy only three books, including a much-loved vintage edition of E.B. White’s wonderful essay Here is New York:

The other main highlight of the weekend was spending time with this girl:

Allison is a regular reader of this blog, and we’ve been corresponding by email for a while – and she did not bat an eyelash when I invited myself to her apartment for a long weekend in September, nor when I promised her I was coming back and bringing my husband. (What a brave soul!)

She gave us her room for the weekend, bought us real New York bagels for breakfast, traipsed around the city with us in below-freezing weather, and said all sorts of nice things about my wedding pictures (she’s newly engaged, so I brought my album along and we talked dresses and flowers for a while). I love it when online friendships transmute so perfectly into real-life friendships – and this one certainly has. It was such a treat to spend the weekend with her (and Allison, if you’re reading, please come up to Boston soon!).

Any suggestions for my next trip to NYC? You can bet we’ll be going back (when it warms up)!

Eating our way through NYC

This past weekend, J and I finally crossed #2 off my 28 things list – we hopped on a bus to New York, to stay with Allison in her adorable Queens apartment and see our college friend Ben play Pumbaa in The Lion King. I’d seen the show before, in London during my first semester in Oxford, but there are no words, then or now, to describe the stunning visual effects of the animal costumes and the African stage sets. You simply have to see it. (And hear it. The music is incredible, and the woman who played Rafiki is particularly gifted. Her voice sent chills up my spine multiple times.)

Anyway, as we strolled around the city, exploring Hell’s Kitchen and SoHo and Union Square and the Upper East Side, and trying not to freeze to death (it was frigid), we ate some delicious meals. New York is full of amazing restaurants, but these are the ones we loved this weekend.

First, after seeing a fabulous Muppet exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image, we stumbled upon Il Bambino, a cozy, rustic panini shop tucked away on 31st Avenue in Astoria. I consider myself something of a tomato soup connoisseur, but this was the BEST tomato soup I’ve ever had – creamy, rich and fresh, topped with flatbread spread with pesto:

So. Delicious. (The 25-degree temps outside only heightened my appreciation.)

We also had paninis – which were yummy – but the other best part of the meal came afterward. Three words: Nutella. Hot. Chocolate. Decadently delicious:

Saturday night found us shivering in Times Square, gawking at the lights and trying to find a place to grab dinner before the show. All the restaurants right off the square were packed, of course, so Allison and her fiance, Duncan, led us a couple blocks west, to the edge of Hell’s Kitchen, where we savored Thai food at Yum Yum Bangkok. The name says it all. (No photos of that – we were on a schedule, and eating fast!)

On Sunday morning, J and I headed to the Met, to sample as much of it as we could before meeting Allison and Duncan for brunch. Last fall, Allison introduced me to Alice’s Tea Cup and I loved it, so this time we headed to “Chapter III,” on East 81st Street:

The interior is charming, and they sell teapots and tea accessories and dozens of teas. The boys had scones and we all had tea (mine was an almond blend):

And J and I split an omelet, along with this delectable confection:

That, my friends, is French toast bread pudding. With fresh berries and cream, raspberry and chocolate sauces. And oh my, it’s heaven. (I bought the cookbook. So many tempting possibilities!)

You’d think we’d never be hungry again after that, but after spending the afternoon exploring SoHo (I finally got to visit Purl Soho!), we were chilly and hungry. So we headed back uptown (to midtown, anyway), and munched on comfort food (mac & cheese, fish & chips, warm artichoke-spinach dip, cranberry-apple crumble) at Penelope. (Which is utterly charming, not to mention yummy, and reasonably priced.)

We left Monday afternoon, sated, and with many promises to return when the weather warms up, so we can sample more delicious food. (And museums and landmarks and parks, of course.)

Where do you love to eat in NYC? I’m already making a list for next time!

heroines in parallel worlds

For many years, it seemed to me that my favorite literary heroines inhabited their own universes, hardly ever running into real (read: historical) people, and only touching actual events peripherally. The American Girls books were carefully set in decades that didn’t quite touch each other (I always found it amusing that they all began in years ending with “4″), and though I adored Felicity, Kirsten, Samantha, Molly and Addy, it was highly unlikely that they’d ever cross paths, or even have been alive at the same time.

Some of the heroines I loved, like Laura Ingalls Wilder and Anne Shirley, were such sacred figures to me – such larger-than-life girls who were the center of their own universes – that I could never think of them together (though Laura and Anne were born around the same time and lived through many of the same world events). They simply lived in different worlds, bounded by different families, life stories and writing styles. And some characters’ place in history is rather vague – Nancy Drew, for example, has shifted back and forth in time over the years, and the Baby-Sitters Club girls, though resolutely contemporary, seemed to live in a sort of bubble in small-town Connecticut.

More recently, I’ve tried to mentally piece together a sort of timeline of heroines’ lives – and it blows my mind, frankly. Even if the stories are similar, it’s still difficult to think of Rilla Blythe as being just seven years younger than Betsy Ray – they were both young women at the time of the First World War, though Betsy was already married and Rilla was just a teenager. And across the ocean, Maisie Dobbs was serving as a nurse in France at the same time, while the women of Downton Abbey (I’m loving season 2 so far!) were learning that the war would change their lives forever.

I’ve read rather a lot of World War II fiction, since it looms large in the American consciousness, and it’s a little easier for me to connect Annemarie of Number the Stars to Patty Bergen of Summer of My German Soldier to Frankie Bard of The Postmistress and even Juliet of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. But still it seems that they all inhabit their own universes – touched, perhaps, by the same earthshaking events (which in turn have affected my own life, decades later). But mostly they still seem to live on parallel tracks, with no knowledge of one another.

Do you ever try to piece together a timeline of heroines, or think about how some characters lived differently (or similarly!) in the same period or decade? Does your reading of a book from a certain time period inform your understanding of other books from that era? Or does this just happen to me?

the first of the 2012 books

Question: did anyone else ever get those slips of paper in elementary school that said, “You’ve Been Caught Reading!”? If they handed those out to adults, I’d get at least one a day.

Anyway. On to the first batch of books for a new year:

The Time in Between, Maria Duenas
I loved this big, sweeping novel set in Spain and Morocco in the late 1930s/early 1940s. Sira, a dressmaker, jaunts off to Tangiers with her dashing lover, who abandons her. She has to pick up the pieces of her life and literally stitch them back together – in a bold, unexpected pattern. Duenas writes gorgeously about high fashion, exotic locales and espionage, with a wonderful cast of characters. Sira’s voice is enchanting, and while her story carries echoes of Casablanca, it is utterly her own.

Cocaine Blues, Kerry Greenwood
I checked out this first book in the Phryne Fisher series from our library after Marianne mentioned her on Twitter. What a fun mystery-cum-romp through 1920s Australia. Our sleuth/heroine is dazzling, funny, generous and bold. A lighthearted story, with an interesting mystery. Fortunately the series spans 18 books so far – so I can keep reading!

The Orchid House, Lucinda Riley
A sweeping family saga, a tale of an English great house, several intertwined love stories and a fascinating glimpse into Bangkok in the 1940s – what’s not to love? I was intrigued and then absorbed by this tale of love, deception, war and secrets, centering around an estate in northern England. Lush descriptions, believable characters, and ultimate redemption. To review for Shelf Awareness.

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, Jennifer E. Smith
Rachel told me about this book (the author is her book’s editor), and I read it in just a few hours. Two teenagers meet at JFK and end up sitting together on their overnight flight to London. They’re both on their way to momentous family events, both feeling raw and shaky – so they spend the night talking. And the story doesn’t end once they land. It’s a sweet (but not saccharine) love story, and the characters are refreshingly real. I immediately put Smith’s two other YA novels on my list.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Elizabeth George Speare
I love Calico Captive by the same author, but had never read this classic – prompting Sarah (who is blogging about it) to exclaim, “Get on it, woman!” So I did. And I fell in love with Kit Tyler, brought up in Barbados and struggling to fit into Puritan life in Connecticut, and her cast of unlikely friends – all, in some way, misfits like herself. Since moving to New England, I am fascinated by historical fiction set in this area, and this story is a winner. Read it, if you haven’t!

The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, Caroline Preston
I heard the author give a talk in November, and enjoyed this elegant book-cum-work-of-art, filled with vintage ephemera from the 1920s. Frankie (don’t call her Frances!) is spunky, sweet and a tad rebellious – she longs to see the Great World, like Betsy Ray, and ends up living in both New York and Paris before coming back home to New Hampshire. A fun story in an absolutely gorgeous medium – take a look inside to see for yourself.

Winter: Five Windows on the Season, Adam Gopnik
I love Gopnik’s work, but didn’t know about this collection till Zoe of Brookline Booksmith blogged about it. Gopnik examines the five “R”s of winter: romantic, radical, recuperative, recreational and remembering. His topics range from Romantic poetry to Arctic explorers, from Thomas Nast to ice hockey to underground cities – and all the while he is typically thoughtful and lyrical. I posted a few quotes from the first chapter last week, and I’m hoping these words will help me through my second Northeast winter.

Flying Too High, Kerry Greenwood
I enjoyed Phryne Fisher’s second adventure – which involves kidnapping, murder, flying lessons, clever tricks to catch the bad guys, and of course, dazzling clothes. Fun to see some of the characters from the first book (like Dot, the faithful maid) again, and to meet a few new ones.

The Sweet Life in Paris, David Lebovitz
As Jaclyn warned, this book made me hungry – for crackly baguettes, warm goat cheese, rich chocolates and other delicious things on offer in Paris. Lebovitz writes with warmth and wry humor about the city he loves, the quirks of Parisians (both humorous and annoying), and the foods he’s discovered while living there. Delectable (though it will make you want to hop a plane to Paris immediately).

The Arm of the Starfish, Madeleine L’Engle
I’d met most of these characters – Adam Eddington, the O’Keefe family, Canon Tallis – before, but this adventure set off the coast of Portugal was new to me. The plot deals with experiments on starfish (which can regenerate their own arms if injured), and how this ability could possibly apply to humans. The plot focused mostly on keeping the information away from the wrong people – I would have liked more exploration of the research itself. Not L’Engle’s best, but still compelling.

Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder
I promised myself a reread of this series this winter, and this first book was as cozy and fun as I remembered. Corncob dolls, a dance at Grandpa’s house, making maple sugar, churning butter – this is pioneer life at its most delicious. (I did catch a few references to the Civil War that I’d never noticed before.) And oh, how I love Pa and his wise, twinkling blue eyes, and his fiddle singing Laura to sleep.

a mind for winter

“But a taste for winter, a love for winter vistas – a belief that they are as beautiful and seductive in their own way, and as essential to the human spirit and the human soul as any summer scene – is part of the modern condition. [...] A mind of winter, a mind for winter, not sensing the season as a loss of warmth and light, and with them hope of life and divinity, but ready to respond to it as a positive, and even purifying, presence of something else – the beautiful and peaceful, yes, but also the mysterious, the strange, the sublime – is a modern taste.”

Snow on the Common, Feb. 2011

“Winter’s persona changes with our perception of safety from it – the glass of the window, as I sensed in that November snowstorm, is the lens through which modern winter is always seen. The romance of winter is possible only when we have a warm, secure indoors to retreat to, and it becomes a season to look at as much as one to live through.”

Snow through the window, Jan. 2011

“There is a humane purpose to watching winter that is found simply in the acts of naming and describing. Winter is hard; the cold does chill; Demeter is mourning. And we oppose that threat with the quiet heroism of comfort. Central heating, double-paned windows, down coats, heated cars. But we also oppose the threatening blank bitterness of winter just by looking at it, and by saying what it’s like. [...] Names are the footholds, the spikes the imagination hammers in to get a hold on an ice wall of mere existence.”

—Adam Gopnik, “Romantic Winter,” from Winter: Five Windows on the Season

I love Gopnik’s work, particularly Paris to the Moon, so when Zoe recommended this collection on the Booksmith’s blog, I had to check it out. And I love his take on the different facets of winter – thoughtful, well-researched and gently humorous. I’m hoping his words will help me weather my second Northeastern winter gracefully.

What words and books help you through winter?

MWF Seeking BFF comes to Boston

I’m a longtime fan of Rachel Bertsche’s fun blog, MWF Seeking BFF, and have been eagerly anticipating her book by the same name. I was jazzed when I won an ARC through Goodreads, and immediately emailed my editor at Shelf Awareness begging to review it. “I read her blog and am so excited to read this book,” I wrote. “Is that a conflict of interest?” Marilyn responded, “No – that’s just interest!”

Spotting the book "in the wild"

So I read it, loved it and sent in my review (which appeared as my first starred review in Shelf Awareness!). And last week, Rachel came to Boston for the first leg of her book tour, and we met up for lunch. And I fell in friend-love.

Our conversation was like one long continuous sentence – topics crisscrossing and doubling back, both of us saying, “Oh! That makes me think of…” or “I thought of you when I saw…” several times. It felt more like a good gab with an old friend than a first meeting with someone I’d never seen before. (Which I suppose it was – we’ve tweeted and emailed for months.) I could have sat there and talked with her over Thai food all afternoon – but I had to get back to work, so I hugged her goodbye (I am a hugger, so I love it when my new friends are too).

That night, I headed to Brookline Booksmith to watch Rachel give her first reading ever. And judging by the packed house and the fact that they sold OUT of books, I’d say it was a huge success.

I’m kicking myself that we didn’t get a picture together – but we had a glorious lunch, and she signed my book, and then we met up with Lindsey the next morning for coffee before Rachel had to jet off to New York. The whole experience was just lovely – it’s such a treat to meet online friends in person, and discover that they’re just as delightful as you thought they were.

I’m posting my Shelf Awareness review of Rachel’s book below, and would urge you to buy it, if you’re looking for a fun, thoughtful read about friendship.*

Review: MWF Seeking BFF

When Rachel Bertsche moves to Chicago, she’s thrilled to finally live in the same city as her boyfriend. But since she left most of her friends behind in New York, she needs to find some local pals, stat.

Longing for a BFF to call for brunch or a pedicure, or a gossip partner to dissect the latest pop-culture news, Bertsche goes on 52 friend-dates – one per week for a year. She scours her existing network for potential friends-of-friends, then branches out to joining an improv class, forming a cooking club, and even going on a mortifying “date” with a “Rent-a-Friend.” As she sizes up potential BFFs, Bertsche also delves into research on friendship – from how a person’s number of friends affects her health to how our ultra-connected culture can propagate loneliness and isolation.

Throughout her quest, Bertsche’s self-deprecating humor shines through as she recounts her adventures and admits that meeting girls, juggling schedules and maintaining new relationships can be exhausting. (Comparisons with dating memoirs are inevitable here, and Bertsche wonders: why isn’t there a better vocabulary for making friends?)

By the end of her Year of Friending, Bertsche has a slew of new phone numbers, several promising relationships, and a renewed sense of confidence and warmth – because acting friendlier has actually made her a better friend. As they cheer Bertsche on in her quest, readers will appreciate the friends they have and even pick up useful – and entertaining – tips for finding new friends of their own.

*(I don’t get any compensation for urging you to buy Rachel’s book – I just think it’s great!)

my experience with online classes

I’ve taken half a dozen online classes in the past two years. And I’ve finally learned: they don’t usually work for me.

More specifically: it is difficult for me to invest in an online course (or any course) with little accountability, little or no face time, and the feeling that I’m just one person in a sea of faceless class members.

The fault doesn’t lie with the course content or the instructors – I’ve enjoyed some of the lessons on writing or photography, scrapbooking or yoga, from women like Jen and Andrea, Marianne, Jennifer and Ali. I am in no way criticizing these women or the content of their courses. In fact, I’d heartily recommend all of them. The problem is mine.

Sometimes the problem is my motivation for signing up. I’ve signed up for several online courses run by bloggers whose work I enjoy, because I didn’t want to “miss out” – because I was, in effect, trying to “keep up” with others in the blogosphere. And, tellingly, even with access to deep stories and thought-provoking questions, or useful yoga poses or photo techniques, I ended up disengaging within days.

Sometimes I simply wanted the course to do something it couldn’t do (similar to the root of the gift-giving anxiety I struggle with around the holidays). I am always – and especially since I moved to Boston – searching for connection and real community. It’s hard for me to get that in a big, anonymous-feeling online forum (though it often comes easier via blog comments, tweets and one-to-one emails). And when I start to feel anonymous and/or ignored, I shut down and withdraw. (This is true – oh so true – in my offline life, too.)

Let this be a lesson to me: there are some ways to connect online that really work for me – and I’m grateful for the community I’ve found in those places. But there are some ways that don’t suit me as well. And next time I’m tempted by an online course, I’ll think long and hard before clicking the “Register” button.

Have you taken any online courses? What has been your experience? I’d love to know.