natalia ilyin

Something snapped today. As usual I walked into the restroom on the ferry, and, as usual, a stranger mentioned it and so I smiled and went through the whole routine--again. Later in the day, I went to get a burrito. A stranger mentioned it, and, as usual, I smiled and made a joke. I crossed the square and went into Sephora for a brief whiff of Jardin Sur le Nil-- and there the small, plump and 20-something salesgirl piled the last wispy straw upon this fifty two year-old's camel's back.

After 40 years of smiling and laughing off the comments of complete strangers, forty years of Italian waiters climbing on chairs to give me my coat-- oh, the exquisite humor!-- of old ladies being aghast and pressing themselves against the wall in fear of attack, of people pointing it out at parties and on escalators, of Asians being downright embarrassed for me-- after forty years of this daily exercise I am at the bitter end of courtesy.

So listen up, because I am only going to say this once.

Yes, I am tall. Yes, I am extremely tall. How tall am I, you ask? I am 6' 2". Yes, both my parents were very tall. No, I do not have a hard time:
a. fitting under doorways.
b. hitting things with my head.
c. finding men.

These are questions strangers have asked me every day of my adult life.
Every day of my adult life.
Every day.

Strangers so regularly ask me these personal things that you would think I would be used to it. But I am not used to it.

Tall people NEVER get used to the rudeness of thoughtless people. When you tell us we are tall as though we do not know it, we are exercising restraint when we don't hit you. How would you feel if a two or three strangers a day said to you, unbidden and without preamble, "You are fat. You are really fat. How fat are you, anyway?"

Yes. We are bored by your questions and we are bored by answering them and we are not public institutions or statuary. You have no right to talk to us. We do not know you. So leave us alone.

If you tell people they are tall, stop doing it. If you have ever told a person he was tall, regret it. How do you talk to a tall person? Start by never, ever mentioning height. Ever. Not once.

I have recently started to realize that one of the things all my friends have in common is that they have NEVER talked about my height unless I brought it up.

I have also noticed that men rarely--very rarely-- comment on my height and that the people who get all het up about it are short, usee-looking women with dark hair who often saw their best years in high school. And now we know why.

I've never written about my height on this blog and I don't plan to, again. It was just that last bovine look of stupidity that caught me off-guard, that last, "You're SOOOOOOO tall," uttered by someone who to whom intellectual strain consists of reading the instructions on a hair iron.

An old boyfriend used to say, "Her height is the least interesting thing about her." You'll find that true about most tall people. So, how do you talk to a tall person? Just remember not to state how tall she is. Don't squawk about it loudly in public places. Don't ask if he played basketball. Don't make jokes about tallness that are funny to you because-- trust me, they are not in the least funny. Don't tell a tall person that you know another person the same height. Remember the fat analogy. Just keep your mouth shut or mention the weather. By not stating the overwhelmingly obvious you just might make a friend for life.

The Southerners say that what you do on New Year's Day you'll do the whole year long. That's why, upon hearing a light tapping at the front door of the cottage, I'll push back crisp sheets, pad across the bamboo floor and open the door to pick up the breakfast tray. The sun will be warming whitewashed walls bright with bougainvillea. The breeze will rustle, faintly jasmine. They'll get my omelette right. I've mastered the espresso maker in the kitchen and island-roasted coffee waits on the shelf. Clambering back into down pillows and comforters, a fresh sheaf of magazines on one side, a pile of fresh croissants on the other, I'll sample both till the trainer taps on the door. A light workout by the plunge pool, a few laps, a luxurious massage, a little reading, a little tapping on the old computer keys, a stroll to dinner with friends and a walk in the balmy moonlight.... would it get tiresome the whole year long? Let's try it and see.

Last night one of my sisters came to town, so we three went down to a convenient carol sing and belted out a few tunes. None of us is much of a singer, but that seems to make little difference to any of us. And there's something about related vocal chords that makes a nice harmony. When we get together, we often sing. And last night, out of the blue, we sang a song a capella that we had known in childhood. Oddly, having not thought of it for twenty years, we all remembered all the words. Or maybe not so oddly, because it is so timely.

It really is as much an anti-war song as a Christmas Song, written by Longfellow during the Civil War. Lest we forget amid the tinselling and lighting, we have a couple wars going on right now. So if you find yourself in a sudden carolling situation, I recommend "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day."

And here's a stanza that is sad, and so not always included, which is the fifth stanza, a couple before the triumphal ending. But what is a triumphal ending if you've avoided the sad stanza before it? So here it is:

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn, the households born
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Today I was looking at a few items on Amazon and scrolled down to see their recommendations for me. Is this what it all boils down to?

1. Beowulf Cliffs Notes

2. Tablescapes: Setting the Table with Style

3. Of Grammatology

4. Williams-Sonoma Dessert Collection

5. Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening,
and Creating New Realities

6. Denise Austin's 3-Week Bootcamp

To tell you the truth, I'm down about it. Not a graphic design book among them.
Makes one question one's life. I wonder what they recommend to Biederbeck. Or Stefan Bucher. Or Art Hanlon. Or Patricia Erskine. Tablescapes?

In our era of political correctness, when racial, sexual and stereotyping “jokes” have finally been swept from the public conversation because of their being disgusting, mean, crass, unenlightened and just plain boring, I find that I must bring to my reader’s attention a small nook of said public conversation that has not yet been tidied: the totally acceptable public humiliation and shaming of those who love what amounts to a small pile of dried and glaceed fruits held together by a winsome batter of butter, flour, eggs and spice. It is time for a new maturity on the part of the pokers and prodders. It is time to stop sending those blasted cards. It is time for the thoughtless, painful, embarrassing jokes to end. I urge you to join me in the ushering in of a renewed era: an era during which fruitcake can take once again its honored place upon the pantry shelf.

Fruitcake. Most Americans today have never tasted a real one. If your idea of fruitcake is something that you can order from a boxed fruit company or buy in a Dollar Store redolent of cheap candy and caramel-corn, well. What can I tell you. Your world is very small. Anything that is more sickly-sweet “cake” than fruit, anything that has small, unidentifiable green things in it, anything that is made by a machine and comes wrapped in plastic is, by definition, not a fruitcake. It’s a pathetic blob of sugars and preservatives aimed at separating the consumer from his dollar by imitating and commodifying That For Which Real Fruitcake Stands.

Fruitcake sums up something iconically American. There is nothing contemporary about its message. Fruitcake is part and parcel with candlelight, the cracking of walnuts, the glass of port, the country dog lying at one’s feet. It accompanies the work-day done, another log on the fire, the reading of "St. Agnes’ Eve." Fruitcake-- the real kind-- symbolizes the keeping of tradition, successful harvest, the idea of comfort, of sweetmeats, feasting, firelight--safety, survival, warmth--home.

Even the cheap fruitcakes in dollar stores, their tins decorated with pictures of sleighs and cottages, offer a desperate nostalgic attempt at these values, at connoting "home". Perhaps that’s why Shoebox Cards finds fruitcake humor so commercially viable. Home being just so, well, over.

It is not without sadness that I recognize that two of my best friends hate fruitcake. I weep for their uneducated palates, their narrow worlds. Through the years, finding their coarse humor unencouraged, they have stopped sending me those damned fruitcake cards. I believe they now send them to each other, finding solace in the companionship of ironic distance.

They’ll never know the secret happiness that fruitcake lovers know—the glow that comes with knowing you've got a carefully wrapped hunk of homemade fruitcake waiting for you. They'll never have that solid fruit-bound assurance that joy will return year after year, in ring form, suitable only for sharing with the truest of companions.

You know things are hectic when you put on what you think is your fabulous Sensaria mango lip balm, and it turns out to have been a glue stick.

What a summer. First New York and then an unexpected 6 weeks in Providence, and now this-- a week in San Francisco. I've barely spent a minute on my island, and believe me, my Peapatch Garden neighbors have noticed.

Most of the tenants of the communal garden are amazing and nice people. I've met some real friends there. The woman who runs the Senior Center. The woman who just retired as head librarian. But I also have an enemy in the Patch: the self-appointed duenna of the garden. Long retired from who-knows-what, white polo shirt and big fuschia walking shorts, helmet hair and a deep, abiding belief in herself and her views of Right and Wrong. Wouldn't you know it. Of all the plots in the garden, she has the plot right by mine.

When I started the garden with friend Janet, she made clear her doubts about our fitness for the job, and harrumphed contentedly when Janet had to quit because of her back. After Pete showed up at the plot a few months later, she put two-and-two together and hailed me with, "Are you married, yet?" for the next four years. Though my dog Jane died 3 years ago, she always asks me where my dog is.

For nine years she has been dissatisfied with my garden performance and for nine years has shown this disapproval through throat-clearing, mutterings and behind-back campaigns. She snorted for a month when my zucchini went wild by accident through an unfortunate miscalculation in the use of organic fertilizer. She rolled her eyes to all when I rescued a bird feeder from a house that was being demolished and stuck it in the middle of my patch. She believes that all bugs, slugs and varmints originate and procreate in my plot, and she recently called the Garden Authority to tell them that grass seed was blowing from my plot to hers and that it had to be put to a stop to immediately.

Every year she tries to convince the Authority that I have abandoned my plot. Every year they tell her I am still there, blowsy, illegitimate garden that it is, filled with tangled morrocan mints and lemon balms and fennels.

Whenever I come in for a quick blitz with shears and trowel, she is there, running down the errant leaf of grass, harrumphing.

Her small and obedient husband edges her garden with his gas-powered edger. He's edged it so many times that it has sunk a few inches below sod-level. My garden has never been edged. Every once in a while Pete would help me garden by donning a fraying straw hat and over-alls and standing in the plot talking in a New Hampshire accent about non-existent cows while I loaded him with weeds. Rounded and honed as this character was, it was not a hit with the Garden Duenna.

Her plants--small, wary zinnias and strawberries-- stand in perfect rows. My peonies explode out of the plot every spring. My daisies take over every August. Her fencing has hospital corners: My fencing looks like deer have lunged against it.

But after nine years, the Duenna is going to win the Pea Patch fight. She doesn't know it yet. I haven't mentioned it. But my life has gotten so involved now that even I realize I do not have time for a garden. This Fall, my peonies will be transplanted, my lavender will find a new home, my fruit trees will be removed, and my beautifully enriched soil will be covered with a perfect oblong of plastic, awaiting a fresh tenant. The harrumphs will take on a warm tone, order will prevail, and peace will be restored to the Pea Patch.

I hadn't been to New York in a while because I had been avoiding my literary agent who expected a manuscript. So going from my island, land of orcas, trees and fog, to my old island, land of traffic, people and big buildings, was a reentry into contemporary life. A few observations on cultural changes since 2007:

1. More beeping, less chatting:
Many more single beeps around, signaling the turn of lights or the readiness of a bagel, but far less public chatting on cell phones. A great thing about texting! All those teeth-meltingly tiresome overheard conversations on the bus now relegated to the keyboard. Lovely.

2. Anyone who thinks he is in the fashion business is actually in the jeans business and must accept his fate.

3. The nasal labial fold is a thing of the past. In the last two years, the usage of facial fillers has hit my business contacts.

4. Light blue is the new white for teeth. Scary when you don't expect it.

5. Bookstores have more tables and fewer books. Hardcover books sport newsprint pages. Vampires rule the racks. And books about green eating. And about how not to look old.

6. A lot of old people are going around with chopped bangs and low-rise jeans and big belts, squinting to see the tiny type on their ipod touch and looking pathetic.

7. Luckily, their corns keep them from sporting gladiator sandals.

As it turns out, I am not fun. True, I am funny sometimes, but funny is different from fun. I have this on good authority.

You can’t imagine the shock this news gave to the old system. I, Natalia Ilyin-- not fun? All these years of the wry remark, the ironic glance--for naught? But there it is. I am not fun, not fun-loving and I do not inspire a carefree, sunny joie-de-vivre in others. I'm a veritable Kafka at the barbecue.

Walking home from this moment of intense realization, I bludgeoned myself for not being fun. For it's true. I'm not fun in the way other women can be fun. I do not jump up and down in delight at the drop of a hat. I do not giggle irresistibly over the cute things cats or men do. I have no desire to giggle irresistibly.

Sweet is exhausting to me. Just trying gave me under-eye circles that rival those of Ahkmatova. And as far as infectious laughter, that’s pretty much gone the way of no sleeves. My years of ecstatic clapping at the repeated performances of others are pretty much over. I am the second-act Maude Gonne without the political agenda.

Yet, thinking over my wide aquaintance, very few of the people I know seem fun-loving, with the possible exception of my business partner, who’s got enthusiasm nailed. But enthusiasm may not really be a synonym for fun-loving. Fun-loving has a “Hey let’s all tumble into the convertible and go berry-picking” quality about it which even Pam does not possess.

Just how fun-loving IS a really grown-up person? How breezy and light the average business-owner in the midst of a recession who spends his days working and nights mentally totalling the month's receipts against the payroll? Do most responsible people spring about, dancing small jigs of happiness, enthralling others with their cheery charm when they are dragging a bouquet of mortgages and wondering where the next big contract is going to come from?

If they do leave it at the office, have the ability to turn off the worries, really let it all go, then I think them rare and brilliant. A loosening of the old bonds is probably a healthy idea, given the price of metoprolol. Yet for me, describing a person as "fun-loving" after the age of 25 has the distinct ring of “someone else is paying the rent.” The exception to this rule is friend Karen Irish who defies pigeon-holing and works like a dog and is truly fun-loving. But she's such an exceptional person that I hesitate even to mention her.

I vow to reliquish my somber personality. To this end, I have created my new “get fun-loving fast” action plan. I’m pretty sure it's going to work for me, and I recommend it to you, should you want to be thought of as a chuckling, living-in-the-moment kind of person.

1. Avoid thinking of death first thing in the morning. Hold back on mental images of torture until after lunch. If you must know what's going on in the world, get others to read the censored NY Times headlines to you.

2. Practice a purring giggle. This may not feel comfortable at first. You may feel more comfortable with warbling sweet nothings like, “If you leave your wallet in the unlocked car one more time for someone to reach in and steal I’m going to knock your head off,” but leave it alone, let it go, and invoke the purring giggle.

3. Every time you think a negative thought, switch your bracelet to the other arm. Count how many times you switch and try to reduce daily. Use And D ointment to quell skin irritation due to bracelet-changing.

4. Learn to perform fun gags and rib-tickling.
5. Poise a pail of water over the cracked door your husband walks through after a long day, and wait for the fun to begin.

I’m hoping this shape-up plan works on me. Because being full of the zest for life is one of the great talents. After thirty, joy takes cultivation. This I have learned. Not fun. But true.

Urged on to attendance while standing in the grocery line at T and C, I showed up at Seabold Hall last night to listen to the duo Brent Grossman and Jeremy Rothbaum. The specialty here is fast, hot versions of roots and blues music standards and Rothbaum compositions. Separately, both musicians have great personal appeal and a certain throw-away irony that comes as refreshment to an island audience often clutched in the grip of Very Serious and Sensitive Folk Music. Grossman and Rothbaum are smart, funny and talented and put on a great show.

Although both musicians are multi-instrumental, in this performance Jeremy limited himself to accordion and piano, while Grossman provided a one-man rhythm section on snare-drum, with occasional bouts of fingerpicking. Wonderful take-downs and thought-through song endings gave the show crispness.

Oddly, the highpoint came in a cover of a Hank Williams song, where Rothbaum delivered a haunting, night-sky-and-stars-loneliness yodel the likes of which I have never heard in all my years of yodel-listening. Left me waiting for him to do it again. Which he finally did, even better. That's a first for me.

The duo could benefit from a refreshment of material-- they were selling a CD produced in 1992-- and a slowing of the pace on occasion. "Long Black Veil" was played at such a fast tempo that the beauty of the tune was obscured, as was the natural swing of Toussaint's "Brickyard Blues." With all that humor and irony, a sincere ballad or two would act like a spark of orange tile in a wall of blue and white mosaic. But all in all, a marvelous show. I may need that yodel as a download.

Well, to make a long story short, it was fabulous. Country Capers got the music going early as people arrived in full regalia-- I have to say that men, always nice to have around, really look especially good in evening clothes. Fleece, although it has many merits, does not hold a candle to a cut-away.
In flowed women in ball dresses and we got a full look at everyone's ensemble during the Grand March, which dissolved into a bit of a Conga line at the end.
King of the Ball: Eight Fingered Dick, (normally a very nice guy who runs the local art store, but something quite appealing happens to him when he lets his hair down and wears all black and little tiny dark glasses.) Queen of the Ball: one Kate Ebert, whose bustled gown of chartreuse green mattress ticking combined with orange silk collar, red and white striped stockings and bloomers made her costume not only amazing, but, darn it, flattering as heck.
Even though this is the recession of all recessions, we made almost twice what we made the last time we did this party. And all of that money goes to microgrants for Burmese living on the Thai Border. Double success-- double happiness. Pictures to follow.

Three days left until the Old Settlers' Ball, and because I have an unrealistic view of my powers, I have said yes once again to making too many other people's ball dresses. So here I sit, thinking thoughts about what I am going to teach next Fall in terms of design history and criticism, and sewing the bejeebers out of yards and yards of taffeta. The balanced life is the life we strive for. Histories and hierarchies, who did what when-- that's one side of the story. The other-- that unheralded long stitch of repeated experience that snicks through life like a machine needle, the continuing tale that folds in upon itself, that starts over and ends and starts over-- the sea swell of the unconscious upon which we plant yardsticks and measuring tapes and wonder why they never reach far enough, why they sink down out of sight. How shall I teach that?

I am a woman of many hats.

Many people content themselves with a owning a business hat and a personal hat, changing from one to the other in a fairly regulated way. But my hat tree is loaded, and their wearing is not a daily routine. Upon said tree hang the branding hat, the design critic hat, the trade-book memoirist hat, the business-owner hat and the nonprofit refugee relief co-director hat.

Aside from the business-owner hat (a large Fedora, suitable for dodging bullets in a film noir alley, which I wear daily) the rest find their places upon my head seasonally.

Like many writers, I prefer to write in the Winter, when it is cold, and publish and tour in the Spring, when it is warm and I can fly without dragging along a big coat. The fact that I don’t actually tour two out of three years does not keep me from thinking that I will and planning accordingly. If you write, this makes total sense to you. If you do not write, this will explain why perhaps you should not take up the profession.

Anyway. I wore my writer’s hat for a time a few weeks ago, but now suddenly I must also don my nonprofit co-director hat and throw a large fundraising extravaganza. Putting a sensible, ladies-who-lunch pillbox on top of a Fedora may look strange but, hey. Of such is life.

Eight years ago now, a friend of mine and I started a very small refugee-relief program. We do one thing. We give micro-grants to stateless Burmese who have been pushed over the border into Thailand. Since it’s not in Thailand’s interest to acknowledge the fact that huge numbers of people have fled the military dictatorship in Burma, in Thailand these people are “non-people,” have no papers, and therefore do not have access to healthcare or any other basics of citizenship.

The Thai tolerate their squatting on the border, and provide camps for some them, which is a strain on the Thai economy, but not as much of a strain as a confrontation with Burma would be. So things are rough for these refugees. Many don’t know where their parents are, where their kids are.

For years, my friend came back from her stays in Thailand, wondering aloud how we could help these women up there on the Border who were giving people medical care, or creating orphanages, or helping homeless kids during the day.

At the same time she’d often say— “Oh, and here’s a scarf from the markets in Bangkok,” and I’d tie some gorgeous piece of silk around my neck and continue wondering what we could do to help these women with projects they had started up.

It took us a long while to put two and two together-- to figure out that we could sell these Thai scarves in America and put 100% of the proceeds into micro-grant programs. But that’s what we did: We started SisterScarf. (Sister is a term of endearment used for close friends in the Cambodian. It seemed appropriate.)

We sell scarves. We have a couple of angel donors. And we throw a big bash once every two years, just to blow the carbon out of the engine.
No, we do not have a website, we’re not on Facebook. We do not want the Burmese government to be able to trace blog entries or any of our services to any of our recipients. (That’s how they cracked down on the uprising last year. They tracked blog entries, picked up everyone who had complained, and threw them in prison. Security equals safety for our recipients. More important than we Americans remember to think.)

So all this to say, I am balancing my co-director hat on top of all other hats and am in the throes of preparing for the fabulous Old Settlers’ Ball, our fundraiser, to be held Saturday, April 25th, at the Island Center Hall on Bainbridge Island. (Email me for an invitation, it is private and there won’t be any announcements of it. Email pronto because it sells out.)

Why, you ask, is it called the Old Settlers’ Ball? Why, you ask, is it a costume party a la 1870’s at which the women wear vintagey ball dresses and the men look like all those good-looking Riverboat toughs in HBO’s Deadwood? Why not just have an auction and drive up the bids for blown glass bowls and expensive cakes while people eat your salmon, chicken or vegetarian entrées?

Because I hate auctions. I am forced to attend them for various friends’ nonprofits, but I find them teeth-meltingly dull. So why should I host one? Instead, we do something that involves eating desserts, dancing to the sounds of fiddles and mandolins, yakking with friends, and just generally retiring the fleece for one night and stepping back into a time that may not have been easier, but was certainly more rustling, given all the taffeta.

Why do we call it the Old Settlers’ Ball? Because there’s a well-known folk song around these Northwestern parts that is called “The Old Settler's Song.”
(http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiOLDSETLR;ttROSINBOW.html) It’s about a guy who went up to Alaska to seek his fortune in the gold rush, but through various travails made no money, got to feeling lower and lower, and finally, in his misery, happened upon an island in the Puget Sound, where “surrounded by acres of clams,” he realized that he had found the perfect life. I can relate. And so can many here. So email me for details and come to the Ball. Cinderella has nothing on you.

Ok. I admit it. I went away to write on my current manuscript. To a place with trees and birds and water and no phone. A dock for walking on. Small creek running by. Away from the business for a few days. No “ I’ll write later because I need to work on these people’s branding program.” No,“ I’ll just do this load of laundry." Just me and my writing sister in a cabin with trees and birds.

Two things were made clear to me at this cabin. First, while I wasn’t noticing, American TV screens quadrupled in size and now hang like huge black bats in the corners of otherwise cottagey rooms.

Second. Coffee-making apparatus inflated along with the American economy in the last few years. An enormous Melitta stainless steel vat with stainless steel carafe turned out only to house 10 cups of coffee. Huge. Looked like a portable missile silo. Many LED this's and that's. The most over-designed piece of American ridiculity I have seen since buying a dryer.

Fun facts: A lip on the carafe made it impossible for a left-handed person to pour water into the tiny aperture on the right side of the water silo. Once plugged in, with water heater sucking energy from the wall and filter dripping determinedly, the little drip-stop thingy got hung up and coffee spread in a big puddle over the granite counter. Three times. After that my sister got out her little plastic filter holder and we heated water on the stove. Easier. Quicker. Less prone to accident.

The coffee silo was bad, but the Mr. Coffee coffee-grinder was somehow worse. Huge. Plastic. A coffee grinder with programmable features. Seriously. A delay-grind feature? Who is going to fill the grinder the night before and have it grind at a pre-set time? It’s RIDICULOUS.

I, of design background—I, who have given advice to innovations engineers about gizmos many a time—I….well…I couldn’t figure out how to open this coffee grinder. Neither could my sister. Programmable features gave no clue. No instructions. Twisting only removed plastic grinder from housing. We both took turns fighting that big plastic coffee grinder. Separately, we took it on and grunted in silent combat. Both of us tried and both of us failed, surrounded by creek-gurgle and trees.

I dreamed last night that I had patented a software program that aged photographic portraits in real time. This invention solved the problem of my photograph looking far better than I do in real life. This is a common problem for writers, whose publishers get fabulous photographers to take their pictures, and for well-known designers, who tend to look boyish and craggy or waif-like and arty in pictures but stringy and tough in person.

No need for these glaring gaps between image and reality! With my new PhotoDorian add-on, no one ever need be surprised again by the unretouched youness of you.

No need to thank me. Your appreciation is enough.

Bad news on the home front. Flowering Around, the flower shop right across the street, formerly known for flowers, has suddenly gone into the organic latte business. This may sound like a boon, what with my having only to roll up the old pj pants and throw on a coat and walk across the street to score the perfect split shot 2%. But already it's spelling trouble.

Unlike most people, I work at home a couple days of the week. This I count as one of the great perks of Pam and my running our own business. Some days I work on the business and some days I write on my current manuscript. But now there's Flowering Around, with its espresso bar, right across the street.

The proprietor is, unfortunately, charming, smart and friendly. Dennis. Known for his dreadlocks here on an island of Norwegians. Massage therapist and shop manager. And then there's my friend Art the Writer, known for his love of coffee and thinking-talk, who's found the new place. But, of course. I introduced him to it.

Fool, I. At my desk in my house, working, I know Art might just be sitting over there at Flowering Around, ready to look up from his book with a smile to offer me a chair. Ready to talk about crafting-the-narrative or what-makes-good-prose-sing or some other topic that can burn more time than almost any other vice. A veritable siren song, this smell of coffee wafting in my window. Right across the street.... So near, yet so far.... Art and coffee: my Scylla and Charybdis.

Living out here on the Island, we don't exactly stand on the whetted cutting edge of fashion, unless it's fleece-related. However, I have a secret weapon. (The key to Island life is the acquiring of secret weapons having to do with cultural change.) On the fashion front, which I quitted in about 1992 due to unforseen aging, I have my niece. She's 15. She knows. (more…)

So the dishwasher broke in the morning and that meant the whole time I was working I knew I would come home to the pile-up. I spent much of the day in a long meeting, convincing a client that, in order to create a marketing plan, it might good to first create a brand story--you know-- something to market. After that my red blood cell count was down to nil. (more…)

So Pete Upstairs went in to have another part of his tongue removed but before he went he asked me to take care of his pet rats while he was gone. Since I live downstairs and we're friends, he was counting on me to do it.

Now. I am not what you would call an ardent lover of All Things Great and Small. As a matter of fact, I never would have even had a dog, had she not been a border collie, cut me out and herded me into doing it. Never had a guinea pig when young. Sneeze near cats. And of course, spending many years in Manhattan watching rats scurry around the subway tracks on 34th Street did not do much to endear rodents to me. (more…)

Here on our island in the Puget Sound, winter skies stay pearl-grey from October to May. In order to fight "Rock fever," we work in bright light, and at home we knit, we sew, we quilt, we cook, we stare into light boxes and remember those good days in Antigua. To combat the grey-scale world, I often walk down to Esther's and poke around. Esther's is our small-- yet fabulous--fabric store, nothing like the big mall ones. It has real people working, and they're all smart and funny and have lived real lives. The current owner is part punk and part Holly Hobby. She went to FIT and then worked as a clothing designer in NY, but came back to the island after the Trade Center blew up. Now she owns the store.
Anyway I went down yesterday and ran smack into Denyse Schmidt's book, Denyse Schmidt Quilts, which shows you how to make thirty brightly-colored quilt and patchwork projects like the "Eye Will Revive" eye pillow and my favorite quilt, the "Drunk Love Two-tone," which reminds me of my misspent youth. (more…)