Thursday, October 30, 2008

Beauty is everywhere



Someone regularly paints interesting graffiti in the alleyway next to Trabant, a coffee shop in the University District. I'm not the hippest chick in the pack so these may just be advertising or a secret coded message from Xenu, but I found them fun and vibrant and cool.


Wednesday, October 29, 2008

My new favorite abstract expressionist (sorry Max Ernst...)

Catching up on the Sunday New York Times, I ran across an article on Beatriz Milhazes, an Brazilian artist. I'm still digesting but go here now and allow this colorful, crazy art to flood your eyeballs. and we'll talk more later.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Friday Dog Blogging


Here's my pooch, he's an 8-year-old Lhasa/poodle mix. A loodle, somebody said today.

Not the sharpest tool in the shed but a good boy nonetheless.





Saturday, October 18, 2008

HBD BKres!

17 years ago tomorrow, my niece was born. I have watched her grow from a chatty two-year-old to a smart, stylish teenager who is already starting to think about such serious things as college and animal rights and the Jonas Brothers.
This is one of my favorite pictures of her, standing in Times Square on a cold March midnight in 2007. The rest of the family was passed out our hotel, but BKres and I roamed the city, in search of hot chocolate and adventures. The picture is tiny but I'll never forget that night.
Happy B-day BKres! I love ya lots.



Thursday, October 16, 2008

Leaves


Fall in Seattle is gorgeous.
I know you're thinking, what could be attractive about drippy gray days, where the streetlights glow all day like giant night lights, and you feel the damp chill deep in your sinuses?
I have one word for you: leaves.
You have to love a thing that is named for its behavior. In the fall, a leaf--well--it leaves.
Seattle's silvery gray autumn light makes the changing leaves light up, illuminates them as though each one is a little lamp. The leaves on the tree outside my window are a riot of golds and yellows and peaches. At dusk, they become a sunburst of light against the surrounding gray-green cedars. Our maples turn a deep ruby red, as intense as pomegranate seeds, or aged port.
This morning as I was out walking the dog in the cold dark mist, I spotted this leaf, a brilliant yellow, bedazzled with raindrops, plastered against the sequiny black pavement.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Ironic Irony Department

Yesterday Senator John McCain called comments by Congressman John Lewis, an African American, "beyond the pale."
Okaaaa-a-a-ay then.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Who is your style icon? (And why this is not a silly question...)




One of the silliest things I've ever seen was an entertainment reporter (oxymoron?) asking some flava-du-jour starlet, "Who is your 'style icon?'"
Let's think about this for a minute. You're asking this question of an insipid twenty-year-old with a handbag budget larger than the GDP of some foreign countries. You're asking the star of "Scary Movie" and a grainy sex tape who she looks up to in the style department.
Mmm-hmm.
It started me thinking, though. I'm an old-fashioned girl. Sit me down with a black-and-white movie and a champagne flute and I couldn't be happier.
Jane Alice Peters -- you might know her as Carole Lombard -- is one of my style icons.
Sure I'm a Hepburn fan (Katharine, mostly but Audrey too) -- and I love Bette Davis, and Isabella Rossellini before her Prince Valiant haircut, and I'll watch Cary Grant and George Clooney any ole time.
But Ms. Lombard is in a category all her own. Maybe because she left us so young, I don't know. But I could watch her in "My Man Godfrey" daily for the rest of my life and never stop admiring her style and wit and grace, the way she gazes at William Powell or glowers at sister Cornelia, somehow managing to both sparkle and smolder against the Art Deco set.
You can watch this 1936 classic movie any time you want, on You Tube. I recommend that you stick with the black-and-white version.
Today is in color. But yesterday, and forever, is in black and white.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

I Heart Lists


Knock-knock.

Who's there?

Control freak.

Contr--

Say Control Freak who? Say it! Say Control Freak who?
----------------------------

It comforts me deeply to find other people's lists. Grocery lists left in shopping carts. To-do lists blowing around on the street. Finding a list tells me that I'm not alone. That others have the same need to quantify life, to order it, to write down pieces of the puzzle and then (oh this part is satisfying), check them off. Here's a list I found today in the grass off NE 75th. It's a checksheet I guess. On the back is written in black marker, "WF."