My husband (one of the best fathers I know) learning the ropes from his dad back in the day.
Don’t give up hope. There’s still time to get him something amazing. Click below for a few things I would be getting for my dad if I hadn’t already committed to buying him something useful (but way less cool.) — Read more
These truly punk Bikini Kill posters are on sale to help more girls learn to play music. Here’s to the next generation of riot grrls!
Kathleen Hanna (of Bikini Kill) has teamed up with VFiles to create a riot grrl mini collection (a dress, lip balm, poster… all the necessities) Proceeds go to help fund the Girls Rock Camp Alliance, an organization dedicated to promoting empowerment by teaching girls to play music. Limited quantities, so run don’t walk.
Cool off by making this delicious watermelon mint smoothie from Well and Good.
Watch Brian Faherty (founder of the Portland, OR furniture design company Schoolhouse Electric) speak about rediscovering his analogue self in a digital world and figuring out how to have the two universes live in harmony.
Listen to President John F Kennedy’s profound speech on world peace and what it could actually mean. Today is the 50th anniversary of this address, by the way…
It’s never too early to foster your kids’ design sensibility. Check out these pint sized versions of beautifully designed chairs on Pangea.com.
Dude, it is now legal to grow pot in Colorado.
Just some hands, reaching up, forever. From the Ace Hotel’s wonderful blog.
In an attempt to keep this delicious soda all to myself, I told my daughter it was “for grown ups” and that she probably wouldn’t like it.
No such luck.
This blue bottle of heaven from Brooklyn Soda Works arrived with our CSA bounty this past week. Who wouldn’t be excited about drinking Apple & Rosemary soda? To wit: the scene at the dinner table last night wasn’t pretty, with my husband and daughter almost coming to blows over the last few drops.
Which of course sent me, in a panic, to brooklynsodaworks.com, desperately searching for information on how I can get more of this stuff into our lives. Especially after I heard mention of flavors like hibiscus & mint, or grapefruit, jalapeno & honey.
Of course you can’t just get some at your nearest Whole Foods, but if you happen to be in Williamsburg on a weekend, stop by Smorgasburg or the Brooklyn Flea to fill up. Or order one with a meal at Parish Hall, Blue Hill or a number of other small tasty eating establishments around town.
In the meantime, I will now try to figure out how to become best friends with them, so they’ll deliver straight to my door. I’ll let you guys know how I make out…
Here’s what was in our bag a couple of weeks ago… when things were still “lean.” Can’t wait to see what a “bountiful” bag looks like.
It is the glory days. The season of the CSA. For the past couple of years, we had the good fortune of belonging to a CSA (community supported agriculture… ie buying food directly from the farmer) that was run by an old friend who had decamped to western Massachusetts to run his family farm.
Well he’s since married and had a kid, and has very realistically decided that running a high end food delivery service for his pals in NYC wasn’t what he wanted to keep doing. So he shut down, much to my dismay. I actually thought it was all over, until I saw a sign for Nextdoorganics at Egg, one of my favorite local restaurants.
And now, for $25 – $50 a week, I get an abundance of delicious greens, veggies and fruit fresh from local farms. I can pick it up a few blocks from my place, or for an extra $5 they’ll deliver. Plus, I can add on extras like kombucha, garlic paste, eggs… soon meat and fish will also be options.
There’s also an active twitter feed where fellow CSA’ers share recipes, a newsletter where resident Chef Chrissy breaks down what’s in each weeks packages and gives her own tips for how to enjoy the bounty.
The best part? You pay by the week. So if you’re not going to be around for a week (or 4) you can let them know. They won’t pack a bag for you and you don’t have to pay. Oh yeah, and they operate year round (woo hoo!!)
If you live in Brooklyn, or the lower half of Manhattan, there is no reason not to check them out and join up.
You won’t be sorry.
We all know what this sign means, right?
A good friend, who is very on top of all things green, just sent me this e mail about NYC’s expanded plastic recycling program. I’m surprised I haven’t heard more about it (besides an earlier e mail from a different friend) but hey, at least now we New Yorkers can recycle a lot more plastic with a lot more ease.
I’m just going to quote the entire email here, since it basically says everything:
New York City now recycles All Rigid Plastic Items. Regardless of number. They define Rigid Plastic Items as having a relatively inflexible shape and being made entirely of or predominantly of plastic.
Examples of rigid plastics included in the expansion are:
rigid plastic tubs – yogurt, deli, hummus, sour cream
rigid plastic caps & lids
rigid plastic jars – creams, cosmetics, salves
rigid plastic take-out containers – “clamshell” and snap together
rigid plastic food containers – cookie tray inserts, plastic egg cartons
rigid plastic packaging “blister-pak”, consumer packaging, acetate boxes
rigid plastic housewares – flower pots, mixing bowls, plastic appliances
bulk plastic – crates, buckets, pails, furniture, large toys, large appliances
Please Empty and Rinse Out All Food and Beverage Containers.
Place the rigid plastic items in the recycling bin with the plastic bottles and jugs, glass bottles and jars, juice boxes and aseptic packaging, beverage cartons and any metal items, same as before.
Remove All Batteries (return any rechargeable batteries to a retailer for recycling).
The items below are not recyclable by New York City’s vendor, and can create problems in processing the materials that are recyclable.
Do not put these items in your recycling:
plastic tubes – toothpaste, lotion, and cosmetics
plastic disposable razors or razor blades
plastic lighters – plastic, metal, or any material
plastic containers that held dangerous or corrosive chemicals
plastic pens & markers
plastic cassette or VHS tapes*
plastic bags, dry cleaning bags, produce bags, any kind of plastic “film”**
squeezable pouches – juice pouches, baby food, yogurt to go
styrofoam – cups, egg cartons, trays, packing peanuts and inserts
electronics – computers, TVs, and related devices, cords and cables***
* cassette or VHS tapes(+CD’s/DVD’s)can be recycled at Greendisk
**plastic bags should be returned to a local retailer for recycling
**electronics must be recycled check for E-waste events near you
It’s a grey and rainy day, which isn’t so great for my mood, but look what it’s done for my hydrangea…
A friend forwarded this blog post to me. It sounded kind of lame (“Worst End Of School Year Mom Ever”) but for some reason, I started to read it. By the middle of the post, I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt. For all you parents-of-school-age-kids out there, this is a must read.
Check out Apartment Therapy’s Ultimate Used Furniture Cleaning Kit, just in time for flea market season…
With all the inter-racial families out there, you’d think the days of outrage over the depiction of one such family in a Cheerios ad would be over. You’d be wrong.
Are you a millennial female? Then The Everygirl is the site for you.
An interesting story about the man who made Coney Island.
I ripped my favorite shorts while rock climbing in Joshua Tree. Are these the perfect replacement?
Thank you, oh Yolanda Edwards of Momfilter (and Martha Stewart Living, but I digress) for telling us about Fox 8 the “short story/fable/e book” by George Saunders (who wrote 10th of December about which I will go on at length in a separate post really soon) I am about to actually buy a digital book for the first time ever.
Your grandmother would definitely recognize all 6 ingredients in these babies.
I have gotten into the bad habit of arriving every afternoon at my daughter’s school with some kind of treat. And by treat, I of course mean some kind of sweet thing. Not blackberries mind you (though she loves those, too) but something that falls into the forbidden-fruit category of — dare I say it — candy.
And as I am one of those parents who puts a limit on the amount of sugar ingested by my child every day, this has begun to pose a challenge. I am not so hard core as to turn my nose up at all sweets, but if we’re going to eat ice cream, let it please be from the artisinal homemade indie ice cream truck, not Mr Softee, if you know what I mean.
And we live in a town that makes this kind of discretion easy, thank god.
So imagine my delight when, after eating a delicious breakfast at Alice’s Arbor in Bed Stuy, I sidled up to their little grocery counter and discovered these homemade, all-natural-ingredients marshmallows by a company called Wondermade. It’s the perfect after school bite: A box full of 16 tiny bits of sweet soft deliciousness, without the high fructose corn syrup I have been so studiously avoiding since I became a parent.
Made by a couple on Orlando, FL, they come in all sorts of off beat flavors like orangesicle, root beer and lemonade. They even have a special 4 pack for Father’s Day consisting of bourbon, coffee, guiness and maple bacon. How cool is that?
And if you don’t happen to see them in a store in your hood, you can always buy them online. (just like you probably buy everything else, anyway…)
Happy Memorial Day. And while we’re on the topic of remembering things, here are some places to check out on the web…
An app to help you remember your dreams.
NPR gathers an hour’s worth of TED talks on the subject of memory, how a nimble one can improve your life, and how a faulty one can hurt others.
When I asked my husband what is his favorite memoir, he answered Goodbye To All That, by Robert Graves. Without hesitation. It’s about the worldwide loss of innocence that occurred as a result of World War I. Seems like a bit of a downer to me, but the best books often are.
Green Memory. A very short poem by Langston Hughes about war and money.
UCLA Professor Gary Small gives us a couple of tips on how to improve our memory.
There are folks leaving disposable cameras all over the world for people to find, use to record a memory or two, pass on to others, and eventually return. It’s called The Disposable Memory Project. Have you seen one of these cameras anywhere?
Why remember stuff when you can just enter it into your phone? Check out PC Magazine’s top 10 organizational apps for the iPhone.
Here’s Adeline, casually hanging out in the window of her (brilliant) stylist Irini Arakas’ midtown studio.
And I got to shoot her, the day before yesterday, for the online celebration of NY culture/magazine: The Aesthete.
Born in France but now living in Brooklyn, Adeline fronts a 17 piece band called Escort and they will be taking over the stage at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Friday night.
It is a show that should not be missed.
But if you have other plans, just go buy the record (one of Rolling Stone’s 50 top records this year) put it on, wrap yourself in sequins and dance till the sun comes up.
Cause that’s what I’m going to be doing.
The official online invitation to Dan Estabrook’s beautiful show. Which I just lifted from the website, but I figure since I’m promoting the show it’s ok, right?
For some reason, it seems that May 2013 is “my-friend-has-a-show-in-a-gallery” month so I have been trucking over to Chelsea to see what has been keeping them so busy for the past little while. And I must say I have not been disappointed.
Take my friend Dan Estabrook’s images for example. He uses what are called alternative processes, (ie not silver like your standard black and white photo, but other light sensitive emulsion techniques like gum bichromate and carbon printing that were typically used in the early days of photography) to create a haunting series of pictures that could be over a hundred years old. They are intimate, captivating and surreal, and manage to be both peaceful and disturbing at the same time.
His show is up through June 15th at Daniel Cooney and is well worth checking out. I took my daughter to the opening and she immediately fell in love with the girl with the fire headband (below). I liked her too, though I am also partial to the feet (also below) maybe because I am a Pisces and we are supposedly really obsessed with our feet.
Or does the fact that I especially love the feet image make me some kind of Jesus freak?
I apologize for not writing a profound review of this show. I am about as much of an art critic as I am an astronaut. But you should still listen to me and go see this show anyway.
Just because.
Dan Estabrook
Daniel Cooney Fine Art
526 West 26th Street
NYC
Through 15 June
