ira is my homeboy

Note card by 4four

It should surprise exactly no one that I love Ira Glass.  And my love grew even more on Saturday when Jordan Ferney from Oh Happy Day shared this quote during her Alt for Everyone presentation.  It so completely summarizes I have often felt but never been able to articulate:

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through ― Ira Glass

How have you handled this gap between your work and your ambitions? Do you feel you've closed it?

happy birthday maya angelou

dear pie: f. scott fitzgerald to his daughter

 

AUGUST 8, 1933

LA PAIX RODGERS' FORGE

TOWSON, MARYLAND

DEAR PIE:

***

All I believe in in life is the rewards for virtue (according to your talents) and the punishments for not fulfilling your duties, which are doubly costly. If there is such a volume in the camp library, will you ask Mrs. Tyson to let you look up a sonnet of Shakespeare's in which the line occurs "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds...."

***

Things to worry about:

Worry about courage

Worry about cleanliness

Worry about efficiency

Worry about horsemanship...

Things not to worry about:

Don't worry about popular opinion

Don't worry about dolls

Don't worry about the past

Don't worry about the future

Don't worry about growing up

Don't worry about anybody getting ahead of you

Don't worry about triumph

Don't worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault

Don't worry about mosquitoes

Don't worry about flies

Don't worry about insects in general

Don't worry about parents

Don't worry about boys

Don't worry about disappointments

Don't worry about pleasures

Don't worry about satisfactions

Things to think about:

What am I really aiming at?

With dearest love.

maggie and milly and molly and may 
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang 
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing 
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone 
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) 
it's always ourselves we find in the sea 

e.e. cummings 

fountains

While Freddy the Little Nude Dude perched upon the City Hall Fountain tends to get all the attention, I prefer the Dunn Fountain located just east of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery.  Placed by Lord Beaverbrook in memory of his friend Sir James Dunn, the fountain was imported from the magnificent 18th century Stowe House in Buckinghamshire, England.  On an idyllic summer, it never fails to remind me of the opening essay in J.B. Priestley's Delight (a book I wrote about here.) I've included his essay below.

it's the weekend: freshen up

 Elizabeth Taylor - gorgeous even when she wasn't glammed up.

watch.  Did you watch Mr. Rogers growing up?  I sure did.  PBS Digital studios has done this remarkably touching and humourous remix of some of his wisdom.  "It's good to be curious about many things."



listen.   The twee pop of Dream Diary is such a throwback it makes me feel like a girl of 17 again...



admire. Julia Rothman's Farm Anatomy: The Curious Parts and Pieces of Country Life makes me want to pack up and move to a farm.  Informative and charming at the same time.  I like that.

make. On Sunday after my lovage revelation I was chatting with my grandmother about it and she informed me that if I could find a use for chickweed, we'd be in business.  And then this recipe showed up in my Twitter feed.  Not sure that I'll be making the River Cottage chickweed pakoras any time soon but it was a funny coincidence.

breathe. Vienna-based photog Akos Major's series Still is a visual vacation from the over-stimulation of ever day life.

live as well as you dare: 20 ways to be happy, circa 1820

"14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue."

I'm not sure I agree 100% with all of English writer and cleric Sydney Smith's suggestions to his friend Lady Georgiana Morpeth in 1820 but most of them hold up.  What would be on your list?

 

16 February, 1820

Dear Lady Georgiana,

... Nobody has suffered more from low spirits than I have done - so I feel for you. 

 1st. Live as well as you dare. 

2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75 or 80 degrees. 

3rd. Amusing books. 

4th. Short views of human life - not further than dinner or tea. 

5th. Be as busy as you can. 

6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you. 

7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you. 

8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely - they are always worse for dignified concealment. 

9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you. 

10th. Compare your lot with that of other people. 

11th. Don't expect too much from human life - a sorry business at the best. 

12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy sentimental people, and everything likely to excite feeling or emotion not ending in active benevolence. 

13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree. 

14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue. 

15th. Make the room where you commonly sit, gay and pleasant. 

16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness. 

17th. Don't be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice. 

18th. Keep good blazing fires. 

19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion. 

20th. Believe me, dear Lady Georgiana,

Very truly yours,
Sydney Smith

it's the weekend: get out and shoot things

Jimmy Stewart. With a camera. That is all.

Watch.  This week we got our first look at what promises to be an epic screen adaptation of Les Miserables.  I'm not going to lie, watching this for the first time with my theatre chums nearly led to some ugly crying. 

Listen.  And on the theme of ugly crying, May 29 marked the 15th anniversary of singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley at age 30.  His only complete studio album, 1994's Grace,  remains one of my top summer evening soundtracks.  Here's one of my favourite tracks.  The bridge will tear your heart out.

Admire.  I am just so taken by this book of: Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Collections of the Smithsonian Museum  If you follow my Facebook page you know that's I was particularly smitten by architect Eero Saarinen's list of his wife's attributes - so candid and honest and real; I'd take it over a sonnet any day!

Make.  As the warm weather moves in and clothes get lighter, my patience for bulky purses and wallets is in decline.  May be time to whip up a simple vinyl billfold.  

Breathe. I'm playing hooky this afternoon and heading here.  The weather was inclement during my last visit so I'm look forward to enjoying it in the sunshine. 

...

confessions of a girly girl

kindred spirits

One of the reasons I came to Grand Manan this weekend was to do some research on a couple of projects that I've had in the back of my mind for awhile now.  The first thing I needed to do was to dig into the island archives to find out if there was enough material to do pursue what I had in mind.  (There was!) So I spent most of Saturday afternoon getting acquainted with two delightful ladies, a mother and daughter, and the host of colourful characters who populated their lives in the first few decades of the 20th century.  It's kind of a thrill to pore over the old yellowed original letters - you start to get a real feel for the details of their life and their personalities.  By the time I came across the quote above (written to the mother by the daughter while she was away at college in the late 1920s) I knew I had discovered kindred spirits.  Looking forward to coming back and spending more time with them!

lady sings the blues

etta james, (january 25, 1938 - january 20, 2012)

Legendary jazz and blues singer Etta James passed away today.  Like most people my first introduction to her was "At Last."  You'll get no objection from me that that's a fairly spectacular song but Etta James was so much more.  In fact, "At Last" is the least characteristic of what she did best - raw, yearning and often defiant odes to heartbreak.  That made you want to hit the dance floor.  So use this opportunity to get to know her better or to remember why you love her.

miss kitt to you

Eartha Kitt once said the public had been her fairy godmother.  Born on January 17, 1927 on a cotton plantation in South Carolina under the most abject of circumstances, she would go on to become the epitome of sophistication and glamour or as Orson Welles put it, "the most exciting woman in the world."

If your only experience with Eartha Kitt is "Santa Baby" or the final season of the Batman TV series, you must remedy this immediately.  Her distinctive singing style and clever songs ("Old-Fashioned Girl" is a particular favourite of mine) will add 67% more glamour to your day.  Guaranteed.

... ..

... ..

correspondence course: robert schumann to clara wieck

After seeing 8 year-old Clara Wieck perform, 17 year-old Robert Schumann quit his law studies to pursue music lessons with Clara's father.  When she was 15 he was completely smitten with her and wrote this charming and whimsical letter....

Mr. Green in the Albion Balloon, Having Ascended from Vauxhall, Metropolitan Museum of Art

...In the beginning I had various plans with regard to our correspondence. I wanted, for instance, to start a public one with you in the music journal; then I wanted to fill my hot-air balloon (you know that I own one) with ideas for letters, and arrange an ascent in a favourable wind with a suitable destination... I wanted to catch butterflies as letter-carriers to you. I wanted to send my letters first to Paris, so that you should open them with great curiousity, and then, more than surprised, would believe me in Paris. In short, I had many witty dreams in my head, from which only today the horn of the post has awakened me. Postillions, my dear Clara, have, by the way, as magical an effect on my as the most excellent champagne. Once seems to hvae no heqd, one has such a delightfully light heart, when one hears them trumpeting so joyously out into the world...

Leipzig, 1834

Photo: NY Public Library

elizabeth rosemond taylor, 1932-2011

the stuff life is made of

Dost thou love life?
Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

Benjamin Franklin

The folks at Etsy just posted this copy of Benjamin Franklin's daily schedule.  So simple.  So inspiring...

(I love the time devoted to "put things in their places"!)

be prepared

Every day I get an email with an inspirational quote from The Happiness Project.  (You can sign up to!) I had to share today's along with this amazing shot of Twyla Tharp at age 66 (from a 2007 GAP ad)