Monday, October 29, 2007

Then and Now

So much has changed in the last year. Massive move from the city to the country, and nothing says it better than pictures.

Last year, just before Halloween, we went to the Boston Common to see the attempt to break the record for most jack-o-lanterns carved and lit at one time. With two little ones in tow, we didn't stay until after dark, but it was quite impressive to see the massive numbers of carved pumpkins in one place at one time. It was a beautiful sunny day, marred only by the pervasive stench of pumpkin guts in the warm sunshine....



Flash forward one year. A much smaller pumpkin patch, but beautiful in its natural setting. Plus, we had Portia with us this time to help pick out the best pumpkins. Bigger boys, too!

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

A Study of American Wallpapers

I love my house.

Let me just say it again, I love my house.

I love the great tall ceilings and the leaded glass in the living and dining rooms. I love the cozy fireplace and the Victorian-era woodwork. I love the quirky upstairs bathroom and my office with the view of the backyard.

I do not, however, love the wallpaper.

Yes, there are acres and acres of wallpaper in this house. A veritable museum of wallpapers. And so I bring to you my study:

"It Takes a Village (to tear all this stuff down): A Study of American Wallpapers, circa 1970"

FIGURE 1: A delicate montage of daisies, cosmos, and monarch butterflies in tones of murky and murkier



FIGURE 2: An elegent faux-toile in shades of sage and dirty grey:



FIGURE 3: A garden of peach roses scattered over white frilly bits:



FIGURE 4: Um...daggers? half-completed crucifixes?



FIGURE 5: A scrubland scene viewed through dust-stained windows during a rainstorm:



FIGURE 6: Mud viewed through dust-stained windows during a rainstorm:



FIGURE 7: Invasion of the blue butterflies:



FIGURE 8: Just turn the lights off, please!



FIGURE 9: It only gets worse:



FIGURE 10: Was butterscotch the only color they had back then?



FIGURE 11: And my personal favorite. This isn't wallpaper; it's FABRIC. Nothing like some naughty bathing scenes to keep you entertained while you brush your teeth in the morning.



This concludes our study of American wallpapers, circa 1970. I'm sure it all looked stunning at the time. And I'm sure that my children or grandchildren will think I'm stark raving mad for thinking it's ugly. What do you think?

Sunday, October 07, 2007

It's about books today

Wanda at Fiberjoy has tagged me for a book meme. I've done a few of these from time to time, but I really like this one. Books, books, and more books!!

1. Hardcover or paperback, and why?

Generally I prefer hardcover books. I plan to keep every book that I buy, and I'd much rather have a library of hardcover books than paperbacks. However, paperbacks definitely have their place--when reading in the bathtub or when traveling, for example.

2. If I were to own a book shop, I would call it…

Tracy's Books?

3. My favorite quote from a book (mention the title) is…
...difficult to decide! One of my many favorites comes from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The opening line is "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." It is a line delivered plainly--for it was largely true in Austen's day--and yet, there is a touch of irony in it, once you get into the book and learn more about Elizabeth Bennet's character.

4. The author (alive or deceased) I would love to have lunch with would be…
Crazy Aunt Purl (Laurie Perry)! I've been reading her blog for ages and am now reading her book and enjoying every page of it. Plus, I think she'd be a real hoot to have lunch with!

5. If I were going to a deserted island and could only bring one book, except for the SAS survival guide, it would be…
my journal, so I could write down my thoughts.

6. I would love someone to invent a bookish gadget that…

would hold a book above me and turn the pages while I read in the tub, on or the beach, or on the couch...

7. The smell of an old book reminds me of…

so many places! Hot, dusty secondhand bookstores in north Texas. The stacks of Davis Library at the University of North Carolina. The pounding of my heart in the archives of the Fawcett Library in London, when I first laid my hands on the papers of Teresa Billington-Greig, the British suffragette I wrote my senior thesis about.

8. If I could be the lead character in a book (mention the title), it would be…
none of them! I love to escape into someone else's life in a book, but I'm quite happy to return to my own when I'm finished reading.

9. The most overestimated book of all times is…

(in my world) everything that one of our competitors publish. I work in educational publishing, and as each new competitor's book is published, there's always a flurry of nervousness about how the competitors are going to take the market. But I've been in the business long enough to know that there is no revolution in this business. There is incremental change, certainly, but a single book never radically changes the market.

10. I hate it when a book…
...is poorly edited. As an editor myself, I have little patience for companies that don't take the time to make books properly.

Friday, October 05, 2007

The Genographic Project

Yes, I'm still knitting, but in the absence of anything interesting to show, I thought I'd write about something I just discovered: National Geographic's Genographic Project.

I know, I'm probably the last person to have heard about it, but I find it so exciting that I just have to share.

Under the auspices of National Geographic, Dr. Spencer Wells is heading this massive five-year study of human migration, charting the migration of peoples through the analysis of DNA. One focus of the project is the collection of DNA from isolated, indigenous peoples--those whose separateness is threatened by growing contact and intermingling with the rest of the world.

But the part of the project that I find personally fascinating is the public participation aspect. The project is collecting genetic samples from anyone who chooses to participate, providing further depth to the knowledge about the migrations of peoples. If you choose to participate, they send you a kit for you to take a DNA sample (through a cheek swab). Some weeks later, they will post your results on their website. You can find out more about your deep ancestry than you ever could have before. You'll learn which path your family took from our common origin in Africa. It's not genealogy; it's a glimpse into your own prehistoric past.

Of course, it's just a glimpse, a limited view into your past. Women will learn the migration path of their family only through the maternal line, because the mitochondrial DNA is what remains unchanged from one generation to the next (except for mutations, of course). Men can choose to trace their family's migration path through their paternal line (because the Y chromosome is unchanged except for mutations) or through their maternal line (through mitochondria). But I think it's absolutely fascinating to be able to get even this limited glimpse into this previously unknowable past!

Our kits arrived from National Geographic yesterday, and we'll be sending the samples in tomorrow. Then, waiting on pins and needles to see what we find out!

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

If you're a foodie...

Since moving to this part of upstate New York, we've discovered some amazing foods at the local farmers' markets. Corn so sweet, so delicate, so delectable you want to eat it at every meal. Grapes so sweet and thin-skinned that they pop into sugary goodness as soon as you put them in your mouth. And pie....oh yes, the pies. Apple pies. Cherry pies. Fruit flavors so intense that there's barely enough room for sugar, and yet they're so sweet. Pastries so flaky like my mom used to make...or even better than my mom made. (Love you, Mom! Love your pie!)



And there seems to be a common denominator to all these lovely foods: they come from Amish or Mennonite farmers.

I know very little about the Amish or Mennonites. I plan to learn more, now that I'm living in an area where they live too. But as I'm going through my own process of simplification, of making life more genuine, of spending my time and my energy and my money on things that matter to me at my core, I wonder how they manage. How do they live their separate lives in this relentless modern world?

Last weekend, we went to Ithaca for the Apple Harvest Festival. Massive crowds of people from all walks of life, with so many ways of marking their separateness from mainstream American society. Hot pink hair. Tattoos. Piercings. Long, flowing, all-natural clothes. Black lipstick. And there amongst the rebels of American society, there were these plain people, entire families, some selling pies and other baked goods, others quietly observing the world around them. As we stopped to watch people ride the Ferris wheel (which, thankfully, none of the kids wanted to ride--I have a healthy fear of Ferris wheels from traveling fairs), I looked around and saw we were standing next to an Amish or Mennonite family watching the Ferris wheel too--the mother and girls in their starched caps, the father and the boys in their plain blue shirts, all in the same fabric. They were so unlike us, and yet, so like us. How do they find their balance in this crazy modern world? How do we?

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Happy Birthday, Portia!

On this beautiful autumn day, our Portia turned nine years old--last year of the single digits, last birthday before middle school, one foot in childhood and the other striving toward adulthood.


The world is your oyster, Portia! Make a wish!!


Enough with the birthday wishes, we want cake!!

Monday, October 01, 2007

Gorgeous autumn

I love autumn. And I feel so fortunate to live in a place that rewards us with brilliant colors in the fall.



In the part of Texas I grew up in, autumn was the time that leaves just went brown and fell off the trees. It didn't change the color of the landscape much, because it was already pretty brown from the scorching summers.

In school, however, we celebrated fall as if we were in the heart of New England. We drew pictures with bright red, orange, and gold leaves, and we made our own fall leaves out of colored construction paper--bright reds, oranges, and yellows. As an adult, I was known to make wreaths out of craft-store "silk" autumn leaves, just to have a hint of that eastern color.

Now that I've moved to a place where the leaves actually do change colors, it amazes me to think how eastern-centric we were in Texas. We not only mimicked the east with our fall colors, we did the same thing in winter--making snow scenes out of paper and glitter and glue. We only had snow once every few years--and never enough to warrant snow boots--and yet, all the pictures we learned to draw in wintertime had to have snow in it. Why didn't we celebrate the seasons the way they actually were?

But anyway, now I'm in the northeast and loving the colors. The trees started changing here quite early--at the very beginning of September--but we're still just approaching the peak of color. In the Boston area, the best color was always found the week of Columbus Day, but I'd always heard that this part of upstate New York was a little earlier than Boston. But here it is, just a few days from Columbus Day, and we still have a long way to go.

That's fine with me. I love the autumn and wish it could last a little longer. There are a lot of cold and grey days to follow, so I want to keep the memory of these brilliant colors as long as I can....