A Moment of Dress-Lust
For this beautiful, hand embroidered, silk 1940’s cocktail dress — currently housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I guess makes a lot of sense. Still…it does inspire.
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Alicia Baladan: “Una Storia Guaraní”
Alicia Baladan is an Italian illustrator whose work has given me yet another reason for massively improving my Italian. I love this work — with its beautiful palette of colors and evocative imagery. Her latest children’s book “Una Storia Guaraní” is about the Guaraní Indians of Uruguay and their sacred and incredibly useful relationship to
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Climbing Milagrosa Canyon
Always around Christmas, with family showing up, we take it as an opportunity to explore new canyons in the mountains. This year a lot of time was spent in Milagrosa Canyon in the Santa Catalina mountains that border Tucson. It's beautiful and very rugged. Hiking the trail is "sporty," as the rock climbers say, meaning
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“I Started Early — Took My Dog:” Happy Birthday (A Day Late) to Emily Dickinson
Here is a wonderful animated film of Emily Dickinson's poem "I Started Early — Took My Dog," to celebrate the poet's birthday, December 10, 1830. The film was created for the Poetry Everywhere series from PBS and the Poetry Foundation. The lovely animation was done by Maureen Selwood and the poem was read by actress Blair
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Trajes Tipicos Mexicanos: Vintage Mexican Paper Dolls
I found these beauties sorting through yet another still-packed box in the garage. I was given these Mexican paper dolls when I was quite young and have fond memories of spending hours studying their regional costumes. One folded the arms behind the back, creating a cone shaped figure and then slid the ends of the
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Embroidered Postcards From Africa and Spain
In 1963 my parents simultaneously received Fulbright Awards to study abroad for the year. My mother went to India (and traveled through Nepal, Bhutan, and a forbidden sliver of Tibet on the border.) My father traveled to West Africa, where he made his way down the coast through 13 countries, meeting with emerging African authors
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In Praise of the Cook, II
Good cooks carry with them secrets locked away in the arcane languages of foods, herbs and spices. They study their alchemical properties, creating potent combinations that not only arouse our sense of taste, but offer well being and longevity. In India, the 5,000 year old Ayurvedic systems of cuisine promise the knowledge for prolonging a
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In Praise of the Cook
Let’s begin with a memory: I am nine or ten years old, shivering with terror in my bed at night. A violent storm rattles the windows, the lightening sharp and sizzling, thunder a chest–rattling roar in the darkness. Skeletal branches frantically lash the panes. I have read too much Beowulf for my own good, and
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Anne Siems: A World Of Wonder
It is easy enough to get lost in Ann Siems paintings, a world of verdant gardens, ghostly lace, and beautiful folkloric portraits. Siems paintings employ different elements of 18th and 19th century art. Her subjects are stylized childhood figures, with pink-cheeked and smiling faces, that stare wide-eyed at the viewer. By contrast, the figures inhabit
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The Voynich Manuscript: Magic, A Garden of Women, and a Secret Language
*Please note that posters in the comments provide links to pages that no longer exist — sadly! Yale at one point removed the archive of images from public view. I am sitting at my desk transported by the digital images of the Voynich Manuscript, created sometime between the late 15th century and early 16th
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