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Nantucket’s Daffodil Festival
Happy Monday! Happy May!
Over the weekend Joe and I went out to Nantucket for the Daffodil Festival, a yearly festival that celebrates the flowerly beginnings of spring on the island.
It was cloudy the whole day, so I played around with Instagram filters for my photos with the result that they each look like they were taken in a different era. Oops.
The festival is about old cars getting spruced up with yellow, parading across the island and finishing in an everyone-is-invited picnic. You don’t have to pay to participate and no one is selling anything. You just show up, hopefully wearing a little yellow and having packed a delicious lunch. and a nice blanket to nap on. and maybe some champagne to share with your neighbors.
I loved this little car logo. I would no doubt care more about cars if they all had logos like this.
Each year we get a little better at packing our picnic. This year we had quinoa tabbouleth, midwestern pasta salad (with pepperoni slices and mozzarella chunks), breaded chicken, cheesy mashed potatoes, olive bread with cheddar cheese, and almond cake. I’m posting the almond cake recipe later this week because it is so wonderful to have in your life.
Finally, my favorite detail from the weekend:
seeing this blanket that our friend Dave (in the photo above, right) handknit over the winter.
Isn’t it beautiful?
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the Twitter Star
Isn’t this just the best little notification? Someone on Twitter mentioned you! You earned a star! It’s red and looks like a stamp of approval!
(to get this on your desktop, download Twitter’s free application for your desktop, which I highly recommend, and change the preferences to alert with badge.)
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How to Pronounce Goethe
In David Brooks’ new book The Social Animal he makes a passing reference to people over-judging potential life partners, seeking out their flaws, and dismissing them.
A possible flaw casually suggested just to strike fear in your heart is mispronouncing the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s name. Let’s be honest, it’s bloody hard to know how to say it right unless you hang out with literary people a lot (or work with them, like I did).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y58HZdyIZfg]
Other words that I really appreciate this guy’s help with: Givenchy, Lanvin, L’Occitane (I hate mispronouncing fashion brands.)
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My Favorite Marinade
I love this marinade recipe. I copied it out of an old Gourmet, a summer issue that I unwisely started reading in January. (never do that to yourself.)
It was in the Letters to the Editor, and the writer said they made it every summer on their deck, with friends, over the grill. I make it in my kitchen with my mouse friends hiding in the corner, for just Joe and me. I try to give the meat (usually sirloin tips because I like their size) at least an hour to soak it all up, and then put them in a small pan and stick it under the broiler, turning every 10 minutes until they are done.
2 lbs flank steak (or whatever)
1/4 c. grainy mustard
2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
1 tsp. Worcestershire
1 Tbsp. soy
1 Tbsp. hoisin
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp minced ginger
If I’m missing anything I just mutter the magic words, “so what, who cares” and double the garlic.
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Jeanne-Claude at the Beach
The Wall Street Journal was free on Tuesday, for whatever reason, and I went to straight to the Lifestyle stuff. There was an article about how Christo was doing without Jeanne-Claude (grim), including this beautiful photo of them. Their story of life as lovers-collaborators is always inspring to me.
We have a print of their as-yet unfinished project of covering the Arkansas River in Colorado with fabric. It might sound sad to look at the print, an unfulfilled and now possibly doomed project, but I love it because the detail and span in the drawing is a reminder of how powerfully they dreamed things into being before anyone could even imagine them or believe they could happen.
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Dreamy Summer ads
36 striped cards later, thank you notes are done. Yess.
To celebrate, two vintage summer inspiration videos for you.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/6631659]
Steven Alan, Spring 2010 (yes, you’re right, I’ve featured this before.)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgURWZvXrJU]
Charlotte Ronson, Spring 2008 (seen on Matchbook Mag blog)
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Remembering Recipes
I love the theme of this week’s contest over at Food52: The Recipe You Want to Be Remembered for. What a great way to spark creativity in recipe hunting and honing. They are sure to, as always, get some amazing recipes out of it.
The above is a little snapshot of my favorite breakfast these days: vanilla pancakes with caramelized bananas, before or after church, at the Beacon Hill Bistro, which is down the street from our apartment and puts clean paper over the tables, serves their coffee with tiny stirring spoons, and takes it for granted that you want real maple syrup with your pancakes.
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Ira Glass on Early Creativity
Oh gosh, I so relate to this Ira Glass quote. My taste and what I admire are so far from the work that I’m actually able to execute, it drives me crazy. And keeps me from working. You too?
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
You heard it from Ira. We gotta fight our way through!
seen on Fresh Air’s tumblr, via Orangette’s twitter
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The new Paris Review
Whatever is going on over at the Paris Review, it’s working like my new Macbook air. Super slickly sexy in a way that makes me wonder if I have enough in me to keep up with it, no cords attached, with barely a mutter of effort to show that it is hard at work.
My favorite feature on the blog is the Cultural Diaries because I like to examine minutia of the cultural lives of strangers. But even the web design is snappy, not to mention how much you want to pick up and page through recent issues when you pass them in the library. And the editor-in-chief Lorin sounds shockingly cool, if not obnoxiously like how you imaged yourself at age forty.
I don’t follow him, but I do follow Thessaly La Force, their web editor, on Twitter, and would recommend her literary daily doses as well. They will make you feel like you walk to work on the streets of New York.
Drawing by William Pène du Bois from the Paris Review website footer, and their very first issue.
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Lauren Winner on Love Wins
Rob Bell’s Love Wins is not making its way onto my reading list because I’ve read a few of his previous books and his style is not my style. But I’ve wasted enough time reading tweets about it the last couple of months that I did want to at least read a review. So how nice that the New York Times had Lauren Winner write up a little something this past Sunday. If there is one Christian writer I will article-stalk until I find everything she’s ever written, it’s Ms. Winner. I like her dependably smart, historically well read, and cheerful approach.
As for the future heaven, Bell does indeed question the teaching that only a select few will get there. He imagines a woman sitting in church crying because she realizes that “if what the pastor is saying about heaven is true, she will be separated from her mother and father, brothers and sisters . . . forever, with no chance of any reunion, ever.” Against that vision, Bell suggests “an exclusivity on the other side of inclusivity.”