How To Update Your Wardrobe
What woman wears only one outfit for 60-plus years?*
When I need a fashion freshen and money is tight, I buy a lipstick. If I can spare a little cash, a couple of new t-shirts can make a difference. But if I’m feeling flush, the best single item to update last year’s clothes, is an awesome pair of boots. Wonder Woman, who appeared in this mod look, in 1968, doesn’t have to choose. She’s getting a complete re-d0. Check out her before and after –
Some Things You Can’t Do Alone
There were times after a relationship sputtered out, that I’d consult self-help books to learn what I could do better next time. I’d comb through the pages for exercises to practice, like musical scales, or the pliés and tendues I do in ballet class, only to realize that I couldn’t brush up on my coupling skills alone. I needed a partner for that.
Photograph: The Wedding, 1994, by Sandy Skoglund
When Short Term Gain is Enough. As Least for Now.
I yanked the ice from the freezer, knowing full well that it wasn’t going to work. I know, because I pay attention to OLD WIVES TALES that have been debunked as medical MYTHS, like antibiotics cure colds, and sugar makes kids hyper. And I remember reading in the Science section of the Times that ice doesn’t speed up healing from a burn, in fact, slows it down, but I grabbed a cube, because I was sure it would feel soothing on my hot flesh, and just maybe, the paper got it wrong. (Benefits of the aloe plant on burns are inconclusive.) It reminds me of all those one night stands, and the gut feeling right beforehand that I’d wake up feeling lousy, but forged ahead anyway.
Illustration: Little Aloe girl, 2010, by Sarah Goodreau
Does Dating Need a Purpose?
Today I read about a barbershop in the East Village that serves drinks as they shear. What an odd bit of multi-tasking. The reporter covering the story complained about wisps of hair and shaving cream falling into his martini, and how each time he wanted a sip, he had to ask the barber to STOP. I ask you, isn’t cocktail hour good enough to stand on its own? Along the same lines, I’ve learned about Dating for a Cause, which allows you to speed date at the same time that you’re repairing the world. If that sounds appealing, and you’re near Chinatown in NYC tomorrow afternoon, stop by for a 5 minute stroll around Columbus park with someone new (for a $10 donation to the American Cancer Society), and then both of you can decide afterwards if there’s enough interest for a second round. On the other hand, you might just want to curl up with a good book.
Image: Woman Reading, 1970, Will Barnet
Foolproof Way to Cook Fish (Thanks, Julia!)
I’m not good at cooking fish, so I never attempt it for dinner parties. It’s hard to get the timing right. One extra minute and your main course is overdone. When non-meat eaters came to the house recently, I decided to give it a try, but only because Julia Child was in the house. This salmon recipe (from Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home) is perfect if you’re dining alone, or easy enough when you’re entertaining a crowd.
Image: Woman Who Loves Fish, 2003, Maggie Taylor
Early Typecasting
One of the early model typewriters, which received its patent on this day in 1868, had flowers printed on its casing so that the weaker sex would feel more comfortable using it. And use it, we did. While being a secretary was originally a job for men, the invention of the typewriter brought unprecedented numbers of women into the workforce and by 1910, according to the Census Bureau, 81% of the professional typists (or type writers) were female. After all, we worked for cheap. Here’s the earliest record of an ad for women typists, placed in a New York paper, on December 15, 1875 by Remington:
Is Obsession With the Latest, Just an Excuse to Shop?
Last Tuesday, I was one of 600,000 acolytes ordering the new iPhone. It took hours, and several attempts of filling in the form, before the site was ready to accept payment. I was a click away from techno-climax, when I decided to take a breath and ask myself the unthinkable: Do I really NEED this phone? I hovered on the “purchase now” button, for a long, couple of minutes, as my heart raced, sweat beading up. This frenzy, so brilliantly engineered by Apple, put me in good company, but it made me feel uneasy. And the point was hammered home in the Times a few days later, when it devoted one of its few editorials to the Half-Life of Phones, asking us to soul search as to the environmental impact of our obsession with novelty. Last Tuesday, I found the discipline to wait. And mostly, I’m glad I did. But if you’re looking for me this weekend, I could be off the wagon, waiting in line with the masses at the Apple store.
Image: VHS, 2010, by Hollis Brown Thornton (permanent marker on paper).
5 Reasons to See “I Am Love”
I did not love, I Am Love, a lush new film, directed by Luca Guadagnino, which peeks into the lives of the very rich. But it was still a pleasurable way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Here’s why:
The “C” Word
No marriage, no family, can survive three rainy days in a camper – John Steinback
Through the years, I’ve slept in the wilderness in a tent. On two separate occasions, I survived three days in a camper (no rain). Last fall, during a romance with an outdoor adventure writer, he suggested we backpack for a weekend in the middle of nowhere, and I would have done that for him, but we split up. On the whole, though, I am much happier in a cushy hotel room, with a big bathtub. Occasionally I’ll get inquiries from men on dating sites whose profiles boast of camping, hiking, kayaking and other robust outdoor activities, but I’m afraid I’ll disappoint them with my urban ways, so I’m honest, and don’t usually hear back. How do you feel about the “C” word?
Image: The Forest, by Blair Mclean
Why I Don’t Write Autobiographical Poems
Love this!
Why I Don’t Write Autobiographical Poems
by Mary Wallach –
Vengeance doesn’t work in a poem, nor do digs at anatomical parts
or mean-spirited, see-what-I-mean, anecdotal jibes. For example,
you write an epic tirade against “Bob.” Who is Bob to me, the reader?
The fact that he lied, cheated, was lousy in bed, that doesn’t make Bob
special, nor does your problem with Bob make me feel different about my life.
However, speak to me of Bob’s kitchen, of its perfect, painted walls
of deep and shiny teal with high-gloss white moldings, (he was into that
Southwestern look), of the way Bob’s toast had to be cooked evenly on
both sides, and of Bob, himself, draped, regally, in a raggedy old kimono,
dragging on a filthy, filterless cigarette, his hand as graceful as a gazelle in
slow-motion, the nervousness suspended, of how each word he spoke was
always articulated as neatly, separately, yet as packed with juice as a
champagne grape — and I can begin to feel more impassioned. And when,
after several years of cohabitation, he drops you as carelessly as he flicks
an ash, you allow me to be devastated.
Photo: Cigarette vending machine in Italy, 2010, by Miguel Torres
Archive for June, 2010
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