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Clip: Maurizio Cattelan: All

17 Feb

 

Toe-numbing temperature didn’t stop the line from snaking past the Guggenheim and spilling out onto the residential sidewalk of the Upper East Side.  It was Pay What You Wish Saturday.  We’d wait in the frigid January night for that rate.  It would give us the chance to meditate on the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, the museum’s architect.

No, it would give us reason to complain.  About the cold.  About the wait.  I don’t even know what we’re standing in line for! my sister finally admitted out of frustration.

We were standing in line for Maurizio Cattelan: All.

Read the rest of the story on Burnside.

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Clip: Carsten Höller: Experience

10 Feb

 

At the local carnival there was always some kid who freaked out and made the wiry man who manned the ride’s controls stop the rickety ride mid-spin.

I was that kid.

Read the rest of Carsten Höller: Experience on Burnside.

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Clip: You Can’t Put a Language in a Zoo

30 Jan

One of the first languages spoken in Brooklyn is already extinct. Yours could be next.

Conservation efforts in Brooklyn are saving the land humans explore and the landmarks we create, while our very system of consciousness is in jeopardy.

Read the rest of my article “You Can’t Put a Language in a Zoo” in The Brooklyn Rail.

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Lavender, Parsley, Peppermint, and Sage

10 Jan

I feel so honored that natural health writer Shea Zukowski thanked me for my editing work in the acknowledgments in her book Lavender, Parsley, Peppermint, and Sage, published by Sterling Publishing!  It’s really such a lovely book, filled with natural remedies and organic cleaners that sound good enough to eat.  More than just useful tips and recipes, the book is brimming with fascinating trivia on herbs and ancient cultures.

Here’s the description from the back of the book:

Herbs offer powerful, natural, earth-friendly solutions for all sorts of home, garden, and personal needs. This invaluable guide gathers hundreds of simple recipes for herb-based formulas that are safe and effective for use in every home. Herbs have been used for practical purposes for thousands of years—natural and proven, they are a welcome alternative to man-made, often toxic chemicals.

Plus, they are easy and enjoyable to work with: herbs can be crushed, boiled, layered, and/or mixed with oil or water or other handy household ingredients to make hundreds of useful home products, for everything from cleaning to personal care.

Organized by use, this convenient volume presents a wealth of helpful herbal solutions. For each entry, readers will find an introduction describing the best uses for this product, a full ingredient list, step-bystep instructions for preparing the formula, information on storage, and advice on how to use it.

A wonderful gift book and useful reference combined, Lavender, Parsley, Peppermint, and Sage is an indispensable guide for a greener, healthier lifestyle.

What that doesn’t tell you is that it has instructions how how to make French Ironing Water, Just-In-Thyme Disinfectant Cleanser, and Rosemary Muscle Rub.  Don’t those sound so luxurious?!

Congrats to Shea Zukowski on the print edition and ebook edition.  It was such a pleasure to work on this book!  It’s inspired me to whip up my own all-natural products.

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Clip: Coffee and Portraiture and the Associations We Make

27 Dec

Associations are revealing.  This morning, as I was drinking a cup of horrid office coffee, my brain leapt from the specific brand and flavor of coffee my mom drank when I was growing up to a seemingly unrelated bit of biographical information about a photographer I’d researched while working on a blog post on his efforts to Save the Whales.  The photographer is Louie Psihoyos, the film director of The Cove, the Oscar Award-winning feature documentary that uncovers the horrifying mass slaughter of dolphins.  Psihoyos is from the Midwest, as is my mom (he was born in Iowa, my mom in Minnesota), and his immigrant parent came from the Peloponnesus, the same region of Greece my dad grew up in and where both of my parents now live.  That wasn’t the association I made this morning, though.  Instead, I was recalling that I myself had recently taken a photograph of my coffeemaker and a bag of hazelnut Eight O’Clock Coffee, while photographing some other food in my kitchen, and that I always associate hazelnut Eight O’Clock Coffee with my mom.  From there, I remembered I’d recently read about a photographer who’d photographed people with their possessions.  At first I didn’t even remember that the photographer was Psihoyos.  As I started to write the blog post about how I associate coffee with my mom, I kept thinking about the significance of Psihoyos photographing people with their possessions and what the objects we’re associated with impart about our identity.

Read the rest of the article on Burnside Writers Collective.

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Happy birthday to Astrid Lindgren!

14 Nov

Happy birthday to Astrid Lindgren!

 

 

Every once in a while I like to throw in a little blog on Swedish culture on this blog, and Astrid Lindgren is one of my most favorite Swedish authors.  She’s the author of the Pippi Longstocking books, which I actually came to through the movies made in ’69/’70, starring Inger Nilsson.

What I love about Astrid Lindgren is not only her silly, witty, award-winning children’s books that encouraged children to embrace their uniqueness and creativity, but she also was outspoken about being against corporal punishment and for animal rights.

After I graduated from undergrad, I had the opportunity to travel to Stockholm, where some of my mom’s side of the family was from.  On my must-see list was the Junibacken Museum, which celebrates Lindgren and her works.  I’d like to share with you my Literary Traveler article on my experience there on Astrid Lindgren’s birthday.

 

Happy Birthday, Teddy Roosevelt!

27 Oct

Happy birthday, Teddy Roosevelt!

On October 27, 1858, Theodore Roosevelt was born right here in New York City.  I had the opportunity to visit his birth home a few years ago and write the introduction to his classic book Hunting the Grisly and Other Stories, published by the Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading.

I am opposed to hunting for sport, and in my introduction I highlight the fact that although Roosevelt was a hunter he was also a conservationist who set up fifty-one wildlife refuges.

Roosevelt’s Hunting the Grisly is available for purchase in both paperback and ebook format.

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Clip: Church Hopping: St. Nicholas Church at the World Trade Center

3 Oct

As the debate rages on over whether the Muslim community center Park51, better known by the misnomer the “Ground Zero Mosque,” should be allowed to be constructed near the former cite of the World Trade Center, little media attention has gone to the one house of worship that actually was destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September 11: St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church.  Established by immigrants, the small Greek Orthodox church had served the spiritual needs of Lower Manhattan since 1916, just shy of a hundred years.  St. Nicholas was destroyed indirectly when the South Tower fell on it during the attacks of 9/11.  With religion at the center of debates over whether a Muslim community center should be built so close to where the Islamic militant group Al-Qaeda attacked and whether there should be any sort of clergy prayer at the ten-year anniversary, why has the Greek Orthodox church’s destruction gone under-reported?  Why are people who profess themselves Christian more invested in keeping a Muslim community center at bay than in rebuilding and growing a Christian church?  Is Greek Orthodox not Christian enough?

You can read my full Church Hopping article on St. Nicholas Church at the World Trade Center on Burnside Writers Collective.

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Clip: Church Hopping LIVE: Church of the Intercession

29 Sep

Did you know Audubon (yes, the bird guy) was one of the founders of a church up in Washington Heights?  If you weren’t able to make it to the live Church Hopping event, you can read about it here, on Burnside Writers Collective.

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Clip: Church Hopping LIVE @ The Church of St. Anselm

30 Aug

 

Dario and Paco saved the Church Hopping tour at St. Anselm’s in the Bronx.  Burnside published the story here.

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