thesis week intensity

If I haven't returned your phone calls, texts, smoke signals...it is because my thesis is due one week from today. Unfortunately, imminent doom is my only real motivator, but it is quite effective.

For motivation, my dissertating friend and I have been coming up with motivational themes every week. A couple weeks ago it was "Keep up the intensity," to remind myself that I have to stay on top of it, and can't just lapse into five-hour sessions of watching 30 Rock and eating Hot Tamales--just to give you one example of a completely hypothetical distraction.

Last week I upgraded to Shark Week intensity--because what is more intense than a whole week of sharks???

If you have any ideas for me for even intenser themes--I can use all the help I can get. There are a zillion distractions and at least two hopelessly crappy chapters between here and next Monday.

and uzi!

I went to DC to meet this little one last weekend, and he stood me up. He decided to come five days late. I have to say, from the looks of it, he is worth the wait.

The advent of Ali and Curt's baby, or "Uzi" as he has been nicknamed, means the family offspring has tripled in the last week and a half. I think I am won over by the power of babies. I had almost forgotten how a newborn makes the whole family unabashedly sentimental, and in the best way, a little bit giddy.

welcome elle marie

A niece! Little does she know what an extaordinarily long line of women, and more women, she has fallen into. We are so happy to have her--the long-awaited next installment.

I wish I could be with her and see her almond eyes and touch her little seashell ears. If I could, maybe I would read her this poem:


Mrs. Adam
by Kathleen Norris

I have lately come to the conclusion that I am Eve,
alias Mrs. Adam. You know, there is no account
of her death in the Bible, and why am I not Eve?
Emily Dickinson in a letter,
12 January, 1846


Wake up,
you’ll need your wits about you.
This is not a dream,
but a woman who loves you, speaking.


She was there
when you cried out;
she brushed the terror away.
She knew
when it was time to sin.
You were wise
to let her handle it,
and leave that place.


We couldn’t speak at first
for the bitter knowledge,
the sweet taste of memory
on our tongues.


Listen, it’s time.
You were chosen too,
to put the world together.

harvest display

When I got this month's New Yorker from my mailbox yesterday, I was startled and happy to see Wayne Thiebaud on the cover. The tell-tale signs were all there: the food, the little halos around the food, the sometimes garish colors.

I have been thinking about food the last few weeks, we are talking about food in class, ala my on-going preoccupation with Michael Pollan. This particular Thiebaud echoes something I think about when I go to the grocery store, especially here in New York. At my neighborhood market right now, there are pumpkins and bubbly squash spilling onto the sidewalks, autumn apples in ten varieties, and, oddly, an overabundance of raspberries...? which are on special.

The "Harvest Display" in our modern world is a funny thing--not just displaying our harvest, but everyone else's, including South America's, which is where the November bumper crop of raspberries comes from. Next to Theibaud's pumpkin lies a summer treat--watermelon--and below are boxes of goods from Chile, Australia, Mexico. On the bottom shelves is that ubiquitous fruit that still seems a little out of place in New York in the winter--bananas.

All of this aside, though, the thing I liked best about Thiebaud's cover was the idea that he might have just painted it, that it might be new. If I feel uninspired or tired, I picture old Thiebaud next to his easel, stooped and squinting, still delighted by the world and churning out work.

election night

About 11:15 p.m. last night, New York went nuts. People started yelling and cheering in the streets, and more people answered the cheers and went out and joined them, and cheered some more.

On the sidewalks strangers were high-fiving. Every few minutes someone would shout, "Obama!" and a collective roar would go up. Then someone on the next corner would do the same thing, and someone on the next corner.

A friend called from Harlem, her voice breathless and muffled by the cheering and pot-banging up there. The streets were so full that cars had stopped using them. "I just can't stop crying," she said. (Hopefully she will blog about it :) )

Cabbies, yes, even cabbies joined in on the fray, beep-beeping their approval as they drove by, as jubilant riders hung out the windows, shouting.

I got on a subway car just as a chant of "O-ba-ma" went up on the platform. Could it be? Even the subway train seemed to pause on the tracks for a moment as a parade of supporters brandishing signs came down the platform. Everyone on the platform started chanting, and everyone on the train started chanting back. Then we started clapping, looking out and knocking on the train windows, until the chant reached a fever pitch.

With the market in a bind and Wall Street a mess, it's good to see the city with a smile on its face again. The whole place seems a little hopeful.

Coming home from Washington Heights tonight, I took an elevator down to the subway. I make the elevator ride several times a week, and it's terrible--cramped, stuffy, suffocating. It's one of the worst parts of my day, and, seemingly, everyone else's, including the elevator operator. She's a silent and unsmiling woman with corn rows, who sits behind a little desk in the elevator with a tiny fan blowing on her. She has a miserable job. Today as I was getting off, she broke her code of silence. She turned to me, one thumb turned up, and said, "Obama!"

I turned up both thumbs and said, "Obama!" back. I smiled the whole ride home.

spotted

If, like me, you became enamoured with Nanette Lepore's home in Elle Decor recently, you might be as delighted as I was when I saw this:



I gasped when I walked past Z. Gallerie the other day and saw this in their window. I'm as tired of the pirate trend as the next person, but I like that this is presented in Lepore's home as part of a salty-dog nautical theme paired with velvet, antlers, and mid-century furniture to make a humorous-but-tasteful admixture. Now all I need is $800, a super-size oil portrait of Eva Peron, and Jonathan Adler to pull off the whole look.

familiar face

I opened my J.Crew catalogue and was loving their new fall line. Not suprisingly, I was particularly drawn to a pretty yellow coat. And then I realized, wait a minute, the gamine beauty wearing the coat was one of my students! Last year I had count 'em, not one, but two models in the same classroom. And they were both nice, and smart, and yes, very pretty.

Hating on beautiful people just isn't what is used to be. sigh.