Photographer Julia Margaret Cameron took up her “hobby” at 49. The camera was a gift from her family, a way to occupy her time while her husband traveled for work. She set up her own darkroom at their home on the Isle of Wight. She kept a journal. She presented her own portfolio to the…
Category: Culture
Postcard from Kansas
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If you’re wondering where people go when they don’t update their blogs for a few days, it might be Kansas. It might be to visit old friends. To stop and sit on a sofa, holding a fussy baby and wonder “Is this what is meant by vacation?” It might be that time you spend, stopping…
Drowning in Yogurt Cups
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Re: Recycling Yogurt Cups!!! Dear Dannon Yogurt, Recently scientists invented a device called the “laser.” It is very handy for correcting vision, cutting things, attaching to the heads of irritated seabass for military purposes. Scientists are smart and can come up with creative ways of fixing problems all the time. I was wondering, since 2005,…
Steve Martin-itis
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Or… When Funny and Serious Start Leg Wrestling on the Puce Shag Rug The sucky thing about being human is that even when you are HILARIOUS you aren’t hilarious all the time. Like right now, I am a friggin’ laugh riot, but can you tell? No. Why? Because I am suffering from the appalling and much-talked-about…
Bound for Glory: America in Colour 1939-1943
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Where: Photographer’s Gallery, 5 & 8 Great Newport Street, London, WC2H 7HY When: Through 28 January 2007 How Much: Free In my mind’s eye, The grapes of wrath are not purple or red or green. They are always charcoal grey. I must have imagined that the days before color television the whole world was an…
Launching a Mistress
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At Random House last night I met Lily (not her real name) and it reminded me of a story I want to tell you. But before I tell you, you have to know about last night. Lily and I and a roomful of disconnected people milling, the spaces filled with small talk and wine. We…
Under My Feet
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One thing that you lose, when you live a life with a car, is your connection with your feet. I miss my Mazda Protégé. I miss it a lot. I don’t love my life in London, and in lots of ways I can’t wait to be able to just hop in a car again—preferably a…
Tower after Hours
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Well. If you make friends with a yeoman warder, then, eventually, you’re going to have drinks with a yeoman warder. It’s bound to happen. The best place to do that, I guess, is the Tower of London. After we hooked up with Robin at the Pink Martini concert, he invited us to come down the…
Pink Martini and Heavy Hats
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If you weren’t at the Tower of London this past Saturday night, you missed two beautiful, and very different things. In no certain order. Pink Martini at Tower of London I believe it may be that communications still occur, via the Atlantic, by Dixie cup and string. And that, my friends, is why the Dionne…
Tales of May 06: Tampa-rriffiic!
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It wasn’t a “vacation.” It wasn’t a “holiday,” as they call it over here. It was an epic event of travel. With that in mind, I’ve decided to break up the Tales of May 06 into bits, for easier consumption. It all began, really, existentially, at the House of Meats. La Casa de la Carne.…
The World Should Be Flat
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I recently had my first proxy visitor to London. She came in the post. Here name was “Flat Stacey” and she was a friend of my niece Grace. Grace is one of many school kids involved in the Flat Stanley project. It’s an international literacy and communications project based on a kids book about a…
Michael Dale David Sebastian
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Navigating a new friend is like discovering a new museum. What is new about it, anyway? It’s been here for years. Yet it is new to me and I am new to it. Michael told me, casually, offhand, that he cleaned objects at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington. It was over a…
Surviving a blue day
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One blue day isn’t just that. It’s the culmination of hours, days, weeks, holding on, fingernails biting into that last saving grain of wood. Fine, fine!. I laugh, I am fine. I am hiding it from you. What is just “blue” is ripping up in me, nearly dead and bleeding on cold cement, in an…
Spiral-bound Woman
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I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. — Joan Didion I’m sitting at my oak table, one I use as a desk. I am glancing up, now and then, at the bookcase next to the…
