These happy dudes are super colorful in spirit and in the way they live.  A new section on my blog called:  “The Way They Live” features Mr. Anado McLaughlin + Mr. Richard Shultz in their house in San Miguel de Allende. “Everything is impermanent — you’re going to lose everything anyway,” his partner says, [...]

  ABC3D by Marion Bataille A Neal Porter Book, October 2008Age Range: 1 to 4 ISBN: 978-1-59643-425-7, ISBN10: 1-59643-425-2Novelty, 5 3/4 x 7 inches, 36 pages Awards: Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year; Capitol Choices Noteworthy Titles for Children and Teens “Easily the most innovative alpabet book of the year, if not the decade… Beyond clever.”—The Washington Post   Prepare to [...]

Sydney artist Phillip George poses among his surfboard exhibition at Casula Powerhouse Art Gallery on December 15, 2008 in Sydney, Australia. George designed the range of 30 ‘Inshallah’ or ‘God Willing’ boards in response to his trips to the Middle East, and to the Cronulla Race Riots in 2005, in an effort to create a [...]

Just cute.   Source unknown.

Design in the 1960s represented energy and fun: it was dynamic, cheap and cheerful and it prompted a consumer ‘youthquake’ revolution. Op Art fabrics, plastic chairs, inflatable houses, mini skirts, paper furniture, pop glass and psychedelic posters were all part of the design phenomenon. When Mary Quant launched ‘the look’ with her range of ready-to-wear [...]

Bryan Nash Gill displays and sells his work on the website Ashes & Milk - so do a whole slew of artists.  (I also love the work of Helen Beard – but that’s for another post.) “Ashes & Milk is an online gallery space founded on the principle that a lot can be created from very little. We [...]

A guy writes a blog – or is it a girl?  It can be heart wrenching little notes, why in the heck are those notes in that book kind of thing or old photos.  He/she finds the notes in old books in his bookstore and posts them online. Goes like this:  “I work at a used [...]

Featuring Brian Smith, his photography and his contribution to the book Friendship Family Love & Laughter. Inspired by the 1950’s landmark photographic exhibition, “The Family of Man”, M.I.L.K. began as an epic global search to find unique and geographically diverse images on the themes of friendship, family and love. It was not only the richest in [...]

Cool article – passed on to you from National Geographic Traveler. Ok, so maybe sleeping in a zoo isn’t your thing. Want to camp out in a museum instead? Then head to Copenhagen. The Kunsthal Charlottenborg museum of contemporary art just opened a new exhibit this weekend featuring a work by artists Bosch & Fjord that is, [...]

There is an amazingly school in Brooklin, Maine called The Wooden Boat School.  Located in a breathtakingly beautiful region of the Maine coast (a five-hour drive north of Boston, MA), our 60-acre “saltwater campus” encourages both faculty and students to feel at home and happily immerse themselves in a world of boatbuilding and boating. Introduction courses are [...]

Jim Denevan is a chef from California, but not all of his handy work fits easily onto a plate. Denevan also creates huge freehand sand drawings using a combination of tools and a truck. Recently one of his pieces has been dubbed the ‘largest freehand drawing in the world’ and it certainly is big at 3 [...]

There is nothing like having a great book, hanging out in the sunshine – or inside when it rains – and heading off to the land of adventure or inspiration or knowledge.  Here is a list of reads for Summer 2009 – some old, some new - Angela 1. Love Will Tear Us Apart – Sarah Rainone A Nick [...]

Looking for a bag with a “green” conscious?  Check out the line of AUM products made in Vancouver, British Columbia by Canada-based Red Flag Design.  All bags are made from locally sourced materials.  Red Flag has made  products of discarded materials since 2004 and they are getting better each year. The shoulder tote is made of re-purposed sailcloth, are [...]

Set yourself free, Baby Boomers, and opt for an adventurous and engaging life – it’s yours to plan and starting right now is a good time. Jeffrey Johnson and Paula Forman offer some valuable information on how and why and have written The Hourglass Solution: A Boomer’s Guide to the Rest of Your Life. “Many boomers [...]

In theatres: August 14, 2009 Taking Woodstock is an upcoming 2009 comedy-drama film about the Woodstock Festival of 1969. It is directed by Ang Lee and written by James Schamus based on the autobiography Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life by Elliot Tiber and Tom Monte.

Carl Fredricksen (Edward Asner) is a retired 78-year-old balloon seller. When Carl was a child, he met and eventually married a girl named Ellie who grew up in a small midwestern town. Ellie always dreamed of visiting South America, but they grew old together, and she died before she got a chance. Now, when developers [...]

First published in 1931, Vita Sackville-West’s masterpiece is the fictional companion to her great friend Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’. A beautiful book, quiet and haunting. And a fascinating exploration of how a building can exert a profound spiritual and emotional pull. Dame Wendy Hiller, the esteemed British actress, appeared as Lady Slade in the [...]

The film recounts the sad, interwoven declines of socialite Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her aspiring actress-singer-dancer daughter, Edith Bouvier Beale—a.k.a. “Big Edie” and “Little Edie.” Their story became a tabloid fixture in 1971 after town officials in East Hampton, N.Y., tried to evict them from their ramshackle mansion, Grey Gardens. Why did anyone outside [...]

Bob Dylan on Barack Obama, Ulysses Grant and American Civil War ghosts. Good article. here. Also read “Dreams of My Father” – written by Barack Obama.