THE NEW NOW

Pinterest is a dream come true!

2012-02-09T14:12:00.000-08:00

When we moved back from Amsterdam one of my first tourist stops in American was a visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It was as close as I could get to resuscitating the world I'd left -- here's a woman who lived travel and experience, vicariously, through her make-believe Venetian courtyard and amongst her millions of dollars of art and sculpture and tapestry. Europe at home. Every now and then, Mrs. Gardner pops into my consciousness and this morning it was she in the form of this portrait. She's my muse today, and it's her energy I want to capture in what I write, how I communicate and the face I hope to put to the world. Mrs. Gardner is a traveler at home, living the style and creativity that so inspired her abroad.

It used to be I'd sit over a coffee table book and more recently a blog or magazine spread, and an image would take me away into my vicarious world. I'd gaze and think and then lose it again to that place ephemera goes - when you turn a page or go back to the business at hand. But friends, for capturing the spirit of creativity, now there's Pinterest!

They say you have to be a certain kind of person to embrace the breaking waves of social media, one who either lives a marketing existence and may or may not be paid to do so - or one with too much time on her hands. But Pinterest sates a whole different appetite, and there are far more of us hungry for it. You like pretty things? You collect stuff? You found yourself pointing over an old scrapbook from time to time, "that was this and look how sweet..." Pinterest is a scrapbook, and incredibly, people are actually interested in your photos.

Here is a fantastic and funny one-two-three on Pinterest and why we love it. Read... great blog too!

WHAT NOT TO WORRY ABOUT

2012-02-06T07:57:00.000-08:00

What were we worried about?

The New York Giants won the Super Bowl last night in the form they're famous for -- the win wasn't fancy, but you could cut the determination with a knife. Eli talked down to the microphone as he left the field: How did they pull it out? "We had faith in each other. And there was no other outcome."

We're big Giants fans, and we were worried about that outcome! A game is the simple stuff to be worried about. In fact, being worried about whether the Giants could pull it off was a nice break from being worried about the other stuff. And when it's all over, we are relieved - but not elated, feeling kind of like "OK, that was easy".

If having faith in your team is how you win, along with playing the game one pass reception at a time, why is it so easy to succumb to worry?

It isn't like me to work a sports metaphor, so let me take a left turn and share something more erudite, get back on familiar ground.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was a great one for analyzing what there was to worry about, and yet his wealth and love for a cocktail led him ever to the contrary. This is Fitzgerald's beautiful letter to his 11-year old daughter, Scottie - a list of things to worry about, not to worry about and simply think about.

Things to worry about:

Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship

Things not to worry about:

Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions

Things to think about:

What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:

(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?

With dearest love,

Daddy

(Source: F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters; Image: F. Scott Fitzgerald with his daughter, Scottie, in 1924.)

NOT ABOUT FORGETTING

2012-01-31T07:59:00.000-08:00

An extraordinary article in the New York Times Magazine last weekend called "The Essence of Being Human is Not Remembering but Forgetting" -- is your copy still laying around? Because the very point of the piece is how far removed we are getting from the hard copy - the true memory - the ephemera.

With what is nothing short of universal proliferation, our "hard copies" are disappearing. We use digital cameras and store our photos on an external hard drive - we used to stick white-bordered photos on our mirrors. Our music is on a screen, we scroll through songs whose titles really never meant anything, for what we used to listen to was more like a panorama, a bigger picture, called an ALBUM. Our memories are now a Facebook Timeline. The notes and letters we sent and received are now emails, texts. Shopping mornings or strolls around a lake are now, so often, tweets. Carina Chocano makes the bleak statement that "what we used to call... records, accounts, entries, archives, collections, keepsakes, catalogs, testimonies and memories" are now, simply, data -- the "stored evidence of our existence".

A dear and close friend from as long ago as 9th grade visited me on the frontier this weekend. It was she to whom my notes were passed and from whom I received the (rite of passage) photo and magazine collage. She was always the archiver for us, and still has it all, us, in boxes. And there's little chance she'll read this post because she's not on Facebook and she shrinks at the thought of following a blog. She says it's because she'd get lost in it, but I think she knows what the Times article is saying, which is, if she goes there, all she's collected will turn into... data.

But is that so, is it a stark either/or? I commented on this same question on January 4th after reading "The Joy of Quiet", and today I put the same stake in the ground. There can be both! What some think of as a replacement existence - cyberspace - should be enabling, not crippling! It should allow us to experience MORE, not be a numbing escape!

Jason Foer, author of "Moonwalking with Einstein: the Art and Science of Remembering Everything", is quoted in the Magazine's article as saying "what makes things memorable is that they are meaningful, significant, colorful." Let's talk about how to use this enabler - cyberspace - the New Now - to create significance and color. Imagination.

ARTIST A DAY: Get an email a day and be introduced to an artist of every medium, the mission is to make personal connections with everyday US and art

PINTEREST: Create an online pinboard, where you can collect the things that inspire you, and share it if you want

STUMBLE UPON: A discovery engine that is customized to find the things you want to see/read about/hear/learn, send you a weekly email - your own Time or Life

VERY SHORT LIST: Receive a daily email that recommends one must-know gem a day

COLOUR LOVERS: A blog that is the definitive voice on color, its role in life, the way it interplays and how it's interpreted

BOURRIDE, FISH SOUP

2012-01-21T14:29:00.001-08:00

One of the most inspiring places I have ever been is Biot, in the hills above Antibes in the South of France. John and I were there in 1996, can't remember how long we stayed but long enough to make a baby, and long enough that the Bourride at Hotel les Arcades was engraved to a collective memory, the most inspired dish on this emerald earth.

A simple enough preparation, we make fish soup now with what we have, adding taste layers but never messing with the elements. You've got to have clam broth and saffron, and a good little tin of tomato paste. The rest you can improvise. The affect of Bourride, our fish soup, is coals for a snow day or shade for a sunny one. This is creative perfection.

BOURRIDE or FISH SOUP

Preparation time: 25 minutes

INGREDIENTS (be creative)

6 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup of chopped onions
2 large garlic cloves, chopped
2/3 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1 1/2 cup of fresh chopped tomato (about 1 medium sized tomato)
2 tsp of tomato paste.
8 oz of clam juice (comes in a glass bottle in the soup aisle or at the seafood counter)
2/3 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 lb fish fillets (like halibut, cod, monk fish), cut into 2-inch pieces
1-2 sweet Italian sausage links, chopped in bite sized pieces
6-10 Mussels, washed and picked clean
Sprinkle of dried oregano, thyme, black pepper, Tobasco
10 or 15 strands of saffron
Salt

1 Heat olive oil in heavy large pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add chopped onion and garlic and sauté 4 minutes. Add parsley and stir 2 minutes. Add tomato, tomato paste and cook 2 minutes longer.

2 Add clam juice, dry white wine, and fish and simmer until fish is cooked through, less than 10 minutes. Add seasoning. Salt to taste. Ladle into bowls and serve.

Serves 4

With it, Manchego cheese and the bread you love, a plate of butter lettuce drizzled with good olive oil, the juice of a fresh lemon and a palmful of salt.

Night Fishing at Antibes, Picasso, August 1939. Click to learn about it.

THE POP CULTURE EDUCATION

2012-01-17T07:35:00.000-08:00

A friend emailed yesterday and said she needed a boost, and wanted an infusion of life, of info... Pop Culture!

I don't know what the exact motivation was for her (but I'll find out), I do know there is a certain quick flash, like the jones of a shopaholic, that is triggered at the lowest points of getting down with the New Now. In my early twenties in San Francisco, my roommate and I could mark each other's mood and heartbreak, the lowest of 20's lows, when we got the call to meet at Virgin Records - nothing beats life's dissatisfaction like brand new music.

Whether we know it or not, we have a soundtrack playing, all of us, and when the ride gets uncomfortable, we have to change the station. The newer the better, though don't ignore the call of the past, for us it was for Karla Bonoff or Neil Young. (Have to have these playing as I finish writing, so please listen while you read.)

Late January 2012 brings this kind of discomfort, like clockwork. Christmas has us sucking wind and Tax Day makes me think of Hitchcock's birds. In our 40's, it's not just moods or heartbreak that signal a soundtrack change, it's the Austerity Program. Some people go buy lipstick, I'm out getting music. Here's what's playing for me right now:

Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Friends

Mavis Staples, You are Not Alone

And when we're not out popping corks and waxing fortunate, we're watching:

The Big C, the smartest, funniest and most creative account of coping with Breast Cancer, talk about the New Now

The Tudors, late middle ages, still my passion because these people get passion. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is smashing as Henry VIII

Downton Abbey, surely you've heard about it, love class warfare when the bottom gets to come-up on the top

Modern Family, surely you all watch it already, go back and see the episodes you missed

And Episodes, Matt LeBlanc is outstanding, who knew?

Now you can click on those, watch and listen, it'll help to change the station --

ERNESTINE TOLD ME SHE LOVED ME

2012-01-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

We all have a pre- and post-9/11 perspective. Me, pre-911, went to work in running shoes and drank as much coffee as I wanted, all day long. My security was assumed and opportunity was a given. 9/11 was 10 years ago and I am just figuring out who I am, post. It occurs to me that we all morph over time and with age, even with a catalyst like 9/11 we still have to morph. The gift of the catalyst is a little better vision, a little more wisdom so that we can name inspiration when it comes to us. A catalyst like 9/11, or losing a job, a home, a lover can be the generator of creativity.

One Wednesday a month I serve lunch at the Bridge, a homeless resource in the heart of Dallas where creativity is pretty hard to discern. Yesterday I poured water, which meant I could talk to folks, ask how they are, learn something.

I poured water over a wad of cash passed between hands in a Winston pack, I was told that Jesus was my savior, a guy named Roman said he got his name for a type of shotgun favored for annihilation.

I also got to know two pretty amazing people. A man who's played the Blues all over the South asked if I wanted him to sing something for me. In the soup kitchen there's a horribly-tuned upright, he told me to follow him and stand by, he told me he was the only one left from his band, the others had... The bad acoustics in there made for a muffled sound, but when the music started, clients stayed sitting a lot longer than on other days. The piano player said he likes to play when he can, he said "these folks need it". I'm a good conversationalist so I replied "yes sir, WE ALL DO." Really? And do all of us appreciate a good pair of shoes a couple sizes too big for the 3 pairs of socks we wear to not get blisters? And isn't it great to get tipped off when a restaurant is putting out leftovers? The Blues guy said "Maybe we do, but things aren't good out here, we're having big problems. Some folks don't like each other and music's about all that brings them to earth." Imagine living the meanness of the street and having to deal with people not liking you. Pretty basic.

The piano player played and I kept pouring water and Ernestine sat down. I watched her, she was sitting next to a guy with cornrows who could have been her grandson if she'd started early; she had cataracts, he couldn't keep his pants up. From time to time she'd stroke him on his neck and whisper to him to eat. When their water ran down I went over and talked to them, they weren't related, Ernestine said, "We's married." Lucky man, I told him, to have someone stroke you like that, make you feel beautiful. Music played as the infighting raged, men were named after assault rifles, and yet, this strange pair loved each other.

Before they got moved along, Ernestine asked me what tribe I'm in. I know I must be in one, but I was surprised she thinks in those terms like I do, me rich white girl, she an old black lady living on the streets. It occurred to me then that I have no idea what tribe I'm in, and she said, "well, I knew when you saw me across the room that you recognized our tribe. I love you, girl, you in my tribe."

The creative part is what we bring to the table. How we see what people need, not just food and water but music to calm upset, and the sense of the Universe that connects us.

"Call it a network

Call it a tribe

Call it a family

Whatever you call it

Whoever you are

you need one."

- Jane Howard (1936-1996)

NEW, ALL OVER AGAIN

2012-01-04T09:30:00.000-08:00

Creativity is a process. It's a place, a state of mind and a pretty scary and deep chasm into which one can fall - even when we're not actively creating. I fell into the cavern of 2011, like a blind person I went round and round feeling the walls in the dark, never sure if I was near finding a way out or just working in circles, hand over hand, over the same walls. Despite how aimless that description sounds, 2011 may have been my most creative year, as I have literally sprung from the chasm with not just energy, but with a plan.

My Now is new, all over again. I, like every person on the reading planet, have not stopped thinking about Pico Iyer's Opinion piece in the New York Times last weekend, "The Joy of Quiet". It's been tweeted and retweeted, posted on Facebook by stacks of friends. And yet for me it's overt message: turn off technology and become a human, already is NOT what resonates. Instead, the many gems Iyer includes, quotes from Thoreau and Marshall McLuhan, and Merton, and the monk David Stendl-Rast speak to the power of connection, not the call for ex-communication.

Granted, the piece is all about the pace at which stuff is coming at us - and it's voracious for sure. We're freaking out, as Iyer says, because "like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much, all but overnight." But there is something to do other than shriek and run away fast to escape the pace. Because isn't pace what we're judged for, as a nation and as individuals? Think what we're able to accomplish at a pace!

The last line of Iyer's article gets it for me, gets at the ways in which peace and quiet must coexist with technology, information and the flashing lights of our lives. Iyer meets a past acquaintance from his chosen escape, a few days at a Benedictine hermitage. The acquaintance seems very clear about the coexistence - his kids are his story board. In these last lines you see the guy's kids, they're running dirty and happy down a rough road in front of him, whipping it up as they hiatus, their time is free today. It's the moments, isn't it? Peace + Quiet are moments by design! And "the child of tomorrow may actually be ahead of us," Iyer notes, "in terms of sensing not what's new, but what's essential." May it be added that the child of tomorrow is - with the help of the pace, the techo-beeps and the info-floods - the innovator, the builder, the founder of the real New.

The New Now is back, and accompanied by the (constant) interruptions, beeps and diversions I look forward to the conversation about how we cope in the chasm.

Some of the quotes in Pico Iyer's article, the Joy of Quiet:

"When things come at you too fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself." Marshall McLuhan

"The man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important message." Henry David Thoreau

Joy is described by the monk David Stendl-Rast as "that kind of happiness that doesn't depend on what happens."

WORRIED

2011-02-09T09:23:00.000-08:00

There are winters and there are winters. This one is vintage New Now. Seeming to say, you can run but you cannot hide. Seeming to remind that the whole world is not in our hands.

I am troubled by how far we have gotten, away from appreciative assent and cooperative curiosity. I am worried that we are putting too many obstacles in the way of the New Now being what I believed it would be, in time, with creativity.

We have lost our sense of humor, as a culture, as a country. We have lost the moment, the conversation.

Time to write, to borrow, to collaborate.

Another who is as introspective as I am today is the author of The W(HOLE) Story -- she's a poet and a curator, it's her photo above. She too seems to be seeking some order in this chaos. The New Now.

MY PLEA TO PLAY: FACEBOOK

2010-11-29T09:43:00.000-08:00

The New Now - mobile, telegenic, tele-transported, tele-networked. And yet... I have had several recent and intriguing conversations with friends and acquaintances - parents, professionals, pathological communicators - and I am just amazed how many are NOT tele-connected! That is, they aren't on Facebook! Is it me, she who used her parenting therapy group last Fall as a stage for confession during the discussion about how much is too much for our kids - I stood (unbidden -- who among them didn't confess, I still wonder): "I am a Facebook Fanatic!" I confessed with raised Blackberry in hand, yes, Facebook is my homepage.

I do not go so far as to say that Facebook is where I live, but those of you who meet me there know that my profile picture is not infrequently lit green to say "I'm here" when you sign on. I don't always type back when you attempt to chat (and I know you don't either), but there's something about seeing other lit-up profiles that makes me feel a little closer to home - even when the lit-up face is someone I have only met once. We are friends, nonetheless.

When my children were babies, I'd have them up in Maine in summer, weeks at a time. I'd look out my upstairs window and see kitchen lights in the distance. I was up at midnight for a final feeding - and someone else was up, too. That's sort of how the green light below profile pictures on Facebook makes me feel. Not alone, not too far away.

I just Googled: "Facebook, concerns". The volume, overwhelming, and I could have written each diatribe and its rebuttal. Instead, I'll take the opportunity to fall back on the great words of a sage of our generation, Lindsey Lohan: "My motto is to live everyday to the fullest - in moderation." Um, what?

Here's where I am on Facebook, my last words before I email around this post (so it hits my most fervently anti-Facebook following). If there is a clear and definable reason for your use of Facebook, write it here. And if you haven't caved, answer accordingly - what would be a perfect tool for this new age, the New Now?

Was your response easily articulated? Live it and love it, join me here in the New Now.

Facebook is my bridge to all the lives I've left behind me. It's how I get my music (WFUV) and my news (the New York Times). It's where I hear from my favorite personalities (Brian Lehrer on NPR and Clotilde Dusoulier of Chocolate & Zucchini) and watch my favorite TV shows (The Big C). I know you all better because of Facebook, and when we see eachother again in person, we'll have so much more time for fun as we've never actually lost touch.

Just a couple good ones popped up recently on my Facebook page - thanks Kersten and Susie!

A MINUTE ON READING: "THE BAD GIRL"

2010-11-23T07:25:00.000-08:00

Where did the Facebook app go that chronicled the books we've read, the ones we're reading and the favorites (and otherwise) of our friends? I can't find it, and have just read such an astounding book, I'm not sure where to go to tell you about it.

I read "The Bad Girl" by Mario Vargas Llosa for a new book group. What a textured piece - on friendship, on beauty, on aesthetics -- a story told via sex and submission and being dashed time after time by one single very bad girl! The crazy, lewd debauchery, over the top - is this real? Such a closely depicted life story, must be a morality tale - so how do we avoid the relinquishment of self and sanity in our own lives? And in the lives of, particularly, our boys?

In fact, this novel is inside out... it's reality-based fiction alright, but about the secondary characters. They are rational and sane and have the kind of command over themselves we recognize - they command power over reality in a way that the primary character, our Ricardito, he who is enslaved to a woman who hates him, cannot manage.

And it's a travelogue!

Most exquisite about this book written by a Peruvian master of literature is the insider portrait it paints of - Paris! "The Bad Girl" is a guide for my favorite city - the exhibits were real, the glitterati make cameos, the restaurateurs (some of whom I've known myself, like Jean Pierre Court of the unparalelled 7e bistro Auberge d'Chez Eux where I have basked in just the meal Ricardo and Soloman ate, down to the detail, probably with some of you!) -- the walks in the Tuileries. They taunt the reader - like :"hey you think this book isn't a real life tale?" Vargas Llosa's Paris is as immediate as if we were there this afternoon, so how can the life story of Ricardo NOT be real as a result? This is what I mean, it's inside out. Everything auxiliary is as plain as day, from the restaurants and cafes to the perfect, messy, real people Ricardo has propping him up. These are what defines Ricardo, not the woman who abuses him, manipulates him, lies to him, crazes him.

I finished The Bad Girl yesterday afternoon at 4:00 -- as one does when thoroughly taken with a novel, she reads while her kids are stationed screenside. The first place I went to find myself was the Errant Aesthete, which as its main concern brings hedonism (Paris) home. I can count on my errant blogger friend to walk me through coming back to earth after this fantastic read. Here's what the Aesthete leads off with, a quote from Plato:

"Everything that deceives can be said to enchant."

Perfect, the Errant Aesthete's salon, Crazy in Love -- here I have my conversation about "The Bad Girl".

SOMETIMES I JUST WANT TO GO HOME

2010-11-16T06:38:00.001-08:00

In this mobile society, "where do you come from?" is a hard one to answer. Lay that on pushing 50 and it becomes even harder.

I used to say I come from North Carolina, but that feels a stretch, as I left there before I'd ever even kissed a boy. The interim stops were not much more than places I lay to write in my diary and listen to my parents in deep philosophy with smart people downstairs. Then there were dorm rooms and rent shares, journeys afar and sprints back to wherever my parents were at the time. I still do that by the way, I find my parents, who, too, have never kept an address longer than a couple of seasons.

I'm unpacking after the latest move and the transience translates to what I'm holding. The nested russian ladies have sat on many shelves. A best friend's painting of two beautiful dogs has hung at the foot of a staircase and in a child's bedroom, in northern Europe and in London. What do I do with the 99 crystal vases and the chaotic collection of Eiffel Towers? I am exhausted. I've been over this, I've been through it. These things have places, I just want to go home!

In the Home Stretch

by Robert Frost, 1920

SHE stood against the kitchen sink, and looked
Over the sink out through a dusty window
At weeds the water from the sink made tall.
She wore her cape; her hat was in her hand.
Behind her was confusion in the room,
Of chairs turned upside down to sit like people
In other chairs, and something, come to look,
For every room a house has—parlor, bed-room,
And dining-room—thrown pell-mell in the kitchen.
And now and then a smudged, infernal face
Looked in a door behind her and addressed
Her back. She always answered without turning.

“Where will I put this walnut bureau, lady?”
“Put it on top of something that’s on top
Of something else,” she laughed. “Oh, put it where
You can to-night, and go. It’s almost dark;
You must be getting started back to town.”
Another blackened face thrust in and looked
And smiled, and when she did not turn, spoke gently,
“What are you seeing out the window, lady?”

“Never was I beladied so before.
Would evidence of having been called lady
More than so many times make me a lady
In common law, I wonder.”

“But I ask,
What are you seeing out the window, lady?”

“What I’ll be seeing more of in the years
To come as here I stand and go the round
Of many plates with towels many times.”

“And what is that? You only put me off.”

“Rank weeds that love the water from the dish-pan
More than some women like the dish-pan, Joe;
A little stretch of mowing-field for you;
Not much of that until I come to woods
That end all. And it’s scarce enough to call
A view.”

“And yet you think you like it, dear?”

“That’s what you’re so concerned to know! You hope
I like it. Bang goes something big away
Off there upstairs. The very tread of men
As great as those is shattering to the frame
Of such a little house. Once left alone,
You and I, dear, will go with softer steps
Up and down stairs and through the rooms, and none
But sudden winds that snatch them from our hands
Will ever slam the doors.”

“I think you see
More than you like to own to out that window.”

“No; for besides the things I tell you of,
I only see the years. They come and go
In alternation with the weeds, the field,
The wood.”

“What kind of years?”
“Why, latter years—
Different from early years.”
“I see them, too.
You didn’t count them?”
“No, the further off
So ran together that I didn’t try to.
It can scarce be that they would be in number
We’d care to know, for we are not young now.
And bang goes something else away off there.
It sounds as if it were the men went down,
And every crash meant one less to return
To lighted city streets we, too, have known,
But now are giving up for country darkness.”

“Come from that window where you see too much for me,
And take a livelier view of things from here.
They’re going. Watch this husky swarming up
Over the wheel into the sky-high seat,
Lighting his pipe now, squinting down his nose
At the flame burning downward as he sucks it.”

“See how it makes his nose-side bright, a proof
How dark it’s getting. Can you tell what time
It is by that? Or by the moon? The new moon!
What shoulder did I see her over? Neither.
A wire she is of silver, as new as we
To everything. Her light won’t last us long.
It’s something, though, to know we’re going to have her
Night after night and stronger every night
To see us through our first two weeks. But, Joe,
The stove! Before they go! Knock on the window;
Ask them to help you get it on its feet.
We stand here dreaming. Hurry! Call them back!”

“They’re not gone yet.”

“We’ve got to have the stove,
Whatever else we want for. And a light.
Have we a piece of candle if the lamp
And oil are buried out of reach?”
Again
The house was full of tramping, and the dark,
Door-filling men burst in and seized the stove.
A cannon-mouth-like hole was in the wall,
To which they set it true by eye; and then
Came up the jointed stovepipe in their hands,
So much too light and airy for their strength
It almost seemed to come ballooning up,
Slipping from clumsy clutches toward the ceiling.
“A fit!” said one, and banged a stovepipe shoulder.
“It’s good luck when you move in to begin
With good luck with your stovepipe. Never mind,
It’s not so bad in the country, settled down,
When people ’re getting on in life, You’ll like it.”
Joe said: “You big boys ought to find a farm,
And make good farmers, and leave other fellows
The city work to do. There’s not enough
For everybody as it is in there.”
“God!” one said wildly, and, when no one spoke:
“Say that to Jimmy here. He needs a farm.”
But Jimmy only made his jaw recede
Fool-like, and rolled his eyes as if to say
He saw himself a farmer. Then there was a French boy
Who said with seriousness that made them laugh,
“Ma friend, you ain’t know what it is you’re ask.”
He doffed his cap and held it with both hands
Across his chest to make as ’twere a bow:
“We’re giving you our chances on de farm.”
And then they all turned to with deafening boots
And put each other bodily out of the house.
“Goodby to them! We puzzle them. They think—
I don’t know what they think we see in what
They leave us to: that pasture slope that seems
The back some farm presents us; and your woods
To northward from your window at the sink,
Waiting to steal a step on us whenever
We drop our eyes or turn to other things,
As in the game ‘Ten-step’ the children play.”

“Good boys they seemed, and let them love the city.
All they could say was ‘God!’ when you proposed
Their coming out and making useful farmers.”

“Did they make something lonesome go through you?
It would take more than them to sicken you—
Us of our bargain. But they left us so
As to our fate, like fools past reasoning with.
They almost shook me.”

“It’s all so much
What we have always wanted, I confess
It’s seeming bad for a moment makes it seem
Even worse still, and so on down, down, down.
It’s nothing; it’s their leaving us at dusk.
I never bore it well when people went.
The first night after guests have gone, the house
Seems haunted or exposed. I always take
A personal interest in the locking up
At bedtime; but the strangeness soon wears off.”
He fetched a dingy lantern from behind
A door. “There’s that we didn’t lose! And these!”—
Some matches he unpocketed. “For food—
The meals we’ve had no one can take from us.
I wish that everything on earth were just
As certain as the meals we’ve had. I wish
The meals we haven’t had were, anyway.
What have you you know where to lay your hands on?”

“The bread we bought in passing at the store.
There’s butter somewhere, too.”

“Let’s rend the bread.
I’ll light the fire for company for you;
You’ll not have any other company
Till Ed begins to get out on a Sunday
To look us over and give us his idea
Of what wants pruning, shingling, breaking up.
He’ll know what he would do if he were we,
And all at once. He’ll plan for us and plan
To help us, but he’ll take it out in planning.
Well, you can set the table with the loaf.
Let’s see you find your loaf. I’ll light the fire.
I like chairs occupying other chairs
Not offering a lady—”

“There again, Joe!
You’re tired.”

“I’m drunk-nonsensical tired out;
Don’t mind a word I say. It’s a day’s work
To empty one house of all household goods
And fill another with ’em fifteen miles away,
Although you do no more than dump them down.”

“Dumped down in paradise we are and happy.”

“It’s all so much what I have always wanted,
I can’t believe it’s what you wanted, too.”

“Shouldn’t you like to know?”

“I’d like to know
If it is what you wanted, then how much
You wanted it for me.”

“A troubled conscience!
You don’t want me to tell if I don’t know.”

“I don’t want to find out what can’t be known.

But who first said the word to come?”

“My dear,
It’s who first thought the thought. You’re searching, Joe,
For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings.
Ends and beginnings—there are no such things.
There are only middles.”

“What is this?”
“This life?
Our sitting here by lantern-light together
Amid the wreckage of a former home?
You won’t deny the lantern isn’t new.
The stove is not, and you are not to me,
Nor I to you.”

“Perhaps you never were?”

“It would take me forever to recite
All that’s not new in where we find ourselves.
New is a word for fools in towns who think
Style upon style in dress and thought at last
Must get somewhere. I’ve heard you say as much.
No, this is no beginning.”

“Then an end?”

“End is a gloomy word.”
“Is it too late
To drag you out for just a good-night call
On the old peach trees on the knoll to grope
By starlight in the grass for a last peach
The neighbors may not have taken as their right
When the house wasn’t lived in? I’ve been looking:
I doubt if they have left us many grapes.
Before we set ourselves to right the house,
The first thing in the morning, out we go
To go the round of apple, cherry, peach,
Pine, alder, pasture, mowing, well, and brook.
All of a farm it is.”

“I know this much:
I’m going to put you in your bed, if first
I have to make you build it. Come, the light.”

When there was no more lantern in the kitchen,
The fire got out through crannies in the stove
And danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling,
As much at home as if they’d always danced there.

OBSERVATIONS IN TRANSITION, TEXAS

2010-09-02T07:07:00.000-07:00

Creativity and intention. Yep, it's all that. What's the New Now, really? It's being surprised at every turn in the trail. It starts with saying "yes, we can do that".

The New Now brings us to Texas. Not whitewashed Texas, not Austin, the Texas city that everyone where I come from calls cool and liberal. But Dallas. We are in the middle, up and dropped. A place most Easterners don't consider because we don't have the slightest - we can't even picture it - we have no expectations.

What is more appropriate, in a new world, seeing from new lenses, than to be lifted and dropped in a place we can't even pass judgment on? Passive and real, acceptance.

Creativity in transition is a stiff challenge. It's hard to be introspective when there's so little stillness of mind. ADD, too much to manage. But so many of us are in motion now, there is no rest. Rest was a state enjoyed earlier this decade. But transition equals observation. We notice and note, we fold down the corners, people, places and things.

What better application for my very favorite exercise, Three Beautiful Things?

1 - You watch late summer rain in Texas change by altitude, starting with long ribbons, then it's thick droplets, and by the time it reaches ground it's just mist, which for the cross country girls we pass on our way to school every morning, is like running through a sprinkler.

2 - I meet the stunning octogenarian from the 16th floor ordering a Grande Misto at Starbucks every day, then watch her meet her caretaker in the lobby with a hand shake and a kiss before they ascend to their day.

3 - Our furnished apartment came with industrial lighting, hotel linens and an uncomfortable pull-out couch. But the painting in the living room is a pastel of the Prinsengracht. Amsterdam meets Dallas, in a high rise.

MAKING TIME TO CREATE

2010-07-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

It's the challenge, one that even the most celebrated authors and artists have made clear when in conversation with dreamers (like me) -- the creative life is work, hard work. It's not just making the art, it's making the time to make the art. Herding ideas. Capturing them to keep them when time is not at hand.

Who has the time, that elusive, crystal time? I have the time that ticks toward an end, ticks like an egg timer with a single, awkward "ding", saying it's all over. I always pictured the creative life as the writer possessed by idea and time, in the room designated "own". Artists in their barns. Gardeners, morning til night, coaxing flowers to bloom, boundless time to ward off weed and rot.

Summer Night, Winslow Homer, 1890

I just read a piece on Winslow Homer in Downeast Magazine, a study of the artist's studio, aloof (and precious) in its Maine Coast grit and ruggedness. Turns out there was nothing pristine about the spot, not in Homer's day. The Homers were loud and numerous when he worked in Prouts Neck; picnics were events, peopled with waving arms and flying retort. All this shatters my image of quiet productivity. And yet, Winslow Homer's paintings were tightly constructed, perfect, and no one but Homer lives in that iconic crash of Maine waves.

Surely, creativity must thrive in wide, empty space. I know empty space is an elusive thing. Here are some prompts, structure that could give permission to be fractured in these fractious and fraught times.

Keep Track of Yourself

Write it down. Different notebooks for different outings is my approach. Consulting clients in development have their own Moleskin paperback. When I travel, it's a Moleskin hardback, palm-sized. I keep my every day brainstorms in a series of orange elastic-banded notebooks. Journals come in every shape and size to reflect the chapter you're in. I just ordered my latest journal from Etsy. A genius creation by a Toronto artist, each hand-bound diary is inspired by a vintage publication, depicting the first edition cover on its hard and colorful binding, and including the first chapter of the book you choose. I chose The Luckiest Girl.

Create in Groups

Last week's Sunday Styles featured Dream Groups, gatherings often led by experts and sometimes operated autonomously to explore members' nocturnal activity of the mind. While the article posited the groups a bit scarily as channels for seeking intimacy, I like the idea of using dreams as writing prompts.

My dearest Maggie told me of her Journaling Group in Galveston. They meet weekly in the morning, artists and writers, non-artists and "never wrote a things". One particular member is plugged in, does research on journaling prompts, has a book or two and leads her group with 10-to-20 minute writing sessions. Journalers then "share" (if they want to) as part of the exposition and development of their art.

The Diarist Workshop is a resource for writing in groups, and has some great links for writing prompts and inspiration.

Creating the Space

Writing it down, no matter your medium, is where to start. Dani Shapiro wrote in her recent blog entry called "On Talking" that capturing an idea or thought or story, instead of talking about it, is what makes or breaks momentum as an artist. It's a spontaneity thing, and for sociable people, discussion is tantamount to life.

Good pen, right setting, best paper. An elastic band to snap shut around it. Capturing the moment. Maybe that's the art, itself.

Even the Icons struggled to Capture It

Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield were literary friends in the early part of the last century; they were prolific writers, artists, diarists. In 1918, Virginia Woolf published Katherine Mansfield's great book "Prelude" from her own Hogarth Press. She and Leonard printed and bound the first 300 copies of her friend's creation, by hand. About this time, Virginia wrote Katherine about dealing with her own challenge with elusive ideas in a letter I found in archive at Smith College. These are truly journaling words:

Virginia Woolf writes:

“What is your ultimate desire—to what do you so passionately aspire?"

Then answers, for her friend Katherine, for herself.

"To write books and stories and sketches and poems.”

FOUND TIME

2010-06-28T14:52:00.000-07:00

The screens we overlay before us can get thick with number. Screens of school (getting children through it), screens of marriage (getting life partners through it), screens of work (layered upon layer) with expectation for production and creativity and, work, seemingly the answer to survival. The thing about screens is that they are flimsy and they inevitably drop, one by one, they fall away - in answer to our call to survive. We're looking for Found Time, but in reality the falling away often reveals a crisis beyond proportion.

Found time. Illicits such a gorgeous soft landing. Found time to take pulse, to catch up, to read, to write. To sip slowly and to talk meaningfully. Or, Found time = now what?

Can you give yourself permission to not know? Can we hide here in the time we find, not just taking pulse but taking stock, and letting a day pass, surviving the passage, and just... breathing?
In my found time this afternoon, I reached out a little, to try and find myself. This is what was given back.

Praise Song for the Day
by Elizabeth Alexander

A Poem for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other's
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what's on the other side.

I know there's something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

"Painting" by Maggie Taylor created with Adobe Photoshop

IN MOTION

2010-06-16T12:13:00.000-07:00

The times bring change whether we are ourselves in motion or just watching the flow.

Seasonal motion. Moving through time as our fundamentals have taught us. With early summer comes places to go, change to routine. Life's school thinks the calendar year nonsensical.

For us, it's simple sense. Our orbit has come full circle, school closes and progress is reported. There has been no real movement. 18 months ago I defined the New Now as painful rebirth, transitional to another plain. Thought I'd become good at it, given time. New Now seemed a momentary step to New Me.

Once at this time, the orbit ended and with it came the end of a contract. Now, I see change confront others, and into the winds they go.

And the news is - Get used to New Now, for it is the state of learning to spin on ones axis. It's the knack of spinning and not getting dizzy. Not new, the fouette turn is head stable, gaze on a fixed spot, body in motion, turning.

And then, Universal motion. High on our axis, not even a top whirls and twists quite like what our world is doing. The tides and channels are as intemperate as always, but sea birds in rainbow garb are in the spin with it, having not asked for it, having never expected it.

BP's assault, the spill, from space

"If only we might build an Ark." The Errant Aesthete, "where meaningful discourse, thoughtful utterance, amusing anecdote and enlightened chatter flourish and thrive". My model of all things close to the bone of style, Errant Aesthete writes of the assault on our blue jewel sea. Perhaps style arbiters are louche, perhaps they find meaning in satire. The Errant Aesthete has as her leading quote, this from Agatha Christie: "They tried to be too clever - and that was their undoing."

There has never been a time without suffering. It's where we meet our ingenuity, our God, call it what you like. For suffering we find antidote. Poetry in Motion is back on New York City buses and subways. Here is verse, which made me feel like someone, all along, will be watching.

Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing
- Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273)

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,

The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.

I SMELL IT!

2010-05-27T09:31:00.000-07:00

Life has overtaken me and I have fallen away, like a piece of fruit off its branch. Falling away hasn't been for distraction. Truth told, it's been an effort born of resentment. I haven't written a thing, for the place in line that writing has been relegated to. If I can't prioritize writing, I won't write.

Until this moment, when I cut into a nectarine and the scent overcame me. Better than the stunning scented candle, Beach House by LAFCO. Better than my new perfume, Infusion d'Iris by Prada. This nectarine actually said something, recited itself in poetic form. It said: we're almost there. Summer.

With summer, everything else stops and the real thing can start again - and I mean that figuratively. When it stops for me, I return to Maine and to the writings of Mary McCarthy and EB White, the poetry of Philip Booth and, maybe this summer, Rachel Carson. To drives along miles that only stop at the water. I will think about what I'm reading in the New York Times and tell you about finds and favorites. All of this will be in an effort to rise above the concerted distraction and reach up to that highest shelf, the one where we stick our journals once we write in them (no matter how long ago that was). That shelf's where the good ideas are stacked.

CRYSTAL BALL

2010-03-19T10:23:00.001-07:00

Apparently, life is about continuing to breath while living in limbo.

Because despite having access to every invention in the world to tell us which way to go (GPS, iPhone, apps galore), it turns out we have to cope and decide and dedicate ourselves to stepping in one direction vs another with no promises at all.

I sometimes think I hear the collective crinkle of a smile from the generations who went before us. It must contain a bit of relief that even with the coming-true of the Jetsons, life is still life, and no one is exempt from the ambiguity that comes with it.

Michelle Slatella asked yesterday in her New York Times column "Life's Journeys, a Lot Less Mysterious": "How does it change the way we experience the world, to know that nothing is unknown?" She's referring to the way we rely on our devices. The ones we buy to "make life easier" as well as the internal ones - our sense that we know everything there is to know, that we can get the information we need in a Google minute. Even the certainty that every corner of every vast forest and empty ocean has been plotted, mapped, committed to some service or other.

An old boyfriend once commented that in my infinite and earnest college-aged wisdom it was a shame that I was never surprised, by anything. Did I really know it all back then? When I know so little now?

GPS can't get us where we really need to go, not even close. A dear friend is trying to decide whether to choose a radical mastectomy because she's predisposed to breast cancer. Another grapples with a relationship that reflects her hopes for the future some days, but not others. John and I live on in our beloved home, gambling like Columbus would have that the gulf between us and financial terra firma is only a month's sail away.

It's the gamble. The GPS would say "Remove the breasts. Pack your bags. Sell the house." But for what?

Michelle Slatella consulted a professor from U.C. Irvine who specializes in maps and early explorers, asking her that question, about how living on the assumption that nothing is unknown is effecting our generation. The Professor responded that in the olden days, explorers "know where they are starting from. And they know that there is something beyond what they know."

She said: "When you are lost, there are possibilities."

MORE ON FEBRUARY FROM VALENTINE'S MORNING

2010-02-14T08:43:00.000-08:00

Sunday Styles in today's New York Times gave us more than one piece about love, today being Valentine's Day. What works and what doesn't in matters where "working" is an apt action word. Modern Love (always provocative), and something about Valentine's Day when you're alone, when you're wistful, when you're spending too much time on Facebook, when you're a gay or lesbian couple living in a State that tells them they're exempt from loving. Each story is short with a quippy "happy" ending, seemingly improbable for its too sensitive and personal voice. Like watching the wedding of strangers, the couple sharing their love in front of an audience of acquaintances throwing rice and clutching hankies-- and you & me watching from across the street, a vantage point that makes it seems a little put-on. That was my take on the New York Times vignettes. Call me a cynic. I'm happier doing my thing at home with my own cast of characters, listening to the ultimate in cynics, Rickie Lee Jones, sing about sad things on Valentines Day.

I've read so mcuh of late, about dreary February, and I just don't share the opinion. There's a certain recovery thing going on in February. Recovery, like coming up for air, or the day you know a flu is behind you. Snow comes, but it melts faster and is followed by incongruous flashes of a red bird or a round green patch. In North Carolina where I grew up there is a real and dependable February thaw. I remember dry and bright college mornings breathing Carolina lighter than air.

I love February, not because I have a beloved with whom I exchange a valentine, nor for the quick follow-up 6 days later of the day of my birth. It's that I believe in recovery, like forgiveness. February is over almost as soon as it starts, then March, and March is Spring. When color comes in longer flashes and the weight of dark begins to lift.

COMING TOGETHER

2010-02-09T08:14:00.000-08:00

Time has come to bring it all together again. It has been a year of making and manufacturing, of building creativity in places it didn't exist. You can feel it, see it. There's new momentum for so many of us.

The Daily Now is moving home. May this archive of cool and creative prompts live on for you. Go deep in, find the writing and art, photos and songs that made you move, every day this past year. The archive will always be here. Remember it. Click here to save it in your favorites.

And from here on, you'll find it back on the New Now. We're picking up our own pieces, and when we come up to look around, holy cow, it's us - it's our turn to take the reins and lead this place out of the mess it's in!

If creativity and responsibility work at once, we'll make this the better world.

Crisis and change makes us new, makes us something we haven't been. The New Now is about finding it where it is, it's the juice to create. We're turning crisis into momentum.

The painting of the bus is by Morgan Blair, "freelance illustrator, fine artist, and desperado. Recent graduate of RISD, now living in Brooklyn and continuing to advance her interest in trees, legos and excellent music."

3 Beautiful Things, for February 1st

2010-02-01T06:00:00.000-08:00

February brings a newness you feel but shouldn't believe. Rounding the corner, it's happening beneath our feet. Rebirth, growth, the tiny signs of thaw.

3 Beautiful Things for February 1st

1 - Waiting for the bus at 8 something this morning, we see a family come to their curb about 500 feet before our stop. Mom waiting with child, she walks out to the middle of our country road and dances a funny dance, legs akimbo. Child doubles over for her craziness.

2 - Reading Kathryn Stockett's "The Help", an eerily real novel about black maids and the white women they work for. Stockett's voice, she was sprung from the latter, is an innate memory, she knows the dialect, the love tinged with deep, faraway regret, the voice of a black woman raising white children. This novel is my chance to imagine what could have been, freedom and individuality for Dowdell, the black woman who "raised me". I salute you, Dowdell.

3 - At basketball practice for 7th and 8th grade girls, a perfect snapshot of 'before' and 'after'. Girls and women, arms entwined, jumping for the same balls. Before: the gangly beautiful pre-adolescents; childlike, blossom, unopened. After: full and free, an unnameable knowing. On one court.

WHAT MAKES ME OPTIMISTIC

2010-01-28T11:20:00.000-08:00

I got my hope back.

I heard it last night, the call to collaborate. It was the creative spark ignited on a grander scale. We have been living a mired existence of late. So much static, agendas and misunderstanding, and obtuse misuse of power - these are things that have been alive in our Universe, it has made me worry. I don't know the people who fight, who scream profanity. I didn't elect the people who wouldn't listen to all sides of such deeply complex issues, when so much is at stake. We seem to be at a nearly Biblical crossroads, where forces of good and progress meet competition and selfishness. I may be the only one who awoke this morning having heard, but I was energized by the message: clarity, someone taking hold, saying we must "DROP OUR WEAPONS". If we, our generation (because, folks, it is our turn) can learn from this, if we can disarm each other, we may do something heroic. I think we can be heroes.

Here are some of the indicators that have crossed my windshield today. For these too, I am optimistic:

3 Beautiful Things, written by a blogger in England, this short, 3-bulleted list is posted every single day. 3 things that open her eyes, 3 trivial things that together made a day to remember. I have followed 3 Beautiful Things for over a year and marvel at the writer's focus. It is more zen than meditation.

Pret a Voyager, a travel blog that picks you up and takes you there. Like Gourmet did. Not wistful, just hopeful. Every destination is just a decision away.

The Home section of the New York Times published a telling 3-page spread today, Best Sellers and Bombs. It is a beautiful, creative collage about what people like (and didn't like), what appeals to us, what we have actually bought through the final cycle of this windstorm recession. I love beautiful things. I collect ephemera and treasures, things that remind me of lighter times. This spread, which used to be published every year, hasn't been written since September 2007. It feels like we're raising our shades a little and letting some light shine in.

Buddhi Mat Yoga opened in our town. It is new and clean, and buzzing rather than funereal. It opened in what was only months ago a bank branch. It seems every new business that opened in the recent past were a tendril of yet another bank. Now it's yoga. Specialty food stores. Places of character and warmth.

Miss Whistle is a blog about life and culture and movies and poetry. This week she quotes Aldous Huxley, who said "it's a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and to find at the end one has no more to offer by way of advice than: 'Try to be a bit kinder'". If we can all just embrace kindness. Sibling to sibling, Democrat to Republican, Boss to Employee just let go. If we can channel compassion, we will commit GREATNESS.

Photo art from 20x200 a Project by Jen Bekman offers limited edition prints, photographs, posters to people like me, seeking images to inspire. The small ones may cost $50. The larger ones, $500. First come, first served. This poster hangs in my kitchen and has been a catalyst for conversation between John and me, also between our children. We range from bad days when we "don't even get it" to better days when it elicits the inspiration for making pancakes. That's creativity. You first have to get excited, then you make things.

INSPIRATION AND FINDING IT

2010-01-20T07:49:00.000-08:00

"Arrange whatever pieces come your way." - Virginia Woolf

The new year has happened, and I'm afraid it's receding fast in January's wake. New Years was when things were going to be put back in balance and I'd finish what I'd started, in a state of mind to set priorities and move forward with what is right for now. Leave the rest in good spirit.

My book, "The New Now", was supposed to have been started. The Artist's Way sits next to my bed. I initiated the Morning Pages back in the Fall, having identified the Artist's Way as my guide for this project. Yet somehow, everyhow, I've gone too many directions, and -- well, the Artist's Way sits there by my bed.

Inspiration is elusive, so say those who live their life in search for it. "The New Now" is meant to be written, for you, for me, to fill the widening void of support for how to get through a day once life has shown us it isn't what we thought it was.

I want to write like Virginia Woolf. Michael Cunningham wanted to write like Virginia Woolf too, he's the one who came up with The Hours which, in my mind, is so worthy of her they might have been in the same room when he wrote it.

I have emulated Virginia Woolf. I've followed her every breath, from Bloomsbury to Firle. I have camped out in the gardens of Charleston House and sketched the gatherings, so alive it's as if I sat amongst them. I've read Woolf's biography, I've speculated about her life, analyzed the essays and watched her story dissected on stage.

And now, I have a confession. Despite my dedication, or maybe because of it - I never, not ever got Virginia Woolf. Her words, they're so beautiful and perfectly pitched, but what they mean seem just out of my reach. Like a hanger-on at the cocktail party, nodding and laughing, I've been faking it. As if the language being spoken was one I boasted of, but in fact, only had through high school (a long time ago...)

This confession comes by way of closure, many thanks to Michael Cunningham's essay in Mentors, Muses & Monsters. Cunningham, who sits at Virginia Woolf's right hand, says:

"I was ready... or maybe I should say I was ready to be
ready - for Woolf's sentences. I had not only never seen language like that;
nothing I'd read had prepared me for the fact that a human being could do what
she had done, line by line, using the same ink and paper available to anybody. I
had neither read nor conceived of sentences that complex and muscular and
precise and beautiful. It may, perversely, have helped that I didn't quite
understand what the sentences actually meant. It may have helped free me to
better appreciate their tones and variations, the sheer virtuosity of their
structures and sounds. I remember thinking, Hey, she was doing with language
something like what Jimi Hendrix does with a guitar. Riffing, that
is, as only a genius can; finding over and over again an exquisite balance
between recklessness and control, between chaos and pattern."

So now I see. Virginia Woolf wrote not to be gotten. She is the true conduit, she provides life and truth, fulfillment and disappointment, bypainting them into a picture we cock our heads one way then the other to view. Long ago, she gave us the OK to leave the picture with our own interpretation, to apply it as our kind of beautiful to whatever we choose.

This is what I am trying to do in "The New Now". Provide the words for you to take and interpret. Onward, inspiration.

THE WISTFUL THAW

2010-01-06T05:54:00.000-08:00

Front page and center, where for over a year our journals have told the plaintive story of plants shutting down and long and winding dole lines, the New York Times features this: "Fresh Arrival in Cul-de-Sac is Optimism". It's true, the thaw is finally reaching those who sat around the table with tears and fears, and the houses that were dark for foreclosure are lighting up again, albeit (I assume) with new families taking the place of those who were forced to move along.

These have been rigid and icy months, and we too feel the thaw. John has made it back into the workforce, in a new capacity, but utilizing the skills and experience he held fast to during the months when the phone didn't ring. He didn't have to take a hard left to avoid disaster, he stayed his course. I worried, wished for someone in the know to tell him what he had to do and how he had to do it; but his determination won the day. Karma, confidence, whatever. Incredibly, even on our particular cul-de-sac, spring has come.

Trickling back to work, fathers hand their stand-in duties back to Mom, or to the neighbor, or in some cases, to the kids themselves. Dads have been everywhere. They've served behind the wheel of carpools and as Orthodontics Negotiator. The Great Recession may have been what was needed to begin a shift toward shared home duties.

At our house, pizza from scratch was in the oven 10 minutes before the bus arrived home. On American Idol night, family-minus-me sat four abreast on the sofa, taking in what John billed as "an Evening of Performing Arts". New traditions. Already outlived.

And they miss their father. Recovery is now about re-redefining home life, responsibilities, the order of things. The next phase of the process is absorbing how we've grown.

Translated:

He: "Now it’s scientifically proven: If Fathers educate children, they become more intelligent!"

She: "Who — Fathers or children?"

WIND ON THE WATER: HAPPY NEW YEAR

2010-01-04T08:09:00.000-08:00

The wind whirled and threw snow up like the flour flung so liberally by my family's women in their Christmas bread making.

The winds blew hard this year, winds of time. And we buttoned our coats to it with some assurance that a) it's getting better and b) if it's not, we can survive it. Because we did, because this time last year we weren't so sure.

I've never before experienced this new year's synchronicity: Our resolutions match each others, almost word for word. We each vow to do what it takes to ensure better times. "Good riddance 2009". The headlines proclaim it, and when the ball dropped at 12:01, those were the words exchanged with handshake and cheek kiss. These exact words, almost to a person.

We share the deep relief that time has passed. Even in the age of the Search for Enduring Youth, we're a year older and happy for it. Good riddance 2009.

I hear the whispers of older generations. Saying that it was a lesson a time in the coming. Hardship is life, and we are strong for our hardships. We have lived blessedly, with little hardship on a global scale. We did not know the determination of generations before, who likely celebrated many such New Years, bidding adieu in the very real sense, to a period of time that required such dogged, gritty compromise. We hear these whispers and with some humility, step into the year that promises better things.

A dear friend and mainstay in the New Now sent me a road map for achieving our universal New Years Resoultion, a resolution for recovery. The best is when you come upon powerful words that share their heft with a little sense of humor. I couldn't renounce email chain letters more vehemently, yet I have to pass this one along, for I can think of no better way to say it.

Happy New Year, dear readers.

HANDBOOK 2010

Health:

1. Drink plenty of water.
2. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar.
3. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.. 4. Live with the 3 E's -- Energy, Enthusiasm and Empathy
5. Make time to pray.
6. Play more games
7. Read more books than you did in 2009 .
8. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day
9. Sleep for 7 hours
10. Take a 10-30 minutes walk daily. And while you walk, smile.

Personality:

11. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
12. Don't have negative thoughts on things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment.
13. Don't over do. Keep your limits.
14. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
15. Don't waste your precious energy on gossip.
16. Dream more while you are awake
17. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need…
18. Forget issues of the past. Don't remind your partner or friend of His/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your present happiness.
19. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don't hate others.
20. Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present.
21. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
22. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
23. Smile and laugh more.
24. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree...

Society:

25. Call your family often.
26. Each day give something good to others.
27. Forgive everyone for everything..
28. Spend time w/ people over the age of 70 & under the age of 6.
29. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
30. What other people think of you is none of your business.
31. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.

Life:

32. Do the right thing!
33. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
34. God heals everything.
35. However good or bad a situation is, it will change..
36. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
37. The best is yet to come..
38. When you awake alive in the morning, thank God for it.
39. Your Inner most is always happy. So, be happy.

May the new year bring us the courage to ensure that the wind on the water will, indeed, carry us home. Listen.

TAIL LIGHTS JUST AHEAD

2009-12-22T17:16:00.001-08:00

December 22, 2009 and Daily Om sent its regular missive. Some days, I hold onto my Daily Om, ride on its beautiful back; some days the words are what take me from dawn until I get to sleep again to see what daybreak will bring.

May this one bring you clarity. Or at least encouragement. It will lift.

Fog
Coming out of a Haze

When we feel muddled and unfocused, unsure of which way to turn, we say we are in a fog. Similar to when we are in a fog in nature, we may feel like we can’t see where we’re going or where we’ve come from, and we’re afraid if we move too quickly we might run into something hidden in the mists that seem to surround us. Being in a fog necessarily slows us down by limiting our visibility. The best choice may be to pull over and wait for the murkiness to clear. If we move at all, we must go slowly, feeling our way and keeping our eyes open for shapes emerging from the haze, perhaps relying on the taillights of someone in front of us as we make our way along the road.

By and large, most of us prefer to be able to see where we are going and move steadfastly in that direction, but there are gifts that come from being in a fog. Sometimes it takes an obstacle like fog to get us to stop and be still in the moment, doing nothing. In this moment of involuntary inactivity, we may look within and find that the source of our fogginess is inside us; it could be some emotional issue that needs tending before we can safely go full steam ahead. Being in a fog reminds us that when we cannot see outside ourselves, we can always make progress by looking within. Then again, the fog may simply be teaching us important lessons about how to continue moving forward with extreme caution, harnessing our attention, watching closely for new information, and being ready to stop on a dime.

We cannot predict when a fog will come, nor can we know for certain when it will lift, but we can center ourselves in the haze and wait for guidance. We may find it inside ourselves or in a pair of barely visible taillights just ahead. Whether we follow the lights out of the fog, wait for a gentle breeze to lift it, or allow the sun to burn it away, we can rest certain that one way or another, we will move forward with clarity once again.

Subscribe to Daily Om.

HOLIDAY RECALL

2009-12-16T08:08:00.000-08:00

Holiday's here and a year has past. Last year, only weeks after we fell into the swirling current of our national crisis, we staged a Christmas for the record books. With all the fear of a new, upside-down life situation, we made a daily decision to keep stepping forward, to remember what was important. This time last year, that was to fulfill the annual obligation to our family and friends. Christmas, Come Hell or High Water.

And it was a great Christmas. I can still feel the relief of December 26th 2008, knowing what we accomplished working with a daily (recession) recipe of nausea and resentment. We managed through the holidays with even a bit of cheer and festivity, by inviting people around and sharing a laugh. Community helped us come face to face with the pound of flesh we were about to donate, and despite the anxiety, propelled us forward.

Oh, those days, how I wished for a crystal ball. I remember thinking that if I could just pace myself, I'd make it the weeks or months of joblessness, wondering, waiting. If I'd had a crystal ball would I have believed that another Christmas would come, replete with fear and wondering, and we'd still be breathing? Indeed, if Santa had given me that crystal ball and I'd been seen a vision of the longevity of this limbo state, I think I'd have gone down in a puff of smelling salts.

We're still here. We're facing into Christmas with the same gritted teeth as last year. Committed to making the season light for our passengers, the three who didn't sign on for a year like we've had, much less another to come. The task is, again, daunting, but since I know I've done it up to now (still breathing), I can go a bit further.

Here's what worked last year:

Scented Candles, always. Pomegranite or fir from K Hall
Cocktail gatherings - manchego cheese, fig bread, music, someone else bring the wine
Easy dinners - roasted chickens from the butcher, arugula, dates & parmesan
Good and constant playlists from Pandora: type in "holiday"
Setting up a team gift for the extended family with Heifer

What I'll add this year:

Themed reading, historical novels about Tudor England like The Other Boleyn Girl and the Virgin's Lover
Painting gestures of people and dogs in wild colors
A card table set up to do a laser-cut puzzle from Liberty

There's a great deal of relief knowing we've made it this far. John goes off every day to a tentative workplace, intent on making it permanent. I throw creative balls in the air and hope they don't drop - but if they do?????

There have been so much inspiration and resources gained during this year of unpredictable tides. The threads are here, now we move to tie them together.

IT'S THE COLOR OF YOUR CARRIAGE

2009-12-02T12:08:00.000-08:00

So I think we all agree, it's not a matter of how we got here, it's what color carriage we'll ride out on.

Before we arrived in the New Now - this age of "who the hell are we?" in the face of there being no free lunch after all - we didn't think much about the way out. Delivery? From what?

And yet, even with full time and satisfying employment, folks have changed their orientation. Target and Walmart are flourishing as go-to sources for fashionistas and freestylers. Dry cleaners and tailors are reporting record numbers as we continue to shop our closets. Contractors' phones are ringing off the hook, yet design magazines are falling like dominos. Even homeowners with a budget for renovation are finding the wherewithal to do it on the inside. (An arbiter of style, a friend who has always done things just so, had her children splash Benjamin Moore on a wall-sized canvas as anchor for her new dining room - isn't beauty in the eye of the beholder?)

I'd argue that this wave of homespun creativity should have rolled in a long time ago. We'd be a nation with a lot more style and character if we were more DIY.

In the New Now, the sane option is lifting your head to hear the stories. Creativity is individual, but I have a developing theory that nothing is NEW. I have a great idea which spurs one in you. You ask for advice from an acquaintance and he discovers his gift for giving it. Creativity is a knock-on effect. You've got to be creative, and you'll come up with the color of your carriage.

The blogs out there are legion, and each of them is based on a great idea carried to fruition. I suggested a reading list in Cyber Beauty. They're all sources of inspiration, but also these blogs are just great ideas.

Read blogs! Pass blogs along! Support those who wrote them with your time and attention, and that support will come back to you in chain-letter fashion. And in them, I'll wager the bet that you'll find a calling, something that leads you forward.

Are you looking for a great idea? Do you need creative inspiration? Is it a new job, the first line of a story? Is it a subject for your next oil painting or a Partner to brainstorm with? Look up and look around, the answer is there.

CYBER-BEAUTY

2009-11-30T10:11:00.000-08:00

There is a certain combination that in this new day - this new age - I find myself seeking in just about every medium, every day. That is the combination that makes BEAUTY.

Beauty is different in the New Now. Or I am different in the New Now, don't know which. But in this time of deep austerity, of questioning what's important and finding what matters, beauty is not just the single dimensional kind of pretty it once was. It involves the 5 senses. Now, it involves a 6th. The new 6th sense is how we bring beauty alive from our computer screen when we don't have the options we once had to go out and seek it. Not only is it possible, it is dynamic, and very real. And free.

You read my daily blog, The Daily Now. Everyday I go looking for something that inspires. It's research, beauty research. The presiding principle for The Daily Now is that beauty lives in the eye of the beholder. That may worry you, for what I find gorgeous may not even rate for you. All I ask of you is to come and visit, and see for yourself. Some days you'll look, say Hmmm (in that I-guess-I-get-it, kind of mystified, whatever sort of way) and you leave me and get on with your day. But I'll wager you go on with something different having visited. I do the research, you make your choice about how it effects you.

Roasted Radicchio with Blackberry Vinaigrette, Eating is Art

Beauty changes us, in a second. The newsstand is lined with magazines advertising the 1001 best gifts of 2009. Rarely do the gifts themselves merit such hyperbole, you may not even pick up the issue (on that "beholder of beauty" premise), but without fail, these glossy pages deliver on color and creativity, they're styled to delight.

It's that - it's the color, pattern and texture. I go even further in my beauty combination. It's music and voice. It's taste and temptation. That's beauty. Beauty itself is a performing art. Here's a list of my current 6th sense source for beauty, where the 5 real senses mingle. (Whether you buy it or not is your choice. It's free.)

BEAUTY IN TASTES

The Jewels of New York

101 Cookbooks

BEAUTY IN STYLE

The Errant Aesthete

Three Beautiful Things

BEAUTY IN THE REAL THING

Laura McPhee, Photographer

BEAUTY IN HUMOR

The Pursuit of Happiness, History and Illustrations by Maira Kalman

BEAUTY IN ART

Emerging art every day at Artist-a-day

Art and prose at the Blue Lantern

BEAUTY IN THE GOING

Pret a Voyager

BEAUTY IN SOUND

WFUV, Fordham University's unique radio station

and finally,

BEAUTY IN FLOWERS AND CUPCAKES

Bart Boehlert's Beautiful Things

GONNA SHAKE IT, BABY

2009-11-25T05:30:00.000-08:00

Last year, Thanksgiving launched this blog. We were a few days into the New Now and it was sinking in, fast, as we felt like we were sinking even faster.

Our whole life has been a walk on the balance of control. Growing up was about taking control. Twenties were about being out of control. Thirties were realizing that control was hovering just outside our reach. The forties, I used to say, are the point on the trajectory when you are experienced enough to do it all and mature enough to handle it.

And then mid-way through, that crashed too. Control - no such thing!

So Thanksgiving again, we're in the same spot with the same concerns and yet, just a little less fear. We've gone one time 'round the seasons and I'll be damned if the sun hasn't kept coming up!

I'm facing into Thanksgiving having a little less control than ever. The place in me that used to contain that urge is filled with something different this year. It's this tiny temptation to just let it fly. With that, behold an image of doing just that. And Katie Couric has handled a lot more stress than I ever will.

Moliere said: “All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.”

CENTER PLACE

2009-11-19T07:32:00.000-08:00

If you don't ask yourself where the center is, you won't find it.

The New Now is like a stallion turned out on a windy day. He gallops, flings himself through his Universe. Then stops fast, shakes, shudders; 2,000 pounds of momentum takes flight from the beast's body and dissipates like a ghost.

Here, has the pace stopped or is it still in motion, somewhere else, outside our realm? I wager, the latter. Nothing about the New Now is rational - or rationality, like the Now itself, is in the process of redefinition.

We say with a smirk, a shrug of complicity, "it's hurry up and wait". But that is because we are desperate to measure the pace ourselves, to have a hand in every beat of it, we want to mold its passing in order to divine its outcome.

It's when the stallion stops so fast you're liable to be tossed over its hock, that's when you need to get off, go find your center. You think I'm talking about a spiritual retreat, that sutra spot -- fingers lightly touching, your eyes closed... No, that's not what I'm suggesting. I'm not that calm, are you? I can count sheep faster than they can jump. I'm talking about a physical place, your space, where you stand, where you sit. Your center.

The New Now is a time, it is a state of being, and it is a place. Build it around you and go there to wait. Stallions stop short, they absorb the air and the sound and the sense, then they start moving again. They hurry up, and wait.

I Ask You
Billy Collins, Poet Laureate

What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside--
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.

But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.

No, it's all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles--
each a different height--
are singing in perfect harmony.

So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt--
frog at the edge of a pond--
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.

HEAVY TOLLS

2009-11-12T07:08:00.000-08:00

Feature article in today's New York Times: "Job Woes Exacting Heavy Toll on Family Life". For those who have experienced job loss, the reality of these words is like a glass of cold water in the face. Our home life is described in mirror shards of detail on the national front page. The rational iota of our brains knows that grown up stresses trickle down and reside with our young ones. But in order to survive the New Now, we want desperately to believe the running refrain from those who aren't walking in our shoes. "A blessing", they often call it. They say: Being home offers the gift of time to enjoy and tend to our loved ones.

But Michael Luo's article refutes this rather useless mantra. Quantity time does not equate to quality time. Think about your last 10-hour drive kids 3-abreast across the back seat to visit the in-laws. I don't care how good your integrated car entertainment system is...

Now overlay the worry, the fear. The disorientation of losing your "space" by being given infinite amounts of it.

The "Heavy Tolls" article is read days after being popped with the latest unemployment report: 10.2% jobless. It's a one-two punch which throws the panorama of our national family circumstance into black + white. The job loss happens to us, but the effects are suffered by others. The others I'm talking about are those who didn't do anything to deserve this. Accident of birth, shared address.

It's the truth of parenting. Once we were owner-operators. We spent money, we owned the debt. We got drunk, we felt like shit. We spewed and fought, we kissed and made up. With a spouse, a family, these consequences are divided equally regardless of culpability. You feel like you have no control? Go inside your 10-year old.

No one is exempt from the pain and anger, the frustration and helplessness. It's been said that these kinds of experiences are character building, they teach lessons about what's important, about the moral rectitude of frugality. Those benefits are like pension monies, you realize them in your sixties. That is, if you haven't paid them out to survive along the way.

Resist. Relax. None of this is a blessing. But survive it intact, we must. The pay-now is to teach our children that we have what it takes to navigate the ship. A small ship, for a long journey.

Resource for survival: Heather T. Forbes Beyond Consequences Institute. Subscribe for a daily reflection aimed at the heart of resistance as it applies to parenting.

IN THE KITCHEN

2009-11-02T14:33:00.000-08:00

Beating the pavement, making it happen, finding the angle. The way home from New York City today was the most vibrant pastiche of color. I'm doing what I can. I am a spouse, a partner, in the New Now.

The time is passing with each leaf as it drops. When it goes, it goes. When this time passes, it's gone.

Home, kids got here before me. Backpacks strewn and noise all around, in stereo. No school tomorrow. There's that effervescence of holiday, no rules, lots of potential.

What will they remember? That I came in from a day in the City and went upstairs to the computer? Or that I came in from a day in the City and turned on the oven, inviting sifters and stirrers to take their posts? There is no more creative place than in the kitchen.

Amy's Apple Pecan Cake

Adapted from Maida Heater's flourless apple cake

2 cups ground almonds

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

2 cups apples, peeled and chopped

1 stick butter (1/2 cup), room temperature

2 eggs

3/4 cup agave nectar - you can get this cheap at Trader Joe's, less cheap at a health food store

2 Tbsp plain yogurt

1 cup pecan pieces

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Whisk together almond meal, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon in a large bowl.

Cream butter and agave with hand mixer until light and fluffy. Fold in apples. Add eggs one at a time, stir in yogurt. Mix butter mixture with almond mixture. Mix in some of the pecans, if using. Sprinkle some on top.

Bake for 25-30 minutes. Watch for pecans as they brown, they can burn in an instant. Pull the cake out when a toothpick comes out clean.

GIRL POWER

2009-10-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who publishes daily on diverse social media sites. She paints a picture with photography, or You Tube video footage, quotes or other ephemera, and posts it for her Facebook and Twitter friends to follow. To decipher, for daily we have to figure out both where she is and where we are as a result of the experience she provided. This friend likes vintage. She is also a fiery feminist - her subjects tend to be empowered, emboldened, impassioned women.

Posted by Susie, this morning

People are losing their jobs, still, in the continuing firestorm of Recession. I heard today from yet another friend disclosing her Husband's loss, just 5 days ago. They - we all - will recover, but it takes time, and these folks are only now starting their process. I heard the weariness in her wavering phone voice. Knowing that her Husband was sitting next to her in the car, I realized her message was tactfully edited. But what I heard was all too familiar, it was the weariness of knowing what this process was going to require from her. Despite the fact that the fall was taken by him.

A woman's resume' will never reflect the job she really does. I'm not talking about the child-bearing, or child-rearing, or home-management or man-management, the jobs that defy articulation even if they were deemed resume' worthy. Job characteristics for a Partner in the New Now is inclusive of all these characteristics - and more. Now you're a crisis manager, rational thinker extraordinaire. You manage up, down and sideways, you keep the peace. And your forte' is finding and coaxing the humor back into the team. For a woman knows that without humor at home, we're sunk.

I am encouraged by how much Girl Power is coming to the fore in the New Now. Women are finding their way, doing jobs for free, all in the name of creating a ground swell. Outside of the home and even their partnership, women are collaborating, being cheerleaders for other women. I know the weariness, but like a strong cup of joe, the Will in us is rising up.

Tomorrow may be "a king-sized drag", but sister, look what kind of ground swell we got behind us. Girl power!

Posted by Susie, yesterday

ROLE MODELS

2009-10-19T08:55:00.000-07:00

There's a tremendous surge in the times these days. Those in the financial world are breathing again, bonuses are healthy and the Dow has topped 10,000. Main Street has a pulse, and though we won't break any records, folks are getting out, they're buying and selling and some are even driving new cars.

But there are still trenches, and here in the trenches, we're just hanging on. We wonder why the Financiers get to report the uptick and cash the bonus checks, when that's where all the trouble started in the first place. Shouldn't recovery start where the hurt is actually being felt?

The surge is actually happening down here in the trenches, and we're not doing it alone. In this astounding time of change and redefinition, momentum is building almost like a chain reaction. This is a time for seeking and nurturing Mentors. And for Mentors to revel in the power of their role modeling.

Creativity is not just discovering the novel in you, or uncovering your latent talent to put on sale on Etsy. You may be a painter or a poet, a soloist or a sculptor, and though as powerful an outlet as that may be, it is just a small part of building the momentum we need to survive in the New Now. Creativity is watching, listening, and invoking, in order to capitalize and build on the wave already in motion.

In my quotidian blog, The Daily Now, I grab onto an image or a message that cracks open the world of opportunity on a given day. Could be some one's face or a tune they've sung. Could be a panting pinnacled for posterity, or a line drawing spotted on a square of pavement. Nothing on the Daily Now is mine, it is borrowed, it is riding a wave already in motion.

Who is a role model? Is she such today and for always? Is she such for a moment, a second, someone with bright red lipstick and shiny gold hoops who tells you she loves what you've got going on? Is she famous, or regular? Is she prolific or a one-off? She's all those things. Collect role models.

We have a choice. We can do this in fear, we can throw balls in the air and hurl ourselves around trying to catch them. Or we can watch, listen, and learn. Your role models are going to keep you company.

Photograph of Sylvia Weinstock, "Leonardo DaVinci of Cakes", by Thayer Gowdy, 2009

THE UNIVERSE AIN'T WHAT IT'S CRACKED UP TO BE

2009-10-08T06:33:00.000-07:00

I learned yesterday that an old friend lost his job with a wind energy company, he'd been setting up green across the Plain States. Wasn't GREEN going to be the great white way, the savior of jobs, the new New Deal?

Unemployment creeps toward 10%. Folks, that means 1 of every 10 human beings you see on your daily circuit will be feeling just what we're feeling. 1 of every 10 will sit before her computer wondering who to shout out to today. 1 of every 10 counts the coins from the couch pillows to pay for the coffee he'll drink as he meets with whoever'll have him at Starbucks on any given morning.

It is "all outta kilter" alright, but the Universe will correct itself. We need to be clear and focused about how we'll contribute.

The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron's incredible road map for creativity, has introduced me to the Morning Pages. She says by way of challenge that "in order to retrieve your creativity, you need to find it... (you) do this by an apparently pointless process I call the morning pages."

It is a method for clearing your head and finding your way through the New Now, for getting to your resources, for navigating the day. Morning Pages are "three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages-- they are not high art. They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind-- and they are for your eyes only."

Morning Pages are my regimen. I write them on the back of a paper towel, on the Business section when I can't take what it's saying, or in an empty Word doc I recycle daily, hitting "no" when it asks me to save changes. I have no idea what I've written in my Morning Pages, often it's just a list of curse words strung together to make a paragraph. Well-placed curse words are not gibberish, especially if they wing their way harmlessly back into the Universe that holds us in her sway.

Without the Morning Pages I'd have very little sense of humor. I'd cry when I listen to things like Grant Rogers' "When a Fellow is Out of a Job".

Try writing Morning Pages, do it without judgement or structure. It's an easy diet, it isn't detox or deprivation. The results are sure and the outcome is wealth.

Wealth is Creativity in the New Now.

INDICATORS

2009-10-06T10:12:00.000-07:00

The closings of three long-standing and beauty-inspiring magazines from the Conde' Nast stable yesterday reached way down in me and elicited an audible "oh NO!" Modern Bride and Elegant Bride -- I carried them across New York and London looking for colors, textiles, images and inspiration, all woven into our outlandishly complex September 21st 1996 wedding on an island in Maine. These magazines were bricks in volume, and contained streams of eagerness and excitement, as the written page rarely does.

We need nuptial inspiration only a time (or two) in our life. Gourmet, though? Gourmet encourages not just creativity, but it challenged us to take risks, in the kitchen and on the road. The passing of Gourmet may be an indicator of what's not possible anymore. Might some call it entitled, this glossy reflection of the Good Life as embodied in fancy ingredients and far away climes? Perhaps, but the dedicated Gourmet reader wasn't necessarily interested in the Joneses, they might never find a star anise nor even go looking for one. Their Gourmet was about possibility. Glossy, beautifully captured possibility.

I've wondered with frequency if we'll ever be the same after all of this. I've wondered if I'll ever get to Morocco, or if my children will see Venice before it sinks. I've wondered if we'll have another chance to say "What the hell, let's do it" - or if frugality and worry are what our Great Recession will leave, indelibly, in its wake. Somehow, the passing of Gourmet answers that query. It will never be the same.

BROILED STEAK WITH HORSERADISH CREAM

Gourmet Magazine, May 2005

A simple horseradish cream turns broiled steak into a classic

1 (1-inch-thick) sirloin steak (1 1/2 to 2 lb)
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons drained bottled horseradish

Preheat broiler. Oil rack of a broiler pan.

Pat steak dry and sprinkle all over with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper.

Broil steak on rack of broiler pan 3 inches from heat 4 to 5 minutes per side for medium-rare. Transfer to a cutting board and let stand, loosely covered with foil, 5 minutes.

Stir together sour cream, horseradish, and remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in a small bowl and serve with steak.

ROAD RAGE ON THE HOME FRONT

2009-10-01T04:40:00.000-07:00

October 1st. No more movement than September 1st, or August 1st. Our New Now is getting old.

We put one foot in front of the other, we remind ourselves of what we have. And despite what seems like a snail's pace, we list what we have accomplished. 20 moving, productive digits. Kids and partners who laugh at stupid jokes. We have dogs and fish who have no clue what we're talking about when we throw around new paradigms, like The New Now. Challenges for dogs and fish don't change, start to finish. It's a fight for the basics. How refreshing. We have a home, we've made hard choices.

And yes, the pitfalls are many, turmoil is rife around us -- there is a colossal conflict of anger and new life raging this minute. Is this how creativity is distilled? Must we fight and spew in order to reach a good place?

In his New York Times column yesterday, "Where Did 'We' Go?", Thomas Friedman called out this anger; madness that has erupted, bizarrely, around our attempts to birth a healthcare system in this country. HEALTH CARE, which should be an overarching blanket that systematically cares for our babies. A compassionate effort by definition, how does this garner so much vitriol?

And then, on a local level. 3 drivers in the past 36 hours have lost their self control because of the way I, random 45-year old station wagon driver, shared the road with them. An elderly woman shot me the bird with a silent scream after I pulled out, admittedly hastily, before her in a parking lot. A middle aged man rolled down his side window and shrieked " YOU F&*%ing A@#&%*+&!!!!!" when I moved to the right by a sports field to let my daughter out for practice. I do not proclaim to be perfect behind the wheel or elsewhere, but I know one thing. My activity on the road, nobody's activity on the road, warrants self-righteous fury about the state of the Universe.

I tack it up to the sheer scope of change taking place around us. Change hurts, it makes us feel helpless, and we have to wait it out - practicing our own growth and creativity all the while. That often means we're forced to be creative when we do not know what we're making. We're forced to take on a new mantle when we were sure our work had been done.

Around here, creative growth and development translates to big things and small, but it is often embodied in food. I have a seven year old. She's creating and growing all day; it's a jungle, 2nd grade. What she wants at home is a plateful of nuggets. And yet we're pushing Creative, and serving up what she doesn't think she' s ready for. Tonight, on the home front:

MARCELLA HAZAN'S SQUID SAUTE'
As described in loving detail by Julia Davis at a creative summit yesterday

1.5 lbs Squid, cleaned, sliced into rings
1 1/2 tbsp onion, chopped fine
Olive oil
1 1/2 tsp garlic, chopped fine
1 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tbsp chopped garlic
1 cup canned tomatoes with their juice
1/2 cup red wine
salt, black pepper, oregano
2 lbs frozen or fresh (but shelled) English peas

1 cup Polenta (quick cooking), prepared as instructed

Saute the onion in olive oil until golden, add the garlic. When garlic is lightly colored, add parsley then tomato and wine. Add the squid to the pot, a pinch of salt and a few grindings of pepper. Cover and simmer for 40 minutes or so. Remove lid and continue to simmer cooking off some of the water to concentrate flavours and thicken the sauce a bit. In another 15 minutes, check that the squid is tender-- and when it is-- add the peas and stir them. Cook just long enough to warm the peas. Correct salt and pepper and serve over whatever fits your fancy. Serve with Polenta.

HOME, AGAIN

2009-09-16T04:50:00.000-07:00

Definition is subtle in the New Now.

When we determined that selling our house was our best defensive posture, we were forced into a paradigm about "home" that I never would have predicted.

Home is the place we'd come to and shut the doors behind us. Home, where friends join us and help us find the humor in it all. Home, where we're safe and warm, despite how frigid the times are outside. The determination to sell our house made us shift our notion of Home from the protective bodyguard to something entirely different. In order to survive, putting our beloved Home into the hands of the tactless and critical market, we had to see Home as the provider, whose coffers of gold would, literally, save us.

Remember when staying loose and free was the goal? Home was only a place to hang a shirt, and the more frequent the address change, the more real the adventure. Who can say when that shifted, I don't think it was linked to a milestone of age. Perhaps it was having the children.

More likely, it evolved around John's job loss, Home was the symbol of stability, missing everywhere else in our lives.

Yesterday, we took a decision - I use the English verb formation "to take a decision" with intention. We didn't "make" anything, we accepted a liability, we took a decision when - with eager buyer at the ready - we decided to "take" our house back. The definition of Home we had adopted as a desperate measure, that we should liquidate this perfect place and strip it of its value to get us through a period of time, became too awkward, painful to bear.

Home, once more redefined. It is ours again. We've committed the sales sheets and the marketing books to recycling, and the sign comes down today. Selling was a desperate measure. And we have taken the decision not to posture ourselves that way. May the Universe interpret our act as courageous, and reward us accordingly!

MAKE MY DAY

2009-09-10T08:48:00.000-07:00

Searching high and low for something to make me smile. We ponied up money for the girls to play soccer this Fall. Following the gripes, resistance and small change requests from the families who aren't feeling the same sense of privilege that their kids can just play again this year, I got an email from Cassie's coach this morning with the simple words: "We smile and have fun all the time."

The news is littered with hard court battles waged by the opposing sides of our Healthcare debate. There are no more hidden agendas, this warfare is about which side is going to win. The scores of uninsured have no position on the team.

We're losing it, people, losing it!

And for those of us trying to make sense of the New Now, trying to find a job, to reassure our children that we live in constructive times; those looking simply to settle in to the year with the hope that we just might be afloat this time next year; the dearth of humor is just not funny.

The 23 year-old and unknown Patrick Kelly was featured today in "City Room", a relatively hidden, sidebar of a column you can read Thursdays in The New York Times. He too appears to be looking for some light relief. Frustrated by the lack of jobs but buoyed by the creative burst, he's started a blog called Make My Day with Patrick Kelly. His readers post New York-based challenges for Kelly, challenges he commits to fulfilling every day for a full year. For example, he'll set himself up at a busy cross street surrounded by a couple chairs with a sign offering "Free Advice". On September 8th, he headed to a bench in Central Park with his guitar and writing tablet, the challenge was to find people to help him write a song. The result is not just what they produced, but what was effected in the process.

Apparently, this incredibly rich concept is being launched for the experience, not as a money maker. The book will no doubt follow, and truth is, I'll buy it. Kelly proclaims the experiment is designed to be as fulfilling for his contributors as it is for him. They live vicariously as he takes the risks. They see their small ideas turn into a live event.

Read the blog. The kid is a kid, for sure, and his writing will assuredly not change the world. But what will stick with you is how brave he is, what little he has to lose. That's the place where creativity thrives.

My children will follow the Make My Day blog, as will I. To bring home the simple message that anything is possible. Nothing's for sure, but anything is possible.

Patrick signs off from his latest post with this salutation: "Stay classy, Planet Earth. Watch football tonight."

We've got to meet humor where we find it.

SEPTEMBER 1ST

2009-09-01T08:18:00.000-07:00

The New Now is in starkest light on September 1st. It was for us the first day of school. And my first day to lift weights after the long, languid summer (spent with head inverted in sand). Today is 10 degrees cooler than August 31st. It is the first day of the year in many quarters.

New. Yes, but it feels old for so many of us, old and hard. Perhaps still jobless, our economy (micro and macro) is still riddled with question marks. We at home are still wondering what zipcode we'll live in September 1st next year. We fight back resentment and sadness, we fight back our own fear of there being a bottom deeper than the one we've already hit. The New Now is one in which answers do not come quickly or neatly packaged. They come in loose ribbons, the answers are the ends which, once we find them, can be made into a bow.

New Now. Coming back from a long, languid summer (spent with head inverted in the sand) presents this one opportunity. A chance to breathe. Today, it's time to breathe, and figure out who we are. Who we want to be.

Julie and Julia. Julie Powell, post-911 tele-servicer, is saved by a bunch of loose ends she's given to tie in whatever bow she's creative enough to make. Out of this she defines who she wants to be. It doesn't take astounding acting, a breathtaking romance or a Queens apartment to inspire you to save yourself by such a simple act.

"Shouldn't I find SOMETHING to dewwww...?" That's Meryl Streep playing Julia Child in a way that, as JoJo said, makes you certain that she is in fact the venerable chef. Watch the clip.

Need new packaging? Need to tie your own bow? No desire to cook 50,000 French recipes?

Let's brainstorm:

Sell stuff on eBay. Start with a dress. Move to a rocking chair. It's a thrill!

Follow The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater. A year-long project is inspiring, and Nigel Slater, British chef who "believes that making something good to eat for your self or for others can lift the spirits in the way little else can." A gorgeous journal of a book which steers you to local and seasonal ingredients and tells you what to do with them.

Form a Resume group. Just a few trusted, like-minded people to gather around developing a creative resume. There is no right answer, but doing resumes together helps to bring out strengths and lose the dead weight.

Write. Take an online course and write. www.writingclasses.com

Comment on blogs. There is such great, fun stuff to read and think about in the blogosphere. Bloggers want to hear from readers, and the more you comment, the more there is out there from you. If you have thoughts and experfiences to share, consider tagging onto what's being said. (Start here!)

Create a cookbook, or better, a lifestyle guide. Called a "Cookbook, Remixed", Tastebook is your source, www.tastebook.com Include your experience and ideas, send it to the rest of us for a holiday present!

There are only a few moments a year when we are given a new air to breathe. This is one of them. No pressure and no worry. Not talking about changing your life, career, love or hair. It is a distraction, an opportunity, in a time otherwise fraught and daunting.

I entreat you to add to these ideas, here below, about how to tie a bow out of loose ends.

BEING TOGETHER

2009-08-06T08:51:00.000-07:00

A recurring question from those outside is "How are you guys doing? Really doing?" Romantic relationships are not just strained in the New Now, they are imperiled. Just as you are going through the phases of grief, so is your relationship. Eight months in, friends, we're in the phase called "cruising". It's where we are and it's alright.

But Sunday's installment of "Modern Love", the always-unpredictable column in the Style section of The New York Times about love in its many, many, many guises, called out what I suspect may be causing anguish for many intimate partnerships these days. Combine the times with the natural progressions of a relationship (longterm monogamy + children + mid-life crisis...) and we may have some trouble on our hands.

What's to stop us from letting the challenges - no, horrors - of losing jobs, facing loss on a material scale and often having to move into plans C, D and F from ruining our love lives as well? The "Modern Love" column, entitled "Those Aren't Fighting Words, Dear" is a love-affirming story about a woman's courage not to let any of these things loosen her grip on what she knew to be true, her, love.

The author, Laura Munson, gave me the words I've been looking for. Not just to deflect lash-outs from the frustration of being identity stripped 48 years in: no work, no income, no big ideas. But they're safety-net words to keep me from falling for the irrational, words which will stand in for my own defensiveness and exasperation.

The words are: "I don't buy it".

Munson writes, "You see, I’d recently committed to a non-negotiable understanding with myself. I’d committed to “The End of Suffering.” I’d finally managed to exile the voices in my head that told me my personal happiness was only as good as my outward success, rooted in things that were often outside my control. I’d seen the insanity of that equation and decided to take responsibility for my own happiness. And I mean all of it.

My husband hadn’t yet come to this understanding with himself. He had enjoyed many years of hard work, and its rewards had supported our family of four all along. But his new endeavor hadn’t been going so well, and his ability to be the breadwinner was in rapid decline. He’d been miserable about this, felt useless, was losing himself emotionally and letting himself go physically. And now he wanted out of our marriage; to be done with our family.

But I wasn’t buying it."

Cruising is OK. I love my Husband for being able to say "it's only temporary". He's right, as hard as it is to feel unsettled and distant from one another. If you're experiencing something more angry, we all do during the darkest of these days, come back to Munson's words. It is a transcendant approach.

NEW WAY TO LOOK AT FIREWORKS

2009-07-23T14:50:00.000-07:00

In my daily trawls for inspiration I came across an artist who uses fireworks as her medium. Here's what Rosemarie Fiore says about her work:

"My drawings are created by containing and controlling firework explosions. I bomb blank sheets of paper with different fireworks including color smoke bombs, jumping jacks, monster balls, rings of fire, and lasers. As I work, I create imagery by controlling the chaotic nature of the explosions in upside-down containers. When the paper becomes saturated in color, dark and burned, I take it back to my studio and collage blank paper circles onto the image to establish new planes and open up the composition. I then continue to bomb the pieces. These actions are repeated a number of times. The final works contain many layers of collaged explosions and are thick and heavy."

Creativity comes in many forms, yet Fiore's art is something you just can't make up. Where did she get the inspiration to bomb fireworks, and when she was done, bomb them again to make a pretty picture?

Our lives are lived at least a few inches below the surface of activity and obligation. So many things have to come before setting down to write, or picking up that book, or painting the image we photographed so many months ago. Yet incredible ideas come to us, and we have a choice. Seize and pursue, or wait in the hope that another one won't be far behind.

I am nourishing a very big idea, which I hope will meld creativity with profession. Indeed, this idea was inspired by The New Now, which inspired The Daily Now. My inspiration is a living room for all of us, for my ideas and your ideas, a salon to share and compare, to co-op and crystalize. More on this idea in the months to come, but let me not lose this moment as a challenge to myself and to you. To take action, steps very small, noticing the knock-on effect. We may not be pyrotechnics, but we will rise out of all this with amazing product if we take care of the ideas.

THE POWER OF FAILURE

2009-06-24T07:44:00.000-07:00

While so many of us are playing the waiting game, walking the thin line between hanging on tight and exploring that worst case scenario, others are business as usual, making the trade, bringing home the bacon. And closer to home, even as our phone sits silent, some among us are even bagging the job and settling in to a new chapter in perhaps a new place, with - finally - a sense of direction.

It's a life lesson. The hard conversations we have with our children when they whine: "but JIMMY has the hyper-multi-band-egon-thruster cell phone..." What do you say? "Is your name JIMMY????"

But it's a lesson we thought we learned ourselves, a long time ago. How funny that here we are, still wrestling with the very same (I guess, as it turns out, human) instinct. Why do good things happen to everyone but me?

I remember walking up 7th Avenue with an old friend who couldn't find a man. I remember saying to her (smugly, I fear) that finding Mr Right is one part luck and the rest a matter of being open and having learned just the right amount about yourself to be ready to share, bla bla blah. Later on, there were many an evening at our house or someone else's, talking over the hard times befalling a distant acquaintance, saying what so many have now said to us: "We all have to deal with it, no one's exempt, it's just a matter of time". Glancing side to side, we'd each retreat to our dark internal closets to count our blessings, noting with a hint of guilt that we were dodging a bullet.

We do all have to deal with it. No one is exempt. Bad things happen to good people. Successful people fail. The book by the same perfect title, "When Smart People Fail" by Linda Gottlieb and Carole Hyatt outlines the process and the road to recovery in brutal detail, delivering the reader, redemptively to the inevitable and only path forward: With our wits about us, be hopeful.

And successful people become more successful in the process. "Failure can teach you compassion and humility. It offers you a new sense of power and a different way to connect with the universe – if you let it", Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen writes in her article "The Positive Power of Failure". She quotes Linda Gottlieb in her article: "Failure is a cleaning of the house. It's an opportunity to reorient your career, to inspect it, to relabel it. You learn to keep all your options in play, be light on your feet. Surviving failure makes you bold… Failure liberates you and gives you the courage to risk in a big enough way to guarantee big success."

But we must see failure for what it is, and be open to its power. We have to practice to really receive its gift.

Perhaps the most profound aspect of the New Now is how we come together, how loose acquaintances, friends of friends, willing enablers, come together to form networks for success. In this way, I've communicated regularly with Nadia, a friend and running partner from our days in Amsterdam, about our fears and our hopes in this dark place. We've traded contacts and connections, and gotten our husbands in touch to build a support network of their own. A few weeks ago, I heard from Nadia that they had landed a great job, had even had the good fortune of choice. After 8 months in the New Now they're moving on. Despite my envy, my intense desire to be where Nadia is, her "head spinning with the details", I am deeply relieved for her, and for us, that there is a light, it does end, here is living proof.

Read Nadia's elation in this paragraph. As the network finds roots, so will we.

Charlotte, after reading your email, both Lorne and I want you and John to know that we are incredibly supportive and understand your situation very well. It is a very difficult time to find a job but John has fantastic credentials, experience and personality and will find a great job!!! Just be patient and keep positive. There is a really low point that comes at 6 months but you have to push it into the far away corner and keep going!!! Because something good will happen. What worked for us was throwing a party in our kitchen every Friday. People would bring food and wine and we laughed and cried and danced and it was great or a real great distraction! I know it sounds wacky but we will have wonderful memories. Lorne had many low points, in the last 6 months he interviewed with 9 companies and some interviews consisted 5-6 interviews per one job, including all the telephone and in-person interviews. The two offers actually came from the places he started talking to in February and March and this is how long it took but as you said, it can also take just one phone call...

THE KARMA EFFECT

2009-06-12T15:16:00.000-07:00

As the going gets tougher and the time passes, we are increasingly aware of the workings of the network; the way that some contacts surpass the call of duty while others simply don't come through. Over a sandwich just today, John and I went through our roll call of who's been in touch, who's had good ideas, and with whom we have the most active quid pro quo - "you help me, I'll help you".

The New York Times Career Couch column (6/6/09) called "Helping the Job Seeker without Hurting Yourself" was a direct message to me about the other end of the phone. It is easy to get lost in where we are, our process, the full-time occupation which is getting a job. All the emails, the phone calls, the invitations we send out to our network is a relentless act of true determination. Yet the phone, which rings so discriminatingly in our house these days, is in the hands of someone with her own set of concerns.

Check it out: the Career Couch leads with a drawing of Corporate Joe at his desk, surrounded by water, shark fins and floundering, waving arms. Harsh reality: that's us, the ones drowning, sinking at Joe's feet. Desperation. Ugly as the drawing depicts us, the truth is this: Corporate Joe is likely as desperate as we are. S/he's the one who's still at the desk with more work, fewer colleagues, and often, lower pay. The New Now isn't just jobs taken away; it's what's left, the culture of fear. I remember consoling words from a friend last winter: "John lost his job? Well, if he's this far along and hasn't experienced this event, it's only a matter of time." Only a matter of time.

When life hits the skids like this, it's good to have friends. But what can we expect from them? It's not a fun Catch 22 to be a friend in the New Now. Career Couch says it right: "Those who are looking for work rely heavily on their networks for leads, and often believe that because you have a job, you must know of other jobs." We're at a life-changing moment. Once you've been here, I swear you'll think differently, even if you land in exactly the work scenario you left. Career Couch gives rather heartless advice to Corporate Joe, not to wear himself out counseling and coaching; not to give away too much "political capital"-- Hold it back, Joe, you never know when you'll need that nugget of a lead you're holding on to, wait for the prime candidate -- and even so, in an ever so capitalist way after all the caution, Couch says "it’s a good policy to help if you can, because you never know when the tables will turn." Still heartless, but... Karma.

Why do folks help each other, why is one contact so much richer than another? Is it really that we don't realise the power of the network? A dear friend, one of the most productive women I know, finds herself at a complete loss when friends find themselves without their employment identity. Why is it so hard to know how/when/if you should help?

If I can be a zealot about anything, it is this. We are only as good as the sum of our parts. Wrack your brain, people, what would you like to hear? How would you want to be helped? When you're in the New Now, you know for certain that it will take a many-minded-mission to regain solid ground. Indeed, it is my firm belief that the entire economy will take this kind of mission, every one of us needs to put our new headsets on and think - create - change - support - enable, in order to bring us to rights. The New York Times Career Couch may speak to you if you're Corporate Joe, but from this perspective I remind you of the mantra your Company X will never repeat - Karma... Karma... Karma.... Practice Karma.

BLOW IT OFF

2009-06-08T07:32:00.000-07:00

Last week, from hitting the deer to listing the house on the floundering real estate market, was a desert. The spectrum of emotion ran from Sadness (the high) to Breakdown in the Fast Lane (low). I think all of us operate somewhere mid-range no matter what our range is. Thinking back, I wonder if I even had a pulse last week. My boy asked me at one point: "Where's the Joy, Mom?"

Friday came (amazingly), and I couldn't take the pain anymore. I made a desert decision to Offer it Up. It was so totally not selfless, new age or zen. It was a function of not being able to live the sadness any more.

We go through denial in this process, we go through anger. The sadness is a drag, and in this everlastingly dreary job market, the sadness, or "lack of hope" phase feels like it will live on forever.

BUT... we all have our digits, we have our sense and our intellect. We can brew a cup of coffee, we can scoop a bowl of ice cream. We have friends around who offer respite. Guess what people, everyone will tell you that "we have to go through the process" - but what I realised last week is this. Sadness can be a choice, not an obligation.

Here's the reality. Events will take their course regardless of whether we get sad or not. So try this along with me this week. When the sadness strikes and threatens to define your range of emotion, blow it off. Literally, blow, with your lips, blow it away. Say to yourself what's true - You Can't Take It. The miracle is that if you say it, and then you purse your lips and blow, it'll go.

Go now and read Anne Lamott's piece in The Daily Now about survival in the desert. Anne Lamott cannot help but get you through. http://the-daily-now.blogspot.com/

CREATIVITY STUDY: MONK HELPERS

2009-06-02T07:52:00.000-07:00

The thing about inspiration is that you can't predict when, or where, or even how it'll hit.

Often it takes anger and confrontation to put on a new headset. After one of the worst down-days to date in our New Now, John and I met in the ring this morning. Each of us were backed by 24 hours of soul searching - which meant we approached one another with a fresh, pointed and undeniably individual line of thinking. And we were prepared to "share it with eachother". That is, if sharing means someone wins and someone... doesn't.

Understand, we are at a turning point, that place when a decision is not arrived at, it's forced. Hence the 24 hours we each spent figuring out how we felt about where we are. I woke up clamoring "Creativity" - let's liquidate and move to where we want to be -- good luck will surely follow and we'll be more fulfilled than ever. Peace Corps, Key West, the Riviera...

John, though, had steeped through the night, in "Conserve" - let's liquidate and head for the hills, move in with Mom & Dad, hide out and spend nothing until the storm passes.

Two very different corners, where shall the twain meet?

We parted having made our arguments, indeed, argument was the process. We are in this together on no common ground.

I turned to the New York Times looking for inspiration. Here's what I found.

Two entrepreneurs from Colorado sell their copier cartridge business to some Cistercian Monks in Wisconsin who've decided they want to be in the cartridge business. You see, monks are charged with making money, supporting their order, but this group had the big idea (cartridges?) but no head for business (rather make honey and sculpt), so after the deal was made, it becomes clear that the women from Colorado were at the Monastery - to stay - to run what's become a multi-million dollar enterprise, LaserMonks.

The irony of it is what makes is so inspirational. What monk wants to be in the cartridge business? What urban woman of a certain age dreams of her small-beans computer supply company being run to support a Cistercian Monastery? I'm thrilled by how UNpredictable it all is, and it made my morning.

How can you not feel the power of this: “Good morning, LaserMonks. Greetings and peace,” Victoria Bench answers the Monastery's phones. Apparently she's a zen-like presence but the humor doesn't seem to escape her. She says that more likely than not, what she hears on the other end of the phone is “You don’t sound like a monk.”

We're in a tight place in The New Now, and we don't know where we're headed. But I'm starting to realize that we'll likely end up in a place where "we don't sound like a monk".

INSPIRATION: THE DAILY NOW

2009-06-01T12:22:00.001-07:00

Today's been a tough one. I hit a deer at 7:25 on my way to take Cassie to school. I took her broadside with impact, and though she didn't live to know this, I sent her hurtling into the side of a school bus in the other lane. The experience was brutal, and what I realized in an instant was that in The New Now, we cannot afford brutality. We cannot withstand brutality! We must create, promote, what makes us feel better.

I came home, put on running shoes and headed out to come to terms with it. In about 5minutes I had a handful of images that made me feel better. Beauty (not perfection). Resonance (though not too sweet). I didn't want to lose these images, so I created a space to hold them and share them.

THE DAILY NOW

Go to my new blog, http://www.the-daily-now.blogspot.com I've built the site to provide a quick hit of momentum. Of beauty, maybe, of comfort. You'll see me there with something every day. And I welcome your ideas, please comment on The Daily Now to share images or thoughts that will help guide the way for so many of us still struggling in this new space we're living in.

CHICKEN IN A BAG

2009-05-21T08:31:00.000-07:00

Next recipe in the series of MAKE THIS NOW's. I'm thinking about those of you who have just gotten the bad news. I know how you feel, stomach is in your throat, how to eat? How to even cook? In The New Now, we find ways around the nausea to put dishes on the table. Small smile, go to the store and get just this, in a basket. Easy.

CHICKEN BREASTS IN A BAG WITH BEANS AND LEEKS

You'll need:

3 leeks, 4 skinless boneless chicken breasts, a can of cannelini beans, a clove of sliced garlic, a handful of fresh marjoram or oregano, a small glassful of white wine, 5 oz cream, s+p

You'll do:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Using tin foil (the wide size if you have it), make a bag by placing 2 pieces of foil on top of each other, about as big as 2 shoe boxes. Fold 3 sides in tightly, leave 4th side open and place on a cookie sheet. (Tin foil bags can be bought in the supermarket.)

Wash the leeks really well after cutting them into 1/2" disks (up to the tough green part). Boil them for 2 minutes or so to soften.

Drain the beans and rinse them. Put beans, cooked leeks and everything but the chicken in a bowl. Use your hands to mash up the beans a bit. Add the chicken breast, mix it all up, dish it into your foil bag, close up 4th edge and make sure the others are tight.

Bake 28 minutes.

Mixing baby spinach into the bag gives you an even bigger vitamin hit.

* Inspired by adorable Jamie Oliver who never develops a complicated recipe.

THE NEW NOW IN LIMBO

2009-05-21T07:10:00.000-07:00

You wake up the next morning and confirm with yourself that yes, it's all real, we're in it. It's not a bad dream. Not a bad mood or a hormonal dip.

Don't be scared, I'm with you. People are panicking - still - even when we're told the worst is over. We may have bounced off the bottom in the Dow's plunge, but that doesn't mean we won't keep hitting the sea floor at home. Whether it's the bills which just keep on coming. Or the tax man knocking with claims of underpayment in 2 thousand bloody 6. Or the roof leaking, the plates breaking, the children growing. And we can't pay. It's limbo, scary limbo, and we don't like it.

In this mornings New York Times, an unfamiliar Op Ed contributor, Daniel Gilbert, wrote a piece you just have to read, called "What You Don't Know Makes You Nervous". Gilbert's saying that those of us who are busy predicting the fall are less able to operate these days than those who've already received the news. How many of you expect your job to go, your business to plummet, your health to tank? And aren't you TERRIFIED? But the truth is, once it happens, as Gilbert says, you weep and moan, but then you clap your hands and get on with it.

So what does that mean? That you have it all: your job, your house, your health - and you're so worried about losing it that you're miserable before you need to be?

Limbo is one Hell of a state, indeed. We are going on 2 years of limbo. Not one single day since August 2007 have we felt at home, situated, comfortable or sure that we'll be living in this house, in this zip code, in even a month's time. But a secure place will be reached again, it's guaranteed. And when that time comes we'll ask ourselves why we were so worried in the interim.

Time to create the New Now in Limbo. The collected songs and memories you'll associate with this time. Poems or articles we read when we couldn't get ourselves out of the house. It may not be all wine 'n roses, but it'll be a chapter of our book. As we see Time waft in the door and out the window, don't we want to make sure that this time is accounted for?

My Songs for the Limbo:
Ben Folds and Regina Spektor singing "You Don't Know Me"
Crosby and Nash singing "Lay Me Down"

My Writings for the Limbo:
David Sedaris' "When You are Engulfed in Flames"
Anne Lamott's "Traveling Mercies: Some Notes on Faith"

My Sustenance for the Limbo:
Trader Joe's HUGE dark chocolate bar with hazlenuts
Starbucks' Venti Caffe Misto ($2.49 compared to the latte at triple the price - note that)

My Memories for the Limbo:
Fires in the living room at 5:30 on a weeknight, mid-winter
Driving up Limekiln Road for the 4th or 5th time that day, watching Winter turn to Spring

"Even though it's hard to know just how the story ends
the road is long and it takes its time, on that you can depend..."
- C+N

WELCOME TO THE NEW NOW

2009-05-19T12:31:00.000-07:00

Mom wrote me an email 15 minutes ago when I was typing on about who knows what - she told me of yet another loved one of a loved one who lost his job - she asked me, could I please remind her what my blog was?

First of all, I didn't know my blog was on her radar. She tried to post a comment once and couldn't figure it out - I agree, it's not easy, but all you have to do is click the highlighted "comments" below each post and write... anonymously... I invite you to write! Second of all, and here's what stopped me in my tracks. The layoffs just keep on coming. There and then, I saved what I was writing to tap this out quick. With all the people I hear about, you must be hearing of even more. Send them here, let us lick our wounds together. There's lots to learn from eachother.

Welcome to The New Now, you, who've just entered the space! It's frightfully heavy, it's not what you signed up for. And it isn't unique. The space is full.

When you read Bob Herbert's OpEd entitled "Far From Over" (New York Times, 5/9/09) saying to us: People, April's 544,000 job losses may have been better than March, but that staggering number is a flashing indicator that we are a long way from improving.

What makes it better? What you'll realize as your nausea recedes and the communication skills you've long taken for granted, specifically those between yourself and your loved ones, are put to the test and they come through for you - you realize that TIMES ARE NEW. You're here and you're hurting, even when "everyone else" seems fine. This may have happened "to you", but here you are. Embrace it, it's real and it's NOW.

Go get this week's TIME Magazine, which has a great cover: "The Future of Work". It lays it out, 10 ways your job will change, and they include flexibility, collaboration, freelance and creativity. The New Now. Start as soon as you can. Go for walks with your partner and talk it through. Be brave, this may be happening to you, but you need to work it to your advantage. Stay tuned, we're talking about REINVENTION!

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1898024_1898023,00.html

THE CYCLONE, 1949

2009-05-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

State of things, of our Country, of our Ecomony. Of our homes and relationships.

"The Cyclone roller coaster became the most famous roller coaster in the world. It had steep drops and savage banked turns that offered patrons an exciting ride."

Coney Island in 1949. People were awed, thrilled. Freedom from insidious ideas abroad was just an infant. Victory in Europe was declared a mere 4 years before; only the lucky few got to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Families were rent asunder, the world was in shambles and yet, people welcomed entertainment like The Cyclone. Terrifying, nauseating and survive-able.

The Cyclone is a symbol of reinvention. A tremendous feat of architecture, defying the odds of fun and physical safety. An unthinkable idea, yet built, and beautiful.

50 years later, what will be our monuments to survivability?

I'm thinking now about reinvention.

OUT, LOOKING IN

2009-04-28T09:37:00.000-07:00

Think we've hit bottom? The weather's better, Madoff's in jail, banks are posting gains. We seem somehow clearer.

We woke today to headlines that an Air Force One jet buzzed over Manhattan on a photo junket - we went wild, angry hens in the hen house! Fly-by airliners over Ground Zero? It is unacceptable, we all know it. We are still a terrified City, you cannot fool around with people so recently wounded. Following expressed ire from the President and a(nother) frank, mea culpa from the White House, we feel vindicated for our anxious reaction. The hens have set themselves back to roost, still clucking sideways and backwards about the unthinkable line that was crossed.

We seem clearer about our boundaries as we begin to trust that we're part of the process. We elected someone who aspires to govern by transparency and we're starting to see what that means. So many of our boundaries have been crossed, now we can re-establish them, for better. They're listening.

But with all that, it's not over. John and I are in a holding pattern, waiting for word on potential opportunities that each passing day seem more like figments of our imagination. Last week two more big jobs were lost in my loose circle of people. Upon hearing, I stood by one friend, with no real encouragement, just empathy. Just these words: "OK, so let's get started..."

I just got a call from a friend in another state, she herself in a good job, her husband as well. But in her town a thousand miles away, the continuing fallout of this thing is at a boil, just as it is around here. She called to ask me what to say, how to be empathetic as more and more people came home with pink slips. She knows from being a passenger on my ride that there are right ways to approach it and not so right. Let's take a minute to record what feels best, when we reach the gates of The New Now, how do we want to be welcomed?

Meet it head on. Call it what it is, it is a terrible state of being. "If you've reached this point in your career and have not suffered job loss, you're just waiting in line". There is no stigma; when you play, you pay. This is not unique.

Pay gigantic compliments to the one who's lost the job. John and I both appreciate the many affirmations of who he is and how good he is at what he does. Loss of identity is as big as loss of paycheck; don't let us forget we are still who we always were, but better, stronger, with "more texture".

Take us out. For a walk, coffee, lunch or dinner. Get us out of our skin. One unemployed friend said that his wife is so much better after she's been with friends. Let her set the pace, but don't avoid the circumstance. This is not something we can or are trying to forget, it's part of our life and we want company in the coping.

Offer gifts. Great music, scented candles, articles and books. Give things you'd like to receive if you were experiencing the dark of the vacuum. Take a look at The New Now post about the Sanity Salon (2/9/09) for ideas. We have to hold onto our style; liken it to the first trimester of pregnancy when you felt horrific and style has gone out the window. I used to tell my sister during her pregnancy: "Accessorize!"
Don't get scared. If you're willing, we will take you along for this ride, but be warned: we will proclaim our emotions. We'll say things we mean (and those things will change regularly), we'll say things to get a rise (misery loves company). Empathy for those in the eye of the storm is a great exercise in passive listening.

This is a post begging for comments. Please click below and offer your suggestions. Again, my mantra, WE ARE ONLY AS GOOD AS THE SUM OF OUR PARTS.

SPARE CHANGE? NO, SPARE RIBS!

2009-04-22T17:18:00.000-07:00

Back in November I wrote in my calendar on this day: Are you still breathing? I am, but I still feel pretty sick most evenings when it's time to feed my people. So in that vein, here's the next in the series of WHAT CAN I FEED THEM recipes -

This is a real crowd-pleaser, and though it sounds precious, it won't break the bank. Most of the ingredients are already under your roof, and if they aren't you'll use them up the next 3 times you make this fabulous recipe.

GLAZED PORK RIBS WITH HORSERADISH APPLE SLAW

What you need to feed 4:

3 lbs baby-back pork ribs
1/4 Worcestershire sauce
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1/4 c sour cream
1 Tbsp prepared horseradish
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 head napa cabbage, shredded with a knife
2 Granny Smith apples cut into strips
a bunch of scallions, sliced

Heat the grill. Season the ribs with salt and pepper. Place on the grill, cover it and cook 20-25 minutes, turning often , until cooked through and tender.

In a small bowl, combine the worcestershire, mustard, brown sugar and baste the ribs during their last 5 minutes of cooking.

In a large salad bowl, whisk the sour cream, horseradish and vinegar, 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper. Toss in cabbage, apples and scallions.

Cut the ribs apart and heap them on a serving platter. Serve horseradish with bread next to it.

* Inspired by a Real Simple recipe

CANYON LADIES

2009-04-21T07:42:00.000-07:00

This one's a tribute, off the subject or condition that one must be in crisis to be needy. Or to be fulfilled. In the New York Times Health section today, Tara Parker-Pope published an article about the overarching healing power of friendship.

I read the article this morning and, cynically, wrote it off as simplistic. Interesting anecdotes. Stories of women seeking solace in childhood friendships to cope through divorce or Cancer diagnosis; A 10-year study showing that older people with larger circles of friends were 22% less likely to die during the study period than those with fewer friends. And if there's no other justification for being friendly, Pope reported that studies show that the risk of obesity is some 60% higher among folks whose friends gain weight. Strength in numbers. The power of the Tribe....

Then, funny how this works, I heard the quiet strains of a long-forgotten song about just this power, the power of friends to heal friends, and Pope's article took on the mighty proportion it deserves. Listen to Joni Mitchell's song "Ladies of the Canyon" http://www.rhapsody.com/joni-mitchell/ladies-of-the-canyon--1970. It takes you behind an easel with Trina who "wears her wampum beads", then it sits you down with Annie who "may make some brownies today". Without you even sipping a cup of almond tea or hearing an inside story, "Ladies of the Canyon" brings you into the heart of what it is to be a woman among friends.

I was afforded this great privilege over the weekend, offered entry into a family of women who have become to one another what flesh and blood can never be. In a place just like Joni's Canyon, a place of "empty halls and beveled mirrors, sailing seas and climbing banyons". The time and place were gifts, but above all, what a privilege to be "welcomed in" (as Joni says it) to a tradition set well before I arrived.

Parker-Pope's Times article is a powerful and substantiated statement about what even those with the great fortune of a Tribe may take for granted. She writes:

"Last year, researchers studied 34 students at the University of Virginia, taking them to the base of a steep hill and fitting them with a weighted backpack. They were then asked to estimate the steepness of the hill. Some participants stood next to friends during the exercise, while others were alone.

The students who stood with friends gave lower estimates of the steepness of the hill. And the longer the friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared. "

REALLY, THE WORST

2009-04-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

Parenting moments, they're stories we need to tell. There's some kind of unspoken mechanism between us parents, in that when we tell our parenting stories we purge them, and let them go - we do this with friends and strangers alike. There's an element of forgiveness that comes when we confess. Telling my parenting stories is the closest I come to understanding the power of a Catholic's Confession of Sins.

This small post is a wide acknowledgement of the terribly misguided parenting decision I made on Tuesday, when all I was trying to do was get John's attention.

As always, I've boiled it down to two kinds of people. I do this in every situation or scenario, it's a most convenient scything of any experience. In the New Now, the first kind of person is he who falls into a minor and, we hope, short-lived depression when he loses his job. The other kind tries to maintain a constant (!) and healthy (!) flow of communication about feelings, while remaining ebullient (!) and fun loving (!). Guess who's who?

So John's been laid a little fallow in his drag of a mood, trudging through the last couple of weeks, including Spring's early moments, Easter's traditional festivities. There've been people everywhere, and that's the problem. EVERYWHERE, we've had a revolving door (see "second kind of person" above). John's and my communications, over the last week or so, have gotten more and more caveperson-like, he has headed inward and I've sought solace by creating a carnival(!*!*!*!)

The parenting moment? After attempts at getting through to my husband, in a festive (!), fun-loving (!) way, to absolutely no avail, I decided to take a Type A personality's standard route to honesty, I employed Shock and Awe and announced over lunch to my 3 young children and 2 even younger nieces - with John as a witness - that WE COULD NOT CONTINUE THIS WAY, OUR MARRIAGE JUST COULDN'T TAKE IT, HE HAD TO TAKE IT ON THE ROAD... You can plug in the rest.

Oh yes, I got John's attention. Eldest child left the house in inconsolable tears, middle one positioned himself between his sputtering parents pleading for us to "hug", youngest cried out that she loved us both. Nieces sat without appetite, eyes like saucers (I have since told their parents that I'd help with the therapy bills.)

Did I mean what I said? Not remotely! I love John and I am toally committed, just a mite annoyed at his self-indulgent moodiness. I am Type A, that's for sure, but it is high time I realized that my Type A communication strategies don't necessarily speak to the audience.

We've made up, nobody's scared about where they'll be sleeping tonight. I made absolutely NO point, I bombed. Thanks for listening, I feel forgiven.

WHO'S HURTING MOST

2009-04-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

Fancy meeting you, here in this Age of Austerity. Publications from the New York Times to Lucky Magazine are commenting about the required as well as the elected mantle of frugality. Do a search on the Times' website and you'll come up with "Consumed: Haute Frugality" and "Austere Times? Perfect!" Apparently, all articles I'll have to read. Lucky, the shopping rag, is beside itself (and the self of its advertisers) with online features such as "This Entire Site is Under $30". eBay and H&M are plastered all over it. A friend's mother, age 70 and independantly wealthy, self-identifies as "only a corner away from bag lady". This new era is playing heavily on our conscience. Even those fully employed with healthy savings are taking on the Great Depression Challenge. Seems we're all game.

I have mixed feelings about the common experience of austerity. Maybe some sense of ownership over the New Now? I know we are not unique - out of jobs and anxious about our future. But when I read about New York City apartment owners taking in boarders when they're still making great salaries, or hear the tense fear and anxiety on the other end of the phone as a friend talks about her husband not getting paid his bonus on time, I want to scream "J-O-B, people!" as I stab wildly with two thumbs at my own chest.

But remember 9-11? No matter where you lived or how you voted, you were changed by living it. Everyone has a story, a reason (fact or fiction) the attacks changed our life. Similarly, John and I will always tell our shock and terror story which began with having the door closed behind him by his boss and the HR professional who axed him. And others will have their narrative about the New Now.

OK - so maybe I am trying to own the New Now, a little. I confess - and here are two points that set me straight (for the moment). The first one, the sanity check that doesn't even require a trip to Africa or India. Last week an article was published in the Times called "Keeping It Secret as the Family Car Becomes a Home" http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/us/02cars.html?_r=1&scp=9&sq=homeless&st=cse. Ian Urbana writes "As with all homeless people, finding food, warmth and a place to clean up is a constant struggle. But for those who live in their cars, remaining inconspicuous is its own challenge, and though living this way is illegal in most places, experts and advocates believe it is a growing trend." I'm feeling deprived because John and I haven't been on a date since November. Larry Chaney of Erie, PA passes his time over a single cup of coffee in a local diner and plays "mindlessly" with a ring of keys to mask the fact that he has no door to unlock.

For the second slap-me point, read Judith Warner's blog "Domestic Disturbances", her post entitled "Families to Care About" http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/families-to-care-about/#more-219. Warner toggles between joining me in my desire to make this economic crisis a wake-up call for "yummy mummies" who have sadly had to cut their nanny staff. I read the post with relish, thinking Warner was leading to a conclusion that would damn the mummy while we damn her banker spouse. Instead - egg in face - Warner goes another direction, saying that "this is a classic blue collar recession. Fully half the jobs that have been lost so far have been in construction and manufacturing. Only 5.1 percent of job losses have been in finance and insurance — the kinds of careers that support the opt-out lifestyle." So it's not about the millionaire or the mummy at all. Snap out of it, sister! Those who are really in crisis are the same who have triple-jobbed while passing their spouses in the hallway. Shame on me for forgetting that I rest soundly in that white-collar 5%.

This is all about the reminder that - still - we need to create an economy that supports women and men who have never had it easy. We need flexible hours and borderless employers who see working from home as a win-win. We need childcare that will help fill our schools with richly textured kindergartners. (Maria Montessori fashioned her early childhood institutes for poor children in early 20th century Italy, not rich suburbanite tikes.) Women are contributing hugely to digging us out of this crisis (82% of those who've sought unemployment in the last 8 months are men). Time to remind ourselves what kind of quest we've been on to support them, and continue the fight.

OUT OF YOUR SKIN

2009-03-30T10:33:00.000-07:00

In the maturing stages of dealing in the No Job Vacuum - 6 months in - I am not modest about much. Indeed, the stigma once attached to being laid off is a laughing matter these days, when more than half of the parents in the Orthodontist's waiting room are fathers. So I'm not going to be bashful when I tell you that I am one of those shallow Americans Kurt Anderson describes in his article "The End Of Excess" in this week's issue of Time. Anderson writes that the excesses we've experienced during the Reagan-and-beyond years were so bizarrely taken for granted, that "even smart, proudly rational people engaged in magical thinking, acting as if the new power of the Internet and its New Economy would miraculously make everything copacetic... We all clapped our hands and believed in fairies."

Since the bubble burst, I've asked out loud: Did people really not question 12% annual dividends on the money they invested with Madoff, even in recessionary cycles? Did we really drive by 25,000sf homes and sigh at the beauty and grandeur? Were millions of dollars in bonus honestly the norm?

The Time cover article positions the fact that the Screeching Halt is good, healthy, positive. Though we didn't ask for it, we all - every one of us - agree. We've got to agree, we're in it, what's to fight? In a quiet moment, do we close our eyes tight and wish it would all go away? Absolutely. But here we are. We're mid-diet and haven't lost the weight. We're partway through summer camp and we want to go home. We're 2 hours into a 16 hour car ride through the Plain States. Even given our epic denial before all this went down, we Americans are American - we'll make it through, stronger, intact. We've spoken out loud our worst case scenario: we'll lose the house. We'll have to move. We'll spend every dime of our savings. But we'll be alive and together.

John and my parents teamed up to give me an experience for my Christmas present this year. John used his last airmiles to get me to Italy. My parents met me there and covered accomodations and food. I spent 6 days around Rome last week with not even a camera. I was with my parents, basked in being taken care of, the 45-year-old dependant, their child. I didn't reach for the bill, I didn't plan the itinerary. Their gift to me was the opportunity to get out of my skin.

It was heavenly. We read a paper maybe twice. The stories played like celebrity news from that distance: American grown ups getting on buses to drive by the homes of AIG executives; Obama's Press Secretary scoffing at Dick Cheney for saying our war in Afghanistan was reckless; American auto brands disappearing because there's no market for gigantic vehicles. All this, while riding around Italian villages in a dented Fiat with a stick shift. Such perspective. I didn't want to leave.

I did not want to leave. My beloved children were sending me texts, and my hard-working Husband was fighting the good fight back in Connecticut, and yet there was a small voice in my head that said "drop your Passport in the toilet and FLUSH!"

Getting out of my skin felt so incredibly good. I'd forgotten what it was like for time to fly because I was having fun. I wandered from catacomb to catacomb with no extra weight. The message is good. We must get out of our skin, we need to lose the weight. But given that, what idiot wants to go back?

When only 2 days remained of this glorious Roman holiday, I asked myself - is it worth it? If I know how hard it is to go home, so hard I feel dread, nausea, why on earth do I subject myself to the pain? Why go at all?

The answer, friends, is of course it's worth it. We cannot cope, we cannot guide, we cannot laugh even the shallow laughs without taking the break. You snicker because my break was in Rome, who'd say no? Our opportunities to peel out of this skin can be far or near. Going to the Y for a swim doesn't count. An exhibit at the Met followed by a $10 glass of wine does. Because that's the escape it's hard to go home from.

So we admit it, we were in denial during the boom time, we embraced the bons temps rouler attitude and we reaped the riches. But we can't make where we are go away. This crisis, as Kurt Anderson writes in Time, will define us. Get out of your skin, though, take back a little denial. It'll get you through.

SERVE THIS - TONIGHT

2009-03-11T12:14:00.000-07:00

The next recipe in a series about how to cope. Friends, when you or your Partner lose your job, nausea prevails. You can't feed yourself and you can't feed others. The grocery store is a vast tundra. This is easier than easy, all you need is a source for great white fish. Go, get it, and cook this NOW!

WHITE BEAN AND HALIBUT STEW
Prep Time: all of 15 minutes
Total Time: maybe 30 minutes

What you need:
4 thick cut bacon slices, scissored up (or chopped if you still chop)
3 shallots, sliced
3 Tbsp Olive Oil
6 garlic cloves, however you like your garlic: sliced, chopped, mushed up
1 8 oz bottle clam juice
1 14.5 oz can diced tomoatoes in juice
1/3 c dry white wine
1/2 tsp pinch saffron threads
1 15 ox cans little white beans ("navy beans"), drained
1.5 lb halibut or Chilean sea bass filets - cut into 2" chunks

Saute bacon and shallots in a large pot until bacon is crisp - 5 mins or so. Add olive oil and garlic, stir a minute. Add clam juice, tomatoes and juice, wine and saffron threads, boil - then simmer for 5 minutes. Add beans and fish. Cover and simmer until fish is cooked thru, maybe 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve with brocooli rabe, green salad, bread and cheese.

* Inspired by an old recipe from Bon Appetit. I could eat it every day and if I was served it at a restaurant I'd ask to speak with the Chef. It's that good. Great blend of saffron and garlic and fish that doesn't end up tasting like any of the above. Enjoy. Don't worry. Breath.

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

2009-03-05T07:50:00.001-08:00

Times are inarguably tough. When effected by them as we are, it is natural to look for something, someone to blame. Gail Collins wrote this morning in her OpEd entitled "The Rant List" that, with the likes of former Countrywide Execs making money in the after-market of failed mortgages (the mortgages they themselves convinced so many of us to obtain) and wacko former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's book deal (what about him is compelling enough to warrant 300 pages?), we have to prioritise just who we get upset with. "Lately", Collins opines, "the unfairness bulletins have been coming so fast and furious that there isn't time to get upset about all of them."

It isn't fair! We are paying for the waste of precious resources all around us. For decisions made by other human beings, by people we pass in the grocery store! We can pin the blame on any number of individuals and groups, but what does that do? John walks along a precipice every day, of blame and anger. I was advised by a friend recently that if we do more than just acknowledge that anger, we will invite it into our lives - Anmarie cautions from experience in the No Job vacuum that it will be an invitation that gives the go-ahead to our worst case scenario.

I'll make you a different invitation. This has been a relatively silent week in our house. Nothing's tangible, but in order to get out of bed in the morning we've redefined opportunity; considering a 15-minute phone conversation not just another dead-end , but an interesting contact, maybe in time, a job lead.

So times are tough - we have to grab the Grace where we can. Here's where I've gotten it this week:

The Bird and the Bee - John, Karen and I went to a $22/ticket show on Tuesday night featuring the unabashedly optimistic Indy/Pop band The Bird and the Bee. Inara George uses clapping, smiling, laughing and amazing lyrics to entertain, she fronts 3 awesome women accompanied by a quiet electronica wizard. The women wore short monochromatic a-line dresses and flats, they all matched, and the show was like being a fly (or a bee, in this case) on the wall of a fabulous girl's night out. Download their first album aptly named "The Bird and the Bee" and their latest, "Ray Guns are not just the Future". For a quick hit of their joie de vivre, watch their recent performance on the Ellen show through their website: http://www.thebirdandthebee.com/

YourStartUpStory.com - Anmarie, the sage I quoted above, introduced me to this inspiring blogsite which provides the voice of "CAN DO" to starting a new business. The author writes about entrepreneurialism from the passenger's seat, but she is clearly an entrepreneur herself, has done lots of research and points to articles and resources that promote new business in this day and age. Low capital, low overhead. Add idea and stir.

Made with Love - On Friday, Libby took me to lunch for my birthday. An age-old friend whose husband leads the way in start-up entrepreneurialism, Libby herself embodies the spirit of "we will conquer" and always does this with style and quiet generosity. On her arm were the most unique bracelets made in Senegal out of discarded rubber. Bracelets of brilliant color: turquoise, ruby, malachite. Buying 6 of them pays for childcare in Senegal for a needy child. $20 for 20 bracelets. Order them and other cool gifts at http://madewithloveinbrazil.com/spreadthelovetoafrica.html

What are you looking for? Read the paper and you get all the negative your imagination shouldn't have to take on. Don't stop reading the paper, but make a decision and filter it, for what's positive, funny, good. Did you see that Walmart has paid dividends this month? We're going to be OK. Look for whimsy and chance. It's time to start the march toward possibility, as we define it.

STYLE REINVENTED

2009-02-26T08:43:00.000-08:00

What I wouldn't have done with all this time on my hands. A clean slate, weekdays look like weekends. John's around to share the household duties. Chief among which, short-order cook. Breakfast and lunch are his domain, and it frees up more mental real estate than I'd ever imagined possible.

Back when the kids were little it was a different kind of vacuum, my hourly fantasies were about ways of escape, so racy. The setting: Coffee shop. Prop: Magazine. I would hurl myself into a car the moment help arrived. Vogue, Vanity Fair, InStyle. Food and Wine. The New Yorker. The stack of periodicals was never outdated. My daily/weekly/monthly objective: feed kids, walk them occasionally, stay abreast of the styles. Know what's happening, where people eat, how they dress, new entertaining themes and, of course, recipes, what causes are sponsored by whom, and most rivetingly (to a former marketing executive), what is the "feeling of living" as communicated in our advertising. It was like a master's degree in popular culture. The thesis: How does style drive our society and how does it speak to what is happening in the world.

On a recent TED talk, Isaac Mizrahi discussed creativity and reinvention, his own based upon the principle that one must simply "stay bored". www.ted.com/index.php/talks/isaac_mizrahi_on_fashion_and_creativity.html Mizrahi, even with his silly, "none of this really matters" sense of irony, stages himself as a guru of reinvention. He's come in and out of the popular world in the way I wish women in the workplace could, he rises out of the categories of his career to again create a new life in a new job, and the world applauds him, "yeah, he's back!", for what he's done both in and out of the public eye.

So, style. Here's the link: Magazines, popular culture, the Oscars, the Stars. Color, pattern, texture, color. Fabric, flow, comfort. Living room, closet, kitchen. In a vacuum, we yearn for connection. We want to feel informed, but self-protected. We're desperate to be in tune with the times, but we're forced into this passive mode, waiting for life as we know it to begin again. In the No Job Vacuum it may be tempting to write off popular culture, we have so many deeper things to worry about. Yet as I see it, the style journals are doing their very best to walk the line between showing what's out there, flesh and blood and beautiful, and the coveted invitation to come back in where it feels good, where we can still enjoy the warmth of living on the surface. "Style" Mizrahi says in the TED talk, "makes you feel great because it takes your mind off the fact that you're going to die!" Ironic in his invocation to keep doing what makes you feel good. It couldn't be more important.

I look left at my stack of periodicals, subscriptions I still hold dear and prioritize even with the shrinking domestic budget. My culture-tracking objective is way less ambitious than it used to be. The stack is disheveled, it reflects my sense of the world. Reading about style is not an escape in this vacuum but it is still a lifeline, it's what helps bring the world together when it all seems in pieces. The function of style is crucial in this age of reinvention.

MY BIRTHDAY CAKE

2009-02-19T09:45:00.000-08:00

Pity party. Lately, it's Big Occasion city. February is full of them, and it's my turn to take the advice I've doled out to so many others. The milestones we pass, even if they're passed up, guarantee deeper meaning as we face into them next year.

Tomorrow, it's my birthday. Let me be clear. Birthdays are not just a number for me, they are the annual moment for acknowledgment. They are important. Historically, they've been launched like small businesses, with a plan and a committee (on which I preside). This year, I'm a committee of one, and there will not be much of a firework display. I'd be sad about it if it weren't my decision, but in the middle of the night as I lay awake and worry, this is the clearest, most appropriate gift to myself. No birthday celebration.

We'll light the fire in our beautiful colonial fireplace. Music. The kids, the dogs. The next day, dinner with family. In order for it to feel alright to me I'll preside over the kitchen. Others might rather relinquish, in the name of being pampered. Not me. It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to...

My Birthday Cake:

ORANGE & BOURBON CHOCOLATE CAKE

Cake:
1/2lb bittersweet baking chocolate
1/2 c unsalted butter (1 stick, cut up)
3 tbsp bourbon (Maker's Mark)
1 orange, zested
4 eggs
2/3 granulated sugar
Couple tbsp shaved chocolate for garnish

Spiced Cream:
3/4 chilled heavy cream
2 tbsp confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cardamom
1/8 tsp ground cloves

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter/flour 9" baking pan, line bottom with parchment paper.
Melt chocolate and butter in a microwave, watch carefully, usually takes a couple minutes. Stir it to continue melting and not burn. Mix in bourbon and orange zest; set aside.
Beat eggs and sugar with electric mixer until pale yellow ribbons form, 6 minutes or so. Fold mixture into chocolate a little at a time. Pour into prepared pan. Bake 35 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool on wire rack.
With clean beaters, beat cold cream until frothy. Add confectioner's sugar and spices. Continue beating until soft peaks form (when peaks are droopy you're good.) Chill in fridge.
Serve cake on a plate covered with dollops of cream and shaved chocolate.

* Inspired by a cake served at the Spotted Pig, 314 W 14th St, New York.

HERE'S TO PLAN B

2009-02-14T10:42:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, in my expedition into the scary realm of READING THE NEWSPAPER I was met with a shocking, first in a long time experience: Inspiration. I read this article twice, gave it to John to read and sent it to several friends for whom inspiration was a fleeting memory. It's been a week and I can't stop thinking about this piece, I must re-publish it, and hope that it hits the mark with you as it did for me.

"What's Your New Plan B?" (by David Segal, NY Times, 2/7/09) nails the crazy confluence of the scary times with how we simply MUST confront them. If you don't have a job right now, a changed way of thinking has been foisted on you. But no one is out there, unscathed. Folks for whom a job is secure, in an industry not bombarded, in offices they own - they too are changing their behaviors, shedding old habits and thinking in a new way. Let's face it, things are going to be very different from now on. We have a choice: we change behind the times or ahead of them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/weekinreview/08segal.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=plan%20B&st=cse

Here's what's hard, and believe me, we live it. Plan B for us is the same as Plan A: Get a Job. That's where the last post comes in (the "Sanity Salon"). In order to re-jig our Plan B we have to build channels in our daily lives. Tamra reminded me in an email yesterday to keep going for walks. Think it's that simple? Amazingly, when the bottom feels hard and cold, the walk is our channel, we can talk without looking at each other, we can breathe. Are you laughing? Like, what a pollyanna she is! Let me ask you this: what else do you have to do? Light the fire and make the Earl Grey Latte (Earl Grey tea with steamed or, in a pinch, microwaved Soy Milk, sounds weird but is truly delicious). Pull out the Scrabble and WIN. Then, a few light moments under your belt, go for Plan B.

Segal's article spends alot of upfront time talking about Plan B as a sorry shedding of dreams - the 2-day work week, the chic B+B in St Remy. But read these lines: "The new Plan B relies heavily on improvisation..." Aren't we, in the New Now, already improvising? "And here’s a hopeful question: does the new Plan B have any upsides?" YES! Get in front of the change, get into Plan B!

JOIN THE SANITY SALON

2009-02-09T07:39:00.000-08:00

Your recession has hit. Through these posts I've tried to establish, yes, how bad it is and no, you are not alone. But the truth is, 90% of the process feels pretty damn lonely. The phone might ring but never at the moment the din gets loudest in our heads. That's where today's post comes in.

Who's on Facebook? If you are, you too are enjoying the latest, greatest guilty pleasure: "25 Random Things About..." I have not completed a list, but without fail I finish reading yours with the biggest smile on my face. Douglas Quenqua said in his NY Times piece about the "25 Things" phenomenon (2/5/09) that it's anybody's guess why this particular note has caught on and spread so much faster than anything else on Facebook to date. It may be true introspection, an opportunity for verbosity or simply unapologetic narcissism... I have my theory and it fits perfectly with The New Now's reason for being: it is Community. When I read your lists of "25 Random Things" I feel close to you and proud of you, I laugh with you and feel much less isolated thanks to your confessions which are seemingly written just for me to read.

I know not what time of day or what state of mind brings you to this post, but I want to hear from you. So that there is more for us to read and, in the spirit of "25 Random Things", so we can learn about each other while we share what makes it easier to get through each day.

Welcome to...

THE SANITY SALON: INEXPENSIVE INDULGENCES TO FILL THE SPACE

Add your tried and true Make It Better's by clicking on the highlighted "Comments" below this post.

Scented Candles from GAP (last purchased at $2.99)- Light one next to where you're sitting and take it with you when you pace

"Force It" Walks - Make an "appointment" (e.g. in 15 minutes...) with your Partner and get outside together. Takes the place of a pricier date night and forces conversation, don't know how, but always works.

Good, dark, grocery store chocolate after dinner, no matter what, a promise to you from the Universe that good things await if you make it through the day

Charlotte: Ghirardhelli Bliss Intense Mint ($2.99)
Suzy: Dove Silky Smooth with Roasted Almonds ($3.53)

Scrabble with Partner, friend, children

Set up DVR (or Tivo) and study the day's media. Make a plan for what you get to watch each evening and record others for a later viewing. There is so much good TV out there right now! Some of my favorites:

Damages (FX)
Weed (HBO)
Big Love (HBO)
Brothers and Sisters (ABC)
House (Fox)
Mad Men (AMC)

Read a Blog. They are everywhere. Avoid the narcissistic ones and head for what helps you feel part of your particular world. I like:

http://www.chocolateandzucchini.com/
http://www.thedailybeast.com/
http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/
http://bookgroupbuzz.booklistonline.com/
http://www.wfuv.org/blog/

Please don't wait, add to The New Now.

THE CITY

2009-02-05T06:50:00.000-08:00

Our phone is ringing! And it's The Network. In these times, the most profound of concepts is the network. And thanks to our network, the phone is ringing.

I've just read "Netherlands" by Joseph O'Neill, which for my money is one of the most finely wrought novels of the year. Not just because it paints a richly layered portrait of the cultures I know and love best - England, Holland and New York. But because the story is told like a matrix. With these incredible yet diverse cities along the bottom axis, and every meaningful character profile along the side. The man, the woman, the family, the enigmatic friend. The portrait is of how each interacts and gets tangled up in their network, these cities, and how they survive.

Without the entanglements with people, we have no way out of the mire.

In the beginning, I arranged every minute into a social event putting John on stage. I invited, opened up, cooked for, laundered for, phoned, suggested, enticed and manipulated. I dumped my results on a desk and expected the opportunities to rise like gumbies and dance around John with exciting opportunities, offers of a hand, the answer. I did that for about a month. Until I crumbled in an exhausted heap for the weight of delivery. The truth is, this is not my search, it is not my job. And the more I work to deliver the gumbies I'm taking away from doing my own job, from raising my children, from caring for John and definitely from caring for myself.

The City, the notion of the City, was built on this concept of network. Cities were not haphazard, nor were they Utopian - they were architected out of "the belief in the real possibility of creating worlds of peace, order, beauty and well being. (That) people can, at times, all get along and build something bigger than themselves."

I'm quoting from a New York Times review of an exhibit in Washington DC's National Gallery of Art (1/30/09) called "Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age". Washington couldn't seem farther away right now as our travel budget has been slashed to local driving and at-home entertainment, but if I could, I'd airlift to see this installation. Not only is it Holland, not only have I just read this amazing novel, but it is an examination in art and cartography of the City, as a living organism, a thought-out way of shoring up and ensuring the network. And it's not "the village" (as much as I respond to Hillary Clinton's expose' about what it takes), it's THE CITY. It's infinite in its possibility, and in the end, it'll be the City that provides the opportunity for all of us, to grow, and not to die trying.

Some resources for networking: http://www.womenatwork.com/, http://www.momcorps.com/

MAN UP OR GO HOME

2009-01-29T08:25:00.000-08:00

Serena reigned supreme the other night in the quarter-finals of the Australia Open. She almost lost it in that heat. Kuznetsova called a foul saying that when the Aussies stopped play for 30 minutes to close the roof, it gave Serena time to get her game back. Kuznetsova's right. Serena got into her own head and told herself she had to "Man Up or Go Home".

Suzanne reflected with me yesterday that she and Bob recently asked themselves how much their experience last year in the No Job Vacuum had aged them. I wanted to know how they answered that - she's not even sure the extent. The point is, when I was waiting for the computer to boot up a few minutes ago I got a glance at myself in the dark monitor and was met by a hagard-looking me. In this, the New Now.

"Manning Up" makes for hagard faces. Whether it's what you picture when you're struggling to put one foot in front of the other while forgetting to breathe (cheeks blown out, eyes popping), or when your head's locked in a rugby-player grip (squashed, wrinkled). Or, most disturbingly, if it's your expression at rest (tight, unsmiling, dehydrated). How much elasticity will we get back when all this is over? How old will we look - and feel - when the match is played?

I often read "More" Magazine, a newish monthly which "celebrates women over 40". The models are beautiful and over 40. The clothes are refined (though this month's issue promotes some pretty garish-looking recession ensembles), the humor is accessible, the spirituality pieces are about things like reinvention and leadership. I am encouraged that "More" brings women forward who are reinvented and honest, who embrace their faces and can say they are, honestly, happy. Mind you - I'd be happy too if I were Emma Thompson. She has a craft which she's turned into a business which is renewable and timeless and makes her money. But I appreciate that "More" says a little Botox is OK, and also says that being a strong woman is, indeed, about embracing the characteristics tagged as "Man-ly". Like - being bullheaded enough to wake up every day to be industrious; not caring all that much about how we look or how we're aging (let's face it, I've seen you too in your workout clothes at 4:00 in the afternoon); playing hard and not being forgiving while we play; not suffering fools and knowing when we have to push re-set on how we're spending our time; being Serena Williams, and Hillary Clinton. When I look in the dark monitor before I start writing, it's all of those adjectives I see, in me. I'm manning up.

This afternoon I'm going to rent "Sex and the City: The Movie". On demand.

ROASTED VEGETABLES WITH SHRIMP

2009-01-24T10:44:00.000-08:00

You'll be amazed how these two factions of food come together in one roasting pan.

What you need: a bag of frozen shrimp (use what you want and keep the rest in the freezer for an alternate version of Cassie's Favorite Ceasar, see previous post); Olive oil; 2 heads of fresh broccoli OR cauliflower, OR 4-5 sweet potatoes, a few peppers- choose any of the above, I like broccoli the best; whole coriander seeds and whole cumin seeds; hot chili powder or cayenne pepper; a lemon for zesting.

To go with it: Spinach, rice, tofu, prepared as you like. Bread too if you want it.

What you do: Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Toss your vegetable with 2 tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp each cumin and coriander seeds, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, chili powder or cayenne pepper to taste (but be sparing - 1/8 tsp is what I use). Spread in baking dish and roast for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine defrosted and shelled shrimp with remaining 2 tbsp oil, the zest of the lemon, 1/2 tsp each salt and pepper.

After 10 minutes, shrimp mixture joins vegetables in the roasting pan, continue to roast about 10 minutes more. Toss a couple of times. Vegetables should be tender but starting to crisp on edges, shrimp are opaque. Squeeze juice of that lemon on top and serve.

* Inspired by a recent Melissa Clark recipe in the New York Times.

THE SPACES BETWEEN

2008-12-25T05:50:00.000-08:00

You'll find what brings you that moment of relief in the darkest, smallest of corners. A dear friend and one of the most insightful people I know, a Presbyterian Minister, wrote something and sent it to me during the blur I'll call The Holidays. It was the context of her sermon (December 22, 2008, Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia). A poem written by Joseph Enzweiller called Christmas 1963:

Because we wanted much that year
and had little. Because the winter phone
for days stayed silent that would call
our father back to work, and he
kept silent too with our mother,
fearfully proud before us.

Because I was young that morning
in gray light untouched on the rug
and our gifts were so few, propped
along the furniture, for a second
my heart fell, then saw how large
they made the spaces between them

to take the place of less. Because
the curtained sun rose brightly
on our discarded paper and the things
themselves, these forty years,
have grown too small to see, the emptiness
measured out remains the gift,

fills the whole room now, that whole year
out across the snowy lawn. Because
a drop of shame burned quietly
in the province of love. Because
we had little that year
and were given much.

The durge of January has taken us on. The winter winds are swirling into the niches of our house, niches we haven't yet been given the go-ahead to find. When reading Enzweiler's poem, I wonder what will fill our spaces, this winter quiet.

The exercise, do you do this? Do you wake from a night's sleep and take a sip of water, then make your mental or even written note of what you're most thankful for? I know for certain that you can count on 2 hands the people who, in consolation, urge you forth to reflect on the myriad blessings that bestow your shimmery existence, despite what woe betides you. Your health, your fine children, the food in your pantry...

Oh, I've tried the exercise, you have as well. But as "Insiders" we know that before that second blessing crosses our consciousness, the tides of the everyday surge past it and we're left where we started when eyes flickered open - with the dread and consignment, here we are now, with acres of space between. Blessings?

So I'll do this for you (if you promise you'll do it for the next person). I'll offer you a blessing, and it's happening this weekend. Bruce Springsteen and James Taylor are going to strike up the band. The Rev Gene Robinson will say a prayer to keep us clear that none of us, not one, is perfect. We'll all be there, present, shoulder to shoulder heads held up to the wind.

We will unite for this, for there is not one person alive, pro or con, who does not seek balance and closeness and healing for our Country. Our greatest blessing is that January 20th, the Inauguration of Barack Obama will take place. We still do not know what it's all going to look like, but this is the "winter phone" and it's ringing. Closing the spaces between.

Read this, it's all you need to know to show up: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/12/obama-inauguration-lincoln_157215.html

CASSIE'S FAVORITE CAESAR SALAD

2008-12-20T16:25:00.000-08:00

An easy, delicious, healthy dinner idea. Don't think about it, just make it.

What you need: a Rotisserie Chicken, an avocado, a bag of romaine lettuce hearts, parmesan cheese (shavings), an egg, worcestershire sauce, a lemon, olive oil, bar of dark chocolate

What to do: In a bowl or an empty glass jar, shake up the egg’s yolk (please don’t worry about using the yolk, but if you feel better you can boil it for 3 minutes), the juice of the lemon, a few drops of worcestershire, 3-4 tbsp olive oil and salt and pepper as you like it.

Chop the lettuce, mix it with picked-apart chicken, avocado pieces and parmesan shavings. Make lots. It’s good, good for you and very satisfying. Follow with a bar of dark chocolate. Today I recommend Trader Joe’s.

* Inspired by the inimitable and fabulous Nigella Lawson.

THE END OF THE LINE FOR SUV'S

2008-12-19T16:23:00.000-08:00

Front page of the New York Times today, the leading photo was of a bundled up worker waving an American flag at what is presumably the last of a line of SUVs parading out from a closing plant in Wisconsin. The city-sized plant facility off in the background, the image illicits remorse and pity, a little bit of grief even, as the black, 17 ft long Chevy Tahoe mumurs by under the windy banner, the stars and stripes.

Plant closes, people lose their jobs, town loses its identity, its motor. It is tragic, sad, life will not be the same for thousands of people in these kinds of towns. But SUVs, they’re a ranch on wheels, have surely seen their day. 1999: John wanted one, so badly. Two kids, two dogs, more kids predicted - more, more, more. I always scoffed, the shape those cars take on the road to me is just gross, over-consumptive, everything non-European about us reflected in a car. So American. Now, with our new awareness of gas and its tolls, that grossness takes the shape of needless expense even to those who a little bit shamefully still drive them; the car in the category of fleets of roaring snowmobiles and plates so full of food they edge the salt, pepper and white vase of carnations off the table.

Explain my definition of ”gross” to the people who live in Janesville Wisconsin and I’ll wager they’d throw back a few more examples to make me avert my eyes, here in my suburban east coast kitchen. I love a Prius, they laugh at Priuses, no traction in the snow, nowhere to put the garbage barrel when you have to get to the dump. I was in line for a souped-up Highlander hybrid before John lost his job. Now, $600 a month for a car? We put snowtires on my 2000 station wagon for $542 and agree that it navigates the weather just fine. Our economic decisions not only don’t help the environment, they don’t help the folks out in Motor City either. But we’re taking steps that bring us closer to the other. Snow tires resonate for all of us, neither a Prius nor a bevy of snowmobiles ever will.

It’s almost the end of the year and my strange American survival mechanism, the one led by Hope, says that it’ll all be different once we have a 9 at the end of our xx/xx/xxxx. Obama and his dream team are on the way, and just the Hope factor will change everything for the better. I pray it will.

But - What what about me and my dream of a hybrid? What will become of the snowmobile driver in Janesville? What’s in store for that town, that vast and eery facility once vibrating with vast and eery motor cars? We will continue speaking a different language. We want sophisticated, high level answers to this global problem, I’m picturing a Janesvillean will want answers that put parts and pieces back in their hands. How will we take care of eachother, who will get the attention, who will get the jobs? When?

MONDAY MORNING

2008-12-15T13:21:00.000-08:00

Monday morning is a bear. Always. No matter whether you work or don’t work. Monday morning exists to remind you of exactly who you are today, and you can’t run from it.

Our Monday morning was Charlie, long off his birthday weekend and feeling the worse for wear, giving us hell for breathing. Today’s Monday was realizing that a dear friend and sister of sorts is making a huge life change, leaving our life together in Amsterdam to revisit her own life in the Phillippines. When I remembered that this was her week to go I cried with all the pent up memories of when we lived together and co-loved my children during our 5 years in Amsterdam. After the tearfest I heard a bang and the Christmas tree fell flat on its ornamented face - water, glass, soggy presents everywhere.

I did my usual “JOOOOOOHN” and what do you know, he came down the stairs. He’s home to help me deal with domestic mishaps. Moodily and distractedly we mopped up and I muttered how it’s “our bad luck". John stepped on the jagged glittery point of a hanging star. He refused the Neosporin, then left the house.

Today I’m seeing signs. The tree fell - just a symbol of our bleak and jobless status on Christmas. When OH YEAH the phone rings and it’s the Vet confirming Leo the Lion’s 2nd puppy appointment, not a recruiter or an interested employer looking for exactly what John can do. A desolate sign that the human providers in the household are not on the radar screen of anyone, Leo the Lion is the one getting the phone calls.

My friend Suzanne said to me this morning that when she and Bob were navigating these same waters last year she played the role of Desperation Monitor - vetting each interaction (call, email, interview) with the question: “Are you feeling desperate?” Like when we were single, she recalled, when we really wanted a boyfriend, men would run the other way sensing the desperation a mile away.

Can you enjoy it right now? Can there be any down time? Can you find the joy, the silly moment? If not, can you sit and be quiet? Can you light a fire or make a collage or show your Partner or your children something pretty? Thinking we see the signs is pure and simple BUNK. There are no signs. It’s life as usual. We’re just not people as usual. The more sense we can talk to ourselves, the faster a surprise will come.

MY CHILD'S BIRTHDAY

2008-12-12T13:20:00.000-08:00

It’s been 3 weeks since John came home with no job. We’ve spent 3 weeks ringing every number and knocking on every door. We’ve bypassed the step containing shame and humiliation in favor of getting there before anyone else does. Our top priority, our daily agenda, our meaning of life is to make contact with people who have a job.

Tomorrow is our son’s 10th birthday. Read this post as permission to be a terrible parent while you go after those contacts. It is not Charlie’s fault that his birthday happens now, but oh how easy it is to wish he’d been born in June like the other two! Here’s how we’ve managed to pull off a birthday from the vacuum’s abyss.

Pre-layoff, we’d planned a night in New York City, climbing the wall at Chelsea Piers, renting a limo to take us to dinner at Jekyll & Hyde, 6 kids and the 5 of us. Post-layoff? Not going to happen. John absorbed the disappointment as totally personal (this will be a running theme) - we ran a close risk of allowing Charlie to blame it all on himself. As with many moments needing clarity since this all went down, I took John out for a hike in the woods near our house and I jumped in and brainstormed a bunch of cheaper alternatives. these included the ones Charlie wouldn’t go for - bowling, movies, ice skating…

What flew? We borrowed an air hockey table and are hosting the Charlie Hockey Tournament, complete with prizes (glow-in-the-dark footballs), pizza and SODA! We’ve got “Miracle” and “Mystery Alaska” to watch on TV. NHL ‘09 on the Playstation 3. The key selling point? Mom and the sisters have to clear out for the night. Works for me!

Here’s the thing - under any other circumstance we wouldn’t have hesitated to say “No Stretch Limo - you’re TEN!” But now, when John + I are dealing with our own sense of loss and lack of resource, saying NO feels like another nail in the coffin.

Friends, we cannot forget who we are in this process. Nor can we blame others for where we find ourselves. Especially not the kids, the ones in the passenger seat. My theory for tonight is this: in a pinch, serve ‘em soda!

TALKING TO YOU FROM THE NO JOB VACUUM

2008-12-01T13:15:00.000-08:00

Here we are. No matter how it happens, when you or your Partner loses a job, the ground disappears from underneath and the one and only thing you know for certain is this: YOU ARE STILL BREATHING.

This blog is a call-out to help come to terms with it. It’ll be one step at a time, and we’ll go all over the process map to cope through it all.

Look for music and food (even though I know songs sound dissonant and food tastes horrible); look for parenting and family coping skills (raise your hand if you’re feeling like the grim reaper in work-out clothes); listen for a little humor in the darkest of moments.

I’m doing this because I’m here with you. I think we can find hope and community in these tough times. During the long nights right after John lost his awesome job I’d lie awake and talk to myself, I’d plead with whoever helps us through endless nights to “meet me where I am”.

Through it all came the idea of this blog. I’m meeting you where you are. You’re not alone, so GO, tell your friends!
Charlotte