Red-Letter Day

It was the end of the day before I noticed how great it was. It was the first day I felt like I was on summer vacation. I know I'm starting it about a week behind everyone else, but today is what it's all about.

I woke up to a relatively clean apartment, which I actually had time to tidy yesterday. I drank the full press of coffee, Whole Foods Organic Red Sea Blend. Delicious. I didn't have to leave any behind or carry it around with me. I could quietly savor it all.

I didn't have to rush through my morning routine; instead, I took delight in each unhurried cosmetic step.

I met my mom and sister for shopping at Millenia, something I haven't done in more than a year. I haven't had an outing with the girls in too long, and the shopping between moms and daughters and sisters is a grand and uniquely wonderful thing.

And then I found some great, and I mean great sales. The best one? My favorite designer jeans, normally embarrassingly expensive, on clearance, for $28.50. Really. Weirdly, they had TWO pairs in my size. I have never owned two pairs of these at once before. In fact, I've only ever owned 2 of these cost-prohibitive pairs in the last six years.

And it didn't stop there! Everywhere I went, it was like there was fairydust sprinkled by the Sale Fairy (who's never before been this powerful) and everything I wanted to buy was magically 70% off!!

I am not sure if my belief in the Sale Fairy is a sign I should shop more, or less, by the way.

During lunch, I got to see the U.S. come back in the second half to tie Slovenia, even if the win was stolen from us by the worst referee in South Africa.

And we had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, which is so glamorous and lovely, and also had the soccer game on in the bar.

We hurried home and I got to meet a friend at Gator's to watch the England match. The game was poor, but the company was great, the conversation enlightening, and the beer so good I almost forgot about Wayne Rooney's uselessness.

My dad came home today, and he was in good form. I'm looking forward to a laid-back weekend celebrating Father's Day.

Finally, I had dinner tonight with my dear friends Jon and Anna, who met me for pizza. I have to confess, I had pizza twice today. It is (unfortunately, for health reasons) one of my very favorite foods. And this was two sets of fine, fresh, gourmet pizza. I'd call any day where a person can twice eat great versions of her favorite food a good day on its own, let alone all of this one's other shining moments.

Last, Jon and Anna are some of my very favorite people. I laughed so hard tonight the people around us were maybe a little annoyed. When I recounted my day to them, it was Anna who totaled it up and pronounced it a really great day.

I could only agree and hope to recognize the next great day for myself before its over.

Top-five Literary Men

I was thinking about things I wanted to bring back from Ireland, and a souvenir named Conor Larkin is among them. That will be difficult because Conor's an Irish, rugby-playing, artisan blacksmith and poet from Northwest Ireland--and also from Leon Uris' fictional work Trinity. I can't bring home a fictional man, obviously, even if he is the man of my dreams.

He's also not the only literary male on whom I've had a small crush. Fiction or no, I find the following men very attractive:

• Mr. Rochester, from Jane Eyre
  
• Hector, from the Illiad
• Rob, from High Fidelity
  

And then a couple authors--probably bad news, but....

• John Keats
• T.S. Eliot
• Pablo Neruda
  

Not a Stalker, but...

This is my set list from the Inkwell show on Thursday night. At the end of the show, we went to go say hello to the band. The frontman gave it to me, right after I asked him to play a song that makes him miserable--at which point I would have stopped talking to me. He was so personable, and I liked him so much, that the details he shared about his upcoming album made me so excited for him--almost proud of him? I wanted to be his friend.

I felt this way when we saw Billy Collins' reading at Rollins on Tuesday:


I get this urge to be friends with people whom I have no business claiming all the time. And I think it is caused by three things:

First, I really appreciate people who are at the top of their craft--its inspiring. As a teacher, I live to be part of the small accomplishments of my students--I am proud when they excel even beyond what would be a return on my investment. When someone is THIS good at what they are doing, I am that much more eager to be part of it and think I should be because of my routine, small-scale opportunities.

Second, there is that urge to hang on and prolong the extraordinary moments. I have come across this image of "manna" several times this week. I want to be friends with these people because they seem so great, and I feel like I have space for them. But real people are not as great as stage people, nor do they have the space for me. Trying to hang on to the people I find in these shows and performances would spoil in the way that manna did. It's the familiar paradox that what is most worth keeping can rarely be kept.

Third, there is the trill of seeing THE person who MADE the THING that means so much to me. I was this way with the songs and the poems. And seeing these performances live, the reading or the rock show, puts me in the same moment as the person who is making the thing that means so much to me. It meant something to the performer enough to create the song or poem, it meant enough to me to go to see it performed live, and now it means something because the performance makes for a shared, meaningful experience. And somehow I think this shared meaning ought to be enough to make me friends with Kevin Devine, Andy Hull, Travis Adams, Billy Collins, and the rest.

And, yes. I know that telling them that makes me sound like their stalker.

So if you are in one of these places with me, and I start to tell whomever we just saw that they were destined to be my friend (or marry me), please point out my drink is empty and that it is time for a refill.

Sioux Falls Weekend

Not into Thrill Rides

I always thought that if I wrote for a living (in those rare moments short on self-consciousness) I'd write fiction. People say you are supposed to write what you like reading most--and I find the right novel ranks among one of earth's greatest pleasures.

But the person I am now probably couldn't write fiction. I can't bear to let things unfold on their own--a characteristic that makes me unbearable company for film-watching. I must know what comes next.

Woe is the man who has seen the movie when I haven't and knows what happens when I don't.

My friend Dave talks about his ultimate adventure being a roll-the-dice roadtrip. He thinks one should get up in the morning with the map and roll to see whether to go North, South, East, West, or to stay put. Another die says how long to drive and how long to stay.

When I consider this, my heart races in panic. Where do we start? Where do we stay? What do we eat? When do we stop for gas? When will we stop at all? What if we go too far? What if we get lost? How do we get home? How much will this cost?

That is not an ultimate adventure. That is an ultimate nightmare.

Right now, I feel fiction's departure from reality as a weighty responsibility--make that liability. Even if I "write from real life" (as everyone is advised), I still must launch characters from the known shore. But doing that means I don't know they'll be able to get back. Maybe good fiction doesn't care if it gets lost at sea, but I won't risk sailing off the edge of the earth.

It's not worth it to me.

The actual writing of the fiction, to me, bears the same horror as Dave's ideal vacation.

And I don't think it is supposed to.

Self-Diagnosis

My sister just got married a week ago, and she is three years younger than me and the third-oldest daughter. Neither my sister nor I, the two oldest siblings, attended, which has prompted a small set of annoying questions about why we weren't there and when we would be getting married.

Rarely do I spend a minute of my day concerned about this, but my demographics, unfortunately, keep it at the forefront of my consciousness. I have taken to absurdly self-diagnosing my apparently unsuitable status, but it doesn't really fend off the question-posers.

Then I came across this response to The Question on McSweeny's which I just find brilliant:

Imagine a large painted canvas. Two observers ask the artist questions:

OBSERVER NO. 1: I've never painted landscapes. Where exactly do you start with one?
OBSERVER NO. 2: Why'd you hang this on the wall? Was it too heavy for the refrigerator magnets?

The first is a question; the second is a judgment that rented interrogative punctuation. And that's what "How come you've never been married?" is. Don't forget that. Respectful grownups will not ask a blind person "Who stole your eyes?" and will not ask you why you're not married. I'm not suggesting that people who ask you that are on a mission to wound you (necessarily), but I do think they hope to elevate themselves at your expense. Maybe they just can't imagine someone approaching life milestones at a pace different from their own, or maybe eliciting bitterness from you restores, in their minds, a molecule of cachet to their own frail marriages—they want you to covet what they're stuck with. Whatever the case, it's a question more about them than about you. It's a question posed with zero empathy, so what else could it be?

OK, OK, but what about your response? Outright bitchiness might not be a good idea. It's a megadose of the negativity they want and, as a bonus, makes you seem like the aggressor. But if it's a casual acquaintance asking you the question, I say you're entitled to your own passive-aggressive retort, something like "Well, I hope to soon, but the worst thing to do would be to, you know, settle," or "All the best gambling addicts seem to be taken,"* depending on that person's particular circumstances. More congenially, "I just haven't found the right fella" might be enough to end the exchange quickly. But be warned that anyone impertinent enough to ask you why you've never been married will probably move swiftly to fix you up with a nephew with preternatural sweat issues.

Of course, no one frets more about matrimonial status than parents. They love you, but now their friends' children have babies and strangers at the mall have babies and chimpanzees on the Discovery Channel have babies, and your uterus needs to step up. Your singleness may also raise questions in your folks' minds about your upbringing. Did they set you up for spinsterhood? Should they have forced a Ken doll on you instead of giving in and getting you Barbie's Dream Cats? But you have the right to tell your parents that the question bothers you, that it actually makes you want to talk to them less. They can ask all they want, but they should know that you simply won't be around as often to hear it. It's their choice.
- - - -
* If you don't think that's passive-aggressive, you haven't heard my aggressive.

A friend of mine hypothesized that McSweeny's might be reading people's brains and posting the contents--at least reading her brain (which is one we frequently share). This material of theirs serves as anything but evidence to the contrary.

Act of Mercy

Sometimes I think one of the cosmic reasons I am unmarried is because Someone knows that I am a greater responsibility than that for which any individual can be reasonably held accountable. There is a distinct possibility they I may not have been assigned a partner in life because I require a team. I consider the redeeming purposes served by a successful and worthwhile marriage: counsel, companionship, and cooperation. Then I reflect on how many people in my life have been required to ensure even my most minute success.


For instance, it can't be normal that I require a diligent squadron to prevent me from setting fire to my surroundings. My dad steered me, with threats and ultimatiums, away from pursing a career in pyrotechnics; my sophomore lab partner Dietrich delivered my college chemistry section from certain explosion by guarding my contributions to the experiments; and my beloved roommate repeatedly removed me from drunken bonfires and flaming Sambouca shots.


As far as companionship, my daily wordcount can't be normal, either. I read someplace that women, on average, speak 20,000 words a day, whereas men may use as few as 5,000. Surely I exceed the 20,000, which is far and away too great a verbal burden for one man to primarily bear. For this same category, I must also consider my great passions and tempers--which are decidedly an assault on general order and solemn decorum. In fact, the only known subduing force is a significant amount of alcohol. (It should be noted here that my primary beverage is its opposite, coffee.)


And finally, it requires an Atlantean effort to coax me into cooperation. I would decidedly prefer to carry the world on my own shoulders, thank you very much. Furthermore, I am quite convinced mine is the best possible plan for doing it. I don't forsee a ready submission to someone who is contending for a share of my universe. Perhaps, for my own good, I must have my current arrangement: I am duped into cooperation by by surrendering in several tiny ways to a great many people, not one particular partner. The sum total of the cooperation is probably the same, but I don't have to acknowledge defeat.

So, it is a distinct possiblity one man would never be enough. And it may be a Cosmic act of mercy to spare someone the job of managing me.

Of course, I don't hold this to be an explicative certainty; most days I doubt this is even the case.

But it sure does make a great answer to those who pose impertinent questions.

Driving Thoughts Part II

I have a really wise friend who has kids my age. Those extra years and family days she has on me have made her a genius, as far as I can tell. I hope I get to be just like her.

Lately, I have been struggling with several things that seem rather one-sided, including my sister's contentious wedding. My friend and I were talking and she said she makes it a policy not to care about an issue or another person's issue more than they do. She pointed out that it isn't healthy or productive. It sounds good to me, though it may not quite be a fail safe plan for "healthy and productive." It doesn't account for any kind of sentimental myopia, where I figure I am the only one who cares and I turn out to be wrong. Still, I find this error preferable to the agony of caring too much.

I can't explain how much I wish I had this advice 7 years ago. My sophomore year in college, I started being friends with a guy who made me crazy. He was insufferable, but I was drawn to him because we had everything in common, including music and a rare sarcasm. We had days that were inexplicably hot or cold--it was arbitrary. I never knew if he was my friend. I would insist that there was some subsurface tension or cause, and he would brush it off like I was the crazy one. (Hindsight shows I wasn't.) The hot and cold with him was exasperating and deeply destabilizing. I figured it was all my fault but I couldn't understand how. We fought all the time (more like I yelled at him in my head--there were no gratifying, direct exchanges) and I constantly vowed never to talk to him again.

The whole thing resulted from two broken people trying to be friends in spite of their dysfunction. (We had both just seen the end of significant relationships and carried a lot of hurt.) Eventually, we became close friends, but that beginning was rough. His head games and my sensitivity stemmed from baggage that was, right then, insurmountable. Our friendship needed time and patience. Instead of internalizing the perlexing strife, I could have rejected responsibility that didn't belong to me. That wasn't my mess to save. I could have used the rule: Don't care more than the other person. It spares you the fight for something that can't be won by fighting.

And that is something I don't readily accept:

Many fewer battles are won by fighting than I suppose,
and not every battle is mine to fight...
which is my most noble excuse for not talking to my sister.

Men are Friends , NOT FOOD

I got a phone call last night from my dear friend Mike James. (He wanted someplace to rant about the New Hampshire results, and if there is someone with whom anyone can do that, it's me). Mike is a friend who reminds me of something important: I have been very blessed with terrific men in my life.

Don't get the wrong idea. Mike is married with two gorgeous kids and a wife who is funny and kind. Mike and I met because we were both hired as first-year teachers at my last school, which is a bit like saying we were together for a tour of duty in 'Nam. He taught near me so it was his room I ran to after a hard day for solutions. He gave me a bunch of U2, (he is 8 or 10 years older than me) and I gave him Coldplay's Speed of Sound and David Crowder. Unless he was coaching, he was almost always good for a Friday beer. Mike only lasted at my school for one tour--I mean year--and when he left, it was hard to tell if our friendship was a work-related circumstantial thing, or something meaningful. (Confession: I hardly think anyone is my real friend. I always second guess things and write them of as circumstantial, only to be occasionally surprised) Those Friday beers meant so much to me because he was such a profound encouragement. Mike has called me or emailed every month or so for 2 years since he moved to North Carolina. Apparently the appreciation went both ways. I watch for cheap tickets to NC so I can visit his family. I have sort of adopted him as a mentoring big brother, and he is not my only one.

As an oldest child, I have ALWAYS, as long as I can remember, wanted a big brother. Someone to be bigger and smarter (OK, maybe not smarter) to deflect the heavy blows and look out for me. Because of this, I have adopted a dozen in my life. I had Paul, Mat, and Brian in high school. I just saw Brian over Christmas break when he was passing through Orlando. He was on the drum line with me and an upstanding Eagle Scout . He was sort of assigned to me because I needed help discerning the stupid in my plans, an I was assigned to him because I had a car. Paul and Mat were there to harass and embarrass me when I had my first date with another guy from the drum line.

In college, I had Kip, Mike, Dave, and Matt. Kip took me camping (the only time I have ever gone) and taught me how to shoot things with a 20-gauge. Mike, Dave, and Matt were sent with my sisters as the envoy to drag me back from Britain when I swore I wasn't coming. These four guys were voted "most eligible men" in my college circle, and other girls swooned and vied for their attention. I could call them whenever I wanted because they were my brothers. Dave is still like my brother 8 years later. I saw girlfriends come and go, but I still had more of their company over the long term than any of them. Those men were (and some are still) very precious to me--and I never dated any of them. I was never even interested.

Somehow, I always knew how to enjoy and appreciate men without needing to attach them to myself. Maybe it comes from getting along really well with my dad. It takes me about 5 mins (literally) to know which ISN'T the man I'll end up with. Sorting that out right away lets me just enjoy them for who they are. I have always been able to do this. And I've always had more guy friends than girl friends. ( having 4 sisters helps--really, do I need many more women in my life?) It turns out this isn't very common. Sometimes, there is an awkward few days where the guy has the wrong idea because I am genuine and friendly, but it is so great when he gets that I'm genuinely agenda-free.

I wish all of the high school / college girls I mentor could get it. It is like in Finding Nemo, where the sharks are going through the "program" chanting, "Fish are friends, not Food!" I wish they could get how much better it is to treat men as brothers instead of boyfriends. I try to make them see: Men are Friends, not Food!

More than my girls, I think we all suffer from the absence of the "Men are friends, not Food" mentality. Because it is so rare to be agenda free, we suffer under the constant accusation that there are ulterior motives. I have truly appreciated some men only to have a friendship precluded by social protocol.

I noticed one of my favorite co-workers at my last job because he was sitting in his first faculty meeting unabashedly reading Vonnegut and drinking a Venti latte. We had a common planning time, and I thought he was hilarious. He had worked with Justice Bryer and as a lawyer for Microsoft during the anti-trust lawsuits. What a fascinating guy to meet for coffee! Though these meetings were few. While it was more likely busy life than anything that prevented regular coffees, he is 40 and married, and I am twentysomething and single. I doubt this was remotely considered, but it looks weird when it shouldn't.

I've often been self-conscious about my relatively short dating history. No, I haven't had a lot of boyfriends who have given me emotional baggage (or other things--eek!). But I can count dozens of men who have taught me and enriched my life and treated me well. I am glad I never had an older brother, because I have been greatly rewarded in my search for one.

Thanksgiving top- fives

It is hard to categorize my restful and heart-warming experience for this trip to the Midwest. But one of my "core-competencies" is list-making, so this is probably the best way to make notes about my holiday. Here are some more Top-Fives:

Things I miss about the Midwest:

1. Caribou Coffee
2. The smell of the cold
3. heavy, fluffy scarves
4. the lack of a need to lock doors
5. being able to find cold storage anywhere outside during the winter

Favorite Christmas decorations:

1. white lights
2. red ribbons
3. red berries and evergreen
4. sparkly tinsel
5. **mistletoe**

Places to drink in Sioux Falls
Going out is unbelievably inexpensive here! Pint of imported (read snobby) beer: $2.75

1. McNally's Irish Pub
2. Braccos
3. Paramount Piano & Wine Bar, on Phillips Ave
4. Long Shots (Main Ave)
5. Kaladi's

Favorite Sioux Falls Stores

1. World Market (Cadbury dark chocolate Flake bars, and McVittles Plain Chocolate "Digestives" [cookies] )
2. Zandbros (new fountain pen converter, Pelikan Blue ink, Dover collection of W. Somerset Maugham short stories, Christmas cards with a Dickens Quotation)
3. Barnes and Noble (one of the largest I have ever seen, purchased a renewed Victoria magazine, Ian McEwan's Atonement, Barnes and Noble's History of Ancient Rome for dad )
4. Ten Thousand Villages (jewelry from India and Chile, Bangles from Bengal, experienced "singing bowls" for the first time thanks to Chase)
5. The Red Shoe (purchased absolutely nothing, but this is a common reaction of mine to Stuart Wietzman and Cole Haan)

Holiday Ritual

I noticed yesterday how much I delight in rituals. I spent the day noticing how ritualistic my travelling is. I have a night-before routine, a morning routine, an airport routine, an on-the-plane routine, an arrival routine... and the whole thing in reverse on the way home. It is like a holiday: you enjoy the occasion because you get to do the same things you don't do any other time. Roast turkey and cranberries are not everyday foods; is isn't normal to hang colorful plastic things with hooks on trees; and, unless you work at Disney, you don't get fireworks on a daily basis. The ritual means I delight not only in the destination, but in getting there.

• The night before I always stay up too late packing, and I try to make Beth help me pack. I used to bribe her with the promise of presents, now I have to bribe her with beer AND preemptive presents.

• The morning I leave, I vow to rise early to finish the cleaning of my apt I whined about the day before but never did. Then, I oversleep because I was up too late packing and leave a messy apt anyway.

• I always buy magazines (a budgetary luxury) at airports "for the plane." I buy things I love but don't usually indulge, like The Economist, The New Yorker, and InStyle. (I have a deep fondness for "thinky" periodicals. Even InStyle counts because they have a brainy and artistic word use.)It is during these purchases that my horrible resentment for NOT having a good national paper really burns.

• On the plane, part of my ritual is guessing who in the gate area will be my seat partner. (only once in my life has it ever been the handsome, single, leather-jacket wearing, scruffy stranger...usually it is an enormous, unfriendly man, a surly teenager, or a chatty old woman who can't identify I intend to read my luxurious magazines) Thist time, I randomly flew next to one of my favorite students from my former school. We had a fantastic 2-hour, life-defining conversation.

• The arrival ritual includes a dash to the bathroom to cosmetically recover from the just-been-mauled-by-recirculated-air-for-hours effect. KCI (Kansas city) wrecks this part by having the retrieving party wait practically in the gate area. Only when it had been wrecked did I notice this was an important part of my ritual.

I am here now, after a long drive, in Sioux Falls, and we have done some of the Sioux-Falls ritual--like driving aimlessly around the city to see how it has changed. But with this, I got to think about what separates ritual from routine. I think routine is simply repetitious actions, but ritual involves repetition based on enjoyment or meaning. We drive around Sioux Falls because we love the city. I buy the magazines because I love them. I guess about gate-dwellers because I can't help myself. I delight in ritual because I love that I get to repeat doing what I love to do. So often, what I really love only happens once.


What I don't have is an un-packing ritual. I hate it so much, I don't even have a routine. I prefer to keep things in bags for months to putting them away. If only I could find a way to ritualize the triumph of a clean bedroom floor...

If only No. 10 were my address...

I am sorry to say it seems my strange affection for British Prime Ministers goes beyond Tony Blair (and my appreciation for Tony Blair is more than unreasonable--some say disturbing) . I have seen the movie Amazing Grace four times this week (because I am showing it in my classes), and my favorite character in it is Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger.

In addition to finding his movie portrayal charming, , he was single--I mean--I would have liked his politics. I am reading a biography of William Wilberforce, and I am pleased to find much of the dialogue in the movie is taken directly from historical documents of the time. This means that I get to like the historical figure instead of just his portrayal in the movie. And he was quite the historical figure: He was prime minister during the Act of Union with Ireland, but he also stood up for the rights of the Catholics. Though he died before slavery was abolished, he was instrumental in Wilberforce's success. He was loyal to the king, even in George III's madness.

Admittedly historical accounts (here, here, and here) are mixed on his overall sucess as a PM, but historical commentary suggests it was because he was a statesman, and not a politician. The difference between the two terms is more than semantic: a statesman demonstrates great wisdom, ability and experience in the art of government, and a politician is someone who is more concerned with winning favor than with governing. What Britain needed during the tumultuous time of the early 19th century was a statesman, and this is what America needs at turn of the 21st. From a political and a quirky personal standpoint, wisdom, ability, and experience are attractive qualities in a man--a confession which betrays my preference for older men.

Perhaps developing an appreciation-turned-crush on historical figures is a hazard of being a twenty-something single history teacher. There is a small chance that I like Pitt because I find the actor (who was recently featured in a Times article) for him attractive. It's unlikely, but I hope that is it. It would make my ministerial fixation a lot easier to explain.

*You Left Your Heart Where?!?

For Thanksgiving, I am going to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Can I just say how much I love this city? I usually get the wierdest looks when I talk about how excited I am to go there, but you have to go there--maybe you even have to go there with Dave--to see how charming it is. Dave pretty much grew up there. I cannot count the number of hours I have spent with him, driving around the "country's biggest suburb," admiring all of its quaint eccentricities.

For instance, Sioux Falls has the highest number of restaurants per capita of any where in the country--it is a great place to go out. It has a thriving local theatre and arts scene, my favorite coffee shop chain, Caribou Coffee, as well independent coffee shops scattered all over the city (inc. a tiny Ethiopian one on 10th where I think my friend Mike and I were the only white people to have ever been there). It has a Magnolia tree, which is strange because you are not supposed to be able to grow Magnolias that far north (Magnolias are my favorite tree). It has one of the largest green spaces in the country, with a park that on either side of the river that surrounds the city. This city's people have a ridiculous amount of civic pride; it has a long history, and they celebrate it (with the kind of brass placards nerds like me have to stop and read). And the people are friendly in that mid-western, down-to-earth, genuine sort of way. In case you get a chance to go, here is a list of things to do when you get there.

Top Five things to do in Sioux Falls, SD

1. Zandbros: a variety store/independent bookstore. It is where I bought my first fountain pen, they carry the Bloomsbury Review (the sign of a good bookstore), and the type of quirky, home-decorating stationary things where people always ask. "Where did you get that?" Bonus: there is an antique-soda-fountain-turned-coffee shop in the back.
   
2. The Washington Pavillion. Instead of tearing down an old highschool, they turned it into a civic arts center. It has a performing arts center, and both a permanent visual arts collection and rotating exhibits. The last time I was there, they had an exhibit about Harold Edgerton (that is now in Arizona.)
   
3. Falls Park. They light it up for Christmas and it is gorgeous. In the summer, when the falls are low, you can climb all over them; and in the spring, when they are full of the melting snow, it is a powerful experience.
   
4. The Sculpture Walk. Some really great pieces have come from here. The city votes on their favorite, then the city buys it each year and puts it out for everyone to enjoy. It started out as local artists, but now it is a national competition. Local corporations also buy pieces and put them in places for the city to enjoy.
   
5. St. Joseph's Cathedral (See photo above). You can sit on the steps for one of the best views of the city.It is a beautiful piece of architecture--stained glass windows and all.

*title taken from a NYTimes Article.

Some top-fives

I was reading the Guardian, and one click led to another, taking me to this. What a masterpiece! And this was the commentary: "The elegance and logic of Harry Beck's design - its combination of bustling intersections, sprawling tributaries, long, slanting tangents and abrupt dead ends, all sucked into the overturned wine bottle of the Circle Line - seems to spark other connections and appeal to the brain's innate desire for patterning and structure."

"The brain's innate desire for pattern and structure".... might explain my top-five lists.

I have been mulling over these lists for a while, and in lieu of a real blog entry, here are some of my recent top-fives:

Favorite Things Men Wear:

1. well-cut, single-breasted black suit
2. closely-coordinated shirt and tie
3. Pea-coat
4. The Jeans--the kind that sit just right
5. cologne--particularly Armani

Renaissance Art Works:

1. Michelangelo's David
2. Botticelli's Primavera
3. Ucello's Battle of San Ramano
4. Rafael's Entombment
5. Donatello's St. John the Evangelist

Favorite Beers:

1. John Smith's
2. Old Speckled Hen
3. Southshore Red
4. Newcastle
5. Guinnesss

Favorite Actors:

1. Cary Grant (hands-down favorite)
2. Colin Firth
3. Jimmy Stewart
4. John Cusak
5. Anthony Hopkins

Things I'd like to own someday:

1. A really expensive, beautiful fountain pen engraved with my initials
2. An overstuffed reading chair that permits me to sit sideways
3. A full wine rack
4. A tailored leather jacket
5. a DSLR
   
   Ok.. so this list is way longer than five...


6. A diamond ring
7. an espresso Machine
8. A British Passport

Other artful things of note:

• I love my Levenger bottled ink. I can't believe I ever used any other kind. It is strong and vibrant, and it has made the most stubborn pens smooth and sure.


• I found a new lip gloss by Laura Mercier that replaces my discontinued favorite from Guerlain.


• I have a new travel mug from Starbucks that epitomizes the travel mug. It has a non-leaky top that flips open and is non-intrusive. It keeps my coffee warm through 5th period, and it is a pretty raspberry color.