I love when there is a confluence of ideas that merge together within a short period of time. Such was the case last week for me when starlings emerged from the ether and became front and center of my focus. It started with reading an op-ed piece by David Brooks in the New York Times about how the brain works, and comparing it to the murmurations of starlings. Then just a couple of days later, I saw a flock of them flying together above the farm behind my house, during a snow storm. It took a few tries to capture them on video, because they disappeared out of view a couple of times before I could get outside with...
So happy to have seen the Ruth Asawa retrospective at MoMA before it closed. February 7th will be the last day, so if you can make it over there before then I highly recommend seeing it. I was taken by so many things: her talent, her resilience, her ability to share her work and knowledge with young people (and old people too!), her foresight to get a patent for her unique wire construction, and her ability to produce an abundance of work in a multitude of mediums. When she was 16 she was sent to an internment camp in Santa Anita, California, along with her mother and siblings, a punishment for simply being of Japanese descent, and then later moved...
I am so grateful to my sister Molly for inviting my husband and me to spend time with her in North Carolina. She rented a house right on the beach with a wrap around front porch, which made for the perfect viewing of early morning sunrises. I love what she wrote in a book that she put together since: "There is nothing more symbolic of hope and renewal than the sunrise. All things seem possible in the presence of the sun's impossible beauty. When your world is in turmoil, the simple truth in knowing the sun will continue to rise is a healing thought." - Molly Ahearn (Here is a link to her own blog post with stunning photos and...
I have been making a bunch of soups lately, after a long hiatus from the kitchen, and have to say that it has been both fun and satisfying. I needed to figure out an alternative to sandwiches at lunchtime, since I no longer craved them, and I wanted to replace them with something that was nutritious and comforting. I like the texture of pureed soups, so started there. Two things that I learned from Mark Bittman in his cookbook How To Cook Everything are 1) Roast whatever vegetables you're going to use before adding them to the soup and 2) Potatoes work great to create a creamy texture if you don't want to use dairy. Here are some of my...
