I noticed that my boss had a nice flower in her office that upon closer examination had a secret. It was in a wine bottle, and the ends were curled up so that it could not be removed, like a ship in a bottle. It turns out that the person who had given it to her was also a friend of mine, so I requested one as well and documented its progress. It's a calla lily.
Picture one is freshly cut with a straight stem.
In a few hours it was beginning to curl.
By midday it was clearly spiraling.
When I left to go home it looked about finished.
When I checked back Monday morning I found it had curled even more.
It's a question that I get asked a lot - by strangers at parties, on the phone with my parents, at home by my wife. Am I really that mysterious?
I collect historical documents and other stuff for UNC's "library." That's about as simply as I can put it without lulling you to sleep. Once in a while though, it produces some interesting stories or even photo ops. Like the one shown here.
This is a bust of Senator Sam Ervin, Jr. that was recently donated to the library. I was the one called on to drive out to Burlington and get it. Of course it made most sense to me to park old Sam up in the front seat and strap him in.
What a creepy bust, right? Well, he was all jowls, all the time - the artist didn't really have much to work with.
I love how lush North Carolina gets in the summer, and here are some growing things that have caused me to stop and take a picture. First, I took a wrong turn into a road behind a shopping center near my house, and found this field. At the time it was filled with little yellow flowers, but by the time I came back with my camera, they had been washed away by a summer storm. Next, as I was driving to visit some friends in Pittsboro, I saw a pond full of water lilies/lotuses. I love how they arranged themselves over the surface of the water. I also have a thing for blue hydrangeas, especially when you find a big bush with a variety of shades. My favorites are the deepest lavender blues. I've been searching for a great mimosa tree that is really pink and fluffy, and found the perfect one in my neighborhood.
After arriving home from being out and about on Sunday, I looked at our neighbor's yard across the street at what first appeared to be turkeys, but were in fact vultures, feeding on some roadkill in the street. These pictures do not do justice to their size, but they were skittish when I tried to get close.
Pretty ominous looking, but they were very helpful in disposing of the unsightly roadkill.
This was a big week in the life of the fetus. He turned 6 months, or more accurately, negative 3.5 months. We had a checkup, and he is fine. He did a lot of acrobatics in preparation for his circus career. We have also done a lot of preparation for his arrival. We hired our doulas, Teresa and Gail and began our 12 week Bradley Method birth class with Carol, who is also part of the Triangle Birth Network. We are really hoping to have a minimal intervention, drug-free natural birth, barring mal-positioning, pre-eclampsia or gestational diabetes. Considering that 99% of American woman have epidurals, this is not standard hospital procedure. We ideally wanted a home birth, but that proved to be to expensive (short version). The doulas and natural childbirth classes will help us to try to have the closest thing to home birth in the hospital. Good thing we live 3 minutes from the hospital and can hold off hon going until the last minute.
We also bought him a crib on Craigslist. It's pretty simple, but it converts into a toddler bed, full bed and love seat. We can't wait for his crib bedding to arrive to see how it looks together.
I'm afraid it's going to happen. I'm going to be "one of those" parents that really pushes their kids to achieve, where "achieve" often is code for "fulfill one or more of the parent's own unrealized dreams." In my case, I'll be pushing my kid(s) to be the next David Bowie(s) or Johnny Cash(es).
Just the other day it really started to hit me hard that there was once a time that I really coveted the creative elements of my life - I wanted them to overtake every other aspect of my life, in fact. But now, my creative outlets have shifted so hard (towards potentially inconsequential things like blogging) or have completely evaporated from my daily routine (like no longer playing my guitar for hours at a time), that I can't help but wonder, "What if...?"
Luckily, one of my responses to these thoughts has been somewhat rational: attempting to integrate creativity back into my life. My life's not over, damn it! So, lately I've started taking more photographs. I've pulled the guitar back out of the closet. I've been sifting through old sketch books and drawings.
But, I guess the other response has been a little irrational - the whole imposing my David Bowie dreams on my soon-to-born son. I can't predict what he'll find interesting. But you know what? I also can't help but think about how much of a "perfect storm" his environment will be for fostering rockstardom.
His paternal grandmother is a music teacher. She passed a lot of this talent to me. His paternal grandfather is an art teacher, an artist too (if that's something different). He passed a lot of this artistic talent to me. He's got other musicians and artistic folks on this paternal side, too. His maternal grandmother is a great artist. She has passed on a lot of her talent to Kate. I also understand there are other artists on the maternal side.
He'll be growing up in a town with a strong musical heritage and a well-supported musical culture. Kate tells me that pretty much everyone growing up in Chapel Hill was in a band at some point in high school, or even earlier. He'll be growing up in our household, with our sensibilities and appreciation for self-expression and love of music and art.
If this kid doesn't grow up to be a rock star, then rock must be dead.
I can see it now. Jonas will be like 6 years old and I'll be saying, "You need to finish writing that concept album or you won't get any dessert." or maybe, "No doing chores until you've done your mixolydian arpeggios!"
Of course, I'm really joking. I'm not going to pressure my kid into doing something he doesn't want to do. I mean, maybe he'd rather be the next Morrissey - I'd be crushed, but I could probably live with that.
For the sake of sharing, here are some of the songs I've made Kate's stomach listen to recently (I'm sticking with a lot of "The Classics" for now, I'll branch out later):
Apparently, the fabric I originally chose was a heavy canvas not suitable for curtains, but I'm really happy with what I found instead at Tonic Living. It also sort of goes with this crib set that I found on an Odeedoh nursery tour page. I am embarrassed to say it comes from Walmart, which is so against our values, but it was also only $39 for the whole set....
On our final day in Montreal, we went to see the Yves St. Laurent Love exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. I'm not a big fan of luxury culture in general, but as art objects they are lovely. My favorites were the Matisse and Braque (pink below) inspired dresses here.
My mom did a great sketch of one of the Matisse dresses here, as well as some fountains.
I heard that YSL's memorial service was held at his property in Marrakesh and the adjacent Jardin Majorelle. I was able to visit there in 2001, and have some old pictures that I (okay Biff) scanned. Although it is an amazing place, my recommendation is to visit Morocco a time other than August.
I really enjoyed Montreal (and Morocco) and would love to go back, although all travel plans are on hold for the next few years.
Saturday I dragged my mom all the way to a suburban mall to go to H&M baby, which was well worth it, in my opinion! We got many outfits of stripes, woodland and safari creatures. We then had lunch at the Jardin Nelson, which has a large open air patio. My pesto/mango/olive/avocado salad was delicious.
In the afternoon we went on a sightseeing cruise on the Bateau Mouche.
We passed Habitat 67 a housing complex created from cubes for Expo 67.
Check out the 4 huge penthouses on top of this luxury building.
Finally, we ended the day with a meal at Le Nil Bleu, which was nice, although I think my favorite Ethiopian is Zed's in Washington DC. Not that I don't love Abyssinia in Raleigh. I keep hoping to make it to Ethiopia, where I hear the injera is much more sour and the spices spicier.
Friday we went to the Jardin botanique de Montreal, which is the biggest botanical garden in North America. The Chinese garden, called the Dream Lake Garden, modeled after a Ming dynasty garden, was like a fairyland. I would highly recommend this for anyone going to Montreal.
They also have an insectarium, which was pretty neat. My favorite was the mini-exhibit on beetle jewelry from Peru. On the way there I saw this hilarious flyer. It says: Missing fish. I have lost my fish. I need him. He is fragile. Help me find him. If you find him, please call me or email me at whereismyfish@gmail.com. Maybe he should check the percolator .... For dinner, we went to a restaurant my mom had found in the guidebook called Chez L'Epicier in an old grocery store. It was probably the best meal I've ever eaten. It started out with a tiny skinned tomato with rock salt with a dropper of vinaigrette that you had to squeeze out while you ate the tomato. I then had a potato and mozzarella molleux and the cutest dessert ever, a chocolate club sandwich with pineapple fries and melon-mint coleslaw.
My mom and I took a mini-vacation to Montreal so that we could spend some time together before I got too big to travel and before being too busy with the baby. I had never been before, but it is a lovely, adorable, laid back city full of window boxes, cafes and pretty architecture.
We arrived on Thursday afternoon, and went straight to the Hotel Nelligan in Old Montreal, which had many sweet details, such as the faucets and edible displays of delicious green apples. The sweet and helpful concierge recommended lunch at Olive & Gourmando, a small and quirky cafe down the street. I had a really unusual but incredible sandwich of hummus, tofu, pickles and olives and the requisite chocolat chaud. Walking around the city, I loved these birch branches and a display of jewelry templates :
The highlight, however, which I had been looking forward to since we had begun researching the trip was the internationally renown circus school, called La Tohu 's annual student performance (Spectacle annuel de l'école national de cirque). I LOVE the circus (well, human circus) and French Canadian circus is very famous (Cirque du Soleil obv, but also the incredible Cirque Éloize). We hadn't gotten tickets in advance, and all the shows were sold out, but the concierge came to our rescue and got us tickets, which turned out to be the best seats. The show was incredible, and they don't have videos up from this year's spectacle but here is a small montage from 2007.
It doesn't even begin to capture the beauty of seeing it live, but you can get an idea.
My mom and I had actually seen Cirque Eloize's spectacular (literally) show Rain last winter at Memorial Hall and were mesmerized. For videos and dates go this link. It turns out that the founders had all trained at Tohu, and one of my favorite acts, the Cyr wheel was created by a member of the troupe!
We had already painted the walls a gender-neutral robin's egg blue in the baby's room and I was searching for a nice cream/gold patterned curtain to go on the three windows. I found a few good ones at anthropologie, but they are like a million dollars per panel. So I decided custom would be cooler, and cheaper, as it turns out. I found this material at reprodepot.com, which is a great source for cool fabric. I also love the echino leopard. More pics to come when the curtains take shape.
I went to the Red Hen a cute baby/maternity consignment store in Carrboro for the first time on Saturday and here were some of the cute clothes I walked out with. If you look at the site, check out the Baby Legs-too cute!
I had a great birthday weekend, starting with dinner at my favorite Ethiopian restaurant, Abyssinia, in Raleigh. Saturday night we had a potluck for friends at our house, but unfortunately did not get enough pictures of the always handsome Michael Feezor and his new old car. Who buys a car from the 70's when gas is over $4.00 a gallon? But it's pretty... Then Sunday we had a family dinner at my parents' house with the same cake I've had every year that I love. Sungold tomatoes are in season and that makes me happy. My parents got me the Orly Kiely bag I had been wanting since my mom got hers (yes I copied my mom). We looked around, but the local stores were out, so I ordered online. Sorry, local businesses, we tried.
Biff gave me two books, the new Lynda Barry, called What It Is. She is one of my favorites since I first saw Marlys. He also got me Let's Make Cute Stuff which is very inspiring.
By midday it was clearly spiraling.
When I checked back Monday morning I found it had curled even more.
Thanks Priyanka!
