Recently in Personal Category

As I dipped into Life Studies last week, looking for words to share in this space, I realized that Vreeland's collection does not lend itself to excerpting. (though the phrase, "how Mimi's fingers, like little white minnows, grasped its handle," seems to have stayed with me.) However, it was her exploration ("Uncommon Clay") of a daughter and a mother navigating the tangled prions and negative spaces of memory loss for which I am the most grateful.

It is unabashedly emotional, to be sure, of both Vreeland and of myself. The subject taps a reserve of longing and misunderstanding as I watch my own mother dart in and out of her mother's life--a life clouded by time, her desires blunted to absorb only the daily presence, really, of my grandfather and the sweets that preface each meal.
I wonder how these two women, such pillars of my life, maneuver through the silences, through the words that now gape, unspoken, in my mother's mind and that no longer find tread in the spongy recesses of my grandmother's skull. What landscapes have they found to transverse across together? Or, more likely, does my mother still search for some safe pathway?
I wonder if, as Vreeland supposes, my grandmother feels that "the world may be spinning around her, mountains, people whirling in and out of rooms, but she is at center, knowing those are her hands at the end of those arms, that that is her breath moving in and out of the dark centers of her being." And I wonder, if that is the peace which exists, how three people, two generations removed, come to find that peace together.

Last night, under the influence of champagne and chocolate, it occurred to those of us at abrooklynlife's New Year's party that 2008 rhymes with ... great ... yeah, so some would consider that a rough night. Others, perhaps, would consider that an indicator of New Year's Eve success. Regardless, in the spirit of eminent future greatness, Subway Reads emerges from the glitter and spangle to greet the cold light of the new year with spectacles and keyboard in hand.
Less ambitiously this year, instead of chronicling the ins and outs of the F train, I'll be exploring the much more modest confines of my bookshelf, though hopefully a few observations from underground will make its way onto the screen as well.

Today, we begin with the one book I received for Christmas:

Women in the Material World

by Faith D'Allusio and Peter Menzel

Arranged alphabetically, Women in the Material World explores the lives of women in countries from Albania, Brazil, and Cuba to Russia, Thailand, the United States, and fourteen other countries all over the globe. This book follows on the heels of the authors' previous project, which documented thirty statistically average families around the world. You can check out their portraits here.

But D'Allusio and Menzel discovered that the stories they had told were predominately male stories, and so revisited many of the profiled families to take a look from the female point of view. This new book is full of life--through conversations, observation, statistics, and of course, photography.

I'll include excerpts from these women's stories here each day of the week.

As Naomi Wolf writes in the foreword, "the beauty on the page is a tribute to the inherent beauty of the subject: the female love, passion, and toil that invisibly undergird human societies everywhere."

On this weekend's parent-visit agenda: a walk through Chinatown, with a surprise blessing of a new business and a tasty Peking duck at Peking Duck House, a long-overdue visit to the Met for a look at the new Greek and Roman sculpture galleries, the Barcelona and Modernity exhibit, and Frank Stella on the roof, plus pizza at Lucali's, and an early bed.

Sophie Estrin Smith was born to Marsha and Adam Smith (of ABL podcast fame) on January 7 at 6:34pm. She weighed 7 pounds 12 ounces and was 20.5 inches long. Happy 0 birthday Sophie!

Last night, at a party, several of us sat around and remembered where we were on 9-11 and how we first heard the news.  At that time, I was living in Atlanta and not New York and only had a visitor's perception of the city. I was in my car, driving to work, and I turned on a popular rock radio station and I heard them narrating the events. I thought it was a joke. After several minutes of listening and never getting to a joke, I called my mom, and told her to turn on the TV right now. I told her that something important was happening, but I wasn't sure what it was. When I got to work, everyone was very quiet. No one knew for sure if it was real. Then we hooked up the TV and watched. Thoughts turned to friends---were they in upper Manhattan or lower Manhattan, where did Brooklyn friends work in the city? Emails, phone calls, nothing made us feel better, but it made us feel like we were trying. A month later, I took a trip to New York with two friends and we got as close as we could to the site. The air still smelt burnt. We were the only people around besides the cops. Even to a visitor, the silence was eerie.

For me, it's a peaceful sleeping beast ...

For D, it's overly exuberant mustard ...

Well, at least I'm not 30. Cause that's when you have to get all responsible, right?

(for more monkey love ...)

(photo by Dennis)

Write what you know. I know I've been teasing Dennis a lot for turning 30. Thirty doesn't have the magical energy-sucking powers of say 40 or 50, but it is a peculiar milestone for the simple fact it's an age I never quite planned for me. In fact, I realize that I never much saw past 26 or 27. And so it boggles my mind to call my grandmother and wish her a happy birthday (a week late) and realize that she is more than three times my age. What boggles my mind even more is that every day my grandparents drive to and from a nearby assisted living facility to visit my grandmother's sister. It is an act of love. They are old, the sister is rather cranky, but they go every day, even when they don't want to. Pretty amazing stuff. And to think, I'm inwardly cringing at the task of writing wedding thank-you notes, which I have yet to start.