MotherPie

Chin Up, Cheerio O, Carry On...

Fake it 'till you make it.  Look up, notice the sunshine, don't focus on the shadows.  Have an attitude of gratitude.  Have a bit of sunshine every day, weather permitting.

For those who study happiness, there is much to be said about these words.  They aren't just truisms.  Rhea pointed out this week that middle age and being blue go together.  I do think tech woes can make one blue (or anxious, or existential).  So can sinking stocks and stinky socks.  Say that one.

Not that you have to be all chirpy, chirpy but these things are true; they can keep you from being blue. If you smile there is a positive effect.

Now I don't know if this is really something that works but my yoga teacher said if you bend over, slightly bend your knees, and just slump into the fall, grab each elbow and just...hang.  Just....hang.  Just doing this is very good for depression.  OOOOOMMMMMMMM. 

Now. If my computers and gadgets would just be hunky dory and the stocks would go up...

Dollars: The New Pennies?

Have you seen them yet?  The new dollar coins? 2008 is the second production/distribution year but as of now, only the first four presidents are out.  I have yet to come across one in regular circulation.  Santa put these in our stockings this year as novelty items. 

Let's dump the pennies! The best use of pennies was the creative collection (a huge penny dump) called the Penny Harvest at Rockefeller Center in NYC (via The Boomer Chronicles).   Every city should do this.

With the cost of the mite dollar, you can pay $75 in Paris for a pizza and cokes.  Somehow these large gold-colored coins are oddly interesting in these economic times.  Monetary incongruence.

The Wedding Cake...

Wedding cakes - take a bite of hope. Take a bite of dreams.  Take a piece of forever, ever after, the all and the everything.  And we all, we spectators, we encouragers and witnesses, we will bite into the hopes as well.  Masticated dreams. Delectable wishes.

Our layered wedding cakes come from an old English tradition, based on an architectural design for a steeple on St. Bride's Church on Fleet Street in London (see my post, Traditions: Bride's Cake).

My daughter's wedding cake design was magnifico.  Traditional yet with her touch of color, entwined with her Midori sea foam ribbon.  My sister-in-law, her aunt, arranged it to be just-so.  It was the centerpiece of the reception.

Would you ever have thought that an architect, reaching a spire to the sky, would be so noted today in our symbolism of layered hopes for the new couple, reaching skyward to heaven with this old, old tradition?

Eat it up. We did.

Bigger Than Dallas: Neiman's is 100...

Neiman Marcus opened its doors in Dallas 100 years ago today.  Fashion and style busted out of the stall, so to speak, and America might mark the moment.  A retailing family went West from the South and opened doors to sell spiffy stuff to a city with oil money, the only city at the time that was listed on the Social Register outside of the East Coast matrix.   

The cotton-and-oil money took to the idea of a button-down ready-made dress that women could step into, rather than pulling over their heads.  The company turned a profit in its first year.  That is just an example of the good sense and fashion mix that appealed to those who could innovate their way forward outside of the strictures of the (Eastern) establishment. 

My sisters-in-law grew up in Big D and their grandmothers took them to Neiman's to shop.  They would say they wanted to be buried in Dallas's Sparkman Hillcrest cemetery so they could sit up and see the (Northpark) Neiman's store.  That is a Texas girl for you, and her sense of heaven. Their two grandmothers are buried in just that position, in just that place.

My new hairdresser in Santa Fe told me that when he went from Chicago to Dallas on a visit he was supposed to go to lunch at Neiman's downtown and that was the only place to eat downtown other than the Fairmont Hotel and they couldn't get a seat because all of the Junior League women were there.  He didn't eat lunch there that day but he took one big long look at all of the big blonde hair-dos on those women who dressed to the 9's and decided on the spot he'd do quite well making a living in Dallas since women their dressed up. He did.

Isn't it ever so interesting how something can really shape a place? Neiman's.  The store that shaped Dallas, then Texas, then the region and...

Three Women & Style...

Millicent Rogers, Mother Theresa and Brooke Astor, all dead now. Style isn't the only factor when you think of impact. Style isn't anything without gumption. I visited the Millicent Rogers museum in Taos... so she's on my mind with these other two.

Millicent Rogers, right, made her mark by collecting regional art. Her namesake museum is full of her personal collection of New Mexican Spanish Colonial religious art, Navajo and Hopi jewelry and Pueblo pottery and other art from this area.  She, an heiress, came here from the East and found a style worth paying attention to, beyond her own style.  Her  interest gave these art forms impetus and traction because she had common sense to look beyond traditional forms and had the guts to move on that instinct.

The two other women whose styles were riveting are complete opposites.  Now we know of the dark nights of doubt of Mother Theresa.  She gave impetus to a life of denial and service, as Brooke Astor was a beacon to the art and style of the elite. Compared to Brooke Astor who reigned in the evening, they are women worlds apart, yet both hold fascination in their own rights.  The dark nights of soirees were Astor's shining moments...

Isn't it interesting to look at other examples of how women choose to live -- those past and those present?  More thoughts on these women on the flip.

Green Chile Stew with One Western Version...

Do you eat to belong? Eat to know? I've given serious thought to finding the best Green Chile Stew receipe as I eat my way around the area sampling this dish.  I've tried before to find the best Clam Chowder and the Best Texas Chili and the Best Gumbo at previous junctures in my life.  I read through the Green Chile Bible, Edible Santa Fe, tasted the fare here and there and found Cafe Pasqual's Green Chile and Pork Stew recipe in this month's Santa Fean magazine to be the one recipe I want to work with at home.  The recipe is in the cookbook, Cooking with Cafe Pasqual's: Recipes from Santa Fe's Renowned Corner Cafe by Katharine Kagel.  Cafe Pasqual's is one of my favorite haunts.  My husband might want to play with other recipes.  For now, we're cookin'. Later we'll share with you what we come up with.  Loving eating, swallowing a new place and life bite by bite.

update: I've now tried a bunch of versions, including a good Buffalo Green Chile Stew courtesy of LaMont's Wild West Buffalo, who raise the beeves.  Continue on the flip for my recipe for Buffalo Green Chile Stew.  I'll post my recipe for The Best Chile Stew and put a link here once it is perfected (wink).

Art & July 4

Happy 4th.  Best way to artfully live this holiday?

Remember our symbols and what they stand for.  With freedom comes responsibility. The design for my moving announcement card to NYC, right. You are free to use, with credit and link back to this post. 

Best art to buy: Peter Max Liberty series.

Best parade and one of the oldest: Round Top, Texas, population 71.  Best food: bbq. Best beer: Corona with lime.  Best decor: flags.  Best way to celebrate: with sparklers and family, of course!

Best place to watch fireworks?  Hmmmm.

Advice to Graduates: Hair Matters, Love What You Do and Fail...

What advice is being given to graduates this year? Here's my wrap-up of what is reverberating, culturally speaking:

The most influential speech of the last few years, still remains college dropout Steve Job's speech to 2005 Stanford grads.  Job's advice: find what you love to do.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow told students at Catholic University this month to live life boldy, and develop off-line relationships. "Ladies and gentlemen, you can not kiss a cursor."

Venture capitalist John Doerr responded to Rice University students' requested '07 speech topics: life and love. "It's easy to lose track of life's priorities." He learned he could accept failing as a venture capitalist, but he could not fail his family.

Oprah Winfrey's advice to '07 Howard University grads:  maintain your principles and serve others.  "My integrity is not for sale, and neither is yours." Her grandmother, a servant in 1950s Mississippi, hoped that Winfrey would "get some good white folks" to work for. "I regret that she didn't live past 1963 and see that I did get some really good white folks--working for me."

There are still speeches to come, but these are precious, priceless, profound and...some are just puffery --

Rave Reviews from Lifelong Learners...

Don't we all appreciate excellent teachers who can make us sit on the edge of our seats with eagerness to learn? Don't we love those "ah-ha" moments when new ideas click in? My mother described one such instructor. Professor J. Rufus Fears is the latest hot prof among life-long learners in Oklahoma.  People are underwriting private lectures and classes just to learn in a live face-to-face situation.  Anyone can order his lectures through The Teaching Company. I've enjoyed their courses in the past. 

Fears is the David Ross Boyd Professor of Classics at the University of Oklahoma, where he holds the G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty.  He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard and is a 21-time award winner for outstanding teaching.  He has been named "Professor of the Year" at Oklahoma three times.

Do You Stop and Smell the Roses?

Do you? Do you stop?

Stop and think...

What happens when beauty

is just...there?

The Washington Post experimented to find out.  They placed a world-famous classical musician playing the most elegant classical music on one of the most valuable violins ever made at one of the highest (but perhaps more plebian than most) pedestrian traffic flow areas of government workers in WDC during the peak of morning traffic. It was an experiment in priorities -- would passerbys stop to listen? Would a crowd gather?  Would the musician make money for his talent that commands a thousand dollars a minute in a freebie concert?  What happened? Only seven people stopped for at least a minute and only 27 gave money through his 45 minute performance.

The article is amazing and a video is there if you want to see the response of the passersby. But what got me, as a thinking mother, was this single fact:

Regardless of how the grownups responded, "every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away."

Life is full of beauty. Would you have stopped to listen?  Really?