MotherPie

Panics of The Great Depression...

The Financial Crisis of  hasn't yet become Depression 2.0 yet (that is a term from Paul Krugman), but references to The Great Depression are growing, beginning at the first of 2009. We are fearful of that term, fearful of what happened then, fearful of what may be in the future.  Some are avoiding the D-word all together, using euphemisms like banana. The Great Banana? so typical of Americans who don't even like to talk about death). The Good Life stopped at the end of The Roaring Twenties, the Gilded Age.  What will our era of the several decades of this bubble be called?

 This photo shows a 1920s bank panic at Guaranty State Bank in downtown Fort Worth. A large mob of panicky depositors crowds around the Main Street entrance of the bank building. 

Maybe people aren't rushing the banks as they did then, but I'm seeing signs of panic and grave, grave concern.  Elderly people have lost their retirement savings, businesses are closing, jobs are hard to find and most everywhere I go people are talking about what they are noticing. 

When the Mayor of Santa Fe held an open discussion meeting about the state of the economy here in Santa Fe, the venue had to be changed to the Convention Center downtown.

photo:  From the Jack White Collection of Historic Fort Worth Photos, UTA

Living Gratefully and Gracefully...

40 Tips for Better Life
 
1. Take a 10-30 minute  walk every day. And while you walk,smile.  It is the 
  ultimate anti-depressant.
 
2. Sit in silence for at least 10  minutes each day.
 
3. Buy a DVR and tape your late night shows  and get more
 sleep.

 4. When you wake up in the morning complete  the following
 statement, 'My purpose is to __________  today.'

 5. Live with the 3 E's -- Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy.

6. Play more games and read more  books than you did in 2008.

7. Make time to practice  meditation, and prayer. They provide us with daily
fuel for our  busy lives.

8. Spend time with people over the age of 70 and  under the age of six.

9. Dream more while you are  awake.

 
10. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is 

 manufactured in plants.
 
11. Drink green tea  and plenty of water. Eat blueberries, wild Alaskan 
salmon, broccoli,  almonds & walnuts.

12. Try to make at least three people  smile each day.

13. Clear clutter from your house, your car,  your desk and let new and
flowing energy into your life.

14.  Don't waste your precious energy on gossip, OR ssues of the past, 
negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your  energy in the
positive present moment.

15. Realize that life is  a school and you are here to learn. Problems are
simply part of the  curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but 
the  lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
 
16. Eat breakfast like  a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a college
kid with a maxed  out charge card.

17.  Smile and laugh more. It will keep the NEGATIVE BLUES away.

18. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.

19. Life  is too short to waste time hating anyone.

20. Don't take  yourself so seriously. No one else does.

21. You don't have to  win every argument. Agree to disagree.

22. Make peace with your  past so it won't spoil the present.

23. Don't compare your life  to others'. You have no idea what their journey
is all  about.

24. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.

25. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: 'In  five years, will
this matter?'

26. Forgive everyone for everything.

27. What other people think of you is none of your business.
 
28. REMEMBER GOD heals everything.

29.  However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

30. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends  will. 
Stay in touch.

31. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.

32. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

33. The best is yet to come.

34. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show  up.

35. Do the right thing!

36. Call your family  often. (Or email them to death!)

37. Each night before you go  to bed complete the following statements: I am 

 thankful for  __________. Today I accomplished _________.

38. Remember that you are too blessed to be stressed.

39. Enjoy the ride.  Remember this is not Disney World and you certainly
don't want a fast pass. You only have one ride through life so make the most of
it and enjoy the ride.

40.

May your troubles be less,

May your  blessings be more,

May nothing but happiness

come through your  door!

Thanks to my Tulsa friend B. for another good reminder of how to seize each day and get the most out of life (I had to put up the November 1, 2008 New York Magazine Cover's Live Well, Spend Less for a memento of our Recession/Depression Times).  Continuing New Year Cheers...

On the Road, Again...

Roads.

Pathways to possibilities.  Connections between places, routes to somewhere. 

Links, passageways, exits and entries.  Low roads, high roads, side ways, by ways.  Highways.

Roads of return, roads to nowhere. Paths of purpose.

Going and coming, coming and going.

Roads.

Fashion & Spending (Be a Genius, Wear Denim)...

When I watched the high end retail market go wild in NYC, when Manhattan was full of hedge-fund excess, I wondered when it would pop. (wondering this, I did, wearing denim). Well, it has, along with other retailers biting the dust. Mother sent me this clipping from Oklahoma City about one of my favorite retailers from my earlier days, Harold's, going bankrupt and it set the prep look for Oklahoma and Dallas.  I was happy they even had one in Atlanta when I was there (Santa Fe never had one). When consumer spending represents two-thirds of the economy, we're in for a protracted severe recession.

Luxury is over and when Dallas cuts back, it's notable: "people aren’t shopping to feel better. They actually are not shopping to feel better.” The worst financial crisis since The Great Depression means thirty-seven percent of Americans plan to spend less on holiday gifts this year. When Rolexes & Picassos Hit Pawnshops you know that things are serious.

So, buy denim! What could be more practical? High-end (the $89.50 Ralph Lauren Western Denim shirt) or more practical (Working Person's store for Wrangler denim shirts at low cost), denim is the American uniform.  Denim has always been in style in Santa Fe. Fashion by default, I think.

One brilliant person wears nothing but denim. Inventor Dean Kamen is considered a genius - almost entirely self-taught, and technically never even graduated from high school, but was earning $60,000/year when he left high school. Kamen wears the same outfit - Levi jeans, workboots and denim shirts - and has for 30 years. He invented the Segway, the world's first drug-infusion pump (and formed a company to manufacture it), a portable insulin pump for diabetics and his latest invention is an electric car motor.  Read more about this guy who has only read one novel in his adult life (he has dyslexia (but not with numbers and equations) and reads old academic textbooks.

Let's go back to our truly original American fashion roots. Put on the denim. Some things never go out of style.

Some of the best things in life are simple.  What could be more practical, easier and comfortable?

Nesting Redux: The Enjoyment of Plates...

My mother believes you should use your nice things.  She does. She dines on her grandmother's china daily -- an irreplaceable pattern.  She still has her everyday dishes, too.  Me? I'm more practical and my children even more so and I've been through multiple sets of dishes because mine just wear out with chippage from herd feeding. Dishes are something we use ALL THE TIME. Now that I have time on my hands and grown children, what do I do? Use my grandmother's china, or my own, or my youngest's that I keep for her hope chest?  Not often. 

With a daughter getting married last year, and the other children off at college, I could eat off china plates everyday. If I wanted to.  Looking at these cute monogrammed plates, left, last month as a potential wedding gift, I started thinking about dishes in general.  I've given hand-made one-of-a-kind decorated plates from Santa Fe's Rainbow Gate for gifts and I hang plates on my walls and love using special plates.  I think I'll order personalized plates for special occasion gifts in the future. But for me, now, for everyday?  Feeling like a new bride, off I went to pick out new dishes for my husband and me to enjoy, and I came out with something practical, below right, that can go into the microwave and dishwasher and is decently priced, simply decorated and practical and promptly broke two bowls washing them to put up. Oh well. So goes life.  The Francophile in me loves the fleur-de-lis pattern.

I poured over plates online.  I visited multiple stores.  I made my husband go to a few, picked out various dishes from several places to compare at home. I never spent this kind of time picking out my own original or subsequent dishes. Empty nest? Nesting after a series of moves? Re-nesting? Nesting redux.  I'm not a second bride, I say to sales clerks.

One of the places to consistently enjoy creativity, company and life itself is at the table. Now that my table is less full of people on a regular basis, I wonder if mealtimes will dwindle in pomp. 

Now that I have more time, I am wanting to pull out recipes and spend more time in the kitchen.  What has gotten into me?

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.