“People might call my rooms stark, but I think they’re like when you have a mint in your mouth and you breathe in deeply – there’s a freshness, a crispness.”
Interior Designer Vicente Wolf
Mixing the senses is invigorating. Think how a smell tastes, or how a color feels. So I appreciated the description from this New York designer. Wolf has been in the business 30 years, written books, won awards. And he knows how to describe things too – I know the sensation (or look) he is talking about.
“No jump roping on the stairs!”
“Don’t eat rocks.”
“Please don’t write on each other with colored markers.”
And my personal favorite….
“The next time we buy a brand new car, please do not write your name on it with a stick.”
“Donald Trump… can make a Savile Row suit look cheap.”
Countess Louise J. Esterhazy is the non de plume of John Fairchild who is retiring his society column from W magazine. The father of 83 year old Fairchild created Women’s Wear Daily. His society column has bashed designers, stars and other celebrities over the decades so I’m sharing this bit of wit from his last column.
Carl Jung said, ‘What we do not make conscious emerges later as fate.”
Hmmm… do you believe in fate? I think we often call things fate when we don’t see how our actions contributed to an outcome. Not as poetic – but it’s similar to the phenomenon of suddenly noticing a type of car on the road when you are considering buying one. So much information comes at us, we’re selective in what our antennae brings in. It’s more filtering than fate…
“It was difficult, later, to think of a time when Betsy and Tacy had not been friends.”
So begins the delightful tales of friends growing up on Hill Street in the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace. The books were published in the 1940’s and are now having a resurgence thanks to the Betsy-Tacy Society. In 1992, only four of the ten books were still in print. So the organization, based in Lovelace’s home state of Minnesota, began a letter writing campaign to Harper Collins publishing house to get them all reprinted.
They are now back in print, recalling happy memories for moms like me and Bette Midler who said, “I read every one of these Betsy-Tacy-Tib books twice. I loved them as a child, as a young adult, and now, reading them with my daughter, as a mother. What a wonderful world it was!”
“Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that are forever flowing through one’s head.” Mark Twain
Twain is known for his acerbic wit more than for positive thinking quotes – yet I see an encouraging thought in this sentence about the power we have to be happy. In this era, we might call it mindful living. Twain’s thought is similar to the quote about life being 10% what happens and 90% what we do about it. I recently wrote an article about joy and found that one proven “attitude changer” is to keep a gratitude journal and write five things you’re thankful for each day before bed. It helps shift your “storm of thoughts” to happier ones.
“The Best Picture category was doubled – and all of us in Hollywood thought one thing: ‘What’s five times two?”
Steve Martin, Hosting the 2010 Academy Awards
There were many moments from last night’s Oscar’s best forgotten. The loud woman who interrupted an acceptance speech, Sean Penn’s bizarre ad lib, the blue face gag, and several of the dresses. But Steve Martin’s wit showed in several moments during the long night. His humor also shines in his books. Martin closed the evening with…
“Ladies and gentlemen, the show is so long that Avatar now takes place in the past.”
“And this dark forest green sits down. It doesn’t jump out at you.”
That’s designer Sam Blount describing Benjamin Moore’s Lafayette Green which he likes painted on a porch floor. There’s both a science and an art to color. Here Blount uses language that you wouldn’t normally associate with color – but I know exactly what shade he is talking about.
One of my favorite books from childhood is Hailstones and Halibut Bones which I blogged about last year. When my great aunt was going blind, I read these poems and tried to imagine describing a color so people could see it in their heads.
This quote is so popular you can even buy T-shirts and mugs for the moms in your life with this sentiment emblazoned on it. It’s a quote to chuckle at – yet I read something selfish in it. Do you? It’s as if the line is proudly encouraging you to spread your bad mood to your loved ones to get them to behave to your liking. If my kids and husband are happy, then I’m happy too. Of course, I might even be happy anyway… but the point is I value peace and harmony. But maybe that doesn’t make a good T-shirt…
“The pursuit of reading is carried on by private people.”
So what would Virginia Woolf make of today’s public sport of reading? We wait anxiously to hear Oprah’s book choices, form reading clubs to discuss books as a group, make celebrities out of some authors, chat with unknown people about books online and read magazine columns to find out what books are on the bedsides of various public people. Of course, just about anything which promotes reading is fine with me. But I think Wolf was describing something rare these days – being alone with your thoughts. Pondering ideas dear to you, allowing time for reflection on the facts and fantasies you read, making sense of a book in your own way. Perhaps in this tell-all world, there are some things we can keep for ourselves
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