a big bag hat, hat bag

(Isaac Mizrahi) What can you say? no, but you could sing something. Oh I don't know. Something like, for instance, what about, for example, say, I know, The Handbag Song?

happy quilt: Vine

"Vine" (detail) Quilt by Denyse Schmidt. More here.

nyc in snow

(photos: The New York Times)

The Greater Economy

Came across a fabulous piece by Stanley Fish in his Think Again blog in The New York Times called Faith and Deficits. Thank Heaven for the Greater Economy and more lasting treasure.

disappearing

Children at Puppet Theatre. Paris, 1963 The photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, (1898-1995) was a master of disappearing. He was just over five feet tall, didn't carry a load of fancy equipment or make a big fuss so people tended not to take him seriously. If they even noticed him at all. He used a 2 1/4" Rolleiflex "because you can hold a Rolleiflex without raising it to your eye; so they didn't see me taking the pictures." (note: that's the camera with the view finder on top) He would then just be still. "I just kept motionless like a statue." he said. "They never saw me clicking away. For the kind of photography I do, one has to be very unobtrusive and to blend in with the crowd." It takes humility and humanity to photograph like Eisenstaedt. To be able to disappear like that and let only your subject be the thing. He took the famous photo of a sailor kissing a nurse on VJ Day in Times Square on August 15th, 1945. Perhaps it's not unlike getting out of the way as a writer and letting the story through?

St David's Day

Happy Patron Saint of Wales Day... Happy St David's Day! In his honor (St David) the Empire State is lit up in the colors of the Welsh Flag. Dydd Gwyl Dewi hapus! (To find out what that means, or indeed what any of this means, check out my post on St David.)