Friday Links

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1. I love this: 2000-Year-Old Roman Theater Hosts World Cup Watch Party.

 

2. Caity Weaver writes about garage sales, thrift stores, and estate sales in The Atlantic. You get history and pathos and sentences like this:

“For every delightful discovery of a charmingly wacky neighborhood where one resident’s garage-door mural features an alien camouflaged among the paddles of a prickly pear cactus, and another homeowner has installed a rooftop statue of an orange pig with blue angel wings, there will be a haunting encounter with a nearly silent man hoping to sell a single button-down shirt for 50 cents. If you don’t have the stomach to witness people’s lives up close, do not ever stop at a yard sale.”

 

3. Thinking about my orange cat. 🙁

 

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Thursday Poem

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Here’s one from Poetry Instagram by Lyndsay Rush, aka Mary Oliver’s Drunk Cousin. I also swear it was just April and now it’s 98 degrees and everything is going, going, going.

 

Soaking it Up
by Lyndsay Rush

Is it June already?
Honey, I swear it was just April
I swear the sun just came out and we remembered
why our ancestors worshiped it
I swear my peonies and iris and wisteria
just opened their eyes
I swear it was only yesterday that I wasn’t swearing
every time I stepped outside
But now we’re in the thick heat of it
The bare feet of it
The thudding heartbeat of it
They love to remind me that I only get 18 summers
with you
But if time is such a petty thief,
why are my arms so full?

Not Yet

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Two weeks ago I impulsively filled out an adoption application for a dog, after following different rescues and thinking and pondering and deciding that yes, the house IS too lonely and I actually WAS ready.

Then we met some foster dogs a couple days after that (including Teddy Murphy, a SWEETHEART) and we went home to sleep on it…and I just missed Toby and realized that I was not, in fact, ready and perhaps I was using the dog idea to distract myself from actually processing the crushing grief of losing my best friend of 17 years.

A shaved mini aussie shepherd dog sits by a man's leg and smiles

 

At least the dog meet and greet confirmed that they’re delightful and that Doc is indeed the Dog Whisperer. Maybe someday…
A photo of dogs on a patio and two people sitting in chairs, shot from the waist down. One dog is leaning against a man's legs while another sniffs his hands. In the background another dog sits by the second person and a tiny dog peeks out behind their legs.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Fashion Pajamas

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It took me a couple years to jump on the “matching set” trend but I finally sewed up some block print fabric I bought pre-tariffs into the Florence Pant (lengthened 3 inches with a 1.25 inch hem) and the Genra Shirt for a look that screams… pajamas?

A woman's full-length mirror selfie. She's wearing a matching short sleeve button-up shirt and wide pants in a navy blue block print with light blue geometric floral motifs.

I promise, these sets are all over the fashion world. There’s even a sewing pattern for both that I was inspired by, but I decided to use patterns I already had and that I knew fit (I have never been a “make a lot of muslins and tweak the fit” sewer).

A J Crew matching set in large block print on cream

A Zara matching set in pink floral on cream Looking at these FASHUN examples, I think I need to try the top tucked in and add some jewelry if I wear it out of the house?

I do like the final pieces, though–as you might expect from almost-pajamas, the whole set is ridiculously comfy. I love an Indian block print for summer; the cotton is so nice and light.

Midsummer

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It was a long weekend and the solstice so I spent as much of it under the sun as I could: A hike in Big Cottonwood, visits to gardens (my dad’s and my friend’s), and watching the sunset from the city’s north foothills instead of the lake this year.

A mountain peak in the distance, framed by tall evergreens

Three pink and red striped roses in dappled sunlight

Sunset over mountains, as seen from foothills above a city

A mossy decorative plaque of a cherub on the side of a wood shed

Looking up at a blue sky through aspen trees

Friday Links

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1. I’m a little late today because we have another summer Friday for Juneteenth. Now I’m plotting how to get 4-day weeks until Labor Day and might be doing this later:

 

2. No one was more surprised than me to learn that Provo has a (kinda) jazz kissa? They listen to more than jazz and I’m not sure there are coffee drinks but otherwise it’s the same. The Kids These Days are discovering listening to an entire album and I am trying to be supportive of them and not roll my eyes! (Review from their Instagram.)

 

3. Anthropeum is a game that has you guess “where in the world, and when, does this human artifact belong?” It’s incredibly difficult!

How To Read More

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I saw this essay by John Paul Brammer, “How I Learned to Read Way, Way, More” making the rounds in my different newsletters. When I read it last week, I realized he was the same author who wrote the piece about applying for Global Entry and the urge to conform I posted last summer. This one is wonderful–talking about attention and curiosity and developing a reading habit.

I had a long dry spell of reading in my late 20s/early 30s when I was still reading what was on my shelves but I just didn’t seek out anything new. Then I started walking to the library from my office job, and then I finally got a Kindle and discovered library e-books. Now I’m reading about a book a week. And no, they’re not all capital-L Literature, but as Brammer says in his essay:

I don’t need to go on about the benefits of reading, but here’s a brief paean: it has dramatically improved my quality of life. I’m less anxious. My thoughts feel cleaner. Thinking itself is more pleasurable. Pain is less mysterious. My brain is just better. Books are a privileged medium. We’re grammatical beings. We talk to ourselves in sentences.

RIP, David Hockney

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The painter died at 88 last week. I don’t talk about art a lot here but a postcard of his “Mount Fuji and Flowers” from the fancy mall stationery store lived in my high school locker and then on the walls of my first office cube. I’m forever on the lookout for an exhibition poster of his “A Bigger Grand Canyon,” and I lived for any story of him in his old age, still out there making art, like this one (from LACMA’s tribute):

During the pandemic, sequestered in his home in rural Normandy, he greeted every day by walking around his gardens, noticing the changes in nature, iPad and stylus in hand. Each day, he created something new, quickly crafting a tree about to bloom or a branch or a flower, observing how his subjects changed each day with the passage of the seasons. And he would share these images with his friends; each morning I would awake in L.A. and be greeted by an emailed iPad drawing from David, reminding me of all the beauty in the world. “Don’t worry,” he’d say with his characteristic sly wit, “they can’t cancel the spring.”

 

David Hockney's "Mount Fuji And Flowers," with flowers in a red vase in front of turquoise mountains.

David Hockney's "A Bigger Grand Canyon" hanging in a museum, with a group of visitors.

Text on a cream background that says, "I'm 82, I'm going to die. We die because we are born. The only things that matter in life are food and love, in that order, and also our little dog Ruby. I truly believe this, and for me, the basis of art is love. I love life. David Hockney Letter to Ruth Mackenzie April 2020"

Tuesday Project Progress: Moar Sweater!

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I guess it’s the Year of the Sweater because I started another one even before my “J. Crew” rollneck was finished. This is even in the same yarn as the last one (Cascade Cantata); I decided a sweater’s worth of yarn would be my “Easter basket” back in April and started it the next week.

A sweater being knit in shocking pink yarn. It's about three-quarters done.

I’m not using a PetiteKnit pattern this time, but another super-popular one–the Lakes Pullover from Ozetta Knitwear. I like the big collar and the loose fit, especially around the biceps (ahem). A woman modeling a loose fitting chunky gray sweater. It has saddle shoulders and a high ribbed neck.

It’s getting close, especially after some solid car knitting time over the weekend.

Tour Of The Mountain West

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We took a long weekend to drive our nephew over to the Air Force Academy for a leadership camp, maybe the last time we’ll have to drive him anywhere since he has his learner’s permit now.

We split the drive there into two days–SLC to Moab, then Moab to Colorado Springs on I-70–but we went north on the way home and took 40 through Steamboat and Vernal in one long day. Both routes were just gorgeous and I kept thinking, “I bet Wallace Stegner has something to say about this country.”

Boy does he–I looked up the source of this quote from another adventure with Skyler and found an article Stegner wrote in 1981 that’s most of the Sierra Club magazine:

Brought here blindfolded, I would know I was in the desert West by the smell of sage and dust and brittle weeds. Given a glimpse of the ground. I would know from the raw earth and the tufted, clumpy vegetation… that I was west of the 100th meridian. Allowed to see the sky, I might guess from the darkness of its blue and the whiteness of the cumuli that float across it that I was in Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico or Arizona. But give me the briefest look at the horizons and I would know I was in Utah, in the high plateaus.

 

Tall red cliffs with blue mountains in the distance in Garden of the Gods

Red cliffs and clear blue sky with the Colorado River in the foreground in Moab

A tall teenage boy with a camo duffel bag stands in front of an aircraft display