Category Archives: Uncategorized

Design

Posted on December 7, 2017 | Leave a comment

Hello Philippines! I know a wonderful lady from Southern California who grew up there.

As to design, I never thought I was good at it. Neither did I think I was a good cook. I try to keep furniture in mainly neutral tones, except for a red paisley comforter cover given to my by my mother years ago.

I try to punch up the color on the bland walls, a bit. Theming. Walk in and there are reds, oranges and yellows. Dad painted a Tuscan landscape and a Maori-inspired piece from his travels. I also have a copy of the 18th century wood block print from Japan, the first full-color wood block in the world. I took care of this doc’s dog for a couple of weeks and this was my gift.

Down the hall are the greens. Each with a different green, all photos of Vermont, Concord grapes in western New York from a family visit, and my mother’s family.

The den/guest room is not finished as yet. When one walks in the front door there is a beautiful print of the Brooklyn Bridge, that I got framed for my husband. We have two wonderful quilts from his family, that are displayed proudly.

As one is a seasonal quilt I would like to replicate that in our den/guest room with four lithographs given to me by Dad years ago. It is art from Puglia, and arrange for their framing.

Our bedroom is supposed to be a Tuscan retreat. Chief painting is a large one from Dad of the Tuscan countryside. I’ve other plans, but they must be unveiled later.

I’ve an ally in getting quality photos and other art framed, K. For nearly 30 years I had a charcoal sketch of dancers that won a competition from an academy of fine arts. Of course Dad bought it for me in an awful uniframe. I had it framed shortly before he died last year and it was ready the day after his funeral, today.

K was gone the day I chose the framing. The owner made me do everything myself. In the end he asked me if I wanted a fillip. The only thing I fill up is my car’s gas tank every month. I said OK.

That night I awakened thinking I made awful decisions and wanted to take a photo of it for Dad. K answered and I told her what I’d done. She said she loved my decisions and couldn’t wait to work on it. Really? “And you did a fillip.” The dancers are in a pas de deux and I chose an undulating frame and mats and fillip with roundness to bring the eye to the artwork.

There’s more to do. This weekend I’ve a floral class, my second in a year. I’ve gotten good at small arrangements and this wonderful florist knows me and loves my dog and as one ages, learning a new thing every day or week is a good idea! You can’t find individual flowers at a grocery store. Here I can find thistles, alstroemeria, gerbera and other stems and with my pruning shears, make my own things. Cheers! Dee

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Clock Ticking

Posted on December 7, 2017 | Leave a comment

Days are slow. No, it’s not my biological clock thank you Academy Award Winner Marisa Tomai for the information. That is no longer my concern.

As we age the clock ticks for everything, age, death, life through volunteerism, cooking, writing and caring for others.

We are awaiting something that takes longer than me re-writing the Uniform Code of Military Justice to prevent a kid from being sent to what now is Afghanistan. Yes, just for wanting to be with his father on the weekend. I got it done quickly.

I can’t be with my father or ever hear his voice or see his emails or see his sundry gifts again. He left a Sergeant in the US Army, I know his dog tag # by heart and my brother, his best friend, has one on his key chain.  It took a lot of my time to do all of these things. I wish to see my husband succeed in everything he wishes to do, and will help him do so.

Infamy, this is the day. May all those who have served our country be honored. Dee

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L’Elisir d’Amore

Posted on December 7, 2017 | 1 comment

We used to go to plays and operas all the time during a nine-week summer festival. The playhouse/opera house was in the Erte style. Over the stage the stone announced “art alone endures.” We “kids” laughed because it looked like art alopee epiduris and have called it that ever since.

Our family went to Vienna to produce a ballet, John Cranko’s choreographed Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev. We stayed at the infamous Sacher Hotel (Sacher Torte’s home) right behind the Staatsoper where they were performing L’elisir d’amore, elixir of love, by Gaetano Donizetti. I didn’t like the opera at all. Perhaps it was jet lag. I’ll try to see his Lucia di Lammermoor before I leave this earth.

We went for tea and sweets every afternoon and saw wonderful things. Dad wouldn’t let me go to the art museum by myself (I was 25 years old) so we saw the Lippizaner horses. Poor dudes, trained like circus animals. I’ve not seen a circus since I was a little kid. I will not go to rodeos, dog or cat shows, and certainly not pit bull frenzies unless I’m under cover. Heck, there is no way a nearly 60 year-old white woman can pull that off!!!

My husband went to his first ballet ever last year and said “that was really good.” Of course it was. My brother produced it and my father was chairman of the board. That was the week before Dad, a musician, entrepreneur and leader died. Now I have to try to get my husband to see an opera. It’s not his thing. I’m thinking La Boheme with supertitles.

Let me know what you think. Art elopee epidures to you, too! Dee

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Wearing?

Posted on December 6, 2017 | Leave a comment

I think of the song “Sisters” from the movie “White Christmas” and wonder what I have on. “She wore the dress, and I stayed home.”

Long underwear, black silk, so comfy. And a just put on a sweater top in black/grey to keep me warm. It came from a company just a brief walk up the street. I got it probably a year ago and had to cut off the tag.

They had pants I love and I bought three pair and before they were bought out they said they were calling them the “Dee Pants.”

The entire worldwide enterprise was bought out and now it seems it’s mostly lingeree. They closed our local store and probably many others. What they offer now online is not to my taste so I’ll stick with what I’ve bought over the past few years, a lot of black and white, grey, blue separates. All very modest, including the Dee Pant.

Things I liked about this shop: the staff was fantastic, they knew how to find what I was looking for and knew what I bought six months ago; it was a young person’s store with a lot of mini-skirts et al but they did stock certain things for an adult in our community; and that I miss them. Happy holidays! Dee

 

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A Woman’s Touch

Posted on December 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

As I’ve been convalescing the past few weeks I’ve looked around our home. What is a “man cave,” anyway? He usually spends so much time around the country for work that when we’re together on weekends, we’re together. He doesn’t play cards or drink. He knows billiards but doesn’t wish to be alone in a basement we do not have at the moment.

A workshop, yes, while his younger brother was out canoeing and hunting deer, he built a workshop and invented things, like a micro-switch for the grain bin. Now that would be his kind of man cave.

As I contemplated my will and eventual demise I realize that I have decorated our home with artwork that is very feminine and beautifully framed. The quilts are from his mother, one flowery one she refreshed, from an ancestor and one she designed and made the squares in the seventies (we consulted on the design for years and made it of the seasons). Some are personal, such as of me as a baby, then cooking at the James Beard House.

Much art and photos are of dance. My kitchen is all me. Do you know what he brought to our relationship, actually our kitchen, besides his wonderful self and a work ethic that only belongs to someone who grew up on a dairy farm? One blue plastic colander his mother gave him to go to college. Of course we still have it decades later.

I’ll never forget those nine bulls 20′ away when I turned on the light on “meet the parents weekend” to use the bathroom. They stared at me, eyes shining so I shut off the light. They thought his father was getting up to feed them but it was three in the morning! Whoops. We married two months later, rookie mistake taken in stride by all. Not the marriage, the light and noise of the bulls.

My in-laws are being flooded out for a lake to serve a big city water. They have to move all the cattle. They must leave in 90 days. When I think of how his mother decorated it’s rational in terms of his and her needs and those of the “kids” who flew the coop years ago but love to come visit.

My husband has no interest in making a living space homey or attractive. When we met he was living in a man cave on the first floor behind mailboxes looking at a parking lot, with his dual-brained computer he built and string cheese wrappers littered between refrigerator and computer. Of course there was nothing on the walls.

Now we always have a view. Thanks, Dad, for teaching me! Everything in me wants to be with him for the rest of my life, but I know it will not be as long as his life. Every few years we have a two minute conversation with me asking him to re-marry after I’m gone and have a kid and he responds not to talk about that. He’d be a great father.

Should I will anything personal to my family? My parents’ wedding photos, beautifully framed. My father’s art (he took up art at age 80) of Tuscany and one Maori piece I love. The dancer’s pieces which should go to my brother, head of a dance company.

Or should I leave everything with suggestions if he does find another lifelong companion and hope that she is kind and caring, acknowledges that I did exist, takes care of my dog and most especially my husband and parcels the art she does not wish to have where I’ve designated. I do not wish to see him alone.

Oh, our wreath on the front door crashed yesterday with precious family ornaments. Pine needles all over the place. It’s in the guest bath right now awaiting judgment. I got it two days before Thanksgiving and think now that it may have been in storage for a month, as it is so dry. There are so many memories, ones we made for our years together of a snowman with a lasso, a reindeer in an apron delivering a tray of cookies, Santa on a bi-plane and me the moose lying atop a bi-plane with presents.

Santa in a kilt with bagpipes and me as the national flower of Scotland, the thistle. He as a moose riding a trout when his brother visited and they tried fly-fishing. I had to go “catch” three steaks for dinner! After all these years, there are more. Finger puppets, he’s the cow (dairy reference), I’m the horse and the dog is the dog. Now we’re all together on Dad’s evergreen tree, dairyman didn’t fall with the wreath, I rescued him and placed him back with us before the wreath fell.

We rescue each other, all the time. Cheers! Dee

 

 

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Eclectic and/or Eccentric

Posted on November 28, 2017 | Leave a comment

I like to think of myself as the former, though am becoming the latter. We moved a lot when I was a kid. I learned to save a few things, cookbooks, silk scarves from Dad from Ferragamo, trinkets from his travels.

My great Aunt O was married to a man who made Canadian pea meal bacon (wet-cured pork loin) braised in beer. Auntie O gave me one of his cookbooks, Larousse Gastronomique, before she died. Twenty years later I cannot open it because it reeks of cigarette smoke.

My Aunt L received a desk from her estate, charred with cigarette smoke for 40 years. My aunts cleaned it up and it is Chippendale, authentic, and gorgeous. I prefer more modern or rustic furnishings. They have the right home for it.

Different am I, not just left-handed. Great Aunt O was a milliner who flew to Paris every year to choose hats for the chic and trendy in Montreal. Very high end. Sometimes a special client would come in for a $500 hat (this is the 60’s so compare that to a Prada bag) and wear it to an event then return it the next day without the tag. She accepted the hat and gave it to me at age five, as she knew it had been worn and could not be re-sold.

I was wearing a $500 red Dior cloche with pigtail at age five. I hated it. The kids always made fun of me anyway for living up in the hills in a great house and a view they could only imagine, and taking the half-bus (the retard bus, they called it) to school. I wore boots because it snowed up there earlier than it did in the village below.

No, I have never been The Grinch. I have always been the fairy who somehow makes the world better. Education, art, theater. I’ll have to talk about philosophy in another post. Age-old wisdom, soc and psych. I took the first training class co-sponsored by Red Cross and the Humane Society of the US.

Yes, dogs and cats are in my sights as well. We’ve an old dog who is sleeping a lot. I would like to get a stethoscope, as advised in my class kit many years ago. If fairy dust has any meaning, may she live a while longer. Live long and prosper. Dee

 

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Optimists

Posted on November 23, 2017 | Leave a comment

Yes, I’m a die-hard one. Occasionally I turn cynical or negative if someone is acting badly toward my family. I see it as being pragmatic, seeing the other side of the coin and doing what is necessary to fix the issue. My mother-in-law calls herself “Mama Bear” and I am as vigilant with her son and our dog. I just got a dog removed from the neighborhood because he viciously bit me with no provocation whatsoever. Luckily our old dog was not with me as she may have been killed and it was so quick I do not know that I could have saved her in time though I would have fought to do so and taken that dog to Animal Control myself.

An optimist, I’ve been trying to get the owner to train that dog for years, to no avail. The dog was with an 18 year-old dog sitter, on her first day of work, and the owner never told her his dog wanted to bite any dog and everyone he encountered. Pragmatism, I finally filed a report with photos of my bloody arm. Enough is enough.

Years ago my husband would have said I was too emotional, I said he was too scientific and methodical. We were both right. Now I can look at a business or personal situation, figure out what is going on and reasons for said behavior and recommend a way to fix it.

He’s always been more into math and physics than people. I’m soc/sci/art so am more of a people person. We’ve kind of morphed as we’ve been together over 16 years.

Today I missed Thanksgiving with his family. I didn’t even cook here. The dog has plenty of food and after lying by the front door for a while awaiting his return yesterday she went back to her routine. I believe she knows that he is coming home. What freaked her out was seeing him with luggage. She hates anyone in her “pack” to leave but is used to this. She is an eternal optimist.

Now we get to Dad. When I returned from his funeral and burial a year ago I entered and found a home filled with flowers and one evergreen tree that has to be grown indoors in our weather. A year later, it is leaning to the left. I decorated it, starting said tree given to me by the women in my husband’s family, adorned by a silver star with his name and dates of birth and death. Of course husband said place all the heavier ornaments on the right, and he was correct! It’s almost straight and no longer a precious “Charlie Brown Tree.”

This year I decorated it with old ornaments, mainly ones I’ve collected for me and my husband over the years depending upon where we were living at the time, a tradition my parents started in my childhood. Atop is the silver star. My mother-in-law saw our stockings one year (they’re never filled, just decorations) and gave me another. She said our dog Zoe was family, too. So last year’s ornaments were hand-knitted finger puppets. He’s the cow (he grew up on a dairy), I’m a horse and Zoe, of course, is the dog.

Dad used to play ball with everyone in the neighborhood. He mentored a genius from across the street. I believe we both believed in people until they demonstrated that they could not be trusted.

There was always an infectious (in a good way) spirit in him that lit up a room or a street for touch football. When I was away at college he bought a small sailboat, 17′ day sailer. He had appointments/performances from dawn to dusk, got home for an hour for dinner and had to go see the ballet (or symphony or opera) and my day was just as long as at the end I handed him de-thorned roses backstage to hand to the prima ballerina. Then many evenings my parents would have to entertain donors and divas after the performance.

When he got us to go out on the boat to relax for a half-hour the wind had died down for the evening on the lake and he’d man the tiller, brother was on jib and mainsail and I was there to let the centerboard down in case we needed it for stability. He said “watch out, we’re going to go like heck any minute!!!” We never did. It was a chore to get back to the dock, but he got to relax and as an executive see something done in an hour, rather than weeks, months or years. I understand that now.

That boat escaped in storms and was returned by real sailors because they all knew to whom it belonged. It had a hole in the bottom and sank at the dock a few times. I understand that is was a respite from mayhem and a place to put one’s brain back in gear and generate great ideas. He kept it despite its faults.

I highly respect the lessons he taught me about being who you want to be, fairness, equality, humor, kindness and love.

He resuscitated moribund educational and arts institutions and also created new ones. I haven’t come quite that far but have my own share of great ideas, have been a consultant and as his eldest child whether it’s nature or nurture it doesn’t matter to me. In my retirement I still bug people to get things done. Thanks, Dad!

Cheers and hope you enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving and are taking a nice long nap. Dee

 

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Life and Love

Posted on November 14, 2017 | Leave a comment

We decided to marry one Monday night, giving me four days to plan an elopement. As we are about to enter our 15th year of marriage I would like to thank our families and friends for sticking with us.

Tuesday afternoon we asked the Admiral (of the family clan, she ran the family ship) and Captain to help us out. She was a witness and we asked the Captain to be Deputy Marriage Commissioner for the day and marry us. After he went to the other room to collect his thoughts (their three sons called me “sis”) he returned and said yes, as long as he could write the vows. OK, I’ll type them up for you in caps, double-spaced. OK, deal. Then I told him he couldn’t marry random people on the street, only me and my husband!

We had a lovely lunch for eight then went to our new home, the Barbie House to call our folks. My favorite Italian restaurant gave us wedding cake. Then my husband lifted me through the doorway. There’s probably a bad photo of my butt on that one!

Life gives conundrums. How does one deal with this tax situation, this business debacle, everything. Yes, we disagree, a lot, but still love one another. I just feel like the skimpy little sister that only drafted laws for 34 million people and created articles of incorporation and bylaws for several non-profits. Ergo the skimpy little sister. I cannot say anything about my role as a consultant as it is not accepted because it was “only a non-profit.”

Now we spend our days creating bank accounts and finding accountants and lawyers. I need to meet them all, because otherwise even though I put my husband (as of 15 years) on my bank accounts and all accounts thereafter, when I called our bank they would say they couldn’t talk to me without my husband’s authorization because I’m “just the wife.”

Love and friendship have no limits between us. The people we need to help us in business, and the government, must know that I am an entity that has signing authority and knows everything. If, I knocked wood, my husband was hit by a bus I could sell the business or hire a designated professional to run it.

Love and friendship. Together, forever. Add dear old dog Zoe and it’s our family that will always be taken care of. Zoe and I will go before he does and I tried to have him promise to re-marry. It’s what I do to take care of business. Dee

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Vision and Wisdom

Posted on October 13, 2017 | Leave a comment

I think they go together. I’ve a vision of life, but my physical vision is going as I age. My husband told me a story of his childhood. His parents always loved him and took care of his health. His teacher asked them to take him to the eye doctor. He was fitted for serious glasses at an early age so that he could later correct a math teacher and ask questions she could not answer.

When he walked out on the street with his new glasses he could actually see cars and the business names across the street. He thought being half-blind was normal, as kids do. I thought all grandpas had one leg. It was normal. He doesn’t tell that story, except to me and immediate family. I cry when I hear it because he couldn’t see the blackboard but still knew more than anyone else. He had to try harder, and milk cows in the morning and after school on the dairy. He can see, has vision and another vision and purpose as to life.

If one is reading every interviewer answer as a potential consultant from books that give vision and wisdom 101, they may be hired because Daddy said so. We never worked that way.

My husband and I know the answers to our respective professions. Why? One cannot teach wisdom from a book, it comes from age and experience. As is vision. Mission, vision you have to be able to sit there in a client interview and answer questions from expertise and maturity. And wisdom. For that there is no shortcut. Dee

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Themes

Posted on September 13, 2017 | Leave a comment

As to interior design, I’ve no experience but have made good decisions according to our parameters.

For several years I’ve been working with a framer. What good is art if it is in a box in storage! In the front entrance it’s mostly yellow, orange and red. Two of my father’s works of Tuscan and Maori origins, and one a wood block from Japan, the first artist to ever do full-color wood block prints in the 1700’s. Something about a letter to a courtesan. If a kid comes in here and asks, I just say her little sister is delivering the mail.

Then you see the kitchen, a mash-up of culinary memorabilia and one homage to dance from the Stuttgart Museum, just a Degas fan print currently in a plastic frame for over thirty years.

The living room ended up mostly blues and browns and charcoal. I had a charcoal drawing taken out of the cheap “uni-frame” it came in nearly 30 years ago, a gift from Dad from a winner of an art school review. My inspiration came from Dad. The owner was at the shop, not K, my usual consultant who throws ideas at me to consider and has a great eye for framing art.

I decided on everything myself with no consultation except to use a fillip. It is a charcoal sketch of dancers and I wanted to evoke the movement of the dancers with a dark red mini-matte, beaded fillip, charcoal matte and undulating frame. Five layers. I called K the day after and wanted to ask if I made any major errors without her. She didn’t let me ask, she just said that she loved my choices and she couldn’t wait to work on it.

Dad’s charcoal gem was done two days after his funeral so he never got to see it. It is a focal point of our living room along with a quilt which portrays the seasons, a gift created by my mother-in-law. Most of the colors are blues and browns. The blues include small paintings from an artist in Florence.

The only thing in the den worthy of note is a gift to my husband, a B/W photo of the Brooklyn Bridge that I had framed for him that one sees directly upon entering our abode.

The hallway and entrance to the master are the “greens.” Mostly photos I, family and friends took. Each photo has a different green hued matte. Our bedroom has a large Tuscan scene painted by Dad in his 80’s, when he took up art. My husband’s favorite is a crayon drawing from me, of me at age five, of me/Dorothy with the scarecrow, lion and tin man. I’ve also one for him waiting at the bus stop with his old dog who brought the brothers there in the morning and picked them up in the afternoon.

There is also a collage of a play book for a theater event I created and had funded. In the hallway to the bedroom there are also framed collages of my parents’ wedding, and one of me and my sister as little kids.

Yes, I’ve things to add. Dad gave me artwork from southern Italy that shows the seasons. Once I get those framed they’ll go in our room or the den, I’ll figure it out to echo his Mom’s creation. I just didn’t know that my individual choices became themes until now. Two more walls to go. I’ll work on it.

I had a cooking toolbox, red metal, that I decorated in culinary photos. It now holds small office equipment and looks cool next to my desk. All we need now is to move to the country on land with a view and use all our shared experience to build the right home. Cheers! Dee

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