April 16, 2019 at 2:51 am (Books, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: New York, novel, reading lists
We subleased a studio on Broadway and spent eight weeks doing very little other than exactly what we wanted to do, which is to say a lot of drinking coffee, eating waffles, taking long walks around the reservoir up and down Riverside Park and reading magazines cover to cover in the bath.
— Asymmetry, p. 177
April 11, 2019 at 6:10 am (Books, Women Writers)
Tags: New York, novel, reading lists
Alice and Ezra’s relationship seems so exhausting.
Their relationship is only possible because Alice is so very young, a real ingénue, like her namesake Alice in Wonderland.
She had once counted twenty-seven different pill dispensers in that bathroom, vials with science-fiction names from Atropine to Zantac and a barrage of exclamatory imperatives: TAKE ONE TABLET DAILY OR EVERY SIX TO EIGHT HOURS AS NEEDED. TAKE ONE TABLET BY MOUTH AT BEDTIME FOR ONE MONTH THEN INCREASE BY 1 TABLET EACH MONTH UNTIL TAKING 4 TABLETS. TAKE 2 CAPSULES NOW THEN 1 CAPSULE EVERY 8 HOURS TILL GONE. ONE TABLET WITH A GLASS OF WATER ONCE A DAY. TAKE WITH FOOD. AVOID EATING GRAPEFRUIT OR DRINKING GRAPEFRUIT JUICE WITH THIS MEDICINE. DO NOT TAKE ASPIRIN OR PRODUCTS CONTAINING ASPIRIN WITHOUT THE KNOWLEDGE AND CONSENT OF YOUR PHYSICIAN. KEEP IN THE REFRIGERATOR AND SHAKE WALL BEFORE USING. USE CAUTION WHEN OPERATING A CAR. AVOID THE USE OF A SUNLAMP. DO NOT FREEZE. PROTECT FROM LIGHT. PROTECT FROM LIGHT AND MOISTURE. DISPENSE IN A TIGHT, LIGHT-RESISTANT CONTAINER. DRINK PLENTY OF WATER. SWALLOW WHOLE. DO NOT SHARE WITH ANYONE . . .
Self doesn’t know a single writer (and she knows many) who can afford this many prescriptions, even with medical insurance covering 80%.
Self wishes Alice would go off and find a man close to her age who doesn’t need to be taken care of.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
April 9, 2019 at 7:28 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: New York, novellas, reading lists
Now that his book was done, a number of deferred medical matters could be addressed, including a colonoscopy, a prostate screening, and some tests a pulmonologist had recommended to investigate a recent shortness of breath.
— Asymmetry, p. 67
Very much enjoying this collection of novellas. The first one, Folly, reads a bit like Francoise Sagan, if Aimez vous Brahms were set in Manhattan.
Another sentence:
Considerations complicated by this maddening habit of wanting something only until she’d got it, at which point she wanted something else.
Stay tuned.
March 18, 2019 at 1:06 am (Sundays, Surprises)
Tags: discoveries, environment, essay, natural history, New York, science writing, The New Yorker
Pack rat self. She clipped an article from The New Yorker of 21 March 2011 and kept it tucked away in a drawer. Until today, when self found it again. She kept only one page, so she doesn’t know who the author of the piece is.
In 1993, Kevin Walsh, of the New York Aquarium, said there was a harbor seal living under the Williamsburg Bridge. In ’97, Sieswerda reported that occasional seals could be spotted on out-of-the-way beaches in Brooklyn and Queens. In 2001, kayakers said that they saw about a dozen harbor seals living on Swinburne Island, in the Lower Harbor, two and a half miles from the Verrazano Bridge.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
June 5, 2018 at 2:04 am (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Family, Filipino Writers, Places, Recommended)
Tags: memories, Mondays, New York, novel, reading lists
Self loves As Lie Is To Grin when the narrator simply describes what he sees as he moves about New York City:
I exited the station at West Eighth Street, heading north, and stood on a traffic island, watching small plane lights appear in the darkness behind One World Trade Center.
She would love to have this book as a walking guide when she is actually in New York City, a city that is dear to her heart because that is where her parents met: her father was a law student at Georgetown, and her mother was a classical pianist who had given concerts at Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher. Painfully, that is also where her older sister died, so many years ago.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
October 14, 2017 at 5:53 am (Artists and Writers, Dearest Mum, destinations, Family, Food and Drink, Links, Pianos, Places, postaday, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: art, Bath, England, Fridays, memories, museums, New York, Paris, postaday, postaweek, restaurants, Wordpress
Very interesting challenge from The Daily Post this week!
SCALE
Photography ” . . . is all about perspective, where and how you place other objects in the frame . . . ” — Erica V., The Daily Post
Here are some examples of SCALE: (1) at the Louvre, in front of the Mona Lisa (2) in Bath’s Royal Crescent, the entrance to Royal Crescent # 1 and (3) in New York’s Russian Tea Room, next to Carnegie Hall. Self’s first trip to New York City was with Dearest Mum, who once played at Carnegie Hall. This September, she took Dearest Mum, who’s now past 80, for lunch at the Russian Tea Room. We had the best time.
The Louvre, May 2017
Royal Crescent No. 1 (Royal Crescent Museum), Bath
The Russian Tea Room, 57th St., New York City (Next to Carnegie Hall): Dearest Mum took self here, her first time in New York City, decades ago. The place hasn’t changed a bit.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
October 8, 2017 at 8:21 pm (destinations, Places, postaday, Recommended, Sundays, Traveling)
Tags: art, London, memories, museums, New York, postaday, postaweek, Wordpress
There’s a theme to the photographs here, self’s second post on The Daily Post’s Photo Challenge of the week, PEDESTRIANS.
October 6, 2017 at 5:34 pm (Family, Food and Drink, Links, Places, postaday, Traveling)
Tags: California, farmers markets, happiness, memories, New York, postaday, postaweek, Sacramento, summer, Wordpress
This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge is PEDESTRIAN:
— Krista Stevens, The Daily Post
So, here are three street scenes. They’re not the greatest, but they certainly were street:
New York City: September 2017
Jennie, Son, and Self in the Claremont, CA Farmers Market: July 2017
Downtown Sacramento, CA: July 2017
September 30, 2017 at 4:14 pm (Links, Lists, Places, postaday, Traveling)
Tags: California, New York, postaday, postaweek, Saturday, Wordpress
Self loves windows. She really, really does.
Sitting by Window, In Reflective Mode
Watertower View, Chelsea District, New York City
Home, Redwood City, California
Other Windows:
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
September 27, 2017 at 11:27 pm (Links, Places, postaday, Surprises)
Tags: California, New York, Palo Alto, postaday, postaweek, Wordpress
Self loves windows in general. So she loves this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge: WINDOWS.
The prompt was to use the window as a frame. But her post uses the windows themselves as objects.
In the first picture, the windows transform a building in New York’s Chelsea Building into a kind of illuminated box. In the second, the airconditioning units sticking out of the windows were what caught her eye. In the third, the window is a wee cut-out in an expanse of grey wall, the only shot of life in a very industrial-looking room.
Night, Chelsea District, New York City: September 2017
More Windows, Chelsea District, New York City: September 2017
Minimalist: Window of a Mini-Eichler, Palo Alto, California
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
 | anthropologist on Shades of Pink: Nadia Merrill… |
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| anthropologist on Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge… |
 | Cee Neuner on Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge… |
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