Jacques Henri Lartigue, French Photographer and Painter – 1894-1986
These beautiful photographs are found in a terrific book: Lartigue: Life in Color – I high recommend.
3 from Lartigue
Category: books
Two Prospectors
Sam Shepard was as complex as the deep characters he created for the theatre and literature. A restless man who liked forward movement, whose complicated past filled the artistic well necessary to develop deep complex familial dramas that eventually led to his 1979 Pulitzer Prize winning Buried Child. An admirer of Beckett, he left his wife and son for a time to begin to establish his place in American Theatre and as it turned out to develop a lifelong relationship with Patti Smith. When he made his way back to his family, he bought a house which served as a home-base for he and his wife O-Lan, their son and her family, including her step-father, Johnny Dark. Sam and Johnny just connected from the start and developed a mutual understanding of each other, forging a 45 year relationship which outlasted even his leaving O-Lan for Jessica Lange.
The letters between them were deeply personal and will have to serve as the closest thing we have to a Sam Shepard memoir, as he never had any interest in writing one before his death. Honestly, to see a true picture of an artist, one only has to look at the body of work they produced to see inside. If you haven’t seen Paris Texas (which he co- wrote with filmmaker Wim Wenders), do yourself a favor, especially if you’re a writer who wants to learn how to create deep, brutually honest characterization. I am nearly finished with this book of interesting letters between Sam and Johnny – I highly recommend.
Current Faves… Quarantine Edition
So, from where to where have we come in a few short months…sigh. If there is anything positive in all this craziness, it’s the coming together of people from around the world to cheer and entertain each other through free online classes, Tik Tok fun vids, etc. It’s a beautiful thing. So I have compiled a few of the ways I’m keeping busy (besides cleaning, cooking and organizing)…
Lifestyle Hacks
- FAB Coconut Primer – Being couped up indoors can be really drying to skin and I am loving FAB’s Coconut Primer, (face) which is a lightweight moisturizer that doesn’t cause breakouts.
- Walmart Pick Up – A safer way to shop at the moment and extremely easy to use. Download the app., sign up, choose an available time, enter credit info and get shopping. Once you set a time, they give you plenty of time to add/delete items on your list. They email you when your order is ready and you click when you are on your way. When you get there you get a text asking which numbered pickup parking space you are in and car color. They are out in just a few minutes and right now give the option of signing it themselves to protect you. Easy, and honestly I may just keep it up after all this madness is over.
- Great Value GF Brownie Mix – Whether you are gluten free or not, this mix from Walmart is so good. It only requires an egg and one stick of butter. Side note for those GFree, Walmart’s Great Value Flour Mix is awesome, just add to regular recipes, like Toll House Cookies or Muffins and it tastes just like regular ones.
Entertainment
- Books: Currently reading “You are a Badass at Making Money” by Jen Sincero & “The Success Principles” by Jack Canfield. Do you sense a theme? Yeah, I’m trying to stay positive and both of these are really good, especially Jack’s book – he’s the author of the popular Chicken Soup for the Soul series and it’s full of encouraging tips and real life success stories.
- Spotify/Echo Dot: Been running Spotify on my iphone & Roku to keep my spirits up using different playlists for everything from housework, dinner, nighttime routines, etc. There are so many playlists on Spotify and Echo Dot will chose from Pandora if you give her an artist to start with or vibe you’re looking for. Echo: I ask Alexa for dinner music and it’s a terrific light jazz that makes you feel like you’re in New York at a dinner club…and I use a Lounge playlist on either for evening reading or getting ready for sleep…
- DVD’s – Breaking out my favorite series collections and alternating for Marathons, or nightly eps. Currently on rotation: Covert Affairs, Mad Men, Castle & Rescue Me.
- Streaming: I recently got rid of my Netflix account because the content basically wasn’t my style, too dark and I prefer more character driven pieces and also I found myself gravitating toward the free streaming services to watch tons of old films that I still love. Pluto, Tubi, Crackle and Roku have a lot of good old ones like Baby Boom, Get Shorty & Be Cool (cheers to Dutch!), New in Town, 007 films and old Hitchcock & Cary Grant classics.
- Instagram Lives: This is where I spend most my time, have to admit…at least lately. It’s so cool how everyone is coming together as I said to offer up their skills and to keep everyone engaged and moving. You can take a ballet class from New York City Ballet’s Principal, Tiler Peck or The Cindy’s a.k.a. American Ballet Theatre’s principals, Isabella Boylton & James Whiteside – or take a dance class with Maks & Peta of DWTS’s fame… There are a ton of great free live exercise classes from yoga to Tracy Anderson right now. You can brush up on your cooking skills and get ideas for meals from famous chefs from Giada and Ina, to the Kitchen alum. (Katie Lee!)
- Learning: There are some good classes you can take online and I have tried out a few of them.
- Masterclass: At $90/Class or $180/Unlimited – it’s a true bargain. Learn from the Masters in Writing, Photography, Playwrighting and Acting to name a few. The class can be accessed indefinitely when you buy and offers up downloadable notes.
- Duolingo: Can’t say enough about this one, whether you want to start learning a language or to finally master one you’ve struggled with for years. Duo can be accessed by website or apps and you can choose as many as you want and toggle between them. I’ve donated all the old language learning books because I’ve never had better success learning languages any other way.
- Cooking Classes: I’ve not taken them but Food Network does offer an app where their famous chefs stream live videos for you to learn from.
- Skillshare: Another I’ve not tried but hear so many good things about. They do offer some free classes but essentially it’s a paid service learning platform with many, many classes to choose from.
- Fit On: This app is wonderful – full of great timed workouts that you can stream through their app on your tablet or phone. There are banked and live classes starting at 10 minutes – even I can commit to that!
- Vlogs: I love watching this style of video, it reminds me of Cinema Verité, and I find it very relaxing. As I’ve increasingly moved to a much more Minimalist lifestyle myself, I love that type of content with tips and tricks to save money and reduce unnecessary buying. I enjoy Lifestyle vloggers like Aileen @ Lavendaire, and MuchelleB. Here are my faves at the moment:
- Kyra Ann – Minimalist
- Rachel Nguyen – All time fave, her videos are stylistically such high quality & creative – mainly vlog style.
- Renee Amberg – Vlogs, Lifestyle, Book rec’s, Exercise, Day in Life
- Lavendaire – Lifestyle, Book Rec’s, Encouragement to follow your dreams
- MuchelleB – Same as above…only Australian life
- Ashley Brooke – Vlogs, Fashion, Transplanted Texan documents New York Life
- Myka Stauffer – Vlogger w/Husband – home life
- Madeleine Olivia – Minimalist, Vegan, life in England
Well, there it is, hope it wasn’t too long a read – and I hope you all are staying home if possible and staying well. These are just suggestions, honestly the first week or two I just felt out of sorts and didn’t accomplish much except helping a family member with their taxes, taking short walks and staring at the TV totally lazy and that’s okay too. Times be strange, try your best to roll with it and get through this thing in one piece. Peace!
Book Review: Daisy Jones & The Six
Late last night I finished reading “Daisy Jones & The Six” by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Initially I was drawn to this book by it’s unique (to fiction) format. The story of a fictional band and the history behind it’s demise is told in subsequent interviews by band members, love interests, producers, managers and journalists. Years ago Aerosmith used this format for their memoir in “Walk this Way”. It moves you through the history with everyone re-telling from their own perspective. Daisy, is an interesting strong-willed mess of a girl but she’s talented. Billy, the lead singer of The Six, is equal in ego, charisma and talent as she. Throughout the book, I saw traces of real musicians from arena rock bands of note mixed within the characters, I won’t list them but they were there. She did do a good job of hitting all the realistic ego based infighting that inevitably goes on within a successful band…everyone can’t truly have a say. Although I did enjoy reading it, I found the ending unsatisfying – if you read it you very well may disagree thinking it ended as it should. I felt for a main character, especially such a interesting wild child of a character, Daisy came to a rather dull resolution. If you read or have read this book, I’d like to hear your take in the comments.
July Favorites
I’ve been thinking about posting some monthly favorites of things that I’m currently digging and have finally gotten around to it… This month my local library hosted it’s library used book sale and I found some cool things as usual, so I’ll start with that:
Kinfolk Entrepreneur – A beautiful, inspiring book of creative entrepreneurs telling their stories and giving tips and inspiration. It was put out by Kinfolk, a culture and style magazine based in Portland.
Chihuly Projects – A wonderful find. Dale Chihuly is an incredibly creative glassworks artist and this book has big beautiful photographs of his works.
Images – Ingmar Bergman’s memoir of his life in film and the influence his private life had on the process of writing, directing and bringing forth his works of art on film.
Music: My favorite Spotify playlist while I’m writing is currently, Dinner in a Mid Century Modern – curated by Andrew T. Lane, who actually has a lot of amazing playlists.
Urban Decay’s Naked Skin Highlighting Fluid is really nice – I normally don’t use a highlighter but got this sample from Sephora and really like it. It gives a little brightness under eyes and in the cupid’s bow.
Essenza Oil for diffusers in Vanilla Bean is such a nice soothing scent to keep going in your home. It’s my current favorite, although I sometimes add some orange to it. I feel much better using a diffuser with essential oils in my home instead of commercial room sprays that have harsh chemicals. If you’re sensitive like I am to perfumes, this is a great alternative, which brings me to the next one…
Valentina’s Sweet Dreams Body Mist – This is a great blend of essential oils (Jasmine, Sandalwood, & Vanilla). It can be used as a body mist or room spray and it smells lovely. Home brewed in Portland, Oregon – you can pick it up at Whole Foods.
Well, that’s it for July…
Just Under the Surface 