The January 2012 elimae
The January 2012 elimae is now posted. Happy new year!
from the comments
Did I ever tell you about the time I blew up our own mailbox with fireworks? I was a lousy prankster.
Go Bury Money, Like Now
I’m sharing a New Year’s tradition aimed at drawing wealth to you. I have no idea about its origins.
Take a bill or some coins and put the money in a plastic bag. The amount does not matter. Bury it outside your front door while saying, “I am burying my poverty.” Mark it with a stone or something you can find the next day. Seriously, people have not been able to find their buried money the next day. Do this on New Year’s Eve, before midnight. Then, on January 1, dig up the money while saying, “I am uncovering my wealth.” Do this anytime during the 24-hour period on New Year’s Day.
If you don’t have ground outside your door, not to worry, take a pot and bury your money there and place it outside your door or on the balcony. If that doesn’t work, take a bowl and cover the money with a wash cloth and put it beside the door. This is about symbolism and intent. Do not spend the money, ever. Put it away. Some say that if you spend the buried money, you’ll lose money.
If you follow these instructions, unexpected money will show up for you in the next year. Maybe because I believe, this always happens for me. Always. At least in the years the Iowan has not found, and spent, my buried money. I have heard about people who eventually have taken stacks of buried money and donated it to a good cause. For instance, they have donated it to a church or favorite charity and report all is well.
Or you could leave it tucked away in its individual sandwich bags in a hope chest or drawer. And laugh to think about what your heirs will think to find it.
The Cake That Makes Our Family
Read between the lines of an old family recipe and you’re liable to read the story of the family itself. The scrawled marginalia and cooking stains, the collective memory of shared feasts—they might as well be alleles in the genome. Maybe it’s the chicken soup your aunt makes by the gallon during flu season, or the roast your mother overcooks every Easter. Maybe, if you’re lucky, your dad has taught you the secret to a perfect Old Fashioned, which he learned from his uncle, who learned it from his bookie. For my family, the recipe that defines us as a tribe, and whose origins best reflect our idiosyncrasies, is my grandfather’s babka.
What is the proper way to dispose of the American flag?
Found. December 31, 2011.
The Lake, The Hood & The Golf Course
After we’d talked for a while, we got in my rental car and went for a drive around his ward. “It’s beautiful, but it’s not for us,” Knowles said, as we rode through Harbor Shores. “It’s not for poor people.” I had asked Knowles if he slept at City Hall, and he took me by his house, which he said he rents for about $250 a month. “I don’t sell dope,” he volunteered, explaining how he pays his rent. “I come out and hustle — electrical jobs, cutting grass, whatever.” […]
When I dropped him back at City Hall, Knowles got out of the car and said goodbye, then poked his head back in the passenger window. “Hey,” he said, “can you spare a couple of bucks so I can get myself a bag of chips and a pop?”
This is an excerpt from Jonathan Mahler’s Simon-esque piece on Benton Harbor, Michigan, for the NYT Magazine a few weeks back. The bit above is from a conversation Mahler has with an unemployed Benton Harbor resident who is also a city commissioner for one of the city’s poorest wards.
For those of you who don’t know, I grew up in the area and my family has lived there for a few generations. The article is a longer piece focusing on the city’s socio-economic problems and new divisions over a golf course and property development on Lake Michigan called Harbor Shores, which is hoped to improve the impoverished city’s attractiveness for future investment. The only problem is that most of the developers and proponents for Harbor Shores are affluent and white, while most of Benton Harbor is impoverished and black – oh, and the golf course was built on a chunk of the city’s one nice park at the lakefront.
It’s a feature worth reading and not just because it’s about the clashes between a city’s residents and a group of well-intentioned (if not woefully ignorant) outsiders that believe they can solve deeply-rooted problems of poverty and crime by introducing the game of golf. I like to think it’s also because Mahler turned my old stomping grounds into a moral fable for today’s social, cultural and economic divisions.
Eva Zeisel dies, age 105
Eva Zeisel, known for her playful and graceful ceramics, has died at the age of 105.
“She’s a conduit to pure things,” Mr. Klein said in 2007. He recalled that Ms. Zeisel, who had a strong appreciation of the history of decorative arts and a personal acquaintance with most of the modern design movements of the 20th century, told him never to try to create anything new. Asked how to make something beautiful, he said, she replied, “You just have to get out of the way.”
We have four or five of her pieces and they please me every time I see them.
headline of the day
Boy throws rocks at cars, shot by crossbow
Worst First Sentence
Tyler Cowen posted the opening sentence of Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton’s Paul Clifford, a sentence that often gets mentioned as the worst opening sentence in the history of fiction.
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
I still contend the opening sentence from Richard Ford’s Independence Day is worse:
In Haddam, summer floats over tree-softened streets like a sweet lotion balm from a careless, languorous god, and the world falls in tune with its own mysterious anthems.
from the comments
At times I have been the elephant.
There’s no law that says you can’t ask anything you want
Yesterday I posted Errol Morris talking about Believing Is Seeing. Here’s Miranda July talking about It Chooses You.
quotes out of context
Look behind the salads, sausage rolls and bite-size pizzas and it turns out that buffets are a microcosm of greed, sexual politics and altruism — a place where our food choices are driven by factors we’re often unaware of.
Stoned friends will never leave now. Air pump motor is about as loud as a refrigerator. Life expectancy of a moon jelly is only a year; new ones cost $50 each.
To the clever bastard who left this in my store: Thanks for the laughs today.
You have to understand people first before you can understand how to devise an economic system for them.
A theater is reportedly opening which will allow and even bless cell phone usage, although that may be an apocryphal story.
The risk of injury is much greater if an eye-surgery patient gets the wart remover, than the other way round.
Because, there you are
One of my favorite parts of Hillman Curtis’s book on Creating Short Films is that as soon as you turn the camera on, the person you are interviewing is there. You don’t have to do anything. They will show you who they are. I may not be remembering that part exactly right, but I’m not going to look it up, because it’s true.
tweet of the day
Hey, ABC. Less than 40 hours until New Year’s Eve. Time to fill the sink with water and defrost Dick Clark.
— Tim Siedell (@badbanana) December 30, 2011
After Farting
“Who run Bartertown!?”
dueling banjos
Probably the thing I like least about Jane Fonda is during the Vietnam War she put Ho before bros.
— Andy Levy (@andylevy) December 30, 2011
Sometimes I feel like Bob Seger is trying a little TOO hard to convince us he had sex in high school.
— Sean Thomason (@TheThomason) December 30, 2011
headline of the day
Man steals Greyhound bus to meet friend for Christmas
Chicago Screenshots
Chicago Screenshots is a (slowly growing) collection of Chicago-centric movie and television stills, presented as architectural and urban landscape photography.
Dueling Banjos
If cool is a species of bullshit obscurity, culture is now divaricate enough that we can all be cool. It’s not gold anymore. More like corn.
— name (@georgelazenby) December 28, 2011
Taco Bell be having they shit look good on commercials but that shit is sick!!
— Te-Aria (@PEANUTBIOTCH) December 29, 2011
Photographs are neither true nor false
Errol Morris talks with The Guardian about his book, Believing Is Seeing.
dear clusterflock
Friend of clusterflock, and designer of the first clusterflock web site, Espen Tuft asks:
I’m working on a blog post: Do you have any favorite social causes? Design for change initiatives?
In a follow up, he says:
I’ve got Design for Good, OpenIDEO, VolunteerMatch, StudentMentor, but I’d love a collaborative list.
Help a brother in comments.
quotes out of context
I love that “you are awful, too” bit so much, I’d like to expand on it.
Sure, Microsoft was demoing a mere reference design, but what we saw was so intriguing, we’re legitimately excited to see final, shipping products.
He was also an international authority on tarot cards, a campaigner for racial justice and a devoted family man.
Everyone has their bullshit. You can simply decide whose you’re willing to tolerate.
Just off our aerial flights, what we’re seeing in people’s backyards is unreal.
Films sans subtitles
My friend Charlie is now living in Buenos Aires in a house full of folks from all over the world, and among them is Lauren Stephenson, whom some of you may know. The other night Charlie and Lauren went to the movies. Their command of Spanish was not up to the task of following the film as its makers intended, and Charlie reflected on the experience of watching a talkie without a solid grasp on the words the characters spoke.
There were a lot of solitary and broody fishermen in boats and seaside bars. And one mouthy whore. There was a girl thrown into the mix, but her character stared vacantly into the distance so often that I wondered what she was looking at. Was she psychic? Did she make that guy have a heart attack just by squinting through the window? What was she looking for in the distance anyway? Did she like to find beavers in clouds? Again, not sure.
from the comments
In truth, everything should be wrapped in bacon.
tweet of the day
I’ve stopped feeding the Christmas tree. The next couple of days will be hard but it’s for the best.
— Trelvix (@trelvix) December 29, 2011
