Monday Morning Links

Vena Cava has amassed a comprehensive to-do list for LA.  I’m homesick. (Viva Vena Cava)
P.S.: Vena Cava’s Fall 2009 collection just hit stores, see the collection (Style.com) and shop (Barneys)
UPDATE: how did I miss this?  Am I the last to know about this or what?  Please advise.  (Amazon)

Dylan Fareed makes a video of Santa Monica [...]

Perhaps My Favorite Souvenir

I’m not entirely over my vacation.  I miss it–a little.  I bought very little, but I did manage to get myself a few little souvenirs.  This book is one of my favorite things.  It combines flowers and food–what else could be more perfect for me?

Behold, the introduction of Gourmandises en Fleurs (Delicacies in Flowers) (translated [...]

Petty Business

If Petty Business is convinced to have sympathy for Norman Mailer, should we too?  I must admit, I can (could) hardly bear him, but I’m a woman.  I never thought about how much power NM had to piss off the universe, but I think he succeeded. Petty Business
Apparently his letters are a good read.  While I’m [...]

Books We Like

Apparently the “we” in the “Books We Like” from npr.org includes me.  I’ll be lying back on my chaise longue contemplating my navel with The Paris Reviews Interviews this weekend, focusing mostly on the mysterious character of Ralph Ellison that I’ve been preoccupied with since age 17, in my minds eye. 
Oscar Villalon reviews the book [...]

Morning Links

Is Saddleshoos channeling Sontag? Rimpletide
Mark Bittman is out-food-journaling me and I like it. Bitten
The author of Pink Wallpaper is soothing my inauguration fatigue with an update on David Collins work and boy do I love those ikat panels in the bar!  Why am I so ikat-obsessed?  Is ikat over? Pink Wallpaper
Jenny Davidson is teaching 18th [...]

Update: Underground Undergrads

In regards to:
 http://arockridgelife.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/underground-undergrads/
I erroneously typed that the event held by the authors was January 2, 2009. 
The event is today Thursday, January 22, 2009 at 2PM at Laney College in the Library Browsing Area on the Main Floor and at 4:15PM in room 401 on the 4th floor of the Student Center.
Should be an interesting afternoon.

Recommended Reading

Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students, and Their High School
Samuel Freedman writes beautifully about the experience of high school students at Seward Park on the Lower East Side in the late 1980’s.  This book is fabulous for understanding the lives of people different from yourself through deep and thoughtful reporting and [...]

We Have A Lot Of Work To Do

You can’t all drop everything you are doing right now and become a teacher.
BUT you CAN and you MUST wake up tomorrow morning and pledge to do one thing, one small thing, for a needy public school.  
Why?
The children in our needy public schools are the children who are left behind, left behind enemy lines, [...]

I’m Rarely Jealous

But Mrs. Blandings Flair Annual find has me a little on the green side.
I was lucky enough to be given several original issues of Flair back in 1999 when I was working the desk at Hollyhock.  A kind client thought it was darling that a teenager shop girl thought Flair was “it” and brought in [...]

“We Must Cultivate Our Garden.” Candide

Last night at dinner with friends we were talking about how the crash that caused the Great Depression actually took two years to fully play out and cause dire effects to peoples’ lives.  Who knows what eight years of Bush, and the events of the last month will have in the coming months and years [...]