The Impact of Movie Lines on Feelings About the Approaching Season
“Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.”
So goes one of my favorite lines from the 1998 Tom Hanks / Meg Ryan classic, You’ve Got Mail. Today feels like the perfect day to buy school supplies. It’s overcast and drizzly, summer is almost gone, and I just got back from a big vacation abroad. How very Bonnie Wheeler of me. (Bonnie was my medieval studies professor at university who always spent her summers in France at a monastery with her likewise professorial husband.)
There is something magical about this time of year. The urge to be intellectually and creatively productive is immense.
I also just bought a new blazer that will be perfect for fall and a puffy coat that would have been perfect for life in Boston. So the desire for autumnal weather is strong.
Go buy yourself some new pencils. It will feel good.
Where The Wild Things Are Contest
Grand Prize: two tickets to the New York City big screen premiere of this beloved children’s story, travel and hotel accommodations for two, and one $500 Urban Outfitters gift card, all courtesy of the hipster megastore. Donning of super-duper skinny jeans optional, but encouraged.
All Vacations Must End
Singing whilst whistling summoned brightest thoughts from the lady on her last day of summer vacation. She would remember the day as it was, as it should be, rather than whine that it must end. Undo appropriation of gloomy thoughts would ruin the day, be it rainy or not, she thought wisely. We shan’t do that. No no. We shan’t do that.
French Day at Chateau Shuker
The Blankenships are in Luton, England outside London visiting our good friends the Shukers. We planned to go to Paris one day, but missed the cheap train. In lieu of oui Paris, we celebrated French Day at Chateau Shuker.
Viva la créativité!
Mandy + Grad School = ???
So I’m considering graduate school for fashion design. Having given up the dream of being a university English professor (because I finally realized I hate literary criticism), I returned to the childhood dream of being an artist.
And now, being a “self-employed” artist person, dabbling in mixed-media paper goods and fashion, with the occasional return to photography–a return that will soon, God-willing, be permanent because of a friend’s generous darkroom donation and the purchase of a new computer (one that won’t bark like a rabies-infested dog whenever I attempt to use the internet and iTunes at the same time)–I have the epiphany that FASHION is where I’d like to focus a lot of my attention. But I feel I have reached the ceiling of what I can teach myself.
I want an actual CURRICULUM to study, with a teacher to whom I can ask questions–not the “go-and-find-a-pattern-and-I’ll-help-you-read-it” method of the community college / fabric store here in town. But of course, to be accepted to a graduate program for fashion design, I have to build a portfolio OF my own fashion designs. This is a Catch-22, is it not?
The Atlanta campus of the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD, in whose graduate program I am interested) has some community education classes I plan to take this fall to build my portfolio. And thank God, Amtrak has a train to Atlanta from a nearby station (because I HATE the drive to Atlanta).
So, dear friends, I’m asking for your advice, insight, and general opinions. What would you do in my situation? And, perhaps more importantly, how would you PAY for it?
Razing Cities
The recession is forcing law makers confront yet another difficult question: what to do with ever-declining cities? Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, Michigan, says some need to be returned to nature. While his solution might seem “defeatist,” Kildee “insist[s] it [is] ‘no more defeatist than pruning an overgrown tree so it can bear fruit again.’ ” I think I might agree.
