full skirt femininity

I am ambivalent about fashion. I'm skeptical of trends that last 5 minutes, yet I love seeing a woman wear a beautiful outfit well.

I wear some of my clothes for 10 years or even longer. I try to buy things that won't go out of style any time soon and update with pieces here and there that will keep me feeling young. I don't have a big closet, and I try to keep my clothes pared down to just a few things.

You have to laugh at haute couture sometimes, but a few years ago I began looking at it as Art, and that changed my perspective. If I don't think of the shows in Paris and Milan fashion weeks as serious wardrobe contributions for the average woman, but as art galleries of a sort, I am more likely to enjoy them. And honestly, these shows are just big expensive marketing events for perfume.

Fall 2008 Ready to Wear hit Paris last week, and the Louis Vuitton collection really caught my eye for its fitted tops and full skirts. I'm sharing two photos without permission, taken by Karen Kooper at the Paris show (above and below). I hope she'll forgive me if she comes here, hehe. The others below, of Audrey Hepburn, I'm afraid I don't know who the photographers were.

Isn't this fez hat fun?

This pic of Audrey and Gregory on the Spanish Steps for "Roman Holiday" - one of my favorite movies - shows how well tiny Audrey wore the 1950s style with the fitted waist and full skirt.

Our old Iranian friend Shirin Majuri designs and makes clothes in her own version of haute couture right here in Lansing. I took a friend to her once to discuss a wedding dress, and Shirin said, "Why would you want a wedding dress like anyone else's?" My friend didn't go with her. But Shirin has a point, I suppose. But, even if I had $1000s to spend on clothes, I wouldn't. And maybe it's just sour grapes, but I think it's more fun to find great looking things at the VOA Thrift Store for $2.50. Think I can find a full skirt like Audrey's?

I hope this full skirt trend lasts more than 5 minutes.

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phone

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Alexander Graham Bell’s birthday is today, Monday, March 3, b. 1847, the same year as my grandpa! (Yes, my father’s father was born in 1847. In fact, he fought in the American Civil War - on the losing side. I am two generations removed from the Civil War, and I’m only 51. My dad’s dad was 70 when my dad was born. He died when my dad was 9. And my dad was 40 when I was born.)

On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell spoke the first words into a telephone:

"Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you."

Wiki says he (Bell - not my dad, or my grandpa) refused to have a telephone in his study, because it intruded on his true work in science. The inventor of the telephone said it was an intrusion and didn’t have one in his office. Hellooooo!
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We have gotten rid of a land line in our house (it was an intrusion), but we each have a cell phone. This model put out for Verizon customers is pretty low tech now compared to state of the art models, like the next one, below it, with a slide-out keyboard. But we always get the cheapest model. Yeah, my charger connector is broken, so we have to charge Don’s and switch batteries every few days. Jeepers.

I mostly talk with my kids and Don on my cell. (Why don’t we call it a mobile like the rest of the world? Same reason we don’t buy into the metric system? We’re stupid?) What did we do before cell phones, picking someone up at the airport? It’s fun to send text messages and pictures too. It’s great having all my Contacts on speed dial. Owee, Boots has two numbers, one’s her cell, and one’s her land line.

This picture on mine was one Don took of one of his sunflowers. I love it when Lesley pix messages a pic of herself at Central Park or in front of the Empire State Building. Or just smiling at work. Ah, two flowers.

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Speaking of NYC, I’ll never forget September 11, 2001. Well of course. But I mean that at noon that day, I was supposed to meet my friend for lunch. After what happened that morning, we decided to cancel our plans. But then I wanted to be with other people. So I walked across campus anyway, to the International Center, and there was my lunch friend watching CNN on the ceiling mounted TV in the lobby, along with a hundred other people.

In that 10 minute walk, everywhere I turned, crouching under trees, walking slowly on sidewalks, sitting on building steps, every single student was on a cell phone. It was eerie, knowing what everyone was talking about, even though I couldn’t hear the words. They were saying the same thing I was saying to my kids and to Don on my cell: "Are you there? Come here -- I want to see you."

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Don's new blog!

Don started a new blog, A View from the Green Barn, about life on our little farm.

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He has ordered chicks to be delivered the first week of April, and I think this prompted blogging. He visited many chicken blogs these last few months while researching how to raise chickens (which he's actually done already back in Milford on our previous farm). His favorite line became: "I google chicks on the Internet." He'll also raise quail, and who knows what this will lead to!

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Oh no, two bloggers in the same house!

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gold

Gold is in the news this week, so it's got me reflecting on this amazing metal.


Did you hear, some German diggers think they've found the Nazi Gold "Amber Room"? Yes, it's supposed to have 2 tons of gold, hidden away at the end of WWII.


Also, it was this time of year, 160 years ago, that the California Gold Rush began.


We bought the earrings in the top photo, designed by Ed Levin, at Mackerel Sky In East Lansing, a great shop for goods made by local and not-so-local craftspeople. They're my favorite earrings, I wear them all the time.



The page they're resting on is from the 1926 edition of the World Book encyclopedia, for which my grandma Olive was an illustrator. It should read "BENNETT, OLIVE N." not "M." Her middle name was her maiden name, Nelson. I kept my maiden name as my middle name too. I didn't want to give up the name I'd spent 21 years with.



Click on the images to see the details better.



The illustrators didn't sign their work, so we don't know which illustrations Olive drew. I've seen a lot of her work, and this is typical, so it could be hers.

I chose the page at the top because of the information about gold. Notice it says all of the world's money in 1926 was based on $8 billion in gold, except for a few paper currencies. It wasn't too long after that year, in 1932, that President Roosevelt disconnected the US dollar from the Gold Standard so he could get the mint to print more currency and ease the Depression. Gold was taken out of circulation as coins, and that's when Fort Knox became a depository for the gold.


If you want to hear interesting information on manipulation of the gold market by central banks to make their paper currencies seem stronger, check this out.

In light of the depreciation of the US Dollar (the Euro against the dollar reached $1.52 yesterday), maybe we should invest in more Ed levin jewelry, hehe.


Let me end with this Ron Sexsmith/Chris Martin video of "Gold in Them Hills." (Thanks, Peter.)

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update

As expected, Hal Holbrook was not chosen for the Oscar for best supporting actor, it was Javier Bardem for his role in "No Country for Old Men."

Here's a photo from the http://www.oscar.com/ site, with his wife Dixie Carter last night before the show.

Did anyone else think that was the most boring Oscar show ever? I expected more for the 80th, maybe a fabulous montage of Oscar's history at least. I liked the video clips from earlier decades' shows. Maybe the writers' strike is the reason this show was sub-par. Even Jon Stewart seemed a little off, although a few of his lines were funny, like this one from his opening monologue:

"Normally, when you see a black man or a woman president an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty."

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Hal Holbrook and Oscar

I mostly remember Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain. No wonder, since he’s performed that guy for 40 years on stage and TV. He won a Tony for the Mark Twain role. He’s won lots of Emmys, including one for his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln. Oh, and I remember his mouth from “All the President’s Men” in which he played Deep Throat, the mysterious informant to Bob Woodward/Robert Redford.

He said on NPR the other day that even though he’s performed Twain thousands of times, the humorist icon’s words still make him laugh. Such as: "We are all erring creatures, and mainly idiots, but God made us so and it is dangerous to criticise.”

At 83, Holbrook's got his first Oscar nomination for tomorrow night’s awards, for his supporting role in Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild,” based on a true story. Holbrook plays one of the characters Chris McCandless meets while he's hitchhiking to Alaska after giving his life savings away, burning all his identification and worrying his parents sick. I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s on my Netflix queue for when it’s released on DVD March 4.

Holbrook was nominated for the Broadcast Film Critics award and the Screen Actors Guild award too, losing to Javier Bardem in "No Country for Old Men" for both. Even though sometimes Oscars are awarded to those who deserve praise after such a long and respectable career, I'm guessing the results of this nomination will be the same as the other two.

Here’s a YouTube video of Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain, recorded in 1967. This is one of my best images and memories of growing up in the US: an actor of good sense and humor playing an author of good sense and humor, although this particular short clip is not humorous.

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eclipse

Click on images to enlarge (I think one doesn't work though). I also posted the last image at my photoblog flying.

It was perfectly clear. What are the chances of that for two total eclipses in a row within seven months?

It was cold, but not as cold as I expected. It was just 10°F (-11°C).

See how in the second image, where the eclipse is partial, the shadow is black. But as the shadow of the earth eclipsed the moon further, the shadow became more red, being affected by the earth's atmosphere, and because the light faded, allowing the red to be more visible. So the final image is when the moon is almost totally eclipsed, even though it just looks like a red harvest moon. I didn't see any turquoise, as the NASA site suggested in yesterday's post. It was too cold to stay out for the whole totality (until 10:30pm or so).

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