Free

I think this is one of my favorite photos ever. It's of my adorable little cousin Clare. I think it's the tiny pink fingernails that slay me.

Tehran, Iran: Pro-reform Protest

Awesome.

Wishlist

A flag necklace from "Scout Holiday"...so adorable...

The Fiery Furnaces (will not be setting me on fire this evening)

Oh balls. Why wasn't I paying attention? I had been planning on going to see these guys for the past few weeks. I should have gotten tix a long time ago. Damn...

Surfwise

I watched this great documentary the other day (on my teeny laptop thanks to Netflix's cool "watch instantly" feature) called Surfwise. It's the story of Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, his devoted wife, and his brood of nine surfing children who travel the country in a motor home catching waves and living in "simple harmony."

These days, people who live off the beaten path can be found with increasing frequency, but Doc was a sort of trailblazer who gave up a successful and profitable medical career, his house and possessions, and the conventions of a "normal life" in favor of a pure existence in communion with nature and free of material possessions.

I found this story so profound and thought-provoking. On the one hand, I was awed by Doc's ethos and thought his kids had to have been the coolest, most fearless and free badasses ever to roam the country. On the other hand, his insistence on bringing up nine children in a cramped trailer with none of the comforts of the modern age, moreover without a choice in the matter (the kids could not attend school even when they begged for it), made him seem like a megalomaniacal dictator.

Ultimately though, this is a really compelling story about life, love, family and freedom and I guarantee that by the end, no matter how you end up feeling about Doc, you will want to tap into a little bit of what he's got.

I is bored at work

The wind started picking up and the hairs on her arms stood up straight. Ellen rubbed her arms and absentmindedly ran her fingertips over the tiny bumps and follicles. Balancing on one foot, she shuffled the other one back and forth on the sandy gravel producing a musical rhythm like maracas or a symphony of cicadas. She paused for a moment, looking out over the cliff. Pinching her fingernails together, she plucked a tiny hair from her chin; a satisfying habit that her friend had once advised her was not at all becoming.

Staring above from this great height, the city looked static and uninhabited like a child's diorama. The scene triggered a flashback to a time in middle school when she had had to build a scaled replication of her neighborhood. Her project had been an artistic but sloppy affair, while her neighbor and classmate Amy's model had had the professional precision of an architect's. Amy had glued tiny houses from a Monopoly game onto cut squares of fake grassy turf and used strips of dark grey sandpaper for the roads. Amy's model had a neat, tight look. She was the type of girl who recieved "A's." Ellen, by contrast, was used to B+s.

As the sun started to lower, the city lights blinked on one by one giving the sky a pearlized glow. She checked her phone for the time and then, surveying the scene below one last time, she went back to her bike and clumsily pushed the kickstand up with her flip-flop.

To be continued?

Life

Cutest baby ever award--introducing Mr. Cole Connors. Yep, as my friend James likes to say, "That kid came out of the womb with a hairstyle." (And he's sporting the Joy Division onesie I got him! His 'rents like their Joy Division :) )