t can be done poorly, or done really really well.  Usually poorly though.  Fascinators, gentle spirits.  Weigh in on the discussion?  I am thinking of buying or making myself one like the golden one below.  I know many people don’t wear fascinators, but they’ve popped up places like the movie Brick, and I don’t even know what decade they were popular in, but done well, are quite nice!  Two headband versions, but many of them are clips that you clip into your hair.  As my own shorn tresses progress on, I’d like to encourage them to reach Zooey Deschanel heights, and pretty little things such as fascinators may keep me from absolutely shearing it all off, as I am a fan of.

These are all taken from charmschooldesign.etsy.com

          
                                                                                                    (c.archer)

arents need to fill their children’s lives with much that lets them taste of the richness of creation; trips to the tidepools, music, laughter, art museums, time in the park to look at leaves and muddy streams, the great stories of history, travel to foreign places and countries, an understanding of the importance of government and civil order, being on a boat where you can’t see land, aching joints from hard labor, people who speak a different language, cutting down a tree, the joy of true friendship, the grief born of faithlessness, the joy of birth, the destruction brought by death. Literature draws on much of human life. It organizes the jumble of cacophonous notes that comprise our chaotic lives and allows us to hear the Sovereign harmony. If one does not know the notes, then the harmony often makes little sense.”   (F. Hinrichs.)

Aha, it isn’t about what a limiting life you can lead, it’s about a life spent investing in other people, the tiniest greatest people who could use your insight.  If you think you can’t do that because you’ll ruin it, maybe that’s true for right now.  Maybe right now, you’d ruin it.  But you’re not always going to be yourself right now.  It all begins to make a mite more sense.  This next bit, I’ve always held this to be true, and yet fail grandly at it, so here’s to continual attempts to listen.

“The thoughts of others must be respected. We do this primarily by listening to someone when we are conversing with them. Careful listening shows that you hold their thoughts to be of value. After you learn to listen to another person, then you can learn to comprehend what they are saying. At this point, the other person will come to the startling and sometime fearful realization that they are being listened to and need to carefully think about what they are saying.”  (F. Hinrichs.)

s my tastes have changed over the years, so has my particularity, even to the point that I rarely find any clothing that I actually like these days except at the ever-out-of-my-price-range Anthropologie.  Light of my life, bain of my existence.  But, I know many readers of my blog are intrigued by the sartorial to be found in every day life so I thought I’d share a few outfits that worked so COMPLETELY for me. It’s rare for me to see an outfit that I love from head to toe, but these are the few I’ve seen in the past few months.

Simple, and simply perfect. This dress is the kind of thing I dream of, frequently. The grey tights and grey shoes put the finishing touches on a wonderful outfit.  This is Effie of the amazing blog, the snail and the cyclops.  Very much love her sense of style and the choices she makes. 

Not sure what her name is, but I think she lives in Sweden, her flickr name is vitamininmotion, and everything about this works for me, except I might have wished for a bit more tailored pants.  The big bow that matches the shoes and the funny red earrings that I might never have thought of.  This girl wins because there was also a picture of her dressed up in an everyday version of the Log Lady ensembles from Twin Peaks.

Of course-ity, of course-ity, the Black Apple must make an appearance.  For better or for worse, her sense of style has helped guide, but certainly not shaped my own. I love this petticoat she has and wish it for myself!

This is another of her outfits, and I very much understand her deliberations over it.  She speaks to the idea of a “themed” outfit.  Ally, my old roommate used to joke about these very things as I’d try on a hundred things every morning, discarding each outfit as “too Woodland Fairy” or “too Gretl” or “too monochromatic”.  Yeah, I took some heat, but building outfits takes time!  I’ve gotten lazy about wearing heels, but I’m getting back into it. 

And Rhiannon from Liebe Marlene.  The detail on this outfit is exquisite, from the tiny pin and ring to the texture of the dress itself.  She always dresses well, but this entire outfit works so very well, I loved it the instant I saw it.

Thinking of buying myself these shoes as a graduation present.  Thoughts as to which colour?

Or these?

he Almanac page above ^^ has been updated, and is current.

Almanac is a weekly variety radio show, featuring stories, songs and interviews. The show on Die Radio Die got deleted, so I think I may repeat it this Thursday, with our last show being next week.

But until then, here’s the Almanac for May 8th, Exclusively Motown!

Featuring music by Tammi Terrell, Marvin Gaye, Dusty Springfield, The Foundations, The Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, you name it, we’re grooving on it.

or right click here to save to your computer.

Here is the Almanac for 4/23/08

Flannery and Self Portrait, 1958(?)

Self Portrait, 1951

Sylvia

I never realized they were contemporaries. They’re in such separate categories of my mind.

A famous anecdote has Charlie Watts punching a drunken Mick Jagger in a hotel in the mid-1980s. After a full night of partying, Jagger phoned Watts’ hotel room early in the morning asking where “his drummer” was. Watts met him down the stairs and punched him, saying “Don’t ever call me your drummer again. You’re my bloody singer!”

Hey guys

Deacon, Cate’s (and our house’s) dog is very sick and basically Cate just found out she needs to find 3500 by tomorrow morning or they’ll have to put Deacon down, and she doesn’t know what to do, because she just doesn’t have the money, none of us really do. Pray that we find the money somehow or that another option presents itself.

Amanda

ell, it’s 1996, she’s twenty-four, he’s thirty already, and she’s coming into her own musically, though the drugs and alcohol will keep her scared for the rest of her life.  They’re living in an abandoned farm house in South Carolina, and between her freakouts and his dark nature, things eventually end.  She may never have gotten over this brief period as the references cloud on later albums, his name popping up in her influences.  All that’s left is the years he was without her, and the best albums of his career were the two after she came and went. 

In a few years, somewhere in San Francisco, another girl’s sharing a room with someone new, their shared possessions and instruments and books litter the floor.  They know that after a time, distance and other things might drive them apart, but for now they’re just waiting.  He records and releases a few exploratory EP’s as well as her first album, and she is catipulted to fame while he continues to make a name for himself, producing and supporting others.  Years later, when she’s walking around New York, she hears a slow sweet strain of song and wonders if he ever thinks of her, because you certainly can’t erase two years, and surely it all meant something more than she even knows. 

He never thinks of her.

Soon enough she meets someone new through her label, and he’s older, and interesting.  Older men are always interesting.  Her parents didn’t much like her dating someone almost twice as old as her, but these things aren’t usually up for discussion.  Intense and musically full, they play together on albums and on the road, she’s already more popular than he ever was, though he’s a better musician.  Now and then he would wonder, as he watched her play, how do I end up with these women, young and talented.  Now and then he runs into the scared girl, or hears her songs at a party, and knows that she thinks of him.  This new girl is just as young as the other one was a decade ago, just as bright and impetuous, just as impossible.  He laughs and laughs, as one night he thinks history has repeated itself and she walks away for the last time. 

After all this time, yet again she’s with someone new, girls like her don’t like to be alone for too long.  Finally, someone more famous than me, she thinks to herself on New Year’s Eve, of course one can’t admit these things, but maybe now the fights will stop.  Besides, he’s not even a musician, but he does make her laugh.