Faux Fum

New Blog

2009-11-25T11:35:00.000-05:00

I have started a new blog - it's a celebration blog! Check it out:

Ro Ro Riot

Delicious Shoes

2009-05-28T19:27:00.003-04:00

While looking for adorable yet comfortable summer footwear I found a UK-based site called Beyond Skin and almost died over the adorableness of some of the shoes on the site. And these ones are even vegan friendly, if that's what you're looking for. My favorites are the sandals called "Rose" for obvious reasons that go beyond their name, "Marina," the navy blue version of "Bob," and the print version of "Sammy." I don't usually love shoes with print patterns, but when I saw these my first thought was, "I want," and my second thought was that I'd better check to see if I had started drooling.

Unfortunately, these shoes are WAY out of our budget right now. As much as I like to think that I don't need a lot of money to be happy, I have to say that it is hard to find both interesting and quality clothing that doesn't require a certain surplus in the bank. Especially when it comes to shoes when you live in the city. I've bought really cute shoes from places that are sort of cheap ($11-30/pair) and those have worn out so fast it's almost depressing. Alas.

Isabelle Guesnon - When I Like "Cute"

2009-05-05T11:56:00.003-04:00

I usually don't go in for the cutesy crafty things. (Crafty? Yes. Cutesy? No.) But in looking up something on Etsy.com I ran across these decorative dolls that are hand felted. They portray the story of the fictional little girl named Isabelle Guesnon and friends, and I find them completely adorable. I'm not saying I'd want them decorating my house. (Maybe a little girl's room some day when I have little girls.) But I get a big kick out of staring at them on the internet and going "Ooooooh."

Errol Flynn's Robin Hood

2009-04-29T09:12:00.003-04:00

Lately I've been watching old movies that I used to watch as a child. Recently I discovered Errol Flynn's The Adventures of Robin Hood. It proved as entertaining as I used to think it was, though not quite as exciting and intense.

Some of my favorite aspects of the film:

Robin saying, "Now, there's a lusty infant!" on seeing Little John for the first time.
The costumes were out of this world. Including very fake gem stones lining the borders of Robin's "nobleman" outfit at the beginning of the show (thus letting the audience know he has some social standing), and Marian's metallic, reptile-skin rainbow gowns.
In the montage depicting Robin's saving the common people from the evils of Prince John's men, a Bad Man's menacing laughter gets cut off mid-guffaw by a well-aimed arrow, and the man falls sideways off his horse.
In the same sequence, when another Bad Man is trying to have his way with a young woman, not only does the man get killed by an arrow shot through a window, the arrow also manages to snuff out a candle on its way!
And something that I really did appreciate and found unexpected in this 1938 film: When Robin is captured after the arrowing tournament and none of his men can figure out what to do about it, Maid Marian is the one that comes up with the plan for rescuing him. Go Marian!

I've been trying to think of some of the other old films I used to watch, because I am seriously craving them. Probably because I'm missing family and friends, so am feeling nostalgic in general. Suggestions? Do tell!

Dialogue

2009-04-22T11:13:00.014-04:00

Last night Jordan and I were listening to some of Stephen Fry's podcasts. I like him. He has some very interesting things to say, he's smart, and he seems like a really good person. But as I listened to him I began thinking of other celebrities whose opinions people tend to listen to. Bono, Bruce Springstein, Sean Penn, Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert and others I can't think of at just this moment. Most of these people are intelligent, I think. They may or may not have good things to say. They may or may not be good people. Some of these people I really appreciate and others of them have attitudes I cannot stand, but I guess that doesn't necessarily make them bad people. It just makes them obnoxious.

The thing that sometimes irritates me is when they say things that are obviously directed at someone else/some other group or are strongly in opposition to other points of view. It irritates me because when they make these statements there is usually not someone else there to answer back. It makes me feel unsettled. I desire a more complete dialogue. The feeling is especially acute when there is a crowd of listeners shouting or clapping their affirmation. This feels like mob mentality. I want it to be tempered by another point of view.

Of course, I guess all media is just one huge dialogue, but I like things being a little more compact. I'd like Sean Penn to get up and state his piece. Then I'd like someone else to get up and state theirs. In the same space. To the same audience. Then after that, I'd like another person to get up and speak their mind. At least 3. Wouldn't life be truly better if we always did things this way? Or maybe it would just be too confusing because people wouldn't know who to follow because they'd always have more than one choice.

I also don't think it's terribly fair that some celebrities who may not have any credentials beyond their fame, fortune, and some most likely unrelated talent get to have their voices heard. Because the voices that get heard do end up influencing society even if they don't have good credentials. But I think this is one of the imbalances in life that simply exists, and there is not much to do about it. So my complaint is merely something to be stated and then left behind as we go on to talk about other things that perhaps can be changed.

"People with virture must speak out; People who speak are not all virtuous."
Confucius (I like that guy.)

1st Contribution to Poetry Month

2009-04-16T22:42:00.005-04:00

Poetry Month has come at a convenient time for me. I haven't had much to do with poetry for months (I had an underlying sense that it was too good for me, so I rejected it first in order to have the upper hand...), but in the last couple weeks I've had poignant and enjoyable poetry encounters. When I found out that April was poetry month I thought, "No way?" Because what are the chances that at the exact time I was starting to feel poetry-ey(?) it would turn out to be Poetry Month? So I'm going to share some of the poems I've enjoyed lately.

The following poem is by a man who used to be a poetry professor in the program I will attend in the Fall. I know what I like about this poem. And what I don't. (But mostly it's just things I like.) I'd be interested to know what other people think about it.

Snapshots
Henry B. Taylor, 1873-1968
by Henry Taylor

I.
Out of communal silence the people
called Quakers have gathered to themselves
their quiet, steady way of being
in a world they choose not to reject.
In that context my grandfather Taylor thrived.
Presiding Clerk for almost forty years,
he had a touch that came to be locally famous.
It got to where he was asked to speak
almost every time a Quaker died.
So, inevitably, came the death
of one for whom he had had little use.
An irreverent old rapscallion, he thought,
and tried to stay out of his way.
The man's sons
came back to Goose Creek from distant homes
and found themselves a trifle out of their depth.
Taking advice, they asked Henry B.
to speak. He would have preferred not to,
but didn't see a way to turn them down.
Worked a day or two on a set of remarks
not without justice but sparing the whole truth,
and when the time came, spoke them. Afterwards,
the sons made known their disappointment. "We wanted
an honest-to-God eulogy," they said, and he,
"I'm sorry. You picked two of the wrong men."

2.
His kindly cleanliness of speech,
his upright square dealing, became
community property, amlost
proverbial. For his son, an example
awsome, if not impossible.
He set Joe Jackson to work one morning
cleaning off the asparagus patch.
Pretty soon Crave Tate came past,
watched a moment, and observed that
the boss didn't want asparagus
pulled out with the weeds.
It takes years to establish asparagus.
"He said to clean it off," Jackson
replied, "and that's what I'm doin.
Go on bout y'own business.
I know what the man told me."
Tate went on up to the house
seeking clarity and vindication,
and got both, in a voice that carried across two fields:
"Hell, no!" Not too strong
by some standards, maybe, but
the teenaged boy who would
become my father, in which role
he would think of this moment often,
laughed.
All but fell down
laughing, in an astonished seizure of relief
that the old man had it in him,
laughed till he had no more breath for it.

3.
He told me once about a time when silence
was the best response he had to what occurred.
He'd engaged a fellow from out Between the Hills
to caponize some young male chickens
before they could grow up into roosters
A delicate skill, practiced even then by few.

As he worked along, the fellow mentioned
he'd just that morning been in Hamilton
at the home of Mr. Harrison Branch.
"Mr. Branch a mighty fine man," he said,
"but he's awful quare." Breath held,
a deft small finger-twitch, a chicken set aside.
"They tell me all them Quakers is quare."

4.
"Just look at that old man!" cried Leon Grooms,
and we all did, as he took two quick steps
while looking upward to watch
the steep trajectory of a fresh egg
we had just found in the haymow,
reaching out toward where his shoe tops
would be in another step and a half, letting
the egg fall easily into the soft cradle
he had made of his hands, straightening,
holding it up unbroken a quick wave of thanks,
then turning back to the weeds
he'd been raking when the wagon passed
down the driveway with us on it, headed back
to the field for another load of hay.
Leon had stood up as we rolled by,
held up our find and called out, "Mr. Taylor,
got an egg for you! "All right! Throw it here!"
"He mean what he says?" It was an uphill throw from a moving wagon, not quite thirty yards.
"I never knew him not to," my father said,
and Leon settle back into his windup.

5.
One afternoon he stood with A.M. Janney
on the porch of Janney's Store,
When down the single street came--so quietly!--
A funeral procession, fraught
with somewhat more than the usual pomp.
Asa Moore's stunning voice rang out:
"My goodness, Henry, those people
sure know how to wrap it up, don't they?
Makes our ways look kind of sparse.
Maybe we need a religion
that would take us out like that."
Grandpa said, "What's good enough
to live by is good enough to die by."

6.
At eighty-five, interrupted.
A storke melted
one side of his face
and stopped him from walking.
Voice thin but speech clear,
he called to me from his wheelchair
as I came into the room,
"Henry, they've got me under!
Yes sir, this time
they've got me under!"
Believing and not believing,
wanting, as always in his presence,
to do right, I made some lame reply.
Yet within months
he was doing a slow dance
with an aluminum walker;
later, two canes, then one.
Went back to gardening.

Nine years later my father stopped by there on his way home
from an auction, and mentioned
having bought a harness-maker's bench.
"Let's have a look."
So my father brought it in to the porch,
and the old man got up, put a hand
on the two tall wood jaws
of the vise, walked all around the piece,
swung a leg over the seat and sat,
working the vise treadle with his foot.
"Just fine," he said, "just fine."
That night, in his sleep, he died.

7.
When Henry B. Taylor had been dead
for at least twenty years,
I was in Janney's Store myself,
and Asa Moore said, for maybe
the thirtieth time in forty years,
that I could never hope to be
the man my grandfather was.

Correct. But I had come at last
to know I was not called
to be the man anohter man had been.
Should not have said so.
Asa Moore, I mostly think,
meant well. I mostly wish
I had, too.
So he was right.

"Just"

2009-01-23T17:27:00.003-05:00

Getting the opportunity to participate in some of the inauguration events felt kind of surreal. In the back of your mind you can hear yourself, years down the road, telling your children just where you stood, and where you walked, and what you felt when Barak Obama stepped into the presidential shoes. The throngs of people surging down the streets with you, bumping into you, smiling at you--no, grinning--all radiating excitement and energy and, yes, hope. All races, nations, creeds walking down auto-free roads and freeways, climbing over medians, doing things we normally would never do, but doing it all with civility and good will instead of anarchy. You can imagine telling your children those things.

The atmosphere this week in Washington, DC did feel a little like a liberation or the end of a years' long war. But I have noticed one trend that dampens the mood a little. I keep hearing people saying, "I just hope he can do all he's promised." I say it too. I've had that thought in the back of my mind ever since Obama got elected. I was thinking it as I strained to hear his inaugural speech over the loud speakers on the national mall. "I just hope..." I wonder what it is about that word "just" that can change the word "hope" into something that looks more like cynicism. And I wonder why it is that even thinking it might be cynical, I'm not willing to let go of that "just". Why not let myself float on the waves of hope right now?

Maybe it's because I know Barak Obama is not perfect, and he's bound to drop the ball somewhere eventually. But isn't worrying about that a little like waiting for that moment when things stop working with your boyfriend because you "know" it's going to happen sometime? That's definitely cynicism. Maybe I'm not cynical, though. Maybe I would simply rather devote my total trust to people I know instead of to some unknowable public entity...?

Either way, even with my "just" I'm still thrilled Obama's here and I'm excited to see what promises he can keep.

What is this World Coming To?

2009-01-08T11:52:00.004-05:00

Here are some other words of the day: Modern, Contemporary, Present-day, Smarty-pants, Over-My-Head, Pimpin'.

I've been looking for another job lately. I'm open to a lot of things, but mostly I'd love to do something with writing. There's a trend I've been noticing in a lot of the job postings for writing positions and other sorts of work: web knowledge and experience. They want to see your blogs and other websites, and etc. That's partly why I started blogging in the first place (in addition to wanting to stay in touch with friends and family who enjoy blogging.) But I've been interested in figuring out how to make my own websites because it's the way the world is going, no?

Recently a friend of mine who knows something about web design created a site of his own with some free advice and articles on web hosting. I've only looked at it a little so far but it seems clear and instructive, and in the interest of helping out said friend and those of you who have shown interest in this sort of thing I thought I'd make mention of the site here. You should really check it out.

Bing in My Heart

2008-12-15T22:51:00.003-05:00

I've been spending a lot of time on the computer and listening to the "White Christmas" station on Pandora.com to help me feel Christmas cheer even though I'm spending most of my time rubbing my eyes and having head aches. And something I realized once again is that Bing Crosby's voice is/was absolutely dreamy. And I'm trying to think of anyone currently who can even come close to matching him in vocal richness and mood. I can't think of anyone. I'm sorry but compared to Bing your Michael Bubles, Harry Connick Jrs, and even Josh Grobins just cannot compete. Give me Bing any day. Any month. Any year. And especially any Christmas. Sing it, Bing.

Dream Job

2008-12-11T12:06:00.004-05:00

When I moved to the East Coast I signed up with several employment websites to help me in my job search. I only signed up at sites with legitimate job offers; however, even these sites have some spammers, hoaxsters, and dirty double dealers skimming through the resumes and sending unwanted feelers out to the unsuspecting unemployed. Usually you can recognize these fake job opportunities by their frequent typos or "WORK AT HOME AND MAKE $1000 A DAY" guarantees. But today I got one that takes the cake. I could read it over and over again and laugh every time:

Hi !

We are looking for entry level specialists of various profiles. You must have Adult age. Your previous operational experience is not important. The minimum education level necessary - High School. It is a lot of available vacancies.

We will offer to you: the decent salary with system of bonuses and
the complete legality & security.

From you: some hours per week of a free time, the experience of PC and the
Internet on a simple level.

(Oh, how I love the scattering of unnecessary definite and indefinite articles.) The glee I feel when reading this email reveals the grammar geek in me, but that's all my mother's fault so don't blame me.

The Mystery of the Berlin Wall Wedding

2008-11-11T11:38:00.005-05:00

A year and a half ago I went to Britain with a group of students (including my now husband) and became close friends with several of them (one of whom is my now husband). My now husband then (before he was my husband, or we were even dating) created a blog for our little group of Britain Friends. And about a month ago he (my husband) started what may become a tradition of creative challenges. He provided a prompt and everyone was supposed to create something that the prompt had prompted. A picture, a sculpture, a poem, etc. Then we voted on the creations. The person who won got to choose the next prompt.

This was the prompt he chose.

And this is what I created:

I sewed (and taped) the dress out of toilet paper and a dryer sheet. (Click on the pictures to see it in more detail.) I also painted the wall. It's silly looking on purpose. I was going for unbelievable.

A Gold Award

2008-11-06T11:17:00.001-05:00

Turns out we won another award for which we had no idea we were in the running. Isn't it a classy design? And if people just glanced at it they would totally think we were singers. Woot!

The Adorable and the Bazaar

2008-10-13T23:35:00.001-04:00

A few months ago I decided that, because store-bought clothes usually don't fit me that well and it can get frustrating not being able find the styles I want, I was going to learn how to make myself adorable and well-fitting clothing. (Thus my interest in crochet.) To help me achieve that goal my parents gave me a sewing machine as a present for graduating with my bachelor's degree this past spring. Of course the summer was filled with wedding plans and not much sewing, but seeing how I have had a little success with crocheting I thought now would be a good time to start learning to sew like a professional. So I purchased fancy fabric and other sewing supplies from Vogue fabrics. I had gone to a few stores in my area, but I wasn't seeing any materials I felt that happy about wearing and my sister said that craft stores generally cater to quilters and Those Kinds of people and not people wanting to make adorable and well-fitting clothing. She suggested I try shopping online at Vogue fabrics or Mood (of Project Runway fame.)

Mood had an aesthetically pleasing website in that it looked clean and put together, but the fabrics were too pricey for me right now. If even by a few dollars. My experience at Vogue was fairly different. Let me explain. Look at the picture below.

Now imagine if you took the general concept of this bazaar and made it into a website. That's what it felt like at voguefabricsstore.com. Only a little less exotic. A little more like what you might imagine a diminutive lady with white hair and little graphics experience would come up with, were she to design a website. Encountering a website that seemed so out of touch graphically, I was a little surprised to find excellent deals on what looks like pretty nice material. And the inexpensive options were more numerous than at Mood. End of story: I think the site is another one of those situations where you shouldn't judge the book by its cover. Also, looking at all the fabrics - and purchasing some - made me feel like I really know what I'm doing. Even though I really don't.

Some More New Things

2008-10-06T16:36:00.001-04:00

I have two more new things that I think are worth mentioning.

First, my friends Hannah, Jim, and Kendall and I won an Emmy Award (Rocky Mountain Chapter) in the Student Production category for our piece "The Christian Eye: An Essay Across England". Because it was a student production we got a plaque instead of a statue:

Even though our piece was a student production I thought it was just as good or better than some of the pieces that won in the professional production categories. Other people think that too.

Second, last week I finished crocheting the hat. The one where I made up the pattern:

When you put it on it looks like this:

Not perfect, but pretty good anyhow. I mean, I'll wear it.

Going to the Emmy awards was great. Winning was better. It was nice to have an outside confirmation that I can accomplish cool things. It was also nice to have the chance to just be around some friends and joke and act generally ridiculous and not think about responsibilities. It reminded me that sometimes I take life too seriously. And that laughing is one of my favorite things to do. In the entire world. And that is no exaggeration. I'm being very serious about that.

New, Newness, Newbies, Newdies

2008-09-30T00:29:00.001-04:00

It feels like everything is new now. For instance, here are some new things in my life:

This is my new husband. He's wearing one of my favorite shirts. And my favorite face.

This is my new apartment. The middle part of it. It's a very long apartment.

This is my new city. Well, the most recognizable part of it, at least. It's not very much like my old city. Like, at all.

These are my new walking shoes. I had to get "Real" Walking Shoes so I could walk around my new city. This is my first pair of Nikes. Ever.

This is my new scarf. I made it with my brand new skill...crochet. This was my first real crochet project. It's prettier than it looks... I'm now crocheting a hat. I made up the pattern myself. In my head. I have full confidence in my ability to accomplish this.

Those are just a few of the new things in my life. Being in a new place with all these new things can be scary. Often I find myself feeling timid, awkward, and juvenile. (There's nothing like searching for a Real Job to make a person feel this way. Oh, and moving into a ward where everyone has been married and in their careers for years, and they emanate this sense of being "established.")

But then, being in a new place with all these new things can be exciting too. Really exciting. It makes me feel like I have an opportunity to be whoever I want. I could take everything I know and like about myself and really be that person I've wanted to be. I could be confident, responsible, selfless, successful, charming, mature, fit, and connected to myself. And all the established people that I meet out here wouldn't know any better.

Of course, it's not as easy as that. But I thought, "Hey, that's an interesting thought." That idea that I could be a new person. Form a new identity. I think I'm going to call this one Antonina. Because that sounds very mysterious.