The Rake's Progress. Or: How the Purge Goes

Several cubic feet of things chucked chock-a-block into boxes and into the back of my car. An old dog bed--which probably should be just thrown out--and camisole tops and shorts that are years too young for me, which probably also should be thrown out. I pitched some old ceramic top bottles that I was saving for heaven knows what--I think I thought we were going to marinate our own vinegars or some such crafty thing. Duplicate shoes. Ugly toys. And there are so many ugly toys for boys. I worry that the boys will have no toys after I throw out the ugly and annoying ones. You try to throw out your kids' art work and try to explain it to them when they find it in the garbage! How did that get in there???

I gauge my progress on my satisfaction of how I feel at the cubic footage I've freed up. I do a little mathematical equation using our monthly mortgage, our home's square footage, solving for how much per month we've been paying out to store stacks of Yoga Journal magazines and empty Weck jars. And some people think there's no practical use for high school algebra.

The result, I suppose, is nominal. My sons brought in the stacks of art they made at art camp last week. My husband brought in tables from his restaurant and he's refinishing them out on the porch. I'm going to the thrift stores to comb through for more Eileen Fisher and Lilly Pulitzer. Although pickings are getting slim in the midsummer lull, I'd hate to miss another $800.00 coat like the one I found last week for $3.49. It's like unraveling a giant sweater that someone keeps knitting, and knitting, and knitting, and knitting, and knitting, and knitting...

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The Lost Designer of the 80's

Claude Barthelemy seems to have been one of those if-you-needed-to-ask-you-didn't-need-to-know designers. In the '80's, he was listed as a young, hot couturier alongside go-the-distance blue chips like Karl Lagerfeld and Lanvin with his oversized sweaters, minis, leggings and fur-trimmed stoles. Exclusive stores carried his soft-edged jackets to shoppers in the know. And then what happened? His pleated skirts, intarsia sweaters, and naughty, zippered wool catsuits still fetch high prices in vintage world and any dealer with his elegantly simple, Gallic tag on her racks raises a flutter in second-hand seekers. He designed for Barbie, for heaven's sake! But the designer himself, who seems to have cut a meteoric swath across the runways and then...? So what's the story with this wasp-waisted pleated skirt? I wondered what else this woman could have dropped off on her Goodwill drive-by--a Chanel original? A couture Pucci? Surely someone this linked in wouldn't just

Change Your Tone!!

I know I have a "unique voice." But I can count on one hand how many people I know who can stand listening to their own voice. (That is not saying there aren't those guys who seem to love talking just to hear the sound of their own voice; but if you literally played it back to them --they'd cringe and crawl under the sofa.) When I was in the 3rd grade, I was chosen to be in some experimental speech/voice therapy at our school. They tried for many weeks to raise the pitch of my voice by having me go up and down the do-re-mi scales until I hit one that they thought sounded pleasing. I had a deep, true contralto voice somewhere a few notes below "do." With the sort of rasping, old-chain-smoker undertones of a freckled Billie Holiday. The experimenters settled on "fa." For 20 minutes three times a week, I got to leave Ms. Foster's third grade classroom and go to the convent living room where I would sing "do-re-mi-fa" and say

E is for Ephemera--The Beauty of the Impermanent #A2ZChallenge

Ephemera Vulgata (garden variety Mayfly) Ephemera: From the Greek: Ephemeron --a short-lived insect. Members of the family Ephemeridae include dragon and damsel flies as well as may flies in the genus Ephemera. For the rest of us: the detritus of our lives: concert tickets, bus tokens, valentine's day cards, matchbooks, packaging, coupons: objects meant to be useful for a brief period of time. And then what? Advocates of simplicity say it should be thrown away. I have tried. But I don't think they're looking close enough. Simply because it is not meant to be durable doesn't mean much of it isn't a tiny window into some artist's mind. I am not ashamed to say I buy many things based on the cleverness or beauty of its packaging. I consider this a way of supporting the arts--manufacturers paid someone to design the structure, the image, the lettering. It may not be as grand and sweeping as an operatic performance, but the opera itself is ephe

Second Hand, Second Thoughts

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