Cover: "The Candidate" by Malika Favre
https://www.instagram.com/malikafavre
VOTE HARRIS WALZ!
https://kamalaharris.com/
Showing posts with label magazine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magazine. Show all posts
Monday, October 7, 2024
"The Candidate"
The New Yorker endorses Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America.
Cover: "The Candidate" by Malika Favre
https://www.instagram.com/malikafavre
https://kamalaharris.com/
Cover: "The Candidate" by Malika Favre
https://www.instagram.com/malikafavre
https://kamalaharris.com/
Wednesday, July 17, 2024
The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator by David Frum
The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator
Violence stalks the president who has rejoiced in violence to others.
By David Frum
Violence stalks the president who has rejoiced in violence to others.
By David Frum
July 14,2024
When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked. One of Trump’s sons and other close Trump supporters avidly promoted false claims that Paul Pelosi had somehow brought the onslaught upon himself through a sexual misadventure.
After authorities apprehended a right-wing-extremist plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump belittled the threat at a rally. He disparaged Whitmer as a political enemy. His supporters chanted “Lock her up.” Trump laughed and replied, “Lock them all up.”
Fascism feasts on violence. In the years since his own supporters attacked the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election—many of them threatening harm to Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence—Trump has championed the invaders, would-be kidnappers, and would-be murderers as martyrs and hostages. He has vowed to pardon them if returned to office. His own staffers have testified to the glee with which Trump watched the mayhem on television.
Now the bloodshed that Trump has done so much to incite against others has touched him as well. The attempted murder of Trump—and the killing of a person nearby—is a horror and an outrage. More will be learned about the man who committed this appalling act, and who was killed by the Secret Service. Whatever his mania or motive, the only important thing about him is the law-enforcement mistake that allowed him to bring a deadly weapon so close to a campaign event and gain a sight line of the presidential candidate. His name should otherwise be erased and forgotten.
It is sadly incorrect to say, as so many have, that political violence “has no place” in American society. Assassinations, lynchings, riots, and pogroms have stained every page of American political history. That has remained true to the present day. In 2016, and even more in 2020, Trump supporters brought weapons to intimidate opponents and vote-counters. Trump and his supporters envision a new place for violence as their defining political message in the 2024 election.
Fascist movements are secular religions. Like all religions, they offer martyrs as their proof of truth. The Mussolini movement in Italy built imposing monuments to its fallen comrades. The Trump movement now improves on that: The leader himself will be the martyr in chief, his own blood the basis for his bid for power and vengeance.
The 2024 election was already shaping up as a symbolic contest between an elderly and weakening liberalism too frail and uncertain to protect itself and an authoritarian, reactionary movement ready to burst every barrier and trash every institution. To date, Trump has led only a minority of U.S. voters, but that minority’s passion and audacity have offset what it lacks in numbers. After the shooting, Trump and his backers hope to use the iconography of a bloody ear and face, raised fist, and call to “Fight!” to summon waverers to their cause of installing Trump as an anti-constitutional ruler, exempted from ordinary law by his allies on the Supreme Court.
Other societies have backslid to authoritarianism because of some extraordinary crisis: economic depression, hyperinflation, military defeat, civil strife. In 2024, U.S. troops are nowhere at war. The American economy is booming, providing spectacular and widely shared prosperity. A brief spasm of mild post-pandemic inflation has been overcome. Indicators of social health have abruptly turned positive since Trump left office after years of deterioration during his term. Crime and fatal drug overdoses are declining in 2024; marriages and births are rising. Even the country’s problems indirectly confirm the country’s success: Migrants are crossing the border in the hundreds of thousands, because they know, even if Americans don’t, that the U.S. job market is among the hottest on Earth.
Yet despite all of this success, Americans are considering a form of self-harm that in other countries has typically followed the darkest national failures: letting the author of a failed coup d’état return to office to try again.
One reason this self-harm is nearing consummation is that American society is poorly prepared to understand and respond to radical challenges, once those challenges gain a certain mass. For nearly a century, “radical” in U.S. politics has usually meant “fringe”: Communists, Ku Kluxers, Black Panthers, Branch Davidians, Islamist jihadists. Radicals could be marginalized by the weight of the great American consensus that stretches from social democrats to business conservatives. Sometimes, a Joe McCarthy or a George Wallace would throw a scare into that mighty consensus, but in the past such challengers rarely formed stable coalitions with accepted stakeholders in society. Never gaining an enduring grip on the institutions of state, they flared up and burned out.
Trump is different. His abuses have been ratified by powerful constituencies. He has conquered and colonized one of the two major parties. He has defeated—or is on the way to defeating—every impeachment and prosecution to hold him to account for his frauds and crimes. He has assembled a mass following that is larger, more permanent, and more national in reach than any previous American demagogue. He has dominated the scene for nine years already, and he and his supporters hope they can use yesterday’s appalling event to extend the Trump era to the end of his life and beyond.
The American political and social system cannot treat such a person as an alien. It inevitably accommodates and naturalizes him. His counselors, even the thugs and felons, join the point-counterpoint dialogue at the summit of the American elite. President Joe Biden nearly wrecked his campaign because he felt obliged to meet Trump in debate. How could Biden have done otherwise? Trump is the three-time nominee of the Republican Party; it’s awkward and strange to treat him as an insurrectionist against the American state—though that’s what Trump was and is.
The despicable shooting at Trump, which also caused death and injury to others, now secures his undeserved position as a partner in the protective rituals of the democracy he despises. The appropriate expressions of dismay and condemnation from every prominent voice in American life have the additional effect of habituating Americans to Trump’s legitimacy. In the face of such an outrage, the familiar and proper practice is to stress unity, to proclaim that Americans have more things in common than that divide them. Those soothing words, true in the past, are less true now.
Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life.
The Republican National Convention, which opens this week, will welcome to its stage apologists for Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its aggression against U.S. allies. Trump’s own infatuation with Russia and other dictatorships has not dimmed even slightly with age or experience. Yet all of these urgent and necessary truths must now be subordinated to the ritual invocation of “thoughts and prayers” for someone who never gave a thought or uttered a prayer for any of the victims of his own many incitements to bloodshed. The president who used his office to champion the rights of dangerous people to own military-type weapons says he was grazed by a bullet from one such assault rifle.
Conventional phrases and polite hypocrisy fill a useful function in social life. We say “Thank you for your service” both to the decorated hero and to the veteran who barely escaped dishonorable discharge. It’s easier than deciphering which was which. We wish “Happy New Year!” even when we dread the months ahead.
But conventional phrases don’t go unheard. They carry meanings, meanings no less powerful for being rote and reflexive. In rightly denouncing violence, we are extending an implicit pardon to the most violent person in contemporary U.S. politics. In asserting unity, we are absolving a man who seeks power through the humiliation and subordination of disdained others.
Those conventional phrases are inscribing Trump into a place in American life that he should have forfeited beyond redemption on January 6, 2021. All decent people welcome the sparing of his life. Trump’s reckoning should be with the orderly process of law, not with the bloodshed he rejoiced in when it befell others. He and his allies will exploit a gunman’s vicious criminality as their path to exonerate past crimes and empower new ones. Those who stand against Trump and his allies must find the will and the language to explain why these crimes, past and planned, are all wrong, all intolerable—and how the gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet’s trajectory, are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and democracy.
David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Link to original article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/07/donald-trump-democracy-dictator/679006/
When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked. One of Trump’s sons and other close Trump supporters avidly promoted false claims that Paul Pelosi had somehow brought the onslaught upon himself through a sexual misadventure.
After authorities apprehended a right-wing-extremist plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump belittled the threat at a rally. He disparaged Whitmer as a political enemy. His supporters chanted “Lock her up.” Trump laughed and replied, “Lock them all up.”
Fascism feasts on violence. In the years since his own supporters attacked the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election—many of them threatening harm to Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence—Trump has championed the invaders, would-be kidnappers, and would-be murderers as martyrs and hostages. He has vowed to pardon them if returned to office. His own staffers have testified to the glee with which Trump watched the mayhem on television.
Now the bloodshed that Trump has done so much to incite against others has touched him as well. The attempted murder of Trump—and the killing of a person nearby—is a horror and an outrage. More will be learned about the man who committed this appalling act, and who was killed by the Secret Service. Whatever his mania or motive, the only important thing about him is the law-enforcement mistake that allowed him to bring a deadly weapon so close to a campaign event and gain a sight line of the presidential candidate. His name should otherwise be erased and forgotten.
It is sadly incorrect to say, as so many have, that political violence “has no place” in American society. Assassinations, lynchings, riots, and pogroms have stained every page of American political history. That has remained true to the present day. In 2016, and even more in 2020, Trump supporters brought weapons to intimidate opponents and vote-counters. Trump and his supporters envision a new place for violence as their defining political message in the 2024 election.
Fascist movements are secular religions. Like all religions, they offer martyrs as their proof of truth. The Mussolini movement in Italy built imposing monuments to its fallen comrades. The Trump movement now improves on that: The leader himself will be the martyr in chief, his own blood the basis for his bid for power and vengeance.
The 2024 election was already shaping up as a symbolic contest between an elderly and weakening liberalism too frail and uncertain to protect itself and an authoritarian, reactionary movement ready to burst every barrier and trash every institution. To date, Trump has led only a minority of U.S. voters, but that minority’s passion and audacity have offset what it lacks in numbers. After the shooting, Trump and his backers hope to use the iconography of a bloody ear and face, raised fist, and call to “Fight!” to summon waverers to their cause of installing Trump as an anti-constitutional ruler, exempted from ordinary law by his allies on the Supreme Court.
Other societies have backslid to authoritarianism because of some extraordinary crisis: economic depression, hyperinflation, military defeat, civil strife. In 2024, U.S. troops are nowhere at war. The American economy is booming, providing spectacular and widely shared prosperity. A brief spasm of mild post-pandemic inflation has been overcome. Indicators of social health have abruptly turned positive since Trump left office after years of deterioration during his term. Crime and fatal drug overdoses are declining in 2024; marriages and births are rising. Even the country’s problems indirectly confirm the country’s success: Migrants are crossing the border in the hundreds of thousands, because they know, even if Americans don’t, that the U.S. job market is among the hottest on Earth.
Yet despite all of this success, Americans are considering a form of self-harm that in other countries has typically followed the darkest national failures: letting the author of a failed coup d’état return to office to try again.
One reason this self-harm is nearing consummation is that American society is poorly prepared to understand and respond to radical challenges, once those challenges gain a certain mass. For nearly a century, “radical” in U.S. politics has usually meant “fringe”: Communists, Ku Kluxers, Black Panthers, Branch Davidians, Islamist jihadists. Radicals could be marginalized by the weight of the great American consensus that stretches from social democrats to business conservatives. Sometimes, a Joe McCarthy or a George Wallace would throw a scare into that mighty consensus, but in the past such challengers rarely formed stable coalitions with accepted stakeholders in society. Never gaining an enduring grip on the institutions of state, they flared up and burned out.
Trump is different. His abuses have been ratified by powerful constituencies. He has conquered and colonized one of the two major parties. He has defeated—or is on the way to defeating—every impeachment and prosecution to hold him to account for his frauds and crimes. He has assembled a mass following that is larger, more permanent, and more national in reach than any previous American demagogue. He has dominated the scene for nine years already, and he and his supporters hope they can use yesterday’s appalling event to extend the Trump era to the end of his life and beyond.
The American political and social system cannot treat such a person as an alien. It inevitably accommodates and naturalizes him. His counselors, even the thugs and felons, join the point-counterpoint dialogue at the summit of the American elite. President Joe Biden nearly wrecked his campaign because he felt obliged to meet Trump in debate. How could Biden have done otherwise? Trump is the three-time nominee of the Republican Party; it’s awkward and strange to treat him as an insurrectionist against the American state—though that’s what Trump was and is.
The despicable shooting at Trump, which also caused death and injury to others, now secures his undeserved position as a partner in the protective rituals of the democracy he despises. The appropriate expressions of dismay and condemnation from every prominent voice in American life have the additional effect of habituating Americans to Trump’s legitimacy. In the face of such an outrage, the familiar and proper practice is to stress unity, to proclaim that Americans have more things in common than that divide them. Those soothing words, true in the past, are less true now.
Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life.
The Republican National Convention, which opens this week, will welcome to its stage apologists for Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its aggression against U.S. allies. Trump’s own infatuation with Russia and other dictatorships has not dimmed even slightly with age or experience. Yet all of these urgent and necessary truths must now be subordinated to the ritual invocation of “thoughts and prayers” for someone who never gave a thought or uttered a prayer for any of the victims of his own many incitements to bloodshed. The president who used his office to champion the rights of dangerous people to own military-type weapons says he was grazed by a bullet from one such assault rifle.
Conventional phrases and polite hypocrisy fill a useful function in social life. We say “Thank you for your service” both to the decorated hero and to the veteran who barely escaped dishonorable discharge. It’s easier than deciphering which was which. We wish “Happy New Year!” even when we dread the months ahead.
But conventional phrases don’t go unheard. They carry meanings, meanings no less powerful for being rote and reflexive. In rightly denouncing violence, we are extending an implicit pardon to the most violent person in contemporary U.S. politics. In asserting unity, we are absolving a man who seeks power through the humiliation and subordination of disdained others.
Those conventional phrases are inscribing Trump into a place in American life that he should have forfeited beyond redemption on January 6, 2021. All decent people welcome the sparing of his life. Trump’s reckoning should be with the orderly process of law, not with the bloodshed he rejoiced in when it befell others. He and his allies will exploit a gunman’s vicious criminality as their path to exonerate past crimes and empower new ones. Those who stand against Trump and his allies must find the will and the language to explain why these crimes, past and planned, are all wrong, all intolerable—and how the gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet’s trajectory, are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and democracy.
David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Link to original article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/07/donald-trump-democracy-dictator/679006/
Wednesday, May 24, 2023
10 Emotions You've Felt But Had No Name For
John Koenig is the marvelous author of THE DICTIONARY OF OBSCURE SORROWS, a book of neologisms to express new terms for subtle emotions. His made up words are combinations of word roots from languages all around the world. While the words themselves might sound clinical, their definitions are lyrical and touching. I have felt a few of these and am happy to know others have too...and that we finally have names for them, thanks to Koenig's imagination!
1. Chrysalism
[kris-a-lizim] The feeling of tranquility when you’re indoors when it’s raining heavily outside.
2. Lilo
[ly-lo] The friendship between two people who feel as if no time has passed when they see each other after a long period of separation.
3. Sonder
[son-der] The realization that every stranger and passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. That each person is occupied by their own personal ambitions, worries, and problems.
4. Monachopsis
[mo-na-kop-sis] The inability to adapt to your surroundings and the feeling of being out of place.
5. Eramnesia
[eram-nee-ja] The realization that you were born in the wrong time period, wishing you lived in another time.
6. Anemoia
[an-em-oh-ya] The feeling of nostalgia for a time or place that you have never experienced.
7. Pâro
[pah-ro] The feeling that no matter what you do, you’re doing it wrong.
8. Xeno
[zee-noh] The powerful moments shared between random strangers, such as a smile or a laugh, which reduce feelings of loneliness.
9. Acatalepsy
[aka-ta-lep-sy] The apparent impossibility of humans ever comprehending the universe.
10. Liberosis
[lib-ero-sis] The desire to care less about things, to feel less.
https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/
And you can buy the book here on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Obscure-Sorrows-John-Koenig-ebook/dp/B08VJMFFRB?ref_=ast_author_mpb
1. Chrysalism
[kris-a-lizim] The feeling of tranquility when you’re indoors when it’s raining heavily outside.
2. Lilo
[ly-lo] The friendship between two people who feel as if no time has passed when they see each other after a long period of separation.
3. Sonder
[son-der] The realization that every stranger and passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. That each person is occupied by their own personal ambitions, worries, and problems.
4. Monachopsis
[mo-na-kop-sis] The inability to adapt to your surroundings and the feeling of being out of place.
5. Eramnesia
[eram-nee-ja] The realization that you were born in the wrong time period, wishing you lived in another time.
6. Anemoia
[an-em-oh-ya] The feeling of nostalgia for a time or place that you have never experienced.
7. Pâro
[pah-ro] The feeling that no matter what you do, you’re doing it wrong.
8. Xeno
[zee-noh] The powerful moments shared between random strangers, such as a smile or a laugh, which reduce feelings of loneliness.
9. Acatalepsy
[aka-ta-lep-sy] The apparent impossibility of humans ever comprehending the universe.
10. Liberosis
[lib-ero-sis] The desire to care less about things, to feel less.
https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/
And you can buy the book here on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Obscure-Sorrows-John-Koenig-ebook/dp/B08VJMFFRB?ref_=ast_author_mpb
Tuesday, January 12, 2021
The Whole Home 2020 by House Beautiful
House Beautiful magazine created a ground-up build in Colorado called The Whole Home and invited a slew of talented interior designers to furnish all the various zones inside. And since our beloved San Francisco Decorator's Showcase was only virtual last year and I had no in-person delights to enjoy, I am posting this here as a substitute.
The concept for this house was extended living, bringing together multiple generations under a single roof. As we journey through, notice how much glorious texture and pattern there is--it's everywhere! Let's start with the entry and living room designed by Lucinda Loya. A gallery of art on some amazing Phillip Jeffries wallpaper and stunning brass stalactite-esque pendants greet guests as they come in (I bet those light fixtures create a fantastic glow at night!), and a floor-to-ceiling fireplace offers bench seating for extra friends (or pets) to perch. An oversize sectional with an extended backless chaise covered in a no-nonsense performance fabric, supplies the perfect spot for gazing out the large windows at the expansive Rocky Mountains.
Once dinner is ready, it can be served in a dining room that is certainly design-forward! Andrea Schumacher echoed the sense of nature just outside: twelve flowerlike pendants and their whopping 1,400 petals fill up the two-story space, alongside a single linear fixture; collectively, they conjure “the tumbleweeds and sticks” of Colorado. Rather than adding wallpaper below, she wrapped her own Woodsy paper, inspired by her grandmother’s art, near the bookshelves above. A custom copper-topped table is rooted by an actual tree trunk and surrounded by vintage chairs with cheerful pink furs. It all sits on a delightful rug of monkeys dancing through the trees!
When offered the slim space between the living room and the owners’ suite in this year's Whole Home Concept House, Marie Flanigan could have plugged in a computer and called it an office. Instead, the Houston-based designer concocted the ultimate ode to her Southern roots: a room dedicated to tea. “I wanted to fashion a space where you could have a friend over for coffee or tea…and actually use your collected china,” Flanigan says. Bountiful seating, brass detailing, and red walls in a high-gloss finish (YUM!) conspire to impart a dose of luxury. Hidden away in the floor-to-ceiling cabinets is a spot for all the accoutrements—cups and saucers, sugar, and biscuits—just right for a tea party or, well, hell, a glass of wine.
In this age of Shelter-In-Place and quarantine (which sounds like it will last well into this coming summer, maybe even fall or winter of 2021?),this family-friendly lounge was designed by the Brooklyn-based duo of Cristina Casañas-Judd and General Judd, and is packed with everything you need for your pod. The punchy, modern Old West–inspired room mixes an overscale basket-weave wallcovering (again from Phillip Jeffries!), electric-blue cabinetry, a Day of the Dead print, and graphic black-and-white tiles to let you know the party’s here. What looks like a surfboard over the bar is actually a sound system primed for dance-offs and sing-a-thons. The bar itself (aka a mini kitchen of its own) is stocked with tools to prevent any need to run upstairs, like a popcorn-ready microwave, a two-in-one beverage fridge, an ice maker, and even a dishwasher. A beer tap and in-counter wine chiller promise to make your family bar the place to be.
Once playtime is over, what better place to head than a tranquil room meant for nothing more than recovery from your day (or a few too many cocktails)? Boston-based designer Elizabeth Georgantas created this lower-level, glassed-in getaway which is right off the prior Jud and Nozawa designed lounge space to be over-the-top Zen, with bark-inspired wallpaper, a grown-up futon, and beanbags that can be pulled down for friends. Window coverings and a wall-mounted water feature, which adds just the right dose of white noise, prevent light and sound from disturbing the vibe. When you’re actually trying to stay awake, more structured seating and plenty of tables can be pulled up for a quick nosh and sip, away from the more boisterous space next door.
https://www.housebeautiful.com/whole-home-2020/
The concept for this house was extended living, bringing together multiple generations under a single roof. As we journey through, notice how much glorious texture and pattern there is--it's everywhere! Let's start with the entry and living room designed by Lucinda Loya. A gallery of art on some amazing Phillip Jeffries wallpaper and stunning brass stalactite-esque pendants greet guests as they come in (I bet those light fixtures create a fantastic glow at night!), and a floor-to-ceiling fireplace offers bench seating for extra friends (or pets) to perch. An oversize sectional with an extended backless chaise covered in a no-nonsense performance fabric, supplies the perfect spot for gazing out the large windows at the expansive Rocky Mountains.
Next is the kitchen designed by Sarah Robertson of New York’s Studio Dearborn who dreamt up a multigenerational space. Handmade zellige tiles in fresh white and peacock blue offset rustic alderwood cabinetry, and rather than selecting one type of hardware, Robertson chose five different designs, including brass and leather. The nearby farm inspired batten-style panel fronts on the refrigeration wall, while the island, made of quartz and wenge wood, has plenty of space for grandparents to pull up and chop; additional undercounter storage makes cleanup easy for all. And off the kitchen, a two-room pantry is both utilitarian and fun, with a tough quartz sink for secondary prep, a professional preservation vacuum sealer, and a striking wallcovering that peeks out from a quiet corner of the kitchen.
Adjacent to this lounge is another superb hangout space which compliments the colors and sense of the Judd's area nicely. “I wanted to create spaces where people come together, look at one another, and engage in conversation,” says San Francisco–based designer Noz Nozawa, who created a cozy hangout for this year's Whole Home Concept House. In the interest of encouraging folks to put their phones away, she pulled motifs from midcentury furniture and conversation pits, traditional Japanese seating, and African furnishings for two alluring zones with distinct personalities that live happily together. The more revved-up fireside area, anchored by a fireplace with agrarian tile reminiscent of a bird’s-eye view of farmland and cast in a sunny 1970s color palette, includes inset shelving and an eclectic mix of vintage leather furniture paired with contemporary (and height-adjustable) Ghanaian-inspired stools. The plush Berber rug, traditionally made by women of the North African Beni Ourain tribes, encourages lounging on the floor. Across the room, a circular seating area becomes a family gathering spot for game nights, snack time, or intimate conversation.
Once playtime is over, what better place to head than a tranquil room meant for nothing more than recovery from your day (or a few too many cocktails)? Boston-based designer Elizabeth Georgantas created this lower-level, glassed-in getaway which is right off the prior Jud and Nozawa designed lounge space to be over-the-top Zen, with bark-inspired wallpaper, a grown-up futon, and beanbags that can be pulled down for friends. Window coverings and a wall-mounted water feature, which adds just the right dose of white noise, prevent light and sound from disturbing the vibe. When you’re actually trying to stay awake, more structured seating and plenty of tables can be pulled up for a quick nosh and sip, away from the more boisterous space next door.
Moving on to the private spaces of the home, let's visit the master suite. “This is the anti-sensory-overload area,” says Elizabeth Georgantas who designed the previous nap-room. “I wanted it to be the single place at home where you have room to breathe.” The soft, minimalist bedroom feels like an upscale boutique hotel in the mountains—the kind that convinces you to stay in bed rather than hit the slopes. An abundance of storage in the en suite bathroom allows for a clutter-free visual environment, while a copper soaking tub (which looks wonderful against all the white) in front of a shower column begs you to submerge. Closed cabinets rule in the bathroom, but Georgantas opted for open shelves and hanger rails in the closet so that all wardrobe options could be assessed and accessed at once.
A pair of bedrooms received a unique approach. Would teenage girls be willing to give up separate bedrooms if it meant gaining their own super-swanky lounge? When designer Charlotte Lucas of Charlotte, North Carolina, considered these bedrooms, she decided to create one for sleep and one for, well, everything else. A whimsical leafy mural envelops the bedroom and is offset by a graphic dotted carpet and matching 70s headboards. The adjacent salon has all the function (and fun) they could dream of: a re-covered, vintage ombré sofa for kicking back and hanging with friends, a long desk with floating shelves for focused study time, and an entertainment unit for marathoning YouTube and blasting music. I can tell you when I was a teen, I would have relished my own living room!
And finally, the Whole Home boasts a whole separate guest suite, and considering the idea of multi-generational living, designer Tiffany Brooks whipped up an apartment with its own kitchen and living room in addition to a bedroom and private patio. This would be a perfect spot for parents to visit or to move in. Motivated by her own parents’ style then and now (“Imagine if the ’90s were done right!” she jokes), the Chicago designer carried the color mauve throughout the great room (watercolor-like wallcovering by, again, Phillip Jeffries), while a saturated green is set against a grand four-poster bed with its own chandelier in the sleeping area. In lieu of a formal dining table, Brooks added a banquette and breakfast nook with bonus storage underneath; the cozy outdoor couch near the fireplace is another desirable spot for sharing a bite. In ways, I think this whole suite is my favorite space--the layering of texture and color and pattern is exquisite.
Sunday, May 12, 2019
David Bowie Publications by Todd Alcott
Artist Todd Alcott has turned David Bowie song lyrics into marvelous vintage book and magazine covers.
You can buy these and more lyric covers from other bands at his Etsy store:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/ToddAlcottGraphics
You can buy these and more lyric covers from other bands at his Etsy store:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/ToddAlcottGraphics
Sunday, December 11, 2016
From 9/11 To 11/9
FROM 9/11 TO 11/9--GRAYDON CARTER ON TRUMP’S “ONLY IN AMERICA” ELECTION WIN
BY GRAYDON CARTER
HOLIDAY 2016
"Only in America / Land of opportunity” —Jay & the Americans
God, I love this country.
Only in America could a serial bankrupt pass himself off as a successful businessman. (And almost none of those he bankrupted were even regular businesses. They were casinos—where people essentially come to lose their money.)
Only in America could a man who offended Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, and African-Americans, as well as women, babies, and the handicapped, become the Republican nominee for president.
Only in America could a man for whom truth is an inconvenient concept feel comfortable referring to his opponent as “lying” and “crooked.”
Only in America, a nation built on a history of immigration, could a man who married two immigrants—one of whom is alleged to have worked illegally when she first arrived—run on an anti-immigration platform.
Only in America could a man with a legendary reputation for stiffing small-business owners and wage laborers be able to pass himself off as a champion of the little guy.
Only in America could a man run for the presidency with one of his heralded accomplishments being the fixing of a skating rink in New York’s Central Park, a job the city had bungled for years. (It’s a feat most backyard rink rats in Canada pull off before their 13th birthday.)
Only in America could a man who brags about groping and kissing women without their consent win 53 percent of the vote among white women.
Only in America could a man who avoided the draft—with a deferment for pesky bone spurs on his feet, which somehow did not hinder him from playing tennis—and who insulted war heroes and their families become the commander in chief of the greatest military power on earth.
Only in America could a man who lashed out over the flimsiest of slights become our chief negotiator with the Russians, the Chinese, and the North Koreans.
Only in America could a man whose staff reportedly took away his Twitter account because he couldn’t control himself be given the nuclear codes. (Thank you, President Obama, for pointing out that one.)
Only in America could a man with a negligible record of charitable giving and not a single day’s experience in public life be raised to the highest public office in the land.
Only in America could a man who kept a volume of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside rule over the second-largest Jewish population in the world.
Only in America could a man whose résumé of failed businesses and alleged sexual harassment is so miserable that he would have trouble finding work at a copy shop be named chief executive of the world’s largest economy.
Only in America could a man who has skirted the law for more than four decades be put in charge of choosing new justices for the nation’s highest court.
Only in America could a man whose foreign-affairs experience consists of negotiating deals for hotels and golf courses—and perhaps arranging for investments by Russians—become the most powerful man on the planet. (And at a very perilous time.)
Only in America could a man who has likely paid no federal taxes for nearly two decades, and who refused to release his tax returns, be put in charge of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service.
Only in America could a man who thinks climate change is a hoax, and something invented by the Chinese, be put in charge of not only the Environmental Protection Agency but also our negotiations with other nations—at the most calamitous environmental period in the earth’s modern history.
Only in America could a man who surrounded himself with political second-raters like Rudolph Giuliani and Chris Christie be put in charge of forming the team to run the next U.S. government.
Only in America could a man who earned the contempt of his Republican rivals for being a con man and a fraud—and who implicated the father of one of his rivals in John F. Kennedy’s assassination—ultimately reap the support of those very same rivals.
Only in America could a man who threatened to throw his opponent in jail and to sue the women who have accused him of sexual harassment, who denigrated the judge who will preside over the trial of his bogus university (because the judge is of Mexican heritage), and who has 75 outstanding lawsuits (including two for fraud) be put in charge of the Justice Department.
Only in America could a man who does not understand the separation of powers, and who has advocated for the use of torture regardless of national and international law, be thought prepared to swear an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Only in America could a man whose primary national exposure was appearing on a reality-TV show become the reality that so much of the world feared.
Do not tell me America is no longer a land of opportunity.
Link to original article:
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/graydon-carter-donald-trump-president
BY GRAYDON CARTER
HOLIDAY 2016
"Only in America / Land of opportunity” —Jay & the Americans
God, I love this country.
Only in America could a serial bankrupt pass himself off as a successful businessman. (And almost none of those he bankrupted were even regular businesses. They were casinos—where people essentially come to lose their money.)
Only in America could a man who offended Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, and African-Americans, as well as women, babies, and the handicapped, become the Republican nominee for president.
Only in America could a man for whom truth is an inconvenient concept feel comfortable referring to his opponent as “lying” and “crooked.”
Only in America, a nation built on a history of immigration, could a man who married two immigrants—one of whom is alleged to have worked illegally when she first arrived—run on an anti-immigration platform.
Only in America could a man with a legendary reputation for stiffing small-business owners and wage laborers be able to pass himself off as a champion of the little guy.
Only in America could a man run for the presidency with one of his heralded accomplishments being the fixing of a skating rink in New York’s Central Park, a job the city had bungled for years. (It’s a feat most backyard rink rats in Canada pull off before their 13th birthday.)
Only in America could a man who brags about groping and kissing women without their consent win 53 percent of the vote among white women.
Only in America could a man who avoided the draft—with a deferment for pesky bone spurs on his feet, which somehow did not hinder him from playing tennis—and who insulted war heroes and their families become the commander in chief of the greatest military power on earth.
Only in America could a man who lashed out over the flimsiest of slights become our chief negotiator with the Russians, the Chinese, and the North Koreans.
Only in America could a man whose staff reportedly took away his Twitter account because he couldn’t control himself be given the nuclear codes. (Thank you, President Obama, for pointing out that one.)
Only in America could a man with a negligible record of charitable giving and not a single day’s experience in public life be raised to the highest public office in the land.
Only in America could a man who kept a volume of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside rule over the second-largest Jewish population in the world.
Only in America could a man whose résumé of failed businesses and alleged sexual harassment is so miserable that he would have trouble finding work at a copy shop be named chief executive of the world’s largest economy.
Only in America could a man who has skirted the law for more than four decades be put in charge of choosing new justices for the nation’s highest court.
Only in America could a man whose foreign-affairs experience consists of negotiating deals for hotels and golf courses—and perhaps arranging for investments by Russians—become the most powerful man on the planet. (And at a very perilous time.)
Only in America could a man who has likely paid no federal taxes for nearly two decades, and who refused to release his tax returns, be put in charge of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service.
Only in America could a man who thinks climate change is a hoax, and something invented by the Chinese, be put in charge of not only the Environmental Protection Agency but also our negotiations with other nations—at the most calamitous environmental period in the earth’s modern history.
Only in America could a man who surrounded himself with political second-raters like Rudolph Giuliani and Chris Christie be put in charge of forming the team to run the next U.S. government.
Only in America could a man who earned the contempt of his Republican rivals for being a con man and a fraud—and who implicated the father of one of his rivals in John F. Kennedy’s assassination—ultimately reap the support of those very same rivals.
Only in America could a man who threatened to throw his opponent in jail and to sue the women who have accused him of sexual harassment, who denigrated the judge who will preside over the trial of his bogus university (because the judge is of Mexican heritage), and who has 75 outstanding lawsuits (including two for fraud) be put in charge of the Justice Department.
Only in America could a man who does not understand the separation of powers, and who has advocated for the use of torture regardless of national and international law, be thought prepared to swear an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Only in America could a man whose primary national exposure was appearing on a reality-TV show become the reality that so much of the world feared.
Do not tell me America is no longer a land of opportunity.
Link to original article:
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/graydon-carter-donald-trump-president
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Rick Owens in Town & Country
Regular readers of "Oh, By The Way" know that every January and June, this blog is turned over to the wild, wonderful, artistic fashion shows that happen in London, Italy, and France. And regular readers know that I am smitten with the amazing work of Rick Owens. Perhaps this Town & Country profile of Owens and his partner Michele Lamy--along with powerful portraits of Owens, Lamy (you can spot her in the third photo by her black henna-ed fingers, bindi-like mark on her forehead, and ARMLOADS of bracelets), and their creative staff--will explain in a way I have yet been able to why Owens is so noteworthy.
RICK OWENS
Rick Owens's cult of gothic glamour continues to draw surprising converts.
By Liz Goldwyn
My first sighting of Rick Owens happened at Les Deux Cafés in the late '90s. Nestled in the back of a parking lot, Les Deux was an oasis of Gallic chic in gritty Hollywood, where hustlers jostled with movie stars for tables.
Michele Lamy, the French-born proprietress, held court, a tribal queen with tattooed fingers and lips, draped in raw-edged leather jackets and long skirts that trailed along the asphalt boulevards. Rick, her partner, a son of the San Joaquin Valley, looked like a tanned, muscular god, inky mane hanging down his back, impressive biceps accentuated by dark T-shirts of the softest jersey. I was intimidated by these gothic creatures, in awe of their otherworldly glow.
Rick and Michele bewitched all who laid eyes on them. Women clamored to buy the slinky jersey dresses and skirts Michele wore, which were made by Rick in their live/work studio across the street. The skinny elongated sleeves of his pieces became a discreet indicator of insider status. Michele was Rick's ideal model, her louche, laissez-faire sophistication the perfect complement to his aesthetic, which reflects a wide and surprising range of influences, from Iggy Pop to Oscar Wilde.
It wasn't long before word of Rick's designs spread beyond the confines of their court. Costume designer and mutual friend Arianne Phillips dressed Madonna in his clothing, beginning with her Ray of Light promotional tour, in 1998, and the New York fashion establishment took notice. Soon Rick started showing there, and in 2003 he moved to Paris to revitalize the centuries-old furrier Revillon with his trademark rock 'n' roll Cali cool. Michele flashed her gold-toothed smile at editors backstage at his shows, and the French too fell under their spell.
Rick became a favorite among women of means who preferred to telegraph their status in code—say, by wearing a $450 black cotton T-shirt, identifiable only to the trained eye, and not by a logo but by the drape. Vera Wang, Ellen Barkin, and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn are repeat customers, and so are the Olsen twins, whose own label, the Row, pays homage to Owens's muted luxury.
His line is now designed in Paris and produced by the very best craftspeople, but it somehow maintains the dark glamour of his Hollywood days. His furniture designs, which used to be roughhewn tables and shelving made by hand, are now fashioned from bronze, alabaster, antler, and petrified wood, objects of sculptural splendor shown at Art Basel and seen in townhouses across the Upper East Side. They are as covetable as the leather jackets Michele wore at Les Deux back in the day, and as hard to get.
Still, he continues to provoke. Full-bodied dancers from U.S. step teams walked the runway for his spring 2014 collection; spectators at his January 2015 men's show were confronted with aspects of the male model seldom seen outside a dressing room.
There is a fearless, revolutionary spirit to this couple that reminds me of the 1968 student radicals in Paris, the art/drag scene in San Francisco led by Divine and the Cockettes, and the pioneer settlers of the West—conquering new territory, celebrating the counterculture, and proudly letting their freak flags fly.
Original article here:
http://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/news/a3494/imaginary-family-thom-browne/
RICK OWENS
Rick Owens's cult of gothic glamour continues to draw surprising converts.
By Liz Goldwyn
 |
| Photo: Max Vadukul |
My first sighting of Rick Owens happened at Les Deux Cafés in the late '90s. Nestled in the back of a parking lot, Les Deux was an oasis of Gallic chic in gritty Hollywood, where hustlers jostled with movie stars for tables.
Michele Lamy, the French-born proprietress, held court, a tribal queen with tattooed fingers and lips, draped in raw-edged leather jackets and long skirts that trailed along the asphalt boulevards. Rick, her partner, a son of the San Joaquin Valley, looked like a tanned, muscular god, inky mane hanging down his back, impressive biceps accentuated by dark T-shirts of the softest jersey. I was intimidated by these gothic creatures, in awe of their otherworldly glow.
Rick and Michele bewitched all who laid eyes on them. Women clamored to buy the slinky jersey dresses and skirts Michele wore, which were made by Rick in their live/work studio across the street. The skinny elongated sleeves of his pieces became a discreet indicator of insider status. Michele was Rick's ideal model, her louche, laissez-faire sophistication the perfect complement to his aesthetic, which reflects a wide and surprising range of influences, from Iggy Pop to Oscar Wilde.
 |
| Photo: Max Vadukul |
It wasn't long before word of Rick's designs spread beyond the confines of their court. Costume designer and mutual friend Arianne Phillips dressed Madonna in his clothing, beginning with her Ray of Light promotional tour, in 1998, and the New York fashion establishment took notice. Soon Rick started showing there, and in 2003 he moved to Paris to revitalize the centuries-old furrier Revillon with his trademark rock 'n' roll Cali cool. Michele flashed her gold-toothed smile at editors backstage at his shows, and the French too fell under their spell.
Rick became a favorite among women of means who preferred to telegraph their status in code—say, by wearing a $450 black cotton T-shirt, identifiable only to the trained eye, and not by a logo but by the drape. Vera Wang, Ellen Barkin, and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn are repeat customers, and so are the Olsen twins, whose own label, the Row, pays homage to Owens's muted luxury.
 |
| Photo: Max Vadukul |
His line is now designed in Paris and produced by the very best craftspeople, but it somehow maintains the dark glamour of his Hollywood days. His furniture designs, which used to be roughhewn tables and shelving made by hand, are now fashioned from bronze, alabaster, antler, and petrified wood, objects of sculptural splendor shown at Art Basel and seen in townhouses across the Upper East Side. They are as covetable as the leather jackets Michele wore at Les Deux back in the day, and as hard to get.
Still, he continues to provoke. Full-bodied dancers from U.S. step teams walked the runway for his spring 2014 collection; spectators at his January 2015 men's show were confronted with aspects of the male model seldom seen outside a dressing room.
There is a fearless, revolutionary spirit to this couple that reminds me of the 1968 student radicals in Paris, the art/drag scene in San Francisco led by Divine and the Cockettes, and the pioneer settlers of the West—conquering new territory, celebrating the counterculture, and proudly letting their freak flags fly.
Original article here:
http://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/news/a3494/imaginary-family-thom-browne/
Friday, December 5, 2014
The President In Snow
For the December 2012 issue of National Geographic, photographer Michael "Nick" Nichols journeyed to the Sequoia National Park in California to photograph "the President," a giant sequoia that is the third largest tree in the world.
Using a rig system made up of ropes, Nichols and his team raised a camera so that they could take shots of every part of the 247-ft-tall, 27-ft-wide giant. It took Nichols 32 days of work to photograph the tree and stitch together the final image from 126 individual photos, creating the first picture of the President captured entirely in a single frame. The result is a stunning image that shows the majestic tree in all its glory, towering high above the snowy ground and tiny people.
Please do take a minute to watch the video and see the rig system, and to see views of the President that are breathtaking.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/12/sequoias/quammen-text
Using a rig system made up of ropes, Nichols and his team raised a camera so that they could take shots of every part of the 247-ft-tall, 27-ft-wide giant. It took Nichols 32 days of work to photograph the tree and stitch together the final image from 126 individual photos, creating the first picture of the President captured entirely in a single frame. The result is a stunning image that shows the majestic tree in all its glory, towering high above the snowy ground and tiny people.
Please do take a minute to watch the video and see the rig system, and to see views of the President that are breathtaking.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/12/sequoias/quammen-text
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