I’ve
never actually studied flower arranging... I’ve kind of learned it as
I’ve gone along, over the course of about 25 years... For me it’s what
painting is for many other people...a way of relaxing, a way of
listening to programs on the radio or to music without fidgeting, a way
of showing affection to people I care about.., a way of centering
myself...especially for me if it involves certain fragrances.... roses,
stock, freesia, lily of the valley, peaches, nectarines, honeysuckle.
It’s like cooking. There’s no one way to do it right. You can start with what flowers are available at any given moment, as if they were ingredients, and improvise on those; or start with an idea, and see what ingredients would bring it into focus; or choose a container and think about various ways it could be shown to its best advantage. Or, most likely, use some combination of all these approaches.
After allowing my 13 year old daughter Hannah to sit on the couch
all summer and watch TV, while surfing the net for days on end, my
guilt that nothing worthwhile was filling that pretty little head of
hers was mounting. I started looking for things to do in this
wonderful town of ours. I definitely wanted to go to the Lautner
exhibit at the Armand Hammer Museum and Hannah saw a picture of one of
his houses and was actually interested too, but then I saw something on
Daily Candy talking about an event at the Santa Monica Library and
thought “Aha! This’ll be the thing I do. This’ll be the antidote to all
those episodes of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. I was going to take
Hannah to a symposium on Food and Climate Change.”
My husband Dave always seems to be ahead of the cool gadget curve,
making sure we're the first kids on our block to have the latest and
greatest tech toys. We've had our Wii for years, stood in line the
first week for the iPhone (him not me), sold our regular laptop to
upgrade to the MacBook Air (worth every penny) and are still jamming
away a year later on Rock Band when most people have never even played
the game. I couldn't imagine what he was going to pull out of his
Christmas stocking this year. Thanks to the generosity of his boss, it
was a Kindle. For those of you who shop on Amazon – which would be almost everyone
with an Internet connection on the planet – the Kindle is not exactly
new, but it sure is hard to get your hands on, which is a bit of a
surprise considering how expensive it is.
After spending years in the political closet (one of the dangers of a politically mixed marriage) I have emerged with a flourish, and a job as Press Person for a Michigan candidate for the United States House of Representatives. I have been working for Bob Alexander, a Democrat running in Michigan’s 8th Congressional District, against Mike Rogers, a four-term Republican incumbent. Bob is the kind of Democrat my parents are – a Joan Baez, “if you want peace, work for justice” kind of guy who spent years circulating petitions and working crowds “cold” to promote the value of a living wage for working people, and eventually persuaded the Michigan legislature to raise the minimum wage by 29 percent. He was not holding office at the time, mind you; it was just the right thing to do.
A few years ago I noticed that a tree was growing in the tiny side area between my house and my neighbor’s. By the time I took notice of it the tree was 4 feet tall. Apparently I had been ignoring that side of the house. I don’t know a lot about trees but it looked like it might be some kind of fruit tree. So I waited and asked my gardener. Sure enough, it turned out to be an apricot tree. Since the window above my kitchen sink is right above where the tree has taken root I figured that I must have spit an apricot seed out of the louvers. 