IKEA Soft Toy Aid 2011

Hi. I'm having computer issues & trying to figure it out: frustration & angst & fear. Meanwhile, if you go to IKEA (no matter where you are in the world), please note that this year's soft toy fundraising campaign is on through December 24th. I won't post the adorable video again, but you can watch it here.

On everyone's IKEA country page, there are blogger tools to spread the word. Even if you don't post about it, please consider posting on Facebook &/or tweet about it. Toys for Tots in the States is in major need & IKEA donated to them this year. I've been beating this drum for years: buy one or more & then donate to a toy drive in your town. Done & done. These are cute toys & they're affordable (even for me).

Let me know if you post about it & I will link to you on the Giulia Geranium blog. Thanks!

(photograph via IKEA)

Week's End - Now, It's Up To You

I hesitate asking "do this in honor of" but I've been trying to decide for an entire week about what to do, hence the non-posts, the "hey look at this pretty picture (more than usual)" business. A very close friend's son died last week. He was studying to be a veterinarian & he also worked with children on his holidays & summer breaks. This was a sudden & horrible event & so please do this on his behalf.

I hope to return to regular posting soon. Giulia's blog will post daily as it is easier to set up & not so very personal (in the first-person sense).

Update: Monday. Thank you dear Carina for passing it on.

Cheers & have a good weekend. I hope you will pass on the information or do a post yourself. There is a toolkit on each IKEA website. Below is the text from GG's site:

Join GG in the Soft Toy Movement for every child's right to education. Please go to your country's IKEA website & click on Soft Toy campaign at the bottom of the homepage. There you will find all the information you need to pass the word on. It has downloadable wallpapers, a coloring book, a banner for blogs & Facebook pages, & videos.

This year, from November 1–December 24, for every soft toy sold, 1 euro (USD $1.35) will go to IKEA global partners UNICEF and Save the Children to extend and start new children's educational programs in 22 countries.

Pick up an inexpensive soft toy at IKEA & put it in a holiday gift donation basket if you don't need it. Giulia is holding a meow-in this very moment because she wants a soft toy this year. The spring has gone out of Celeste the IKEA Pig's curly tail. We'll see about an addition but Celeste the IKEA Pig (her full name) is not going anywhere...there's a familiar orange & white pink-nosed feline draped over her every day. (images via IKEA website)

Tutu & Blue Asters

Every flower has a history and every flower symbolizes something. Often the history and symbols are confusing and contradictory but they are still fascinating. If your birthday is in the month of September, your flower is the aster. Here is the story and language of your flower.

The Latin name for the aster is Aster, which literally means star. The association with stars, clearly references the flower’s shape. While we no longer use the word aster to refer to stars, we still use words that use the root aster in words with related meanings. The word asterisk literally means ‘little star,’ while the word disaster refers to something that occurred under a bad omen or something that was ‘ill-starred.’

The colloquial names for the aster are starwort and Michaelmas daisy. (From Suite101 by Melissa Howard)

(Blue aster by zizzy via flickr)

Week's End - Streets of Jerusalem

Some of the best (& most surreal, disturbing, intriguing) walks were here. You want material? For writing, for thinking? It's here. Tramping up & down hills, through villages (where I should not have been), everywhere. My scanner is broken* (of course, it is)...& so just this evocative Streets of Jerusalem photograph by Julian Kaseler via we heart it] That's a little girl walking down an inexplicably (to me) empty street. But it happens, that bit of quiet there, yes, sometimes. I wonder where she is now. OK, that's enough from me because I just found a pix of Leonard Cohen in concert in Israel. Oh, too tempting, too tired. It'll be fun just to think of it. Have a peaceful weekend. And feel fortunate for it....(that goes for me, too, yes).

[*Though most of my photographs were destroyed there, I have friends who have wonderful ones & I'm sure they'll lend them to me if I would just ask. So I will. Tomorrow, said Scarlett]

Monday update: resting for today at least. Hope to be back tomorrow. I see many tempting posts just on this site...Cheers all.

Cutting Up in Black & White, Part One

"Well then, we went and had tea with Henry James today ... and Henry James fixed me with his staring blank eye — it is like a child's marble — and said 'My dear Virginia, they tell me — they tell me — they tell me — that you — as indeed being your fathers daughter nay your grandfathers grandchild — the descendant I may say of a century — of a century — of quill pens and ink — ink — ink pots, yes, yes, yes, they tell me — ahm m m — that you, that you, that you write in short.' This went on in the public street, while we all waited, as farmers wait for the hen to lay an egg — do they? — nervous, polite, and now on this foot now on that." --Virginia Woolf

From today's Writer's Almanac site. (Thank you, dear Garrison.) As solemn as I am today (& lately), this made me laugh out loud. It's the natal day of Henry James. I will elaborate, in the summer, on the big huge embarrassing booboo gaffe scene I made /committed/created in an academic department one fine spring day. Briefly, then...I was caught mocking James, his plots, sentences, & the stentorian-voiced (female) professor who taught his oeuvre--ahem. (Let me be clear: she was a literary luminousa & scary. Grown men quaked in her presence.) My impromptu comedy skit, including different voices--when I go for it, I go big, people--was a hoot; everyone laughed until they cried (or peed their pants.).Then all went suddenly silent. The sickening realization that, holy cow-wow, she's right behind me. Right? Where is everyone going? You're leaving me alone? Cowards!

I blame...my mother (of course I do). Yes, and all relatives & family friends who encouraged me to perform, to mug for their cameras, & generally to entertain them. It had a weird effect of making me even more shy--except when performing. (And now, they want me to pull a Tina Fey. Too late, people. Besides, do you realize that you will be in this stuff? Huh?)

It cannot be overstated how often my mother was stopped & asked: do you know who you & your little girl remind me of? Also what cannot be overstated is how much my second sister looks like the young Shirley. [Photographs by Allan Grant in 1957/LIFE archives]

PS: Mom, et al: you asked for it. What can I say? You have a few months to procure hush money.

Week's End - Easter Coiffure

I'll be back over the weekend, if you're not lucky. Meanwhile, enjoy the 1930s photograph by Sam Hood. (Check out those jodhpurs & whole off-hand outfit. This reminds me of Mapplethorpe's iconic photographs of Patti Smith.) Our Aussie friends at the NSW State Library archives are surprised by the amount of outside interest in the collection. I'm not surprised. Here's the photograph link; follow it to the ever-expanding flickr archive.

The home front: a Julie-chase with newly-purchased (crummy) cheapo video-cam-camera thingy to capture scenes of what might be asthma attacks. For the vet. I thought she'd be a ham, but she's Garbo. Picked up 27 seconds in the middle of the night. Poor girl. It's very upsetting. At least I have Hazel Smith's lovely Marie notebook to ink in observations. (Don't forget her shop, The Plum Plum.)

Other people's Easter plans (or what you did for Passover--any wild seders?) are most welcome. I need entertainment & you can make me quite envious with your tales of well- or ill-behaved friends & family, etc. I've hard-cooked the eggs; the dye will be cast as I watch NCAA Final Four (yes, I do watch). Beautiful weather in DC, but the other whether is will a sister show up, as I hope.

I had blog & other site recommendations but that will have to be on weekend/early next week. I don't want to leave anyone out. But check the comments because there have been some good ones, especially under Gregory in Black & White. Follow those bloggers. ciao!

The Girl Effect

I apologize in advance that this lacks cupcakes, cute babies, the WH party crashing twits, fabulous dinner party plans, what-to-buy, gratuitous exclamation points, pink objects, & baby animals. (The Girl Effect website)

I rarely look at Google Analytics. It creeps me out & also points out that more people would rather look at stuff about my dumb life than at the much better (not to mention, cuter) Giulia Geranium blog. So humor me & click on the video. Yes, worlds collide here. Every. Single. Day.

[Domino Cascade photograph]

Week's End - Presidential Peek-a-boo

"In 2008, half the people who watched the Fox News Channel were over sixty-three...oldest demographic in the cable-news business...the majority...who watched the most strident programs, such as Sean Hannity’s and Bill O’Reilly’s shows...were men. All that chesty fulminating apparently functions as political Cialis. Fox News shows should probably carry a warning: Contact your doctor if you have rage lasting more than four hours."

Louis Menand's New Yorker [November 2, 2009 issue] Comment made me laugh out loud on the Metro recently. I thought, "I know someone like that..."

More cuteness from the White House flickrstream. It serves two purposes: a quick week's end because I'm sick (the thermometer says so anyway) & it'll clear the bile in my system at a family member who ranted at/about me (on my dime!) about things political. So it's official: I am a communist-fascist-America-hating...something or other. Oh, & I'm an Obamaton, or some weird thing like that. This person was in the throes of post-Glenn-Beck-or-similar hysteria. Someone needs an etiquette lesson.

[President Barack Obama plays peek-a-boo with Maeve Beliveau, the daughter of Director of Advance Emmett Beliveau, in the Outer Oval Office, Oct. 30, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)]

Week's End - Summer Sparklers

Fourth of July Eve pix-into-collage. Though I have approximately 1 million (I counted) photos of various Fourths (including in France & Italy, explanation forthcoming), no time to organize them & scan. I dearly wish I could be a girl on the beach with sparklers this year.

More tonight or tomorrow. Perhaps with a bit of coherence, even? Maybe.

[Girl on the beach by Peter Stackpole, LIFE Archives; remaining by John Dominis for LIFE' girl in converse sneaks by D Sharon Pruitt/Creative Commons flickr set ]

Les coquelicots

I hope by the time I see this in the morning (or later, I need to rest), this will cheer me up. Had to take off comment function on Giulia Geranium due to hate mail & spammers. I am literally sick over it (the reaction, not taking off comment function. Only a few comments were fit to publish since mid-March 2009).

I have scads of photographs & images of red poppies; this one is courtesy of Mary Cassatt - The Complete Works website.

Week's End - Noah in Black & White

A very tough week finally winding down. I love this b&w shot of my youngest nephew (marred by my darn pen) from a few years ago. He's the smiliest person, so I wonder what he was thinking about. Mesmerized by the sound of the ocean, most likely. A day (a life) at the beach sounds fabulous right now....

Saturday afternoon at the movies...

It's damp, cloudy, sort of cool (not complaining...it'll be too darned hot soon). I needed to update some stuff, people were not exactly charmed by JK Rowling photo (my fault, should've found something, you know, imaginative), & I love this picture. [Photo from LIFE archives/by Francis Miller]

The Man Who Would Be King arrived...the DVD, not Prince William. Netflix gift membership nearing end...I might have chosen something else if less distracted. Upon arriving home yesterday, after finding out I have a cracked tooth (yes from stress), I was relieved. Vaguely recall seeing it with my mum when I returned from France so long ago. While I know I could be re-peeved by the English colonial business, I can let it go while watching Michael Caine & Sean Connery. Now if I can watch it without cracking up thinking of Craig Ferguson's imitations of both actors, that will be good (Yes, I tape him. Yes, I love him. I am unashamed. At least he goes for it...literary novel, plays, magic tricks, puppets! And he actually mentions Sudan, Zimbabwe, Congo, Burma, etc. in his monologues. Yep.)

Mont Blanc/Monte Bianco

Thinking about France a lot Bleu/Blue, etc. The photograph's quality deteriorated; it's an integral part of the permanent fridge installation. A friend's then-young French niece already has style here, no doubt about it. She had a cheerful determination about reaching this point (note stance). Good manners, too. Anne-Sophie was the only one of 8 people who didn't quickly correct me when I slipped & said "Monte Bianco" instead of Mont Blanc. (They're French, can you tell? An Italian would not do that...vive la & all that) bisou and baci.