A Minister fan from Old Lyme, Connecticut recently wrote in with the following suggestion:
It would be very helpful to have a cover with a POCKET to place correspondence cards, business cards, etc. so loose items do not fall out of the book.
Another Minister devotee made a different request in her online review of the product: “Add a loop to hold my pencil.”
Good ideas, all… what do you think?
Great post on Unclutterer about taking a good stern look at the knick knacks in your life… They lend interest to a house and give their owners pleasure, but when do they outlive their value? Here are the questions you should ask:
1. Why do I own this and choose to display it?
2. Does it represent who I am right now and the mood I want to create in my home?
3. Do I care for this object the best way I can care for it, or is it really just clutter?
4. Will my place be a better sanctuary or place of relaxation without this object in it?
Another great New York City landmark is gone. The Cheyenne Diner, a neighborhood institution festooned with Native American decorations at Ninth Avenue and West 33rd Street, closed its doors on Sunday. It had been around since 1940.
We used to go to the Cheyenne for coffee and a 4 am breakfast when my son played ice hockey over at the old Sky Rink, just down the block. The Cheyenne got the hockey crowd, cabbies, cops, people wandering in after the clubs and bars closed, tourists, and, of course, neighborhood folks who came in for coffee, the News, and one another.
The Cheyenne joins a growing list of New York diners that have fallen victim to high real estate values. The iconic Moondance Diner closed at Sixth Avenue and Broome Street last July - it was moved to a small town in Wyoming - and the chrome-and-blue Munson on 11th Avenue has found a new home in the Catskills. The Market Diner, a famed hang-out for all-night types on 11th Avenue, is reportedly reopening for a second run at the same address after closing in 2006.
Never fear - you can still get the best egg sandwich in New York at The Skylight, just around the corner from the Cheyenne on West 34th Street.
Amateur professor and self-declared “findologist” Professor Solomon created a simple twelve-step method for finding things you’ve lost. According to him, “There are no missing objects, only unsystematic searchers.” Now Professor Solomon is making his 67-page book, “How to Find Lost Objects,” available online as a free PDF download. It may sound a little wacky, but many of his ideas aren’t far off the mark… I especially like Principle 6:
It is possible to look directly at a missing object and not see it. This is due to the agitated state of mind that often accompanies a misplacement. Go back and look again. It may be staring you in the face.
In college, I once combed through my entire dorm room piece by meticulous piece in search of a missing ID, only to find, when I got back around to my desk, that it was sitting right there in plain view, on top of my computer.
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This year marks the 150th birthday of one of Berlin’s most beloved artists, Heinrich Zille.
Zille immortalized the life of ordinary people in Berlin. He knew every nook and cranny of the rapidly-growing industrial metropolis, including its darker corners such as tenement blocks, dank cellar rooms and gloomy courtyards. “It hurts when you have to sell serious matters as a joke,” the illustrator was once heard to say.
Like his friend, Kathe Kollwitz, Zille had an eye for the injustices of the era and the sufferings of the poor and downtrodden working class warehoused in Berlin’s tenements.
“Zille, that Old Pa, is known in every pub and bar,” was a quip on the lips of many who lived in working class districts. “No one would believe all the things I’ve seen,” Zille would later remark.
Charley Parker’s blog, “lines and colors,” had a recent post about Zille. Michael Kimmelman, the chief art critic of the New York Times, said the “essence of his pictures was to show how monotonous life would be if we only cared about what’s great in the world and not about everything local and paricular and even sometimes untranslatable that actually makes life rich.”
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