How To Tie A Scarf And Other Essential Life Knowledge

Spring is coming a little early here

In honor of Leap Day, we’ll be leaping from thought to thought in this post.  I’m sure you’ll land on something that fits you.

This has been a hit or miss week for me online.  Muscles that haven’t been used in months since even before my surgery have been spasming and rebelling as I return to exercise.  On Monday my physical therapist and I decided that 2.5 mph is the fastest I should go on the treadmill if I don’t want my back to seize up.  My 13-year old dog walks faster than that!  What all this means is I can’t sit at the computer for too long, hence missing blog posts.

I’m preparing to head off to the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) conference in Chicago this week.  Just me and 8000 other word geeks.  I hope to post on my blog while there (pray for mild Chicago weather).  That’s why today’s post will be short and sweet.  Organizing and packing to do.

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My 50/50 Challenge is moving along.  I’ve finished Eric Weiner’s Man Seeks God: My Flirtations With the Divine.  Weiner has been a foreign correspondent for NPR and other outlets.  He is the prototypical curmudgeon, yet he is a fantastic observer of people.  Like his previous book, The Geography of Bliss, he travels the world in search of answers to basic questions.  In this case, after a health scare he begins to question which spiritual foundation he wants to offer his young daughter.  He protests (sort of) at abortion clinics with Franciscan monks, twirls with Sufi dervishes, and cross-dresses at a Raëlian convention.  He even delves into the Jewish roots he had ignored most of his life.  As a “spiritual voyeur,” he takes us across the globe and deep into the questions of what we are looking for when we seek a spiritual life.  And he does it all with respect for the people he encounters and a wicked sense of humor.  Read it for the travel.  Read it for the laugh-out-loud humor.  Read it to find your own answers to the questions he asks.

Click here to see where I am in the challenge.
 

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Here are posts that gave me pause this week.

Blogger/writer Julie Hedlund took the words right out of my mouth last week with “Open Plea to Bloggers: Kick CAPTCHA’s, Word Verification to the Curb.”  I know spam can be a problems for bloggers, but they need to ask themselves if they might be driving away comments from readers who are more casual readers.  Let the spam filters do their jobs.  As for me, more than once I’ve decided not to leave comments when the squiggly words were too much trouble to figure out. 

Becky Green Aaronson brought the Holstee Manifesto to my attention recently and I thank her.  It’s a more modern play on “Just Do It.” The directive to “stop over analyzing” hit home for me.  I went searching for the origin of the manifesto, so you can read the story here.

Nadine Feldman gives us women one more thing to worry about as we age in “It Ain’t the Hot Flashes.”

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Here is my two best finds of the week (drum roll please).  Remember this photo from High Line Park I posted from my New York trip?  Read the story behind the smiling face.

And this is a “must bookmark” video for all those fashion forward types.  Watch “25 Ways to Tie a Scarf in 4.5 Minutes” from Wendy’s Look Book.  I will watch this a million times until I’ve memorized every one.  In France all the women (and many men) wear them winter or summer and do it so effortlessly.  Now I’ll have their little secrets.

source

So tell me, now that you have this video do you think you’ll join the scarf club?  What’s your favorite fashion statement or one you wish you could pull off?  Have you seen the Holstee Manifesto before?  What’s your favorite part of it?  Read any good books lately?  Share all your thoughts in the comments box.

New York State of Mind -- Scenes from the High Line

New York at its cheekiest

Thirty years ago I traveled to New York City for an academic conference as a graduate student.  I think I paid  $50 for the airfare (it was the beginning of discount prices when they were discounts).  We had to drive eight hours to get to the airport that had this cheap rate.  Our small troupe of graduate students flew into Newark, hopped a train across the state line, trudged through the darkened streets of Sheepshead Bay to the tiny rent-controlled apartment of a friend where we all crashed for the night.

The next day we boarded a subway car with instructions not to make eye-contact with anyone (we were all friendly, innocent Midwesterners), then when we alighted somewhere near Central Park we obeyed further instructions to walk with purpose until we reached our hotel and don’t stop in the middle of the sidewalk to check a map.

For that trip I had no money.  I lived off of the free food at conference breakfast buffets and book publishers’ evening receptions, with a slice or two of New York pizza purchased for lunch.  Four of us grad students piled into a small, overpriced hotel room and endured the tone of disdain from a front desk who knew we didn’t belong in the Big Apple.  I saw nothing of the city but a corner of Central Park.  I wasn’t overly impressed with the place and left with no strong desire to return.

But now I’m back as a tagalong on one of my husband’s research trips.  I’ve traveled a lot more.  I have the money to eat pizza and then some.  I have time to explore.  But the hotel room is still tiny.  With this unseasonably mild winter weather most of the country is having, we had the opportunity to spend our first afternoon in the city strolling along The High Line, a remarkable park created on an abandoned stretch of an elevated train track.  It opened in 2009.  I can’t wait to return when the whole thing is in bloom, but it still offers a wealth of sights even on the grayest winter day.

Here is a bit of what I saw as I strolled the meandering path above the streets of New York.  Click here to see tons of photos more creative than mine posted by other users of the park in other seasons.

Brad and his colleague, Azita, miss the High Line scene as they are lost in mathematical discussion

Whimsical graffiti everywhere you turn

No, not a friendly native.  A cutout that many apartment dwellers next to the Line post in their windows

Nature loves the High Line

Somewhere in Chelsea

Lady Liberty

What is your favorite unexpected place to visit you've found at home or when traveling, and what did you like about it?  Tell us about it and provide a link (if possible) in the comments box.

Here's another story to read about one of my favorite street scenes in Dijon, France, where children are a local treasure.