Josef Frank

Google's doodle is particularly beautiful today, celebrating the birth date of Austrian/Swedish architect and textile designer Josef Frank.

Median Home Size is Dropping

Good news for us. Maybe we'll be seeing few tear downs replaced by McMansions in our neighborhood.

Things That Are Wrong On Many Levels II

Returning to a previous topic that will sometimes be the source of ongoing posts, here is an example of something-that-should-never-be in McLean. It's so wrong on so many levels it's hard to believe it exists. But, yes, it exists on Old Chainbridge Road. It's a shop called THE PREPPY PINK PONY and it manages to combine two great WASP obsessions -- horses and deeply unattractive clothing.

At Christmastime, they put a Santa figure out on the front sidewalk and dress him in patchwork Lily Pulitzer.

The boxers pictured above act like a kind of WASP sartorial birth control. Nothing says sexy like underwear covered with Pembroke Welsh Corgis!

I would love to know who came up with the idea to put little repeated patterns of WASP-type activities and accoutrements on clothing. The first I ever saw it was in Connecticut, when I was a teenager and one of my friend's Dad's had red pants with little embroidered sailboats all over them.

And then something horrible happened in the world and it morphed into frogs, whales (thank you Vineyard Vines) martini glasses, and I swear I am not making it up, little pig heads wearing tophats and monocles.

Cognitive Impairment

I've noticed in the past year that when I'm writing on the computer I sometimes make very odd word substitutions. I'm guessing it's age related. I decided to keep a list of the words, because I know enough about how the brain organizes language to know that different kinds of substitutions -- say words that sound alike vs. words that have a similar meaning vs. words that use the same letters just in a different order vs. words that have a similar structure vs. words that are part of the same category of objects (for example, trees) -- are the result of glitches in different areas of the brain.
Anyhow, here's my list. See if if you can make anything of it. I can't.

or FOR are
kind FOR got
bit it FOR be it
buy FOR pay
do FOR to
suggestively FOR successfully
again FOR aging (heh!)
pines FOR palms
think FOR thing
important FOR appropriate

Taos New Mexico and other stuff

I was lucky enough to travel to Santa Fe at the end of May to attend a science writer's workshop and when the workshop was over, my husband met me in Santa Fe and we drove up to Taos.
I love Taos. I don't know what it is. Well, I do know what it is. The sky is big. You're on a high desert plateau with the most beautiful range of mountains at your back -- the Sangre de Christo. Wheeler Peak is just north of Taos, and at around 13,000 feet above sea level it's the highest mountain in New Mexico.
Back in the day, husband and I climbed Wheeler Peak, not really understanding how long it would take, how tiring it would be, and how severely we'd be impacted by the thinner air this high up. It's considerable. The last bit of the approach, not that far from the peak, took several hours because of the constant stops to regain our breath.
I don't have a photo to show you because the photos from that trip are old enough so that they're not digital, but when you get to the top of Wheeler Peak, you encounter a pristine, and I mean absolutely pristine, alpine lake, where you rest for only a couple of minutes because you're so freaked out by your lack of breath and the knowledge that now, you have to walk back down the mountain and even though you're descending instead of ascending it's still going to be difficult so you barely have the time to appreciate it.
When we finally got back down, we stopped at a ski lodge cafe and ordered a pitcher of iced tea and a pitcher of iced water and drained both of them in about five minutes while we looked up at the mountain and then at each other and laughed our a**es off. We had no idea what we'd taken on when we headed up the path that morning. But we'd prevailed, and we'd done it, and it was something to be proud of.
Maybe that's why I like Taos so much. I did something extraordinary there. When my middle son, who just by chance was also outside of Taos while we were there, heard that we'd climbed Wheeler Peak (something that some of his fellow geology field camp students had been toying with doing) he told us we were "bad ass."
So, in Taos I became a bad ass.
But there is something about Taos that resonates with middle aged women. Millicent Rogers, a Manhattan socialite, went there in her forties and never left. Georgia O'Keefe -- same. Mabel Dodge Luhan not only moved to Taos, but married a Native American in the Taos pueblo and took his name.
Maybe it's because the sky is so big and the terrain is strewn with fragrant sage brush or because the colors are so strong and evocative -- the oranges, purples, and deep greens of the mountains. Clouds that are whiter and puffier than you see here nudging each other along across the big blue sky.
There's a feeling, in the high desert, that your soul has enough space to spread its wings.
I feel this way, but no-one else in my family does. Husband likes Santa Fe better. Middle son says Taos is "grubby and small," which admittedly, the town Plaza is. But if it were only about the Plaza I wouldn't be drawn to it either.
That I can't get anyone else in the family excited about Taos is a source of great frustration to me.
Anyhow, photos above are us -- me, Duncan and Larry -- white water rafting on the Rio Grande in the Taos Box. And a photo of me, on the edge of the Rio Grande Gulch, just a bit north of where we rafted. Sorry about the disposition of the photos, my layout skills are rusty.

No Rain, No Rainbow

In case you didn't know it, Sarah Palin is the Rod McKuen of her generation.

Just listen to William Shatner's dramatic reading of her Twitters.

Today's Bitter Irony

I'd really like to see this movie -- Soul Power -- it's a documentary of a concert in Africa in the 60s with a bunch of R&B acts like James Brown, as well as Miram Makeba, who was one of the first African performers to make an impression in the U.S. in the 60s.

So I went to http://www.washingtonpost.com/ to use their movie searching tool. I typed in Soul Power, my zip code -- 22101 -- and here's what showed up. I am not joking.

The McLean Family Restaurant

which is probably one of the whitest places on the face of the earth. At least on the East Coast. And I'm pretty sure James Brown never performed there.
Bitter.