buried treasure

i'm thrilled to be reading the adventures of tom sawyer right now. mark twain has brought me back to what it's like to think like a kid, from the lust for adventure, thrill of mischief, to the awkwardness of growing up and the purity of friendships. sometimes you just wish you were born a boy!

"'say, huck, if we find a treasure here, what you going to do with your share?'

'well, i'll have pie and a glass of soda every day, and i'll go to every circus that comes along. i'll bet i'll have a gay time.'

'well, ain't you going to save any of it?'

'save it? what for?'

'why, so as to have something to live on, by and by.'

'oh, that ain't any use. pap would come back to thish yer town someday and get his claws on it if i didn't hurry up, and i tell you he'd clean it out pretty quick. what you going to do with yourn, tom?'

'i'm going to buy a new drum, and a sure-'nough sword, and a red necktie and a bull pup, and get married.'

'married!'

'that's it.'

'tom, you--why, you ain't in your right mind.'

'wait--you'll see'

'well that's the foolishest thing you could do. look at pap and my mother. fight! why, they used to fight all the time. i remember, mighty well.'

'that ain't anything. the girl i'm going to marry won't fight.'

'tom, i reckon they're all alike. they'll all comb a body. now you better think 'bout this awhile. i tell you you better. what's the name of the gal?'

'it ain't a gal at all--it's a girl.'

'it's all the same, i reckon. some says gal, some says girl--both's right, like enough. anyway, what's her name, tom?'

'i'll tell you sometime--now now.'

'all right--that'll do. only if you get married i'll be more lonesomer than ever.'

'no, you won't. you'll come and live with me. now stir out of this and we'll go to digging.'"

"but paris was a very old city and we were young"

trina gave me a moveable feast for my birthday, so i've been walking the streets of 1920s paris with ernest and friends for the past few days. the jfk library in boston has the ultimate archive of hemingway manuscripts, photos, and correspondence. don't you wish you could walk the quais and check out books from the library with them too?


ernest and his first wife, hadley, in paris, 1922

"with so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. this was the only truly sad time in paris because it was unnatural. you expected to be sad in the fall. part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. but you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. when the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.

in those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed."


the murphys, pauline pfeiffer, ernest and hadley, summer 1926

" 'let's walk down the rue de seine and look in all the galleries and in the windows of the shops.'

'sure. we can walk anywhere and we can stop at some new cafe where we don't know anyone and nobody knows us and have a drink.'

'we can have two drinks.'

'then we can eat somewhere.'

'no. don't forget we have to pay the library.'

'we'll come home and eat here and we'll have a lovely meal and drink beaune from the co-operative you can see right out of the window there with the price of the beaune on the window. and afterwards we'll read and then go to bed and make love.'

'and we'll never love anyone else but each other.'

'no. never.'

'what a lovely afternoon and evening. now we'd better have lunch.'"


john "bumby" hemingway and gertrude stein in paris, 1924


hemingway's passport photo


ernest and his second wife, pauline in paris, 1927

be mine?

happy valentine's day! some inspiration from a book about the history of valentines for all you lovers out there. hope your day is full of love, no matter what size, shape, or form!

my soul mate

how have i never realized how fucking rad zandra rhodes is???? i spent a good couple of hours at the library looking at some very inspirational "library use only" books, including one called the art of zandra rhodes. here are some of my favorite pages...i asked my mom for the book for my birthday so maybe i'll get to post more photos soon. :)









the best part about her work is her appreciation of other cultures (mexico, the american desert, native americans, japan, spain other native cultures....) and her thoughtful interpretation of motifs and colors and styles from each. it reminded of my sketchbook from morocco! really makes me want to live somewhere hot so i can just wear giant painted kaftans all the time.








GOD the colors and textiles are PERFECT!!!! plus now she's like 60-something and has HOT pink hair. i want to be her.

brit birds

my mom's got this great coffee table book with loads of british fine-young-things from the 1960s- charly rampling, patty boyd, lady eliot, and on and on. it's called birds of britain with photos and text by john d. green. just thought i'd share a bit with you, so grab a cup of tea and hold on to your trousers! we're going back to london, circa 1967....

makes me want to climb a mountain

i flew into chicago yesterday. left a brunch of tacos in sunny, 60 degree san francisco for 30 degrees, a dusting of snow, and a desperate need for some gloves. but it's not too cold, and luckily we were spared the dumping of snow that the east coast got, but it's certainly not california!



on the plane i was reading The Last of His Kind: The Life and Adventures of Bradford Washburn, America's Boldest Mountaineer, a biography of bradford washburn, a mountain climber, cartographer, explorer, and photographer. the stories of his adventures are incredible--dropping into a blank space on the map in the yukon territory to try to map it; scaling mountains never scaled before; climbing the French alps at 17!!!; correcting the recorded height of mt. everest (from 29,028 feet to 29,035!!!)





i can't even believe people like this even exist! and to think they did it all in the 1930s and on, with 20 pound sleeping bags and photography equipment bigger than the dogs pulling their sleds. so dangerous and beautiful and romantic, it really makes me want to climb a mountain.



enjoy these amazing photos! washburn is considered one of the best mountain photoraphers. his wife barbara also went with him on some climbs. she's the first woman to climb mt mckinley. um, i think that deservs a "you go, girl!"



all images via panopticon gallery