The Medici records show that Eleonora di Toledo's dress maker was paid even more handsomely than Pontormo himself.

She used both of them.

• One evening in Paris, we went to the Escargot restaurant in the rue Montergeuil, in search of snails of course, and of Montreuil peaches. I did not expect to find anything special about the strawberry fritters which I chose out of curiosity for dessert. It had been a good meal, in black and red surroundings of past elegance, with a close friend. Those fritters were to be the fault, the way Chinese and Japanese potters deliberately put a fault into their vases to make them human. But I was not allowed my fault after all. The fritters were perfection, the batter crisp, the strawberry inside firm but meltingly delicious. Even the creme anglaise was right.

-Jane Grigson, Strawberry Fritters

There was an old wig lying in the middle of the road.

He said that his actions were directed by lunar phases.

Philadelphia, September 2009

book ideas and spot drawings

There's a crow flying
Black and ragged
Tree to tree
He's black as the highway that's leading me
Now he's diving down
To pick up on something shiny
I feel like that black crow
Flying
In a blue sky

I took a ferry to the highway
Then I drove to a pontoon plane
I took a plane to a taxi
And a taxi to a train
I've been traveling so long
How'm I ever going to know my home
When I see it again
I'm like a black crow flying
In a blue, blue sky

In search of love and music
My whole life has been
Illumination
Corruption
And diving, diving, diving, diving.
Diving down to pick up on every shiny thing
Just like that black crow flying
In a blue sky

I looked at the morning
After being up all night
I looked at my haggard face in the bathroom light
I looked out the window
And I saw that ragged soul take flight
I saw a back crow flying
In a blue sky
Oh I'm like a black crow flying
In a blue sky

-Joni Mitchell, from Hejira, 1976

When you hear the recordings of his voice you can tell that the crack-up is well under way.

But now she just blinks in and out, like a digital watch.

Fish in the Road, September 2009, Philadelphia PA

scenes from North Creek Farm in Phippsburg, Maine September, 2009

French Bakelite beads from the 1970's

Quilting it is not going to solve the problem.

It was a garden for the blind: a constant offense to the eyes, a pleasure strong if somewhat crude to the nose. The Paul Neyron roses, whose cuttings he had himself bought in Paris, had degenerated; first stimulated and then enfeebled by the strong if languid pull of Sicilian earth, burned by apocalyptic Julys, they had changed into things like flesh-colored cabbages, obscene and distilling a dense, almost indecent, scent which no French horticulturalist would have dared hope for. The Prince put one under his nose and seemed to be sniffing the thigh of a dancer from the Opera.

-Guiseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard

Constelation textile design

He can't catch or throw.

She remembered the blue air of her life on the coffee farm.

Of course it's rick-rack, but it's also something more.

Aquaman at 30th Street Station, philadelphia PA, september 2009

No one expects the candied walnuts.

from the Yinka Shonibare show at the Brooklyn Museum, September 2009

Don't stop until I tell you.

Orbiting someone's moon for that long can become exhausting.

Neutralize it with a thin layer of resin.

August in Philadelphia, 2009

She was there at the door like a basket of strawberries.

1930's color is not color as we understand it.

It was as if they were peering through a dim gray veil.

All of our money came from a chain of novelty stores.

blueberries, Maine, August 2009

bus stop, New York City, August 2009

wrapping paper, found in the street, August 2009, Philadelphia PA

It's nothing that a hot shower and a shave won't cure.

His teeth were like rows of milk glass bottles.

It doesn't need to BE crocodile but it needs to have the evil SHINE of crocodile.

She's only interesting until she sacrifices her tail.

Is it nail polish or artificial banana?

You see green eyes like that in Syria.

Somewhere far away there is an employer who will be delighted to have you.

She's always coming at me with her nonsense, but I'm just not that interested.

There's not enough ice in this country.

Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, 2009

They don't produce the viennoiserie anymore. 

It's not cost effective. 

But at one time they made the best apple turnover in Paris. 

My astrological sign has nothing to do with it.

Summer clover, Philadelphia PA

"I was in prison for six months in 1962 for larceny (not really as grand as it seems)."

-Joe Orton, program biography for Entertaining Mr.Sloane

I found it in the road.

The profanity doesn't come from either side of the family. She made that up by herself.

                                 A BLUE COAT

A blue coat is guided guided away, guided and guided away, that is the particular color that is used for that length and not any width not even more than a shadow.

-from Tender Buttons, by Gertrude Stein

He was a roast beef sandwich and she was a dish of sherbet.

star shaped sequin

chain link design

figurine in window, Philadelphia PA

figurine in window, Philadelphia PA

HOW TO SAMBA ( WOMEN"S VERSION )

   1. Start before a mirror, with no music. You may prefer to practice with a pair of very high heels. Though samba is a dance that started out barefoot, and can still be danced that way, high heels will throw your spinal column out of whack and give your pelvis the appearance of greater flexibility. Platform shoes with relatively wide heels provide the best combination of stability and shock absorption.

from Samba, by Alma Guillermoprieto