Recommended Articles

A few articles that have caught my eye recently, especially the article about how our perceptions are influenced when we taste wine. It's amazing how quickly we develop bias: from the label, color of the wine, and particularly the price...

1. Brown, Sarah. "It Happened to Me: I Don't Have a Best Friend." xoJane 11 Dec. 2012

But unlike romantic relationships, friendships are often ranked according to age – your oldest friend is usually your best friend. But since all my old best friends have moved on and replaced me with newer, shinier models, where does that leave me? Our society may view romantic relationships as the only kind of relationship worth actively pursuing, but there’s no good reason why we shouldn’t have to work at friendship like we work at dating.

2.Konnikova, Maria. "What We Really Taste When We Drink Wine." The New Yorker 11 July. 2014

In one of the most prominent studies of how expectations can influence taste, Gil Morrot, a wine researcher at the National Institute for Agronomic Research in Montpellier, and his colleagues found that the simple act of adding an odorless red dye to a glass of white wine could fool a panel of tasters (fifty-four students in the University of Bordeaux’s Oenology program) into describing the wine as exhibiting the qualities associated with red wine. The tasters thought they were tasting three wines, but they were actually tasting only two. There was a white Bordeaux, a red blend of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, and the same white Bordeaux colored with a red dye. When Morrot looked at the tasters’ responses, he found that they used similar descriptions in their notes on the red and colored-red wines (chicory, coal, cherry, prune, cedar, and the like), and markedly different ones when describing the white (floral, honey, peach, grapefruit, pear, banana, apple).

3. Rich, Simon. "Guy Walks into a Bar." The New Yorker 18 Nov. 2013

So a guy walks into a bar one day and he can’t believe his eyes. There, in the corner, there’s this one-foot-tall man, in a little tuxedo, playing a tiny grand piano.
So the guy asks the bartender, “Where’d he come from?”
And the bartender’s, like, “There’s a genie in the men’s room who grants wishes.”
So the guy runs into the men’s room and, sure enough, there’s this genie. And the genie’s, like, “Your wish is my command.” So the guy’s, like, “O.K., I wish for world peace.” And there’s this big cloud of smoke—and then the room fills up with geese.
So the guy walks out of the men’s room and he’s, like, “Hey, bartender, I think your genie might be hard of hearing.”
And the bartender’s, like, “No kidding. You think I wished for a twelve-inch pianist?”

Currently No. 8

Loving light linen, spicy fragrances, hydrating spring water mist, and a sweet tote bag that holds two bottles of wine. Summer, anyone?

(1) Hackwith Design House Chandler Top (2) MCMC Fragrances 'Noble' Perfume Oil

(3) Avene Thermal Spring Water Hydrating Mist (4) Hero Bags Two Bottle Bag

Recommended Reading

After seeing Matt Taibbi's appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, I immediately requested his book at the library. It's a fascinating look at some of the inequalities in our country and the growing divide in how we systematically reward or punish behavior based on position in society. I've also been delving deeper into short stories and as soon as I polished these three collections off, I had four more collections sitting on my nightstand and two more on my Kindle...

Here is an excerpt from each:

1.  The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap (Matt Taibbi)

The laws governing the rights of immigrants are overtly diluted, in a manner that would strike the average American as simply strange, if not outrageous. A natural-born citizen enjoys Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Police can't come busting into your home without a warrant, can't wiretap your phone for no reason. Any evidence seized in an improper search is invalid. This basic principle, that evidence improperly obtained gets excluded, is called the exclusionary rule.
But according to a recent federal court decision called INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, in cases involving immigrants, a Fourth Amendment violation must be "egregious" for evidence to be thrown out. Moreover, thanks to a more recent case called Gutierrez-Berdin v. Eric Holder, even "very minor physical abuse coupled with aggressive questioning" does not rise to the level of an egregious Fourth Amendment violation.
The government's rational here is beautiful in its simplicity. American criminals have constitutional rights not because they are natural-born Americans but precisely because they are criminals. Deportations, however, are not part of the criminal justice system. "Removal proceedings," wrote the circuit judge in the Gutierrez-Berdin case, "are civil, not criminal, and the exclusionary rule does not generally apply to them."
So the undocumented alien who kills a room full of Rotarians with an ax has a right to counsel, a phone call, and protection against improper searches. The alien caught crossing the street on his way to work has no rights at all.
Strangest of all, immigration proceedings are run by immigration judges, who are not "Article III" judges - not members of the judicial branch, as described in the U.S. Constitution. Immigration judges are actually employees of the Department of Homeland Security. In other words, they work for the same branch of government that prosecutes the cases." (P. 203)

2. One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories (B.J. Novak)

The Girl Who Gave Great Advice
"Well," she would say, and then narrow her eyes at the person she was talking to: "what does your heart tell you?" (Sometimes she would use "gut" instead of "heart." She switched those up sometimes.)
"Yes. Yes!" the friend would say, as the girl who gave great advice held her squint and then added a slow, small nod one and a half seconds later. "You're right! Thank you! You give the best advice. I feel so much better. Thank you!"
That's how it happened most of the time. But sometimes, her task was more complicated. These were the times the person would say "my heart tells me..." (or "my gut tells me") but would then say something in a tone of voice that made it sound like the person wasn't necessarily all that happy to be saying what he or she was saying.
The girl who gave great advice knew how to handle these situations, too. She would lower her head thirty degrees and then tilt it back up after two and a half seconds, and ask at a slightly slower pace in a slightly lower voice: "And what does your..." and then she would say either "gut" or "heart," just whichever one she hadn't said before. (This was the part she had to be most careful about. Once, she had said the same word as she had the first time—"heart," twice—and the whole thing fell apart.)
If her first piece of advice hasn't worked, this second piece of advice always made everything all right. "Yes! Yes! Now I know what to do! You give the best advice!" everyone told her. "The best! Ever!" (P. 41)

3. Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris)

The Great Leap Forward
Across town, over in the East Village, the graffiti was calling for the rich to be eaten, imprisoned, or taxed out of existence. Though it sometimes seemed like a nice idea, I hoped the revolution would not take place during my lifetime. I didn't want the rich to go away until I could at least briefly join their ranks. Money was tempting. I just didn't know how to get it. (P. 100)

4. Birds of America: Stories (Lorrie Moore)

Dance in America
I tell them dance begins when a moment of hurt combines with a moment of boredom. I tell them it's the body's reaching, bringing air to itself. I tell them that it's the heart's triumph, the victory of speech of the feet, the refinement of animal lunge and flight, the purest metaphor of tribe and self. It's life flipping death the bird.
I make this stuff up. But then I fee the strange voltage of my rented charisma, hear the jerry-rigged authority in my voice, and I, too believe. I'm convinced. (P. 47)

Elizabeth Suzann SS2014

Although everyone and their mother has posted and/or pinned this spring-summer collection from Elizabeth Suzann. I still felt the urge to highlight the simplicity of this chic collection. I'm obsessed with all the reversible-wear pieces and the minimalist palette...

(1) Maxine Crop (2) Winnow Tunic

(3) June Dress (4) Marlena Lined Dress

Recommended Articles

Traveling and creativity are endlessly fascinating topics; particularly traveling alone (which I have come to have a love/hate relationship with) and the dynamics of creativity on an interpersonal level.

Here are snippets from a few articles that have caught my eye recently:

1. O'Hagan, Andrew. "Yes, Please | Party of One." The New York Times 09 May. 2013

The first rule of travel is that you should always go with someone you love, which is why I travel alone. The writer’s life is more openly narcissistic than most, yet it takes a true connoisseur of self-involvement, a grand master in the art of selfishness, to experience the world’s delights as they are meant to be enjoyed: through one pair of eyes, via one set of ears, with the perfect use of your own nostrils, tongue and touch. I believe that traveling alone is the last great test of who you are in a world where everyone aches to be the same.
I mean, you meet people. But you also meet yourself. That is the beauty of going it alone.

2. Shenk, Joshua Wolf. "The Power of Two." The Atlantic 25 Jun. 2014

For centuries, the myth of the lone genius has towered over us, its shadow obscuring the way creative work really gets done. The attempts to pick apart the Lennon-McCartney partnership reveal just how misleading that myth can be, because John and Paul were so obviously more creative as a pair than as individuals, even if at times they appeared to work in opposition to each other. The lone-genius myth prevents us from grappling with a series of paradoxes about creative pairs: that distance doesn’t impede intimacy, and is often a crucial ingredient of it; that competition and collaboration are often entwined.

3. Andreasen, Nancy. "Secrets of the Creative Brain." The Atlantic 25 Jun. 2014

I’ve been struck by how many of these people refer to their most creative ideas as “obvious.” Since these ideas are almost always the opposite of obvious to other people, creative luminaries can face doubt and resistance when advocating for them. As one artist told me, “The funny thing about [one’s own] talent is that you are blind to it. You just can’t see what it is when you have it … When you have talent and see things in a particular way, you are amazed that other people can’t see it.” Persisting in the face of doubt or rejection, for artists or for scientists, can be a lonely path—one that may also partially explain why some of these people experience mental illness.