Photo by Jen Snyder
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Equals in Print
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The clock ticks faintly as I sip from my ever-present water bottle. It’s the refillable type, of course, but that’s not really the point.
As I sip, I read familiar words on the screen. Some newspaper desperate to monetize is going on about things I already know: Americans aren’t using their vacation time and are less happy than their European counterparts.
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By EBK Riley
My daughter Delia is disappointed that we can’t go to Paris for her seventh birthday this September. I don't know when it really started, but now, she's all about the City of Lights. Her favorite mug in our mismatched collection is one that features a line drawing of the Eiffel Tower, and when Angelina Ballerina ended on PBS Kids last Sunday morning and Rick Steves’ Best of Europe: Paris came on, she watched the whole thing as if it were a Taylor Swift special. She tells me that she needs to bring a sweater, even in the summer, and that the best value for a stay in Paris is an out of the way two star hotel: nice beds, continental breakfast and some evening room service, for little more a night than a one star hotel in the center of the city. If she had a bag, it would be packed.
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By Erica Nikolaidis
In September, I turned 33. I have not yet succumbed to the fear and dread with which many people experience birthdays. Sure, I could do without the ravages of age—the new lines crinkling my face, my butt’s slow and steady southward migration, the sad Vince Guaraldi music that plays in my head whenever I see my boobs. But it seems silly to get neurotic about the inevitable (oh, that I could apply this sage insight to my other neuroses). Why not embrace the new number, enjoy the concrete justification to Treat. Yo. Self? Open presents, eat cake, get your feet rubbed. Get your feet rubbed while eating cake and opening presents!
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Three-meter long ropes of pink and red padlocks reach up to the ivy-covered balcony, known as Juliet’s Balcony, in Verona. People would like to believe that this was the balcony made famous in the scene when the ‘star crossed lovers’ declare their love for each other in Shakespeare’s play. Visiting tourists close small locks on the building as a sign of their unbreakable bond to each other, and as a romantic gesture of sympathy to Romeo and Juliet, who died for love. Watching the teenagers who go into the nearby shop to buy locks or write graffiti on the street walls, or the older couples who come in to take photographs, it doesn’t seem to matter to them that the government of Verona built it in the 1930’s. All around the rose marble city there are sites like this: Juliet’s tomb is in fact unoccupied, and her house picked simply because the family name resembles Juliet’s family name, ‘Capulet’.
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CARPE DIEM OMAN
by Anna Yarrow
My daughter and I saw some boys diving off a pier in Muttrah, Oman. I took a few photographs, and then they dared me to, "Jump, jump!" So I put down the camera, and leapt, fully clothed, into the ocean. It was such fun, I joined them--running, flying, swimming--again and again. My daughter watched, laughing. On our way back to the car, I asked her, "Were you surprised when I jumped in the water?" She said, "No Mom, you do stuff like that all the time." I wish!
Anna Yarrow is a mother, nanny, writer and photographer, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work is featured in an upcoming anthology, Monday Coffee & Other Stories of Mothering Children with Special Needs, due for publication November 2013.
Love Letters Between Friends
Photo by Roxanne Krystalli
Roxanne Krystalli and Katherine Conway are friends who write "love letters" to each other. Here is their most recent exchange:
By Katherine Conway
Dearest R,
As always, I am writing to you from my floor. This is a new floor, a light brown carpeted basement floor. This new floor feels far from the cool white-tiled floor of my house in Rwanda, where I mulled over evil, humanity, and healing. It feels even further from the big red tiles of my Honduran campo home, where I spent many candle-lit hours writing and sunrise filled mornings processing life’s journeys. It feels far from the expensive rug covered floor in Boston we collapsed on after hours of storytelling and shared empathy. This is my new floor — it doesn’t yet contain those moment, those memories.
R, I moved. again.
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By Roxanne Krystalli
My darling K,
I, too, am writing to you from a floor — the third floor of Ginn library, to be precise. I am sitting at what I feel is my ‘assigned seat:’ by the window, across from the tree by which I mark the seasons. At the moment, I am living to the tune of red leaves – perhaps my favorite seasonal soundtrack. When I think about ‘putting down roots,’ as you put it, I think of red leaves and the first raindrops on library windows. There is something peculiar about being grounded by transience, about finding one’s roots in seasons which — by definition! — change. Perhaps this is the kind of permanence that you and I can aspire to: the sense of being rooted and grounded, with just a pinch of whimsical nostalgia, remembrance, and dreamy transience to keep our wandering souls alive.
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Exploration Elsewhere Online
A day in the life of New York City, in miniature.
Winner: Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction 2010
Nominee: Webby Awards 2011 - Best Viral, Best Music
Official Selection: AFI Fest 2010
Official Selection: Tiburon Film Festival 2011
Original Music: composed by Human, co-written by Rosi Golan and Alex Wong.
Please view in HD and full screen for best effect. For a description of the shoot, camera, lenses and workflow, please see here.
LINKS
Dinner in NY
Miho Aikawa's fascinating look at how people eat dinner in NYC
The Spewbag Challenge
Even barf bags can be beautiful in the right hands
Shannon Rankin's Map Art
The Social Life of Genes
Homing Instincts
A gorgeous Flickr set of currency used to trade at the height of hyperinflation in Germany from 1914-1923