Please Just Stop the Music!

Just last night, the music in a Decatur restaurant was so intrusive I couldn't hear my pal Erin speaking.

We asked for a volume reduction, but it crept back up repeatedly through the night.

ARGH.

So Peter Jon Lindberg caught my attention with his funny rant about the full-on assault of our ears in public spaces from stores to restaurants and hotels in the latest issue of Travel & Leisure.

I think his essay is pitch-perfect:
http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/bad-music-in-public-spaces/1/?comments_page=1.

Word by Word.

Best-selling author Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird is essential reading for writers.

Scratch that: for all creative human beings.

Her latest inspiring essay, How to Become the Person You Were Meant To Be , knocked me flat with her trademark sisterly honesty, clarity and wisdom.

Every word she writes hurtles the reader closer to essential--but often forgotten-- truths.

There are so many resonate nuggets in this piece that I stopped highlighting individual lines such as "You doon't have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't" or "I pray that your awakening comes with ease and grace, and stamina when the going gets hard."

Discover Lamott at:
http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200911-omag-purpose-anne-lamott.

Reliving Childhood Memories.

As a child, my mother read me Where the Wild Things Are. I loved that book so much I literally tattered the pages. She had to buy me a second copy.

In his new film, director Spike Jonze has expanded the slim plot while remaining true to author Maurice Sendak's fantastical story of 10-year old Max and the beasts he befriends.

Rage, understanding, sadness, play, fear and isolation are among the themes explored in this beautifully adapted movie.

If you're an adult of a certain age, you'll vividly recall the monsters. If you're a kid, you'll appreciate the sensitivity Jonze brings to childhood's challenges.

Both will marvel over the humanity of the beasts, with their expressive yellow eyes.

Microscopic Miracles.

A silken galaxy of spiderwebs. The mating dance of such diminuitive creature as mayflies, horseshoe crabs and velvet worms.

David Attenborough's astonishing two-part series Life in the Undergrowth will ignite your childlike wonder.

Spooky, poignant, comical, even prurient, the rituals of these invertebrates are caught on up-close on camera and set to pitch-perfect music.

Simply sublime.

Available at Netflix.

Land of Enchantment.

Once, 25 years ago, I choose Atlanta for my home with conviction.

Since then, I have chosen to live in Chicago and Washington, D.C., for work-related reasons. Sixteen years ago, I choose Atlanta again. Not for a love of the land, but for the love of a man.

But my spirit, my soul speaks to me of the Southwest, its voice growing more insistent with each passing year.

Specifically, my spirit speaks to me of New Mexico.

Of watermelon-hued desert vistas and vast cobalt blue skies punctuated by puffy clouds. Of Native traditions, of poetry and pinon trees. Of strings of chilies crinkling dry in the warm midday sun. Of sancutarios and milagros. Of beat-up trucks and lonesome two-lanes. Of chunks of turquoise and lengths of gleaming silver. Of arroyos, of pueblos and mesas. Of inky skies scattered with stars. Of cool nights and colorful woolen sweaters.

In a parallel universe, I am already there.

So, I was grateful to find a collection of essays--most written in the 1920s-1950s--from others similarly bewitched, The Spell of New Mexico, edited by Tony Hillerman.

It's no subsitute for New Mexico's red earth under my feet or its singular rhythms.

But its pages are filled with reveries from the likes of D.H. Lawrence and Ernie Pyle, capturing the state's lure. The words are a balm, even as they beckon me. I found myself savoring every word, nodding, even "yes, yesing" aloud.

The tug of the place is manifest. It is a deep and abiding love.

So, if you, too, are similarly transfixed by New Mexico, I suggest you, too, seek out this collection.

Turkish Delight

Had a great time at this past weekend's Turkish Festival in Atlanta, sponsored by the Istanbul Center.

Yes, there was great food, interesting handcrafts and friendly people, a rousing performance by the world's oldest military band, laong with the powerful and etheral chants of an all-girl Assyrian choir.

But best of all? Learning history first-hand, specifically, the little-known exile of the Ahiskan people while making manti, Turkish dumplings, with young women who shared their memories.

Log onto www.istanbulcenter.org to learn more about upcoming Turkish events, from cooking classes to language lessons.

A Mother's Wisdom.

In the November 2009 issue of O magazine, actress Julianna Margulies says her "Aha!" moment was remembering her mother saying: "Honey, this is only a moment, it's not the rest of your life."

Mother knows best, esepcially when you are depleted, anxious or overwhelmed.

Client Spotting.

My friend and technology advisor, Dale, (check out his website, www.gyronyconsultive.com if you need support), sent me this amusingly accurate article about different types of clients.

Regardless of your industry, I think you'll find it's a bull-eye in terms of the identification, care and feeding of each.

Read it at: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/15/identifying-and-dealing-with-different-types-of-clients.

TV Worth Tivoing.

I am four episodes into ABC's Modern Family and I am loving its deadpan depiction of dysfunction.

An Ad Campaign to Love.

American Express's clever new TV ads touting buyer protection are short on copy but long on memorability thanks to the smile-inducing imagery.

And they boast a killer tagline: American Express: Don't Take Chances. Take Charge.

Dream Dinner Party. Yours for $200,000.

The Neiman Marcus Christmas Book just arrived and it features The Algonquin Round Table Experience, a once-in-a-lifetime charity dinner party being held at Manhattan's legendary, literay hotel.

Along with fine food and drink, sparkling wit will be on the menu courtesy of some of today's today's most luminary minds including Malcolm Gladwell, John Lithgow, Anna Deavere Smith, Christopher Buckley and Delia Ephron.

Price too steep? For a mere $25, you can donate to First Book, which distributes books to children in need.

www.neimanmarcus.com/Algonquin

Pistachio Bliss.

Mid-afternoon in Atlanta. I'm feeling virtuous about the hour-long walk at lunchtime, but I need a pickup. Nothing in my pantry or my fridge will do.

Then I remember my pal Erin mentioning Alon Bakery's pistachio croissant.

I head to the Highland location. I'm not an early bird, but the pastry Gods have decreed that I shall have my croissant.

Cut to me, in the parking lot: biting into airy layers dusted with rock sugar, enfolding a deep green paste of crushed nuts.

Not too sweet, but decadent.

Perfection for $1.99.

Eating for Two.

Writing in O Magazine, Meg Giles has written one of the most lyrical essays on pregnancy I have ever read.

And I don't read essays on pregnancy as a general rule.

Entitled You Are What I Eat, she relates the dishes she consumes to important people in her life--both living and dead, a recipe for nourishing her as-yet-born child.

Read it at: http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200910-omag-meg-giles-pregnancy-meals.

An Ancient Approach to Perfectionism.

I've been fighting my perfectionism since I was old enough to understand its meaning. If you, too, are a perfectionist, you've got my empathy. It's not an easy thing to do.

The Japanese have a highly refined aesthetic. They are a perfectionistic people. Yet Japan is where the contrarian concept of wabi-sabi orginated.

Wabi-sabi honors the imperfect, the unfinished, the transient.

If a rose drops a brown petal and you don't brush it away, that's wabi-sabi. Setting a table with a chipped dish is wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi is a crooked nose on a beautiful face. Wabi-sabi is a beat-up wooden table with rings and cracks from years of use.

Wabi-sabi is interesting because it allows us to appreciate the incomplete, the impermanent. Wabi-sabi celebrates asymmetry and deteroiration.

And wabi-sabi has been very effective at helping me recognize--and lighten up--on the soul-crushing perfectionism in myself and others.

Awareness of wabi-sabi softens the edges of perfectionism.

Ecological Intelligence

Daniel Goleman, the best-selling author of Emotional Intelligence, is tackling the hidden ecological impact of everything we do and everything we buy in his latest book, Ecological Intelligence.

With his trademark insight, he explores the concept of "radical transparency" which could revolutionize the green movement.

He also challenges the notion of "local," pillories greenwashing tactics, offers an analysis of "satisficing," and exposes our inertia even in the face of inexorable evidence our of mounting negative environmental impact.

Reading it, you'll be green all right. Green around the gills.