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By Valerie Monroe

Can’t get enough Valerie Monroe? There’s more at https://valeriemonroe.substack.com.

A WEIRD THING happened after I wrote my last post. If you read it, you’ll know I mentioned that a good way to feel more pleased with your appearance is to invest in flattering bathroom lighting. I bragged about the quality and favorable effects of my own. Not five minutes after I hit “Publish” did the lights in my bathroom flicker spookily and then—pfffffttttt! After more than 10 years of illuminated perfection, dark. An electrician is expected to arrive…someday.

Something about the situation reminded me of waiting for weeks to get a haircut because the style is all wrong and then waking up on the morning of your appointment and thinking your hair looks absolutely perfect—in fact, it’s the most cunning style you’ve ever had.

I was casting about for the connection between those two stories and then it hit me: perfection. Specifically, the impermanence of perfection. Everything changes, nothing stays the same, and to expect it to, or regret that it doesn’t, invites a special kind of suffering.

Speaking of a special kind of suffering—and avoiding it—more beauty companies are refusing to retouch model photos, so advertising images are less about perfection and more about the real thing. I think this is a fine idea and applaud it. It inches us closer to a world where the images used to sell us stuff we probably don’t need aren’t also selling us an unachievable ideal we definitely don’t need. Striving for perfection, as it relates to our complexion, must be one of the greatest drivers of women to beauty counters. After all, even skin tone and texture (related to perceived health, fitness, immunity, and fertility) are cues for physical and sexual attractiveness. And doesn’t the makeup industry do a terrific job of offering multiple and ingenious ways to imitate those cues? Foundation, blush, concealer—all the trickery you could wish for.

Still, not content with imitation, we strive for actual perfection—a much more, let’s face it, impossible goal. For example, poreless skin. A pore is a tiny hole at the top of a hair follicle that allows sweat and sebum to exit through the skin. There are roughly 20,000 on your face alone (nearly 5 million on your entire hide). A poreless-looking complexion is associated with youthfulness, because as we age pores appear larger due to slowing skin-cell turnover, trapped sebum, and loss of skin elasticity. Though pore size is genetically influenced, says dermatologist Tina Alster, if you have oily skin or tend to perspire a lot, they’ll look bigger than if your skin is dry.

Before I get to Alster’s suggestions for minimizing pore size, I want to direct you to a face mask that claims to clean out pores in a similar way Biore pore strips do for your nose—but with more…screaming. I’d never heard of the Milky Piggy Hell-Pore Clean Up Mask till a young friend recommended I look at it, which I did here. (Fair warning, you’ll probably want to fast forward.)

This video says a lot about what women will do in the name of beauty (and also about creative or weirdly-translated product names). What’s strange to me is not that the YouTuber tried the mask; it’s that after watching her video, other women wanted to try it, too.  

For the saner (and less masochistic) among us, Alster recommends a cleansing brush to clean the surface of your pores; but this won’t make a big difference in appearance if you think your pores are very noticeable. A prescription retinoid, like a Tretinoin cream or lotion, applied in the evening will, over time, refine your complexion’s surface by increasing cell turnover, which prevents sebum from collecting in the pores.

If enlarged pores are your personal skincare bugaboo (I’m speaking to you, Nicole) Alster recommends in-office microneedling, which works on any skin type, as the most effective treatment. With a motorized handpiece containing 36 tiny needles on the tip, she “tills the land” on your face, essentially creating a controlled injury that obliterates pores and encourages new skin growth. Each treatment, she says, reduces pores in size, number, and depth. She recommends two to three microneedling treatments about a month apart to get up to 80% improvement.

I had one treatment (as part of a “vampire facial”) around four years ago; this is what I wrote about it for O, The Oprah Magazine:

When you tell people you’re going to have your face poked all over with tiny needles, you get two responses: “Yech!” and then, “Why?”

I’ll tell you why. I want the smoothest, freshest-looking, glowiest skin—and to that end, many dermatologists suggest microneedling, a process in which a small device embedded with a cluster of sterile, retractable needles is pressed all over the face, causing “micro-injuries.” The skin rushes to heal those injuries with new collagen and elastin, which, if you’re my age (66), are literally face-saving; they help keep it from looking like all the stuffing’s been pulled out of it.

There are at-home kits, but doctors aren’t fond of them because they say the needling typically doesn’t go deep enough to get appreciable results—and because infection is possible. So I made an appointment with New York City dermatologist Cheryl Karcher, MD, who uses the EndyMed Intensif microneedle device. The Intensif also emits pulses of radio-frequency energy to further tighten skin and minimize pores. In the equivalent of a skincare trifecta, Karcher suggested I increase the benefits by rubbing into the “micro-injuries” 6 milliliters of my own platelet-rich plasma, which she extracted from a vial of my blood drawn just before the Intensif procedure. (If you’ve read about the “vampire facial,” you’ve probably seen photos of famous faces smeared with blood. On me, Karcher used only the yellowish plasma because it contains beneficial growth factors.) Numbing cream is applied pre-procedure; still, I have two words for you: staple gun. Karcher moved the device over my face in increments of about an inch as she released the needles. It really hurt, especially around my lips and eyes. The plasma, warm and sticky, is mostly absorbed during the minutes after the needling, and though Karcher said I could rinse it off, for good measure I left it on all day.

For about 24 hours, I was very pink, with one small red dot on my forehead, and for several days, my skin peeled a bit. By the end of the next week, my cheeks looked smoother. Over a month or so, as the collagen and elastin regeneration continues, I should see more glowiness and a little tightening, says Karcher. Which seems well worth the yech and ouch to me. 

Confession: I didn’t notice that my skin became appreciably tighter after this treatment, and it was free; if I wanted to address a specific issue—Alster says microneedling also works on perioral wrinkles, a.k.a the little lines around the mouth, and stretch marks—I might’ve invested in another treatment or two.

Peels, Alster says, don’t work to reduce pore size, and most dermatologists don’t recommend the Milky Piggy Hell-type mask (or even those less creatively named) as they can injure the skin. She also doesn’t recommend at-home microneedling, because it’s impossible to clean the needles appropriately.

One last thing about pores: You need them! They’re an integral part of your physical infrastructure. Of the many millions on your body, if you think you can see 20, really, how bad is that? And if you can only see them in a magnifying mirror, just put the mirror away. Because no one else sees them.

Today, as my bathroom remains dark and my refrigerator has begun to emit an ominous whistling noise, I’m struggling to accept the impermanence of perfection. But I am always looking for an excuse to pick up Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart; it’s not about appliances, but it’ll likely lighten my outlook. Yours, too, if you need that.

MyLittleBird often includes links to products we write about. Our editorial choices are made independently; nonetheless, a purchase made through such a link can sometimes result in MyLittleBird receiving a commission on the sale, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com. 

Cooper, with his/her backdrop of toad lilies. / Photo illustration by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

COOPER’S TAIL is filthy. Their feathers are more gray than white.  I don’t know how this happened. I created an attractive little pool in the cage. So far, no interest. Maybe as it gets hotter . . . 

Notice my reference to Cooper as “their”? My first stab at this personal pronoun business. The sex of parakeets is unknown until they are about 6 months old. The nose bit turns blue for boys and tan for girls. Cooper’s is neither—sort of bluish tan. So, intersex?

Cooper, or Coop, for short, is a parakeet, a budgie. The whitest parakeet I’ve ever seen. This is a description, not a political statement. They is not (are not?) an albino. Their  eyes are black not red.

Can I just switch off between the sexes? This personal pronoun bit is awkward. I won’t get into whether birds can even have personal pronouns, as they are not persons but miniature dinosaurs.  

He was one of three budgies My Prince bought me for my birthday before last, so she’s about a year and a half old. If his sex was going to show, it would have done so by now. 

There were just three in the cage at Petsmart or Petco or wherever. The other two birds, Bossy and Buddy, a pair of beautiful blues, were clearly a couple, but if we took them, this white bird would be left on the perch . . . which was just sad. Like ostracizing him. God knows what that would do to her psyche. So we decided to take all three. 

As it happened, just as we’d paid and were leaving the store, a woman raced in to buy a parakeet for her son’s birthday. The only thing the child wanted, and she had called the store and, Yes, she was told, they had some . . . 

We slouched away, feeling kind of lousy. Not only did we ruin this kid’s birthday, we could have made a few bucks. 

Anyway, naming. Coop’s name was settled before we left the store. Being the world’s whitest parakeet, she was named after Anderson Cooper, who I consider the world’s whitest man (without being albino and also not a political statement). 

We took the three birds home and let them loose in the greenhouse/solarium off my office, where the notion was they’d wing about joyously amid the tropical plants I nurse through the winter and I could watch their amusing little stunts from my desk. This is how it was with an earlier pair, tragically lost. So, I had reasonable expectations. 

Instead, Bossy spent all of his days, from the moment he entered the house, determined to bust loose. Buddy helped. Savages. It was horrific.

Coop, the outsider from the beginning, had a little corner that she gnawed. On chilly evenings the trio would snuggle on a perch, but other than that, Coop was a loner. 

Doesn’t much like me, either. He screeches maniacally when I get too close.

And then Buddy died. And Bossy died. Don’t ask, it was traumatic. 

Coop was left. At this point, which was a few months ago, and inspired by the wreckage of the walls (which Bossy had pecked away at trying to get loose), The Prince decided to begin his long anticipated project of rebuilding the back porches—taking down the existing glass panels and extending the upper level from halfway across the back of the house to the full 20-foot width. 

This meant caging Cooper, which does not please him/her. Them. But the weather is mild so Coop spends the days on the back porch loudly yakking with passing birds. No one visits, which is sad. Perhaps one day one will. I know of at least one escaped parakeet in the neighborhood; perhaps that one will find its way to us. 

Meanwhile, Coop watches me in the garden. 

Ah. At last we get to the garden.

Today I’m planting a patch of toad lily (Tricyrtis ‘Sinonome’), a plant I did not know I wanted—needed—until our friend Karen offered some up from her front yard. Toad lily, which has strappy foliage and canes covered in late summer with colorful spotted flowers that resemble small orchids, not only likes the shade, it adores the shade. And this is the gift I give my plants: a shade that becomes deeper each year thanks to the wingspan of the kwanzan cherry that we stupidly planted about a decade ago. 

Toad lily is also extremely hardy, drought resistant and deer resistant, and spreads, and spreads, and spreads. Which is why Karen gave me a small bucketful. I believe they’re purple.

One more thing. 

How do you wash a feral parakeet’s tail?

Whether a fantabulous Indian patio umbrella from Etsy, right, or a classic piece from Home Depot, a sunshade can add shelter and color to the garden between blooms.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

MUCH HAS improved in the garden since last week. The river-rock path flows cleanly to the garage, as intended, and the weekend rains, plus a dose of fertilizer, have perked that which had drooped from neglect. I can get under the porch to a neatly organized potting shed, and the plants that were languishing in too-small pots have found their bit of summer soil. 

Those ladders still tilt adorably against a wall, but I suppose I can’t have everything. 

Now that it’s cleared, I notice it’s a rather dull time in the garden. The tulips are gone, as are the cherry blossoms. The peonies are breathing their last. It’s very . . . green out there. 

In another month the hydrangeas will be in full bloom, the trumpet vine will climb the wall, and the rose of sharons will come into flower, one with red and white blossoms along the porch rail like a cheery umbrella at a café in Capri, another down below, a moody purple for that tropical jungle look that pleases me in the midsummer heat. 

This would not be the optimal time to sell this place, should we decide to sell, which is a perennial question—though less so as the rest of the country roils with political and environmental angst. Washington DC is looking pretty damn good as a place to settle down and age-on in place. 

That said, the garden is in a between time when things other than flowering plants are needed to provide a little perk. 

1. Colorful chairs and benches stand in quite well for blossoms. Our metal rockers are currently peach, though I’m thinking of painting them something more shocking, or replacing them. I like the aged look of these patio chairs, near right, from Wayfair—and they fold, which is a neat trick if you’re looking for extra seating.
2. Perhaps a park bench, above right, instead of chairs. A red one, perched in the greenery. The door to our garage is turquoise. What a blast that would be. 
3. Pots can be as fanciful as flowers, and are frequently more colorful. I do love Chinese pots, center right, in gorgeous soft colors, the chili-pepper heat of Mexican ceramics, near right, and those from Mackenzie Childs, far right, with their Alice in Wonderland air. Or paint your own: Fine Gardening has a fine tutorial.
4. Speaking of Mackenzie Childs, birdhouses can be a delight. If someone gifted me one of their aviaries, below right, it would be a clutch-my-pearls-and-grab-the-inhaler moment. 
5. Chandelier trees. Grab some twinkle with crystals dangling from tree branches. If you don’t have a stash try these:  https://www.kinsmangarden.com/product/Chandelier-Tree.
6. More tree sparkle? Don’t we all have stacks of blank CDs gathering dust? Friends of ours, a pair of architect luminaries, just to emphasize their design bona fides, tied 50 or so to a tree branch and created a glittery waterfall beside the garden door. 
7. Plant stakes needn’t be so utilitarian. I saw some around the corner walking the granddog yesterday, four pale wood stakes, like legs that badly need the beach, supporting a beauty of a clematis. How about these metal fiddlehead ferns,  far right, instead—with clear fishing line instead of twine. They’d work for tomatoes too, instead of those ghastly wire cages.
8.  Who needs flowers when they can hoist a spectacular Indian umbrella? Great snob appeal— and another clutch -your-pearls number. You won’t find these at Home Depot. But if you don’t care to wait (India is a ways away), Home Depot does offer classic market umbrellas in a range of primary and sherbet colors—and black and white stripes, for your Parisian fantasy. Bonus! If you have too much sun for a shade-loving plant, a parasol will do the trick. 
9. More do-it-yourself? Make like designer Tony Duquette, unmatched for flamboyance even 22 years after his death, and spray-paint a felled tree branch (just check out the curb after a storm) a brilliant, shiny coral. He was mad about the stuff. Plonk the branch anywhere, let vines twirl ’round; pretty much instant, and nearly free, exhilaration. 
10. Grab a book and sack out on the porch. May I suggest the 44 Scotland Street series from Alexander McCall Smith? He’ll have you laughing so heartily that you won’t give a hoot about the garden.  

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By Valerie Monroe

Can’t get enough Valerie Monroe? There’s more at https://valeriemonroe.substack.com.

BEFORE I get to a beauty question today, I want to spend a few minutes on one of my favorite subjects: denial.

One day a friend who’s my age said, “Sometimes I hate looking in the mirror because I see an old man.” I said, “That’s funny, because when I look at you, I don’t see an old man,” which I think lightened his load a bit. Then I said, “And when I look at myself, I don’t see an old woman, either. I just kind of see my face.” To which my friend replied, “That’s because you’re in denial.”

All I could think was, If denial is wrong, I don’t want to be right. Which I guess is, in itself, a kind of denial. But I’ve found it to be a handy tool to keep my spirits afloat when waves of anti-aging messages flood my perspective.

How do I maintain my denial? For one thing, with the best bathroom lighting you’ve ever seen. Two frosted tubes running along both sides of my medicine cabinet mirror cast an even, glowy light on my face. (You don’t need these exact bulbs, but you do need warm, incandescent, symmetrical lighting. Like halogen bulbs with a glass frost filter; MR16 are good ones.) When I’m at someone else’s place and there’s a bright light at the top of the bathroom mirror casting a downlight, I don’t even bother looking at myself: Whatever the image is, I don’t want to see it. A friend calls that kind of reflection “a false grotesque fantasy that fucks with our brains.” (I couldn’t have said it better.) It’s not what you actually look like, so why acknowledge it?

After spending some time at a friend’s one summer I was convinced I needed a facelift ASAP. Then I got home, looked in my own mirror, and went, “What was I thinking?” I’ve also had more than a few consultations with dermatologists and plastic surgeons in their harshly lit offices, where you’re handed a mirror and asked what you see (or would like to not see), and have had the terrible, sinking feelings of diminution, privation, reduction—all the losses that come with recognizing the startling reminders of mortality in your face.

Who needs that?

What I mean is, who needs a daily diet of that? If you’ve been reading these posts, you know I’m all for accepting our aging appearance and for the peace that becomes available when we learn to see ourselves with loving awareness. But there is also Botox, and filler, and good lighting, and denial. Because . . . not dead yet. Gather ye confidence while (and where) ye may. If a touch of neuromodulator and denial helps here and there, so be it.

The good news is we have options as we straddle the two worlds of the spirit and the flesh. So: What will it take to make you happy with the lovely, tainted glory that is your face?

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“Ask Val” answers your urgent questions.

Yes, you, juggling SPF 30 moisturizer, SPF 50 sunscreen, SPF 15 foundation, and. . . . What is that, a calculator?

Q: I know this is a stupid question, but if I wear two or more different products with SPF, am I getting combined protection from all of them?

A: There are no stupid questions at Val’s beauty retreat. You’re getting only the highest protection you wear, which should be at least SPF 30 in rain or shine. Go here for more sunscreen advice and product recommendations.

By Nancy McKeon

WHAT DOES it say that it’s four minutes past midnight and I’m relieved that Wordle has just dropped?

To answer my own question, it says that I’m happy to be able to spend a few quality minutes with my overstimulated mind before going to sleep. Of course, I won’t sleep for long because Spelling Bee drops at 3am. Yeah, when I get up during the night to pee, it will be waiting for me.

I long ago gave up the daily crossword puzzle in the New York Times. I gave up the Sunday puzzle a few weeks ago. I now seem to have the attention span of a 15-year-old gamer.

The daily Mini I can tolerate on my phone. And I’ll put in the few minutes required to do the Monday and Tuesday, sometimes Wednesday, crossword on my phone when they pop up at 10pm. Those first days of the week are dead simple, and the Mini doesn’t require much at all. A quick jolt and I’ve achieved something.

I got caught up in Spelling Bee maybe a year ago. At some point in the first week, the “Queen Bee” screen popped up, but I didn’t know what it meant, so I just shrugged. Now I know it meant that I had guessed all of the words contained in the seven-letter “hive” (I thought it was a daisy, go figure). Then someone (I’m looking at you, niece Erin Byrne) introduced me to the “Today’s Hints” page, meaning that even if I hit the Genius mark (not that hard to do), I could eke out more words by drilling down into the two-letter hints (e.g., AB-2, meaning there are two words beginning with AB, etc.). But now we were talking about a whole different level of commitment.

Enter Wordle! One unknown five-letter word to be guessed in six attempts. Period.* It was better when I started, back last December, when it was independent, famously invented by Welsh-born Brooklyn software engineer Josh Wardle for his girlfriend. (It went viral: 90 players on November 1, 2021, per Wikipedia, and more than 2 million a week later.) Then the Times bought it at the end of January 2022 and generally screwed things up. (I couldn’t get it on my phone until about a week ago, had to use my iPad, which meant I was taking TWO devices to bed with me. And they complain about the kids!) Everything seems to have settled down now, and I don’t for a minute begrudge Mr. Wardle his “undisclosed seven-figure” payday.

There have been copycats, such as Quordle, four different secret words, each of which has to be solved using the same guessed words (but you have more than just six guesses to get there, which I achieved exactly once before deciding that life was too short).

The biggest benefit of Wordle over the endless Spelling Bee (or Quordle, for that matter) is that Wordle is finite: one game per day, dropped at midnight. A few sometimes-frustrating minutes to figure out what the secret word is, based on your initial guess and the letter hints offered with each guess.

And then sleep.

At least until Spelling Bee drops.†

* Okay, weirdness alert: There are sometimes TWO correct answers. But I don’t care, as long as I get one of them.

† Oh no! I just learned about KnotWords! And I have a new fave, Worldle, six chances to identify a country by its outline (with hints as to distance and direction from each guess). All right, a new, new fave: Artle, from the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC—images not words, you get four chances to guess the artist! I’m in! And David Remnick would kill me if I didn’t at least mention The New Yorker’s Name Drop, six clues to guessing the identity of a “notable name,” past or present.

This is supposed to be a garden. Perhaps it will be soon again. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

WHAT A DUMP.

This is not how my garden is supposed to look at the tail end of spring. 

The pebble path from the porch to the garage should be meandering like a streambed past the hydrangeas. Parlor palms should be flanking the garage door, not sitting under the tree, blocking the light from the clematis—which I doubt we’ll see in flower this year. 

The trompled* mess on the right is the remains of the magnificent tulips; they really were something this spring. The planter in their midst should be sprightly with . . . something. More mashed tulips are on the path’s left, though you can’t see them behind the piles of . . .

My Prince has made a mess. A child’s desk, a sorry-looking tabletop, pots and saucers, a trash lamp, bags and bags of mulch. There’s a bike carcass beneath the stairs, where the pots and saucers are supposed to go. My camera lens isn’t wide enough to capture the quaint display of ladders propped against the wall. I could break a leg getting to my potting area under the back porch.

This is the dreck I must clamber over to attempt to garden. My mood shifts through the day from hopeful, to frustrated, to furious. I want to plant the elephant ears, the coleus, the caladium, and the tropicals I’ve nursed through the winter. The geraniums need moving, the fern nearly covers the entire surface of the pond. I can’t tell if the banana in the far-left corner is showing signs of life. Such misery!

I knelt on a mulch pile yesterday to look at my Meyer lemon and the orange hibiscus;  both are budded, which should excite me. The African gardenia is also covered with flowers. Between that and the jasmine, the garden scent is so strong it warbles up to the second floor, where I can sniff it from my desk.

Meanwhile, last weekend’s deluge blessed my wild children—the wisteria, orange trumpet, autumn clematis, and the honeysuckle. The growth is alarming. They all need thwacking back.    

It is progress, I suppose. Much of the clutter that’s now in the way was on the back porch, which is supposed to be a place of rest and lounging. I’m having difficulty envisioning the final destination, since the garage is full to the walls and rafters (though I’m not sure we have rafters: there’s stuff in the way). 

There was a threat involved. It seems to have worked. I’m listening to the sounds of progress, the banging and shoving and cursing. I hope all of this crap is leaving, though not the mulch, which I will need. 

Please, may the path be clear so I can exhale my venom and indulge in a violent bout of . . . gardening.

Happy almost summer! 

*Trompled. Not a word, but certainly should be.

LittleBird Stephanie’s garden in better days, with the rear garage, which looks like a charming cottage thanks to the arched door. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

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By Valerie Monroe

WHY DOES IT seem more important with each passing year to be able to forgive? I wrote this for O, The Oprah Magazine, remembering a time when forgiveness was a concept I was sadly unfamiliar with:

I used to feel as if I were living in a foreign country. It was as if I were an outsider, never comfortable with the customs, never fully understanding what was expected of me. And so I was always walking on eggshells: Did I do the right thing? Did I somehow unknowingly offend you with my last remark? Was my work not quite good enough? Were my friends, lovers acceptable? I felt as if I were being judged, and most often coming up short, as if I were playing a game with a set of rules no one had bothered to explain to me.

The older I got, the more uncomfortable I became. One night I had a vivid, frightening dream. Motivated by the desire to untangle it, I began psychotherapy. In my sessions I talked about the many instances when, as a child, I felt as if I had come up short: showing a marked lack of graciousness, for example, about the arrival of my baby sister; my constant need to know my mother’s whereabouts at all times—perhaps suffocating to her. My therapist wondered aloud about how I, by then a mother myself, might feel toward any other child—my son, for instance—who demonstrated that behavior. It was a no-brainer, literally: My heart was instantly awash with compassion. As I remembered more of my childhood shortcomings, and forgave them, it became like a practice—the forgiving—and before long I was doing it with my adult self, too. Forgiving myself for past mistakes in love, in work, in the many daily interactions always open to missteps. I had to learn how to forgive the mistake, try to gain some perspective from it, and then, try to do better (or at least, different).

Is all self-esteem nurtured by mastery? I’m not sure. But it was mastering forgiveness that nurtured mine.

Come with me for a moment over to the mirror. Honestly, as I write this, all I can think is that it’s going to sound like a parody of self-help instruction. You might feel this, too, as you submit to my request. But do it anyway. Look at yourself. Look at your face and say the first word you think of. Then please think about the meaning of that word, the word you said about your face. Take a minute. I’ll wait.

I wonder if that word was critical in some way. It wouldn’t surprise me, because we live in the kingdom of objectification and we serve as its loyal subjects.

Now, again at the mirror, please look into your own eyes, as if you were looking into the eyes of someone—anyone—other than you. Keep looking till the critical scanning falls away and you are just looking into a pair of eyes. This might take a while (see here) but keep at it. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be switching your focus from eye to eye and your mind will be scrambling to find . . . a way out.

But stay with it long enough and you’ll give yourself a gift: the opportunity to see your face without objectification. What happens then? You’re no longer bound by the rules of a deeply critical, unrealistic, demanding, and unforgiving beauty culture. Refuse to see your reflection through that narrow, pinched, mean-spirited lens and you are free to begin to forgive yourself for all the ways you have internalized unwarranted disappointment or even despair.

Here’s a secret that beauty marketers don’t want you to know: Make a practice of looking at yourself with forgiveness and you will feel more beautiful every day.

Don’t take my word for it . . .

I Worried

I worried a lot.
Will the garden grow,
will the rivers flow in the right direction,
will the earth turn as it was taught,

and if not how shall I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing,

even the sparrows can do it and I am, well, hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism, lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up.
And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

—Mary Oliver

The real 1973 ‘Battle of Versailles’ fashion show did not involve horses or fencing foils, as in this vividly imagined panorama by fashion designer and film director Tom Ford. It did, however, establish American ready-to-wear as a worthy challenger to Paris couture, thrusting fashion into the present with modern music, mostly Black models and an energy that stunned the staid French audience. As Ford put it, the battle was won by sportswear. “The victors? Bill Blass, Stephen Burrows, Halston, Anne Klein, and Oscar de la Renta—surely the greatest underdogs in the history of fashion.” The garments in the exhibit are either the very ones that appeared in Paris or were part of the designers’ collections for that year. / Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

By Nancy McKeon

THE THING to know about fashion exhibits at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is that it’s rarely fashion qua fashion. It’s usually fashion as part of culture, of history, of the Zeitgeist. So, the second part of Costume Institute’s homage to American fashion opened last week with an intellectually ambitious series of displays and vignettes, long on interpretation, sometimes short on nouns. And, yes, there certainly was clothing.

One goal of this second half (the first half opened last fall and is still on view) is to reconsider American fashion’s evolution in the 19th and 20th centuries. In recorded remarks to a preview audience, museum officials seemed to be all but apologizing that the museum’s American Wing period rooms, where the vignettes are staged, were collected in an earlier era, with an emphasis on the nation’s British roots and Eurocentric focus. The rooms, they explained, were now “peopled” by mannequins in era-appropriate garb and in some cases “visited” by specters of the unseen hands behind the garments and even the furniture.

So, the museum layered history and context on top of the garments, and then brought in the cavalry in the form of nine film directors—Martin Scorsese, Sofia Coppola, Chloé Zhao, and Julie Dash, to name a few—to add yet another layer, of drama and even emotion, to the enterprise.

I wouldn’t say that the evolution of American fashion kinda got lost in the process, but let’s just say you’ll have to look for it—and then know what you’re looking at.

Fashion photographer turned film director Autumn de Wilde fills the Met’s Baltimore Dining Room, circa 1810, with the audacious décolletage-baring French Empire muslin gown at left, faced off against the slightly more demure American interpretations of the neoclassical style at right. Given Baltimore’s ascendancy as a prosperous port and commercial center, fashions were routinely imported from France, though, as depicted here, local tastes were not always in tune with the less-Puritanical European ethos. / Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

British taste influenced early wealthy American home styles, as in this 1811 Adamesque parlor in Petersburg, Virginia. In the late 1810s, British style also competed with French taste in clothing. Lines were more demure, more staid. The color of the center gown in the Benkard Room, another vignette by Autumn de Wilde, is thought to reflect the vogue for “Clarence blue,” favored by Britain’s Duchess of Clarence. De Wilde wanted to show period rooms and period people in action, being human, not museum pieces. Here a quiet evening of cards has suddenly become very lively indeed. Unseen in this view is the rat that has run up the leg of a nearby chair and the traumatized cat that sits atop the fireplace mantel. / Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Director Autumn de Wilde’s fainting female, left, looks garroted, while the playful pup from another de Wilde room is properly costumed. / Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Richmond Room, from Richmond, Virginia, circa 1810, is the setting for director Regina King’s homage to 19th-century seamstresses and designers who worked behind the scenes to create gowns for the wealthy. This vignette features three designs by African American dressmaker Fannie Criss Payne, born in about 1867 to formerly enslaved parents. Creativity in dressmaking was beginning to be noticed, and Payne wrote her name inside garments she created. The day dresses shown here date from 1905 and 1907, but Payne herself, depicted by the mannequin in the center of the room, lived until 1942. / Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, BFA.com/Matteo Prandoni.

The Met’s Shaker Retiring Room found a gifted match in film director Chloé Zhao, who filled the spare room with 1930s-’40s sportswear by midcentury trendsetter Claire McCardell. McCardell’s approach, especially her “Monastic” and “Nada” dresses, meshed with the simplicity of the Shakers and brought the 1800s aesthetic into modern American women’s wardrobes. An original 1870 Shaker ensemble—light brown dress with full gathered skirt and ivory fichu, or small shawl around the shoulders—is elevated over the McCardell outfits (including a simple wedding gown) as if in benediction. / Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This circa-1870 Renaissance Revival Room from Meriden, Connecticut, provides a lush background for the richly ornamented and exquisitely detailed gowns of Ann Lowe, a New York-based African American designer who specialized in debutante and wedding gowns. Lowe designed Jacqueline Bouvier’s gown for her wedding to John F. Kennedy, as well as the gown Olivia de Havilland wore to accept her Oscar in 1947 for “To Each His Own.” The dresses in the vignette date from the early 1940s until 1968. Director Julie Dash, who created the vignette, added mysterious black figures to the scene to stand in for the unheralded and often uncredited Lowe attending to her original designs. Their headpieces are by Stephen Jones. / Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The most modern of the Met rooms in the exhibit is this 1912-’14 living room by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Francis W. Little Prairie Style house in Wayzata, Minnesota. Storied director Martin Scorsese explained he was challenged to mesh the FLW room with the midcentury gowns of Charles James. His inspiration? To stage them as if they were in the 1945 noir-genre psychological thriller of John Stahl’s adaptation of “Leave Her to Heaven.” So, underneath the glamour, mystery and even danger. / Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

LEFT: A wedding dress by Ann Lowe, circa 1941.
RIGHT: Charles James “Butterfly” ballgown, circa 1955. / Images © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

LEFT: Dress, Stephen Burrows, 1970s.
RIGHT: Dress, Claire McCardell for Townley Frocks, 1949; from the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Met. / Images © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

LEFT: Dress, Jessie Franklin Turner, 1942.
RIGHT: Dress, Norman Norell, 1941. / MyLittleBird photos.

Side by side, these two dresses show that even after breaking free from Paris, American designers would do more than cast an eye toward France. On the left, this “New Look” silhouette dress by Christian Dior meets up, on the right, with an almost line-for-line copy by Hattie Carnegie. Carnegie made some seaming changes and used a button belt, a Dior signature of the time that he did not use with this particular garment (but which Carnegie’s customers may have preferred). / MyLittleBird photos.

Stop, thief! / Photo and foot compliments of The Prince.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

I RECENTLY read, in some Agony Aunt* column or other, that picking up bits of broken plants fallen to the floor of a garden center is stealing. 

My god.

I’ve twice been guilty of what I consider actual theft, although in the second instance I still feel the act was (somewhat) excusable. 

The first was when I was perhaps 9 years old. Could have been 8. But I was let loose in a McGrory or Woolworth’s and, heeding some demonic whim, I lifted a bottle of nail polish. I don’t recall the brand or color, but let us say it was sparkly pink. I do recall I got the shakes as I stuffed the bottle in my pocket or whatnot and hustled out the door waiting for screams of Thief! Thief! 

Was I disappointed not to have landed behind bars? I don’t recall. 

Anyway, I never used the polish. I was too ashamed, and my mother would ask where it came from and I’m not good at lying. It was stuffed in the back of a drawer where it languished. . . .

The second time, I was a teenager cruising Macy’s, the flagship store featured in Miracle on 34th Street (was Macy’s yet a chain?). It was not an inviting place, as I recall. The lighting was dreary and the wooden escalators went rickety-clack between floors. Some years later they would add snoot: completely remodeling and adding a fancy deli, in an attempt at Harrods upscale. That was around the time Bloomingdale’s transitioned from the place to buy housekeeping sundries and maids’ uniforms to the Bloomingdale’s where you loitered about looking for a Saturday night date. 

Anyway. Macy’s. I was there because I needed sunglasses and I parked myself at the counter and found a pair in a sale basket that probably cost two bucks, about my budget, and I looked at the salesgirl (that’s what we called them back then) and she ignored me for obviously better prospects draped in mink and Gucci buckled shoes. It was as if I were invisible, a feeling I experienced again only when I passed 65. 

I was ignored for so long and so rudely that I palmed those sunglasses and wandered off, feeling puffed up and morally justified. At first I moved casually, then at speed, out of the store and into the sun.

I’m not sure if I ever again wore those shades; they may well have gone into the Drawer of Shame to nuzzle the nail polish.

And so, I thought, I’d closed out my history of larceny. 

But now! It seems I’m a career criminal, unapologetically lifting sprigs of this, broken bits of that, which fall from garden-center pots and baskets. I DO NOT PLUCK from plants for sale (well . . . maybe once or twice when I considered the price of the pot highway robbery). These were stray bits that would, no doubt, be tromped upon then broomed into the trash. Really? The store would take these sad leavings and pot them up? I don’t think so.

I would, however, and did and do. This is not thievery, it is rescue. I’ve taken these sorry snippets without a tremor and will continue to do so until my tetchy knees will no longer bend to reach them, or allow me to stand up again. 

Those bits so tenderly stuffed into my purse or pocket will come home to rest in porch pots and as they grow into plants are removed to places of glory in the garden. 

Or, anyway, a spot in the garden.  

*Agony Aunt. A delightful British term for advice columnist.

By Nancy McKeon

MY VET is flying off to London tomorrow, about six weeks after her holiday in Tulum. My upstairs neighbors hosted family for a week in Costa Rica—then flew off to a wedding in Mexico City. The couple next door to them are in Italy for a month. Other dear neighbors (the ones who let me cat-sit) just got back from a week in Aruba.

Me? Just sittin’ here. But I’m not alone! I have books that take me places, that spoon-feed me scenery and sightseeing, and even time travel, with a foreground of clever police work.

Consider this list a work in progress. I assume you have favorite series that I don’t know about (or have forgotten), perhaps set in other exotic locales (I’m light on South America, Africa other than Egypt, and Asia). There must be hundreds of them: Feel free to pile on! Add your suggestions to the Comments so other readers can reap the benefit.

In the late 1920s there emerged a category of movie theaters, movie palaces, called “atmospheric theaters.” The interior decor had a theme, whether Egyptian or neoclassical or over-the-top baroque, allowing Depression-era patrons to immerse themselves in the richness of another time and culture. (The now-restored 1931 Holland Theatre in Bellefontaine, Ohio, has the architectural components of a 17th-century Dutch town!) The truly atmospheric theaters had ceilings featuring moving clouds and twinkling stars.

That’s what these mysteries call to mind for me. Sure I’ve been to Venice, but it has never felt as real as when I follow Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti around from island to island, coffee bar to coffee bar. I still don’t know the Greek islands—too many of them! But I’m getting more than a glimpse of the sights (and the bureaucracy) thanks to Jeffrey Siger’s top cop, Andreas Kaldis.

Québec? Check! France’s Dordogne? Yup. Ancient Rome? Done, and more than once.

Remember that Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are coming up. If you can’t yet persuade your loved ones to get on a plane, consider these books, some of which come in attractive boxed sets. Best of all, because publishers love repeat business, some of the series are 15, 20, even 30+ books long!

Though there are always newcomers to classics, I’ll assume everyone knows about Agatha Christie’s Hercules Poirot (though I don’t get much more than charmingly fractured English out of the little Belgian) and Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret (but it might be fun to count how many times Maigret stops to light his pipe as he wanders around Paris).

The late Peter Mayle, who made Provence so memorable for us (A Year in Provence, Toujours Provence, etc.), did also commit fiction among the olive trees and wild thyme; but the genre for those fun, well-plotted books was the “caper,” not mystery (hence the titles, The Vintage Caper, The Marseille Caper, The Corsican Caper and The Diamond Caper). On the other hand, I thought it might be a giggle to add Lee Child’s 20+ Jack Reacher books to the list, if only because a tour of Reacher’s brain would be fascinating. (I resisted.)

I’ve listed each series by the name of the detective and pointed out the first in each series. I like to start at the beginning, but these authors know how to weave the backstory into each book along the way.

Again, there’s room for plenty more: Please add your faves in a Comment.

MARCUS DIDIUS FALCO
Author Lindsey Davis

THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB

Author Richard Osman

Elizabeth and her pals are pensioners in a posh-enough retirement village in the Kentish Weald. Of course, Elizabeth is a retired MI6 operative, so it’s not so surprising that they meet on Thursdays in the home’s Jigsaw Room (in a time slot when it’s not being used for Art History or Conversational French classes) for their Thursday Murder Club. The goal: solving cold cases. The group: decidedly mixed (Elizabeth; Ron, the retired union organizer; Ibrahim, a methodical sort better with numbers than with adventure, and new group member Joyce, who just wants something exciting to happen). Richard Osman’s series is a (hilarious) fledgling; the second book is The Man Who Died Twice; a third, The Bullet That Missed, will be out in late September 2022. You can thank me when you discover how marvelous these books are, but I’ll pass the praise on to my former Washington Post colleague Caroline Mayer for the tip (thanks, Caroline!).

THE MAMUR ZAPT

Author Michael Pearce

I don’t remember how I stumbled upon the Mamur Zapt mysteries, but it was quite the rabbit hole. Start with the term Mamur Zapt, which is not a name but a title for the head of the political police in pre-World War I Egypt when Egypt was ruled by the Khedive but wasn’t really because the Brits were in charge. Got that? It’s only the beginning of an exotic 19-book trip that has little to do with the Nile. And it helps to know that in the first volume, The Mamur Zapt & the Return of the Carpet, the rug in question has nothing to do with home furnishings; it’s a holy object on its way home from Mecca. Okay! Other titles are slightly less domestic-sounding and rather more chilling: The Bride Box (okay, that sounds domestic, but . . . ), The Face in the Cemetery, The Mamur Zapt and the Camel of Destruction (that one begs to be read for the title alone; haven’t yet but will).

CHIEF INSPECTOR ANDREAS KALDIS

Author Jeffrey Siger

Pick a Greek island: Mykonos, Patmos, Tinos, Santorini, Ikaria. You name any of the Cycladic isles and there’s bound to be homicide afoot there, at least in this series by Jeffrey Siger, a former New York lawyer who now lives in Greece. Honest cop Andreas Kaldis is often dragged in to set things right—with all praise going to his very political superior, of course. There’s reverence for the beauty and storied history of these islands and their people, and awareness of the international forces at work there, including current immigrants—just about every civilization has trod over Greece over the millennia—and international crime syndicates. The first book, Murder in Mykonos, will put you in the mood for an Aegean cruise, but it will also prepare you for the real world of today’s Greece. All dozen volumes of it. I’m four books in, and it’s another win for my friend Barbara Carroll!

BROTHER CADFAEL

COMMISSARIO GUIDO BRUNETTI

CHIEF INSPECTOR ARMAND GAMACHE

DR. SIRI PAIBOUN

POLICE CHIEF BRUNO COURRÈGES

ALEX KOVACS

AMELIA PEABODY

AURELIO ZEN

Author Michael Dibdin

The late, great Michael Dibdin had his melancholy police inspector posted all over the Italic peninsula, usually regretting that he couldn’t go home. The first book, the terrific Ratking, sends Aurelio Zen to Perugia because of a kidnapping, but a personal favorite of mine is Back to Bologna, in which a Bolognese industrialist is killed with a Parmesan knife (I know, right?). Oh, and there’s Dead Lagoon, wherein our hero gets to go home to Venice, but not in the most reassuring way.

Long in the what? / iStock photo.

By Valerie Monroe

Can’t get enough Valerie Monroe? There’s more at https://valeriemonroe.substack.com.

EARLY ONE weekend afternoon some years ago, I spent a couple of hours in a park swarming with parents nuzzling their babies, with partying children running around, faces painted like clowns, like fairies, like little wild animals, like gypsies. One small, pale boy scrambled to the top of an imposing rock, threw his arms open wide, and warbled, “I am the king! I am the king!” And I was reminded how profoundly entertaining children can be.

Though I’d have found my own son thoroughly entertaining if he’d simply stood still while I watched him grow, he insisted on taking up other, more complicated pursuits: juggling, performing magic tricks, playing the saxophone. There was always something to do around him: applaud, pull a card out of a deck, clap my hands over my ears. Having a child provided me with a steady stream of things to respond to, demanding constant intimacy with the present.

Somehow, that child became an adult with a child of his own. Though I could tell you the practical details of how it happened, I can’t explain the when. In a matter of seconds, it seems I have become the mother of a father. And the other day I heard my 3-year-old granddaughter ask him, Why is Grammie old?

I wish I knew the answer to that question. But I am old. And I have the teeth to prove it.

Which leads me to . . .

◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊

“Ask Val” answers your urgent questions.

Yes, you, next to the little girl in the red hooded cape. Why are you covering your mouth with your—wait . . . is that a paw?

Q: It seems my teeth are becoming more noticeable—and not in a good way—as I get older. What’s happening to me?

A: Ah, yes. Your gums are deteriorating. Have a nice day!

The problem is that your gums have begun to shrink away from the crown portion of your teeth, exposing some of the root. The length of the average front tooth is 10 to 12 millimeters; with recession and root exposure, it can become as long as 15 to 17 millimeters. (That’s where the expression “long in the tooth” comes from, indicating someone of advanced age.) In the same way that skin loses collagen fibers, gum tissue loses mass. The best preventive measure is to brush and floss twice a day, which can help keep your gums free of bacteria and, therefore, recession-worsening disease. Also, overly vigorous cleaning can scrub away gum tissue, so avoid trying to work out while you brush. I like this dentist-recommended toothbrush. (Mine vibrates in the key of C. I don’t know why I noticed this, but it pleases me.)

Having your teeth professionally whitened is a fine way to freshen up your face, because, a) white teeth are a sign of good health (and youth), and b) the procedure isn’t outrageously expensive and is fairly easy. But best to start out with a natural shade of pale rather than a whiter one. Too-white teeth look fake at any age, but on a mature person they can look . . . false. Finding the most natural-looking shade partly depends on your skin tone: Simply, the lighter your skin, the lighter your teeth can be, as olive or darker skin can create too much contrast with bright pearly whites. Better if your tooth color matches your sclera (the whites of the eyes), which is typically a creamy, off-white.

Poor dental aesthetics are linked to lack of self-confidence—and studies show, unsurprisingly, that discolored teeth have a negative impact on social perceptions. Healthy chompers also help preserve the architecture of the face, as the cheeks and lips are supported by the teeth and jaw.

I’ve been thinking about my granddaughter’s question, relative to being intimate with the present. I mean, to quote Judy Collins, who knows where the time goes? But the more we’re rooted in the present, the more we practice that over the years, the more constantly, consistently can we be here.

Why is Grammie old? Maybe the better to love you, my dear.

MyLittleBird often includes links to products we write about. Our editorial choices are made independently; nonetheless, a purchase made through such a link can sometimes result in MyLittleBird receiving a commission on the sale, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com. 

The little backyard that started it all 39 years ago, in a picture taken this week. Here it shows the area covered with the blossoms of the Kwanzan cherry tree. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

. . . I am a no dig/no till gardener, so I suggest you don’t dig your garden at all, not even in spring.

Instead of digging in the organic matter (garden or local authority compost, well-rotted manure, Strulch*), lay it on top. The worms and the micro-organisms will work it in naturally.

Sometimes people say that they have to dig, because they have very heavy clay soil. However, the method also works for heavier and lighter soils. If you are in doubt, why not set aside one border as “no dig/no till” and see how it goes.

—Alexandra Campbell, The Middle-Sized Garden

This is a position I have espoused for the last 35 or so years, but Campbell is British so of course she knows best. Though I don’t know how she sounds, we assume the voice is Masterpiece Theater quality, posh, you know, the voice of authority, used to sell everything from Jaguars to Poo-Pourri, the bathroom refresher. Like speaking through a mouthful of marbles, not Marlboro fog.

I have a theory that the Brits have developed stronger chins than most because of this lock-jawed speech, Churchill the exception that proves the rule. I will research this further.

What I’ve said in at least one column is that we never bothered to improve our heavy clay garden soil when we bought this house nearly 39 years ago. Other than a spindly sapling of an apricot tree—the previous owner’s single attempt at livening the space—the plot was not fussed over, ever, from the time it was built in 1915. Thus, it was a pristine, hard-packed lot both front and rear.

As I’ve also said before, several times, I am not a gardener, or ever thought I was. I’m a decorator. Give me a blank space and I’ll tart it up. So I proceeded to tart up the yard, starting with eye-catching annuals, figuring we’d be living here only a few years and then move to Key West or some such.

As the years passed, the occasional perennial found its way in. Often as gifts, like the various hydrangeas. Year after year we remained and the garden grew, soil ball after soil ball, bag of mulch after bag of mulch. Until now when the soil has become so loose and rich that I scarcely need a digger to dig, my fingers will do.

And, as the years passed, technical difficulties arose, like the tree that grew to shade the ground like a giant umbrella, forcing the addition of shade-loving plants. Lovely but invasive plants . . . invaded. Flowers guaranteed to flower refused to, others so simple a child could grow them swiftly died. That sort of thing.

I read a book, then two, then more. Catalogues and magazines piled up. Websites and tweets were explored. And blogs like Alexandra Campbell’s led me to other blogs and books. In time, I know the aisles of garden centers better than those of Nordstrom and Macy’s.

Somehow the garden grew, and I grew into a gardener.

* A straw mulch for organic gardening manufactured and sold in the UK.

This is about as good as daffodils get. / iStock photo, above and on the front.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

I’VE GROWN to hate daffodils. While I’m perfectly happy if you grow them, maybe even share some flowers with me, I’m sorry I bothered planting them. 

They’re such a nuisance in the small garden. Oh yes, it’s exciting to see the foliage poke up in the border—one of the first signs of spring. But it turns out that anticipation is 95% of the pleasure (of any event, when you think about it:   What’s in the box, behind the door? They make game shows out of this). 

The daffodil greens pop up, the buds open, and just as swiftly the flowers frizzle, leaving a mess of floppy foliage that distracts from whatever flowers are coming next, like the roses and peonies, far more beautiful and deliciously scented. It’s an unsightly mass, that foliage, ragged, unruly, and—the ultimate issue—long-lasting. It straggles on into June and sometimes July, and you’re supposed to leave it alone. 

In some horticultural mumbo-jumbo involving photosynthesis, a word you might not have heard since high school biology, the foliage absorbs nutrients that feed the bulbs and ensures more flowers the following year. 

The first year after planting, the bulbs will produce a few flowers, so you follow directions and leave them be, and the floppy foliage will be ugly, but there won’t be much of it. The next year, they produce twice as many, which is momentarily exciting, but the foliage is twice as thick. And so forth. 

And that damned foliage is supposed to remain until the leaves yellow and soften, like so many banana peels strewn higgledy-piggledy about the border, then turn brown and die. At that point you can cut the leaves off at ground level. 

Many people fold the leaves as they begin to soften, creating neat little nests that look like huts for pixies, I suppose, if you’re a hovering bug. This is a giant NO! NO! according to reputable gardening sites. Leave the foliage alone, they all say. To which I reply, Phooey! Fold away! 

Tulips have a similar foliage issue, but with them the likelihood of a fine performance in subsequent years is doubtful. I just pull them when they’re done flowering, replacing them in the fall.

You can do the same with daffs, though the first year’s flowering will be puny. Give them a yank when they’re done and they’ll pop out easily enough. If you leave them in place, each year thereafter you’ll have a bigger, cheerier display—for the 10 seconds they’re in bloom. But as years pass, the bulbs become more stubborn, their little legs reaching far down and tangling with whatever is way down there, and anchoring themselves, so eradicating them is nearly impossible. I know this.

You can also just hack off the foliage after the bloom, in the hope of killing them once and for all, but the leaves will still pop up each subsequent year with fewer and fewer flowers and more mess. I know this too. 

Best, I think, to just buy them as cut flowers at a market or flower stand, where they’re usually 10 for a buck or so. Stick the stems in those clever floral water tubes with the pointy bottoms that I’m always going on about, and insert them into the garden, where they’ll look just dandy.  

In the 39-plus years since I planted the bulbs, I think I’ve gotten maybe five or six weeks of pleasure. Even with a snap to the air the blossoms rarely last more than a few days. And if the temperature soars, at it often does, they’re gone overnight.  

That is not, I figure, a good payoff. 

Made entirely from one sheet of paper, snipped away at by paper artist Lucrezia Bieler. She calls her works “papercuttings”; we call them amazing.

By Nancy McKeon

WOOD. CLAY. SILVER. Three substances and hundreds of treasures at the Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington DC next week.

Show-goers will find wood in many forms, from polished furniture to hand-bent and -steamed basketry to pulp-based paper. Clay can mean humble terracotta pots, but at the craft show it’s more likely raised by artisans to heights of fired earthenware and sparkling porcelain vessels. Silver gets hammered and stretched and shaped into jewelry, as well as into elevated everyday household objects.

Of course the show encompasses other materials as well: glass, fabric, decorative fiber, precious and semi-precious gems, leather, and mixed media. But here are four craftspeople lifting their basic materials in inspiring ways.

Paper

Swiss-born Lucrezia Bieler starts with a sheet of black paper and surgical scissors. What she winds up with is work that hangs in museums. For several years she has been working on two themes: women interacting with nature (the example shown above) and endangered species. “For the women-nature compositions,” she states, “I use a style that reminds me of mediaeval millefleur tapestry or Impressionist paintings.”

Bieler’s cutttings are part of the Swiss and German tradition of Scherenschnitte, or “scissor cuts,” begun in the 16th century, emigrating to the United States with Swiss and German immigrants, largely to Pennsylvania. Bieler mounts her finished pieces onto white paper, but glues them only in certain places to allow shadow and depth.

Simple pieces, she explains, can be done in a day, but complex ones, such as shown above, can take an entire year, and are priced accordingly.

Artisan Jennifer McCurdy specializes in wheel-thrown porcelain, which she then carves for movement and shadow.

Porcelain

Jennifer McCurdy of Martha’s Vineyard works with a translucent body for her pieces, starting by throwing porcelain on the potter’s wheel, then carving for light and shadow and only then firing the vessels. For some pieces, her husband, Tom McCurdy, enters the picture and gilds the interiors with 24-karat gold leaf. The resulting pieces manage to look as though they’ve been caught in motion.

A basket made by hand from Maine ash trees by Stephen and Tamberlaine Zeh.

Wood Basketry

Baskets are varied. In the Smithsonian show, Connecticut basketmaker Kari Lønning, who studied Norwegian crafts at the University of Oslo, works with the invasive akebia vine and artist-dyed rattan reed to produce often colorful baskets. Stephen and Tamberlaine Zeh, on the other hand, make their baskets from Maine brown ash trees. It sounds as if they torture the wood, citing hand-splitting, pounding, hand-scraping, carving, and green-bending, but those are the methods of the Maine woodsmen, Shakers, and Native American basketmakers. Inspired by their basketry, Tamberlaine Zeh takes the couple’s basketmaking techniques and applies them to weaving gold and platinum jewelry.

Sara Thompson brings a minimalist sensibility to traditional silversmithing.

Silver

Sara Thompson apprenticed herself to a bench jeweler while she was still in high school in Massachusetts. She then pursued metalsmithing at the Oregon College of Art and Craft. She thrives on “raising” a flat sheet of sterling silver into a three-dimensional vessel or spoon. A 12-minute video on her website documents the six-hour process of making such a work. The pieces she will bring to the Smithsonian fair show what she calls a convergence of traditional silversmithing with contemporary and minimal design—practical objects with a touch of artistry and, always, the visible hand of the artisan.

Small, simple spoons by silversmith Sara Thompson.

The Smithsonian Craft Show opens to the public on Thursday, April 21, 2022. Want to be among the first? Tickets for the Preview Night Party—from 6 to 9pm on Wednesday, April 20—are $250. First Look and Visionary Reception—from 5 to 6pm—are $500.

Show hours: 10:30am to 5:30pm, Thursday, April 21, to Saturday, April 23; and Sunday, April 24, 11am to 5pm. You may use your ticket on the day of your choice.

Admission: $20 at the door or in advance online at Smithsonian Craft Show.

Group tickets (10 or more) are $10 each; student tickets are $10.

Covid Protocol:

To attend, proof of full vaccination against Covid-19 is required, either by displaying your status on a smartphone or by showing a physical copy of the vaccination card or official vaccination record.

Unvaccinated guests must provide proof of a negative Covid-19 test taken within 72 hours of attending.

Masks must be worn indoors, regardless of vaccination status, unless actively eating or drinking.

The Smithsonian Craft Show is produced by the Smithsonian Women’s Committee, an all-volunteer organization that supports the education, outreach and research programs of the Smithsonian Institution. The awe-inspiring National Building Museum is located at 401 F Street NW (202-272-2448). The closest Metro stop is Judiciary Square. 

This is how LittleBird Stephanie’s sago comes out of “hibernation.” Not so pretty. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

PERHAPS YOU paint Easter eggs. I paint a sago palm. 

Each year the 10-, maybe 9-year-old, plant—which, while it looks like a palm, is not a palm but a cycad—moves from its perch in the foyer to a perch on the front porch, between the window boxes. It’s very grand when the sago leaves are greenly unfurled.

At the moment, it’s not in the least attractive.

Sadly, it’s a pain in the butt to water indoors in its rather shallow, though fabulous and dramatic, cast-iron planter. You can hardly take a hose to it in the foyer, and the planter is not just heavy but wide, making it a two-person operation to lift and place anywhere, so it tends to dry out a little too frequently.

The result is that the leaves gradually yellow and by around this time each year you have a nobbily core that strongly resembles a pineapple and a bunch of pale and brittle fronds. This is an unappetizing sight. It looks, in fact, rather dead. But it’s not dead, it’s just doing what it does, guzzle water in preparation for a spectacular regeneration. 

Here’s where a can of Colortool spray paint, from Design Master, comes in handy. A particular shade called Basil is a dead ringer for life. And totally harmless to plants, I’ve found, by testing it myself many times over the years. 

If I were more careful, cautious, I would have The Prince help me put the plant on the porch floor on top of layers of newspaper to avoid spraying walls and such surroundings. This is what he would do, being far more fastidious about such than I. Instead, I take the day’s sports section of the Washington Post, which would otherwise be used for the evening’s fireplace starter, carefully place it under a frond, shellack it with spray paint, then repeat with each leaf.

Sorry I can’t give you the full drama of this transformation as it only occurred to me to write about it when I was about 75% done—but you can see some of the yellowed leaves in the photo above and the newly greened leaves in the finished project, below and on the front.

The finished, spray-painted sago palm. / Photo here and on the front by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

Note that here and there I’ve left some brownish yellow at leaf edge? Ah! This is the genius: I do not want the plant to look unnatural, therefore I leave bits unpainted or not thoroughly coated, as if they’re just beginning to brown. 

This might also be read as I was too damn lazy to do the job properly, which is what Some People might say.   

What you can’t see are the little nibs in the center of the center that are just beginning to develop. The sago has this amazing habit of issuing those pointy bits, which sit and sit for weeks and then suddenly—overnight, I swear—they emerge and unfurl, inches high. And then they laugh.  

Author Pat McNees loves reading banned or challenged books, including the Holy Bible, on the front. Above, she reads The Kite Runner. / Photos by Susan Pourian.

By Pat McNees

IF YOU THINK you’ve been hearing more about banned books lately, you’re absolutely right. According to the New York Times, the American Library Association (ALA) has reported 330 recent reports of book challenges—more than ever before.

The ALA list of banned and challenged books distinguishes between a “challenge” (an attempt to remove or restrict materials in a classroom or library, based on the objections of one person or group) and actual “banning” (when the material is removed.) You can look up the top 10 books challenged each year (for the years 2000-2020) with the reasons each book was challenged.

Author Pat McNees dips into The Catcher in the Rye. / Photo by Susan Pourian.

Honestly, a look at that list is eye-opening. The reasons given are as interesting as the titles themselves.

For three years running (2018-2020), the No. 1 most often mentioned book was George by Alex Gino, the sensitive portrayal of a transgender child coming to terms with gender identity. It was challenged, banned, and restricted for LGBTQIA+ content, conflicting with a religious viewpoint, and not reflecting “the values of our community.”

♦ No. 5 was The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, banned and challenged for profanity, sexual references, and allegations of sexual misconduct by the author.

♦ To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (No. 7) was still being both banned and challenged for racial slurs and their negative effect on students, for featuring a “white savior” character, and for its perception of the Black experience.

♦ The No. 10 book in 2019 was a children’s picture book, And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, the story of two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo who became inseparable. When zookeepers gave the pair a motherless egg, they successfully hatched baby Tango. This story about a same-sex family was challenged and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content.

Fifty Shades of Grey is one of the challenged books that author Pat McNees seems to be enjoying. / Photo by Susan Pourian.

Most writers can’t stand the idea of limiting access to books. What can you do to counter the pressures librarians and teachers get to remove books from circulation? I’ve been following this issue for years, and here are a few possibilities:

1. Stand up to censorship and participate in the Stand for the Banned Virtual Readout by posting a video of yourself or a kid you know reading from a banned book or talking about censorship. Videos may be featured on the Banned Books Week YouTube channel. Read guidelines here.

2. Report instances of censorship to members of the Banned Books Week Coalition, which includes the American Library Association, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the National Coalition Against Censorship, or the National Council of Teachers of English.

3. Exercise your reading rights. Check out or buy a banned book from the ALA’s list. Encourage your book club to discuss what you read.

4. Pick a Banned Books image from Pinterest and post it online.

5. Help celebrate Banned Books Week (Sept. 18-24, 2022)

6. And follow it on Twitter.

And lastly, don’t despair. As Phyllis Reynolds Naylor points out: “Well, the man who first translated the Bible into English was burned at the stake, and they’ve been at it ever since. Must be all that adultery, murder, and incest. But not to worry. It’s back on the shelves.”

Image from “The Urban Garden: 101 Ways to Grow Food and Beauty in the City.” / Image from the book.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

THERE ARE things peculiar to city gardens and peculiar things about city gardens. 

Unlike the suburbs, city gardens don’t, as a rule, have marauding deer—though the occasional one makes an appearance, causing general delight, at least in my neck of the woods. Neighbors hang over railings, cameras capture the strange sighting, which usually makes the evening news. It’s as if we’d spotted a minotaur or an elephant.

Well, we used to have an annual parade of elephants when the circus would come to town, stomping up the excitement, as it were, but that’s neither here nor there, as the circus is kaput. 

However, there are animals about. Mostly squirrels, which are generally considered cute, and the occasional opossum. We had one of those for a spell. She used to perch on the fence of an evening, weird reflective eyes quietly watching us dine on the back porch. There are also raccoons, cursed for plucking expensive koi from backyard ponds. This week there was a fox trotting around the US Capitol grounds, and what a foofaraw he (or she) caused, nipping at lawmakers’ ankles as we often wish we could. 

Kathy Jentz, left, and Teri Speight, authors of The Urban Garden: 101 Ways to Grow Food and Beauty in the City. / Jentz photo by Zoe Zindash, Speight photo by Kizi N’Kodia.

But it is mainly dogs that are a nuisance in the city, destroying curbside gardens with their digging and acid-rain-quality pee, and any patch of grass neighbors have the audacity to try to maintain. 

Close behind this menace are plant thieves of the two-legged variety, snatching tomatoes and peonies that dare come close enough to the garden’s edge to get pinched, and postal workers, ears glued to phones, that tromp their way through the tulips. 

The urban garden of our dreams, from “The Urban Garden: 101 Ways to Grow Food and Beauty in the City.” / Photo by Kathy Jentz.

We, meaning our gardens, again in general, are small. Too small for big trees—though some, like me, plant them anyway, figuring (wrongly) that we’d have long moved to Key West before their size became an issue. 

And with homes butted up against one another, with low fences if any, there’s not one hell of a lot of privacy. 

Scale, privacy, foiling miscreants, plant selection, and making a lot out of a little are the essential themes of The Urban Garden: 101 Ways to Grow Food and Beauty in the City, by Kathy Jentz, editor and publisher of Washington Gardener Magazine, and Teri Speight, garden speaker, writer, podcaster, and former head gardener for the City of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Together they consider the pitfalls and pleasures of city gardening. A tiny garden can be freeing, they say. If there’s only so much you can do in a small space, focus on creating a “jewel box,” they say. 

It’s a slim book, just over 300 pages, but comprehensive; though there are numerous how-tos, it’s more of an engagingly written idea springboard than an instruction manual. While an experienced gardener could run with the ideas, someone new to gardening would find the book most useful as inspiration. 

The authors stumble with ideas for entertaining and garden art— “Give Barbie and her friends an outdoor jungle-themed disco.” Good God, no! But when the focus is on gardens, they’re firmly rooted in their element. 

There are excellent chapters on creating cottage gardens, night gardens, perennial gardens, water features, scented gardens, roof gardens, and Asian gardens.  Other chapters focus on ground covers, shrubs, and small trees for year-round interest; using pots and window boxes for herbs and vegetables as well as flowers; vertical gardening; lighting; creating privacy with plants and ornaments; laying out the garden to make it seem larger; and hardscaping—how and where to lay out paths, and the wealth of unusual materials you might use, such as moss and creeping herbs instead of stone or brick in lightly trod areas. 

Offbeat ideas are liberally sprinkled. Like growing rice in a pot with no drainage: It unfurls like tall grasses, and yes, you can harvest it for dinner. Or growing “franken-trees,” dwarf fruit trees with several varieties of fruit grafted onto a single plant. Say, an apple tree with one branch of Fuji and another of Honeycrisp, or “fruit cocktail” trees grafted with varieties of plums and peaches. 

Hiding or distracting from eyesores such as power lines and trash bins gets several chapters on materials for screening the unsightly, or just distracting the eye. Like hanging an actual door or picture frame to highlight an artful patch of garden, or using mirrors, which also open-up tight spaces and reflect often sparse light. 

And yes, there are suggestions for dealing with dogs and plant thieves, from planting thorny plants along garden borders to foil tomato thieves to inserting twigs among the shrubbish to discourage dogs from squatting among the peonies. Though I have found fondue forks work best, those pronged ends really get the point across. And I haven’t made fondue in a few decades anyway. 

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