Your Lady of the Overdue Flickr Updates

Check it.

The series of photos below details the progress of the most delicious pie I have ever made. Components: 1. Brown sugar cashew crust, 2. Lemon Custard layer, 3. Fresh blackberries.

Build your own horse.

Available at a Clockwork Robot.

Shaq and a Panda

Oh noez!

Fallen Princesses

Dina Goldstein disenchants your Disney.

Unexpected and Wonderful

Severija Incirauskaite-Kriauneviciene cross stiches your cars and pans.

Ladies, I salute you.

Maira Kalman's blog is one of my favorite parts of the NYT. It's half comic and half diary, and Kalman's observations and ideas are presented in a beautiful, artful way. This latest entry made me tear up a little, and wish I could be more. You may recall my admiration for Ruth B. Ginsburg- a significant portion of this entry is devoted to her. Most poignant is this frame.

Taken from The New York Times, credited to Maira Kalman.

"I return to court to hear Justice Ginsburg speak to law students. And in answer to the question, 'How does it feel to be the only woman on the court?' she answers simply, 'lonely.'"

In other, important news, it's my dad's birthday. Happy day to you, Stephen Raymond Cronk. I love you, and you are the best principal I know.

Mademoiselle le Robot

For her thesis at NYU, Interactive Telecommunications Program student Kacie Kinzer has come up with a thesis project so charming, so clever, so twee, it is liable to melt your heart.

I present to you the Tweenbot.


Miss Kinzer has created a few human directed cardboard robots. Clearly conveyed on each is a destination, a goal. Without human help, the robots cannot get where they are trying to go. The idea is to observe the interaction of people with unknown communication technology. So far, her observations have been positive- no robots have been stolen or damaged, and all have wound up at their destinations.

"Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the 'right' direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, 'You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.'"- Kacie Kinzer

Email Kacie Kinzer at tweenbotinfo@gmail.com if you want updates on upcoming robot missions. I know I do.

Your Girl vs. Modernity

The power went out yesterday, for several hours- I was there for one. I did what you would expect. Lit my candles, took a long, hot bath, and read. When the electricity came back on I was almost disappointed. I need to go camping.

I need to go camping in this sleeping bag, from artist Eiko Ishizawa.

Hero of the Week

I'm in the midst of reading The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell. It's a series of stories, connected musings, on the impact of puritan ideology in America. She kind of sloughs through the usual fear/hatred of our bodies, witch hunts as the original national pastime, and the Christian nation tracts in favor of a more thorough examination of the idea of what our puritan legacy really is. She argues it's the notion of the "city on the hill," verbosity, and public education. That's all good and fine. I love her points, but I love her tangents more.
Sarah Vowell, incidentally, is not my hero of the week. But she does get points for introducing me to Chief Osceola of the Seminole people. How did Osceola snag this dubious honor? When he rejected Andrew Jackson's relocation plan, veiled as the Treaty of Payne's Landing, he stabbed it through with a knife. Other chiefs of higher seniority had signed and agreed to move the Seminoles from their native Florida to Oklahoma. It sounded like a bad deal to Osceola. So he led the resistance until he died, captured in a federal prison, of malaria. His objection to Jackson's treaty, apart from the obvious, came because of Jackson's pro-slavery stance. Married to a black woman, and well aware of white perceptions of natives, Osceola was far from keen on giving Jackson anything.

It takes a specific kind of badass to stab a treaty. My friend, May, once claimed that if she could travel back in time only once, it would be to punch Andrew Jackson in the face. I'd like to travel back in time to be Osceola's best friend.

So what if I like pretty things.

I am not impressed by most photography. In my personal opinion, popular portrait photographers- Annie Leibowitz is an obvious target for critique, but I would also argue that Seydou Keita and even Milton Rogovin- are less artists than they are panderers to the cult of celebrity or black and white high gloss. However, when there's an installation or creativity or cleverness, I can get into a photograph. Yessirree, I can.

These are from Rune Guneriussen, and they are beautiful.


I love the snow. The sort of lamp post from Narnia feeling.


And how about some phones marching into the sea. Lovely.

Darcy vs. Zombie vs. Predator

Elizabeth Bennet is having a hot year.

And remember when we found out in American history that two dudes had invented the modern sewing machine simultaneously? Well, wait for it, Mr. Darcy is The Predator.



It's like I fell into an alternate dimension where everything is tailored to my specifications.