Stop Being So Critical

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I loved this Op-Ed by Michael S. Roth in the NY Times: "Young Minds in Critical Condition."

He says:

Our best college students are very good at being critical. In fact being smart, for many, means being critical. Having strong critical skills shows that you will not be easily fooled. It is a sign of sophistication, especially when coupled with an acknowledgment of one’s own “privilege.” [Bold emphasis my own.]

Yes, how many times did I hear "critical thinking" thrown around in my education? SO MANY TIMES that's how many. But, like he goes on to say, it's not that great of a life skill. And in fact, it could be a hindrance to a more open and creative learning process:

In campus cultures where being smart means being a critical unmasker, students may become too good at showing how things can’t possibly make sense. They may close themselves off from their potential to find or create meaning and direction from the books, music and experiments they encounter in the classroom.

And why do I care? Out of college? And not a professor? Because it resonates with something I've been thinking a lot about since moving up here and that is:

The value of exploration and support over tunnel vision and criticism. 

Opening this inn has been a learning a experience in a thousand ways. But I've especially appreciated having the opportunity to get better at being flexible, and at being able to work towards the big picture of something while not letting small, daily frustrations, inconsistencies, and unforeseen situations stress me out or throw me off course.

We knew things would get complicated, we knew things wouldn't go as planned. But instead of feeling critical (of myself and my team and this property) we've been able to come up with solutions that will make this place even better than we first planned.

I'm not saying I'm an ace at it, but there's something about the folks we're working with and the pace of country life that's opened me up this way.

I've talked about how living up here has cut down on the rat race of constant comparison, how it's made me reconsider things like being a "city person" at heart or how I think I might want to raise kids. Every day I'm surprised by what a difference this surrounding has made in how I feel and interact with the world. And it's funny because I've spent years abroad and when you're out of the country you expect these kind of changes and this kind of reflection, but not so much when you move within the States.

Regardless of exactly what is bringing these questions to the surface, I'm happy to be asking them.

I Love Lamp: Mini Barn

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Now that it's fiiiiiiinally getting warm out, Steven and I have started to get our hands dirty tackling some projects like the Mini Barn aka No-More-Goats-Gazebo aka Goatzebo. See, the previous owners had lots and lots o' goats:

Fifty-two to be precise. And they used what was once a hotel bunk room as a pen to separate some of the more aggressive male goats. Steven and I are now de-goat-ing it to turn it into a gazebo of sorts for guests to hang out in.

First we removed the beat up windows and door, and the particle board that was nailed up over the back.

Then with our maul and crowbars, we took out parts of the pens. I say "parts" because we're leaving the walls for a booth-feel. And I say "we" even though this part was clearly all Steven.

Next we swept out all the cobwebs and hay and thought about how on earth we were gonna get rid of the goat-y smell from the particle board floor. I decided to look under the building itself to see if there was perhaps a better sub-floor beneath all the goat grime and there was! So with crowbars we painstakingly removed the rotted particle board floors to reveal a much more people-friendly wood floor.

We got about halfway done with the floor before we decided to call it a day. Sometimes it's best to quit when you're ahead!

Our next steps are to finish ripping up the rest of the floor, give the whole thing a hearty power-wash then paint the shit out of it. And while I'm a total sucker for whitewash, that seems like a bit of a dangerous choice for such an indoor-outdoor space so instead we're going for a "Notre Dame" grey.

Hopefully I'll have some more progress to report next week!

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

I Love Lamp: New Floors

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Like I said on Instagram, I call this one "Before and Almost-After":

New floors to go with our new windows and freshly painted white walls. You better believe I took my shoes off, padded around barefoot, laid down on it. And the verdict is I LOVE IT! Hopefully you will too when you come for a visit.

Things are coming along.

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

I Love Lamp: Plastic Rugs

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I came across this photo today from SFGirlByBay and it re-awoke this weird love I have of plastic rugs:

I think it was when we were living in Mali that I first fell for them. People use them indoors and out, as often for a party as for prayers.

We bought a few when we were living at a radio station in the little town of Segou. (I know I know, it was a super crazy situation! Read the book I wrote about our travels and you'll know all about that and plenty of other weird stuff we put ourselves through...)

And we've held onto one through the years which is currently living in our kitchen:

Quite a distance that one has traveled. Who'da thunk.

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

Man Repeller on the Perfect Instagram Account

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Have you seen the Man Repeller post on the perfect Instagram account? HILARIOUS.

She (Amelia Diamond), like me, wants to create a second Instagram account. Although where I want to fill mine with all the boring and stressful and entirely unappealing things in my life, she wants to indulge in all of the sunsets, macarons, and humble bragging that she can.

I say GO FOR IT. I'm all about having more subversive Instagram accounts out there.

I Love Lamp: Swings!

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I've had a thing for swings for a while now.

So much so that back in Brooklyn I insisted on hanging a hammock inside.

Which was mostly a noble attempt to deflect my true desire: to have a yard with a swing.

So imagine my joy when yesterday reached an insanely balmy 60 degrees--

And Steven built me a swing!

Like just about everything we've had a hand in here, it's made from barn wood. (And some climbing rope threaded through two drilled holes.) Not to downplay Steven's fabulous craftsmanship but, boy was it easy!

As we develop the grounds for the Inn, I'm gonna be sure to have some swings for guests because we shouldn't be the only ones enjoying the view of Mt. West Kill like this.

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

The Danger of Inspiration

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A friend of mine gave me a copy of Annie Dillard's famous book The Writing Life last year and I both love and loathe the advise she gives. So I was excited see this Op-Ed in the Times by Thomas Chatterton Williams that circles around her warning that a writer is "careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write".

Cutting to it: Williams goes on a Game of Thrones watching and reading binge and he can't shake that style and voice out of his own writing.

"I do not mean to sound presumptuous: There are far worse things than crafting a massively successful, carefully plotted and highly lucrative series of fantasy novels. The problem for me was that I wasn’t writing anything close to as good as the books whose language and thought patterns I was so haplessly aping. Nor was I any longer making the kind of work I’d set out to create in the first place. I was somehow pumping out a terrible sausage of the two."

Williams, I have BEEN THERE man. I am a total language ape. I'm one of those people who has to resist putting on an Irish accent when in Irish company. Which is why, when I'm writing, I don't avoid reading all together (impossible, unpleasant) but rather, I read things that are sooooo far from my voice that it would feel ludicrous and immediately unnatural to mimic it. It's easier to catch the straying this way.

Williams has a similar solution:

"Salvation arrived (knock on wood) when I decided to give Teju Cole’s “Open City” another go. This was a streamlined book I had tried several times to start without any traction. Coming back to it in the middle of “A Song of Ice and Fire” was a revelation. No matter how much Martin I had ingested, 15 minutes with Cole was like a palette cleanser on my mind, a spoonful of cool sorbet after a long and heavy meal....The solution, I’m convinced now, isn’t to read less (that would be boring) or even, as Dillard suggests, to censor what is taken in. On the contrary, the answer seems to be to take in more."

(Bold emphasis my own.)

All of this makes me think about a conversation I've been having with our various friends who come up and visit on the weekends--

A lot of them ask what's different up here in the country vs. back down in Brooklyn. What do we like, what do we dislike, how does it affect our writing/art/motivation. And doing leftover dishes one morning with my friends Dominique and Mary I stumbled upon the realization that a hugely important change is:

I've stopped constantly comparing myself to other people.

Part of that is that I very literally do no see other people that much. (It's nearly noon and so far and I've seen only Steven and a guy in a phone service truck.)

And naturally that will change once we're running a business that's sole focus is having people around--

But I think there's really something to be said for NYC's particular hustle, bustle, and rat race bullshit. It's a place where people come to WIN. To be THE BEST. And right now I'm really and thoroughly enjoying living at my own pace, in my own way. I don't feel guilty about getting up "late" at 8am because I see people coming back from their runs around Prospect Park, I don't feel unstylish next to that perfectly hip woman on the G train, I don't feel like a failure going to book events for famous young writers, or on the brink of poverty for not being able to afford a $16 cocktail.

It's one thing to feel inspired by other people, but quite another to feel inadvertently dragged down by their "success".

I'm doing things on my own, for their own sake and value, not in comparison to what I think I should be doing or what other people are doing. AND OH MY GOD IS IT LIBERATING.

All of this is not to say that I was desperately unhappy in New York. It's more like I no longer have this anxious hum in the background of everything, and that silence lets me focus on what's actually in front of me. And oh my, it can so be inspiring.

Santorini to West Kill

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I came across these gorgeous photos of Santorini (Greece) in Cereal Mag today, shot by Kate Holstein.

I've been thinking about Greece a lot this week because that's where Steven and I took a honeymoon-esque trip last summer and Wednesday was our 1 year anniversary. (!)

And while we didn't take any photos quite as stunning as the ones above, I believe this poolside one from Santorini is pretty epic, no?

AHAHAH! It still cracks me up.

We eloped down at Brooklyn City Hall then came up here to the Catskills for a quick honeymoon, because like I said back then, it would have seemed weird to just go back to the apartment and what, answer some emails? Rent a movie?

And this Wednesday we celebrated in the Catskills again, but this time as residents and future business owners and we just kept marveling about how if you had told us on our way out of City Hall what our lives would look like together a year from then (the big move! the house! the dog! the business!) we would have laughed.

A big hearty "I can't wait to do that!" laugh of course.

Here's to more ADVENTURE!

 

I Love Lamp: Afternoon Light

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Dramatic natural light can make just about anything look 'design-worthy'. As we inch our way towards spring, I've noticed that the light is changing around here. All winter it's been hushed and cloudy or a sharp bright blue. But now, each afternoon, there are these fabulous, intensely dramatic rays that cuts across the valley:

And I can't get enough of it!

On top of it all, the other night we had the most Miami-like sunset I've seen since moving up here:

Keep it up sun. I like what you're doing.

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

Fly Fishing in the Catskills

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This photo on Man Repeller caught my eye today because--

It's the first day of FISHING SEASON!

(File that one under "Things I Did Not Know/Care About Back in Brooklyn".)

Last summer, when we were looking for inn locations around here, my dad took Steven fly fishing out in Roscoe.

They caught all KINDS of things, and ever since then he's been, well, hooked.

This year, Steven is stoked to have his own gear and, more importantly, his very own 'crik' to fish in: the West Kill.

This morning it was loud and frothing from the melting snow. It's supposed to be in the 50s this week so it should swell quite a bit in the next few days.

For all your fisher(wo)men out there, fly fishing legend Art Flick used to live here on the West Kill. In fact, he ran a hotel at the other end of the valley where Route 42 meets Spruceton Road.

The building, unfortunately, no longer exists. I've heard a mix of stories as to why but most of them involve a fire. Either way, Art Flick's fly fishing legend lives on in his famous book:

P.S. We watched "A River Runs Through It" last night to get stoked for the opening of the season and OH MY GOD Brad Pitt is good looking it was so boring.

I Love Lamp: Barnwood Benches

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Yesterday afternoon Steven and I were feeling a little trapped and listless. It's been cold, cold, cold for months, months, months and while there's still lots to be done for the Inn and one can always work on a new book idea, we both found ourselves in a bit of a "hurry up and wait" place. We've learned that when our to-do lists have become too amorphous and intangible, it's good to get our hands dirty. Literally. So as the contractors packed up their gear for the day, we decided to take ours out and into the barn to MAKE something.

A few weeks ago Steven made a bench out of some old barnwood and 2x4s for our entranceway:

I've been trying to settle upon a design for benches in the Inn's rooms, and while I love this one, the top is one of a kind so we had to come up with something else.

When it comes to making stuff for the rooms-- for the house even-- the name of the game is "What can we cannibalize from our house/barn/yard?" aka "What's FREE?" We've made shelves out of barnwood and L brackets from the old laundry room for our bar--

We built our dining room table from barnwood and 2x4's--

Hell, we even dragged the barn door into the kitchen!

After sketching out different models involving all sorts of cuts and supports we decided upon something laughably simple: barn wood + two stumps + 4 screws. And presto!

The actual construction took maybe ten minutes, but sitting by our fire with our feet propped up on it and some beers in our hands, we felt like it was the real pride of the day's work.

Sap and Saws and Such

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It's supposed to be a good weekend for maple sap which means we'll probably go back up to our neighbors' sap house this weekend to help them out drink beer while watching the sap boil into delicious syrup.

Before then though, we've got some work to do. Like sawing the deadfall we gathered last weekend to use in our wood stove.

And if that all sounds a little too romantic to you-- like I'm wrapping this all in a perfectly crumpled dish towel-- then let me just add that IT'S STILL TWENTY DEGREES HERE and I haven't felt my toes in days.

No, I take that back. MONTHS.

Let 'Em Roam

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When we were about 7 and 9, my brother and I used to hang around the neighborhood after school with a roving gang of kid skaters. On our rollerblades (all altered to be break-less), we'd play Man Hunt, Kick the Can, and Tag through the streets of Park Slope, Brooklyn. We'd stop for pizza and candy and soda. We'd laugh at dirty jokes the older ones told that we didn't understand, we'd bicker over game rules and ignore sore losers til they shaped up. I was the only girl but that didn't seem to matter in our prepubescent world. What mattered was that we were FREE. Til the streelights came on at least. Then, without discussion, and sometimes without even a goodbye, we'd roll back to our houses and our parents who had dinner just about done. When I tell people stories like this, they think I'm lying. Or that I'm actually much older than 30 since I apparently grew up in Brooklyn in the 1950s.  But I'm telling you, it's true and it's all I can think about this morning after reading Hanna Rosin's incredible article in The Atlantic called "The Overprotected Kid".

Sure I had piano lessons  and supervised playdates and was walked to and from school by an adult until I was 9-- it was the 90s after all-- but ultimately, my childhood had elements of a bygone era of kid freedom that hardly seems to exist anymore. And for that I'm crazy grateful.

I don't have children yet so I am in no way reading this as a parent, which is sure to color one's perspective. But I will say that I've been thinking a lot about the overprotective nature of modern child rearing since moving out to the country because there's something about being in this much openness, away from all those Park Slope strollers and baby groups and fancy toy stores, that's made me rethink how I might raise a kid.

And the gist of that change is more wandering, more freedom, more unstructured time that can be lost to hours of exploration and imagined worlds. Especially outdoors.

The heart of this article is about risk and seemingly aimless and unsupervised exploration as it relates to independence and growth. Rosin gathers information for her analysis from lots of different studies, articles, and documentaries and is adept at inserting hard facts into her discussion which is exactly what makes this piece a THOUSAND times better than any other pop-science 'play is important' article I've come across in the past ten years. And in it she gives a great stab at answering the enormous, nagging question we all have about this which is:

Yeah, kids used to run around on their own a lot more through the woods and all that, but aren't kids SAFER nowadays? Aren't there fewer accidents and abductions?

The short answer is, no. Not really.

And in fact, kids might even be WORSE off from all this adult intervention. Less creative, less independent, less willing to take risks, less able to deal with the consequences of risks, uncooperative, self-centered... the list goes on and is awfully familiar if you've ever read anything about what we all accuse "millennials" of being nowadays.

Of course the world has changed since the 1970s--which is when most folks pinpoint the dramatic shift in child rearing styles--but NOT into a more dangerous place. Freak accidents are still freak accidents. Like Rosin says, "Head injuries, runaway motorcycles, a fatal fall onto a rock... turn out to be freakishly rare, unexpected tragedies that no amount of safety-proofing can prevent."

All of this is easier said than done. Someone remind me of this post when I refuse to let go of my 12 year old daughter's hand in the crosswalk one day. But it's good food for thought. And I'm so glad that there are people like Roisin and all the folks she spoke to who are doing such fantastic job of making us reconsider exactly what we do in the name of child safety and betterment.

A parting thought: an essential element of all this kind of unsupervised play is having other kids to play this way with.  You might decide your kid is allowed to go skating through the neighborhood with their friends til sunset, but if every one of their friends is required to have an adult around, well, then your kid isn't getting that kind of freedom after all.

That, or they're skating alone. Which sure, can be kind of fun. But they should really have an appreciative audience when they nail that grind down the full flight of stairs of the old building with the "No Trespassing" sign on it, cuz that was CRAZY and they DID IT flawlessly.