and how was your Thanksgiving?

My husband cooked the entire Thanksgiving dinner. He has done most of it for years, and now he has completely edged me out of the kitchen for special meals (except for washing the dishes and setting the table) which is fine because he's a very good cook and loves doing it as long as he can try new things. Anyway, among the clutter on the counters was a small metal bucket, filled with dead leaves from our lawn. (I guess I should have been raking leaves instead of watching football. And yes, I am the football fanatic, and my husband is the chef.) He refused to tell us what they were for, so I envisioned them decorating a platter.

As we gathered to sit at the table he took out his little creme brulee blow torch and set the leaves on fire.

I immediately say, (repeatedly) you're going to set off the smoke alarm; the kids are laughing hysterically; everyone is asking what the h*** are you doing? He says I wanted to bring back memories of the smell of burning leaves; Me: you're going to set off the alarm; Kids: burning leaves is illegal, we don't have that memory. Then the alarm went off. And the smell really was wonderful.

the evidence

My Thanksgiving duties were so onerous that I didn't order flowers, so I got a supermarket bunch, pulled out the best, and added some holly from my garden.

No that is not my dining room table, but it is a dark room and the flash made it look rather lurid, so I took this picture outside. 

lurid

In other news, I've been trying not to complain here about the flood fallout that continues to devastate the Catskills. The last two weekends sales were 10% of what they were a year ago. We really relied on the supermarket (the next closest one is 30 miles away) to bring people to town. Also 2/3 of the businesses are still closed, though a few reopened last week and they finally removed the concrete barriers that closed off most of the town and made it look like a war zone. We've formed a little ad hoc Main Street merchants group and are busy putting up lights and trees and trying to make the town look inviting. Anyway, Harriet, who watches the store when I am not there called me yesterday (Friday), and told me we finally had a good day. Among other things at least a dozen of those racy, kitschy potholders sold. They are making people laugh, which is good. Another way to make people laugh is to put a blowtorch to a bucket of dry leaves in your kitchen near the smoke detector.

Jen

Museum of Bad Art

I am fortunate to live reasonably near the Museum of Bad Art, which is in the basement of a movie theatre (art house, of course) in Dedham, Massachusetts. I love that it exists, that it raises questions, that it is humorous and quirky and never fails to make me smile.

The art comes from thrift stores, yard sales, donations (sometimes by the artist) and other such places. It's sometimes funny, sometimes creepy, generally weird. There is also something serious and dear about it.

"The pieces in the MOBA collection range from the work of talented artists that have gone awry to works of exuberant, although crude, execution by artists barely in control of the brush. What they all have in common is a special quality that sets them apart in one way or another from the merely incompetent."  (from the MOBA website).

Yup, weird.

The comments posted with each picture are amusing. Some are written by the person who donated it, some by the MOBA curators. For the above: "No longer able to tolerate the incessant barking, Charlie the chipmunk uses a Band-Aid to tape Sheba the Sheepdog's mouth shut before posing with her on the picnic table." (Doesn't that look more like a monkey-dog than a chipmunk?)

Of course the term bad art raises eyebrows. There's a New York Times article about MOBA that discusses that issue  (read it here). I love outsider art, which I could possibly distinguish from bad art, but am not going to go into parsing all of that here, now. It's not relevant.

For years I have toyed with the idea of creating something like the MOBA in the Catskills--I think it would be great fun and I see plenty of good bad art at the auctions I frequent. I even emailed MOBA to see if they'd be interested in having a Catskills outpost. Alas, I have not yet heard from them. Of course I can go ahead and do something on my own. Maybe make a little space in the store for quirky art?

All pictures from the MOBA collection. 

crazy bird people

Check out this wacky bird post from BIRD/LIKE. For one thing, there's a picture of taxidermied bird shoes. And an Egyptian birdhouse the size of a lighthouse. And a Hitchcock's "The Birds" Barbie.

And if you haven't seen it (or if you have, I'm sure you want to see it again):



I probably have 200 birds in my store (and it's a small store). Wooden birds, ceramic, plaster, metal. Birds on curtains, notecards, field bags. Lots of books about birds. But I'm not worried--birds are classic. The rest of the world can move on to newts or armadillos--I stand by my birds.

Oh, and in case you missed it earlier this week, watch Crimes of (bird) Passion here.
Enjoy the weekend--it's almost spring!

typewriter love

I have a manual typewriter in the store that I plan to use to make price tags, though I haven't done so yet. I forgot how loud they are and worry I will disturb the other stores in the building. And my goodness, how hard you have to press the keys!  Enjoy the Boston Typewriter Orchestra--repurposing at its finest.