Jennifer Jeffrey, Writer & Editor

Random Photo Friday: My Grandpa Jeffrey

This is my Grandpa Jeffrey.

I took this picture the day of my Grandma's funeral back in October. We had all spent most of the day crying, and he was wiped out. I sensed how alone he felt, even in a room full of family.

Since then, he's done remarkably well in adjusting to life on his own. He's back to delivering Meals on Wheels to seniors who can't get out on their own, and attending OSU games, and driving all over Oregon to visit family members. He still misses my Grandma terribly - we all do - but he's doing his crossword puzzles and planning a fence to keep the deer out of his yard.

See that checkbook peeking out of his shirt pocket? For as long as I've known him, my entire life, he has always carried a checkbook there. He spent the early years of his life in the tiny town of Sweetwater, Texas, picking watermelons and dreaming of bigger things. His mother wore a bonnet and smoked a corncob pipe. To this day, he speaks with a gentle twang and says "y'all."

Last time I saw him was in April, and he asked if I had filed my taxes yet.

"Of course," I replied. "I used TurboTax this year."

"Me too!" he exclaimed. "Isn't it great?"

He sent me a Facebook invitation a few weeks ago. My Grandpa - on Facebook.

I want to be just like him when I'm 84.

People become more precious when you remember that we only have a limited amount of time with each person in our lives.

Here's to savoring the moments we have with the ones we love.

x   x   x   x   x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x    x

Inspiration On the Interwebs

+ I've known about Superhero jewelry forever, but I only stumbled across Andrea's blog a couple of weeks ago. Every entry is soulful and rich, and I always leave feeling expanded.

+ This just might be worth a trip to Pennsylvania: the granddaughter of Andrew Wyeth gives personal tours of his work! It's on my Places I Want to Go list. Dang, that list is getting long.

+ Also on the list? A trip to Marrakech to visit Maryam and her gorgeous Peacock Pavilions. Look at those ceilings! *Gasp*

+ Susanna is making great progress on her winged messenger project. She'll be sending out these inspiring pieces all over the world soon...

It's the weekend.

LIVE YOUR DREAM.

Munching on Corbis Brain Bran

I recently signed up for Corbis Brain Bran and ordered their deck of inspiration cards.

It's a limited-edition collection of 24 cards printed with an eclectic assortment of images from the Corbis Image Library. Each card has a statement on the back designed to juice up the creative process when your mojo is running dry.

Like:

Go Commando

Create a Manifesto

Hire an existential detective (what a fabulous idea!)

The images range from shocking to mundane (the tribal figure above is one of my favorites: yow!) You can also subscribe to their RSS feed, which offers a steady stream of images + ideas.

It's a fun concept. I wish I could make my own deck. I'd love to assemble my own collection of images on thick, sturdy cards like these. Hmm. Maybe I could order a postcard deck from Moo - but they're glossy and snapshot-like, and I love the matte, cardboard feel of these, and the way that you can play around with them and make a sculpture of sorts when you're feeling bored or thinking through something.

I occurs to me that a custom deck like this would be a great branding piece for design agencies and copywriters to give as a gift to clients + prospects - a way to say: we think groovy thoughts and you should hire our brilliant selves, pronto-like.

Oh, the wheels :: they are turning.

Drawing Umbrellas + Marveling at the Brain

I did everything I wanted to do over the luxuriously long weekend, and a little more besides.

Observations:

+ Plump, freshly-picked purply-red organic cherries are worth every penny, but at $8 bucks a pound, I'm tempted to have them set in platinum and wear them on my ring finger. Bing Bling.

+ Pan's Labyrinth was haunting + lovely + sad. I had to squeeze my eyes shut and clap my hands over my ears during a few of the scenes. I get kind of freaked out over sadistic military personnel who enjoy torturing the enemy. I know - it's just a movie - but I can't convince myself that nothing is wrong when someone is getting their face crushed on the screen in front of me.

+ Capsule SF in charming Hayes Valley was full of fabulously creative people selling quirky, beautiful, fantastic handmade stuff. As a friend of mine said: "We're so lucky. Do you think street fairs in Wisconsin have stuff that is anywhere near this quality?" Not to knock Wisconsin, but she's right: we're really lucky. Psst: there's another Capsule show in October.

+ It's nice to get out of the city and drive across the bridge and have dinner in a sleek new space with a gorgeous brick oven and a Chez Panisse alum behind the counter, even if they still have a bit of work to do on what comes out of the kitchen. Adore those chandeliers.

+ My ongoing love affair with the New York Times online was stoked further this weekend with this article about Jill Bolte Taylor's discoveries following her brain tumor. If you haven't seen her TED Talk, you simply must. It's about 18 minutes long, and TOTALLY AWESOME:

I love the way she uses the word "choose" towards the end. I can choose to engage the right side of my brain. I can choose peace + connectedness.

I can choose joy.

+ Speaking of joy: less than one week to the R.E.M. concert.

+ So we can choose, right? But. If - hypothetically - you should happen to slip on a narrow wooden stairway and your tailbone should happen to thump-thump-thump down several of those same stairs, you may find that this whole business of choosing your frame of mind is rather more difficult than it seems, especially when pain radiates up through your torso and down through your legs every time you sit or stand or move a single inch. Hypothetically.

There are only four working days this week. Huzzah!

Stargazer Lilies + A Dreamy List for a Long Weekend

Perched on the edge of a 3-day weekend, I'm giddy with possibility.

Maybe I'm drunk on the scent of these pink speckled stargazer lilies that have been perfuming my air all week with their lush, spicy fragrance. I wish I could bottle it up and slather it on my skin before I walk out the door.

What are the ingredients that make a weekend special?

Here's what's going into mine:

+ Eat pie

+ Drink tea

+ Draw umbrellas

+ Find cherries

+ Walk barefoot on the beach

+ Slide into the car and drive somewhere new

+ Take my camera with me everywhere (look for: stripes + flocks of birds)

+ Listen to the Weepies music I downloaded

+ Call Grandpa

+ Watch Pan's Labyrinth

+ Read Persian love poems from the starry blue book Barbara sent me

+ Sleep like a baby

Three. Whole! Days.

Here's hoping yours is delicious.

xox

The 9-Year Old Cynic

Have you seen this Dairy Queen ad?

It starts off so well; I love it when the little girl flutters her fingers in a sweet wave to the boy across the restaurant.

Then the employee delivers a sundae "...compliments of the gentleman in the donkey shirt."

Another wave. Aww.

It's the ending that gets me: "Like shooting fish in a barrel," the little girl tells her mother with a cynical twist to her lip.

When did 9-year olds get so jaded?!

I've never written copy for TV ads, but I have written magazine ads, and I understand that technically, this piece is a success. The writer here delivered both warm fuzzies and a surprise ending. I mean, I'm still thinking about it, and isn't that what counts?

But: it leaves me feeling queasy. I don't want to believe that pretty little girls are calculating how to squeeze gifts out of boys BEFORE THEY'RE OLD ENOUGH TO WEAR A TRAINING BRA.

Though it does fit nicely with my Guaranteed-To-Be-A-Bestselling e-book titled: How To Become Filthy Rich as a Freelance Copywriter.

Chapter 1: Always Appeal to Base Human Instincts

In no particular order:

• Greed
• Envy
• Pride
• Lust
• Fear
• Hatred

Master this, grasshoppah, and your bank account, it shall overflow.

And you thought freelancers toiled away for peanuts? Bah.

Finding Truth in Contradiction

Kal Barteski is one of those people who make me eternally grateful that someone invented blogging. I likely would never have known about Kal without her blog, and yet now she is a constant source of inspiration to me. Artist, author, entrepreneur, mother, wife - she's brave, creative and refreshingly frank about life's ups and downs. In a word: Rockstar.

Back in March, she posted a painting of a woman struggling to feel beautiful and she wrote this message:

This piece was inspired by my real life body and the real life weight that bothers me... A lot. I know taking the weight off is a slow process - and I think that it's just another part of the missing ease and patience I need to find for this old soul. I drew an accurate version of my body - and I disliked it - I fought with some creative block and pushed through it. When it was done - I really, really loved it. It was beautiful. Maybe so am I...

The painting struck a nerve with so many of us who deal with body image issues, and Kal announced that she would take commissions for "Tiny Custom Ladies" for one season only, during the month of May. I couldn't type fast enough to put my order in.

Take a peek at some of the beautiful ladies in Kal's Gallery. They're tiny pieces of magic.

At the start of the year, I told my sisters that this was going to be the "year of art" and that any and all presents they got from me would be some kind of art. Since then, art in one form or another has indeed been flying out my door, but when I saw this, I decided that it would be my belated birthday present to me.

Random Photo Friday: Trampoline Bouncing

Yesterday was not my favorite day.

It was 94 degrees in the city by noon. Walking several blocks to an early afternoon meeting, sweat trickled down the backs of my thighs, and the back of my neck dripped.

One word: suboptimal.

By 6:30 pm, when I pulled out the skillet to sauté chicken livers for Petra's dinner, I was a cranky, stinky, melty popsicle. I slept with a fan blasting air into my face, and woke to a marginally cooler morning. 

But I'm trying to be a good sport about it, so I opened up my iPhoto library today with the intention of finding pictures that convey happiness, lightness and joy.

I found one that fit the bill perfectly: a snapshot of one of my sisters and one of our beautiful, magical, bright-eyed nieces, having fun on the trampoline at my parent's house. It's early evening, and the sun is low in the sky, and they're bouncing and laughing and wiggling their bare toes.

It makes me smile when I look at it, and rinses away the sticky film of yesterday. I hope it does the same for you.

And here we are: at the threshold of another gorgeous spring weekend.

Get up. Stretch. Find laughter + magic + sunsets.

Happy! Friday.

Doodling on the Pages of My Life

When I got the Pentagram 2008 Typography Calendar, I quickly realized that every month has to be torn off to expose the next. It seemed like a shame, because the pages are so beautiful - I didn't want to throw them away.  I intended to use them as wrapping paper, but then I kept noticing them, slumped in a neglected pile, and I thought: well, I could write on them.

So I did.

They've since become a kind of visual diary, a way to sift back through the prior month and map out the events + highlights of my days and weeks. I'm not a very good artist, to my deep dismay, so they resemble the random doodles of a bored child, but I like them.

Writing on the calendar pages feels kind of like my Iyengar yoga practice. Iyengar yoga is about moving slowly and deliberately, hugging muscles to bones and sinking into each pose with care. It's about observing the subtle responses of the body and mind in every second. Watching as hamstrings start to scream in Utthita Parvakonasana; watching as forearms begin to ache in Urdhva Dhanurasana; noticing the way the eyes dart to the clock on the wall, and the mind asks: when will this be over?

Writing on the pages conjures that same sense of deliberation and attention, of placing a magnifying glass over moments in my very recent past.  Of connecting more deeply with Here + Now, with this life, my life. Remembering a burst of laughter, or a shared confidence, or a fabulous cookie. Observing the way each hour spent with someone I care about is like a treasure; when they're all drawn out, they're like gems threaded together on a chain of days, and oh how they sparkle. Recognizing, over and over, how much goodness my life contains; how much abundance; how much beauty.

Noticing: happiness.

Here's a quote I'm writing on the April page:

Give up all other worlds except the one to which you belong. (David Whyte)

So.

Wise.

+  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +

Psst: read the rest of Whyte's gorgeous  poem here.  

That’s Me in the Corner, Singing Off Key

A thin piece of paper is sitting beside my keyboard. It’s about one inch wide, and four inches long.

It’s a ticket.

A concert ticket stamped with R.E.M. across the top.

I might have plucked the ticket out of its envelope and held it to my heart and jumped up and down like a thirteen-year old girl when it arrived. I might have whooped and screamed. I might have scared Petra silly. Then I might have opened up the envelope about ten times over the next hour just to make sure it was real.

Might have.

I guess it's kinda obvious that I'm excited?

It seems odd, at my age, to admit that I have a Favorite Band, but I do, and R.E.M. is It.

Years ago, while in college, I went through a dark time when I felt like the world was a very inhospitable place.  I was estranged from my family, and trying to figure out who I was, and if there was anywhere I belonged. Then one day my boyfriend, a wonderful human being, handed me Automatic For the People. I listened to “Everybody Hurts” and cried my head off.

"Everybody hurts," Michael crooned. "Everybody cries... so hold on... just hold on...." I pressed Rewind (remember cassette tapes?) and played it again. And again. And again. It didn’t make everything better, but somehow it made everything more bearable.  A weight lifted off of my heart; I could breathe.

Is it any wonder that Michael and the boys hold the Best, Always & Forever spots in my music pantheon?

(If you’d like to see a picture me during that time in my life, you’ll have to click through the jump. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but there was no way I could post this picture where anyone casually strolling through my blog could see it. They might be scarred for life, and then how would I feel?)

Random Photo Friday: Graffiti Truck

You might remember that I have a mild fascination with graffiti. Walking Petra all over the city, I've seen more than my share of spray can art and signatures scrawled in paint. A lot of it I don't like; some of it I love.

I like, but do not love, graffiti murals that cover entire walls. Many are decent, but not outstanding, so those go into the category of "meh." Simple signatures and other crude bits go into the "visual blight" column.

The sweet spot, to my eye, lies somewhere in the middle:  edgy and unpolished, with an arresting artistic composition.

That's what I like about today's photos: a van as canvas. A woman rises out of a sea of  blocky letters, swirling a skirt that seems to be made of sunbeams and wind currents.

I like.

Speaking of swirling: I've been whirling around the Bay all week, meeting with clients and spending more time in my car than I have in a long while. I'm not complaining - I secretly believe that I work with some of the most fabulous people anywhere (shh! don't tell!), but the result of all the going and meeting and note-scribbling is: no blogging.

*boo*

But I've got a couple of posts brewing, and once I get some work out of the way, I'll put them up.

In the meanwhile: soak up this gorgeous spring sunshine, and have a twirly-whirly, bubble-icious weekend.

Get Your Art On:

+ The SF MoMA Artists Gallery at Fort Mason is having their Annual Warehouse Sale. It's worth checking out, even if you just go to browse.

+ The Annie Leibovitz Exhibit at the Legion of Honor ends on the 25th. The celebrity shots are fun - who doesn't like to see Johnny Depp sprawled out on a bed  - but what bowled me over was the personal shots she included. Her tender, loving photos of her father's death and Susan Sontag's fight with cancer had me fighting back tears.

+ Remember when I wrote about Jen Beckman's 20x200 project? I received these pieces by Doug & Mark Starn this week - from an edition that sold out in less than 3 minutes. I happened to be sitting at my desk went the editions went live and was lucky enough to snag both. I did a happy dance when they arrived. Simply gorgeous, yes they are.

Where Are You Finding Inspiration Lately?