Thursday, January 31, 2008

Today's New York Times House & Home Section


The New York Times would say it is a perfect slow movement day, it is cold out, and I am thinking again about how to change without rushing out and buying things. The House and Home section of the paper today was full of good stuff:

The Slow Life Picks Up Speed is interesting because it again points out that the participants in the movement don't "grow" easily...or maybe at all. The article has several examples of companies that ended up sending work abroad etc to meet their production needs, and thus became "fast".


It is the conundrum.. slow food was made in your kitchen or in small restaurants, not in huge places that fed thousands. Now the slow movement is incorporating the recycle movement and sometimes produces something that everyone wants. It can't be available to everyone because the original materials were discards or one of a kind things that aren't available widely. So it begins to manufacture "discards" and use them. Then it becomes "fast" and the originators bail and start another small company re-using already produced stuff one at a time and the cycle starts again. I just wish the article had talked a bit more about quality, functionality and sustainablilty as hallmarks of the movement, but maybe that is just my thinking?


The other 2 articles were one about Piet Oudolf, a garden designer who has a focus on the winter and how the garden dies. The pictures are textural. And then, there is Eliphante, the home of Michael Kahn and his wife, Leda Livant that incorporates rocks and scraps from constructions sites and both inside and out.

I wish I could find someone who would fix my old Kenmore sewing machine. It does so much that I want to do without using a finicky computer interface and used to sew like a dream. I think it is repairable but I guess I have to find a slow sewing machine repair shop!

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