{this moment}
A Friday ritual. A photo capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
Inspired by Amanda Blake Soule and legions of lovely bloggers.
I hope you’ll be similarly inspired and leave a link with your own “moment.” I’d love to see it.
Have a great weekend!
Photos by Michael Lipman, Susan Sachs Lipman
{this moment}
A Friday ritual. A single photo capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
Inspired by Amanda Blake Soule and legions of lovely bloggers.
I hope you’ll be similarly inspired and leave a link with your own “moment.” I’d love to see it.
Have a great weekend!
Tamalpais High pool, the first day of summer vacation.
Tagged Animal Photography, Animals, Birds, Ducks, Marin Birds, Photography, Pool, Scaup, Slowing Down, Summer, This Moment
{this moment}
“A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.”
Inspired by Amanda Blake Soule and legions of lovely bloggers.
I hope you’ll be similarly inspired and leave a link with your own “moment.” I’d love to see it.
Have a great weekend!
A couple of weekends ago, my family and I were wandering around the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, when I caught sight of this laundry blowing on a line in the breeze. I found it quite pleasant and mesmerizing to watch, and it got me thinking about the act of line-drying laundry.
Lots of people are re-discovering line drying as a way to use less electricity for the task of drying their clothes. For others, it takes them back to a time when outdoor clotheslines were more common and summers included the sweet, fresh smell of laundry drying (and, in my husband’s case, the sound of his mom’s wooden clothespins plunking into her metal bucket, as she released her laundry from its line.)
This site offers lots of tips to get the most out of line drying. I like to use a drying rack, to reduce both my electric use and the wear-and-tear on my clothes. Another site, Urban Clothesline, features lots of great drying racks, lines, and other solutions that can be used in a variety of settings, from backyards to apartment bathrooms.
The Project Laundry List site has a wealth of information about the economic and energy savings associated with line drying. It also covers programs, trends and issues, such as the role of homeowner’s association rules concerning practices like outdoor laundry drying. There’s even a laundry history. As much as I like line drying, I am thankful for the invention of the washing machine nearly every time I use mine.
Lastly, if you seek lovely, uniquely scented soap for your wash, Maylee’s Garden offers natural vegan and eco-friendly soap in a variety of great fragrances like Lavender and Cedar, Bergamot and Lemon, and many more.
Posted in Home Ec., Lost Arts, Odes, Slow News, Snapshot, Sustainability
Tagged Clothesline, Green, Laundry, Laundry Drying, Laundry Line, Laundry Soap, Maylee's Garden, San Francisco, Simpler Time, Soap, Sustainability
With apologies to those who are still buried in snow, I’ve really been feeling it lately — the first blush of spring. A few warm spots of sun, trees beginning to bud and even flower.
Sweet, small goldfinches called from this cherry tree. Petals sprinkled from a plum tree on our street. Acacia trees have been blooming with bright yellow. There seems to be new life all around.
Not long now ..
Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman
Posted in Deck Garden, Nature, Porch Swing, Seasons, Snapshot, The Great Outdoors
Tagged Cherry Tree, Flowering Trees, Nature, Photography, Spring
Solitary Crow ... Companioning My progress Over snowy fields
-- Senna
To celebrate New Year's We feast Newly-opened eyes on Snowy Fujiama
-- Sokan
Photos from the season of going inward — when not playing outside. Click on any photo to enlarge.
Photos: Susan Sachs Lipman
More are available on the Slow Family Online Facebook Page.
I came upon this whimsical house, nestled in the forested Cascade Canyon section of Mill Valley, right behind the library. It’s so sweet and imaginative, and captures the playful aspect of the season. Plus, its setting couldn’t be more perfect.
Photos: Susan Sachs Lipman
Posted in Community, Design, Holidays, Seasons, Snapshot
Tagged Christmas Decorations, Holiday Decorations, Holidays, Mill Valley, Winter
I just got back from a big Solstice bonfire in a rural field. There were goats I could barely see bleeting in the background, and I watched as a little girl toasted her first marshmallow over the fire and laughed with unbridled joy.
Into the fire went our wishes and hopes for 2010 or, conversely, the quality, activity or thought we wished to leave permanently behind. Scrawled on paper, the unwanted characteristics caught fire — edges first, and then entire sheets, until they were flaming, at times floating, pieces of ephemera.
The wind shifted, the fire smoked. It lit up the faces of people I had met earlier in the warm house, over Jambalaya and a fantastic, wintery Squash and Mushroom Soup. There had been lots of great talk and dancing, people of all ages. One woman continued to burn personal papers from a long-term task, just ended today. She methodically lifted envelopes out of a shopping bag and into the fire. I saw tax returns, the Blue Cross logo — highly earthly reminders of the present — as she continued her own ritual, her own moving on, just as the Ancients had done when they gathered to lurch (sometimes frightened) from past to future, to warm themselves together in Winter and greet the recurring miracle of returning light.
Above us, the Pleiades shifted in their faint group. People sought out the Big Dipper, which was especially low on the horizon. A perfect crescent moon, angled like a cradle as if on a stage set, rose and hung orange in the inky sky. When we reluctantly left, our host invited us back to see the baby goats that would arrive on this same spot in the spring.
Photo: Jon Sullivan, pdphoto.org
Posted in Community, Holidays, Nature, Seasons, Snapshot, The Great Outdoors
Tagged Night Sky, Ritual, Solstice, Solstice Celebration, Solstice Tradition, Winter, Winter Solstice
Honey is one of the world’s oldest foods. Ancient Egyptian tomb reliefs from as far back as the 3rd millennium B.C. show bees being smoked from their hives to produce it. Nomads and traders helped honey’s popularity spread worldwide, while it remained a prevalent sweetener in the Middle East, where it still often, and wonderfully, appears in Mediterranean, Arab and Jewish dishes.
Jews around the world traditionally celebrate their new year by dipping apples in honey, and by eating honey and spice cakes, the better to usher in a “sweet new year.”
And lots of people ring in the fall by making honeyed cakes of wonderful harvest ingredients like pumpkin, and warm spices like cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves.
This terrific and tasty honeyed spice cake recipe recently appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, just in time for our good friend and fabulous cook Sandy Waks to try it out for a Jewish New Year gathering last week. It was very meaningful to slow down and gather around her table, which brimmed with fresh, often biblical, foods — Sandy’s also a fantastic gardener — and warm, interesting company, and to stop and give thanks and blessings for the new year.
Of course, a year, or even a season, needn’t be starting to make this cake. I intend to make it many times this fall. Dense cakes like this one pack well for school lunches and other times, are loaded with healthy ingredients, and just taste yummy.
Photo by Susan Sachs Lipman: Pumpkin spice cake at the Mill Valley Book Depot
Posted in Butter and Egg, Holidays, Home Ec., Recipes, Snapshot
Tagged Autumn, Cake, Depot Bookstore, Egypt, Fall, Food, Food History, Honey, Honey Cake, Jewish New Year, Mill Valley, Pumpkin Cake, Rosh Hashana, San Francisco Chronicle, Spice Cake
Post-Tidepool Breakfast. August 6, 2009.
In my June tidepool post, I mentioned that tidepooling (waking up early and doing anything outdoors, really) always makes me especially hungry. After our recent round of tidepooling, we came home and made extra eggy French toast, with fresh, local blueberries and strawberries (seemingly at their peak) and Vermont Grade A maple syrup. Then we took a nap.
Photo by Susan Sachs Lipman
Posted in Butter and Egg, Home Ec., Snapshot
Tagged Breakfast, Food, French Toast, Maple Syrup, Photography, Vermont
