Thursday, July 30, 2009

Update on the little guy & FOOOOOOOOD

I wanted to thank everyone so much from the bottom of my heart for all the kind comments, well-wishes & encouraging stories. Christian is doing really well & really doesn't even seem to mind his "big owie nose." He still seems to love dogs and has seen a few since the accident and he smiles & waves, so I guess he's not scarred emotionally, haha. (I think he'd have to get unscarred pretty quickly once we got home anyway... we have a dog, Ashby. He seems to miss her and has asked about "Happy" (how he says 'ashby") the "nice doggy." hahaha)

We takes walks by the lake everyday and he wears this adorable visor to shield his nose from the sun. (As soon as I can fix my computer I'll upload some pics) He hasn't gone in any water yet but is having fun playing in the sand.

Things are better between my dad & Dave... It's been rough for everyone but I'm hoping it's settling down... So, anyway, I wanted to tell you about one of my FAVORITE restaurants ever because we're going soon!!! It's Port Edward Restuarant in Algonquin, IL.

It's super-themey and even has a boat and a pond inside & I absolutely love it. It was opened in 1952. They have an amazing wine lounge and I can't even begin to talk about how awesome the food is. There are cool little secret rooms & lofts & as a kid I used to love walking around with my stepbrother & stepsister exploring. Christian is going to love it!!


Anyway, they have the best Sunday champagne brunch and every year we come we take the boat out in the morning and take the 3 hour boat ride to Port Edward and FEAST!!! You have to stay for hours and just take your time... So yummy!!! I love it because the long boatride in the morning feels like such an adventure... and I love the ANTICIPATION of all the great food!!! When we finally get there we're so hungry and it just hits the spot perfectly.
We're headed there soon & as soon as I can upload pics I'll show you what we've been up to.
xoxo,
lauren

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Training Graduate Students in the Writing of History

Randall Stephens

In the Chronicle of Higher Education Stephen J. Pyne writes: "History is a book-based discipline. We read books, we write books, we promote and tenure people on the basis of books, and at national meetings we gather around book exhibits. But we don't teach our graduate students how to write books."

Pyne concludes: "Before writing can be taught seriously to graduate students in history, their professors will have to agree on what good writing means, decide that it matters, and accept themes as well as theses."

Pyne's essay is based on his recent Harvard University Press book on the same topic. In Voice and Vision: A Guide to Writing History and Other Serious Nonfiction he argues that literary considerations should enhance the writing of history. Pyne looks at how setting a scene, creating suspense, and shaping the narrative arc all improve works of history.

Pyne has summarized his arguments in a piece that will appear in an upcoming issue of Historically Speaking. His essay will serve as the starting point for a roundtable on the subject. Other historians will weigh in and speak about their experience in and outside of the classroom.

Really Tough Day

Well, we made it to the lakehouse safe & sound - After driving all day Sunday- 13 hours later. Early yesterday morning around 6:00 (mon) my dad's dog bit Christian in the face. Christian was about a foot away from her and stuck his tongue out and she just launched at him from on the couch. Thank God Dave was right there and pulled her off. (I had noticed the dog acting a bit skittish around him the night before & we'd decided we would keep them separate but in the AM, so early, it didn't really register that she was on the couch & we should put her in another room... we were there for 2 seconds before it happened.)


We rushed to the emergency room in our pjs (and we're out in the country so it was like 45 mins away in Wisconsin) and his nose just looked like raw hamburger meat. He handled it so well. He stopped crying within a couple of minutes and just kept saying "doggie owie." It was the worst feeling trying to get there because we were following the GPS and roads were closed off and my little baby's nose was just covered in blood. We prayed & realized how much worse it really could have been- eye, throat, etc.


When we got to the hospital, they had to strap him down in one of those papoose things and he was amazing. "I'm tough" he said, haha. He had 4-5 bites and the one that worried me the most was this huge flap of skin on the top. It was so rough watching them stick the anisthetic needle in all of his wounds because he definitely screamed when they kept poking it in. Then they stitched him up for about 15 minutes and he kept saying "all done." I had to help hold him down on his tummy and it was just so hard to look into his little eyes and see how scared/ hurt he was. Just before the end of the stitches I got really dizzy & almost passed out so I had to sit down. It was almost like this weird relief that he was going to be okay and then just I couldn't stand anymore... or like all the adrenaline left and there was no more juice. They finished up and he played with some toys while they briefed us on the situation.


From there we got him some "eggs" (his big request) and went to a reconstructive surgeon who had helped my dad and she took a look at his "owie." She said it wasn't pulled as closely together as it should have been but the only other option was to put him under and have her redo the stictches. Not worth it. We're going back to see her in a week to check on everything.


Once it was all over and Christian was asleep in the car, the crying started. (haha from me) All we could do was thank God that he was okay. At the restaurant we stopped at when he woke up, everyone stared. It's kind of funny to watch the people who pretend they're looking somewhere past you as they slowly swing their heads around & take a good look and then another good look at nothing to your left. haha I really don't blame them-- it's not pretty and was seriously bloody. We have to keep the wounds uncovered but he can't go in the sun so he has a little visor to wear. No lake for a while so we're hoping it heals quickly so we can get this little guy some fun. He's doing great & is loving his new indoor basketball hoop Dave picked up at the drugstore.


Anyway, we're all in a strange spot right now--- insane relief tinged with some serious regret/ guilt/ anger/ sadness. My dad feels horrible--- both of his dogs are at a kennel right now and Quais (the one who bit Christian) is in quarantine. From now on whenever we come here, they'll be kenneled. I know Dave is upset that my dad's not going to put Quais down... I know it's just not in my dad to do it... So there's just a lot of tension right now. (pic below before)


Anyway, I usually only write posts when I have a strong feeling about something- be it happy or excited or something like this that I feel I need to get off my chest... So I'm not sure how much I'll be on for a bit... sometimes it's therapeutic so we'll see. Just check back & hopefully we get to some of the wonderful places I can't wait to show you. Oh, and also, my dad keeps doing stuff to his house. (haha I know, the audacity- HIS HOUSE! haha) But, really bad design choices and it's driving me crazy. It's a simple (beautiful) farmhouse frame with a wraparound porch and he's covering the outside of it in Victorian details- wagon wheels in the corners, ornate spindles with 2 paint colors, an Italiante fountain in the front yard... And I can't even get into the issues on the inside... So not sure if I'll have anything to show you in here. hahaha

ok, talk soon.

xoxo,

lauren

Monday, July 27, 2009

Richardson's Rules of Order, Part VId: Tips for Writing Research Papers for a College History Course

Heather Cox Richardson concludes her Tips for Writing Research Papers for a College History Course. Earlier, Richardson discussed how to develop a topic, organize the paper, and craft a strong argument. Here she describes the finishing touches to put on a paper and what might be done after completion.

Tips for Writing Research Papers for a College History Course

Heather Cox Richardson


Finishing your research paper:

Standard font for a research paper is Times New Roman, size 12, double space. It should have page numbers at the bottom of each page (except the first, but if one shows up there, don’t worry too much about it).

Your essay must have notes—either endnotes or footnotes (endnotes print more easily, by the way)—and unless you are specifically told otherwise, you need to prepare a bibliography, too. This should be easy if you wrote down the full citation information of each source as you used it. The citation format for bibliographies is different than that of notes, though, so check to make sure you’ve got it right.

Your essay needs a title. The title page should include your name, the names of your professor and your TA (if there is one), and the date.

Getting the essay back:

If you’ve invested this much in an essay, you should get enough feedback on it to understand where you were successful and where you were not. Many graders don’t write many comments because so few students ever bother to pick up their essays, although they’re quite willing to elaborate if they know someone’s interested. If there are not enough comments on your essay to enable you to understand how to write a better one next time, go ask. (For how to do this, see the section on proper behavior in a classroom).

If you enjoyed writing the essay and the professor agrees that it’s an excellent piece of work, consider submitting it for a university prize, for a national prize, or, perhaps, cutting it down for a local newspaper. UMass history prizes are listed on our website; national prizes are on the internet, and your local newspaper editor is listed in the paper itself.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Clay Leaves and Frame


One of my ladies at the Gadsden Hobby Lobby used her clay leaves we did in class on this basket and she went home and made more and put them on her frame we painted in class.


She also did the oil painting of the flowers in the frame she really did a good job on all of this.

Hobby Lobby Paint Class Saturday 7/25/09




We had a Saturday Fruit Class everyone did a great job and we all had a lot of fun!!!!

Hobby Lobby Oxford 7/21/09 Gadsden 7/23/09











We painted these cute watermelon slices on a clay pot with a lid to match, you could put a pot liner in it and use it for almost anything!!!

Paint Class Ladies Circle Group 7/18/09

We had a good time painting these photo boxes with the Ladies Circle Group

Friday, July 24, 2009

Rethinking Mary Tudor

Randall Stephens

Oh, much-maligned Mary Tudor. Forever linked to the word "bloody." A little like having "the Terrible," "the Cruel," "the Incompetent," "the Dangerously Stupid," or "the Bastard" forever fixed after one's name. Scourge of hot Protestants, Mary has not fared well with historians and other critics. In 1791 a writer in the London Review vented that Mary's wicked use of the Tower of London ranked "as bloody, as cruel, and as horrid, as any of the tales of the castle known by the name of the Bastille at Paris."

Enter Peter Marshall, who reviews four recent books on Queen Mary in the TLS. The title of his piece is particularly provocative: "Not a Real Queen? What Do Historians Have against England’s Earliest Queen Regnant – a Decisive and Clear-headed Ruler?":

England is no longer a Protestant nation, but the cultural templates of the past stubbornly resist resetting. Feminist historians have almost uniformly declined the invitation to laud the achievements of England’s earliest Queen regnant (in fact, much modern scholarship, as Judith M. Richards notes in exasperation, seems almost to proceed from the assumption that Elizabeth I was the nation’s first female ruler). Meanwhile, the judgement of the Enlightenment, in the person of David Hume, that Mary was “a weak bigoted woman, under the government of priests” has proved remarkably tenacious. It continues to characterize representations of the queen in popular culture, from Kathy Burke’s skilful cameo as a gibbering simpleton in Shekhar Kapur’s 1998 film Elizabeth, to Mary’s role in a recent Discovery Channel series on “the most evil women in history”. It is revealing that three of these authors begin their books with anecdotes about the negative or sceptical reactions of friends and colleagues on being told they were writing about “Mary Tudor”. >>>

See these related reviews:

Geoffrey Moorhouse, "Burning Questions: Geoffrey Moorhouse Wonders if Mary Tudor Deserves Her Reputation for Cruelty," Guardian, 4 July 2009.

Lucy Beckett, "Cardinal Values," Spectator, 17 June 2009.

Our Living Room: Going Green!!!

Well, I took the plunge. We decided on a bright mossy velvet for our sofa reupholstery. I can't find an image that looks like it exactly... It's a bit less limey/ more green than the pic above (house beauitful) and the cotton velvet is super-rich with lots of tonal variation.

We're doing a pair of these tight-back arm chairs from Martha Stewart in the ferny fabric (above) on the reverse (again, color is off):

Here's the exact shape of the sofa (Atlanta Bartlett)... and you must've known I'd have to have a back-up plan... We're also getting a white washable slipcover made for the sofa (exactly like the one below) for warmer months, kids, and so we can bring in any color scheme we want. (Ok, so I can bring in any color scheme.. hhahaha a like my husband really gets to the urge to reaccessorieze! ;) --- We're waiting on having the slipcover made until I feel the urge.. because I'm definitely really exited about the green right now. And... just so you don't think I'm really crazy with money/ flippant I should explain: We got the sofa off of craiglist for really cheap & the current fabric is really dirty. I really wanted to do white slipcovers, but we would have had to reupholster the fabric anyway because it was dirty/ old/ and striped, showing through the slipcover... SO I decided to reupholster it in a fun color so I could have the option to take off the slipcover. Now we'll just wait a few months for the slipcover.



We went with green because we really feel that it's true to the house and its connection with the outdoors. Green greets us from every view and I really want the interiors to be all about the views. (It's also both my & my husband's favorite color ;)



There will still be tons of white because you know I need that:



We bought these glass lamps from Arteriors Home for next to the sofa:







The plan is to tear out the carpet & do hardwood floors. We'll probably start out with seagrass rugs and eventually I'd love to find the perfect worn, antique (or antique-looking, I'm really not picky) patterned rug to layer over the seagrass in the living room. I also want to layer my favorite green fabrics and/ or use them as a skirted table in the open dining room. I want to bring on some old-fashioned florals:



Below is a room with a green sofa from the Martha Stewart furniture line:




Our Living room will be a bit softer, more blended but just to give you an idea.. I love how you can mix virtually any color with green- blues, aquas, pinks, browns, etc... getting pumped!! Since I'm crazy about green rightnow I figured it was time to join the Hooked On Houses blog party. Check it out!! Anyway, we're off to visit my dad at his lakehouse for some (finally!!!) rest & relaxation!!!!

I cannot wait to sit on the dock and swim & go boating & tubing!!! (notice how i'm screaming in the pic below and my husband is just relaxing .. hahahah)
Will be posting from there & hope to get lots done at the lakehouse to show you!!!
xoxo,


lauren

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

A Sweet Surprise: ( a casual) Tablescape Thursday


Saturday morning one of my best friends, Alissa, stopped over while we were gettting our lower level wall-to-wall seagreass carpet installed. I had to miss a little party some of our friends were having because I had to stay & supervise the install, so she brought over BREAKFAST!!! I've been meaning to do Tablesapes Thursday with Between Naps on the Porch for a while now & figured this was the perfect opportunity! (This one is definitely more food/ friend focused!)


Below is Alissa withher delicious goodies!!!

Now my husband's always said the way to my heart is through food. (He used to bring me beef jerky, not flowers, in college. hahaha) Anyway, the breakfast looked so pretty- being the blogger that I am- I had to make everyone wait to dig in so I could get a couple of pics. It was so simple but so perfect- fresh fruit, o.j., bagels, croissants and I toasted & loaded mine with hot ham & cheese mm mm. (I will now crave that sandwich all the time..)

The pink zinnias in the old jam jar (from my garden- yay the one thing I haven't killed!!) were already there & worked perfectly with all the bright colors in the fruit. I've been dying to use the pitcher that the o.j. is in: It's cut glass with palm trees on it that I found at a thrift shop for $4. The plates are Pottery Barn Classic white and the bowls are vintage soup bowls with a pretty green design on them from Lucketts for $4. So thanks so much to my Tikie Torch (just a nickname for Alissa)- we love you!!!

Hope you enjoyed!! There are so many beautiful tablescapes waiting at Between Naps on the Porch, so go check it out!!
xoxo,

lauren

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Sean Wilentz on Lincoln, Obama, and the Virtues of Politics

Chris Beneke

2009 marks the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth and there has been a predictable outpouring of books on this most esteemed of U.S. presidents. At nearly 25,000 words, Sean Wilentz’s essay review in The New Republic (“Who Lincoln Was” July 15, 2009) offers an authoritative and trenchant summary of seven of them. Though it echoes themes in the work of other historians such as James Oakes, James McPherson, and the late David Herbert Donald, the article stakes out interpretive territory that is distinctly Wilentz’s. A renowned historian of antebellum America, Wilentz is the author of books on the emergence of New York’s working class and, more recently, The Rise of American Democracy, and The Age of Reagan. He is also well known for his outspoken support for Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential race and his firm opposition to candidate Barack Obama. His latest New Republic review combines elements of both deep historical research and cutting political analysis. It is at once a brief for unapologetically empirical history and for the efficacy of politics and political experience—and implicitly conjures one of the key moments in the Obama-Clinton contest for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Wilentz ‘s critique of the latest Lincoln scholarship takes on what he calls the “standard two Lincolns approach,” whereby a cautious and relatively conservative politician is transformed (by the trauma of war and personal tragedy, by abolitionist rhetoric, by something he read, etc.) into a man of deep feeling and unimpeachable liberal values. Wilentz suggests that such a dramatic conversion never took place—Lincoln had long been a determined opponent of slavery. Of course, Wilentz doesn’t deny that Lincoln’s views evolved over time. As he sees it, however, it was not so much Lincoln’s principles as the possibility of their application that changed. Wilentz’s portrait of Lincoln resembles James McPherson’s portrait of the Union soldier. Patient and tenacious, it was his un-spectacular political groundwork, his pragmatic willingness to advance where possible and retreat when necessary, that accounts for the success of Lincoln’s subtle, long-term campaign against slavery. In sum: “[p]ure-hearted radicals did not manipulate him into nobility as much as he manipulated them to suit his own political aims—which, as president, were to save the Union and insure that freedom and not slavery, would prevail in the struggle of the house divided.”

Wilentz is unsparing in his treatment of psychological and literary interpretations of Lincoln that appear to him as scholarly Mugwumpery—assembled by academics too good for the messiness of ordinary democratic politics. The problem, according to Wilentz, rests with those who would ignore the political context in which Lincoln operated, as well as Lincoln’s own persistent politicking. Prominent Harvard prof Henry Louis Gates comes off as an historical dilettante (“quoting friends and putative authorities … all the way from Harvard to The New Yorker”), while Gates’ colleague John Stauffer’s otherwise well regarded book on Lincoln and Douglass is lambasted for employing the trope of “performative cross-racial self-fashioning” at the expense of the available evidence. Treating Lincoln as a literary figure, or worse, as the dull instrument of unbesmirched radicals, Wilentz argues, distorts the facts and demeans Lincoln.

There are unmistakable and unhidden echoes of a critique of candidate and President Barack Obama (or at least his most avid supporters) throughout this review, which Wilentz addresses frankly in the conclusion. Wilentz does pause between his historical analysis and his concluding remarks on modern politics to offer an olive branch of sorts: “Our president [italics added] is hardly the innocent that he tries to appear to be, but it is precisely his intensely political character, the political cunning that lies behind all his ‘transcendence’ of politics, that makes him Lincolnian; and it comes as a great relief from the un-Lincolnian sanctimony that surrounds his image.” But left-liberal perspectives, Wilentz maintains, elide the important differences: “Lincoln, unlike Obama, started out in life dirt poor, and lacked any opportunity to attend an elite private high school and then earn degrees at Columbia College and Harvard Law School.” The “mythologizing and aestheticizing” of both men substitutes a fashionable illusion for a complicated reality. Lincoln and Obama are alike, Wilentz contends, but not in the ways that literary scholars and progressives would have us believe. Lincoln could not have been as stridently principled as Frederick Douglass and still achieved what he did; and neither can our current president.

The question left unanswered is how much Lincoln’s achievements required the unremitting idealism of a Douglass—both as a political foil to his own compromises and as a personal spur to principled action. As James Oakes showed in a book that Wilentz praises, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics, political maneuvering is seldom sufficient to produce the kind of change that the Civil War era wrought.

Natural Elements: Driftwood

I love bringing nature indoors. My favorite accessories are typically natural objects and driftwood is right at the top.

(image above from House Beautiful.) It's so sculptural and its dull gray finish is coveted by many... Furniture manufacturers work so hard to get the perfect dull-gray/ limewash finish of driftwood on their pieces today. It's not an easy finish to replicate because it comes from exposure to years & years of water & sun & often salt. Today I wanted to share with you a few resources & inspiration pics for driftwood furnishings & accessories. Check out http://www.nautilusdesign.co.uk/index.html for some beautiful & unique driftwood pieces like this mirror below and sculptures, lamps, etc. The creator of Nautilus, David Holmes, writes, "From an early age I have been fascinated with driftwood, combing the beaches of Pembrokeshire and Cornwall in my holidays.This interest has never wavered, I still collect driftwood; I love the fact that each piece has it's own inherent texture, shape and colour. The unique quality of each piece of wood inspires my handmade designs."

I love this piece of driftwood he has just casually leaning in a corner. There are so many beautfiul images on the Nautilus website so check it out if you have a minute.



The items below are by another artist, Carl Woodland Jr., also known as "Sonny" who learned the art from his father while growing up in the Florida Keys as a boy. He now continues the business with his wife and daughter. Their website is http://www.alldriftwoodfurniture.com/ and the prices are REALLY reasonable. I WANT this sunburst mirror: (how gorgeous?!!)


LOVE this too:They come in all shapes & sizes & they even do custom:


Their tables are so beautiful & they do dining tables, consoles, coffee tables, end tables, you name it. Just cannot get over this dining room table:


They also do lamps in all shapes & sizes & the prices even compare with mass-produced pieces.



Here is Pottery Barn's driftwood lamp (below) for $299 and while I think it's gorgeous, I'd rather have one handmade by an artist who makes his living doing it. (above)




Cote de Texas recently posted this photo below on her beloved linen post. I am gagga for this entire room. Notice the driftwood/ limewash finish on the coffee table. And I can't even handle that lamp.


My dad is a bass fisherman in Illinois (it's his lakehouse we're going to in a week!!) and has lots of fish mounted on driftwood. He always found his own driftwood from the lakes and some of them are HUGE!!! To be honest, I like the driftwood better than the fish.

We've been renovating the lake cottage so right now the entire unfinished basement is like a Grandma's attic: full of junk & treasures. As I was nosing around in there, I came across all of his old mounted fish, collecting serious dust. And I was naughty. hee hee hee hee heee... I'm seriously giggling right now thinking about it. hahahah Well, I ripped off some of the fish & hung the driftwood around the house & used it on tables & window sills. Check out the HUGE piece he found below... I snapped the pic before I even pried off the little thing that holds the fish on. I DOUBT this is still hanging now that I've left, or if it is, there's probably a fish on it.


Here's another little piece I love in the same room:


The only piece I have in my home in Virginia is the one in the shelf below. My dad mounted my first bass on it when I was 4 years old. The poor fish is really beaten up right now (I still have it somewhere) but the driftwood is still in perfect condition and I move it around all the time. Here is in the old basement:

And here it is now (below) in our dining room:

There are lots of websited that sell driftwood if you're not in a spot where you can find your own. Here's one of them: http://www.amazonmoosey.com/ (image below)

Also try this one: http://antlerflowers.com/bases.html (image below)

And one more last pretty pic from House Beautiful. LOVE the candelabra!!! (below)

Do you have any driftwood at home or any ideas what to do with it? Would love to hear!!


xoxo,


lauren
Related Posts with Thumbnails