Melissa Ablett

The Quotable Abigail Adams

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:01:00 +0000

In an age of constant and instant communications, we have to sadly admit that letters are becoming a lost art. Gone are the times when lovers exhausted themselves writing page after page to send slowly across the sea, replaced with 140 character tweets or an iPhone vibrating with a picture message. While it’s ignorant to wish we could return to a previous era of correspondence, beautiful letters can still be read, appreciated, and celebrated for their historical and literary importance through collections like The Quotable Abigail Adams.

Edited by John Kaminski, the director of the Center for the Study of the American Constitution at the University of Wisconsin Madison, The Quotable Abigail Adams gives a glimpse into the life and letters of the amazing woman who counseled and consoled one of the most influential men in the birth of the United States. With quotes gleaned entirely from the letters Adams used to keep vital contact with her husband, children, and closest friends, Kaminski shows us the complexities and wisdom that make her an invaluable female role model from a male-dominated period of history. The book’s short biography and quotes depict a woman who is at once lacking confidence in her informal education yet one of the President’s most valued advisers; self-identified as more adapted to small, simple pleasures but an adept and experienced in foreign affairs; a mother and wife who gains strength from her family yet is able to endure years of their absence.

Any reader will be able to find quotes that speak to them as well as quotes that raise an eyebrow. Many of her words transcend time and geography, and are astutely applicable in today’s world. In a letter to her uncle, Cotton Tufts, she writes “It is high time that we had a Government who knows how to conduct our affairs with steadiness, judgment, & equity that they may not make themselves contemptible in the Eyes of all Europe.” Writing to John Adams on sexism, she chastises, “I cannot say that I think you very generous to the Ladies, for whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to Men, Emancipating all Nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over Wives.” Adams intelligence shines as she quotes Alexander Pope, Thomas Paine, and Michel de Montaigne, blended with her own observations on topics ranging from bachelors to the French Revolution.

While the art of writing letters may no longer be practiced in any substantial capacity, The Quotable Abigail Adams is a time capsule in which we can escape the LOLs, SMS, and IMs of our current existence and revel in the wisdom of an icon of American history for whom words and letters were like “cold water to a thirsty soul.”

Written by: Melissa Ablett, January 29th 2010

Black Tagua Ring

admin — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:28:00 +0000

By Muichic

As a society, we are constantly becoming more aware of how many beautiful materials we use in our attempts to make ourselves and our homes beautiful are incredibly harmful to the environment. After years of mining for silver, harvesting for mahogany, and slaughtering for ivory have taken their toll, we’ve started seeking out more viable fashion options. Organic is replacing synthetic and sustainable is replacing rare.

Yet, many of us must guiltily admit that despite our desire to be eco-minded, equally appealing substitutes can be hard to find; however, Muichic has overcome this obstacle with the tagua nut ring. In layman’s terms, dubbed vegetable ivory, tagua nuts come from an ivory-nut palm that grows in the humid rainforests of South America. This raw material can be harvested without negatively affecting their habitat, and provides an economic alternative to destroying the rainforests for farming.

The best part, however, is the natural beauty of Muichic’s products. Smooth and substantial, the shapes and designs of their rings, necklaces, bracelets, and earrings embody a natural vibe. All products are 100% handmade in Colombia, and each tagua nut has its own unique grain and shape, making every item one of a kind. The ring is comfortable to wear and compliments anything from a tribal print dress to jeans and a funky t-shirt. The company is based in Vermont, which makes buying and shipping within the United States easy and affordable.

As we all become better buyers with a conscience, Muichic's tagua accessories are a great, organic, eco-friendly option. Companies like Muichic are advancing the movement to reconcile our vanity with our scruples, which is a great thing for fashion and our planet.

Written by: Melissa Ablett, January 3rd 2010

Magic Neighbor

admin — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:01:00 +0000

By Lisa Germano

Young God Records

Lisa Germano’s music is like finding an old photograph at a yard sale. Somehow, inexplicably, you’re drawn in by a sad or troubled expression staring back in black and white. Soon, without knowing fully why, you feel a connection to the woman sitting in the photograph, hands in her lap, poised in an awkward position that seems unnatural, strange, perhaps even eerie. And you eventually see a story unfolding before you of a quiet childhood with a distant parent, an unrequited love, and precious moments of happiness glimmering in between.

Wandering and melancholic, each song on her latest album Magic Neighbor speaks in this same strangely intimate way, like a diary page read aloud. Germano sings almost as if she’s a young girl, alone in the corner of her room, creating lyrics to a meandering melody and humming to herself. Perhaps one of the more structured songs “A Million Times” beautifully depicts the path of a relationship as she recalls memories one after another. Germano sings of honest observations, blatantly saying, “We had more fun when we were strangers, as blind as blind can be.” Supported by minimal repetitive cords and percussion, she lays out, “A million times, we like to play the game all over, and when we’re done, we’ll start again.” With unforgiving candidness, Germano reveals the flaws and insecurities she harbors while in love, as if she never expected anyone besides herself to hear the song.

Peculiar instrumentals on various instruments including piano along with Germano’s half singing-half speaking style make the experience of listening to her music even more unique. Her music is painful and pleasing, comforting and disturbing, immediately memorable but only meaningful (and increasingly palatable) after a few listens. As a woman, she represents a feminine honesty and loquaciousness that could on the surface be perceived as trivial, but in essence is nothing of the sort. Like stumbling on an old photograph whose subject never knew they’d be viewed by a stranger’s eyes, Magic Neighbor draws the listener into Germano’s world and opens a window into the stories of another life.

Written by: Melissa Ablett, December 15th 2009

Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers

admin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:39:00 +0000

By Tom Wolfe

Picador

Radical Chic, noun: a small clique of the New York upper elite who, in order to appear groundbreakingly fashionable, support social movements and causes which ironically are at odds with the morays inherent to their identity

Mau-mau, verb: to stubbornly and meticulously badger someone into supporting a cause; to petition while using one’s minority identity in such a way that a member of a majority is left without rebuttal

Flak Catcher, noun: poorly paid and hardly respected public officials who are often used as human shields to protect their bosses from mau-mauing (see definition)

Beginning Tom Wolfe’s collection of two essays Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, I admit I knew very little. Who or what was the radical chic? What was mau-mauing? Why were flak catchers on catching end? A child born long after the '60s, I had little beyond a layperson’s knowledge of Wolfe’s other eccentrically long titles—something involving Kool-Aid, acid, and some sort of test.

Upon concluding the book, I’m happy to admit that I now know infinitely more, not only about the kooky title, but also about race relations in the 1960s, the Black Panther movement, and the infamous evening that brought the hypocrisy of the highest New York socialites to the nation’s attention. With a constantly tongue-in-cheek tone, Wolfe walks the reader through the dinner party hosted by Leonard and Felicia Bernstein in 1970 in his essay “Radical Chic” and through the methods employed by minority groups to petition the local government of San Francisco in “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.” On both coasts and with two different populations, Wolfe holds up a mirror to the duplicity, irony, and hilarity of race relations.

I couldn’t help laughing as Wolfe aptly described the wonderfully humorous scenarios: Roquefort cheese balls served to dinner guests in black leather, rich Jewish party-goers writing checks for an anti-Semitic organization, minority leaders protesting against a white government for their failure to follow through, then failing to follow through with their own protests. Wolfe’s style is disarming and feels truthful, as if he’s the only person who sees each situation for what it actually is, and the actions, desires, and blind spots he reveals in people of every ethnicity serve to both humble and unite them.

Both essays were highly enjoyable, and as someone far removed from the 1960s, New York, and San Francisco, I can only imagine they would be even more interesting to someone with firsthand knowledge of those locales during this time period. Although the book was essentially about how people tried to deal with difference, I turned the last page feeling more akin to each person’s fumbling portrayal regardless of race. The best part of Wolfe’s writing is the recognition that he himself is part radical chic, part mau-mauer, and part flak-catcher. We all are, to varying degrees, and as long as there is a satirist to expose our foibles and peccadilloes, we should keep hosting parties to provide hilarity for the audiences of the following decades.

Written by: Melissa Ablett, October 12th 2009

The Old Garden

admin — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:45:00 +0000

By Hwang Sok-Yong

Seven Stories Press

A garden is a metaphor for revolution. When painstakingly cared for, dry and barren ground can eventually yield the most beautiful of things. A garden can change an unruly landscape to an ordered plot, produce food and purpose, and forever capture the energy of a gardener with loyalty, conviction, and a love of what it could become. It can be simple in activity, process, and outcome, yet incredibly intricate and an entity all its own.

Many of us will never live this metaphor and will never have to face the difficulties the characters in The Old Garden must confront. After eighteen years of political imprisonment, South Korean Hyun Woo is freed only to find that the Seoul he once knew is gone and the woman he loves is dead. In this beautifully written book, the author uses her diaries and letters, woven with the Hyun Woo’s attempts to narrate his own past and present, to chronicle a man trying to find footing on the soil he fought to change, and face his choices and regret.

The novel’s world renowned and accomplished author, Hwang Sok-Yong has confronted these issues in his own life. Born in 1943, Sok-Yong has been imprisoned and exiled in the name of writing about his country, and his characters emanate a dedication and love of their home that is undoubtedly autobiographical. The author’s vivid imagery and veridical descriptions of the activists hiding “underground,” the aftermath of the Kwangju Massacre ,and torture at the hand of prison guards is affecting. Chills ran down my entire body when I read the main character Hyun Woo reflect, “Was it really possible for us—and there was not even a handful of us, and we were so young—to change the world with nothing but our noble intentions?” This was not just a story; this was something the author had truly lived.

But a garden can also be a symbol of more than revolution, and _The Old Garden__ _is first and foremost an incredible tale of a tragic love that grew despite all odds. While hiding in the town of Kalmae, Hyun Woo falls in love with a beautiful art teacher and ally of the movement. Beyond the already complex life of a political fugitive, he must now battle issues without a clear right or wrong, oppressed or oppressor, power or people. Must a revolutionary sacrifice their own bliss for the greater purpose? How can a revolutionary reconcile that he or she will most likely never experience what they fought to win? During one of the most poignant and meaningful moments in the story, he reads his lover’s diary entry about a day they washed laundry and fished in the sun. She writes, “What seems so insignificant, the everyday tasks of a simple life, is in fact the most important part, isn’t it?” The answer is yes, but for the revolutionary, it is anything but simple.

To survive the unfathomable emptiness in prison, Hyun Woo manages to grow a small garden beneath his crumbling cell wall with seeds gathered from rare trips outside of solitary confinement. Despite the lack of sun, of good water, and of real soil he is able to keep the small plants alive, relishing their growth and nurturing them constantly, until the winter comes and frost covers his walls. And while the conditions may have killed each flower and destroyed any lasting life, it was in the gardening itself that he found meaning.

Written by: Melissa Ablett, September 2nd 2009

Birds of Paradise Earrings

admin — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 08:25:00 +0000

By Stars + Rocks

Not ever being one to splurge on jewelry, I’m often times frustrated by the cheap and mass produced items I find myself buying off racks in department stores. I am no stranger to a green finger, a necklace that breaks as I’m putting it on for the very first time, or an earring that manages to fall off in transit, which always provides for a few strange glances once I arrive at work. I have also suffered the mortification that comes when you realize someone is wearing exactly the same bracelet, in exactly the same color, from exactly the same place.

So I was both surprised and delighted to find the Birds of Paradise earrings made by jewelry designer Jazmine Bowe for her “urban gypsy” Stars + Rocks jewelry line. At an incredibly reasonable price, these handmade earrings are intricately detailed and visibly of quality. I love wearing large earrings, and these lightweight pieces don’t leave your ears feeling as if they’re hanging two inches lower after you wear them for a day.

These earrings are versatile enough to be worn during day or night. So far, I’ve sported them—and received compliments doing so—with a black strapless dress and a t-shirt and jeans. They have an ethnic vibe that goes well with many current trends, and their size is big enough to grab attention, but not so large that I would recommend those with smaller faces not wear them.

But the greatest part comes back to knowing I won’t go out and find myself surrounded with twenty other girls wearing forty of the same earrings. There’s a pride that comes from supporting an artist and getting to look good doing it. I’m excited to have found unique and beautiful jewelry that didn’t come at a price I couldn’t afford. I will most definitely be looking at Bowe’s inexpensive and creative creations for gifts, self-indulgences, and fashion sense, instead of chunks of plastic on the racks of a department store.

Written by: Melissa Ablett, August 30th 2009

Been Here a Thousand Years

admin — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:46:00 +0000

By Mariolina Venezia

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Been Here a Thousand Years, Mariolina Venezia’s novel that sweeps across Italy’s history from 1861 to 1989, with certain ideas and images already floating in the periphery: Berlusconi’s wife explaining the reasons for their divorce, my own memories of whistles and blatant gazes from men during a visit to Florence, high fashion seemingly making women into glorified clothes hangers. To tell the tale of a family of women over a historical timeline from Italy’s unification through fascism seemed a daunting and exhausting task. Venezia tells a multifarious story that, for the most part, glides above what could otherwise be a tiresome history lesson, burdened with sexism.

I have always enjoyed historical fiction. The combination of a creative story set against a factual backdrop intrigues and excites me. Venezia does an amazing job of writing an almost magical story of five generations of women in the Falcone family with the very real story of Italy’s past. Themes of womanly and motherly love that border on mythical contrast with the destruction of World War I and II. National power struggles, dictatorships, and monarchies parallel sisters’ rivalries, marriage proposals, births, and the lifelong search for fulfillment. Venezia does not attempt to justify or condemn the lives the women choose or are forced into. Instead, she creates a beautiful and expansive story in which sexism is simply a given, a historical fact.

At times, it feels like the author is taking on too much. The reader is forced to keep tabs on an endless cast of characters who, although each is well-crafted and interesting, pop in and out of the novel with such frequency that references to the family tree on the third page are more necessary than I would like. Venezia is creative with her use of narration and her manipulation of time and dialogue, but in the muddle of too many voices, it doesn’t feel as if she truly hits her stride until the last fifty pages. Gioia, the last of the Falcone women to take the helm of their history, is by far the most interesting and multifaceted. To some extent, it seems as if each character before her was a writing exercise the author used to develop her final masterpiece.

Writing this review is not easy, and I feel as if I need to write a thirty page essay on this novel to truly find my conclusions about it. I am reminded of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude—a multitude of characters, a rich history, poetic language (translator Marina Harss does a stunning job), complex motifs, and countless interacting story lines that each can be dissected, analyzed, and most importantly, enjoyed. This book is best for readers who can commit to more than light fiction, and best if one can block out preconceived ideas and images of Italy—something I could not do. Mariolina Venezia’s work is rich enough on its own.

Written by: Melissa Ablett, July 29th 2009