A beautiful home nourishes us — 10 ways to nurture yours

By Caitlin Kelly

“If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it:
Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe
to be beautiful.”―
William Morris

Chinese Jade ornament with flower design, Jin Dynasty (1115-1234 AD), Shanghai Museum. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the few architecture blogs I read is from Alabama firm McAlpine Tankersley. I love their designs, even though the mega-mansions and second homes they are hired to create are far beyond my reach financially.

A recent post:

Architects and Interior Designers are in the business of affecting the physical plane of our world by producing a scape that can be seen and touched – lived in and on.  Integral to its success is the layering of texture, tones, and the reflection and refraction of shades of light and dark.  Depth and scale of shape in measured doses to elicit a calculated response…

Our sensual experiences have a physiological response by stilling our minds, calming our hearts and relieving stresses.

Great beauty has the power to relax and center our energy and emotions.  Lowering our internal pressures free us to see more clearly and calmly.  It is always a goal to create a meditative space that is restorative in nature, a space that you feel better in and are compelled to linger through.

…Beauty can be a retreat for healing.  Luxury is a tonic for the soul.

As someone who has seriously studied antiques, art and interior design, these words deeply resonate with me.

I spent much of my childhood at boarding school — brown metal beds, chenille bedspreads, weathered floral wallpaper, linoleum floors — and summer camp. Living with other people’s institutional aesthetic choices has left me with a fairly ferocious desire to make every place I live in lovely, welcoming and, as Susan writes here eloquently, a retreat for healing.

Journalism is also a business often conducted in atrocious working conditions: noisy, filthy, crowded and/or filled with stress, whether financial or professional. By the time my husband staggers in the door after a long day and a long train/taxi commute, he’s ready to be soothed!

I loved studying design seriously, understanding why some colors and proportions are inherently beautiful and others jarring and wearying. In our color class, we were taught the color scale and how to use shades and tones. In our materials class, we learned the relationships between textures and how to use them safely and elegantly.

It doesn’t matter if “home” is a small dorm room or a trailer or an apartment or a house. It’s what you make of it.

Here are some ways to create beauty in your home:

The bouquet above cost $30 — a splurge, for sure — but provided enough material for bouquets in three rooms that will last for at least two weeks.

Fresh flowers, a plant or some branches

Unless I’m totally skint, every week includes a bouquet of fresh flowers or greenery from my local florist. No, it’s not a necessity, but what a lovely touch to have even one bright pink gerbera, the tart scent of eucalyptus or some branches of curly willow. I also stock up on Oasis (florists’ foam) which can turn any water-tight container into a vase and frogs (glass and metal holders that fit into a low or flat container), easily found in thrift shops and flea markets. Or — take your kitchen shears and find some bittersweet or holly growing wild.

I found these pierced-metal lanterns for an unlikely $13 each in a cafe in Minneapolis.

Candles, votives and/or tea-lights

Not a day goes by that I don’t light a candle, or several, usually as we sit down to dinner. It creates a totally different mood from any other sort of illumination. Instead of leaping out of bed on a cold, dark winter’s morning, take five minutes to light a small bedside candle.

Fresh towels or linens

Even a new $5 dishtowel, in a fun pattern or color, can cheer up your kitchen. I find unusual shams, sheets, coverlets and pillowcases like this gorgeous floral duvet cover at Anthropologie and these super towels in a blue and white pattern from Zara Home.

Three or four sources of light per room — and overheads only in bathroom, hall and kitchen

Think about the most soothing and beautiful interiors you’ve been in. They may have been in a hotel or restaurant, where professionals have seriously considered how to create a mood using light and darkness. There are different kinds of lighting, (task, overhead, floor lamp, table lamp) as well as different colors of bulb. Three-way bulbs allow for different levels of brilliance. Overhead lighting — especially fluorescent — is often depressing, unflattering and too dim to be useful. If you can afford it, consider adding dimmers to every overhead light.

On my desk, I’ve layered a 19th-century woven wool paisley shawl underneath a Peruvian manta.

This hand-embroidered vintage linen tablecloth perfectly covers our headboard.

Vintage textiles

My passion! Few items add as much character and warmth to an interior as an early hand-made quilt, gently worn vegetable-dye rug, embroidered linen napkins or pillowcases. You can easily find vintage fabrics on-line through EBay and Etsy, as well as flea markets and antique shows. If you know how to sew, whip up some throw pillows or a tablecloth.

Scent

It might be a scented candle or lavender sachets tucked between your linens or your sweaters. I love making sachets from vintage textile scraps. (Also great to toss into your suitcase!)

Lovely flatware

You can find great old things for pennies. We use mis-matched silver plate I’ve found in flea markets everywhere I travel. A bottle of silver polish will restore them to a soft gleam.

A piece of pottery

It might be a spoon-rest or a teapot or a bowl. Having a useful object made by someone’s hands is a great reminder that not everything in our homes has to be made cheaply by overseas labor. I recently wrote to the Ontario potter who made this teapot, which Jose bought for me in Toronto years ago, just to thank him for adding such beauty to our lives.

Vary the shapes and sizes of your objects and furniture

Is everything you own shaped like a square or rectangle: (sofa, tables, rugs, bed)? Add some curves! A round or oval mirror, a round or demi-lune side or console table, even a long, narrow runner in the hallway will mix things up. An over-sized round lantern or bowl can change the look of a table or chest of drawers.

Pools of darkness, to add mystery

Obviously not in places that need to be very well-illuminated for your safety, like stairs, kitchen or bathroom. But the most alluring spaces have a feeling of discovery or mystery. I found my small, dimmable uplighter lamp at Home Depot for a big $13.05.  This once-dead corner of our living room now contains a round covered table, on it two marble garden ornaments, an antique planter and a pierced metal lantern found on sale at Pier One. The Victorian mirror was an antique store find in small-town Ontario.

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It’s Black Friday, and retail workers deserve more

By Caitlin Kelly

Today, thousands of Americans rush out to start their holiday shopping. It’s called Black Friday because it’s the beginning of the season that pushes retailers into the black — i.e. profitability.

While shoppers clamor for more product, more discounts and even more hours in which to spend their money, please pause to remember the hard-working people who serve them, since 70 percent of the American economy is created by consumer spending.

Retail workers also deserve more:

— More money (most earn minimum wage)

— More respect (until you’ve served them, it’s hard to believe how rude and nasty some shoppers can be)

— More hours (store managers scrimp on paid hours because every other cost is already spent)

— More opportunities for raises, bonuses and promotions into a decent wage. (No worker adding profits to the bottom line should be so fiscally punished)

Here’s my op-ed in today’s New York Daily News, America’s sixth-largest newspaper and the last newsroom in which I worked as a reporter.

An excerpt:

In a time of growing income inequality, no one should assume that retail staff are uneducated or have no higher ambition than folding T-shirts for hours. RAP also found that more than 50% of them either have a college degree or are working toward one.

Some, like our store manager Joe, who fought with U.S. Special Forces in Mogadishu, have served their country overseas. And some enjoy retail work and consider it a meaningful career choice.

For others, it’s a stopgap, a place to earn a wage while awaiting a better-paid opportunity. One multi-lingual young lawyer I know recently made the move from folding T-shirts at the Gap to working at a major investment house, the fortunate culmination of a lengthy and frustrating job search.

These workers deserve and demand more respect and better economic treatment.

Walmart (Photo credit: matteson.norman)

As some of you may know, a frenzied crowd of shoppers trampled a 34-year-old Walmart associate. Jdimytai Damour — in his first week on the job on Long Island, NY — to death in 2008.

Walmart has yet to pay the $7,000 fine levied by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration:

Sitting on appeal with a review commission, the case of Jdimytai Damour’s death highlights how corporations can choose to fend off modest penalties over workplace dangers for years on end, according to occupational health experts.

For a company with sales of $466 billion last fiscal year, the $7,000 fine from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration represents little more than a single store’s rounding error. Walmart would have vastly outspent that sum simply in legal fees devoted to fighting the penalty. But the world’s largest retailer is less concerned with the monetary fine than with the broader implications of the case. A negative ruling could compel Walmart and other retail companies like it to take additional safety precautions for workers or face new liabilities.

“It’s not about the penalty,” said Celeste Monforton, a former OSHA analyst who’s now a lecturer at George Washington University. “It’s this interest in seeing how far Walmart can push back against the decision.”

I’m aware that for some people — including readers here — Walmart offers low prices and may be the only shopping choice in their area. I will never ever shop there.

I worked part-time, from 2007 to 2009, at an upscale mall near my home in suburban New York selling for The North Face, costly outdoor clothing manufactured — as most apparel now is — in low-wage nations across the globe, from Peru to China. I earned $11/hour, with no commission, for a job that demanded devoted attention to 14 simultaneous tasks, from spotting shoplifters (no store security staff) to scrubbing the toilets. We were given daily sales goals. The lowest was $400, the highest — during the holidays — $6,000.

It was the hardest job I’ve ever done. I’m glad I did it. I’ve never seen the world the same way since then.

It showed me a sort of corporate brutality I could never (naively) have imagined had I not stepped behind the cash wrap. Shoppers assumed we were stupid, uneducated, unable to get or keep any other sort of work, when many of us had lost much better-paid jobs in the recession. Or we were going to college, and/or supporting a family.

My second book, “Malled” My Unintentional Career in Retail” details my experience, as well as that of hundreds of others nationwide.

Yet the word most industry experts use to describe these workers?

Disposable.

Retail work is the largest source of new jobs in the U.S., yet most of them  — part-time, with very few hours and no benefits — pay such low wages that workers end up using food stamps to supplement their meager incomes. Enough already with corporate welfare!

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Thank you!

By Caitlin Kelly

It’s sometimes easy to forget that attention is a gift. We’re all busy, tired, distracted.

So when readers come to Broadside — for one post, or several — I know it’s a choice.

It’s been amazing and inspiring for me to “meet” people from around the world here, even just from reading your gravatars when you sign up to follow. Several of you have become good friends, from London to L.A.

Newest followers include a dancer/choreographer and playwright from Tel Aviv, a retired history teacher in Florida, a country singer from Nashville, and a suburban mum in Britain.

You are one seriously diverse audience!

I appreciate your comments, and especially so when you finally decide to join the conversation — I know many of you lurk, silently. Please weigh in!

London (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

It’s been a new privilege to start teaching and coaching, and the response has been terrific, with students coming from Australia, New Zealand, California, Virginia and other spots. Working with Skype is great, as we can see one another and exchange ideas and laughter. The other day, I waved to three small children in Adelaide as their mum and I were about to start a session. So fun!

Selfishly, coming back to teaching and coaching has also offered me a needed and welcome break from the usual routine of pitch/sell/write/revise. As a full-time writer, I’m an intellectual production line of one — the old brain gets tired!

It’s been great to leave my apartment, meet new clients face to face and begin to expand my teaching to other places. It looks like I might be teaching at NYSID, my former school of interior design in Manhattan. I really love teaching, and I’ve missed it. It’s fun to share my skills and help you meet your goals.

Writing well isn’t easy!

For some odd reason, people now think it is or should be or want it to be.

Great writing is really the end product of clear, focused thinking: about topic, tone, voice, diction, rhythm, intent, mood. It has many moving parts, and until they spin together without friction, you’re more likely to hear the nasty grinding of gears than the smooth humming you’d prefer.

So, dear readers, and those of you placing in your trust in my skills to teach and coach you, you’re very much appreciated.

Thank you!

Loneliness — the new epidemic

By Caitlin Kelly

Loneliness (Photo credit: FotoRita [Allstar maniac])

Powerful piece in The Globe and Mail:

In Vancouver, residents recently listed social isolation as their most pressing concern. More Canadians than ever live alone, and almost one-quarter describe themselves as lonely. In the United States, two studies showed that 40 per cent of people say they’re lonely, a figure that has doubled in 30 years. Britain has a registered charity campaigning to end chronic loneliness, and last month, health secretary Jeremy Hunt gave a speech about the isolated many, calling attention to “a forgotten million who live amongst us ignored, to our national shame.”

It is the great irony of our age that we have never been better connected, or more adrift.

The issue isn’t just social, it’s a public-health crisis in waiting. If you suffer from chronic loneliness, you run the risk of illness, and premature death.

“This is a bigger problem than we realize,” says Ami Rokach, a psychologist and lecturer at York University in Toronto, who has been researching the subject for more than three decades.

“Loneliness has been linked to depression, anxiety, interpersonal hostility, increased vulnerability to health problems, and even to suicide.”

The holiday season is a time of year when feeling unconnected, or disconnected, can be more painful than ever.

As someone who’s been working alone at home — with no pets or kids for company or distraction — since 2006, I know how isolating this form of employment can get. Yes, I can go to the library or a cafe to be surrounded by people, but that’s not the solution. They’re not friends.

I realized the other day where my community lies, and it’s not at all what I would have answered if you asked. It’s the YMCA in my small town. I go there three or four times most weeks, taking classes in jazz dance and choreography or using the work-out room. I also sometimes take pool aerobics. So every visit now means running into one of my teachers or a fellow student or a neighbor.

It feels really good.

Loneliness is something I’ve fought for years since I moved to New York in 1989, jobless, knowing only two people, my fiance (now my first husband) and a high school friend of my mother’s. To my dismay, she never bothered to invite me for coffee or, even though she worked in the same industry, make an introduction to anyone. It was very tough indeed.

Getting divorced five years after arriving here was also difficult. I had only one deep friendship, with a woman (sadly) since gone from my life.

Only in the past four or five years have I felt at home here, thanks to finally having found several good friends. No matter my professional achievements, it was a long, long time of feeling disconnected and unwelcome. When you live in a suburb, and don’t have kids or hobbies, it’s tough to find and nurture new friendships. And New Yorkers endure the nation’s longest commutes, their spare hours devoted tend to work or family.

This year, Jose is working on Thanksgiving but I’ve been adopted for the holiday — strolling only three doors down a warm, dry hallway on my floor to join friends for their Thanksgiving meal tomorrow.

I love this smart, creative solution. (Yay, Canada!)

The Vancouver Foundation has another answer: It is giving out grants of $500 to people who will organize a community event that brings strangers together – a knitting circle, an origami workshop, a pumpkin-carving jamboree. Mr. McCort attended one gathering recently, and was struck by an unfamiliar sight: “No one was on their phone, or checking email. There were a hundred people, just talking and making new friends.”

Do you feel lonely?

What do you do to try and alleviate it?

Related articles

• Chronic loneliness afflicting elderly ‘a national shame’ (itv.com)
• Tenth of doctor visits by sufferers of loneliness (scotsman.com)
• Regarding Solitude, Aloneness & Loneliness (costaricantimes.com)
• Lonely elderly make 30million GP visits a year just for company (express.co.uk)
• Feeling Lonely Tonight? 7 Strategies to Combat Loneliness (psychcentral.com)

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Writers, beware: 10 caveats before you publish your book

By Caitlin Kelly

English: Logo of french publisher Léon Vanier (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here’s a wise/sorrowful reflection on publishing, by former lecturer in French at Cambridge, blogger Victoria Best:

Nowadays you could be forgiven for thinking that everyone in the world writes and harbours some secret dream of superstardom. And publishers seem (and this may be an illusion) to have become more and more cagey and restrictive about what they will put out…And paradoxically, the more platforms that appear for writers to publish on, the more problematic it all becomes. There are people out there drawing flow charts now to account for all the different choices that can be made. And still the question remains: who will actually read us?

It seems to me that the basic problem is that publishing is way too emotive a subject for writers to be allowed near…Many writers talk about publishing before they have actually experienced it. In the same way that newly-formed partnerships fantasise romantically about having children, and university students imagine being rich, writers think about publication as a joyous event, and quite possibly one that will solve all their problems – financial, moral, existential. Whereas most of us who have published limp bloodied from the arena, humiliated by having failed to make the crowd go wild. My premise in this post is that – like so many modern phenomena – publishing is an awful experience and yet still we want it beyond all reason.

Here’s the inside dope from NYC career editor, Daniel Menaker, in the blog Vulture, an excerpt from his new book:

Approximately four out of every five books published lose money. Or five out of six, or six out of seven. Estimates vary, depending on how gloomy the CFO is the day you ask him and what kinds of shell games are being played in Accounting….

To make matters worse, financial success in frontlist publishing is very often random, but the media conglomerates that run most publishing houses act as if it were not. Yes, you may be able to count on a new novel by Surething Jones becoming a big best seller. But the best-­seller lists paint nothing remotely like the full financial picture of any publication, because that picture’s most important color is the size of the advance. But let’s say you publish a fluky blockbuster one year, the corporation will see a spike in your profits and sort of autistically, or at least automatically, raise the profit goal for your division by some corporately predetermined amount for the following year. This is close to clinically insane institutional behavior.

The entire blog post is a must-read for anyone who really wants to hear what goes in inside publishers’ hallowed halls. Not for the naive or foolish. It’s funny, sad, bitter — and true!

And, from The Nation:

the work of writers is traded in three currencies: money, meaning book sales and author advances; status, meaning reviews, awards, fellowships and general cachet, which are not strictly quantifiable but pay dividends nonetheless; and a third, which I can only describe as the actual life of a book, which is its movement through the world after it is published. Sales do contribute to this third currency, but only so much, because it is intangible, uncountable and ultimately unknowable, and yet still entirely, wonderfully real.

What do authors hope for with publication of their work?

Fame

Defined how? Ten people beyond your immediate family? A cover story in People magazine?

Fortune

Most writers receive an advance, from a commercial publisher, of $5,000 to $50,000 for their first book — maybe even their seventh or twelfth. The advance is typically paid out in thirds, at best, more often in quarterly payments: upon signing of the contract; upon delivery of the first few chapters or full manuscript; upon publication, (typically at least a year after signing), and — yes, really! — a year after publication.

Which somewhat re-defines the word “advance.”

Every payment is sent through your agent who claims their 15 percent fee for representing you before they forward the rest to you. Most mid-list authors, (i.e. not best-sellers), will never “earn out”, i.e. repay the publisher their advance and thereby receive any additional payment for their work. This is because we receive a tiny fraction of the cover price and because publishers make sure to claim their profits before we see ours.

Foreign sales

Pleasant, but rarely lucrative. Citic Press bought the rights to publish my book “Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail” in China, paying $3,000. It simply went to pay down my advance. They re-named the book for their market, (“The Greatest Saleswoman in the World” — hardly!) and gave it a crisp new cover, with a photo wholly different from the American version.  I’ve received no reply from them to my repeated emails asking for information about how it’s doing there.

Thousands of passionate readers

Many books find fewer than 1,000 buyers, in any format. Ever. A book selling 10,000 or more copies has done well. (My second book, “Malled”, did. Whew!)

A movie deal

I know someone whose book — published in 2001 — is now in production as a major motion picture. Many books are optioned, (which usually means you get a nice five-figure check), but few make it through the process to become a finished film. Here’s an interview with Orson Scott Card in the current issue of Wired magazine, author of the award-winning 1985 book Ender’s Game — now in theaters after more than a dozen scripts were rejected over the decades.

A television series (with residuals!)

Sweet! My book Malled was optioned by CBS as a sitcom and I was swooning with excitement. I was paid $5,000 — but lost $1,000 to the two agents who repped it. Many emails went back and forth between me and the script-writer, a Hollywood veteran. But CBS’ top executive said no to the final version and CBS now owns the script.

A job offer

Maybe. Certainly not a sure thing.

For posterity

Everyone’s dream.

Rave reviews

OK, these days, any reviews! While many online sites review books, and you can read dozens on amazon.com, it’s difficult to win an inch of serious reviewers’ space. The competition is ferocious.

Awards

Oh, the gnashing of teeth and the rending of garments! We’d all like that “XYZ-award-winner” on the cover of our book, but only a tiny fraction of us will ever get it. I was really honored when Malled was nominated for the prestigious Hillman Award, given to “those who pursue deep storytelling and investigative reporting in the service of the common good.” (A professor won it.)

So…why the desperate compulsion to publish a book?

For some people, it’s the pure satisfaction of having done it, knowing they can.

For others, it’s a strategic move, to build or bolster their brand or authority.

For academics, it’s a must, without which they can’t win tenure.

And yet, despite all of the above, I’m glad I’ve done my two books, and am now working on a proposal for another, fully aware of the pitfalls (and pleasures) if someone does make an offer on it.

I enjoy writing non-fiction books because journalism today offers few places in which to deeply explore serious ideas at length. A book gives you 80,000-100,000 words to plumb the depths of a complicated story. For me, that’s the draw.

Will anyone review it or buy it after a year or more of consistent effort to produce it? No idea!

Here’s a brilliant bit of writing advice, (there’s more if you follow the link, from Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction Paul Harding, in the one publication every ambitious writer must read, Publisher’s Weekly:

Get your art written any way you can. It’s tempting as a teacher to present your own method as normative. It’s maybe even more tempting as a student to look for a method that sounds good and austere and disciplined, with a dash of charming self-deprecation thrown in, and conform to it in the hopes that it will work for you, because writing is hard, after all, and it’s nice to think that if you follow a prefabricated set of rules you’ll get a story or a poem or a novel out of it.

But a huge part of being a writer is discovering your own intellectual and aesthetic autonomy, and how you best get the best words onto the page. The musician Tom Petty tells a great anecdote about working with the producer Jeff Lynne. Petty was in the studio making an album and being very doctrinaire about some recording method or another, much to Lynne’s exasperation, and so Lynne finally said to him, “Tom, no one gives a shit about how you make your records. They only care if the record sounds good.”

Outside of writing workshops and seminars, no one cares if you sit facing the blank page for six hours every day beginning at sunrise, or if you loaf around frittering away most days like a bum, or if you write your book one line at a time on the sly in between typing your boss’s business letters at the office. What’s important is that your reader holds a thrilling, amazing work of art in her hands.

How about you?

What would it mean to you to finally publish your book?

Those who have self-published, is it what you hoped for or expected?

THIS WEEK’S WEBINAR IS “CRAFTING THE PERSONAL ESSAY”; 4:00 p.m. EST Nov. 30. I HOPE YOU’LL JOIN US!

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The allure of patina

By Caitlin Kelly

In our time, we try to be a bit slick. I think there’s value in the roughness of things

–— Marcel Wanders, contemporary Dutch designer

Are you familiar with the Japanese esthetic ideal of wabi-sabi?

Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they represent.

Wabi-sabi is underplayed and modest, the kind of quiet, undeclared beauty that waits patiently to be discovered. It’s a fragmentary glimpse: the branch representing the entire tree, shoji screens filtering the sun, the moon 90 percent obscured behind a ribbon of cloud. It’s a richly mellow beauty that’s striking but not obvious, that you can imagine having around you for a long, long time-Katherine Hepburn versus Marilyn Monroe. For the Japanese, it’s the difference between kirei-merely “pretty”-and omoshiroi, the interestingness that kicks something into the realm of beautiful.

An antiques term for the wear and tear you find on old silver or wood is patina.

I love the terms used in the trade for the things that are worn and weathered — pottery is crazed, paintings have craqelure and works on paper end up with foxing.

All these evidences of aging and wear can ruin the monetary value of an object, although — depending on your budget and the item’s rarity — much can be repaired by conservationists.

The Japanese tradition of kintsugi is described well here on this blog, with some lovely photos of cracked pottery repaired with gold.

I found this early 20th-century (late 19th?) jam pot in a small town in France at an antiques shop. Felix Potin still exists today as a major grocery store chain in France.

Everywhere I go, I seek out things with an overlay of use. I find them in thrift and consignment shops, in antique stores and flea markets, at auction and outdoors fairs. I’ll never be the person living in a super-modern, all-glass/plastic/marble/metal home. I want to see and feel the evidence of the people who made things and who owned and enjoyed them before me.

Here are some items I’ve acquired over the years precisely because their patina, roughness or wabi-sabi add to their beauty for me:

This small green-painted chair, with a rush seat, probably mid 19th century, is so cracked the finish is now called “alligatored.” I found it at a country auction in Nova Scotia in the mid 1980s; I bought four of them for $200.

I can’t remember where I found this oval, battered wooden stool, which has three wooden legs. I’m guessing it might have been a milking stool, as it’s so low and very comfortable. We use it as a table in the bathroom.

I found this old mixing bowl at a small-town Ontario auction for about $10. It’s the perfect size for popcorn!

This is the weathered gilt frame for a beveled mirror, itself with some discoloration from age, I found in New York City in an antiques shop for $300.

Do you like or prefer old things?

Why?

How it feels to be 14, 15 and 27: three recent films

By Caitlin Kelly

Do you remember how it felt?

These three recent films, all of which I enjoyed, powerfully explore what it really feels like to be young, confused and figuring stuff out…

The Way Way Back

If your parents divorced when you were young, (as mine did), you may have spent your childhood and teens being subjected to a series of boyfriends or girlfriends of a sketchy, dubious or downright nasty sort. This film stars Steve Carrell, (of TV’s The Office), as Trent, a bully who’s dating 14-year-old Duncan’s mother, a weak-willed mess, (Toni Collette). Off they all go to his summer house in Massachusetts. There, they meet his wildly drunken neighbor and her teen daughter and a flirtatious wife married to another of his pals. For Duncan, it looks like it’s going to be a really long summer.

But he finds a new family when he wanders into Water Wizz, a local water park, and starts to see how funny and lovable he really is. He’s befriended there by its manager, Owen, who looks like a deadbeat goofball, but proves to be just what Duncan most needs — someone who can gently tease him into becoming his best self. Honest, smart and poignant, this film reminded me how it felt to be marginalized by your family, who really have no idea who you are underneath that teen prickliness, while a bunch of erstwhile strangers bring out the best in you.

Blue is the Warmest Color

If you’re not ready for its famous seven-minute sex scene between two young lesbians, maybe this isn’t your movie.

But the rest of the film — which won three awards at Cannes, shared between the two leads and the director, a first — is well worth the three hours (!) it devotes to this coming-out story of young Adele, who falls for sly, knowing, upper-class Emma after spotting one another crossing a street in Lille.

Adele is completely 15 — starved for life, affection, attention. She eats spaghetti off her knife while her parents watch TV at the dinner table. Emma, with her blue-dyed hair, is five years her senior, a university art student already confident in her powers, artistic and sexual.

Who hasn’t fallen for the knowing, powerful, self-assured version of who we think we’d like to be? Does it ever work out? Adele is obsessed. But Emma moves further and further our of her orbit, strategically mapping her way into the byzantine world of artistic success — thrilled when she introduces her young lover to a potential gallery owner, leaving a good impression.

Emma pulls away, breaking Adele’s heart. She cries easily and copiously — I kept wanting to hand her a Kleenex as globs of mucus run down her face. But that’s young love.

I liked this movie a lot, and the graphic sex scenes felt almost irrelevant after a while because this is really a film about what it feels like to grow into yourself, and the inevitable losses that come with it.

The truly taboo word here? Class. Adele is working-class and proudly and happily becomes a kindergarten teacher, a profession in which she blooms, to the dismay of Emma’s wealthy, languid posse. Emma’s world is elegant, littered with arty pretensions — her friends argue Klimt versus Schiele at a dinner party. Eager to please, Adele not only does all the cooking for them, but the cleaning up. That power imbalance is something every younger lover knows all too well.

Frances Ha

My favorite image of this film — which is shot in black and white — is the final one, a surprise you’ll need to wait for.

This story, of Frances Halladay, a 27-year-old modern dancer living in New York, limns the challenges of making money doing what you love, of friendship strained by your BFFs new love, the ever-shifting sands of self-confidence. It, too, is full of youthful yearning — for artistic success, for the safe solidity of the friend who never leaves, for financial security, for love, for an apartment all your own you can finally afford.

For many of us, the 20s are a time of self-discovery and self-invention. Who are we? Will anyone ever love us? What happens when our best friend marries — and it’s someone we don’t even like? Can we make a living doing what we most enjoy? If not, then what happens? What happens after that?

Much as Frances is a little irritating in her relentless naivete, her goofy sweetness and optimism are also charming. I ached every time her heartless little shit of a room-mate Benji calls her “undateable” and she too-quickly agrees. Few films have reminded me so effectively of the clash of hope and fear that our 20s can offer.

Which films bring back your most powerful feeling of being a teen or young adult?

Please sign up for my final fall webinars: essays, A-list clients and freelancing

By Caitlin Kelly

First, a huge thank you!! to the students who’ve signed up and found value in my new webinars and one-on-one coaching — from Australia, New Zealand and across the U.S. It’s been a lot of fun and a resounding success.

I also coach individually by phone, email or Skype, happy to read your material and work with you on specific pieces or projects you send to me in advance. Email me at learntowritebetter@gmail.com.

Three more webinars are left in the fall series; I’ll offer them again in February, when I’ll add two more: defining and resolving ethical challenges in journalism/blogging and how to conduct a kick-ass interview.

The three remaining:

Crafting the Personal Essay, Sunday November 30, 4:00 p.m. EST, 90 minutes.

It looks dead easy to bang out a personal essay, but it’s not! Great personal essays combine the deeply specific with the universal, the unique-to-you with the immediately familiar to a wider audience. I’ve published mine in The New York Times, Marie Claire, Smithsonian and others. My essay about divorce won a National Magazine Award — for humor! I’ll share tips and tricks to help you craft your essay into a compelling, powerful, saleable piece.

Marie Claire (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Writing for A-List Clients, Saturday December 7, 4:00 p.m. EST, 90 minutes.

Ready to run with the big dogs? You’ll learn here what editors of the most demanding publications want and need; my work appears regularly in The New York Times, as well as reported stories and essays in Marie Claire, Glamour, More, Ladies Home Journal and Cosmopolitan. You’ll learn how and when to pitch, what every pitch must contain — and the one guaranteed way to get an editor to read your pitch.

The New York Times (Photo credit: Scott Beale)

You, inc: The Business of Freelancing, Saturday December 14, 4:00 p.m. EST, 90 minutes.

Do you fantasize about working at home in your PJs? But how to drum up the thousands of dollars you’ll need every month to pay your bills, buy health insurance and keep building your retirement funds? How much to charge? How and when to negotiate a higher rate? How many assignments can you juggle at once? This practical, tips-filled class shares my experience of working for decades as a successful and productive full-time freelancer.

I hope you’ll join us!

Attention, movie buffs! Batman’s cape and the Maltese Falcon at Bonham’s auction Nov. 25

By Caitlin Kelly

If you love movies as much as I do, this is the auction for you, to be held in New York City Nov. 25.

You can register from anywhere, then bid online or by telephone. (Don’t forget that auction prices will include an additional 12 to 25 percent added in the buyer’s premium.)

Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in the 1941 film adaptation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The variety of the 309 lots is amazing, with the priciest object likely to be the Maltese Falcon, the title object — a lead bird — from the 1941 film directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, estimated to head into seven figures.

A few highlights:

— The lacy white cotton nightgown worn by Mia Farrow in “Rosemary’s Baby”; estimate: $12,00-15,000

Indiana Jones (Photo credit: Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer)

— A leather bullwhip used by Harrison Ford in the 1989 Indiana Jones film; estimate $20,000-30,000

— A pair of derby hats worn by Laurel and Hardy; estimate $15,000-20,000

Laurel & Hardy (Photo credit: twm1340)

— A replica pair of ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz; estimate $12,000-15,000

— An Edith Head sketch of Elvis Presley, estimate $1,500-2,000

— A maquette (3D model) of a terror dog from Ghostbusters; estimate $2,000-3000

— A Gotham taxi license plate from the Batman movies, estimate $300-500

— A French poster for A Night at The Opera, by the Marx Brothers; estimate $800-1,000

— A still photo from The Wizard of Oz; estimate $200-300

The Wizard of Oz (1939) (Photo credit: twm1340)

— A pale blue silk pleated negligee worn by Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind; estimate $50,000-70,000

— A revised final draft of the film script for Citizen Kane; estimate $1,500-2,000

— The taupe-colored 1940 Buick Phaeton automobile from Casablanca; estimate $400,000-500,000

Do you fight with the people you love?

By Caitlin Kelly

English: Fight (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Thought-provoking post here from Jezebel; (read the comments as well, lots of good stuff in there):

What is a fight anyway? A disagreement, sure, but predicated
on what? Miscommunication typically. Unrealistic expectations. Actions by the
other person that are perceived as selfish or thoughtless or simply not in line
with whatever one person in a relationship thinks are the perceived agreed-upon
values, stated or otherwise, of the relationship.

And a big part of all this confusion is usually this weird concept of
unspoken agreements. Can I just say right here and now that the concept
of unspoken agreements is super baffling? The thing where someone does
something and you’re supposed to know it means X or Y whether they say
so or not and return the thing to them you didn’t know they did in the
first place because it’s all supposed to be understood?

I bet more relationships have ended by failure to mind-read than almost any other crime of the heart.

So it goes without saying that lots of fights could be avoided by talking
more, by improving communication, stating/negotiations and expectations, and by
lowering expectations. But we are mere mortals over here, not Deepak
Chopra. Fights are happening. Deal with it.

Some people go through life (medicated?) never having a fight with anyone, ever. Over anything.

I’d love to be one of them, but it’s highly unlikely.

Jose, my husband, and I have been together 13.5 years. We had our first fight before our first date.

Yes, really.

But, once we met, we were together after that first night.

We laugh often and loudly. We wince at the thought of ever losing one another. We’re both stubborn, hard-headed and opinionated. We also love each other deeply.

But we’re not averse to verbal fisticuffs, an issue we struggle with still. We were both badly bullied when were younger and neither of us were trained or socialized to beat the shit out of our tormentors. Instead, we learned to verbally annihilate them. We got really good at that.

And both of us are tough, competitive career journalists, a profession that best rewards aggressive winners, not calm, gentle, cooperation.

We also grew up in completely different emotional environments. His parents never fought (in front of him.) My family yelled a lot. I hated it, but it was what we learned. So taking the gloves off, so to speak, comes too quickly, a habitual behavior that’s tough to break, no matter how essential to do so.

English: A fight in ice hockey: LeBlanc vs. Ponich. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When Jose and I first fought, there was an underlying meta-fight, like gasoline poured into flame, of his disbelief, outrage and shock that we were fighting at all. For me, it was business as usual. It took a long time for me express my needs more calmly.

Like every couple, we also carry ghosts of old hurts, sometimes arguing ferociously not with one another, really, but with an unresolved bit of business from our past.

Everyone in a lasting intimate relationship must find a way to negotiate through conflict.

I really liked this recent post from another blogging Caitlin at Fit & Feminist, which addresses how grouchy and (regretfully) argumentative we can get when we’re really just hungry:

A couple of weeks ago I found myself embroiled in a bit of an interpersonal snafu.  I was trying to broach a sensitive subject with care and delicacy, hoping that I could not only get my point across but that I could do so in a way that was diplomatic and fair.

The problem is, I tried to do this while I was hungry.  And so instead of being careful and delicate, I struggled to find the right words to convey what I wanted to say, and then finally, I became frustrated and blurted out exactly the wrong words required by the situation.

After I finally got to eat something, I realized what I had done, but it was too late – the damage had been done.  And not only that, but the damage had radiated outward in a domino effect of fuckery, and I found
myself spending the next couple of hours engaged in a desperate attempt to put band-aids over all of the social wounds my hunger-fueled carelessness had wrought.

It occurred to me later that if you could go back over the past several years and catalog all of the times I had really stepped in some big piles of shit with other people, then dig deep down to find the underlying causes of it, nine times out of ten your excavation will lead you to an empty, rumbling, pissed-off tummy.

Here’s one of the best songs ever about a remorseful lover (successfully) rushing to the train station to re-claim his sweetie who’s about to leave him after a fight, recorded in 1996 by British singer-songwriter Richard Thompson:

She’s sitting on the train, the train’s gonna to leave
Bags in her hand, tears on her sleeve
Banging on the window with all of my might
But she won’t look to the left or the right
We had a fight and it wasn’t pretty
Now she’s leaving, ain’t it a pity
Going to wait tables, down in the city
Hold that red light one more minute
6:18’s got my baby in it
Train don’t leave, heart don’t break
Train don’t leave, heart don’t break

And here’s a brilliant post from American business guru Seth Godin about the corrosive effects of tantrums at work.

As readers here know, from a recent string of critical comments, I have little stomach for fighting with strangers. Fighting with intimates is stressful enough.

Do you fight with the people you love?

How does it turn out?