Q & A with one of my favorite bloggers, {frolic} by Chelsea Fuss

By Caitlin Kelly

If you haven’t yet discovered the lovely images, stories and spirit of {frolic}, I urge you to do so immediately!

I don’t know how or when I found her, but am so glad I did.

Chelsea Fuss — who has the perfect name for someone with such exacting esthetic standards — now lives in Lisbon after traveling to all sorts of gorgeous places, which she has written about and photographed for her blog.

I admire her spirit of independence and exploration. She has spent her life discovering and sharing the world’s beauty — and for that I am a grateful reader and follower of her eye and her ideas.

She and I now follow one another on Twitter; she kindly agreed to let me do an email interview with her.

Tell me a bit of your history…where were you born? Raised? Did you move around a lot as a child or teen?

 

I lived in North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Olympia, WA. My family did move quite a bit though most of my growing up years were spent in Olympia, where my family goes back a generation or two. 

 

What sort of work do/did your parents do? i.e. where does your creative spirit come from? 

 

My dad was an accountant but we were always moving or talking about moving and he changed jobs a lot, setting up business wherever we went. My mother was a speech therapist but very creative with a very DIY mentality. She sewed all of our clothes and baked everything from scratch. 

My grandmother is an artist and my mom always encouraged creativity. I always looked up to my oldest sisters who brought home opera cassettes, foreign films, and art books.

Where did you attend college and why? 

I went to Brigham Young University (a Mormon school in Salt Lake City.) It was sort of the most comfortable thing to do at the time.

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“I couldn’t wait to be “grown up” have a job and my own apartment. It’s something I dreamed of from a young age”

 

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Did you enjoy it – how has it helped (or hindered) you? 

 

I loved my art history classes and the lifestyle of college though I had a difficult time with the particular culture of the university I was at. I grew up Mormon, and the most comfortable thing at the time was to go to Mormon University where my best friend was going. Sometimes I wish I went elsewhere but really I was in a hurry to get through university.

I couldn’t wait to be “grown up” have a job and my own apartment. It’s something I dreamed of from a young age.

When and where did you first get interested in the work you do now?

 

I was interested in flowers since the time I was about 7 years old and I asked my mom could we please plant a big huge flower garden instead of vegetables! Flowers have always been an obsession. As a teenager in Olympia in the 90’s, I spent most of time in my herb garden wearing a straw hat, while all the other kids were at Nirvana concerts. I made potpourri and dried flower wreaths. Ha!  I read every book about gardening and flowers that I could get my hands on. At 18 I arranged the flowers for my sister’s wedding.

I always loved reading magazines and studying the styling. Blogging is something that was unexpected. I discovered it by accident and got hooked.

New horizons!

Who, if anyone, encouraged or mentored you the most? 

 

My parents have always been very supportive. My mom was always buying gardening books when she found out it was an interest of mine and my father has always been a huge supporter of my entrepreneurial spirit. My grandmother, Grace, was always cheering me on as well.

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 “When I want a “so truthful it hurts” answer, I call my dad, for his pragmatism”

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What lessons did they teach you that have proven most useful?

 

My mother and grandmother have taught me the value of optimism and positive thinking. You really have to have a positive attitude and use intention as a small business owner because of the instability and unpredictability. 

 

My dad has always tried to teach me to be more detached and not make as many emotional decisions. I am still learning that one but I’ve gotten better. 

 

When I want optimism and a pep talk, I call my mom. When I want a “so truthful it hurts” answer, I call my dad, for his pragmatism. 

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“Travel becomes a way of life and a comfort zone”

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You’ve traveled the world…what gives you the confidence to do so?

 

I think it’s one of those things that the more you do, the more comfortable you get with it. Travel becomes a way of life and a comfort zone. Just like anything else. Even when it is uncomfortable, if you want something bad enough you’ll do it. Travel has always been an obsession I was willing to do anything to make it happen.

It’s funny you use the word “confident”. I’ve never been super confident and was very shy as a child and teenager. The Dr. thought I was mute when I was a kid because I never talked!

I always felt different from other people but because I had parents and siblings who encouraged me to forge my own path and live my own way, I slowly become a more confident person and found my comfort zone in doing my own thing. And I’ve always felt more confident, living life my way.

 

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“These things come with tradeoffs. Of course it’s not easy. The instability and unpredictability is hard for me”

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Other people look at a creative life, and a somewhat transient one, as scary and unpredictable. How does it feel for you?

 

For me, running my own business and being a freelancer has always been more of a comfort zone than the alternative. I’ve always loved working by myself and I think honestly, that’s been the biggest appeal. That, and freedom. 

 

The transient part had always been such a dream for me that it just felt right and it felt overdue. As I kid I dreamed of seeing the world and that dream has never left me.

I think getting to the realization that these things come with tradeoffs. Of course it’s not easy. The instability and unpredictability is hard for me. And I definitely have moments of thinking “What in the world am I doing?!” Especially moving to Portugal. In my head it seemed pretty simple and easy but I have to say it’s been much more challenging than I imagined. 

 

Where do you find creative inspiration? Do you have any role models or people you especially admire (in or out of your field?) Why them?

 

I am super inspired by artist studios, other people’s gardens and kitchens and living rooms! I love seeing how other people live and work and what they collect and how they put it all together. I always find inspiration on walks through markets, a museum, and of course a new city.

I really love what Marie from My Life in Sourdough http://www.mylifeinsourdough.com/  is doing because it’s different than anything I’ve seen before. Her series combines a romantic comedy story line with a cooking show. I think it’s brilliant and timeless.

 

What advice would you offer to people who wish they had your life? (i.e. creativity, freedom, travel, etc.)

 

First off — not everything looks like it does on the Internet.. so it’s not perfect and I have lots of problems and bad days like everyone else. Also, everything is a trade off, so while I might have freedom to travel and a flexible job, there’s other things I don’t have that maybe I would love to have.

 

Also: Focus on doing what makes you happy and what you love. Don’t be afraid to market yourself as an artist. The Internet is still the Wild West so there are so many possibilities. Do what you love and use the Internet to the best of your advantage. Also, nothing is perfect. If you want your art or creativity to be a job, you might have to compromise as far as business models, products, etc.

 

What work are you most proud of, so far? Why?

This is so hard. I think every creative person is so tough on themselves! And I always see how I could do better or improve everything I do.

I really like the way these images came out for Anna Joyce’s Indigo Collection, photographed by Lisa Warninger and prop styled by me. http://www.frolic-blog.com/2015/07/indigo-beach-dreams-with-anna-joyce/

 

On Thanksgiving, grateful for…

By Caitlin Kelly

This is the warehouse for NYC’s food bank. As you enjoy your meal today, remember how many cannot, without help.

Today is American Thanksgiving, a day when friends and family gather to celebrate.

Here are some things I’m grateful for:

You!

This blog now has more than 15,900 followers worldwide, and more join every day. It’s a place we continue to have lively, civil, moving conversations about our lives. Those of you, like Ksbeth, Rami, Steve, Charlene, Matthew, Grace and Leah who have been here for years,  I’m honored you return here.

I enjoy writing it and hearing from you, and am so glad you make time to visit, read and comment.

Health

As someone who spent the fall of 2011 on crutches, so bad was the pain in my damaged left hip, (since replaced), and who has spent months on end in physical therapy attending to both knees and my right shoulder pre and post-surgery, I’m so grateful to be strong, flexible and healthy.

Without good health, we have nothing.

My handsome hubby, Jose

My husband

Jose is a treasure. We met online when I was writing a story about internet dating for Mademoiselle magazine and 200 men replied to the personal profile I put up on one of the sites. He was in the mix. Ironically, we both work in journalism in New York but we would never have met any other way. It’s now 15 years and it feels like minutes.

Friends

We’re staying this week with dear friends in suburban Maryland, a four-hour drive from our home. They’ve welcomed us many times and it’s a blessing to know their home is open to us. In a world where work comes and goes too easily, where family can be complicated and moral support gets you through it all, deep and sustained friendship is one of my greatest joys.

Work

Jose and I now both work full-time freelance. That means, every single month, we need to earn multiple thousands of dollars in income to pay all our bills. If we’re ill or tired, we can take time off, but there’s no paid sick leave or vacation. No one pays into a 401k to help save for our retirement now.

Everything is up to us. So having a strong network of people who know and respect our skill and hire us to write, edit, teach and take photographs is key to our ongoing success.

Savings

We’ve been careful and frugal. Having a financial safety net allows us to take time off when needed and the creative risks we need to to compete effectively with people decades younger.

Ideas

We talk constantly about our ideas for work, travel, our home, new projects to work on individually or together, whether our blogs or creating new workshops. I’m grateful for a partner who is fun, funny and full of ideas. I am fortunate to have friends who help me refine mine and who share theirs.

This is me, in Ireland, at my happiest — tea, travel, newspapers, painting

Creativity

I’m fortunate to have grown up in a home bursting with creative talent. My father, still alive and healthy at 86, was a film-maker and someone who makes art in multiple forms: engraving, etching, oil, lithography and silver. My late stepmother wrote for television and my mother was a journalist and editor. It was simply normal behavior to have tons of ideas, sell them to make a living and know that a percentage would be rejected or not very good. When I took the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking for a story, I scored in the 98th percentile. I guess it rubbed off!

 

Paris, January 2015

Travel

As regular readers of Broadside know, we live to travel, and are gone usually several weeks each year to Canada, other parts of the U.S. and, in better years financially, to foreign lands. This year has been fantastic in that regard, with trips to Maryland, Ontario, Quebec, Maine, London, Paris and Ireland. Because we’re now both freelance, and have friends generously welcoming us into their homes, as long as we have work and wi-fi, there’s no need to stay put in New York. Beyond grateful to be able to keep my passport handy.

Our living room

Our home

We live on the top floor of an apartment building with a spectacular view, facing northwest, of the Hudson River and the opposite shore. Every morning we’re greeted with a fresh bit of beauty, whether the rising sun creating a line of demarcation across the hills, sparking every window into a “ruby moment” as it reflects the sun, or fog so thick we can barely see the trees.

We live and work in a one-bedroom, so we have to be tidy and organized, but love that our balcony is our refuge/office/spare room when the weather is good.

I really enjoy our town, Tarrytown, NY, 25 miles north of Manhattan, a place so pretty films and television shows are made here — a few days ago HBO was filming a show with Sarah Jessica Parker.

We’ve enjoyed many fun versions of this holiday over the years — spent in frigid, dark-by-2pm Stockholm, others with friends in D.C. and N.Y, getting to know them and their relatives better. 

Our own families living very far away from us, we’re lucky to be invited to join others’ celebrations.

Wherever you are today, I hope your Thanksgiving is a happy one!

Why journalism still matters — go see “Spotlight”

By Caitlin Kelly

The late David Carr, NYT media columnist — much missed. Brilliant, no bullshit.

Their clothes are drab, cheap, poorly- fitting.

All they do is sit at desks or talk on the phone or knock on doors.

Their work takes months.

Why on earth would this make a compelling film?

I admit it, I’m biased, having worked as a journalist for more than 20 years. I’ve been doing it since my undergraduate years at university and still enjoy it, even though 24,000 of us lost our jobs in 2008 and thousands more are losing their jobs every year now.

The film is about the Boston Globe’s investigative team, called Spotlight, and their controversial and much-challenged decision to look into allegations of child abuse within the Catholic church there.

The cast is terrific — fellow Canadian Rachel McAdams, John Slattery (of Mad Men), Mark Ruffalo, Stanley Tucci.

The newsroom looks like every newsroom everywhere, overlit, ugly, standard-issue desks and chairs, glass-walled executive offices. Its power structure,  (interesting how it parallels the church they investigate, and how every senior editor is male), also deeply familiar.

The mix of political cynicism and compassion for the people they’re covering — and the remorse they feel as they realize they knew about the story years before and ignored it — also resonate.

But what left me in tears was how truthful is the portrayal of my work, certainly as part of a daily newspaper staff; I worked at the Globe & Mail, the Montreal Gazette and the New York Daily News.

It takes patience.

It takes persistence.

It takes a ton of tedious-but-essential detail work like reading old directories and chasing down court documents.

It takes a belief that what you’re doing all day, for months, actually might make a substantive difference — at best — in the lives of your readers.

Working as a news or investigative reporter is a weird mix of aggressive digging, pressure to stop digging, (by angry sources, power brokers, bosses worried you won’t bring home the goods), and the growing conviction that you’re on a huge story you have to get, no matter the cost.

Your co-workers may question and resent you — since they’re expected to crank out copy every day, possibly multiple times a day — and your team has yet to show anything in print, even after months of work.

The people you’re investigating will do anything to shut you down, from polite threats over a cocktail to appeals to your civic pride. (It can get much more bare-knuckled than that.)

The film shows reporters doing what no film ever shows — reporting.

That means knocking on door after door, some of them slammed in your face, some of them suddenly opened and a confession spilling out so fast you write it down as you walk away, as McAdams does in one scene.

It can mean sitting with, and witnessing, incredible pain when someone tells you they have been molested or raped, but not hugging them or saying anything — instead, as McAdams does — saying quietly, “We need specific language.”

Me, hard at work on assignment in Bilwi, Nicaragua.

To anyone but a reporter, she sounds shockingly callous and cold. Why isn’t she comforting the man telling her his secrets?

Because that’s not our job. (Even if, and it often is, our social impulse.)

I’ve been in that place, as someone who had been raped told me her story. It’s a delicate moment you’re neither trained or prepared for, like holding a water balloon — one false move and it shatters. You have to be calm, quiet, empathetic and just listen. Your job is to witness, not to emote or react.

I loved that the female reporter is portrayed as dogged and relentless as her two male peers. We are!

I love that her nails are bare, that she wears no jewelery but a plain wedding band and apparently little make-up. In the world of news journalism, that shit really doesn’t matter. It’s one reason I love it and felt comfortable within it.

It was powerful to see the conflict between the reporter’s private feelings — about faith, about the Church, about their own history — and the work they were doing. I know reporters personally who covered this story and what it did to them emotionally. This rang true.

I loved seeing a brief glimpse of a friend’s book, Lead Us Not Into Temptation, and his name in the final credits; Jason Berry, a New Orleans journalist, was one of the first to write about this issue. I met Jason in Paris many years ago when we were both chosen to participate in a year-long European journalism fellowship.

When I left the theater to use the bathroom, three women my age there had just seen it as well — and we got into a long, deep, impassioned and personal conversation about the film and why journalists want to do that kind of work. It was an amazing encounter for all of us, one of whom works with Catholic church abuse victims.

I told them about my two books and the kind of interviews I’ve done that were equally soul-searing, and my hope that sharing them with a larger audience would be useful somehow. It made me realize, sadly, how rarely I get to talk to non-journalists about my work and why I believe so deeply in the value of it, still. It moved me to hear from three others that it matters to them as well.

If you care at all about journalism and why, at best, people still want to do it for a living — and I know that many people simply hate journalists and don’t trust us — go see this film!

 

The gift of hospitality

By Caitlin Kelly

A shared meal is a gift

How often — ever? — do you welcome guests into your home?

In some cultures, it’s normal to ask even people you don’t know very well in for a drink or a meal or to spend the night. In others, people can take years before they decide to open the door to you.

As the holiday season starts in the U.S. with Thanksgiving, thousands of people will be visiting friends and family, settling into unfamiliar beds, padding down the hallway to a new bathroom and wondering how best to behave.

I love having people come for dinner and our sofa is well-worn from the many visits we’ve had, sometimes for a week or more, from family and out-of-town friends. (We live and work in a one-bedroom apartment. I’d kill for a proper guest room!)

I love the intimacy of spending time in someone’s home and they in mine. You get to see their family photos (or lack of same), their choices of art and design, their books. Every fridge’s contents is a revelation. (You’ll always find maple syrup, eggs and half-and-half in ours.)

I love the ease of a morning spent in pajamas reading the paper or sitting by the evening fire at my Dad’s house, settling in. There’s no rush to get out of a crowded, noisy cafe or restaurant, no bill, no harried waiter or busboy.

In a few days together, you’ve got time. Time to drop and return to a deeper or more difficult conversation or to discuss things you never get to in all those quick meetings — who they first loved or what they studied in college or why they love Mozart so much.

One of the members of our jazz dance class recently had us over for a post-class hot tub session (bliss!) and lunch.

It was the most fun I’d had in a long time. Seven of us squished into the hot tub, the first time I’d seen any of us not in our workout clothes. Lunch became a hilarious and occasionally R-rated conversation that revealed all sorts of new things about one another.

Cooking at the house we rented last year in Ireland

It was, I later realized, a true gift.

It takes time, energy, planning and an open heart to welcome people into your home. (Tidying it up can feel like too much of a chore.)

If you’ve got multiple small children, it can simply feel impossible.

But what a pleasure to sit in someone’s home, to see their taste, to enjoy their cooking and conversation.

Now that we all live so virtually most of the time, being in someone else’s space feels more important to me than ever.

Quiche is a quick, easy and affordable way to feed a few people…

We’ll be driving five hours from New York to suburban D.C. to visit friends there for Thanksgiving. Dear friends, they’ve welcomed us into their home many times before, so we know their enormous dog will be at the door, soon shedding blond fur all over our New York uniform of black clothing. We know their fridge will be full and that it’s OK to raid it.

I look forward to helping my friend prepare the meal for all her family.

And — talk about unlikely! — I recently expressed a vague wish to learn to play the cello. I don’t even know how to read music and the only instrument I played in earlier life was the guitar.

My friend has a cello she’s going to let me try when we’re at her house. What a moment that’s likely to be. (Dog runs away in terror.)

Who will you welcome into your home this season?

Are you looking forward to it, dreading it — or avoiding it altogether?

What matters most to you?

By Caitlin Kelly

When you wish upon a star…

I know a younger writer who — ho hum — has produced five books and four children in less than a decade.

Laura Vanderkam is happily and lucratively obsessed with the notion of time management, which isn’t as compelling to me. (But it’s clearly working for her!)

I do love her stance on a default phrase we often use — “I’m too busy”.

No, she says, the words you want, and want to mean, are “It’s not a priority.”

Travel! I live for this. I work for this. Probably my number one priority

The things you devote the most of your time to become, de facto, your priorities.

It’s where we invest the bulk of our energy, money and attention. Our hopes and dreams.

We sacrifice other things to make sure these are, and remain, a central part of our life.

It might be your pet(s) or children or partner or your job.

It might be a passion project.

It could be competing in triathlons and beating your own personal record, time and again.

It might be setting up a charitable foundation, as several people I know have done.

It might — as several friends of mine are facing — be recovering, far more slowly than they’d hope, from surgery, illness or accident, losing hours and hours to maintaining or trying to regain their health and strength.

Sometimes life makes sure whatever we think is a priority…isn’t anymore.

I value making time to just sit still and enjoy the beauty around us

I think about this a lot because, like many of you, my life is filled with so many simultaneous things I hope to accomplish personally, professionally, intellectually, physically — from losing at least 30 pounds to publishing several more books.

So I make time to take a jazz dance class on Monday and Friday mornings which leaves my sweat in puddles on the floor and am finishing up my third book proposal, with a publisher already asking to see it.

I want my marriage (my second, 15 years in) to keep thriving, which means paying attention to my husband and his needs.

So we have both chosen to stay freelance (which means a sort of financial tapdance many can’t tolerate) so we can now sit and eat a mid-day meal at home together or travel much more often and widely because, as long as we have work and wi-fi, we can still earn a living.

A resort we love to visit…saving up for it means we make it a priority

I love to travel and am always planning the next journey, whether a road trip, a visit to a friend out-of-state or another flight across an ocean.

So I try to stay healthy enough to work hard, then take breaks. We nurture our relationships, so we have places to stay and friends to visit. We save money so we can afford flights, car rental, meals and lodging.

I want to make enough money to enjoy some real luxuries, whether beautiful new clothing, well-made accessories, regular massages.

Yet I also want to keep enough of a savings cushion I never have to fear poverty.

(That’s an ongoing conflict for me!)

I want to do work that deeply challenges me intellectually, no matter how much that can scare me.

What if I fail?

I now co-chair a volunteer board, The Writers Emergency Assistance Fund, (which sends a grant of up to $4,000 within a week or so to a needy writer who meets the criteria), so I’m testing and growing my leadership skills.

It’s already proving a real challenge to manage all the goals we’ve set for ourselves.

But which of all of these is most important and why?

How about you?
What matters most to you — and are you putting that first in your life right now?

Routines and rituals

By Caitlin Kelly

We eat by candlelight every evening

I’m writing this post with two different streams of music coming into our apartment.

In the living room, our new favorite station, TSFJazz, which we discovered during a taxi ride into Paris on our last trip there, in December 2014.

It’s terrific! We listen to it now as a default choice and I love hearing French all day (I speak it) as well their broad array of choices.

On Saturday mornings, I listen to a reggae show on WKCR, the radio station of Columbia University, learning new-to-me phrases like “large up” (to praise or remember.) On a cold, gray winter’s morning, what better way to start the weekend?

I love rituals and routines, for the rhythm they add to my life.

In a world where things change so often and so quickly, I increasingly appreciate unmoving touchstones.

My daily pot of tea, usually at 4 or 5pm

From age 8 to 16, I attended boarding school and summer camp, each with decades-old routines and rituals, some of which I loved, (we sang en masse after every meal at camp), and some of which I hated, (we had to be back at boarding school by 6pm Sunday evenings to listen to yet another missionary talk about their good deeds overseas.)

What I did enjoy about that ritual was the closing song of every Sunday evening, the lovely hymn, Abide With Me,…fast falls the eventide, the darkness deepens, Lord with me abide…

I can still remember the timing of the school’s bells: 6:55 wake-up; 7:10 out for a walk around the block; 7:25 head to the dining hall for breakfast. Each afternoon someone would bring back to our boarders’ house a huge green basket filled with cookies for our afternoon snack.

For special occasions, like graduation, a bagpiper arrived in full regalia, another ritual I cherished.

Each one of these shaped our days, weeks and months, adding form and familiarity to the inevitable craziness and changes of growing up.

I like how, as an adult, we can create our own rituals and routines, for ourselves and our children. It’s comforting to have things we know we can look forward to, like the Saturday morning pancakes my husband makes.

Jose bought this book — I look forward to reading it!

A few of ours:

We drink our morning coffee from a thermos, a habit of my parents when I was growing up, which seemed eminently sensible for people who like consuming a lot of caffeine over many hours.

The reassuring red of a British bus, post-box and phone booth

I still plan ahead using a red leather Filofax, a beautiful and sensual way to store the information I need to stay organized.

I love cutting recipes out of magazines and newspapers, sticking them with a glue stick onto a piece of paper I three-hole-punch and put into a binder. Of course, I could do it all on-line and clear my home of all those cookbooks and stained bits of yellowing paper.

But I won’t.

After every game played with my co-ed pick-up softball team, now into our 15th season, we always head to the same local pub. We know the menu off by heart and have eaten everything on it a bazillion times. But it’s where we go.

We eat dinner at home by candlelight, and an overhead light dimmed low. I love the gentle mood that candles create.

Every afternoon at home, I get in touch with my British/Canadian/Irish roots and put on the kettle to make a fresh pot of hot tea. No sad little bag in a cup! I have a selection of herbal, Constant Comment, Earl Grey and fruit-flavored teas. Such a soothing, comforting way to take a break, relax and re-hydrate.

I tend to avoid mentioning religion here, but I also love the rituals of the Episcopal church services I occasionally attend: the liturgy, Nicene creed, the collect, my favorite hymns. In an ever-shifting world, there’s something grounding and, yes, deeply comforting to know what we will say and do collectively.

Every weekend, we dive into three newspapers (yes, in print), the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. Our favorite, by far, is the FT and its magazine supplement entitled (yup) How to Spend It, filled with ads for custom-made yachts and editorial images of $100,000 jewels, an amusing peek into 1%-world. The paper, though, is filled with terrific writing on books, travel, food, gardening.

I’m reluctant to fully unpack and put away our suitcases after a great trip — until we’ve planned our next one.

For Jose, it’s an hour of quiet time every morning, listening to music, reading or just thinking, before I wake up. Plus his cup of hazelnut coffee.

Every year, the Rockettes perform their Christmas show here, a beloved tradition for many New Yorkers

What are some of your favorite rituals and routines?

Aaah, country life…where, in the U.S., suicide rates are higher

By Caitlin Kelly

It’s not easy living in a rural area, as some people discover when they move to one.

This deeply disturbing New York Times story discusses the suicide rate in rural America — twice as high as in urban areas:

The C.D.C. reported last year that Wyoming has the highest suicide rate in the nation, almost 30 deaths per 100,000 people in 2012, far above the national average of 12.6 per 100,000. Not far behind were Alaska, Montana, New Mexico and Utah, all states where isolation can be common. The village of Hooper Bay, Alaska, recently recorded four suicides in two weeks.

In one telephone survey of 1,000 Wyoming residents, half of those who responded said someone close to them had attempted or died by suicide.

In September, mental health experts, community volunteers and law enforcement officers gathered in Casper to discuss possible solutions. Among the participants was Bobbi Barrasso, the wife of Senator John Barrasso, who has made suicide prevention a personal and political mission.

“Wyoming is a beautiful state,” she told the crowd. “We have great open spaces. We are a state of small population. We care about one another. We’re resourceful, we’re resilient, we cowboy up.”

…The realities of small-town life can take an outsize toll on the vulnerable. A combination of lower incomes, greater isolation, family issues and health problems can lead people to be consumed by day-to-day struggles, said Emily Selby-Nelson, a psychologist at Cabin Creek Health Systems, which provides health care in the rural hills of West Virginia.

This story hit home for me.

In 1988-89, I spent 18 months living in Lebanon, New Hampshire (now, shockingly, plagued by an epidemic of heroin addiction), a small town of about 10,000 close to the much more affluent town of Hanover, NH, home to Dartmouth College. I moved there to follow my then boyfriend (later husband) in his medical residency at Dartmouth, a four-year commitment.

Port Hope, Ontario. pop. 16,000

I was excited. I had only lived downtown, and/or in large cities like Toronto, Montreal and Paris. I was really curious about small-town life and looked forward to trying it — but barely lasted a year before I was really in fear of losing my mental health. No exaggeration.

It was the worst time of my life.

We were broke, trying to live (and own two cars) on his salary of $22,000, the nation’s poorest-paying medical residency and my savings. I had no job and there were none to be found.

There was no Internet then. The winter was brutally long and cold. We had no friends or family nearby and every social overture I made was ignored or went unreciprocated.

Everyone was married or pregnant and/or had kids. We were “only” living together, not yet even engaged, which (!?) seemed scandalous to others our age, even students who’d moved there from other large cities.

The only time our phone rang, a voice would say “I need a windshield” — we had inherited the former number for Upper Valley Glass.

I know. That sounds funny.

I’d rather be surrounded by a horde of dancing strangers, thanks!

I became almost agoraphobic because everywhere we went, alone or together, we were socially invisible. Plus, ambitious as hell, I was professionally dying on the vine. Journalism is incredibly competitive and staying out of it for even a year or two is never a great idea.

I had left my country, close friends, a well-paid newspaper job and a gorgeous apartment.

For this?!

The stifling pressure to conform to some really weird 1950s-era ideal of behavior was crazy. I was criticized — by a friend! — for choosing bright green rubber boots instead of sensible brown or black. And coming from Montreal, a vibrant, bilingual, sophisticated city, the region’s dominant ethos of Yankee self-denial was alien, all these women wearing no makeup or perfume or anything with a visible shape to it.

I had never felt so out of place, not even when I lived in France or Mexico.

Yes, we had a nice apartment. Yes, the countryside was gorgeous. Yes, I actually enjoyed attending the local auction every Friday and learned a lot about antiques.

But I fled to New York within 18 months of arriving there; I would never have made it through another three years there.

For the past 25 years I’ve lived in a small town, but one only 25 miles from Manhattan. It gives me the best of both worlds, easy, quick access to one of the busiest and most challenging cities in the world — with the beauty and silence that also recharges and refreshes me. I know enough people here now I’m always seeing someone I know at the gym or the post office or the grocery stores. but without feeling stifled or excluded.

London — much more my speed!

Do you live in a rural or isolated area or small town?

How is it working for you?

The joy (and misery) of possessions

By Caitlin Kelly

“I don’t believe in storage lockers” — prop stylist/blogger Chelsea Fuss

If you’ve never seen Chelsea’s blog, go!

I loved seeing these gorgeous shawls — so much better to take a photograph than buy and regret…

I’ve been following it for years, for which she’s won all sorts of awards. Fuss worked in Portland, Oregon for 14 years as a props stylist and lived like a nomad for a bit, (no husband or kids.) Now, at 37 — an age when some of us are deeply mired in conventional-if-bored-to-tears work and domesticity — is happily re-settled in, of all places, Lisbon.

I enjoy everything about her blog, and her spirit of adventure. She really has the perfect name for a woman who creates lovely images for a living!

I also share her values: a devotion to connection, to beauty, flowers, travel, quiet, making a pretty home, wherever you live, that welcomes you without spending a fortune.

Paris, January 2015. I’d rather be free to travel than stay home, encumbered by stuff

I loved her comments here, on another woman’s blog, readingmytealeaves.com:

When you spend your day driving around town in a cargo van buying $1000’s of dollars worth of props from Anthropologie and West Elm [NOTE: chic chain-store shops, for those who don’t know them] for photo shoots, those products start to mean very little. I am very detached (possibly to the extreme) from possessions! There are very few stores I walk into and find myself ooh-ing and aww-ing. As a prop stylist, after a while, you’ve seen it all. What’s really special are the one-off pieces, the heirlooms, the perfectly weathered linens, or the family postcard with old script that tells just the right story.

As I sort through my stuff, organizing/ditching/selling/donating/offering for consignment as much as I possibly can, it’s a powerful time to reflect on what we own, what we keep and why.

This Tizio lamp is one of my favorite possessions — bought in 1985. The light it casts is clean, bright and has two intensities. Because the base is so small, it’s versatile. The lamp can also be flipped upwards to cast reflected light instead.

Even as I’m pitching, Jose and I are treating our home to a few nice new pieces: framing a lovely image by the talented pinhole photographer Michael Falco (a gift); a striking striped kilim we’re having shipped from Istanbul that I found online, rewiring and adding a fresh new white linen shade to an early pale grey ginger jar lamp we recently found in Ontario and a spectacular mirror, probably mid-Eastern in origin, I found dusty and grimy in an antique shop in North Hatley, Quebec.

So…how can I possibly advocate less stuff?

Because we live in a one-bedroom apartment, with very limited closet space. I’ve lived here for decades, and we both work at home now and don’t plan to move into a larger space any time soon, so a constant attention to add/pitch is crucial to our sanity and tidiness. (Yes, we do have a storage locker and keep some things in our garage as well: out of season clothing, luggage, ski equipment, etc.)

I grew up in homes where my parents’ primary interests were travel and owning fewer/better quality objects than piles ‘o stuff. My family home, and ours today, was filled with original art, (prints, paintings and photos, some of them made by us, Eskimo sculpture, a Japanese mask and scroll) and a few good antiques.

I’m typing this blog post atop a table my father gave us last year, which is 18th.century English oak.

One of the lovely Indian textiles my mother collected, atop an Art Deco-era Japanese vanity, a gift for my 35th birthday

It boggles my mind to enjoy and use every day in 2015 an object that’s given elegant service for multiple centuries. I prefer, for a variety of reasons, using older things (pre-1900, even 1800, when possible) to new/plastic/Formica/mass-produced.

Many people inherit things from their families and cherish them for their beauty and sentimental attachment. Not me.

I own nothing from either grandfather, and only a vintage watch and a few gifts from one grandmother — she was a terrible spendthrift who simply never bothered to pay three levels of tax on her inherited fortune. Her things were sold to pay debt; if I want to see a nice armoire she once owned, it’s now in a Toronto museum.

So…no big emotional draaaaaaama for me over stuff. I’ve bought 99% of what I own, as has my husband.

I’m also of an age now when too many of my friends, even some of them decades younger, face the exhausting, time-sucking, emotionally-draining task of emptying out a parent’s home and disposing of (keeping?) their possessions. One friend is even flying to various American cities from Canada to hand-deliver some willed pieces of jewelry, so complicated is it to ship them across the border.

When my mother had to enter a nursing home on barely a week’s notice four years ago, we had to clear out and dispose of a life’s acquisitions within a week or so. Most went to a local auction house.

It was sad, painful and highly instructive.

$31. Score!

Today I’m lucky enough to enjoy a few of her things: a pretty wool rug by my bedside and several exquisite pieces of early/Indian textiles; she lived in a one-bedroom apartment so there wasn’t a lot to deal with.

But if we’re lucky enough to acquire some items we really enjoy, parting with them can feel difficult.

Maybe better to keep them to a minimum?

Check out this amazing 650 square foot NYC apartment with handsome multi-functional pieces and built-ins.

How do you feel about owning/cleaning/ditching your possessions — or those of others?