So Sylvie

Do You Know Danny Kaye?

Are you sure? Well after seeing a photo of his Chinese kitchen it got me thinking, "Wow, do I really know Danny Kaye?"

Once I began reading I realized there's a lot I didn't know about him. For instance, he's an original owner of the Seattle Mariners baseball team. Before that he was a lifelong fan of the Brooklyn/LA Dodgers and recorded a song called The D-O-D-G-E-R-S Song.

He left school at 13 to pursue a career in acting.

He also had a longstanding interest in medicine and was permitted to observe surgery on several occasions.

Over the course of his career he raised over $5,000,000 in support of musicians pension funds.

It is rumored that he had an affair with Sir Laurence Olivier in the 50s, while both were married, that spanned 10 years . 

He was infected with Hepatitis C from a blood transfusion while undergoing heart bypass surgery in 1983. Four years later he died of a heart attack.

The theater and demonstration kitchen underneath the library at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York is named for him.

He loved cooking.

“My father’s Chinese kitchen was his private theater,” wrote Danny Kaye’s daughter, Dena Kaye, about the room her father loved most in the family’s Beverly Hills residence. “He was the same entertainer at the stove as he was on stage. Audrey Hepburn said it was like watching a great ballet dancer. Rudolf Nureyev described him as ‘a balletic matador.’ Everyone got up to watch him cook (he never sat down until dessert), and once he’d carefully plated a dish and put it on the table, he’d bellow, like a drill sergeant, ‘Don’t look at it! Eat it!’”

And he had a gorgeous dining room in which to eat all that yummy food with guests like Shirley MacLaine, Cary Grant, Michael Caine, and Itzhak Perlman...

 

I love how all of the greenery outside continues inside with the wallpaper and green chairs.

He lived a rich life.

 

Over the [Eel] River & Through the [Red]Woods

We journeyed to Trinidad for the Thanksgiving holiday! No, not that Trinidad. The one in Humboldt County in Northern California. It's a spectacular drive passing through vineyards and small towns, farms and incredibly changeable landscapes -- Avenue of the Giants takes you through massive redwoods, and you find golden hills with gentle oaks in the Sonoma Valley.

This rock formation is about 200 feet tall and gorgeous.

The weather was exciting. Bright sun & outbursts of rain and rainbows.

Richard driving...

 

I've been meaning to photograph this cottage for years. It's south of Laytonville.

(click for larger views)

 

The barn...

 

 

The natural foods store that I like to get lunch at in Laytonville was closed so we stopped at my other favorite spot there, Chief's Smokehouse.

Very cool concert poster collection...

 

Here are Jesse and Marcel waiting for those great fries...

 

 

Dazzling architecture in Eureka...

 

Dear Green Wellies, I found these at a thrift shop in Eureka but they weren't my size!!

 

We love to stop in Healdsburg for coffee...

 

And Copperfield's, our favorite bookshop...

 

Autumn is such a lovely time for a drive in California. Many thanks for being able to live here. Glad to be back home with our cat Nella. It rained last night so I can go out into my "back forty" and look for some more of that special fungus. Cheers!

Sylvie in Wonderland

I went on a hike yesterday in the open green space behind my house. It was simply magical. The recent rain we had gave the fields a phosphorescent glow and all the birds and bunnies were out. I decided to venture down some smaller animal paths that I hadn't been down before and that's where I made my happy discovery. There, beneath a graceful old oak tree, in the dappled sunlight was not one, but four Amanita Muscaria:

I suddenly  felt like I was in a dream. They seemed too good to be true. In my 48 years I've never chanced to make such a discovery. I was ecstatic! I scurried home and grabbed my cameras and some containers (gives a new meaning to Glad Ware) and returned to the site, trying not to burst out along the way, passing by several neighbors who were sitting on their stoops or working in their gardens. "Poker face, poker face", I kept telling myself.

 

When I got to the field I saw a couple of bunnies out on the grass at the edge of their habitat. I walked toward them to try to get some photos and they hopped into the bushes. I went over to the place where they entered and saw more Amanita Muscaria! Bigger than the ones I had seen before. I felt like a little kid on an easter egg hunt. Lewis Carroll must be smiling, "She followed the rabbits through the hole and there you are."

 

I found several types including this lovely golden one. You can see a little bug chewing on it in the close-up (you can click on all of the photos for a better look):

 

I remembered from reading so many Italian travel memoirs that you don't pull the whole mushroom up, root and all. You break it off at the level of the soil, leaving behind a stump (seen at the bottom of the next photo) to regenerate. I was very careful to do this, covering the stump afterward with soil and a top dressing of decaying oak leaves.

Below is a cluster of two. the one on the left is half-eaten. I left these for the critters who were enjoying them.

The next one was hiding snug down in the dirt. I didn't know it was so big until I harvested it. It weighs about a half pound. Very dense.

 

 

 

The one below was a strange sort of orb shape. It really did look like an easter egg.

 

Here you can see how little creatures have nibbled on this one and licked off the white spots on half of it:

Careful to leave a stump:

I could only safely fit a couple of them into my containers. Two of them I had to carry openly in my hands so as not to damage them. I live less than two blocks from this site and it took me at least an hour to walk home with all of the people stopping to chat. A cute couple in their pick-up truck with their dog drove in reverse down the street when they saw what I was carrying. They were on their way to forage and were keen to caution me several times over, "Wash your hands really, really well." Which reminds me, I need to go and check on the neighbor's dog who licked my hand on the way home.

Marcel took the photo of me when I got home. You can see the state of my hair from crawling through the bunny brambles!

Vintage pastels from Lawrences auctions in the UK.

White Wood Floors...

I love the look of wide plank floorboards painted white. Everything floats on them. Of course the white walls here are part of what makes this look so ethereal. Brown wood pieces feel especially rich with this backdrop and colors just swim in it.

 

Beautiful for the bed...

 

 

 

Beautiful for the bath...

 

 

And the kitchen...

 

Although I've always dreamed of having a home with these floors, I would say that for me I'd have to draw the line at the kitchen. A rough natural wood farm kind of floor would be more practical for as messy as I like to be. I need a working kitchen, where you can just sweep the crumbs right out the garden door to the foraging birdies.

All photos courtesy of Sarah Kaye photographers.

'Greedy' Man Shops Globe

So I watched Sundance Channel's new reality show about a buyer for Anthropologie called Man Shops Globe. More like Man Plunders Globe. How dare they?! How dare Anthropologie and the Sundance Channel (I thought Robert Redford was supposed to be some sort of eco-guy??) produce and air such filthy excess. In the midst of an economic crisis no less. It's arrogant consumerism disguised as thoughtful re-use. White neocolonialism (is that redundant?) is alive and well. Yeah, he has some good ideas for utilizing found objects, but so do you and I. Unfortunately the exploitive nature of the show outweighs any of the positive notes.

Robert Clive & Family with Indian maid, painted by Joshua Reynolds, 1765

There's a scene where the "star" of the show, Keith Johnson walks through the streets of Jodhpur and points to wooden transport carts that hard-working people are using to deliver goods around town, "Can we get those?" he says to his Indian agent. And with a sweeping wave of his hand declares, "Let's get twenty of those." Isn't that cute the way they use those primitive carts to do back-breaking work all day. Let's make those into a coffee table that we can rest our tired Gucci soles on after a hard day's shopping. Get those to Anthropologie stat!

I'm hoping that they are reading their reviews. It appears that they are as following my earlier post wherein I pointed out that they used the wrong name for one of "their" artists, Leslie Oschmann, a correction was made on the show's web site. If anyone out there has contact with Robert Redford please feel free to share this with him. Cheers.

"Man Shops Globe"

A new show airs tonight, Man Shops Globe, on the Sundance Channel, where Anthropologie buyer Keith Johnson cruises the world's flea markets. I'm going to check it out even though I have a personal gripe with Anthro as they refused to compensate me for a photo of mine that they used to market their drawer pulls, WTF?! 

 

Here's a photo of Keith in Amsterdam looking at some of Leslie Oschmann's pieces. If you remember I did a post on her recently:

 

For some reason they refer to her as Leslie Osterich. Did she get married, change her name... seems like a branding mistake (I learned that on Dragon's Den; note to self: too much TV lately). Anyway, isn't it convenient that he meets up with someone who formerly worked for Anthro. Not exactly an unexpected discovery. We'll see. I'll give my review of it after this episode.

On a side note: I'm thinking of getting this at an auction. Not for myself necessarily. Is it so ugly that it's beautiful, or is it just ugly?

Follow-up: I reviewed the show HERE.