crooked house

Scaling Buildings in Paris

Those crazy Parisians -- the latest thing is scaling buildings. Well, looking as if you are. This is an art installation by Buenos Aires-based artist Leandro Erlich -- that's a giant mirror and the people are actually climbing all over that facade on the floor. See more photos on My Modern Met.

Sandwich Artist

From top to bottom: a Mondrian sandwich, a Pollock one, O'Keefe, and Hirst. There are more at Low Commitment Projects. Via Max Clarke on facebook.

Kasha

Vivi likes kasha!

When I was little, my mom used to do a Slovak finger play that involved "kasha" or porridge. I can't remember the exact words and I certainly can't read Slovak but I think it might have been this one -- it was a bit like "This Little Piggy," in that it involved the adult lightly gripping, with her forefinger and thumb, each of the fingers of the child's hand as each line was recited. After the last line, during which the littlest finger was gripped, the adult's fingers ran up the child's arm and tickled him or her under the chin:

The mother mouse was cooking porridge,
In that colourful pot,
To this one she gave a little on his spoon,
To this one she gave a little in his bowl,
To this one she gave a little on his plate,
And to that one she gave some on his wooden spoon.
But she did not give any to the small one,
Cause there was none left.
So she sent him to the pantry to eat some jam.

Apparently the word kasha, in Eastern European cultures, refers to any type of porridge, which is a dietary staple there at least a thousand years old. In American English, the word kasha usually refers to buckwheat groats and buckwheat was certainly one of the oldest kinds of  cereals used to make porridge in Eastern Europe.

As a result of trying to eat much more healthily here in the crooked house, we've been shopping more often in the organic section of the grocery store, which is where I came across a packet of organic kasha, the roasted buckwheat kernel kind. Although we ate a number of Slovak dishes when I was growing up, I'd never tried this. Vivi and I whipped up a pot this morning, and ate it with a spoonful of honey and some milk. It was, suprisingly, delicious! (As the very healthy-looking, slightly strange-smelling grain boiled away in the pot I was already mentally going through the list of words I expected to use to describe its taste -- they included "terrible," "awful," "no good," "very bad," and, of course, "yuck." I was astonished to be wrong.) We will have to try some of the many, many, many other recipes for kasha -- sweet or savoury; breakfast, lunch, or dinner; main or side -- found here.

Pretty word, too, isn't it? Kasha. I expect a celebrity will use it as a name for a baby any day now.

Winner of the When I Was Small Giveaway

And the winner of last Monday's When I Was Small giveaway here on crooked house is Amanda. Congratulations Amanda! (The winner was chosen by randomizer.org.)

Walk Off the Earth: Someone That I Used to Know

Fun video, pretty song by a Burlington-based band that appears to perform mostly covers on youtube. It went viral last week.

Snow Day

Not much school this week for residents of the crooked house. First there was the annual twenty-four-hour stomach flu vomit-a-thon on Wednesday, then the early lunch-time dismissal on Thursday due to an impending snow storm, and now school is cancelled today while they clean up the streets. We just made the obligatory snowman. He looks like he is bleeding because we tried to use red smarties for his mouth but they proved to be too irresistible and had to be eaten, leaving nothing but red dye smears across the snow. We replaced them with uncooked rotini noodles, which aren't as palatable.

Nothing says "fun" like a giant fake smile.

See, she actually does have a normal face.

"Ah yes, the 2010s," future photography historians will say, "when the likes of hipstamatic made even joyous childhood activities such as the making of snow angels look bleak and ominous."

The angry birds are quite pissed off about it. Well, the red one is. The green pig is mildly annoyed, the blue bird, concerned.

 

Hidden Mothers

In the early days of portrait photography, small children were often photographed while sitting in the arms of their mothers, who were completely covered by a blanket. Later the ghostly lump of the mother would be cropped out of the photo by a mat. These Hidden Mother pictures are highly sought after by collectors today. It seems that even before the proliferation of unrealistic images of women in the media, moms didn't want their pictures taken.

Look here and here for more of these strange photographs. Via A Cup of Jo.

The Joy of Books

Just watch: The Joy of Books, via Sara O'Leary and Nathalie Foy on facebook. Gorgeous. Someone commented "I want to like this more than once." Yes.

When I Was Small Giveaway

Sylvie and I just got the best package in the mail -- two copies of our favourite children's author Sara O'Leary's new book When I Was Small, illustrated by Julie Morstad. It is the latest in their lovely series of books about Henry, which include When You Were Small and Where You Came From. In When I Was Small, it is Henry's mother's turn to talk about the things she did when she was very, very small, including sleeping in a mitten:

This book is just as sweet, charming, and hilarious as the others -- it is the perfect bedtime book. And if you act! fast! you can win a copy. Just leave a comment and your email address below and we will choose a random winner next Monday, January 16th. The book is not yet readily available in the states so if you live there and just can't wait to get your hands on a copy, please do enter. I am happy to send it anywhere in the world.

You can see more pageviews of the book on the Buy Olympia site - Americans can certainly order it from there. And you could always order it from Amazon.ca or Chapters.

There are also more gorgeous images from the book at the publisher, Simply Read 's, blog. Love that daisy for a sunhat!

 

 

Not Entirely Lost

From Dana Spiotta's intriguing Stone Arabia,a novel partly about a very intense sibling relationship, this excerpt describes a memory of the narrator's father, who died when she was seven or eight years old:

I don't remember a single conversation I had with my father. I do remember, however, walking behind him on the street. He reached his hand back and opened it, then closed it and opened it without looking around for me. I ran up and pressed my palm into his palm. He closed his hand gently over mine, squeezed it. I remember how large his hand was, and how warm and heavy it felt.

...

Occasionally -- maybe three times it happened -- I get a sense of my father from other men. When I walk behind a certain kind of man in the street. It happened to me in New York City once. I was in a crowd and a man moved right in front of me. He brushed past me. He was wearing an overcoat. And because of his height, or maybe the way he carried himself, the way he walked, or the way his hair met the back of his collar. Or how his hand looked as he held his briefcase -- something brought back my father. A deep, intimate body memory came over me; I could see him -- somewhat -- but I could feel him, or recall feeling him, completely. I glimpsed this stranger through the crowd and I startled. A flood of recognition and longing. I hurried after him, even tried to catch up. And then he turned slightly and I saw his face. I felt, ridiculously, real disappointment when I realized he was not my father. He did not look at all like my father. The incident didn't make me feel sad, though, it made me remember my father in ways a picture never could. I felt the memory of my father on my body, the way you feel a breeze or the heat of the sun. He did not feel -- and so was not -- entirely lost to me.