Niagara Falls email forward

I get a lot of (unintentionally) hilarious email forwards from family members, and there are also lots of forwards with cool pictures. Sometimes both!

Hilarious part: "My friend's mother had a cousin living in Niagara Falls that year." (that year = 1911) This is about as credible as "my sister's friend was dating a guy who worked in a morgue, and one day she got a bad skin infection..." or "my mom's friend was riding the schoolbus home one afternoon when a girl stuck her head out the window...right beside her identical twin" (I don't know why the twins part is crucial but whatev). Basically: yeah right.

Cool pictures part:




Couldn't crop down that sepia one, but I'll leave you with this tidbit from the original email--not the animated GIF of "awesome!":

I THINK NIAGARA HAD VIAGRA!

Seed Savers

I'm reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver right now. It's about her year of food on her family farm in Virginia and how the family will only eat locally produced food. These kind of "off the grid" "back to a more simple way" types of experiments constantly interest me and seem to be popular these days. I would like to think I could do it, but the other part of me thinks I like chocolate pop-tarts. Barbara's fictional books bore me, and I've never been able to get through one of them. This book so far has been more entertaining. In the last section I read about the Seed Savers Exchange. The nonprofit exchange is focused on saving the seeds of heirlooms for people to have access to for generations. I'm not quoting Barbara correctly by any means, but basically a large portion of the seeds available for planting are corporately controlled by a few companies. And the seeds aren't that great because companies want farmers to buy new seeds every year instead of saving seeds to preserve a unique food. That's the basic gist, and we're the losers left to suffer with inferior tasting cauliflower, tomatoes, melons, etc. Yikes! I just wanted to post it in the event I do get a garden and find myself "off the grid", I'll have a place to start.

Grey Gardens

I've been obsessed with Grey Gardens since discovering it in college. For those unfamiliar with the story - Grey Gardens is a 10 bedroom home in the Hamptons owned and lived in by Edith Bouvier Beale, Big Edie, and her daughter, Little Edie. They are most famous for being the aunt and cousin of Jackie Kennedy as well as starring in the Mayles brothers' documentary "Grey Gardens". The documentary is a "cult classic" (I hate that term), because it documents their life in the decaying mansion and how the 2 women lived with 52 cats and countless raccoons on the overgrown lot. It kind of reminds me of a precursor to reality shows today because these women have such mother/daughter issues on display for us to watch. I've always been a little bit scared of the film because these women and the state of the house kind of creep me out - but at the same time - fascinate me! But I think I'm at the point where I just have to see it. Last weekend HBO debuted their movie version of Grey Gardens with Jessica Lange (Big Edie) and Drew Barrymore (Little Edie). Apparently it gives more context about events that brought the 2 women to the house again, their dependence on one another, and their lost hopes and dreams. Also, the costumes look excellent.

The way the Edie's lived in the home is only half of my interest. In 1979 Ben Bradlee and his wife, Sally Quinn bought the home from the Edie's and promised not to tear it down. Ben Bradlee used to edit the Washington Post, (most interestingly) during the Watergate years. I think this is why I'm most fascinated in the story still - the fact that Ben Bradlee owns it. My point with all this is that I would love to see photos of the house now. Countless photos exist of the house when it's on the verge of death, but now people that go to the house say how magical and mysterious it is. How could it not be?? I'd be a little freaked out to sleep there, but I hear Sally did an excellent job keeping the original house in tact. So far the only things I've been able to find (other than pictures of the front exterior), are these photos of the gardens today. Seriously - isn't it beautiful??