Most mornings, I pause briefly to admire the leaves of a plant just outside the magic cottage–some are green with red veins, some red with green veins. As though woven by chlorophyll artists, I noticed the slight tears and small holes in many of the leaves the other day. Perhaps part of the tropical storm [...]

My younger sister Kassandra (she’s the youngest of the three of us) is an incredible, fierce dancer who just moved from San Francisco, where she was training with Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet and posing in front of walls of graffiti. (Stunning, isn’t she?) I’ve just freshened her personal site kassandrataylor.com; you’ll see new Flickr images, [...]

The wild winds of Tropical Storm Fay are whipping around the magic cottage today. So we’re making my favorite breakfast food, pancakes, with crispy edges: Recipe: 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/4 tsp salt. Stir. Crack one egg in middle, add 1 cup buttermilk. Stir. Drop 1/8th cup circles in pan with [...]

As we wait out a tropical storm in Miami, I am thinking of a sky loom rather than the looming sky, inspired by this part of Anthony Doerr‘s breathtaking, brief piece in this summer’s Granta: Salmon, wildebeest, locusts. Storks, swifts, snow geese. What if the torrents of animals migrating past us every year left behind [...]

My good friend Antony, who lives in Sydney, just reminded me of this great clip with New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo. My favorite part is the supermarché aisle sequence, and it strikes me that many of my beautiful American readers may be in vacation towns with less stellar grocery options [...]