It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new.
But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful.
There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
Alan Cohen
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
Groucho Marx
The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Slow Love ... House and Garden and Writing and fan mail

A long time ago, I used to live in a very old house, on a wooded lot, with a winding road going past and down the hill  and there were gardens.
I read magazines on gardening and house decorating like some people eat M&M's .. well, at least the way I eat M&M's..

One of my favorites , that I saved  every issue of,  was House & Garden Magazine.
When the magazine  came in the mail, I would make sure nothing was waiting to be done, no one would disturb my hour of reading the magazine from front to back.
Lingering over photos of rooms that I would try to duplicate, gardens that I wanted and ideas I would try to use in my own garden on a much tinier scale.

And I would start with Welcome, where Dominique Browning, Editor of House & Garden, would talk about some aspect of living , homes, gardens, children, food .
One day she wrote about her child growing up and it inspired me to dash off a note to her, telling her my similar story.

Imagine my surprise, delight and excitement when I got a letter from House & Garden asking me if they could publish my Letter to the Editor.
I still have that magazine.
I had to throw away, give away, sell almost all of my books and magazines when we moved out of that little house and started our wanderings, ending up here in Buenos Aires.
But one of those magazines has traveled along with me.
November 1999, House & Garden. With my first published Letter to the Editor.

She would never know  what an impact that made on my life, how I was inspired to think that maybe there was something that I had to say that someone else might be interested in , that maybe there was something I had to say that would make a difference to someone else, the way what she had to say, made a difference to me.

This morning I was reading the New York Times ( online.. Thank you God for the internet, again)
and there was a name that was familiar, it took a moment to realize who it was , being out of context in my mind.
Dominique Browning. former Editor of the now gone House & Garden magazine.
She is writing , she has a blog and now , I can go back to reading one of my favorite writers of all things Home, Family, Food , Garden and Life related.

If you have never been one for that sort of reading, this might make no sense to you, but here I am, far away from "home", in a house that we have made a home,  in a country where we still have trouble figuring out What the heck they are talking about ! and trying to find something as simple as a paint roller..
So for me, this is a wonderful surprise and comforting to know that no matter where I go .. some things are still there for me.
In English .

So I recommend that you go grab a cup of tea, sit down with your computer and read
Slow Love by Dominique Browning.

Thank you to  Dorothyparker.com and HighValleybooks .com and gailmonaghan.com for the use of their vintage images of House & Garden magazine.

3 comments:

  1. This is just the kind of writing that I love! Thanks so much for the link.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is delightful.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are welcome..Thank you.

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