The Summer of Awesome

No, my friends, I have not forgotten my promise to post images and stories from Italy.  I've just been caught in a whirlwind of deadlines.  In fact, in rare spare moments, Mr. Magpie and I have been collaborating on a series of posts about gardens of Italy.  We're nearly finished with the first one, and it will be coming to you very soon!  In the meantime, here's another of our collaborations.  We saw this sweet little street while wandering in Florence, and we knew we needed a photo.  My hands were full (of shopping bags, no doubt), so I asked Todd to snap a shot with his iPhone.  At that very moment, this gentleman turned down the street, and Todd clicked.  Sometimes you can't plan or set up a shot like this.  It just happens, and these are some of my very favorite moments.  I've cropped the photo a wee bit, and processed it very slightly, but this is pretty much as we saw it.  Florence.  A city I want to return to again and again.

I hope you are having a beautiful July.  Here in Maine we are heading into the sticky days of summer. The peas are nearly bursting from their pods, the honeysuckle's clambering up the lilac, and the daisies are unfurling under the midday sun.  As Portland hits peak tourist season, our favorite food trucks are out, and a long-awaited (and already beloved) restaurant has finally opened.  After a very hard spring, Mr. Magpie has declared this the Summer of Awesome.  Life might be throwing some curveballs, but we're both pretty good hitters.  

If you're heading up (or down) to southern coastal or midcoast Maine this summer and looking to make this your own Summer of Awesome, below are 10 places (in no particular order) to hit.  I will be back very soon with tales from Italy, chickadees.

Summer of Awesome Destinations

1. Marginal Way in Ogunquit (for a shore walk of pure beauty)
2. Five Islands Lobster Company (for fresh seafood and quintessential Maine scenery)
3. Snug Harbor Farm (for my favorite nursery in the state)
4. Portland Sea Dogs (for great Minor League Baseball)
5. Montsweag Flea Market (goes without saying!)
6. Maine State Music Theater  (for wonderful musical theater on the gorgeous Bowdoin College campus)
7. Gilsland Farm/Maine Audubon (for birdwatching)
8. Reid State Park  (for a beautiful sandy beach and an incredibly picturesque setting)
9. Peaks Island (for a glimpse of Maine island life)
10. Portland Museum of Art (free admission on Friday nights, but always a fab place to visit)

Poppies at Gilsland Farm

A Bit More Mist . . . and a Few Thoughts About Solitude and Togetherness

Do you mind a few more photos of fog?  These are shots I took at Willard Beach in South Portland.  It's a lovely neighborhood beach in any weather, but I do love a good rolling fog for a walk. 

I also wanted to say thank you for all the wonderful comments and emails about my last post.  They made my week.  

I can't help it; in my head I've named this shot "The Happy Couple."

I've been writing a great deal lately, and helping clients work on their writing projects, which is a process that brings rewards of its own.  Often when people ask me for advice about how to become a writer, I am hard pressed to give them any one answer.  Of course, reading heaps of books is up near the top of my list, and writing every day--or as close to every day as possible.  But I think maybe the most essential trait a writer can cultivate is a love of solitude.  Social butterflies are not suited to the task.

When you do seek companionship, it is helpful to find others who love solitude, too.  Then you can be alone together.  They need to be people who don't fret when you wander off for hours to stare at leaves and shells and rocks and twigs.  They need to feel very secure in their own ability to be alone when you lock yourself away for hours to write. They need to not wait for you to come out of hiding.  Instead, they must have their own quiet obsessions that occupy long stretches of time.  In this way, when you do come back together, it will be out of a mutual joy in the work and play you are both pursuing.  There will be much to share, much that sustains both. 

And there will be no petty jealousy.  Each will support the other in his or her pursuits.  I'm not saying this is an easy path to choose, but it is certainly a more joyous and productive one when we can share it with like-minded spirits.  This all seems like an obvious thing to say, but I know what it's like when a writer (or an artist of any kind) tries to share her life with someone who does not understand the need for solitude.  This leads to a silent pen, which leads to loneliness, something utterly different from solitude.  The latter nourishes, the former leeches one dry. 

Are you someone, writer or not, who needs solitude?  If so, how do you find it?  I think it is increasingly rare in our relentlessly "connected" world.  One trick I have is that I don't watch television . . . at all . . . ever.  I'd love to hear some of your strategies for finding solitude.

Wishing you a week of beauty and lots of creative energy, my friends!

Chip Tease: On Paint Colors and the Coast

Note: Buckle up, my friends.  We're in for a long one.  I've been away for ages, I know, but mostly because we've been painting.  And painting.  And painting.  If you're as crazy about paint and colors as I am, or if you want some interesting links to things paint- or Maine-related, then read the text.  If you just want to see colors and pretty pictures, please feel free to skip my ramblings!

I have a longstanding obsession love affair with paint, as does Mr. Magpie, and we have been talking nonstop about colors for the cottage ever since the day we stood in its kitchen with our realtor and emailed in our offer.

Ultimately, I think every color we've chosen has been inspired by one thing: the coast.  More specifically, we've been inspired by two coasts, one we live on and one we've never even seen in person before.

Photo I took on the island three years ago.  On the right are mason jars filled with the sea glass we gathered that fall.

Ever since those four months that we spent on Peaks Island here in southern Maine three years ago, I have dreamed of a room painted the color of my favorite pieces of sea glass.  Benjamin Moore's Palladian Blue is just that color.  As soon as it went up on the walls of our living room, I knew it was right.  It shifts all day long in the changing light, from blue to green to both, combined with a touch of soft gray.  Sometimes it feels like the sky, other times like the shallows of a sandy beach.

Benjamin Moore Palladian Blue

Oh, I should mention that we've done all our walls, including the kitchen, in a matte finish using Benjamin Moore's Regal Select paints.  This paint is very durable and washable.  Yes, we've already had to wash some spots--moving is dirty business!  This paint is also incredibly easy to work with.

If you're a local reader, you might be interested to know that we've bought all our paint at Maine Paint Co. on Forest Avenue in Portland.  Working with a local store has been wonderful.  Folks there knew us by name after just a couple of visits, and they have been helpful with every question we've had, whether practical (Q: "When is that floor paint ever going to cure?"  A: "Fifteen days.  Be patient." And they were right.  It did take exactly fifteen days.) or aesthetic (Q: "Should we dare to paint our dining room a very dark and dramatic color?"  A: "Yes."  Emphatically.  And they were right.  Or more precisely, she was right.  Tanasia at Maine Paint has been a color consultant extraordinaire).  And this dining room color question leads me to the next chip: Newburg Green.

Benjamin Moore Newburg Green

There is a story behind this beautiful color, which, on our dining room walls reads sometimes as navy, sometimes as deep teal, and sometimes as nearly black.  Gasp.  Serious drama.  I am in love. Remember how I mentioned a coast we've never seen in person?  Over the summer, the Portland Museum of Art hosted an exhibition called The Draw of the Normandy Coast, featuring French and American artists of the 19th and 20th centuries who were inspired by the cliffs and ports of Normandy.  What impressed us upon first arriving at the show were the walls of the gallery themselves, which some brilliant people at the museum had painted a very deep marine blue.  Against this backdrop the Monets, Whistlers, and Dufys were stunning.  Again and again we found this blue in the paintings themselves--sometimes darker, sometimes lighter, but variations on deep, briny blue with hints of green.  Wouldn't we love a room in a color like this, we wondered.  Well, yes, but we hadn't found a house yet.  We were putting the cart well ahead of the horse.  In fact, the horse was still nowhere in sight.  

And then we found the house.  And then we thought, it's a little cottage.  It should be all light-filled rooms and whitewash and sea glass.  We forgot all about the Normandy coast.

But there sat our dining room in the darkest corner of the house with two windows, one of which lets in little light at the moment due to an overgrown (not for long) viburnum rubbing against its panes.  A dark room, indeed.  We decided to fight the darkness.  We talked with Tanasia.  She sent us home with lots of wonderful samples in light and bright colors.  None of them worked in the room.  We went back to the store.  We talked some more, and the ever-patient woman asked us questions, offered ideas, and listened to our color woes.       

And then it happened.  There on the table in the paint store was a copy of Maine Magazine.  I absentmindedly flipped through it while we chatted, and I was about to set it aside when it fell open to a page advertising the upcoming Winslow Homer exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art.  It's difficult to describe the buzz surrounding this exhibition.  Pretty much everyone I know can't wait to go; nor can we wait for the tours of his famous studio at Prout's Neck.

Winslow Homer, Eight Bells, 1886

But that's not what I was thinking about at the moment.  All I could see was blue.  That spot of blue in the break in the clouds.  And suddenly the Normandy coast was back.  And the Maine coast.  And I showed it to Todd, and we both knew.

So the color we chose is called Newburg Green, and there is green in there, but only to serve the blue, and like the ocean and sky along a northern coast, that blue is ever-shifting and changing with the day and the whims of the weather.  I can't wait to show you our dark dining room.

Benjamin Moore Mountain Peak White

Now onto trim and ceilings and doors and even the brick fireplace.  I love white for trim and doors, especially in a cottage, but I know how hard it can be to choose.  Too much yellow in it and it can feel dirty; too much blue and it feels cold, etc.  I think we simply must test it at various times of day against the other colors we plan to use in a room.  A white can look hideous at the store under their fluorescent lights but be a stunner in sunlight or under incandescents.  The opposite can be true, as well.  I've fallen in love at the store only to find once I get it home that the crisp white I thought was the color of sun-bleached seashells is actually the yellow of a chain smoker's fingernails.  

I wasn't expecting to like Mountain Peak White, but its sample was the one color that matched the bead board cupboards (be still my heart) in our kitchen, and I knew I wanted to paint the kitchen walls the same color as the cupboards to make the whole room light and bright and airy, so I went with it, and guess what?  In our house it looks clean and fresh without being blinding.  And it may have an alpine name, but it feels wonderfully seaside cottage-y, so it soon spread to the living room and beyond, until before we knew it, we were using it on trim (in semigloss) and ceilings (in pearl--after reading this post over at For the Love of a House, I don't think I will ever paint a ceiling with flat paint again) throughout the house to unify all the various colors.  In fact, we worked hard to find colors that we loved and that also resonated with the white as well as all the other colors in the house.  Against the Palladian Blue, Mountain Peak White feels soothing and creamy.

Dream Beach, Reid State Park, Gigi Thibodeau 2010

Have you ever been to a beach in Maine?  The sand here varies from beach to beach, depending, of course on the rocks found surrounding the beach.  We don't really have white sandy beaches; they tend more towards pale grays and grieges.  One of my favorite beaches is Reid State Park, where I spent countless hours in the waves as a kid.  I took a series of photos there a couple of years ago, and I find myself thinking often of the color of the sand at Reid.

 

Benjamin Moore Pashmina

And so, my study is in Pashmina, also by Benjamin Moore.  It's a warm greige that sometimes feels much grayer, depending on the time of day.  And it always reminds me of the beaches along this part of the Maine coast.

Farrow and Ball French Gray

And for his study, Todd (aka Mr. Magpie) choose Farrow and Ball's French Gray--another very Maine coast color with a touch of green in it.  In his study it is warm and rich like moss, and just perfect for a reading room.  I promise to give you a peek soon!  

I haven't mentioned yet that we've turned our entire upstairs into a sort of work/sleep/hangout space for the two of us.  When you climb the stairs, you enter a large room with skylights, which is paneled entirely in bead board that we've painted with the Mountain Peak White.  That's our bedroom.  Love. Serious love.  

The floors in there are hardwood, but the boards were in rough shape, and we have a limited budget, so we decided to paint them.  And what cottage is complete without at least one painted floor?  With the white walls and the navy blue bead board bed we're soon to have--after 22 years we have bought our first new bed--we decided to go with a beautiful neutral floor color: Thundercloud Gray.

Benjamin Moor Thundercloud Gray

On our floors it is even softer and lighter than this sample.  And while that Mountain Peak White sample looks very cream against the white of my blog, it looks much whiter and crisper beside this gray.  Have I ever told you that as much as I love a sunny day by the water, by far my favorite days along the coast of Maine look like this:

Thus Thundercloud Gray and also a lighter, even softer grey with a touch of violet:

Benjamin Moore Bunny Gray

Bunny Gray is in our front foyer downstairs, which is a very small, but light-filled space with arches leading into the dining and living rooms.  We knew we needed a very neutral color here to allow the eye to move comfortably from one room to the next, and Bunny Gray did the trick. We tried it in an interior hall as well, but without much natural light, it actually read as violet rather than gray.  In a room with lots of sunlight, it reads as a beautiful driftwood color that connects with all the other ocean colors.

Last but not least is the room we are finishing later today--the guest room.  When we moved in, this room was painted a deep burgundy red on the walls with a very orangey-gold ceiling.  Not at all cottage-y.  Not at all coastal.  Not at all us.  This room was the hardest for us to re-imagine.  It is on the first floor overlooking the garden, so we knew we wanted to connect it to all the beautiful greens right outside the windows.  The winner was a green that Benjamin Moore calls Spring Meadow, but it reminds me of the lichen that grows on the rocks near the ocean here in Maine.  

Benjamin Moore Spring Meadow

Hmm . . . I'm not happy with this sample.  It's nowhere near as lovely as the actual color, which is greener and richer than this.  One more reason I can't wait to show you the actual rooms, but I wanted to share some of our inspirations first.  I promise before and after photos (one room per post) soon!

On Memory, Mood, and Manipulation

Here in Coastal Maine, as anyone will tell you, we haven't really had a spring this year.  It has been cold. Period. We've had a few hours of glorious sunshine, but not the kind of slow, golden afternoons that warm your bones after a long winter.  And mostly we've had more than our fair share of rain, clouds, fog, drizzle, and mizzle.  I took these photos in Falmouth down at the town landing on a rare sunny afternoon, and then I processed them to look a little like 1970's postcards.  I always loved the overly saturated colors of postcards when I was a kid.  They were like real life, only in Technicolor.  

The sky on the day I took these wasn't actually very blue.  It was more the slightly bluish-white of bone china.  The shades of blue you see here I added, which made me feel deceitful, but also a little god-like.  There were people at the landing on that day: a mother playing with her young daughter, a woman beach combing, a fisherman in his boat, several men on a building site.  I avoided capturing any of them in these shots because I wanted the images to feel a bit lonely and moody.  

Photography, like writing, is a manipulative art form.  When I teach writing to students (which I do a lot of, if you are ever looking for a writing tutor or coach), I like to remind them that to write is to manipulate the perception of the reader.  Since you have total control over what to emphasize and what to downplay as well as what to reveal to and what to conceal from the reader, you should think of it very much like how a photographer thinks of framing and processing a photograph.  Everything--point of view, color, texture, mood, light, and so much more--is in your hands.  What a thrill . . . and a responsibility.

Because my whole life is wrapped up in writing--and has been for a very long time--I think about small details everywhere I go.  I look at the angle of a rooftop, consider the shape of puddle, and note the hemline of a woman's dress.  No, that is an understatement.  I obsess about these things.  And now that I am an enthusiastic amateur photographer (who is beginning to get a few paying gigs), I obsess about such details even more than before.  It's a lousy habit if one is to accomplish practical tasks, but it's a glorious habit if one is to craft anything of beauty or even interest.  Ah, and that's just it.  I didn't want to make these particular photographs beautiful exactly.  I wanted to make them capture a certain mood, a certain angle of light and memory from about 1975.  That memory isn't pretty or picturesque so much as it's intensely saturated, scrubbed with bright white sunlight, slightly blurred, and more than a little lonely.  But lonely in a way that I rather enjoyed that spring when I was eight years old--and still enjoy now all these decades later.

Every Day Is Like Sunday

Todd and I went adventuring this morning and wound up at Old Orchard Beach--the classic seaside town, complete with boardwalk, amusement park, arcade, and pizza that you have to dab with your napkin to soak up the grease.

It is always a joy to take photos at amusement parks and carnivals, but I find it especially so when the park has closed down for the season.  Instant ambiance, melancholy, nostalgia, and longing.

My family didn't really visit amusement parks when I was a kid.  I think I only went to Old Orchard once or twice, but even so, its images have remained etched in my brain all these years.  While it's more built up now, the essential things remain pretty much the same.  

As you know, I'm a girl who likes a bit of melancholy, so a beach resort town on a cloudy day in September is right up my alley.  To get a little of this same feeling for yourself, simply watch this Morrissey video of "Every Day Is Like Sunday."  Oh, and just for your knowledge and amusement, I should add that back around 1990, I basically thought I was the girl in the video.

Hope you're having a lovely Sunday, my friends.  xo

What to Treasure

I've missed blogging this past week!  I can't wait to read everyone's posts and catch up on what you've been reading, thinking, watching, imagining, creating, and celebrating over the pasts several days.  Early last week we packed all of the belongings that we'd brought to the island plus those trinkets and baubles we've accumulated over the past four months, and we left the island.  It was the saddest I've ever felt leaving a place, and I have left many, many places in my life.  At the same time, we were lucky to have the distraction of the holidays and family and work to push us forward through our days.  Christmas was lovely (hectic, too), and now we're off tomorrow to a conference in Philly for a bit.  We haven't even finished unpacking, but that can wait.

I hope you'll bear with me as I type this one last island post tonight.  I mentioned a couple of posts back that I was a writing a list of what I'll treasure most about my island memories.  Todd has chimed in, too, so here goes:

~Sunrise.

~The scent of wild roses in the air.

~Watching lobstermen hauling traps outside our front window.

~Riding bikes along the back shore on our road with its well-loved cottages, tenacious wildflowers, brambly roses, sea-weathered rocks, salt marshes, and views of the ocean that stretch for miles.

~Sea smoke like you see in these two photos above.  It only appears when very cold air is moving over warmer water, but when it does, wow.
~Neighbors who wave.  Always.  Whether walking, biking, driving, or riding a big wheel, nearly everyone here waves as you pass by.  If you're walking and they are, too, it is likely that they will stop and chat for a bit, no matter who you are.  It's not a fake, touchy-feely gesture.  It's as necessary to island life as having good storm windows.    
~Kids riding their bikes everywhere on their own.  

~No Starbucks, no McDonalds's, no Wal-Mart--no chains of any kind.

~Leaving the door unlocked.

~Talking with people whose families have lived on the island in the same house for generations.  (Sadly, with the poor economy and the rising property taxes, fewer and fewer of these families can afford to stay here.)
~Eating at home nearly every night.  There are two year-round restaurants on the island, and they are great, but most nights we've eaten at home, and it's been magical to cook with the sun setting and the waves crashing just outside our window. 

~Having Portland restaurants just a ferry ride away for those nights when we do eat off the island.  Portland is foodie heaven.  This is the best food town in the northeast for half the price of Boston and none of the pretense.  Local, organic, original, and beautiful food--that's what you'll find on your plate here.  
~Hannigan's Supermarket.  "If we don't have it, you don't need it."
~Beachcombing.  My mason jars are filled to brimming with sea glass!
~The simple, profound physical certainty of high and low tides.
~The waves.  Their sound, their smell, the constancy of their presence.  
~Riding the ferry--everyone rides it, so it's one of the centers of social life and news on the island.  I never grow tired of this bay and the view of the islands here.  Plus, a girl can get get some good crocheting done on those 15-minute rides.
~Island dogs and cats.
~Island cars--seriously, we saw one that had a piece of driftwood for a rear bumper.
~The blast of the ferry horn carrying over the island--always on time.

~The people we met.  Hands down, this is the friendliest place I've lived.

~Being back in the state where I'm from and in the city where I met my husband.  Nineteen years and several cities and states later, we've come full circle.    

~Sunset.

The World Beach Project

One of my favorite museums is London's Victoria & Albert, one of the great design museums of the world.  Right now they are hosting a wonderful project that invites anyone anywhere of any age to create patterns on the beach and then post them on the V&A's World Beach Project site.  The only rule is that the patterns must be made of beach stones and nothing else.  The project site has an interactive map that allows you to see the designs created by everyone who is participating in the project.  Some of my favorites are the ones made by kids.  Below are just a few that I especially like.  Happy beach combing days, my friends!

Image from  here.

Image from here.

Image from here.

Image from here.

Image from here.

Image from here.

Dreams of Spring

As I went out for a walk today in the frigid New England air, I tried to have faith that spring will come soon.  My mind wandered back to this same time last week when we pedaled the boys' lovely, rusty bikes along a South Carolina beach, racing the dolphins as they arced through the waves just offshore. When I was a kid I never understood why adults complained so much about the cold.  This year I understand.  My middle-aged bones have been frozen since October. Thank heaven for warm friends, Earl Grey, crochet, the paperwhites Melissa gave me, and oatmeal with maple syrup.  They've coddled me through winter.  I can hold on until the forsythia blooms.