Dumbo and me

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "What one thing did you really want when you were a kid?"

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When I was a wee lad, my most prized possession was an LP and an accompanying story book of Disney's Dumbo. I played that LP to the point of wearing it out on a portable RCA record player. I would listen to the story (it was essentially the soundtrack to Disney's 1941 movie) and read along in my story book and be transported.

Here's a copy of my old LP I found on eBay.

What got me more than anything was the introduction to the Disney story book. One of the first illustrations in it was this map of Florida.

It looked so exotic and peaceful. Palm trees were something my Pennsylvania young self could only see in books and I longed to live in a place where they grew. Even as a kid I loathed winter and I ached to live in a place where it didn't exist.

The house I grew up in was not a TV kind of place. In fact, we didn't get our first color set until I was heading into high school. I was a very loved and very valued member of a large family. We had a big house and a big yard, something my brothers and I were charged with maintaining. Between all of the stuff we did outside, homework and the tomfoolery inherent when there are six boys under one roof, watching TV never really figured into our lives very much.

However, everything else we were doing stopped on Sunday nights at seven o'clock. A lot of people reading this will be too young to remember what Sundays at seven on NBC meant. But to those of us of a certain age, Sunday nights meant this:







(The actual intro starts at :20) That's right, The Wonderful World of Disney. In a time before DVDs and DVRs, most of us saw the classic Disney films on The Wonderful World of Disney. They never failed to enthrall me, even though I saw them on a black and white TV.

I found the intro to Dumbo. Watch it before Disney yanks it off of YouTube.






At one point in those years somewhere in the 1960s and 1970s Old Walt himself introduced the world to his vision of Disney World on a Sunday night during a telecast of The Wonderful World of Disney, something he was planning to build in where else but Florida.

I somehow knew better than to want to go to Disney World when I was a kid. We took our vacations in rural Canada, something I loved as much as I loved life itself and to miss that was unthinkable. Even at six or seven or eight, I knew that the Florida thing was going to have to wait.

However the die was cast some time around 40 years ago. Even then, I knew that some day I would call Florida home. As exasperating as life and times can be in this banana republic sometimes, every time I walk out the front door I see palm trees that I grow myself. It doesn't matter what our ridiculous governor is doing, I sink my feet in the sand and watch the sun setting over the Gulf of Mexico any time I think to walk on the beach at the end of the day. So what that our grandstanding legislature practically insists the world is flat, I have palms and parrots and geckos and 75 degree January afternoons.

Every time I hear the wild parrots squawking or hear the thump of a ripe coconut falling I remember back to a time when all of this was unthinkably exotic. I remember back to a childhood lived out in the rolling farmlands of Pennsylvania and I just smile to myself because when it's all said and done, I got what I wanted.

So to speak to this week's Blog Off topic, what I wanted more than anything when I was a kid was to lead the life I lead today as a middle-aged man. I toy with leaving this part of the world all the time. Some small part of me remains fundamentally attached to the northeast US. However the palms, the sand, the parrots and the geckos make me want to stick around for just a little while longer.

And there you have it. My childhood fantasy, realized. What about you?

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As the day goes on, the rest of the participants in today's Blog Off will appear miraculously at the end of this post. Keep checking back and check out everybody's posts. You can follow along in Twitter as well, just look for the hashtag #LetsBlogOff. If you'd like more information about about the Blog Off or if you'd like to see the results of previous Blog Offs, you can find the main website here.

As the day progresses, a list of participating bloggers will appear here. Check out how everybody participating tackled this topic.

Something to look forward to

In a bit more than six weeks, I'm going to board this airplane.

Two-and-a-half hours later, I'll be walking here; in my blue heaven.

This guy and I (and a couple of other friends) are going to turn it all off and tune it all in. Quiet! Isolation! Primitive conditions! Hammocks strapped to coconut palms!

I haven't set foot on my beloved Cat Island in nearly two years and I am positively aching for the place. The Out Islands of the Bahamas are a magical place and I've written reams about them. So much so that The Bahamas has its own tag on my blog.

If you've been to Nassau or taken a cruise, I'm sorry to inform you that you really haven't been to The Bahamas. The Bahamas is its Out Islands, the places off the beaten path. Islands where the Obeah Man still lives and where mer-men and mermaids still swim in blue holes.

So for a week in early September, some great friends and I are going to forgo internet access, telephones, TVs and many of the modern trappings it's easy to think make life possible. Man I can't wait to turn off my phone and just sink my toes in the sand for a week.

Late addition: I just found this video on YouTube from the Bahamian recording artist Stileet. The music of the Out Islands is something called Rake and Scrape. Steel drums are for tourists in all-inclusive resorts elsewhere. Rake and Scrape is infectious to say the least. I'll be watching this video on a non-stop loop for the next six weeks!

Back to the Chihuly Collection

Greater Tampa is an enormous metropolitan area, I'm not kidding when I say it can take an hour-and-a-half to get from one side of it to the other. That's an hour-and-a-half when there's no traffic.

There are a fair number of people here in the design business who know one another through Twitter and we've been threatening to get together for quite a while. Commutes are always a sticking point as we live scattered from North Tampa to Sarasota (that's a distance of 60+ miles) but on July 14th, a critical mass of us gathered in Downtown St. Pete for a face to face meeting. A first for most of those in attendance. I was just happy to be able to walk to our meeting place.

Downtown St. Petersburg has the only permanent collection of the work of Dale Chihuly in a museum setting in the world, and our evening started out there. So at 6:30, Eric Miller, Carmen Christensen, Tom Wiebe, Michelle Wiebe, Jeremy Parcels, Ginny Powell and I met for an evening of art and tapas. The tapas came later.

Many thanks to JoAnn Locktov (publicist to the stars) and Wayne Atherholt (Marketing Director at the Chihuly Collection) for making all of that possible. We were fortunate to have Wayne guide us through the museum privately and his tour began with an introduction to the art scene in downtown St. Pete. That's a drum I beat regularly and I was thrilled to have a fellow believer in St. Pete start out our evening.

The collection is just big enough to show a retrospective of Chihuly's work, but not so large that it's overwhelming.  I have to admit that when the Collection opened last year (I wrote about it here and here), I was a bit of a Chihuly skeptic. But I'm not a skeptic anymore.

Dale Chihuly's art is informed by the artistic tradition and in his creations, you can see echoes of everything from Native American Baskets to gondoliers in Venice. It's at once mythic and playful, contemplative and jarring, grounded and fantastical. We're fortunate to have the Chihuly Collection here and I'm fortunate to live within walking distance to it.

I'm fortunate too to meet such great people through my social media involvements and it's great to have so many so (relatively) close.

If you find yourself on the west coast of Florida, make it a point to drop in on the Chihuly Collection.

Wabi Sabi isn't another word for lazy

I have been avoiding Apartment Therapy for the better part of the last year. My blood pressure has been thanking me. But like a bad car accident, there are some times when I just can't resist looking.

So yesterday afternoon I went over to AT to see if they'd matured in any way since my last visit lo those many months ago. I should have known better.

On the front page, one of the undergraduates over there was proclaiming partially painted walls as the new trend. It's funny, any time one of those yahoos spots something half-assed and is a loss to describe it, the fall back pronouncement is that it's Wabi Sabi. No it's not.

Wabi Sabi is a uniquely Japanese anti-aesthetic that admires the beauty of the undone, but more than that, it's an appreciation of nature's hand in the undoing. US Retailers and trend setters have been trying to make a commodity out of Wabi Sabi for years and so far it hasn't stuck. Thank God.

Maybe the problem is that Wabi Sabi is inherently anti-consumerist and Wabi Sabi takes time. Add in that Wabi Sabi is usually unplanned and Pottery Barn (and their cheering section at AT) are left spinning their wheels.

So here's a primer. This is Wabi Sabi.

Photo by me

This is laziness.

via Apartment Therapy

This is Wabi Sabi.

via Outsider Japan

This says "I don't know how to use a paint brush."

This is Wabi Sabi.

via Outsider Japan

This is an eyesore.

Meet the iWavecube

This is the world's smallest microwave oven, the iWavecube.

A couple of weeks ago, the company behind the iWavecube, iCubed International, contacted me to see if I'd be interested in test driving one of their small microwave ovens. I turn down many more of these offers than I accept but there was something about the description of this appliance I found intriguing. I was skeptical of course but I agreed to have them send me one of their models.

Right now there's a black iWavecube sitting on my kitchen counter and I've been putting it through its paces for a week now. As soon as it arrived I was struck by how small it is. It takes up .73 cubic feet of space, that's less than a square foot for the decimal impaired. Its actual dimensions are 10.5"W x 10"D x 12"H and I can see it fitting in all kinds of tight spaces.

The interior dimensions (8"W x 8"D x 6"H) are just large enough to accommodate a coffee cup, a frozen entree or a bag of popcorn. Considering that I use my microwave as a butter melter exclusively, it makes sense to minimize the space I devote to having a microwave oven. I think that holds true for a lot of people. Despite its small size, it's still a 600 watt appliance and that's plenty of power for its intended uses.

Another thing I like about it is that its controls and display are on the top of the unit. If I don't feel like setting the clock, its unset clock doesn't taunt me every time I walk into my kitchen.

The iWavecube comes in three colors right now, black, silver and white. There are more colors in the pipeline but for now there are three.

But back to its intended uses for a moment, iCubed International has been compiling user feedback on their website and they're uncovering all sort of neat uses for this microwave. Aside from the expected uses like heating cups of soup or boiling water for tea, iWavecube customers are using their appliances to do things like heating shaving soap or hair conditioner in a bathroom. Optometrists and dentists are using them to heat up moldable plastics. Physical therapists use them to heat up gel packs. These microwaves only weigh 12 pounds and come with a carrying handle so people are traveling with them or taking them camping.

I'm sure none of those uses were expected when the product was being developed but the iWavecube's definitely come a long way from the dorm rooms they were intended for.

The iWavecube retails for $99 and is available at Office Depots everywhere and you can buy them from iCubed International directly through their website.

Make no mistake, this is not an appliance you'll be cooking whole meals in. But honestly, how many people use a microwave that way? If you're looking for a compact way to heat up small things, the iWavecube may be a solution.