Nairobi Blue and beauty

Somewhere between being introduced to Peacebang's Beauty Tips for Ministers, watching Project Runway and the September Issue, following Tom and Lorenzo's blog, and reading Grace Coddington's memoir, I find that I've become interested in fashion. Who knew that would happen?

So I watched the red carpet coverage of the Oscars in part because I was dying to see what Lupita Nyong'o was going to wear. As what's-his-face interviewed her about who she was wearing (Prada, and again, who is this person who remembers that?), she explained that the color was "Nairobi blue" because it reminded her of the sky in Kenya.

And I thought to myself, We have just seen a new color name be born. 

Sure enough, moments later on Twitter and in news reports that followed, people were writing about her Nairobi blue dress.

And I thought, how fabulous that from now on the name Nairobi will be connected in people's minds to beauty.

That wasn't the first wonderful gift to beauty that Lupita had offered. Aside from the way she carried herself throughout the awards season, she also gave an amazing speech at the ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon. Do read the whole thing, but this is the part that grabbed me hard:

I want to take this opportunity to talk about beauty. Black beauty. Dark beauty. I received a letter from a girl and I’d like to share just a small part of it with you: "Dear Lupita," it reads, "I think you’re really lucky to be this Black but yet this successful in Hollywood overnight. I was just about to buy Dencia’s Whitenicious cream to lighten my skin when you appeared on the world map and saved me."

One of the things I have been learning is that how we appear is not frivolous. How we present ourselves is not a mere outward show. It's a form of communication, and the messages it sends can be very powerful.

Again, do read the whole speech, but she ends with this:

What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion for yourself and for those around you. That kind of beauty enflames the heart and enchants the soul. It is what got Patsey in so much trouble with her master, but it is also what has kept her story alive to this day. We remember the beauty of her spirit even after the beauty of her body has faded away.

Just beautiful.

Ruth Benerito, my hero

And probably yours too.

A chemist long affiliated with the United States Department of Agriculture, Dr. Benerito helped perfect modern wrinkle-free cotton, colloquially known as permanent press, in work that she and her colleagues began in the late 1950s.

That's right. This is the woman who made it possible for us not to iron every piece of cotton we wear.

She died last Saturday at the age of 97. If you're wearing any permanent press clothing today, take a moment to remember Dr. Benerito and all the others who made that possible.

Full obit here.

British take (which notes her home of 56 years was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina) here.

Various & Sundry: from Hazardous Waste to Couture

So this morning I done did that fabulous thing that I do from time to time: I took all the old batteries and light bulbs and medicine and paint to the Household Hazardous Waste Disposal Center. I drove up and a man in a hazmat suit made me sign a form and then took the stuff away.

I write this in case you were not aware of the Household Hazardous Waste program in your community. Here's the link for the programs in the greater SF Bay Area, if you live in these parts. But do Google for what to do in your area. It feels good to be rid of that stuff.

Of course today I've also been following the news out of San Francisco after the Boeing 777 crashed at SFO. Listening to this recording of the Air Traffic Controllers before and after the crash is really impressive. They don't sound panicked, but boy does the pace of the directions pick up. And the pitch of the voice is a step higher. Come to think of it, maybe they do sound panicked. But they handle it magnificently. My prayers continue for all those affected.

For any native New Yorkers confused about what this means, this is like a plane crash in Queens, as is demonstrated by the handy map below:

The San Francisco Bay for New Yorkers infographic

This raised a question:

But where's Staten Island? RT “@neatorama: The San Francisco Bay for New Yorkers pic.twitter.com/7RgkXmfuDX”
— San Francisco (@sanfranmag) July 5, 2013

And an answer:

@sanfranmag @neatorama Staten Island is Alameda.
— Wanda (@itsWanda) July 5, 2013

So now you know.

There's a new stage production of Much Ado About Nothing I would love to see, with James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave as Benedick and Beatrice. Wouldn't that be something? It's at the Old Vic this September-November, so I'd say my chances are slim to nil, but it's wonderful to contemplate.

I loved this story about June Coleridge, a Bletchley Park codebreaker who just celebrated her 90th birthday.

[She] joined up aged 18 in 1940/1. She lived with an uncle who was building an aerodrome and learnt to fly during that time.

She said, however, that the work itself on the code breaking could be boring and her social life was limited.

She was also sent to Columbo in Sri Lanka as part of her intelligence work.

David Coleridge, one of June's three children, said: "I'm very proud of what she did there at Bletchley. Nobody knew until the later 1970s that anything had happened there, of course."

Yes, of course. Well, I'm glad they know now.

I'm still thinking about this comic Fat is Not a Feeling. Here's one panel of the larger piece:

I think there's more to be uncovered, here, but certainly this has got me cogitating.

Continuing in the "Life is complicated" department, this obit for Rena Price was actually a very difficult read. "Catalyst for the Watts Riot" is the subhead, which is...I don't know what it is, actually. Shorthand, I guess. Reading it, it's like one of those stories where you see the jar of explosive liquid about to tip over and you want to shout "Nooooo!" as the camera goes into slow motion and it's just too late. Is it the fault of the person who knocks over the jar? Or did it build up to that moment? Or was it inevitable? But that's how I read it. It's a history lesson I don't think we've learned. At all.

But let's end with something lovely, shall we? Like this Georges Hobeika Fall 2013 Couture Collection. Who is Georges Hobeika? I have no idea. But the dresses are sure pretty.

Enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend.

Various & Sundry: The arc of the moral universe and its fashion requirements

Yesterday, I watched Kris Perry and Sandra Stier get married at San Francisco City Hall, courtesy of a live feed online. Who'd'a'thunk it would have happened that fast after the Supreme Court decision on...Tuesday? Wednesday? I forget. So much has happened.

It's been a crazy week in many ways, made even more remarkable by the events that could be seen from a distance.

Not only did I get to watch two women get married 30 miles away, I also got to watch the most amazing political moment in Austin, Texas on Tuesday night. Did you hear about this? A Texas state legislator named Wendy Davis attempted a 13-hour-long filibuster to stop the passage of SB5, a bill that "would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy and force many clinics that perform the procedure to upgrade their facilities and be classified as ambulatory surgical centers."

Also, doctors would be required to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles — a tall order in rural communities. If signed into law, the measures would have closed almost every abortion clinic in Texas, a state 773 miles wide and 790 miles long with 26 million people. A woman living along the Mexico border or in West Texas would have to drive hundreds of miles to obtain an abortion if the law passed. The law's provision that abortions be performed at surgical centers means only five of Texas' 42 abortion clinics are currently designated to remain in operation.

Tuesday evening as I watched events unfold on Twitter through the hashtag #standwithWendy, I found myself on the edge of my seat. Would she be able to continue the filibuster, without water, food, or a break for the restroom, until the session ended at midnight? Would legislators stop her filibuster on technicalities? And then, when they did, would other legislators be able to stall the action long enough to get to midnight. And then, when that wasn't enough, would the crowd in the rotunda be loud enough to drown out the call for a vote. And then, when the vote was taken, did it happen after midnight? And did they change the time stamp on the vote? It was amazing to watch. A-ma-zing.

And then the follow-up: the type of shoes she wore to stand for all that time has become a sensation. Check out the reviews on Amazon. Here's one:

If you are looking for a shoe that will never yield to the floor, pressure or good ol' fashioned boy's club bullying this is the shoe for you. It has been tested for hours, opportunities to yield to oppression were presented yet this shoe stayed firmly in place holding up half the sky for 13 hours. Highly recommended.

 In other fashion news, let us admire Ewan McGregor in his fabulous kilt as he receives the OBE.

That's quite lovely.

But back to the news. The satirical law website Lowering the Bar offers these Top Ten Notable Facts about the Gay Marriage Decisions. Did you know this was the "First use of phrase "legalistic argle-bargle" since 1824's Gibbons v. Ogden"? That's a primo completely made-up fact, right there.

You might also want to celebrate the end of the Supreme Court session with this fabulous T-shirt:

As I said, a crazy week. I didn't know the arc of the moral universe was going to be quite such a roller coaster. But carry on, people, a step at a time. Get comfy shoes if that's what it takes. And I am very thankful for the people who spend their life fighting the good fight. 

Various & Sundry: Courage from start to finish

I love my little blog. It's just so satisfying, being able to share what's on my mind and have it actually reach other people. It's nerve-wracking, too, of course, and I'm glad I am an obscure little bit player in the blogosphere, but as a writing person, I think blogging is great exercise. If you're wondering about blogging yourself, I'd recommend that you read Mark Shaefer's post 10 Maxims of Successful Blogging. Here are maxims 1 and 2:

1. We live in an increasingly information-dense world. The only way to stand out is to dig down deep and bring your own story to the world. Your point of differentiation is you. You have no competitors. Write a blog post that only you could write.  

 2. The biggest challenge to blogging isn’t having the time, the ideas, or the resources to do it. It’s having the courage to do it. It takes guts to put yourself out there in front of the world. You can’t learn that. You just have to do it.

Actually, I think that's about more than just blogging, don't you?

In other writing news, the editor for the obituary page of the Daily Telegraph (London) explains how to write a good obituary:

You know that James Harrison is going to have a good obituary, when the day comes. Harrison has a rare form of blood plasma that prevents Rhesus disease, a condition where antibodies in a pregnant woman’s blood destroy her baby's blood cells. He has been donating blood an average of once every three weeks for over 50 years and is estimated to have saved 2.4 million babies. Makes me wonder when I'm next eligible to give blood.

Here's who else is not in the obituary pages this week: Debbie Harry, who is, instead, featured in Vogue Spain, 67 years old and looking absolutely fabulous. As Tom and Lorenzo explain (well, mostly Tom), Debbie Harry taught Tom "that being fabulous is the very best 'fuck you' one can give to a world determined to tear you down, and that drama, beauty and glamour were good for the soul when so many people around you seem to be striving for mediocrity." Given that yesterday, I wasn't sure whether I'd actually brushed my hair that day, I think I could be doing better in learning this lesson.

I did not look like this yesterday. Or any day, for that matter.

Then again, I don't look like Hitler either. Unlike some tea kettles I could name. JC Penney got in trouble this week when someone pointed out that the kettle on a billboard near Culver City had a decidedly Third-Reich-like cast to it. This gave rise to the following lead in Business Insider:

JCPenney has officially denied that a tea kettle being advertised on a billboard on the 405 Interstate near Culver City, Calif., is intended to represent Adolf Hitler, the Nazi dictator during World War II.

What's your favorite part? Is it the "officially denied"? Or (my favorite) that they explain who Adolf Hitler is?

Here, by the way, was JC Penney's official response:

@telegraph Certainly unintended. If we'd designed the kettle to look like something, we would've gone w/a snowman: twitter.com/jcpenney/statu…
— jcpenney (@jcpenney) May 28, 2013

Well, naturally.

I understand JC Penney is having a hard time of it these days, and they may want to read this post, or at least follow its wonderful advice: "There is no silver bullet. There are only lead bullets." Really, that's better advice than you'd think. Sometimes you just have to fight that good fight.

But wouldn't you rather watch bath time for baby sloths? I know I would.

Various & Sundry: Supermodels, Martyrs, Poets, and other animals

*sigh* It's been one of those weeks that's clunked along. I had lots of plans of things to blog, but, as you see, it didn't happen. Probably because I never did get that handsome dose. But I do have a few things left lying about the place that are worth sharing, late as it is, so here you go.

For example, there are good reasons I didn't become a supermodel. Again, the handsome dose would have made my career as a supermodel more likely. But there are other legitimate reasons, as Nancy Kho points out.

I don't know if you've been following Lent Madness, but this week the martyrs have been beating the tar out of the more naturally-death-inclined. Yesterday, however, in a match-up between John Donne and the martyr Agnes of Rome, Donne charmed the votes out of people, which broke the martyrs' win streak. Does it have something to do with his erotic poetry?

This leads very nicely into Book Riot's Date, Dump, or Marry: Famous Author Version. Your choices? I'm thinking to date Jane Austen (she would be an excellent dinner companion, don't you think?), dump Poe (I mean, creepy, although I'd worry I'd be the inspiration for some gothic character), and marry Dick Francis. He seems stable and unpretentious.

Oscar fanatics and film buffs may want to read this analysis of Django Unchained. I haven't seen the movie, and don't plan to, so I am in no position to opine, but it strikes me as a really important perspective.

I really liked what Beth Kanter had to say about the importance of being data-informed rather than data-driven. And I especially appreciated this article on the seven  habits of highly effective mediocre people:

Being mediocre doesn’t mean you won’t change the world. It means being honest with yourself and the people around you. And being honest at every level is really the most effective habit of all if you want to have massive success.

In law enforcement news,

Prosecutors in England, prepping for a case, repeatedly contacted a police department for details on the arrest—specifically, they demanded a witness statement from "PD Peach," an officer who assisted. The problem is, PD stands for Police Dog, and Peach is an adorable German Shepherd, and as such is incapable of reading or writing.

Well, maybe, maybe not, as this police report shows:

Perhaps Peach had someone speaking for him, something Pat Derby did quite well. Ms. Derby, who died last week, was "a former animal trainer for television shows like “Lassie” and “Flipper” who became a crusader against animal exploitation in entertainment and founded of one of the largest privately operated wildlife sanctuaries in the United States." I read two obituaries for her this week, one in the Times, and one in the Telegraph. In both, she sounds tough-minded and realistic. "Throughout her life, she remained acutely conscious of the inherent shortcomings of raising wild animals in captivity: 'You can never replace the wild. You can only make the prison as comfortable as possible.'"

I don't know. I think this bucket of sloths looks pretty cozy.

Review: Grace

I have been a reading fool the past few weeks, which has been a treat for me. And as a humongous indulgence, I bought -- in hardback! -- the new memoir Grace by Grace Coddington.

Like many people I met Grace through the movie The September Issue, which was about the production of Vogue's mammoth fall collections issue. Ostensibly, the focus of the movie is Anna Wintour. But Grace Coddington steals the show (I'll post a clip of the movie below). She looks more like an ex-nun, stumping around the Vogue offices in sensible shoes, than she does an ex-model who used to hang out with Mick Jagger and the like.

She steals the show again in this book. Though she's not a booky person, she's a good storyteller and has lots of stories to tell. She includes a lot of her own sketches, which are wonderful. And be aware that at the back of the book are lots of photos from the fashion shoots she describes in the text.

I read a few reviews from people who were frustrated because they didn't know fashion and didn't know the people she was talking about. Well, I don't know fashion either. But I read it like a book with vocabulary words I didn't understand, taking my time and looking things up as I went along -- or just allowing things to wash over me if I didn't want to spend the time on complete comprehension. What's great with the internet is you can look up people, images, notable fashion collections, even, and find out what she means. I thought it was incredibly rewarding, even if it did slow me down a little.

Mostly I continue to think she is an incredibly compelling person with no pretensions, thoroughly herself and unconcerned whether you like it or not.

If you do want to read this, and aren't a fashion person, I recommend you watch The September Issue as well, and probably as an introduction. It certainly helped me to hear her voice throughout and understand a little better the world and some of the people she describes.

Various & Sundry, Education, Happiness, and two F words

A few quick items for your enjoyment and edification:

For example, students do a good job of evaluating their teachers. A company has developed a survey that seems to give pretty robust data on which teachers do a good job and which ones are struggling.

The survey did not ask Do you like your teacher? Is your teacher nice? This wasn’t a popularity contest. The survey mostly asked questions about what students saw, day in and day out. 

The results also fascinate me:

Of the 36 items included in the Gates Foundation study, the five that most correlated with student learning were very straightforward:

 1. Students in this class treat the teacher with respect.
 2. My classmates behave the way my teacher wants them to.
 3. Our class stays busy and doesn’t waste time.
 4. In this class, we learn a lot almost every day.
 5. In this class, we learn to correct our mistakes. 

 When Ferguson and Kane shared these five statements at conferences, teachers were surprised. They had typically thought it most important to care about kids, but what mattered more, according to the study, was whether teachers had control over the classroom and made it a challenging place to be. As most of us remember from our own school days, those two conditions did not always coexist: some teachers had high levels of control, but low levels of rigor.

Isn't that interesting?

Another insight I appreciated: there's nothing wrong with happiness. David Lose writes about how often Christians seem to denigrate happiness as vastly inferior to joy. But as he points out (not in these words), it's not that one is superior to the other; they are simply different things. There is no need to turn up one's nose at happiness.

Jennifer Weiner wrote an incredibly moving meditation on the F word - fat. Highly recommended.

And on another F word - fashion -, I have to admit I love this picture of Salma Hayak owning the sidewalk. You know what? It makes me happy. Enjoy.