Diane Girard writes:
"It’s like a religion — you believe in it, or you don’t. I believe that
not everyone can become rich. However, some of us may manage to live
out our lives without losing all our savings. I plan to be one of those
people because I am a wuss. I am content to watch my small jack pine
survive the storm."
Author: SeniorWomenWeb
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Magical Money Trees
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Movers and Shakers of Garden Design
Many garden but few gardeners have the power to reach into the future to shape landscape style and fashion. Gertrude Jekyll, Mien Ruys, Geoffrey Jellicoe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Thomas Church, Roberto Burle Max, and Edwin Lutyens are just some of the extraordinary gardeners from the last century who influence today’s garden design.
Andrew Wilson introduces 56 of them in Influential Gardeners; The Designers Who Shaped 20th-Century Garden Style (Clarkson Potter, 2003), transporting readers through photographs and scholarly text into the designers’ ideas and gardens.
Wilson has the perfect background for the task: He teaches the professional diploma course in Garden Design Studies at the world-famous Ichbald School of Design in London and was the chairman of the Society of Garden Designers. Wilson tackled this daunting task by organizing the designers by their primary focus — color and decoration, plants, concept, form, structure, texture, and materials. An introduction to each section provides an overview of the times. More detailed essays about the individual designers follow, providing just enough information to whet one’s appetite. The result is an encyclopedic reference to garden design.
From Linda Coyner’s review of Influential Gardeners; The Designers Who Shaped 20th-Century Garden Style
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Bejeweled
The New York City Ballet’s site presents a slide show, Bedecked, Bedazzled & Bejeweled: Costume Ornamentation At New York City Ballet.
Robert Sandla writes of the exhibit in the Power of Costumes:
On paper, the descriptions are carefully neutral: “ Tutu, classical: Dark grey silk bodice, heart-shaped neckline and beige tulle halter….Has matching headpiece.” “ Dress: Peach chiffon dress, knee length, asymmetrical straps, faux lacing on back, jewels at left shoulder, bow at waist where skirt opens.” “Tutu, classical: Gold and pink lamé brocade bodice with jewels, blue satin sash over right shoulder; jewel brocade palettes, stylized sequin ‘flippers’ from waist.”
In photographs, the costumes bloom with a fierce poetry, products of wild imagination and painstaking industry. The tutus and tiaras, the grand gowns and flirty skirts, the formal men’s jackets and dapper vests worn by generations of New York City Ballet dancers can now be viewed here on the Company’s website – and it’s a dazzling display. Ballet is famously the most ethereal of the arts, and most of us only glimpse costumes as they move at high speed on a distant stage. New York City Ballet’s new online gallery gives everyone the chance to examine a treasure trove of costumes at leisure, and in ravenous detail. Balletomanes, dancers, artists, fashion plates, cultural historians, designers — anyone with eyes — will stare for hours.
Click on the link to begin the slide show
Many of the costumes highlighted at the NYCB online exhibit were designed by Karinska. We’ve found a Dance magazine article on the costumer by Allegra Kent, who danced with the New York City Ballet from 1953 to 1983:
"I lived an important part of my life in Karinska’s creations. Night
after night during many seasons over the course of thirty years, I
pursued my childhood dream of dancing, and I did so for the most part
in her costumes. I explored some of the greatest choreography ever
invented while booked or snapped up in her sumptuous creations."