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john heileman wins the best home backdrop so far. so color coordinated,
right down to fife the dog. mmmm. love those warm greys, and those little bits of ktchen aid red make it perfect.
woof.
22 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
looks like an efficient home base/launch pad for a busy life that has little to do with tradition.
James Carville's vintage NOLA home, chosen by Matalin when they moved to New Orleans, is very different. He did an interview in the large kitchen meant for extended family with very different needs. Old house with a very high (room for heat to rise) old, wood beamed and boarded ceiling. Wish I had a picture. But I found this:
MATALIN: On a family visit to New Orleans, I had gone house hunting alone. This gave me a distinct advantage. But there was no other way. James hates shopping for real estate almost as much as he hates snow. He opted instead for daytime drinking and lamenting with his sisters over his wife’s out-of-control materialism. I didn’t expect to find the right house immediately—who ever does? But after viewing five or six houses that were in the realm of possibility, and thanks to the astoundingly astute Realtor queen, Carmen Duncan, I discovered the grand vintage New Orleans home of my dreams. I was sure. I was in love.
My father had just died and I had a feeling that the house was his parting supernatural gift to me. It happened so suddenly, so easily: it was meant to be. ... And the neighborhood called to me, and all around it, the shattered city, a place I loved. I telephoned James, ... and soon afterward he pulled up with his sisters in tow—so many Carvilles squeezed together in one vehicle that they could barely exit in a civilized manner.
CARVILLE: After Hurricane Katrina, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fragility of New Orleans. What really sets it apart from almost anywhere else in America is this: its survival isn’t guaranteed. Washington is going to be there fifty years from now. Dallas is going to be there. Nashville might get a flood or a tornado, but it’ll be there. Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, they’re not going anywhere.
In New Orleans, that’s never a given. The city’s permanent existence is never assured. It’s environmentally fragile, it’s economically fragile, and it’s politically fragile. After Katrina, it really could have gone either way. ... But it wasn’t only that two-thirds of the city had flooded. It was that the whole culture could go under. So many musical instruments had washed away, and the musicians who owned them were scattered all across the country. Hundreds of doctors left. Schools closed. I started having visions that New Orleans would wind up as a little spit of land on the Mississippi, the size of Key West. I could imagine us sitting around a piano thirty years from now, playing a couple of old songs and telling the kids how it used to be.
I’d been raised sixty miles up the river in Carville, a little town named after my grandfather, who was the postmaster. I’d already witnessed pieces of old Louisiana disappear. My mother was Cajun, descended from the Acadians who settled in Louisiana, and she and my grandmother would talk to each other in French. I remember being kind of embarrassed by that as a kid. I wasn’t the only one. After World War II, everybody just wanted to be an American.
These days, there are relatively few French speakers in Louisiana, but that wasn’t the case when I was growing up. I worked offshore on a dredge boat, and I’d hear people say, “You know what, I just can’t explain it to you in English.” There were some French-language radio stations, but they’ve largely gone off the air. As I got older, I couldn’t believe that we were so stupid, as a people, to lose that part of our culture.
... But nobody does culture like New Orleans. ... After the storm, the thought kept gnawing at me: what if that culture doesn’t last? ... When it dawned on me that it might not, I went from simply missing New Orleans to feeling this gripping fear that it might fade away before I could get down there for good. As much as anything, I wanted to get back home before home disappeared.
My father had just died and I had a feeling that the house was his parting supernatural gift to me. It happened so suddenly, so easily: it was meant to be. ... And the neighborhood called to me, and all around it, the shattered city, a place I loved. I telephoned James, ... and soon afterward he pulled up with his sisters in tow—so many Carvilles squeezed together in one vehicle that they could barely exit in a civilized manner.
CARVILLE: After Hurricane Katrina, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fragility of New Orleans. What really sets it apart from almost anywhere else in America is this: its survival isn’t guaranteed. Washington is going to be there fifty years from now. Dallas is going to be there. Nashville might get a flood or a tornado, but it’ll be there. Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, they’re not going anywhere.
In New Orleans, that’s never a given. The city’s permanent existence is never assured. It’s environmentally fragile, it’s economically fragile, and it’s politically fragile. After Katrina, it really could have gone either way. ... But it wasn’t only that two-thirds of the city had flooded. It was that the whole culture could go under. So many musical instruments had washed away, and the musicians who owned them were scattered all across the country. Hundreds of doctors left. Schools closed. I started having visions that New Orleans would wind up as a little spit of land on the Mississippi, the size of Key West. I could imagine us sitting around a piano thirty years from now, playing a couple of old songs and telling the kids how it used to be.
I’d been raised sixty miles up the river in Carville, a little town named after my grandfather, who was the postmaster. I’d already witnessed pieces of old Louisiana disappear. My mother was Cajun, descended from the Acadians who settled in Louisiana, and she and my grandmother would talk to each other in French. I remember being kind of embarrassed by that as a kid. I wasn’t the only one. After World War II, everybody just wanted to be an American.
These days, there are relatively few French speakers in Louisiana, but that wasn’t the case when I was growing up. I worked offshore on a dredge boat, and I’d hear people say, “You know what, I just can’t explain it to you in English.” There were some French-language radio stations, but they’ve largely gone off the air. As I got older, I couldn’t believe that we were so stupid, as a people, to lose that part of our culture.
... But nobody does culture like New Orleans. ... After the storm, the thought kept gnawing at me: what if that culture doesn’t last? ... When it dawned on me that it might not, I went from simply missing New Orleans to feeling this gripping fear that it might fade away before I could get down there for good. As much as anything, I wanted to get back home before home disappeared.
Heilmann would never say anything like that about this DC or VA home. McCaskill would say it differently because she never really left and whatever else happens it's not going anywhere.
Looks nice.
I’ve noticed that.
Krugman and the guy on Fox
My son has had to lay two boxers down. 
They've opted for a puggle this time.
"The larger the dog, the shorter the lifespan."
