Beach House in the Burbs

I dreamed the other night that you showed up at our band room to donate some of your fabulous costumes to our fabulous band, the Seed & Feed Marching Abominable. And I woke up thinking, "What a great idea! It's a natural fit." As a member of the Seed & Feed, I sometimes feel like a Rock Star. Not an Elton John caliber rock star, but a small, local bringing-joy-to-the not-quite-so-massive-masses rock star. (Though our rock star status got a big boost this week when we made the Huffington Post .) And in my band, we wear costumes—elaborate, Elton John in his best costume-wearing day costumes. Maybe you’ve seen us. We’re in Atlanta, where I know you spend some time. So, anyway, the point of my letter. I thought maybe the dream was a sign, even a glimpse into some fabulous future where you'd show up in our band room and present me with costumery to wear and share. And figured a letter to you, one of my costumery idols, might help that future along. I’m trying ...

I went to Greece last month, one of the most photogenic countries in the world. And would love to say I took fabulous, professional quality photos with my fabulously expensive, complicated camera. But, no. I could either afford to go to Greece or I could afford to buy the fabulously expensive, professional camera and stay home and take more pictures of the cat. Clearly I've done enough of that. Instead I invested a whopping 99 cents in Camera + for my iPhone and had fun with it all over Greece--taking perhaps not professional-museum quality photos of the lovely landscape, but taking decent photos, then having more fun editing/filtering/adding captions. Take a look: Before leaving for Greece, I practiced at Noah's Ark Animal Sanctuary . This is the original photo of the alligator. This is it after I made it look like a cool, 1950s Florida postcard using the HDR setting to add the color and the borders to add the border--duh--and the text. Here are some other ...

The littlest nephew (who is now 6'2") and I went to the Atlanta Botanical Garden this past weekend to see the Imaginary Worlds exhibit--and all the other pretty stuff too. What a cool exhibit! Enormous, fantastical plant-covered creatures scattered throughout the garden. The Unicorn was one of my favorites. I loved the way the plants that make up her mane and tail waved in the wind. The Ogre was good too. You can't tell from this picture, but he had a tunnel through his side, like he was a bridge or a hidey-hole or a playhouse. But those two were only my favorites until I saw the Earth Goddess. At 29 tons, she is quite a woman! More ordinary critters such as butterflies, bunnies and cobras also were fun to see, but I loved the fantasy creatures best. They weren't the only bits of beauty, however. I longed to take home orchids from the filled-to-overwhelming orchid room, but settled for lots of pictures instead. And what would a day in the garden ...

Everybody talks about the beautiful beaches, the ancient ruins, the spectacle that is Knossos if they go to Crete, the southernmost Greek island. But, honest to the Greek gods, the most fabulous museum on that island, hands down, is the Homo Sapiens Village . This museum covers the entirety of the human (or at least male) experience in one place that you can experience from start to finish in about 45 minutes. This will leave you plenty of time of sit on a lovely Cretan beach or eat more delicious food or drink Retsina or Raki, because you’ll never need to visit another museum again. Take a look at what you can learn at Homo Sapiens Village: My sister, the anthropologist, says this progression is all wrong. Maybe it's the blood splashed all over it. Shouldn't this should read “From the caves TO the moon”? Unless we evolved from caves on the moon—and I don’t think so. Where’s the guitar or better yet, the alto sax (that’s what I play)? From the cave on the fa...