I’m sure there are more, I’m only looking at one post.
“a baby bird skeleton with a wet napkin draped over it”
“if Montreal were a person”
“a sickly Victorian ghost”
“he looks like the main character of a Disney movie where a fine Italian leather dress shoe makes a wish to be a real boy for a day”
“a medieval shoe”
An entity with “too many bones”
“IRL uncanny valley”
“a fish”
“like he was made by AI”
In Key West, Florida.
Same, girl, same.
My husband, who is the only regular (maybe the only one, regularly or not, full-stop) reader of this blog, is going to kill me for this post, but: I’ve been thinking a lot about ruin porn recently. As a theoretical long-time reader would know if they existed, I am now and have always been a big fan of ruin porn, basically pictures of abandoned and/or dilapidated houses. But a curious thing has happened to me recently, in that I’ve noticed that while I love looking at housing that are falling apart, I cannot tolerate signs of wear and tear on my own house. Back in the day, I used to watch Grey Gardens and feel like I too could wander through the halls of a decaying mansion and be eccentric and glamorous. So why when my own paint peels do I feel disheveled in a stupid ugly way, rather than a stylish one?
Below, a few recent ruin porn items I found in the wild, that I’ve used to try to help me tap back into the joy of looking at decay.
One of the “self-professed” oldest houses in Brooklyn goes on the market, via Brownstoner.
From a New York Times obituary of the famous milliner and indigo dye textile artist, Leigh Magar. “For a time, the couple lived in a vine-covered former candy shop at the back of a property in the historic district. During their tenure, it was all bohemian funk and decay — a Southern gothic artist’s atelier — with plaster flaking off the walls and exposed lath, battered antiques and statuary, vintage appliances and found artwork.”
And my absolute personal favorite, a T Magazine feature about a British estate near London that was built in 1690 and is now falling apart in a way that has proven to be catnip for photographers and creative types. “Today, the house feels even more like a place apart, at once ancient and separated from time — though not immune to its ravages. The eastern facade is covered with vines, and the lawns are unmown, with only a small herd of dairy goats keeping the grass in check. The swimming pool is submerged in a layer of algae, the greenhouse has all but collapsed and several rooms have been closed up or designated as storage space.”
I wanted to look up whether there was a real distinction (versus just an intuited/understood one) between two things I’m researching, and so I went to Google and typed in “what is the difference between… ” And of course, Google being Google, it gave me prompts of other distinctions people commonly ask about, which were unexpectedly kind of funny! What is the difference between…
A latte and a cappuccino
A yam and a sweet potato
a malt and a shake
a vegan and a vegetarian
a fruit and a vegetable (a deceptively simple question!)
a crow and a raven
a psychopath and a sociopath
a bison and a buffalo
a hotel and a motel
a psychologist and a psychiatrist
(My question isn’t on here, FWIW!)
From a New York Times article about renewed interest in Shakers:
Fastvold said that she did not consult with the two active Shakers at any point, saying it was out of respect: “For them it’s a living religion, and for me I’m telling a story about a historical figure.” She added, “I was worried I’d be too cowed by their interpretation of her story to not make space for my own.”
Before “The Testament of Ann Lee” opened, one of the active Shakers, Brother Arnold Hadd, posted an anticipatory video on a website that challenged the idea that the deaths of her children were at the root of Mother Ann’s insistence on celibacy. The deaths would have been expected, he said, because of the high incidence of infant mortality in her time.
Later, after he had seen the film, in an emailed response to a request for an interview, Brother Arnold declined to comment, explaining that it was “filled with lies and inaccuracies on a scale not imagined before.”
***
Explains why they never got back to me! Brother Arnold probably thinks I’m scum of the earth now, but he thinks that about most people, so it’s fine!
As I’m sure you all are aware at this point, the film about the founder of the Shakers, Mother Ann Lee, was released in late December to more or less universal critical acclaim. I am gearing up to go to see it next week with my ride or die AC, and of course we will be dressed in bonnets, dragging our sleek yet rustic wooden chairs behind us, like a weirdo version of whatever it is ladies did at Barbie screenings in 2023.
So I had two ideas about this movie, and the first was that someone should go to a screening of it at Sabbathday Lake, in Maine, where the remaining two Shakers live (correction: it’s currently three Shakers because a new one is in a sort of trial period, but this happens every few years and newbies rarely stay the course, sadly). The article would be reminiscent of a New Yorker Talk of the Town from a few years ago when Michael Schulman went to a performance of Doubt on Broadway with some nuns, which was very charming. I actually cold emailed Sabbathday Lake to see if they’d be up for it, but I didn’t get a response. I’m not totally surprised––ask me how I know that Brother Arnold is, ahem, prickly––but also, I kind of get it: it’s pretty rare that a minority religion gets a fair shake on the big or small screen, and it must be weird to see the woman you revere most portrayed by a chick from Mean Girls. Anyway, on the off chance they do email me back and want a collab, I’m going to delete this, just fair warning.
Second idea, and this one really has legs: I’m really feeling like Shaker dancing as portrayed in the movie should be the next big hipster workout craze. See this clip? It’s like, Ryan Heffington Tai Chi? I don’t know, I think there is really something there! The choreographer lives between Brooklyn and Hudson Valley (tracks) so she should open a studio in between those places which is coincidentally right where I live. Ha!
Susan Orlean, great writer and delightful human, on the best gift one could give her:
My dream gift is a donkey. I feel like it’s an obvious good gift. Maybe not everybody feels that way, but my husband, who is a great gift giver, knew that I really wanted a donkey, and I received a donkey IOU from him a few years ago for my birthday. At that time, we were living on a farm in Hudson Valley, so it wasn’t as nutty an idea as it sounds. I just thought it was the most amazing gift.
One wrinkle is that donkeys live for a really long time, like 40 years. And so the thought of the commitment to a 40-year relationship with a donkey got me very nervous. I kept putting it off. Then we moved to L.A., and it’s not an ideal place for a donkey. So it remains a “to be fulfilled” gift.
The so-called “Persian flaw” refers to the way traditional Persian-carpet weavers would deliberately include a flaw in their rugs to acknowledge that only God was perfect.
Mark Hoppus from Blink 182 and Rod Dreher, formerly of the American Conservative.
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