Results tagged "The Hamptons"

Guest Bird #7  – Sylvia

If you’re not familiar with Palm Springs weather, check out last month’s warm temperatures!
 
Water has always been an important theme in the Palm Springs area, for the beauty as well as the cooling effect.  At last count, there were said to be over 30,000 swimming pools in the Coachella Valley.  I have chosen the most interesting residential pools to share with you…

Bob Hope’s pool and 17,531 sq. ft. house!  (1)

Elrod House pool  (2)

When viewing the photos below, please hover your mouse over the word “Notes” on the lower right side, so that you’ll be able to see the descriptions!

(1)  1979 Bob Hope House (John Lautner) photograph by Julius Shulman & Jurgen Nogai, 2007
 
(2)  1968 Elrod House (John Lautner) photograph by Julius Shulman & Jurgen Nogai, 2007
 
(3)  Palm Springs Modern p. 40

Yesterday…while I was twittering, checking my email, designing a logo, writing an allergen free cookie recipe and driving back from Hampton Bays where I had purchased a pound of nutritional yeast, it occurred to me that my brain was on overload. Genetically modified soy overload. Information anxiety overload. Kids are riding around in spaceships when they are really hiding in the attic before blowing chunks on the Today Show overload. David Byrne was on the radio and a woman was walking by pushing a terrier in a baby carriage. It had started to rain again. I had reached maximum capacity. My mind was feeling a little like mush and slowly I started to think about Dr. Pepper – and how I used to love to walk barefoot up my parent’s street to Ada’s candy store to buy the soda and then linger back home again. Then I thought about the time that my parents gave me a few dollars and told me to go to Ada’s to buy some gum before we left for a flight out of town. I remember thinking  – wow, dollars worth of gum? What kind of gum should I get? I told Ada to fill the bag with bucks worth of every kind of gum she had. She was a little grumpy – suggesting that my parents didn’t really want that much gum, but I insisted. Every kind of gum she had.

This was just my take on the situation – my analysis of the quest I had been given. There were no specifics involved–had there been, I would have done what was expected of me. I would have just bought one pack of Wrigley’s and returned with change. I could have been spared the disappointment, but the concept of every kind of gum was way more fun. Or I could have just listened to Ada. But what did she know? She’d only been running a penny candy store for 100+ odd years listening to kids  – one of these and one of those and two of those… yelling at teenagers trying to steal cigarettes… attempting to sneak up the stairs in the back to see just how many bodies she was preserving… one of these, four of those.. 2 more of those, no not those.. those… that one, and two of… OH ADA, JUST GIVE ME THE GUM. And so she did, and when I returned home with all of the newly purchased gum it was unbelievable to me that my decision making skills were a little off the mark. What do you mean you don’t want dollars worth of every kind of gum Ada had? But don’t you know that in 20-something years from now I am going to be driving back from Hampton Bays with a pound of nutritional yeast remembering this?

A few weeks later, it was all forgotten until one afternoon I was walking our dog Henry… there she was careening off her porch — “HOW WAS THE GUM?” — thanks Ada.