By Paige Smith Orloff
JUST LAST WEEK, a Twitter friend turned me on to this video of punk’s godmother Patti Smith covering a song Debbie Boone made famous, “You Light Up My Life.” At the risk of overstatement, It’s brilliant, and there’s something so tender about the juxtaposition of song and singer, not to mention Smith’s tenderness with kids in the studio audience (the performance was for a kids’ variety show) that I had to watch it over and over. Here’s why.
From the category archives:
Sister Acts
By Paige Smith Orloff
I RETURNED FROM my summer travels with just a bit of dread. Not of unopened mail or calls to be returned: I feared my garden, and rightly. After only a week away, I found a state of explosion. You can see the results: tomatoes of every size and hue, giant mottled heirlooms, tiny red cherries and orange sungolds, some odd yellow plums and giant pastes. I managed to pick a good 15 pounds in about as many minutes. What’s cooking.
By Anastasia Smith
FROM TIME TO TIME I love posting on here about sister-themed books (um, no I’m not talking about Sweet Valley High) that I’ve come across and enjoyed, because it always starts a juicy dialogue about what everyone has been reading lately. My current recommendation?
By Paige Smith Orloff
RETURNING READERS MAY remember last summer as the time of pie anxiety. After a cataclysmic conflict over crust, my mother and I foolishly faced off in a local pie contest and, well, let’s just say that neither of us felt like much of a winner by the end. Ever since, I seem to have been avoiding pie entirely, at least in my own kitchen. My recipe, instead, for Fruit Whatmachallit.
By Paige Smith Orloff
HOW CAN IT be that for years now, I’ve been missing out on the Scissor Sisters? What I know so far…
By Paige Smith Orloff
MOSTLY, I EAT summer corn with as little adornment as possible. I grill it, I boil it, add a bit of butter or extra virgin olive oil and flakey, crunchy sea salt, and–that’s it. I’m done. But there is this one exception…and it’s my contribution to Week 2 of the big cross-blog recipe swamp called Summer Fest. Hint: It’s a breakfast food that’s good anytime.
By Paige Smith Orloff
A FEW YEARS back, my family made its own venture into the wilderness, moving from the urban sprawl of Los Angeles to the expansive green hills of the Hudson Valley. It’s paradise, yet the climate can be wretched and unforgiving, the land hilly and full of stones. We marvel aloud at the tenacity and sheer strength of this area’s early settlers; we are awed by what they accomplished, and quite certain we, with our reliance on power tools, the internet, and central heating, would not have a prayer of replicating their achievements. Novelist and memoirist Gabrielle Burton shares her own amazement at the resilience of our forefathers and mothers in her lucid, provocative novel, Impatient With Desire. Here’s what I thought.
By Paige Smith Orloff
IS IT POSSIBLE to plant the right amount of zucchini? I planted 3 plants. THREE. I skipped any other summer squash altogether. I congratulated myself on my behavior: sober, sensible, even restrained. I had learned, I thought, from my elders, from my own past experiences…but here’s how it went.
By Marion Roach Smith
TRADITIONAL MALE ROLES are heightened and added to when played by women. Think not? Have you seen Alien, The 40 Year Old Virgin, or the new Angelina Jolie vehicle, Salt? Major roles in all three were originally written for men, and, as played by women, became unforgettable. The sisterhood of stepping in–and stepping things up–is a good one, indeed. My 2 cents.
By Marion Roach Smith
SISTERS UNDER PRESSURE is always a good place from which to plot a story. After all, with all that history between any set of sisters (you didn’t really think you are the only one who has issues with your sister did you?), it’s a good bet that if you squeeze the pair a bit, some interesting things will happen. They do, in a new novel by Susan Rebecca White called A Soft Place to Land, and they do it quite well, indeed. The scoop.
By Paige Smith Orloff
WHO COULD RESIST a book with the subtitle “My Life in a Harem”? OK, probably a lot of people. But I’m not one of them. Read all about it.
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By Paige Smith Orloff
JULY IS A SUPER MONTH when it comes to festivities: Picnics galore, BBQ on the Fourth, and then it’s time to channel your inner Parisienne come the 14th, Bastille Day. Here’s how I’m doing it.
By Paige Smith Orloff
SOMETIMES, YOU JUST HAVE to read a book. You love (or know!) the author, the subject compels you, something on the dust jacket sucks you in, a review is so provocative you cannot skip it…I have hundreds of different paths to reading, but the one I took to my latest favorite read is roundabout, for sure–and yet, at least for my life here on TSP, it feels totally inevitable. Here’s what I’m reading, and why.
First time here? Here's the idea: TSP is a network of blogs about the many facets of the word sister, and the concept of sisterhood. A sisterhood of sister blogs, you could say. Whatever sister means to you, from identical twin to sister-in-law (or in-friendship or in-feminism), we’ll make room to listen in about it or express it on TSP. Like the slogan up top says, “Don’t you have something to say to your sister?” We've got galleries of art and literature by and about sisters, and a Sisterpedia of sisterly trivia...but now we're getting ahead of ourselves. The quick study: 
As the suffix of its name suggests, 
No surprise, really, that sisterhood, often life’s longest relationship and always one of its most important, has been the Muse for so much creative self-expression by women, and also by men. 
