Paige Smith Orloff invents sisterhood from scratch.
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MY GOOD FRIEND told me that Mary Karr’s Lit was the best non-fiction she’d read in years, that while she couldn’t bear to put it down, the prose was so divine it made her want to stop after each passage just to savor it. This friend is no easy sell when it comes to writing and reading, so ok: add that book to my reading list, stat. [click to continue…]
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IHAD TO BREAK the news to my mother last night. A huge player in our shared history was gone. Her face went white, and she looked like she might cry. As we sat down to dinner (a dish I re-christened Cold Comfort Chicken Potpie) she looked down. “I just can’t believe it’s gone.” She was talking, of course, about Gourmet magazine. [click to continue…]
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AS A WAY TO BRING the happiness back into our family’s world of pie, I suggested that my mother and I do a joint project: enter a local pie-baking contest. I’m competitive when it comes to board games, but not so much to contests with judges and juries; I kind of assumed she’d beat me, and the world of pie would be returned to its axis. Best-laid plans… [click to continue…]
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"Mom! These are DEFINITELY POTATOES."
ARE WE ADDLED YET? Has the heat cooked your brain, softened your resolve, wilted your garden? Why yes, I say, to all three, which is perhaps why, when the Rock and I were washing our slender haul of assorted love apples from the garden yesterday, I didn’t bother to correct her when she insisted the tomatoes were potatoes and ate more carrots than she washed. It’s too hot to argue. It’s too hot to do much of anything, which is why I say: Make soup. (Does this seem proof positive that I’m not thinking clearly? No, no, I promise, this is good advice–read on.) [click to continue…]
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Joe Forte's artwork just about sums me up.
A FEW DAYS BACK, my (internet/have never met her in person, yet feel like she’s a part of my dysfunctional family) friend, lovely Marilyn of Simmer Till Done, asked me to chime in with a guest post on her blog. The assignment was simple: food & memory. I pinged her back (this whole convo, of course, was over Twitter) and said I’d LOVE to be a part of her blog (it rocks) but that my initial, stream-of-consciousness response to the assignment was pretty dark. “I’m cool with dark,” was her reply (or something like that) and so I was off to the memory races. [click to continue…]
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MY INTENTIONS WERE pure, I swear. My mother is one of the two best pie makers I have ever known. Ruth Reichl is the other one, so Mom is in plenty fancy foodie company. (I’m not picking favorites here. That would be stupid, and probably reduce the amount of world’s-two-best-pies in my future.) Since Ruth was in Brazil, and therefore not available for stalking for pie tips (and I suspect she’s more likely to put them on her own site, anyway) I turned to Mom. “I have a great idea!” I began. She looked suspicious. My “great ideas” and “suggestions” can be as annoying to her as hers are to me. “I want to film you making pie, and put it up on The Sister Project this week!” Her face seemed to pale, and the corners of her mouth plummeted. [click to continue…]
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KIDS FIGHT, RIGHT? This is not news. Not to those of you who grew up with siblings, anyway. As an only child, I think I believed that incessant sibling squabbling was like one of those subjects exaggerated by the media, say, anyone’s interest in the Brangelina brood: something real, to be sure, but perhaps not quite as culturally pervasive as the folks at Us magazine would like us all to believe. [click to continue…]
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YOU KNOW YOU’RE a sister when your friendship can survive one of you writing, publicly, about the other. Or can it? It all started innocently enough. I sat down for a coffee with the editor of a regional magazine based here in the hinterlands, talking about what I might write for him, what I was writing for other folks, and inevitably, the conversation turned to The Sister Project, and our amazing oldest sister, lovely Margaret. I should have known what was coming. The editor, like everyone else I meet, wanted to know all about her, her garden, her projects. Now there was a subject! Could I finagle a profile of my friend (and regional celebrity) Margaret? Yikes. [click to continue…]
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REMEMBER MY SUMMER GOALS? Now that summer is more than one-third past (read that bit again, why don’t you, as you weep into your iced coffee) and I’m about to embark on our few short days of family vacation, I thought I should check in with, um, myself, and err, you all, and ‘fess up to what I’ve done, or not, on that list of mine. [click to continue…]
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HOW’S THIS FOR A PLOT? Two couples meet, fall in love–each with the other’s partner–dissolve their existing marriages, switch partners, and marry again. Wild enough. But now imagine that within these two fragile families are four young girls, two each, all close in age. Two of them, named Jenny and Jane, even share the same birthday, one year apart. The four girls are all now sisters, of a sort. What sort of sad, strange family is this? [click to continue…]
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THEY WANT TO BE IN PICTURES: From my Country Living story.
First time here? Here's the idea: The Sister Project 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 on our homepage 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: Learn more about TSP, and how to find your way around. And oh—a giant, sisterly welcome.
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.
TSP’s Galleries were created to show off that outpouring of art and craft, poetry and prose. Come see a show or two—no ticket required, no lines to get in—and suggest others whose work we ought to showcase.
As the suffix of its name suggests, TSP's Sisterpedia is the reference section, one we’re hoping you’ll help us grow to maturity by adding your knowledge in the comments. Turn us on to new facts and figures, whether for the branch of our ‘library’ called Sistory (history from a sister point of view, from the Muses of ancient Greece to 60s Girl Groups and beyond) or the one called Sibling Science (what makes sisters tick, genetically and behaviorally). Or just click around and have a good read. See you there.
