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Travel Bright

23 TIPS on How and Why to Fly, NOW!

Flying in from Los Angeles to New York or back and forth is a routine familiar to many bi-costal commuters.  Yet not everyone finds pleasure in constant travel.  The many restrictions and the potential for loss is high when one is going away from home.  Security, Terrorism and Other Hazards plague the transition between “Arrival and Departure.” Yet, travel is intensely important.   We cannot avoid it.  Without travel, we are stuck in ONE place. Furthermore, we cannot maintain our far-flung friendships and many attachments without getting on a plane, occasionally.  Getting out to see old friends and perhaps family is a way of maintaining one’s status, relationships, and memories.  Creating NEW impressions of places known before is vital to feeling ALIVE.

Perhaps, we loss a part of ourselves if we do not get on a plane a GO see a museum exhibit in another city just because it relates to some arcane topic we studied in college.  Without planes, it seems, we cannot unlock our full human potential!  Of course, some people like Emily Dickinson (who famously wrote moving poetry from the self imposed prison, in an attic, without the benefit of actual trips or internet connection, managed to travel through books and in her imagination quite effectively).  Poets…  unlike most people can (time) travel (yet… this is another topic).   Unless YOU have the gift of reading (and writing) between the lines… don’t try it in public. OK?

The obvious key is to successful airplane travel is packing BRIGHT.  Take a little of what makes you happy, comfortable, and content at home.  It is right to fine-tune what one must have in order to function.  In this way, we are all different as snowflakes.  What you have in your bag will not work for me.  Yet, Talkinggrid’s 23 Must Have Travel Items are a simple yet tried and true method for staying On-Top of getting around.

Before the trip:

1.Get ready to Practice Politeness.  This is an opportunity to appreciate the little things people do for your safety.  Searching your bags, for example, is an important function for TSA agents to perform.  IF they neglect to check some bags, some times, we’d think we were not getting our money’s worth. So… we appreciate the people that do this (mostly boring) job.

2. Be prepared to eliminate doubt about your identity.  Thus, taking seriously the oracle at Delphi’s recommendation of “know thy self.” If you do not have valid identification you are not going anywhere conventional, quickly.  Thus, those of us who can verify that we are who we claim to be are SOMEBODY, at the airport where it counts.

3. Another perk of travel is that it gives you the opportunity to “expand your portfolio of experience.”  You are fascinating.  You write.  Read. Paint.  Dance. Sing.  Yet performing all these marvelous skills in previously unknown cities can be hugely life-enhancing since whenever you arrive in a new city you have the advantage of being vulnerable and confused and thus interesting to predators and admires, alike. Bravo! Make the MOST of IT!

Remember: Aerial Views are special.  We don’t get to see all the little houses and think about how small we really are unless we are UP here in the air LOOKING DOWN and seeing that what cost millions to the individual is but a spec on the patchwork quilt that is a nation.

4.  Most importantly, Get a Grip!  Every time you leave HOME on a major trip you are embarking on more than a mere journey from here to there.  YOU are making decisions about what matters to YOU.  What is important enough to get YOU and only YOU out of bed?   WHAT must YOU pack that I wouldn’t pack?  Tell me, pretty please.

5. Make time for enjoying the trip.  Don’t forget that it can be fun to explore the airport.  Past security there are shops, restaurants, and plenty of opportunities for relaxation, including those inviting coin operated massaging chairs.

  1. BAGS INSIDE BAGS!   Packing everything in a tot or overnight bag and THEN put it in your luggage… Hah! It makes you so… more prepared for shopping or mini-trips within your over-arching or BIG trip; try taking an extra tot with a fanny-pack full of makeup; that WORKS.  YOU get by better by having much more than one bag with you, always.

 

On the Plane:

  1. The Carry On, itself must be pretty.

You don’t want your bag looking like anyone else’s.

(Mine is a lavender floral print by Anna Sui for Tumi with a load of interior pockets, including a lined pouch for jewelry.  It works for me.)

  1. The Airport Pic-Nic.  Who can stand to eat what passes for food in most cases?  Not I. Thus, I bring my own home-cooked fresh meals, on board.   You may think this is a bit much.  Yet, I find it more economical and healthy to cook, contain, travel items.  transport, and enjoy the food I know is made fresh and to my specifications than to hope and eat whatever I can get.  That is why Whole Foods offers thermal bags.  Buy a few, use them regularly, and make your life better.
  2. The Eye Mask.  Give yourself some time to relax.  Check out.  Snooze.
  1. Wash your hands with extra care; bring along a quality Nail Brush.  Nothing beats having very clean hands, fingernails, and being well groomed.   Taking a moment to massage your hands, think about life, and reflect how lucky we are to have running water… is priceless.
  1. Don’t forget to Moisturize and hydrate.  Drink plenty of water before, after, and during your flight.  It will keep all systems running smoothly and the exercise of walking down the isle of a long air-plane in flight, several times will do you better than just sitting there.
  1. Noise cancelling headsets, Bose Speakers, for example, (or at least ear-plugs) can mean the difference between enjoying some rest and quiet time or… NOT.  Noise cancelling headsets work well to erase the voices of the two aging hookers that have seats behind you… or that monstrously energetic child’s wailing… providing the cushion of silence… your soundscape matters to you, for some of us, SILENCE is everything.
  1. Analogue Journal(s).  This is a solid block of time when you will not be interrupted.  You can write.  You can write your little bleeding heart OUT.  You can write poems to the clouds!  You can write a staggering list of Forgotten Lovers you wish you’d had!  You can write what kinds of parties you intend to have for your loved ones in the coming years.  Get to all the self-indulgent ego-boasting writing, you always want(ed) to do, now!

In your Carry On:

  1. Pack Gloves.  In all weathers, gloves are a gift to the self.  They protect your hands and light-weight ones keep your hands soft and germs off the finger tips. Thicker ones keep sensitive hands warm.  Gloves, leather or knit, are small yet high impact Sports gloves, for example ensure that you will be prepared to use the gym at the hotel.  Snow gloves make fights with packed balls of icy moister, FUN!
  2. A Selection of Hats.  Always carry a knit hat or two, they are tiny and make a huge difference in how comfy you are in ultra air-conditioned plane rides from here to there.  Also wear a proper hat, something fashionable to go with your jacket and slacks, which you take off in order to go through security.  Just the act of taking off your hat, makes you LOOK civilized.  Civilized is better in the world of air travel, deal with it.
  3. Cashmere Scarves!   Life without the lightweight warmth of cashmere wool may not be worth living.  I know. It was difficult before I discovered the major pluses inherent in the plushness, this soft and fine stuff provides. Two or three, good scarves fit anywhere and define YOU, dashing.  I prefer deep colors: tomato red, eggplant, and coffee scarves make me feel cozy and approachable.  Also remember: big plush, thicker, scarves can serve as blankets and improvised extra baggage.  The ladies in South Africa wear big ones, with which they wrap their babies around their bodies, while getting from here to there.   LOVE!
  4. Silk Blouses and Cotton Tank Tops: Light weight, breathable, silk is a traveling girl’s best friend.  Pack five blouses in your carry on they take up NO SPACE and you are consistently well dressed!  Wear them on their own or under wool sweaters to keep warm.  (Cotton, shelf bra, tank-tops, with a little elastic, are wonderful underneath.  Or… in the tropics… may stand alone as an eye-catching top, in a pinch.
  5. Under Garments: YOU must have seven days of fresh underwear with you NO MATTER where or how long you go for, IF traveling on a plane.  You never know when you get stuck somewhere and this is the one area of your carry-on reality you can and will control.  Unparalleled comfort comes from finding you have clean knickers, a feeling of instant power from a quick change into fresh underwear, no matter where –––precisely––– your earthly travels take you.  Fresh underwear will make YOU feel worthy of respect; away from home.
  1. The Neck Pillow:  protect your strangely vulnerable, fragile, yet vital, part of your body, THE NECK, is protected and ensconced from jiggle in transit. IF you don’t have ONE then I suggest you buy one at the airport.

Once you arrive you will need:

  1. Bath Salts and Oils.  As soon as you arrive you will want to take a long soak.  You need this to unwind, relax, and disinfect yourself from all the bugs and germs that are a part of sharing air with many strangers from all over the planet.  In the morning: you will want to have a WAKE UP or orange, grapefruit, lime-citrus soak to get you going, again.  In the evening: lavender, chamomile, or red-wine anti-oxidant soak will do YOU fine.
  2. The Travel Library: in airports, and trips, perhaps even more than at home, we have the opportunity to read real books, with pages, made of paper.  (Think of all the delightful paperbacks, begging to be read.  Paper books, one can sink into, a literary bath of words for the brain to soak in!)

Take TIME with those slow and softly turning paper pages, for they will be gone soon… unless—of course—virulent nostalgia grips the polis and…  If you don’t mind hauling around a selection of reading material, YOU are an exceptional being, in my book. (It is amazing, by the way, how many very thin books worthy of re-reading exist.  Strunk and White’s “Elements of Style,” and Dale Carnegie’s  “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” are two book I recommend everybody read again and again) pretty please.

  1. Writing and Drawing Materials.  In a very positive way it totally pleases me to paint in public.  Funnily, I’m good at concentrating with a crowd around.  Maybe because I’m the last of five children.  You may find that making a rough sketch of a memory or the flight attendant gives you a buzz unlike any other.
  2. A Laptop!   Of course, you were planning on bringing your portable computer along.  This is your chance to work on the Great American Novel or write your next blog entry.  NOW, get to it and enjoy your trip!  Bon voyage!

There YOU GO!

23 TIPS

Graciously from,

Frau Kolb

Active Head  at:
www.talkinggrid.com

Nov 16, 2013, 5:48 AM

 

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Crashed at the Standard

Dearest Readers of The Talkinggrid,

img_5432_medThank you, for following this moody blogger upon a few luxury adventures in learning to live more fully in the flow of the cosmic creative urge.  Forgive me for neglecting to keep you informed on the many happenings and intense drama, behind the scenes, in Frau Kolb or Talkinggrid, Land… anyway… You are cherished here.  Talkinggrid appreciates every click, donation, and welcomes advertisers to consider the quality of its following. You, legions, of active educated engaged reader are special humans: artsy, creative, informed and afluent YOU come from all over, together we explore a beevy of possibilities.  I remind you to read up under Zoom in With Frau Kolb for achieved material (when I fail to update the front cover you can always dig in deeper into the art adventures already published.)

This weekend I had a focused BLAST of big room relaxation, at The Standard Hotel in Downtown, Los Angeles. My best DUDE art PAL: Marty Walker and I downed a couple spicy bloody Marys promptly delivered to our, “WOW ROOM!”  after Mr. Walker, departed for his fabulous digs nearby.  Say “Hi!,” to beautiful Lady Lanchaster and thank you Mr. Walker for standing by my side after I had an epic melt down on Saturday Night.

Have you ever had a public temper tantrum?  Let me assure you: I HAVE!

Fortunately, the tub in the room was ocean sized and I used an entire bottle of Mr. Bubble, to get a worthy foam going and myself afloat, once again.

Oh!  Sweet Jesus…earlier, I was sizzling!  Thank goodness, I have real friends and The Standard Hotel to back me up when I need a cool room with a giant rubber foot in it, for climbing and high mirrored walls and a Roman orgy sized shower, the room comes equipped with a window side desk, just in case one is caught in the clutches of inspiration, past midnight and demands reams of Standard Hotel paper to write one’s Magnus Opus.…  What a splendid environment for decompressing and recovering one’s sacred calm!  I am especially grateful to STAR at the front desk, you live up to your name, and are a great asset to The Standard Hotel in Downtown, Los Angeles, which is one of my favorite party hotels.

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Frau Kolb Bathing at The Standard Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles

Years ago, I stayed at The Standard Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles, California, after dancing all night at their roof-top poolside party outdoor patio/lounge with my then friends, a couple of tall Mexican Women, I haven’t seen since.  Hah!  I also had some fun at the Hollywood location about a decade ago… I’ve been around.  Hah!  I’m an old hat at blowing my top and having a blast at luxury hotels around this super fun planet of ours.  Yep, that is what Frau stands for…

Life! So many FUN hotels and restaurants…  a lifetime to discover the joys of travel and wine, while visiting art treasures and discovering visual artists around the world.  Here on www.talkinggrid.com you will not get the regular NEWS.  Here you tap into Frau Kolb’s unique perspective or  version of reality.  I am sure you find it refreshing that someone, at least ONE person, is  living it UP, carefree, and bubbly even when failing to be the world’s calmest or most stable being yet continuing to show up for the theater and drama that adds spice to otherwise dull, LIFE, is my forte!

Many thanks,

Frau Kolb

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Bathing is the answer to almost any question in my quiet book of dreams and birdsong.
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Happy Thanksgiving: Greetings from Los Angeles! (Happy TG from the TG!)

Dear TalkingGriders,

Thank you! Thank you for frequenting the Talkinggrid. Your letters, notes, LIKEs, and LOVE mean the world to me, Frau Kolb. The many friends that give us regular feedback are my favorite people! Thank you to ALL that have made time for an interview, inviting Talkinggrid into your exhibitions, events, galleries, studios, and–––best of all––– welcoming into your warm hearts.

This year has seen TalkingGrid grow from a one-woman (albeit often supported by ONE man) acrobatic operation, a gigantic handstand, which only a handful of progressive souls, hungry for alternate art experience and (YES!) art adventure were following to a group hub, a virtual yet thriving hangout where friends frequently add content, insight, and vision. The warmth of the fire of inspiration, intelligence, and excellence which is the focus of this happening hotel of on-line art connection and mapping of NEW art worlds which continuously POP up in the field of forever. The talkingGrid is a flexible creative circle. Frau Kolb invites art writers, personalities, mega-minds making creative strides, exploring their limits, and trying NEW approaches to being artists NOW, to share of themselves via digital video interviews, art chats, select writings, photographs, and more. YOU, choice and select humans, have encouraged the TalkingGrid to EXPAND. Yes, we are growing.

Yet, for example growth is NOT always a good thing. The expansion of a cancer is not good news. Neither is what happened to me, last year. I ate like a fiend. I cooked for three days straight. I served a smoked salmon appetizer, followed by my famous butternut squash soup, served in bowls carved out of the gourds. The gargantuan organic turkey, a bird I brined and stuffed with a shitake mushroom, cranberry, and chestnut stuffing before blasting and drizzling with honey was served surrounded by an army of fingerling potatoes baked in truffle oil, shallot and cream reduction of whiskey gravy, roasted sweat potatoes in a buttery glaze of Hawaiian red sea salt , skinny and elegant French style haricots vert with almonds, cranberry sauce with Amazonian berries ground up and added for their anti-oxidant power, various pumpkin pies, (yes… it was) NUTS. It was labor intensive to cook ALL this food, butt it was NOT ass labor intensive as the double duty eating I dove into mountainous piles of food like a starving beast, hungry for pleasure.

This year, the only massive expansion on the schedule is that of the TalkingGrid. I see the TalkingGrid adding up to a maximum of eleven art inspired and focused writers/personalities/social-butterfly/introvert book hounds/ full time experts on various facets of the ART universe. Together WE will feast on art world offerings, always from a fresh, un-central, yet informed, perspective. Embarking on unexpected art adventures, which will take us all overt the world, literally. We have, Ron Schira. His three original stories revolving on, Frau Kolb’s request, around issues of NUDE experiences in ART viewing are an invitation into the mood of this playful, sexy, far from mainstream, timeless, ART adventure which is The Talkinggrid. Furthermore, it is our intention to shed some light onto issues of censorship, exploring boundaries, and finding the essential truth, sometimes cloaked yet always present, that THE BODY of Western ART, is sparked by the changing yet perpetual presence of the Body in ART. The most abstract of artists, uses his or her hands, heart, and BRAIN to paint and if the painting is erotic, or of a hot body, or IF the artist pierces the barrier of creative control and submits themselves ass nude model for others to paint… HEY! The experiences, the life, the thinking of a true artist IS always INTERESTING… again and again, the BODY fascinates us in art ass concept, the BODY is always central to the discourse of art, found only at The Talkinggrid.

We also have a brilliant article from Ola Manana and her deeply personal perspective on Obama-Care, of real charity, and her sister’s choice to donate a to a neighbor during hurricane Sandy’s rage. We are eagerly awaiting her coverage of our Sunday visit to the Barnes Foundation with La Suzy, Los Angeles native, currently based out of Brooklyn New York, artist that Frau Kolb had the pleasure of meeting at Perform Chinatown, earlier this year. Amazing, Ola!

This year TalkingGrid published a solid series of artist interviews, art chats, informal dips into the cosmic expanse of individualistic vision and drive to manifest public renditions of artistic excellence and personal aesthetic understanding, a prowess demonstrated through exposed and original philosophies of ART, made solid, open, and available for collecting! Hah! Looking UP close at artists working TODAY and everyday makes me a richer person and for that I’m extremely thankful.

There is so much to be grateful for. Including that I’ve decided to forgo cooking at home this year. Instead, we have other plans. We will celebrate the holiday within a framework of our history. WE will celebrate the holiday as we do each year buy eating and feasting and gorging ourselves on LOVE, so let’s leave the credit card at home (impossible) and lets LOVE the ones that are with us and the ones that are not! Let’s send love to our brothers and sisters around the world that decide that WAR is a path toward peace, each day. Let’s work toward full tables laden with fresh organic food for every human that wants it. Let’s embrace the idea for even a second everyday that there is hope evidenced in our collective HORROR over human rights violations, poverty, natural disaster(s), crime, and any human that finds themselves alone, neglected, or needing a manicure before the holiday and feeling that a single hang-nail is cause for tears. Pain is relative. Universal. And… always a reminder that we are alive, for which we can be eternally grateful.
Thank you,

Frau Kolb

 

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Happy Birthday Talkinggrid! Frau Kolb HITS the ONE YEAR Mark

Happy Birthday Talkinggrid! Frau Kolb HITS the ONE YEAR Mark as a reliable source of intense ART Chat!

YES!  WE made it!

ART Miami Basel 2012

Catching the plane, yesterday, at the very last minute Frau Kolb–––almost––– allowed the opportunity to bask in art intensity with ART WORLD notables slip between her slender cafe con leche fingers.

Imagine THAT!  The HORROR!  THE HORROR!  You are so looking forward to seeing what FRAU  had up her long and elegant sleeves.  Because, in the back of your mind, you had filed away the information that TODAY we officially mark the ONE YEAR anniversary of Talkinggrid as a reliable source for alternative ART NEWS in America!

JA!

Now, we got our par-tay hat on!  Ladies and Gentlemen get ready for MONUMENTAL COVERAGE of ART Miami BASEL 2012!

IF you were concerned or angry because it seems to you that Frau Kolb has too much fun being herself this is the time to bail, Mister, because Frau Kolb is ready to DIVE on behalf of the Talkinggrid and swim deep into the thick of ART Miami Basel 2012 with the gusto of Ponce de Leon diving into the fountain of youth!  Frau Kolb is on a mission to BLOW you away with her energy and unending capacity for silly, yet sincere, pomposity in the realm and ever re-generating field of contemporary ART.

ART you ready?

This year’s most exciting and vast art fair, ART Miami Basel 2012, is sure to be sensational.  Just think of all the insane FUN Frau Kolb had last year!  This year will be even better because despite all the obstacles, all the set-backs, all the changes in crew and re-positioning of the TALKINGGRID as an older impulse in the history of Frau Kolb, WE MADE IT!

We are here!  AGAIN!

The dream is now reality, Folks!

You may lack the background in “Who the F*CK? is FRAU KOLB,” butt rest assured that Frau Kolb is uniquely qualified to be the Dante  to your Virgil by sharing with you some of her off-the-cuff, RAW, art-insight with you.  JA!

You may not be interested in the history of a young NEW YORKER… a girl who HIT the streets in search of Punk ROCK splendor at the age of seventeen and somehow wandered into Soho.  The rest, my friends will be available in my full-length biography: “ME!, ME!, ME!,” by Frau Kolb.

Anyway, I gotta get ready here!

I got ART to see and people to meet.

Love,

Frau Kolb

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day: Project Dublin

I was just on Facebook with a dear old friend in Dublin.  We decided that I absolutely must visit Dublin later this year and check out the IRISH ART SCENE!!!! YES!  I will. 

Now we have a P R O J E C T!  

Let’s get FRAU KOLB to DUBLIN by September!  How does that sound?  

Do YOU LOVE the idea of Frau Kolb, hitting London, first——of course— I mean, I can’t get that close to the Tate, and the Rothko Room, there and The Turners at the National Gallery… Ah!  I love art and I can’t wait to learn more about contemporary art in Ireland!  

Maybe I will have the pleasure of meeting Bono, again.  Thanks to a teenage best friend’s father’s connections I got to go dancing with the lead singer of U2 when I was a wee lass growing up in very IRISH Manhattan.  My maiden name is Irish and you know I got faded yesterday, in anticipation of today.  Thus, kiss me… 

I’m like Barack Obama, truly and honestly BLACK IRISH at heart, forever! 

Keep rockin’ the DONATE button!  Thank YOU!!!  Please share the link and leave messages with questions, topics, comment, and feedback.  I appreciate the hit rate spike and shower of generous contributions from friends and former enemies, too. Hah!

Dearest Loyal Talkinggrid Supporters, Readers, Joyful following 

Im happy today because Im able to show up and do what I do in the world.  Thank goodness!  

The last few years have presented me with too many opportunities to expire.  We all face that possibility on some level everyday.  Violence, bad art, or disease might be a sudden end to anyone that isnt careful. 

Thus, inoculate yourself against the dangerous world.  Retreat into contemporary art.  (Hah!)

Readers!   Frau Kolb is blown away by the fact that you keep coming back to read this lowly and scattered, strange and too personal, art infused blog by artist and personality, Frau Kolb.  YES!  WE make a great pair, you and eye.  YOUR eyeballs keep rolling over my early morning words.  Thus, I’m inspired to keep writing them.  We are a symbiotic unit.  Thank you!

Finally, Ive achieved one of my lifes most important and previously unattainable goals: I write daily.  Writing, traditionally is a solitary practice.  I love reading and practice this on my own, quietly.  Yet, writing for me is best like this, in flow, daily and knowing that someone, one of my many friends, will read what I write and let me know if it is shite or true gold that I have spun. I have written, almost daily, for several years now.  I have to admit, however, that i achieved this lofty goal, in the most unlikely place, and least exclusive, on-line venue Facebook.  

It was on Facebook that I tripped into an incredible circle of amazing artists, art critics, consultants, power personalities one and all; many of whom Id never heard of before, some Ive known since my teens all are active, moving, pushing, edging forward.  It is fascinating to observe the Machiavellian style with which some wield their on-line art might. 

After about a year of dancing around the armies of humans flaunting their visual art prowess and connectedness I became fatigued.   I went on a campaign to rid myself of all the deadwood Id amassed in a friend requesting frenzy which took a big part of a year to initiate and then another year to prune this wild garden to what it is now: a tidy plot my Facebook list is now, reduced to the kindest, sweetest, and most uplifting people.  I recently, friended someone Id un-friended because, frankly, the woman is sharp, even her name suggests it.  I unfriended her and so many others because, I dont want to be an aspiring big personalitys Bitch.  That is right, Ive said it. 

Im competitive and IF Im going to write everyday it is nice to know that you come because you dig my words, perspective, art adventures, and quirky personal Caribbean history.  We may be fans of each other.  Yet, no matter how often I decide to take out my, SEND MONEY HERE! placard and brandish it in my most obnoxious Dance of Desire, I expect you to simply respect my wishes and click the freakin donate button, regularly, so that your $23.00 donation, or better $69.00 gift, or 200 bucks, or  do something NUTS and send Frau KOLB millions, I promise to invest it in entertaining myself and others, learning more about art, buying ART  furthermore, your generosity will aid in legitimating my continued commitment to showing up here for you with new MUSE NEWS and ideas, whichadmit it you find so stimulating and rare.  I think Id create a type of artists colony where we creatives cold chill out and get free spa treatments or some other RADICAL UTOPIAN art fantasy. just send the GREEN, if ya know what I mean.  

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Frau Kolb’s International EASTER Message

复活节快乐

¡Felize Pasqua!

Frohe Ostern!

Inquiring Readers ask:

 “Dear Frau Kolb,

How does Frau KOLB celebrate EASTER???”

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EASTER in OUR LUTHERAN GERMAN AFRO LATIN 

American HOME is a BIG DEAL! 

We start with a bunny-hop and backyard Easter egg hunt.

April is the sweetest month…. breeding bunnies

Our children run a monk.  The colors of a plum.

Screaming Lilly’s blossom in the blazing light.

I wear my bright Dominican Doña skirt. Sparkles.

BLACK TULIPS… Dancing in the BACK YARD!!!

Sparkles, sparkling: 波光粼粼

The children run amok and discover a petal of Grace.

A clover of Wunderbar!  We dance!  REJOICE!  Re-cycle old toys from Easters Long ago, bring back the giant bunny…

WE stop and read the bible, we contemplate the life of

Christ; man, rebel, symbol, and ultimate ideal…

Übermensch!

We drink Wagner.  We eat Goethe for breakfast!

Husband shouts quotes from Faust. Wife sparkles.

Hands washed we go for our Osten Spaziergang!

Wir gehen ‘raus und Wir rennen.  Wie den Wind.  

复活节快乐

EASTER for ATHEISTS (Frohe Ostern, Everybody Else!)

How does an atheist celebrate Easter Sunday?”

Answer:

YOU Don’t.

Thank you,

F. Kolb

Another Avid Talkinggrid Head asks:

“How do you find the energy for so much luxury travel, art adventure(s), routine Champagne consumption, hotel hopping, organic gardening, book reading, harboring cinematographic ambitions, fine art inquiries, and blogging?  How is it that you manage to grow this little far-out web-site with no real focus other than a profound desire to write about the little slice of life we, artists, daily creatives, burning or cooling in flames or waves of inspiration and desire to complete our many projects, know to be true?

Answer:

What a flattering question! The fact is that Frau Kolb is, “like a hummingbird,” buzzing around ideas, events, and people… getting to the nectar; here and there.  Yet, not everywhere, not where you are… you NEVER see me in NEW YORK, these days… London, England, is beckoning.  Dublin, Ireland is definitely on my mind.

Moreover, I’m thinking of doing an AMERICAN art tour, heading into the interior of the nation to meet art STARS I admire.

Paris: mon amie, je veux vous rencontrer!

I talk, a lot.  I type, fast.  I read, much more than most.  I write, daily.  YOU do it, too.  Don’t you? 

You read, a lot… actually, all of my actual audience are educated readers attracted by the wealth of FRAU KOLB’s unique understandings: just “ZOOM in with Frau Kolb,” or visit “Four Frau Answers,” for more on what the “F” is UP with this expanding and contracting, breathing and ALIVE, fun, entertaining and highly readable independent and meandering,
“tremendously creative,” and “much appreciated,” on-going intimate art-chat: BLOG!

YES, you can do it too.  I recommend you do.  It is very gratifying to get a press pass and attend art fairs and other intellectually charged spectacles… reporting only what you want and what you want… flaunting rules of GRAMMAR and conventions of type.  YES!

I get up early, often before dawn.  I write daily.  It helps to keep the words coming.  Which in turn makes it so that I’m ready, daily to face the world with a landslide of WORDS!

Seven Simple WAYS in which to The Sweet LIFE:

Dearest Loyal Talkinggrid Supporters, Readers:

Always remember: you are sacred.  You are the throbbing heart of the universe.  Yet… you are no more than I or than the man that serves you gruel in prison.

There are SEVEN sacred STEPS to a SWEET SUCCESS.

I. You must center yourself on caring first for yourself and then for others.

II. You must be free of need.  Success, oddly, depends on certainty from start to finish. For you must be blind with faith that the wishes you work toward, daily, do come true. 

III.  Being idle is unhealthy.  Too much desk/computer/couch destroys the body, the soul, and leaves one a wreck.  Every adult human must walk, daily.  Work.  Carry.  Cook.  Clean. Groom themselves in order to feel right.  

IV. Be Creative.  You can do it.  It takes practice.  HERE I am writing, again.  SEE FRAU WRITE, again.  The more I do it the better I get at doing it without having to think way too much.  Getting up before dawn to write or writing for hours each day is… easy when you simply bask in the silence of pre-dawn.  Loading and re-loading, writing and re-writing of this site a successful  habit.  By doing so, I have built a venue, a platform, a place for discussion and a means of communication.  I wish to share with you my thoughts and I welcome your comments and donations. 

V. Allow yourself to play.  Failure is not an issue in play, because it is obviously NOT SERIOUS!  I dance.  I dance in public and I am willing to do it anywhere, anytime, and I do not need music beyond the noise of being FRAU KOLB, which by the way, is not me… Frau Kolb is a work of art, a character, a construction.  We share some facts:  I am Frau Kolb, yet there is more to Frau Kolb than meets the eye… a trail of veils, a shimmy of the hips, a dip to the ground and several high-kicks, later… 

 oh… yeah… SEVEN STEPS to SWEET LIVING

5. Mix it UP!  Please don’t be bland, man.  Make friends with people that did not grow up on your block or mountain.  Grow beyond whatever lies were told to you that divide you from fulfillment.  HAVE FUN and follow the alluring rhythms of foreign lips, hips, trips, and cinematographic and literary travel to distant made up countries is also… a way to MIX IT UP!  

VI. Don’t forget the SEX!  Masturbation counts.  Keep it going.  Keep it private.  Keep it off the streets and keep it safe.  Condoms.  Monogamy.  All good, just remember NOT to be a selfish lover and to make sure and service your (adult and consenting) partners nicely if you don’t expect them to stray.  By the way, physical affection, hugs kisses, touch are requirements for happy relationships.  Sincere praise is essential to ensure loyalty! 

This advice, on sex, will influence all other aspects of life… Always remember: sexy and wealthy go hand in hand.  Your ability to give and get love enhances your ability to work, to walk, to read, write, and compose the you that is constantly in formation. 

VII. Quit comparing yourself to others.  You will always be less than the competition you imagine in your head.  You doom yourself to sadness when you believe others are better off.  EVERYONE is struggling.  We all have problems, affairs, issues, asshole toxic parents, addictions, worries, and anxieties to deal with yet… we can cultivate peace in our lives by unplugging ourselves from unhealthy, negative, mind polluting sources of information and connect with the ever lasting truth which is that LIFE is delicious if lived with gusto!

In addition: 

Pleasure must be subject to respect for life.  Any drug, habit, party, or practice which harms self or others is subject its ability to provide comic relief; without some form of redeeming quality on must avoid cruelty or humor that hinges on harm to others… this is beyond “political correctness,” it is a call to humans everywhere to respect that we each have a right to live, learn, grow, and continue.

Eat healthy. Organic food is not a luxury.  Try planting some organic seeds in dirt.  Buy organic dirt.  It matters.  Demand organic food.  Why not?  Why don’t you deserve to eat food that can actually sustain your well being. 

Every human has a right to be refined, educated, and at ease in being beautiful.  We are all specimens of such rare and intricate grace that to bask in this truth is our everlasting duty.

Yours truly,

Frau Kolb

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Caribbean Roots & Personal History

The Museum of The New World El Museo de Las Américas deserves a visit and more funding for African Studies. I’d love to see the understanding and scholarship focused on the countless valuable lost human lives.  I’d like to see these missing histories recovered and restored, polished and displayed, full of their inherent glory.  For every human story is one of survival, strength, and fortitude.  You just have to cast reality in the bright light of romantic thinking.

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“Was hast du gesagt?”

I insisted we visit El Museo de Nuestras Raices Africanas in Old/Viego San Juan Puerto Rico.  Unless we really aimed, we were not going get there.  The target was an hour away via auto.  In order to visit the museum we had to escape from the manicured reality of vacation paradise.  It was so glaringly comfortable, at the resort, we almost couldn’t leave.  Hot tubs, infinity pools, sunken bars… I was being extravagantly pampered, ensconced in pleasure, getting massages, downing Piña Coladas, making small water color paintings, and reading my beloved Judge Dee novels.

Yet… we had to go to Old San Juan.  It turned out that the Museum was not a dedicated museum anymore, rather a mere suite of rooms or a salas, a devoted to the plight of a portion of the ancestors of our Caribbean forefathers, in the larger museo.

The culmination of the trans-national flight was to be in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.  We were planning to visit my father’s grave, with the children. Thereby, creating indelible family memories.   A sub-text to the trip was helping me to reconnect with myself.  Any deep questioning of the self may prompt you to visit ancestral lands and places where you are instantly factored in as a vital part of the community.  My pueblo, the people of Caribbean and I connect, click… being immediately familiar, yet appropriately formal, as we are…   Therefore, there was no resistance, only the unwavering laser focus of my husband, propelling us toward leaving the staged comfort of our resort in Fajador, a sea-side marvel, made complete by its private beaches on Palomillo Island to visit the city of Old San Juan and specifically the museum where I hoped to learn more about the humans that were abducted and introduced to the Caribbean as chattel, the African slaves forcibly imported to the “so called,” NEW WORLD.

My loving Big Scientist German husband worked his magic to execute this significant excursion out of the usual travel loop to Hawaii, which he loves and has kept us flying west and very rarely east, for several years…    He knows exactly what I require to unwind: a private beach, a doting staff, fried plantains, watercolor tablet at the ready, a stack of Judge Dee Murder Mysteries, and plenty of rum, to boot!  Yet, this trip was about more than mere poolside decadence with a splash of creativity.  It was a soul-healing journey into the facts around who I really am. 

Yet, the hands of the masseuse were small and strong, covered in olive-oil gloves, reminded me, in her effective silence that everything is done differently in the Caribbean.  The caring touch connected me with memories of my mother, she used olive oil for skin treatments, too.  Then I had a bath in coconut milk and a rice-based scrub.  They washed my hair and put a berry-red stripe in the front.  My nails were polished and I was ready to take the shuttle to Old San Juan.  We paid for a private taxi, instead.

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Post Spa Treatments: Frau Kolb is ready to visit Old San Juan

Police patrol the second oldest city in the New World, a statue of Ponce de Leon, seeker of the Fountain of Youth and first governor of Old San Juan, wearing pantaloons and armor, presides over a town square under renovation.  Hah!  The field where soldiers met with cannon balls is in resplendent display, thronging with international tourists.

This museum visit came on the heals of my trip to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles California.  My intention was to take-in for the first time, really, the “African heritage,” which is evident in my fine tighter curls and milk chocolate good-looks.  People keep telling me, I’m a “black person,” yet the darkest man I ever knew was my father and he never mentioned this obvious “fact,” to me.  His own sense of identity had little to do with the his onyx hue of skin.  He had no concerns about his own racial identity.   I received little instruction in what it meant to be “Negro,” my father’s policy, was to assimilate, to blend in with the machine, erasing all traits that might make him appear foreign.  Thus, he wore suits and polo shirts… however, never able to fully blend in, he favored his polos in bright yellow, which looked great on him, …

The Afro-Latinos of Santo Domingo… Old San Juan, and… I hope to visit soon: Havana… are my people in that they recognize me. My real name, is common in the Spanish speaking Caribbean.  (Upon re-entry to the United States, I return to the land where people mispronounce my name with impunity.) I open my mouth and speak my Spanish and immediately doors fly open.  My voice is familiar and without meaning to be, commanding in a trust-worthy, generational sound of inherited privilege, which humans trust… just think how American women swoon for posh sounding British actors, take Hugh Grant, for example… my voice is reassuring to the locals, because, thanks to the fact of my wayward, unwanted, mother’s origin, I come from the social elite of our island nation(s).  Thus, my voice  is a sonic key to trust and immediate higher status in the Caribbean, the land(s) of my parents and grandparents.   It even works, sometimes outside the Caribbean.  Yet, in Los Angeles, so close to Mexico, my Caribbean Spanish is met with questioning.

I saw my grandfather’s photo for the first time, last week. 

My father was ambitious.  He married my mother because he firmly believed she was his ticket into the upper echelon of Dominican Society. One of a large family, a group of mostly Africans from the English speaking Isle of St. Croix, he saw the Dominicans as a dashing and heroic people.  Known in the Caribbean for their fabulous leader, El Jefe, their great infrastructure, and Spanish pizzazz… He idealized them.   He had read about the dazzling members of my mother’s extended family his whole life, growing up in the slums, shoe shining for needed family sustenance, his mother a domestic in a fine home, where she learned table manners… and brought these “better,” customs to her shack-home, in pieces.  Shards smuggled out from under her patron’s noses, she learned that eating was to be done on many plates and slowly… no rushing, she urged my father.  He listened with one ear and ran out the door to his next adventure until he fell in my mother’s carelessly laid, yet effective, net of beauty and welcoming gestures, knit by her fine last-name, and her descendant from the ultra-glamourous playboy and socialite’s darling, Ricart, son of the Ricart that was the brother of…  Ah!  

Spanish Conquistadors… addicted to gambling and the beauty of the native women and the importance they were vested with in the Caribbean… Who cared about them back in Europe?  
Mother was looking to get out of Dominican Republic and my father’s status a young attorney, a graduate of the local University, the first University in the New World,  The opportunity presented itself, which made him a welcome immigrant to the United States, when professionals from everywhere were invited to uproot and come earn in the land of milk and honey. His education made him a welcome immigrant to the United States, in the early seventies. His legal degree was a shining neon sign saying, “EXIT,”  to my mother, who was fed-up being a piece of meat in a country where sexism makes virtual slaves many women.   My mother was the singular secretary assigned to the thirteen recently graduated attorneys.  She has a gift for organizing.  She became a treasure to the department.  Men were vying for her attention.  Yet, was welcome and loved by my father’s mother, my namesake, upon a chance meeting.  Besides, my mother had more than her fair share of baggage.  She had had four children, who were living with her at her Aunt’s home.

Daniel Branagan was the best father.  He talked to me all the time, lecturing on ethics, body language, street smarts, safety, and critical thinking skills.  He taught me to think like a stray cat, assessing danger in a wild New York City of the early eighties.  He taught me to defend my positions.  He taught me to read the signs in the sky and the writing on the wall.   I’ve always had a library, because my father always had lots and lots of books.  He demanded that I “always carry a book with me,” to this day, I do. Falling into the American work forced he earned a decent living selling furniture at a store on 14th Street near Union Square, in my native isle, of Manhattan.

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Christopher Columbus/ Christobal Colon, statue in Santo Domingo, Capital of Dominican Republic.  He was the first to lay claim to the treasure isle of lovely, old Santo Domingo, thereby “discovering,” America.

So… we hit the Museo de Nuestras Raices Africanas.  I was looking for answers, deeper understanding, roots… not Hollywood made but real and indelible.  Sadly, there was only one, rather shabby, room devoted to the African diaspora, in the Museum of Latin American, which was very well conceived and gave me the opportunity to learn more about Puerto Rico’s and Dominican Republic’s native people, the Taino.  Sadly, the exhibit that was meant to be so enlightening, it was supposed to show what the living conditions on a slave ship were like and to really instill pride in the many descendants of the erased people, stolen from Africa… there was one image… I found haunting.

The video instillation which was supposed to show us HOW it felt to transported as cargo in a slave-ship felt, literally, failed to turn-on.  It was broken.  I wanted to see it and I was crushed because the halls/salas devoted to the native people of the Latin American jungles were particularly vivid and did enhance my understand of a part of my ethnic, physical, cultural being.  They hired a European master realist sculptor to cast members in vanishing tribes as models of the vibrant culture which is being erased by the “NOW or flowering of… But there were no bronzes of the lost Africans.  None.  No record.  We have the proof of them in us, in our blood, our music, language, and dance.

We are partially all African.  We are Jewish.  We are Chinese.  We are Caucasians.  We are.

I was ready for another dip into the abyss.  I had endured “the horror, the horror!”

I had visited the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.  I’d witnessed the monuments, read books on The Holocaust, but… finding proof, respect, honor, of the people, kidnapped and sold… this was “curiously absent.”  I am becoming ravenously hungry for a history of my father’s ancestors, the once enslaved people, descendants of the stolen human loot of Africa.  It looks like I will have to continue searching for poignant records and moving museum exhibitions focused on the Caribbean people’s African roots, origins because I did not find all the answers I was looking for at El Museo de Las Américas.

I demand to know more about ALL my ancestors.  I learned more about my mother’s father on this trip, than I expected.  My grandfather grew up attending cock-fights, horrific gambling matches, with his father an heir to several family fortunes, writing eloquent poetry and political ballads, he died young.  I knew that his father was born to a well-off Spanish family and that he visited Dominican Republic to attend a cock-fight (how despicable!)   I knew he had blond hair and blue eyes because that fact had so impressed my dark-brown Daddy.  My father, Daniel, the Black Knight, so rushed to believe the Dominican propaganda machine’s messages, he embraced a love for his nation’s unique beauty, the warm and inviting water, the delicious fresh food. Ah!  My beautiful black marble sculpted father, loved the air, the water, the land of his memory so much that he returned to Dominican Republic, time and again until he returned to die there, only to be taken for the last ride of his life… but that is another story…. by his adopted “son,” and chauffeur, his final caregiver…betrayed his trust by never paying a cent of the promised money, my financial inheritance, a contract he signed,  in illiterate haste, which released me from guilt and duty in that he was false in his dealings with my father’s will.  (Thank goodness I wasn’t sitting around waiting for that pocket money!  I forgive the traitor.  Yet, I think… what a silly move!)

My father’s investment in time, love, and energy pays off in my life daily and in that I know how to manage, how to observe the law, and how to float and swim toward goals, yet not against the current, with it, in flow… how to align myself with prevailing benevolent powers, seeking protection in the authority of my accomplished husband, for example….  that I am able to move forward despite challenging circumstances which befall us all.  My sense of honor demands that I keep my father’s memory alive because I am grateful that as his daughter I received a tremendous dose of intelligent attention from the moment I was born until I showed that I would be falling in love with some other male and leaving him, someday.  Thank goodness, in a wave of clarity toward the end of his life my father woke-up from the dream of empty ambition.  He forgave me on his death bed for being me.  He died blessing me and telling me that his birth family had failed him.  He said he had adopted a new son, a man, his driver…a man with not one but two wives… looking identical… like twins and yet one was the dried up virgin and the other a wet valley of seductive corruption.

My father showed bad judgement in his choice of chauffeur.  Hah!

I’m so glad that my Papa gave me his blessing before dying.  I wear his good wishes with pride.   It is somehow linked in my mind that I’ve developed an obsession with Judge Dee, mystery novels by Robert Van Gulick, a 1950’s Dutch Diplomat Chinese studies school and … they… well they… sound like Daddy and the rough yet organized world he faithfully described; he taught me about the unchanging universe.  He taught me the law the justice of the universe.  The righteous truth that there is more than enough for every person within themselves to create abundance for others.  I read Judge Dee and I hear my father in the solving of simple mysteries with a handful of clues… I also LOVE my Big MONKEY, my sweet German Husband that underwrites my explorations of the past and supports my ongoing investigation on Talkinggrid because he is the father of our family and trustworthy and kind, like my Daddy was when I was his baby Monkey.

883552_646726755347581_1633_medNext year: we will be traveling to Europe and covering more Muse News abroad.  So… get ready and donate NOW, why don’t you buy yourself a freakin’ ad, or donate some cash like artists, independent art collectors, musicians, and holistic healers, and other supporters of The Talkinggrid do.  Thank YOU again to all those that contribute with encouragement and by reading.  Please, let me know IF I made too many offensive errors.  I’m OPEN to donations and suggestions.  Thank you!

Ah!  I unlock myself before YOU, lucky regular readers of the Talkinggrid!

YOU Loyal supporters!  I thank YOU!  This site is getting more and longer visits, daily.

I upload more and take responsibility for all its errors and mistakes, many are on purpose… others are happy accidents, which prove this site to be what it is: the work of one, artist, woman.

Yours truly,

Frau Kolb

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Dr. Daniel E. Branagan; Mi Padre was an Ideal Dad

A few days after Father’s Day…. I’m thinking of my father

I’ve written about him and our close connection before.  Read Dr. Daniel E. Branagan; Mi Padre was an Ideal Dad, if you like…

Since his death, I’ve grown closer to my father.  I have come to idealize him.  He is a Saint, now.  He visits me, with advice, when I need his support.  An attorney in Dominican Republic, whose political/professional ambitions were thwarted, destined to failure.  (He was naive, a firm believer in the goodness of man, his fellows, in the LAW, as a force toward good… redemption.  He believed in THE SYSTEM, jails in his mind, served to “rehabilitate some…” Thus,  he voted conservatively.)  I admire him, never-the-less for his lofty ambitions and solid morality.  He cared.  He demonstrated and proved a fierce, attentive, love for me as a little person.

Toward the end of his life, my father went HOME.  He went back to his “people.”  He choose to avoid traditional medical care until the cancer had spread.  It was too late when he tried.  (Santo Domingo, the capital of Dominican Republic, has excellent doctors and offers excellent medical care at much less out-of-pocket-cost than in the United States.)   I believe he died in relative peace, even though I was not at his bedside.  

I saw him a few months before he died.  I traveled through dimensions, as one does when going from one culture to another, to his heimat.  But it was more than just a trip into a world I am a part of yet… I’ve not been there much in the last twenty years.  I grew up visiting Santo Dominigo.  During summer vacations, we’d go and stay with my mother’s family, in their old home, which is no longer in the family, it exists but the whole neighborhood around it was demolished in order to make room for progress.  The old fashioned, brightly painted, tin-roofed and wooden homes, that decorated the neighborhood, were a “fire hazard, “and impossible to standardize.  Whole neighborhoods, middle-class barrios vanished.  Yet, the city keeps growing, moving forward.  You don’t see street kids, looking to shoe-shine or beg a little change for their families, anymore.  The government did something, schools, I think. I tried to move there, once.  My father was living there, but he had a woman… he did not even like her all-that-much, he complained about her ignorance, or lack of interest in Mayan Codexes which are housed in the Faro a Colon ,a whole sad  monument to, of-all-unfashionable-people, Christopher Columbus.  He had no room in his mature, attempts at establishing his dream life, his public unfolding, his grand success for a twenty-something and lost, me.

Columbus, curiously enough “discovered,” Santo Domingo and made it his base of operations.  He lived there and governed until his brother took over.  Descendants of the family are still active members of Dominican Society.  We are the oldest city in the New World, with the oldest church, university, and infrastructure.  We had a powerful dictator for a long time, which means we have working roads, a functional telephone system, and a very stable society; despite unrest, poverty, and other ills (which plague all nations, except the northern European societies which benefit from their government’s former exploitation of colonies and slave trading, generations ago.  Wealth, being a “civilizing,” factor.).  Today, Thursday, 24 April 2014 Frau Kolb types, from a, “centered quiet place within,” having slept well, dreamt of nothing… passed out from a day fulfilling obligations, duties.

What do you do that you don’t want to do, really?  What fills you with dread until it is behind you and then you realize that it isn’t so bad?

Well, for me… sometimes, my children’s school projects, deadlines, homework, teacher conferences, meetings… Oh!  It is all too much.  I get really stressed out.  I have to buy poster board!  Tape!  Do this.  Do that.  Help!  Now, I see… why my mother never went to school to talk to my teachers.  My father did when I was little.  When he could… when he wasn’t working, selling furniture in Manhattan, New York City.  He worked, a lot.  He studied law, earned an attorney’s title and thought he’d take his NEW WIFE to America, like she wanted, for six months—get loaded— and be able to set themselves and her four little ones; in their home nation, Dominican Republic, in the Spanish speaking capital, first city of the New World, home to Christopher Columbus, and his clan: Santo Domingo.  Of course, six months after arriving in New York City, they had long ago worn out the middle class digs where they dropped as friends of family for the first few weeks and had passed to less comfortable accommodations, incurring debt along the way.  (They had a duty to send money home.)

The first job my father took in the United States was as a dishwasher in a restaurant.  It broke his proud heart, yet he took the position.  He was punctual, attentive, and compliant; a better dishwasher doing a better job, rinse, and repeat.  Shortly, there after, he had a better gig in a nicer spot; always… punctual, attentive, compliant; like his parents, descendant of African slaves brought to the Caribbean, imported to St. Croix… part of an Anglo-Irish household of prominence; as domestics… house slaves, virtually… yet, English speakers.

My father’s accented English was faultless.  He spoke it with flare and taught me to, “always carry a book with me,” after teaching me to read, at home so that by age three, I was very good at it.  Then he taught me to play chess… that was fun, beating old men, playing in the park; a five year old girl in a handmade cotton dress with pink satin bows decorating her flat little chest… quickly executing a “check mate!”  Her father, laughingly… collecting cash.

When I was a kid, growing up in Manhattan, I could always call my Daddy at work, on 14th Street near Union Station where he was the top salesman on the floor.  He’d always answer, taking my after school calls, with glee in his voice.   My father advised me, “Watch people.  Their bodies never lie.  Their intentions are always clear in their eyes, on their faces… you will see what they are thinking IF you look carefully enough.  They will call you a Mind Reader… I see the ones that come in with the intention to buy and I facilitate their transactions. I provide guidance, information, and encouragement. I sell.”  He would contrast himself to the, “young and inexperienced,” salespeople that would, “jump on everybody walking in; wasting their energy and leaving the real business of furniture sales to me. Hah!”  He’d laugh.  I’d admire his thunder.  He was amazing so black, tall, fit like a knight; always ready for a challenge; thus, he died loving my mother.

“People…” my Dad would explain, “Love walking into stores; just to LOOK… that is why they call it a furniture gallery… they can’t afford or don’t want to buy… ignore these people and they will be thankful for it.”  Yet, “Costumers are clients… ignore these people and well, not only will you not have a job for long, it isn’t fun selling furniture if you don’t DO IT.” and then he would look down at me sternly and say, “And… you know, Cari… most people can’t really afford good furniture.  They can’t afford a sandwich for a girl on date-night, my Dear.  They don’t understand that money flows whenever and wherever it wills… we just have to be there to get our share.”  Work!  Pay attention.  Read.  Write.  Bike ride.  Walk.  Repeat.

He trained me well to think, and thus fulfilled his duty; providing for me and equipping me with people reading and sales skills; teaching me to pay attention to others as a means of fulfilling my own needs, “going with the flow,” of money… instead of against it… he taught me to swim the high seas of responsibility and come ashore today with pride.

Hah!

Thank you, Dad.

Loving Thursday,

Frau K.

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Frau Kolb Applauds Angelina Jolie’s Choice to Have Preventive Surgery

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Watercolor on paper © by Frau Kolb, 2011

How dare I compare myself with Angelina Jolie?  She is a Hollywood goddess, right? Who the hell do I think I am to mention that Breast C A N C E R connects more women than one can imagine? We sisters that have faced the HORROR the Horror of fear and decided to take action in preservation and honor of our health can move forward in life to embrace all the joys of being here NOW!

Angelina Jolie is one such woman, stepping up to the world and announcing that one has choices, options, and that making decisions is NOT easy but that one can create a worthy life through making active health choices rather than avoiding preventative measures.  The concept that one can avoid facing the death threat of cancer by having the surgery before the cancer is NEWS to me! I wish I had known that I had this option.  After nursing my two children I’d have certainly considered taking the same bold step as Jolie.  Since I have the same genetic mutation of the Brca1 and Brca2, which made my cancer POP out of no-where and grow—super aggressive and fast—to stage three, which has a 50/50 prognosis, I’d have done nearly anything to avoid the harsh and frightening realities of chemotherapy and radiation. The point really is in being aware that one has options, choices to make, tests to take.  I wish I’d known about the gene.  I did not.  Yet…

Breast cancer and its horrific treatment with chemotherapy was… well only bearable because of some basic life choices I had in place, which made it so that during treatment I had the strength to write a list of 100 things I loved about MY CANCER.  The unpublished book, “Cancer with Style,” is the journal of embracing LIFE, LOVE, ART and Adventure as a strategy for life in which I chronicled the ups and downs of embracing life as a means of addressing the breast cancer crisis.

The first solid choice: a great husband.  It looks like Angelina and I share this decisive factor at the center of our lives.  ONE needs friends, family, and warm fuzzy feelings about living in order to hang on. The next key: great doctors, shop around.  Jolie and Frau Kolb both opted for the Pink Lotus Breast Center of Beverly Hills.  Kristi Funk is a great doctor and really treated me with the respect and caring one expects in the doctor of one’s choice.

Artist, Terri Amig, posted a mention, a reminder, to me that NOT all women are so fortunate.  This is true.  However, health concerns are testing grounds for rich and poor, alike.  Yet, without health insurance… I think one’s options would be limited.  Yet, I’m aware of at least one single (yes she’s gorgeous) woman that made smart choices regarding her health and had a lot of fun despite dealing with breast cancer without health insurance.  She rallied her friends, family, and committed herself to a medical treatment, which worked for her.  I commend her and all other women to be proactive about their health, their lives.  Get check-ups.  Get tested for the gene.  Make decisions.  These steps might be impossible to implement with the same level of panache and glamour associated with Jolie.  Yet, IF you are determined to take care of yourself, you can and will make sound choices.  By asking questions, visiting public libraries, and doing internet research you are very likely to be able to amass a fortunate of viable options available to all that seek out their own well being.

We all have options.  But the willingness to step forward, be brave, and take charge is the height of mastery and I must say I admire Jolie.  I always have and as the years pass she only more wins my admiration for her bold decisive nature and continual commitment to being an example of forward thinking open minded savvy which is now legendary.  Yet, it is vital to remember that we are all the STARS of our own lives and must find the strength to LIVE, to accept responsibility of our quality of life and to embrace being able to make, even difficult, choices.

So ENJOY your power to make choices, get informed, and be as bold and powerful as any celebrity in your own estimation and proclamation!

Much Love,

Frau Kolb

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No More Diets! Eat Cake. NOW!

Chilled Champagne is an essential ingredient in any diet I undertake.  So WHEREVER you are, pour yourself a tall skinny glass of bubbly and let’s toast to the prospect of a new you! (Or not, I’ve since recently, reconsidered my position on this critical issue: to drink or not to drink… that was the question.  I think I’m over alcohol, but I’ll keep you posted…)

Now, I’m going to tell YOU.  I am NOT a nutritionist.  I am not a fashion model.  I am a woman that LOVES FOOD and eats a lot.  I’m not particularly young and Yet, I’ve lost weight as needed after gaining weight as needed for pregnancy and post wrestle with life-threatening bout of evil breast cancer (cause: a genetic mutation).

Since November, when my beautiful doctor, a man, older than me… I calculate he must be older than me, he went to medical school and became a luminary in his field… told me, “It is time we talk about your weight.”  I was twenty five pounds heavier than I am today.  I just shrugged my shoulders.  I thought: “Hey, I’m older now, I had cancer, I’m busy, I have kids, blah, blah, blah.”  In other words, I thought:  I have to be FAT.  Everybody is FAT after a “certain age…”  Yet, sitting before me was a really good looking super-skinny and well coiffed presumably older-than-me MAN.  I was a little beaten down, having surrendered to the idea well, frankly that to be NOT beautiful, to become attractive, or lacking in sex appeal  in my immediate and future future was an unavoidable destiny FACT. (OUCH!)  I had surrendered to the idea of being older and overweight ass unavoidable TRUTH.  Because I believed I was old and… well… I had no choice butt accept my big bottom as a reality knot to be untied.

Anyway, I made a lame attempt at defending myself, I told him, “I go to the gym,” and I said, “I eat healthy.”  My doctor LAUGHED at me.  He did.

“EVERYBODY always says that they work out or don’t eat so much but the fact is that gaining weight is a simple mathematical equation: too many calories and not enough movement to burn off the calorie count.”  He said.

NOW, he had my attention.  “Are you calling ME a cliche?”  I asked, outraged for an instant, wanting to get offended so I wouldn’t have to listen.  “YES!” he laughed.  Skinny, tall, and blond, my beautiful doctor said, I was indeed a, “Cliche.”  This made me angry, because ONE thing I pride myself on is on be myself, unique.  So… I said, “Do tell.”

Well, my doctor gave me two guide lines:

1. Cut every meal you get (in a restaurant ESPECIALLY) in half and eat only half, every time.

(Note: In my case, I eat the protein and avoid the starch.)  This shrinks your stomach, which is essential.)

2. Excursive at least one hour everyday.  YOU must do enough to sweat, then rinse it off.  This Rinse off, may seem obvious, but it is essential to your  health that you remove the toxins from your skin that your body excretes through exercise, daily.

Starting in November, I applied those two guidelines. I started by walking, then running or… sometimes… dancing.  Biking is also really important to me.  Now, I’m SKINNY ME: weighing less than I did a decade ago.  BRAVO!

I also changed the following:

I no longer drive everyday.  At least one day per week, I walk or bike EVERYWHERE. (This is ALSO good for the environment.)  This works especially well when going grocery shopping… carrying food home on a bikes, keeps it real what YOU buy.  Best of all NO frozen food.  I’ve never been a big fan of canned or frozen prepared, highly processed, foods.  I’ve always preferred ORGANIC fare and I know that this fact alone makes me healthier and more resilient than most.  NOW, I’m a little stricter about what I eat… but I eat real food: organic animal proteins, salads, fruits, veggies, dairy, and FOR ME: NO GLUTEN.  NONE.

Fast Food, has always been completely out-of-the question for me.  Butt, IF you are a driver-through bandit, you like your McD’s on the GO, or TACO Terror, or worse you eat any food that involves a person taking your order via a microphone and throwing a bunch of chemical sculptures of food into a box for you then you better STOP IT!  Because, just like smoking, some habits have no upswing and can only slow you down and make you ugly.

I cook.  More and more, my families meals are delicious and less expensive than eating at the Ritz, for kicks.  Anyway… IF you would like to discuss, this topic further… ask me a question either here, on the comments or on the Frau Kolb/Talkinggrid Facebook FAN PAGE!  Yeah… In the mean time: GET OUT there and MOVE.  EAT LESS.  EAT FRESH!  Enjoy LIFE!  Embrace FUN, laughter, good times are your pals when facing any challenge.  Don’t forget simple corny and gut wrenching JOY ass a remedy!  Cheers and BOTTOMS UP!

Love,

Frau

Jul 24, 2013, 6:00 PM