Over a year ago I was sitting in a coffee shop with a few friends for a writing group. We started it to continue our passion for creating, to be held accountable amongst each other, and subsequently to play catch-up with each other’s lives. Unfortunately we mostly gabbed. This particular time, however, my friend Matt was very much discouraged none of us had read the works of Anne Carson. He got up from our table and twenty minutes later returned with copies of Autobiography o

Recently I was in Kentucky for work and was lucky enough to have some leisure time. I drove to Memphis, a city I’ve only ever known because of my cousin’s love of Elvis Presley. I couldn’t wait to go to Graceland so I could feel what she must have felt for him. Instead, when I arrived in my blue suede shoes, what I got was a theme park. The house was built in 1939 and purchased by Elvis in 1957. Graceland was once a proud estate home that Presley had bought to care for his el

As I lay in a mess of empty cold medicine boxes and body-warmed blankets, I turned on my third movie of the day. I couldn’t do much else than watch Netflix. After crying through Toy Story 3 and being stunned by the performances in August: Osage County, I turned on the Princess of Wales biopic starring Naomi Watts. Diana was ok. It wasn’t a great film by any means, but something broke through my Nyquil-tinged haze and left its mark on me. During a scene while Diana and her lov

From sailor to mediocre actor, amateur painter to photographer ingénue, Eugène Atget is an example of failing at what you want until you succeed at what you love. Atget lived in a rapidly changing Paris. The city was modernizing and instead of fighting the inevitability of change, he did something bold. He used his talents to preserve the city he loved. His subject was France, but he focused his work on Parisian interiors, vehicles, and something he called petites métiers, or

This project was conceived on Park Avenue in front of the Portland Art Museum on a Sunday afternoon in July. Jenny and Phillip, post-grads and held in their adult lives, were enrolled in an art history class at the museum that day. It was gloriously bright. They had sunglasses on. They’re sunglasses-type people. Phillip lifted his shades and said, “I have a great idea.” Jenny tilted her aviators down and said, “Yeah?” And the rest, as they say, is history. Phillip found that