The Moon over Nauset Beach

Maeve, 11-23-12

Constantly in motion

London, Paris, Provence, San Francisco, New Jersey, Hamptons...all in a month.  So much fun and so much travel.  Remember summer, those lazy days, watching the surf roll in?  Yeah, me neither.  I think the next time I will get a lot of rest will be when Malia Obama is elected president.  I hope your fall has been happy and productive.

This is the beach from the north side of Montauk this past August.

Self-portrait, Gordes, France. October 6, 2012

Flag, South Portland, Maine 7/31/12

Shelter Island, June 18, 2012

Cape Elizabeth, Maine

Maria

Shana

I love hotels

Meet me at The Oasis

Tyler

Tyler and Sara

Shana laughing

Shana

Six arm situations

Seven, if you count me behind the camera. Cape Elizabeth, Maine, April 7, 2012

I love planes

We take so many things for granted. Planes are such a gift, so amazing to get into this big metal tube and blast off into the sky and see things far away with your own eyes.

Some outer buildings at the airport

Salibello Antiques

I was in the Hamptons for work all week.

Midwest mission, part 3: silver lining

Even with all this Irish blood in me, I am an optimist. Or at least, I can laugh at myself and whatever bizarre cards life deals me. You have to, or you will absolutely lose your mind. I've been trapped in a marble quarry, fallen on my face, bled on, meowed at and slept in a motel alone in the only snow storm Savannah has had in 20 years, and that's just this year. But on the other hand, I also swam in the Seine on a lazy hot summer day, visited a champagne cave run by two brothers that only produces enough bottles for their parent's restaurant and the occasional tourist who strolls in (me....there is a bottle of that in my icebox right now, waiting for just the right moment...any moment now), got a ride around a race track at 140mph, heard Thich Nhat Hanh in person and I make a living doing what I love.

The huge silver lining of my bloody trip to Indiana was the chance it afforded me to stop in Cleveland, Ohio and visit with my dear old friend Stephanie and her family. I have known her since high school at Nightingale here in New York. Stephanie lives in an absolutely beautiful apartment in Cleveland with her husband Mark and their two kinder, Lucas and Alina. Lucas is 3 and Alina is 18 months; she has only been walking for four months. They are such a joy to be around, and they are bi-lingual, which makes me very jealous. Lucas speaks perfect English with a German accent.

When I got back to their apartment after 11 on Thursday, there was a bottle of wine and glass waiting for me in my room, with a note saying, drink me now! That's a good friend; I feel very lucky.

Midwest mission, part 1

I have a photograph in my house that I inherited when my grandfather Donald Warfield Sr. passed away two years ago and it is his father Robert Graves Warfield when he was in the air force in World War One.

I started to ask my father a lot of questions about this man since he died in 1933 when he was 40. My father said, you should call my uncle Bob in Indiana, my grandfathers older brother, who is 94, and would be the only one left who could really answer some questions. I called Uncle Bob, and for 94, he is a remarkable man. He has his memory and does not suffer from dementia or Alzheimer's. I decided I should drive out and see this Mr. Bob, because he is 94 and although he insists on his 100th birthday he will be jumping out of a plane with a parachute strapped to his back he could die any day.

I wake up in Greenfield, Indiana and drive down the little strip that carries every restaurant that is available because in small town America there are no individually owned businesses anymore. You can expect to find a Long John Silvers, a Bob Evans, a Qdoba Grill and on and on in almost every town in America, so I knew there would be a Starbucks and I found it. I got a coffee and as I am leaving my phone rings and it is Uncle Bob saying, “Where are you? Where are you?” I said, “What? I am on my way now.” He said, “My wound..I need to go to the hospital...I am bleeding like a stuck pig!”

I hung up the phone and really quickly realized that this day might not play out the way I was hoping, where I would do a little family history research and take some pictures. Nope. I arrive at Bob Warfield’s two story house in Fortville, Indiana at 9:15am. It is a green house that he had built 39 years ago. The top floor has not been used or visited in about five years. Bob and his grandson, Bobby, who is severally mentally disabled are waiting outside for me. Bob is bleeding from his cheek through a bandage due to a routine procedure to remove a growth and there is quite a lot of blood. He is holding napkins to it and we get him in the car and we drive to the emergency room.

They try to stop the wound for three hours using various methods and eventually bandage it up and send us on our way. We go to a diner back in Fortville. Everyone in the diner knows Bob and Bobby. I start to notice that the white bandage on Bob’s face is slowly growing more and more red. It is making me sick to my stomach. He is struggling to be the same person that he has been all his life even when his body starts to not want to cooperate. It is obvious that it is pretty well saturated and it will soon drip down onto his blood splattered sweater. I tell the waitress that we are going to need to take this food to go. My visions of a walk down memory lane are starting to wash away and I call the hospital and they tell me to call his main doctor and I call the doctor and they have to call me back and they are all talking to me as if I am the caretaker, and as if I will be the one who will be attending to Mr. Warfield in the future. Each phone call is more heartbreaking than the one before.

Magical Tree

I wish I had noted the name of this incredible tree, but alas. It lives in the Jardin Bontanique in Marnay-sur-Seine, France which very sadly is closed to the public now because of lack of funding. I snuck in, well walked in, as the doors are not locked and the place is a revelation - truly breathtaking. The amount of care that went into making it is obvious. It felt like an enchanted kingdom. I hope to return.

14 Seconds of Monet

because I want to burn into my mind being there, in the galleries of the Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris. In the movie Midnight in Paris they get some time to themselves in these rooms, which would be incredible. Monet gave this series of paintings, called Les Nymphéas as a gift to the people of France at the close of World War One to give them a place to come and rest their mind and see only beauty in a dark time. They called WW1 the "Great War", the war that was supposed to end all wars. Would that that were so.

I love the errors even still

Agh cursed light leaks! I apologize, my sweet horse friend Brancita. Large format camera + blazing sun + moving horse + 4 planes = a few mistakes

By night, in Marnay

Memento Mori

Paris is filled with the past, choking on it almost. Thankfully it all looks beautiful and those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it, so I guess it is mostly friendly reminders from the dead to make sure you live the life you want to live. That is how I see things anyway.

Wall of the cemetary at MontparnasseEver heard of these guys?Oh Serge you sexy beast, even in death he gets a lot of attention. You should walk past his house on rue de Verneuil in Paris, it is covered with graffiti.I went inside the Notre Dame for the first time the other day and was blown away. Someone in line behind me said "This place makes me wish I believed in God." I think that was their goal. You can feel the love and tremendous care that went into making this place by hundreds, maybe thousands of people more than 600 years ago. It took quite a beating during the Revolution from the people who "beheaded" mamy of the original statues but has survived, thankfully with the windows intact.

Locks of Love, part deux

These guys look right on trend for Pride Week. I don't think it is Pride Week here in Paris, but I am still pretty proud of good 'ol New York for taking another leap forward for civil rights. This is in the Musee CarnavaletAlso the Carnavalet, a museum dedicated to the history of ParisBill touring me around, looking for birds to put on thingsThere are millions more locks of love than I remember from when I last visited Paris, and they mostly seemed from this year, which means the city must come and remove them so new lovers can make their mark. Is there a giant bin full of cut love-filled locks somewhere in Paris? Are there tough guy fish who wear necklaces made of keys in the Seine? I swam in the Seine over the weekend, but a long way from Paris, don't worry. It was wonderful.I especially like this heart lock.