New York Times Nostalgia


My parent’s brought down the Sunday New York Times with them and flipping through it, especially the Arts and Leisure section, is pure joy. I read my news online here, except for the occasional local paper, and on the whole I don’t think I miss anything.

I’m not even a die-hard print only kind of person, but it is a tactical pleasure to have the Arts section in my hands again. To be able to flip through it scanning the headlines. The type in neat ordered rows and the grainy color images punching it all up. I realized it is not merely the act of holding the paper instead of the computer that I like so much–I actually read differently.

I carefully pick and choose everything I read on the internet. This goes from blogs to news, so when I scan the NYT Arts section I only read what I think would be interesting after a 15 second consideration. Apparently that does not include much of what is in this Sunday edition, and perhaps to my detriment. It all looks quite interesting when I have a hard copy in front of me. Maybe if left to my own choices, it’s easier to focus in rather than branch out –not a great quality for learning more about the world around me.

Or maybe this is just nostalgia run riot speaking.

St. Maarten Airport


My parents have landed for the week. And yes, this really is how close incoming planes come. People gather at a bar and beach at the end of the runway strip to watch the planes land and take off.


They do this despite the serious warning on the signs of “extreme bodily harm and/or death.”


Luckily the whole family survived.

Top or Bottom?

Here was my thought while driving yesterday: there are two kinds of creative people. Those who visualize the ideal and then try to create something that resembles their ideal as completely as possible, and those who take bits and pieces of reality as starting blocks and see what they can create from that.

Top Down People….

Those who visualize the ideal might create a reasoned-out guideline to how the work should be organized. They know what they want, but not necessarily how to create it. Theirs is a world of symmetry and order with a rational mind at work behind it trying to approximate the perfection they imagined. They can be dissatisfied when their creation isn’t perfect according to their pre-determined ideal.

Bottom Up People…

are realists, in a sense. They work from the bottom up, with pieces of reality whether it be an overheard sentence, the look in someone’s eye, or an old car part. They imagine the potential of that thing in connection with this other thing. Their world is forever in pieces that they are trying to put together, which can be chaotic but also full of endless possibilities.

That’s not to say people can’t behave either way at different times, but I definitely lean toward the latter. What do you think? Does the top down/ bottom up distinction make sense to you? Are you a top or a bottom?