Sweet Magnolia

Everything is blooming most recklessly;

if it were voices instead of colors, there would

be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

Certain smells have the power to transport you to another time and place. The other day I walked past a magnolia tree, and when my lungs became infused with the bright, flowery smell, it became the first moment I felt my body’s acknowledgement of springtime.

My parents had a magnolia tree in their front yard, and from my earliest ages they would string a piñata to the strongest branch, and me and my friends, in our prettiest play-things, would sweat our little hearts out trying to beat this thing into breakage. Eventually, even if it meant an adult had to assist, the paper mache donkey (usually, it was a donkey) would explode and out would come a festival of riches in the form of penny candy.

I could count on the tree being in full bloom for my birthday, and, it seemed, as though it knew the party was over, it would readily shed its leaves and the lawn would be decorated with a blanket of these lovely, long pink and white petals.

Whether you know it or not, every tree you plant comes infused not only with its distinct blossom, but also its distinct folklore. Magnolias, in addition to being beautiful, carry the promise that, if you suffer tough times, better ones will follow quickly. They are trees which encourage determination and, if planted next to your bedroom window, ensures that your partner will remain faithful to you forever.

Did the Grateful Dead know any of this when they crooned their 1970 hit “Sugar Magnolia”?

Sugar magnolia ringing that bluebell, caught up in sunlight, come on out singing

I’ll walk you in the sunshine, come on honey, come along with me.

She’s got everything delightful, she’s got everything I need,

A breeze in the pines and the sun and bright moonlight, lazing in the sunshine yes

Indeed.

It’s not tough to justify the magnolia as a muse of desire. Encountering a magnolia tree is a unique experience which penetrates the senses. Indeed.

All Hail -- Hail!

We can all hum songs, recite rhymes, and explain away the soppy rains of April, but I can’t allow this notoriously moist month to relegate itself to the simplistic flip of a calendar page without mentioning rain’s angry bastard cousin – hail.

Hail is, in essence, rain gone wrong. It forms in thunderstorm clouds when, because of intense updrafts and high liquid content, the cloud layer freezes the rain. Because of its propensity for upward winds, hail it common on mountaintops. Hail becomes large when it’s still wet, connecting with other hailstones, and eventually falling from the sky, heavy enough at times to cause very serious damage to any thing or person vulnerable and exposed.

Several weeks back…it was a dark and stormy night (really, it was), particularly foggy with looming thunder off in the distance. March was turning into April, and it was a slow drive in the early spring mist up the mountain towards my Pennsylvania retreat. The rain began, and then, finally, a heavier rain, accompanied by crashing thunder. Cars were pulling over, and so, I followed suit. Once in a church parking lot, I watched the rain transform into small white pebbles – the size of perfect marbles, and with as much power and resilience. I opened my window and reached my hand out to experience the full event. The hail arsenal started as a small battle, and then raged into a full war on the car, drumming on the hood with all its might, leaving its deceased—white, and fully formed--on the surrounding pavement.

This was certainly not my first hailstorm. Perhaps my third, but certainly the most eventful. I found myself saddened when sensibility determined it was all right to drive back to the house because the hail was gone for now, and perhaps not coming back anytime soon. There is something to be said for a furious downpour, but the hail was an event, something much more mystical. A true phenomenon.

If April showers bring Mayflowers, what do hailstorms bring? Fun.

I [HEART] Paris

If it’s April in New York, then it’s April in Paris, and if I’m in New York, then it’s safe to assume that I’m not in Paris. This is a great tragedy, as there’s truly nothing to compare to Paris in the springtime—or, any season of the year-which is why, today, I decided to search out all things Parisian in my sunny spring day in another stylish little town called Manhattan.

I’ll start the day with a decadent hazelnut crepe. (This is not an every day occurrence, mind you, but a special treat for this Paris-in-NY experiment!) Just after I’d returned from Paris, over 8 years ago, I bought a crepe maker, and was surprised at how delicious and nutritious crepes can be. I admit that my favorites involve Nutella, but my other personal fave includes asparagus and goat cheese. Mmmmmmm.

I had no idea how easy crepe making could be – so, so simple. The recipe below suggests a mixing bowl, but I just throw it all together in a blender.

1 cup all-purpose flour
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter, melted

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour and the eggs. Gradually add in the milk and water, stirring to combine. Add the salt and butter; beat until smooth.

Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium high heat. Pour or scoop the batter onto the griddle, using approximately 1/4 cup for each crepe. Tilt the pan with a circular motion so that the batter coats the surface evenly.

Cook the crepe for about 2 minutes, until the bottom is light brown. Loosen with a spatula, turn and cook the other side. Serve hot.

The women of Paris know the importance of being beautiful. This is different from New York City, where the women understand the importance of being trendy and professional. Beauty is more than fashion, it’s an innate je ne se quoi mixed with the ideal blend of sensuality and confidence.


Before I get dressed, I spritz on my favorite fragrance. I am an enormous fan of all things Christian Dior, and currently wear (after years of being a self-proclaimed Anik Goutal junkie) the light, embodied Hypnotic Poison. You simple can’t have a fantastically French day without the right perfume.



There’s a certain daring to daily French style. My favorite color is red, and I’ve never been one to shy away from red lips. Besides, what else would go with my springtime staple, classic red trench? Oh, yes – the perfect scarf! Mine is not quite Hermes, but precious to me, as I found it in a tiny shop off a Roman cobblestone road.

Then, I might skip over to Park Slope where my fantastic friend Brion often dresses his Shi-poo Marcel in these adorable French berets. You can see by the look on his face that he loves every second of it.

When I’d first arrived in New York in 1997, I was ecstatic to discover a Francois Truffaut festival right near where I was living – and felt as though I was in my own private ciel watching double features of my favorite filmmaker’s life’s work. While each and every cinematic endeavor is fantastique, I am a sucker for the Antoine Doinel series, my favorite of them all being “Stolen Kisses.”

There are many places to catch a Paris film in New York, but the most appropriate is—where else?—the Paris cinema, doused in its perfect shade of deep scarlet.

I saw the magnifique masterpiece “Amelie” there, and (ask my old roommate!) had it on essentially every minute I was home from 2002 - 2005. I loved getting lost in the saturated cinematography, and, bien sûr, the fantastical story.

Ideally, a French movie would follow a lovely dinner at my favorite NYC French restaurant, Danal.

What would a Parisian day be without the ideal Provencal mas—or, farmhouse—city escape? Luckily, I have my sweet chateau just outside the city. It’s Pennsylvania, not Provence, but if I light one of my favorite French candles (always in a light fig scent, se vous plait!) it’s just about perfect.

I love Paris. I love just thinking about Paris. And now it’s been over 8 years since I dansé through the streets of the city of light.

As this blog is devoted to all things beautiful, it could easily have focused on all things Parisian. If so, I would have had to change the name from Che Bella to Cela Est Beau!

So, Paris until we meet again, I will see you in New York. Always remember -- j’taime!

My Caribbean Calico

Once upon a time (or, fall 2007, to be exact) I went to St. Martin for some much needed rest. Just a month before some determined derelict had broken into my Queens apartment and stolen every single possession, leaving my home and my psyche completely ransacked. Looking back, I understand I was still in shock from a series of horrifying events which summed up 2007.

My first day in the Caribbean I met a friendly calico whom I took to immediately. As with many island resorts, this one was overrun with kittens of all kinds, many of them calicos. I’m not foolish enough to believe that I was the first tourist to foster this feline orphan, but for the next 10 days she was as good as mine. She followed me around; I fed her, I cared for her. She was quite a “talker”, and as we were in the French West Indies, I imagined her speaking to me either in French or in English with a hard French accent: “Liza…would you pleez scoop some more tuna feesh into my bowl as I am as hungry as a wild ti-gher. Immédiatement!!!"

I named her Gamine, which, as you know, is the French word for “scrappy little street girl.”

They say that you are either a dog person or a cat person, and even if you love both, one much be a dominant bias. If that has to be the case, I would have to admit that I am a dog person all the way.

I love all animals, but I think that living in NYC—with its abundance of neurotic, stinky indoor cats—slightly turned me off to cat ownership. The other reason is, as a child I owned perhaps the most perfect cat on the face of the planet. She’d followed me home during the infamous blizzard of ’78 from my neighbor’s—The Delpicos—house where they had taken her in as a stray. My mother refused, and back down the street she went, only to find that the cat had made a pilgrimage back to our doorstep all on her own in the middle of the snowstorm. “All, right,” my mother conceded, “If she really needs to live here she can stay in the shed.” So, in the shed she went. I remembered being elated, understanding that the shed is (sort of) an extension of our home. As a grown up now I understand my mother was hoping the cat would find a cozier, more welcoming alternative. But one night later my mother sent my dad out to the shed to retrieve the year-old cat, who would soon be known as Mittens for her white paws.

I remember my mother’s explanation as, “My grandmother always said that if a cat comes to your door you should never turn it away.” And then, with a sigh, “She had a lot of cats.” Mittens came to us fully trained, with perfect manners. She wasn’t chatty, but she was fiercely loyal and loyally fierce, despite her runt status, for the next 10 years. (PS: We put an add in the paper, but no one claimed her!)

My great grandmother wasn’t the only one who believed in this animal-welcoming mantra. Many cultures believe that an animal chooses you because they have a lesson to teach you. Each and every animal represents something different in each and every culture. The Egyptians worshipped cats believing the cat to be a descendent of the sun god Ra. When a cat was in an Egyptian home, she ruled. Anyone who has every owned a cat would agree that if you own a cat – they rule the house!

And so, I honored the tradition of my Galway-born great-grandma when I met one. I’d fostered strays over the years, feeding them, finding them homes, even giving them names like Medea and Cunegonde until their owners could meet them and name them on their own.

When the concierge told me a story of the local cat killer (or, cat catcher from the pound, as he’s more commonly known) who’d come to gather kittens to euthanize, I knew I had to take action. I was going to adopt Gamine and bring her to NYC.

Now, adopting a cat from the Caribbean isn’t as simple as it seems. Yes, they are overrun with cats, and more than happy to get rid of them. Still, I was eager to get started on the process. I was lucky enough that a local cat loving friend was going to capture and care for Gamine throughout the process of timed shots (mandated so many weeks apart) and having her spayed. Lastly, someone had to be willing to take her on the plane to NYC – someone from the hotel offered! Everything was going as planned. And then a snag. A big snag.

Despite the fact that this kitty was now the bearer of a tiny identifying microchip inscribed with my name, Queens address and phone number, I could not keep her in Queens. Further, I knew that I would be leaving Queens and going – where exactly? As I was leaving on a 10-day venture for Rome the day after her arrival, she would have to be boarded. She was so used to freely flitting around the sand and the sea – how would she react to being kept inside? All the time? Was my pursuit to have this cat more inhumane than I thought?

The day I decided to leave her be I cried for hours, and then sporadically over the next many months when I recalled my cat caretaker friend in my head telling me that she might not re-acclimate to a life outdoors.

What had I done???

For so long people would ask me, “You adopted that cat from the Caribbean, didn’t you?” And I would just lower my head, and shake it in shame.

Flash forward nearly a year and a half when I am back at the same resort and walking the same path back to my room. There, our from behind a bright pink bush, pops a spunky little calico crying, “Hey you! Where have you been?”

I bent down and she sat in front of me, where I could examine her markings. The very same cinnamon and chocolate stripes, three distinctly dripping down her head, and a random splotch on her right ribcage. Left paw, white, right paw, tortoise shell. I started back to my room and she followed the whole way, only to stop when I stopped to acknowledge a grounds worker when she exclaimed, “That cat is following you!”

Does this story have a happy ending? Well, the fact that Gamine is alive is very happy indeed. But, no, she did not make any further ventures to the St. Martin vet’s office in prep for her American visa. After I’d seen, yet again, how joyfully she’d relished her freedom, I felt it unfair to make the attempt. I hope that by having her fixed and vaccinated I’ve somehow preserved her longevity. I’ll visit Gamine every year and have renewed faith we’ll find each other. Au revoir for now , Gamine! Until we meet again.

Glove Italian Style

My mother may have been born in 1946, but her affinity for fine gloves channels another era. It’s a fixation she passed down to me, leaving the heightened possibility of stumbling upon a dated snapshot of my girlhood, ruffled, bonneted, and, of course, gloved. It’s difficult to estimate exactly when I’d become a connoisseur, all I can confess is a small trunk filled with a perfectly folded collection—white gloves, pink gloves, cashmere, leather, cotton—marking travels and growth spurts, but not strictly museum pieces, coming out to play every month of the year with the exception of summer.

Flash back to 2007, on a Roman cobblestone street, ‘twas the season of gift giving, and I cozy outerwear. I was on vacation, and on this day in search of fun finds to overburden my small suitcase. The window was decorated with covered hands, sprouting fingers up towards the sky, the viewing area no bigger than two-feet-by-four. That day I’d spotted the gloves I didn’t make it to buy, and instead spent every single day walking around the remarkable Colosseum and admiring the mild winter weather.



For a year-and-a-half, the gloves remained at the forefront of my mind. And so, when an opportunity to fly back to Rome for the afternoon arose on my way to Siena, I took it. Not just for the gloves, but because you can never, ever get enough of Rome.

When I was a very little girl, my grandmother had this remarkable charm bracelet decorated with charms my grandfather had gathered for her from all over the world. I’m still unsure of the exact date of his trip, but what remains is my grandmother’s Colosseum charm, and this fantastic photo.


Needless to say, summertime isn’t the best time to buy gloves anywhere, least of all Rome. Yet when I walked into the stuffy storefront, the temperature peaked – as did my curiosity. There was room for little else than gloves, everywhere, marked in boxes by color and size, floor to ceiling. Behind a tiny counter was a suitably tiny woman, wearing a beret that made me look warm just watching her. I told her I’d like to try to dark chocolate color, extra long, and was—of course—relieved to discover she understood English. She immediately produced a pillow, and ordered me to placed my elbow on top by replicating the gesture.

Within seconds, she’s slipped a glove over my hand with little effort, and noted she had even less time for me to make my decision. I held my hand up in awe – the quality was impeccable, the color, deep and rich. “Well?” she asked, impatiently. Somewhere in between choosing a mint green pair for my mother I learned that it was her family’s store, three generations back.

Later, much later, after I’d given my mother the gloves, she asked me where I got them. “In Rome,” I told her, assuming that would be enough, since my mother had never been to Rome and had no point of reference. Then she launched into this story about my grandfather, unlike me, a winded storyteller, and my mother, with her exquisite memory recalling my grandfather shopping for gloves for my grandmother in Rome, right in the middle, a little shop with a single counter, and all of the colors of the rainbow to choose from.

Loving the Luddite in Me

When I found out that a fun fellow Taurus-girl’s birthday was vastly approaching my mind went, naturally, to note cards. Not just any variety of note cards, but personalized note cards, a writeable calling card, if you will, something harkening to a day—a century, perhaps—of old. It took a few beats before it occurred to me that not everyone was raised to hold fine stationary in such celebratory regard. And in this electronic age, paper-lovers like myself are a vastly dying breed.

My mother, in so many ways, is very “old school”. (I say this with the greatest affection.) She was a true stickler for monitoring clothing’s seasonal appropriateness, penmanship, and thank you notes. All gifts had to be accompanied by a timely thank you note, written in a neat and attractive manner that would make Emily Post envious.

I don’t know my Taurus friend well enough to understand her thank-you-note-sending inclinations, but I do not-so-fondly recall the time I opened my first embossed stationary, one Christmas morning. The cards were a light pink, and my name was written in a sariffed, brighter hue. When I think about these cards now, I wish they were in front of me – I would send them to everyone I know. However, at the time, I wished they were the cool, new version of Donkey Kong. I was ten years old!

One might say that I inherited my affinity for note cards from my mother, but now that I’m nearly the exact age she was when she ordered, purchased, and placed them wrapped under the Christmas tree, I’m sure my lasting fondness has little to do with heredity. Nurturing, yes. Genetics, no.

In this day and (techno-crazy) age, you’re either a luddite, or you’re not. It’s a term that’s generally used to describe folks like me who use their computer for little more than a word processor, and break into a sweat at the thought of installing their own software. If you still keep a paper calendar, resist owning a Blackberry, and feel overwhelmed by Facebook – you’re a modern-day luddite.

The word luddite originated in the early 1800’s by a bunch of British revolutionaries who went around smashing up machinery for fear that they’d make laborers obsolete. They were called “luddites” after Ned Ludd, a man who’d made his name in the late 1700’s, busting up anything electronic (but later was committed to an insane asylum).

As a writer I’m not the least bit worried about becoming obsolete. But it does make one think about the investments we all make in technology…and things in general. We all have a computer (or two, or five) that we refer to like pets with personalities (“I once had an IBM that was build like a tank…great computer!”). Some even sit in storage, never to see daylight until our ancestors dust them off and stare in awe. There’s much controversy over the future of paper, and its electronic replacement (yes, there is such a thing as electronic paper!). For some generations the idea of putting pen to pad will be as far reaching as 8 tracks and joysticks. For others, they’ll just love the primitive process of scratching words into parchment, sealing an envelop manually, and awaiting with anticipation and excitement the several days it takes for someone to unwrap your thoughts – from their own mailbox.

An old friend greeted me recently with these fantastic little note cards. I thought it an interestingly appropriate choice, and delighted in recognizing that there’s nothing like old friends to remind you of who you really are.

It could be that my name’s “Liza”, and I suffer from name-imprint envy, but if I see something with one of my friend’s names on it, I’m beyond tempted to buy it. I recently gave my friend Nicole some really pretty writing paper with her name at the top. (And no, she’s not the fun Taurus I told you about – she a fun Aries!)

Maybe it’s somehow actually more fun if stationary is a novelty. I know, for me, the old fashioned way will never go out of style.

Amazing Agate

In my opinion, no other stone makes more of a statement than amazing agate. Judging from this great feature in Marie Claire’s March issue, they couldn’t agree more.

Agate is characterized by its fantastically bright color, and natural swirling patterns. It can be found in many different kinds of rock, but most commonly unearthed through volcanic rock.

Agate was first unearthed over 3,000 years ago off the Sicilian coast. The Egyptians used this luscious stone as a ceremonial decoration.

What I love most about agate is that, no matter how similar, no two stones are exactly alike. They each have their own distinct footprint, and remind me so much of the inside of a tree trunk. Many years ago, my friend Nicole gave me this pretty brown agate stone, mounted in silver.

Years later I returned the favor, by stringing this hot pink agate with matching pearls and silver beads.

There are so many ways to make a statement with this stone. Here I’ve string a bright blue agate onto gold and indigo glass beads, to create a necklace that’s perfect thrown over a comfy sweater or summer t-shirt.

Agate can be carved into many other shapes, one of my favorite being this “horn” shape. I don’t know if you can tell from the photos, but this stone is the palest pink, but has a vibrancy and an iridescence that makes it glow.

According to legend, agate is believed to be a discerner of truth, and an emotional healing stone. If you believe in astrology, and your astrological sign is Gemini, you should wear agate to keep calm and focused. (No wonder this stone is so hot in these crazy times!!!)

No matter what sign you are, agate is also said to enhance courage, protect against danger, and improve perception. It also protects against insomnia. So wear your agate in perfect truth and – sweet dreams!