Michelle Richmond

Tuscaloosa

It’s difficult to believe the destruction in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The place holds special meaning for me, as it was my home for four years while I was a student at the University of Alabama. The mile-wide tornado apparently picked up just in front of Bryant Denny stadium (see video of the tornado passing behind the stadium here). The student publications office, where I spent endless hours working on the Corolla, was just a stone’s throw from the stadium. How strange and sad to see a familiar and safe-seeming place reduced to rubble. While tornadoes are a common enough occurrence there, they generally came and went quickly. Upon feeling familiar stillness in the air, a kind of torpor, you would scan the skyline and listen for the train sound. If you heard a train, you knew to get inside, away from windows, preferably to a closet or a bathroom. In all my years down South, I never saw anything resembling this monster of a storm.

View local coverage at the Tuscaloosa News. See student reaction at the campus newspaper, The Crimson White. Go to West Alabama Food Bank to make a donation to help feed the survivors. You can also donate through the Red Cross.

Pretty House, Quirky House

I’m loving the new design book by Christian Lemieux, Undecorate: The No-Rules Approach to Interior Design. I’ve always sort of hated the term “decorate,” which brings to mind stuffy lamps and knick-knacks chosen by someone who’s being paid by home decor stores to talk clients into overstuffing their space with impersonal items. Having passed out of my Room and Board phase into my Anything Goes phase, I’m thrilled to find a book devoted to the art of decorating for one’s personality and lifestyle, as opposed to decorating one’s house like a showroom.

About the author: CHRISTIANE LEMIEUX is the founder and creative director of DwellStudio, a fast-growing home décor and children’s furnishings company. Known for her colorful, modern patterns, Lemieux launched a full-scale fabric line in 2010. She is also a featured design partner with Target and a frequent contributor to leading design blogs, such as Apartment Therapy and Design*Sponge. She lives in New York City with her husband, children, and her Labrador, the design studio’s mascot.

About the book: Undecorate profiles twenty homes from all over the country, revealing their owners’ love of imperfection and penchant for surprise and unusual juxtapositions while inspiring readers to follow their own whimsy and practicalities in their personal spaces. An anglophile creates an English manor in Hollywood, mixing British flea-market finds with midcentury furniture. A car fanatic turns a vintage Airstream trailer into a master bedroom and situates it in the middle of a vast industrial loft in downtown Chicago. A couple transforms a log house in Nashville, Tennessee, by blending their modern and eclectic styles with the home’s rustic charm. Though the designs differ widely, the spaces all express an open-minded attitude. Some homes embrace their contexts, while others transcend them. All are shaped by instinct and imagination and share innovative ideas that readers can use to organically and elegantly create their home to match their lifestyle and tastes.

The Untimely Death of Manning Marable

What if you spent 20 years writing your magnum opus, only to pass away the day before its publication? That’s what happened to Columbia professor Manning Marable, remembered here in the New York Times.

“For two decades, the Columbia University professor Manning Marable focused on the task he considered his life’s work: redefining the legacy of Malcolm X. Last fall he completed “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” a 594-page biography described by the few scholars who have seen it as full of new and startling information and insights.”

It is tragic that Marable will never get the chance to go out into the world and talk about the book that was so close to his heart for so long. But there is something to be said for the fact that he spent his life pursuing work about which he was passionate. Now that work is out there in the world, and, judging by the response in the New York Times and elsewhere, the book will surely find a wide audience.

What Makes You Cry?

There’s a wonderful scene in Broadcast News in which Jane Craig, played by Holly Hunter, unplugs the phone in her hotel room, sits down on the bed, and starts weeping and wailing. She cries passionately for several minutes before pulling herself together and confidently going about her business. Later, one realizes that crying is part of the character’s daily routine. I love the scene, not only because Hunter makes crying funny, but because it shows crying in all its cathartic and narcissistic glory, crying as ritual and refresher, crying as a near-religious experience.

My son came home recently talking about a birthday party for a girl named Ruby, to which he hadn’t been invited. “At first I was sad, but now I’m so glad I didn’t get invited,” he said.

“Why are you glad?”

“It was a princess party,” he said. “It made Jack and Joey cry.”

Jack and Joey are twins, and their play dates with my son invariably involve light sabers, wrestling, swords, and other forms of pretend violence. Their own birthday party this year had a pirate theme. They probably had great expectations for Ruby’s birthday party. I imagined Jack and Joey bursting into tears upon realizing that they were surrounded by girls in princess dresses and giant pink balloons. I have to admit I couldn’t stop laughing when my son told me, so earnestly, about Jack and Joey crying at the princess party.

Of course, to the twins, the princess party was no laughing matter. Their tears were real. Disappointment is a powerful thing. As adults, most of us remember well a few instances in our childhood that made us cry with abandon.I have vivid memories of crying in Mrs. Monk’s first grade class at Greystone Christian School in Mobile, Alabama, during a lesson about clocks. Mrs. Monk was a kind and gentle teacher, and she came over to ask me what was the matter. “I don’t understand time,” I cried. I still don’t. A couple of years later, another incident at Greystone brought me to tears. My third grade class had had a potato-growing contest. Each student had brought a potato to school, stuck it in a jar of water, and waited for it to sprout buds. My potato exceeded all expectations and, much to my astonishment, won the contest. Read the rest of this post at My Year of Questions.