Improving the world

Oh Fred

A couple of years ago Pierre, my Better Half, was invited by a close friend of his to host a small conference around topics involving architecture and urbanism. He personally chose and invited his interlocutor – Graham McKay, an architect who has taught at universities around the world and is a wonderfully original thinker. (You really have to have a look at his blog, misfits’ architecture – extremely well written, concise, funny, erudite, with plenty of really interesting information onRead More

Nice things that happened within the span of one week

A little over a week ago, I played a concert with my quartet. It was an open-air concert, and as much as we musicians are always afraid of these (there’s no walls that the sound can bounce off, and therefore it’s harder than usual to try and make our instruments sound beautiful), it was just perfect. The surroundings were beautiful – it was a nature reserve on the Belgian coast, known for the huge variety of birds which live there.Read More

My grandma, her stories, and the future of the world

As in many Polish families in the 90s, I grew up with my grandma living with us. She was a survivor – born in 1914, in the first year of her life her father was conscripted in the army. He went fighting and when he came back, he was physically ruined and never got better any more. Her mother, during the absence of her newly wedded husband, did her best to take care of her two small babies and whatRead More

A zero waste, no-nonsense gift guide

On the couple of blogs I follow regularly, in the last two months before Christmas there happens a huge inundation, a mass attack of gift guide posts. It gets worse and worse every year. And I get more and more irritated, when I visit a website to look up some, ya know, apartment makeovers or fashion trends in New York (bear with me), and instead I get a gift guide post. And another. And another. And… Not only is itRead More