The Dining Room Is Back

 

"Set the table in the dining room. Use the good dishes."

"How come we're eating in there? It's not Thanksgiving."

"And the linen napkins," she added. "The ones with roses on them. Six place settings. Wash your hands first."

"Jeez. She's just a girl. You'd think the Queen of England or somebody was coming over."

Chesapeake Blue

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Mapelor, S.L., CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Why so many people are embracing a forgotten space

 

The formal dining room, long considered a symbol of wealth and privilege, has been the subject of much debate over the past 30 years. Some declared it dead, a relic of a bygone era when families sat down together each night for a home-cooked meal. Others clung to it as a place to welcome friends and family for holiday meals. All the while, American families turned toward eating in more informal spaces in the kitchen or — gasp — in front of the TV or on the go.

Washington Post

Eugenia Martínez de Irujo and Narcís Rebollo, surprise wedding in Las Vegas

He flipped it open, took out a snapshot. 

"I can't give it to you," he said. "It's the only one I've got. 

But I thought you might like to see it. Wedding photo. Sort of. 

We drove out to Vegas and got it done in one of those 

get-hitched-quick places. In fact, we looked for the tackiest 

one we could find. We had some guy take this for us outside, right after."

Birthright

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The image shared by Eugenia Martínez de Irujo in her Instagram profile has set off alarms. Has the Duchess of Montoro married Narcis Rebollo in Las Vegas? The daughter of the Duchess of Alba and her current partner, the President of Universal Music in Spain and Portugal, appear dressed as Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley.

ELMUNDO

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"You look terribly in love," Suzanne managed. 
"Stupid with it." 

Birthright

Drawing can help you think and focus better

Since one of Sasha’s sketch pads sat on the table, he picked it up, 

took one of her pencils. He drew quickly.

The structure, to Riley’s eye, looked more like a barn

 than Bran’s house, but it made the point. So did the curved lines, 

the squiggles to represent garden paths, shrubs, trees, the cliff wall.

And as far as she could tell, he had everything in its place, 

and nearly to scale.

Island of Glass

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UnknownUnknown author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Do you ever draw? Most of us don't, and the reason we usually leave drawing to the artists is because we're not very good at it. Who wants to do something they're bad at? 

But maybe we should rethink this assumption, especially since drawing has so many benefits, artist or not.

Mother Nature Network

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But it was the drawing on his worktable, one he'd anchored with an empty beer bottle and a chunk of quartz, that grabbed her attention.

He'd taken their grid, their site survey, their map and had created the settlement with paper and colored pencils.

There was no road now, no old farmhouse across it. The field was wider, the trees ranging along the creek, spreading shadows and shade.

Around the projected borders of the cemetery he'd drawn a low wall of rock. There were huts, grouped together to the west. More rocks and stone tools collected in the knapping area. Beyond, the field was green with what might have been early summer grain.

But it was the people who made the sketch live. Men, women, children going about their daily lives. A small hunting party walking into the trees, an old man sitting outside a hut, and a young girl who offered him a shallow bowl. A woman with a baby nursing at her breast, the men in the knapping area making tools and weapons.

There was a group of children sitting on the ground playing a game with pebbles and sticks. One, a young boy who looked to be about eight, had his head thrown back and was laughing up at the sky.

There was a sense of order and community. Of tribe, Callie noticed. And most of all, of the humanity Jake was able to see in a broken spear point or a shattered clay pot.

Birthright

Motherly embrace

Deep in the boggy soil the bones lay, almost perfectly articulated from sternum to skull.

She would continue to excavate the rest.

The remains told a story without words. The larger skeleton with the smaller turned close

to its side, tucked there in the crook of the elbow.

“They buried them together,” Callie said at length. “From the size of the remains, the

infant died in childbirth or shortly after. The mother, most likely the same. The lab should

be able to confirm that. 

They buried them together,” she said again. 

“That’s more intimate than tribal. That’s family.”

Birthright

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It is a fitting discovery as Mother's Day approaches.

Archaeologists have uncovered the ancient remains of a young mother and an infant child locked in a 4,800-year-old embrace.

HISTORY HERETIC

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And here was proof that the love could last

thousands of years.

Birthright

Things happen to couples who have been together a long time

Still looking at him, she held out a hand. Jake put a mug of coffee into it. 

“I heard you were out of town.”

“I got back yesterday. I came by the site, but you were busy.”

“Oh. Well. You put cheese in those eggs?” she asked Jake, and was already opening the

refrigerator to dig some out.

“Not everybody likes cheese in their eggs.”

“Everybody should like cheese in their eggs.” 

She passed him the cheese, skirted around him to open a loaf of bread. 

“Put some in my share, and if it gets in someone else’s that’s too bad.”

Doug watched Jake hold out a hand for the knife she’d taken out of a drawer, watched her

pop bread into the toaster, then take the plate he handed her.

It was like a little dance, he decided, with each knowing the steps and rhythm the other

would take even before they were taken.

Birthright

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"Another sunset together" by Leo Hidalgo from España - Another sunset together. 

Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Science says these 5 things happen to couples who have been together a long time

Being with someone for a long time changes the way you see the world. It also changes you. Everything from how you act to the way you think shifts in ever-so-slight ways.

And according to Joshua Wolf Shenk, the author of "Powers of Two," these tiny shifts are also the catalyst for a different kind of thought process — a shared mind, so to speak — that allows couples (romantic or not) to come up with more creative solutions to problems than they'd ever think up on their own.

YAHOO!

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“I’ve been making this pie for too many years to count. It’s Loren’s favorite.”

“You smile when you say his name.”

“Do I? We’ve been married—I count from the handfasting—for thirty-six years. He still makes me happy.”

That, Abigail thought when she was alone again, was the most vital and compelling statement on a relationship.

The Witness