Why did you start your blog?

I started English Muse a little over a year ago to help deal with the sadness and hopelessness I felt watching so many of my friends lose their jobs at the Los Angeles Times. After so many years working at the paper, I felt like a refugee there, searching for a community where I belonged. I had no idea then that my friends here would be the ones who would help me the most after my own layoff from the LAT in October.

So I'm wondering, if you'll please tell me, why did you start your blog?



(Photo from Yay!Everyday)

It's 2:05 am in LA

This is where I am: In this little lit room in an otherwise dark house. Too much to do to sleep.

What time is it where you are?

The girl with the pink gloves

This is a story about beauty and obsession, sparked by a small photograph deep inside the New York Times Style section on a Sunday three years ago. I've tried, unsuccessfully, to train myself not to fall so deeply in love with objets. I'm a newspaper reporter. I lack the necessary requirement -- money -- needed to enjoy the hunt for beautiful and expensive things.

But there was something about this girl and the way she was captured (by the brilliant photographer Bill Cunningham) pulling on her pink gloves on a March afternoon in Paris. I wanted a pair of pink gloves just like hers, like they held the key to life's happiness. Granted, I live in Los Angeles, where people barely wear coats let alone long beautiful gloves. But I figured (and hoped) I would wear them on trips to cold, metropolitan cities while strolling along fashionable boulevards.

So my quest began: I combed all the usual Beverly Hills haunts. No gloves to be found. Especially not pale pink ones. I searched through Internet stores. Nothing. Then I turned to eBay. Surely someone somewhere was trying to unload a pair. Right? In fact, there were lots of pairs -- all made in the 1950s. It quickly became apparent why no one wanted those gloves: Only Hollywood actresses have hands small enough to wear them.

I should have just given up. But I didn't. I couldn't. Somehow these gloves became a symbol of luxury amid the mundane, a promise that the future would be grand. Or at the very least, anything but ordinary. Finally, I found a place in New York that made bespoke gloves with the finest Italian leather. I gave them my hand measurements and sent them my New York Times clipping. Six weeks later, the most gorgeous gloves you've ever seen arrived wrapped in tissue. Just like the girl's in the picture.

I have taken these gloves with me many places, to New York, Washington DC, Rome and Paris. I've pulled them on many times and admired them, fastening their little pearlized buttons. But I've always ended up putting them back in their satin pouch. I have yet to wear them out.

I'm saving them for the future, I guess. For the grand (or not). The promise remains the same.


PS: I found the gloves {here}!