Date Night

Dear Friends,

When I lived in Brooklyn I used to transfer from the G train (the only train that doesn’t go into Manhattan) to the E train (which does). The passageway between the G and the E is a long and gloomy tunnel. There was a people-mover but it rarely worked. When it did work, though, hallelujah. You could just rest for a minute, look at your phone. Once I bumped into a former coworker in that tunnel. As usual the people-mover wasn’t working. She told me that when it did, she would think to herself, “that’s all my luck for the day.”

I think about that all the time. Luck as cosmic debit card, and you never know the balance.

I guess luck was on my side last Friday, since Chad and I found ourselves sans bebe that evening. We had no real plans aside from going to the James R. Thompson Center to see part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. We were the only people there aside from couple of the biennial’s curators, who kindly took a few minutes to chat with us. After that, we decided to go to Inga Bookshop. We took the advice of one of the bookstore’s co-owners and from there went to The Duck Inn in Bridgeport. The restaurant is across the street from the Eleanor Boathouse, designed by Studio Gang in 2016. We ran over to check it out as the sun was setting. It was stunning.

Maybe we could have planned such an evening but I doubt it. It felt charmed in a way that I haven’t felt in a long time. I may have blown all my luck for the week on that one night, because I spent the next two days sneezing my head off due to either a sinus infection or allergies.

But it was worth it.

Love,

Claire

PS: Here are some hard-earned wins, no luck involved:

Congratulations to Yasmeen Siddiqui and Minerva Projects on previewing their upcoming book Labyrinth by Ilona Pachler!

Its gift guide season: Shana Gozansky’s My Art Books for kids (Phaidon Press) made it onto Oprah’s 2023 list!

What I’m listening to:

The Royal Horticultural Society podcast is never not uplifting. I enjoyed these two recent episodes: “Hidden Roots: Extraordinary Tales from Black women gardeners” and “The Radical Lives of Britain's Women Gardeners.” I will never tire of hearing about people growing plants in adverse circumstances. Seeds are hope.