Category Archives: General

Upon finishing up a vacation in Maine, the most I can muster is an almost-smile – and the one you see here was actually taken while I was still basking in vacation glory (hence the tank top) after a day at the beach. That feels far away now, even if the vacation posts just got posted here, thus delaying the weekly recap until right now. It was worth it. Remembering a happy vacation is always worth it. Back to the week in repose of the past…

A happy placeholder on this blog while I was actually still away.

The showy clem.

Light and airy and high in the sky.

A peony parade begins at the end.

Nipper in red.

A message for any journalist still engaged in both-sides reporting and acting like the two political parties are both worthy of respect. One wants our democracy to continue, and one wants to put a convicted felon in power and our democracy to death.

Time to tea up.

A pregnant pause.

Summer theme 2024: coquette.

The coquette summer playlist – part the first.

A coquette night to remember.

Our annual seaside spring retreat began as we returned to Ogunquit, Maine – Beautiful Place By the Sea.

A bouquet of peonies, a catbird, a beach, and a bed & breakfast – these were a few of my favorite things. 

A woodland walk filled with flowers caught in the nick of time. 

Our time in Ogunquit came to a close all-too-soon, and we look forward to a return in fall, but first… the summer.

Dazzlers of the Day included Matt Bernstein and Ken Burns. 

It will be mildly amusing to see what, if any, reaction results from posting this picture on my social media. Many people will quickly glance at it, then immediately comment without visiting the link here, which is about to explain that this pregnancy test is merely part of a pregnant pause prior to tomorrow’s big summer theme reveal. 

This test is the right color for the upcoming summer – all shades of pink welcome here. As for the humorous undertone, and the naughty acts that might merit such a test, they’re part of the decadent, winking, flirtatious fun that the summer theme will hopefully evoke. 

Summer demands a lighter touch.

And we deserve a lighter summer. 

Were it not for the bank of peachy-pink clouds hanging below it, the moon in these photos might have been lost in its translucent beauty here. But the clouds showed me the way, drawing my eyes upward to find the moon, which at the time these pictures were taken was very near its fullest stage, very much evidenced by the wackiness of last week. 

It was a magical view, fitting for this final day of May – the month of magic and enchantment, perhaps more than any other. Wistfully, I watch it move into the past tense, as June knocks at the front door. This is when I wish the days would slow. Instead, they bound headlong into the summer ahead, not wanting to slow or pause, not wanting to wait. 

Come along for the ride into a new summer season, as we reveal a new summer theme tomorrow…

Tea comes with all sorts of memories, more than I can recall in my ever-advancing age, and so I look to the search and recover process that involves me searching the archives for previous posts here. A number of tea memories come up when that journey begins – and it’s a trip to the past that I mostly don’t mind making, unlike many other looks-back. 

A happy tea memory with my Dad.

A cup of coziness with a song to match.

Tea for taking one’s time.

The tea of a tease.

Spilling the tea since 2003.

Tea dance.

The days of teabagging.

Tea time with Oscar.

The evocation of tea memories.

Tea slumber.

Like a cloud, this lead-in to summer is intended to be light and airy, the way we are shaping up this summer to be – at least the way I hope for it to be. Summer plans are best kept light and airy, especially in the world as it currently stands. And especially in my world after last summer. 

A light and airy song to match this post – a tune to travel the skies, carried by the clouds themselves. Fittingly by the brilliance that is Air. Another peek at the summer theme to come…

At the time of this writing, we’ve only been back a few hours from a gloriously-long weekend vacation in Maine – the Way Life Should Be – so this will be a placeholder for a much grander post somewhere down the line. I’m still in vacation mode, and after running an errand I came home to find my friend Chris making a surprise visit en route to Rochester, so we had dinner together, thus extending a happy vacation moment just when I thought it was over. Friends are the best balm for retiring to reality from an all-too-short vacation. 

These flowers are a happy reminder of our recent time in Maine, personifying the giddy cheer that Ogunquit has always brought to us. 

All things pink for those that have been following here – a hint at our summer theme, on this, the unofficial kick-off to the summer season. Rather than give anything more away, let’s step back in time with the weekly recap. Enjoy your day…

Who are the young men?

Valley of lilies.

Garden perfume by way of Korea.

Sometimes I suck.

Grieving is messy, and moody.

Like Godfather, like Godson.

Social media apathy, because we simply do not care.

Clouds of catmint.

Luxuriating.

Globular glory.

Live wires!

A maiden’s voyage.

Dazzlers of the Day included Megan Hilty, Jennifer Simard, Joven Calloway and Michelle Williams.

The other day I got one of those supremely unhelpful and useless notifications from Facebook indicating that I posted 16% fewer posts over the last week and had 67% less engagement. If I were an LOL guy I’d have LOL’d all over my laptop. Instead, I probably gave the briefest of chuckles, then quickly moved on. The truth is that I simply don’t care about social media, and most of what I do now is just a simple post of the current blog link you see here. A quick hit-and-run, which is why my engagement and posts are fewer and farther between these days. 

That’s been the slow trajectory of things over the past few years, and the same holds true for Twitter and Instagram and the latest Threads. I’m just not into them anymore, and it’s not a new thing. This website was around before all of them, and I enjoyed sharing with my friends and family and whatever limited audience was made aware of its existence (some of you may remember the great postcard blitz of 2003…) and it has always existed solely for my creative expression and enjoyment. That’s happening with or without social media, and given the awfulness of those platforms now, I find myself more and more content when I’m not on them. 

So, yes, FaceBook – I’m aware that I post less and have little engagement – and I couldn’t be happier about it. 

Also, I’m still here, so count ALANILAGAN.com among the ladies who are still lunching, still spilling the tea, still throwing this party… 

Grieving is messy. It follows no definitive trajectory, no tried and true path. It defies scheduled and plans and organized everything. Those stages the everyone talks about – they overlap and bleed into one another, sometimes doubling back and repeating, and just when you think you’ve gotten over the anger or the denial or the simple sadness of missing someone, it comes back stronger than before, made worse by the sustained absence of a loved one, which sometimes feels like it’s building on itself.

And you know no one wants to hear about it anymore, so you don’t bother to let anyone know what’s happening. Part of you wants to keep it to yourself anyway, the way I used to simply sit with my Dad at family functions – the two of us quietly there, but on the periphery – not unhappy about it, and never wholly part of it either. Once in a while he’d make a quip about something that was going on – always surprisingly perceptive, often quite cutting – and sometimes I’d say the thing we were both thinking and he would smile. 

No one else could understand. 

As summer approaches, I’ve been trying to get into the seasonal sunniness, but I fear losing him at the height of summer last year has tainted the season for me – just for a bit. And so I seek out ways of making this summer a little sweeter than usual – silly pink frills and party ideas – and slip into the pool when I can, because I avoided it so much last year. I still feel the push and pull of mourning and grieving, feel myself on the verge of joy then feeling guilty about it, then missing him again, not in any debilitating way, just in a dull, aching worry, like something has been misplaced, but I’ve forgotten what it is, the abstract pang of a phantom pain. 

And summer approaches again…

Encroaching upon the unofficial beginning of summer – Memorial Day Weekend – the sun has finally deigned to give us some of its unfiltered power, and none too soon. Some of the plants are way behind, some are right on usual time, and only a few are pulling ahead. I’m told the lilacs in Maine should be beginning soon – a happy overlapping of our lilac season, and I spent yesterday afternoon in the pool smelling the American lilac mingling with the Korean lilac. Usually they miss each other, so this is a nice dovetailing in a spring that could use a little more warmth. On with the weekly recap…

Swimming beneath the cherry blossoms.

My take on ‘The Great Gatsby’ on Broadway right now. 

Ferning up for your love.

A most fragrant duet.

Poised on the precipice of taking flight.

Shades of summer on the horizon.

Lilacs!

The prepopulated post -a glimpse behind these scenes.

Blue evening and moon.

Mom and I made our bittersweet return to Broadway after five years away, and it turned out to be more sweet than bitter.

Being cancelled is the new fifteen minutes of fame.

A new sensational obsession.

Come on girls! Do you believe in love?

Dazzlers of the Day included Harry Sisson, Helen Zia, and James Phoon.

A song for a blue night, when the moon winks at you from behind a bank of clouds. In this glorious spring section when the danger of frost has mostly passed, when we can finally relax a little when it comes to the lingering question of whether winter might reach back and clobber us once more. I think we can let that guard down for another year. Let us find resolution in this lovely little song.

Spring nights can make for the most magical nights, when the wind is right and the moon is light. All promise rests on the hope of a warm breeze – it is the promise of summer, peeking around these clouds like the moon…

There is safety and protection in the way I’ve designed this blog to work. Pre-populated and scheduled posts allow me to do a week’s worth of blog posts in a few hours, then simply hit-and-run on my social media outlets when they go live. It gives the appearance of constant and consistent self-promotion, of an ongoing presence, even when I’m not here. More importantly, it lends distance to my posts, and distance lends enchantment…

Distance also gives a rosier outlook when I don’t feel like writing, when I don’t feel like doing anything. That gives this place a slightly skewed slant, try as might to be brutally honest, a skewed view that gleams and sparkles when my soul doesn’t feel like shining. So you won’t always know when I’m actually hurting, or when I’m actually bothered, or when I’m actually feeling anything. It’s safer for the soul that way, and that’s why I make it look easy. 

That’s also why I respect those of you who do it all without complaint, why I honor your work, and your willingness to take it all on in silent and stoic fashion. 

Think of the swan, gliding so gracefully upon the water, and then think of all the movement that goes on beneath the surface. Swans must be ferocious and fierce to feign such fabulousness. 

More hints of a quiet summer to come, this is a color that looks to feature prominently, and I’ve already given away too much so that will be all I can say on it other than listen to Lana, listen to Laufey, eat your macarons, and watch ‘Marie Antoinette‘. It’s not that deep, it’s not that serious, and that’s the way summer should be. 

The latest trailer is out for the first of the ‘Wicked’ movies, and it further establishes the potential of what this could be. This one brings out a bit more of Galinda’s performance, and while I’m not the biggest Ariana Grande fan, she seems to be impressively slipping into the pink witch’s magic. 

“The real thing about evil,” said the Witch at the doorway, “isn’t any of what you said. You figure out one side of it – the human side, say – and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It’s like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.” ~ Gregory Maguire