Come and Be Inspired

If you have never had the pleasure of an afternoon spent at Blithewold Mansion on Bristol Harbor, you are really missing one of the loveliest places on earth.

Brown University graduate Augustus Van Winckle (there are Van Winckle gates at Brown and Princeton!) built the original mansion for his wife, Bessie. He had apparently given her a 72’ Herreshoff yacht earlier and she needed a place to moor the boat!

The mansion (actually the first one burned down and the one standing today was rebuilt in 1907) is set on 32 acres of westerly-facing waterfront on Bristol Harbor. It is built in the style of a 17th century manor house. The house is filled with beautiful antiques from all over the world. The oldest pieces are oak and leather armchairs dating back to the early 1600s. There are several beautiful Tiffany lamps. Every room but two still has the original wallpaper and all the furnishings are as the original owner, Bessie, had arranged them. This has been verified through photographs.

The third floor of the mansion is filled with personal diaries, garden plans, family letters and correspondence of all kinds. It is a wonderful glimpse into the past.

Set on 32 acres, to say the gardens are inspiring is an understatement. There are 50 varieties of specimen trees including the largest Sequoia east of the Rockies – right in our backyard. The original greenhouse was restored a few years ago and it is magnificent.



The website for Blithewold is wonderful – they will tell you of all the upcoming events including teas, concerts, and garden workshops. I especially love their garden blog.

Keeping a Journal

One of my favorite things to give as a gift is a journal. A book of blank pages for my friends and family to fill up with their handwriting, drawings and anything that makes up the moments of their lives.



I’ve got these beautiful, linen napkins and embroidered on them in gold thread is ‘Consider the empty plate, full of possibilities” – the same can be said for the empty page. As soon as you scribble on it in your own hand, it is transformed and can become anything.

My son keeps his music journal. I have several – one is all about my house, I have one for my art work and ideas, one for my garden and one for writing about the days of my life.



In a paper journal, you can scribble things out, add illustrations, ticket stubs, and dried flowers – all clichés but there is a reason some things become iconographic. They are universal mementos and they have the same effect on all of us.

There are a lot of people who use the web as a personal journal but certainly I am not one of them. They record intimate details of their lives and post it on the web for all the world to see.



I still like the feel and look of the handwritten page. It gets messy and wrinkled up but it seems more real and more connected to real life than anything to do with a blog. I like it because it is personal – no right or wrong, it just is.

I do admire the people who use the web to keep their personal journals but I cannot see myself joining them anytime soon.

2009 Six Meter International World Cup - Sailing Now in Newport

SAILING now in Newport, the 2009 Six Meter International World Cup.

Among my top 10 reasons to live in Newport - this is one. Not in order, but by discovery.
I discovered this event as I drove along Ocean Avenue, I passed several beautiful sailboats - all of the same size - 6 meters, sailing around Brenton Reef, at the entrance to the channel of Narragansett Bay, between Beavertail and Castle Hill. The boats were just cruising at the time, some heading up the bay and some heading out, they are spectacular.

The daily ebb and flow of living on the coast is familiar, the fishing boats and pleasure boats arriving and departing, the QE2 and tankers, and then it suddenly changes, there is an explosion of sails.... and it unfurls without having been part of it, or aware of the planning and coordinating, it happens on another level, on another playing field.....a waterworld, a sailing playground for those fortunate enough to be aboard and involved.

For anyone who wishes to be a part of this sailing world in Newport get involved at Sail Newport!

For the armchair sailors among us, here are the official Day 1 and Day 2 race reports:


Day 2 Race Report2009 Newport 6mR World Cup1900hrsNEWPORT, RI (Sept. 9, 2009) - Today's weather tested the metal (and wood) of competitors in the second day of racing of the 2009 Newport 6mR World Cup.
The northerly brought wind speeds averaging 18-22 knots with gusts of up to 25 knots toward the late afternoon. After a short postponement to allow the ebbing current to settle the rough sea state, a 6 nm course was set northwest of Gould Island.
In the Modern Division it was Scoundrel's (GBR-96) day, skippered by Rob Gray who said, "We had a great start, we only tacked three times and gybed twice for the entire race. Lots of extra maneuvers bring mistakes, which we wanted to avoid today."
Tuesday's winner, Sophie II (SWE-132) helmed by Hugo Stenbeck took second with Patric Fredell's May BE XIV (SWE-114) finishing third. After two days of racing Scoundrel and Sophie II are tied in first place with 3 points, followed by May Be XIV with 9 points and Finnegan (US-123) and Arunga (US-118) with 10 points each.
Owing to magnificent boat handling on the challenging final downwind leg with a building breeze Gallant (KC-10) skippered by Eric Jespersen won the Classic Division. Postle and Pope's Titia (GBR-22) took second place with TP Kolijonen-Astrand's Fridolin (FIN-12) coming in third today. Today's win places Gallant first overall in the division with 4 points; Totem (US-51), Goose (US-81) and Saskia II (KC-19) share a three-way tie for second with 9 points each. The strong northerly breeze is forecast to continue for tomorrow's races.

Day 1 Race Report2009 Newport 6mR World Cup1900hrsNEWPORT, RI (Sept. 9, 2009) - The 6 Metres got off to a slow start today on the first day of the 2009 Six Metre International World Cup. The initial race was abandoned after a northerly breeze died out. By mid-afternoon, however, a light southerly breeze filled in and enabled the Classic and Modern classes to complete their first race of the five-day series. A fleet of approximately 30 spectator and support boats were on hand to watch the thirty-four yachts from 11 countries sail the windward/leeward course. The Modern and Classic Classes had separate starts. In the Modern Division Sophie II (SWE-132) skippered by Hugo Stenbeck won the race by picking off Scoundrel (GBR-96) helmed by Rob Gray at the finish. Andy Parker’s Finnegan (US-123) took third in the only race of the day.
In the Classic Division, relative sailing newcomer, Jesse Smith of Jamestown, RI took first place in his first World Cup competition sailing with his local crew onboard Totem (US-51). It was a good day for the North Americans as second place went to Peter Hofmann’s Goose (US-81) and Gallant (KC-10), helmed by Eric Jespersen took third. Heavier breeze will be welcomed tomorrow, as competitors who have traveled and brought boats from three other continents, chomp for more races. The Race Commmittee will decide early whether to send the fleet to the alternate course North of Newport Bridge to keep the fleet racing inside Narragansett Bay.

PHOTOS courtesty of Onne Van Der Wal

Stormy Day

It is a stormy day and I was just coming back from showing a darling cottage on Maple Ave in Sand Hill Cove. As I am driving by Scarborough Beach I see that the sky is full of big beautiful kites.

The surf is way up and I couldn’t help but pull over to watch the ocean full of ‘kite boarders’. Wow, this is beautiful. The ocean is rough and the kite boarders are loving it. What a magnificent site. The kites are all different colors, red, and turquoise, green, black…and the kite boarders look like they are dancing over the sea, gracefully playing with the waves, fearlessly speeding across the ocean top.

Wow….there are so many of them. They must be shooting a commercial,
I think. But no…. no commercial. It’s just Rhode Island – and surf’s up.
Pretty cool!

Morning Glory in Wickford

One of the loveliest things to do in the morning is take a Yoga class in the Studio at Wickford Cove.

This charming and light-filled yoga studio is located right on Wickford Harbor in the waterfront room of the little shop, The Herb Wyfe.


Teachers Belle, Linda, Gail, Diane, and Christine offer classes for beginners to advanced. One recent morning I was the only one who showed up and I had a private class with Belle. What luxury! This is Belle – she is a wonderful instructor.


You really could easily miss this studio as hidden and tucked away as it is. It is really sweet and perfect. The sun shining off the water reflects the most beautiful patterns on the ceiling.


After the class, stay awhile and enjoy a cup of chai. You’ll feel a little calmer, think a little more clearly and be just a little bit happier. Can you ask for anything more?

The Wallpaper Chronicles

Wallpaper. As a child, I hated it. I hated the repetitiveness of the patterns, the way your eye would go round and round a room and always come to rest on the same exact thing. There was something disturbing about it, disturbing in a way I didn’t yet know how to put words to, an inherent uneasiness that hinted at larger uneasinesses as yet unexpressed. A wallpapered room was a room wearing a mask, creepy, claustrophobic, a room aiming to conceal something. However, my mother loved wallpaper, loved the crisp regularity of it, and she believed it to be an essential visual component of every well ordered home. In our house, wallpaper went up and down with the seasons. The routine never varied. First every last adhering molecule of the old paper had to be removed. By hand, with a pan of solvent, a paint scraper, and when we were old enough, by me and my sister. We might have enjoyed the geometric satisfactions of putting it up, but taking it down? Talk about despising a chore! The wet solvent dripping down your arm…the sickening gluey smell of the sodden paper…the wobbly ladder and its sudden, heart-stopping lurches…the stubborn, welded-on shreds that refused to give it up...and above all, the slow, frustrating stupidity of the paint scraper. God help you if you got the dull one.

So needless to say, as an adult, wallpaper is not a place I’ve ever cared to go.

And yet…and yet. There’s a nostalgia factor to old wallpaper that can’t be denied. Almost nothing evokes the reality of a vanished past more effectively than traces of old wallpaper clinging to a wall; the very fact of its decrepitude serves as poignant reminder that it was once fresh and new, applied with hope and good intentions, tempus fugit. These remnants out of time are windows into other lives, other minds, other experiences.

I ask you: Who in the world would opt to surround themselves with Leonardo’s “Last Supper” endlessly repeating like a stuck record, pieces of which to this day still adhere to the basement walls of a small, otherwise unremarkable white house on Broadway? Who would want to live with the rigors of a biblical toile pattern, featuring a stern patriarchal figure (Moses? Abraham?) vingnetted over & over, as seen in the attic of 17 Third Street? What would it have been like to sleep in a room like that every night, stamped as it was to infinity with themes of guilt and redemption? Did those messages seep into one’s very soul? Who plastered the planks of the attic walls at 17 Chestnut with discarded newspapers & handbills from the late 18th century? Décor - or insulation - or both? Was the sailboat pattern on the closet ceiling of that dilapidated cottage on Kerry Hill chosen by an indifferent workman or by an energetic young mother-to-be? What vanished romance inspired that floral pattern in the bedroom?

Once you start noticing it, the wallpaper evidence is everywhere, and can be found in just about every old house in Newport. Look at it; look closely. Newport is good at keeping its history everpresent. Let yourself examine these gorgeous shards of vernacular history, and the ghosts who are responsible for them will flame back into being for a split second - if only in your imagination - before vanishing back into the unfathomability of the past.

A Captivating Lifestyle

One of the liveliest and most recent art groups to form is the Sakonnet Arts Network.

They have a great website and on it you can find all sorts of interesting events and classes for the artist and for the arts patron.





You can participate in Plein Aire painting – I have seen small groups of local artists set up along the Sakonnet and I always want to join them. You can enroll in evening figure workshops, learn how to make paper incorporating flower petals (love that!), meet for Dancing with Sculpture in Little Compton (sounds intriguing)
or maybe drop in for a pilates or belly dancing class with Barbara, the Dancing Spirit (that’s her studio on Main Road near Coastal Roasters – you have to check it out).

South Tiverton is a short ride from Newport and has so much to offer. Whenever I stop in at the town hall, I linger over the current art exhibit. There is always some new and delightful art to look at on the walls of the meeting room.

Congratulations to Tiverton for being such a lively and artistic locale – when you combine that with all the conservation land and open space, it really is a great choice if you are looking for a new place to live.


Call us – we can show you many beautiful homes in Tiverton.