the ahlbergs

Hiatus

Sorry, we've been busy.

We'll be back soon!

Beaverkill Library

For Peter's birthday we rented an old farmhouse on the Beaverkill River in Sullivan County. It had been a general store at one time so the front room was an enormous wide open space with floor-to-ceiling windows on one side and a towering wall of books on the other. Having this library at our fingertips for the week turned out to be a major perk. There were so many beautifully aged first editions—great works of literature, philosophy, and poetry, as well as large format history and photography volumes. Every night we ate dinner while pouring over a new book. These are some of the really special ones that we wish we had at home:

Marilyn: A Biography by Norman Mailer

Walker Evans: First and Last

How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis

Suburbia by Bill Owens

Visions of America by Ron Tyler

Fishing Dry Flies for Trout on Rivers and Streams by Art Lee

The Bests

Something about having a baby has made me keenly aware and grateful for all the awesome things in the world, so I started a running list on my desktop called 'The Bests,' as in, "Roger from American Dad is the best" or "Cool Ranch Doritos are the best" (the list could easily be comprised solely of animated tv characters and junk food, but I tried to diversify). Here's an excerpt, with some contributions from Peter:

• The paper department at New York Central Art Supply

• The Neversink River

• Kimchi

• Cocktail hour

• Ian Frazier articles in The New Yorker

• Maura Jacobson crosswords in New York Magazine

• Seltzer

• Our Zojirushi rice cooker

• Jim Jarmusch

• The Bluths

• Esperanza Spalding's performance of 'Overjoyed' at The White House

• Road trips

• The Fairway 

• The basketball courts at the Meadows Recreation Center, Central Park

• Movie previews

• Lee Wulff

• Phil Dunphy

• Bon Ami

• +J

• Mississippi John Hurt

She's Here :)

What to do when you're a week overdue

I'm definitely not making the same claim for marinated octupus and spinach pie as people do for pineapple and spicy foods. The internet will give you millions of ridiculous ideas about how to induce labor; right now we are more concerned with how to keep ourselves happily occupied while we wait (and wait). The answer yesterday was, basically, to eat. We didn't set out with a plan other than breakfast at B&H Dairy, but the day turned into a sort of NYC food tour, something that happens more often than I would like to admit.

We started with french toast and a lox & onion omelette made with extra special care by a cook who is also expecting a baby (pregnancy has been a great unifier, bridging all sorts of gaps that typically prevent us from making friends with strangers). We got a loaf of challah to go, and since it was suddenly sunny and warm outside, decided to head to the beach through Brooklyn, around the Belt, past Coney Island, and over the Marine Park Bridge. We detoured into Breezy Point, a super-weird gated beachfront community (supposedly also known as the "Irish Riveria") before heading back towards the Rockaways. We parked at Jacob Riis Park and walked on to the beach, where we saw two joggers, some dead birds, and lots of trash. We braved the wind long enough for the gravitational pull of the Moon to give our baby a nudge, or so we hoped.

Appetites renewed, we took the BQE to Astoria. At Titan we loaded up the cart with stuffed grape leaves, butter beans in tomato sauce, octopus, anchovies, feta, olives, pepperoncinis, oregano, halvah, and freshly-made taramosalata, spinach and cheeses pies, and pitas. Two old ladies at the feta cheese counter patted my belly and chattered excitedly in Greek, so I smiled. Around the corner from Titan is a huge fruit and vegetable market where everything costs a fraction of what it does in Manhattan, so we stocked up on oranges, grapefruits, kale, and a huge bunch of dandelion greens to add to our Greek dinner spread.

For lunch we went in search of a Mexican place that Peter had been years ago. We drove around in circles (you know, past 30th Street, Road, and Avenue) and stopped in one place that seemed promising, but wasn't it. To avoid the awkwardness of just turning and leaving, we bought like 900 corn tortillas for a dollar, and got back in the car. Finally we found Los Portales, ordered a whole bunch of their amazing veal flank and roast pork tacos ($1.50 each), and ate while we drove back over the 59th Street Bridge. Between bites, we hatched a plan to move to Queens.

So, still no baby, but waiting turns out to be not so bad.

My Sister Went to Ghana

Clock is working good.

I'm obsessed with these vintage Soviet alarm clocks. All from this Latvian Etsy seller, who has great stuff and bad grammar.

Happy New Year

A magazine advertisement designed by Kono Takashi for the movie Kinga Shin'nen (Happy New Year), 1932. From Japan Style by Gian Carlo Calza.

Cleaning House

I've been hanging on to this otherwise crappy Taschen book called New York Interiors for years because of these three pictures of Ted Muehling's apartment. Scanning them, selling the book to Strand, and having an extra inch and a half of bookshelf space is making me inordinately happy.

Concrete Poetry

I bought Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America for Peter solely because of its name, but the title page turned out to be the real prize.