“For what?” I asked.

“Toilet paper. They won’t take anything but exact change.”

Digging into the deepest folds of my wallet, I cringed as I saw an attendant passing my sister-in-law a wad of toilet paper before she entered the public bathroom, with me and a crowd of strangers standing around to witness the hand-off.

We were on a 24-hour tour of Quito, Ecuador, the first stop on our extended family adventure to the Galápagos Islands. Recently semi* retired and on a mission to see the world, this was the second grand excursion our family had taken courtesy of my dad, the first an African safari in 2024 with no toilet paper restrictions to speak of.

What if you purchased one handful, and realized with your pants around your ankles that you’d misjudged your situation? What about the guys? A purchase was a public admission that they planned to shit in the sky-tram bathroom.

Mom had gotten sick from the altitude as soon as we landed in Quito - not unheard of at over 9,000 feet above sea level. But our biggest concern was how our stomachs would do on the Grace - the 147 ft yacht Dad had reserved for us that started its career carrying Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier around the Mediterranean on their honeymoon. Mom and I both have a history of scream-vomiting at sea.

Our instructions before departure came mostly from Mom. “No athleisure fabrics. I want y’all in crisp linen,” she texted. My brothers were silent to those messages on the family thread—each was accustomed to some combination of t-shirts and Carhartts—but I was with Mom: I, too, wanted to appear plucked from a Slim Aarons photograph. I’d purchased a vintage 1940s rayon halter dress from Thea Grant in Dumbo to wear to dinner, and packed a patterned cotton scarf I planned to wear tied around my head in a sort of Jackie O/ Lee Radziwill gesture.

The Galapagos Islands were born between 3 and 5 million years ago (300 million years before dinosaurs) the result of intense volcanic activity over a geological hotspot in the Pacific Ocean. The islands farthest east are the oldest, teaming with plants and species like the famous Blue-footed booby, the marine iguana, and the giant Galápagos tortoise. These animals can’t be found anywhere else on the planet. That’s where our adventure began.

We took a dinghy from the Baltra airport to Santa Cruz - the Galápagos’ main island with a population of around 18,000, to see the famous Galápagos Giant tortoise. Measuring up to 5’ in diameter, they are the largest tortoise on earth. They’re also the namesake of the islands: galápagos is a Spanish word for tortoise, given to the area by Spanish sailors from the 1500s.

We encountered two of them slamming shells half-way through our tour, and after some inspection from our guide Alejandra we learned that they were two males. “Is there a biological or evolutionary purpose for that?” I asked, reverting to my hand-raised-front-row persona from 2007 when I was last in class. “Sometimes they just need to…” she said, and then motioned with her hands like she was a heavily-caffeinated flower girl throwing rose petals down the center aisle.

The first evening on the boat, the staff let us know we would be sailing for four hours overnight from Santa Cruz to Floreana, one of the southernmost islands of the Galápagos and one with, after some pre-trip research, a salacious past. I’d arrived with a tell-all book on the subject of its original and controversial settlers, titled Eden Undone, by Abbott Kahler and was excited to dive in before bed.

At 1:00 am, the boat began rocking back and forth at a pitch that didn’t seem life-threatening, but was definitely going to prevent us from sleeping. We realized we’d given the kids no instruction on how to reach us in the middle of the night —they were in a cabin on the opposite side of the boat—and laid awake wondering if they were asleep, scared out of their minds, or stumbling around the boat’s perimeter deck crying out for help. I eventually ventured out of our cabin, gripping the railing to avoid being cast from the boat (gone without a trace!), and peaked into their room to confirm that they were asleep.

Standing on deck, enveloped by warm air and nothing but the sound of the Grace piercing the ocean surface, I felt transported to a time of petticoats and messages in bottles. Despite what felt like tsunami-level rolling inside our cabin, the water around us looked calm. I’ve never been able to locate constellations, but I know I saw every star in the sky that night.

A single Nazca booby flew alongside us—gliding at eye-level without moving a single muscle. I watched him for a long time, waiting to see what would divert his course. When nothing did, I returned to my cabin.

Tucking myself back in, I opened a message from my brother on the family text thread: a photo of Kermit the Frog holding a metal nail to an electric socket. It was 3am and we had another seven days ahead of us…

(stay tuned for Pt. 2 :)

The headlines for Marty, Life is Short lead with the tragedy—the untimely death of Martin’s oldest brother in a car accident, his mother from cancer, and his father from a stroke, all before he was 21 years old. He later lost his wife Nancy to ovarian cancer in 2010, and just recently, his daughter Katherine to suicide. (The film cuts short of a Meryl Streep epilogue, definitely a bright spot for both of them!)

When you write it all down, the magnitude of his loss is overwhelming. But every day since I saw this film, I’ve thought of it and felt unusually happy.

Why?

Option A - Maybe it’s the effect of Tom Hanks, Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Steven Spielberg and other legendary Hollywood figures flipping burgers on the grill and smoking cigs on the pier (they’re just like us)! The danger of celebrity is, of course, that millions of people around the world feel like they KNOW you, and watching this fuzzy camcorder footage feels like laughing along with old friends. They’re also some of the best entertainers in the world? Which means they’re funnier than your actual friends even when they’re off-the-clock.

Option B - Interviews with Short, combined with the unscripted footage of summer holidays and Christmases, make it clear that the thing that matters most to him is not his career or his legacy.

“I’d say my career is 80% failure, “ he says. “And I say those are pretty good odds.”

What makes his life wonderful are the people he loves and the time spent with them. This deep affection seeps through his videos like a melted marshmallow out of the square edge of a s’more. It’s a reminder to me—someone who has always had a lot of ambition and a dream of being someone of note—that I am overrun with the things that matter most, even to celebrities.

Option C - A nostalgia for the days of camcorders. These home videos weren’t recorded for the likes, or tagged and cross-promoted with the other celebs in attendance to create buzz and increase follower numbers. They are a call and response to the small group of people who mattered to Short.

Option D - The film makes Short’s summers a main character, and who isn’t better in the summer? The gorgeous weather! The slamming screen doors! Extra time to pursue a hobby, or extra pleasure in cooking a meal! Is it the OPTION of water, even if you don’t like to get wet? Is it enough green, grassy ground to play capture-the-flag?

This documentary made me dream of a summer place for my kids and the amazing friends and family it’s taken me a lifetime to collect. It helped me understand the importance of spending my time being great for the people I already know, not on courting the approval of people who I will never know. And it inspired in me an excitement for the life I’m building now, the one that only I understand.

Thanks, Marty, for the lesson on living well, especially when we aren’t looking.

We’d moved to Brooklyn in August —transplants from Alabama with no family here, just a few friends and a big question mark on whether raising a family in New York was tenable. I was on month four of the WORST WINTER OF MY LIFE—the coldest and longest the city had experienced in over a decade— and was starting to question the “fun family adventure” phrasing we’d used to frame our move to the big city.

Within the first month of us living here, I’d double parked my car to make way for Tuesday’s street cleaning (along with the rest of the residents of my block). Unfortunately I forgot and left it there, blocking all traffic for over an hour. I received a note on my windshield that said “What makes you so fucking special? Have a shitty day, jerk!”

The Knicks beat the Spurs 114-89 at the game, so my son and I exited through the gift shop, walking away with a Brunson jersey and a flat-billed ball cap for me.

I’m not trying to take credit for the Knicks winning season. Or Wednesday’s game-clinching Anunoby tip shot. But this hat has for the last 3.5 months become an accessory that I can’t leave home without. School drop off in sweatpants and Knicks hat. Guggenheim visit in a tweed suit and Knicks hat. Floral summer dress and Knicks hat. Knicks hat and bathrobe. Knicks hat and nothing (bummed but my husband couldn’t get on board lol).

From what well of repressed “downtown baller” persona was this flat-billed fetish coming from? No matter what I wore, what mood I was in, my Knicks hat looked good with everything. Was a Knicks hat…the new Yankees hat?

In May, my friend and I drove my trusty minivan to Massachusetts for my first Brimfield Antiques Show (which I wrote about here). On the way out the door - in Knicks hat and army green jumpsuit- my husband said “If you’re going to wear that hat you better actually know what’s going on.” They’d just beaten the 76ers to qualify for the semifinals, a fact I was totally unaware of.

At the first tent I stopped in at Brimfield - the owner said “Hey! Your team’s having a good run this year!”

Touring an antique mall the second day, an older gentleman walked past me and said “Did Jordan ruin your childhood, too?” I confessed that I was a newly minted fan, having moved from Alabama in the last year. “I can hear it in your accent” he said, and then proceeded to educate me on the ups and mostly downs of the 80s and 90s Knicks. In exchange, I gave him my intel on Alabama antiques and where to go for the good primitives.

Walking past La Bicyclette in Carroll Gardens, another older guy shouted at me “You watch that game last night?!” “I sure did,” I said, cosplaying like a local. “Man it’s been too long,” he smiled.

A dad I didn’t know at school drop off said “Go Knicks!” when I approached the group chat, unfortunately in front of a couple of friends who know I’m not qualified to sport the cap. “I’ve been to one game and I got a hat,” I said apologetically.

This past weekend, my kids and I were taking the F to Soho to get some Crocs (sigh) for the summer months, and an older woman was looking for a seat. I encouraged my son to offer his.

“Well, I think I’ll take it since I like your mom’s hat!” she said in the verbatim accent of Joe Pesci.

“I’ve got to admit to you, I’m not really qualified to wear this hat,” I said. “I just moved here from Alabama in August.”

“Listen,” she said, and got closer to my face. “New Yorkers will curse you out. If you’re blocking traffic we’ll scream horrible things at you. But then we’ll get out of our car and say “Where’s your spare?” dropping her r’s like Towns drops 3-pointers.

“It’s about your WILL to be a New Yorker,” she said with her finger in my face. “Keep wearing that hat.”

I ventured north from NYC in my minivan early on Tuesday - opening day - for my first Brimfield experience and was disappointed with what I discovered.

Don’t get me wrong, my friend (the talented painter) Mallory Page and I had a big ol’ time digging through junk and eating and drinking lots of pickled flavored things (fried pickles, pickle lemonade, pickle grilled cheese), and I took photos of some candidates for purchase. But when you dedicate two days away from your family and book a $300 room at a Hampton Inn, you’re looking for a bigger reward than what awaited us.

What the show had in spades:

• Used L.L. Bean totes ad nauseam.

• MANY MINIATURE DRESSERS. So many!

• LOTS OF DISTRESSED AMERICAN WORKWEAR. The t-shirt bros’ world takeover is moving along as planned.

• Several 19th century chromolithographs which I’ve always had an affection for.

• An amazing collection of antique costumes and 19th c. clothing from my girl at Ornate Vintage, including this Victorian riding suit in perfect condition which I had fun trying on for her live feed lol.

• High prices! As someone who has shopped the world’s dirtiest, dead-body estate sales and who sold vintage clothing for a living, these prices were not geared toward the reseller or anyone looking for a deal.

• Pickle-themed foods !

What the show did NOT have:

• Any price tags, which means I got surveillance priced at every booth based off of my really new looking Knicks ball cap. Almost like I went to ONE game but HAD to stop in the merch store.

• Curation. A handful of the t-shirt bros had a nice collection and created an experience, as did Strange Desires (one of my favorite vintage clothing follows on insta) but most dealers appeared to open up the back of their UHaul, throw a sheet out on the grass and dump a bunch of shit on the ground the same way you empty a piggy bank.

• Many of the dealers I was excited to see packed up their trucks at 1 pm on the first and only day they were showing, so that they could then shop the show themselves. I’m not sure if there’s a better indicator of the addiction/ circle jerk that is the antiques business than this.

Is it me? Am I the problem?

I have over the last few months been off instagram in large intervals, which I should mention has improved my life immensely but maybe cut into my pre-show research?

I regularly read Emily Stochl’s Pre-Loved posts here on Substack. But her Brimfield Guide was focused mostly on clothing and I was honestly shopping for more furniture and art this go around. She knew something I didn’t though, which was that at least 50% of the tents were vintage clothing focused.

Bottom line: Brimfield is a show that’s priced for the retail customer, but showcased like the most unorganized estate sale you’ve ever attended. I’d rather pay full price in a place where I don’t have to use a porta potty.

The Midwood estate is located at the end of a mile long winding road, perched on a ridge overlooking the Hudson River just south of Germantown, New York. The property consists of 85-acres, a Federalist clapboard mansion built in the 1880’s, clay tennis courts, a pool, and unfettered access to the Hudson via its own historic ironwork bridge. (You’ll pass under it if you ever take the train to Hudson :)

Originally established by the Livingston family in the 17th century (signers of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution - thank you for your service!) it was purchased in the 1980s by my new friend Sarah’s grandmother, Joan Kaplan Davidson.

Joan was an heiress to the Welch Grape Juice fortune, but more importantly, a hardworking philanthropist and civic servant who ran the J.M. Kaplan Fund, a philanthropic powerhouse in New York City politics, preservation, and the arts. For my fellow obituary enthusiasts out there, hers reads like the textbook of a life-well-lived.

The grounds are perfectly kept but unkept, sunsets on the porch cinematic, the driftwood on the beach perfect for a future sculptural art piece that I’ll never start! But as you already know, my interest in homes is more urgently focused on what’s inside them.

Specifically books. I’d wager that any home without them has broken a fundamental rule in the still unwritten official PHIP rule book, which is that I want to see evidence of what everyone has read and is reading. (It’s why I’ve resisted a Kindle for soooo long).

Ms. Kaplan’s archive rivals that of a small public library, with sizable collections in politics, art, architecture, gardening, and philosophy. It’s loosely organized by topic—definitely not organized by color, and definitely not overly orderly. As one of my friends once advised me: “A bookshelf needs to live.” I’d argue that means that there’s no perfect place for one thing, nor should something always be put back in its place, for that matter. Evidence of use - this is the goal!

For my aesthetically inclined readers, the tiny strips of lighting hidden in the shelving (no doubt installed before the dawn of LED in the 1990s otherwise I’d be providing all sourcing details) gave the cases a glowing cantaloupe color that I aim to paint match and use in all future book display.

Her collection of artwork gave the feeling of being collected through different times and moods, ranging from large commissioned family portraits (her son Peter’s in the front parlor was a topic of convo for many reasons - the open red oxford was very Swayze; do you also think he looks like he’s wearing Tabis?), to framed hooked rugs, to family photography, to Maxfield Parrish-esque landscapes.

More interesting to me were the moments where simple cork cover took the place of any traditional work of art, covered in family photographs, children’s artwork, newspaper clippings, an iconic “house rules” list, itineraries, New Yorker cartoons, and more.

Recently in a New York Times Story titled A Professional Organizer’s Guide to Spring Cleaning Your Life, home organizer Christina Fallon said this:

“Most people are sentimental and hold on to things, especially if they are attached to a good memory. They worry that if they give something away, that memory will fade. I suggest people take photos of these items and then let them go. We tend to make museums of our lives.”

Since Joan’s death in 2023, her children have taken over management of Midwood, with local grandchildren supporting day-to-day operations. They have agreed to keep the house in the family, but also to make it available to vetted renters. There’s been a surface level cleansing process, but all in all, Midwood is the same as Sarah remembers it during her childhood summers.

Can you imagine having a photograph of this child’s to do list from 1998, as opposed to the list itself, framed and resting above the fireplace mantel? (Frankly this is my issue with any service offering to digitize children’s artwork. It’s just not the same as the real thing).

How different of an experience would it have been to rent Midwood, stripped and scrubbed, repainted, revarnished, with all personal artifacts removed? Without the archive of political buttons in the kitchen, the stacks of paperbacks, the house rules, disposable camera photos, framed quotes from FDR, and even frayed sofas which perhaps could use a recovering, but sure as hell feel more welcoming than something new from Pottery Barn. I haven’t even mentioned the stunning decorative murals, now often peeling in places, which were based off of the Augustan frescoes of Boscotrecase, now at the Met!!! (in photos below).

Living with old things takes a special energy and effort. I don’t want to gloss over that. But what was remarkable about my weekend spent at Midwood, on top of the wonderful women I got to spend time with, was not the glamorous work of a hired interior designer, a painting by the latest trending artist, or the amenities of a 5-star hotel, but the lesson I received in LIVING:

MORE reading, MORE time with family, MORE inspirational quotes, MORE money spent on framing (sorry not sorry), MORE art for the fun of it, MORE scrapbooking, MORE TIME to do the things that bring us joy.

If that makes Midwood a museum to the lives of the ones who consider it home, then what a shame it would be to dismantle all of that.

The question I can’t escape, with Midwood close in the rearview, is: what is at the root of my own panicked need to constantly organize and cleanse my life of my things?

I feel it. I feel it RIGHT NOW as I stare at, on this one single desk, a sewing machine, baseball trophies, a Hello Kitty polaroid camera, a string of Christmas lights on the wall, a pair of girls pajamas that I need to donate, and more.

I’ve got my own thoughts, but I’m curious to know yours in the comments section below: Why is purging and organizing perpetually on our mental to-do list?

More photos of Midwood below, and even more in my Substack feed. Make sure to follow me there—it’s different than subscribing to my actual newsletter, which is admittedly confusing!

-MKQ

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I’m 41 years old, the mother of two, wife of one, former magazine editor, retailer, vintage dealer and forever interior designer, serial home renovator, collector, creative consultant and writer who in 2025 moved to Brooklyn from Birmingham, Alabama with nothing on my agenda except 1) to get my family settled in our big new city and 2) to figure out what I wanted to do next with my career and life.

Planted some flowers. Bought a Knicks hat.

After decades of dabbling in different creative pursuits—most recently selling vintage and fine art at my shop in Birmingham—with a need to express myself creatively but always with the goal of receiving recognition (hello eldest daughter syndrome), I’m excited to launch Time & Material. T&M is my new playground (keyword: PLAY) for exploring a thread that—after review—strings all of my former pursuits together: a deep interest in people and their relationship to their things.

A few ways I plan to do that, i.e. what you can expect with your subscription to Time & Material:

• Interviews with my friends and former colleagues in fashion, antiques, art, publishing, and interior design about their relationship to special THINGS of their own

• The stories of interesting objects I discover on antiquing excursions

• Occasional home tours: storied houses for sale, interesting renovation projects, homes of collectors, and other places with the distinct imprint of their current or former owner

• Q&A’s with fine art framers, copper platers, veteran estate sale appraisers, and other preservationists on what they’ve learned about people by working with their things

• Conversations with artists on why and how they make what they make

• Personal essays from me on buying behaviors and trends, ways that we shape and showcase our identity, fear of death, our collective craving for fame, my personal fear of outer space, why the graphic novel-fication of all children’s books is a bad idea (right?!), and other sometimes deep—but often light!— musings on questions I run into during my days.

• Playlists and film and book recommendations/reviews

• BUT MOST IMPORTANT AND INTERESTING TO ME: reflections from you, my readers, about your treasures, your purging regrets, and more SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH that I hope will help all of us learn more about each other and ourselves.

Who am I and how did I get here?

As a child in Alabama, my favorite past-time was filling a “memory box” that my mom had gifted me with mementos—a Ziploc bag filled with pea gravel from my first home, a laminated book I wrote in Kindergarten (The Jrym - translation The Dream), a diary my grandfather gave to me to record notes from our tennis lessons together.

My favorite book was The Red Ball - the story of a little girl who learns about her ancestors through old photographs she discovers in her attic.

I buried time capsules in my backyard.

Physically wearing a watermelon collar, mentally worried about dying and whether my story will be told.

I turned my own attic into a den of pre-teen heartache, writing love notes and other anecdotes in the plywood walls. (Devon Sawa forever).

My teenage years were spent obsessively journaling and scrapbooking, filling pages with ticket stubs, metro cards, dried corsages, handwritten notes and photographs that highly dramatized a suburban American childhood into stories of far flung travel, steamy romance, and embarrassingly deep searches for meaning.

After doing a personal inventory of my favorite past times—as a child and as an adult—time spent preserving, arranging, and curating a story for others to remember me by WHEN I AM GONE has by far been my preferred pursuit. Always death in the background. Admittedly morbid for an 8 year-old, but much less so than my other interest in….the death of other people and THEIR things!

Cemeteries have always fascinated me, my first memory being a small one with unmarked headstones that I spotted on the side of the road en route to elementary school. I love walking through them, taking notes of first names I’ve never heard and making guesses on their cause of death.

Exploring les puces in 2012, one of my most successful vintage buying trips to-date.

In my twenties, I spent a year writing obituaries for people who had no family member to do it for them. They appeared in The Coastal Star, a small-town South Florida newspaper that describes itself as “a community of neighbors celebrating life along the shore.” It was one of my most rewarding jobs to-date.

Vintage clothing grabbed my imagination in high school, offering me windows into the lives of women who came before me. My major at Georgetown was Culture & Politics, so it’s no surprise that I’ve reveled in the lessons on international politics, industry, trade, social customs, and value systems that I’ve garnered from my study of clothing.

my first trunk show ever, hosted by Cortney Bishop Design in Charleston, SC.

Eventually, estate sales became my drug of choice, which is of course how I went from vintage collector to vintage dealer. A size 2 Pauline Trigère gown at $25? It won’t fit ME, but at that price, I can’t walk away. Enter the dopamine hit that all thrifters and junkers and dealers can’t get enough of - the possibility of finding the diamond in the rough. The clothing and art and finery aside, I also just love touring other people’s homes, seeing the evidence of who they were in their design decisions and making note of architectural elements that I wanted to bring into my own home projects.

I got my start selling vintage clothing on Etsy in 2012, eventually traveling to Paris to source for trunk shows throughout the South. In 2021, I opened my own shop in Birmingham, Alabama, an incredible chapter that ended when we made the move to Brooklyn last year.

A photo taken at one of my favorite estate sales from the early days, complete with a pink terrazzo womb-like foyer with recessed lighting and (not pictured) a built-in planter.

At a time when our consumption levels are at an all time high —fueling everything from an exploding fast-fashion collosus, to a boom in storage facilities and a growing home organization industry, my hope with Time & Material is to get closer to the truth about what really matters in our material world.

Why do we buy what we buy, make what we make, and keep what we keep? Why, at our core, do we all want so badly to be known?

If you like the sound of my new pursuit and want to explore this topic with me, I’d be thrilled to have you as a subscriber :)

Alive and kicking,

MKQ