Pulitzer Prize

Dress two from my most recent best shopping day ever: Pulitzer Prize.

I mean, obviously it's a prize.

Less obvious: it is a Pulitzer! Lilly Pulitzer, to be exact. I've seen some Lilly Pulitzer stuff in various secondhand capacities, but it always fit kind of weird, so I regretfully let it pass me by.

But thanks to my mysterious, fashion-forward benefactor/soulmate and Another Man's Treasure, I've finally got my paws on one. And it happens to be the best one I've seen, and it happens to be in perfect condition.

Which means I win! Two elements make Pulitzer Prize truly special:

Call me crazy, but there is something I find very appealing about prints in which the different layers of color don't align quite perfectly. See also: Crazy Daisy.

Maybe it has something to do with having lousy eyesight; I like things that are a little blurry to begin with, so that when I take off my glasses, the world doesn't change too much.

Also: flowers. Also: blue, purple and green. Best combination of colors, or bestest combination of colors?

Second element making the Pulitzer prize-worthy: those buttons! I'm going gaga over those glabrous globes. They are so prim and proper, particularly prudently pasting over my pectorals.

But unbutton a few and it's a whole different ball game. I live in fear of the day I realize that they've gotten too worn and dingy to have quite the same effect.

Back when the weather was still unconscionably hot, some friends and I took a trip up to Storm King, a huge sculpture garden about an hour north of NYC.

I was enchanted with the sculpture that guests are encouraged to bang with a hammer. Museums would be more exciting if every artwork came with its own hammer.

As part of the "Light & Landscape" exhibit, we visited some bees and learned about how they do what they do.

Honeybees: best insect, or bestest insect? I am relatively bug-phobic—I once screamed when I saw a giant cockroach on the wall of a restaurant, and not that I'm recommending you do this, but our drinks got comped—and yet there was something simply fascinating about the honeybees crawling all over each other and just kind of doing their thing. Not creepy or gross in the slightest; in fact, they seemed exceptionally clean. A little fuzzy, even... cuddly?

The beekeeper encouraged us to take up beekeeping. I'm tempted, if only for the chance to one day wear a beard of bees.

Also, you know how honeybees are dying off en masse, and it's a terrible mystery? (If you don't know, please Google it; this is important.)

Turns out it's not much of a mystery to the beekeepers. Modern honeybees are totally stressed out. They get driven around to these monoculture fields, so all they eat for three weeks is, say, almond pollen. Then they get doped up and driven to a peach field, where they eat only peach pollen for the next few weeks. It's sad to think about, and another way in which modern agriculture makes things terrible while technically feeding everyone and thus technically being a force for good, depending on your priorities.

Thinking about modern agriculture is just so depressing; I have to go to my happy place.

It's... a field, filled with light, and flowers sprouting everywhere.

Some flowers are royal blue, some sky blue, some lavender. There are little green leaves sprouting in between the blossoms.

And bees.

Most photos by Claire Loeb!