The Sidebar: On (and Off) The Pink Cloud

Pantone's pink, Le Creuset’s shallot, Claire Nolan’s blooms, Bill Eville’s Washed Ashore, Brian Doyle’s hummingbirds.

My Pink

It’s no secret that my favorite color is pink. You may write off this girly hue as so much bubblegum and so many tutus. But I don’t and won’t. Pink to me is raspberries and radishes, rhubarb and cranberry beans. It is roses and cosmos and zinnias and hellebores and coneflowers and cherry blossoms. Pink is the strawberry ice cream I make every June and the black raspberry ice cream I make every July. It is a Slinky of pickled red onions and the faded crimson stain that roasted beets leave on parchment paper.

Pink has always been a happy hue for me – I equate it with beauty, and beauty to me is reverence and grace and awe. And yes, I find pink calming, true to its reputation. But if you believe what the color analysts say, pink is calming to some and agitating to others. Apparently our color associations are emotionally based and have everything to do with childhood memories. What a surprise! (Not.) Growing up, I did have a pink bedroom, and it was the very first space I could call my own; that could be one reason I lean on pink.

But I also know that wearing pink makes me feel good, makes me feel like Susie. Which is apparently why I have worn it in every single PR shot ever taken of me! Pink is not considered a serious color, just like “Susie” is not considered a serious name. Most Susans who want to be taken seriously do not shorten to Susie. I have never gone in for too much seriousness.

Naturally, my wedding dress was pink — pink with shimmery silver sequins no less. And I had a nifty pink faux-furry jacket to wear over it; we got married in November, during the pandemic, on a cold and windy day. And yes, he wore a pink tie. The flowers? Yep. My sister nearly croaked when I insisted on pink shoes, too.

Photo by Maria DeForrest

Pink of the Year

When you love something it follows you around. Or I should say, you notice it everywhere. But I’m not making this up – pink really is having a moment. The 2023 Pantone color of the year is Viva Magenta. That right there is one jazzy pink. And I love it.

And the 2023 Benjamin Moore color of the year is Raspberry Blush. Delicious. It looks like the inside rim of a conch shell or the color of a New Dawn climbing rose in bud, before it breaks open and softens into a powder puff. And it’s the exact color of the Vineyard sky at sunset on certain late winter days. Not to be confused with The Pink Cloud, that time in early sobriety when you think, confidently, “I’ve got this nailed.” And then fall apart into a puddle of nonsense a week later. That pink is the ephemeral kind.

Pink Pots

The latest new color from Le Creuset is pink! And it’s called Shallot – of course, named for one of my all-time favorite vegetables. I have a serious crush on this color, but my husband started a red Le Creuset collection for me, so I don’t think I can mix this pale lilac-y beauty in with tomato-ey red. Besides, the color is being targeted to millennials — not grey-hairs who wear sequined dresses to their second weddings — and Tik Tok viewers. So many Le Creuset Shallot videos on Tik Tok! Who knew? I thought millennial pink was a thing about six years ago, but apparently it hasn’t gone away.

In all honesty, it doesn’t matter what color your Le Creuset Dutch oven or skillet or gratin pan is; if you can save up your pennies (dimes, dollars) to buy a piece of this enamel-lined cast-iron cookware, you will not be sorry. You will have it forever and will love the way it retains heat and spreads it out so generously.

Pink Plate

Speaking of ceramics, my dear Island friend Liz Packer, a farmer who let me feed her pink pigs when I first got to the Vineyard, surprised me a few months ago with this rosy plate she made. Liz has taken up ceramics (we have great courses at Featherstone Center for the Arts), and this gorgeous color, along with the flowers (cosmos!) etched on the plate, reminded her of me. Liz and her daughter Lucy grew cosmos in the field where the pigs once roamed and ate my cookbook scraps.

The color of the plate could be called Shallot Skin - and together they remind me of the faded blooms of a very special smoky pink cosmos called Rubenza. Nature is something else.

Hot-off-the-Press Pink and A Circle of Good Writing

Pink is also the color of two important but very different books that are part of my life right now. In a way, they are both manuals for leading a good life. One is a 300-page guide to growing, harvesting and arranging homegrown flowers all year-round: In Bloom, by British stylist and creativity mentor Clare Nolan. (It is not a new book.)

The other, Bill Eville’s Washed Ashore, is a (brand new) memoir of navigating life, work and parenting in an Island community. And the fact that its cover is pink – actually, the color is nearly an exact match with Benjamin Moore’s Raspberry Blush (Godine is one on point publisher!) — is incidental. Except that a big part of Bill’s story is the journey through his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.

On Clare Nolan’s book, I will be quick and make this one point: The book was a total balm for me after going through the Floret flower farming course and putting myself into the rather stressful place of trying to figure out how to grow flowers as a business.  Clare’s book is all about growing flowers for yourself — to fill your house, to share with friends and family, to bring joy. It’s a home grower’s book that won’t make you feel as if you have to grow 500 tulips at a shot. It will inspire you with its dreamy photography and endless information about varieties and techniques. My one quibble is with the rather difficult-to-read text font in the paperback version. I’d prefer a copy of the hard cover, but the paperback is more widely available.     

The author of Washed Ashore, Bill Eville, is my very talented colleague at the Vineyard Gazette. (I am the special projects editor for the Vineyard Gazette Media Group.) He recently took the helm as chief editor of the newspaper, but he stepped into that role not only as long-time managing editor but also as the much loved writer of the weekly missive called The Notebook, which goes out to readers in all 50 states and many countries because of the nature of our 175-year-old newspaper’s loyal and far-flung readership – and because of Bill’s writing.

To many, including me, Bill’s short essays – clear and honest and telling — are the highlight of Saturday morning. Together they feel almost like the serial novels once published in magazines long ago (and revived periodically, including by Tom Wolfe when Bonfire of the Vanities ran in installments in Rolling Stone magazine). So it’s thrilling to anticipate the carefully crafted memoir that draws from Bill’s stories.

They are stories of raising his two children, Hardy and Pickle. Of being the husband of a minister — Cathlin is the pastor of the West Tisbury Congregational Church. Of caring for the family dog, Artichoke, and the family’s flock of backyard chickens. (Beloved Janice recently succumbed to a hawk attack). Stories about wrestling and coaching and staying tied to friends from former lives while settling into life on an Island.  

But it’s not just the stories. As another of my talented colleagues, Martha’s Vineyard magazine editor Vanessa Czarnecki, writes of Bill and Washed Ashore in her beautiful editor’s letter in this month’s magazine:

“Eville broaches the big questions of how to be a good father and a good man, and how to move forward in the face of uncertainty. He reminds us that life’s little moments are not so little. That in the right hands, the most personal stories are often the most universal.”

I hope you’ll read Vanessa’s full letter, which is not only a gracious introduction to Bill but also a nod to one of Bill’s favorite writers, the late and very talented Brian Doyle. I had occasionally read bits of Brian Doyle that Bill linked to from The Notebook, including this essay about why a visit to kindergarten will cheer your soul. But I had not read Doyle’s Joyas Voladoras, his absolutely breathtaking essay about the tiny heart of a hummingbird, the cavernous heart of a blue whale, and the loneliness of the human heart. Vanessa offers that up as a gift, and as an observation of Bill Eville’s ability to “linger, Doyle-esque, in the quiet moments.” 

Photo by Jeanna Shepard

There’s one more thing about Bill. And I leave that to yes, another talented colleague, Julia Wells, who writes in her profile of Bill and preview of Washed Ashore in this week’s Vineyard Gazette: He has ‘a heart as big as the room around him.’

You will probably glean that when you read this excerpt, Homecoming, which I hope will inspire you to buy Washed Ashore.  

Me, I’ve been stubbornly waiting for pub date to get my book from our independent bookstore, Bunch of Grapes, where I once worked. I pre-ordered, knowing how important early sales numbers are to authors. Even though Vanessa sent me a PDF of Washed Ashore, after I read the prologue I stopped. I knew I had to hold the book in my hands.

Turns out I will get my book a few days ahead of pub date when we host a launch party for Bill at the Vineyard Gazette offices this coming Friday. Bunch of Grapes will be there with stacks of books and plenty of Sharpies for Bill to sign with.

I will be so happy and excited for Bill. And I will look around at all the people there and be grateful not just for our Island community, but also for the circle of writers who inspire me every day – most especially the ones who are right there toiling in the trenches beside me.