It’s that time of year again to run out and get your 2012 Moleskine Planner or Journal. In the past few years, Moleskines have gotten extremely popular. For those who don’t know the history of the Moleskine, it was a popular type of notebook made by a small French bookbinder who supplied all of the stationery shops in Paris by the late 1800s. The original notebooks were a simple black rectangle with rounded corners, an elastic page holder, and an internal expandable pocket. Pretty soon, luminaries such as Vincent Van Gogh, Ernest Hemmingway, Pablo Picasso, and just about anyone else who  passed through Paris.

Despite their popularity, by the 1980s the notebooks had all but disappeared. But in 1997, a small publisher in Italy started to make them again, and it picked up where it left off as a favorite among artists and travellers. Today, it seems that you can’t walk into any bookstore, stationery, or airport gift store without seeing a big display of Moleskine planners and journals.

The original Moleskine design is still available in the form of journals, notebooks, and sketchbooks. Recently, they also started to introduce neat licensed designs such as this Pac-Man design.

I recently had the pleasure of trying out a new set of Moleskine Ruled Journals.

These are a little different from Moleskine’s traditional design. They’re 8 1/2″ x 11″ notebooks with thin lined paper inside, perfect for writing long travel journals.

Moleskine has had a feature on its Web site since 2009 where artists can submit artwork they’ve made in their Moleskine notebooks.  In the last two years, over 2400 images, drawings, and paintings have been submitted. This year, in celebration of this creativity Moleskine created a new collection called The Cover Art collection which consists of three Journals and four Diaries/Planners. Moleskine decided to select a handful of artists whose work to feature, and for each piece of artwork chosen, Moleskine makes a donation to a charity of the artist’s choice. Here’s a video explaining the concept:

The artists of these notebooks is Paul Wang, and the charity he chose is Urban Sketchers, an art organization devoted to the craft of location drawing. When you fold out the cover of each notebook, you see a beautifully drawn sketch.

This one is called “Old Oil Shop”. It’s a depiction of a grocery shop in Hong Kong with all kinds of cooking oils and preserved vegetables which evokes life in old-time China.

This one is called “Wet Market”, and depicts a grocery stall in a district in Hong Kong called Shum Shio Po best known for its street markets.

(If you’d like to purchase these for yourself, they’re available on Amazon).

All are handmade and are even numbered with a quality control number. Overall, these notebooks were beautiful and in a funny way the quality and craftsmanship of these notebooks adds a bit of prestige and class to whatever you’ll write or draw in it. Whether you’re writing deeply personal words in a journal or the next great literary masterpiece, why write it in a cheap spiral notebook from a cheap office discount store, when you can write in a beautiful notebook that’s helped inspire great artists around the world?

October 28th of this year marked the 125th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. In the last year we’ve seen demonstrations by the Tea Party, and on the other side of the political spectrum we’ve seen demonstrations by Occupy Movement. As much as you might agree or disagree with these movements, one thing is for sure–we can be thankful we live in a country where people are free to speak their mind.

When I was in China in 1999, my sister and I were in Tienanmen Square in Beijing visiting as tourists. We saw a small group of about 10 old Chinese women gather together. One of the women started to take out what appeared to be a banner of some kind, probably related to the falun gong movement. Literally within 20 seconds, a nondescript bus drove up to them. A few policeman swept them up quietly and within the minute, all of them were gone. The people in the square hardly took notice, they just went about their daily business. So many years later, things haven’t changed much over there.

We take it for granted, but this is how governments have conducted themselves for thousands of years. In the late 1800′s, the gift of the statue to the US was their way of telling us–never forget how special the gift of liberty is.

One very interesting fact about the Statue of Liberty is that it almost never happened. While the people of France funded the building of the statue, it was agreed that the funding and building of the pedestal fell on the people of the United States. Problem is, in the midst of an economic crisis in the decade of the 1870s, it became difficult to justify the project. The New York Times said in an editorial on September 29, 1876, that “no true patriot can countenance any such expenditures for bronze females in the present state of our finances.” In 1884, governor of New York Grover Cleveland vetoed a bill that would have provided $50,000 for the project (about $1 million in today’s money). When the US Congress the next year tried to pass a bill to provide $100,000 to the project (about $2.3 million today), the bill was defeated.

It was Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of The New York World, who started a drive to collect $100,000. New Yorkers started donating money, most of it in amounts under a dollar. Pulitzer published the names and stories of donors in his paper. By August 1885, 120,000 donors had contributed $102,000.

In many ways it’s the same today. In 1982, as the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty was approaching, the statue had fallen under disrepair. I still remember driving by in New Jersey and seeing the statue discolored and rusty.

The National Park Service and Congress just couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be able to fund any meaningful restoration with tax dollars. In May 1982, President Reagan asked Chrysler chairman Lee Iococca to head a private sector effort to raise money. The result was what we call the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, which completely restored the Statue by her 100th birthday in 1986, and continues its important work to this day, both with the Statue of Liberty and with Ellis Island. If you haven’t visited either yet, make sure you do so the next time you’re in the New York / New Jersey area.

The Foundation continues to rely on private donations to this day. By buying the beautiful Christmas ornament you see pictured above or any number of other great gifts sold by the Foundation, in the spirit of those New Yorkers 125 years ago who gave the few cents and dollars at a time, you too can keep the Statue open and new as a fresh reminder of this country’s freedom.

Who said whiteboards had to be boring? This Umbra Talk Magnetic Dry-Erase Whiteboard is a high quality and affordable whiteboard that’s in the shape of a speech bubble. It’s perfect to hang in a dorm room or outside the door, or in an office where you want to break up the monotony and spur a little creativity.

Speaking of creativity, a portion of proceeds will go to the Pratt Institute of Art and Design in New York, as this was the 2008 Umbra/Pratt Institute design competition. Carolina Kim was the winning artist.

It measures 17 inches by 14 3/4 inch. Definitely a conversation piece–literally!

For those of you who read my post on September 11 this year, you’ll remember that I mentioned how after the towers went down, for months afterwards there seemed to be an awful “hole in the sky”. For months, I left the curtains in my window overlooking the World Trade Center closed. The hole was just too painful to stare at every day.

On March 22, 2002, starting at dawn, two brilliant spotlights shone all through the night until dusk, in the footprints of the original World Trade Center. I remember opening my curtains that night and sitting and starting at the beautiful lights, which when seen up close looked uncannily like the beams that once held up the tower. It was one of those moments when art helped in the healing process. At once, the lights were a reminder of what we had lost, but also a beautiful tribute to those who were lost and a beacon of hope for the future.

It’s funny, I’d always assumed that this was a project of New York City government, but in actuality it was independently conceived and designed by a group of several artists and designers under the auspices of the non-profit organizations Municipal Art Society and Creative Time.

Something else that might surprise you is that the future of this tribute is not guaranteed. While originally funded by a grant from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and Con Ed, the future funding of the lights, which cost a lot of money to maintain, is in jeopardy. The MAS is reaching out to the public, asking if they could make a generous donation online or by calling 212-935-3960.

In addition, ArtSpace Marketplace is selling limited editions of photographic prints for only $150. Here’s a sampling of the beautiful prints.

Proceeds of sales from these prints will go to help keep the tribute going. Whether you support the effort through direct donations or by buying the prints, it a worthy cause which should continue at least until new the skyline has finally taken shape, and then even after that as a fitting way to remember what once was.

To my fiance Lisa’s chagrin, I have recently become obsessed with everything having to do with the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs in New York. Lisa lives in Flushing, NY. Before it became a mecca for Asian food and hapless baseball teams (sorry Mets fans), it was the center of the world.

In a way, the World’s Fairs of New York are markers in time for sweeping changes to the culture of the United States. Just think about what the United States looked like prior to and after 1939, and prior to and after 1964.

There are a couple things I’ve learned about the New York World’s Fairs. In the book “The Great Gatsby”, the narrator talks about driving through “ash heaps”–it turns out that was what Parks Commissioner Robert Moses cleared to build the 1939 World’s Fair. Today, we take things like sushi and belgian waffles for granted. But back in 1964, these were exotic food items that no one had seen before. In 1964, there was no Internet, no cell phones, no personal computers, and not even a 10 cent long distance phone call.  So the World’s Fair was the first look many people got at other cultures and new technology.

In many ways, I wish I could go back and experience that time. It was a time of unbridled optimism. If you’ve been to EPCOT Center and Disney World and look at exhibits like It’s a Small World and Carousel of Progress, you probably don’t realize that these animatronic exhibits were first constructed for the 1964 World’s Fair.

Today, when you to go to the site of the old World’s Fairs, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, it’s a beautiful city park. Lisa and I go biking through it, watch the occasional pickup soccer game, and eat empanadas from the carts. There are a few reminders of the glory that was once there: the huge Unisphere in the middle of the park constructed by US Steel back when steel was in its heyday, the abandoned New York State Pavillion whose once-glorious observation towers sit rusty and decrepit. The helipad has been turned into a banquet facility which is closed to the public.

There are two buildings which remained open and maintained. The Hall of Science was one of the first “see and touch” science museums in the world, and is still going strong today.

The other building, the New York State Building, was changed into the Queens Museum of Art. The piece de resistance of the museum is its huge scale model of the five boroughs of New York City, originally built for the World’s Fair and since impeccably preserved. If you’re from the City, it’s fun to walk above and beside the model on the glass floor and look for where you live. If you’re from outside New York, it’s fun to explore the whole city from inside one room.

Other highlights of the museum include great displays of artifacts from the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs. Here, I was like a kid in a candy store. I couldn’t get enough.

Something else the Queens Museum of Art had was a large collection of Tiffany Lamps and Tiffany Glass (something I never knew before was that Louis Comfort Tiffany of Tiffany Glass fame was the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, who started the Tiffany & Co. jewelry shop and use progeny I just gave a lot of my life savings to!)

Okay, now that you’ve heard all my raving and pontificating about the museum, here’s the deal. For a limited time, you can go to Groupon and purchase a $50 membership for only $20. That’s admission for your whole family for one whole year, which means this will just about pay for itself by your first visit (normal admission is $5 for adults and $2.50 for kids). When you consider that you also get four free passes (value of $20) and a 10% discount at the museum, you’ll be making money on the deal! If you’re a fellow enthusiast of the World’s Fairs, the museum shop does have great memorabilia and souvenirs from the World’s Fairs (not from the museum’s collection, these were donated by other collectors). And if that weren’t enough, you can get $10 the purchase of a “deed” to your favorite building in the famous Panorama.

The Groupon Deal lasts only a few days, but if you’re reading this after the deal is over, even a regular priced membership is a great tax-deductible deal which will help a great museum as it expands for the future.

The first day of summer is next Tuesday, and Father’s Day is this coming Sunday. And you know what that means. Picnic season is here!

There’s one thing unfortunate about picnics, and that’s that the styrofoam plates and cups we use once and never use again end up clogging up landfills. The very things that make them so sturdy also make them resistant to biodegrading.

That’s why this picnic basket set from the Santa Monica Art Museum is so neat. It comes in a biodegradable box shaped like a briefcase on one side and a shirt-and-tie on the other side. Inside are 4 Compostable trays, 4 Compostable large bowls, 4 Compostable small bowls, 4 Compostable utensil sets, 4 Compostable cold cups, 8 Recycled napkins, and 1 Compostable trash bag.

The items are sturdy, and yet when you’re all done with them, you can compost them and in no time they’ll return to the soil. Aside from doing your part to save the environment, proceeds of sales will go to help the Art Museum.

Judd Apatow’s humor is certainly not for everyone, but that’s what makes him the perfect editor for I Found This Funny: My Favorite Pieces of Humor and Some That May Not Be Funny At All. In it, he compiles stories from as diverse humorists as Philip Roth, David Sedaris, Steve Martin, Nora Ephron, Jonathan Ames, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Conan O’Brien, Lorrie Moore, Paul Feig, Jonathan Franzen, Alice Munro, and many, many more.

It’s an interesting look into humor. It’s not meant to be a textbook or a deep study into the definition of humor. Instead, it puts together a lot of writing, from poems to short stories to essays, that at one time or another has been considered “funny” and lets you decide.

Proceeds from the book will go to 826 National, a nonprofit tutoring, writing, and publishing organization that promotes creative writing to kids ages 6 to 18.

Kiehl’s ‘KAWS’ Creme de Corps is a body moisturizer formed under a partnership between Kiehl and New York-based artist KAWS.In the U.S., 100% of proceeds from sales of this lotion will go to assist RxArt, a non-profit organization which promotes healing through exposure to original fine art. RxArt brings art programs to pediatric hospitals.Spending time with sick kids and introducing them to beautiful fine art is a wonderful way to boost their morale, inspire them to enjoy the beauty in life amid the difficulty they’re going through, and help the healing process.Creme de Corps is available in three sizes with KAWS’ limited-edition artwork.

Need to send a quick Christmas e-card, and tired of sending and receiving the same free e-card from Hallmark or Blue Mountain for the umpteenth-and-a-half time? Here are some truly unique Christmas e-cards which help a great cause: support for the arts in schools.

It’s no secret that in these tough economic times, often the first casualties within schools are arts programs. Playing an instrument is a wonderful way to teach kids things that can’t be taught in a classroom, things like teamwork and creativity, the value of art, and a feeling of self-esteem and accomplishment.

This is what makes initiatives like Fidelity Futurestage so important. This is a charitable program run by Fidelity which helps bring arts education to underprivileged middle and high school kids. The program funds in-school classes, helps expose the kids to professional artists, theater productions, concert performances, and students’ own performances.

These e-cards are simple holiday cards but what’s neat about them when your recipient opens them, they’ll hear classical music pieces from the Boston Pops, Chicago Symphony, Houston Symphony, LA Philharmonic, or the North Carolina Symphony. Better still, for each card you send, Fidelity will donate $1 to needy schools.

Moses Asch founded Folkways Records in 1948, with a mission to record and document music from around the world. It was an early supporter of artists like Pete Seeger, Leadbelly and Woodie Guthrie, whose music went on to influence nearly every genre of music today, from country music to rock.

 Upon Asch’s death in 1968, the Smithsonian Institution carried on the mission to ensure the sounds and artists would be preserved for future generations. They agreed to continue Asch’s policy that all of the original 2,168 titles would stay in print indefinitely regardless of sales.

Folkways: A Vision Shared – A Tribute to Woody Guthrie & Leadbelly is a tribute album of covers of Woodie Guthrie folk songs by diverse artists who have been influenced by his music, including Bruce Springsteen, U2, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and many more.

Proceeds will go directly towards continuing this great organization’s mission.