The latest episode of the Times’ Modern Love podcast features a reading of “One Bouquet of Fleeting Beauty,” an essay by former florist Alisha Gordon.
A powerful New York Times essay that played up the power of flowers almost two years ago has now been given a second life on a popular podcast.
The latest episode of the Times’ Modern Love podcast features a reading of “One Bouquet of Fleeting Beauty,” an essay by former florist Alisha Gordon that originally ran on November 12, 2015. The actress Kerry Bishé, best known for her role in the AMC series “Halt and Catch Fire” reads the essay on the podcast.
The original essay captured many floral industry members’ hearts and led plenty of social media users to weigh in on the Times’ Facebook page with their own fond flower memories.
“Why do we send flowers?” wonders Gordon in the essay. “To make up for what is intangible? Those feelings we can’t hold in our hands and present as a gift to our loved ones?”
Gordon, who worked at Sammy’s Flowers in Portland, Oregon, for two years, went on to write elegantly about the customers she encountered and the range of human emotions flowers helped them express. (One of the passages that might resonate with your design room or sales team: the sometimes humorous and often poignant card messages customers dictate.)
“I miss the shop!” said Gordon, in a follow-up interview with Ebrief editors at the time. “Hearing from people who’ve read the essay — both people I know and people I don’t know — has been one of my favorite things about this.”
