check it out

My good friend Vaughn just got published in the Atlantic's online magazine, which is completely and totally awesome.  I whooped and holler'd.  You can read his article on a complex Japanese culinary tradition here.

negotiating with the living

If I hadn't been so sick, I might have thought of a question to ask Margaret Atwood when I saw her Tuesday evening at the Herbst (she was appearing as part of the City Arts & Lectures series).  As it was, I put on a nice dress and drug myself to the theatre.  She is sixty-nine years old.  Who knows when I'll get a chance to see her again.

Besides, she sang.

Apparently she wrote some hymns for her new book, The Year of the Flood.  Pre-publication, the book was lying around the home of her L.A. agent, whose partner, Orville Stoeber, a professional musician and composer, picked it up and started writing music for the lyrics.  Now it's been performed all over the England and Canada, and the U.S. is next.  Atwood claimed that this was the only tour stop she was going to sing at.

Some highlights from the evening which I hastily scribbled down:

 "Teachers sometimes pose the unfortunate question 'What was poet trying to say?' as if he had some kind of terrible speech impediment...he really wanted to say 'I love you so much' or 'War is terrible' or 'Death is scary and I don't want to do it' but instead he stuffed it into 14 lines of ABAB..."

after a long discussion of why she thinks it's important for characters to have different, distinct voices, referencing Faulkner and Blake

"I also like to have characters with different colors of hair."

In response to the question, "Was your most recent book written for a specific audience, and if so, who?"

"...Readers are readers.  They have a republic of their own.  So I write for readers.  I think they're very good people to write for."

She was wryly hilarious throughout.  As I walked into the lobby, she was ushered right past me.  She is very short.  I didn't join the long line of people waiting to get their books autographed; I remembered an article I read years ago in the New Yorker in which she complained about how tiring it was to autograph books.  Supposedly she invented a gadget which would enable her to autograph books long distance.  It was not in evidence.

in the choir, listening to the sermon

A few weeks ago, I got a free ticket (thanks to this lady) to go see "What's the Economy For, Anyway?" at the Commonwealth Club.  Annie Leonard stole the show.  She's got a fantastic voice and is a damn compelling speaker.  Fox news was no doubt delighted to quote someone who called her her Karl Marx with a ponytail.  I actually think she's much more likable in person than in her very popular video, which I can't help but finding more than a tad condescending and, well, kind of sensationalist.  So it goes, I guess.  The evening I saw her, she initiated a bizarre revival of the obsolete meaning of "disease" (synonymous with "unease").  It seemed unconscious and so it was interesting to watch her co-panelists Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man, and David Batker echo it.  I came prepared to dislike Beavan, largely on the basis of this Slate.com review of a documentary about him.  He got in one good line, though: "People like to deny that there's a problem if they can find no solution that they can take part in."   Ultimately, it was a really interesting evening where everyone in the audience nodded wisely and we all agreed with each other.  Excellent reception afterwards.  File under: things I love/hate about San Francisco.

facebook and the 24-hour public confessional

Of course, the idea of a confessional was that sins were shameful and had be spoken of in whispers, absolved in private. Now, of course, we want everyone to know how wild, depraved, in love, in despair we are. The confessional has imploded and we all scream, not for forgiveness, but for envy, admiration, attention. I am so hip, insane, fickle, shallow, lookatme! we cry into our megaphones, tattoo on our bodies, on buildings. Re-reading Milan Kundera's Immortality:

"Individualism? What does it have to do with individualism...On the contrary, it means that the individual no longer belongs to himself but becomes the property of others. You know, I remember my childhood: in those days if you wanted to take somebody's picture you asked for permission. Even when I was a child, adults would ask me: little girl, may I take your picture? And then one day they stopped asking. The right of the camera was elevated above all other rights, and that changed everything, absolutely everything."

Of course, that was written in 1990.

stuff I've been eating

Here are some culinary projects and experiences, working from least to most recent.

I did this:

while making this:

Which, in case you are wondering, is a leek & Gruyère potato gratin (my mother's recipe) that I took to Arlene's Hotluck. Worth it.

Meanwhile, here's a snapshot from a week or two ago in the kitchen:
Sadly, this does not even begin to do justice to the marvel and bounty of that Sunday morning. This was the scrambled egg preparation table. Meanwhile, I roasted summer squash zucchini in the oven to make bruschetta, and Alyssa and Coleen pitted and skinned peaches for a pie.

In the final frame, starting at 12 o'clock: beets with brown sugar and ginger by John, mashed winter squash and sweet potatoes by Annabel, couscous with beet juice by John, bok choy stir fry by Kristin. Not pictured: nectarine and white peach cobbler by Tim. Possibly the most colorful meal I have ever eaten. Also: delicious. What did I make? Nothing. I'm sickly. I sat in the corner, drank lots of black tea with red current, and took pictures.

Amerikanisch Oktoberfest

is in October, because that is comprehensible to USAmericans. A festival called "Oktoberfest" which takes place from mid- to late-September only prompts head scratching and skepticism. And so it is that Shroeder's, an otherwise rather legitimate-seeming German restaurant and bar in the Financial District, hosted one of its several Weis'n celebrations this past Friday. Allow me to be entirely clear:

this party : Munich's Oktoberfest

my 8th birthday party : Tiberius on Capri

(okay, it's not me, but you get the idea)

uh-huh

For the record, I had a lot of fun when I turned 8. I had a piñata and ate a lot of cake and got nice presents. Even so.

I really enjoyed this Oktoberfest, though. I got to drink some good German beer and my very cool housemate John was seconds away from winning a drinking contest. I took my dirndl out for the first time, and it worked exactly like a dirndl should: quick service at the bar and plenty of attention all round. I even got whirled around the floor by a member of the Golden Gate Bavarian Club who knew what he was doing. I didn't, but this is one of those rare instances where it's so blessedly easy to be female: smile, stay on your toes, and just keep moving.

last Wednesday: a variety show

6:15am - Alarm goes off. Climb down from my bed, hit snooze, climb back up.

6:30am - Alarm goes off. Get up.

6:30-7:45 - stretching, yawning, shower, humming, coffee, opening eyes, granola

7:45-7:55 - bike to Mission High School

8:00-9:50 - tutor freshmen on oral history narratives for their ethnic studies class

10:00-1:20 - work work work, put add on craigslist for extra theatre ticket, filter candidates, choose one contact, give ticket

1:20-1:35 - bike to Golden Gate Theatre

1:35-1:45 - eat ham & cheese croissant, aka lunch

2:00-5:00 - watch South Pacific with my a free ticket. As I'm leaving a man tells me "You know, I saw the original." "On Broadway?" I ask. "Yup, that was back in 1949." I was one of the few non-grey- or white-haired people in the audience. But then, who else goes to a Wednesday matinée of anything, especially Rodgers and Hammerstein?

5:00-6:00 - grocery shopping

6:00-6:20 - dinner

6:20-8:00 - baking cupcakes for cool-housemate-Kristin's birthday, singing, dancing, candles

While we're on the subject, the playbill for South Pacific, which has rather heavy echoes of Gaughin, doesn't include any facial details for the native women. Really? They aren't minimized enough in the musical by the pigeon English of one and the attractive, smiling silence of the other? Do designers not study these things? Or do they just not pay attention?