Oh.My.God. Have I mentioned that I am oh so, so very well-acquainted with that state called denial? And that, every once in awhile, against my better judgment, I elect to do a little reality check?
Feeling a twinge of guilt over my Scrooge-like mood, I visited my mother's basement this morning to pick up my little holiday ornaments and faux tree/ornament displayer. And while I was there I thought, what harm can come from visiting my little ole yarn stash?
Let me repeat, with emphasis: Oh.My.God. I am kicking, KICKING myself for bringing home a new Rowan knitting project last Saturday. Going mad with all my UFOs on size 3 needles, I decided I needed a simple, fast, beautiful project on larger needles. No harm, no foul, I thought. It'll be done in a flash, and then I'll be able to return to all those guilt-makers refreshed, rejuvenated. All logical, and pragmatic, as long as you were residing deep, deep, deep in that lovely state of denial.
I'm not even going to explain how horrifyingly monumental it was. I'll just give you the gist of it. If I am fortunate enough to live another 30 years, arthritis-free, I'll make serious headway on the stash. As long as I NEVER AGAIN succumb to temptation and bring home another skein, ball or cone of yarn. No matter how luscious the feel or stupendous the color, I must resist. Or have a truly serious yarn sale.
Now, I'm sure many of you are out there saying -- yes, yes, sell it, give it away, get rid of it!! But you inveterate fiber freaks know just what an unbearable test that would be. The yarn I was all set to give away at the shop's Super Bowl yarn exchange suddenly sang to me as I uncovered it. What was I thinking giving away a beautiful silk/alpaca blend when there were sweaters and scarves and hats to be made?
The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, yes? Alright, I own it -- you can call me yarn 'ho.
Yarn 'ho, yarn 'ho, yarn 'ho.
But I won't give up that hoard of sock yarn I tucked away a few years ago and unearthed today. Because, from here on out, the only thing I'll be buying are more sock needles. The occasional tape measure. Buttons for completed projects. But no more yarn. Not Rowan yarn that's getting discontinued. Not Jitterbug. Not Socks that Rock yarn. Not the new Noro sock yarn that Bananie showed me over udon Wednesday night... Really. I can beat this thing.
(Pop over to the loop website to check out the new Noro).
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Saturday, December 1, 2007
A Quiet Day in Berkeley
In November of 1983, Big Game was held at Stanford. As a result, my BFF from college, Becky, and I decided to journey from San Francisco over to Berkeley. And we had a perfect day. It was quiet and peaceful on Telegraph (well, as quiet and peaceful as Telegraph ever is) and we moseyed up the Avenue, browsing languorously in the bookstores. Neither of us made a lot of money at the time, but we were voracious readers who haunted the used section of Browser Books on upper Fillmore. I remember the wealth of temptations on the mezzanine of Moe's, with its discounted art books and extensive used fiction section. I could see where every English graduate student had sold their texts and volumes of literary criticism once a course was completed. We lingered in Cody's, where Becky found translations and treasures in the East Asian studies section; and I lusted after all the imported British editions of fiction, with their yellow, Virago green and Penguin orange spines, marked up to $7 or $8 when they only cost 95p or 1-2 pounds in England. We must have eaten somewhere and most likely poked through the bins at Tower Records. We were back in the City by late afternoon, before the hordes of Cal supporters returned, pleased with ourselves and our simple, yet lovely, day.
Today is another Big Game Saturday, again to be played at Stanford, and as I run my errands around town I can't tell if it's more or less crowded than any other away game Saturday. Probably because I am not near campus, and live here rather than visit; possibly because I'm older and less attuned to the presence of students. Still I remember that Saturday as one of my best days ever. The sense of freedom and adventure, the pleasure of paging through more books than I could ever discover or possess, being with someone who knew me better, perhaps, than anyone else.
I don't remember who won Big Game that year, but this year's result was a notable and welcome surprise. Stanford 20, Cal 13, and the Axe returns to the Farm after a lengthy absence. A team with a lackluster win-loss record, but with wins over USC and Cal -- that's a redeeming season without a doubt. I may even wander about town in my Stanford sweatshirt...
Today is another Big Game Saturday, again to be played at Stanford, and as I run my errands around town I can't tell if it's more or less crowded than any other away game Saturday. Probably because I am not near campus, and live here rather than visit; possibly because I'm older and less attuned to the presence of students. Still I remember that Saturday as one of my best days ever. The sense of freedom and adventure, the pleasure of paging through more books than I could ever discover or possess, being with someone who knew me better, perhaps, than anyone else.
I don't remember who won Big Game that year, but this year's result was a notable and welcome surprise. Stanford 20, Cal 13, and the Axe returns to the Farm after a lengthy absence. A team with a lackluster win-loss record, but with wins over USC and Cal -- that's a redeeming season without a doubt. I may even wander about town in my Stanford sweatshirt...
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Keys
The BFF's younger son has asked me for a copy of my house key. He is entranced by the idea of a key ring with his own keys on it. When I pointed out that there was already a key ring on a shelf in the kitchen, he informed me scornfully that was a key chain and he wanted a key ring. His plan is to collect some keys and then get a lanyard to hold them. This is a boy who loves to make a lanyard. We spend time every summer, shortly after the end of camp, starting them and he usually finishes his. I confess I show my age because I can make the body of the lanyard, but I always need help starting and ending it.
I keep a spare set of my house keys at the BFF's house, the master key to the front and back doors. They're at my house at the moment, which isn't very practical. But I've been meaning to make extra keys from the master set and haven't gotten around to it yet. Both the boys follow where my keys are pretty closely. They like to know that mine are in the box with all the other spare keys (i.e. car keys) that belong with their family.
I have three sets of keys. One has my car key, the keys to my house and an absolutely random key that is probably for an office I worked in and never returned when I moved on. This is my "light" key chain which I keep because I read an article somewhere that said it was good to keep only a few keys along with the key that you use for the ignition. Probably an urban legend, but one so embedded in my brain now I regard it as fact.
The other set of keys has all the additional, crucial keys. The key to the BFF's house, to the shop, to my mother's house, to my bed away from home on the Peninsula, and a spare car key. This key chain has a leather fob where you can store spare change, which is critical for feeding meters in San Francisco and Berkeley. Parking is more difficult than ever in San Francisco, and I'm positive that tickets for expired meters are a huge line item in the City's budget. Those meter people have become much more aggressive in the past decade or so, and I speak from the personal experience of paying many expired meter tickets. But it wasn't until I moved to Berkeley that I was told, "Don't you know there's no free parking in Berkeley?" Yee-ikes, I won't be pressing my luck in either urban jungle any time soon.
I keep change for meters in a separate coin purse, because said younger son of BFF spent much of his toddlerhood taking change out of the leather fob and trying to stick it up his nose or in his mouth. He's still the daredevil, so I'm not taking any chances.
The last set of keys I have are my father's keys, which makes them seventeen years old and most likely useless. I can't tell you where they are precisely, but I know what's on the key chain. The job keys to the 49th Street building he worked in, as well as the master key that unlocked the doors from the fifth through the ninth floor. There was a key to his individual office, which alternated between the sixth and the seventh floor. The house keys to his home mailbox and the key to the outside door of his apartment complex, which was quite valuable just after he died. The management company tracked those keys ferociously and no locksmith would make a copy of it. So his friends who lived in the building each asked me for the key, but I just couldn't give it away. Pragmatically, they asked what I was going to do with it once I'd cleared out the apartment, and I had no good answer other than I couldn't bear to part with it. I knew I'd probably never return to the building, but on the outside chance I did, I'd want to have access to the lobby -- where the mailboxes were, with the blond wood benches where you could wait for the elevators idly to wind their way down, and the distinctive blend of fabric softener, bleach and detergent from the laundry room just off the lobby.
But mainly, I wanted access to the third floor so I could turn right from the elevator and go along the cement walkway to apartment 3 CC. My dad had lived in this duplex for eleven years, with its view of Harlem River Drive and Yankee stadium. He'd thrown numerous parties, and brined and barbecued turkeys at the holidays. He revelled in showing off his barbecue skills, aided by the smoker, the grill, and the barbecue sauce recipe which was handed down solely through the men in the family. I loved the view from that small terrace, marveling at the river and the way you got a weather report right when you stepped outside.
The keys to the intricate lock system were also on the key chain, though one was missing since I'd broken it off in the lock and my dad never got around to fixing it. I remember how I'd struggle to master the order and direction the keys were worked every visit. I'd get so frustrated, coming from my lackadaisical, suburban Southern California upbringing where you had only one house key, that turned only one way, because that was all we needed by way of protection. All my friends were also latchkey kids and I don't know how many keys we lost over the years, causing our parents to make new copies for us. I don't remember anyone ever changing the locks.
The last key went to the Lincoln Continental my father started driving the previous year when he became Vice President of his Local. He'd loved the Audi sedan he'd owned before the labor union election and I knew he didn't really want to give it up. But, he explained, an American car symbolized his solidarity with his brethren and it was especially important for the officers to set that example for the membership.
The car is gone. Someone else lives in that amazing apartment with its teeny terrace patch of AstroTurf and two wrought iron chairs. A tenant, more current than my father, unlocks the mailbox and sorts their mail while waiting for the elevator. (Does it sound like the elevators were slow? They were -- in part, because there were only two of them for a building with approximately twenty floors.) I've heard Local 144 is gone, integrated into Local 1066, a more powerful and flashy union. My father is gone. And as one of my empathetic friends said to me, that's so awful, because along with losing your father, your relationship to that New York is gone.
So, I keep keys to the past. The BFF's younger is eager for his keys in the present. And the niecelet, the local one -- she has her own ambivalent struggle with the key to her father's house. Sometimes she has it with her, more frequently it's in the pocket of the jeans that are at her mother's house or in some other place that is not on her person. We all hound her about whether she has it or not, which makes her very grumpy. I think she's straddling -- caught between not needing to carry her own keys because she has a parent with her who takes care of that, and on the brink of having her own life where she will have to be responsible for her comings and goings.
Keys. They unlock so much.
I keep a spare set of my house keys at the BFF's house, the master key to the front and back doors. They're at my house at the moment, which isn't very practical. But I've been meaning to make extra keys from the master set and haven't gotten around to it yet. Both the boys follow where my keys are pretty closely. They like to know that mine are in the box with all the other spare keys (i.e. car keys) that belong with their family.
I have three sets of keys. One has my car key, the keys to my house and an absolutely random key that is probably for an office I worked in and never returned when I moved on. This is my "light" key chain which I keep because I read an article somewhere that said it was good to keep only a few keys along with the key that you use for the ignition. Probably an urban legend, but one so embedded in my brain now I regard it as fact.
The other set of keys has all the additional, crucial keys. The key to the BFF's house, to the shop, to my mother's house, to my bed away from home on the Peninsula, and a spare car key. This key chain has a leather fob where you can store spare change, which is critical for feeding meters in San Francisco and Berkeley. Parking is more difficult than ever in San Francisco, and I'm positive that tickets for expired meters are a huge line item in the City's budget. Those meter people have become much more aggressive in the past decade or so, and I speak from the personal experience of paying many expired meter tickets. But it wasn't until I moved to Berkeley that I was told, "Don't you know there's no free parking in Berkeley?" Yee-ikes, I won't be pressing my luck in either urban jungle any time soon.
I keep change for meters in a separate coin purse, because said younger son of BFF spent much of his toddlerhood taking change out of the leather fob and trying to stick it up his nose or in his mouth. He's still the daredevil, so I'm not taking any chances.
The last set of keys I have are my father's keys, which makes them seventeen years old and most likely useless. I can't tell you where they are precisely, but I know what's on the key chain. The job keys to the 49th Street building he worked in, as well as the master key that unlocked the doors from the fifth through the ninth floor. There was a key to his individual office, which alternated between the sixth and the seventh floor. The house keys to his home mailbox and the key to the outside door of his apartment complex, which was quite valuable just after he died. The management company tracked those keys ferociously and no locksmith would make a copy of it. So his friends who lived in the building each asked me for the key, but I just couldn't give it away. Pragmatically, they asked what I was going to do with it once I'd cleared out the apartment, and I had no good answer other than I couldn't bear to part with it. I knew I'd probably never return to the building, but on the outside chance I did, I'd want to have access to the lobby -- where the mailboxes were, with the blond wood benches where you could wait for the elevators idly to wind their way down, and the distinctive blend of fabric softener, bleach and detergent from the laundry room just off the lobby.
But mainly, I wanted access to the third floor so I could turn right from the elevator and go along the cement walkway to apartment 3 CC. My dad had lived in this duplex for eleven years, with its view of Harlem River Drive and Yankee stadium. He'd thrown numerous parties, and brined and barbecued turkeys at the holidays. He revelled in showing off his barbecue skills, aided by the smoker, the grill, and the barbecue sauce recipe which was handed down solely through the men in the family. I loved the view from that small terrace, marveling at the river and the way you got a weather report right when you stepped outside.
The keys to the intricate lock system were also on the key chain, though one was missing since I'd broken it off in the lock and my dad never got around to fixing it. I remember how I'd struggle to master the order and direction the keys were worked every visit. I'd get so frustrated, coming from my lackadaisical, suburban Southern California upbringing where you had only one house key, that turned only one way, because that was all we needed by way of protection. All my friends were also latchkey kids and I don't know how many keys we lost over the years, causing our parents to make new copies for us. I don't remember anyone ever changing the locks.
The last key went to the Lincoln Continental my father started driving the previous year when he became Vice President of his Local. He'd loved the Audi sedan he'd owned before the labor union election and I knew he didn't really want to give it up. But, he explained, an American car symbolized his solidarity with his brethren and it was especially important for the officers to set that example for the membership.
The car is gone. Someone else lives in that amazing apartment with its teeny terrace patch of AstroTurf and two wrought iron chairs. A tenant, more current than my father, unlocks the mailbox and sorts their mail while waiting for the elevator. (Does it sound like the elevators were slow? They were -- in part, because there were only two of them for a building with approximately twenty floors.) I've heard Local 144 is gone, integrated into Local 1066, a more powerful and flashy union. My father is gone. And as one of my empathetic friends said to me, that's so awful, because along with losing your father, your relationship to that New York is gone.
So, I keep keys to the past. The BFF's younger is eager for his keys in the present. And the niecelet, the local one -- she has her own ambivalent struggle with the key to her father's house. Sometimes she has it with her, more frequently it's in the pocket of the jeans that are at her mother's house or in some other place that is not on her person. We all hound her about whether she has it or not, which makes her very grumpy. I think she's straddling -- caught between not needing to carry her own keys because she has a parent with her who takes care of that, and on the brink of having her own life where she will have to be responsible for her comings and goings.
Keys. They unlock so much.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Late Nights
It is a universal truth that children really, really want to stay up past their bedtime. The BFF's boys have a longstanding 8 pm bedtime, and they will try any half-assed reason to stay up. The same excuses they have trotted out for oh, six to eight years. Sporting events are a guaranteed tussle, with promises about brushing their teeth during the commercials if they can please, please, please watch one more inning. Tonight, it was all about the Charlie Brown Halloween Special. Which was a clear no-go, because it started at 8:00 and lasted a full hour.
Truth be told, my heart goes out to them with every round of begging. I haven't told them yet that one of the best things about being a grown-up is you get to decide when you go to bed. And you can put yourself to bed, but still keep the light on while you read, or do the crossword puzzle, or eat bon-bons. I figure there's no use in sharing that information now, because there will be many more years of bedtime tussles and then a whole lot of curfew debates. Why tell them about something that they won't get to enjoy for another eight years?
The local niecelet, on the other hand, has become quite the night owl. She's been known to call me after 10 pm on a school night, which I judge as rather permissive. Sometimes she stays up and reads, but I suspect she's mostly on her laptop or listening to her iPod, and on those nights she's probably up until midnight. I think she is one of those cases that was born a late night lover, and the pre-adolescent changes in chemistry have just unleashed a characteristic she came in with. I speak with some authority on this matter, as a longtime late night lover myself. I don't know why everything seems so much better or more interesting when it takes place at night. And I don't necessarily mean late night parties or special events -- I mean Charlie Rose and his guests, or the latest issue of the New Yorker, or the way a book really gets to me after 1 AM. For years, (okay in my 20's) when I sporadically kept a journal, I wouldn't start writing before 10:30. And now that there are DVD's with multiple episodes on them, I usually finish watching between 1:30 and 2. (Tonight was Disk 1, Season 6, Part 2 of the Sopranos, but I was done by 11. Only two episodes.)
All of this is by way of explaining why this Sunday is my favorite day of the year. The day when the clock falls back an hour, and you get an extra hour of sleep or gardening or reading or whatever you want to do. The BFF makes fun of me every year by telling me that the whole daylight savings thing is make-believe, but I don't care. I like gaining an hour every fall and hate losing it in the spring.
Last year at this time, I had a great late night routine that revolved around a radio show called Open Source. It's the only good thing that's come out of Boston in a long, long time, according to my rigorous standards. It was broadcast on KQED-FM at 1 AM, so I could read for awhile and then tune in, or listen to News and Notes which came on at midnight. Open Source was (and still is) a fantastic show that focuses on one topic for the whole hour, and always has intelligent, eclectic and savvy guests. Their funding looked secure in the late spring when they received a grant from the MacArthur Foundation. But in one of those moves that shows just how tenuous producing any intellectual or artistic project is, another one of their funders dropped out and they went "on hiatus" in July. Still, you must, must, must check out their website and see what they've been programming. They really are a treasure, and challenge you to think, a quality that's all too rare in many of today's "news" sources. And they have podcasts -- sample the one with Edwidge Danticat, and you'll see why I'm raving...
Off to bed now, but not to sleep. I have a very good shot at completing the NY Times crossword puzzle since it's only Tuesday!
Truth be told, my heart goes out to them with every round of begging. I haven't told them yet that one of the best things about being a grown-up is you get to decide when you go to bed. And you can put yourself to bed, but still keep the light on while you read, or do the crossword puzzle, or eat bon-bons. I figure there's no use in sharing that information now, because there will be many more years of bedtime tussles and then a whole lot of curfew debates. Why tell them about something that they won't get to enjoy for another eight years?
The local niecelet, on the other hand, has become quite the night owl. She's been known to call me after 10 pm on a school night, which I judge as rather permissive. Sometimes she stays up and reads, but I suspect she's mostly on her laptop or listening to her iPod, and on those nights she's probably up until midnight. I think she is one of those cases that was born a late night lover, and the pre-adolescent changes in chemistry have just unleashed a characteristic she came in with. I speak with some authority on this matter, as a longtime late night lover myself. I don't know why everything seems so much better or more interesting when it takes place at night. And I don't necessarily mean late night parties or special events -- I mean Charlie Rose and his guests, or the latest issue of the New Yorker, or the way a book really gets to me after 1 AM. For years, (okay in my 20's) when I sporadically kept a journal, I wouldn't start writing before 10:30. And now that there are DVD's with multiple episodes on them, I usually finish watching between 1:30 and 2. (Tonight was Disk 1, Season 6, Part 2 of the Sopranos, but I was done by 11. Only two episodes.)
All of this is by way of explaining why this Sunday is my favorite day of the year. The day when the clock falls back an hour, and you get an extra hour of sleep or gardening or reading or whatever you want to do. The BFF makes fun of me every year by telling me that the whole daylight savings thing is make-believe, but I don't care. I like gaining an hour every fall and hate losing it in the spring.
Last year at this time, I had a great late night routine that revolved around a radio show called Open Source. It's the only good thing that's come out of Boston in a long, long time, according to my rigorous standards. It was broadcast on KQED-FM at 1 AM, so I could read for awhile and then tune in, or listen to News and Notes which came on at midnight. Open Source was (and still is) a fantastic show that focuses on one topic for the whole hour, and always has intelligent, eclectic and savvy guests. Their funding looked secure in the late spring when they received a grant from the MacArthur Foundation. But in one of those moves that shows just how tenuous producing any intellectual or artistic project is, another one of their funders dropped out and they went "on hiatus" in July. Still, you must, must, must check out their website and see what they've been programming. They really are a treasure, and challenge you to think, a quality that's all too rare in many of today's "news" sources. And they have podcasts -- sample the one with Edwidge Danticat, and you'll see why I'm raving...
Off to bed now, but not to sleep. I have a very good shot at completing the NY Times crossword puzzle since it's only Tuesday!
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Birthday wishes
Well the Red Sox just won the World Series, so that one didn't come true either. Hate the Red Sox. Hate the Celtics. Not that crazy about Boston in general. Hope they don't take up the mantle of "team of the decade" or "America's team." That would be just.too.much.
Yes, I had a birthday this week, and I'm of an age where that isn't necessarily good news. Even though everyone quips, "Well, consider the alternative!" Ha freaking ha. For instance, I have only one year left in an age bracket (designed by media consultants and insurance companies) that I never felt applied to me. Now I'm headed into an even more improbable one. By your late 40's, birthdays become slightly taunting -- another year when I didn't publish a novel, swim laps every day, or read all the books I've checked out from the library. And you aren't as likely get the great, extravagant gifts either. Though I am looking forward to my upcoming visit to the Caviar Bar at the Ferry Building. And I did love my birthday cake from Satura, and celebrating with the dear friends that make up my book group.
Also, on the up side, there are still things to learn, new areas of expertise to develop. The ever-expanding world of the Internet for one. Just when you start to become a little bored with it and think you've discovered all it has to offer, you stumble across a new site that captures your fancy. Or changes your life. I found the latter, and I'm not exaggerating. Some one(s) have created a comprehensive knitting site that anticipates and fulfills your every knitting need. It's called ravelry.com and it's still in beta form, so you add your name to the list and in a few weeks (or several; okay, somewhere between 4-10) they contact you and give you access to the site. Which is so incredibly amazing. I have been a knitter for a long time, decades even, and I have yet to find or create a system to track all my knitting paraphernalia and projects. Which, it turns out, has been a good thing that's allowed me to live in denial about all the knitting stuff I have accumulated over said decades. But, the geniuses at ravelry have created a flexible, interactive system to catalog all my current projects, my unfinished projects, my projects that have yet to come to fruition, and all of the yarn I have purchased here and there over the years. And let me tell you, that is a shocking, shocking amount of yarn. I haven't even entered it all yet, and I am convinced (in this one discrete area) my mother is right -- I really do have too much yarn. It's a common joke among knitters that whoever dies with the most yarn wins, but I now have to face the fact that I actually possess more yarn than I can knit in this lifetime. And take steps to decrease that stash. Because ravelry has a category called the queue (so British, so adorable) where you list your fantasy future projects. (Do they know knitters or what?) And despite all the yarn I already own, I confess I've made entries in my queue. Therefore, I have to get rid of some old yarn and abandoned projects to let in the new. Which is having a very relieving (and revealing) effect. There are abandoned baby sweaters that will either be frogged or finished and donated, whichever option is most conducive to shrinking the stash. And yes, they have a category for frogged projects! and hibernating projects! They're geniuses, I tell you, geniuses. I'm inspired to tackle my other primary weakness -- too many books. And maybe, CD's that I don't listen to so much. You can see where I'm going with this.
Here's an example of another area of expertise I'm developing. I have a riddle for all you fans of The Wire. Two actors from Seasons One and Two attended Harvard. Who are they? The great news about the Wire is that the fifth (I refuse to believe final, even though that's what the creators say) season is set to air in January 2008. And, the Season Four DVD set will be available in early December, according to Amazon and Netflix. Let me just mention how disappointed I was not to have received a pre-order on this magnificent show as a birthday present. Ahem, ahem, I guess I'll just have to put it at the top of my Christmas list. Local niecelet, spread the word.
As a lead-in to the delivery date, I will be sharing with you some of the classic, memorable lines from Seasons 1-3 of the Wire, sayings that I frequently apply to appropriate moments in my own daily life. Expect some of the wisdom of Omar, Bunk Moreland and Bodie from the Barksdale crew. Just a little touch of BalMer reaching out to the Bay Area.
I know a bunch of people -- friends and relations -- that have October and November birthdays. Since we are roughly in the same age bracket, I'm assuming that Valentine's Day used to be celebrated in style... And a happy happy to you all!
Yes, I had a birthday this week, and I'm of an age where that isn't necessarily good news. Even though everyone quips, "Well, consider the alternative!" Ha freaking ha. For instance, I have only one year left in an age bracket (designed by media consultants and insurance companies) that I never felt applied to me. Now I'm headed into an even more improbable one. By your late 40's, birthdays become slightly taunting -- another year when I didn't publish a novel, swim laps every day, or read all the books I've checked out from the library. And you aren't as likely get the great, extravagant gifts either. Though I am looking forward to my upcoming visit to the Caviar Bar at the Ferry Building. And I did love my birthday cake from Satura, and celebrating with the dear friends that make up my book group.
Also, on the up side, there are still things to learn, new areas of expertise to develop. The ever-expanding world of the Internet for one. Just when you start to become a little bored with it and think you've discovered all it has to offer, you stumble across a new site that captures your fancy. Or changes your life. I found the latter, and I'm not exaggerating. Some one(s) have created a comprehensive knitting site that anticipates and fulfills your every knitting need. It's called ravelry.com and it's still in beta form, so you add your name to the list and in a few weeks (or several; okay, somewhere between 4-10) they contact you and give you access to the site. Which is so incredibly amazing. I have been a knitter for a long time, decades even, and I have yet to find or create a system to track all my knitting paraphernalia and projects. Which, it turns out, has been a good thing that's allowed me to live in denial about all the knitting stuff I have accumulated over said decades. But, the geniuses at ravelry have created a flexible, interactive system to catalog all my current projects, my unfinished projects, my projects that have yet to come to fruition, and all of the yarn I have purchased here and there over the years. And let me tell you, that is a shocking, shocking amount of yarn. I haven't even entered it all yet, and I am convinced (in this one discrete area) my mother is right -- I really do have too much yarn. It's a common joke among knitters that whoever dies with the most yarn wins, but I now have to face the fact that I actually possess more yarn than I can knit in this lifetime. And take steps to decrease that stash. Because ravelry has a category called the queue (so British, so adorable) where you list your fantasy future projects. (Do they know knitters or what?) And despite all the yarn I already own, I confess I've made entries in my queue. Therefore, I have to get rid of some old yarn and abandoned projects to let in the new. Which is having a very relieving (and revealing) effect. There are abandoned baby sweaters that will either be frogged or finished and donated, whichever option is most conducive to shrinking the stash. And yes, they have a category for frogged projects! and hibernating projects! They're geniuses, I tell you, geniuses. I'm inspired to tackle my other primary weakness -- too many books. And maybe, CD's that I don't listen to so much. You can see where I'm going with this.
Here's an example of another area of expertise I'm developing. I have a riddle for all you fans of The Wire. Two actors from Seasons One and Two attended Harvard. Who are they? The great news about the Wire is that the fifth (I refuse to believe final, even though that's what the creators say) season is set to air in January 2008. And, the Season Four DVD set will be available in early December, according to Amazon and Netflix. Let me just mention how disappointed I was not to have received a pre-order on this magnificent show as a birthday present. Ahem, ahem, I guess I'll just have to put it at the top of my Christmas list. Local niecelet, spread the word.
As a lead-in to the delivery date, I will be sharing with you some of the classic, memorable lines from Seasons 1-3 of the Wire, sayings that I frequently apply to appropriate moments in my own daily life. Expect some of the wisdom of Omar, Bunk Moreland and Bodie from the Barksdale crew. Just a little touch of BalMer reaching out to the Bay Area.
I know a bunch of people -- friends and relations -- that have October and November birthdays. Since we are roughly in the same age bracket, I'm assuming that Valentine's Day used to be celebrated in style... And a happy happy to you all!
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Inert and inept
Do you remember the movie, Private Benjamin? It came out in 1980 and starred Goldie Hawn. There's a lame joke in it that still makes me laugh. The ragtag group of women soldiers are about to participate in war games, and are being given instructions by an intimidating, higher-ranking officer. Sgt. Ross, played by Hal Williams, is describing the terrain and says "Some of these landmines are inert. Those that aren't are (beat, beat) ert."
I want to be ept.
I am having a crisis of confidence. Can't read, can't write, can't make my computer do what it's supposed to, and I seem to have lost my knitting mojo. Which, given the amount of yarn I have stashed at my house, my BFF's house, and my mother's house, could be a big damned problem.
I just returned from a jaunt with lots of other knitters and at first, I thought it was a result of being around so many talented craftswomen. At best, I'm a knitting technician rather than a creative force or an expert, so it's easy to be intimidated by the skills of my confreres. But when I got home, I noticed unfinished projects that I'd given up on because I was stuck. And the project I'd planned to start on the trip had frustrated me completely, because I couldn't get the gauge swatch to work and the pattern I knitted looked nothing like the stitch on the sweater in the picture. And my latest obsession, socks, did nothing to soothe me. I couldn't increase to the correct number of stitches on a new pattern I'd been looking forward to trying, and I'd turned the heel way too early on my second sock in the beautiful Kaffe Fassett yarn. Which meant I had to rip it out and do it again. Wouldn't that make you question your mojo?
So, how to snap out of the funk? By starting a new project, of course. An achievable project for the shop, made out of one ball of yarn. One ball of yarn that knits up like buttah (Rowan Cashsoft Baby DK), especially on the ebony needles I'm using. I plan to use the whole ball on one stitch pattern, creating a long gauge swatch so customers can see how much yarn 142 yards really is.
Oh, and Sheridan Hay's, The Secret of Lost Things, seems to have broken my reading slump. I had a very satisfying reading session, snuggled up in bed late last night. The light went off around 1:30 and I didn't fall asleep over the book!
In retrospect, I wonder how much of my slump was due to coffee deprivation. The house blends I sampled in New Mexico sucked, and a latte from the Linden St. outpost of blue bottle coffee co. straightened me right up. To find out more about this nectar, check out their website bluebottlecoffee.net. This elixir makes me purr with pleasure. Every morning. Really.
But I still need a Mac guru...
Okay, okay and a shout out to IMDb (imdb.com) for that Private Benjamin info. My memory's not that good!
I want to be ept.
I am having a crisis of confidence. Can't read, can't write, can't make my computer do what it's supposed to, and I seem to have lost my knitting mojo. Which, given the amount of yarn I have stashed at my house, my BFF's house, and my mother's house, could be a big damned problem.
I just returned from a jaunt with lots of other knitters and at first, I thought it was a result of being around so many talented craftswomen. At best, I'm a knitting technician rather than a creative force or an expert, so it's easy to be intimidated by the skills of my confreres. But when I got home, I noticed unfinished projects that I'd given up on because I was stuck. And the project I'd planned to start on the trip had frustrated me completely, because I couldn't get the gauge swatch to work and the pattern I knitted looked nothing like the stitch on the sweater in the picture. And my latest obsession, socks, did nothing to soothe me. I couldn't increase to the correct number of stitches on a new pattern I'd been looking forward to trying, and I'd turned the heel way too early on my second sock in the beautiful Kaffe Fassett yarn. Which meant I had to rip it out and do it again. Wouldn't that make you question your mojo?
So, how to snap out of the funk? By starting a new project, of course. An achievable project for the shop, made out of one ball of yarn. One ball of yarn that knits up like buttah (Rowan Cashsoft Baby DK), especially on the ebony needles I'm using. I plan to use the whole ball on one stitch pattern, creating a long gauge swatch so customers can see how much yarn 142 yards really is.
Oh, and Sheridan Hay's, The Secret of Lost Things, seems to have broken my reading slump. I had a very satisfying reading session, snuggled up in bed late last night. The light went off around 1:30 and I didn't fall asleep over the book!
In retrospect, I wonder how much of my slump was due to coffee deprivation. The house blends I sampled in New Mexico sucked, and a latte from the Linden St. outpost of blue bottle coffee co. straightened me right up. To find out more about this nectar, check out their website bluebottlecoffee.net. This elixir makes me purr with pleasure. Every morning. Really.
But I still need a Mac guru...
Okay, okay and a shout out to IMDb (imdb.com) for that Private Benjamin info. My memory's not that good!
Monday, October 15, 2007
Doris Lessing
I love it when the Nobel Committee gets it right. And I love that Doris Lessing remains her usual blunt self, calmly pointing out that time was a wasting if the Committee wanted to get her the prize before she pops off.
I was introduced to Lessing through the character of Martha Quest, rather than the better known Anna Wulf. Diane Middlebrook was teaching The Four-Gated City in a class my sophomore year and I still have a commercial paperback copy of that novel rattling around my house somewhere. The following fall, I went overseas to Cliveden and that is where I first saw The Golden Notebook. It was a house copy, and had been lying around and passed around for God knows how long. But I can still tell you what the cover of the paperback looked like. Black background, the title in gold type, followed by the author's name. Very simple, but it drew you in. You could tell lots of students had curled up in the drawing room and lost themselves in it. That it had made plenty of train rides, but never been left behind. I thought of my friends Liat and Jolene who had been at Cliveden the previous winter. I could see them reading it.
Lessing was one of the earliest writers I heard speak via Stanford's Lane Lecture Series. It was in the mid-80's and she read a short story about London that left no doubt she had a voice. An amazing, powerful voice. These readings are usually held at Kresge Auditorium, but this one was held in Mem Aud which was packed to the rafters, overflowing like it was an especially tempting Sunday Night Flicks offering.
The mid-eighties was also when Lessing decided to pull a trick on the publishing world, to see if they would publish the work of an unknown woman writer and give it a proper, critical look. So she submitted the The Diaries of Jane Somers to her publisher under a pseudonym. They published it without much fanfare, until Lessing went public with what she'd done. This is what I think of when there's all this back and forth about whether she should be classified as a feminist, whether she identifies herself as a feminist. She may not want the label, but she damned sure walks the walk. And has her entire career.
Her output has not lessened over the past two decades. I've loved (and recommended to friends) some of her most recent novels: Love, Again, The Sweetest Gift, The Grandmothers. Loved them enough to own them in hardback!
Lessing was self-educated, a voracious reader who wrote what she wanted to write. In both cases, she held no truck with literary fashion. It's for that and her amazing body of work, covering five decades, that she earned and deserves the Nobel. Do we still produce writers like that today? Can a writer have that kind of career today? I don't know the answer, or if it really matters. I'm just grateful that Doris Lessing achieved that kind of career and I get to read her work for the rest of my lifetime.
As for Harold Bloom's response that the award smacked of "political correctness," is this anything other than an indication of decades of emasculation anxiety? Teeny peeny, that's all I'm saying.
I was introduced to Lessing through the character of Martha Quest, rather than the better known Anna Wulf. Diane Middlebrook was teaching The Four-Gated City in a class my sophomore year and I still have a commercial paperback copy of that novel rattling around my house somewhere. The following fall, I went overseas to Cliveden and that is where I first saw The Golden Notebook. It was a house copy, and had been lying around and passed around for God knows how long. But I can still tell you what the cover of the paperback looked like. Black background, the title in gold type, followed by the author's name. Very simple, but it drew you in. You could tell lots of students had curled up in the drawing room and lost themselves in it. That it had made plenty of train rides, but never been left behind. I thought of my friends Liat and Jolene who had been at Cliveden the previous winter. I could see them reading it.
Lessing was one of the earliest writers I heard speak via Stanford's Lane Lecture Series. It was in the mid-80's and she read a short story about London that left no doubt she had a voice. An amazing, powerful voice. These readings are usually held at Kresge Auditorium, but this one was held in Mem Aud which was packed to the rafters, overflowing like it was an especially tempting Sunday Night Flicks offering.
The mid-eighties was also when Lessing decided to pull a trick on the publishing world, to see if they would publish the work of an unknown woman writer and give it a proper, critical look. So she submitted the The Diaries of Jane Somers to her publisher under a pseudonym. They published it without much fanfare, until Lessing went public with what she'd done. This is what I think of when there's all this back and forth about whether she should be classified as a feminist, whether she identifies herself as a feminist. She may not want the label, but she damned sure walks the walk. And has her entire career.
Her output has not lessened over the past two decades. I've loved (and recommended to friends) some of her most recent novels: Love, Again, The Sweetest Gift, The Grandmothers. Loved them enough to own them in hardback!
Lessing was self-educated, a voracious reader who wrote what she wanted to write. In both cases, she held no truck with literary fashion. It's for that and her amazing body of work, covering five decades, that she earned and deserves the Nobel. Do we still produce writers like that today? Can a writer have that kind of career today? I don't know the answer, or if it really matters. I'm just grateful that Doris Lessing achieved that kind of career and I get to read her work for the rest of my lifetime.
As for Harold Bloom's response that the award smacked of "political correctness," is this anything other than an indication of decades of emasculation anxiety? Teeny peeny, that's all I'm saying.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Koigu addict
Knitters know, there's your stash and then there's your Koigu stash. My general stash is made up of yarn for future projects. I have an idea of what the yarn will be -- a scarf, a baby sweater, a cardigan -- when I buy it. I have a sense of who it will be for -- mostly me, sometimes a friend or relative, never a boyfriend (there's a whole legend about the boyfriend sweater and the doom that accompanies it). But when it comes to Koigu, any sense of reason goes right out the window. I will buy it to make something. I will buy it to look at. The number of skeins available in the color I'm lusting after is superfluous. I will buy one skein -- 175 yards, hardly enough to make anything -- if the color is tempting enough, and then I will create a whole scenario about how I will find other yarns to blend with it in order to justify the purchase. I was fortunate to take a workshop with Sally Melville this spring, and learn how to make a garter stitch scarf with one skein of Koigu and 2-3 solid colors of fine weight yarn, thereby giving me license to pick up individual skeins of Koigu to my heart's content. For the rest of my life. How great is that?
Koigu is fingering weight, which means it's knit on teeny, tiny needles, size 3 or smaller. That means a long-sleeved pullover can take you, well, forever. At least a year, allowing for other UFO's and project diversions. I have a fetching sweater just like that on the needles -- a simple, classic Jaeger pattern, with just one sleeve to complete. I hope it will be finished by the new year. Though I think that was my plan for last year as well. I try to use this UFO to reign in my profligacy. I cannot, will not, purchase enough Koigu for another sweater (10 skeins or so) when this one leaves me feeling so guilty. My solution, then, is to only buy in small quantities. Two skeins, say, for a pair of socks. But it never seems worthwhile to make Koigu socks because they'll be on your feet, and who will get to admire them? Instead, I've made a scarf out of two skeins. And I've laid aside at least eight skeins for gauntlets (I plan to have very warm and beautiful arm candy in the near future). Still I can't stop myself. I have three or four individual skeins to make up into the Sally Melville scarves (for me? for friends? whatever). And during last month's little spree at the Knitting Basket, I had to have the two skeins in a peachy, lavender combo that I don't care if I ever knit. Of course, they went onto the needles over the weekend, and the previous pair of gauntlets in an irresistibly beautiful shade went into the knitting pile.
I'm going to grab the niecelet and her digital camera so you can see how enticing this yarn is. And sometimes, it's very soothing to be working on teeny, tiny needles so you can see how the color is distributed on each stitch...
Koigu is fingering weight, which means it's knit on teeny, tiny needles, size 3 or smaller. That means a long-sleeved pullover can take you, well, forever. At least a year, allowing for other UFO's and project diversions. I have a fetching sweater just like that on the needles -- a simple, classic Jaeger pattern, with just one sleeve to complete. I hope it will be finished by the new year. Though I think that was my plan for last year as well. I try to use this UFO to reign in my profligacy. I cannot, will not, purchase enough Koigu for another sweater (10 skeins or so) when this one leaves me feeling so guilty. My solution, then, is to only buy in small quantities. Two skeins, say, for a pair of socks. But it never seems worthwhile to make Koigu socks because they'll be on your feet, and who will get to admire them? Instead, I've made a scarf out of two skeins. And I've laid aside at least eight skeins for gauntlets (I plan to have very warm and beautiful arm candy in the near future). Still I can't stop myself. I have three or four individual skeins to make up into the Sally Melville scarves (for me? for friends? whatever). And during last month's little spree at the Knitting Basket, I had to have the two skeins in a peachy, lavender combo that I don't care if I ever knit. Of course, they went onto the needles over the weekend, and the previous pair of gauntlets in an irresistibly beautiful shade went into the knitting pile.
I'm going to grab the niecelet and her digital camera so you can see how enticing this yarn is. And sometimes, it's very soothing to be working on teeny, tiny needles so you can see how the color is distributed on each stitch...
Friday, September 14, 2007
Garden ramblings
My garden is:
When I moved into the Berkeley bungalow seven years ago, the front and back yards were overgrown and untended, but had great features. In the front were a yellowing camellia bush, a rhododendron and a huge white azalea bush, all of which reminded me of the shade garden in the Haight I was leaving behind. And there was a whacking great bird of paradise which returned me to my Southern California childhood.
It was the back yard, though, that closed the deal. A magnolia tree with sturdy branches you could sit on. A corner plot of bamboo that seemed contained. Three beds of calla lilies. More white azalea shrubs and a listless white camellia. A little grove of fuchsias in the shadow of a walnut tree. A rose bush that bloomed velvety red roses. And the jackpot -- a rose tree that produced sprays of peachy/pinky blossoms, plus two peony bushes, one red and one white. Never mind the weeds, the crabgrass, the overall dishabille -- I was moving to Berkeley for sunshine and roses and tomatoes, and here was a garden.
The following year, I stumbled across Ashley and Awesome Blossom. She put everything in order by pruning, weeding, shaping, adjusting, designing and introducing new plants. The front yard and back were glorious when she was done. And after another year, this time with me weeding and feeding and watering, the back yard came into its own. The white camellia that I'd fretted over bloomed, then shot out new growth. A plot of huge, fragrant, pink lilies encroached on the bamboo bed. And rose bushes that I thought were sticks, produced a few buds and then a flower or two.
Berkeley is blessed with terrific nurseries -- Magic Gardens, Berkeley Hort., East Bay Nursery -- and I spent many happy hours absorbing their offerings and researching them in my Sunset Garden Book. And then I discovered Annie's Annuals in Richmond and became a flower floozie. There have been hits and misses (more than a few misses!), but by now the garden has expanded beyond Ashley's influence and feels like my own. The columbine that had wilted in years past, is now filling in nicely alongside the poppies and lilies. The cheddar pinks and scabiosa I discovered in Shetland blend with the love-in-a-mist that has spread like wildfire.
The heavy heat from last week seems to have broken, and the garden's long soak now lasts a few days. I poke through the branches of the walnut and magnolia trees, looking for where to prune. There are not so many weeds, but more and more leaves fall and I think about where to put bulbs. The pink and white Japanese anemones have popped, and the dahlias look like they're trying to bud.
You plant a garden, tend it for a few years, and think you know all its secrets. The only mystery I was pondering was where to put the bougainvillea a friend had dropped off in August. As I was poking around the flower bed, a long, creamy, bell-shaped flower with a dusky sweet scent landed beside me. I had no recollection of buying a plant that could produce such a beauty with such an aroma, and was wondering how it could have arrived in my garden. I looked up and at the very top of a tree that is now taller than my house, I could just make out where the flower might have fallen from as well as sprays on a few neighboring branches. And I couldn't believe it. This tree started out as a little china doll plant in a 4" container that lived on the deck of my house in the Haight. I'd bought it on a lark at Cole Hardware, meaning to put it in a proper pot and bring it indoors. It stayed outside and when I moved to Berkeley, I just stuck it in the ground to see what would happen. It wasn't meant to have so much sun, and the dark, ivy green leaves grew lighter and lighter, then turned yellow and fell off. But the plant got a stalk and kept growing. As the years went by, it sprouted a few trunks and they kept climbing up too. No leaves for the first 3 feet or so, but then they'd bunch out on skinny little branches, the leaves retaining their distinctive shape, now sporting a bright shade of green. The trunks never got bigger than a foot in diameter and they framed the flower beds. The rustling of leaves from the upper reaches mirrored the sound of the bamboo shoots across the garden. And there, I thought, was my garden surprise.
Now, an added bonus -- amazing tropical flowers that fall from the sky. Who knew? And what will my next garden surprise be?
- delightfully forgiving
- a work in progress
- still able to surprise me
- this year, the best it's ever been.
When I moved into the Berkeley bungalow seven years ago, the front and back yards were overgrown and untended, but had great features. In the front were a yellowing camellia bush, a rhododendron and a huge white azalea bush, all of which reminded me of the shade garden in the Haight I was leaving behind. And there was a whacking great bird of paradise which returned me to my Southern California childhood.
It was the back yard, though, that closed the deal. A magnolia tree with sturdy branches you could sit on. A corner plot of bamboo that seemed contained. Three beds of calla lilies. More white azalea shrubs and a listless white camellia. A little grove of fuchsias in the shadow of a walnut tree. A rose bush that bloomed velvety red roses. And the jackpot -- a rose tree that produced sprays of peachy/pinky blossoms, plus two peony bushes, one red and one white. Never mind the weeds, the crabgrass, the overall dishabille -- I was moving to Berkeley for sunshine and roses and tomatoes, and here was a garden.
The following year, I stumbled across Ashley and Awesome Blossom. She put everything in order by pruning, weeding, shaping, adjusting, designing and introducing new plants. The front yard and back were glorious when she was done. And after another year, this time with me weeding and feeding and watering, the back yard came into its own. The white camellia that I'd fretted over bloomed, then shot out new growth. A plot of huge, fragrant, pink lilies encroached on the bamboo bed. And rose bushes that I thought were sticks, produced a few buds and then a flower or two.
Berkeley is blessed with terrific nurseries -- Magic Gardens, Berkeley Hort., East Bay Nursery -- and I spent many happy hours absorbing their offerings and researching them in my Sunset Garden Book. And then I discovered Annie's Annuals in Richmond and became a flower floozie. There have been hits and misses (more than a few misses!), but by now the garden has expanded beyond Ashley's influence and feels like my own. The columbine that had wilted in years past, is now filling in nicely alongside the poppies and lilies. The cheddar pinks and scabiosa I discovered in Shetland blend with the love-in-a-mist that has spread like wildfire.
The heavy heat from last week seems to have broken, and the garden's long soak now lasts a few days. I poke through the branches of the walnut and magnolia trees, looking for where to prune. There are not so many weeds, but more and more leaves fall and I think about where to put bulbs. The pink and white Japanese anemones have popped, and the dahlias look like they're trying to bud.
You plant a garden, tend it for a few years, and think you know all its secrets. The only mystery I was pondering was where to put the bougainvillea a friend had dropped off in August. As I was poking around the flower bed, a long, creamy, bell-shaped flower with a dusky sweet scent landed beside me. I had no recollection of buying a plant that could produce such a beauty with such an aroma, and was wondering how it could have arrived in my garden. I looked up and at the very top of a tree that is now taller than my house, I could just make out where the flower might have fallen from as well as sprays on a few neighboring branches. And I couldn't believe it. This tree started out as a little china doll plant in a 4" container that lived on the deck of my house in the Haight. I'd bought it on a lark at Cole Hardware, meaning to put it in a proper pot and bring it indoors. It stayed outside and when I moved to Berkeley, I just stuck it in the ground to see what would happen. It wasn't meant to have so much sun, and the dark, ivy green leaves grew lighter and lighter, then turned yellow and fell off. But the plant got a stalk and kept growing. As the years went by, it sprouted a few trunks and they kept climbing up too. No leaves for the first 3 feet or so, but then they'd bunch out on skinny little branches, the leaves retaining their distinctive shape, now sporting a bright shade of green. The trunks never got bigger than a foot in diameter and they framed the flower beds. The rustling of leaves from the upper reaches mirrored the sound of the bamboo shoots across the garden. And there, I thought, was my garden surprise.
Now, an added bonus -- amazing tropical flowers that fall from the sky. Who knew? And what will my next garden surprise be?
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Solace
For me, for these past many years, September is the cruelest month. I know I will be pitched around, submerged beneath some icy, stormy waves, left without my bearings. Some days, I'll be energetic and accomplish items on my to-do list. On far too many others, my custom-blend, java wake-up pot will ping harmlessly against my torpor.
September has signalled many happy times in my life. The beginning of a new school year, the anticipation of reuniting with friends, the excitement of opening football games. When I lived on the east coast, there would always be that one September morning when you left the house attired in your cotton and short sleeves prepped for the summer heat and humidity. But overnight, it was gone -- collapsed and dissipated for the year. You needed a sweater that morning, that day, and the layering season had begun. Here in Northern California, Sept. weather can be anything -- heated, chilly, foggy, clear -- it's just a way station for next month's Indian summer.
Establishing a routine, putting together year-end goals, outlining major projects -- all the big ideas, the semblances of order -- seem to exhaust me as I ponder them. Where will I summon the energy to put them into effect? And so I seek solace in small ways, in circumscribed activities. Knitting on small needles. Listening to Keith Jarrett's Koln Concert. Folding the laundry. Dreaming of the perfect guacamole. If the weeds don't get pulled, if the green recycling bin doesn't get put out, I'll try again in two weeks.
And in spite of myself, I can still be surprised, still brush up against unanticipated pleasures. Meeting the boys after school on Tuesday, I experienced the life of their school for the first time this year. There is nothing so alive as an elementary school at the end of the school day! The explosion of energy as kids stream out of the doors and down the steps to meet waiting parents and siblings. Son the younger, the daredevil, is riding around the playground on his trick bike with one friend propped on the handlebars, while another friend tries to say goodbye. We have to rush to avoid a parking ticket and so join the throng of families on the sidewalk, checking to see that we have everything -- backpacks, sweatshirts, homework -- before we dash to the bakery, on the way to the barbershop, to get back home in time for dinner, so that mom can head off to back to school night. I get to babysit the boys, negotiate double dessert, check over homework and curl up with them and a movie, while mom visits with this year's teachers.
Routine, goals, projects... forget about it 'til next month. For today, tonight, I'll just go along for the ride with them.
September has signalled many happy times in my life. The beginning of a new school year, the anticipation of reuniting with friends, the excitement of opening football games. When I lived on the east coast, there would always be that one September morning when you left the house attired in your cotton and short sleeves prepped for the summer heat and humidity. But overnight, it was gone -- collapsed and dissipated for the year. You needed a sweater that morning, that day, and the layering season had begun. Here in Northern California, Sept. weather can be anything -- heated, chilly, foggy, clear -- it's just a way station for next month's Indian summer.
Establishing a routine, putting together year-end goals, outlining major projects -- all the big ideas, the semblances of order -- seem to exhaust me as I ponder them. Where will I summon the energy to put them into effect? And so I seek solace in small ways, in circumscribed activities. Knitting on small needles. Listening to Keith Jarrett's Koln Concert. Folding the laundry. Dreaming of the perfect guacamole. If the weeds don't get pulled, if the green recycling bin doesn't get put out, I'll try again in two weeks.
And in spite of myself, I can still be surprised, still brush up against unanticipated pleasures. Meeting the boys after school on Tuesday, I experienced the life of their school for the first time this year. There is nothing so alive as an elementary school at the end of the school day! The explosion of energy as kids stream out of the doors and down the steps to meet waiting parents and siblings. Son the younger, the daredevil, is riding around the playground on his trick bike with one friend propped on the handlebars, while another friend tries to say goodbye. We have to rush to avoid a parking ticket and so join the throng of families on the sidewalk, checking to see that we have everything -- backpacks, sweatshirts, homework -- before we dash to the bakery, on the way to the barbershop, to get back home in time for dinner, so that mom can head off to back to school night. I get to babysit the boys, negotiate double dessert, check over homework and curl up with them and a movie, while mom visits with this year's teachers.
Routine, goals, projects... forget about it 'til next month. For today, tonight, I'll just go along for the ride with them.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Kicking it to the curb
As long as I've been a reader, I've felt a responsibility to finish a book. I'm still hauling around novels from undergraduate classes that one day I mean to finish. Henry James', The Ambassadors. George Meredith's, The Egoist. Sir Walter Scott's, The Heart of Midlothian. But I've also reached a point in my life when I recognize one day, I'll run of time. I might not finish all those books. I definitely won't finish all the knitting projects. And so, I'm trying to be discerning. All right, cutthroat. This is my year of heartlessly not finishing books. Kicking them to the curb, if you will, for not grabbing or holding my interest. If I gave the raw numbers, the year would not be deemed a success. But with each volume, I try to give myself a pat on the back and let go of a little guilt.
This week was big. I cut loose two novels by authors whose past works I've enjoyed -- Katie Fforde's, Bidding for Love and Jane Smiley's, Ten Days in the Hills. Fforde wasn't that hard; I've felt she was tiredly working old territory as I slogged through her past few books. The opening page of this one introduced our harried heroine and her pregnant cat and I just thought, go no further. I had far more hope for Smiley, but her first chapter was so tedious -- the characters unappealing, the subject matter too forced, the writing style too didactic. I skipped ahead, hoping that new characters would hold my attention. By page 80, I knew I was out of luck and returned it to the library that afternoon. It was a double victory -- in the past I would have purchased the hardback based on her track record. I'd now saved myself $26.00, as well as a lot of time.
Unfortunately, I did force myself to finish a lackluster mystery, the latest in a series that I can abandon. I hung in there because I'd just finished a luminous novel, and I knew whatever I read next wouldn't be able to compare. The novel was A Day at the Beach, by Helen Schuman, a writer I hadn't heard of. It's about Manhattan on 9/11, and the path one couple takes in its immediate aftermath. I'd consciously avoided such novels, but this one was surprisingly arresting and so beautifully written I couldn't put it down, finishing it about 2 a.m. Among other things, it posed the question, does art make life worth living? Does it really help redeem disaster? I love discovering finds like this, and it's something that's happened more often as I've taken advantage of my local library, eight blocks from home and on the way to everything.
It's the discovery that makes reading so satisfying, not duty.
This week was big. I cut loose two novels by authors whose past works I've enjoyed -- Katie Fforde's, Bidding for Love and Jane Smiley's, Ten Days in the Hills. Fforde wasn't that hard; I've felt she was tiredly working old territory as I slogged through her past few books. The opening page of this one introduced our harried heroine and her pregnant cat and I just thought, go no further. I had far more hope for Smiley, but her first chapter was so tedious -- the characters unappealing, the subject matter too forced, the writing style too didactic. I skipped ahead, hoping that new characters would hold my attention. By page 80, I knew I was out of luck and returned it to the library that afternoon. It was a double victory -- in the past I would have purchased the hardback based on her track record. I'd now saved myself $26.00, as well as a lot of time.
Unfortunately, I did force myself to finish a lackluster mystery, the latest in a series that I can abandon. I hung in there because I'd just finished a luminous novel, and I knew whatever I read next wouldn't be able to compare. The novel was A Day at the Beach, by Helen Schuman, a writer I hadn't heard of. It's about Manhattan on 9/11, and the path one couple takes in its immediate aftermath. I'd consciously avoided such novels, but this one was surprisingly arresting and so beautifully written I couldn't put it down, finishing it about 2 a.m. Among other things, it posed the question, does art make life worth living? Does it really help redeem disaster? I love discovering finds like this, and it's something that's happened more often as I've taken advantage of my local library, eight blocks from home and on the way to everything.
It's the discovery that makes reading so satisfying, not duty.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Fall Books addenda
In my earlier post, I neglected to mention new works by two stupendous, young(er) writers. Luckily, Michiko Kakutani reminded me with today's reviews of Edwidge Danticat's, A Haitian Tragedy: Brothers Yearn in Vain and Junot Diaz's, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I've been mesmerized by their earlier works, and consider them part of a critical, new wave of writers who tell migration stories that differ from the traditionally positive tales, the success stories favored by earlier generations. Hailing from Haiti and the Dominican Republic, they give voice to the oppression and violence in their home countries, giving us a valuable perspective on the instrumental and hidden role the American government played in propping up corrupt and violent regimes.
At the other end of the spectrum is Penelope Lively's, Consequences, which I just finished and quite enjoyed. It is a quiet, introspective novel looking at the role fate, or luck, plays in a number of characters' lives. A young man and woman meet in a London park, and fall in love. Everything that comes after is linked to that one action. Lively's writing plays to my English major's sensibility, with prose that is both precise and delicate. Here's an example:
At the other end of the spectrum is Penelope Lively's, Consequences, which I just finished and quite enjoyed. It is a quiet, introspective novel looking at the role fate, or luck, plays in a number of characters' lives. A young man and woman meet in a London park, and fall in love. Everything that comes after is linked to that one action. Lively's writing plays to my English major's sensibility, with prose that is both precise and delicate. Here's an example:
"It sometimes seemed to Molly that the library was a place of silent discord and anarchy, its superficial tranquility concealing a babel of assertion and dispute. Fiction is one strident lie -- or rather, many competing lies; history is a long narrative of argument and reassessment; travel shouts of self-promotion; biography is pushing a product. As for autobiography . . . And all this is just fine. That is the function of books: they offer a point of view, they offer many conflicting points of view, they provoke thought, they provoke irritation and admiration and speculation. They take you out of yourself and put you down somewhere else from whence you never entirely return... The surface repose of a library is a cynical deception."That's a great example of why I love reading British women writers. It links the worlds of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf and lots of others with the present day -- both the subject matter and the writing style. The members of my writing group spend no small amount of time discussing these "internal" novels, which are classified, frequently and dismissively, as "women's fiction". Meaning the type of fiction women write, but also describing a whole genre in which emotions figure prominently and the focus is on a woman's world. It's tone is quiet and domestic, rather than gregarious and action-packed style of men writers.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
my local rag is dying
They announced the latest round of layoffs in the spring, but the demise began long before that.
I felt the stab in my heart on Sunday, July 17 when Live!Rude!Girl! announced this was her last column. She was one of the few columnists worth reading and, along with Minerva's horoscope and the Frank Longo crossword puzzle, the only redeeming thing about the San Francisco Chronicle's Pink section.
The signs it was going wrong began so, so long ago. When the Sporting Green turned white instead of green. When Adair Lara became an occasional reporter instead of a regular columnist. When the Sunday Book Review shrank to four pages. And I won't even start on the Phil Bronstein mismatch. But most annoyingly, through all the mayhem and upheaval, the Chron has yet to figure out how to eliminate the. damn. creases. in. sections. of. the. paper. The creases are never in the whole paper, just in the one section you inevitably want to kick back and read. The sports section. The datebook section. The silly Matier and Ross political gossip (not news, never news) column. But you can't just relax and read because you have to keep yanking to straighten the paper. And you can't yank too hard or you'll rip the page, and the paper's barely readable as it is. How have they not ponied up for the technology to fix this? How hard can it be?
One of my dear friends, Ms. Q, is a crackerjack reporter in NYC who grew up on the Chronicle. Her brother wrote for it for years, and she still waxes nostalgic about Herb Caen's columns. And I loved the paper in the 80's and early 90's when Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City ran in daily installments, Patricia Holt produced a thoughtful, comprehensive Book Review that featured new and local writers as well as the accepted "old guard", Susan Yoachum wrote some of the shrewdest political commentary ever, Marc Sandalow offered serious coverage of the local political scene, and Louis Freeberg contributed an insider's view on the dissolution of the old South Africa, while posing provocative and timely questions about how race still permeates American life. The Chron would never be a paper of record like the New York Times or the Washington Post, and it didn't offer the in-depth coverage of the Los Angeles Times, the paper I grew up reading. But it had some amazing talent and it gave them a free hand to cover their beats, while accurately covering the concerns of our bustling little (and parochial) metropolis. The paper was defensible for what it was, and ambitious journalists knew to leave for more competitive papers 'cuz the Chron never had serious aspirations to be anything other than the local rag.
The initial death knell rang years ago when the Examiner folded and the Chronicle and Examiner staffs merged. Two fully staffed newsrooms in a city that produced little of note was a precarious scenario from the get go. So cuts were made (i.e. reporters let go) where there was "duplication". Some would call that the first blow. But the merger came with a financial cushion that was good for a few years, so there was a lot of grumbling, but little desperation. This stage included a lot of Phil Bronstein blustering about the Chronicle having to redefine itself for its current audience. (Translation -- a former foreign correspondent who covered the destruction in Central America during the '80's is now crafting the paper to appeal to Contra Costa County readers to boost market share).
Then the rumblings about losing money began in earnest. And escalated. And everywhere, all you heard was the paper's hemorrhaging money, and can't hold on much longer. In June, the announcement came that the paper would make a 20% cut in its staff, with buyouts and whatever polite euphemism you want to use for firing.
That, at least, is my interpretation of why my local rag is dying. But what do I know? A more informed version of the events can be found at David Weir's website, hotweir.blogspot.com, under the Aug. 17 entry.
As much as it's pained me to see talented journalists depart and an institution flag, the greatest affront has got to be a current feature on the Chronicle's website, sfgate.com. It's a tribute to all those loyal, departing staff entitled: Colleagues Remembered, The San Francisco Chronicle honors departing staff members. I kid you not. See why it's been referred to as the Comical?
It's kind of like a murderer writing his victim's obituary. Okay, that comparison's out of proportion. But the feature is tasteless. And offensive. And too often, that's the state of contemporary "news" in America.
My Sunday's are not the same without Live!Rude!Girl! To sample some of her work, check her out at www.myspace.com/liverudegirl.
I felt the stab in my heart on Sunday, July 17 when Live!Rude!Girl! announced this was her last column. She was one of the few columnists worth reading and, along with Minerva's horoscope and the Frank Longo crossword puzzle, the only redeeming thing about the San Francisco Chronicle's Pink section.
The signs it was going wrong began so, so long ago. When the Sporting Green turned white instead of green. When Adair Lara became an occasional reporter instead of a regular columnist. When the Sunday Book Review shrank to four pages. And I won't even start on the Phil Bronstein mismatch. But most annoyingly, through all the mayhem and upheaval, the Chron has yet to figure out how to eliminate the. damn. creases. in. sections. of. the. paper. The creases are never in the whole paper, just in the one section you inevitably want to kick back and read. The sports section. The datebook section. The silly Matier and Ross political gossip (not news, never news) column. But you can't just relax and read because you have to keep yanking to straighten the paper. And you can't yank too hard or you'll rip the page, and the paper's barely readable as it is. How have they not ponied up for the technology to fix this? How hard can it be?
One of my dear friends, Ms. Q, is a crackerjack reporter in NYC who grew up on the Chronicle. Her brother wrote for it for years, and she still waxes nostalgic about Herb Caen's columns. And I loved the paper in the 80's and early 90's when Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City ran in daily installments, Patricia Holt produced a thoughtful, comprehensive Book Review that featured new and local writers as well as the accepted "old guard", Susan Yoachum wrote some of the shrewdest political commentary ever, Marc Sandalow offered serious coverage of the local political scene, and Louis Freeberg contributed an insider's view on the dissolution of the old South Africa, while posing provocative and timely questions about how race still permeates American life. The Chron would never be a paper of record like the New York Times or the Washington Post, and it didn't offer the in-depth coverage of the Los Angeles Times, the paper I grew up reading. But it had some amazing talent and it gave them a free hand to cover their beats, while accurately covering the concerns of our bustling little (and parochial) metropolis. The paper was defensible for what it was, and ambitious journalists knew to leave for more competitive papers 'cuz the Chron never had serious aspirations to be anything other than the local rag.
The initial death knell rang years ago when the Examiner folded and the Chronicle and Examiner staffs merged. Two fully staffed newsrooms in a city that produced little of note was a precarious scenario from the get go. So cuts were made (i.e. reporters let go) where there was "duplication". Some would call that the first blow. But the merger came with a financial cushion that was good for a few years, so there was a lot of grumbling, but little desperation. This stage included a lot of Phil Bronstein blustering about the Chronicle having to redefine itself for its current audience. (Translation -- a former foreign correspondent who covered the destruction in Central America during the '80's is now crafting the paper to appeal to Contra Costa County readers to boost market share).
Then the rumblings about losing money began in earnest. And escalated. And everywhere, all you heard was the paper's hemorrhaging money, and can't hold on much longer. In June, the announcement came that the paper would make a 20% cut in its staff, with buyouts and whatever polite euphemism you want to use for firing.
That, at least, is my interpretation of why my local rag is dying. But what do I know? A more informed version of the events can be found at David Weir's website, hotweir.blogspot.com, under the Aug. 17 entry.
As much as it's pained me to see talented journalists depart and an institution flag, the greatest affront has got to be a current feature on the Chronicle's website, sfgate.com. It's a tribute to all those loyal, departing staff entitled: Colleagues Remembered, The San Francisco Chronicle honors departing staff members. I kid you not. See why it's been referred to as the Comical?
It's kind of like a murderer writing his victim's obituary. Okay, that comparison's out of proportion. But the feature is tasteless. And offensive. And too often, that's the state of contemporary "news" in America.
My Sunday's are not the same without Live!Rude!Girl! To sample some of her work, check her out at www.myspace.com/liverudegirl.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Adieu, Knitting Basket
I believe a community can't have too many book or yarn stores, and I'm always sad when a favorite closes its doors. In this case it's the Knitting Basket, which has been a staple in Oakland's Montclair district since it closed its shop in San Francisco. The Knitting Basket was the first yarn store I visited in San Francisco, soon after I moved here, in 1982. It was located on the same street that I worked on, Union Street, and it was pretty intimidating. All those yarns, in all those colors. How were you supposed to figure out what yarn to use for the sweater pattern that seemed easy enough for you to knit? The shop was staffed with brisk and knowledgeable salesclerks whom I was afraid to approach, sure I would expose my ignorance. So I wandered around, selecting projects on a hit and miss basis. Fortunately, there was a knitter in my office who offered me support (cheers, Frances!) and helped me when I really screwed up.
The Knitting Basket moved in the early 90's to the prosperous, Presidio Heights part of Sacramento St. My knitting knowledge had improved a lot, so I could better appreciate the selection of yarn stocked. And since I was better paid, I could afford it! The new location was also easier to navigate -- the shop was narrow rather than wide, and the cherry cubbies stuffed with yarn invited you to touch. But, by the late 90's, the shop owner decided to leave the City and focus on the East Bay store.
The one drawback to the Knitting Basket was its mark-up. Yarn owners fall into two camps -- those that stick to the manufacturer's suggested retail price and those who decide to make a dollar or more on each ball or skein sold. Dedicated knitters quickly learn the difference, and I must admit I mostly shopped at the Knitting Basket when they were having a sale -- due to the markup and because they stocked such high end yarn ($30 a skein and up). And when I did visit, it wasn't the pricey yarn I was buying.
But I always liked the shop. Montclair is one of the Oakland neighborhoods that feels like a little village, with an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, a toy store, a candy store and a couple of independent bookstores. I could spend a lazy afternoon poking through yarns and checking out the pattern books of designers my LYS doesn't carry, then stop for a Jamba Juice or a latte at Peet's. Plus, I really like Rachael, the owner who bought the shop a few years ago. She's closing up to spend more time with her kids, who are just starting school. A completely understandable reason, but she will be missed.
Faith dictates that when one door closes, another opens. Sweet Adeline, my favorite neighborhood bakery (voted Best Bakery in this summer's East Bay Express reader's poll) has a wonderful display of knitted goods up this month, and this morning when I stopped in for my Saturday indulgences there were ten or so women sitting around knitting! Providence, I think.
One of the most critical dilemmas a knitter faces when a shop departs is just how much yarn to pick up to enhance their stash. (And yes, that term accurately describes the habit we yarn addicts indulge in). I always seem to be treading that fine line between scavenging and gluttony. My strategy here was to do a little reconnaissance on the first day of the sale, to pick up the choicest yarns that would go first and then check out what else might appeal. Do I need to tell you that a woman was blocking the Koigu and Jitterbug crates, while talking on a cell phone, and that increased my adrenaline? All I could think of was supply and demand, supply and demand, as I threw the skeins into my basket. That crisis averted, I turned my attention to the selection of Noro magazines, making a mental note to go home and check out which issues I was missing. There were some nice colors of Silk Garden and Kureyon that were tempting, but I figured I could go through the magazines and review possible projects before committing.
I was going to play it cool and wait a few days before returning, but I kept thinking of that one copy of the Jo Sharp magazine that was out of print. Rather than leaving anything to chance, I popped in again the next day. And picked up some sock yarn (at 40% off, who could resist?). Plus, I'd decided on a Silk Garden and Debbie Bliss Cashmerino project that only needed a few skeins of yarn and I wanted to review colors. I knew I'd be jammed up during the end of the week, with dentist appointments and family events, but I thought I could safely wait a days. Imagine my shock, shock, and dismay when I returned Monday and found whole cubbies emptied out! My little Silk Garden sweater selection had vaporized. How could I have overlooked Saturday, the one day when knitters from all over the Bay Area would come to pillage? What an amateur's mistake!! Thank goodness no one had snatched up all the yarn for the Cavendish wrap (in the original color, even) so I could still come out with a win!
My little spree was quite the success. I can tell because I have a bag of yarn hiding in my car trunk -- afraid to bring it into the house to add to the other bags, all right bins of yarn, that make up my stash.
Denial? That's a river in Egypt.
Thanks for the memories, Rachael. I'll miss you.
The Knitting Basket moved in the early 90's to the prosperous, Presidio Heights part of Sacramento St. My knitting knowledge had improved a lot, so I could better appreciate the selection of yarn stocked. And since I was better paid, I could afford it! The new location was also easier to navigate -- the shop was narrow rather than wide, and the cherry cubbies stuffed with yarn invited you to touch. But, by the late 90's, the shop owner decided to leave the City and focus on the East Bay store.
The one drawback to the Knitting Basket was its mark-up. Yarn owners fall into two camps -- those that stick to the manufacturer's suggested retail price and those who decide to make a dollar or more on each ball or skein sold. Dedicated knitters quickly learn the difference, and I must admit I mostly shopped at the Knitting Basket when they were having a sale -- due to the markup and because they stocked such high end yarn ($30 a skein and up). And when I did visit, it wasn't the pricey yarn I was buying.
But I always liked the shop. Montclair is one of the Oakland neighborhoods that feels like a little village, with an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, a toy store, a candy store and a couple of independent bookstores. I could spend a lazy afternoon poking through yarns and checking out the pattern books of designers my LYS doesn't carry, then stop for a Jamba Juice or a latte at Peet's. Plus, I really like Rachael, the owner who bought the shop a few years ago. She's closing up to spend more time with her kids, who are just starting school. A completely understandable reason, but she will be missed.
Faith dictates that when one door closes, another opens. Sweet Adeline, my favorite neighborhood bakery (voted Best Bakery in this summer's East Bay Express reader's poll) has a wonderful display of knitted goods up this month, and this morning when I stopped in for my Saturday indulgences there were ten or so women sitting around knitting! Providence, I think.
One of the most critical dilemmas a knitter faces when a shop departs is just how much yarn to pick up to enhance their stash. (And yes, that term accurately describes the habit we yarn addicts indulge in). I always seem to be treading that fine line between scavenging and gluttony. My strategy here was to do a little reconnaissance on the first day of the sale, to pick up the choicest yarns that would go first and then check out what else might appeal. Do I need to tell you that a woman was blocking the Koigu and Jitterbug crates, while talking on a cell phone, and that increased my adrenaline? All I could think of was supply and demand, supply and demand, as I threw the skeins into my basket. That crisis averted, I turned my attention to the selection of Noro magazines, making a mental note to go home and check out which issues I was missing. There were some nice colors of Silk Garden and Kureyon that were tempting, but I figured I could go through the magazines and review possible projects before committing.
I was going to play it cool and wait a few days before returning, but I kept thinking of that one copy of the Jo Sharp magazine that was out of print. Rather than leaving anything to chance, I popped in again the next day. And picked up some sock yarn (at 40% off, who could resist?). Plus, I'd decided on a Silk Garden and Debbie Bliss Cashmerino project that only needed a few skeins of yarn and I wanted to review colors. I knew I'd be jammed up during the end of the week, with dentist appointments and family events, but I thought I could safely wait a days. Imagine my shock, shock, and dismay when I returned Monday and found whole cubbies emptied out! My little Silk Garden sweater selection had vaporized. How could I have overlooked Saturday, the one day when knitters from all over the Bay Area would come to pillage? What an amateur's mistake!! Thank goodness no one had snatched up all the yarn for the Cavendish wrap (in the original color, even) so I could still come out with a win!
My little spree was quite the success. I can tell because I have a bag of yarn hiding in my car trunk -- afraid to bring it into the house to add to the other bags, all right bins of yarn, that make up my stash.
Denial? That's a river in Egypt.
Thanks for the memories, Rachael. I'll miss you.
Friday, August 31, 2007
The Fall Booklist 2007
There's always a frisson of anticipation in the publishing world (and among readers) this time of year, as the new BIG books roll out. Enough of those articles touting the beach reads of summer, now the heavyweights are about to arrive. And this fall's offerings are especially tempting -- I can't wait to dig into new work from some of my favorite writers in all genres. The fiction list is truly impressive -- Kate Christensen, Ann Patchett, Ann Packer, Alice Sebold, Richard Russo, David Leavitt, Tom Perrotta, Haven Kimmel, Ha Jin, Frank McCourt, a new Isabel Dalhousie mystery from Alexander McCall Smith, and a new Easy Rawlins mystery from Walter Mosley.
On a sadder note, we've had the last mystery from Magdalen Nabb, who passed away earlier this week. Nabb was part of an impressive group of women mystery writers whom I discovered (and raced through) during the 1980's -- including fellow Brits Liza Cody, Sarah Caudwell, Dorothy Dunnett, and Americans Amanda Cross, Linda Dunlap, and Julie Smith. Like Columbia English professor Carolyn Heilbrun (who wrote under the pseudonym Amanda Cross), Nabb's mysteries focused less on violent crime and more on characters and their relationships. Her mysteries were set in Florence and featured a male detective, Marshal Guarnaccia. The stories unfold at a leisurely pace, especially compared to someone like Patricia Cornwell whose stories are gripping and fast-paced. But Nabb writes elegantly, like her predecessors Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers and it was always nice to enter the world of the carbinieri and Italy. She'll be missed by readers of literate mysteries. Her obituary can be found in the NY Times and the London papers. I favor the London papers -- those Brits really know how to deliver an obit with style.
On a sadder note, we've had the last mystery from Magdalen Nabb, who passed away earlier this week. Nabb was part of an impressive group of women mystery writers whom I discovered (and raced through) during the 1980's -- including fellow Brits Liza Cody, Sarah Caudwell, Dorothy Dunnett, and Americans Amanda Cross, Linda Dunlap, and Julie Smith. Like Columbia English professor Carolyn Heilbrun (who wrote under the pseudonym Amanda Cross), Nabb's mysteries focused less on violent crime and more on characters and their relationships. Her mysteries were set in Florence and featured a male detective, Marshal Guarnaccia. The stories unfold at a leisurely pace, especially compared to someone like Patricia Cornwell whose stories are gripping and fast-paced. But Nabb writes elegantly, like her predecessors Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers and it was always nice to enter the world of the carbinieri and Italy. She'll be missed by readers of literate mysteries. Her obituary can be found in the NY Times and the London papers. I favor the London papers -- those Brits really know how to deliver an obit with style.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
bye-bye Summer
It's official. In Berkeley, at least, summer is over. The Cal frosh arrived ten days ago and the Berkeley High football players have been practicing on the big and little fields all week. Tomorrow is the first day of school in the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD). I'll bet parents all across town are thrilled not to have to arrange one. more. summer. play date.
The weather forecast for tomorrow is hot and smoggy -- it's the first declared Spare the Air day of summer. Two days before September. Today, the BFF's boys found out which classes they're assigned to, and both are pleased with their teachers. They both have their new sneakers for the first day of school, and the elder son will be wearing his Cal Marshawn Lynch jersey, even though Marshawn did not return for his senior year, lighting out for the NFL draft instead. (One day, I will blog about the saga of the Marshawn Lynch jersey which I purchased as a birthday present. Was it some sort of karma for me to fork over cash for a Cal football jersey? Twice?) Interestingly, their best friends won't be in their classroom this year. For the elder son, he and "D" were in the same class last year but in different classes the year before. For the younger though, it's a bit more of a disruption -- two of his best friends are no longer in his class, and he's had the same class and teacher for the past two years. (Their school allows kindergarten and first grade teachers to keep the same class for two years, rotating the grade and teachers each year). He's not worried -- "I know everybody in my class" -- and all of the second grade classes join together on Friday afternoons for music class.
We all love the boys' school, Malcolm X Arts and Academics Elementary School, and I'm looking forward to another year of assemblies and potlucks, performances and book sales. It's not only a great school (named as one of California's Distinguished Schools two years ago), it's also an example of BUSD at its best. There are kids of all colors, from all ethnic, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds, learning and playing, and in the spring drilling for the STAR test together. I'd originally hoped that the boys would go to another elementary school, a hill school that is resource rich and has multiple connections to UC Berkeley's School of Education. But their mom felt more welcome at Malcolm X, it's within walking distance and she really wanted the arts emphasis. I now admit that I was wrong. I'd always heard "this school is the best fit for my child", but never experienced it. It's hard to quantify a feeling or to compare it to the statistical description of another program, but that intangible should be a critical factor in choosing a school. Berkeley is truly lucky, and has worked hard to offer a variety of outstanding educational choices in their public schools. There are 11 neighborhood and magnet elementary schools that feed into three middle schools that then feed into Berkeley High School. BHS was at the forefront of the "small schools" movement, creating the CAS (Communication Arts and Science) program in 1997, with its first graduating class in 2000. Now it offers a number of small school programs that students can rank their preference for, though assignment is done by lottery -- 1) Academic Choice (the program perceived as the most rigorous, and therefore desired by those who want their kids to go to four year colleges; inevitably the one said parents bitch about not getting into), 2) Community Arts and Science program (the aforementioned CAS), 3) Arts and Humanities Academy, 4) Berkeley International High School (with an International Baccalaureate curriculum), 5) Community Partnership Academy, and 6) Social Justice and Ecology. A dizzying array, yes? But nothing compared to the head-spinning ordeal of trying to locate information about any of them. Not listed on the Berkeley Unified School District website. Or the Berkeley High School website. No, you need to know to go to the BHS PTSA website (Berkeley High School Parent Teacher and Student Association for those not up on the lingo). Which is mentioned on the BUSD and BHS websites, but without any guidance that this is where to find information about the small schools at Berkeley High School. I've nicknamed this M.O. "the secret handshake" and observed it in so many educational institutions... all of which are concerned about access and equity, but have yet to integrate transparency into their outreach efforts. They don't intend for information or their process to be difficult or mysterious to access, but so often that's how it turns out. And I don't think it's done maliciously or even intentionally, in most cases. But because educational systems, no matter how well-intentioned, operate from the top down there's never a sense of how relaying information quickly can become a series of obstacles if you're looking from the bottom up. Which came to my attention late in the spring, when I showed up at my dentist's office in need of an emergency appointment. And overheard the receptionist engaged in a frustrating phone call trying to find out how to enroll her daughter in Berkeley High for this fall, and what the process was to get into the Academic Choice Program.
In so many ways, BUSD is a model school district, or at least has all the components that define a model district. Yet, it continues to struggle to serve all of its students well. And if you read the Berkeley Parents Network boards, it manages to piss off or disappoint a fair number of its constituents. All the while, continuing to wrestle with that pesky, decades old, achievement gap problem, without making much progress. How does this still happen, over and over, in so many districts -- urban, suburban, enriched, struggling??
Alright, I've tipped my hand with this post. A good deal of the blog will focus on schools and the mystifying field of education. After all this time, how have we come to know so much and be able to affect so little? I'll be looking most closely at the schools and school systems of my nearest and dearest, while also drawing on the knowledge I've picked up during my years in the field. And I'm very lucky to have a bit of a brain trust at my disposal, whose wisdom I'll share with you.
The nieces have a bit of reprieve before school starts. The local niece returns to classes next week, the long distance niece the week after. Both are in a transition year before the crunch of applications. The local will be applying to high schools next year, though she maintains steadfastly that she and her BFF will be attending Berkeley High. (And let me add that her mother already jokes about that tuition money she'll be saving). But there are a few private schools where the niecelet could thrive and be challenged, just with a smaller student body than BHS. And some of her friends will end up at those schools. Watching this year's cohort go through the process could be enlightening or disheartening. We'll see. The long distance niece is fortunate enough to be attending one of the best high schools in the country, and one I loved seeing applicants from during my days in undergraduate admissions. This is her junior year, the last gasp before plunging full tilt into the maw of college applications. She is on the brink of one of the headiest and potentially heartbreaking experiences of her life, and though there's a lot that I, her parents, teachers and peers can tell her, at this point, it's all in her hands.
Just as an aside, it's ironic that both nieces have attended private schools since jump street. My siblings and I attended suburban public schools, and I was the only one of the three of us to choose a private university. And my parents (a school district administrator and labor organizer) were a tad chilly to my choice, biased in part by their very positive UC experiences. My mother spent much of the 1980's-90's as a senior administrator in a challenging, urban school district that was struggling to educate children from all over the city who'd come from all over the world, uphold a consent decree, and garner new sources of funding as the state and federal governments annually reduced their financial support. My mother never questioned the school choices my siblings made for their daughters, and she thinks both schools are excellent (which they are). Are the nieces receiving a "better" education than we did? The choices are so different because the times are so different. The three of us (older brother, me, younger sister) participated in the first wave of integration in a suburban Southern California school district that was court mandated to desegregate. While we had the option and academic preparation to go (flee) to private schools, we didn't. My recollection is that in junior high, all of my friends were going to public school and that was good enough for me. And I was equally enthusiastic about going to the "Mustang blue and gold" high school where my brother was having such a fantastic time. Now, I'm struck by how hopeful we all were. From elementary school through high school, I had friends who were black, white, Asian and Hispanic. They were all the smart kids, and we were all in the same classes and clubs, and on the same athletic teams. Some of us went off to four-year schools, but most of the graduating class ended up at the local junior college as it had always done. But those public schools don't exist in the cities where my nieces live; those precise schools, in the little burgh where we grew up, have changed dramatically, and not for the better. Again, why are the choices so skewed, with those that have the most garnering the best and largest number of options?
There's a big, fat, full moon tonight, and Berkeley has relatively few "city lights" so it's dark and inky by 9 pm. I love turning into my driveway on these evenings, when it seems that the moon is shining directly on my backyard. I sit out on my back porch and enjoy it, until the raccoons start skittering around on the branches of the camphor tree.
And sorry for the lack of posts! Between family visiting (my brother and sister-in-law flew in Friday night to claim their daughter and just left yesterday) and a comedy of errors in my mouth, I've been a bit distracted.
The weather forecast for tomorrow is hot and smoggy -- it's the first declared Spare the Air day of summer. Two days before September. Today, the BFF's boys found out which classes they're assigned to, and both are pleased with their teachers. They both have their new sneakers for the first day of school, and the elder son will be wearing his Cal Marshawn Lynch jersey, even though Marshawn did not return for his senior year, lighting out for the NFL draft instead. (One day, I will blog about the saga of the Marshawn Lynch jersey which I purchased as a birthday present. Was it some sort of karma for me to fork over cash for a Cal football jersey? Twice?) Interestingly, their best friends won't be in their classroom this year. For the elder son, he and "D" were in the same class last year but in different classes the year before. For the younger though, it's a bit more of a disruption -- two of his best friends are no longer in his class, and he's had the same class and teacher for the past two years. (Their school allows kindergarten and first grade teachers to keep the same class for two years, rotating the grade and teachers each year). He's not worried -- "I know everybody in my class" -- and all of the second grade classes join together on Friday afternoons for music class.
We all love the boys' school, Malcolm X Arts and Academics Elementary School, and I'm looking forward to another year of assemblies and potlucks, performances and book sales. It's not only a great school (named as one of California's Distinguished Schools two years ago), it's also an example of BUSD at its best. There are kids of all colors, from all ethnic, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds, learning and playing, and in the spring drilling for the STAR test together. I'd originally hoped that the boys would go to another elementary school, a hill school that is resource rich and has multiple connections to UC Berkeley's School of Education. But their mom felt more welcome at Malcolm X, it's within walking distance and she really wanted the arts emphasis. I now admit that I was wrong. I'd always heard "this school is the best fit for my child", but never experienced it. It's hard to quantify a feeling or to compare it to the statistical description of another program, but that intangible should be a critical factor in choosing a school. Berkeley is truly lucky, and has worked hard to offer a variety of outstanding educational choices in their public schools. There are 11 neighborhood and magnet elementary schools that feed into three middle schools that then feed into Berkeley High School. BHS was at the forefront of the "small schools" movement, creating the CAS (Communication Arts and Science) program in 1997, with its first graduating class in 2000. Now it offers a number of small school programs that students can rank their preference for, though assignment is done by lottery -- 1) Academic Choice (the program perceived as the most rigorous, and therefore desired by those who want their kids to go to four year colleges; inevitably the one said parents bitch about not getting into), 2) Community Arts and Science program (the aforementioned CAS), 3) Arts and Humanities Academy, 4) Berkeley International High School (with an International Baccalaureate curriculum), 5) Community Partnership Academy, and 6) Social Justice and Ecology. A dizzying array, yes? But nothing compared to the head-spinning ordeal of trying to locate information about any of them. Not listed on the Berkeley Unified School District website. Or the Berkeley High School website. No, you need to know to go to the BHS PTSA website (Berkeley High School Parent Teacher and Student Association for those not up on the lingo). Which is mentioned on the BUSD and BHS websites, but without any guidance that this is where to find information about the small schools at Berkeley High School. I've nicknamed this M.O. "the secret handshake" and observed it in so many educational institutions... all of which are concerned about access and equity, but have yet to integrate transparency into their outreach efforts. They don't intend for information or their process to be difficult or mysterious to access, but so often that's how it turns out. And I don't think it's done maliciously or even intentionally, in most cases. But because educational systems, no matter how well-intentioned, operate from the top down there's never a sense of how relaying information quickly can become a series of obstacles if you're looking from the bottom up. Which came to my attention late in the spring, when I showed up at my dentist's office in need of an emergency appointment. And overheard the receptionist engaged in a frustrating phone call trying to find out how to enroll her daughter in Berkeley High for this fall, and what the process was to get into the Academic Choice Program.
In so many ways, BUSD is a model school district, or at least has all the components that define a model district. Yet, it continues to struggle to serve all of its students well. And if you read the Berkeley Parents Network boards, it manages to piss off or disappoint a fair number of its constituents. All the while, continuing to wrestle with that pesky, decades old, achievement gap problem, without making much progress. How does this still happen, over and over, in so many districts -- urban, suburban, enriched, struggling??
Alright, I've tipped my hand with this post. A good deal of the blog will focus on schools and the mystifying field of education. After all this time, how have we come to know so much and be able to affect so little? I'll be looking most closely at the schools and school systems of my nearest and dearest, while also drawing on the knowledge I've picked up during my years in the field. And I'm very lucky to have a bit of a brain trust at my disposal, whose wisdom I'll share with you.
The nieces have a bit of reprieve before school starts. The local niece returns to classes next week, the long distance niece the week after. Both are in a transition year before the crunch of applications. The local will be applying to high schools next year, though she maintains steadfastly that she and her BFF will be attending Berkeley High. (And let me add that her mother already jokes about that tuition money she'll be saving). But there are a few private schools where the niecelet could thrive and be challenged, just with a smaller student body than BHS. And some of her friends will end up at those schools. Watching this year's cohort go through the process could be enlightening or disheartening. We'll see. The long distance niece is fortunate enough to be attending one of the best high schools in the country, and one I loved seeing applicants from during my days in undergraduate admissions. This is her junior year, the last gasp before plunging full tilt into the maw of college applications. She is on the brink of one of the headiest and potentially heartbreaking experiences of her life, and though there's a lot that I, her parents, teachers and peers can tell her, at this point, it's all in her hands.
Just as an aside, it's ironic that both nieces have attended private schools since jump street. My siblings and I attended suburban public schools, and I was the only one of the three of us to choose a private university. And my parents (a school district administrator and labor organizer) were a tad chilly to my choice, biased in part by their very positive UC experiences. My mother spent much of the 1980's-90's as a senior administrator in a challenging, urban school district that was struggling to educate children from all over the city who'd come from all over the world, uphold a consent decree, and garner new sources of funding as the state and federal governments annually reduced their financial support. My mother never questioned the school choices my siblings made for their daughters, and she thinks both schools are excellent (which they are). Are the nieces receiving a "better" education than we did? The choices are so different because the times are so different. The three of us (older brother, me, younger sister) participated in the first wave of integration in a suburban Southern California school district that was court mandated to desegregate. While we had the option and academic preparation to go (flee) to private schools, we didn't. My recollection is that in junior high, all of my friends were going to public school and that was good enough for me. And I was equally enthusiastic about going to the "Mustang blue and gold" high school where my brother was having such a fantastic time. Now, I'm struck by how hopeful we all were. From elementary school through high school, I had friends who were black, white, Asian and Hispanic. They were all the smart kids, and we were all in the same classes and clubs, and on the same athletic teams. Some of us went off to four-year schools, but most of the graduating class ended up at the local junior college as it had always done. But those public schools don't exist in the cities where my nieces live; those precise schools, in the little burgh where we grew up, have changed dramatically, and not for the better. Again, why are the choices so skewed, with those that have the most garnering the best and largest number of options?
There's a big, fat, full moon tonight, and Berkeley has relatively few "city lights" so it's dark and inky by 9 pm. I love turning into my driveway on these evenings, when it seems that the moon is shining directly on my backyard. I sit out on my back porch and enjoy it, until the raccoons start skittering around on the branches of the camphor tree.
And sorry for the lack of posts! Between family visiting (my brother and sister-in-law flew in Friday night to claim their daughter and just left yesterday) and a comedy of errors in my mouth, I've been a bit distracted.
Friday, August 17, 2007
The Latest Doohickies
This week, I've been hanging out with the nieces. The long-distance one flew in with my mom on Monday, the local one and I cruised down to the airport to pick them up. Once the luggage was packed into the trunk, the two of them piled into the back seat along with all their gadgets. Between the two of them, they have two video iPods, two laptops, one Razr cellphone (with texting and photo capabilities) and a digital camera. And two pairs of ear buds, though they usually share one pair while listening to one iPod. Their antiquated relatives rely on them to fix (please, skip the explanation and just make it work) the functions and programming issues for tv and cable remotes, DVD players, cell phones and other assorted electronic / digital / computer equipment.
I am no Luddite, but I am reluctant to adopt new technology. While I love my Apple computer and swear by my Palm Pilot, in most other arenas I've been dragged into the 21st century. I am camera-less, got my only cellphone the Christmas before last, and my iPod last Christmas. Owning multiple copies of the same album or song, only in different formats --LP, cassette,
CD-- I could not see the point of converting to digital simply because it was the latest thing. But when the local niece introduced me to iTunes (and more specifically her impressive playlist), I found a way to create my ideal, expandable music collection. To achieve it, I had to upgrade my operating system, add a whole lot of memory, and master a ton of information that I'm still digesting -- but I feel the magic!!
While the original plan for this week was to visit a few local colleges, get cracking on The Interpreter of Maladies and maybe catch a few museum exhibits, we have fallen far, far short of our goals. The long-distance niece spends hours every day on the phone and on Facebook; the local niece loves internet-surfing and IM-ing. And YouTube -- did you know you can watch tv shows from other countries on YouTube (e.g. Next Top Model with British accents)? It's amazing how much I don't know. And how much has changed. But, what would be the point of telling the whiz kids that my parents suffered through back-to-back adolescences with only one family telephone number? Or that there were probably twenty tv channels total, VHF and UHF combined? Already I get the rolled eyes and talk to the hand -- why give them more ammunition?
But some things don't change. Today, we did not tour the Cal campus, but we did some fabulous back to school shopping on Bancroft and Telegraph. Do you remember the excitement of picking out your own clothes for school, with your own money? Well, the money your parents gave you to escape the sulkiness and tantrums that were sure to accompany any shopping you did together. I had forgotten it, until I watched the two beauties wandering around Urban Outfitters -- from the rows of tank tops and camisoles to the stacks of t-shirts and cords to the sale racks -- in a state of bliss. So many colors! So many possibilities! So many outfits to swap with friends! It reminded me how bright and shiny the upcoming school year is at that age, and how exhilarating it is to make your first independent decisions. You could show your mom your purchases, but wouldn't you rather hide those bags in the closet until your best friend arrived?
Yesterday, we trekked to Japantown (a ritual) and found the usual treasures at our favorite stationery store -- notebooks, pens, colored leads for mechanical pencils, magnets, folders. So, they've made out like bandits -- smart, adorable bandits.
Last night, on the CNET news website, I read an article (posted by Stefanie Nelson on 8/15) stating that a larger percentage of the class of 2011 will come to college with gadgets than had the Class of 2008. Statistically, not so surprising -- but those gadgets? They were all those I catalogued at the top of the page. And the nieces? Currently they're in middle school and high school. What will they need to be technologically savvy for college?
And what technological breakthroughs will I be trying to master without their assistance??
I am no Luddite, but I am reluctant to adopt new technology. While I love my Apple computer and swear by my Palm Pilot, in most other arenas I've been dragged into the 21st century. I am camera-less, got my only cellphone the Christmas before last, and my iPod last Christmas. Owning multiple copies of the same album or song, only in different formats --LP, cassette,
CD-- I could not see the point of converting to digital simply because it was the latest thing. But when the local niece introduced me to iTunes (and more specifically her impressive playlist), I found a way to create my ideal, expandable music collection. To achieve it, I had to upgrade my operating system, add a whole lot of memory, and master a ton of information that I'm still digesting -- but I feel the magic!!
While the original plan for this week was to visit a few local colleges, get cracking on The Interpreter of Maladies and maybe catch a few museum exhibits, we have fallen far, far short of our goals. The long-distance niece spends hours every day on the phone and on Facebook; the local niece loves internet-surfing and IM-ing. And YouTube -- did you know you can watch tv shows from other countries on YouTube (e.g. Next Top Model with British accents)? It's amazing how much I don't know. And how much has changed. But, what would be the point of telling the whiz kids that my parents suffered through back-to-back adolescences with only one family telephone number? Or that there were probably twenty tv channels total, VHF and UHF combined? Already I get the rolled eyes and talk to the hand -- why give them more ammunition?
But some things don't change. Today, we did not tour the Cal campus, but we did some fabulous back to school shopping on Bancroft and Telegraph. Do you remember the excitement of picking out your own clothes for school, with your own money? Well, the money your parents gave you to escape the sulkiness and tantrums that were sure to accompany any shopping you did together. I had forgotten it, until I watched the two beauties wandering around Urban Outfitters -- from the rows of tank tops and camisoles to the stacks of t-shirts and cords to the sale racks -- in a state of bliss. So many colors! So many possibilities! So many outfits to swap with friends! It reminded me how bright and shiny the upcoming school year is at that age, and how exhilarating it is to make your first independent decisions. You could show your mom your purchases, but wouldn't you rather hide those bags in the closet until your best friend arrived?
Yesterday, we trekked to Japantown (a ritual) and found the usual treasures at our favorite stationery store -- notebooks, pens, colored leads for mechanical pencils, magnets, folders. So, they've made out like bandits -- smart, adorable bandits.
Last night, on the CNET news website, I read an article (posted by Stefanie Nelson on 8/15) stating that a larger percentage of the class of 2011 will come to college with gadgets than had the Class of 2008. Statistically, not so surprising -- but those gadgets? They were all those I catalogued at the top of the page. And the nieces? Currently they're in middle school and high school. What will they need to be technologically savvy for college?
And what technological breakthroughs will I be trying to master without their assistance??
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
I heart HBO
In the 1980's, they brought me same day coverage from Wimbledon for the tourney's full two weeks. And I loved them. Next came Sex and the City, which finally, fully, portrayed the complexity, joys and fears of being a single woman in the big city. The most important thing for thriving and surviving? Not a man, but a loyal posse of women friends. And I loved them more. Then they redefined the family drama with The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and the current Big Love. And I thought they had reached the apex.
But I was wrong. All hail -- The Wire.
Have you heard about it? The best show on television. Continually overlooked by the Emmy's. The superlatives are all true. I can't do it justice and will refer you to the master on this subject, Tim Goodman, the television critic for the otherwise lackluster San Francisco Chronicle. Have you read his column? Checked out his blog, Bastard in the Machine? Priceless. Hysterical. Snarky (his self-description, Mr. Crankypants says it all). The signature line that never fails to crack me up? " So, don't lie to me like I'm Montel Williams."
Have you watched it yet? You'll be sucked in immediately. I loved Homicide: Life on the Street, David Simon's network tv series. Definitely a primer for The Wire -- set in Baltimore, extended story lines, some of the same actors, a police drama, but so much more. The Wire probes deeper, immersing itself within the gritty, urban landscape, and is the contemporary heir to the classical Greek tragedies. How convincing is the acting? I will never, ever, be able to like Idris Elba in any other role, no matter how kind and gentle, because for me he so fully inhabits the character of Stringer Bell. Always. Forever.
I raced through all three seasons, using a combination of library copies, Reel, my local video store's selection, and Netflix to feed my addiction. And I patted myself on the back as I watched some of the special features on the last disc of Season Three. You see, even though the library didn't have copies of Season Four yet (set in Baltimore's floundering school system, can't wait!), I felt secure with my Reel and Netflix backups. Then, I went to Netflix and found out the distressing news -- Season Four hasn't been released yet. Horror! Shock! Despair! No announced release date even! What am I to do? Why, start rewatching, beginning with Season One. I never stopped to watch the episodes with commentary from cast members, writers and directors, since I was so eager for the next episode. Unfortunately, the library copies are checked out and have holds on them, and Reel has NO copies of Disc One, Season One. So I'm watching the Sopranos, Season Six, Part One for solace. Boo hoo.
Regarding my earlier pop culture reference, in my dream, I found myself huddled with Meredith Grey as writer? new character? on the set of Grey's Anatomy as they were setting up to shoot a new scene for the upcoming season. I was trying to impress upon her how critical it would be to maintain the show's level of excellence this season. Easy interpretation -- I'm sad about how much I'll miss Isiah Washington's character, Dr. Preston Burke. Now, I don't in any way condone what he said and did, and the way they wrote him out was completely perfect. But I'll miss him, his spiffy "lucky" surgical caps, his gorgeous looks, his willingness to put his feelings out there no matter how difficult Christina could be. And Diahann Carroll as his mother -- perfect casting. Even better than her role as Whitley Gilbert's mother on A Different World. In the end, Burke was a man who walked away from his love rather than make her into someone she couldn't be. Which is not a bad way to close out a character. As much as I enjoy all the rest of the cast, I'll miss him.
On the library front, I cleared the deck on Monday. Paid my $10-plus fine (so I could check out new items) and returned all the overdues. Came home with an armful: Penelope Lively's latest, Consequences; Margaret Drabble's The Sea Lady (again); Robert Ellis' City of Fire, a whodunit set in Los Angeles (I'm a sucker for location as a character); and two works of non-fiction, John Sedgwick's In My Blood; Six Generations of Madness in An American Family (yes, he's related to Edie Sedgwick); and Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas (how long have we been waiting for this one?). And all the while, under the gun to finish Ann Cummins' Yellowcake, a novel blurbed by Antonya Nelson, Ann Packer and Sigrid Nunez. The long-distance niece is in town for the next two weeks and we're all reading along with her Jhumpa Lahiri's, The Interpreter of Maladies, the summer reading assigned by her school. The two nieces are keeping me busy and introducing all sorts of interesting things I've not experienced (last night, a marathon showing on MTV of America's Next Top Model). You'll probably hear more about this tomorrow!
But I was wrong. All hail -- The Wire.
Have you heard about it? The best show on television. Continually overlooked by the Emmy's. The superlatives are all true. I can't do it justice and will refer you to the master on this subject, Tim Goodman, the television critic for the otherwise lackluster San Francisco Chronicle. Have you read his column? Checked out his blog, Bastard in the Machine? Priceless. Hysterical. Snarky (his self-description, Mr. Crankypants says it all). The signature line that never fails to crack me up? " So, don't lie to me like I'm Montel Williams."
Have you watched it yet? You'll be sucked in immediately. I loved Homicide: Life on the Street, David Simon's network tv series. Definitely a primer for The Wire -- set in Baltimore, extended story lines, some of the same actors, a police drama, but so much more. The Wire probes deeper, immersing itself within the gritty, urban landscape, and is the contemporary heir to the classical Greek tragedies. How convincing is the acting? I will never, ever, be able to like Idris Elba in any other role, no matter how kind and gentle, because for me he so fully inhabits the character of Stringer Bell. Always. Forever.
I raced through all three seasons, using a combination of library copies, Reel, my local video store's selection, and Netflix to feed my addiction. And I patted myself on the back as I watched some of the special features on the last disc of Season Three. You see, even though the library didn't have copies of Season Four yet (set in Baltimore's floundering school system, can't wait!), I felt secure with my Reel and Netflix backups. Then, I went to Netflix and found out the distressing news -- Season Four hasn't been released yet. Horror! Shock! Despair! No announced release date even! What am I to do? Why, start rewatching, beginning with Season One. I never stopped to watch the episodes with commentary from cast members, writers and directors, since I was so eager for the next episode. Unfortunately, the library copies are checked out and have holds on them, and Reel has NO copies of Disc One, Season One. So I'm watching the Sopranos, Season Six, Part One for solace. Boo hoo.
Regarding my earlier pop culture reference, in my dream, I found myself huddled with Meredith Grey as writer? new character? on the set of Grey's Anatomy as they were setting up to shoot a new scene for the upcoming season. I was trying to impress upon her how critical it would be to maintain the show's level of excellence this season. Easy interpretation -- I'm sad about how much I'll miss Isiah Washington's character, Dr. Preston Burke. Now, I don't in any way condone what he said and did, and the way they wrote him out was completely perfect. But I'll miss him, his spiffy "lucky" surgical caps, his gorgeous looks, his willingness to put his feelings out there no matter how difficult Christina could be. And Diahann Carroll as his mother -- perfect casting. Even better than her role as Whitley Gilbert's mother on A Different World. In the end, Burke was a man who walked away from his love rather than make her into someone she couldn't be. Which is not a bad way to close out a character. As much as I enjoy all the rest of the cast, I'll miss him.
On the library front, I cleared the deck on Monday. Paid my $10-plus fine (so I could check out new items) and returned all the overdues. Came home with an armful: Penelope Lively's latest, Consequences; Margaret Drabble's The Sea Lady (again); Robert Ellis' City of Fire, a whodunit set in Los Angeles (I'm a sucker for location as a character); and two works of non-fiction, John Sedgwick's In My Blood; Six Generations of Madness in An American Family (yes, he's related to Edie Sedgwick); and Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas (how long have we been waiting for this one?). And all the while, under the gun to finish Ann Cummins' Yellowcake, a novel blurbed by Antonya Nelson, Ann Packer and Sigrid Nunez. The long-distance niece is in town for the next two weeks and we're all reading along with her Jhumpa Lahiri's, The Interpreter of Maladies, the summer reading assigned by her school. The two nieces are keeping me busy and introducing all sorts of interesting things I've not experienced (last night, a marathon showing on MTV of America's Next Top Model). You'll probably hear more about this tomorrow!
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Back home in Berkeley
My jaunt to Lake Tahoe truly felt like time away. There was no fog, blue jays galore, the aroma of pine trees and green tea sunscreen as well as beautiful, clear, blue water. But Friday evening, barrelling down 80, I did experience a frisson of excitement at the sign flashing: Berkeley - 14 minutes.
This is my eighth year in Berkeley and I am dug in. I recommend the Derby St. farmer's market on Tuesdays, Monterey Market strawberries over Berkeley Bowl's, and the Elmwood bookstore, Mrs. Dalloway's. I worry that the opening of PaperSource on Fourth St. will hurt Castle in the Air's business; Castle has a much, much better selection of fountain pens and inks. I worship the holy trinity of Acme Bread, Cafe Fanny and Kermit Lynch, and get the cheapest gas on the corner of San Pablo and Cedar (alas, no windshield cleaners). My favorite Peet's is the original on Walnut and Rose, and I was shocked, shocked, this afternoon to find the last Hear music store papered over and shut tight.
So you see, Berkeley has all you could want and a host of treasures to discover. It has the rich, intellectual life of a university town, the political infighting of a major metropolis, and the entrenched challenges facing any urban center. I'll be telling you about the battle over relocating my beloved South Branch of the library, the new school year at Malcolm X Arts Elementary School (where the boys go) and the city's other public schools, and the kerfuffle surrounding the plans to open a Trader Joe's on MLK and University that's just starting to escalate. One concerned neighbor is already worried about the potentially crippling traffic jams on Big Game Saturdays.
Relocating to the East Bay after years of living in San Francisco was more of a homecoming than a move. Both my parents grew up in Berkeley -- my mother was elected student body president at Garfield Middle School (now King Middle School, renowned for Alice Water's Edible Garden project) and my father played baseball and the trombone at Berkeley High. Following a tradition that continues to this day, mi padre actually lived in Oakland, but used a Berkeley address (either his grandparents' or his aunt's) to attend the Berkeley schools. His parents and extended family moved to Berkeley and Oakland during the 30's and 40's, migrating from Guthrie, Oklahoma. I live around the corner from my great-aunt's hardware store on Sacramento St., which remained in business until she and my Uncle Bill passed away in the early 90's. I love Berkeley, it feels like home. Except for all that navy blue and gold.
As anyone who's lived in a college town knows, summers are golden since the students go home! In Berkeley, early June is marked by huge numbers of U-Haul trucks and varied pieces of furniture and household items abandoned on the sidewalks for the city's trash collectors to pick up. But the real booty is what's left behind in the dorms -- clothing and books, sure; but the current student body has no qualms abandoning land line and cell phones, old printers and computers, microwaves, mini-refrigerators, coffeemakers, etc. It's like they load all they can (or want) into their mode of transport and abandon the rest as though a magic mover will come in and clean up the remains. Quite a change from decades past -- is it that today's students are used to being taken care of and don't register they need to clean up their mess? That they assume they're in a disposable environment and have no sense of what these items are worth? Hard to gauge, but this is happening on college campuses across the country, adding to the already taxing end of the year workload of experienced administrators while leaving them baffled about how to change the wasteful behavior. Lots of concern about this generation of undergraduates and twentysomethings, and I'll be posting on this subject from time to time. What does it mean for us (the legions of boomers) that we'll be relying on a generation of coddled, self-absorbed workers who have little experience handling any sort of adversity and expectations that they'll achieve at least as much as their parents? Will they be able to support us all? Or will Rome be burning?
On a happier note -- Bonds broke the home run record while I was away, and I missed all news of the event. But thanks to the wonders of technology, I can access as much print and visual coverage as I'd like right here in my own home! Thanks to the Internet, I can also read a virtual edition of the Sunday New York Times, and Woody Allen has a powerful, deeply felt tribute to Ingmar Bergman in the Arts and Leisure section. Reading it, I got why Bergman was such an innovative voice and I was impressed, yet again, with Allen's range of knowledge and his marvelous ability to capture and communicate ideas. I took special note of Allen's homage to Bergman's genius, and that he views himself, still, as the student in the presence of a master. That's such a change compared to current directors and stars, who seem so sure of their own unique talent and genius, while having such a limited understanding of the history of their craft. (I'm thinking of actors who can command astronomical salaries, like John Travolta and Bruce Willis. They pale in comparison to Paul Newman or Robert Redford, Al Pacino or Robert DeNiro -- never mind the greats like Burton or Brando -- who have created an incredible body of work, but are still out there pushing themselves in new directions). Okay, okay, I know this is the old art v. commerce argument, but you should read the article, which is titled The Man Who Asked Hard Questions.
On the book front, at Tahoe I definitely had the biggest book on the beach with Hermione Lee's Edith Wharton biography. (Hey, where were all those Harry Potter readers?) It's riveting. It's one of those works only a professor could write. It's 869 pages with notes and index. It can't be digested on the library's 21 day time frame. It's a definitive work. If I have it on my bookshelf, I can consult it whenever I want, for the rest of my life. I was an English major. I love Edith Wharton. I must have this book!!!! Okay, it's $23.10 on Amazon which is a better discount than any local, independent bookstore would have on a $35 book. I'll buy the Chabon in hardback at a local independent, I promise...
FYI, I have a feeling this week's posts will focus on pop culture. I had a dream last night I was in Gray's Anatomy. Which means ... something.
This is my eighth year in Berkeley and I am dug in. I recommend the Derby St. farmer's market on Tuesdays, Monterey Market strawberries over Berkeley Bowl's, and the Elmwood bookstore, Mrs. Dalloway's. I worry that the opening of PaperSource on Fourth St. will hurt Castle in the Air's business; Castle has a much, much better selection of fountain pens and inks. I worship the holy trinity of Acme Bread, Cafe Fanny and Kermit Lynch, and get the cheapest gas on the corner of San Pablo and Cedar (alas, no windshield cleaners). My favorite Peet's is the original on Walnut and Rose, and I was shocked, shocked, this afternoon to find the last Hear music store papered over and shut tight.
So you see, Berkeley has all you could want and a host of treasures to discover. It has the rich, intellectual life of a university town, the political infighting of a major metropolis, and the entrenched challenges facing any urban center. I'll be telling you about the battle over relocating my beloved South Branch of the library, the new school year at Malcolm X Arts Elementary School (where the boys go) and the city's other public schools, and the kerfuffle surrounding the plans to open a Trader Joe's on MLK and University that's just starting to escalate. One concerned neighbor is already worried about the potentially crippling traffic jams on Big Game Saturdays.
Relocating to the East Bay after years of living in San Francisco was more of a homecoming than a move. Both my parents grew up in Berkeley -- my mother was elected student body president at Garfield Middle School (now King Middle School, renowned for Alice Water's Edible Garden project) and my father played baseball and the trombone at Berkeley High. Following a tradition that continues to this day, mi padre actually lived in Oakland, but used a Berkeley address (either his grandparents' or his aunt's) to attend the Berkeley schools. His parents and extended family moved to Berkeley and Oakland during the 30's and 40's, migrating from Guthrie, Oklahoma. I live around the corner from my great-aunt's hardware store on Sacramento St., which remained in business until she and my Uncle Bill passed away in the early 90's. I love Berkeley, it feels like home. Except for all that navy blue and gold.
As anyone who's lived in a college town knows, summers are golden since the students go home! In Berkeley, early June is marked by huge numbers of U-Haul trucks and varied pieces of furniture and household items abandoned on the sidewalks for the city's trash collectors to pick up. But the real booty is what's left behind in the dorms -- clothing and books, sure; but the current student body has no qualms abandoning land line and cell phones, old printers and computers, microwaves, mini-refrigerators, coffeemakers, etc. It's like they load all they can (or want) into their mode of transport and abandon the rest as though a magic mover will come in and clean up the remains. Quite a change from decades past -- is it that today's students are used to being taken care of and don't register they need to clean up their mess? That they assume they're in a disposable environment and have no sense of what these items are worth? Hard to gauge, but this is happening on college campuses across the country, adding to the already taxing end of the year workload of experienced administrators while leaving them baffled about how to change the wasteful behavior. Lots of concern about this generation of undergraduates and twentysomethings, and I'll be posting on this subject from time to time. What does it mean for us (the legions of boomers) that we'll be relying on a generation of coddled, self-absorbed workers who have little experience handling any sort of adversity and expectations that they'll achieve at least as much as their parents? Will they be able to support us all? Or will Rome be burning?
On a happier note -- Bonds broke the home run record while I was away, and I missed all news of the event. But thanks to the wonders of technology, I can access as much print and visual coverage as I'd like right here in my own home! Thanks to the Internet, I can also read a virtual edition of the Sunday New York Times, and Woody Allen has a powerful, deeply felt tribute to Ingmar Bergman in the Arts and Leisure section. Reading it, I got why Bergman was such an innovative voice and I was impressed, yet again, with Allen's range of knowledge and his marvelous ability to capture and communicate ideas. I took special note of Allen's homage to Bergman's genius, and that he views himself, still, as the student in the presence of a master. That's such a change compared to current directors and stars, who seem so sure of their own unique talent and genius, while having such a limited understanding of the history of their craft. (I'm thinking of actors who can command astronomical salaries, like John Travolta and Bruce Willis. They pale in comparison to Paul Newman or Robert Redford, Al Pacino or Robert DeNiro -- never mind the greats like Burton or Brando -- who have created an incredible body of work, but are still out there pushing themselves in new directions). Okay, okay, I know this is the old art v. commerce argument, but you should read the article, which is titled The Man Who Asked Hard Questions.
On the book front, at Tahoe I definitely had the biggest book on the beach with Hermione Lee's Edith Wharton biography. (Hey, where were all those Harry Potter readers?) It's riveting. It's one of those works only a professor could write. It's 869 pages with notes and index. It can't be digested on the library's 21 day time frame. It's a definitive work. If I have it on my bookshelf, I can consult it whenever I want, for the rest of my life. I was an English major. I love Edith Wharton. I must have this book!!!! Okay, it's $23.10 on Amazon which is a better discount than any local, independent bookstore would have on a $35 book. I'll buy the Chabon in hardback at a local independent, I promise...
FYI, I have a feeling this week's posts will focus on pop culture. I had a dream last night I was in Gray's Anatomy. Which means ... something.
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