All of a sudden it is the last day of 2009.

It has been a year to remember, at least. I got some good stretching in. For example, the learning of Spanish, the farming in Iceland, the escape from Google, the meandering about Paris with a lover, the pretty successful complete switching of career tracks.

For all the things that have happened this year. For all the things I've done, I think it's those walks along the Seine or the beach at Coronado or the car rides to it doesn't matter where with John's fingers tangled up in mine that are my proudest bit of this year. Falling in love with him was the bravest, most dangerous, most terrifying and probably best thing I've ever done.

I've spent probably too much time trying to understand what it all means, but today I don't want any answers. Today I just want to know that it happened, and that I was there.

Coming to my senses

I am not known for my acute sense of smell. When there is a bad smelling thing, I can't smell it. When there is a good smelling thing, I probably can't smell it.

Except all of a sudden there are smells everywhere. The wreath practically jumps off the door at me when I walk by and the enormous tree in the living room that we all decided had no scent at all was filling my lungs with forest scent as I read the Fountainhead the other day. Things that I specifically could not smell have smells, strong smells.

It's extraordinary. It's like. It's as if there were colors, and then they turned into crazy bright colors. Hypersensual. It feels hypersensual. Incredible, just incredible.

Holiday times

This has not been my best week. I've been rather close to my surface, which, in its own way, I think, is good for me -- to be simply true in public like that.

I am thankful for the holidays and the lots of family that has filled them. That's what I'm hoping to remember of these short days that feel so long.

To more of merriment and brightness.

Anything but that

Gasp. My mother has suggested the unthinkable. Celiac.

Wheat gluten is one of my most favorite things ever. My falling victim to the cruelty of celiac would be a foul trick of fate.

The problem is this: I honestly really did try to eat lots of iron this past month. Still no red meat, but I ate every iron rich thing vegetarians can eat and lots of it. Black beans, raisins, ferrous fumarate. I don't think I've ever eaten so many beans. I even ate turkey and chicken and fish. And to be still so low doesn't bode well.

Add to this the fact that my family has accused me of being anemic since my lips turned white at college ten years ago. No one can recollect ever seeing me with properly red lips. And I've never been rejected from the Red Cross before, but what I've neglected to mention is that I've always been almost rejected. Details, details.

And all these tell tale symptoms of anemia sound so familiar. I never thought they were a big deal. Yes, my fingers get tingly easily. Plenty of reasons for that to happen. Yes, on rare occasions I feel particularly dizzy, bump into walls when walking through doorways, and become a butterfingers. I actually choose cellphones to be able to withstand the many many times I am likely to fling them from my fingers, but A. that doesn't happen too often and B. everybody drops stuff sometimes. Yes, I get the rapid poundy heart when I probably shouldn't considering how much I ride my bicycle, but I definitely don't have pica or... damn is that really the only one I don't have? Is that why my lips are always cracked?

But celiac. Noooooooo. No no no. And yet Web MD does say it can lead to anemia caused by iron and or folic acid deficiency, which could explain why my supposedly iron-rich diet made no difference. But none of this celiac-specific stuff sounds familiar. And not the leukemia either, THANK GOD. Please, please I promise to be so good. I will put molasses and raisins in everything. I will eat red meat. I will eat cheese and folic acid for just in case. Just don't let it be celiac!

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post script

Ferrous fumarate supposedly has the most elemental iron of any of the forms commonly available as supplements, but they say adults need 60-200mg of iron daily. About a third of the weight of ferrous fumarate is elemental iron, so the normal 325mg tablets should do it, but I just looked at my bottle, and it says it includes 18mg of iron. In other words, no where near enough for someone who actually needs lots more iron. This is good news, I think. I think it is totally reasonable to at least do another dietary experiment before jumping to celiac. I will look for new vitamins.

Holy Toledo

The newest lab result to come in is labeled Ferritin. Supposedly the standard range is 22-291 ng/mL, and Wikipedia says I should be concerned about anything under 50. Mine says 4. Four! 4 is significantly less than 50! WebMD says even 6 month old babies should have at least twice that!

The internet says that probably means I really don't have any iron in my system. Eek. That would explain why my sisters tease me about looking like I have lip liner around my white lips all the time. (White lips being an indication of anemia). How low must it have been before if 4 is what I get when I'm feeling relatively ok??

I guess that answers the iron vs. vitamin B12 question. Although maybe my B12 is low too. But dang. I am an itty bit concerned that it could have gotten so low while I've been making such a concerted effort to keep it up. Maybe I will email this new doctor of mine to ask her what I should make of this.

Duuuuuuude. Wikipedia says that low levels of iron can also give you the jimmylegs. Crazy. What if that has been the tingle I always feel in the back of my legs that makes me stretch all the time such that I can now touch my nose to my knees with my legs straight? I suspect it also means I'm craving exercise, but still! Revelation upon revelation! It's like a mystery novel that is all coming together!

According to WebMD, difficulty concentrating is another symptom of anemia. I bet that's why I had such a hard time studying for my last two finals because normally I am a master of concentration, but sometimes I just can't do it for the life of me. My mind is being blown right now.

I wonder what it feels like to have so called normal levels of iron in your system. Maybe I would turn into a superhuman. I probably would. My god, the more I read about this stuff, iron sounds like a miracle cure to every thing I've sort of just come to accept as normal.

So ok, people, the next time you see me looking out of it and always holding on to stuff when I walk, make me eat a nice juicy hamburger, stat. I hereby give up all claim to ever becoming vegetarian. This confirms my suspicion that we really are complex chemical reactions influenced in large part by what we eat.

Results are in

Score one for Kaiser Permanente today. I've already gotten back results from this morning's lab tests, and wouldn't you know I was indeed shy of the normal range for hemoglobin, even for a girl. Coming close on hemocrit too, which I think is good news. Good news because what I suspect it means is that I should start feeling a lot better after a few days of pairing my iron vitamins with clementines. Not a bad prescription, if I may say so myself.

But just think! Maybe all I have to do when I get the wobbly water legs, the shaky hand, and the inexplicable malaise is eat citrus with a spoonful of molasses. Seems like as good an excuse as any to bake gingerbread, no? I still suspect it wouldn't hurt to throw in a cup of cottage cheese for good measure. It's a wonder how much easier it is to make the most of your day when it doesn't feel like you're walking through sand.

I also traded in my old doctor for a new one who looks like she'll be a thousand and one times better than my old one, who I did not like at all. And still in walking distance of my apartment.

All in due time

Thinking about love today. And what-all it means. I used to think love should be easy. And I know I'm the first to want to run away. But maybe there is something to the magnetism of mixed tears. Maybe it's better not always to be in charge. Maybe it's better not always to get what you want or to be not always right. Maybe by giving up a few things you can make something bigger than yourself.

Last night's conversation turned lightly to dowries. What would you want to love someone forever? Fifteen white horses? A fancy yacht? Diamonds? A rural estate with a greenhouse and dark room? A cabin? An island in the Mediterranean? Without thinking, I came out with - good intentions. I just don't think fifteen horses would be much without that, and, even then, the horses would just be icing on the cake.

Its ugly head

I am hoping this morning on the miracle of modern medicine. With any luck, I'm just a few blood tests away from chalking up the terribleness of this week to an easy fix vitamin deficiency. I could be just a few sips of water from shaking the awful, awful image of last night's dream from my waking mind. I could be just a niblet of cheese from the sense that my legs are made of bones instead of water when I walk.

Paysages and points of interest, by Bernard Buffet

It's true

Light is indeed preferable to darkness. Especially when solitary.

Still life, by Bernard Buffet

Birds, by Bernard Buffet

This is the bird that started my obsession in the first place:

Dang me

So so close to being done. Just one last final to study for. It's nudging up to my normal bedtime and I've still got 2/3rds of my notes to review.

So I'm boiling water for a little black tea - at 11pm, yes, I may never get to sleep - and I've just queued up Buck Owens in my iTunes. If he doesn't perk me up, nothing will.

Insects, by Bernard Buffet

I don't think I've ever actually posted anything about one of my favorite artists, M. Bernard Buffet, painter, lithographer, Frenchman.

Here are some of his insects. Beautiful stuff. Butterflies still haven't gotten old. Or maybe it's that he makes them new again.

The epistolary underworld

Cleaning out one of my drawers in search of my Social Security Card, I chanced upon a stash of letters that might have been written or may yet some day be written. About loss. About regret. About love.

For example:

Dear Lisa,

I am so sorry that it has taken me so long to write you back. I am so grateful that you sent back Liza's birthday negatives. It was so kind to take the roll of film and even have it developed; most people would have thrown it in the trashcan. We were on Berkeley Campus that day because my brother went to Grad School there & he was showing us the campus. How amazing for it to be the role [sp.] of film with her name & school in the picture. She rarely wears that sweatshirt, but since we were ice skating, she took it with her. Thank you again for your generosity; I would have been disappointed to lose those pictures. It was her 8th birthday. Again - sorry this took so long, but I wanted to let you know that your efforts were greatly appreciated.

Fondly,
Margaret Jones

I am reminded of Ella Chase. There is the question about the distinction in nobility between the literary and physical worlds. I just hope things turn out better this time.

Tassin

I've been on an antique map kick this week and with the end of finals in sight, I've been itching to do a little decorating around the apartment.

I already busted out my 1610 map of Scotland and I really want to frame my little gravure du Mont St. Michel, which is a colorized, postcard-sized version of this:


I am loving this Nicolas Tassin. If only I had his printmaking skillz. Why was everything prettier in the 17th century?

False alarm

Ok so it would be an overstatement to say I was actually worried about that Permaculture pop final last week, but there were definitely a few answers I made up entirely so when he offered to hand our tests back after class today I was considering maintaining my blissful ignorance of whatever grade he might decide to give me for it.

But all my potential worry was for naught! He liked mine so much he asked to keep it as an example to share. How's that for a surprise!

Holed up

All of this studying and cozy cold weather are giving me an odd combination of cabin fever and cravings for curl up tea time.

I've got the tea covered. I think I've been drinking upwards of a litre a day, but I could use a good lap to curl up in. Ideally in someone else's cabin.

Three for three

I have made contact with the Suding lab at Berkeley. I shall be chatting about possible volunteer projects with its head when they open back up in January!

If only it were this easy to convince people to hire you when you're not working for free. Now all I need to do is figure out how to have a life on top of all this exciting school-ness.

Fictional employment

I was listening to Barry Lopez' "The Mappist" on Selected Shorts last night as I scribbled, snipped, and sketched away at my Restoration final project last night, and towards the end of the story the narrator mentions that his daughter wants to be an environmental historian, and he's hoping to hook her up with this badass map maker who goes around hand drawing maps of every possible cool thing, such as the location of temporary streams, populations of predator and prey species of a given area over time, sites of historical interest, the movement of water in cities municipal and otherwise. Both jobs would be pretty cool, really - drawing the maps or writing the historical interpretation. Pretty niche work of the sort Modern Technology has deprioritized, making it hard to make a living, but still, wouldn't that be great? Hiking around, monitoring bird species, getting a good feeling of the land, creating a magnum opus.

Were you aware of it? vol. 24: How to eat a persimmon

By nature I distrust the Hachiya persimmon (above). Naive to their sinister ways, I once bit into one of their kind when it was far softer than any other fruit I consider palatable, but it was Not Soft Enough! Anyone who has fallen victim to the Hachiya persimmon, who has bitten into them when they retain even the slightest hint of cellular structure knows that the experience is cruel. For the uninitiated, imagine that chalkiness that coats your mouth when you eat a banana that is a little bit too green and then multiply that slight unpleasantness by a million until it is unusual punishment.

I did, however, chance upon a strategy to render even the meanspirited Hachiya harmless. The trick: freeze it. Pop your persimmon in the freezer for 24 hours, then stick it in the refridgerator (or out on the counter if you're going to eat it right away) until it defrosts, and it will be edible mush. Once the stem-let has been removed, this blob can be plopped into oatmeal as a pretty decent sweetener. Or you could whip up some persimmon pudding.

Nevertheless, as someone who prefers to eat most fruits when they have the texture of an apple (peaches and plums notwithstanding), the Hachiya persimmon is not incredibly appealing. I prefer it's friendlier cousin the Fuyu (below). The glorious Fuyu can be eaten raw when it's hard as a rock, just the way I like it. You can toss them in salads or just bite fearlessly into them. Fuyus, in my humble experience, are also not as sickly sweet as Hachiyas, which further raises them in my esteem.

In any case, you have been forewarned. You may now venture forth and enjoy these fruits which may well be at the peak of their season.

Mid finals crunch

Papers are being written, projects are being constructed, exam material is being reviewed.

I am looking forward to an art-filled winter break, but am also pleased with how much I've absorbed over the past few months. Considering I knew next to nothing about plants when I started - other than that mine seem to like the amount of water I give them - I am pretty pleased with how this semester has gone. Even if I don't use this info professionally, I'm glad to have studied it. I'm feeling pretty decent about grad school, even.

It would be cool to find a way to make art about plants. So far I've been trying to up the creativity of my school projects. My restoration plant journal was called out Sunday as the most beautiful thing the prof had ever seen (plant journal-wise) since she started teaching the class. And it wasn't that it was pretty, but that I wanted to make it useful for me, which she picked up on. I wanted it to be something I liked, not just a bit of stuff I had to do for a class once. When I get it back, I want to add more to it.

I feel like I haven't seen anyone in ages, but solitary as it's been, I feel my time has been well spent. The transition from 60+ hour work weeks to student freedom has gone well. I just need to learn better how to allow myself to have free time I feel good about.

It feels good to be thinking and have ideas for the future again.

Teacher's pet

Or, Ask and you shall receive

My Soils prof pulled me aside before class to ask if A. I wanted him to introduce me to his Agro Ecology pal at UC Davis who is doing soil research and could give me a few pointers. Yes please, I said. and B. that his wife mentioned that I'd mentioned that I was interested in soils and would I be interested in being the lab assistant for next semester's Plant Nutrition class. Yes!

Apparently he was expecting to have to sell me on it. I don't think there's any money involved, but dude if I'm taking the class anyway, it seems like a pretty sweet deal. So I'll probably be getting letters of rec from a husband and wife team. At least they have different last names, but as far as I'm concerned, if you've got someone willing to help you out, you might as well milk it for all it's worth.

And can I just say that I was a little concerned at the beginning of the semester that I wasn't doing enough to get myself into grad school being at community college, but damn there really is something to being the one kid showing initiative.

So far, so good

Took the grand tour of the USDA research facility in Albany today, or at least the ground floor and basement and chatted it up with Dr. Ponciano and the head of her lab. She is amazing, by the way, Dr. Ponciano, or Grisel, as I know her now. She is the bundle of positive energy you want to work for no matter what it is specifically you'd be doing.

As luck would have it, I should be gearing up to get my volunteer on in her lab (or Bill Belknap's lab, to be precise) in January. I shall get my own specific project that I can work on till I'm carried off to grad school hopefully some time in 2011. And I'm feeling good about whatever might happen between now and then.

Bill Belknap's advice for posterity:
1. Go into science because you love it.
Science won't make you rich, and it won't get you the babes.

2. Don't rule out universities with small programs.
Even if it's not tier 1 famous, a lot of the smaller programs have good people. You are in it for the long term. You want to have a decent quality of life so you're not burnt out in five years.

3. Find an advisor who you can get along with.
It doesn't matter what the person is reasearching. Grad school should not be about shouting and tears.

4. Find a post-doc with someone - ideally in the National Academy - who will go to bat for you.
Working for a famous person who views you as competition for grant money will do nothing to further your career. Better to work for a decent human being who wants you to succeed. Shocking as it may sound, lots of famous scientists will make a proactive effort to destroy your career so that they won't need to compete with you for grants. Do not work for these people.

So long, old friend

It is with a heavy heart that I report the untimely passing of my dearest desktop companion, Emilio the Goldfish.

Originally intended as a feeder fish, Emilio was rescued by my former manager and presented to me on my 27th birthday. Unlike all but the rarest members of the animal kingdom, Emilio exuded an unmistakable lust for life. The impact of his raw, cheerful energy was felt far beyond his small fishbowl. He was a favorite about the office, his excellent swimming abilities and bubble blowing tricks being remarked on by anyone who passed by his corner of the desk.

Emilio enjoyed walks and scenic car rides as well as the occasional shopping excursion. Ever the good sport about having his tank cleaned and water refreshed, he took pleasure in his treat of a few extra fish flakes following a good rinsing. Emilio appreciated the simple things in life like his realistic aquarium plant, the castle drawn on the side of his tank, and the satisfaction of good company.

A longtime resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, Emilio's condition declined rapidly following a long and somewhat stressful roadtrip to Los Angeles. He died of a broken heart after being separated from his lifelong companion. He is survived and dearly missed by his caretaker and close friend, me.

I am not exaggerating when I say that Emilio was hands down the world's best ever goldfish. I am glad we were able to share what brief time we had. I will remember you fondly, my ichthyian friend.

Quickly

Arrangements have been made to meet up at the USDA the Wednesday after T-giving. Pleased about that.

Buttermilk biscuits with greens and corn-cherry scones have been baked, potato-sunchoke-nettle soup and a new batch of vegetable broth have been made, and rice is on for tonight's thai basil eggplant with tofu.

I was rejected by the Red Cross for having too little iron on Thursday. I'm usually close, but I've always squeaked by in the past. This time I was way off, so I took it as a sign that I should indeed take my bus buddy up on his suggestion that we go out for sushi after class since I'd been wanting raw salmon and he was wanting to break his 8 year vegan fast with fish. We did well for ourselves. I have four weeks to pump enough iron into my blood to make a pint of it desirable to the Red Cross, which will probably mean increased consumption of meat or at least fish.

Looking forward to socal for Thanksgiving, which we're hosting this year. I'm in charge of the requisite Swedish Coffee Cake, and may take on mashed potatoes and one version of cranberry sauce, since my mother insists that there be two.

With any luck, next week will also fit a quick visit to John's, the viewing of The Fantastic Mr. Fox (!!!), a family game of pick up soccer, and a date with Maggie to our 10 year hs reunion. Good things, all.

Feeling a bitty bit overwhelmed by all the things that I have to do, should do, and would like to do, though.

On a roll

Awesome biotech lecture in my Plant Disease class this morning, which would have been great on its own (we talked about the tradeoffs of genetic engineering) but the woman who gave it is a researcher with the USDA, which it turns out has a giant field station in Albany. Determined to get the absolute most of this idyllic return to studenthood, I stayed a bit after class to chat her up, and she's totally down to hook me up. She says the USDA totally takes lab volunteers and may even have spots for summer internships With Stipends that I may even be eligible for as a full time student. I am to email her to one day have lunch with her and my soils prof (her husband) to talk about how to get into careers in science!

I am feeling excited about science and the future! Woohoo!

Academic bliss

We did our arboriculture presentation (read: skit) today during which I had four costume changes in about 75 seconds, one group member shuffled around in a bucket as a tree waiting to be planted and another girl dressed up like our prof, all the way down to her rattail braid. And can I just say, the class Ate It Up.

The prof wants us to go on tour and is going to mail us dates of the next couple San Francisco Urban Forestry Council meetings to see if we can get ourselves on the agenda. It could be public humiliation, but I'm down!

And not only that. I ran into my soils prof this morning, and he stopped me to say that I got the best grade on our last test. Booyah! He asked what my background was in, and I gave my proudest, Celtic Studies and Linguistics. Thank you, he said. My test was a joy to read.

Needless to say, I'm feeling a needed smidgeon puffed up. I even biked the ten miles home after class without feeling resentful about the bus pass fiasco.

So, thank you to the forces that timed things just so. I needed a lift.

Were you aware of it? vol. 23: The Knobcone Pine

Chapter VIII of John Muir's The Mountains of California runs you through the trees that make up the forests of, well, the mountains of California. To my untrained eye, the little black and white line drawings of the various tree genera and species may as well have been identical. Or, rather, all but one, this so-called Knobcone Pine.

John Muir has this to say about them:

Pinus Tuberculata
This curious little pine is found at an elevation of from 1500 to 3000 feet, growing in close, willowy groves. It is exceedingly slender and graceful in habit, although trees that chance to stand alone outside the groves sweep forth long, curved branches, producing a striking contrast to the ordinary grove form. The foliage is of the same peculiar gray-gren color as that of the Nut Pine, and is worn about as loosely, so that the body of the tree is scarcely obscured by it.

At the age of seen or eight years it begins to bear cones, not on branches, but on the main axis, and, as they never fall off, the trunk is soon picturesquely dotted with them. The branches also become fruitful after they attain sufficient size. The average size of the older trees is about thirty or forty feet in height, and twelve to fourteen inches in diameter. The cones are about four inches long, exceedingly hard, and covered with a sort of silicious varnish and gum, rendering them impervious to moisture, evidently with a view to the careful preservation of the seeds. [...]

The Grove Form and the Isolated Form (Pinus Tuberculata)
It is so little known [...] that it can hardly be said to have a common name. Most mountaineers refer to it as 'that queer little pine-tree covered all over with burs.' In my studies of this species I found a very interesting and significant group of facts, whose relations will be seen almost as soon as stated:

1st. All the trees in the groves I examined, however unequal in size, are all of the same age.
2d. Those groves are all planted on dry hillsides covered with chaparral, and therefore are liable to be swept by fire.
3d. There are no seedlings or saplings in or about the living groves, but there is always a fine, hopeful crop springing up on the ground once occupied by any grove that has been destroyed by the burning of the chaparral.
4th. The cones never fall off and never discharge their seeds until the tree or branch to which they belong dies. [...]

Needless to say, I was skeptical. This all sounds a little too fantastical to be true, something of a chimera of the plant kingdom. Except! We were clearing away a giant pile of Black Acacia logs from the base of an old Coast Live Oak, and I found this log about a foot in diameter With Pinecones Stuck Right To It. It was like chancing upon a unicorn horn, I swear to you.

And then! I was wrapping things up at the Botanical Garden the other week, having potted a bunch of vine cuttings, and on my way back to the N Judah, there appears from nowhere an Entire Tree with pine cones growing straight out of the trunk. And not only that, I found another one in one of the vegetable beds at school when we pulled out the sunchokes. I am a believer! However, I have done you the service of not providing any photographic evidence to encourage your skepticism and heighten the drama of your personal discovery. You are welcome.

The thirteenth, a bad luck day, on Friday

Boo to Friday the 13th.

It seems to have killed my phone, my bus pass, and my bicycle.

I can fix my flat tire, but still. Enough is enough!

Art crush

I discovered Mark Hearld wandering around Moe's this afternoon, and oh my god this man is amazing. I may even like him as much as Bernard Buffet.

Some of these kind of remind me of Nikki McClure, except better and with more feeling. No offense to Nikki McClure. I do like her stuff too, but I seem to have a predilection for block printing.

This is what printmaking should be.

Pigeons Park
White Hart
Starling on the Shore
Sea Change

Pheasant

I love the way he's able to take artistic liberty, putting his character into the prints, while being true to the essence of each animal. And, of course the sharpness inherent in block prints.

St Jude's even prints fabric of his Doveflight design.

Doveflight
Doveflight detail

Is he not amazing? I wonder to myself why decent prints like this are so hard to find at fabric stores. ...And then I checked the price tag -- £44.00 per metre. Ouch.

Still, I am inspired. Seeing these makes me want to turn my favorite plants into prints like this. And then learn how to screenprint.

Thank you, M. Hearld for getting the creative juices flowing!

Design #1

This is the first shirt I recall doing without a pattern. I've altered things before, but I believe this was the first thing I started completely from scratch. I've got to say I'm still pretty pleased with it.


I'd done a lot of button down shirts and wanted to try something with a slanted opening, mainly to see if I could figure out how to do it. The rest of the design sort of grew out of the white grid fabric, which I reincarnated from its former life as a sheet. I love working with sheets, by the way. They've got great thread count and last so much longer than standard cotton.

<shoulder detail

darts

hem

There's also a red side zip, which you can kind of see in the shoulder pic, that I added because I wasn't sure how tight it'd be to get over my head. It turns out I don't need it, but I like it for the color accent. Same thing with the contrast thread. Always a fan of functional things doubling as decoration.

Sweet potato & parmesan polenta

After a girl in my permaculture class was moaning over some sweet potato-parmesan focaccia she got at Arizmendi the other day, I was inspired to make an attempt at reproducing the flavor she was describing myself. I thought I'd try it with polenta in my attempt to find the few things I'm willing to by nearly pre-made from the store. Those tubes of polenta are one of them.

I added in tomato because I thought a little sauciness to it would be nice. The red onions give it a nice sweetness too, especially when they get crispy in the oven. Here's what I came up with:

Sweet potato & parmesean polenta

for this you will need:
one tube polenta
sweet potato
parmesean
red onion (optional)
tomato (optional)

suggested instruction:
Grease a baking sheet and preheat the oven to 350ºF.*
Slice polenta 1/4" thick and lay out flat on baking sheet.
Slice sweet potato and red onion thinly and lay out generously on polenta.
Slice tomato about 1/8" thick and lay out on polenta.
Cover generously with parmesean.
Bake for 30ish minutes, until the sweet potatoes are soft, the tomatoes are saucy and the cheese has melted.
Let it cool for a bit so you don't burn yourself and enjoy.

*Pyrex takes too long to heat and keeps the polenta moist. I like it better drier on the baking sheet. It also cooks faster.

Physical labour making its mark

It's not just the cuts that appear on my hands from nowhere. Or the giant slice in my knuckle from bamboo cutting in the rain during class.

Bamboo construction is rad, by the way. This exciting ravine in my knuckle took me out of commission before we polished things off, but I am highly anticipating the arch we are building. And the best part is that I think, given a pile of bamboo, a pruning saw, a short machete-type knife and a rubber mallet, I might just be able to recreate one on my own.

But, dude. I was wearing a tank top as I brushed my teeth in front of the bathroom mirror the other day, and it would appear that all this mattock swinging and terrace shoveling is showing itself as upper body strength. I can almost see muscles in my arms and shoulders, which is cool, but doesn't feel very womanly.

Tips for constructing with bamboo
- Make your cuts near a node for added strength when possible.
- Fill nodes at joints with concrete for added strength.
- Twist the bamboo towards you as you saw through it. Pruning handsaws cut on the pull (not the push), so keeping the bottom edge of the blade near the handle in a constant position (where the tip moves through new wood) helps make smooth cuts without a little lip at the end.
- When cutting lengthwise, you don't actually need a sharp knife. Any thin, longish knife and a rubber mallet for hammering it past nodes will do since the crack always originates a few inches below your blade. (Though a sharp knife is handy for trimming edges down to size after the initial long cuts have been made).
- When weaving bamboo, make strips as uniform in size and as flat as possible. 3/4" is a good width, 1/4" is a good thickness.
- When anchoring constructions with steel rods (or whatever else), lift bamboo off the ground with a rock so that soil microorganism don't rot it out.

Ruffles

I am really dying to get back into designing and sewing clothes. People seem to like the few things I've made in the past and an enterprising classmate was convinced I should be hawking my wares at Art Murmur. He even offered to help stitch a few up.

Impractical as it may be, given my current dirt bathing lifestyle, I want to make dresses. Shirts too, but there are a couple of dresses that have been floating around in my head for ages now. One looks not unlike this:

photo by Garance Doré
But with a different neck line. I'm still into the look of off-white on black. Sharp blacks can get really harsh, and I like the way a little detail like these ruffles can soften it.

photo by Scott Schuman, The Sartorialist
More ruffles here. I like the loose fold-over method on these. There's really no need to make them perfectly neat and aligned when you'll just be bunching them up anyway.

I really should get a sewing machine I know how to use. Or take either of the machines in my closet up the street to the shop to have them checked out (and explained to me). If only every day had 25 hours.

Were you aware of it? vol. 22: Back from the dead

As heard on Fresh Air Monday October 12, 2009

DAVE DAVIES, host: Well, Sanjay Gupta, welcome to FRESH AIR. I thought we'd begin with this remarkable story that you tell early in the book of this Norwegian skier who takes a plunge in the mountains and gets trapped in freezing water for something like two hours and manages somehow to recover. How?

Dr. SANJAY GUPTA (Associate Chief of Neurosurgery, Grady Memorial Hospital; Author, "Cheating Death: The Doctors and Medical Miracles that Are Saving Lives Against All Odds"): It is a remarkable story, even for someone like me who's been studying this for a couple of years, who's had the opportunity to travel around the world and talk to the foremost researchers in hypothermia, in extreme survival. This story is sort of the pinnacle of even that. This was a woman who has, I guess, the dubious honor of being the coldest-ever human being who subsequently went on to live. This is a woman who was declared dead in a hospital in Tromso, Norway, and now is a practicing physician at that same hospital.

She was found after she fell into a stream, a sort of frozen stream on a very cold place, and this is Tromso, Norway, which is north of the Arctic Circle in one of the northern-more points of Norway. What we know now is that she struggled for around 30 minutes or so. She was probably getting pockets of air, which is why she could last that long. And then she just stopped, and by the time they got her out of that frozen stream, she was dead. She had no spontaneous respiration. She had no spontaneous heartbeat. She had no blood pressure. Her pupils were dilated, indicating that her brain had become swollen. She was dead, and it was at this point that I think that a critical decision was made. The decision was to go ahead and leave her cold. The idea was that this cold could somehow be protective. It could somehow stimulate an almost hibernation-like reflex in the body. We know that there was no oxygen traveling through the body, but because she was cold, the body wasn't really demanding oxygen, either.

DAVIES: How cold was she? How cold was her body?

Dr. GUPTA: She was 13.7 degrees Celsius, so right around 55 degrees or so. And again, that's the coldest recorded temperature of someone actually surviving, someone surviving.

DAVIES: And how long did they decide to leave her in this hypothermic state?

Dr. GUPTA: Several hours. They did not warm her up at the scene, which is what often happens, even with blankets, and then warm saline and things like that. And they did not warm her up right away when she finally got to the hospital. They waited a few hours and then slowly, very slowly started to re-warm her using these temperature gradients, so just a few degrees at a time.

DAVIES: And what happened?

Dr. GUPTA: What happened is that, you know, they got her in there, and they realized that, you know, she really had no heartbeat. And sometimes you can't tell in the field, you know, it's tough to check a pulse, but now they have - they're doing an echocardiogram, directly looking at her heart, and she really has no heartbeat. So now they're very concerned, and they say we're going to slowly start to re-warm her, and we're also not going to give her any extra IV fluids.

One thing they learned is that when you start to go into this hibernation-like state from cold, from hypothermia, all your blood vessels become very leaky. They just leak fluid. So if you give a lot of fluid, that fluid starts to leak, and if it leaks into the brain or into the lungs, that can cause death.

So they gave no fluids, slowly re-warmed her, and then there was just this great moment where all of the sudden the heart, which was doing nothing - you had true, what's known asystole, that flat line on EKG, and all of a sudden it started to come back. And it was a magical moment as they described it to me when I was visiting them in Tromso, but I think they were still concerned that her brain had gone for too long without oxygen. How could the body tolerate this? But as I said, you know, she slowly recovered. At first, she was paralyzed, almost, in her entire body from lack of oxygen to her brain, but over a period of time, she continued to recover, finished her medical school, which she was a medical student at the time, and is now a doctor in that same hospital.

Photography vs. legend

Thinking lately about photography and legend. And how the happenings of daily life could be turned into myth a millenium or a century for now, if it weren't for our obsession for documenting everything "how it is."

I almost don't want to take photographs anymore because it's too easy to let snapshots replace memory and storytelling. There's no space for legends to grow. And I don't like that about photography - photography in a journalistic sense, I mean, as opposed to mechanical photography of posed subjects, which has its uses and doesn't pose the same level of threat to myth.

Photography at its best is about capturing and telling. It is giving your eyes to someone else for a split second. It communicates some connection, some understanding incommunicable by words alone.

But cameras are everywhere now. I don't have to tell you about how there's a spot in the north of Iceland where the earth erupts into a series of jagged peaks unlike anything you've ever seen because you can see it in satellite photos or any of a million other images of the place. Myth has been reduced to snapshots.

So, I've taken to paying more attention to the magic of the time and place, to the daily fantastic. I like to ride the bus as if I'm part of a story in which anything could happen. The story that's been told since the beginning of time, that we relive constantly with different names and architecture as if it were the first time.

There was really something to shapeshifting, to seeing past people in their skin, to recognizing repeated themes in new bodies. I want stories to be dynamic again. I want to be able to wrassle with experience and misremember it until it feels right.

I think when can capture that on film, when I can see a legend in a moment, a connection between the past and the future, when magic exists again, I'll be able to pick up my camera.

Green tomatoes

I made one of my better batches of fried green tomatoes for dinner tonight as I continue to wait for my barm brack dough to rise.

I have probably ten pounds of green tomatoes, not to mention an equal weight of sunchokes, in my refrigerator, harvested from plots across Oakland as we pulled up tomato plants. It's unlikely that many more tomatoes will ripen in autumn's short days and cool nights, so it's out with tomatoes, in with the onions, fava beans, winter greens and garlic. Garlic should be planted in the fall to be harvested in late spring, early summer, I think. You can plant garlic right up through about March if you want to harvest it as green garlic (as opposed to the little white gems proper).

I've been a good urban farmer this week, and am feeling a certain nobility in it. I love the way we descend on our harvest at the end of Permaculture class, taking home our weekly sack of vegetables wrested from the earth by our own toil, though it still feels a bit like alchemy. I'll be the first to admit the plants do most of the work.

To fry green tomatoes, you will need:

- a supply of green tomatoes
- cornmeal
- flour (optional)
- milk or egg or buttermilk or a combination or nothing
- hot paprika or cayenne pepper
- salt, preferably sea salt
- vegetable oil or ghee or bacon grease for frying

Mix 2 parts cornmeal with 1 part flour in a small, flatish bowl with enough hot paprika or cayenne pepper so that you can just begin to see the color once it's combined. (Or use only cornmeal for a grittier texture, or half cornmeal, half flour for a finer texture). Shake in salt to taste.

Pour your milk or egg into another small bowl, if you'll be coating your tomato slices.

Slice your tomatoes about 1/4" thick. Heat some oil/ghee/fat in a frying pan. Dip each slice first in the milk/egg, then in the cornmeal mixture so that it's coated with cornmeal. Lay slices flat in the frying pan and cook until the tomatoes are soft and the cornmeal gets a nice crisp golden color.

Enjoy immediately.

Because these are necessarily made in small batches it's easy to adjust paprika/pepper and salt levels to your personal preference as you go.

Overheard

In case you missed it on NPR's Marketplace, we were having an amicable discussion about coal and cleaner wind energy in West Virginia when all of a sudden it turns to this...

DON BLANKENSHIP, CEO of the coal company, Massey Energy: There is no global warming. We went through the population fear. We went through the killer bee fear. It’s just the next phase — it will go away.

SAM EATON, reporter for Marketplace: And if it doesn’t, and if legislation passes and coal emissions are taxed and regulated, what then?

BLANKENSHIP: Teach your children to speak Chinese, because if we’re going to play around with windmills and solar panels, we’ll fall behind.

Thankfully Scott Jagow scribbled down the exact quote so I could confirm I heard that right. I may well have driven off the road if I'd been driving when he said that. Wow, dude.

Apparently this guy is a real prize when it comes to spouting quotable quotes on environmental issues.

Chouette

mon petit hibou
pumpkin carving 2009

Cross-pollination

Thinking about how it's so easy for academics to get buried in their own subject material - like architects never leaving the lab or meeting non-architects. Architects are better than most, I think, at entertaining ideas outside their own field, but the trend in general strikes me as unnecessarily limiting.

I guess what I like best is taking ideas from one field and applying them to the next. Asking what it all means. What does it mean that photons can act as a particle or a wave? Where is the line between the metaphors we use to understand that concept and its applicability to our living, working and curious investigation of the world?

So many of the cool famous people of the past used to hang out together and bounce ideas off of each other. I want there to be collectives of academics across fields to share ideas and play out the influences of theories across fields as a way of being more human, more true to your full nature. This sort of thing has happened before like with social darwinism, philosophy of physics, agriculture as metaphor, but I feel like the scientists aren't at the table anymore once those discussions are happening.

As someone who is making the moves on science, I want to be the one having those discussions. Cross-pollination, exploring the connections between things, sussing out why things matter, and explaining back. I feel like that's my thing, my one thing if I have one.

Tiki Tuesday

Newness is indeed goodness when your friends are whisking you off on a week night to a magic island cove. Such a great little expedition. Yay for bandmate-friends.

During our drunken yet intellectual chatting, we toyed with the idea of music and accessibility, and I wanted to jot down a bit of that thought while it's still lingering.

Our collective sentiment was just that nothing should be out of reach, especially not art and creativity. Music is music no matter how it's made, who is making it, or what other people think. There's no such thing as cheating. Open tunings are not cheating, electronica is not cheating, mixing is not cheating.

Not everything needs to sound polished or even needs to be right all the time, which is not to say that every kid taking piano lessons should have a record contract, but that it's a shame if something as primal as music and self expression is limited to a handful of virtuosos not just because offbeat artists like Joanna Newsom or even someone like Bob Dylan or Igor Stravinski can stretch and challenge ideas about what good art is, but because art should be a basic human right.

Also, that folk music is where it's at. The music of the people. We want people to feel like art and creativity are within reach, that the creative impulse exists outside of the pursuit of fame or money. Folk music is where it's at - the music of the people. Let there not be a hierarchy. Just let your voice be heard.

If you want to start a band, do it. Even if you can't play a single instrument, chances are you'll wind up in a tiki bar one Tuesday in Alameda happy to be alive and know the people you know.

Looking up

The moon hung low as we came down the hill tonight.

A seductive waxing crescent I could almost curl up in.