Swoon

I think I just met the love of my life. It's something in the way he looks at me with his most incredible green eyes, wanting me. I just want to bury my face in his chest. I want his hulking self slinking about my apartment.

And when people ask what I did on Saturday night, I could say Benjamin and I curled up in bed to read. Because he would have to be named Benjamin. Benjamin, like the science teacher. He even looks like a Benjamin.

I am so tempted to go back tomorrow and bring him home with me. I am sure he is exactly what I need. If only there weren't the delicate matter of the other two cats that already live at my parents' house. Sigh.

Science geek out!

Late blight of potato, in which leaves turn black and tubers turn to mush

So I met the girl I'll be working with at the USDA yesterday to hear about the project she has in mind for me and holy toledo I am to be inventing potatoes! I am to be on the cutting edge of plant molecular biology! I am to work on actual things that (assuming I am successful) would actually be useful in the actual world!

Firstly, genetic modification has a bad rap. I know. People are not crazy about human-invented (xenogenic) genes escaping into nature and doing we don't know what yet, and people are not excited about human-gods sticking firefly genes (transgenic) in tobacco plants. Or adding resistance to antibiotics into anything if it means antibiotics are less likely to be effective when we really need them.

We are relatively ok with the sort of interspecies hybridization that brought us pluots or mutation breeding whereby we nuke seeds and see what happens. And crazy stuff can happen with mutation natural or otherwise. The less fun part of natural breeding is the kind of monominded selection for specific phenotypic traits that brings us firm but tasteless tomatoes. Or in more serious cases amps up allergens and other natural toxins.

But! We can do all the good stuff without the bad stuff!

It just so happens that a wild variety of potato is particularly resistant to Phytophthera infestans, the fungus-like beast that took down Ireland when it caused the potato famine, and we can borrow its gene for other sexually compatible potatoes. We can double check to make sure the bacterial plasmid's antibiotic resistance gene didn't make it into the plant DNA, and although the plasmid DNA of the bacterial vector generally used for this sort of thing has border sequences telling the plant where to snip built in, we can swap those for plant versions so that what's left in your potato is 100% natural potato DNA, something that could have been created by nature itself given enough time.

The lab I'll be working in has already done a sort of proof of concept with one breed of potato, and five years on, they're still good at fighting late blight (caused by P. infestans) , which means they don't seem to be exerting the sort of selective pressure that breeds super-strains of pathogens. (Typically this will occur in two or three years). And yours truly shall be trying doing my darndest to duplicate this success in more commercially appealing varieties of potato. If it works, it will be huge. HUGE.

Hello, grad school!

Goodness

There was a moment Friday when I walked into Berkeley Bowl West and it occurred to me just how magnificent it was to be at liberty to do spur of the moment grocery shopping mid-afternoon on a weekday.

Or this morning with the park to myself on the first sunny morning, reading about the magic of botany.

Or tea and chats this afternoon with my lovely friend Anna.

There really are so many things to be thankful for. I hope to do more of all of them.

Out, out

Reading and reading and reading these days. Trying to keep the chin up. Still feeling a bit sore in the old liver and shadow. But I hope with so much concentration I can wait it out. Read it out.

Or sometimes, like Tuesday's bluegrass dinner party I think maybe I can play it out. Pick it out.

Or counting plants in the Plant Biology greenhouse, I think maybe I can smart it out, tucking the empty hours into the USDA, into plant nutrition text books, into identifying trees.

Dead ringer

While buying my chocolate rosemary scone at this morning's farmers market, the Feel Good Bakery boy confessed had to look upwards of three times to make sure I wasn't this girl:

Laura Veirs
She has my glasses, new haircut, and even my penchant for western wear. And she went on tour with Colin Melloy. I approve. Oh, I approve.

Can we be friends, Laura Veirs? Maybe your friend Feel Good Bakery boy can introduce us. I will have to follow up with him next week.

**I would also like to point out that she has a banjulele.

The need for good things to last

Listening to Wendell Berry in conversation with Michael Pollan on City Arts and Lectures on NPR.

Early on he mentioned something about this new or revived interest in sustainability and interpreted it as society recognizing the need for good things to last. As wrapped up as I've been in agriculture, food politics and environmentalism lately, something about that definition strikes me.

It obviously applies to the usual natural resources, tools that aren't instantly obsolete, and workers treated fairly, but it reminds me of how easy it's become to let a good thing go, like love and human relationships, as if we don't need anything, but I believe we do. I believe we do.

Fiction addiction

Jean Honoré Fragonard, La Liseuse
Things Fall Apart makes the sixth novel I've finished so far this year. Fully half the number of books I usually manage to read in a year. I'd forgotten how much fiction reminds me of being 12 years old, burrowed under the covers of my bed, devouring novels as if starved for words.

So far I've been to New York, to an English Wonderland, to Russia, to Algiers, along the Eastern seaboard, to Nigeria, and am now back to medieval Japan. Medieval Japan in the evenings, mathematics in the morning, elbow deep in plant science all the minutes between, and constantly hungry. Always, always hungry.

Storm, midday

What brilliant wonder it is to dash about in the lightning and crack of thunder, the wet hands of a thousand small gods rushing down from heaven to meet your warm skin.

Or this morning, the throngs pounding at your window, singing for your ears, as you lie, tucked deliciously under the mountain of quilts, your head held up by goose down, as your eyes, your soul, and soon your own voice melt into a lavish fictional world guided by small black ink print on yellowed paper pages.

The sun also rises

I want to recount for posterity the small and simple ways that today has been the best day:

1. Waking up early to a good shower, because showers are always nice.


2. The blooming of my irises.


3. A brisk walk to the doctor's office in which my umbrella was not upsought despite the wind.


4. Meeting my new doctor, who is awesome and I may have a friend crush on. My new highly pleasant and cute doctor who wore slim fitting black corduroy pants not unlike a pair I own myself with the most darling of shiny red flats, which I would be willing to add to my red shoe collection. She demonstrated her extreme competence by actually listening to what I had to say, offering home remedy alternatives to prescriptions, showing an interest in my well being, and potentially identifying the cause of my impossible plugged ears. I love her. I just love her.


5. Walking right in to take care of my follow up lab tests, with which my doctor was not stingy about ordering. I was back on the street within five minutes of discovering the location of the laboratory.


6. The blending of a successful banana-lime-orange-soymilk smoothie, which was delicious, and the whipping up of a lovely egg-leek-spinach-garlic-tomato-sundried tomato-mushroom-manchego-milk fritata, which I ate with toast, which I did not burn, while reading The Stranger.


7. The finishing of my breakfast feast in precisely the right amount of time to gather my things and read up about the Suding Lab before heading out to meet them.


8. The arrival of my cast iron cookware, to be followed later by the arrival of a lovely handmade card, not to mention emails from some of my favorite people.


9. The perfectly timed departure from my apartment, which coincided precisely with the arrival of the 1R bus I rode to the Berkeley campus.


10. The extreme friendliness of everyone in the Suding lab, not least Katharine Suding herself, who is certain that I can volunteer in her lab and that things can be arranged such that I even get something out of it.


11. The acquisition of my favorite kind of notebooks from my favorite corner office supply shop in plenty of time for the new semester.


12. The sunniness of the sky for my walk from Ridge Road, through campus, and down Telegraph.


13. The fantastical and thunderous rain and hail storm I enjoyed from the used fiction aisle at Moe's books, where I found stacks and stacks of books to read.


14. The pause of the rain timed perfectly with my walk to the bus, and the simultaneous arrival of myself and the 1R bus at the bus stop.


15. The good news that I don't need to buy a Statistics textbook after all.


16. The successful making of paneer, my first foray into cheese making, followed by the making of a delightful saag paneer, followed by the consumption of a most delicious milk chocolate truffle with marzipan from France.


17. The incredibly quick return of initial blood test results which show in no uncertain terms that my hemoglobin levels are fantastic and even my iron levels have skyrocketed sixfold from 4 to 24, suggesting that I can continue to eat wheat gluten to my heart's content, though the official celiac test has yet to come back.

In short, everything has gone just right today. I am brimming with gratitude.

Now I believe I will finish my fourth book of the year.

Adoration, inspiration

I mentioned Alphonse Mucha the other day, and was reminded that the world might be a more beautiful place if more of us were familiar with his art. The man was a god of geometry, botany, dark lines, and voluptuousness, of the magic of nature and how we are part of it.

Dams, rivers, bridges

I grant that there is a version of the truth in which the end of December saw me quite crushed, and that there was a reprise of said devastation to ring in the new year.

Similarly, I could state honestly that the heft of those circumstances tugs at various points of my physiology throughout the day.

But what I'd rather talk about is the lightness that seeps from my bones, that gives a spring to my step even now, the sense of good things to come.

It doesn't so much matter what I have lost or why. If I am to be the storyteller, I want to give my words to remember those solid things that remain. And there are so many of them.

To that end, I should like to dedicate this year to restoration and construction. To love, thankfulness, and the pursuit of happiness.

Iskandar

What good friends must I have to remember my tea from Paris and carry it back for me the long way to California in a thin glass jar. I really am touched. I should like to have a party to celebrate and share it. Tea is one of my favorite ways to surround myself with my favorite people.

I think you were right, by the way, about things turning out for the best. I am glad we can be friends now, and I don't suppose we would be close just so had you not been as determined as you are. I won't argue when you claim it as your worst trait, but I am certain it's also your best.

Thank you.

Fitting.

Belonging is an odd thing.

After so many weeks in a series of bags, it was so easy to unload my backpacking pack, my book bag, my shoulder bag and banjo case. To hang my clothes on hangers. To set the new tea kettle on the stove. To line my boots up. To return the skull to the banjulele case. To squeeze my multiplied books into the bookcase. To tuck my toothbrush into the medicine cabinet. To stack the bars and boxes of chocolate in their spot on the corner of the table. And to slip between my sheets, to melt into my own mattress under my own quilts.

After all the peculiar spaces I've fit into these weeks, it feels delicious to find places for things.

Russian on Russian

Lucky is the author who, bypassing dull and repulsive characters, sadly real though they may be, is drawn to those who personify the highest human values--the author who, out of the vast stagnant pool of humanity, selects only a few exceptional types, who has never felt the need to bring the high pitch of his lyre to a lower key, who has never condescended to gaze upon his more unfortunate brethren, and who never comes down to earth himself, being completely absorbed in lofty characters who have no contact with it. His lot is doubly enviable: among them, he feels as if he were in his own element, while his glory spreads far and wide. He has clouded people's eyes with illusion, he has flattered them by concealing all that is sordid in life, he has shown them man in all his splendor; and the crowd runs behind his triumphal chariot, acclaiming him. He is hailed as a great poet, soaring high above other geniuses of this world as an eagle soars above other high-flying birds. His name alone causes the ardent hearts of the young to quiver and fills eyes with responsive tears. ... He has no equal, he is God!

Nikolai Gogol
Dead Souls

En bref

I have returned, less ten inches of hair, to my newly recarpeted Oakland forteresse.

There is much to tell.

The Fountainhead

As often as I cursed audibly while reading it, I didn't hate all of the Fountainhead.

Ayn Rand and I can agree on the nobility of the human spirit. I do believe there is strength in our frail human hands. I know the fierce flame of invincibility Howard Roark likes to call pain that goes down only to a certain point.

I have not yet decided which of us has the greater hope for humanity - my puppeteer fingers or her steel heart - but I don't believe the lot of us are better off working against each other. I maintain a faith in engagement.

To make a man so unlike other men and to raise him up seems a cheat. To tell her believers that to be human is to deny your humanity feels a contradiction.

I may have a certain fondness for our weakness, for our softer spots. To feel your person shrunk to the size of a floating pea and to know your strength even then, that is the powerful, the fantastical shapeshifting, the pure magic of being human.

There remains the matter of compromise, of collaboration. For someone who exalts her fellow individual (those few among us), Ayn Rand has such hateful things to say about the masses between. I can understand how a brush with communism might color her political leanings, but to prescribe one truth for all of us, albeit an opposite truth, strikes me as small.

And so you have it. I may well be a Roark myself, as unwilling to budge as I am; I recognize the similarity of our methods.

And now it is 2010.

I am hoping this year might surprise me. I get the feeling it will be filled mostly with business. With tying up loose ends. And I intend to get them good and tied up: the retaking of the GRE, the securing of a minimum of three solid letters of recommendation, the finishing of all the books I've started &c. Nothing too exciting on the radar.

Secretly, though, I want this year to be great.

Were you aware of it? vol. 25: What English sounds like to foreigners

According to Adriano Celentano, an Italian singer wrote this song with gibberish to sound like English. If you've ever wondered what other people think Americans sound like, this is it.



There is talk of breaking into the night club scene with some synchronized Prisencolinensinainciusol action. I'm feeling a little jazzercise coming on.