Yuppie Safety Revolution!

I haven't been blogging much lately, partly because I just haven't felt like it, and partly because I've been so busy. In order to earn some extra dough, I took on a large grantwriting project, which involves writing reams of text about planning for the management of various public safety hazards.

I must say it has been very interesting, as my attitude towards law enforcement has always been one of dislike, and my attitude towards other people who work with various emergencies has been one of, well, mostly indifference and incomprehension, as thoughtless as that sounds. Working on the project has made me realize that a lot of very sweet little boys who love toys, and stories about good guys saving the day, grow up and go into law enforcement. Still, at heart, I am not a person who loves the enforcement of public order by authorities. Though on the other hand, if, say, a chemical plant blows up, I'd like someone to be in charge.



I took a break from my ceaseless writing to celebrate T's graduation from San Francisco State, with a B.A. in History. Ask him about Upton Sinclair sometime, I dare you. We ate at a rather perfect restaurant called Chez Papa, which was totally worth walking up a lot of hills and paying a whole lot of money. The sauce on T's mussels may have been the most delicious thing ever.



After dinner, we crossed the freeway overpass from Potrero Hill back to the Mission, headed for Hugh and Mati's. Hugh threw a slideshow/party to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the 1968 uprising in France, which balanced very well with too much time spent thinking about the management of "incidents." Slideshow? Sounds boring? It was full of humor, great graphics, irreverence, and big questions about why and how social change happens.

I especially enjoyed the lack of true-believerism of it all, the shouted comments and debate. Though I consider myself left of liberal (that quiz says I'm left libertarian), I get annoyed by unsubtle cheerleading about leftist causes, especially when that cheerleading is about some wonderful "leader" who is going to make it all better.

Below are some not so great photos of some of the many people who were there.

Mati and Kate


The host


Part of the throng who enjoyed spending Saturday night trying to translate french denuciations of capitalism and situationist slogans into English

Ohio

So I went to Ohio to visit my parents.

I won't pretend that my parents didn't disappoint me. I always really wanted to get away from home as a kid, and live a life completely unlike the one I knew. And I did. But them getting older has changed my attitude towards them. They're in their late 70s now, and I worry about them.


I've known Kim for almost as long as I've known my parents. We were best friends growing up in the suburbs of Cleveland. As kids we lived in our own little world of weirdness, which was a great comfort to me. Once my husband told me that I sound different whenever I talk to Kim on the phone, more relaxed.


Kim is a very hardworking mom. While I visited, we got a chance to sneak away for a night out. We stayed in a fancy hotel, and consumed a number of cocktails. I loved the Prosperity Social Club in Tremont, a big old bar that was cool without trying too hard. I won't repeat all of the strange private jokes we have been rehashing for decades.


The next day, we got together with Stan, Arun, Marc, and Mr. R. I saw Mr. R and Arun just a couple of years ago, but I hadn't seen Marc and Stan for about twenty years. I felt like I could have talked to them all day. I also noticed that not too many people get to the age of 40 or so without having had something really sad happen to them.


Mr. R is quite a bit older than 40, but apparently he has a picture in his attic, because he looks about the same to me as he did when I was a teenager. I will never forget when I was in high school, and Mr. R. read from his favorite book, A Death in the Family, to our English class. He was so moved by the words that his voice trembled and his eyes filled with tears. That is how much he cared about the power of words, and he cared that much about his students too. Mr. R still seems just as passionately engaged with life as ever, and that inspires me.

After brunch, Kim and I went to a baseball game. When we were kids, my dad subscribed to The Plain Dealer, and hers got The Cleveland Press. Both of us would cut pictures of our favorite baseball players out of our respective newspapers and look at them together. We especially liked Rick Manning, because he was cute, not because he was a good player.



This is how I spent a lot of my trip: driving back and forth between my parents' house and Kim's over the flat Ohio highways.

Saturday

My Saturday brought together some of my favorite preoccupations: food, clothes, and music.

First: my love of quinoa, an amazingly healthy and tasty grain (it's actually a seed, but that's another story.) Here's a new recipe I've improvised. I had it for lunch today.

Lemon Almond and Herb Quinoa
1.5 cups quinoa
3 cups vegetable or chicken broth
chopped herbs (I used rosemary, tarragon and thyme)
1 cup chopped veggies (I used carrots, but zucchini, asparagus, etc. will work)
a large shallot, minced
a small handful of almonds, chopped coarsely
olive oil and/or butter
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Saute shallot in 2 tablespoons of olive oil at medium heat. When shallots start to soften, add veggies and saute until tender. Add quinoa and mix thoroughly to coat each grain of quinoa. Add broth. Cook on medium heat, covered, until quinoa becomes fluffy, about twenty minutes. In the meantime, toast the almonds in a small amount of olive oil, just until you smell a toasty smell. Mix the almonds, herbs and the lemon juice into the quinoa, heat for another minute or two to reduce moisture, and serve.

Second: my new jeans. I buy 75% of my clothes at used-clothing stores like the Crossroads Trading Company and the Buffalo Exchange, but jeans are tricky. Repeated trips to my used-clothing haunts were not yielding anything but Old Navy jeans and tiny acid washed flares. So I hit J.Crew with a gift card my mom got me for Christmas and snagged the jeans below. Now I'm ready for spring.



Third: my new favorite song, which I listened to five times when I got home. Every now and then I find a song I love so much that it brings me great joy, and I listen to it over and over until I learn all the words. I might even listen to it so much that I get sick of it. As you must have guessed by now, most of the songs are about death, broken hearts and rebellion. Past songs have included:
Confeso, Amalia Rodriguez
Romulus, Sufjan Stevens
Clandestino, Manu Chao
The Greatest, Cat Power
Paper Planes, MIA
I Know No Pardon, Vetiver
Back to Black, Amy Winehouse
(not to mention the entire recorded output of Led Zeppelin)

This month's favorite is She Sends Kisses, by The Wrens. I found an adorable claymation video of it on YouTube. Check it out! It might become your favorite too. Maybe then we can scream the lyrics together like I do at home.

Adoption

I have the feeling that some people read this blog mostly for the adoption stuff. In that respect, I feel like an author who insists on focusing on a dull subplot, while her readers hanker for the juicy parts.

When our adoption in October didn't work out, it had a huge impact on me (and on both of us). I think many people waiting to adopt keep their desire for a child right in front of them, and wait very actively. The only way I have been able to protect myself from the sadness is to get on with life, and put adoption on the back burner. T was telling me the other day how he always looks at babies when he's out in public. I have gone in the opposite direction. I avoid babies. It's hard to feel my desire to become a parent right now.

I think that's one reason people give up on adoption or fertility treatments and decide not to become parents. They assume because they don't feel the desire for a son or daughter, that it's no longer there. I know that my desire is still there, because every time I'm asked to make a wish, a successful adoption is the first one I think of. Every time I'm part of a serious conversation about dreams and hopes, the kind of conversation that puts you in touch with your better self, I feel the desire come out of hiding.

On a day to day basis I check Statcounter to see who's been looking at our adoption website, read our adoption agency's message board to see how the other wanna-be adopters are doing, but I don't think about it that much. Even though the chances are, logically, that it will happen within a year. I'll be utterly surprised when it does.

And just to advance the plot, we had an adoption contact, one that could have turned into a match, a few weeks ago. But it just didn't feel like the right fit, mostly because the woman who contacted us was only one month pregnant. I didn't feel I could handle that long of a wait, and I was also aware of the statistics that say that a long match is more likely to fall through. It was nice to have a possibility to think over, but sad to let someone down, which is something we've had to do twice now.

See why I haven't written any adoption posts lately? I feel like I should be upholding the spirits of people who are waiting to adopt, or educating people who read this blog about the wonders of open adoption. But right now I'm in no position to be a spokesperson. I'm just someone who's slogging along.

Shuffling

A very sweet colleague of mine, who works at Apple, offered to order me an iPod Shuffle with his friends and family discount. I know I'm the last one on earth (the privileged Western "earth," that is) to have such a device.

This little player lets you load 240 songs. I've spent a few hours today scouring my iTunes and CD collection for my absolute favorites. I thought it would be fun to share the first ten songs that shuffle to the surface, no matter how embarrassing or obscure. Most of the artist links will take you to a performance of the song.

"You fixed yourself, you said, well never mind. We are ugly but we have the music."
Chelsea Hotel No 2, Rufus Wainwright. I've long loved songs about dramatic, tragic lives and lost love, tossed off with nonchalance. This Leonard Cohen cover pretty much epitomizes the genre. When Leonard Cohen wrote this song, which is about Janis Joplin, he became enraged when his publicist was so unchivalrous as to share the back story.

"Well nobody made this war of mine."
Mysteries, Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man. I love Portishead, but I love Beth Gibbons' solo album even more. This song sends me into a metaphysical swoon, with its lyrics about life as mystery. She's playing my song, because I think several times a day about how I'm alive right now, and how amazing that is.



"Memories mar my mind."
Love is a Losing Game, Amy Winehouse. More tragedy. Sometimes I wonder about myself. Why do I love Amy Winehouse, who is an utter wreck, with such great fervor? I'm a highly responsible taxpaying citizen, practically a teetoaller, and I have a tendency to run from drama. Yet I'm convinced there's a tiny little Amy Winehouse inside of me, who is demanding sensation and colorful madness.

"You were quicker than they thought. You just turned your back and walked."
Still the Same, Bob Seger. I've already dealt with my strange love of this song here.

"That money pump of power knows. The best defense is attack."
I Am the Law, Jon Langford. I've long had a crush on Jon Langford, because in my alternate, Amy Winehouse-ish mental world, I am drawn to drunken, larger than life outlaw/artists (but they have to be funny and self-deprecating.) This song, which is about the uses of power, totally rocks in a leftist sort of way. MP3 available here.

"Come to the fireworks, see the dark lady smile."
Burn It Blue, Caetano Veloso and Lila Downs
Caetano Veloso is another leftist musical hero, and he sings like an angel. I'm actually a little ambivalent about the slightly generic romanticism of this song, but I love Lila and Caetano's voices together.

"In the morning when you finally go, and the nurse runs in with her head hung low."
Casimir Pulaski Day, Sufjan Stevens. Sufjan Stevens is all about goodness, and living in a carefully controlled moral universe. This is very appealing to me, because I grew up in a very religious family, where it was believed that the smallest actions were making a splash in god's universe. This song seems to be about a chaste romance between the singer and a young girl who is dying in the bosom of her strict, religious family, and it's lovely and very philosophical.



Petit Pays, Cesaria Evora. I'm all about the lyrics, and Cesaria is singing in Portugese, which I don't understand (though I know she's singing about her "little country.") But when it comes to Cesaria, I don't need lyrics. Her voice contains the beautiful melancholy of living, and it soothes my soul. I saw her play once at the stunning Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, and she was a stolid, barefoot presence, who seemed drenched in fatalism.

Samba Tranquille, Thievery Corporation. The first thing I ever liked about the Thievery Corporation was their name. This instrumental makes me feel like I'm in the dark, looking at city lights in the distance. MP3 available here.

"Is it a memory, or are you calling from somewhere?"
Do You Think About Me, Waco Brothers. I've always thought the Waco Brothers, one of Jon Langford's bands, were kind of mediocre, but I love this song, which energetically asks a straightforward question that I've had from time to time about past loves and lost friends. MP3 available here.

There's my 30 minute soundtrack. How about you?

Festivities

We celebrated T's birthday today.

First, the birthday person relaxed in his bathrobe with his beloved laptop.



Then we joined Margaret, BZ, Max and Aiden for some East Bay baseball.

My two favorite teams, the Indians and the As, were playing. Sadly, the Indians lost, 6-1. They are my first priority (I'll save tales of the Indians-directed fanaticism of my youth for another post.) T, however, had no preference, so he was not at all disappointed in the outcome.



We continued celebrating over dinner at Spork, a Mission District restaurant that replaced a dreary KFC not too long ago.

Dining at Spork is much more like dining at Design Within Reach than dining at KFC. And I mean that as a compliment. There is no chicken at all on the menu. I love the place. Everything I've tried at Spork has been delectable, especially the chilled asparagus salad and the airy dinner rolls. Here's the swordfish dish that I had.



The most quirky thing thing about Spork is not the sporks, or the teeny-tiny hamburger cookies they give you with the check: it's the fact that they don't serve tea. I love tea. This time, I asked them, hey what's up with the tea thing? The waiter told us that when they first opened, elderly people came in for the first seating and dawdled over their after-dinner tea for an inordinate amount of time. So they just took tea off the menu. That struck me as a bit unkind, plus I've never really seen an elderly person in Spork.

The birthday person had the steak, and the grilled strawberry salad, and finished with beignets, served with a rather fancy silver spork.

Happy birthday, T!

Walking

I'm lucky enough to live in a neighborhood I love, the Mission District. I've lived here for almost fifteen years now. And I'm even more lucky, because I work there too. I'm one of the 2.5% of Americans who walk to work. Google Maps told me that it's .9 miles each way. Ah, built-in exercise!

My route is a little different each day. Here are some things I saw today.

Spring in flower form outside of Bi-Rite. I think I've been underestimating pink all these years.


An enigmatic sign.


Valencia Pizza and Pasta displays the day's specials.


A mysterious lady with enormous teeth lives in this abandoned convenience store.


The Homestead, where I used to hang out alot when it was Dylan's, admonishes its customers.


Some very friendly graffiti.


What is going on back there?