Happy Birthday Norm!

I'm wishing my other, Norman, a happy birthday; he and I turned 30  this year. 

One of my first memories of  Norm was during our lunch break in 8th grade, at Arcade, and he was playing basketball with Kim Urrutia, and Kim kneed him in the groin. I remember thinking that this kid is a ladies man.

My next memory is Norm adopting a sheepish voice to tell me that my Led Zeppelin shirt was not accepted by school rules (which was true; no musical band shirts) and I was bothered. 

In the next year, he and I formed a extraordinarily close bond that time hasn't dissolved...

Happy 30th brother, I love you man.

"Torture is a War Crime" Day at GCT

Corrie sends me emails that she gets from signing specific petitions and the like, and sometimes I try and act on some of them. The Karl Rove thing at Radio City was an email forward from Corrie. Yesterday, Thursday the 28th, there was a demonstration at Grand Central put together by The World Can't Wait, an organization that's calling for the release of torture photos and prosecutions of those at the highest levels sanctioning "enhanced interrogation techniques".

I made it a little late to the event, but they started later than I though they would. The group of demonstrators was split into one or two "officers" wearing black pants and shirts, leading the majority of the "prisoners" into Grand Central Terminal and up to a balcony on the East Wing. The prisoners wore orange jump-suits and black hoods covering their heads.

Here's a shot of them coming in:

Once they made it to the balcony they unfurled a series of banners, one lady began to give a speech, using her best outdoor voice, booming it all around the great marble hall, and the crowd grew, sometimes cheering, sometimes booing. Occasionally you could hear different suited white guys yelling things like "Why do you hate America?" and "Get a job!" who would then become accosted by younger scruffy looking supporters, and get into animated arguments with us commoners.

Here's a shot of the assembly and banners:

I eventually went up the one of the stairwells and took some pictures from behind, listening to their chants ("Torture is a war-crime",  "Prolonged detention is torture", "Release the photos"), and watched the crowd snap pictures with their cell-phones.

Of course I don't disagree with their message...I just find it hard to motivate myself to protest anything anymore..I guess I would have to be really into something to stand with signs and chant things, I mean, I'm thirty years old (plenty of people here in costume were older), and I did the protesting/demonstration thing before, when, you know, we had a real bastard in charge.

Here's a shot of the speaker:

Here's a shot from the stairs (most of mine looking down were not good enough to post):

This is the back of one of their posters...they had images on both sides, and I like the John Yoo mugshot (the Bush mugshot is too obvious). My camera was having trouble with the lighting, making it look like nighttime inside Grand Central, then when I'd take the flash off, it was always blurry. Eh, what can you do, beside figure out your camera before Marc and Linda's wedding at GCT in two weeks(!).

The group, after leaving Grand Central, marched a few blocks south to the Union League Club, to protest Henry Kissinger, et al, at a ceremony with Negroponte awarding Petraeus some Public Service medal. Corrie and I went home instead. She wanted to yell obscenities at Hank, which I endorse, but really, I'm having a hard time mustering an automatic hate for guys like Petraeus, just because they were appointed by El Busho, just because they run the Army, just because.

If this text shows up blue, I'm sorry...I don't know why that happens.

Stone Fruits

Stone fruits are those fruits that have hard pits, the most common being peaches, nectarines, plums, and apricots.

If you'd like to make a wonderful pancake or waffle (or ice cream) topping, find yourself a variety of stone fruits, slice them down and toss the pits, put them into a bowl or container with a small pinch of fresh mint, a few sprigs of lemon verbena, and plenty of sugar.

Leave the mess out on a counter for an hour or two, and the sugar will masticate the water out of the fruit, and soon enough you'll be left with a delicious gooey fruit compote. Stir it up and remove the sprigs and twigs and enjoy.

I learned that all things equal, all of the stone fruits at their ripest, drippiest best, my favorite would be...nectarines. Peaches are great, and I love apricots (the book Eat Right for Your Blood Type told me that apricots will provide the necessary potassium that I'd be losing by avoiding bananas as per my Avoid list for being type A), and we grew up eating unripened plums...but the subtle difference between peaches and nectarines becomes less subtle when both are extremely ripe, and I lean towards the nectarine.

I have an accent?

In my recent attempts to make ends meet, I've been "helping out" at one of the City's largest and most well-known Green Markets, at Union Square, on Saturdays working with an upstate dairy farm run by friends-of-friends. I stand at a booth and help them shill dairy. I've been talking with the hoards of people who swear by this particular farm, who line up thirty people deep at times, and I've been getting a recurring line of personal questions. When I say 'personal' I mean that this particular line of questions has nothing to do with the cows or farm or dairy, although those questions are far more frequent.

This particular line of questions is more like, "You have such a charming accent. English?" "Where did you get that accent?" "Where are you from, your accent is beautiful..." That last one happened the most recently, and I answered with a laugh and "Well, thank you. I'm from California," which is pretty much how I always answer these types of questions. But that time, though, the lady said, "No you're not. I'm from California." 

Okay.

I laughed again and said, "I'm fifth generation, grew up in Sacramento, went to school in SLO-town. My mom's from LA..." and she conceded that I probably wasn't lying, and we talked about Novato and Sausalito for a few minutes.

I asked Corrie if I sound like I have a British or Aussie or Kiwi thing happening, and she said all she could ever here was a laid-back California mumble. I guess it is pretty loud at a busy and crowded City market...

UPDATE.

Most Popular Atom in the Universe

The universe is a big, big place, too large for our primitive human brains to actually grasp in its true dimensions. I've heard and read many times that hydrogen is the most populous atom in the universe, and this makes sense, since the universe is made of galactic clusters, galaxies, a ridiculous amount of empty breadth, and dust. Galaxies are constructed of stars and their possible solar systems, and since stars are fusion engines--slamming two hydrogen atoms into helium and them ripping them apart, over and over--and since one estimate puts the number of stars in our universe at one-hundred-billion-trillion (100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000), it makes sense that with all the empty space dotted with galaxies that the simplest atom would be the most abundant.

But, if we examine a source closer to home, like, say living matter, check out the result: of every 100 atoms of living matter (on Earth anyway), 40 will be hydrogen. I would imagine that this is because living matter on Earth is mostly water, and then, next, organic molecules, which are hydrocarbons--rings of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen.

One and a Half Arms are Enough

If you get some time, check out this story about Kevin Laue, a one armed basketball phenom from the Bay Area who's been recruited to play for the Manhattan Jaspers, a small school split between Manhattan and Riverdale, a ritzy area of the Bronx. The Jaspers are a Div 1A school,  but quite small, smaller than St. John's (a nationally known Div 1A basketball program) in Queens.

This kid is pretty much too young to remember Jim Abbot, the one-handed pitcher in the major leagues, but after he heard of him, he taught himself about Abbot's accomplishments (his no-hitter!).

Laue has gone to elementary schools to speak about living with disabilities, trying to enlighten and educate. I hope Kevin, and the Jaspers, the best.

Congratulations Sonia Sotomayor

It's been a productive and inspiring month for the New York Latino crowd. First, the Jets picked Mark Sanchez with their first pick in the NFL draft, in the hopes of bringing a fresh face to the franchise and sell some PSLs. Then Prez Obama picks Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court Justice.

The pride of the Bronx, Sotomayor grew up in a housing project in the So. Bronx, with a life story nearly as compelling as Obama's. In an earlier post I said that I wasn't a Republican, but to be honest, I'm not a Democrat either, but my views tend to lead me to vote much more often with Democrats, and I do support most of Obama's decisions. This nomination is no exception, especially since it's a shrewd move on his part.

Also, nearly related, not that anyone knows or cares, but I eventually skipped the Karl Rove protest last night...I had domestic things to take care of.

Brooklyn Wonders, Part 1: Hunterfly Road Houses

New York City is full of world class sights, landmarks, and vistas. That's water under one of the many bridges (George Washington, Williamsburg, Manhattan, Brooklyn, RFK). But, once in a while, you'll be able to find something or somewhere that has much history outside of Manhattan, and I'm trying to highlight some of those here, starting with this post.

When the Dutch arrived in 1634, there were already roads cut into the ground all over the wooded hilly landscape that made up what they called Breukelen, or occasionally called Canarsee (which is still a name of a neighborhood) after the native Lenape people. The Lenape were the road builders, and eventually, the Dutch set stone pavers down on the roads to make it easier to get supplies to the disparate communities. The two surviving roads that are still in the same orientation to themselves, and generally at odds with the surrounding street grids that popped up after British and American development, are Clove Road and Hunterfly Road.

Here's a picture of Clove Road, the only (I doubt this, as I've studied aerial shots and think I've found another spot where Clove Road may still exist as a walkway through a parking area) remaining section of the street still in use by automobiles. You can see the pavers that Dutch laid more than 300 years ago (they had been blacktopped in the '30s, but the asphalt has since eroded).

The next remaining Lenape road is known as Hunterfly Road. Clove Road essentially was a way through the woods (Brooklyn was a mountain wilderness before the British showed up) from the East River, today what would be looking directly at the Statue of Liberty, basically headed east, out into the communities that lived on Long Island. Hunterfly Road was a north-south road, connecting what today is Queens and Long Island Sound to the beach resort of Far Rockaway, on the Jamaica Bay, near what today is JFK airport. On a quick random side note: taking the subway from our apartment in BK away from Manhattan, in thirty minutes you'll end up in Far Rockaway, a teeny beach community that looks like Pismo Beach mixed with the town from the movie Jaws, and you'll technically still be in New York City. Incidentally, where we live, in Bed-Stuy, originally was a community called Bedford Corners, established in 1659, that grew up around the intersection of Clove and Hunterfly.

In any case, when New York State abolished slavery in 1827, a free-black community sprung up in the late 1830s, built around the only place the white community didn't care too much about, some backwater area along the old Indian Hunterfly Road. Eventually Weeksville, taking its name from James Weeks, a freed slave who bought the parcel of land from another freed slave, became a fully functioning, fully insular free black community. They had schools, hospitals, elder care, law and order organizations, markets, and around fifteen thousand people. This community existed about a mile south of where we live today. The Hunterfly Road Houses are still standing, a few different homes from different time periods, built up one after a another, each under a new generation. 

Tours are free if you're a student or if you live within a mile. I've gone around and asked some of the kids we know if they've heard of Weeksville, and the history of the area...I'd like to take it upon myself to do some guerilla educating around these parts.

A Note on Michael Vick

Living in a black neighborhood for the past few years has helped me come to understand the two disparate views of the just released from Leavenworth Penitentiary and disgraced ex QB, Michael Vick.

When I heard that Vick might be connected to a dogfighting ring, I was upset. I love dogs. I love them as pets, though, which is different than most of white America, which sees dogs as members of the family. Anyone familiar with Cesar Millan's television show knows that this point of view can lead to behavioral problems with their dogs.

But to me, a lover-of-dogs-as-pets, the idea to pit them in fights to the death with each other is twisted and corrupts the natural abilities of the animals. I would imagine one-on-one fights to the death are not usually in the wild-dog world and its ancestry.

The uproar in the white world over Vick is predicated, I feel, on that member-of-the-family attitude attached to dogs. Viciousness towards canines is an old problem in the States, what with the ASPCA being founded in 1866, modeled after a British counterpart being founded in 1824. This was before there were even any child-abuse watchdog groups in the Union.

In black neighborhoods across the nation, the consensus among the masses was "here's white America again taking away the livelihood of a young black man, who happens to be the most exciting player in the NFL, and doing so because he's black." Dogs are not members of the family in black America (not like in white America, anyway), they are pets, ornaments, objects, or protectors. For a people so marginalized throughout American history, the compassion seems to exist for their fellows, for their comrades in blackdom, especially when that fellow is the highest paid player in the NFL, rather than with any four-legged ill-tempered or ill-trained pet. To the black folks I talked with, this whole thing had to be a conspiracy to get Vick, because how could these white folks get so worked up about some stupid dogs?

In black America, fellow black folks, especially the uber-famous, are always more important than dogs. In white America, dogs are people. Another moment of the two worlds not seeing eye-to-eye.

But then I found this advertisement for a reality show featuring Michael Irvin, a football Hall of Famer, found it in a dingy subway station in Brooklyn, and it was graffiti-ed as such:

What does this show? Maybe Vick doesn't have the unending support in my neighborhood? Maybe people are upset at the decisions he's made and the position he's put himself in?

Most sports writers here in the City think Vick's paid his debt to society, that he's learned his lesson (they hope), and deserves another shot at NFL stardom. PETA is ready to call for a lifetime ban. They're ready to boycott any team that pursues him. Should PETA dictate the rest of his career? I'm not sure how I feel about that. Should Vick get another chance in pro-football? Again, I have mixed feelings.

One thing I know for sure, though, is it's going to take a lot for me to really give a crap. The most exciting and highest-paid player was a stupid jackass, thought of himself as invincible, bankrolled a dog-fighting ring, personally killed some of the dogs, got caught, went to prison and flushed his financial security down the drain. I'm supposed to care that all he has now is a $10 an hour construction job? This is the current line from the sports writers here in the City.

That sounds like a job to me, which is more than plenty of us in this Depression. Welcome to real life, Mr. Vick. Try paying your bills and making ends meet like a real person.

Another Note on Sports

I noticed that my Yankees kicked some ass yesterday, and although it was great to see Phil Hughes pitching lights out (three hits in eight shutout innings), I will say that I wasn't a fan of the promotional hats they wore last night. I believe all teams wore the red-caps with the American flag inside the team's logo to raise money for returning Iraqi veterans, a cause I believe worth supporting, but I don't like red caps on the Yankees.

Speaking of Yankees and caps, I'd been in the market for a Yankee cap for the last few years, knowing that after I cut my hair, I'd be able to sport the kind of fitted cap that had been previously off limits. After narrowing it down to three or four different Yankee hats (around here that is a big deal, since every day you can see one that you've never seen before) the current season started. The Yankees moved across the street, started abusing the regular fans, introduced both The Moat and the Trost Toasties (the Moat is the area that separates the close, nice $2000 seats from the "cheap" $400 seats; the Toasties are the security detail for the nice, expensive seats, named after pricing man (Yankee CFO) Lonn Trost), and I decided to not spend my hard-earned money on a Yankee cap. It seemed like the extant of my protest, as I don't blame the players, and I still root for them, I won't be boycotting an entire season like a close friend of mine did years ago, I just wouldn't by a hat. Pretty lame, I know,  but that's that.

But I still needed a hat, sort of, as my Irish-fro can be tough to manage and my fedora isn't always right for all occasions. I'd been looking for a baseball-cap, and found what I needed quite accidently, or, really, found it while not looking for it: a Brooklyn Dodger cap.

I don't love the Dodgers, but they may be one of my NL teams, with the Pirates, Cubbies, and Marlins (still have a soft spot for the Phillies), but really, I decided that 1) I like blue, and 2) I've been living in Brooklyn for three years, representing Brooklyn, voting in Brooklyn, doing jury duty in Brooklyn (County of Kings, baby), paying taxes in Brooklyn...I found a way that (for me) sticks it to the Yankees and shows off the Brooklyn pride.

The last time I forsook a team of mine in any way was in 2007 when a good friend of mine tried to convert me to being a Jets fan, trying to change my affiliation from the New York Giants to the Jets. I still root for and enjoy the Jets, but I'm not your typical Jets Fan...they live in a world like the Raiders Fan: living and dying by the green-and-white (or silver-and-black). That year turned out pretty good for Giants fans everywhere.

Also strange notes from yesterday in the baseball world: the Yankees, Dodgers, and Tigers as a team each drummed out exactly 19 hits yesterday, while the White Sox hammered out 24.

Quick Book/Movie Note

I found and read a novel in 2003 called Push, written by Sapphire, a performance poet and social worker. The novel is written in the voice of the narrator, a barely literate sixteen-year-old black mother, pregnant during the duration of the novel's narrative, where both pregnancies were by her abusive father. Not a generally jolly set-up, but the novel is powerful and fast, and very uplifting by the time you get to the end. When you finish, the feeling inside you is not one of anger or pity, but a triumphant feeling that simply moving on is equal to victory.

There is a movie coming out soon based on the novel called "Precious", as that is the name of the narrator and the producers wanted to stay away from confusion over an action movie named "Push" released recently.

I recommend the book. It's not always the easiest read, but your horizon will be expanded by the time you finish it. 

Reasonable Argument

Now, I'm not a republican, but it's good to see a reasonable argument in favor of Gay Marriage coming from one, especially if it's John McCain's daughter.

The republican party has been waging a war against the gay marriage in the name of protecting the institution of marriage. Okay...Is this a religious thing I don't understand? Doing a little research will show that between 41 and 50% of first marriages, 60 to 67% of second marriages, and 73% of third marriages all end in divorce. The blanket phrase "half of all marriages end in divorce", while basically accurate, tends to skew the actual data, and my research site has a good breakdown-by-age.

Now, not agreeing with homosexuality on principle or religious grounds is one thing (I can't say I understand that, but I have some loved ones who do), but how that translates to revoking civil rights I'll never understand.

I support Gay Marriage. I've included an argument FOR gay marriage, not by some other lefty crack-pot, but from a GOPer, and the last republican Presidential candidate's daughter. The main ideas are: this is about Civil Rights, not how you feel about homosexuality. In "America", you know the one, the mythical land of Republican dreams and freedoms and equality, what the GOP is essentially saying is "you, the group of couples with mixed parts, you get these rights" and "you, the group of couples with the same parts, you don't, because you have the same parts."

Protecting an institution where, in the big picture, over half will fail doesn't seem the right way to argue against allowing the rights to translate over to another group.

Do you think that when the Civil Rights Act was initiated most Americans had nothing but positive feelings toward the black people the Act was designed to help? Did you know that 2/3 of the people living in the colonies didn't want to break away from Britain in the 1770s? Keeping the constituencies happy shouldn't be the gauge right now. This is about Civil Rights and/or denying them.

C U Next Tuesday!

I found something fun to do for next Tuesday, May 26th. I wonder if you can get arrested for egging Karl Rove.

Probably, but I hear there will be a protest outside of Radio City that evening, and as my protesting days are limited, these are the kinds of events I like to go to and observe...maybe crib some things for my novels, or just soak in the hot-headed youthful energy of getting a good hate on, you know, the kind fueled by privileged college aged kids who, when trying to emulate the hippies from the Sixties, shout their indignation and anger for the last Administration.

There's to be a debate/conversation between Rove and James Carville at Radio City Music Hall that evening, and simply the presence of Rove angries up the blood of most folks here in the City. It should be a good time.

Shale Oil Reserves: Loosening the BLM's Grip

The Bureau of Land Management has been eyeing reserves in Utah and Colorado, et al, as prospective reserves of shale oil, the dirtiest and hardest to retrieve fossil fuel. Shale oil is the rocky and sandy crud that's left over after wells dry up or left alone entirely, as the retrieval has never been economically feasible. Until now, I guess. Creative way to wean the American dependence
on foreign fossil fuel: start processing our own large shale oil reserves...too bad the costs are extraordinary when it comes to the necessary energy to clean and refine the fuel, the financial investment, and the damage to the surrounding areas.

You can sign a petition that asks the BLM to halt handing over public land to Big Oil for shale prospecting right here. Now, I have a friend who works oil rigs in the Gulf, and I love this man, and I'm not trying to threaten his livelihood, but the destruction of more landscape in exchange for the dirtiest and costliest form of fossil fuel, and only enough for a few months, and only after years of development, seems like the wrong direction to head.

Is it possible for us as a country, or even broader, as a global specie to figure out a way away from poisonous forms of energy? Is it possible for humanity to step up and bite the bullet and make the necessary hard choices before it's too late? Is it already too late?

I'm not that pessimistic, but really folks, the technology is there and has been for a while. It may not be glamorous or cheap, but it may just be necessary.

May 22nd is my 11,000th Day

After checking out a copy of a book I got in Citrus Heights a few decades ago, you know, one of those "Your Birthday, ____ _" deals that has historical events and figures that happened/were born/were felled on your birthday or around the same week, and I noticed they had a chart for the number of seconds, hours, days, weeks, months for each year up to 100. The easiest to pinpoint--days--had a nice round number a month-and-a-half after one's 30th birthday.

May 22nd is my 11,000th day on planet Earth (I take the leap years as included, like the chart, which probably averages them out, but since I can't tell, I'm going with it).

I like how language and brainal perception can sometimes exist uneasily, like how the phrase "a few thousand days" seems less daunting than "a decade", when they can be defined as the exactly the same expanse.

Transnationale: Cool Website

I've been meaning to post about a cool website that Corrie stumbled upon a while back, Transnationale.org. The information on this website has been culled from years of scrutinous research by an independent group located in France.

Among the types of information they provide (some for free, more details after you pay a 30 Euro charge): the revenues of the worlds largest companies; the names and salaries of those companies' executives; how many human rights violations those companies have incurred over the years; how many instances of lobbying and outright corruption those companies have engaged in; the types of labor practices those companies engage in; environmental disturbances; profit listings; the interconnectedness of the major corporations and their (sometimes secret) subsidiaries, and more.

Here is a sample list of the largest corporations in the world by sector by revenue. Seeing Boeing and BP atop the list for Aerospace & Defense and Energy Concerns respectively isn't new or bizarre, but seeing Cargill and Vivendi atop the list for Foodservice and Media respectively are names I hadn't heard of until this website.

Arm yourself with knowledge.

Happy Birthday Dan!

So today is my brother's birthday. I won't say how old he is, but younger than my thirty years.

Here are some fun facts about May 20th. On my birthday this year Dan called me and left me an hilarious message, and I kept it until yesterday, when I noticed that my voicemail had been cleaned up automatically. If voicemails are left too long, then I guess they get deleted automatically.

My voicemail to Dan couldn't be as funny as his, with my favorite part, "thirty years closer to death."

Happy birthday, brother. Love you.

HB 627 Passes

The so-called Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights, House Bill 627, has now passed in the Senate, and will corral some of the shadier practices from credit-lenders. Not that I helped, but I'm glad I mentioned it.

Here is an article spelling out the details about what is no longer allowable and what is now mandated.

A Note for my nerdy Numismatic Friends

I always thought it was spelled "pneumismatic"...

That means something like a coin collector. I may be well versed in counter-culture, and international traveling, but I also collected coins and comic books, so I have some definite nerdy tendencies...

In any case, Corrie and I recently finished our 50 state coin collections, two to be exact, so we're responsible for taking twenty-five bucks of currency out of circulation. But I do like the fact we were able to finish the set by simply checking laundry change and the like over the last ten years.

Already I've picked up two-each of the first two from 2009, the US territories (Washington DC and Puerto Rico), and I'll be keeping my eye out for the rest. Here's a picture of what they look like:

Apparently starting in 2010 there will be another ten-year fifty-coin issue series about national parks, or, in the case of Delaware (which has no national park) a federally maintained national area. 

Oklahoma City: Family

"Webster's defines a wedding as 'the act of removing weeds from one's garden.'" -- Homer Simpson.

Family. Corrie's parents, living in Oklahoma City, have five tremendous biological kids. They also have at least that many adopted kids, or strays that needed positive parental units for guidance, or kids they looked after, with almost the same amount of privileges that the biological kids have. It is a wild scene when most of them get together. Love and questions and knowledge flow around in a dizzying display. After our wedding, Tony may be one of the newer adoptees, having a wonderful family of his own, but being in south-western Louisiana, a weekend trip to OKC is easier than to Monterey, and the Dolmans love him the same as the other strays they've kept track of.

Congratulations Stephanie for graduating high school, for the $3k scholarship, for being accepted into the Denver Art Institute. Good luck with everything, and your sister and I will be around (on the phone and in cyberspace, anyway) when you need advice or whatever.

Congratulations Ron and Carol...you made it. Empty house...(mostly) adult kids...free time, relaxation time...

I still don't know how to thank you for Corrie.

My family has taken in a stray or two, and my mom has a similar air about her, looking after kids no authorities ever mandated into her ward. My dad's family, large, sprawling, loving, similarly accepting.

I'm not sure why I chose this coda to come first on this scrolling blog-site, maybe I thought it was the most important, that obviously the family link is the strongest connection of all those people living in or coming into Oklahoma City last weekend.

Thanks for the hospitality, the caring, the love...

Oklahoma City: The Babies

Corrie has always referred to her niece and nephew as the Babies, or her Babies. The two, Daniel Miles and Lola Bell, are wretchedly adorable, to quote a loveless curmudgeon, but even before Corrie and I got married, Daniel could manage an Uncle Pat now and then. Since we got married, both Daniel and Lola could say things like "We love you and miss you Uncuh Pat and Ant Kohwee" on phone messages and the like, which really do melt your heart.



Not until this trip did I fully feel the part of being Uncle Pat, and not just some guy married to a girl who's brother has some kids. The first incident, on the first day, right before the Babies went to sleep, Lola, being carried by Auntie Mary (Corrie's sister) came up to me and said, "Uncuh Pat, could you give me a dollar?" with a smile and twang that hurt me right here, the same spot that quivers in fear of every father with a cute daughter. Strangely enough I had some cash currency, but felt like I might set a bad example of being a push-over uncle, but then I found myself pulling the dollar bill out and thinking, how often are we going to get to see these kids really, and popped it twice by the edges. I was trying to hold onto some dignity, so I asked her, "Miss Lola, what are you going to do with this dollar?" To which she responded, "Put it in my pink piggy bank at home," and from there I was a lost cause.

The next day while everybody was getting ready for the ceremony and visiting, I found the quiet spot in the kitchen to clean the ramps and get them ready for the following day's feast. I heard a struggling sound, and turned to see Lola fighting with a chair with casters, fighting to push it into a position next to me, so she could climb it and "help" me with the ramps. Turns out she actually helped, without the quotes, and I remembered hearing that you should get kids involved with cooking matters, so they learn to not be afraid of the kitchen. She asked me if you could eat these things, and I smiled and showed her the one that her daddy had just eaten, and she asked my if she could eat one. A ramp is like a green onion, sort of; I mentioned it in an earlier post and I take for granted that readers understand what I mean. Raw, a ramp is a spicy-tangy mix of onion and garlic. I said Sure Lola Bell, you can go ahead and eat that one right there, which was a smaller ramp, and I thought that would, at worst, turn her off of onions for twenty years. She gobbled the whole thing up, saying, "That makes my mouth feel good." Again, the heart melts. About now Daniel sees her eating, and he joins us, eating his share as well, doing a great job helping me clean the ramps and ramp-greens, and I did my best to give a good lecture of fine dining, one that they could at least wrap their cute little heads around.



The next day, while Chris and I were getting the dinner situation figured out, we heard some laughing and squealing, and turned around and saw Daniel and Lola splashing around in the mud left over by the previous night's rain. I yanked out my camera, feeling overjoyed at the beautiful innocence of simply splashing around in mud; that simple pleasure that living as an adult all but crushes.


Now I feel like Uncle Pat. Now I am Uncle Pat.

Oklahoma City: Sidewalks

I'm not sure if I can really be considered a bumpkin, but I have been awed by plenty of things that other people live with and take for granted on a daily basis. A good example of this is when Corrie and I descended in a plane into Ft. Lauderdale and I couldn't help but see large puddles of water on the rooftops of buildings. Puddles? When we got out of the plane and went to get our rental car, still more large puddles needed to be navigated around, and I couldn't shutup, "Look at all this water!" I kept saying, "Puddles!" and Corrie would nod and giggle and say Yes, dear, this is a humid place. It was late August, and anyone, like me, from Northern California would be taken aback by the sheer heat index (115 F in Sac, but dry as a bone; 85 F in Ft. Lauderdale, but around 80% humidity, which is remarkably worse feeling) and seeing green things and puddles of water. I'd tell people that in Sac in August it feels like the sun is leaning on your shoulders, but you could pour a gallon of water on the ground and it would disappear in thirty seconds, having evaporated. That shocks people from the humid zones of this country.

Another example of me being awed by things others take for granted: the lack of sidewalks on most of OKC's streets. I understand on highways, on long winding mountain roads, even in upstate NY, sidewalks are unnecessary. But in Oklahoma there are plenty of residential areas, with houses and houses, and then shops of one sort or another, and nary a sidewalk to be found. Most intersections didn't have crosswalks or even pedestrian walk/don't walk signs. It all struck me as really strange, and I wouldn't shutup about it.

One morning I woke up earlier than Corrie, and she asked me to see if there was anything to eat for breakfast, and after looking and finding el zilcho, I asked where the closest grocer was, was told "Just down the street, this side, past the light." I suppose that if I asked I would've been lent an automobile, but my license expired this April, and I'm coming from Brooklyn, and in the City, we walk. That's not trash-talking, just, in New York City, you WALK...even if it's to the bus, subway, or other random spot you found to park your car, you'll be doing plenty of walking. When I returned I was scolded by the sister of Peter's girlfriend for not asking for a ride "all the way down there," which was about as far as a walk from our Brooklyn apartment to the further of the two train lines, the J train, or about three-quarters of a mile. This walk was much more harrowing, along the side of the road, on people's lawns, on the beaten path a few yards from the street, cars zipping by at what seemed like ridiculous speeds.

In any case, here's a picture from the same street going in the opposite direction, and hopefully the worn path in the center is visible.

Oklahoma City: Gonzo Cuisine

I finally had the pleasure of meeting Chris Eames, a family friend of my in-laws. A few months older than my brother-in-law and myself, we had spoken a few times over the phone, and had heard plenty of stories of each other over the last nine years I've been acquainted with the Dolmans.

Currently Chris is living in Austin and attending culinary school, and on Saturday of our trip to Oklahoma City, he and I joined forces and whipped up a feast for the twenty or thirty people there that afternoon. Chris is very passionate about his art and is very skilled and knowledgeable. It was a ton of fun entertaining the ever-shifting audience...people would come and go, some staying for a time to watch and ask questions, and we got the impression that the plethora of high school aged kids never cooked anything...ever, probably, but they seemed genuinely interested in what we were doing.

Chris manned the grill outside, where he grilled off five pounds of seasoned sheet steak (for fajitas--a dish asked for by the Lady of Honor for the weekend, Steph). Also done on the grill was the chicken. Chris picked up three whole roasters and we portioned then up--wings, breasts, thighs, drumsticks, and carcasses for stock. We roasted the carcasses first so we could make brown stock; we slathered the wings and drumsticks in bar-be-cue sauce for the kids; we spooned a sauce made from tamarind and reduced stock onto the thighs and nicer airline breasts (airline=breast with wing drumstick still attached); and I sliced up the remaining breasts and let them sit and marinate with cilantro, onion, and lime, for the chicken half of the fajitas. That meat was cooked on a bowl of foil on the grill, with a little beer added. Also on a foil bowl were the ramps that I brought from New York, with a little olive oil and salt and pepper. The greens from the ramps we tossed directly onto the grill, as a bed for the last two breasts. I was inside working the sauces, stocks, some black whole grain mustard I was pickling, tamarind juice, and cutting the meat.

I mention all this because besides the ramps everything we made we either used from cupboards or picked up at the store...mirepoix stuff like onions, carrots, celery...peppercorns and kosher salt...chickens and beef...Carol made a great tabouli dish and pasta salad, but we really wanted her to relax. We cut the vegetables for both of those. The black mustard seeds and tamarind concentrate I found at an Indian import store across the street from Peter, my younger brother-in-law. It is this action, this found cuisine, that is the essence of this post's subtitle: Gonzo Cuisine.

Chris and I didn't plan any menu; once we had the mirepoix, we just looked around and made stuff that tasted good. Later on in the evening, after we were both spent, he told me about a conversation he had with one of his instructors. Chris stated that he was a proponent of a thing he called "Gonzo Cuisine" (he and I are big HST fans..shocker, no?) and the instructor informed him there was no such thing. He stood his ground, though, and the master chef asked him to define what exactly he means by Gonzo Cuisine, and Chris told him, "That's when you march into somebody's house and make some fine dining with whatever they have in their cabinets." The master didn't have anything derisive to say about that.

Gonzo Cuisine. You should see what I've been doing for dinners with Corrie and Marc and Linda for the past three years...I've been a master of Gonzo Cuisine for a while without even knowing it has a name.

Shout out Mr. Eames

A Bit of Lagging

Later today I'll be adding some thoughts from our trip to Oklahoma City for my sister-in-law's graduation. We got back yesterday afternoon after staying up Saturday night to 1) see everybody and make sure goodbyes were said, and 2) make sure we made the flight, which took off Sunday at 6am. I remember saying that we're too old for that, you know, pulling an all nighter, and we probably are, but I would do it again under similar circumstances.

Right now I have to organize my ideas on the trip into easily digestible posts, with pictures, and, at some point, this post itself will be rather superfluous.

339 W 29th Street

Behind the mask of scaffolding in the picture above is the row-house at the address of 339 W 29th Street in Manhattan, just west of 8th Ave. Built in the 1840s, it has been in the news because of the work being done on it--renovations and the like--and the fact that a married couple, Abigail Hopper Gibbons and James Sloan Gibbons used the house as a stop on the way to Montreal for escaped slaves. It was one of New York's stops on the Underground Railroad. That fact has caused an outpouring of support to designate it a historical landmark. Apparently a work stoppage order was issued last Tuesday, but only because the zoning paperwork wasn't in order. Wild, sometimes, what some of the City's older buildings have been involved in.

Here is an article about the issues.

Comparative Size and Population

Being from California, when you wish to make trips to see some of her sites, long car rides are a given. Ask any New Yorker what would constitute a regularly traveled "long drive" and they usually say either Buffalo or Montreal, both about six to six and a half hours away according to Google map recommendations and obeying speed-limits, and, for those readers who know a thing or two about California, it's about the same distance as San Luis is from Grass Valley, but still less than Sacramento to LA.

Comparing "long" trips relative to each other, I end up thinking about other comparisons. Having driven or rode across the entire US thrice, with another long drive from SLO to Texas, I have a decent sense of the sizes of theses united States, and not just a book-smarts idea, but also a visceral been-there-and-counted-the-hours kind of feeling.

So sometimes I look up things that pique my interests. For example: Iran is slightly larger than Alaska, a state I've never been to, with a population around 66.5 million. That's ten million more than the combined populations of Texas(2) and California(1), the US's two most populous states. That's pretty big, with lots of people. Okay...

How about Afghanistan? Afghanistan is slightly smaller than Texas--which means it's still pretty big--with 33.6 million people, close to California's population.

Thinking about these two countries--one of which we're actively trying to conquer and the other the target of the conservative drumbeat for war--led me to check on another scene of American war-of-choice, Vietnam. The spindly Mekong-hugging ocean-kisser is slightly larger than New Mexico, while housing a whopping 87 million people. 

Enough war? How about a peaceful Scandinavian country, Iceland? Boasting the world's oldest functioning legislative assembly, the Althing, formed in 930, Iceland is slightly smaller than Kentucky, with a population of nearly 307 thousand, less than a tenth that of our Kentucky, which stands at just over 4 million.

Another entry of useless stuff...these facts and others can be found here.

A Point of Clarification

My apologies to the few readers who check out this site...the LEED exam that Corrie passed is the current foundation of green-building measures. The knowledge necessary to pass the exam consists of a thorough understanding of arcane bits of information: use of daylight; the types of paints that give off the least amount of fumes; proper water conservation planning; using existing materials if they can be salvaged...that type of stuff.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, I think.

By passing the exam, Corrie is now has the authority to sign off on projects that desire to "go green"--the current buzzwords--to go along with the knowledge to design it so.

We both feel that in ten years the building codes for the entire country will most likely be the basics of the LEED certification, since most energy wasted in this country is used in buildings.

Congratulations Corrie!

Corrie kicked ass on her LEED exam this Friday, and is now a LEED accredited professional!

She and I had spent the past week studying, and it paid off. She would study the paperwork while riding the train to and from work and I would make notes during the day based on the flash-cards she'd been given to study. At night over dinner we would talk over the different topics and she would teach me the reasons and contexts of the breakdowns on the flash-cards.

After some of the practice tests had demonstrable errors in the phrasing of some of the questions and their respective multiple choice answers, a faint sense of agita began to creep into the study area. What if the actual test was this typo ridden and full of implications contrary to the provided study guide? I knew the material at least well enough to know when a particular question was fraudulent essentially.

Through teaching me all about accrediting a newly constructed structure or the renovation of an existing one, Corrie proved her knowledge was so ingrained that poorly written questions were not going to foil her.

She got her results after finishing the exit survey, and, being the last person to leave, the lady handing her the paperwork allowed herself some levity, saying something like, "I can't give these to you until I see you smile. You passed." 

Corrie did some cartwheels right in the lobby...

I am so very proud of her.

Weather Patterns

Corrie and I were hanging out on our stoop last night as it started to sprinkle. The overcast sky hadn't let loose all day, when, once darkness fell, so did some drops.

As we were outside, a car drove by, and almost as if it were unzipping the sky, the patter of droplets began to intensify, until visibility began to minimize with the torrential downpour.

I thought it was neat, standing guarded by our stoop's overhang, that we're able to watch and experience the different patches of precipitation as they drift over our low corner of Long Island...first some driplets, then some patter, then the air changes and you can feel the pressure drop and the breeze pickup, and a quiet roar coming from down the street as the thick patch of dark clouds move your direction...then in two minutes it's back to a patter, then barely a drizzle.

The weather patterns here in the City still dazzle a California boy like myself...growing up we had two seasons; rainy and hot; then in San Luis it was between 70 and 90 during the day for 300 days a year. The people out here think we're crazy for leaving that kind of "paradise", but I love the the variety and visible changes that I never got out West.

Brain Science

I recently read an article about Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran, an Indian-born behavioral neurologist. This gentleman's approach to certain problems is generally low-tech, stemming from working with few resources in India.

One of the pathologies he devised a simple remedy for, and was at the forefront of the discovery of the cause of, is commonly called "phantom limb," where an amputee patient feels the missing limb as if it were there.

A different scientist working in the early '80s with Macaque monkeys discovered the different areas of the brain that deal with data coming in from the fingers. Then he amputated a finger (I'm not sure about the ethical ramifications about this move, but...), had his lab infiltrated by PETA and was stripped of his monkeys. He got them back years later, and checked the amputee's brain, and saw that the neurons allocated to the finger had been taken over on both sides by the neurons for the two surrounding fingers, like ivy taking over a small gorge.

Dr. Ramachandran noticed in a human amputee patient of his that when you touched certain parts of his face, he could feel it in his amputated arm quite realistically. Turns out the sensory neurons for the face are close enough to hijack good neurons from amputated limbs, but sometimes the brain can still cross itself up, and make you think it's the vacated limb that's delivering sensory data.

Most phantom limb problems are of the nature of pain or a stiffness from being held motionless. How do you fix this? Dr. Ramachandran devised a treatment: let's just cross up the brain ourselves deliberately. What was his expensive fancy sci-fi apparatus? A mirror.

He had his patient put his good arm and his stump onto a table while kneeling on a pillow, so his head was pretty much at the same level as his limbs. Then he put the mirror just in front of the stump and angled in such a way to make it look like his good arm was really his amputated arm. The Doc told him to just look at the mirror image and start doing things with your good hand. 

The patient immediately began to feel that his amputated hand was snapping fingers and counting to five and all the other activities his good hand was doing. They'd successfully crossed up and tricked the brain.

For most patients, this "mirror therapy"--twenty minutes a day for four weeks--tends to diminish the pain completely. Clinical studies at the Walter Reed facility, where amputees coming back from Iraq are stationed, have been positive, though at first everybody was quite skeptical.

One of the other problems this Ramachandran was working on is more bizarre; called apotemnophilia, it is the desire to have a perfectly healthy limb amputated. I'll try to get to the neurology and Ramachandran's low-tech solution to that later.

Cinco de Mayo

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

A radio station I listened to while driving to high school used to give away prizes on Cinco de Mayo in a large sink full of mayonnaise. Contestants would have to rummage around up to their elbows in nasty sun-melting crap to snag concert and ballgame tickets, CDs, keychains and bumper stickers...

I might be disappointed in I had my arm elbow deep in mayo and got a bumper sticker for the effort, but, I guess if you're demented enough to slop around that sink, you might be able to do something interesting with a bumper sticker...

Denis Johnson's New Novel

I've picked up and finished Denis Johnson's new novel Nobody Move. It is a speedy read, full of Johnson's terse dialogue and tense scenes. A master having fun with the crime-novel genre, Johnson seems to be channeling the same type of dialogue that made Jesus' Son so extraordinary, but here the mood is different, almost like he's not taking the story seriously. This is no great crime, of course, because the story is straight pulp--sugary-sweet pulp, easy going down and enjoyable. It may not stay a part of you like Tree of Smoke and Jesus' Son do, but it does have Johnson's gripping prose, his trademark that snatches you from out of a free-fall. In the end, with each tiny section of Nobody Move passing by, you say to yourself, how the hell does he do that?

Denis Johnson is one of the authors in my trinity of influence...I'm not sure if these three guys are my favorites, but rather I think I'm directly influenced by the various ways they tell stories. I've written earlier about one of the other two, Thomas Pynchon, who I think is influencing pretty much everybody past a certain point (check out Lethem, Chabon, Foster-Wallace etc). Pynchon is great for me, and my friend Norm, and plenty of other people, but he's not for everybody, and we'll leave it at that. (He might be my favorite.)

The third writer in my sphere is Haruki Murakami...this guy is just out there...for anybody who hasn't read anything by Murakami I suggest Dance Dance Dance or Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World. I read a short story of his that had a young woman as the narrator, and she had the unfortunate problem of not being able to remember her name. It turns out that a talking monkey had been stealing it, since he had only been assigned a number at the lab, and once she got her nameplate back, she never had those problems again. Murakami just goes places that you didn't think were reachable.

Employee Free Choice Act

I've been meaning to mention this for a while. I'd be lying if I said that remembering it now had nothing to do with my cousin Mike.

The Employee Free Choice Act is an act in congress at the moment that would restore the worker's freedom to choose whether they wanted to join a union. It would eliminate current obstacles facing employees who desire collective bargaining. It would guarantee workers that chose collective bargaining would be able to achieve a contract. It would also simplify the process of organizing by allowing employees to form a union by signing cards authorizing the representation.

I remember sometime in 1996 sitting with some friends at Loehmann's Plaza in Sacramento, sipping coffee in one of those hot summer evenings, chatting with a dude who had his clipboard and backpack talking about being kicked out of four area Starbucks already that day. While we talked about organized labor, women, coffee and cigarettes, the plaza security guards approached and gave him the boot. The managers at the Java City (where we were, and probably has been since changed into a Starbucks) wanted him far, far away. For talking. For spreading "dangerous" ideas.

We all left together that night.

A Note for Dan

I read a post from my brother about the possibility of rekindling his interest in sports. I, being a sports fan, am excited by this possibility.

Sports in America are the mainstream outlet for male emotional release, but most fellows would think that's a lame way to phrase what they can't verbalize.

So, Dan, I do suggest the A's...they're moving to Fremont by 2010 (I think) and will probably be changing their name to either the Fremont A's or the Silicon Valley A's. Personally I think it ought to be the East Bay A's, but I don't get to make that decision. 

By the way, the name Athletics is the oldest team nickname in all of baseball. Originally the team nicknames were not official, and the Reds were known as the Red Stockings for many years and the Red Sox were known as Beaneaters, Poindexters, Doves, and a whole assortment of either sanctifying or derisive other names, pretty much based on how they fared the year before. The Athletics as a name was derived in 1862 (I think) for the non-professional "athletic gentlemen" who played organized ball in Philly, and the name hasn't ever changed, not when they started getting money for playing, not when the moved to KC, and not when they moved to Oakland.

Also, randomly and weird, the Sacramento Kings, in the NBA, is one of the original NBA franchises, having started as the Rochester Royals in the pre-WWII NBL, then moved to Cincinati, then to KC (and had their name changed to Kings, since their was already a Royals in town), and they split the KC time between KC and Omaha. Then, as we remember, they arrived in Sac around the same time we did.

Some Useless Movie Tidbits

Have you seen the film Hotel Rwanda? Don Cheadle is great as hotelier Paul Rusesabagina, a man who opened up his hotel to refugees during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Currently I'm reading an article about the progress of reconciliation in Rwanda, fifteen years removed from the nightmare, and it's rather startling. Rwanda is currently one of the safest African nations, competent traffic police enforce traffic laws, cell-phones work almost everywhere in the small nation, and the population has jumped twenty-five percent to about ten-million. Plastic bags are forbidden in an attempt to keep litter down and protect the environment. Many of the perpetrators of the genocide have been released from prison and are living among their victims at almost all levels of society. The survivors aren't always happy, of course, but they realize that the Hutus and Tutsis must learn to coexist. The writer said the strange feeling for him (he first visited in early 1995 and again in 1996) was that the area feels simply normal, and that itself is extraordinary.

Another movie related topic: for anyone who has seen What About Bob?...doesn't it seem like they could use the exact same script--changing no dialogue--but film an incredibly creepy film about a psychopath attaching himself to the unwitting family of some jerk shrink? Some dialogue might need to be changed, but probably not too much...