Big hello at Tot Shabbat

Last Friday Chiansan visited from San Diego during his week on the West Coast before flying back to China for the semester. I took him and Miriam to Tot Shabbat at Beth Shir Sholom. We were entirely out of place and entirely welcome.

We were late. Miriam was too young. We weren't part of Beth Shir Sholom's camp group. We were the only non-campers. We were the only non synagogue members. We tried to be quiet. We didn't sing along. We sat there on the playground equipment under the tent in the synagogue's back yard. We chatted amongst ourselves. We watched the children mumble and move and sing along. I mumbled along with the prayers. We watched Miriam go for the sandbox. We were greeted by the religious education director. We ate the challah and chocolate chips. We greeted the rabbi. We were greeted by the cantor. We fled, smiling.

Yesterday's run destination: Along Montana

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: cheerios and blueberries
lunch: the bowties pasta and sauce that will not die
dinner: excellent chicken dinner picnic (lemon oregano roast chicken breast with garlic mashed potatoes, salad with purslane, pears, walnuts, and olives, chocolate covered dried strawberries) at Temescal Gateway Park

Near future semi-apocalyptic science fiction set in California

I heard on NPR, in one of those 150 word capsule stories, that the East Coast was watching carefully to see if a tropical storm was going to grow into a hurricane and found that I didn't really care. I know millions of people may be affected, and I even know some of them personally, but it's sooooo faaaaar awaaaay. At times, California seems like its own country, if not its own world.

I'm in the midst of T.C. Boyle's A Friend of the Earth, which isn't exactly his most highly recommended novel but it fits in my habit in the past few years of reading near future partial apocalypse novels, those novels set a few decades hence in which the world maybe has gone to hell but is still recognizable and at least some people are surviving, if not thriving. In 2025 the climate has dramatically shifted about, not hotter but weather patterns have changed and for almost everywhere worsened. California, where it is set, is beset by hurricane-type storms one after the other for months on end, followed by endless drought. Not exactly cheery stuff, but too plausible to put down.

It is a marked contrast to the science fiction I used to hoover up: books of starships and singularities, a thousand years of peace and alien worlds. The near term stuff written post-Philip K. Dick and his generation just doesn't see the same rosy future. It doesn't seek to inspire as much as to warn and to complain. Still, it is thought provoking.

see: World War Z, World Made by Hand, Feed, Rainbows End, Snow Crash(set in LA!), and the still strikingly relevant Neuromancer

If you have recommendations of additional near future semi-apocalyptic science fiction, particularly set in or around LA, please comment below.

Yesterday's run destination: along Montana

Yesterday's menu:

breakfast: granola

lunch: thai leftovers

dinner: cheesy pasta

bonus: our neighbors made cupcakes!

A professor walks into a bar in Somerville...

Spring 2008

The whole staff gets an email from Josie that a friend of hers from WGBH told her about an upcoming event that sounded a lot like Soap Box. Tuesday evening at the Thirsty Scholar, on Beacon St. in Somerville near Inman Square, they are going to show a video, have a scientist giving a short lecture, and get a discussion going. Free appetizers, buy your own beer. I decide to go.

The Thirsty is a grad student kind of place, not too far from MIT and Harvard but far enough to be cheap. Somerville edges into working class Boston inner suburbs, but around here there are a lot of people like me: young, educated, friendly, and awkward. There is a excellent selection of beers on tap and the room is dark and loud. A baseball game is playing on the facing plasma screens, but not the Red Sox, and the place is a little more than half full.

A few guys are standing around looking official, fiddling with connecting a DVD player to the TV, and the right kind of awkward seems to permeate the nearby tables so I take a seat. I introduce myself to the guy on the bench next to me and yell a greeting to the woman opposite and sit back and join the silent watching in the midst of music, shouting, and baseball.

They get the DVD set up and the host introduces himself and the evening's sponsor, Nova Science NOW. He promises a sneak preview of an upcoming episode on climate change and has on hand a geologist with expertise in the giant CO2 increase linked to the Permian extinction. 10 or 15 people are actively listening, and maybe another 10 its hard to tell. The guys standing around the cocktail tables near the bar are watching the game. Some appetizers come out, putting the program briefly on pause. We snack on jalapeno poppers and bland quesadilla wedges. I order a Blue Moon.

The video is five minutes of talking heads and animations about a giant volcanic eruption half a billion years ago that covers Russia in a mile of lava and releases a ton of carbon into the atmosphere. Shortly thereafter, 90% of species go extinct. We discuss, briefly and loudly, among the three of us at the table.

The scientist, with an adorable British accent, turns out to have consulted on the computer simulations. He shouts out a few minutes of additional background and takes questions. He moves about, tries to ask questions back of his interlocutors, fights the background rumble of the bar. The bar has its own rhythm and roar but never gets quiet enough for normal conversation. Questions are all over the place. Where do the rock samples come from. What is it like to work at Harvard. Does this mean we're headed towards another extinction event. An older guy in a beat up denim jacket and a beer gut looks down from the game and asks if 90% of everything died, was it just bugs that survived.

I finish my beer, thank the host as things are wrapping up, and go home.


Yesterday's biking destination: Cafe Luxxe, 9th and Montana

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: donuts
lunch: leek and mushroom frittata, greens salad
dinner: bowties and ragu redux, Yorkside style

Yummy donuts

Recommended: Zelda's Corner Deli on Venice Beach for sandwiches and mini donuts. The sandwiches are for the most part pret a manger, but they toss them on a panini grill for a minute so the bread warms up and gets nicely crusty. The donuts are cooked to order and are superbly crispy and fresh. I've been three times in three weeks. The sandwiches are $5-7, on the small side, and all have been tasty with high quality ingredients though nothing fantastic. There's a promotion that if you mention that you learned about Zelda's on Yelp you get a bag of donuts free with your sandwich. Yum!

Yesterday's run destination: around the country club and up the hill to Mt Olivet Reservoir

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: cereal
lunch: pasta salad, israeli salad
dinner: bowties with a beef ragu, ratatouille, greens salad

Stroller meditation

Notice your steps. The movement of your legs, in the ankle, in the knee, in the hip. Feel your weight shift from side to side. Feel the skin of your legs, the texture of the fabric as it moves against your thighs. Notice where your clothes are close, and where there is space.

Breathe. Breathe in time to your steps, in and out.

Notice your steps, the pace of them. Keep the same pace, not too fast, as your attention focuses on the movement. Feel your toes press into your sandals, and through them into the pavement. With each step, connect to the ground. Capture the brief moment of firmest connection. With each step, feel the earth, then let it go and move forward.

Breathe. Feel the rush of the breath through your nose.

Notice the bar beneath your hands. Feel the vibrations of the wheels against the ground as they roll. Focus on the skin of the palms of your hands, of your fingertips, of your fingers. Relax your fingers, and let your palms connect with the bar, feel it as an extension of your arms. Notice the bumps and dips in the sidewalk, and let them roll by and behind you.

Breathe. Feel your ribcage expand and contract. Notice the feeling of skin against fabric as the fabric is asked to stretch.

Notice a leaf, a single leaf, on a spot on a hedge ahead of you. See this leaf, the shape of it, the color. See how it moves in the breeze, how the shape of it changes as you approach. See how it turns into a blur as you come near and pass it. Notice another leaf, a single leaf, on a spot on a hedge ahead of you.

Breathe.


Yesterday's run destination: up and down Washington

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: cereal and banana
lunch: pick up
dinner: pasta salad

Things to do with 10 pounds of heirloom tomato seconds

On a lark at the 3rd St. Promenade Farmers Market this morning I bought a 10 pound flat of heirloom tomato seconds, since that dropped the per pound price from a market standard $3.50/lb to $1/lb. As seconds, some of those tomatoes needed to be trimmed away of split skins and others were a bit mushy but a good third of them are eatable straight away. For the others, into the pot.

Marcella Hazan is my guide for all things pasta sauce and her recommendation was either to blanch and peel or to heat them in their own juices for 10 minutes then run them through a food mill. I just happen to have a food mill and it seemed easier to turn and turn than to gently ease tomato skin quarters from the irregular surface of a heirloom tomato curled in on itself.

The smell of the simmering, reducing, rosy liquid as it darkens and thickens is delightful.

Yesterday's run destination: Montana Ave.

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: cereal
lunch: king salmon caught by Sue's brother-in-law, flash frozen, and shipped down from Alaska
dinner: Elizabeth's pasta salad

So, nu, what did you think of our museum

Miriam is a bit young for the Skirball Cultural Center's excellent Noah's Ark kids play area and exhibit but we enjoyed it nonetheless. There was so much to look at and listen to and do that even though she was able to engage with maybe a tenth of the objects that was a full hour of delight.

The center was, on a Sunday afternoon, exceedingly well staffed, with a concert going on in the amphitheater, volunteers offering an exit survey, staff giving scheduled introductions to the Noah's Ark area and not one, not two, but three different activities for the short pants and pinafores set. Being a museum programs person myself I was quite happy and a little bit surprised to see so much programmatic activity going on for what seemed like a typical weekend day. There was the Save the Ocean drawing area, sponsored by Jane Goodall's organization Roots and Shoots, a nicely staffed and supplied Make a Finger Puppet activity room (I made a bunny with button eyes. Miriam thankfully did not immediately go for the eyes.), and a heavily moderated but still rhythm-free drumming circle with lovely gourd shakers, drums, blocks, and other vaguely African percussion toys. Staff (overwhelmingly female) were engaged, friendly, seemed to enjoy their work, though I would give them at best a B+ on experience with this age level and age appropriate banter. The activities were more fun than the facilitators, lets just leave it at that.



Yesterday's run destination: around the big block

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: brownies
lunch: cheesy potato
dinner: cheese and crackers and pasta leftovers

Overheard on the playground

Kasia: I'm flying around
Jeff: I'm flying too
Aron: I have a jet pack. Foosh!
K: I have a jet pack too and mine is cooler
A: Mine is filled with fire and explosions to space
K: [hangs off the bar at the top of the slide] My jeb pack...my jem pack
J: I'll get a magic wand
K: My jem pack is filled with candy
J: chocolate kisses
K: My gem pack is filled with chocolate kisses and, um,
A: Lets make a secret castle
K: A sand castle. Lets get some sand. No, wet sand.
...
K: Put it right here. No too close. [Takes some of Aron's wet sand and pats it onto her pile, then brushes away the rest.]
K: Now we need dry sand to put on top.
J: And magic wand to zap it.
K: [Sprinkles dry sand over the pile]
J: Is that fairy dust?
K: No it's just dry sand.
J: [runs around looking for a twig]
K: Now some fairy dust for the castle. [Sprinkles more dry sand on the pile]
J: And a magic wand. [Sticks twig into middle of pile]

Yesterday's run destination: Somewhere on Montana

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: leftover donuts, not so good the second day
lunch: salmon and pesto
dinner: pesto carbonara
bonus: brownies

Pesto Festo (for three)

Laura Gibson, that wonder of energy and joy, tells of her mother's annual August party celebrating that wonder of leaves, basil. For my wedding cookbook she contributed:

Pesto Festo is an annual event held at Mama Gibson's house where all the remaining basil growing in the backyard is harvested at the end of the summer and many baggies of pesto goodness are created. They are then stored in the freezer so we can enjoy pesto all year long. Mom generally divides one recipe of pesto in half for freezing so that each bag contains enough pesto for 2 servings.

The pesto recipe itself is from a Stars and Stripes newspaper article mom clipped in Naples..we tried many recipes before discovering this one which is indeed the favorite and, we think, the most authentic.

The recipe is more garlicky than I would expect, uses almonds rather than pine nuts, and omits salt (but I suspect they put it in anyway), but is basic, classic basil pesto.

With the four pots of Trader Joe's basil growing on my herb table in the backyard starting to show their age, it was time for a little festa of our own. Since the schedule for the day left a larger hole in the afternoon than dinner would really take to make but not long enough to go out for an activity, I made fresh pasta.

I have not one but two pasta makers. I have, but never really use the typical double roller device for rolling down pasta dough thinner and thinner to fettuccine or spaghetti width that comes with a cutter attachment for the final and most satisfying run through the machine to produce dozens of strands at once. The pasta maker I do use (occasionally, a few times a year) is my pasta extruder Cuisinart attachment. It is one of those seemingly useful kitchen items, like an ice cream maker or chafing dish, that often ends up at tag sales. Mine still has the $2 handwritten sticker on it, three years later.

It can make macaroni! Following the exceedingly detailed directions that sound at once colloquial and translated from another language/culture.

Pick up the extruder housing, holding it as shown. Place your left hand with the fingers over the screw cap and the thumb on the front panel. Place your right hand with the fingers on the back panel and the thumb in the hopper locking track. DON'T PUT YOUR FINGERS UNDER THE ATTACHMENT; THEY MAY GET PINCHED AS THE ATTACHMENT LOCKS INTO PLACE.

It's the semicolon that gets me.

Still, it is awesome and fresh pasta, while related to the everyday dried stuff, really is a different and superior food. Pesto Pasta Festa!

Yesterday's run destination: DK's Donuts

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: donuts
lunch: the last of the crepes, eaten savory with smoked mozzarella, pepperoni and capers
dinner: pesto pasta and salmon

Old McDonald, 2010

Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O
And on that farm he had a pig
With an oink oink here and an oink oink there
Here an oink there an oink everywhere an oink oink
Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O

Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O
And on that farm he had some chickens, E-I-E-I-O
With a broack broack here and a peck peck there
Here a cheep there a peep everywhere a meep meep
Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O

Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O
And on that farm he had a tractor, E-I-E-I-O
With a vroom vroom here and a vroom vroom there
Here a vroom there a vroom everywhere a vroom vroom
Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O

Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O
And on that farm he had a mortgage, E-I-E-I-O
With a payment here and a payment there
Here a bill there a lien everywhere a broken dream
Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O

Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O
Then the bank came and took his farm, E-I-E-I-O
He lives with his daughter in a nearby town
And he likes to drink his whiskey down
Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O

Yesterday's run destination: around the block

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: crepes
lunch: bread and cheese
dinner: on the go PB&J before attending the Bark Mitzvah service at Beth Shir Sholom

Picnic on the beach

Last night to celebrate the successful completion of Becca's first week of work and just because we could, we had a picnic dinner on the beach. I packed a bag and we got in the car and 10 minutes later were digging our toes into the sand. We bought what turned out to be an enormous cup of soda at movie theater prices from the beach stand and made excellent use of one of their few spare tables while the crowds walked, jogged, rollerbladed, and biked by. Three guys were practicing their volleyball skills: toss, bump, catch and return, toss, bump, catch and return. A few pigeons flew around. People trekked back from the surf in bathing suits and wet suits half stripped off, in skirts and hats and sunglasses with beach bags and towels and flip flops dangling from one hand. The sun was just going down so for those of us who forgot our prescription sunglasses, only the southeast half of the beach was viewable without squinting. Dinner was delightful, and there was even a playground nearby for some swinging and sliding.

Later in the evening in place of watching Jon Stewart or Colbert we listened to a 1969 Studs Terkel interview with Eva Barnes, a tavern owner who grew up in coal towns across the midwest, a meatpacker, an assembly line worker, an anti-Vietnam marcher, a mother, and a fascinating character. She told a story of her glorified youth in small towns where people had no money and not a few sorrows but would know and help one another. They would go on picnics, dozens of people together. Everyone would bring something, bread, pies, homebrew and moonshine, the boys would go fishing and make a huge pot of mulligan stew and the girls would pick berries. Everyone would share and everyone would eat and no money passed hands. She lamented that, as she saw it from 1969 Chicago, nothing like that happened anymore, that people didn't help their neighbors or even know them.

On the beach, on the shore side of the bike path under some palm trees, were 10 or so empty picnic tables and upon listening to Mrs. Barnes I longed for those tables to be full of people with food and cheer to share. I appreciate the food stand, and admire its elegance, its permanence, its usefulness, but its neatly spaced round tables each with an umbrella and four patio chairs do not substitute for the shared experience she remembers from her rural youth.

It is a different place, of course, and I place great value on how the dynamics of a place and macro attributes of a community, its size, its transience, its age distribution, can determine the culture that grows up in that place. I heard too many languages from the walkers to pretend that the vast and enormously desirable expanses of Santa Monica's beaches are a local resource only. Too many hundreds of people walked by in our hour at the beach to fairly compare it to a coal mining town in 1920s Illinois where people have lived together, worked together, known each others' lives for years when they go out to have a picnic together. But I would like to overlay the experience of breaking bread together on this already well used public space. Those picnic tables are just sitting there under the palm trees, empty.

Yesterday's run destination: Bergamot Station

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: crepes, again
lunch: curry leftovers, again
dinner: ho dogs

Cutting the card (not as) quickly

Santa Monica is both spread out and compact. Commerce is restricted to major boulevards interspersed with large of residential neighborhoods. There's an Interstate that cuts the city in half, and the expected industrial and office park districts alongside. And yet, from my house in 10 minutes, in various directions, I can walk to a park, a supermarket, a few drug stores, restaurants, beautiful streets for jogging or strolling. A little farther out on today's walk I came to Bergamot Station and the Santa Monica Museum of Art. On display in various galleries was top notch art, mostly contemporary, in a beautiful post-industrial post-railroad setting.

Having worked at the MIT Museum for the past five years I gained an appreciation for the strobe photography of Harold Edgerton. So it was a surprise and a joy to see a pastiche of his work in the Hugh Brown "Allegedly: New Chainsaw Works" exhibit alongside pastiches of Duchamp, Mapplethorpe, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Pollock, etc. Brown does a great job of mimicking the styles of 20th century artists, creating new artworks about or including a chainsaw. For the Edgerton, he took the image of a card cut in half by a bullet and cut it instead with a chainsaw, but with what appears to be excellent high speed strobe photography technique.



Doc Edgerton's Cutting the Card, Quickly, courtesy of Edgerton Digital Collections


Hugh Brown's Harold Edgerton [Cutting the Card (not as) Quickly, 1964], courtesy of Robert Berman Gallery

Yesterday's run destination: 25th and San Vincente

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: crepes
lunch: curry leftovers
dinner: Ezra's chickpea dish, with an eminently drinkable Trader Joe's Reserve 1999 Petite Syrah

Don't fear the robot, little one

Miriam is a careful child, as I was. At sing along she'll sit and watch for a while before deciding whether to join the joy or wander off. Put a new food on her tray and she'll look at it, watch to see what I am doing, poke at it, bring it to her lips and down again, and threaten to drop it off the side before finally taking a bite. When wrestling with a toy too large for her she always keeps a hand on a nearby surface, a bookshelf or coffee table, to stabilize.

She fears the robot. Just a little bit, and less each day, but when our Roomba (Thanks Wendy! It's working great!) starts up its brushes and begins its random walk around the room she backs away, murrs, and looks to be picked up. I don't entirely blame her. Here is an otherwise inanimate object, clearly not a dog or cat or person, that suddenly starts to move. While it is small compared to me, it's probably a third of her weight and given her journeyman skill level in balance and walking it could probably knock her down if she wasn't braced for it. So she edges away. In its semi-random motion, sometimes it follows.

I want her to embrace the robot, to wonder at its movements and make friends with it. I wouldn't mind her thinking of it as a toy to figure out how to turn it on and off and do so, repeatedly, like she pushes the beads back and forth and back again. I'd like her to give it a little smile when she passes by its corner and glances its way. Like I do. But for now she's afraid of it, and probably confused by it, and stays away from it.

Yesterday's run destination: Federal and Wilshire, where we saw the President's motorcade drive on unnaturally empty streets

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: egg crepe
lunch: potato leek soup
dinner: chicken and veg curry
bonus: the last of the pecan chocolate chip cookies

Sun Strips

Product Concept: Sun Strips

Need: For the beginner gardener who wants to know what kinds of plants wil grow in different parts of his proposed garden but doesn't know how to calculate areas of high sun and partial shade. For inexperienced gardeners, figuring out how much a given spot is shaded by trees, buildings, and other obstructions.

Product: photosensitive paper is placed in multiple spots around a garden for 24 hours on a sunny day. The photosensitivity of the strips is calibrated to give a scale from full sun to full shade when the sensitized paper is held against an included scale. By placing strips throughout the garden, a map of the amount of sun on each spot, a product of the shadows cast. Papers come with clips on small stakes to keep from blowing away. The finished map can be used in garden planning to select different plants for different parts of the garden.

A preview of tomorrow's Yesterday's run destination: seeing President Obama's hand and forearm out an SUV window at the corner of Wilshire and Federal

Yesterday's run destination: San Vincente Blvd.

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: challah french toast
lunch: nibbles
dinner: potato leek soup, bean salad, roasted cauliflower

A little off the sides

I live in a land of palm trees. Though there are a few species native to Southern California, most planted in Santa Monica come from other places. The list of their origin countries and regions would make a good year or two of traveling. Canary Islands. Guadalupe. Cuba. Mexico (Pacific coast). Mexico (Carribean coast). Senegal. Java. Burma. Northern Arabia. My source for the origins of the various palms I see as I walk, stroll, or run along the city streets is Trees of Santa Monica, first published in 1944 and revised in 1981, and a delight of local knowledge with the tone of a long time resident speaking to other long time residents.

These palm trees need maintenance. Without care and pruning, their lower leaves will die and rot, become infested with bugs and animals, and threaten both the health of the tree and passersby when they eventually fall. Up and down Wilshire Blvd. between our house and the park are trees in the midst of their regular trimming. An entire block of parking is coned up and three cherry pickers each attack a tree. 50' in the air a guy with a chain saw hacks at the lower fronds and they fall to earth, sometimes gracefully, sometimes in a heap. The worst of these fronds are in tatters, their backbone and frills all but unrecognizable. The youngest of them are mostly green, with just the tinge of grey brown death on the tips of their leaves. These fall most satisfyingly, with a dip out to the side, then gliding along and angle stem first, like a nose-heavy paper airplane. Below, a backhoe with giant jaws in place of the regular arm and shovel collects and picks up the piles of debris to be trucked away. The resulting trees look green and healthy, if a little shorn.



Yesterday's run destination: CVS

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: smoked mozzarella omelet
lunch: japanese leftovers
dinner: quesadillas and lentil soup

Duck, Duck, Duck

On a tire sized rock carefully half buried into the park's clay soil sits a little girl with a cracker in her hand. A few feet down the slope sits a sleepy duck, its bill turned into its wing, resting in the partial shade falling on the concrete berm that encircles the upper pond. Two ducks swim left. One duck swims right. On a rock carefully perched on an underwater rise in the middle of the pond sits a turtle facing south, sunning himself.

The little girl takes a bite of her cracker. The duck ruffles his other wing then settles back down. The shadows shift a little as the the branches of the italian stone pine move in the breeze. Seven ducklings stick together near the far shore.

A boy with long hair and his caretaker come up the hill. He comes right up to the edge of the pond and stares at the ducks. He picks at a stand of tall grass and tosses a small piece at a passing duck. The caretaker quietly admonishes him. He turns away and stares again at the pond for a moment, then they move on.

Yesterday's run destination: Cox Paint

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: Santa Monica Donuts' old fashion was far superior to its jelly filled
lunch: cold pizza
dinner: Kaido's tempura/teriyaki dinner special

Worm Tea

Worm tea is gross. And it's brewing in my backyard.

Today I went to a workshop sponsored by the City of Santa Monica's Recycling Department on composting and vermiculture. Held at the super approachable and family friendly Virginia Ave. Park, it was led by two guys from an LA County garden learning center. Apparently they do a couple of these every weekend, and were very organized, with a laminated poster presentation, answers to all of our wormy questions, and soil samples, literature, and worms on hand. I took it all.

A word about Virginia Ave. Park. This is possibly my current favorite among the many awesome Santa Monica public parks. Besides the fields, playground, and free parking, Virginia Ave. comes complete with a Saturday Farmer's Market, a water play area with 20' jets and water cannons, outdoor free art classes for the 5-8 year old set, a basketball court that seems to be in constant use, and picnic areas that have been booked for birthday parties every time I've been there.

I left the workshop encouraged that worms were recommended as a good match for apartment dwellers as they do well on just kitchen scraps, unlike a regular compost bin which benefits from a mix of kitchen and garden waste. I left the workshop knowing a few new things about worms: healthy, well watered, warm but not too warm, happy worms can eat about their weight in food scraps every day, double in numbers in three months, and, when everything is going right, decompose food into soil without making odors. I'll believe it when I smell it. I left the workshop $50 poorer but with a pound of worms and a three level worm hotel, which is now sitting under the avocado tree next to the laundry shed.

The top level: contains nothing. It's empty until the worms have reproduced quite a bit and outgrown

The middle level: which is the new home of a pound of worms, the half eaten dirt they came in, some damp newspapers to get them munching, and a brick of compressed coconut husk, which was recommended to help their digestion. Eggshells too: good for digestion, good for the worm bin's pH. The middle level has a mesh bottom, letting the "good stuff" fall into

The bottom level: where worm tea brews.

Worm casings, or worm poop for the more childlike among us, collect in piles like dripping mud through your fingers in the bottom level. This is wet, smooth, thick stuff, and liquid oozes out of and pools around the bottom of the bin. This brown liquid is worm tea, and it is apparently jam packed with nitrogen, phosphorus, protein, bacteria, protozoa, and other stuff that makes it excellent fertilizer. Such good fertilizer that you need to dilute it 10:1 before giving it to your plants. The bottom level comes with a handy spigot to drain off the worm tea for fertilizing purposes. Yum.

Yesterday's run destination: Santa Monica Library

Yesterday's menu:
Breakfast: cereal
Lunch: cheesy potato
Dinner: shabbat at Tony's: chicken marbella, kugel, salad, challah

Jicama Salad

For Becca's birthday dinner with a Mexican theme I made a Jicama salad side dish. Mostly I had picked up a jicama in that morning's shopping so had it on my mind.

Jicama is a mild crunchy root vegetable that can be eaten raw but is a bit plain by itself. It works nicely in slices in a crudite next to carrots or pepper strips, with a bit less solidity than carrots or radishes but still very much a solid object than can be carved into any shape or size.

I wanted a side dish that could be eaten with fork so cut the jicama into short matchsticks. I wanted the salad to have some bite so added in chopped red onions. To give a bit of the flavors of Mexican cuisine (or at least what little I know of Mexican cuisine as interpreted by norteamericanos), I put in cilantro and lime as well. A bit of salt and it was done. I thought about some chili, either powder or hot sauce and decided against it but next time might put in a few drops.

It was quite tasty, though I seemed to be the only one gravitating towards it the next day at leftovers lunch.

An easy fast

This morning I listened to a story about fasting on This American Life that set out a more intense fast than I have ever considered for myself. David Rakoff did a 14 day clear liquids only (fruit juices and broth) fast but did not find spiritual enlightenment, as he secretly was hoping to do. He did lose a pound a day, though. What stood out to me was a basic, even banal, point: that fasting alone does not bring a transcendent experience, that to find spirituality or cosmic connection fasting can be a tool but a seeker must engage fully, through belief, inner search, meditation, the company of other seekers, etc. Rakoff read the New York Times every morning, did his regular routine, stayed in his own apartment, and then was surprised when the epiphanies didn't roll down upon him.

The only fasting experience I have is the 25 hour fast of Yom Kippur. It is one of the very few Jewish traditions I uphold, and even that not entirely consistently. I appreciate the use of the fast to mark out a special time for contemplation, even in the years when I do basically nothing else to mark the holiday, and like Rakoff keep my regular life of commuting and email and novels through the fast. But I recall my most intense Yom Kippur, the year I was in Israel for my cousin's wedding and staying with Uncle David the rabbi, where all of my regular patterns had been broken and I was surrounded, in what from the outside looked like one of those lonely subdivisions in the middle of farm country, by people who were not just fasting but intently praying, and the hunger and the tingle of not eating served to concentrate my mind on this usually alien concept of praying for redemption.

I never know what to say to people on Yom Kippur. Friends and colleagues typically say "May you have an easy fast" but I think if the fast is easy, if it does not prevent you from leading your regular life and habits, then it is useless. If I fight it I don't make the best use of the uncomfortable and even painful practice. By hoping the fasts of others are easy, I encourage them to not take fasting seriously. Hoping to ease the pain suggests that the fast is being imposed from outside rather than fully chosen and embraced and created from within. Which it is, and that is part of the point of modern American Judaism, and a whole other layer by which my friends and colleagues and I can connect and create community.


Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: cake
lunch: fajita salad
dinner: pizza

Yesterday's run destination: Santa Monica Public Library

Just another day at the dealership

Today we bought a car. Yay! More accurately, I should say the bank bought 90% of a car that they will let kindly let us drive over the next five years while we buy it from them.

After three hours at the dealer that included a test drive, zero negotiating, much reading of documentation, 45 minutes on the phone with the car loan and auto insurance people, and two complimentary bottles of water, I drove away in our brand new silver Civic. One visit only, which was great since it took a frustratingly long 50 minutes to go drive the 8.7 miles up Santa Monica Boulevard to Hollywood.

This is after a week or so of going back and forth about what kind of car to get. We started talking about a used car like the previous two that I've owned. Then the used cars looked either like scary salvage titles or so expensive they got into new car range. So we switched to new car and ended up with the same car everyone we know gets for their first car. I am a little surprised that we succeeded in getting a car out of this process, and less price shocked than I expected, which I attribute entirely to the separation borne of using a car loan, which is also a new experience for me.

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: french toast and bacon at Rae's Restaurant (I shall return)
lunch: leftover lentil soup
dinner: pork fajitas, jicama salad
birthday cake: lithuanian coffee cake

The Leaky Pipeline

On this morning's run I listened to Margaret Prescod's show Sojourner Truth on KPFK. She had a panel of current and former high achieving students of LAUSD talking about the afterschool programs that had helped them to succeed in music, sports, and science. The astrophysics grad student particularly caught my ear with the phrase "leaky pipeline" to refer to the disproportionate rates at which women and minority scientists fall out of the scientist career, at every stage: going to college, selecting a science major, going to grad school, finishing grad school, junior faculty appointments, and moving on to tenure and a long and productive career in science.

Being a roundtable among teens and the people who run programs for them, the discussion turned back down to high school and middle school level interventions and the need to lower class sizes, increase resources like lab space, and ensure teachers for all students, not just the magnet school students, are comfortable and confident with their own math skills. I basically agree with all that but the contrarian in me starts thinking about why math becomes such a thing to be feared for so many people. I recall A Mathematician's Lament, by Paul Lockhart, which tears down the entire K-12 mathematics curriculum as divorced from the pattern finding and meaning making that makes mathematics a beautiful and intricate art for those who love it. He complains about mathematics enrichment programs that in an attempt to get kids up to "grade level", which is to say, able to do certain operations and process extremely specific mathematical concepts at a certain age, push and break kids' natural love of pattern finding and puzzle solving.

It makes me think that what specifically happens in a math/science afterschool program matters enormously, whether it is about creating an open space where math is respected and loved or a cram school to try to cram kids into a pipeline. The former certainly is harder to hire for, since you need to find people who themselves love and truly are comfortable with mathematics as art, conversation, and a tool for understanding, and even many people in the science pipeline don't think about math that way.

Yesterday's menu:
Breakfast: cereal
Lunch: beef salad again
Dinner: lentil soup
Snack: pecan chocolate chip cookies

Following the news

News sources I read on a semi-regular basis:
NY Times
LA Times
Santa Monica Daily Press

News sources I read somewhat less frequently:
The New Yorker
The Economist
Harper's Weekly
Wall Street Journal
Santa Monica Mirror

Yesterday's menu:
Breakfast: cereal
Lunch: greens salad with beef
Dinner: In-n-Out

Yesterday's run destination: that strange curve in Montana Ave.

A few good foods

I'm not quite sure when I became a foodie but one of the main aspects of living in Santa Monica that I've pursued in this setting up period has been finding a set of restaurants, shops, and markets that I can really get behind. I'm looking for the best donut, and the cheapest place to buy organic produce and fun little specialty shops where I can pick up some kombu, prosciutto, Valhrona, or a dry aged ribeye.

So far, I like DK Donuts for a neighborhood donut shop, based on freshness, texture, and selection. I keep wanting the farmers markets to be as good as they are but cheaper, particularly in the middle of tomato season, and I want to meet an actual farmer, not just their market stand managers who live in LA. There were some great shops on Sawtelle Blvd. for japanese everything.

And if you find yourself on Venice Beach, try Zelda's Sandwich Shop's mini donuts, which are fried as you order them and are crispy and delicious.

Yesterday's Menu:
Breakfast: donuts
Lunch: bean salad and rice
Dinner: steak and potatoes

Yesterday's run destination: around the block

Meet you by the garden

Last night I took the family to a potluck dinner and seed swap at Gardenerd. While sitting on line for an hour and half in the Santa Monica City Hall permits office a few days ago I read the Santa Monica Daily Press and the Santa Monica Mirror cover-to-cover. In among the event listings was a Seed Swap sponsored by Gardenerd. Gardenerd sounded, just from the 20 word listing, like my kind of gardening organization: hip, online, open to new people. It turns out it is also a microbusiness, loose community, and very much new to what it is doing.

The potluck was held in the founder, principal, and sole proprietor's backyard in Mar Vista, on an entirely residential street, next to a house in the middle of a complete renovation. From the front, the only indications that there was a public event on site was a small vinyl banner stretched across the top of the garage and an 8.5"x11" sign taped onto the door pointing around the side of the house. In back was a medium sized backyard (by the standards of LA backyards I've seen so far) intensely managed, from the woodchips under the seating area to the wisteria arbor to the raised beds to the hanging garden pockets growing herbs on the back fence. It was a lovely little space dedicated mostly to vegetable gardening, and very much up my alley.

20 or so people sat around finishing up dinner, bedecked with nametags and many clutching handfuls of key envelopes filled with seeds. What with baby and deciding at the last minute to attend we didn't get there until more than an hour through the two hour event but I wolfed down my food and started asking around and soon fell into conversations with folks from all over the Westside and collecting seeds. I had none to offer, but that didn't seem to be a problem, and showing off Miriam was, as always, quite popular. I'm going to stat with an herb garden, so mostly collected herb seeds, chives and basil and cilantro and parsley, but someone pushed her favorite flowers into my hands and someone else was talking about carrots and I went home with a whole selection and a wonderful sense that interesting, helpful people are hiding behind the fences and down the side streets of this huge city.

Tower of cookies

I made cookies a few days ago to feel at home in my new apartment and start off right my relationship with my neighbors in the building, before Miriam's 4:00 am cries established the mood. I went a little overboard and there were lots and lots of cookies. It kind of turned into a monster cookie.




Yesterday's menu:
Breakfast: strawberry pie
Lunch: leftovers
Dinner: peanut butter sandwich beach picnic
Drinks: black and tan

Yesterday's run destination: around the Brentwood Country Club

Educating local food

The UCLA Family Commons is a social services-type organization dedicated to inspiring healthy families and healthy living. More than a typical such service organization, it serves the full income range, and if anything is skewed towards higher income families. As an extension of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, they are and very much act like a pilot program, with funding out of proportion to its peers and some flailing about trying different ways of reaching their target population, which is unrealistically broad.

That said, they seem to be doing great stuff for the few people they serve. As I savored the freshness and the samples of the Wednesday Farmer's Market (like all farmers markets, a haven for great picture taking) I saw a group of six or so 9 year olds with a counselor going through the market each with a shopping list in hand and little slips of paper with a sentence or two of the culinary qualities and health benefits of different foods, like potatoes and lemons and beans. Each had a basket and were chatting about the strawberries and other tasties they wanted to buy if they had money left over.

All of this is well and good except the Santa Monica Farmers Markets already run a schools outreach program with field trips, visits to schools, and library events around cooking and healthy eating. Family Commons' program adding an explicit healthy eating/healthy living curriculum to that sounds great, and it was lovely to see the kids in the market, but I wonder if they are reinventing an already successful, or at least extant, program.

Yesterday's menu:
Breakfast: giant biscuits
Lunch: japanese takeout
Dinner: chicken thighs in red wine, potatoes, corn relish, greens salad
Bonus: strawberry pie

Yesterday's run destination: around the neighborhood with a stop at Douglas Park

Streetscapes

As Arizona Ave. comes up the gentle slope of the central plain of Santa Monica from the ocean to the West LA border, it passes through a dense city center commercial zone, runs adjacent to not one but two enormous medical centers and in general for its first 25 blocks is used as a major, though secondary, thoroughfare. A much larger road runs parallel on either side, Wilshire to the north and Santa Monica to the south, so the mix of through intersections, stop signs, and occasional lights gives Arizona a slower, more pedestrian friendly feel. There are bike lanes, haphazardly marked, in both directions. Trees are at times sparse and some stretches, particularly around the medical centers, present a scale well out of proportion to individuals or residences. There is an elementary school and playground, a few churches, bungalows in widely ranging states of repair and lots of two and three story apartment buildings.

Then as it approaches 26th Street, the view up the street changes. A canopy of identical forty foot ficus trees stretches up the next five blocks. The street narrows. All thoughts of large commercial buildings fade. The feel of the street becomes smaller, more intimate. Now there is a stop sign at every corner, and the sidewalk bumps out into those corners to slow traffic and mark the entrance to each block. The buildings are the same mix of bungalows and apartments, but under the camouflaging effect of the shade of the giant trees they look more elegant, cleaner, better loved than homes a few blocks down in the sun.

Yesterday's run destination: Sawtelle

Yesterday's menu:
Breakfast: cheese and salsa omelette
Lunch: leftover pasta
Dinner: roast chicken and homegrown veggies at Karen's house

Mid-Century Modern

Our apartment is in a small 50s building that has been tastefully updated and, at least to my Victorian-architecture-of-New-England-trained eyes, in a simple mid-century modern style. Mostly that means it has simple adornments, straight lines, and windows with a horizontality that would be a big no-no in a 19th century building. The kitchen cabinets are all up on metal legs and the doorknobs are smooth ovals of brushed metal. White curtains billow in the always open windows.

This is a dramatic difference from our two apartments in Boston over the past seven years, the first an 1890s building with some of the original moldings and exterior detailing (though painted over many, many times) and a terrible layout for modern living and the second a lovely Craftsman era two family in wood and white walls with glass fronted built-ins in the dining and living rooms.

This is youngest building I've ever lived in and while it is not overflowing in personality, it has a definite feel of modernity that I hope to add to with decoration and furniture. I've been perusing the offerings at Mid-Century Modernist for inspiration and envy. I would say that an authentic looking, let alone authentic, blue modern couch with cat-resistant fabric (extremely tight weave or microfiber) and raised legs in my price range is a rare, rare thing, even on the vast marketplace that is LA Craigslist. But I'll keep looking.

Yesterday's run destination: Montana Ave. Library Branch

Yesterday's Menu:
Breakfast: chocolate chip cookies
Lunch: leftover Salmon Teriyaki takeout
Dinner: Jonalicious Pasta and Two Buck Cab-Sauv

California light

Having just moved to Los Angeles from Boston, everything Californian is new and exciting and a little bit scary. The streetscape alternates between familiar and alien with astonishing rapidity. Sunlight moving up the living room wall over the course of an afternoon is just about the same, then looking out the window at a cloud passing behind a telephone pole starts out all normal until I notice the palm tree next to it. Moving has been an expectedly stressful time, though not without it's great moments.

One great thing: I made extremely tasty cookies last night. One terrible thing: the air mattress we're trying to sleep on squeaks like a balloon being rubbed every time you shift positions. Another great thing: we went to the beach yesterday morning for a morning walk, found free parking, Miriam saw a few dogs and enjoyed the playground. Another terrible thing: When it came time to move Sophie from the hotel to our apartment she had hidden inside the box spring, requiring disassembling the bed and propping it up on an angle, while holding Miriam, who started crying, to sort of roll the cat down towards the hole she had ripped in the facing fabric and out onto the floor to be captured and caged.