Attributes of American children's garments that mark them as solely for the use of girls:
-frills in any location, including sleeves, collars, hems, seams, etc.
-lace in any location
-most embroidery, except for Specifically Male Items, like baseballs, trucks, or dinosaurs
-purple as a dominant color
-light blue as a dominant color, unless the garment incorporates a Specifically Male Item image
-pink as a dominant color
-pink as an accent color
-pink as an incidental color, even a few threads or as part of a full color design
-pictures of girls, dresses, most cupcakes, horses, or hearts
-decorative buttons sewn along seams, such as along the shoulder
-puffed sleeves or shoulders
-any fasteners except snaps, zippers, or buttons
-buttons closed with loops instead of buttonholes
-a shirt extending below the hips
-any neckline except crew neck or polo
-most sandals or open toe shoes, except those in a palette of blue, brown, black, and white (orange accents OK) modelled on sneakers or sport sandals
-sparkles
-red that might be confused for pink
Any child wearing a garment exhibiting one or more of these attributes will be assumed to be a girl, irrespective of other visual or verbal cues up to and including the use of the male pronoun by parents, caretakers, siblings, or self.
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: eggs and bacon and toast and tea
lunch: leftover beef chili
dinner: lentil soup, popovers, greens salad with farmers market snap peas
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Sprouted smoothie
Over the past few days I've been sprouting various seeds to use for cooking. It started with spotting mung beans in the grocery store, which I bought with the sole purpose of turning into bean sprouts. Then it snowballed after stopping at a farmer's market booth offering sprouted lentil salad, which was delicious, so fresh and fittingly vibrant for a winter food that would feel at home in snow and sun. So I am sprouting two types of lentils too. These all just sit damp in bowls on my counter and grow little tails, which I think would become stems if I didn't keep snacking.
This morning the red lentils went into perhaps the wackiest smoothie I have ever made, which isn't saying too much since I only started making smoothies with the arrival of my birthday present immersion blender last fall and haven't really gotten into it yet.
I make yogurt based smoothies. Sadly, the yogurt smelled like cheese and had sprouted mold. So I made a milk based smoothie, with frozen strawberries, banana, and the aforementioned red lentil sprouts. It all seemed a little thin, so I grabbed my handy tub of sodium alginate from the molecular gastronomy experimentation zone of the kitchen, and it thickened right up. That stuff is amazing.
This morning the red lentils went into perhaps the wackiest smoothie I have ever made, which isn't saying too much since I only started making smoothies with the arrival of my birthday present immersion blender last fall and haven't really gotten into it yet.
I make yogurt based smoothies. Sadly, the yogurt smelled like cheese and had sprouted mold. So I made a milk based smoothie, with frozen strawberries, banana, and the aforementioned red lentil sprouts. It all seemed a little thin, so I grabbed my handy tub of sodium alginate from the molecular gastronomy experimentation zone of the kitchen, and it thickened right up. That stuff is amazing.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
You are the new day
What do a cartoon picture of a bat starfish, a propane torch, and potato leek soup have in common? They were all part of my day today! Also, Miriam and I strolled from our house to the end of the Santa Monica Pier, around seven miles roundtrip, stopping to see the ducks, listen to storytime at the main library, eat lunch atop the cliffs overlooking the Pacific, buy t-shirts for screen printing or maybe hand painted designs, and pick up "mama" to walk her home from work. Yay good day.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.
(selectively excerpted from Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food)
Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
Avoid foods containing unfamiliar or unpronounceable ingredients.
Avoid high-fructose corn syrup.
Avoid food products that make health claims.
Shop around the periphery of the supermarket.
Shop outside the supermarket whenever possible.
Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
You are what you eat eats too.
Eat like an omnivore.
Eat well-grown foods from healthy soils.
Eat wild foods when you can.
Eat out of a traditional food culture.
Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism.
Don't look for magic bullets.
Have a glass of wine with dinner.
Pay more, eat less.
Eat meals, not snacks.
Do all your eating at a table, in the company of others.
Eat slowly.
Stop eating when you feel full.
Cook.
Plant a garden.
Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
Avoid foods containing unfamiliar or unpronounceable ingredients.
Avoid high-fructose corn syrup.
Avoid food products that make health claims.
Shop around the periphery of the supermarket.
Shop outside the supermarket whenever possible.
Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
You are what you eat eats too.
Eat like an omnivore.
Eat well-grown foods from healthy soils.
Eat wild foods when you can.
Eat out of a traditional food culture.
Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism.
Don't look for magic bullets.
Have a glass of wine with dinner.
Pay more, eat less.
Eat meals, not snacks.
Do all your eating at a table, in the company of others.
Eat slowly.
Stop eating when you feel full.
Cook.
Plant a garden.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Radicalisms I considered in 2010
Income inequality is wrong. The gross global product divided by the number of living humans is around $6,000/year. Everyone should get around $6,000/year.
The best work you can do with your efforts or your money are clean water and childhood vaccinations. Until everyone has clean water and vaccinations, other efforts or money towards public health or the alleviation of suffering are ineffectual and bogus.
The highest purpose of humanity is to spread complexity, life, as far as possible. The momentary pleasure or suffering of a generation is nothing compared to getting ourselves and our ecosystem off this planet and out into the wider universe.
Gender differences are a historical artifact that can be overcome by education and shifts in culture. In a modern scientific society capable of providing safe and reliable birth control, abortions, labor and delivery, infant nutrition, and adoption matching, as well as IVF, sperm donation, egg donation, and surrogate pregnancy, sex differences are a choice, and one we can decide not to make.
Guns have no place in civilization. A gun should never be used in anger or malice, and short of abolishing anger and malice, guns should not be available. Repeal the second amendment. Regulate and limit the production of weapons. The technology of making a gun is complex enough, for at least another generation of industrial developments, to be limited to corporations and other technically able organizations, and limiting those organizations' production limits the availability of guns. Buy and destroy guns currently in private possession. Regulate gun ownership more strictly than any other type of ownership: more than cars, planes, houses, chemicals, welding equipment, etc. First restrict them from civilians, then from law enforcement as well.
Invite a homeless person to sleep in your guest bedroom.
Dress children androgynously. In the absence of gender-neutral pronouns, randomly use gendered pronouns, on a day-by-day basis. Introduce your child to others as one gender or the other and try to see him/her through others' eyes, as yours are inevitably marred by knowing the physiological sex of your kid.
Tax estates completely, using the money for wealth transfers and government-funded creations of long-reaching, intergenerational importance, like education or infrastructure. Generational wealth shifts should be from generation to generation, not individual to individual. Children of wealthy families have more than enough advantages already as a result of their upbringing in wealth.
A good life doesn't need to include economic production. The best things in life can't be had for money.
A good life necessarily includes economic production. The best things in life can't be had without money.
The best work you can do with your efforts or your money are clean water and childhood vaccinations. Until everyone has clean water and vaccinations, other efforts or money towards public health or the alleviation of suffering are ineffectual and bogus.
The highest purpose of humanity is to spread complexity, life, as far as possible. The momentary pleasure or suffering of a generation is nothing compared to getting ourselves and our ecosystem off this planet and out into the wider universe.
Gender differences are a historical artifact that can be overcome by education and shifts in culture. In a modern scientific society capable of providing safe and reliable birth control, abortions, labor and delivery, infant nutrition, and adoption matching, as well as IVF, sperm donation, egg donation, and surrogate pregnancy, sex differences are a choice, and one we can decide not to make.
Guns have no place in civilization. A gun should never be used in anger or malice, and short of abolishing anger and malice, guns should not be available. Repeal the second amendment. Regulate and limit the production of weapons. The technology of making a gun is complex enough, for at least another generation of industrial developments, to be limited to corporations and other technically able organizations, and limiting those organizations' production limits the availability of guns. Buy and destroy guns currently in private possession. Regulate gun ownership more strictly than any other type of ownership: more than cars, planes, houses, chemicals, welding equipment, etc. First restrict them from civilians, then from law enforcement as well.
Invite a homeless person to sleep in your guest bedroom.
Dress children androgynously. In the absence of gender-neutral pronouns, randomly use gendered pronouns, on a day-by-day basis. Introduce your child to others as one gender or the other and try to see him/her through others' eyes, as yours are inevitably marred by knowing the physiological sex of your kid.
Tax estates completely, using the money for wealth transfers and government-funded creations of long-reaching, intergenerational importance, like education or infrastructure. Generational wealth shifts should be from generation to generation, not individual to individual. Children of wealthy families have more than enough advantages already as a result of their upbringing in wealth.
A good life doesn't need to include economic production. The best things in life can't be had for money.
A good life necessarily includes economic production. The best things in life can't be had without money.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
64 colors of FUN
Miriam's first real scribble is on the refrigerator, first in a decade-long series of her art to take that traditional place in the American home. It is red and purple and blue, wax crayon on paper. Since that fateful drawing in late 2010, her technique has advanced a little, but there have been no breakthroughs in her art, and so the drawing remains in its place of honor.
First Parish Unitarian Universalist of Arlington Church, entertainingly called FPUUA (fuh-poo-ah), annually holds a pair of bridging ceremonies for graduating high school seniors, one within the youth group for their departure from that group, and one with the congregation as a whole. The youth group ceremony is shrouded in some mystery to those who are not youth, their advisors, or their parents, but I was able to observe and take part as a congregant in a few of the public ceremonies over my five years with that congregation. There are words spoken, by the soon-to-depart youth, by their advisors, by their parents, and by the congregation as a whole, and gifts given. One year, the gift to each senior was a 64 count box of crayons. As Tina Schultz, director of Religious Education described, this was to remind them of the joys of childhood, that brightness can be found in the smallest packages, and that they should color outside of the lines.
Not from FPUUA, but acquired somewhere in my adult life, I have my own box of crayons, with which Miriam now learns to scribble. My downstairs neighbors have a box of their own on their desk in the window facing onto our driveway, and seeing its yellow and green design gives me hope that there is a box of colors somewhere behind each of the doorways and windows I pass along my way.
Yesterday's run destination: Montana Ave.
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: Cinnamon Toast Crunch
lunch: salami sandwich
dinner: boiled potatoes, broccoli, and hot dogs
First Parish Unitarian Universalist of Arlington Church, entertainingly called FPUUA (fuh-poo-ah), annually holds a pair of bridging ceremonies for graduating high school seniors, one within the youth group for their departure from that group, and one with the congregation as a whole. The youth group ceremony is shrouded in some mystery to those who are not youth, their advisors, or their parents, but I was able to observe and take part as a congregant in a few of the public ceremonies over my five years with that congregation. There are words spoken, by the soon-to-depart youth, by their advisors, by their parents, and by the congregation as a whole, and gifts given. One year, the gift to each senior was a 64 count box of crayons. As Tina Schultz, director of Religious Education described, this was to remind them of the joys of childhood, that brightness can be found in the smallest packages, and that they should color outside of the lines.
Not from FPUUA, but acquired somewhere in my adult life, I have my own box of crayons, with which Miriam now learns to scribble. My downstairs neighbors have a box of their own on their desk in the window facing onto our driveway, and seeing its yellow and green design gives me hope that there is a box of colors somewhere behind each of the doorways and windows I pass along my way.
Yesterday's run destination: Montana Ave.
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: Cinnamon Toast Crunch
lunch: salami sandwich
dinner: boiled potatoes, broccoli, and hot dogs
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Juicer
I have a new juicer. It is shiny and red. The silver lever arm reaches back and lifts the squisher. It is good for lemons and a little small for oranges. I will make lemonade. I bought five pounds of lemons. I will make lemonade for everyone!
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Playing with blocks, balls, cars, and slinkies
A lovely evening was had by all a few nights ago on the back of a grab bag of kids toys and a free moment that found all three Bijurs sitting on the cramped messy floor of our second bedroom. Miriam has a hammer and workbench-type toy that holds wooden balls that when hit drop through to a lower level and roll out the side. She discovered at some point that the rubber seal that holds and releases the balls are weak enough that just pressing down on a ball will release it, and the hammer has since migrated to live with the other workbench toy, the one with pegs. One problem with the ball-based workbench is the finely turned balls have a tendency to roll and hide. So we set up a little corral of blocks. Which started as a parental project to avoid scrambling after rolling balls, but soon became a little zone of experimentation for the 30+ crowd on just how far and fast those balls roll and at what angles, and maybe if we jack up the back of the workbench a little with this here block can we generate enough force to bump that car across the floor? All the while the nominal owner and operator of these toys is delightedly replacing and popping the balls.
Then, entered the slinky. Our standard metal slinky made a perfect size tunnel for these particular balls, with perhaps half an inch of clearance. Stretched out, curved, looped back on itself, it provided an easily varied route for the balls to roll through. And held up propped against a tower of blocks, it provided the balls a much greater oomph. Now the littlest Bijur was up on her feet dropping balls into the slinky-snake's open mouth, watching it zoom around and into the workbench's tunnel and out the other side into our maze of blocks. And it was good.
Eventually, we had a contraption, eerily similar to the rube goldberg machines built by the student teams I worked with via MIT, in which a ball would roll off the desk into the slinky (propped up by cross supports and hung at just the right angle by yarn), through the tunnel, hitting a car to roll into a house of blocks and onto Miriam's foot. And it was good.
Yesterday's run destination: DK's Donuts
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: donuts
lunch: chickpeas and orzo
dinner: homemade linguini and bolognese
Then, entered the slinky. Our standard metal slinky made a perfect size tunnel for these particular balls, with perhaps half an inch of clearance. Stretched out, curved, looped back on itself, it provided an easily varied route for the balls to roll through. And held up propped against a tower of blocks, it provided the balls a much greater oomph. Now the littlest Bijur was up on her feet dropping balls into the slinky-snake's open mouth, watching it zoom around and into the workbench's tunnel and out the other side into our maze of blocks. And it was good.
Eventually, we had a contraption, eerily similar to the rube goldberg machines built by the student teams I worked with via MIT, in which a ball would roll off the desk into the slinky (propped up by cross supports and hung at just the right angle by yarn), through the tunnel, hitting a car to roll into a house of blocks and onto Miriam's foot. And it was good.
Yesterday's run destination: DK's Donuts
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: donuts
lunch: chickpeas and orzo
dinner: homemade linguini and bolognese
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Our patron saint
In Palisades Park along the top of the cliffs overlooking the vast expanse of Santa Monica's beach, at the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Ocean Avenue sits a WPA-era sculpture of Monica of Hippo, patron saint and namesake of this city I live in. It is concrete, formed and painted an unbroken white, streamlined and austere. Driving or walking down Wilshire towards the sea, it is visible for blocks over the traffic and stepping up to it, the integrated pedestal rises above eye level, while Monica gazes back at the city above.
It was made in 1934 by Eugene Morahan, a Santa Monican originally from Brooklyn. Its base steps back and back like the Empire State Building and Santa Monica's face and stance and robe are shaped in the austere, simplified art deco lines of the time. Whitewashed, calm, and massive, it speaks of a pre-war sensibility of art, and of Santa Monica, perhaps influenced by this town's industrial history combined with its carefully cultivated placidity by the sea.
Monica of Hippo, later Santa Monica, mother of Augustine, best known for converting him to Christianity, as recounted in his Confessions. She lived in the 4th century and travelled a bit, from North Africa to Rome and back. She is the patron saint of mothers, alcoholics, and married women. Santa Monica the city is named after Santa Monica the saint supposedly for two overlapping reasons: it was named as part of its settlement after the feast date of Santa Monica in 1770 and for a trickling stream that reminded the presiding padre of the tears Santa Monica shed as her son caroused in his youthful libertine ways.
Yesterday's run destination: Santa Monica sculpture
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: popovers, again, we're almost done, really
lunch: leftover lentils and rice
dinner: tofu broccoli stir fry
It was made in 1934 by Eugene Morahan, a Santa Monican originally from Brooklyn. Its base steps back and back like the Empire State Building and Santa Monica's face and stance and robe are shaped in the austere, simplified art deco lines of the time. Whitewashed, calm, and massive, it speaks of a pre-war sensibility of art, and of Santa Monica, perhaps influenced by this town's industrial history combined with its carefully cultivated placidity by the sea.
Monica of Hippo, later Santa Monica, mother of Augustine, best known for converting him to Christianity, as recounted in his Confessions. She lived in the 4th century and travelled a bit, from North Africa to Rome and back. She is the patron saint of mothers, alcoholics, and married women. Santa Monica the city is named after Santa Monica the saint supposedly for two overlapping reasons: it was named as part of its settlement after the feast date of Santa Monica in 1770 and for a trickling stream that reminded the presiding padre of the tears Santa Monica shed as her son caroused in his youthful libertine ways.
Yesterday's run destination: Santa Monica sculpture
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: popovers, again, we're almost done, really
lunch: leftover lentils and rice
dinner: tofu broccoli stir fry
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Not a hurricane
As a newcomer to this southernly land I am surprised and amused to live among palm trees. Palm trees don't belong in my city, they belong in tropical resorts, on desert islands, safely away on cheesy TV shows and bad joke cartoons. Palm trees, tall and skinny and hairy, their tuft of fronds at angles and scales alien to the maples and dogwoods of my upbringing, are a signifier of places to visit, to enjoy the sight of, and then the memory of.
Over the last six months, I've started to get used to palm trees as part of the backdrop of my life. I haven't oohed and aahed over the tree a few yards over when silhouetted against the sunset since October. The trees up and down Wilshire are just trees, kind of. And while I never solved the mystery of why the super tall and skinny ones all lean towards the ocean (best guess so far: remember that the Pacific is actually more to the south, not the west, at this point on the coast), I haven't asked anyone for their theory in a while. I'm getting used to them, and by extension, to LA.
Until Sunday when, down along the palisades in the drizzle watching the rain bead up on the windshield with a sleeping baby, a cup of tea, a few brownies, and the erudite conversation of my spouse, I saw those tall spindly palms swaying in the wind against grey skies and was struck by a pop cultural memory of hurricanes, of tropical places facing far less than paradisiacal weather, of local television meteorologists sent out from their comfortable studios to stand in knee high water holding their hats while in the background palms sway and collect blowing debris, signs and sheeting and the detritus of the built environment picked up the forty, sixty feet to land in among the stretched to breaking fronds above, or bounce off and away along the winds.
Yesterday's run destination: Brentwood Country Mart
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: popovers and donuts
lunch: rice and lentils
dinner: "Lakers" chicken stir fry with red cabbage and yellow bell pepper
also brownies
Over the last six months, I've started to get used to palm trees as part of the backdrop of my life. I haven't oohed and aahed over the tree a few yards over when silhouetted against the sunset since October. The trees up and down Wilshire are just trees, kind of. And while I never solved the mystery of why the super tall and skinny ones all lean towards the ocean (best guess so far: remember that the Pacific is actually more to the south, not the west, at this point on the coast), I haven't asked anyone for their theory in a while. I'm getting used to them, and by extension, to LA.
Until Sunday when, down along the palisades in the drizzle watching the rain bead up on the windshield with a sleeping baby, a cup of tea, a few brownies, and the erudite conversation of my spouse, I saw those tall spindly palms swaying in the wind against grey skies and was struck by a pop cultural memory of hurricanes, of tropical places facing far less than paradisiacal weather, of local television meteorologists sent out from their comfortable studios to stand in knee high water holding their hats while in the background palms sway and collect blowing debris, signs and sheeting and the detritus of the built environment picked up the forty, sixty feet to land in among the stretched to breaking fronds above, or bounce off and away along the winds.
Yesterday's run destination: Brentwood Country Mart
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: popovers and donuts
lunch: rice and lentils
dinner: "Lakers" chicken stir fry with red cabbage and yellow bell pepper
also brownies
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Grades are the least of it
I'm shopping podcasts of college courses for something to listen to next after a reasonably successful fall "semester" of Intro to Greek History, Modern France, and Intro Psych. I get 5-6 hours a week of listening time during runs, walks to the park, driving around, etc., i.e. time that my mind is not fully occupied, my baby is content, and I don't have a book handy. I started listening to the occasional college lecture a year or two ago with Becca on longer car rides, loading up the iPod with Civil War history and such in addition to the regular programming of This American Life and Radio Lab. The quality of the thought and the sustained arguments over an hour or more were a nice antidote to radio news and its 90 second bullet pointed stories. Plus all of the lectures I've listened to so far have been from Yale, and I can reminisce about the lecture halls and get most of the cultural references.
For the next round of courses to listen to, though, I'm trying to branch out, particularly towards some California universities, in a fit of civic pride and as a small part of my overarching goal of learning about this place my new home. The campus references go over my head, or those that don't are just references to buildings and libraries, not memories and friends. And, particularly right now, when I am trying out a whole bunch of courses by listening to the introductory lecture, I am struck by how foolishly grade-focused undergraduates are. Half an hour or more of each of these first lectures is dedicated to detailing the grading system, the deadlines for homework and tests, the curve the class will be graded on, and other bits of course mechanics minutia that is entirely useless to a podcast listener like me who is uninterested and ineligible for grades and is only listening for my own edification. From a few years distance since my last degree program, grades seem quaint and useless, a motivational system useful only in the absence of real motivation and a measure of achievement both distracting and inaccurate. Plus they waste 30 minutes of valuable time describing it.
The best alternative to regular grading I've come across so far in the past few months of listening in: John Merriman's alternative final exam: an option to have a 30 minute conversation with a TA about the topics of the course in lieu of filling a blue book with essays. In French or English, your choice.
Yesterday's run destination: Wilshire and Ocean
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: popovers
lunch: carbonara
dinner: squash collards white bean soup
Grading seems so slight and silly to the adult learner
pirsig
For the next round of courses to listen to, though, I'm trying to branch out, particularly towards some California universities, in a fit of civic pride and as a small part of my overarching goal of learning about this place my new home. The campus references go over my head, or those that don't are just references to buildings and libraries, not memories and friends. And, particularly right now, when I am trying out a whole bunch of courses by listening to the introductory lecture, I am struck by how foolishly grade-focused undergraduates are. Half an hour or more of each of these first lectures is dedicated to detailing the grading system, the deadlines for homework and tests, the curve the class will be graded on, and other bits of course mechanics minutia that is entirely useless to a podcast listener like me who is uninterested and ineligible for grades and is only listening for my own edification. From a few years distance since my last degree program, grades seem quaint and useless, a motivational system useful only in the absence of real motivation and a measure of achievement both distracting and inaccurate. Plus they waste 30 minutes of valuable time describing it.
The best alternative to regular grading I've come across so far in the past few months of listening in: John Merriman's alternative final exam: an option to have a 30 minute conversation with a TA about the topics of the course in lieu of filling a blue book with essays. In French or English, your choice.
Yesterday's run destination: Wilshire and Ocean
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: popovers
lunch: carbonara
dinner: squash collards white bean soup
Grading seems so slight and silly to the adult learner
pirsig
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