Friday, January 30, 2009

Seoul Food

I’m still working through the many photos we took in Seoul and I figured, since I’m uploading while lunching, I’ll just share the Food and Restaurant photos and see how far that takes us.  Not too far, probably.  I don’t expect a snack on this flight, anyway. 

SO: Koreans love their food, and here is some foodness they were loving for me:

The delicious Hershey’s kisses that J’s foster-sister (?) hand-wrapped for us in a beautiful box covered with arcane pronouncements:

The delicious breaded pork cutlet waffle we enjoyed at the euphoneously-named “Donkas in the Waffle” shop down behind our hotel:

The delicious breakfast we had on the day that we insisted on something “western” and thought we could do better than pretzels - these are two offerings from Mr Donut, including a sweet-potato sesame old-fashioned that was pretty dang tasty!

The extremely delicious predicate to our lunch with the foster-sis and her daughter at the bulgoki place out in the gallery district near the big palace - this plate was fried on a gas grill till everything turned into a caramelized delight that none of us could stop eating:

The also extremely delicious dumplings that got hand-made for us no sooner than I’d ordered them at the Chinese place I had doubts about till I went inside just down the street from our hotel:

The cheerful lads who were working the honey-thread candy stand in Insadong, the arts and crafts street in Seoul - the honey is frozen in a disk and then spun out by hand into 16,000 thread-like filiments, coated with corn flour and wrapped around a sweet center.  This stuff is royally good and these guys put on a fun show when they make it for you. 

Out on the main drag, whatever that was called, here’s a lady shopping for her cabbages.  I tell ya, nobody shops for, cooks up, or appreciates the cabbage like your Korean folk. 

We didn’t dine here, but I guess if I wanted a Good Grief plate or some Concussive Football Injury nachos, this would have been the place for them:

Here’s one that was better before my flash card choked on it and lost the bottom of the image: a restaurant specializing in tentacled foodstuffs.  Outside, the cheerful squid and octo wave you on in with “thumbs” up and (now lost) foot-entacles curled around beneath them:

Just to prove we were there, here’s Kel, Zach and me (Z is waving his fan) with the Insadong Robot.  He’s a traditional Korean crafts robot, and he is here to party!

Finally, let it not be said that I failed to post any photos of Jesse.  Part of the package that came home with him was a pair of “Classic Pretty Shoes” (I swear I am not making this up) with a pokemon-like character inscribed inside.  These shoes are little plastic dealies and I’m not sure how comfortable or practical they would be for a child who could fit into them.  However, we never crossed that threshold.  Jesse’s pods are just to damn big for these shoes.

Well, let’s call that enough for now.  I’ve still got a handful of “weirdness” photos to share but I don’t want to wear you all out.  Seoul has been around for 1500 years or so; there’s no reason for me to feel compelled to blogpost all my photos of it within a six-week window.  Catch you next time then, good buddies!

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Memeing with the Oldies

I was once a meme whore but I am significantly recovered.  I rarely now, if ever, respond to email- or blog-borne proposals that I engage in some activity that everybody else is doing too for no other reason than that they are doing it.  But now I find myself getting four requests that I enmeme myself in a 48 hour period, and that drives me to do the deed myself.  With no better justification than that, here’s my twenty-five random things:

I can eat cereal for any meal.
I prefer odd-numbered lists.
I like, when visiting a new town, to sample their cheeseburgers.
I have accessory scaffoid bones in my feet.
I have been in two productions of Woody Allen’s God, and two productions of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. 
I don’t twit.
I cherish my public transit commute.
I read signs, directions and labels.  For fun.
I love meringue pies but don’t love meringue cookies.
I mutter to myself.
I can make an extensive repertoire of funny noises.
I get a lot out of doing yoga but I eat meat anyway.
I prefer a firm bed.
I use nasal steroids.
I have never met some of my closest friends in person.
I value the spiritual life but don’t do enough to foster it.
I am hypersensitive to the feelings of inanimate objects.
For one afternoon in 1980, I worked for the presidential campaign of John Anderson.
I used to have warts on my hands but I lost the last one while I was in high school.
I have a scar on my right wrist.
I have a tattoo on my left calf.
I passed out while watching Reservoir Dogs, but not at the part you’d probably expect.
My first movie was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
In my heart I know I’m not good enough, even if you don’t believe me.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, I will still totally kick your ass.

There you go.  I hope you feel edified.  I have met my on-line obligation and that had better be good enough.  (and for extra excitement, you can compare those to my 100 things list on my About page!  Man, this internet thing might really be taking off!)

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Tunnel Vision

The NoHo/Stud City of my youth was obviously imperfect, but in many ways we all managed to overlook some things so that we could envision others.  Here’s something precious I think I mostly overlooked at the time:

My walk to school was only about a third of a mile.  I’d start up my block of stucco bungalows and cross a quiet residential intersection, then head up another block of bungalows - outrageously, with no sidewalks for my delicate footgear… and then cross again, walk one short block west, and finally make a right turn into the stub.  The houses all along the way were single-story, sited on roomy lawns, with detached garages and semi-detached perspectives.  Porches were swept and unused; front laws, manicured and vacant.  The wide quiet street fronting up to wide quiet lawns leading to sterile little porches; it all made me feel rather disconnected.  I was okay with that, I knew I had things really good compared with the rest of the world. 

But those houses - it was as if they were watching me with rolled-back eyes or something.  There was nothing wrong with them.  To the contrary, they exhibited pride of ownership, were well-maintained - it was a classic neighborhood for any child.  I’d sometimes actually meet with actual neighbor kids from my own actual block to throw a frisbee or a baseball up and down the street.  My block felt like something I could belong to.  But along the way to school, those few interceding blocks felt like a journey into very different territory - someone else’s.  Maybe someone creepy. 

But then I’d hit the stub and what do you know: my old friend was always waiting for me to give me a fresh take on things. 

The 134 cut through my quadrant, which in L.A. is to say, a major freeway bisected my neighborhood.  We were a grid of ten narrow blocks across and four tall blocks up and down, penned in by four larger boulevards.  When they put in the big freeway, they just ran it through the middle of the uppermost row of blocks and installed double dead ends on every north-south street between Kling and Riverside Drive.  A tunnel ran beneath the freeway and my walk to Riverside Drive Elementary School led me under the wide swath of concrete that impassively, perpetually withstood untold tons of automotive inventory at speeds of dead zero to better than eighty.  Those massive trucks, those reckless coupes on steroids, gomers and dozers vying for ten traffic lanes plus four shoulders, and I was in the third grade and had to take the tunnel beneath it all to the other side every day.  The tunnel - my old friend. 

The tunnel punched through from the truncated stub of Mary Ellen Street, one of the middle north-south streets in the quadrant and a logical place to put the only tunnel under the freeway.  There were just two or three houses and then a short flat rise of twenty vertical feet or so behind sturdy hurricane fencing, very steep and covered with dense brush.  Right in the middle was a rough concrete aperture - the entrance to a crude plain tunnel.  About six feet wide and eight tall, its roughened walls of nubbly sprayed cement rose straight up to a flat roughened ceiling.  The floor, also concrete, was in poor repair, and water would gather on it in small stagnant puddles, having dripped down from occasional dark leaky patches overhead.  Lighting was provided by dim bulbs hanging down in little metal cages every ten feet or so, and the tunnel was easily 80 feet long.  A four-foot metal post blocked the center of each entrance - even bikes had to be walked into this cloistered space.

It was a pedestrian tunnel, but to me it certainly didn’t feel ordinary.

Some people vandalized the tunnel with graffiti and broken bottles and the occasional personal offloading - that was to be expected.  In many ways it was a profoundly creepy place, an after-school special’s stage set for Bad Events, where the bully or the mean storekeeper has you pinned down, but for me it really wasn’t so much like that.  The tunnel felt like an okay place.  The thick pocky walls felt intensely sheltering and protective; their unfinished breadth baffled all sound till even the massive freeway immediately overhead was inaudible save for at the very ends.  The air inside felt like cave air to me, somehow nourishing and ancient.  Upon walking into that tunnel, even the small landscape of the little cul de sac collapsed to an identity, the walls constricting it and the light growing smaller and dimmmer the further in I walked; from within, the world outside was pared down to almost nothing.  It was out there, behind you and before you, bright dots against the darkness of the tunnel walls, details indistinguishable. 

As I’d approach the other side of the tunnel, the world would slowly grow, incrementally, more and more of it becoming visible as I approached the debouchement, coming slowly back to recognizability.  And when I’d emerge outside again, blinking, a mini-block away from the crosswalk at Riverside Drive and my school on the other side, I would come back out into that same old sunbaked flatness of the Valley air ineffably refreshed, a little restored, and focused on my goal, my day, the task at hand.  I’d come out of that tunnel just a bit different than I’d been when I went in, even if only momentarily and illusorially.  I’d find myself to be a little more straightforward for the experience.  As the time I appreciated it.  I’m pretty sure I’d appreciate it now. 

Friday, January 23, 2009

Seoul Shots: Shooting Up the Palace

You’ve been very patient.  Here’s your candy:

In Seoul, almost nothing looks like it’s been there since the Silla Dynasty - because it hasn’t.  The ancientest things are earthen funerary mounds, which are always interesting but not often very culturally-distinguishing.  The city is jammed with beautiful tall buildings and clunky mid- and low-rises that are covered with han-geul signage but otherwise could be almost anywhere.  But there are a few places where the essential, overwhelming koreanness that is unmistakeable though often incohate is truly made concrete - though not by use of concrete.  Rather, it’s wood and stone, brick and mortar. 

The Palace of Gyongbukgung is reached via wide, mad roads full of careening vehicles that speak eloquently to the modernity of the city and its frenetic pace.  But the thick stone wall with its curved tile cornice that surrounds the palace speaks equally eloquently to a different, hidden aspect of the city, which is in fact its soul:

This was taken from the steps of the first main court building, looking out toward the gatehouse and the city beyond it, one senses the deep roots under the flagstone courtyard (intentionally made uneven to avoid blinding on the reviewing stand) and the deep disparity between what’s outside that wall and what’s inside.

Here’s the symphony of rooflines that weave and intersect in constantly changing patterns as you walk among them - not so enormous as to destroy the human scale of the place, so you always feel that you belong there, but tall and soaring enough to pull one’s eyes constantly upwards along their swooping edges:

The roofs are not merely tiled with beautiful masonry laid in perfect ranks; they also feature veritable menageries at every peakline.  They all appeared to be different, but this one is a good example of how much thought and artistry went into some of these details.

The place is, of course, heavily guarded by the KAS (Korean Anachronist Society).  While I never felt personally threatened by their enormous shiny swords and battleaxes, I’ll admit readily that they were impressive. 

Plus, apart from being so well guarded, the place was under lock and key. 

That’s why we had to sneak in.  With our local hosts, who bought us tickets.  But even so, we tried to keep a low profile.  There’s no reason to antagonize someone with such large weapons. 

Inside we found many courtyards, throne rooms, private family apartments, and other chambers, spaces and rooms that would have made for great photos with a slightly more sophisticated camera, and a memory card that didn’t destroy so many of my decent shots.  However, it was basically impossible to take a bad photo of the room set in the reflecting pool, though admittedly I didn’t try too hard to mess it up.  Here’s two:

Finally, in the main courtyard, they’d set up a stand where visitors could try on authentic ancient Korean headgear.  The children looked painfully cute in it - here’s Zach with Jesse’s foster-sister:

and zach by himself:

and I don’t want any more giggling from the rest of you.

That’s what I’ve got from Gyongbukgung.  Up next: food and streetscapes.  I mean, once I get around to uploading them.  You should pace yourself with this stuff.  I don’t want to be responsible for any drownings or anything.  (oh, and if you are grousing about me not posting any photos of Jesse, check that first one again - lower right corner.  There ya go, commodore!)

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

You Got Served

I think the germ of the idea that compels me now to put pen to paper (I am transcribing this you see) was in an article in the Washington Post some months back, about a man who’d been a butler at the white house for eight administrations.  It was a touching story of perseverance and balance, in which a man consigned to inferior treatment in his own country committed himself to the service of the President of the United States.  The article referenced glittering affairs of State, profoundest workings of the inner circles of power, and the unvarnished essence of actual POTUSal home life.  But, while there is service in each of these, the man in the story wasn’t personally involved in any of that.  His service was to serve, regardless of the circumstances through which the President substantively struggled. 

The actual battles of the day were the antithesis of this man’s service.  It was, rather, his job to make it possible for the Most Powerful Man on Earth to execute his duties, realize his vision, and still maintain the humanity and happiness that the Declaration of Independence sought to vouchsafe for all mankind.  All, including the president - but not necessarily his Jim Crow’d, disempowered butler. 

The the bitterness of that irony never impeded this man in the slightest.  He bent to the menial details as well as the most elaborate productions.  Without him and his crew the Affairs of State would have been international humiliations, high level conferences would have foundered on simple logistical shoals.  The presidency itself would have been diminished without his service, and that was a noble calling that he answered every day for thirty long years. 

I grew up in a household that honored that kind of service - the fulfillment of a personal pledge, the contribution of one’s full measure to a higher principle, or, sometimes, principal.  Doing your best at anything was a mitzvah in itself, without even referencing what you were actually trying to accomplish.  This orientation was a commonplace with us.  My dad, RabbiCop, was truly a clergyman, and we frequently debated pointless midrashic niceties.  Dad taught, mostly, forsaking the congregation altogether.  He did his communal work in chaplaincy, with the sherriffim and ATF.  We’d have a little family daven for shabbat and havdalah most weeks, but it wasn’t often that I got to hear him do a full-on service. 

By this, of course, I mean a religious service, a torah reading or a seder or something.  Thinking on it, I can see how the word was adopted here, with the tending to a spiritual flock being a particularly noble example of service - but I really don’t make that connection much anymore.  I think of a religious service as akin to tea service or brake service - a predetermined set of components in a specified format, constituting an single complete unit.  Tea service and brake service have predefined contents; religious services have their own ordained constituent subunits.  The “service” is a recantation of specified items.  It was not my experience that “services” put me immediately in mind of the subordination of the self to the greater good.  It really seemed to be more about the cookies afterward more often than note. 

But there were those moments that the spiritual supervened at services.  Though it didn’t evoke any expanded sense of the word “service” to me at the time, these incidents aroused an internal experience - an inspiration, if you will - that opened my understanding to a different kind of religious practice.  I’m sure that those were the sort for which the term “service” was originally appropriated.  Some pastors and rabbis and imams and priests operate primarily in this sphere, and to worship with them is to renew one’s place in a benevolent universe.  Clearly, to me at least, MLK was a leader of this ilk, driven by an ethic that superseded his reality, to which we could be driven only by exhortation and example - functions he selflessly served up to the moment he was shot. 

While no one can say what would have been his impact had he lived, King’s impact as a martyr is beyond question.  We dedicate our evolution as a race to his memory, and while he’s hardly the sole father of our progress, and much we’ve gained was gained without his help, as a symbol of the personal sacrificed to the possible, he has rightfully, in my eyes, been anointed as our saint of service. 

So now on MLK day I can look out my window to the greenbelt across the street where children play and bums dump garbage and relive themselves, but on this particular day the kids are out with their whole families and they’re all filling bags with trash.  It’s a national day of service now, a day off work not to watch stuff blow up or to light backyard grills or bask in ancient celebrations of family or prosperity, but to buckle down and do something for your community.  I rather like the idea - maybe even enough to teach it to my sons by example.  That is, after all, the only way to really teach something like that.

Or maybe I’m already teaching.  Sure, I spent MLK day shopping for drapes for the boys’ room, but the very next day was the inauguration of a man who has the potential to make a bigger positive impact on the world than any American - any human - in generations.  Our new president embodies aspirations and commitments that have real power - transformative power, the power that empowers others to change themselves.  Without lapsing into messianism, hopes are high - for me and for millions, even billions, of others.  I now speak as one who, four years ago, so feared for my nation’s future that I went to an electoral battleground to defend voting rights - to no effect, as it turns out, except perhaps to arouse some incipient social readiness for change, a readiness that was widely nurtured in the intervening four years till the community that that spoke but was not heard became the community that could not be shouted down. 

Unprecedented volunteerism and small donations turned the moribundity of old politics on its head, with whole demographic slices linking up to work for a common goal, in concert and in spite of differences.  A dear friend traveled to Nevada to walk precincts and talk to people to encourage them to vote, and then, to vote for change.  That walk was true service, and the candidate - now the President - himself thanked my friend for it personally when they wound up working out together in the small weight room of the hotel fitness center.  Yes, my friend pumped iron with Obama, and introduced himself as a volunteer, and the Community-Organizer-in-Chief paused in his efforts to say Thank you.  Such service deserves recognition, and our new president was wise enough to meet that responsibility. 

Working for the vote, for the power of the franchise, is really to be considered as part of the larger civil rights struggle that began before abolition, suffered the outrages of John Brown’s landing and the long night of state sponsored terror against persons of color, and then found its voice and its power less than half a century ago.  That struggle clearly continues full forward today.  The inauguration of Barak Obama does not culminate this striving, but it is a damn fine signpost along the way. 

That’s probably why more people, as I understand it, in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the population, flooded to DC to witness an historic moment. And of course all moments are historic, all have their place on the cosmic time line and their impact is unknowable but in hindsight - but still, as a moment of taking stock and revisioning ourselves, January 20, 2009 lacks much competition.  There are parties in DC, in Chi-town, in every US city including Wasilla, and in Berlin and Sydney and all over Africa.  It’s an international celebration.  I spent it at work.  I work to bring access to justice to those who cannot afford access to public transportation.  By my small efforts, together with those of my colleagues in the office, in other similar offices in all the other states across the country and in all the offices that survive in part on our support, good people missed the inauguration because they were working on something of related significance and more pressing importance - at least, to their clients.  Signposts are for those seeking direction; those who know where they’re going are excused from reading them, in recognition that they have other things to pay attention to.  The national mall filled with the foaming crest of human potential is all well and good, but I needed to make sure the funding for my projects was protected and effective. 

I may not be a wealthy man - I’m not, in fact - and my income must stretch far to meet my family’s needs.  In theory, I could have earned more elsewhere, but the price was one I couldn’t pay—a renunciation of my ethic of working on behalf of goals that inspire me.  My wife, too, works hard - harder than I, quite often, outside in the heat or the rain, managing the vicissitudes of both human foibles and animal instincts… she, too, is worth ten times her wage, but we don’t expect anyone to make up the difference for us.  We absorb the loss because we share the gain.  Knowing that someone has protected herself or gained independence because of our work - that’s part of the salary too. 

So maybe, when I missed the SCOTUS chief justice getting schooled in the language of the constitution by our new president, I was just doing a little selfless service.  It’s one more facet of a complex of service , my modest contribution is a contribution nonetheless.  My boys see me go to work early and come home late, they know I work hard.  When they know why, may it be that I can pass the spirit of service on down to them. 

Sunday, January 18, 2009

The Winner

This guy is an old-timer; I’ve seen him out there for years and years, and it looks to me as if he’d been out there quite some time before he ever came to my attention.  His skin is a congested, florid pink - weathered, wrinkled and puffy.  It appears to be so uncomfortable that I actually find it difficult to look at him.  He’s clearly shrunk down some but probably never reached five-foot-six, and his frame is further diminished by his underslung posture and his heavy drooping paunch.  He reeks of rot and cheap vodka and wears worn-out work clothes that are frequently filthy to the verge of being primarily filth, thick with grime, noisome and foul.  And, tragically, they suit him. 

He rides my bus home every so often, boarding where I typically do at Fremont Street.  There’s a whole slew of lines that stop there; sometimes he takes one of the others, and sometimes he picks my 38.  One evening some while ago we rode home on the same bus together.  I don’t recall much of what he wore; as I mentioned, I actually try not to get too much of an eyeful of him.  But he was talking, too, and I did glance over to see him leaning forward to pick at his feet, shod in erstwhile footwear that appeared to be actively decaying into his flesh.  In a worn-out whispered growl he said:

“I’ve never in my life worn socks with so many holes in ‘em.  Never in my life.  You get a hole in the heel, you just turn’em over.  Holey, holey socks.  I’d challenge any of ya to a sock contest, a holey sock contest.  A holes-in-your-socks contest.  And I’d win.”

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Calling Senior Whences, plus Towering Views - JESSTACULARLY UPDATED

Today let’s start with a brief homage to Senior (with an enye, not like about to graduate) Wences.  Oh, sorry, I mean that other guy: Senior Whences.  This is the dude who deals with the stuff that you can’t figure where the hell it came from.  You know what I mean.  That note in the lint trap in someone else’s handwriting, or the thing between your teeth that you finally get free and then can’t tell what it was, and all that sort of mystery material.... Senior Whences is there to tell you whence such matters originated.  Well, Senior Whences, I need your help.  Over the past year a few unwhenceables have come into my life, and if you don’t tell me their provenance, I’m just going to have to blog about it.  O too late!  Strap in, I have a list of three of them:

ITEM: I got to work early one morning and checked my voicemail, which usually is empty but this particular morning there’s a blinking light.  I dialed in and listened, hearing something vaguely familiar… a martial tune, cheerful and brassy but unmistakeably military - John Phillips Souza meets Andy Griffith… where did I know this from?  And then at the appointed moment it all became clear: a dulcet announcer tells me that GOMER PYLE, USMC is being presented by some damn sponsor or other.  I listened for the full duration of the theme song, and then the line went dead.  Any of you send that along to me?  I didn’t think so.  So Senior Whences, whence that?

ITEM: I got back from Korea, back from bonding leave, back to my office to find on my desk a stack of annual reports, a variety of memos, a lovely bag of baby clothes from my office mates… and a CD in a red envelope with a piece of silver tinsel tied to it.  The disk itself was pink, with the words “Zach” and “Jesse” written across its surface in red glitter glue.  Upon playing the disk I found it full of very cool music, ranging from grungy punkish stuff to something that sounded like Charlie Hunter to some wicked female vocals I can’t otherwise categorize but very much like.  Maybe had I made it a practice to broaden my musical perspectives I’d have known what I was listening to, but I don’t even know where it came from.  Senior Whences, help me!

FINAL ITEM: I have a little tag hidden on this site that lets me get some basic stats on visitors and usage.  It’s not like there’s many of the former or much of the latter, but I like to see what there is to see.  Over the past several months I’ve seen an increase in visits - about twice as many as previously.  However, it’s not like there’s a lot of new people stopping by to Chuckle the ol’ Hut.  Rather, it’s one visitor, I’m pretty sure, coming back several times a day.  I’m complimented and all, but with no comments, no emails, nothing identifying left behind, all I know is that someone whose internet access comes through Limelight in Tempe Arizona is really curious about my archives.  Senior Whences, I am looking to you for answers.  Leave me not hanging, dude!

Speaking of hanging and dudes, I have to apologize for my ongoing failure to post pix of my awesome new boy.  The issue has been the loss of most of my Korea photos, and an irrational resistance to posting Jesse photos before I travelogue your sorry asses to Seoul and back.  And by Seoul, I mean, sort of, this:

Yeah, this is a city of 16 million or so, spread way out and way way up too.  On our last day in town we took a trip up to the top of the highest peak in town - and there are plenty of high ones - where they built a big-ass sightseeing tower for my personal entertainment.  That photo was looking north toward the traditional ancient heart of the city - a city that apparently has been entirely built since about 1960.  Even the old palaces are reconstructions.  And when I say it was built, I really mean that it was built:

These are visions of a seriously large town that knows how to make things interesting.  As evidence, here’s the view from the MEN’S ROOM OF THE SEOUL N TOWER.  You can see the freaking curvature of the globe from in front of the urinals:

Very cool.  To cap things off, here’s little Zachy enjoying his own sightseeing atop the tower - he got tired of the incredible vistas unfolding at his tiny feet, but could NOT get enough of the two-dollar vending machines full of dismembered power rangers in little plastic eggs:

And here’s me, blending in and indistinguishable from the native Seoul men who surrounded us as if they owned the place. 

Next up: Mindblowingly cute and beautiful photos from our field trip to the palace.  And I’ll try to update this post with a Jesse shot sometime soon.  I think I’m getting over my intransigence.  Meantime, I’m still confused about the above-referenced ITEMS, so any clues would be warmly appreciated. 

UPDATE: I’ve had a request to give with the kidpix already, so here’s a nice one: At Fisherman’s Wharf, the boys get their leetle heads crusheded by a pretend crab:

More to follow, eventually…

Monday, January 12, 2009

This One’s for My Special Lady

We’re getting back into the groove now - a handful of stories and snippets are already long-handed into the ol’ notebook, I’ve got more writing time now that I’m back riding the 38 in the morning, and a veritable scadload of little notelets to myself of things that will be fun to write about eventually.  I’ve even recovered several of my lost Korea photos, which means that soon I’ll be regaling your eyeballs with pitchers unstead of these-here word thingies, which will be a great relief for my vast non-english-speaking constituency.  Or not.  I have no idea why any of you wind up here, honestly.  Is this thing on?

However, today it’s time for a special message for one of you in particular.  Yes, mom, I’m cyber-looking at you.  Today isn’t just the one-month anniversary of our bringing Jesse home with us - it’s the somewhat larger-denominated anniversary of my mother’s birth.  We are all looking forward to seeing you this weekend, at which time I can bestow upon you the generosity to which you are so richly entitled.  However, today - even though it’s your official birthday - what I’ve got for you is rather less tangible.  Rather, in the histrionic tradition of our clan, and in full recognition that there’s not much I can give you that you actually need and don’t already have, I offer you these laudatory words:

Start counting up from zero
and you’ll soon hit seventy
It’s not so big a number
as anyone can see
a minute plus ten seconds
I can hold my breath that long
A dollar minus thirty cents
won’t download you a song
Typists type more words per minute
Placekickers kick more yards
No, making it to seventy
just isn’t very hard.

But seventy is quite a lot
in certain other ways -
a lot of pounds for one-arm curls
a lot of rainy days
It’s way too many frankfurters
to eat all at one time
a lot of diamonds on a crown
a lot of lines to rhyme
For everything is relative
and numbers don’t mean much -
I mean, they mean so many things
their meaning can’t be touched.

So look beyond the number,
ask, what does it describe:
symphonic sounds in concert,
the souls of Jacob’s tribe?
Reflect upon the love that’s shared
and superseded fears
now put to rest by lessons learned
across seventy years,
evaporating in a blink
or lingering like wine -
a life well-lived, a song well-sung
the grapes of ancient vines.

Yes, seventy is plenty,
and seventy is scant,
depending on what’s on your mind
and your peculiar slant.
And so today, I have to say,
when all is weighed and measured,
let’s celebrate the septdecimal fate
of one whom we all treasure.
So we enlarge beloved Marge,
and merry maketh we;
Her day of birth has graced the earth
for years of seventy. 

Way to go, mom.  Thanks for all the nurturing, and stuff.  See you soon, right?

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

taking pictures cuz they last longer

We passed them on the Golden Gate Bridge, driving north on a brilliant cloudless day.  We weren’t going very fast, so they must have been down around 30 mph in the far right lane, well slower than the speed of traffic around them.  As we approached the gleaming grin of their unweathered rear bumper, I began to wonder if it was a rental car they were driving - locals just don’t dawdle like that.  We pulled further up alongside and I noticed that the left rear window was open, and that through it was thrust the beaming windwhipped face of an ecstatic young woman, her hair flailing wildly in the sunshine, a nice new-looking digital SLR camera clasped with both hands against her eyes, wherewith she clicked away with rapturous abandon at the cables and towers soaring overhead. 

We continued to gain on the shiny little car until I came even with the driver’s window.  This was also open, but upon a very different vision: The driver was a lank young gent, dark hair minimally styled, scruffy-bearded and slumped down in his seat.  One hand was on the steering wheel; the other gripped the edge of his window.  His expression was something between a sneer and a pout - a snout, if you will, and he appeared to be in full dudgeon His brow hung down near his eyes, and his eyes - on that beautiful day, on that beautiful bridge - were grimly locked on the grey sameness of the road ahead of him. 

Young love, I thought; young tourists.  We left them in our figurative dust. 

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Spirited Recollections - Turning the Page on 2008

Technically, it’s been a week since I last posted - that’s about as long as I like to let things sit around here at the hut.  “Technically,” I go back to work tomorrow after a month off doing the bonding thing.  Technically, this has been a really memorable post-xmas/chanukah holiday season for a whole mess (or “passel") of reasons.  Let’s enumerate!

Holiday Spirit 1: The Spirit of Parking Hell

I’d taken Z with me to Trader Joe’s - our local branch, which I believe is their #1 busiest and more profitable location, and which I’m sure has among their worst parking lots.  Still, I found a space that fit the car and Z and I did pretty well with our hunting and gathering, despite a madding crowd that packed the store to the wainscoting with foodlust and pre-holiday-party-hosting anxieties.  But when we got back to our car with a big cart full of groceries, we discovered that our erstwhile parking lot neighbors had absconded, and had been replaced with others who had parked very close to us indeed.  I’d backed into the space so the cart had to squeeze between my car and my neighbor’s for maximally convenient loading of our groceries into our trunk.  This meant I had to fold in the side view mirrors on both cars.  Then I threaded the cart between the cars, unfolded the mirrors out again, unloaded the cart, and briefly considered actually returning the cart to its appointed place before realizing that Z and I had both had enough and TJ’s actually had people on staff who did cart retrieval for a living.  I therefore left the cart behind the car and turned my attention to getting out of the lot.  Traffic precluded my immediate exiting, however, so I was sitting and waiting when a TJ’s staff drone clumped up toward us.  This individual was clearly not having a good day.  She was scowling, her stringy hair fell over her face, her clothes didn’t seem to fit very well and her overall personal presentation was that of a person who devoutly wished to be elsewhere.  With no discernible glee, she spied the cart behind my car and forced her way back to retrieve it.  Turning it around, she bumped my back bumper, but hey, that’s what bumpers are for.  However, she made no effort to fold in the side view mirrors as she jammed the cart back up between my car and the one next to mine - she just pushed for daylight regardless of, for example, the scraping sound resulting from the cart dragging along against the rear quarterpanel and doors of my car.  Once she’d finished abrading the finish on the Subaru and was shoving the cart joylessly back to the corral, I popped my head out to see the damage: a few scratches on our already-worn paint was all she’d done.  I suppose a really good wash and wax would mostly fix it, if I ever gave the car such luxurious treatment.  I considered shouting after her broad, bitter ass, to berate her for her thoughtless ineptitude - but I didn’t do it.  She was already obviously mad enough at the world, and getting into a shouting match with her in the parking lot wouldn’t have fixed my paint or changed her attitude.  My holiday gift to you, sullen Trader Joe’s worker, is this: letting you get away with scratching my car.  I didn’t have time to wrap it for you but frankly I’m not sure even now that you’re worth it. 

Holiday Spirit 2: The Spirit of Getting Away with Infractions

It was nearing dusk of New Year’s Day and Zach had not yet been outside, so I bundled him up and drove him to a playground.  On the way back we stopped to get some ice cream, waffles, and Golden Star Sparkling Jasmine Tea at Whole Foods (the only place Golden Star is currently available to me).  Driving back to our neighborhood in what was now the full dark of evening, I pulled over to let Z check out some lights atop a mysterious nearby building, and took a call from Kelly - could I pick up some chinese food if she called in an order?  Of course I could, if that meant I didn’t have to cook supper that night, so I gladly drove out to Ton Kiang and started trolling for parking.  Forty minutes later, I was still driving in circles and my patience was seriously frayed.  Z was telling me he was hungry and dizzy and tired of driving around, and it looked like things were getting worse, not better.  I was willing to walk several blocks to get the food but I had to consider Z’s willingness to trek, which was limited and getting limiteder.  Finally, I was about ready to throw in the towel, drive home, drop off Z and the ice cream, and then walk the 10 blocks back to the restaurant, when on the very block where the restaurant was sited I saw a space open up at the corner.  Well, it was “space,” if not “a” space - a bit of curb painted red but long enough to hold my car while we ran in, got food, and ran back out again.  I was at the breaking point and so I made the easy, wrong decision: I parked in an illegal space.  We trotted down the block to the restaurant, only to learn that our food wasn’t ready yet.  We sat and waited.  And waited.  Fifteen minutes went by, very slowly, before they called me up to pay and take my supper home.  We left as quickly as we could but as soon as we hit the street I saw what I had dreaded: two cops standing at my car, using flashlights to read the VIN number and look for anything out of place “in plain sight.” I grabbed Z around his waist and ran down to the scene of my indiscretion with him in tow, to the apparent amusement of the cops.  “Am I too late?,” I breathlessly asked.  Z just turned his big dark eyes on them and looked cute.  “No, but you ought to know better,” the big cop told me.  “I do, I do,” I assured them, unfolding the story of driving for too long with a hungry anxious child, of what I was up to, the whole megila.  I guess I was pretty pathetic, or convincing, or karmically tuned or something.  I didn’t get a ticket, though I’d earned one.  I guess I got away with something, but I’m not about to try it again anytime soon.  San Francisco, that was a really welcome holiday gift.  Thank you.

Holiday Spirit 3.  The Spirit of Pyrotechnic Celebration

This is a short one: On New Year’s Eve we went with our visitors - Kel’s sister and her family - to Baker Beach to watch the sun setting on 2008.  As the sky went pewter and heavy clouds scudded along in skyborne reflection of the breakers and swells at the mouth of the bay, obscuring the headlands and the towers of the big orange bridge, I pulled out a long-stockpiled box of sparklers.  Little Zachy and littler Nate were suspicious and a little nervous about the playing with fire aspect of our celebration, but we eventaually got our respective three-year-olds to hold lighted sparklers for a few minutes, shedding bright motes against the encroaching darkness of a year on the wane.  By the time we left, sand in our shoes and mist in our hair, the last day of the year had clearly transitioned to the last night of the year - but against the lids of my eyes when I closed them, I could still see the awed and excited faces of small children as they waved the flame-encrusted wires at a future that surged toward us with every wave that broke on the dark beach.  After keeping those silly sparklers for at least a couple of years, I can unequivocally say that there was never a better time or place or way to set them off. 

Holiday Spirit 4.  The Spirit of Gorging and Consumption

While the guests were in town, I was privileged to cook: stewed chicken with smoked paprika, braised short ribs, baked beans with molasses, breaded and fried brussels sprouts, and deep-fried potato cakes filled with seasoned beef and onions.  I also was the beneficiary of Kel’s finally busting out the old gingerbread recipe her high school chum had given her, and which she’s never since made till this year - needless to say, it was immeasurably better than the dry, flavorless stuff we’d gotten commercially (and that, till then, I’d thought had been pretty good).  Oh yes, I also whipped up a very tasty little cherry-cranberry cake, on a whim, and a big pitcher of homemade horchata.  Kel had heard about some holiday cocktails that sounded festive, and wanted to try one that was horchata-based - but it didn’t appear to be in the cards for us to get out to the Mission district to get the key ingredient.  But wait - it’s made out of rice, right?  And we had rice, so what was the problem?  Answer: THERE WAS NO PROBLEM.  This was a really easy and fun recipe that impressed the normally-implacable Kelly to such an extent that I recommend you try it yourself:

HORCHATA LIKE TU MADRE SHOULDA MADE IT

Blend a cup of rinsed long-grain rice in a blender with a cup of water, until the rice grains begin to break up.  Dump it into a bowl and add four more cups of water; let stand for three hours (minimum) at room temperature.  Strain the ricewater into a pitcher and discard the rice.  Stir in half a cup of milk, 1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract, 1/2 tablespoon ground cinnamon, and 2/3 cup granulated sugar.  Chill, stir it all up, and serve proudly!  Our suggestion: it goes very well with vanilla vodka....

That’s probably enough for new, recap-wise.  I’m still working on some photos for those of you wondering about the Korea trip but for now I’m down to my last day hanging out with the family before I return to the beige splendor of my cube and the thrills and spills of riding the bus to work.  If I’m lucky I’ll have time to write up some stories while I commute.  Lately, time has been the thing I’ve had least.  And mine, right now, is up.  Goodnight!