I just returned from a trip to Atlanta. My family spent the weekend watching my brother race in the Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup there. After a tough qualifying session, he passed about 6 guys in the rain-soaked race. I was really impressed by him! Race cars are so menacing. Watching swarms of them tear through the misty rain over and over emphasized to me what I already knew- I ain't cut out for this! During the race, we saw three or four other Jettas slush through wet mud and pop their bumpers open against the track walls, but Perry made it through safely.
I also was lucky enough to come across a wedding party of jamaican women speaking patois (pidgin Jamaican English) to one another. Here is a video of a patois speaker:
Last night a gaggle of us rode my purple BMW into the fog to see Bon Iver (name is corruption of the French words for good winter – bon hiver) perform at the Fillmore in SF. The venue was jam-packed! Usually I covertly finangle my way close to the stage, but as late-comers we were elbowed to the outer margins of the crowd of 1,200. While our 6’0 volleyball compatriot peered coolly across the broad crowd, the rest of us stubby field hockey players bobbed and weaved from one clear line of sight to the next trying to get a glimpse of Justin Vernon who wrote the band's first album after a breakup and a bought with mono while living alone in a isolated cabin in Northern Wisconsin. Whew.
There was one big surprise for me last night; while famed for his falsetto, the lead singer, Justin Vernon, has a Barry White-esque oh so deep speaking voice. Who knew? Despite his calm baritone, he was a witty Wisconsinite. At one particularly pungent moment in the smoke-filled room, he noted wryly that he “smelt some weed earlier” and earned hearty cheers from the crowd. To top it all off, Icouldn’t help but love his frizzed out bowl hair cut – it reminded me of Harry from Dumb and Dumber.
Overall, two thumbs up for Bon Bons. The rhythm section was pulsating heartbreaking emotion the whole night, and although Vernon’s vox weren’t as on the spot as his recordings, it was perhaps more emotionally powerful that way and the Bon Iver experience is all about emotion.
Cell phone photo in front of the mural we helped paint
Last night X and I attended a fundraising gala for Precita Eyes, a mural-producing NPO from the Mission district of San Francisco. I first encountered Precita Eyes while working for the SFMOMA. They helped create Kerry James Marshall's wall-based works in the museum's atrium (here is a great video of Marshall speaking about the mural. You can see the Precita muralists in the background).
Most of PE's murals are not in museums, however. They coat the alleys in the Mission district, a heavily latino area in SF, and even pop up in Lebanon and China. Below are two of my favorites:
"Vamos Gigantes" PG&E Substation, 19th St between Mission and Valencia (the work features famous Hispanic players, the old "Seals" stadium, two SF stars - Joe DiMaggio and Barry Bonds - and more)
At the ripe age of 14, I was a mainstream R&B lover. Usher, Tyrese, Jagged Edge and that one Blu Cantrell song filled my orderly CD booklet. Since then my taste has changed but the music memories remain. I still love the Sunshine Anderson song and video above, and although 112's "Peaches and Cream" (below) made me pretty uncomfortable back then (I was a preteen, ok) it really embodied the times. Enjoy!
All the clothes made on last night's episode of Project Runway were made of newspaper. The trenchcoat above was the winner. I'd wear that. Check out some more below:
The most tattooed senior citizen is Isobel Varley, from the UK, who covered 93% of her body with tattoos. Photograph: John Wright/Guinness World Records
The longest fingernails belonged to American Lee Redmond, who started to grow them in 1979 and carefully manicured them to reach a total length of 8.65m (28ft 4.5in). Lee lost her nails in a car accident this year. Melvin Boothe, also from the US, has a set of fingernails that had a combined length of 9.85m (32ft 3.8in) Photograph: Ranald Mackechnie/Guinness World Records
The fastest 100m hurdles wearing swim fins is 19.278 seconds and was acheived by Veronica Torr (New Zealand) on the set of New Zealand Smashes Guinness World Records at the Mt Smart Stadium in Auckland. Photograph: John Wright/Guinness World Records
The man with the most body piercings is Briton John Lynch, aka Prince Albert, who was counted as having 241 piercings, including 151 in his head and neck. Photograph: Richard Bradbury/Guinness World Records
"At this late hour of the world's history books are to be found in every room of the house - in the nursery, in the drawing room, in the dining room, in the kitchen. And in some houses they have collected so that they have to be accommodated with a room of their own. Novels, poems, histories, memoirs, valuable books in leather, cheap books in paper - one stops sometimes before them and asks in a transient amazement what is the pleasure I get, or the good I create, from passing my eyes up and down these innumerable lines of print? Reading is a very complex art - the hastiest examination of our sensations as a reader will show us that much. And our duties as readers are many and various. But perhaps it may be said that our first duty to a book is that one should read it for the first time as if one were writing it.
One should begin by sitting in the dock with the criminal, not by mounting the bench to sit among the Judges. One should be an accomplice with the writer in his act, whether good or bad, of creation. For each of these books, however it may differ in kind and quality, is an attempt to make something. And our first duty as readers is to try and understand what the writer is making from the first word with which he builds his first sentence to the last with which he ends his book. We must not impose our design upon him; we must not try to make him conform his will to ours."
The Essays of Virginia Woolf Vol 5: 1929 to 1932 , edited by Stuart N Clarke, published by Hogarth Press.
In a big shift away from my recent LSAT-filled end of summer days, I woke up at 6:30 AM this morning to sell tomatoes for Tomatero Farm at a Farmer's Market in Danville, CA. I got hooked up with the strange gig through a friend of a friend. At the end of the day, I walked away $50 wealthier and with a mind filled with psychedelic veg: tie-dyed heirlooms, rainbow chard, green eggs , and tomatoes that grow without water (they have more flavor that way!).
Plentiful bills and many a quarter passed through my hands. I weighed gobs of golden beat orbs, speared tomato samples with toothpicks and encouraged passersby to try the dry farmed early girls (my favorite), green zebras, purple cherokees and yellow brandywines. The work was simple but satisfying, and now I can roll with some organic/local farming street cred on my side (and some free veggies from the neighboring vendors).
A study has found that Rhesus monkeys make unique vocalizations to interact with infants
Baby talk, also referred to as "motherese", "parentese", or "mommy talk," is a nonstandard form of speech used by adults in talking to toddlers and infants. It is usually delivered with a "cooing" pattern of intonation different from that of normal adult speech: high in pitch, with many glissando variations that are more pronounced than those of normal speech. Baby talk is also characterized by the shortening and simplifying of words. Baby talk is also used by people when talking to their pets, and between adults as a form of affection, intimacy, bullying or patronising.
Studies have shown that infants actually prefer to listen to this type of speech.[6] Some researchers, including Rima Shore (1997), believe that baby talk is an important part of the emotional bonding process. Shore and other researchers believe that baby talk contributes to mental development, as it helps teach the child the basic function and structure of language. Studies have found that responding to an infant's babble with meaningless babble aids the infant's development; while the babble has no logical meaning, the verbal interaction demonstrates to the child the bidirectional nature of speech, and the importance of verbal feedback.
She ain't talkin in motherese
Some researchers have pointed out that baby talk is not universal among the world's cultures, and argue that its role in "helping children learn grammar" has been overestimated. In some societies (such as certain Samoan tribes; see first reference) adults do not speak to their children until the children reach a certain age. In other societies, it is more common to speak to children as one would to an adult, but with simplifications in grammar and vocabulary. In any case, the normal child will eventually acquire the local language without difficulty, regardless of the degree of exposure to baby talk. However, the use of motherese could have an important role in affecting the rate and quality of language acquisition.
Some examples of widely-used baby talk words and phrases in English, many of which are not found within standard dictionaries, include:
Moreover, many words can be derived into baby talk following certain rules of transformation, in English adding a terminal /i/ sound is a common way to form a diminutive which is used as part of baby talk, examples include:
horsey (from horse)
kitty (from cat or kitten)
potty (originally from pot now equivalent to modern toilet)
doggy (from dog)
("Puppy" is often erroneously thought to be a diminutive of pup made this way, but it is in fact the other way around: pup is a shortening of puppy, which comes from French popi or poupée meaning doll.)
Other transformations mimic the way infants mistake certain consonants which in English can include turning /l/ into /w/ as in wuv from love or widdo from little or in pronouncing /v/ as /b/ and /ð/ or /t/ as /d/.
Noooo eloongaaateeed voooweeels foooohr meehh
Still other transformations, but not in all languages, include elongated vowels, such as kitty and kiiiitty, meaning the same thing. While this is understood by English speaking toddlers, it is not applicable with Dutch toddlers as they learn that elongated vowels reference different words.
South Carolina, indisputably the worst state in the union ( in 1860 James Petigru, a congressman from the state, sheds some light: “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum”) , struck again tonight. Besides starting the civil war and having the lowest high school graduation rate (average of 53%), it's representatives continue to be the shockingly gauche. Another political leader - Republican Congressman Joe Wilson - embarrassed South Cacalacky when he interrupted President Obama's Health Care Address with a very audible shout of "You Lie!" Check out the video below and note the crowd's shock at this rare breach of protocol (around 1:20):
But Wilson is hardly the worst politician to come out of South Carolina. I will highlight more:
1) Current Governor Mark Sanford
From June 18 until June 24, 2009 (that is SIX whole days), the whereabouts of Governor Sanford were unknown to the public, including to his wife and four kidsand the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides security for him, garnering nationwide news coverage. Lieutenant GovernorAndré Bauer announced that he could not "take lightly that his staff has not had communication with him for more than four days, and that no one, including his own family, knows his whereabouts."
Before his disappearance, Governor Sanford told his staff that he would be hiking on the Appalachian Trail and while he was gone he did not answer 15 cell phone calls from his chief of staff Scott English; he also failed to call his family on Father's Day. Turns out this douche-bag was in Argentina (at least he picked such a ballin' country) with his mistress.
2) Governor & Senator Strom Thurmond: The biggest political bastard of all time?
First offense: He ran for President in 1948 as the segregationistStates Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrat) candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes. Here is a quote of his about desegregating the army:
"I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches." (Listen to the clip here)
He then continued his fight against racial equality well into the civil rights era. Thurmond supported racial segregation with the longest filibuster ever conducted by a single Senator, speaking for 24 hours and 18 minutes in an unsuccessful attempt to derail the Civil Rights Act of 1957. As an added bonus, at Thurmond's hundredth birthday party in December 2002, Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott sparked controversy by praising Thurmond's 1948 candidacy for President and suggesting that the country would be better off if Thurmond had won, leading to Lott's resignation from his Leader post.
Shocking, right? Just wait, there's more!
Thurmond at 100
Second Offense: He served as Senator through the 1990s, and left office at age 100 as the oldest serving and longest-serving Senator in U.S. history (although he was later surpassed in the latter by Robert Byrd). How do we reward someone who campaigned for federal enforcement of segregation? Let him stay in office until he is ridiculously old of course!
Third Offense: Shortly after Thurmond's death on June 26, 2003, Essie Mae Washington-Williams publicly revealed that she was Strom Thurmond's daughter. She was born to a black maid, Carrie "Tunch" Butler (1909–1948), on October 12, 1925, when Butler was 16 and Thurmond was 22. He helped pay her way through college and later paid her sums of money in cash or, through a nephew, checks. Though Thurmond never publicly acknowledged Washington-Williams when he was alive, he continued to support her financially and politically campaign to deny her rights - what a great dad!
Washington-Williams has stated that she did not reveal she was Thurmond's daughter during his lifetime because it "wasn't to the advantage of either one of us" (no kidding) and that she kept silent out of love and respect for her father (I doubt that last part). She denies that there was an agreement between the two to keep her connection to Thurmond silent (I also doubt that).
3) Preston Brooks
In May, 1856, Charles Sumner, a Democratic abolitionist senator from Massachusetts, gave a speech in the Senate, denouncing the “crime against Kansas.” The Kansas territory had been created and opened to settlement in 1854, but the question of whether or not slavery would be allowed in the territory had been left up to the inhabitants of the state. “The South,” David Donald writes “determined to create a new slave state in Kansas, had banded together ‘murderous robbers from Missouri,’ ‘hirelings, picked from the drunken spew and vomit of an uneasy civilization,’ ” (in Sumner’s words). Sumner’s impassioned rhetoric against this pro-slavery faction enraged Preston Brooks, a Democratic representative from South Carolina. On May 22nd, he stormed into the Senate and beat Sumner with a gold-handled cane, striking half a dozen blows to Sumner’s head, blinding him with blood.
4) John C. Calhoun
Calhoun, a Democrat, was elected Vice-President under John Adams in 1824, and retained the position under Andrew Jackson. But Jackson and Calhoun fought, primarily over the doctrine of nullification. Things escalated until, in 1830, Calhoun took the bold move of publishing a private correspondence between himself and Jackson. In 1831, he became the first Vice-President to resign his post. But his uppitiness didn’t stop there. Elected to the Senate the following year, he became the most vocal proponent of slavery in Congress, and in 1837 delivered his famous “Positive Good” speech. “I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good—a positive good.”
Will Ryman lives and works in New York City. Ryman's recent work challenges the viewer to alter his perspective through distortions of scale, compelling empathy and also pointing to the hazards of humanity, as the natural world succumbs to our ever larger foot print. Ryman created over one hundred massive roses for a gallery show in New York called A New Beginning. The six foot flower sculptures are littered with detritus like cigarettes and empty chip bags. Occasionally, an equally large lady-bug or aphid joins the clump. Ryman described the work as a NYC garden from the point of view of a rat.
The image above is of Ryman setting up his piece "The Bed" at a gallery in London. "The Bed" is a 26 foot-long papier mâché sculpture of a chap that looks uncannily like the BFG. In his artist’s statement, Ryman said that ‘The Bed’ originated with his childhood impression of his parents’ bed being much bigger than it actually was, and is an exploration of one’s distorted perspective of one’s place in the world and relationship to surroundings.
This poem once touched me (how could it not?). It still does, but with each read it feels more and more harrowing. Here is a video of Sylvia Plath reading her own work:
You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time-- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene
An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--
Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I'm finally through. The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two-- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
Watch out for these boys! Straight out of the utopia that is Stoke-On-Trent, England, The Novellos are making waves nationwide and even internationally. The boys have been together for a while now and met while at school but they gained a critical following after their first single reached #3 in the UK indie chart in March 2008. They're currently touring around England and you can find a list of their gigs at their my space page.
Common Names: Pomegranate, Granada (Spanish), Grenade (French).
Origin: The pomegranate is native from Iran to the Himalayas in northern India and was cultivated and naturalized over the whole Mediterranean region since ancient times. It is widely cultivated throughout India and the drier parts of southeast Asia, Malaya, the East Indies and tropical Africa. The tree was introduced into California by Spanish settlers in 1769. In this country it is grown for its fruits mainly in the drier parts of California and Arizona.
Foliage: The pomegranate has glossy, leathery leaves that are narrow and lance-shaped.
Harvest: The fruits are ripe when they have developed a distinctive color and make a metallic sound when tapped. The fruits must be picked before over maturity when they tend to crack open, particularly when rained on. The pomegranate is equal to the apple in having a long storage life. It is best maintained at a temperature of 32° to 41° F. and can be kept for a period of 7 months within this temperature range and at 80 to 85% relative humidity without shrinking or spoiling. The fruits improve in storage, becoming juicier and more flavorful.
Symbolism: * Some Jewish scholars believe that it was the pomegranate that was the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden.[36] * Pomegranate is one of the Seven Species (Hebrew: שבעת המינים, Shiv'at Ha-Minim), the types of fruits and grains enumerated in the Hebrew Bible (Deuteronomy 8:8) as being special products of the Land of Israel. * Jewish tradition teaches that the pomegranate is a symbol for righteousness, because it is said to have 613 seeds which corresponds with the 613 mitzvot or commandments of the Torah. For this reason and others, many Jews eat pomegranates on Rosh Hashanah. However, the actual number of seeds varies with individual fruits. * The myth of Persephone, the chthonic goddess of the Underworld, also prominently features the pomegranate. In one version of Greek mythology, Persephone was kidnapped by Hades and taken off to live in the underworld as his wife. Her mother, Demeter (goddess of the Harvest), went into mourning for her lost daughter and thus all green things ceased to grow. Zeus, the highest ranking of the Greek gods, could not leave the Earth to die, so he commanded Hades to return Persephone. It was the rule of the Fates that anyone who consumed food or drink in the Underworld was doomed to spend eternity there. Persephone had no food, but Hades tricked her into eating four pomegranate seeds while she was still his prisoner and so, because of this, she was condemned to spend four months in the Underworld every year. * In Hinduism, one of Lord Ganesha's names is "Bijapuraphalasakta," which means "He who is fond of the many-seeded fruit (the pomegranate)." * In Vietnam, the pomegranate is called thạch lựu and the pomegranate flower is the symbol of summer. The famous Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Du wrote in "The Tale of Kieu":
Đầu tường lửa lựu lập lòe đơm bông. (Over the wall, the flames of pomegranate flicker in blossom.)
Making pomegranate juice at a stall in Turkey
* Pomegranate is one of the symbols of Armenia, representing fertility, abundance and marriage.
* In Mexico, pomegranate seeds are an essential ingredient of chiles en nogada, a favored food symbolizing the red component of the national flag.
* The pomegranate fruit was an emblem in the coat of arms of Catherine of Aragon (1485 - 1536). She was the widow of Arthur, Prince of Wales but, more memorably, was King Henry VIII's first wife. However, when Queen Catherine didn't produce a male heir, His Majesty cast a furtive glance around the court for younger and more promising breeding stock, finally settling on Anne Boleyn. With a new queen ensconced in the Palace, her first decree was a new coat of arms, showing a white falcon pecking at a pomegranate.
Culinary Uses: * After opening the pomegranate by scoring it with a knife and breaking it open, the arils (seed casings) are separated from the peel and internal white pulp membranes. Separating the red arils is simplified by performing this task in a bowl of water, wherein arils sink and pulp floats. It is also possible to freeze the whole fruit in the freezer, making the red arils easy to separate from the white pulp membranes. The entire seed is consumed raw, though the watery, tasty aril is the desired part. The taste differs depending on subspecies of pomegranate and its ripeness. * Grenadine syrup is thickened and sweetened pomegranate juice used in cocktail mixing. Before tomato arrived in the Middle East, grenadine was widely used in many Iranian foods and is still found in traditional recipes such as fesenjan, a thick sauce made from pomegranate juice and ground walnuts, usually spooned over duck or other poultry and rice, and in ash-e anar (pomegranate soup).[11]
Feathers and poof seem to be two consistent themes in Icelandic female songstress fashion.
Exhibit A: Bjork (born Björk Guðmundsdóttirin Reykjavík, Iceland). I truly believe that Bjork could be the most eccentric person alive today...maybe that's ever lived.
Exhibit B: Emiliana Torrini (born Emilíana Torrini Davíðsdóttir in Kópavogur, Iceland). She is of both Italian and Icelandic parentage; her father owns and operates a well-known Italian restaurant in Iceland, and many Icelanders first remember her as a young waitress. She currently resides in Brighton, England.
Check out the orange frisbee dress and the feather & gem drenched rainbow gown in this video:
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Cafe 458 Atlanta
