Soft Porn on Roller Skates

The review on the front page of Sunday's New York Times Book Review is about a new biography of Henry Miller timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Tropic of Cancer in the United States.  The book had been published in Paris in 1934 by a "soft porn"  publisher and banned as obscene in America until "a landmark legal victory overturned the ban in 1961."  It then became a bestseller. (Of course.)

 I've never read the Tropic of Cancer, but I remember when it was published.  I was 11, and my dad directed me down the street to my piano teacher's house to pick up a book in a brown paper bag from her husband.  I went on my roller skates, picked up the book,  and dutifully handed it over, uninspected, to  my dad.  I did look at the title on the cover, but that was it.

The book disappeared from the house the next day, and I figured my dad took it to his office at San Jose State, where he may have read it on his lunch hour.

Clem and Bill

 My parents.  Not a day goes by without my mind straying to them, replaying scenes, re-interpreting what happened,  trying to weave a narrative that makes sense.  Some part of my brain is always knitting away at this, but by the end of the day, it all unravels, and the next day I begin again.

In San Francisco in the late 1940's, before I was born

Are there people out there, I wonder, who had such a healthy, or at least largely unambivalent,  relationship with their parents that they aren't doing this?   My mother has been dead for 20 years, my father for 15. I never go to their graves in San Jose, but I visit them in my head every day.  I wonder if I'll ever give it up.

Art Trek With Annika

I haven't been going to art galleries lately, but Annika's home from her art residency in Iceland, and she, by God, wants to get out and see some things.  So yesterday we did.  We made the rounds of several downtown San Francisco art galleries, and it came back to me why I've largely switched from galleries to museums.

Annika painting in Wendy's studio when she was 10

Despite a shift at her restaurant job that started at 6:30 am, Annika looked radiant when I met up with her just after noon.  At 22, she is clear-eyed and smooth-skinned, her dark glossy hair pulled back in a bun for work; she  was wearing much-loved red down vest I handed down to her when she went to Iceland. I forgot to take my camera yesterday, but at left is  a picture of the nascent artist at about 10.




We set out.    First to the Dolby-Chadwick Gallery, which I think has the best paintings of any SF gallery. The current show is sculpture by Stephen de Staebler, which Annika and I weren't crazy about, but the back room yielded much more interesting finds, including paintings by Louise LeBourgeois waiting to be hung for the next show (see below, from the upcoming "Light Through Water" show).

Then we went to  one gallery after another, mostly at 49 Geary and then at  77 Geary. At the end of it we were dragging, and I reviewed how much art I'd seen that did nothing for me, that felt clever but contrived and offered little to take away, alas. You never know, though, and that's what keeps us at it.

Water #450 and Water #453 by Louise Lebourgeois

Hiroshi Sugimoto, from "Photogenic Drawings" at the Fraenkel Gallery

Kota Ezawa at the Haines Gallery; from his new book "Paper Space"

In the not-so-crazy-about-it category: burro-brick by Caleb Duarte and Xun Gallo and the Fischer Gallery

But Would Mitt Wear It?

I read in Leah Garchik's column this morning that Barney's sells a Christian Louboutin men's sneaker that costs $1,295.   And there's a waiting list for them.

I flew to the computer to see what a $1,295 sneaker looks like.  Couldn't find the exact one--some cost more, some less--but I did find this one made of python, for $1,395 on the Louboutin website:

The Christian Louboutin "Louis Men's Flat," $1,395

According to Garchik,  Barney's  confirms there's a waiting list, but says "it moves quickly and that many regular customers are on permanent alert waiting for new models."  A wardrobe of Louboutin sneakers?  Is this what people who pay only capital gains taxes get to buy? 

And the other news of the day:  Ashland, Oregon, has a very effective program called "The Ashland Food Project," to help its Emergency Food Bank.  Neighborhood coordinators pass out reusable grocery bags to people who agree to pick up one non-perishable item of food for donation each week.  Every two months, the neighborhood coordinator picks up the full bags.  The Food Bank is now collecting 36,000 pounds of food every two months.   The Berkeley Food Pantry is considering following suit.  No waiting list and you get a free reusable grocery bag.

A Sisterhood of Iron-ers

Ten years ago, I was invited to join a group of quilters called the "No Problems."   It was a bit intimidating because I was a very new quilter.  I'd never taken a class; I just bumbled around with my rotary cutter and a straight-edge and made very simple quilts   These people had Bernina sewing machines and Rowenta irons, and some of them had been in Quilt National.  These people sewed curves.

But I joined up anyway, and pretty soon I realized  that the group was really about friendship, not quilting.   If you need advice, you send out a group e-mail, and someone's going to know the answer.

Well, a couple of weeks ago,  my iron lost its mind.  It thought it was off when it should have been on.  I shook it and swore at it, burned my forearm waving it around in exasperation, and gave up.  I sent out an e-mail to the group.  What iron did they recommend?  By then I was on my second Rowenta. 

Just about everyone weighed in.  Rowenta, whether made in China or Germany, was no longer The Iron of Choice.  Three people have Black and Decker Classics, which are cheap ($30),  although they have steam holes that can catch the edge of fabric and cause wrinkles.  One has a Black and Decker Surge Express, but it leaks steam so she uses a spray bottle. Three have Rowentas, but only one is happy with hers.  One has an Oliso, which has little feet that pop up when you put it down, but it's expensive.  Ann, bless her heart, actually read up in Consumer Reports, which recommended a Kenmore, then a Singer, and then a DeLonghi.  Mabry swears by a "modest Sunbeam Series L."

What to do?   I tallied the group's recommendations and decided to go to Ace Hardware and buy a Black and Decker Classic.  It's only $30.  It reminds me of the one my mother used to use, black and silver, with a no-nonsense design. She was English and wilted in hot San Jose summers, so she took to ironing in her underwear while she watched "General Hospital."  Like me, like my group, she just wanted an iron that was cheap, hot, heavy, and had good steam.

The No Problems, c. 2003

Lest I Seem Like a Simpleton...

...or worse, lacking compassion.

I don't think talking can always save a relationship.  I wish it could, but it can't.  I think people can talk and get nowhere with a partner who won't listen, or who can't or won't do the necessary work on their own past.  Or with a partner who won't put the relationship first, or who doesn't believe in therapy.  And there are relationships that have gone too long without intimate conversation, and the channels have corroded.

It's complicated.

As far as Seal and Heidi:  Of course, who knows?  But putting so much energy into flaunting their perfect romantic relationship didn't help them or the public who thrives on fantasies of the ideal.  It's so much harder than that.

Grown Apart

Today I read that Heidi Klum and Seal, whom I know nothing about except that they have odd names, are separating after seven years of marriage.  In their statement, they say, "We have had the deepest respect for one another throughout our relationship and continue to love each other very much, but we have grown apart." [my italics]

Oh, hell, what's the real story?  Who's having an affair, shooting up, or drinking too much?  You have this apparently ideal marriage, renew your vows every year, and then, bam, you're separating?  You "continue to love each other very much"?  Really?

I'm going out on a limb here, but I think people don't "grow apart," the much-used euphemism, if they a) keep talking about how they feel and b) make their relationship paramount.    Growing apart, and all the trouble that follows, begins when people aren't talking about how they feel.  It took me a long time to learn this, and I needed (we needed) some professional help.  You're feeling sad, glad, mad, scared?   Do not flip open your computer or switch on the TV or make a phone call.  Do not invoke deadlines at work.  Stop what you're doing and talk. (Reminder note to self.) 

In the meantime, Heidi and Who-sit:  People have put you on a pedestal of your own building, and you owe it to them, after all the showy affection, to tell them what's really going on. This is a teachable moment.

Understanding of Fine Homemaking Values

Jerry and I were down in the basement this afternoon going through the contents of  trunks, two of his, one of mine.  His were full of family pictures and yearbooks.  In mine I found-- I kid you not--my Tiny Tears doll (c. 1957), a stuffed lamb my sister gave me when I went away to college, an ancient Raggedy Ann, old letters, and my high school scrapbook:

Musty and the Scotch tape has failed

On the last page of this musty monster,  I found a letter from Betty Crocker congratulating me for "your new title, Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow for your  high school."  With this, I  got a charm of a heart with a hearth inside it, plus the promise that I could be named Homemaker of Tomorrow for my state.  That didn't happen.  A classmate named Debbie Claire was very ticked that she didn't get this award, because she wanted to work in a test kitchen eventually.  That didn't happen, either.

According to Betty, this award represents my "outstanding qualities and understanding of fine homemaking values, which are even more important in their way than the practical skills of cooking and sewing."  I can't cook worth a damn; I do sew.  But  I won the contest because I took a written test. (Oddly, three years later, my sister won the contest for the class of 1971.)

Here's a picture of the charm, the letter, and the article in the high school newspaper.  My English teacher, on hearing the news, asked me if I'd get a great big box of Bisquick.  (No, fine homemaking values: it has transfats.)

The swag

Short Tale of a Big Quilt

Radical!  I made a quilt in three weeks of  big squares with minimal agonizing.  Week 1: In a gust of self-confidence, I cut 10" squares of an odd assortment of fabrics that I was drawn to and arranged them on my design wall.  Exhilarating!  Week 2:  Doubt set in.  Too simple, squares too big, need color between squares?   Wind went out of sails.  Week 3: Reclaimed confidence.  Sewed it together.  Decided to submit it to the big East Bay Heritage Quilters show in March as my second quilt.  Might get in, might not.

"Snowscape"

I've been known to spend a year off and on working on a quilt, sliding in and out of funks about it.  I've made quilts with pieces as small as 1" and squares with as many as 25 pieces.  I often make quilts with triangles, simple designs, but hell, to me, to put together.  I could go into how my dad, an art professor, was a glass-is-half-empty kind of guy, pushing toward perfection until he'd hurt and alienated and angered both of his daughters.  Or how I really, honestly, believed he was right until sometime in January 2012.  Hell with it.

Old Friends

Who are these people?  And when the hell was  it?

The bride is Laurie Abbott Lamson, my sophomore-year roommate at UC Santa Barbara.  The groom is Joe Lamson.  I was her bridesmaid.  The time is July 1970, and the setting was the patio of her parents' condominium in Orange County.  It  was definitely a wedding of its time, small, low-budget and not wardrobe-scripted, except that I had to wear yellow. 

This followed quite a school year.   We'd survived three lengthy and  often violent student uprisings, witnessed the burning of the Isla Vista Bank of America, and endured Reagan calling out the National Guard.  We'd been tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed, and we'd lived under curfew in our student apartment.  My nerves were shot.  I was happy to be transferring to Berkeley in the fall, away from UCSB forever.

Laurie and Joe went  on to graduate from UCSB, and for years they've lived  Helena, Montana,  where they had three sons, and now--I just found out--a  baby granddaughter.  I haven't seen Laurie in 20 years, maybe more, but  we've kept in touch, mostly by Christmas cards.  Today I got a card from her; I'd sent her the address of my blog, and she's caught up with my life that way.  Now I have her e-mail address, and we can be back in contact without getting writer's cramp.

A remarkable synchroneity of skirt lengths

The Bucket Book

Pulse-quickening

...that's what they ought to call this brochure.  It arrived yesterday.  It is fat (113 pages), glossy, and  expensively produced.  I flipped through it in the late afternoon when my blood sugar was a little low and I was dragging, but soon my pulse had quickened and I felt a yearning so strong that I couldn't understand why other people (Jerry, for example) didn't also feel they have to drop everything and go to Zanzibar.  Seriously.

Even though it was only last April/May that we took a cruise on this very cruise line, when we spent thousands of dollars to ride around the boot of Italy,  when we disembarked in Venice swearing we'd never, ever take another cruise.  In fact, I said they couldn't PAY me to take a cruise.

Now this.

By the time Jerry got home, I was buoyed by possibilities.  How could anyone die without having been to St. Petersburg?  Ireland? Hong Kong? Not so much Mumbai or Greenland, perhaps,  but Mont Saint-Michel?  How could anybody face the possibility of an ICU and tubes and monitors, without memories of seeing the Colosseum and Red Square and Cape Town? 

I ran this by him.  Not impressed. I could persuade him to go to Costa Rica, possibly the Panama Canal (again, the ship) and Alaska.  No interest at all in sailing down the Volga from St. Petersburg to Moscow.  Unmoved.  Would rather join the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

But me?  Again, as I was a year ago,  I was seduced by the brochure:  all your needs taken care of, a floating hotel, room service, delicious food, nannying. 

And then I remembered:  On a ship, you're in port only so many hours.  You live by the ship's schedule, not your own, even if the slogan of this cruise line is "Your world, your way."  We had only five hours in Florence.  You take a chance on being on a reunion cruise of Texas A&M and Auburn alums who talked loudly and seriously about Newt Gingrich.   Among your fellow passengers is a woman who turns up her nose at your borrowing the stewardess's vacuum cleaner to clean Boboli Garden dust off your shoes.  Alas, it all sounds so good.  LOOKS so good.

Here's Zanzibar.  (Maybe I should just make a quilt with these colors?)

Is anyone else seduced?

Au Revoir, Leah!

2012:   Leah at 20.

My friend and next-door neighbor Leah leaves for New York tonight on her way to Paris.  Last night, she, her mother, her sister, and I went out to dinner and then to see "The Wild Bride" at Berkeley Rep.

Leah's a French/Drama major at Tufts, and going abroad for part of her junior year has been a long-held dream.  She's saved and planned, and now she's going. 

On Monday morning we went to buy a camera so she record her time in Paris, and she chose and paid for a very nice Nikon.  She's going to post pictures on a blog, which she's thinking of calling "Partaking of Paris."  After the camera purchase,  we stopped by a lingerie shop so she could buy two pairs of what she calls "tights" and I call "black pantyhose."  (When was the last time I wore such an item?)  In April, she'll turn 21 in Paris.

Isn't it romantic?  Isn't it Audrey Hepburn? Or something Frank Sinatra sang?  Something '50's that her generation probably feels no nostalgic pull toward?

1999: Leah at 8

Here's another picture of Leah, a favorite of mine, taken at Tomales Bay:

Just What the Doctor Probably Didn't Order

There are times when nothing but chocolate will do.  And I don't mean a conscientious dose of a few squares of dark chocolate  (can anyone actually DO that?).  I mean  dense, dark chocolate and a lot of it.  It has to be in a sizable bar that I can drive around town eating as soon as I buy it, unwrapping the flimsy foil with eager fingers and breaking off large chunks for immediate gobbling.  

By 3 o'clock this afternoon, after a couple of not-so-good days, feeling tired and mildly depressed,  I gave in and went to the Colusa Market for a bar of my favorite kind, pictured below.

My medicinal chocolate bar of choice

And the gray-and-white fabric  I ran out of?  No quilting pals had any.  I searched online at fabric.com and equilter.com: no luck.  One site came up with 7,000 possibilities when I searched for gray-and-white, including prints of Batman and VW busses that had a lot of other colors, too.  There are some really terrible fabrics out there.

So I ate all but three squares, which I left in the car for the next emergency.

Where Will It All Go?

Inheritances are handy, no doubt about it, although I never expected much from my parents.  My dad always said, "It'll all be spent on enema bags," referring to what my sister and I might inherit.  Turned out to be more than either of us expected, although not a whole lot.

Now I'm pondering what's going to happen to my stuff when I'm no longer around.  I look around my studio: quilts, CDs, eccentric book collections, non-eccentric book collections, sewing machines, fabric, paintings I've bought.  Where will it all go?  Bigger things, family items like my piano and some furniture, will go to my sister, but what about my art books and my camera, things that don't seem particularly significant to me now but might be a way of honoring the bond with a friend?  I would like people I love to feel recognized.  At the same time, I don't want to be too much of a micromanager. (Do I?)

My godmother left her sterling silver flatware to me in her will.  She was going to leave me her persian rugs but I didn't visit her enough, so I got cut back to just the sterling.  That was fine with me, no sting to it; inheritances are nothing you're owed or should count on.  At the same time, as a general principle,  I don't think writing your will is a time to get even over the petty stuff.

Maybe it's a New Year kind of thing.  Maybe I'll think about it later.

Report from the Egg Lady

This is what 30 dozen eggs looks like.  I bought them at Costco today to donate to the Berkeley Food Pantry. Total cost:  $50 for six shrink-wrapped flats of five dozen eggs each.  Turns out it's a much better deal to buy them at Grocery Outlet, where they're only $35 for 30 dozen,  although they're Medium rather than Large eggs.

 Over the weekend, they'll live in our downstairs refrigerator, and I'll take them with me on Monday.

Generally, if the Pantry has eggs to distribute, clients get only a half-dozen.  Other volunteers and I will use serrated knives to cut empty dozen cartons in half and transfer six eggs to each.  I donate eggs a few times a year because I think they're a basic, handy, easy-to-cook food.

Possible campaign slogan for Obama:  "Eggs in every refrigerator!"
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For Quilters Only...

Does this look familiar?  Would you share? I don't have the selvedge or I'd scout about online.  Non-quilters:  It's an addiction.

Happily Ever After, Quirkily

 I was flipping through the pink section of the SF Chronicle when this picture stopped me cold:

Dressed identically for 33 years

This couple, Nancy and Donald Featherstone, got engaged on their first date and have been married for 33 years,  identically dressed all that time, right down to her shoes and his tie.  They're featured in a soon-to-be aired documentary called "After Happily Ever After," which will "bring viewers into the living rooms of some quirky, yet successful pairings...".

Oh, boy!  Other couples featured: a pair of nudists, a young Indian couple whose marriage was arranged, a pair of young moms, and couples who still write poetry to each other.  The filmmaker, Kate Schermerhorn, who's been divorced twice (her second marriage fell apart during the filming) says, "I no longer go into a relationship feeling it's going to be forever.  It's days that turn into weeks that turn into years, but the important thing is that it's making me happy now."

I can relate.  Jerry and I proceeded on a year-to-year basis until about year 15, when the marriage really "took,' and  now it's been almost 35 years.   Some people, notably our respective fathers,  questioned the match:  Jerry's dad thought I should change my last name and do all the cooking; my dad thought I shouldn't have married a divorced man with three kids.  But what the hell: I collect books on first ladies, travel, and death; Jerry collects moths, golf balls, and Mexican motel ashtrays. I think sometimes other people are baffled by our marriage, but it works.   Cookie-cutter romantic bliss doesn't,  although I'm not sure they had to find a pair of nudists to make the point.

And by the way, Donald Featherstone invented the pink lawn flamingo.

Cooking with Qualms

For years, my friend Rebecca,  who's a very good cook, has urged me not to apologize for anything I make because, after all, that's what Julia Child said.

This has always puzzled me.   Did JC mean that cooking is such an imposition that the recipient ought to be glad to get anything at all? That's what I thought, and it dovetails nicely with the philosophy of this household, which is that if you are served, you'd better be grateful.

But, no, that's not what JC meant.

I'm reading a book I got for Christmas, "As Always, Julia," the letters of Julia Child and her pal Avis DeVoto, and I just came across this on page 46:

 "...the... hostess should be advised never to say anything about what she serves, in the way of "Oh, I don't know how to cook, and this may be awful," or "poor little me," or "this didn't turn out"...etc. etc.  It is so dreadful to have to reassure one's hostess that everything is delicious whether or not it is."

So it's not about holding your head up because you slaved in the kitchen, and no apologies are necessary.  It's about not making your guests, who haven't lifted a finger, feel uncomfortable! Forget it.

On a more positive note:  Julia Child hated Republicans.   In 1952, she wrote,  "...the Republicans...need to 'grow up' to their responsibilities.  I have faith that the nation is strong enough to withstand them and to teach them, though my faith is not without dreadful qualms" (1952).

Also--she's wearing pearls in every picture.

Pearls

Only my mother wore pearls

This is a picture of my sister, my mother, and me on my wedding day in 1977.  My mother's in silk, I'm in polyester.  She's wearing a string of pearls, I'm not.   I didn't own any.  I inherited a string of my mother's  pearls, and sometimes I put them on,  think "you look stodgy," and take them off right away.

This morning I figured out that I could read "The Lady,"  my favorite British women's magazine, online.  First article that caught my eye: "Girls in Pearls" (apparently"girls" is not perjorative in the UK the way it is in Berkeley).  Readers sent in photos of themselves in pearls, from childhood to their nineties. One woman said she'd worn pearls for 72 years.  The editors added these observations:

* "As a woman matures, the pearls  she wears can become more impressive...[but] only those over 50 should attempt to pull off a three-strander.."

* "Rather like a lovely bunch of flowers that distracts from a shabby drawing room, pearls on a woman tactfully draw the eye away from crow's feet and dimpling flesh--and add a little magic instead."

Bucked up, I read on:

*Pearls are romantic, add instant chic and don't look daft on the school run or overdone when walking the dog." [my italics].

Encouraged,  I got out my mother's pearls and put them.  Not chic and definitely daft for going to Berkeley Bowl.

Iowa: It Comes Down to Grammar

Is anyone else bone-weary of hearing about Iowa's  Republican caucuses?   As a lifelong Democrat, I view it as an irrelevant exercise among relatively few people in a demographically un-diverse state.  Who cares? 

I'm completely disinterested. To be sure, I consulted  my favorite grammar manual, "The Practical Stylist" (Sheridan Baker).  Baker says that  "disinterested" means "impartial, without private interests in the issue." I have no private interest in which Republican wins, except that Michele Bachmann might be easier for Obama to beat than Romney would be, but I don't care enough to root for her.

I think I'm also uninterested, which means that I not only don't have a stake in who wins, but I'm also indifferent. It's just a lot of noise on TV and radio at the moment.  As I heard on NPR today, it's been the Andy Warhol of Iowa caucuses: so many candidates who each got 15 minutes of fame.

Jerry is militantly annoyed by the coverage of  Iowa caucuses, the way he was when George W. Bush was president and he'd appear on the TV screen.

 "What's HE doing there?"  Jerry would bellow.   Now he shouts, "Who cares what a bunch of  people in Iowa think?"

I have a friend from Iowa, a long-time Berkeley resident, and she thinks Iowa is pretty awful based on people she knows there, even if they do allow gay marriage.  To me, it feels like a lot of hot air blown into a flimsy balloon that's going to pop on Tuesday night.  Hurray.