MOMA and Mom

Last weekend my mother, visiting from Maine, and I went to MOMA and took in the Joann Verburg photography exhibit, which was really quite something. Her luminous large format dyp- and tryptychs are incredibly lush and detailed, inviting and calm -- and an interesting juxtaposition to both Serra's rather cold gigantic curved sculptures and the Soviet Modernist offerings nearby. There's a nice interview with the curator here.

While in the cafe, I had moment of gustatory epiphany, having ordered the delicate cheese board with figs and the Italian semi-soft cow's milk sottocenere al tartuffo. Wow. I am in big trouble. Luckily, Murray's Cheese Shop carries it because I can't go on without it. It's really that good.

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Oh -- and I'd be remiss to not mention the time spent with my mother, a spry 70-something tennis player, reader, minister, and all-around good egg. She arrived with this huge packback, bearing books and unbounded enthusiasm for her 2-day stay that never flagged. Beyond the great food and art we consumed, my favorite moments were when she was taking a nap and I settled in to read her 20-page essay about her mother who died earlier this year. It was by turns devastating and hilarious and offered countless insights into a woman I barely knew and a life (my mother's) that I knew only tangentially. From ski outtings with ski poles made of broom sticks and boots afixed to skis with canning jar rubbers, kittens who drowned in a crock of fermenting beer ("Oh well, we'll drink it anyway!") to my grandmother's weaving business in Arkansas, the essay details an incredible life (lives) of poverty and loss but also rampant creativity and pluck. While immensely entertaining, it was also unbearably sad to read: "Her death broke my heart, cracked it open in its hard places, in my private, unprotected places -- and unexplored geography I'd never really visited." This essay did the same to me, on a microcosmic level, and left me sad, grateful, and wishing to tell my own stories, of my own mother, my own life -- her own amazing life -- and do it before it's too late. I guess I've started, here. Let's hope I have the energy and guts to continue.

Tomorrow People

At 9-ish this morning, Friday, after the crazy and now historic Tornado-Hits-Brooklyn excitability of yesterday, I was wandering around my company's insanely spacious (but oddly devoid of things you crave to eat) cafeteria. Recently, the staff has ambushed the sound system -- in an inmates-running-the-asylum way, no disrespect -- regaling us tired corporate drones with a truly bizarre repetoire of unknown origin (radio? someone's cd or 8-track collection?) of tunes. While waiting for my usual crazy-healthy vegetable drink, I heard on the speakers (over the noise of the juicer and the sound of a couple businessmen babbling into their ridiculous Bluetooth ear-pieces) the faint reggae rhythms of a long-forgotten song.

Juggling my (possibly fake) Starbucks coffee and my noxious green drink and half a bagel with low-fat vegetable cream cheese (um, hello, what happened to the scallion?) I was mesmerized by the faint, honeyed Jamaican intonations of a song with familiar beat and words that, though intelligible, harkened piercingly back to my somewhat distant past.

It came to me on the down-escalator: Ziggy Marley's "Tomorrow People" -- a song I recall really enjoying (in a dance-around-the-room manner) way, way back when. From 1988, the year I graduated from college.

And I heard it just after I was contacted -- or, in today's online parlance pinged or... poked -- by dear friend P., from Paris (via facebook.com, go figure... I mean really). With whom I graduated the same year but sadly lost touch. With whom I had lived in that same year in a great flat in the East Village, struggling together through the end of film school, drinking cappucinos at Cafe Orlin and having deep conversation at some long-gone joint just south of Cooper Union.

Small synchronicities, that's what it's all about. Coincidence? Of course. I don't believe in 99% of perceived connections but believe they are what life is really all about-- the frisson of imagining that they do mean something. The ephemeral stuff of literature and film and dreams.

No moral to this non-story. I come from a certifiably Ludditic (is that a word?) family and can now, again, smile at my own choice to embrace technology in the dream that it has at least a modicum of power to connect people with their past. And a present they might not have known.

You know I am a Very Busy Woman and it's not in my nature to wax nostalgic but this kind of thing is happening more often and it just makes me so damn happy.

Tommy, We Hardly Knew Ye

Tommy Makem died a couple of days ago and I'm inordinately sad. I grew up with my parents' Clancy Brothers LPs; we're tangentially connected via our Scottish, and partly Irish (I'm sure) heritage but it's more than that. It's about the folk movement (again, tangential for me, via Joan and Bob and Pete and, of course, Tommy Makem and his merry band) and the gratitude I feel for hearing music (from German folk songs to Scarlatti) when young, and being influenced by the sheer eclectism of my parents' catholic tastes. I raise my glass to them... and to Tommy.

All you freeborn men of the traveling people
Every tinker, rolling stone, or gypsy rover
Winds of change are blowing, old ways are going...
Your traveling days will soon be over.

Nice Headline

The Centrists Didn't Hold. (New York Times).

Barry Who? Congrats, Cal

"Iron Man" Cal Ripken, Jr. was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame today. He's an inspiration and I'm so happy to have had the pleasure of watching him play live a few times in my life.

Bots and What-Nots: Feeling Stupid

I remembered, suddenly, that I have another site , created a year or so ago -- the experimental Global Warming Compendium -- which, like this one, languishes in obscurity. I went there a few days ago and was stunned to find that 30 new people had registered! Oh joy! Oh shock! I immediately and breathlessly dug up a new quirky and interesting news article on climate change for the home page, formatted it, posted it, and sat back, breathless. Then I decided to check out the new people (certainly smart, concerned netizens who had stumbled on my little php experiment while scouring the Web for ways to connect and collaborate to save the planet).

It only took a few minutes to realize ... I've been had. Bot (see malicious purposes) and paid for. They were all fake, jennifer13984, bill39872, cindy10928, etc. All from... nowhere. Sigh.

Then I noticed one that was different... One "Annabeth" with a hotmail account. Yes! A real person. From British Columbia (who would fake that?). I immediately set about emailing Annabeth, anxious to encourage the few registered users I can claim. My email was pithy and breezy, heartfelt and grateful and quite well-done, I thought, at a little over 250 words.

I was about to press "send" when I remembered that I myself had created lovely the Annabeth out of whole cloth, back when I thought I needed to seed this sorry site with at least a couple registered users. At that moment, I personified the word "cringe." (And what a great word, right? Cri or cry + unhinged + whinge + itch + wring + grinch + flinch + wench. C'est moi).

I fiddled with the site's registration process and I'm pretty sure now anyone who wants to register (ha) will have to provide me their complete CV, an essay on "What Global Warming Means to Me," a valid e-mail address, their mother's maiden name and will need to wait for a CIA background check. So, go on, sign up to day!

Richard Rules: Serra at MOMA

Horrifed at my recent lack of cultural activity (I don't count reading*) I zoomed up to MOMA on Saturday to take in the Richard Serra show. Big. Big, big, HUGE pieces of metal, curved, rusting in the Sculpture Garden. You can walk between the four curves and get a lovely claustrophic feeling that I would liken to being trapped in a cargo ship's inner hull. I can't quite figure out how he made them; it must have been very difficult. What's easy is taking bad photos of them. They are NOT photogenic. Inside (where photography isn't allowed, dammit) there are even more wondrous... large curved things. The exhibit continues in the same theme, gigantic curved objects, some conconcave and some convex, so many that you feel lost among them. Neat!


Now, I must confess a love of going to museums alone. I have a very short attention span and usually die before the other person is finished perusing. Yesterday's outing, for example, took a grand total of 17 minutes (not including transportation). This way, every moment is... precious. Or something. Anyway, better photos and Serra himself here.

Of course, before posting this I had to google "que Serra, Serra" on the off-chance that I might be the first briliant humorist to use the phrase for a blog posting. Alas, no. But I did get a hoot out of this short mediabistro.com post.

Recent reading: Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns (phenomenal); Augusten Burroughs' Possible Side Effects (quite funny); Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World History (salty!).

My Kind of Signage

Now THAT'S a good use of advertising space. Who'd a thunk that a business as pedestrian as Manhattan Mini Storage (which as far as I can tell pretty much has a lock on the storage biz in Manhattan) would have the chutzpah. Love it. I do remember another location that had posted, simply, "Save Darfur." I just... wish I had something to store at the moment. View larger

CommuniCATing

O. Henry is definitely stating that the catfood box is empty -- so empty he can crawl in it and get stuck.
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Well, Shoot

Dang! A small piece of my past has evaporated. The Assocation of Independent Video and Filmmakers is now defunct (and has been for about a year). A truly independently-spirited organization, it gave me another peek into the world of filmmaking (after NYU film school) and gave me the momentary desire to be a documentarist (which career is on hold for a while).

I remember working there as a student, filing things, answering the phones, waiting for the sweet sound of NPR's All Things Considered (which meant I only had an hour left to go). The offices, on lower Broadway, were cramped and cluttered and oh so homey. I remember a girl named Rain or Raiine or Rainne who had cool hair, and Ethan who was very serious but whom I liked a lot... at least one Elizabeth (so sweet and smart and cool) and Larry the head of it all. Sigh.

I remember one project was calling a bunch of documentary makers for some (legitimate) reason and I remember being so thrilled to speak with Barbara Kopple that I nearly couldn't speak. I myself wound up with a sound-recording gig with a woman I barely remember (Carol something) who dragged my sorry ass to Albany for a shoot and never paid me. Oh well. AIVF published a cool quarterly (I believe) that was the perfect print corollary to the hard-bitten world of independent filmmaking. It was called The Independent.

So... Save The Independent. I know I'll try to help.

A Culinary Profile

I'd like to think I'm normal: interested in food as a means of sustenance and mild pleasure, enjoying a wide range of cuisines in moderation, with a healthy contemplation about a food item's origins, its grower's plight, its manufacturing's environmental impact and my relationship to it and them.

Unfortunately, I have to admit to being somewhat obsessed with all things culinary -- not to any degree approaching a true "foodie" or to imagine myself as a chef, but geez. The evidence is in:

Read in the last six months and now sitting on my desk:

Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential and The Nasty Bits

Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires
Lynda Bladholm's The Asian Grocery Store Demystified

Bill Buford's Heat

The Gardner Museum Cafe Cookbook

The Joy of Cooking (old and new editions)
Here in America's Test Kitchen

Watching on TV

Top Chef

Hell's Kitchen

America's Next Top Food Network Host

Iron Chef

Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations

I also frequently read blogs like Michael Ruhlman's. C's and my current favorite restaurant is Landmarc on West Broadway. I was somewhat surprised and saddened (only a little) at its terrible reviews for the Time Warner building location. Our favorite dishes at Landmarc include the sinful pain perdu, the ubiquitous (for me) salmon tartare, any salad, and of course steak frites. We know we need to get out of the neighborhood more and I'm saving my pennies (dollars) for Masa someday in the future. Blame it on Bourdain, but, as he says in his Nasty Bits:

"Go to Masa. Go now. Book late and show up on time. Sit down, shup up -- and relax. He'll [Masa Takayama]take if from there. Give yourself over the the experience. And enjoy. Eating well... is about submission. It's about giving up all vestiges of control, about entrusting your fate entirely to someone else. It's about turning off the mean, manipulative, calculating, and shrewd person inside you, and slipping heedlessly into a new experience as if it were a warm bath. It's about shutting down the radar and letting good things happen. When that happens to a professional chef, it's a rare and beautiful thing. Let it happen to you."

And that was AFTER describing, in exquisite detail, his last meal at the place. So, next time I have a few hundred (make that about $800) to spare (and I mean really to spare) that's where I'm heading.

What I Love... What I Hate. An Ongoing Survey

This will be an evolving litany of things. I hate touching shower curtains. Everyone now and then a certain confluence of humidity, water temperature, wind and angry spirits will draw a shower curtain toward me as I stand, batting away, dripping shampoo into my eyes. Horrible.

I love slivered almonds, avocados, fresh cilantro, red wine, fresh-water pearls, pedicures. I loathe finishing a good book (and will leave it around, still bookmarked or splayed on a surface or set somewhere like my desk as if it weren't all over and already fading into my literary memory). I currently love the two books I'm reading: Michael Ondaatje's (wow, I spelled that right on the first try!) Divisadero and Wendy Werris' An Alphabetical Life.

I love that C. praises me when I announce (on the phone) that I'm considering (or just took) a nap in the middle of a sunny Saturday. More to follow.

Hometown Oysters

Imagine my delight at finding, in the lovely script on the specials menu at Blue Ribbon Sushi (Sullivan St., Manhattan): Oysters from Edgecomb, Maine. That's my hometown. It's where I grew up and where my parents still live. It's quite rural, an hour north of Portland, just a by-way kind of town between Wiscasset (the "prettiest village in Maine," which, by the way, it actually isn't but is still quite comely) and Damariscotta (home of the famous Reny's).

These oysters, from Glidden Point, to be exact, may well have been the best I've ever had. Sweet, exceptionally fresh and tender and served nicely with a jot of lemon and a barely perceptible twist-tie of spring onion. These wonderful morsels more than made up for the obnoxious septet of (had to be) sales guys on someone's expense account, all gigantic and fat and super-loud. The staff tried to seat them in the "special" boxed in area but no luck. Yuck.

Skywriting Dreams

Okay, here's one for the dream analysts. After waking up at 8 am (!) on Sunday (!!) to deal with the hyperactive cats, I went back to bed and dreamed... That I was somewhere in an unfamiliar but rather beautiful hilly suburb. I looked up to see a skywriting plane languidly lettering across the blue and I suddenly realized that it was not just advertising or a "Marry me, Kit!" (wonder where THAT came from) but a conversation. A chat. Like a Google Talk or Yahoo IM. But in the sky! I was mesmerized. Metachat. How 'bout that. Oh -- and then Petey my cat changed into Doris from Everybody Loves Raymond (which I've seen maybe once) and I couldn't get him back and then someone was strangling me but then I woke up and O. Henry the kitten had draped himself across my neck like a small cat-scarf.

Baseball and Bridges

I like baseball. Quite a bit. Okay, not enough to actually blog about it but I'm a consistent quasi-fan who once went to a Yankees parade (1996. And those are not for the faint of heart) And J. who once dated a cop from upstate, actually went to that World Series (I think it was) and entered the stadium on a horse! (I think that's how it happened. I remember he wore a pinky ring and they broke up soon after, though I'm not sure any of this is related except tangentially and for ... color commentary for whatever it's worth.)

All this to say, I had nice afterwork rendezvous with C. at Ideya, the fun Jamaican joint on W. Broadway.

The experience was made even more delightful by a late-meal sighting of Ken Burns at the table near us. His life's work to date is simply incredible, both in volume and quality, and all the more amazing in its breadth and depth -- and subjects: how cool! Jazz! Architecture Baseball! Radio! And more than a dozen other impeccably forged pieces. He's a hero of mine, truth be told.

Years ago, I was a documentary filmmaker for about twenty minutes, post-TSOA -- with a still-yet-to-be unearthed gem of a video called "Working Dreams," presumptive analogue to Studs Terkel's wonderful Working, created with old friend Janine and great DP Doug Shannon... It languishes in 3/4" obscurity. We interviewed subject ranging from a chimney sweeper to Pam, a Bloomingdale's perfume sprayer. But I digress.

Ken's Brooklyn Bridge is closest to my heart; I'll tell you why some other time.

Anyway. Happy to see the guy; happy to know he had some good grub tonight. Happy there are people like him in the world, here and now, actively preserving the past in a way that makes one almost certain there is hope for the future.