Dream cottage

While in SF for a week, we were fortunate enough to be able to stay in the guest cottage of my mother's good friend MR. What a gorgeous place, and so comfortable! Best of all, it was only a short walk to my mother's place, so we could spend lots of time with her.

Choice of bath or shower.

A little deck with roses, for morning coffee.

A generous kitchen and good reading lights in the living room area.

Canopy bed!
Spending a week in this comfortable, lovely home in one of the most enjoyable neighborhoods in San Francisco was a like dream, the dream of returning to my home town to live near my family...as if I had a heck of a lot more money than I ever will! And then, we were happy to come home to our cosy place, in our fun neighborhood, in another city we love.

Sally's garden in Bolinas

The morning was foggy, but the light was beautiful. We drove from SF to Bolinas to visit Sally Robertson's garden, a place she has created and from which she draws her inspiration as an artist in watercolor.

We had a private lesson from her, in observation and in painting.

This rose was our subject.

The palette of colors in the foliage here is fascinating. I had not picked up a paintbrush for decades, but two of our party were dedicated watercolor painters, and another is a budding artist. Sally was able to speak to all of us clearly, gently, and with tremendous insight. She told us stories, and recommended books, especially The Art of Watercolor by Charles LeClair.

We ate lunch in her garden, and gradually the sun came out.

The dads

The nieces

Parody Thursday

via Bob Collins at MPR NewsQ, I learned of the existence of a multitude of parodies of the omnipresent, stupid, catchy-as-hell "California Gurls" song by Katy Perry (you can Google it). Of course, the most professional parody is by the gang at The Key of Awesome, but there will soon be one from every state (I've seen Iowa, Colorado, Wisconsin so far); the makers of the "Minnesota Gurls" parody have even made an interactive map on YouTube so you can find them!
Minnesota Gurls gets so many things right! How many times do you see the loon?

The boys want in on the action as well. Here are California Dorks:

Sing it, North Dakota Bois!

And finally, "California Gays" is the most fierce, fresh and fabulous!

It's gone international! Northern Irish girls get the deadpan award, Wolverhampton girls, haven't found a version in spanish yet, but I'm sure there is one out there, oh here.

our week in San Francisco

We came to celebrate my mother's recuperation after her chemotherapy and the fact that her tests show that there is no cancer activity for now. If her tests continue to be clear, they'll officially say she's in remission after five years, but what is most important is that her strength is returning, the pain in her legs is leaving, and she feels happy and full of life!

We also celebrated a cluster of birthdays.
Some of the highlights of our trip? walking, walking, walking and family times.
We saw the Birth of Impressionism show of works on loan from the Musée d'Orsay at the De Young museum in Golden Gate Park, and ate at Delfina Pizza: the food is absolutely great, the servers are lovely, but the manager on duty that day was so absolutely hateful that I will never go there again.

The other art pilgrimage was to the SFMOMA show "Calder to Warhol" with a small part of the huge art collection donated by Gap founders Doris and Donald Fischer; my sister used to work in their headquarters and saw a lot of this art when it was displayed there. She has some stories to tell. We had lovely lunch at their Caffe Museo and artist-inspired desserts up on the roof.
It was great fun to acquaint my daughter with Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance at the Lamplighters (I have just discovered that there is a filmed version of the show with Kevin Kline as The Pirate King, Angela Lansbury and Linda Ronstadt! Must watch!)



I was incredibly excited to see fledgling seagulls at the Yerba Buena Center, still not able to fly, but learning to hop up and down on the garden wall. Where was there nest?

Other excursions included the Farmer's Market at Fort Mason and the lovely, lovely Bay, wading in the Pacific at Ocean Beach, trekking Chinatown and North Beach (cannoli at Stella's and pork buns at that one place on Stockton which actually has a name but which we always find by accident)

We ate breakfast twice at Out The Doorbecause they make the best pancakes in the world.

Much time was spent combing the stores of Japantown for the perfect bento box and bento prep gear. We plan to try out lots of recipes this fall, and I'm so happy to have found Biggie's Lunch in a Box site!

We also spent time lovingly touching all the stuff at the New People store (where we also made some purchases) and the Viz Theater where we saw Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai, 1954) directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring the incomparable Toshiro Mifune.

And now we are home again, home again, jiggity jig.

Atmosphere "To All My Friends"

On school, work, ambition, and living your dreams:

Atmosphere is going on tour: details at Rhymesayers. But no Twin Cities date? Wut?

Gene Kelly

Listen to Christopher Walken talk about the great Gene Kelly. I wish we could see more about his observation on dancing ahead of the beat.

traces of Japanese sixties pop culture

From about 1963-1968, my family lived in Japan where my father, then a doctor in the U.S. Army, was stationed at Camp Zama.
Some sounds and melodies are imprinted from those years.
"Sakura sakura" (played with many variations on the koto by Yoshie Sakai) is a tune everyone knows.


We lived in a house in the Sagamihara Housing Area. There were lots of trees, and the post was small enough that we could walk the few blocks to school. I went to first-fifth grades there.
Although we were in Japan, we lived in the Army. Think "Leave it to Beaver," airlifted and dropped into the Japanese countryside. Sagamihara was a small town then; now it has been absorbed into greater Tokyo. Officers (doctors were automatically officers) had bigger and nicer houses than the enlisted men. We kids and wives were "dependents" and our entire social life was contained by the post. Those families who chose not to live in Army housing were said to be living "on the economy." I thought "the economy" was the land outside the fence around our housing area.

There was a commissary where we did our shopping, a pool where we spent most of the summer, a library, a movie theater, a "snack bar" with a juke box and hamburgers, an Officer's Club where we could eat steak. Even though we had relatively little contact with Japanese people or culture, we did watched Japanese TV in black and white: samurai movies, army movies, monster movies, variety shows, cartoons, sumo wrestling. Since it was all in Japanese, we made up the stories to go with the images. For a while, we had a confused idea that any dueling samurai was "a victor."

One program I that I loved was a cartoon called "Obake no Q" about a ghost named Q-Taro who was afraid of dogs. The theme song has been stuck in my head for decades (there were later versions, but this is the original). I can't believe I managed to find it on YouTube!


This song ("Ue o Muite Aruko"), sung by Kyu Sakamoto, was a huge cross-over hit (meaning Americans actually heard of it). We had the record.

I also remember seeing some of the early Group Sounds bands on TV shows. I was especially impressed by The Spiders.

Christopher Nolan movie flow chart.

courtesy of Darren Franich over at Popwatch.
He left out "Does Cillian Murphy wear a bag over his head?" and "Does Michael Caine raise his eyebrows?" but this holds water.

Step-Up 3D dancers on Jimmy Fallon's show

I must watch this a million times!

Li'l C (red pants,"king of krump" as seen in RIZE, and SYTYCD judge) Twitch (black jacket, glasses, "bendy girl" is Tamara Levinson (Argentine, former Olympian rhythmic gymnast, Cirque de Soleil performer and Madonna dancer), endless head-spin is by ? Bboy Daniel Cloud Campos (who also danced with Madonna on tour and in this Shakira video) apparently did the jackhammers and double flip at the beginning, and is NOT Harry Shum as I misidentified him... and others unnamed but amazing. I wish I knew the name of the woman in black and white stripes, I LOVE her dancing! I have to see this movie now even though I know the plot, dialogue and all elements not actually involving dance will be filler.

Janelle Monae sampler

We are madly in love with Janelle Monae: her singing, her dancing, her concepts, her band, her live performances, her videos, her "suites", her inspirations, her company The Wondaland Art Society, her sharp look.

Cold War (from ArchAndroid: "an emotion picture for the mind"), an intimate performance.

Tightrope (also great remix with Lupe Fiasco)

Many Moons (a fave in our household)

Exploring Southwark

One of the pleasures of travel for me is using maps, and in London, there are helpful maps everywhere.

I stayed for three days in London before I went to Spain, in a university residence hall behind the Tate Modern on the South Bank of the Thames. I spent my time exploring the Borough of Southwark. I wasn't quite sure how to pronounce Southwark, suspecting it was one of those words that doesn't sound the way it looks. So I listened to how the Southwark Tube stop was announced, and it sounded something like "Sutherk."

Another pleasure of travel is seeking out the voices of the past, and Southwark has a particularly rich literary heritage: Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens are only a few of the writers who lived here or wrote about this borough.

A few steps from the (restored) Globe Theater, one can see this rose window, also restored, part of what little remains of Winchester Palace, the bishops' palace built in the 12th century and in use until the 17th century. This palace was probably the most important structure in the area for hundreds of years, but its fortunes shifted. It was mostly burned, and the remains were hidden until uncovered by recent development. And life goes on. If you walk the streets early, you see Londoners on their way to work, few tourists are about. Later the streets will be choked with people speaking Italian, Spanish, Russian, every language under the sun. Most of them will give the window a glance, take a picture, and hurry on to other attractions.

I had my own destination in mind, the pleasures of the Borough Market.

You can have a coffee at the Monmouth Cafe, and maybe one of these pastries, before heading to the fabulous Borough Market. This fruit and vegetable market also dates back to Roman times. These days, the wholesale operation is open from 2AM to 8, while the retail market is only open later in the day Th-Sat. It has now become fashionable and popular, not just for locals but for food tourists like me.

If you get there early, you can still wander this food paradise in relative comfort, and if you get lost, there is this map.

I've just found this wonderful online journal called Mad Shakespeare, which is a labor of love (or should that be labour?) by people who all have degrees in Shakespeare studies! A review of the production of As You Like It, that I saw at the Old Vic, explains why an otherwise very good production, that I did enjoy, fell short of being excellent.

Three versions of "Spanish Buzz"

We went to see Toy Story 3 today, and cried at the end, along with the rest of the world.
*SPOILERS* Don't read this if you haven't seen the movie and don't want to know what happens.

One of our favorite parts is when the gang tries to undo the Buzz Lightyear reset and ends up switching him to "Spanish mode." This little special feature about "Spanish Buzz" shows how the animators did the Spanish dance sequence at the very end, using Cheryl Burke and Tony Dovolani's choreography of a ballroom paso doble (to a rhythm that actually in Spain would be called a "rumba," not to be confused with the Cuban rumba or ballroom rumba). The song is performed by the Gypsy Kings and is the already existing Spanish translation of "You'll Have a Friend in Me." They did a superb job of rendering the movement of the dancers, and the body language of Buzz when he is in "Spanish mode" is spot on.


My daughter had already seen the movie in Spain, where everything is dubbed. I asked her how Pixar handled the switch to Spanish mode if all the characters were already dubbed into Spanish? She said they made his sound like a typical Andalusian.

I found this great little video (by YouTuber "vagoperesozo" from Argentina) that shows all three versions of this scene. In the U.S. English version, Buzz is supposed to be acting like a Spaniard (flamenco style poses, etc,) and he is voiced as speaking in a perfectly Castillian Spanish, with the same intonation as as all the dubbers of Spanish movies in Spain ("rrrounnnd tooooones" as they say in "Singing in the Rain"). In the Latin American version, in which all the characters speak Latin American accented Spanish, Buzz switches to an exaggeratedly caricatured and inconsistent "Spanish" accent (what Spaniards sound like to Latin Americans), sort of like Dick Van Dyke trying to do a Cockney accent in Mary Poppins. Finally, in the dubbed version as shown in Spain, the one my daughter saw, all the characters speak in a Castillian Spanish accent and when Buzz is reset, he is voiced by a REAL Andalusian,

As one commenter quotes him: "Bitacora Espasiá... Me dehpertao del hiperzueño."

Family photo

Rubén, Alba, Daniel (yayo), Primi (yaya), Rosemary, Carmen.
My daughter with her father's parents, her aunt and her cousins in Teruel.

Veg-head

This picture is from Featherstone Farms web page) and shows the contents of our latest weekly delivery! Since I've returned from London, I have been eating almost exclusively food from my Featherstone Farm CSA box, with just a few supplements of carbs and proteins. I steamed last week's green beans and have just been eating them cold. The cat likes to eat them, too, in fact he begs for them!

I turned half a cabbage into garlicky coleslaw, using the fresh garlic and parsley from the farm: chopped them up and added a sea salt and pepper, enough mayo to very lightly coat the cabbage and some cider vinegar. I also steamed half a cabbage with some carrots and potatoes, and have been adding these to other dishes I make, such as the baby back ribs in Caribbean-style BBQ sauce (spicy and citrusy) I made in the slow cooker. The sauce is from a local company, purchased at the Midtown Global Market, but one could easily prepare its equivalent with some OJ, lime juice, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, a little brown sugar, a little bit of this and that.
I've been enjoying the cucumbers either raw, or grated and mixed with pressed garlic, yoghurt, and a little dill (Greek tzatziki), or mixed with yoghurt, cumin, and mint (raita). Either of these goes well with the steamed veggies.
The six ears of corn got parboiled and are just as delicious cold as hot. I have collected the summer squash and onions, eggplant and basil, and will cook them up with the last of the tomatoes I froze last year for ratatouille. Ordinarily, one adds bell peppers to this, but I don't have any yet, just two banana peppers. I may throw them in, instead.

This leaves me with a red cabbage, another big bag of green beans, more potatoes and carrots, a few leftover cukes, and some beets. . . I may roast the root vegetables, although it feels too hot to roast anything, and prepare the cukes with a Japanese style dressing (rice wine vinegar, toasted sesame seeds)
Bring on the cavalcade of vegetables, I'm ready! This lovely "vegetable quilt', also from the FF site, gives me so much joy.

"The Perennial Plate" online series about local food

I discovered this great online video series about eating local foods, called The Perennial Plate, of videos via Lee Zukor at the blog Simple, Good and Tasty. This episode gives some lovely ideas for how to use that stuff in your CSA box! I'm going to try the pickling chard stems, the fennel slaw, and making the pesto with carrot tops (I did not know they were edible!!!).