Riding a bison

Gezelligheid

2010-12-07T23:06:00.018-05:00

Acts of creation combine the messy with the marvelous. It is too easy, and perhaps too common, to step back and observe a final product and say: Ah! Creativity. Creation. The Created. And I am a witness!

The Created that we perceive is actually the final moment in a process that involved conception, design, structuring, rehearsal, building, destroying, bleeding, and a multitude of other elements and efforts that often stay hidden behind their final façade. Some of the greatest works--and the greatest workers--overcome this. The evidence of their creative processes reveals itself. This is why people visit museums to see paintings and sculptures instead of simply looking them up on the internet--we love to see brushstrokes and chisel marks. It's why we attend readings by authors instead of merely staying at home with our books--we want to hear the text read in the author's voice and ask her questions about how it was written. It's why we attend concerts instead of just jacking in to our iPods.

The best concerts I've attended have made me feel as though I was witnessing Creation: Nickel Creek, The Swell Season, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, the Dave Brubeck Quartet. And last night, Andrew Bird.

Bird's performance was stunning and recalled to my mind these other concerts where I felt privileged to be a witness to something new and original and impossible to recreate. But there was something about it that made it seem different from other creative performances I've been to. I'm having a hard time explaining it--even to myself--but I think I've come up with a decent metaphor.

Watching and listening to The Swell Season was like arriving in time for the sunset on the Sixth Day. The majority of the work has been done. The lights in the firmament are in place, the waters and the dry land are divided, vegetation is growing and the animals are up and about. There's man, but he's alone. Aha--now he's not! Off they go into the garden!

So much of what we saw (and were allowed to participate in, bless Glen Hansard), was a unique act of creativity unrolling before us. But The Swell Season had a setlist and they'd rehearsed it in order. The lights were timed to cues that had been set weeks before and run through hours before the performance. The roadies knew when to bring out what instruments. The band knew when to take its breaks and let Glen and Marketa go on without them. The trial and error and most of the creative processes were past.

Being in attendance at Andrew Bird's Gezelligheid concert last night was like arriving midway through the Fourth Day as the seeds of future vegetation are being scattered before the wind. Some may take root immediately while others drift along to find more suitable soils. They're beginning to spring up to see what they'll be, to adapt for specialized pollination, to produce new perfumes and colors and shapes that a moment ago didn't exist.

Gezelligheid is a Dutch word, roughly translated as "coziness." Bird's work in his Gezelligheid concerts is to bring about an informal, conversational performance where he can relax and be a little more intimate (DC's Sixth & I Historic Synagogue was the perfect setting for this). After his opening number he decided to play a familiar song he loved because it helped him to relax. He played a lot of new songs being prepared for his next album. He performed an unfinished number that he said he'd probably never record. He shared a song with us that was written and recorded by The Handsome Family because it had inspired him long ago to reach for something higher in his lyric-writing ("'Delirious with pain, his bedroom walls began to glow and he felt himself soaring up through falling snow. And the sky was a woman's arms.' I can be better. I know I can be better"). Most of this was impromptu and decided as he went, sharing with us what he was thinking about at the moment and what his favorite tunes were right now. He wasn't afraid to improvise, even with the setlist.

And he wasn't afraid to make mistakes or to start over when he wanted to try something different or wanted it to sound better. He laughed at himself when he created a 28-second loop on his on-stage mixing board when the time limit is 26 seconds. He plucked and then replucked and then re-replucked intros and bass lines so that everything would be the best creative product possible. And he let us watch and listen! It was amazing to see and hear a master as he went through the processes of making something astoundingly beautiful and new. It was true Creation, the messy making it even more marvelous than it would have been otherwise.

Instead of using the house sound system, Bird set up about 20
speakers of various sizes and used Victrola horns as amplifiers.

These twin Victrola horns oscillated when Bird hit a pedal, creating a
repeating miniature Doppler effect on the background of certain songs.

This ample amplifier was just in front of where I was sitting. Every
time I looked at it the words "dinosaur Victrola" from Creedence
Clearwater Revival's "Lookin' Out My Back Door"popped into my head.

Grah

2010-12-03T13:37:00.003-05:00

I was all set to have a blog post every day this week. I had a great topic that I was going to go on about after a small project to be completed during my morning walking commute yesterday. But the small project turned into a much bigger project that I haven't been able to finish yet, and so that planned post had to be delayed. Stymied, my work day ended and the evening ran away with me. Ah well. Here is a post for today, even if a small one, and an apologetic one at that (and not even an epic apology, like Socrates').

I hope to make some headway on this project over the weekend so that I may blog about it next week.

Hell damn World Series

2010-12-01T10:06:00.010-05:00

fruitatthebottom.blogspot.com is probably written by a female somewhere between 36-50 years old. The writing style is personal and happy most of the time.

Thank you, urlai.com, for determining that my writing indicates that I'm a middle-aged woman. Apparently this conclusion came from analyzing the text of 24 of my previous posts, including (but not limited to):

1. Roll my blues 11/30/2010
2. Don't call him Shirley 11/29/2010
3. A tale of two turkeys 11/28/2010
4. Two things 11/17/2010
5. Mosaic project--YOU decide! 10/3/2010
6. The bluest skies you've ever seen 1/29/2010
7. Chewing exotic 1/8/2010
8. Bison riding...? 9/2/2009
9. Kitchen fail 9/1/2009
10. Genius 8/5/2009
11. Grilled 6/17/2009
12. Old and cheap 4/30/2009
13. Rush Write 3.23 (on 4.08) 4/8/2009
14. Music of the spheres 3/30/2009
15. Snow... snow... snow... snow... SNOW! 1/26/2009
16. Dreams: Soccer and the LOC 1/15/2009
17. Dreams: Nazis and Lamb 1/12/2009
18. Sweet, sweet freedom 12/11/2008
19. Peace on earth 12/11/2008
20. Feeling scholarly 12/8/2008

So what drove this blog analytics site to determine that my writing is 68% female? I can see that I've got a lot of posts in there about cooking... but two of them deal with outdoor grilling. There's also a post that's based around a speech given by Elizabeth Gilbert. Too bad she's more known for the indulgent feminine anthem Eat, Pray, Love than she is for her chronicle of frontier manliness The Last American Man. There's a post that references a musical, too. Ooo, and "Old and cheap" talks about my inability to resist chocolate. Hmmm. On the other hand, I've got posts in which I discuss:

Bison riding (surely a manly American frontier activity)
Space exploration
A dream involving a raucous game of soccer in the Library of Congress
A dream in which I fought Nazi stormtroopers and succumbed to an experiment in self-cannibalism

I don't know, urlai.com. I'd say it's more 50-50.

What would make my writing more masculine? What is urlai.com looking for in a man's writing? More curse words? Sports? Violence? Scratching and burping? I'm seriously not sure.

At the very least, perhaps I can take comfort in the idea that I've overcome gender stereotypes and risen to a higher plateau in my writing. Behold, I am the Transcendental Male Blogger.

Roll my blues

2010-11-30T18:49:00.010-05:00

This post goes out to Darrell, who broadly suggested I blog about food. Though broad, it's a pretty good suggestion, and it's one I plan to continually follow up on. (In answer to your question, Darrell, no. I have not read In Defense of Food, though I have read The Omnivore's Dilemma.)

Since I moved to the DC area, I've made breadmaking a focus in my home culinary practice, trying to recreate the warm taste of home that I remember from my formative years. It took a little over a year of baking before I began to feel like I was doing it well, and I think I'm continuing to improve.

One of the recipes that has come to be a standby in my repertoire is for homemade rolls, and it's one that consistently gets rave reviews from those who eat them. The recipe comes from Sue Marten, a woman that was a good friend of my mom's and that was pretty influential in my childhood (as Primary president as well as a Cub Scout den leader). It's actually pretty simple and relatively easy to follow:

1 1/2 cups warm water
1/3 cup of honey
1 tablespoon of yeast
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 cup of melted butter (or other oil)
1 teaspoon of salt (or 1 tablespoon if using all whole-wheat flour)
4 1/2 cups of white flour or whole-wheat flour or some combination of the two

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and lightly grease an aluminum baking sheet.

Stir the honey into the warm water until it's mostly dissolved, then sprinkle the yeast on top. When the yeast begins to activate and grow, stir in the eggs and melted butter. Then add in the salt and stir in the flour, one cup at a time. Stir only until the last of the flour is combined into the dough, then sprinkle with a thin layer of flour and lay a cloth over the top. Let dough rise until doubled in bulk. Punch it down and form the dough into rolls, laying them out onto the baking sheet. Sprinkle very lightly with flour, cover with the cloth, and let rise again. Bake for 10-20 minutes, until the tops of the rolls are lightly browned. Cool a bit and serve.

One Thanksgiving I accidentally made the rolls too big and they ended up having a diameter close to that of my palm. I thought it was kind of funny to have such huge rolls until I realized that the leftovers were the perfect size for making turkey sandwiches. Now I make them too big every year so I can slice the extras in half and stack turkey and lettuce between them for the next few days after. I even made another batch of huge rolls on Sunday so I could have more sandwich material.

Incidentally, this year my brother Scott told me that he thought this batch of rolls was the best I've ever made. We discussed what made them good and I think I've determined that the difference came from using a new type of honey--a jar of apple and peach blossom variety that I picked up at the Arlington Farmers' Market. It might be worth a try to experiment with other types of honey to see if it makes a difference in the outcome of the rolls.

Roll my blues away...

Don't call him Shirley

2010-11-29T15:05:00.013-05:00

Many of you may already be aware that Leslie Nielsen died yesterday. Having had some impact on my enculturation as a kid and the development of my sense of humor, I thought it appropriate to write a few paragraphs on the man and his career.

Nielsen did some great work in the field of comedic film, but like any actor he also performed in some really lousy movies. This may have been unavoidable in the last couple of decades, having fallen in as a regular in the Zucker Brothers' films (once a great parody team, now factory engineers of vapid no-brain spoofs). What I'd like to do here in this post is talk about three great works that Leslie Nielsen has left us to admire, lest anyone be tempted to remember him for his role in Superhero Movie. Shudder.

Airplane! (1980) I probably don't need to trump this or worry that it will be forgotten, but I had to mention it first because it is by far my favorite work that Nielsen was involved in. It was also his first major comedic role, setting the stage for the career he'd be known for. My mom recorded this off of television when I was 9 or 10 and my developing sense of humor encountered it at just the right time. I loved the movie as a whole, but to me Nielsen stole the show with his deadpan performance as Dr. Rumack. "Captain, how soon can you land?" "I can't tell." "You can tell me--I'm a doctor."

Police Squad! (1982) Few today remember this short-lived television show with much laud (it got canceled after six episodes), but it was a hilarious work of comedic genius. All the one-liner rapidity and comedic timing of Airplane!, wrapped up in a 30-minute television show. It is renowned in some circles as one of the few shows on TV never to have jumped the shark. One of my favorite gags on the show was the "freeze frame" at the end over which they ran the credits. Rather than broadcasting a still, the actors all just froze in place, sometimes in the middle of pouring liquid (which proceeded to overfill the cup and run everywhere), sometimes in the middle of booking a criminal (who looked around confusedly for a moment before slowly slipping away from the frozen cops and running off).

Police Squad! also laid the foundation for the much better known film The Naked Gun. Not many people pay attention to that movie's subtitle: From the Files of Police Squad! Personally, I think the series was funnier overall than the movie, not to mention a bit cleaner. But then you don't get to watch O.J. Simpson... Oh wait. Maybe that's a good thing.

Forbidden Planet (1956) This was Nielsen's premiere role in film--and a lead role at that! Don't watch this movie expecting the deadpan, wise-cracking Leslie Nielsen you've come to know. He's completely straight-arrow and no-nonsense in this film, the captain of a starship sent from earth to a distant planet to investigate the disappearance of an entire colony. He plays opposite the formidable Walter Pigeon, working off a script that was inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest. Forbidden Planet was one of those early sci-fi films that set the standard for all other sci-fi films to follow. It's also notable as the premiere performance for Robby the Robot, an iconic cinematic automaton who continued to appear in science fiction spots for the next five decades. In the movie's titles, Robby is credited as "himself." And Nielsen got to star alongside him.

A tale of two turkeys

2010-11-28T19:40:00.008-05:00

Thank you all for your suggestions for future blog posts. What I did not tell you when I made the request is that I intend to write up a post based on each and every one of the suggestions I received (JBod's second suggestion is likely eclipsing his first one, for the record). So my goal is to get my fingers flying and write a post every day this week. Starting today, with a suggestion from ANJ to blog about the Great Turkey Experiment my brother and I pulled off for Thanksgiving this year.

Two and a half weeks before 25 November, my brother Scott sent me an email titled "Interesting Method to Cook Thanksgiving Turkey." The email contained a link to a Huffington Post article with detailed instructions on brining, rubbing, perching, smoking, and grilling a turkey in spite of many traditional methods that produce dry or otherwise undesirable meat.

Everything about the method looked good to me, but I kept going back to the explicit instructions NOT to stuff the bird. Which makes sense for this recipe. But the unfamiliar reader here must understand that for a Gillins, a Thanksgiving turkey is really just a vessel for creating moist, flavorful stuffing.

I pointed this out to Scott, and he saw my point. We then agreed that the only way to proceed was to cook two birds--one traditional, the other new.

I picked up two 10-pound, free-range turkeys from Whole Foods (no performance-enhancing moisture injections in those birds) on Tuesday, and on Wednesday I made two separate batches of brine (one the recipe from Alton Brown we've been using for the last three years, the other the one from the Huffington Post article). I set each turkey to rest overnight in separate containers, as depicted below:*

Thanksgiving morning Scott and I set to work preparing each bird according to its prescribed method. I left partway through the process to donate blood (the American Red Cross really, really wanted it). When I got back, one turkey was stuffed and in the oven, the other perched over a gravy pan, hot coals, and smoking wood chips outside in my grill.

The grill-smoked turkey required a little more effort than the oven-roasted one. Scott had to add fresh, hot coals three times during the cooking process and all-in-all it took a little longer to cook. But the results were well worth the work.

We pulled the stuffing out of the oven bird (delicious as stuffing from inside the cavity always is), then set to work carving each turkey up. I cut an entire half-breast off the smoked turkey and sliced up three slivers for me, Scott, and Scott's wife Marilee to try.

Many of you who know me well understand that I have an affinity for hyperbole. I use it from time to time as I see fit. However, I mean no exaggeration when I tell you that that smoked breast meat was THE BEST TURKEY EVER. Under the browned, crispy skin was a rosy, smoke-infused meat that retained more juices than I'd ever seen in a roasted turkey. The smell was tempting, the taste irresistible.

I carved the rest of that half-breast and the majority of a thigh, then set in on carving the oven bird. It seemed to have no flavor. I ended up slicing up one half-breast, but I didn't bother with the rest, knowing where my attention would be during the dinner.

After our dinner was over and Scott and I laid on our backs for a while, we went back into the kitchen to divide the two carcasses between us. With a few hours of objectivity now between me and my first try of the two meats, I took a taste of the oven-roasted bird. It actually tasted quite good. It was reasonably moist, had a nice flavor, and it was pretty tender. Then I took one more small bite of the smoked bird--it was simply superior. I conducted my first taste test in an order that was unfair to the oven-roasted bird. If I'd given it the first shot, I would have appreciated it for what it was. Putting it second in the line-up was like having the Beatles open for your cousin's boyfriend's Oasis tribute band.

The future of Thanksgiving is undecided. Now we know how great a turkey can be, but stuffing is still the king of dishes at our table. The next 12 months will be filled with careful deliberation--and possibly some heated debate--as we decide how the next Thanksgiving turkey will be prepared.

*I intended to take pictures of the entire process and the end results for comparison, but I only got these two preliminary brining shots. Ah well.

Two things

2010-11-17T22:35:00.005-05:00

Thing 1:

I never got back to you, dear readers, about the results of my mosaics project vote-off. So technically the Beatles won out, what with a couple of Facebook votes and a text message that put the U.S. cover of A Hard Day's Night over the line.

However, when I showed up to class with a large printout of the image, my teacher immediately nixed the idea, saying it would be too difficult for a beginner such as myself.

So you would think I would default to the roots... but no. I went a totally different direction. Well, not TOTALLY different.

Behold: The Apple Records logo! A-side and B-side! Yeah, it's still The Beatles, but a bit more abstractly. I'm doing both images side-by-side--sort of a diptych, but without the hinge.

The project is coming along nicely and should be done in a few weeks. I'll be sure to post pictures when I'm done so you can all see the results.

Thing 2:

I have fallen out of the habit of writing. And I'm not just talking about the gross understatement that that would be about this blog. I mean that since I graduated in May, I have done almost no writing at all. Maybe chalk it up to wanting a brief break after all the paper writing that made up my graduate career? Whatever the cause, it is time for the dearth to end and for me to start composing again. I've been pondering ways to get back into it, and it seems to me that blogging would be a healthy exercise.

So.

In order to jump-start this renaissance, I am proposing to allow you--my few, faithful readers who have decided to revisit this page--to choose a series of topics for me. The idea is that your topics will stretch me and help me to think outside myself again--to think more like a writer, that is. There is no limit to what you may suggest as a topic, or even as a genre. Fiction? Sure! Biography? Definitely. Poetry? I'm willing to give it a shot. Literary criticism? Try me.

Please place your suggestions for topics and/or genres in the comments below and I'll start working on them as soon as time permits. You know, if I happen to have some downtime at work or some oddity like that.

Mosaic project--YOU decide!

2010-10-03T20:17:00.008-04:00

Trusted friends and unknown readers:

Over the course of the next eight weeks I will be attending a weekly art class on the creation of mosaics. The class is offered by the Art League of Alexandria through the Torpedo Factory. I've always loved mosaics and I have a lot of time on my hands since I finished school. So I figured, "What the hey? I'll take a mosaics class."

My assignment to complete before this Wednesday (6 October) is to bring in a picture of what I want to make my overall project for this class. It can be literally anything. I'm not a skilled artist by any means, of course, so it shouldn't be anything too complicated. But really, I can make whatever I want.

I've narrowed it down to two choices, quite different from one another. I like both ideas, so I thought I'd put it to you, my dear readers, for a vote. Democracy!

Idea 1: I love trees, and I think that tree roots are quite interesting. They're not the subject of art quite as often as their trees' lofty limbs, so I thought it might be cool to do a mosaic study of at least a section of a tree root system. Could be quite lovely. I did a quick Google image search for tree roots, and here's something that at least somewhat represents what I'm thinking:

It's not quite it--I would definitely set the roots in an earthy background (there'd be a lot of brown in this mosaic), and I think I'd make it clear that we're looking at roots by making a basic horizon with a strip of blue sky above the ground.

Idea 2: As most of you know, I love The Beatles. The US release of the cover of their album A Hard Day's Night differed from the UK release in that it took just four of the many images of the band members' faces and then cut them in half, showing the moppy tops of four young lads' heads. Cutting out the album title and focusing in on those iconic coiffures makes for a pretty cool image, and one that would do well in mosaic form, in my opinion:

So what do you think? Idea 1 or Idea 2? Roots or Beatles? Vote in the comments!

The bluest skies you've ever seen

2010-01-29T19:33:00.006-05:00

My friends: I, like most of you, am a fan of fine photography. As such a supporter of the arts, I urge you all to check out Rachel Thurston Photography.

Not only is her photography great--she also knows that Seattle is awesome. In conclusion, take a look. You'll enjoy.

Chewing exotic

2010-01-09T00:08:00.007-05:00

I recently acquired this pack of Eclipse Breeze: Exotic Berry gum. I got it for quite a steal: the friend I went to see Avatar with offered me the rest of her pack for just one piece of my Original Flavor Trident that had been sitting in my pocket for several hours. For those of you who are counting, that's six pieces of foil-and-plastic-wrapped gum (only ONE of which had already been chewed) for one piece of paper-wrapped gum. That had been hanging out in my pocket. Her reason for this shrewd deal? It was the worst gum ever. I told her I'd take the remainder of the pack and decide for myself.

The peculiar thing about this Breeze line of Eclipse gum (which also includes Exotic Mint) is that it uses cardamom as an active ingredient and a central flavor. Cardamom is a seed-based herb that generally plays a major role in Indian and other Eastern foods. You can buy it ground on the spice aisle of your grocery store and it often makes a nice compliment to both sweet and savory dishes (I have a recipe for some whole-grain pancakes that calls for cardamom--it plays well with the hint of cinnamon and the nutty whole-wheat and buckwheat flavors). Cardamom seeds are actually sometimes chewed like gum, and are known to freshen breath. The idea to include cardamom in gum is not bad in and of itself.

Where Wrigley went wrong in this particular venture was its attempt to wed the unique taste of cardamom with a totally incompatible berry flavor. Cardamom in my pancakes, or in sweet Scandinavian breads or savory Indian dishes, is carefully balanced against other complimentary flavors. Not so in Eclipse Breeze Exotic Berry. It's like someone just decided to take some berry gum and add in some cardamom to "neutralize the toughest breath odors," then threw the word "exotic" into the name of the gum by way of explanation or apology. Noting that the berry is exotic does not excuse it from sucking.

And yeah, it's probably the worst gum ever.

Bison riding...?

2009-09-02T13:14:00.006-04:00

I just wanted to mention--I think it is strange how many hits I get on this page based off of people clicking on Google results for searches on "bison riding." Do people actually ride bison for sport and recreation?

The latest such hit occurred early this morning at 4:19 am. The user doing the search was in Muttenz, Switzerland. Perhaps the Swiss view bison riding as a typical American hobby?

Kitchen fail

2009-09-01T11:57:00.009-04:00

Alton Brown has never lied to me before. So when I watched the episode of Good Eats about milk, and he told me that homemade cottage cheese is way better than the store-bought stuff, I believed him.

It wasn't much of a stretch of the imagination to believe it for me, actually. See, I don't really like cottage cheese. I like the idea of it--low-fat, high-protein, slightly salty cheese product. I like cheese, I like salt, and protein helps me to live. It should all add up, right? But the actual placing of spoonfuls of cottage cheese in my mouth never really lives up to the ideal.

So when Alton Brown promised a better product that I could make in the comfort of my own kitchen, I decided to jump in. I bought a gallon of skim milk and a small bottle of white vinegar. I enhanced my kitchen tool box with a candy/fry thermometer.

I poured the entire gallon in a large saucepan, clipped the thermometer to the side of the pan, and slowly raised the temperature of the milk over medium heat until it reached 120 degrees Fahrenheit. I turned off the flame and poured in three-fourths of a cup of vinegar, gave the concoction a stir, and let it sit for 30 minutes. I lined a colander with a flour sack tea towel and strained the whey-vinegar-water solution off of the mass of casein protein. I gathered up the edges of the towel and rinsed the clump of protein under cool running water for three to five minutes, let it drain a bit in the colander, and put it in a bowl.

I sprinkled it with a little kosher salt and poured half a cup of whole milk over it.*

I put a spoonful in my mouth.

I chewed the salty paste.

Yes, paste. That's about what it tasted like. Maybe this is why the stuff from the store is so high in sodium--add enough salt to milk protein paste and it's palatable?

The thing that bugs me the most is that I don't know if I did something wrong, if something out of my control went wrong, or if I just really don't like cottage cheese.

In the end, I still trust Alton. Our joint successes far outshine the tasteless failure that sits leftover in a Gladware container in my refrigerator.

*Alton said to use half-and-half, but come on--I was trying to be healthy here.

Genius

2009-08-05T15:55:00.004-04:00

I just watched this TED.com video.* Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the recent popular book Eat, Pray, Love, explains a new way to look at creativity and the creative process. I've embedded the video below, but for those of you who don't have 19 minutes' worth of free time or patience right now, I'll sum it up: Creative types carry the burden of being expected (and expecting themselves) to be creative all the time. Creativity can seem like cutting parts of yourself out, a bit at a time, and being constantly burdened with producing at the cost of personal sacrifice. A better way to understand creative genius, according to Ms. Gilbert, is to appreciate that it comes from an outside source. The Romans referred to creative muses as Genius. These ethereal fairies may not really exist, but maybe another creative force does, and maybe it illuminates humans from time to time, giving us glimpses of the Divine. Reshaping our thinking this way takes the burden off of the writer, the musician, the artist, and gives back some credit where credit is due. This is, I think, a brilliant way to perceive the creative process.

Interestingly, the main point that I caught hold of while Ms. Gilbert was explaining this was not the idea that I need to recognize outer inspiration in my own creative processes, but rather that I need to put more emphasis on the efforts required of me to make that inspiration become something worthwhile. At one point in her speech, after describing what inspiration can be like, she counterbalances it with this statement:

I'm a mule, and the way that I have to work is that I have to get up at the same time every day, and sweat and labor and barrel through it really awkwardly.

This sentence hit me hard, and I realized that at times I neglect the fact that I have to work hard for what's important to me.

This may sound like I'm being harsh on myself. Or it may sound like I'm an idiot for not realizing that I have to work hard for important things. Please bear with me.

First off--I'm not an idiot. I've been familiar with the Law of the Harvest for quite some time, but I think that I sometimes expect to be able to set the terms of what needs to be sown. In high school I started to exercise in earnest. I remember coming to a decision that it was important for me to be in shape. But I would lift weights and run and do sit-ups and push-ups for maybe two weeks, then go stand in front of the mirror, bare from the waste up, and be totally unimpressed with myself. Where was the definition? Why was I still so soft? I had worked hard--really hard--for two whole weeks, with no visible results. It took several times of starting and stopping before I finally realized what was required of me and got into a long-term exercise routine that yielded a leaner body and more defined muscles.**

Second--I don't think I'm being too harsh. I do recognize that in spite of my occasional shortsightedness there are trends of knowing what's required of me and giving my all to get it done. I knew what it would take to become an Eagle Scout. I prepared for and carried out a hard-working two-year mission, learning Spanish throughout. I completed my B.A. and I'm nearly done with my M.A. Perhaps the key difference is that the things I know I need to put X amount of work into have some semblance of defined parameters. I knew from age 12 what I needed to do to achieve the rank of Eagle--it was outlined in my Scout Handbook. I know how long two years is, how long four years is, what courses I needed to take during those four years, et cetera. But nobody was able to tell me how many weeks of hard exercise it would take to get a line of definition onto my abs, and nobody has ever set out how many drafts I need to rewrite in order to produce a publishable account of my Great Uncle Ronald's sordid life.

The brilliant thing about Ms. Gilbert's speech and what it taught me is that it's nothing really new or novel. As I said, I know the Law of the Harvest. And it's not like every time I write something I just sit down and expect the light of creativity to illuminate my keyboard and stream art onto the screen. One of my favorite posts I've written for this blog is my reflections on seeing Dave Brubeck perform in New York. That post is the result of a writing process that involved some research, the transcription of portions of Ken Burns' documentary, and a few revisions and minor rewrites before I felt satisfied with my work, satisfied that it reflected what I felt and thought when I heard and saw Mr. Brubeck perform.

There's a point to all of this. Maybe I'm learning now that if I want to be satisfied with my paper on the anti-sell-out culture of ska, I need to become more of a mule. The creative spark was there--something inspired me to research a paper asking whether or not ska bands and fans really care about selling out or not. I must admit that it's a pretty cool idea and the foundation for a potentially great paper. But so far I haven't put the work into it that has been required. My biographical piece on my Great Uncle Ronald is pretty good, but I need to sweat and labor and barrel through it awkwardly to make it great and get it published. I eventually learned what it would take to get my body into shape. Maybe now I'm learning what it takes to really write well, and not wait for some brilliant idea to strike me and expect to be able to do it justice with a first draft.

*If you're not familiar with TED, it's worth taking a look at the site. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a non-profit organization that hosts an annual conference in the name of "ideas worth spreading." The conference consists of several short speeches given by leading writers, business people, scientists, et cetera, all of whom have something, supposedly, worthwhile to share. Some of the talks are definitely better than others. Like I said: worth perusing the site.

**Then I fell through a roof and injured my lower back, ruining that for the rest of the summer. But that's another story...

Grilled

2009-06-18T00:32:00.004-04:00

So I really enjoyed my dinner tonight. I just had to share. If I'd had some foresight, I would have taken a picture before I supped, but I was hungry. And it was delicious.

I purchased some sockeye salmon* at Whole Foods on Monday and I decided to grill it--it had been a while since I'd stoked the grill fires and it sounded good. I rubbed some foil (shiny side out) with a tiny bit of olive oil and put the fillet on it. Then I rubbed about a tablespoon more of olive oil over the meat, sprinkled it with a pinch of kosher salt, and applied some dried dill (I would love to try this with a couple of sprigs of fresh dill). I topped the fillet with some thin lemon slices, covering the whole surface area. Then I folded up the sides of the foil and nearly wrapped it, leaving a sort of vent open at the top. I didn't want to seal it completely--got to let some of that smoke in to flavor it.

I got that started on the barbecue, the coals piled to one side and the salmon on the other so as to keep direct heat from cooking the bottom too fast. While that sat for about 10-15 minutes in the covered grill, I cut the woody ends off of half a bunch of asparagus and put it in a plastic bag with some olive oil, a splash of champagne vinegar, and some salt and pepper. I tossed the whole thing and brought it down to the grill. The salmon was nearly done, so I closed up the foil tent around it and put it far from the coals, letting it cook the rest of the way in its own heat. I arranged the asparagus stalks directly over the coals and let them cook for a couple of minutes, then rotated them all and let them cook another minute or so.

The whole thing was really delicious and hit the spot. The salmon was not overdone and no one of the seasonings overpowered the others. I'll admit that the asparagus could have used a a little less salt and just a little less vinegar, but overall the seasoning was a winning combination, and it complemented the salmon well.

This evening I am content.

*Here's a little tidbit that I've picked up: beware of fish labeled as "Atlantic salmon." The Atlantic salmon has been fished to near extinction. The breed still exists, but almost exclusively as farmed fish. Due to this, Atlantic salmon will have been raised in crowded, netted-in coastal environments, with diets heavy in antibiotics and waters rich in fish poo. Opting for sockeye or "wild Alaskan" or some other variety will help lower the overall crud content of your fillet. Mercury is still a factor with wild fish, though.

Old and cheap

2009-04-30T12:06:00.002-04:00

No, this post isn't about your mom (zing!). It's about the chocolate I just ate.

I'm sitting up at my client site waiting for a relatively simple task to be performed that will enable me to finish up my work here in about ten minutes and go back to where I'm supposed to work (and where I have personal email access, incidentally). I ate my lunch, I've been catching up on blog reading... still no movement on the simple task I'm awaiting. I've walked up and down the hallway a couple of times and I keep passing this bowl of Easter candy. Chocolate is one of my few weaknesses, but it's that terribly cheap brand that comes in large coin shapes (for Easter and Halloween) as well as eggs (Easter only). I kept telling myself that cheap chocolate simply isn't worth it, and that held me at bay for the first five hours today.

But I just walked by the bowl again and I couldn't resist the siren song of chocolate any more. I took an egg. I unwrapped it. I ate it. I felt sick. Not only is it cheap chocolate--it's old chocolate. Probably from last Easter. Urgl.

My resolve is renewed.

Rush Write 3.23 (on 4.08)

2009-04-08T14:39:00.001-04:00

In response to this post:

1. Artists gratify men’s urge for immortality by demonstrating that it is possible. An artist may not necessarily capture my visage in oils, or my deeds in verse, etc. (let alone become famous enough to make his rendering of me known to the world). However. The fact that some Italian lady who once sat for Da Vinci can capture the heart of the world, inspire songs, and cause all to bemusedly wonder about her smirk, that tells me that some of us are immortal. That some of us do live forever. And if it’s possible for some Italian lady, then why not me? Why not all of us?

2. “Joyce” is telling us that Homer’s art (specifically the Iliad and the Odyssey) , and the myriad works of art that it inspired did more to preserve the memory of Troy and the war that brought Greece to it than any formal history ever did. That without Homer’s works, Troy would be insignificant and unremembered. I must agree. What other evidence do we have, aside from ruins that were only discovered and identified centuries after the fact and recognized because we knew what Homer told us?

3. I would say that according to “Joyce,” Homer’s telling of the Trojan War is even more valuable/valid because of its inaccuracies. And here I mostly agree with him. The inaccuracies are, arguably, the artistic license of Homer. The myths that are mixed with the history are the things that enrich us, in “Joyce’s” view. The embellishments of Ulysses’ character are what make us relate to him and treasure his tale. Accuracy may affect a work of art’s value as a history, but since when has historical worth been the ultimate standard of value?

Music of the spheres

2009-03-30T16:56:00.018-04:00

I remember learning about the two Voyager space craft when I was in junior high. Of course by that point they had been hurtling through the cosmos for nigh onto 17 years, but it was news to me. The best part of the earth press kit we put together in case some extraterrestrial intelligent life happened across our little craft was a golden record. The record contains greetings in 55 languages, various naturally occurring sounds from earth, several music tracks, and the recorded brain waves of Ann Druyan*, the last wife of Carl Sagan.

This is all really fascinating, but what caught my attention the most when I recently rediscovered all of this was the list of musical tracks that the world decided to put on the record to represent our people and cultures to the universe. Twenty-three different nations collaborated to choose the 90 minutes of music. Most countries selected various folk songs and classical pieces (Bach was a very popular choice--represented three times (Beethoven is on there twice--every other composer only once)). The United States also chose a classical piece for one of its selections--we collaborated with the U.S.S.R. and France to get "Sacrificial Dance" from Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" on the album. But the rest of our selections were more... unique:

"Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry
"Melancholy Blues" by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven
"Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" by Blind Willie Johnson
"Night Chant," a traditional Navajo chant

I love that we chose jazz, blues, and rock & roll to send out into space, along with a representation of America's aboriginal cultures. I think it's also noteworthy that all of the artists featured from our selections are minorities--blacks and Native Americans.

We're awesome.

As I was learning all of this, I came across this quotation from writer Darren Wershler-Henry:

Design a faster than light spacecraft and then overtake the Voyager II probe for the sole purpose of replacing the gold LP of the second Brandenburg concerto with a copy of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (from his poem The Tapeworm Foundry: andor the dangerous prevalence of imagination).

Also awesome. I mean, this is probably meant to be more clever or in jest, but it's an interesting idea, right? Like maybe we did earth a disservice by putting so much Bach on there instead of diversifying a bit. Maybe David Bowie's alter-ego is truly stellar, while you kind of have to be from here to get the Brandenburg concerto.

I'm curious to know what music other people would have picked to go on the golden record. Here's the track listing. Thoughts?

*Ann Druyan on recording her brainwaves:

Earlier I had asked Carl if those putative extraterrestrials of a billion years from now could conceivably interpret the brain waves of a meditator. Who knows? A billion years is a long, long time, was his reply. On the chance that it might be possible why don't we give it a try?

Two days after our life-changing phone call, I entered a laboratory at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and was hooked up to a computer that turned all the data from my brain and heart into sound. I had a one-hour mental itinerary of the information I wished to convey. I began by thinking about the history of Earth and the life it sustains. To the best of my abilities I tried to think something of the history of ideas and human social organization. I thought about the predicament that our civilization finds itself in and about the violence and poverty that make this planet a hell for so many of its inhabitants. Toward the end I permitted myself a personal statement of what it was like to fall in love.

Sellout

2009-02-08T03:09:00.001-05:00

Thy name is Cabeza.

Posted from my iPhone

Snow... snow... snow... snow... SNOW!

2009-01-26T13:06:00.002-05:00

So I went out my front door this morning and saw flakes drifting down. Without thinking I said, "Aw, shoot--snow!"

Immediately I realized that 10-year-old Cabeza, if he were here, would be sorely disappointed in what a lame adult I had become. Therefore, I repent of my dread of traffic and ice and embrace the possibility of building a snow man (or maybe a snow toilet (ah, Soutridge)). Let it snow!

Dreams: Soccer and the LOC

2009-01-16T01:55:00.002-05:00

I figure I should get this one written down and published before I forget any more of it. A night or two after the Nazi invasion dream where I tasted of young ovine, I dreamed I was leading a group of fellows from the elders quorum in my ward to a "manrichment" activity. We were in DC, and I had a soccer ball. We walked past the Supreme Court and took a turn at the entrance to the Library of Congress. Once inside, we spread out and I gave the ball a good kick. It careened off of walls and bounced through the stacks, landing near another guy from my quorum and barely having time to rest before he sent it flying in another direction. It's funny, because I remember in my dream thinking that we were playing soccer--that there were goals and everything--but it seems like really we were just generally making noise and trying to get the ball to bounce off as many fixtures as possible.

After several minutes of general running around and yelling and chasing the ball, an irate middle-aged lady librarian confronted me at the top of an open staircase and started getting all passive-agressive. "Does this seem like an appropriate activity for the Library of Congress? Hmmmmm?"

Since she was playing it overly cool, I decided I would too. I glanced down at the banister and noticed I had a plate of potato chips and a big bowl of onion dip resting at the top there. I reached down nonchalantly and scooped an extra-big helping of dip onto one chip, then shoved it into my mouth. "Sure." Crunch-munch-smack-smack-smack-smack-smack... "I don't see why not." Another chip, more loud munching.

This had the desired effect of Smug Dream Jared, as the librarian dropped her act and started yelling at all of us to get out of there. Security guards showed up and led us all out. But it was fun while it lasted.

There was a second part of the dream, something about having to pack up and check out of a boarding house, but I really don't remember much of anything about it.

Dreams: Nazis and Lamb

2009-01-12T15:12:00.008-05:00

In the tradition of the Shark's dream-recording blog posts, I share with you two recent excursions into my id:

Island of the Nazis

On the night of 2 January I found myself on a boat approaching an island off the U.S. Pacific coast. The island was fairly covered with trees, but a few hundred feet from the shore where we docked there was a cabin, overlooking the ocean. My brother Scott and I went to the cabin, where we sat and talked for a moment (I don't remember the conversation). I glanced out the open door and noticed people moving up from the shoreline toward us. Nazis! One of them was dressed like some sort of officer, and the rest were his stormtroopers.

I turned the table I was sitting on onto its side to use as a shield, then pulled a small handgun from my pocket. It was old and I wasn't even sure it if was loaded, but I had no time to check the clip. The Nazis were coming through the door! I put my arm up over the edge of the table to see if I could get a few rounds off, but the trigger was stuck. The officer pulled his Luger and shot me in the wrist. I dropped my pistol. I started to bleed pretty badly, but the Nazi officer didn't seem to care.

"Vhat iz ze radio frequency you are broadcasting on??!" I refused to answer--on principle, really, since I had no idea what he was talking about. This angered the officer, so he put his gun to my head and was getting ready to pull the trigger when Scott blurted out the answer, saving my life. This satisfied the Nazis, and they allowed Scott to right the table and help me lie on top of it while he administered first aid to try and stop the bleeding. I had been trying to apply pressure to my wrist this whole time, but the bleeding wouldn't stop. "I don't think it's really all that bad," Scott said. "It looks like a pretty small wound." I looked and saw that he was right. Then I looked away, looked back, and saw a gaping hole opening into my forearm. A nurse (where did she come from?) came in, looked at my arm, and announced that part of it would need to be amputated immediately. And it was.

Someone else who showed up in the cabin said that my amputated flesh shouldn't be wasted, and proceeded to toss it onto a grill. A few minutes later it was done, but the cook decided that he probably shouldn't feed it to anyone, seeing as how that would be cannibalism. But he figured that before he threw it out he should offer me a bite. "Don't you want to know what you taste like?" Turns out that I did. It also turns out I taste like lamb.

Okay, so maybe one is enough for now. I'll post the second dream tonight or tomorrow.

Sweet, sweet freedom

2008-12-11T22:13:00.006-05:00

Last night I turned in my last final paper of the semester (huzzah!) and now I stand facing the future. A future of 43 days without obligatory reading. It is time for the annual inter-semester reading spree; here's what's on the list (in no particular order, and not necessarily guaranteed to be read):

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (okay, so this one is in particular order since I'm already reading it--about 150 pages in)
The Knife Man
The Devil in the White City
Assassination Vacation
The Third Policeman
The United States of Arugula

Thoughts? Suggestions? Maybe I should strike a book or two? Maybe I should add a couple? I'm open--I realize there's an imbalance on the side of nonfiction. I want to make as much out of this reading time as possible.

Also on the slate for the break: revising my biographical essay on my Great Uncle Ronald that I wrote for a class last semester. Time to get that puppy published. And I need to keep in the habit of writing non-scholarly stuff. Need to keep my focus--it would be a shame to get stuffy at this point.

Peace on earth

2008-12-11T13:20:00.001-05:00

In case any of you have forgotten, I've embedded a copy of the best version of "Little Drummer Boy" ever.

Okay, so it's the only good version of "Little Drummer Boy" ever. Still... David Bowie + Bing Crosby = magic.

Feeling scholarly

2008-12-08T12:32:00.008-05:00

On Saturday I visited the Library of Congress to--get this--do research. Yes. That's right.

I've been a few times before, but it's generally been for tourism-related reasons. Which are valid enough; it's a beautiful building with great exhibits and other things to see inside. But this is the first time I was there to sit down with rolled-up sleeves and my glasses slowly sliding down my nose while I craned over hard-bound tomes belonging to our nation's official source for congressional research.

So yeah, I felt pretty cool. Here are some highlights of a visit to the LOC, whether for research purposes or otherwise:

It's like a full-service library. When you know the call number of the book(s) you want, you fill out a slip and hand it to the librarian. In a little while they bring your books to you at the desk you've chosen. And they're all really helpful, friendly, and knowledgeable if you need any help with your research.
It's full of history. The original LOC burned down in 1814 when a bunch of drunk British Canadians ransacked our capital. As we rebuilt, Thomas Jefferson donated his personal (and quite extensive) book collection to form the foundation of the new library. The builders also decided to stick it to the Brits by making the building better than ever, using the finest materials. Up in the rotunda there were some accoutrements that called for metallic leafing, so they used the rarest and most expensive metal available at the time: aluminum.
Aluminum leafing aside, it's a beautiful building (as I mentioned before). The inside of the rotunda and all of the vaulted ceilings in the public areas are all covered in mosaic. I love mosaic. More about the art and architecture incorporated into the LOC here.
People are quiet inside because it's a library. If only people would be quiet in the Lincoln Memorial, seeing as it proclaims itself a temple.
They've got a Gutenberg Bible in a glass case. So cool.

Ten feet from legendary

2008-12-01T23:16:00.013-05:00

Saturday night, after eight hours in a car, yelling at the non-entity that caused stand-still traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, navigating an island city that I do not know, and paying profiteer prices for parking, I sat in a dark nightclub ten feet from a piano where Dave Brubeck sat creating. The set started at 8:00 and I finally sat down at 8:15. It took me about two minutes of deep breathing and immersion in music to clear my head. That left me with less than forty minutes of an all-too-short set to enjoy some really, really great jazz. The next morning I went to church with friend Scrumpestuous D, picked up a total stranger, and spent another 8 hours in traffic coming home (read about the homeward trip here). Forty minutes ten feet from Dave Brubeck sandwiched by a total of 16 hours in the car? So worth it.

Dave Brubeck is one of my heroes. He revolutionized jazz in the 1950s with his experiments with time signatures. Up to that point, the vast majority of jazz music was arranged and performed in 4/4. It was simply what was accepted. Then in 1959, Brubeck released Time Out, a daring record that challenged the 4/4 standard. Kathy's Waltz (in 3/4) was an innovation. Even that seemed tame after the album started out with Blue Rondo a la Turk, which shifted back and forth from a frenetic 9/8 to a cool 4/4. The biggest hit off the album--and the biggest hit of Brubeck's career, was Take 5, played in 5/4. He was a musical innovator; he didn't allow himself to be bound by the accepted standards when he composed. He fell back on his classical piano training often and blended its influence into his music.

Before making his musical mark, Brubeck served his country in the army during World War II. Deployed with Patton's Third Army from 1944 to 1945, he was pulled from a unit headed for the front lines because of his musical finesse. Brubeck played piano as the lead of a racially integrated jazz band called the Wolf Pack. They provided entertainment for the troops in an as yet segregated Army. When they returned to the United States at the end of the war, he stayed with his band members for a while, but their mixed group met resistance. Brubeck describes it in Ken Burns' Jazz:

When we landed in Texas, we all went to the dining room to eat, and they wouldn’t serve the black guys. The guys had to go around and stand at the kitchen door. This one guy, he said he wouldn’t eat any of their food, and he started to cry, and he said, 'What I’ve been through, and the first day I’m back in the United States, I can’t even eat with you guys.' He said, 'I wonder why I went through all this.' You know, the first black man that I saw, my dad took me to see on the Sacramento River in California. And he said to his friend, 'Open your shirt for Dave.' There— [crying] there was a brand on his chest. And my dad said, 'These things can’t happen.' That’s why I fought for what I fought for (Jazz, Episode Seven: Dedicated to Chaos).

When he formed his famous quartet that produced Time Out in 1959 and stayed together until 1967, his bassist, Eugene Wright, was black.

I got to ask Mr. Brubeck a question once, in a Q&A at the Kennedy Center in March 2008. I asked him to talk about what it was like to play in an integrated band during a time when the general public resisted the idea of blacks and whites performing together (I may have used the word "pioneer" in there). He talked about the brotherhood and bonds created by music. He emphasized that jazz or no jazz, we're all brothers and sisters, and that was what always mattered to him.

Dave Brubeck is not only a great musician who left an indelible mark on the face of jazz, but he's also a great human being. His forward-thinking attitude and conviction for what was right may not have necessarily broken down racial barriers or overcome a nation's prejudice, but it certainly made a difference in the lives of his fellow Wolf Pack members, or in the life of Eugene Wright.

And I sat ten feet behind him on Saturday night, watching him create. He continues to meld classical themes into jazz constructs. Despite being 87 years old, he continues to play fluidly and pour an unseen reservoir of energy into his musical performance (his gutteral "aaaahs!" and "haaaaahs!" could be heard throughout the club, punctuated further by a stiff kick into the air under his piano). And he embraces the ideal of jazz as a musical form of freedom. Right before his quartet closed their set with their best-known standard, he stood at the microphone and said, "People ask us all the time if we get tired of playing 'Take Five.' Of course we don't. We've played it every show since 1959, but we never play it the same way. In fact we play it a different way every night. How do you like that?"

I like it even better the way he expressed it in Ken Burns' masterful documentary:

When you get a group of musicians really playing... it was this feeling of freedom, and then a guy would get a solo and this was his expression of freedom. A trumpet player, a trombone, or the saxophones, or the pianos. And then they were completely free, away from the constriction of the written music, but improvising on top of it. And this is the thing I love the most about jazz—it’s the thing that expresses the United States, it expresses freedom. All over the world, jazz is accepted as the music of freedom. It’s the most—it’s more important than baseball!

Going local: Eastern Market

2008-11-25T16:06:00.012-05:00

A week ago Saturday I visited Eastern Market with friend Amanda. Eastern Market is located in the upper-left corner of Southeast Washington, DC, not far from the Capitol. It's easily accessible by rail--it has its own Metro stop on the Blue/Orange line--or by car. Just park on the street in the surrounding neighborhood.

Unlike the other markets reviewed thus far, Eastern Market is open more than just one day a week, and it's much more than a farmers' market. The farmers' portion, plus the arts & crafts and flea markets are open on Saturdays and Sundays (farmers' market: 7 am to 4 pm, arts & crafts and flea markets: 9 am to 6 pm). There's also an indoor area known as the South Hall, open Tuesday through Sunday (Tuesday-Friday: 7 am to 7 pm, Saturday 7 am to 6 pm, Sunday 9 am to 5 pm). There. Logistics out of the way.

Now to the meat of the matter. A visit to Eastern Market, as you may have guessed, is much more than a visit to a farmers' market. If you go there and all you do is buy a sack of apples, you've missed the boat.

The first thing I do at Eastern Market is enter the South Hall and eat at Market Lunch. In spite of the name, my last visit here was the first time I'd actually ordered a midday meal. Usually I would go in the morning, but this particular Saturday I was looking to fill the afternoon. I ordered the crab cake sandwich with a side of collard greens. The sandwich was very good (not as amazing as the girl in front of us in line would have had me believe), and I liked the collard greens, but I could have used half the portion they gave me. Breakfast is really where Market Lunch shines. I especially recommend the blue bucks (blueberry buckwheat pancakes) or the French toast (paying extra for the pecan topping is a must). The fellow who works the counter is sassy in a way that keeps you coming back, the service is fast, and the prices are more than reasonable. And on any given Saturday morning, you're going to see Mormons standing in line with you. The rest of the South Hall is home to butchers, fishmongers, and bakers who sell high-quality, fresh products.

Next on my list of stops is Capitol Hill Books. Not technically part of Eastern Market, the used bookstore is located right across the street to the south of the old South Hall (the original brick South Hall building suffered an electrical fire last year; it is currently under renovation and should reopen next summer). Capitol Hill Books is probably the folksiest, most mom-and-pop-type operation I've ever seen. What's more, it pulls it off without feeling forced. I would be surprised if I found out the proprietors ever said, "Hey. Let's figure out how we can be more folksy around here." The ambiance is achieved naturally.

The view from the front window is indicative of the interior as a whole--stacks and stacks of books, not necessarily on shelves (look at the staircase). The store is organized in a patchwork manner, with genres assigned to general areas (fiction, mystery, poetry, and music upstairs; sci-fi and gardening in the basement; nonfiction main level), and subgenres posted on the shelves with helpful notecards. The notecards are spread throughout the store, wherever they might be helpful in your careful search for a particular author or title. "John Gardner on floor behind Hesse." "Gabriel García Márquez located under García." "M-R goes down and across (Arrows may help)."

A friend of mine refers to Capitol Hill Books (really one of her favorite haunts) as "the socialist bookstore;" she's sure that the owners and employees are teetering off the left-hand side of the political spectrum. I couldn't really say; I've never been indoctrinated or even engaged in any kind of political conversation. The gentleman seated at the checkout counter usually just makes humorous and good-natured comments about your purchases. Once he went so far as to quote an entire Yeats poem to Amanda. She melted into a puddle, but she remained a moderate voter.

Stomach full of blue bucks, newly purchased used books in hand, I then return to the market and pick up produce. The vendors line the sidwalk that runs on the east side of the old South Hall. Most of the vendors sell vegetables or fruits, though there is a regular table that offers homemade salsa and dips--both as samples and as packaged wares. The produce is good, nothing notable about the quality, though I did discover a handy feature at one of the vegetable stands during this last visit. The seller packaged small varieties of veggies together into food storage bags and sold them as a bunch for three dollars each. I got a bag with red potatoes, green beans, and a little bit of broccoli. A good deal for what you pay. I also walked further down the line and picked up some Nittany apples (my new fall favorite).

Finally, there are the flea market and the arts and crafts portions of the market. The flea market is located to the south of the temporary South Hall, and it's filled with all sorts of wonders: rugs, trunks, statuettes, jewelry, scarves, handbags, and so on. The arts and crafts booths are set up on the sidewalk opposite the farmers' market sidewalk, and also on the patio north of the old South Hall. Jewelers, potters, painters, photographers, and others show their handiwork. Even if you're not in the market for anything from here, it's always worth it to peruse. Some of the vendors are quite talented--Dan Kessler, whose work has been commissioned by the White House, is there every Saturday.

Eastern Market, as a farmers' market, is not a place I would regularly frequent. The produce is decent, but not spectacular, and the commute into DC takes much longer than a jaunt over to Arlington or a walk to Del Ray. But combining the farmers' market with the prospect of delicious breakfast and used books and local culture adds an allure that keeps me coming back.

Going local: Old Town Farmers' Market

2008-11-18T15:49:00.013-05:00

Several weeks after my visit*, my review:

The Old Town Farmers' Market is situated on the fountain plaza next to City Hall, at the intersection of King Street and Royal, right in the liver of Old Town (I really think the heart of Old Town is the waterfront at the end of King Street and the Torpedo Factory--King and Royal is close, though). It's the earliest starter of all the markets I've reviewed so far; it opens at 5:30 and shuts down at 10:30. Like the Arlington Farmers' Market, Old Town is open year-round, availability of fresh produce notwithstanding.

It probably has the largest area out of the markets I've reviewed as well. In spite of the large fountain in the middle, Market Square has a lot of space, and the vendors sprawl across it. The large area provides for a wider variety of wares than I've seen in other places. Beyond the traditional produce, meat, dairy, and baked goods, crafts peddlers and florists dot the rows of booths. This is good for those looking for more than just food offerings. Bad for those creeped out by severed doll heads used as mounts.

Questionable display choices aside, I also haven't been as impressed with the quality of produce I've picked up in Old Town. Mealy apples, fresh cider that tastes like it's from concentrate--not up to par with Del Ray or Arlington, in my opinion. To be fair, I've shopped those other markets much more frequently than I've shopped Old Town. I shouldn't judge from this past experience; I may have picked a lesser vendor or just gone on a bad week.

The best thing Old Town does have going for it is its location. Like the Del Ray and Arlington markets, it's situated in the middle of a bustling area well known for its shops, haunts, and restaurants. At the Old Town Farmers' Market, you're within walking distance of the waterfront (the heart), several good restaurants, and a few notable historical sites (such as the Alexandria Courthouse and the John Carlyle House). It also has the feeling of community that exists at the other markets, only it's the Old Town community as opposed to the Arlington or Del Ray communities. Choosing a market out of the three to visit based on the neighborhood depends, then, on what you're in the mood for. Old Town is definitely more full of tourists. Arlington's Courthouse/Clarendon area is a target spot for yuppies, while Del Ray attracts former hippies, indie hipsters, and yuppies who are pretending to be hipsters.

Overall, I prefer the Arlington and Del Ray markets to the Old Town offering.

This past Saturday I also visited Eastern Market and took some pictures. I hope to have that review up by the end of the week.

*Special thanks to special guests who accompanied me for my site visit: Amanda, KE, and especially Katherine, who loaned me her camera and emailed me the pictures for this post (I forgot my camera at home).

Jared needs...

2008-10-27T23:55:00.004-04:00

A friend of mine blogged about the virtue of googling the phrase "________ needs," with the blank filled by your name. The results can be quite humorous. For example, here are my top five:

Jared needs to go!
Jared needs to lay the smack down on these guys...
Jared needs your support.
Jared needs his own Backyard FX Show.
Jared needs to DIE!

Apparently the fellow from the sub shop who sullied my good name is not a popular guy on the interwebs.

Anyway, try it yourself for hilarity and jest.

Post results in the comments or on your own blog...

Going local: Del Ray Farmers' Market

2008-10-07T16:55:00.009-04:00

Two months later, here is my review of the Del Ray Farmers' Market.

The best thing about this market, to me, is that it's a five-minute walk from my house. Located across the street from the Dairy Godmother in the heart of Del Ray, the market is actually pedestrian-friendly for a lot of local residents. The parking situation is a little worse than Arlington's (the market in Del Ray actually covers the only parking lot in the vicinity), but that is not an issue if you arrive on foot and carry out your produce. For those who might drive, there is usually some street parking not too far away. For those walking with dogs, you'll have to tie them up on the fringe of the market--no dogs allowed inside.

At first glance, the market seems much smaller than its Arlington counterpart. The parking lot it covers isn't really all that big, and staring across the street it looks like the number of vendors that can be crammed in under the few tents ought to be pretty limited. But after going to the market a few times and going back to Arlington, I've decided that the number of vendors at Del Ray can't be that much lower. Even if it is, the Del Ray market carries a competitive amount of variety and quantity in its offerings.

The vendors at Del Ray sell produce as tasty and fresh as those at Arlington--especially notable are the tomatoes and peppers. Look around and you'll also find a variety of specialty products like jams, preserves, syrups, and vinegars. The central table-tent of the lot belongs to bakers who offer samples of breads, cookies, rolls, muffins, and cakes.

If anything suffers from the cutback in size, it's the variety of meat and dairy vendors available to shoppers. There is a good meat vendor that sells fresh eggs, and one or two dairy booths. My first week there I bought a container of maple syrup yogurt; it was good, but not as good as the Blue Ridge Dairy honey yogurt from the Arlington market.

For its size, though, the market is a great place to shop and it has the same friendly community feeling present in Arlington. The Del Ray community is famous for its small-town, mom-and-pop feel, and the farmers' market there fits right in.

You can shop the market on Saturdays from eight in the morning until noon. The market opens in the spring and stays open through the first Saturday in December--if you want to scrounge for produce in the winter you'll have to visit Arlington or the Old Town Farmers' Market.

Fringe benefits available to those who choose to patronize the Del Ray Farmers' Market include the Cheesetique (where the cheesemongers know everything there is to know about cheese!), Let's Meat on the Avenue (an old-fashioned butcher shop full of the freshest meats, run by an experienced Australian), and Tops of Old Town (not food, but the hats are cool and the proprietor is the sweetest lady you'll meet).

Going local: Arlington Farmers' Market

2008-08-11T10:54:00.020-04:00

It has been spread abroad that white people love farmers' markets; I am no exception.

There are five farmers markets convenient to where I live in Alexandria: Arlington Farmers' Market, Del Ray Farmers' Market, Old Town Farmers' Market, Upper King Street Fresh Farmers' Market, and Eastern Market. It is my intention over the next three weeks to visit each of these in turn for the sake of comparison and contrast. If all goes as planned, I'll place a review of each of my market visits right here for your viewing pleasure.

I started this past Saturday with the Arlington Farmer's Market. Located next to the Arlington Courthouse, the market runs every Saturday from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm, and it appears to be open year-round, which is a plus.*

The market itself covers a fair-sized lot. The official website for the market claims to have thirty producers involved, but I don't know if they're claiming that all of them are present each week. Whether they are or not, there is certainly a large selection present, with multiple vendors to choose from for fruits, vegetables, breads, honeys, meats, dairy products, and flowers.

The last two times I've visited, I found the vendors quite friendly. They're willing to make change for a twenty and make recommendations regarding their produce, and they all seem very appreciative of your business. There's also a spirit of friendly cooperation and neighborliness among them--this surprised me a little, since I walked into the market assuming that two stands selling fresh vegetables would consider themselves at odds with each other.

I stopped at one particular stand that had a sign promising delicious and unique cherry tomatoes, tried one, and felt compelled to buy a pint. I already had a few tomatoes in a half-flat box that I had purchased from a vendor across the way, and as I payed for the cherry tomatoes the man at the cash box looked closely at them.

"Those don't look like our tomatoes"

"No, I bought them from one of your competitors over there."

"Oh, they're not our competitors," he grinned warmly. "We're all just neighbors here." Nevertheless, he did lean in closer and whisper, "Ours are better!" Then he chuckled.

The spirit of camaraderie extends to some degree to the patrons of the market as well. Everyone seems to be kind and deferential to one another. There's a sense of community--maybe it's the common interest in sustainable, local agriculture; maybe it's the smell of fresh basil and flowers that hovers in the air between stalls.

I've been quite pleased with all of my purchases from the market--particularly the colossal blackberries from Westmoreland Berry Farm and a batch of peaches I picked up from another stand this week. Those cherry tomatoes were pretty dynamite too. I'm also excited to finish off my store-bought yogurt soon so I can dive into the fresh honey yogurt I purchased from the booth run by Blue Ridge Dairy. The small spoonful I tasted promised a true, cultured yogurt flavor with just enough honey to soften the bite.

The two drawbacks to the market are the fact that it's about a ten-minute drive to get there (small drawback), and parking is fairly limited considering the popularity of the market (larger drawback). If you're lucky you can find street parking, but most patrons have to use a lot adjacent to the market. Cars are constantly moving up and down the lanes of the lot, searching for an empty spot or someone who is leaving. Once you finally park, each spot is metered. Make sure you have change on hand.
Overall, though, I've really enjoyed my experiences at the Arlington Farmers' Market. I recommend it to anyone who has the means to go on a Saturday morning and the desire for fresh, local produce.

*Many fruits and vegetables won't be available during the winter months, but it's nice to know that a market is still open during that time, offering whatever is available.

Barack Obama for Childlike Emperor

2008-08-05T10:48:00.006-04:00

A friend shared a link with me where you can go to generate your own inspirational Barack Obama quotations.

I thought it was important for Mr. Obama to address the current state of affairs in Fantasia, as he runs against the Childlike Empress for her position this year:

Generate a Barack Obama Quote!

"I think it's time we had a national conversation about Fantasia. We need to get past all the Swamps of Sadness and recognize that we are our own best hope for overcoming the Nothing. We need Falkors, not G'morks. Falkors are our imagination. And we need to have change in Fantasia."
Generate your Barack Obama quote at Buttafly.com

He goes on:

Generate a Barack Obama Quote!

"These people haven't had imagination for fifty years. So you can't be surprised if they get bitter and cling to their Swamps of Sadness and their G'morks and their the Nothing. That's what my campaign is about. Teaching all the little people in this country that they can have Falkors."
Generate your Barack Obama quote at Buttafly.com

I believe in the audacity of imagination; I believe in a new Fantasia. This is change we can believe in.

Bored scribblings

2008-08-04T14:55:00.004-04:00

I was just cleaning up my little officeoid (it's not a full office--it only has 3.2 walls), and I came across a few "notes" I had taken during two different meetings. The first set of notes was torn off of a steno-pad. I think it's from something I sat in on up at my client site:

--Bees can kill me, but they haven't yet

--Jenn and I think we inherited a cooking gene

--Jazz, rock 'n' roll

--Let's talk about what we think we're going to talk about talking about, but never actually talk about it.

The second set of notes is from a meeting at my office that some of our clients were invited to. Chuck "Malapropism" Dogberry of the clients bought pizza to try and seem like a cool guy, and the thing went on for about four hours. Around hour three I drafted a will onto one of the pizza napkins in case I should die of boredom or take my own life:

Last Will and Testament
To whom it may concern:
If you are reading this, I have been found dead with my eyes burned out by a laser pointer and the pen attached to that laser pointer jammed deep, deep into my jugular.
'Twas CAP [the client program I support] that brought me here, and 'twas CAP that drove me to this end.
To my brother The Shark I bequeath my music collection and my DVDs, except Matt can have "Firefly." Everything else I leave to Matt Sztuk and Michele, who will play Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide who gets what.
To Jamie [my supervisor at the time] I leave a kick in the shins.
[signature]
Jared Gillins
28 FEB 2008

These are some of the most productive meetings I've attended with my clients.

Posted just to have a link for a comment in Shark's blog

2008-05-15T13:43:00.003-04:00

I just needed to be able to refer to this in a comment I'm leaving in The Zap! Pow! Zoom! Initiative.

The Far Side was created by Gary Larson, who also holds the copyright. This cartoon was posted not to curb the legal purchase of Far Side materials, but rather to utilize it as an example in an ongoing discussion about the nature and validity of comics as art. This cartoon will be removed upon request by Mr. Larson or his legal representatives.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might

2008-05-12T23:19:00.011-04:00

OR Ecclesiastes 9: 10

Finished with finals, I find myself flat-furnished with a fullness of Free Time. Which begs the question: What to do?

I want to make sure that these summer months don't slip past me without a serious effort on my part to make the most of them. Last summer I did some good stuff--I spent Memorial Day weekend at the beach, ran a 10k, visited Utah twice, did some hiking, got heat exhaustion and had to have two bags of fluid pumped into me intravenously, read several books, and put on weight.

Here's what I've got so far for this summer:

Exercise regularly to finish recuperating my knee and lose the weight from last summer
Read several more books
Plant a garden (or at least plant the pots and boxes in my back yard)
Play the guitar every day
Blog weekly

Fine-tune the papers I wrote for my creative nonfiction writing class--have at least one ready to be submitted for publication by the end of the summer

Bike the many trails around here--including the length of the Mt. Vernon Trail
Get out of the metropolitan area and do some hiking
See at least two 80s musical legends in concert (here I come, Yaz and George Michael!)

Continue to hone my grilling skills; allow friends to enjoy the meaty fruits
Visit Polyface Farms in southern Virginia
Find the Darth Vader gargoyle on the National Cathedral
Learn to use my cool camera better

Those are a few ideas, anyway. I'm open to suggestions. Anyone? Anyone?

Sunday I was eloquent

2008-04-29T10:25:00.006-04:00

I show no bravery of shining gems.
Truth, Independence, are my fluttering plumes.
'Tis not my form I lace to make me slim,
But brace my soul with efforts as with stays,
Covered with exploits, not with ribbon-knots,
My spirit bristling high like your mustaches,
I, traversing the crowds and chattering groups
Make Truth ring bravely out like clash of spurs!

-Edmund Rosamund, Cyrano de Bergerac, Act I, scene iv

I read Cyrano de Bergerac during the second semester of my sophomore year at high school. I remember being enthralled with the play--I couldn't get enough of the language. The title character's wit and ease with which he used words spoke to my young fancy and germinated an early desire to be... eloquent. That was the word I remember coming up with. Cyrano was eloquent. I would be eloquent too.

I may have told a few people about that desire shortly after it was espoused, but mostly I kept it to myself.

----

On Sunday this week, after speaking in sacrament meeting on friendship, fellowship, and regional activities, I was approached after services. A friend pulled me aside and told me plainly that she thought I was eloquent in my talk. Eloquent! It was the first time anyone had used that word to compliment me. Perhaps I am on my way.

Calling all ska fans!

2008-04-22T15:23:00.001-04:00

I'm writing a paper on ska and its fans, and I created a little survey to help me collect some data. If you are a fan of ska (and only if you consider yourself such a fan), please click on the link and take the survey. It's pretty short--should really only take you five minutes or so. Thanks!

Click Here to take survey

The appeal of the blues

2008-03-31T15:19:00.013-04:00

OR "I sing the body electric"

My first plan for today after work is to drive to Borders, pick up the Muddy Waters Anthology, and then proceed to bury myself in a dead black man's sorrows. This became part of my schedule after I woke up this morning with the blues.

I was feeling fairly rotten so I put on Eric Clapton's From the Cradle for the drive to work. Oddly enough, belting out "Blues Before Sunrise" along with Slowhand elevated my mood a bit. Each track made me feel a little better and then better, until the guitar solo on the bridge of "Five Long Years" (track 5) made me almost giddy.

So what is it about the blues that can take my cares away? It almost seems counter-intuitive, like it should have the opposite effect. Listening to a man moan about his broken body, destitute lifestyle, and cheating woman isn't really a pick-me-up. Listening to a woman pour out her sorrows over the man who left her for a better gal doesn't exactly make one think of better times. Or does it?

On the first episode of Ken Burns' Jazz, Branford Marsalis points out that to sing or hear the blues is to cathartically embrace the fact that life is full of problems and troubles. The blues, then, are there to "free" the singer and the listener. It frees them from the burden of pretending that everything's just fine all the time.

The blues are also intended to lift people--show them that they may have it bad, but it could be worse. Blues are often hyperbolic in their descriptions of suffering. Back to From the Cradle--in the song "Third Degree" Clapton sings verse after verse on the crimes and misdemeanors his woman has him accused of. Then, giving the reasons why each of those claims must be false, he slowly paints the portrait of a blind, lame, illiterate, broke, and possibly impotent man, whom bad luck is simply killing. Nobody is that bad off--and maybe that's what the blues listener realizes as he hears the guttural moans and weeping, wailing guitar.

I think that that guitar is also key. I mentioned that Clapton's solo on track 5 picked me up further than anything else on the album had thus far. I think that part of the power of the blues is its ability to transform emotional energy into music. You could probably make this argument with several other genres, but I contend that the blues is especially good at it. To play the blues you have to have "soul," which is to say you have to know how to express your soul through your instrument and voice. Human beings are vessels. Some of these vessels carry music, and only a portion of these musical vessels know how to pour out their contents. Fingers and throats become conduits, larynges and guitars become universal translators that communicate aurally what was previously stored internally. And for some reason, when that human musical message comes out in the blues, it speaks directly to the blues listener.

Reading back over what I just wrote, I don't know if I actually explained anything. But in the end it doesn't really matter, because either way the blues have made me feel better.

On random bits

2007-11-28T10:58:00.001-05:00

So I guess I have a few random thoughts to throw out there and try to hash out. Feel free to help, those of you who have not given up on my blog:

THOUGHT THE FIRST: I have a silly e-crush on some blogger named editorgirl. Apparently a friend of Amanda's, she has a nice blog with a creative name and interesting and regular posts. In my estimation, she's an attractive writer--that is to say, she writes attractively. Whatever that means. Silly e-crush.

THOUGHT THE SECOND: My friend Erin asked me last night how much longer I have in my MA program here at George Mason. Usually when people ask that, I give a nebulous answer akin to the Israelite "40 years" approximation. But I actually thought it out last night and realized that if I keep my current pace, I have five more semesters, including the Spring 2008 semester that starts in January. So that's two and a half more years. If I take one course during the summer for the rest of my MA program, that eliminates one semester, making it an even two years left. That would make for a grand total of three years in the MA history program at GMU. I can manage that.

But what next? Perhaps I'm a little ahead of myself, but I've been thinking already about where to go for my Ph.D. I'm assuming, first of all, that two more years of juggling full-time work with part-time school won't make me swear off academia forever. I'm assuming that I'll have been wise in those two years and saved and invested enough to be able to plausibly quit my job and be a full-time doctoral candidate. And I'm assuming that Ph.D programs will want me.

Just to throw this out there (that's what this post is all about, after all), I think that the ideal place for me right now is Rutgers University's American Studies Ph.D program. It'll be just like a history program, really, with the path I would take. And Rutgers Newark has, get this, the Institute of Jazz Studies, which, according to their website, is "the largest and most comprehensive library and archive of jazz and jazz-related materials in the world." Guh.

So I'd do a doctorate in American Studies where I could interdiscipline myself in 20th century American history with some cultural and musical studies. Throw in a little early-to-mid-20th century literature, and I'd be golden. You could all call me Doctor Jazz.

THOUGHT THE THIRD: I finally got my license plates last night from the dealership up in Silver Spring. I didn't know they weren't going to let me choose my license plate design. I mean, I didn't want to spell anything fancy or anything like that, but they gave me the plain old white plates, when I would have prefered the ship. The ship!

So anyway, the real issue here is a matter of obsessive compulsion. When I was a lad, my mom and I would play a game where we'd make words out of the letters on license plates of other cars on the road. The only rule was that you had to maintain the order of the letters. You got extra points if you could find two words: one that started with the initial letter in the series, and one where the initial letter was not the first letter of the word. For example, if the letters on the plate were HTL, you would say "hotel" and then "shuttle" for the bonus.

My license plate letters are KFF. I'm having some trouble making words. The best I've come up with so far is "kickoff," but you all know I'm not really a football fan.

Moments in Toast History

2007-08-23T12:43:00.000-04:00

Orville Wright had a penchant for our favorite means of preparing and consuming bread:

Fond of toast, he developed two special implements to guarantee a perfect product every time: a gauge to ensure that each slice of bread was cut to a precise thickness, and a toaster, constructed of two sheets of metal, to compress each slice as it was toasting (Tom Crouch, The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright, 479).

Just thought you'd like to know.

Where is Jared?

2007-05-13T15:25:00.000-04:00

If any of you have tried to email me, or tried to call me between the hours of 7:00am and 7:00pm EDT, you may have noticed that I'm simply not there. Where am I?

Once a year the client I work for, the Naval Treaty Implementation Program (NTIP), carries out a Challenge Inspection Training Exercise (CITE). For those interested in international law and arms control regimes, read the next few paragraphs and find out what a CITE is. For those of you already bored, skip a bit.

The 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) prohibits the production, development, stockpiling, or use of any and all chemical weapons, and the United States happens to be a party to the treaty. Being a party isn't a huge deal for a lot of nations, but it is for the USA. The Cold War arms race wasn't just about stockpiling nukes; the USSR spent a lot of money developing and stockpiling chemical munitions as well, and we followed suit. Now the USA and Russia literally have tons of chemical weapons to destroy, and we have until 2012 to do it (neither country will make the deadline, by the way).

The U.S. Army is in charge of properly storing and destroying all of the United States' chemical weapons. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), an international body created by the CWC, takes charge of verifying the proper storage and disposal of the agents. So really, the Department of the Navy should have nothing to do with this.

However! The CWC contains a provision allowing for challenge inspections. A challenge inspection is the result of one state suspecting another state of not abiding by the rules of the treaty. For example, Belarus could accuse the United States of hiding undeclared CW agents in unused bunkers at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, Kaneohe Bay. Or Senegal could accuse the Navy of developing chemical weapons under the guise of defense research at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division (NSWCDD).

As of yet, there have been no challenge inspections under the CWC. Every state that could initiate one can also be relatively sure of a reciprocal challenge from the state they accuse. But if there were to be a challenge inspection, Russia and the United States would be the two most likely candidates.

So we practice, we exercise. And that's what I'll be doing this week. Many of the employees of my company and most of the government workers at my client site will be staying four nights at the luxurious Dahlgren Comfort Inn, right next to NSWCDD. There I will spend several humid days pretending like I'm helping prepare the base for a challenge inspection carried out by the OPCW and the fictitious Republic of Simón Bolívar, our accuser. Most of my days will last 10-12 hours, after which I will eat dinner at any number of fine local restaurants (from Uncle Dave's Somethin' Different Café to the appetizingly named Crabby Oyster). I'll be back Thursday night, at which time I will regain email access.

In the meantime, do feel free to drop me an e-line or to comment on the blog. I'll let you know how everything went on my return.

Constant vigilance!

Is Congress causing global warming on purpose?!?

2007-04-24T13:29:00.000-04:00

In light of Warren's recent exploits into the field of global warming, I thought that this editorial was particularly exigent. Read and wonder:

And I post again

2007-04-24T12:22:00.000-04:00

I have a little black book

I post! I post!

2007-04-20T11:14:00.000-04:00

Many of you have been wondering if I would ever post again. Some of you may think that I purposely put off posting to prove a point. Some of you may even think that I simply don’t care any more. Not so! I post!

It seems that my previous musings on not making time for writing inspired my friend Nick, administrator of Salsa Night (the other blog I contribute to), to be a more frequent writer himself. More than that, he invited others to join him in a month-long effort to write something at least once a week for the month of April. Thus began the Salsa Night Month of Writing.

I claimed Mondays and I’ve been posting regularly all month. It only recently occurred to me that I should mention it here.

So if you miss me, or my writing, or if you’re simply bored, feel free to check out any of my posts:

I work best under pressure

Goals, planning, and Free Time

Sounds often heard at my client site

And while you’re there, feel free to peruse around. There’s some good stuff to be found.

Why Don't I Write (more)?

2007-03-04T13:23:00.000-05:00

A monthly post is better than no post at all, right?

Let me tell you: I enjoy writing. That is to say, I enjoy writing the type of writing that I like to write. Some writing I don't like: quantitative analysis, filler for meeting page requirements, dry topics that don't interest me and that I can't imagine would interest anyone else, quantitative analysis, and quantitative analysis (to name a few types).

But some writing is fun. I like to tell a good story. I like to be excited about a good qualitative analysis I've done and then describe it succinctly. I like to rant sometimes, and occassionally to rave (sans ecstasy and glow sticks). Writing can be cathartic. Writing can make me learn more about a topic that I love. Writing can help me express myself. It keeps me connected to my friends. It broadens my views. It makes me happy when I feel I've done it well.

So why don't I write more? Why isn't this blog updated more often? Why hasn't "A Piece of Poetry" become a regular feature, as I imagined it would?

This post is incomplete because I don't have an answer for that. I have several partial answers, but none of them really address the bigger question from which "Why Don't I Write?" stems: what keeps me from making time for some of the things that I like? If writing (or anything) is important to me, what keeps me from it? Or why do I keep myself from it?

Feel free to wax philosophical. I await your wisdom.

Free Jared! And Tibet if you’ve got the time

2007-02-08T11:24:00.000-05:00

Today, tomorrow, and Monday I am bound to a desk that is not my own. Part of my company’s contract with the Naval Treaty Implementation Program (NTIP) is to have an on-site contractor that remains, well, on-site. The man with this job is named Darnell, and he knows the ropes quite well. But what happens when Darnell takes leave?

Rather than go for one or two or, heaven forbid, three days without Johnny on the Spot, our liaison at NTIP insists on having someone fill Darnell’s chair. And fill his chair I can.

Unfortunately, I can’t do most of the other things associated with this particular job. Darnell has access to many things that required a lot of processing and account-making and approval. NTIP doesn’t want to bother with all of that for a guy who will only be here for three days, so I basically have a mouse, a keyboard, and a screen. The internet works (hooray!) but I have no email access, either business OR personal (boo). Nearly all of my business correspondence has to happen over the phone. Not that that’s inconvenient, it’s just not SOP.

Where is this all leading? To this point: I have nothing to do. I’m supposed to be performing Darnell’s duties, but I don’t have Darnell’s tools and resources. There are a few things that I can do, and do have access to. If I look hard I can find things to keep myself busy. But guess why I’m writing this post—I’ve already done them. I’m actually quite proud; I kept myself busy for four hours this morning. And now? I have a couple of things that I can look at, but nothing I can do. Thus I blog.

If you would like to donate to the Free Jared Fund (FJF), please post a comment to this or any other post on the blog, or put a new post on your own blog. You can make a Free Jared a reality.

Great Moments in Pointer History II

2007-02-05T11:55:00.000-05:00

A week and a half ago my team lead called me up at my desk and said, "Would you happen to have an extendible, retractable pointer? We need one."

At first I was a little incredulous. I asked if he was serious; he was. Apparently a group of executives from other companies was in our little corporate conference room giving presentations. One of them had asked my company, their host, for a pointer to use in his presentation. One of our vice presidents offered him a laser pointer, which he declined. He wanted a reliable mechanical device. In a flurry, people were assigned to track down a telescoping pointer. Our employees called everywhere and could not find them. Even the clerks at Staples were unaware of their own pointers (same aisle as protractors, $3.50). Finally someone asked one of my coworkers, who had seen me pointing at something only days earlier. He told my team lead, who promptly gave me a call.

Needless to say, I happily loaned my instrument of pointing for the good of the company. They used it for a full three days. At the end of the third day, my company president brought my pointer back to me himself. He had placed it in a foam-rubber lined case. Inside, wrapped around my pointer, was a crisp twenty-dollar bill.

And people ask why I carry a pointer around.

For Great Moments in Pointer History I, see the other blog I contribute to: Salsa Night.

A Piece of Poetry

2007-01-22T13:42:00.003-05:00

Wood
by Thomas Hornsby Ferril
(Trial By Time: Harper & Brothers, 1944)

There was a dark and awful wood
Where increments of death accrued
On every leaf and antlered head
Until it withered and was dead,
And lonely there I wandered
And wandered and wandered.

But once a myth-white moon shone there
And you were kneeling by a flower,
And it was practical and wise
For me to kneel and you to rise,
And me to rise and turn to go,
And you to turn and whisper no,
And seven wondrous stags that I
Could not believe walked slowly by

I'm no poetry/literature expert, but I do appreciate a little verse here and there. I thought I'd give a little web time to an under-appreciated 20th century poet named Thomas Hornsby Ferril. He was a Poet Laureate of the state of Colorado and a friend of Carl Sandburg. In fact, the Colorado Center for the Book's official bio of Ferril tells an amusing anecdote about their close friendship:

The Ferrils were known for their lively dinner parties with theater people, writers and photographers. Friends recall parties where Ferril played his mandolin and Sandburg played the guitar... Anne Ferril Folsom recalls coming home from school one day and being startled to find someone asleep on her bed, wearing her mother's negligee. It was Carl Sandburg, taking a nap.

So anyway, I'm interested in others' interpretation/applications/thoughts on the poem. Me? I think it's lovely. I'll withhold further comment until a few people post.

What I look like

2006-06-05T10:26:00.000-04:00

You probably already know what I look like if you're reading this blog, but I needed to post a picture of myself somewhere on the internet in order to get it into my profile. So here I am. This is a headshot that was taken of me in 2003 for "publicity" for a production of The Importance of Being Earnest that I was in. Publicity is in quotation marks because it was a community theatre production in Springville, Utah. How much publicity can the Springville Playhouse get?

Although, now that I mention it, we did make it on The Tonight Show's Headlines segment. The local Springville newspaper published an article advertising our play and in the headline called it "The Impotance of Being Earnest." Yeah.

And who will train the trainers?

2006-04-21T12:28:00.000-04:00

I was in a particularly boring training meeting at work last week. I spent a good portion of the time wondering why the people who give trainings don't have to sit through trainings of how they can be better trainers.

This line of wondering led nowhere, however, except toward a nodding head. So in order to stay awake, I started making a list of interesting words as they came into my mind. This not only proved to help keep me from nodding off, it also made it look like I was taking notes.

For your enjoyment, here is my list. Some of the words I had heard but I did not actually know the meaning of, so I looked them up later.

conglomeration
asphyxiated
amalgam
anachronistic
cahoots
cavort
lichen
liniment
licentiousness
capsicum
inebriate
myocardia
Constantinople
opal
serendipitous
archaic
malodorant
anthropomorphic
agrarian
appaloosa
einsteinium
cairn
mop
pernicious
carbuncle
ocelot
gnu
gnocchi
jocular
perturb
argyle
labrador
Cornish
limpet
ergonomic
cantankerous

"Jared," you say, "some of those words are not nearly as cool as others on the list." Maybe not at first glance. If a word seems less cool, try saying it out loud. Perhaps it's just fun to say. Or, think about it linguisticly: mop, for example, is an extremely labial word. Isn't that interesting?

Also try and catch the flow of words. They appear here in the same order in which I wrote them. Some are connected to the words previous, some are not. Which ones are? What are the connections? You can have fun with this post for hours.

Why did you grow a beard?

2006-04-21T11:38:00.000-04:00

It's a valid question; depending on whom you ask, the responses can be extremely varied.

My friend Nick, for example, would simply respond that it's because he doesn't shave three times a day (I believe he had to explain that to BYU ultimate frisbee officials on several occasions). Some will blame it on sloth, others on the need to investigate their own masculinity. Some actually think it looks good. I have my own reasons.

The first beard I grew was for a mediocre, student-written play at BYU called Faking Reality. Personally, I think we were faking quality, but I did have a good time with it. My character was a rebellious BYU drop-out, so of course he had to wear a beard. Incidentally, this role required me to carry around the much-fabled "beard card" (not actually a card, but a form letter from the Honor Code office).

One year later, in the spring of 2004, I was alone in Europe and decided the beard would return. I was hiking around by myself and I decided that the beard fit the Hiking Around Europe lifestyle.

Fast forward one more year and I again found myself in Europe. Again I grew the beard. I had come to associate an extended stay in Europe with the growing of facial hair. It just seemed to fit. I was walking around small countryside towns, riding trains, and eating lots of granola bars.

Now it is spring again, one year later. Ridiculously enough, I feel like tradition mandates a temporary beard on my face. I've done it each spring for the last three years, so why stop now? I feel a little cool with the beard, especially because it's always a rarer chin-strap variety (the real reason for this is that my mustache doesn't connect well). It reaffirms my ability to grow it and allows me to try something different for a while.

Additionally, this year's They Might Be Giants tour is entitled "Why Did You Grow a Beard?" I'll be attending a somewhat intimate concert at a DC club downtown. I'm hoping that John or John will spot me and say, "Hey, why did you grow a beard?" to which I can respond, "Because I was hoping you'd ask."

Reminiscing on a 286

2006-04-21T11:35:00.000-04:00

I got to work on 7 April this year and found that my mouse wasn't working.The day before I had to switch offices and I took my CPU with me in order to maintain my Outlook settings, keep the stuff I had on my hard drive, etc. However, I decided to use the other computer components left to me by the previous occupant of my new desk; among other things, he left me an optical mouse. I'm no techie, but I do enjoy the smooth glide of a mouse sans ball. No cleaning, no jerky motion, no troubles.

No troubles, that is, until the day after you get it hooked up and your computer decides that it doesn't remember having the hardware installed. To make matters worse, I don't have the administrative authority on my computer to perform the simple task of installing a mouse. Add to that the fact that our IT guy doesn't get in until 10:00, and you come out with the fact that I spent three hours yesterday operating my computer by keyboard. It took a while for it to come back to me, but slowly I began to remember my family's old 286, which gave the luxury of a mouse only on certain programs. "Alt+F+S = Save! Of course!" Pretty soon I was whizzing around Windows and having a jolly time of it. I felt sort of like a deacon on a youth conference pioneer trek: I was reliving the days of the desktop pioneers! My eyes welled up a little as I thought back even further to the Commodore 64 that used to occupy my brother's room.

Things are all right now. Todd the tech came in around 10:00, failed to negotiate the installation of hardware with my computer, and gave me the consolation prize of a brand-new Dell ball-based mouse, fresh from its wrappings. It may not be an optical mouse, but somehow I'm more grateful for it.

Life imitates art

2006-04-21T11:31:00.000-04:00

There's a guy at my work who looks exactly like the Lorax, only taller. Every time I see him I want to pat him on the head and express my deepest regret that his habitat was destroyed. It's seriously all I can do to keep from asking him if he knows he looks like the Lorax.

So I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and it made me think of the Simpsons episode when Homer gets bypass surgery. Dr. Nick isn't fully prepared because he accidentally taped-over the surgery show about bypass operations with a talk show about People Who Look Like Things.

Pumpkinhead: All we ask for is a little dignity and a
            little respect.
     Host: [sly] And a new candle every now and then?
Pumpkinhead: Yes, and a new -- [realizes] no!

The ironic thing about the people on the Simpsons talk show is that they all could have greatly reduced their likenesses to pumpkins, brooms, etc. by changing superficial things. Which brings me back to Monsieur Lorax. Does he know? Does he realize that if he trimmed his bushy mustache and combed his hair and improved his posture he could look more like a human and less like some fantastic endangered species? Maybe he does know all this. Maybe he maintains his appearance in order to remind us all to be enviro-friendly. I have been recycling more since I met him.

A new creative outlet and a new way to waste time

2006-04-21T10:58:00.000-04:00

That's what this is. I'm excited to be one more unknown author in a sea of amateurs that have delusions of a widespread reader base.

In spite of my cynicism: I enjoy writing and I don't do it enough. I also happen to think (this may be a bit presumptuous) that I'm a fairly good writer; at least I can entertain.

Nobody may ever read this. People may read this and then hate it, or think I'm a poor writer and a substandard blogger. It mattereth not. This blog is more for me than anyone else; if somebody likes what I wrote, that will be a bonus.

Read on then and bask in my presumptuousness, or get out.