free rad!cals

alight on a rooftop with me, and let's nestle together and cast our gaze on the stars

2012-01-23T23:09:00.001-05:00

lyrics for Andrew Bird's "Night Sky" (transcribed by me, as i listened to the mp3 below)

chorus:
sound is a wave, like a wave on the ocean
plays the ocean like a violin
pushing and pulling from shore to shore
biggest melody you never heard before

if i were the night sky (x2)
here's my lullaby
lullaby to the eve bye
if i were the night sky

verse 1:
what if we hadn't been born at the same time
what if you were 75 and i were 9
and i come visit you
bring you cookies in an old folks' home
would you be there alone?
when the late summer lightning fires off in your arms
will i remember to breathe?
you know i never will
if i could convince you that i mean you no harm
just wanna show you how not to need (/leave?)

what if i were the night sky?
here's my lullaby
lullaby to the eve bye
if i were the night

verse 2:
what if we hadn't been each other at the same time?
would you tell me all the stories from when you're young and in your prime
will i rock you to sleep
would you tell me all the secrets you don't need to keep
would i still miss you?
oh would you then
had been mine

chorus

[download mp3]

This American Life examines a Chinese life on the assembly line

2012-01-18T00:25:00.002-05:00

EVERYONE NEEDS TO STOP WHAT THEY'RE DOING AND READ/LISTEN TO THIS RIGHT NOW.

what does it mean for something, everything to be “made in china?”

fascinating/horrifying revelations of the factories and working conditions in china that make all the shit you take for granted.

Shenzhen is a city without history. The people who live there will tell you that, because 31 years ago Shenzhen was a small town. It had little reed huts, little reed walkways between the huts. The men would fish in the late afternoon. I hear it was lovely. Today Shenzhen is a city of 14 million people. It is larger than New York City. Depending on how you count it, it's the third largest city in all of China. It is the place where almost all of your crap comes from.

And the most amazing thing is, almost no one in America knows its name. Isn't that remarkable that there's a city where almost all of our crap comes from, and no one knows its name? I mean, we think we do know where our crap comes from. We're not ignorant. We think our crap comes from China, right? Kind of a generalized way. China.
But it doesn't come from China. It comes from Shenzhen. It's a city. It's a place.

Shenzhen looks like Blade Runner threw up on itself. LEDs, neon, and 15-story-high video walls covered in ugly Chinese advertising. It's everything they promised us the future would be.

[...]31 years ago, when Deng Xiaoping carved this area off from the rest of China with a big red pen, he said, this will be the special economic zone. And he made a deal with the corporations. He said listen, use our people. Do whatever you want to our people. Just give us a modern China. And the corporations took that deal, and they squeezed and they squeezed. And what they got was the Shenzhen we find today.

i find it important to emphasize, that my absolute horror and disgust in reading this is less directed at the Chinese government and the Chinese leaders or even at the Chinese corporate heads who ~~allow this~~ condone this sick, sick operation (though, of course, they are fault here as well). what horrifies me and disgusts me most is actually the fact that American people are totally ok with/ ignorant of / willfully ignorant about it. we condone this kind of human rights abuse, because we want our crap to be cheaper, and we always want more of it.

think about how amazingly, completely backwards and effed up this is:

As a creature of the First World, I expect a factory making complex electronics will have the sound of machinery, but in a place where the cost of labor is effectively zero, anything that can be made by hand is made by hand. No matter how complex your electronics are, they are assembled by thousands and thousands of tiny little fingers working in concert. And in those vast spaces, the only sound is the sound of bodies in constant, unending motion.

modern technology has advanced to such a degree that we (Americans) assume ~~most things~~ everything is made by machines, even the relatively simpler things that used to be made by hand, like sweaters, and books, even our food. most people probably think we live in the mechanized future, where handcrafted things are a luxury, a long-lost artifact of history and ancient cultures and the pioneers. so in an age of inconceivably advanced technology, where the machines get smaller and more complex and powerful year after year, you would expect these machines to also be borne from the labor and precision of machines. but, in fact, Mr. Disney tells us, they are assembled by hand, millions of precise hands, working repetitively in an unending mechanical whir. and, in fact, these millions of tiny hands are actually cheaper and more expendable than those big machines.

what makes that such a perverse and deplorable realization is compounded by the fact that those big expensive machines are what put people in America out of work. and here is where i get really angry: in America, where we have labor laws and unions and it's illegal to pay your workers nothing and have them work endless days, the big corporations figured it's actually cheaper and better for business to bring in those big machines. that's what happened in the coal industry, and the automobile industry, and many other industries: human labor got replaced with non-stop, wageless, liability-free machines. other corporations, who couldn't use machines (such as computer manufacturers, i guess), shipped the jobs overseas, to China and India, where they could get human hands to build their products and still get paid next to nothing.

and the really terrible thing is, that China's and India's wages keep dropping year after year, to "stay competitive" with one another in the international market for jobs. so you see, this is a compounding problem that grows worse year after year, with no foreseeable end, because the trend in dropping prices of tech products comes at the price of workers' wages and working conditions.

but, slave labor does not necessarily have to exist in order for these markets to exist. if American companies, such as Apple, commit to fair labor practices (as Apple just did, in joining the FLA), they set the standard for business practices around the world. if American companies demand ethical practices from their suppliers and partners, businesses and employers around the world will change to meet the demand. American companies and American consumers need to demand and expect better.

the dangerous cunning of internet scams

2012-01-09T18:56:00.001-05:00

over the holidays, i was at home in kentucky eating lunch with my family, when we got a phone call. my brother, being the most spry of us at the table, jumped up and answered the phone. my brother, also being the most patient/naive of us at the table, listened to the automated message long enough to hear that whoever just called us had put us on hold, to wait for "the next available agent." my mom immediately grabbed the phone from him and hung up. everyone at the table chided him, "when you get calls from telemarketers, just hang up!"

but, this was one of several similar calls we'd gotten this week. at another point during the holidays, we got a call from "American Express" which i thought was a telemarketing call, so i hung up, but then i remembered that credit card companies sometimes make courtesy calls when strange or suspicious spending occurs on a credit card (i'm grateful to my credit card EVERY single time this happens, even the one time it was for $70 of groceries at Safeway). so, it being the holidays, i had a twinge of concern in the back of my mind and asked if my parents had checked their credit card activity lately. my mom, being a somewhat paranoid and worrisome person, immediately checked her wallet and my dad's wallet and freaked out that one of their AmEx cards was missing. she called American Express back to talk to someone to see if something suspicious had happened on their card because one was missing. 10 minutes later, we found the card (at the bottom of a purse or briefcase) and AmEx informed us they hadn't made a call to us in the last half hour.

but, because of this earlier incident, in which a potential telemarketing scam could have also been a potential credit-related courtesy call, my mom's curiosity was more piqued than it would otherwise be, and she called the-place-that-put-us-on-hold back and asked them who they were, why they called us, and if it was such an important matter, why they put us on hold. the person on the line then continued to inform her that i owed $400+ in debt to a hospital in LA for a visit occurring nearly 2 years ago. my mom was incredulous at first, then angry, argumentative, and lastly, she asked me if i knew anything about this. i thought it was preposterous, i had a string of freak medical emergencies about 2 years ago for a work-related health injury, but i had paid all my medical bills up front, out of pocket. i also had two different sets of insurance, my own medical insurance and workers' comp. so to have an outstanding debt of this size from over two years ago, and not hear anything about it until now, seemed wildly suspicious. worse, the man on the phone threatened that the issue had to be resolved TODAY.

luckily, my mom was in a hurry to go to yoga and told him he'd have to wait, and then just hung up. we didn't hear from them again. until a week later. they sent a letter to my house, which i didn't read or see because i wasn't home when my mom got it, but it freaked her out. from what i can tell though, from her reading it to me on skype, is that there are no details regarding the visit, what services or procedures incurred the debt, or even who the doctor(s) was/were that i saw. the letter said i had 30 days to write back to dispute it, otherwise they would assume i acknowledge a debt was owed and they would pursue it.

well, this afternoon, while i was sitting in the sun enjoying a post-lunch break with some reading, i received another call. again, the man on the phone was insistent that i needed to resolve the issue today. i told him, firmly, that i would not be doing ANYTHING today, i would not admit debt, would not resolve to pay them, would not speak to them further, until i obtained written documentation from them and the hospital with more details about the supposed outstanding bills and until they could tell me specifically where the charges were coming from. they couldn't even tell me what date the visit(s) occurred. the man on the phone said he wasn't a doctor and could not provide that information. i asked to speak to his manager, was put on hold for 10 minutes, and then i hung up because i thought it was ridiculous. they called me back another ten minutes later, but left no messages when i didn't answer.

this angers me so much because what the man on the phone is telling me is that the hospital i saw in LA "sold" my and others' medical files and bills to the collection agency he represents. isn't this a violation of HIPAA and patient confidentiality acts? if some third party company does in fact have access to my information (such as address, phone number) and was sold that information, i am pretty sure i have firm grounds to sue.

well, i looked up their number online and found that others had received similar (unwarranted) phone calls and had filed complaints, indicating some suspicious, scammy behavior. i also called my insurance and workers comp representatives right away, and received notice from them that what this company is doing is ILLEGAL. according to my workers comp agent, discussions of debt or bills directly with patients (at least as it pertains to workers comp cases) is illegal, they should always go directly to insurance first. also, i should have received fair warning of this, even if i did not pay something, rather than hearing about it suddenly two years later.

my biggest problem with this is the predatory nature in which these kinds of calls are being placed. without having to do more than mention "debt" "collection" "credit report" in one sentence, they made my parents draw their own conclusions with a lack of evidence or data and had them fearing for their financial security. they immediately feared for their ruined credit scores, having all their assets seized, legal troubles that could easily be disappeared with a quick $400 payoff. this is the scary nature of scams these days: scammers can easily get you to leap to conclusions and be under their thumb, because the economy is so scary right now, everyone's trying to stay out of debt, and everyday people feel powerless and ill-prepared to challenge even the most dubious of financial crises or disputes. my parents thoughts immediately turned to "it will be easier to pay this now while it's still early than to try to delay it and incur litigation fees or penalties." but where's the proof? also, resolving a financial dispute over the phone immediately seems very strange to me.

furthermore, scams of this nature erode our sense of security and foster paranoia - how can we distinguish between a real scam and a legitimate call from my credit card or hospital? how will i know when i actually owe money and when i'm being taken for a ride? (answer: always keep really detailed and careful records of all your medical-related bills and large purchases, always make sure you pay on time - and keep records of debt repayment - and keep a rolodex of people at each agency or organization you use services from and their customer service lines. NEVER take anyone's word for it that you owe money and didn't know about it).

if you are similarly the victim of dubious medical bill-related calls, here is what you should do: tell them they should contact your insurance (but DO NOT provide any insurance phone numbers or plan data) and if they contact you further tell them their actions are illegal and you will report them to an accountability agency. then see if you can have their numbers blocked from your phone.

the point of this post is: in today's increasingly confusing and difficult to navigate digital world, information and misinformation are equally abundant and equally dangerous. scammers know that a lot of people are paranoid right now about issues related to money, and many don't know how to differentiate between legitimate companies and scams (for example: my dad opened a spam email from "Amazon" telling him my brother had purchased a $500 laptop computer, and then forwarded it to my whole family asking who bought the computer, before i told him to delete it immediately and not click any of the links because it was spam. you don't see a lot of "Nigerian prince" emails any more, all the spam is masked as notifications from companies you actually use - Viagara and Rolex being perhaps exceptions to the rule).

all that glitters is gold

2011-12-26T23:57:00.000-05:00

ever since a friend told me about golden birthdays, when we were probably 7 or 8 years old, i've been sorta latently anticipating it, slowly building it into this Moment that would like, validate my life. like, i kept telling myself by the time of my 26th birthday, my golden birthday, that i will have figured my life out.

because 26, to a 7 or 8-year-old, seemed so old. and i remember wondering at the time what kind of person i would be in what seemed like such a distant future (2011 sounded futuristic in the early 90s). would i be married? would i have kids by then? what would i be doing? how tall would i be? would i still have the same friends and enjoy the same books, where would i live? would i finally have pets by the age of 26?

as a kid, i figured by the time i became a 26-year-old, by the time of my golden birthday, i would have my shit figured out. i would have grown out of insecurities and achieved some dreams of mine, that surely by 26, life would be a little less rocky, i'd be a little more sure of myself, i'd be, you know, an adult.

another thing: the reason, i think, i put so much emphasis on my golden birthday as a kid was because earlier in my childhood, one of my teachers at the Montessori school told our entire class during circle time about the Hale-Bopp comet. apparently, this amazing astronomical event, this once-in-a-lifetime event, had just occurred the previous night and i had totally missed it. what was i doing!? this knowledge, that i would be dead the next time Hale-Bopp passed into visibility, was just too tragic and agonizing for me to handle as a small child. i think i cried thinking about myself dead in the ground while a magnificent meteor passed overhead and me without the eyes to see it, and then maybe possibly i threw up a little on the inside. henceforth i took to staring a lot at the sun, even though my teachers and parents told me to look away, and stood outside once in the winter with my dad observing a lunar eclipse - i had just taken a shower and it was so cold outside that my hair froze stiff in a rolled bun on top of my head.

basically, my golden birthday was my personal Hale-Bopp comet. i knew i was only going to get one chance at this in my lifetime, and i'd better get it right.

but you know what? i thought what i wanted on my birthday was luxurious, extravagant celebrations, a gilded cake, to be swaddled in gold lurex and lame and parade around like a Macy's day float. but what it turned out i needed most was to spend my birthday with my family and allow myself to be reminded how wonderful small moments can feel and how these moments can erase all the uncertainty i have about my life. every little day is a Hale-Bopp, you know? and i'd rather live my life appreciating the beauty of a million everyday stars than lament forever one shooting star.

cubicle chronicles

2011-12-07T23:00:00.001-05:00

i have started drawing at my desk as a way of coping with the feelings of horrible boredom and waste of my life's potential that comes with my job. it is also an excellent way of managing my anger and frustration and staving off my daily existential crises.

i like to "free draw," that is, i like to make random lines on a page and turn those into drawings. i like to think of it as "liberating" the drawings on the page. all this to say, i definitely don't consider myself a serious artist, and i don't know what i'm doing.

but the other day, i was drawing, and the drawing turned out to look a little/ a lot like me.

i gave her a mean stare (because this is how my face probably looks most of the time at work), combat boots and nunchucks, so she'd be tough and not stand crap from anybody (because most of the time at work i feel silenced and powerless).

and then i decided to keep going with it, and i started making these comics. i put her in situations that bother me at work, like when people at the cubicle next to mine start clipping their nails at their desk, or when my supervisor who smokes and drinks lots of coffee decides to breathe into my face. soon i'll have her confronting the people at work who don't recycle, who talk really loud on their phones, who don't clean up the microwave. it's been surprisingly therapeutic. these are the drawings i've done so far (click to enlarge):

The Nail-Clipper

Coffee-Cigarette Breath

an important mystery has been solved!!!

2011-11-30T02:21:00.001-05:00

over a month ago, i posted this tweet:

the foot in question greatly disturbed me, to an alarming degree; it created in me some nagging, paranoid fear of an expanding unknown natural world, a cruel, heartless world in which creepy-looking, unidentifiable feet are violently severed from their bodies and horrifically displayed in my work parking lot.

here is a crappy photo of a crappy cell phone photo of the aforementioned foot (i haven't figured out how to download photos off my cell yet, sorry). the poor quality of the photo greatly dilutes the creepiness of the foot; you cannot see, for instance, the bleached bone protruding from the scaly green flesh, the torn tendons, the little curvy nails, sharp and pointy at the ends of the toe pads.

but, just as i'd forgotten about the foot, Ben and i went to Golden Gate Park and spent an afternoon hiking and walking around Stow Lake. there, by the water, to my great surprise, disgust and horror, i saw the feet again, this time walking towards me!

all around us, these strange birds i had never before seen. they were a weird cross between a chicken, a duck, and a lizard. they had small, fat black bodies, with weak-looking wings, white beaks, red eyes. and those feet! they looked like a strange chimera of chicken and an iguana. and they enjoyed coming close to us! we'd never seen birds like these before, and we were terrified.

well, tonight, i learned what they are! i found this book online, The Birds of Golden Gate Park, by Mailliard:

i had to look pretty hard, but finally, towards the end of the water fowl section, this description:

"Can be confused with no other Park bird"

"chicken-like"

"feet lobed, greenish"

yep, that's the bird! what we saw was a Coot, or mud-hen. also, that solves the mystery of the foot i saw in the parking lot of my work... but not how it got there. my guess, after watching the seagulls get hostile with the coots, is that maybe a seagull attacked one, ripped off its foot, and then carried the foot, in its beak, further inland, dropping it in the parking lot near my car. *shudders* nature can be strange.

further question: is this where the phrase "ya old coot!" comes from?

i mean, really, can anyone look at this and honestly tell me they are not creeped out!!?

aaaggggghhh the toes!

Black Friday is a disturbing reflection on our society, yes, but have you seen the Justin Bieber fragrance ads?

2011-11-25T02:14:00.001-05:00

i hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving (and for those who don't celebrate, i hope you had a peaceful Day of Mourning). i am personally extremely thankful for my family and friends and my physical health and well-being and clarity of mind. i'm especially grateful for the latter, as the day of giving thanks quickly gives way to the day of rabidly consuming everything in our paths.

Black Friday, truth be told, scares me shitless. never do i have less understanding or compassion for humanity than when i think of hoards of people trampling and ambushing each other in the malls for the sake of bargains and/or sport. it really is terrifying.

when people decide to camp out in a public square or park in the name of democracy, choose to care for each other, educate one another, engage in dialog, and live cooperatively, it is deemed a "health and/or safety hazard" and immediately pepper-sprayed or dismantled or demonized. but, when people choose to forgo family dinner to camp out in front of big box superstores the night before things go on mega sale, it's understandable? that makes no sense to me whatsoever.

on to other salient points: have any of you seen the Justin Bieber fragrance ads? i saw one for the first time a few months ago, when i was shopping for sweaters at the mall.

what i simultaneously love and am repulsed by, is the oh-so transparent marketing scheme. the fragrance, obviously marketed to young teenage/tween-age girls of Bieber Nation, is being sold by the eponymous little pop tart Justin Bieber, who will make mega, un-godly bucks this holiday season peddling and inflicting this sugary sweet hormone juice on our unsuspecting populace.

what i love/hate about it is that there's no smidgen of pretense: Justin Bieber and his handlers/marketing machine know where the money is. of course they're not going to bother making a fragrance or aftershave for mini-dudes. the mondo money is with the itty-bitty ladies. so, of course, when i saw this ad for the first time at the mall, my initial thought was "hm, how weird, Justin Bieber made a fragrance for girls?" but of course he did!

and not only will it sell, it will sell like hot cakes (hot cakes with Justin Bieber's face on them, that then want to fuck you! those kinds of hot cakes!) because this is the precise thought process that goes into buying a bottle of Bieber's lady scent (so hilariously packaged in a bright pink blossoming flower):

it is not, as it would be with other celebrities who have fragrances (see: Britney, Gwen Stefani, J.Lo) "i want to smell like Bieber."

it is, "this is what i want to smell like if i want to be fucked by Bieber."*

and that is why i feel particularly depressed on this eve of Black Friday.

*additional thoughts: does the perfume actually smell like Bieber? does the perfume ostensibly attract Bieber to its wearer because he likes the smell of himself? or because it's the smell of money?

11/11/11 11:11:11

2011-11-11T11:20:00.000-05:00

so, did you do it?

luckily here at work, my desk phone clock, my computer, and my cell phone were all set a minute apart, so i got three consecutive shots at 11:11. i closed my eyes and gave thought to every single member of my family, thinking about the last time i saw them and what i will make sure to do the next time i see them again (give them long, powerful hugs, make sure to hold their hand and tell them how much i love them). for some reason, a lot of my thoughts turned to food - the last time i went hiking with my Uncle Donald and how he and his wife packed sandwiches for us on the hike and how sweet a gesture that was, thought about the last time i went to my grandma's house and my aunt Su Yuan made soup for everyone, and how i had a migraine that day and couldn't enjoy it as much as i wish i could have because it would have made her so happy, and i thought about the last time i went home for the holidays and visited my dad at his office one day and he offered me a little grape juice box from his office fridge, the way he's always done since i was a little kid.

and i thought about the warmth of a hug, how good it feels to hold someone you love close to you, and how every one of my family members' hands feels in my hand - my mom's hand is fat and soft and warm and strong, and my dad's is rough and dry but also somehow gentle and comforting, and my dad's mom's hands are papery white and wrinkled in delicate folds like tissue paper from a gift, and my mom's mom's hands are so much like my mom's that they are virtually hand twins, that i just know mine will be like that too one day.

and then i thought about Cal, my brother, and how i hope he's happy and i wonder what he's doing right now, and how when we were kids i did so much for him - i used to get all the other kids on the playground to help me plan a birthday party at recess for him, because his birthday was always during the school year and he was always jealous that mine was right after Christmas and everyone was home for my birthday. now that we're adults it's hard to be a big sister to him sometimes, but i'm going to go home this year and do something nice for him.

and finally i thought about myself. i've been really sad and negative lately, so i tried to imagine myself the way i used to be, the way i want to be, which is smiling, laughing, happy, face lit up with so many great ideas and a joy for life. if i can think it, maybe i can be it.

so in this magical minute that stretched into three, i counted my blessings, thought about my family and friends who are so far away, thought about the good things i've done and the good things still left in me to do. i thought about this moment, this small moment in the entire geological timeline of the earth's existence. i thought about time and how it's a construct and really has no meaning. but this moment, alive and awake in it as i was, was a gift, a fleeting gift i will never get back, so how can i spend it in the best possible way? who are all the people i want to imagine in this moment with me, even though they aren't here?

a minute (or two) of magical thinking

2011-11-11T00:09:00.001-05:00

people who are close to me know that i am not religious and i'm maybe not even that spiritual, but dammit, do i believe in numerology*!

that's why tomorrow, 11/11/11, for the one minute of 11:11, i will concentrate all my energy into thinking just positive, well-intentioned, powerful, hopeful and generous thoughts. it's harder than it sounds. but for that one minute, i'll do it, and hope that you'll join me, and maybe magical and wonderful things will result (you've just spent a whole minute intentionally using your brain to generate positive vibes – that in itself is a good thing). you've got two shots at this (if you don't abide by the military way of telling time), so make them count**! 2 whole minutes of extraordinary positive energy being sent out into the universe by a bunch of people at once!

let's make brainwaves!
-stef

*in elementary school, probably for at least a solid year, if not more, i would make a wish/positive intention every day at 3:33 pm, and 12:34 if i caught it. seriously, a whole year. it was a year of magical thinking.

**seriously, i've already set my alarm for it.

learning a practice of love

2011-11-10T16:34:00.001-05:00

when i was a teacher in Los Angeles, i had lots of students who were maladjusted to being at school, an environment that necessitated, sometimes forced, their interaction with a diversity of people, an environment that challenged them to try new things EVERY DAY, while possibly sitting next to someone they couldn't get along with, or even got along with too well. i learned more about human nature in my two years of teaching than i have learned my entire life.

one invaluable thing i learned was that everyone, from the teacher's pet to the disaster student who wreaks havoc on your classroom, is just seeking some validation. everyone needs solace in some redemptive quality in themselves. oftentimes, because we're too insecure and damaged from a history of neglect and emotional abuse. children are especially sensitive to every event in their lives, because these events are closer to the surface of memory, and because children use each moment to learn and adapt and adjust.

the moment that changed my ~~pedagogy~~ life was when i did a functional behavior analysis (FBA) in my first year of teaching, as part of a grad school project. the FBA is basically a glorified checklist that you use to observe a student's behavior in an attempt to understand the purpose, indeed, the meaning, behind the behaviors. for my project, i chose my student Marvin, who had a range of bizarre behaviors that seemed to come out at random: he would frequently come disruptively late to class, get out of his seat and come to the front of the class to stand near me and mock my lessons, he would throw pencils at other students, he would sit at his desk with both fists in his mouth and his eyelids turned up in grotesque self-amusement, he would bark like a dog and scream and bang on his desk and stomp his feet and laugh maniacally at the hell he was raising. frequently, his behaviors were so disturbing i would react more out of fear than frustration. so, i followed him around one day, went to all his classes, armed with my FBA chart, on which i listed all his behaviors, and made checkmarks by them each time i saw them occur, and in what setting or following what types of stimulation. at the end of my observation, i was horrified to discover he only behaved this way in my class.

but after looking at my notes, i began to detect a pattern. Marvin had one of the lowest reading levels of any student i had in any of my special ed classes - he was barely above a kindergarten reading level despite being in the 6th grade. in all of his English classes, i noticed him being suspiciously quiet, almost unnoticeable. he only occasionally tapped a peer on the shoulder, or ripped at the edges of a textbook, but all while the teacher was turned around. Marvin was trying to avoid being noticed in the classes that would require reading, something he was bad at, insecure about, and ashamed to be exposed for. Marvin was, however, strong in math. in fact, he was one of the strongest in my special ed class. he was quick, usually accurate, and excited. he was almost always the first one done, the first to raise his hand, and then the first to freak out if i didn't call on him (which i tried not to do ALL the time, in order to give other students a chance). i then considered my math class, and the way i usually conducted them - short group teaching, individual practice, followed by a review of answers and more practice*. it became painfully clear to me that Marvin's disturbing behaviors were not completely his fault, he was trying, in the only way he knew how, to get my attention for something - maybe the one thing - he did right and was proud of.

the reason this changed my life, you see, is because it revealed a fallacy of an unexamined assumption. we're told, or assume, that people who act unreasonably or irrationally are just weird and/or crazy, and should be ignored (at best), shunned, or reprimanded. never are we told to reach out to these people, to embrace them, and try to understand them. when i realized that Marvin was just seeking my attention for something he felt proud of (granted, in the worst ways imaginable), all i had to do was give him a little bit of my time every day to listen to him, applaud his accomplishments, and give him validation in an otherwise unforgiving and indifferent world. it was so simple, and yet, so revolutionary, because it goes against everything else we're told in our culture.

what we have to understand is that people behave in strange ways all the time. sometimes words are not enough to give voice to deeper longings, or are too hard to say. sometimes you give someone a gift, because you don't know how else to say you're sorry. or you reach out to touch someone's hand, just to let them know you're so happy they're alive. our culture can be so isolating that we forget how to talk to one another, and when we make efforts to reach out to another human being, it feels revolutionary.

learning to see through Marvin's destructive behaviors and understand what he was trying to say by them, helped me move away from blame-placing, to a more compassionate, understanding, and forgiving approach to my interactions with others. it's not always easy to practice, heck, it's not always easy to remember, but trying to hold in my head and heart the conviction that all people are, like me, struggling to be loved and make meaning out of their lives, and the least i/you/we can do to make a difference is to love a little back.

The toughest thing is to love somebody who has done something mean to you — especially when that somebody is yourself. Look inside yourself and find that loving part of you. Take good care of that part because it helps you love your neighbor. --Fred Rogers

*the lecture-style, banking model of teaching is an obvious first-year teaching mistake. the problem is it's so common and assumed that even this critical pedagog was fooled into thinking it would work! in my second year, i greatly improved my pedagogy by adopting a student-centered, rather than teacher-centered, method of instruction. i still gave mini-lectures, but incorporated multiple manners of student engagement and participation, even though my mini-lectures were only about 10 minutes long. i worked my butt off trying out activities, and inventing new ones, and the best idea i ever had: allowing students to work cooperatively to solve problems together. wow, what a difference a year of mistakes makes! in my second year, all my students were OVERJOYED to come to class, i never had anyone be late, and my second-year Marvin, a girl who was, of course, named Angel and had a predilection for animal print hoodies, never derailed my class (despite running around the room stomping her feet and clawing the desks and grunting) because my other students were enthralled with my lessons, loved what they were learning, and didn't want to stop. the best part of this story is that the culture of learning and positivity in my class was so strong that Angel eventually realized the best way for her to get attention in class was to do well in class. i succeeded in turning her around bit by bit, but issues Angel had in another class caused her to get expelled from school.

free falling

2011-11-10T12:28:00.001-05:00

I opened my laptop this morning to check the weather, and this is what I saw.

I fell asleep watching the documentary Transcendent Man, about Raymond Kurzweil. I highly recommend it, fascinating and alternately dark and hopeful. Funnily, I was watching it last night because after watching two episodes of Breaking Bad, Season 4 back-to-back, I was too scared to sleep. Somehow, dystopian robot futures were calming after watching normal humans break down into remorseless criminals.

a scientific inquiry into the varying experience of sunsets over time

2011-11-09T19:39:00.000-05:00

Some data:
The sunset time for Fremont, CA (94538) for today, Wednesday Nov. 9, 2011, is 5:01 pm PST.
The sunset time for Los Angeles, CA (90034) is 4:53 pm PST.
The sunset time for Syracuse, NY (13203) is 4:46 pm EST.
The sun sets in Oxford, OH (45056) at 5:28 pm EST.
In Lexington, KY (40512), the sun sets at 5:31 pm EST.
And in Miami, FL (33101), it's 5:34 pm EST.

I'm sure there's a scientific explanation for the variance, like the earth's tilt on its axis and the rotation in relation to the sun, but I'm going to leave it to more scientifically-inclined minds than mine to furnish those reasons. (Did you see how I gave zip codes instead of latitudes and longitudes, which would have proved infinitely more useful in answering this question? Although I did try to arrange those cities in order from North to South.)

All I know is, it gets dark disgustingly early now, and I was correct in thinking that, when growing up in the Midwest, the falls were never so dark, nor the days so short (and unfulfilled) as they are on the west coast. It was not just nostalgia playing a dirty mind trick on me.

A Letter to The Occupy Movement

2011-10-24T19:15:00.000-04:00

To my compatriots and comrades in the Occupy Movements Everywhere:

I am writing this out of urgency, and a desperate desire for the 99% to succeed in bringing about the changes our world needs. I've been following the growth of the movement with great interest and enthusiasm, although I must admit my frustration is growing with each passing day. I do not agree with the detractors who say The Movement needs a solid list of demands or a "clear" message, because the issues and problems which the Occupy Movement illuminates are too numerous and varied to pinpoint, and besides, I am glad the Occupy Movement has refused to be limited in its scope and wanting.

I am writing today, not to request any clarity or focus in message, but in action. I believe The Occupy Movement has the power and potential to transform our society, if we put our collective weight behind decisive action. And now is the crucial time.

The Occupation Movement is about to come up against two of the greatest momentum-killers: 1) institutional recess and 2) desensitization. Both of these are issues of time.
The first is a problem familiar to student organizers: you've worked so hard to build your movement and mount pressure on your target, only to find yourself with only a few days or weeks before Spring Break/Winter Break/Summer vacation. Often, in these cases, administrations just have to play a waiting game before the student organizers all go home and the rest of the student population forgets what happened. When the students return from vacation, they have to start all over, trying to build enough momentum to push through their demands before the next vacation hits. It's the same with congressional recesses and politics, too. There is always a built-in timeline, whether institutionally situated or not, that dictates the rhythm of actions. In the case of the Occupy Wall Street movement, we have about 2-3 weeks, at most, before the harsh New York winter hits. At that point, what happens to The Movement? Even if OWS decides to continue camping in Zuccotti Park, there is a question of purpose. Is the point of the Occupy Movement to camp together in public spaces indefinitely? What does it achieve in doing so?

That brings us to the next problem, which is desensitization. Right now, the Occupy Movement has newness and the spectacular as advantages. A social movement of this size and diversity has never been seen, possibly, since the beginning of modern society. The Movement has the media and people around the world in rapt attention because it's new, it's exciting, and it's all of us (we are the 99%). But how long will this last? My guess is: not very long. Unfortunately, we live in a society that is extremely short of attention span. And one that is easily bored and desensitized. Which is to say that the longer this goes on, the smaller our window of opportunity for change becomes. We cannot afford to let something of such importance be forgotten or dismissed as a fad. We must harness the power and potential of this movement, while public interest and opinion ~~still remain strong~~ are still growing, to make something daringly transformative happen.

Malcolm Gladwell touches on the importance of swift action in his article for the New Yorker, "How David Beats Goliath" (May 11, 2009):

“And it happened as the Philistine arose and was drawing near David that David hastened and ran out from the lines toward the Philistine,” the Bible says. “And he reached his hand into the pouch and took from there a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead.” The second sentence—the slingshot part—is what made David famous. But the first sentence matters just as much. David broke the rhythm of the encounter. He speeded it up. “The sudden astonishment when David sprints forward must have frozen Goliath, making him a better target,” the poet and critic Robert Pinsky writes in “The Life of David.” Pinsky calls David a “point guard ready to flick the basketball here or there.” David pressed. That’s what Davids do when they want to beat Goliaths. [emphases mine]

If we want to win, if the Occupation Movement is going to amount to some everlasting change, we need to act quickly.

The greatest advantage The Occupy Movement has in its arsenal is the power of the people. The Movement has been exercising this power (as in the frequent use of The People's Mic), but rarely applying it. We are the 99%, are we not? What we lack in material and economic wealth we make up for in human capital. We can overwhelm and overpower the 1% if we remember to act in unison. The 1% needs the 99%, not the other way around. And that is the source of our power.

I propose that we start direct actions targeted at the 1%. For example, what if the Occupy Movements decided to unanimously boycott companies owned or affiliated with the 1%? The misconception has always been that the 1% determines the health and strength of our economy. The truth, however, as we all know, is that it's the individual consumer and taxpayer who actually contributes to society, that it's our money that goes towards bailouts, and it's our money that goes into the stock market. I propose that Occupy Wall Street make a large banner, "Boycott of the Week! This Week, the 99% Boycotts: _____________" and fly it in Zuccotti Park, and that other Occupy sites do the same, and then watch as the 99% proceed to withdraw their money from said bank, or stop buying said brand, or sell said stock. Imagine the dips the market will take, and the blows to the fat cats' pocket books! If the 1% was mostly ignoring us before, we will force them to listen to us now.

We must continue to push and build pressure on our targets and find a way to win our government and economy back.

We are too big to fail, and this is too important to be ignored.

Onward, the 99%!

-stephan!e

Occupy Wall Street newcomers

2011-10-22T00:07:00.000-04:00

"...and then, there were Ben Kuebrich and Stephanie Lee."

ben and i made the local NBC NYC news*, for showing up last friday to check out the amazing happenings at the Occupy Wall Street movement. more on that soon!

View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.

*the only reason we found out was because we met a guy on the way home who stopped us to chat and said "hey! you're the ones from the 6 o'clock news!"

rabbit habits

2011-10-19T14:14:00.000-04:00

my roommate found a domestic rabbit the other day, and has been keeping it outside under a laundry hamper with a phone book on top. i didn't find out about it until this morning, but i'm concerned for its health and safety - there are stray cats in our neighborhood - and i'm wondering if its quality of life isn't what it should be.

the moment i heard she had found, and was keeping, a rabbit, i got scared, remembering the wild baby birds my brother and i used to find as kids and try to keep as pets - tried to "save" - only to have them die within a a night or two. i suspect wild animals, or any animal for that matter, knows when it's being held captive in an unnatural state. i think domestic animals are less aware, though, because of their upbringing and ways of life and force of habit. habits are something we impose on our animals that would be against their nature and better interests, for habits are something that are evolutionarily disadvantaging. (habits make us comfortable in otherwise potentially adverse situations and give us the illusion of control over situations, they dull our awareness to changes in our environment and make us assume constancy in our lives that doesn't exist.) i even suspect that animals can get depressed and will themselves to die when they find themselves in such situations of captivity. when my brother and i tried to rescue a baby robin that had fallen out of its nest, we gave it a large box with a cloth and dry grass bed, and lots of water and birdseed, but it died the next day. i remember feeling sick to my stomach when my parents explained it needed its mom, and thinking that maybe if we'd left it outside, the mom wouldn't have been scared away and returned for her baby. i was maybe 6 or 7 at the time, but i remember thinking to myself that i'd learned an important lesson, that i think still influences me to this day: that nature can take care of itself, if humans can prevent themselves from interfering. basically, i think the world and all its animals would be better off if humans had never made efforts to control and dominate and use it, and endeavored instead to coexist in it.

so i'm conflicted. this little rabbit is trapped and i don't know how to free her. what does freedom mean for a domestic rabbit? while i can't just let her go in the woods - i suspect she'd be eaten by coyotes or an owl within a few days - i can't just let her stay in what can only be called a death trap, waiting for a flood or a carbon monoxide leak (my roommate wants to keep her in the garage!) or a stray cat to come and kill her. i want her to have the best quality of life possible, but i don't know how to give that to her, and what that means.

furthermore, it's really distressing to me because of the symbolic importance i've placed on this rabbit in the last few hours. i think about all the wild animals killed by human (in)action and interference (the animals i see everyday on the roads, the beautiful red fox i saw the other day, the first red fox i'd ever seen in my life so close, its tail blowing up in the wind, for a moment it looked like it could have just been sleeping, i had to pull my car over and call ben to cry, i was so upset), and think about the animals i've tried to save without success (the baby birds, the mauled chipmunk i should have just let die by the paws of a menacing neighbor's cat), and i think to myself, if i could just save this one animal, just this one, i could make it all better. i could stop having nightmares and feel some relief.

also, i sympathize with her. living in cramped quarters, with little view of the outside world, and in vulnerability of predators is a shitty way to live. my life has felt that way lately, like a trap, and i think that, deep down, i'd like to save this rabbit so i can feel a little saved myself.

UPDATE: and then, of course, this had to happen today in Ohio. (some idiot who had been keeping 50 exotic animals in his yard, decided to set them loose before committing suicide. local law enforcement decided it was the "right thing to do" to hunt them all down, and kill them. freakin' ridiculous. fyi, i believe in cosmic justice, and i hope that every human who hunts animals for sport spends their afterlife as a factory chicken. have i mentioned i'm unwaveringly pro-fauna?)

RIP, Steve Jobs

2011-10-05T20:04:00.000-04:00

here in Silicon Valley, the news of Steve Jobs's passing hit us all like an earthquake. ripples and jolts of shock and dismay. the news of his death coming only a few weeks after the shock of his resignation as CEO, due to his ailing health.

i know very little of what Steve Jobs was like as a man, but i know he changed our world and the way we lived in it with the power of his ideas. there are traces of his influence all around us, whether we like it or not, and his presence in so many aspects of our modern world make it impossible to not feel impacted by the fact that even such a brilliant and valuable man did not receive the care he needed to overcome cancer. with all that Jobs and his team were able to do and accomplish with him at the helm, it's viciously cruel that he would die so young (only 56) from cancer. whether you're a Mac or PC, it's terribly sad.

just think: as the news is breaking, thousands upon thousands of internet users are taking to their smart phones, their iPads, their Macs (and all the derivative devices thereof), and tweeting, video conferencing, posting to facebook, blogging, etc. all of those actions were touched, influenced, and forever changed by this man and his ideas.

RIP, Steve. and thanks for everything.

Steve Jobs, "How to live before you die."

what a bunch of boobs

2011-10-04T18:37:00.000-04:00

this is from the TSA's 3-1-1 policy regarding liquids on a plane (click image to make large):

"To ensure the health and welfare of certain air travelers... the following liquids... are permitted through the security checkpoint: ... Items used to augment the body for medical or cosmetic reasons such as ... prosthetic breasts, bras or shells containing gels, saline solution, or other liquids..."

so lemme get this straight: i can't pack a bottle of sunscreen in my suitcase, nor can i bring a bottle of water aboard a plane, but if i stuffed it in my bra for "cosmetic" augmentation of my body, then it's ok? am i alone in thinking that is utterly ridiculous and extremely insulting?

furthermore, if i do decide to bring such breast-enhancing, liquid-enabled technology on my flight, i have to submit myself to thorough inspection and screening.

this is why i'm becoming gradually less inclined to travel.

Jens Lekman's "Cowboy Boots"

2011-10-03T02:30:00.000-04:00

the song i can't get out of my head lately is Jens Lekman's new song "Cowboy Boots." ever since i heard it for the first time at his performance in San Francisco, i've wanted to hear it over and over again.

Jens Lekman - Cowboy boots (acoustic session) by mouxlaloulouda

i scoured the internet for lyrics and guitar tabs, but found nothing (the lyrics out there currently are extremely inaccurate and it's too early perhaps for tabs). so, having listened to the live performances enough times to know the lyrics by heart, i thought i would do the internet a service and share them:

"Cowboy Boots" lyrics by Jens Lekman

you know that thing when you have the same dream
seven hundred thirty nights in a row?
and you think your dream is trying to tell you something
yea you say "tell me something i don't already know"

[chorus]
just pour me a drink
so i can refuse
to raise my glass
to these sad and worn out midnight shoes

in my next dream, i want a pair of cowboy boots
the kind that walks the straightest and the most narrow route
anywhere but back to you

here we are down the same old street
here we are with nothing to say
your little hand trying to make it into her's,
but she puts it in her pocket and looks away

i keep my eyes on the sidewalk for something flippable like a dime
i wanna know how you forgive someone,
someone you've forgiven so many times

[chorus]

i really want to learn the guitar part to this song so i can record a version of me singing it. can anyone out there help me out with the tabs?

the light by which i travel into this and that

2011-10-02T20:06:00.003-04:00

Jens Lekman and his drummer, Addison. they played a show at the California Academy of Sciences on Thursday, September 29, 2011. this post is about their performance.

i'm in a delicate state right now. i've tried to write this blog post several times over, over several days (this is attempt #5 6). i never do that, not with blog posts anyway. never. it's weird for me not knowing what to say, but then again, i understand: it's hard to write about things that mean a lot to you, that are deeply personal, that are personally significant. it's hard finding the perfect words to say something that just makes sense to you, something as simple as liking someone's music and how it makes you feel. that's what's going on here. that's what happened when i tried to write a thoughtful post about seeing Jens Lekman perform in San Francisco. nevertheless, something must be said.

the seasons are changing and i feel lost, like i often do this time of year. there are so many things that i miss and can't return to, and i'm reminded of all those things the most when summer turns to fall. i've spent the last few weeks listening to Jens's music because it makes me feel at home in a place in my heart and memory that doesn't exist in a physical place any more.

i guess that's why seeing Jens perform live is such a meaningful experience for me. it's a physical home for an emotional state. it's dancing and singing along with others who feel the same way you do.

Jens played a fantastic set, including songs from his new EP and some stuff that might be on the new record (my guess is the songs "Cowboy Boots" and "The End of the World is Bigger Than Love" are on the forthcoming record, in which case i already can't wait for it to be released), and he also played some older stuff, like a beautiful acoustic version of "Black Cab," and one of my favorite Jens songs of all time, and a song i want played at my wedding, "I Saw Her In the Anti-War Demonstration" (videos below). and when Jens played "Opposite of Hallelujah" and he busted out a sample of Chairmen of the Board's "Gimme Just a Little More Time," i swear we both looked directly at each other while we waved our arms in a come hither motion and shuffled our feet in place, while lip syncing the lyrics. Jens also played "A Sweet Summer's Night on Hammer Hill," and i sang along and yelled "oh no!" like it is on the record, and then everyone else started in with me, and we did the "bumpa bumpa bumpa bumpa bumpa bumpa BUMP!"s and at the end of the song, Jens clutched the mic tight to his chest and, beaming, asked us "can you hear the beat of my heart?" while his hand thumped a heart flutter on the mic for all of us to hear. he looked so happy to have shared that song with all of us, like we had just made his night because our collective understanding of the song matched his, and that synchronicity was putting a smile on all of our faces.

Jens playing the crowd like a xylophone at the end of "Opposite of Hallelujah"

something else i really appreciated about seeing Jens this time around was the light politicking he did between songs. reading his blog and listening to his music lately has made me realize the subtle politics in his music that are gradually coming more prominently to the surface. during his set, Jens paused to tell us about the debates over a Good Samaritan law in Sweden, healthcare and education, and he sang a love song about an anti-war demonstration. and "Waiting for Kirsten," from his new EP, though ostensibly about missing the chance to see Kirsten Dunst at a local club, is also a delightful song about social equality and a Swedish disinterest in celebrity ("in Gothenburg we don't have VIP lines/ in Gothenburg we don't make a fuss about who you are").

i've always thought critics have underestimated the resonance of his music; they get caught up in the surface, distracted by the adorable lyrics (he rhymes "Jehovah's [witnesses]" with "pullovers" and "casanovas" in a way only someone with a sweet Swedish accent can do), without realizing that Jens is writing/singing about some pretty heavy stuff: love, loss, the end of the world, missed connections, life's changes. his work has always had that common theme of working thru life's transitions, difficult times, with a sense of humor and a childlike questioning. his music is liminal, transitional music with some of the despair diluted with fun. it's dancing-because-what-else-can-we-do kind of music. i always label his music "Holiday" when i put it in my library, because that's how it feels to me, like a holiday from my life's worries, but also because holidays as a kid were always those short breaks between the end of something and the start of something else, when you were at home in your old house that you grew up in, but don't feel like you live there any more, and you spent your days lying in your bed staring at the ceiling, thinking about your life and scared about your future.

i had more, so much more, to say. but you know what they say about pictures and words. so here are some pictures and some moving pictures i shot at the show (click on pictures to make them bigger!):

Jens sampling Chairmen of the Board's "Gimme Just a Little More Time" during a live performance of "The Opposite of Hallelujah" (i think this is from his 2007 tour for Night Falls Over Kortedala, because of the girl group with him, and because i remember filling with joy when they busted out that sample during the show i saw in Chicago)

Jens Lekman extract by Wirewool

my college friend Karen and i at the end of the night, happily holding one of Jens's limited edition picture discs in the lobby of the museum.

additional things that must be said:

- i think the most frequently uttered word of his entire performance was "pocket." that in itself encapsulates how much love i have for his music and what great friends Jens and i would have made, if only we grew up in Sweden at the same time.

- i have mp3s to share with you!

Cowboy Boots (Live) (link goes to another page, right click on mp3 link to download)

The End of the World is Bigger Than Love (SoundCloud link)

Yeah, Oh Yeah! (Magnetic Fields cover)

meth head

2011-09-29T19:02:00.000-04:00

i woke up in the middle of the night in a state somewhere between waking and dreaming. i knew i was awake, but i was having a dream moment. i jolted up in bed and looked to my left, where my sleeping laptop light, for a moment*, seemed to glow menacingly at me, and i thought it was a flashlight, or a microphone, that someone was watching me as i was sleeping. i imagined sirens, cop cars coming screaming down the street to snatch me. suddenly, i had bolted out of my bed and was frantically trying to pick up and hide the meth equipment i had imagined were in my room, beakers and tubes laying around on the floor beside my bed. i realized i was being crazy, so i gained control of my body and turned on the light. stood there in disbelief for a moment, in the stark sudden brightness of my room, and had to convince myself it was a dream.

i have been watching way too much Breaking Bad.

* that moment that also occurs when you look at the second hand of your watch and for a moment, that second seems to grow longer than any other second that comes after it due to your anticipation. is there a name for this brief slowing of time?

fine italian and french cooking

2011-09-28T19:15:00.001-04:00

i've been boning up on my cooking terminology and technique during my lunch break today. one thing i'm proud of, is that ben and i have a really terrific track record in terms of our home cooking. we've been making delicious, healthy (low on oil, high in veggies, low on waste), collaborative food since we first started living together, and it's one of the things i miss the most about our life together. it occurs to me i'm really lucky that i have a partner who is as eager as i am to have a fully collaborative relationship, right down to the preparation of fine food. our lives are a lot happier and healthier (and fuller!) as a result, in addition to being less gender normative, which will be good for the kids!

since i'm going back to see ben in a little over a week (yippee!) i've been reading about food and thinking about what i want to make and it made me think about the art of food preparation, the skill required in artful cuisine (knife skills, knowledge about how to choose and prepare produce, proper timing, just to name a few), and the language that is so specific to food preparation. of course, good cooks may not necessarily even know the formal terminology for what they're doing, which is the case with us. i learned today that what we've been doing with our acclaimed pasta sauce is known in the worlds of french and italian cooking as Mirepoix and soffritto (respectively), and "the holy trinity" in Creole cooking. our sauce is more or less a traditional Bolognese Ragu, minus the milk and cream due to ben's lactose intolerance, plus a super secret ingredient i learned from my mom that will go with me to my deathbed (it seriously makes the difference between mediocre sauce and awesome, no-leftovers, lick-yr-plate sauce)!

another interesting thing i learned today was the origin of the cooking term Mirepoix, which is a mixture of onions, carrots and celery, in the ratio 2:1:1, lightly browned and used as the basis of flavoring for sauces, such as our own pasta sauce, and cooking stocks. have you noticed how fragrant and yummy celery is when its flavors are opened up with some heat? delicious! anyway, i was wondering what the etymology for the term was, and learned this:

According to Pierre Larousse (quoted in the Oxford Companion to Food), the unfortunate Duke of Mirepoix was "an incompetent and mediocre individual. . . who owed his vast fortune to the affection Louis XV felt toward his wife and who had but one claim to fame: he gave his name to a sauce made of all kinds of meat and a variety of seasonings" [from Wikipedia]

glad to know a cuckolded, impotent little French aristocrat gave us such a lovely term for something so tasty! thanks, dude!

also, if you've ever wondered what the difference between Ziti and Penne is, here it is:
Ziti and Penne are both cylindrical hollow pastas, but the difference is that ziti is cut with a square edge, while penne pastas are cut at an angle. this is an important distinction! the angled ends of penne allow for even more sauce retention than ziti, since the ends act as scoops. ridged penne, or penne rigate, allow even more sauce retention because of their ridges. an easy way to remember this is that the name penne comes from the latin/italian word for "feather" or "quill" - hence the angled edge and the name. also: mostaccioli are a larger, wider version of penne and their name means "little moustache."

isn't cooking fun??!

tag obsessed

2011-09-28T03:00:00.003-04:00

you know that part of Everything Is Illuminated where Alex, Jonathan and Grandpa go to the house of the old woman and find her house is almost completely filled with thousands of boxes, all labeled with a very specific and strange category (darkness, dust, etc.)? that's how i felt when i finished writing the following email about the new delicious, which i can't stand in its current iteration because it interferes with my obsessive need to keep my bookmarks grouped together in a very particular way, like the aforementioned old lady.

tree house

2011-09-25T01:09:00.013-04:00

i've always had an affinity for all things related to trees, nests, and birds. so imagine my explosive delight when i learned of the artwork of Patrick Dougherty! i had the phenomenal pleasure of seeing one of his art installations today, in Palo Alto, CA.

Patrick Dougherty is an artist who uses renewable resources to craft beautiful, dynamic structures. his work material is sourced from local plants and shaped and woven without the use of metal nails or synthetic glues, just the delicacy and dexterity of human hands. this particular piece, called Double Take, was made from willow and poplar branches from a place in California.

Double Take is quite easily the most exciting and inspiring piece of art i've seen all year. my first response to it, as i rounded the corner and first caught glimpse of it, was that it looked like something from out of Where The Wild Things Are.

in fact, that's a good way to start describing the impact the work had on me. the atmosphere and feel of the Wild Things movie was fantastical, vaguely familiar and slightly off-putting, like a dream, a vivid dream that is sublimely vibrant and intensely textured. this is the same effect i got when i approached Dougherty's work: i felt other-worlded, the way you do when you confront something strange and beautiful for the first time. gargantuan nests of woven branches standing over 20 feet high on the corner of a neighborhood - their staggering beauty and seeming defiance of natural laws and elements completely belie the humble materials of which they are made.

from the rigidity and strength of twigs, branches and splinters, Dougherty shaped structures that imparted smooth, liquid movement, at once evoking the hot licking flames of fire and the gushing, explosive force of water. the branches look as if they are constantly wind-blown, but stand hardy and strong despite the elements. the structures are both deeply rooted* into the ground and reaching skyward.

*a little girl shows me how they watched the artist use larger, thicker branches to form a frame, and then dug deep into the earth to root them, later burying them so the whole structure would remain in place.

indeed, what makes Mr. Dougherty's structures so captivating is how full of contradiction they seem. the unnatural, conspicuous beauty of the whole contrasting with the humble parts. the fluidity despite rigidity. the deep-rootedness coexistent with upward flight. even though Mr. Dougherty builds his works of art with the intention of allowing them to decompose naturally under the elements, Double Take seemed impervious to weather and the seasons. i went at a good time, the day after the first day of autumn, and the leaves were beginning to show the first signs of changing color and had begun to fall, landing on ledges in the sculpture windows, sometimes catching in spiderwebs to spin perpetually in the wind. from the ground, vines have started climbing their way up the face of the walls. the sculpture looks every bit as alive and dynamic as i imagine it did in January 2011 when it was finished.

the other dimensions of the sculpture which made it so exquisite: the smell. i wish i could have captured the smell to share it with you. all around it and inside it was the freshest piney fragrance, like being deep in evergreen woods on a clear snowy morning. crisp, clean, comforting, and invigorating.

also: the way it invited interaction. in the hour i was enjoying the sculpture, i met two little girls, who rode their bikes right up to me and asked me, "do you know who made this!!?" they were so excited to start talking about it, and wanted to show me all the ways they could climb in it, on it, around it. after them, a trio of senior citizens came and walked through it, poking their heads out of windows to grin at each other. after them, a family of a dad and his two boys, both under 7 years of age. the boys would go to a window and play a game with their father in which they pretended to serve him a fast food order ("do you want sweet potatoes or ice cream, dad?" "do you want ice cream with that?" "you get ice cream because you're the man.") seeing everyone have so much fun with the art made me realize how rare an occasion it is to actually be able to touch and play with something so beautiful that is also not fragile or protected behind glass.

another amazing thing about this piece was how three-dimensional it was. this seems obvious at first, because of course a sculpture is 3D. but think about the sculptures you see in museums, and how there are only approximately 4 different angles (from the front, rear, left and right sides) at which to view a sculpture before you've exhausted visual interest. supposedly symmetry is a sign of beauty, but it makes for, ironically, flat and boring art. not so with Mr. Dougherty's work: i walked around the entirety of his work for about an hour, and photographed a new angle each time. each section of Double Take, like a tree in a forest, was remarkably individual and irreproducible.

now, for lack of any more words (or perhaps too many), a glimpse inside Double Take. i shot this video while walking through the inside of the work. you can see the phenomenal craftsmanship that went into the weaving and construction of the piece. you can also hear the sound of children playing, the distant chirping of a bird, see the light and hear the wind, as well as the traffic from the nearby street, and the sound of my feet on the brittle wood pieces on the ground.

the executioner's song

2011-09-22T00:01:00.007-04:00

as you'd know if you've been visiting the blog lately, i've been reading Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song. it's a great read, albeit disturbing. it is such a visceral book, leaves me with a knot in my stomach most of the time and i've even called ben crying on the phone after reading chapters of it.

the book is a strange accompaniment to the recent execution of Troy Davis by the state of Georgia. while reading Mailer's book, you get to know Gary Gilmore and his victims, and you really get to hate him and all of his meanness and violence, and you cringe at all his dirty-mouthed arrogance and disrespect for life. but, you know that he's going to be executed. you have that expectation going into it: that the whole thing ends in justice. that SOB got what he deserved. and though you feel sick about it and kind of hate yourself for having these feelings, you just can't reconcile that with the fact that Gilmore was a vile individual, and a danger to everyone around him. so in this case, where the facts of Gilmore's crime are all laid out by Mailer for your omniscient reading experience, you feel satisfied knowing that justice was inevitable, and perhaps more importantly, deserved.

not so when history is being made by the minute. when i found out the Supreme Court denied Troy Davis clemency, despite the recanting of witnesses in his case, and the pleas of thousands of people, and went ahead and executed him anyway, just a few moments ago, i felt a really sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. just this crushing overwhelming sadness. hearing about how he refused his last meal, because he didn't think it was going to be his last, i dunno, for some reason, that thought really got to me. like, my mother always calls me to make sure i've eaten my dinner, every night she always makes sure i'm staying fed, and i always do the same thing to ben now. and Troy Davis, he had hope until the last minute in justice or mercy or pity or something, and then he goes to his death in a cold concrete prison, hungry. that thought, of a man going suddenly to his death, without all his worldly ends taken care of, made me really, really sad. we were all watching and hopeful of little minutes that would build into hours, into days, of delay and finally a stay of execution or a commuted sentence. and then, suddenly, they just went and executed him anyway. one minute he was alive, with family and with a past and with mortal fear coursing through him, the will to keep up a legal battle that has lasted years, and hunger pangs in his stomach and then the next minute, he's gone.

i'm scared. i'm scared of a justice system that will execute people without even a moment's pause. i'm scared of a justice system that is so dysfunctional that sometimes witnesses are talked into giving incriminating testimonies, that sometimes allows potential murderers to play the system and pin their evil deeds on others. i'm scared of a justice system that satisfies itself with murdering potentially innocent citizens instead of seeking out the truth. and i'm scared to live in a world in which such a tragic farce is permitted to exist.

in moments like these, i really hope there is some Plan to all of this chaos, this madness and despair. i hope there is justice at the end of all of it, even when it doesn't seem that way. whatever higher powers that be, please have mercy on us all.

‎"The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

weird satisfaction

2011-09-16T17:59:00.005-04:00

i love when i tag something on delicious and find out i've used a weird tag before and i'm continuing to build a history for it. example: today while tagging Morgellon's disease*, i realized i'd tagged something "freaky"^ before. the other "freaky" page? this "Indian Pediatrics page," describing bilateral triphalangeal thumbs. it is, indeed, freaky.

*my note in delicious on what makes Morgellon's freaky:

A weird disease - "undiagnosed dermopathy," also referred to as "delusion of parasites" - first "discovered" by a woman whose son complained of "bugs" under his skin. She noticed hairs and "fibres" sticking out of the sores. Doctors refused to see her and c/wouldn't give her a diagnosis, saying she was suffering from a psychological condition. Really weird and freaky stuff.

^"freaky" and "creepy" are distinct. only a couple things are "freaky," according to my tagging practices on delicious, while many things (27) are "creepy."

all things connected

2011-09-14T18:42:00.003-04:00

the universe has been yanking me by previously invisible strings, tied to things it, seemingly, wants me to know.

about this time last year, i began reading the writing of Raymond Carver, because i learned in my research that his stories were the inspiration for the Robert Altman film Short Cuts. why i suddenly had an interest in this particular film, i'm not sure, because i never was that interested in Robert Altman films before. after reading Raymond Carver and learning more about his life, i found out he used to live in Syracuse, NY, not far from where ben and i used to live.

today, i learned that David Foster Wallace, whose work i've only recently started reading, wrote Infinite Jest (which sounds delightful, by the way, and might be the next book on my reading list after finishing Executioner's Song and Eating Animals) in Syracuse, NY. how bizarre, right? of all the places to write a book! further connections: he was born in Ithaca, taught briefly at Illinois State University (unfortunately before ben attended there) and taught fiction at Pomona in Claremont, CA, where my cousin went to school.

some other time recently i was watching a documentary in which the subject of said documentary was living in Syracuse, NY.

i also recently learned that my aunt (by marriage) attended Syracuse for her Master's degree. i'd never even known anyone who graduated from there before and then i found out there was one in the family!

and recently i've been reading and researching and learning a lot about different types of wine. my favorite wines - based on their science as well as their taste - are late harvest, noble rot, and ice wines. turns out, the Finger Lakes region of New York is well-known for making ice wines! and that is only a day trip away from, yep, Syracuse, NY!

and finally, Syracuse is the current home of my husband-to-be.

thus, why am i not living there when all signs point to YES?

worship this

2011-09-14T13:52:00.006-04:00

Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.
The human beauty we're talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings' reconciliation with the fact of having a body.*

-- from this extremely genius article, "Federer as Religious Experience" (emphasis mine)

there are so many wonderful things to love about this article: brilliant writing, brilliant sports writing, David Foster Wallace, tennis, a better understanding of life, love, the writing process, and the capabilities of the human body, and Roger Federer. in short, best thing i'll read today.

*i should note, too, that my brief excerpt doesn't even include his terrific footnote(+). DFW, he really knew his way around a footnote. a man after my own heart.

(+) speaking of which, here's one now:

By the way, it's right around here, or the next game, watching, that three separate inner-type things come together and mesh. One is a feeling of deep personal privilege at being alive to get to see this; another is the thought that William Caines is probably somewhere here in the Centre Court crowd, too, watching, maybe with his mum. The third thing is a sudden memory of the earnest way the press bus driver promised just this [religious] experience. Because there is one. It's hard to describe — it's like a thought that's also a feeling. One wouldn't want to make too much of it, or to pretend that it's any sort of equitable balance; that would be grotesque. But the truth is that whatever deity, entity, energy, or random genetic flux produces sick children also produced Roger Federer, and just look at him down there. Look at that.

look at banner!

2011-09-11T16:31:00.009-04:00

my future husband and i are featured on Democracy Now!'s banner for their 9/11 War and Peace Report, "The 9/11 Decade: Voices of Dissent."

the photo they collaged was from an ANSWER LA protest in March of 2010, on the 7th anniversary of the Iraq War [ link goes to the original source article of the following photograph, taken by Gary Friedman of the LA Times ]

this photo of us represents a significant moment for me, so i'm honored Democracy Now chose to use it as a representation of the post-9/11 generation and post-9/11 America, and how we are moving forward in the wake of the attacks.

that particular moment of the protest was an extremely intense and emotional one for me. we had marched through the heart of Hollywood - "thousands" of us, according to the article - and stopped when we reached the soundstage. there were speakers, but i don't really remember what they spoke about. i was too absorbed in my surroundings - people stretching back for miles, and us at the front of it all, learning Spanish as we marched along alternating between chants in English and Spanish, and there were police on the rooftops in black uniforms and i could hear helicopters over our voices.

the following photographs all come from ANSWER LA's flickr site.

everywhere around you could see the ravages of 9/11, amazing how the collective memory is so intact, and intensified, in the presence of so many people. it was fascinating to me to see the violence implicit in a peace protest: people angry at 7 years of war, comparisons between Obama and Bush, banners that read "RIP Public Education" and others that suggested 9/11 was an inside job, others expressed a hatred for Zionism. it became clear how much violence and pain we were still experiencing so many years later, and how much suffering we were still self-inflicting. it made me wonder if we'd ever find our way out of pain and violence.

and then, we were invited to sit in the street and observe a collective moment of silence for all the victims of the aftermath. all the victims of war and hatred and the victims of the class wars and the budget cuts whose impacts will damage us for years to come. 9/11 killed thousands of innocent civilians, here and abroad, led to human rights violations, changed the way we travelled, shattered relationships with our international brothers and sisters, and now was beginning to erode our democracy as public education took the first major hit as the war sucked our government dry of funds. as we sat in the street, everything suddenly hushed, i felt a trembling fear in my heart for what would happen if we did not find a way to peace.

in the silence, i wanted to weep. here we were, all connected by tragedy, but still with the strength to see that war wasn't right. here was hope. i could see all around me people start to put fists in the air in solidarity. there was strength still in all of us, despite feeling crushed down by despair. this war would kill our spirit if we let it, but the crowds of protest were growing, the voices of dissent were growing, and would continue. we were joined on the street by thousands of people from multiple walks of life, and maybe in this group would be a future president, a future lawmaker, a future organizer, a teacher, a parent willing to believe we still have the responsibility to change.

another reason i am so honored that this picture was taken, let alone used by Democracy Now!, is that ben and i are together in it. ben and i first met while working together on a living wage campaign at Miami, and we fell in love through our mutual dedication to social justice. one thing that made me excited to get to know ben better throughout our relationship was the feeling of finally having a true partner, someone who i could depend on emotionally and who would give me strength, but who also shared my passions and would collaborate with me to make the world a better place. my whole life, i wanted to change the world; finally i had someone who would walk beside me all my life and help me do it. as we move forward and prepare to join our lives together, we plan to always honor our commitment to social justice, and to foster lives that practice a philosophy of love.

the town that doesn't read

2011-09-08T14:21:00.005-04:00

...breeds really myopic people.

i currently live in Fremont, CA. i don't love it. i've only lived here 5.5 months, but as a kid, my family and i would visit our family in the Bay Area and we'd stay at my aunt's house in Fremont. in my encounters and experiences with Fremont denizens, i've come to realize the people here are... how should i put this... not intellectually inclined.

it's a difficult thing to explain, since i risk coming across as mean and supremely judgmental, but here it is anyway: Fremont ("Freak-mont" as my cousin from LA likes to call it) is extremely superficial in a way that ought to put LA to shame (that utterance in itself is pretty damning). while LA proved to be a pleasant blend of Midwestern/East Coast transplants, outdoor enthusiasts, intellectuals, activists and community advocates, the extremely poor and the extremely wealthy, the deluded and the jaded and the absolutely crazy, Fremont is predominantly one type of person: privileged. not only privileged, but delusionally privileged, self-importantly privileged, unmercifully privileged, ignorantly privileged. and if there's one thing i can't stand, it's privilege without any responsibility.

the problem with this kind of community is that privilege, and all the trappings of extravagant wealth, are normalized. everyone works at their tech industry job from 9-7, drives their BMW/Mercedes/Lexus to work out at their designer gyms, has dinner at one of many restaurants in the area, and goes home to their mini-mansions and their loveless sexless family lives with their spouse and 2.5 kids. the kids i've encountered who grow up here are terrifying: pre-teens carry Chanel purses and follow their mommies around at the mall, families have Sunday dinner at a restaurant, everyone staring blankly into the gentle glow of a smart phone or iPad. the children all seemed perfectly primed and ready to take their parents' places as the future CEOs and CFOs of america. i can ask my cousins how much a house or luxury car costs and they'll provide an answer in an instant, and with a little disdain for my ignorance, but when i probe them instead for information on the UC budget crisis, their eyes glaze over like robots that didn't understand the command, then shrug it off like it's not important and thus not worth knowing. for further comparison: a few weeks ago, i rode my bike out to the annual Arts and Culture fair to volunteer with a local environmental advocacy organization. my cousin, on the other hand, spent the day charging visitors to the fair $6 to park their car in the parking lot he co-opted with his friends. his parents openly lauded his entrepreneurial spirit, as they explained to me it's one of his most cherished "traditions." what a good capitalist!

comparing my upbringing with theirs makes me so glad my parents chose to be the "rebels" in the family and raise my brother and i in the midwest, while they both worked for a state university. i grew up reaping the benefits of the state and having a deep respect for public programs and institutions. i grew up valuing education and community service, rather than making money, and that has led me to take my undergraduate research very seriously, led me to teach special ed for two years in an underserved community, get a Master's, and now i plan to further my education and get an MPA from one of the best schools in the country so i can research and implement more progressive policies that protect the environment, reduce wealth disparities, and repair public programs so they better serve their communities. my relatives, on the other hand, balk at the mention of higher ed, none of them having gone past a Bachelor's degree in anything. their favorite way to spend their free time is watching tv, surfing the net, playing computer games, and finding additional ways of making money (day-trading, gambling, buying foreclosed houses and upselling them).

i'm always fascinated at the ways in which we choose lives for ourselves, how we carve our identities with chance and choice. being able to understand the story of your life and how you arrived at your convictions and passions is something i think about often, especially when i'm surrounded by so many people who i feel so different and disconnected from.

and, to tie it all up and to return to the reason i started writing in the first place: the reason i am so unhappy here in Fremont can be summed up in one poignant point: they don't read here. in my entire life, i've never known a public library that only opened one day a week from 10 to 5. that is the library closest to me, and it's holding my requested reading list hostage because i can't find time to go during their hours. the whole library system here is messed up and underfunded, understaffed, and underserving the community, you just need to view their hours to get a sense of how many children in the Silicon Valley area are not getting full access to the free literature they should. even more amazing, is that there are also no bookstores in the area to supplement this lack. i searched all of Fremont and neighboring cities to find a viable bookstore and only found one: a Half Price Books (the rest consisted of an adult bookstore, Islamic bookstore and a Zion Christian bookstore). it saddens me to think the nearest bookstore is a going-out-of-business Borders 24 miles away.