2008
The story of my life, in comic form.
Objectivists procreating, heaven help us.
Oh, Athena.
Reasonable Accommodation.
Print isn’t dead. November 5, 2008.
Made its reappearance just when I needed it.
This. F*cking. Election.
If I could afford an $8550 coffee table.
Don’t mess with liberal feminists.
I found out I’m an INTJ.
Momma said wonk you out <3.
The economy, in plain English.
Light installations.
When in doubt, prorogue.
Mario Kart, a love song.
Photoshop in real life.
What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person.
Christian Lacroix Fall 08 RTW.
Cellular reprogramming.
300 love letters.
Hillary as Secretary of State.
Something long overdue.
Yes we can.
Where on earth is Waldo?
All 607 pages of it.
Sweet storytelling.
Allowing the antisocial to be social.
Elie Saab Fall 08 Couture.
And this poem.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
(The Summer Day, Mary Oliver, 1990)
44: Blogging the Obama transition blogs
I’ve had quite a few folks ask me what transition blogs I’m reading leading up to President-Elect Obama’s Inauguration on January 20, 2009. Answer: quite a few! The coverage leans from tabloid-style (Politico 44, as an example) to wonkish (hi, IBM!) to highly editorial (NYT‘s characteristic rigour).
For the short of it, take a gander at my shared “Obama Transition” feed.
And here’s the full list — a pretty good mix of coverage on appointments, transition pulse, and the hard hitting question of what Michelle will wear to the Inaugural Ball. (Actually, on that, check out this amazing series of Inaugural ballgown sketches created for Obama and the girls).
As you’ll see from my short notes, some picks are more suited to visiting, versus aggregating through a reader:
American University School of Communication > Transition Tracker
A product of AU’s Graduate School of Journalism. Home of a nifty (if incredibly ugly) widget that visually tracks Obama’s key appointments.
Council on Foreign Relations > Campaign 2008
Deliciously wonkish, with some well-used metadata that lets you track topics by region, issue and publication type. Lots of policy papers and briefs, if you’re into that kind of thing.
IBM Centre for Business and Government > 2008 Presidential Transition Initiative
A solid blog-style format by Senior Fellow John Kamensky. Many good links to docs and reports.
National Journal > Lost in Transition
I’m a big fan of LiT’s daily link dumps. Each link is annotated just enough to figure out if it’s worth clicking through.
Newsweek > Powering Up
Thoughts and reactions to the transition, in a group blog format: long-ish entries with Newsweek’s characteristic easy style.
Washington Post > 44
Can’t fault the Post for their healthy dose of irreverence (and more and more).
New York Times > The New Team
Everyone’s favourite, right? Comprehensive coverage with some neat (if questionable) user-interaction features, like the “If You Were President” Cabinet creator.
Politico > Politico 44
So far it fells like a tabloid to me (sorry, Politico, I enjoy you otherwise), but I’m hopeful it will improve as we move closer to Inauguration. Their President-Elect Calendar widget is neat, though, if you want to know Obama’s every move.
Public Citizen > Becoming 44
A left-leaning blog following Obama’s appointments and transition, they keep a good running list of decisions and speculations to date.
Are you reading any good ones that I’ve missed? Let me know!
On elBulli
I am a bit of a food fiend.
I spent my childhood playing in an industrial kitchen (my parents are restaurant owners), and I have the burned finger-pads to prove it. I love to cook. I love to feed people. And I love to talk about food, and write and read about it, and watch cooking shows, and research food chemistry, and buy cookbooks and lust after Frank Bruni’s job (hey, a girl can dream).
As part of this, I have been obsessed with the mythology of elBulli and dining there since I’ve known of the restaurant. So much so, in fact, that I recently sat at Indigo Books with this in my lap, and read from cover to cover, all 632 pages. (With a small break, because a 632-page hardcover tome on my lap eventually made me lose all sensation in my thighs.) The book spells out with military precision a minute-by-minute story of a day in the restaurant’s operations. It’s fascinating, the typography is perfect, the photos immaculate, the layout thoughtful. A really great memoir, of sorts, only the protagonist is a restaurant.
elBulli is headed by one of the world’s few living geniuses, Chef Ferran Adrià, and sits on the Costa Brava in Catalonia, Spain. Adrià is lauded as a pioneer of ‘molecular gastronomy’, a frou-frou term that makes me cringe because it conveys a fussy, overly-wrought approach to cooking. Indeed, my heart is with simple techniques and good ingredients; a no-mess kind of style.
But I can’t help but be fascinated by Adrià’s intellectual approach to ingredients, from sourcing produce to plating his tiny edible masterpieces. He says that his food “demands psychological reflection”. I won’t do justice if I try here to delve into the 35-dish tasting menu each evening comprises, having only read about it. Lucky for me, Clotilde has done a great job documenting (and photographing!) the affair, having visited elBulli back in 2006, and sweetly recounts being “whisked away on a flying carpet driven by a mad scientist”.
And this is where I am torn. Part of elBulli’s mythology is that only 8000 spots a year are reserved from over 2 million reservation requests. It’s a lottery worth a shot, in my books. I want to send that email this October, that small chance at getting a table, and put some of my savings to good use in 2010.
At the same time, it’s a bit of a hard sell. I’ve tried it with some close friends: “Would you be up to flying to Spain at a moment’s-notice, all to experience a once-in-a-lifetime dinner, but it’s kind of a crap-shoot as to when it might happen, and the bill will be hefty?” It’s a no-brainer to me, but um, also a bit unreasonable, I guess.
All this to say: if you’re willing to be my gastronomical companion, throw caution to the wind, and take a stab in the dark at dining on a bluff in Catalonia in 2010, let me know sometime before October 15, 2009. I’ll make reservations.
The small moments
Each morning I walk down a quiet side street to catch the streetcar to work. Wednesday mornings are garbage collection day in my neck of the woods.
I’ve lived in Toronto for half a year now, and without fail, each Wednesday, I’m greeted with a “Good morning, my dear!” from the collector. I wish him a good day and a smile, he tips his helmet, I walk to my streetcar with a grin from this small exchange.
This morning, as I near-skated down the street, still getting used to the first snow, I noticed an older lady about 5 houses up struggling with her giant Toronto garbage bin. My morning friend didn’t think twice when he saw her, rushed over, swiftly picked up the bin and carried it to the side of her home. She thanked him. As always, he wished me a good morning as I walked by, and I thanked him, too. In the midst of a job that can’t be too fun these winter mornings, he didn’t think twice about doing good.
I have a co-worker who makes a point of recognizing me. Just small messages of reassurance or a hello, but it’s those tiny gestures that make the day. I’m sure he takes the time to treat everyone with this same care; but it doesn’t make it any less meaningful, because really, we all just want to know that we matter.
My sister, in the midst of her crazy end-of-term, took an afternoon to decorate our apartment windows with tiny twinkle lights. I walk into our dark little home after work, and I’m greeted with light-bursts framing the sky. It makes the night a bit more magical, it feels like the season.
A lady in the elevator piqued up just this morning and blurted out: “You smell amazing.” I thanked her and shared my perfume, to which we had a laugh when she realized she wears the same scent, and I exited at floor 5.
All this to say: these small moments, these fleeting gestures, these nothing-reallys, with close friends and complete strangers alike, make the day. They make my day.
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