Category Archives: Design

I Know My ABCs, but I’m Not So Clear on My Ps & Qs

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What I don’t know: what happened to yesterday’s post (this is it, again). I could swear I’d posted this and even gotten a comment or two on it already. Where it went baffles me. Apparently it’s now keeping company with the magically disappearing previous post about coulrophobia, which I also had to re-post. Go figure. So here’s Round 2 of Yesterday’s Post.

That slyly generous character ‘Nessa, over at her Stronghold, has tagged me once again, this time to participate in a bit of speculative introspection via the medium of the ABC award. I am happy to state that she did not give me the ABC award in the sense that I knew it as a young squirt, when we generously offered our playmates ABC gum (Already Been Chewed). So while I know from reading her post that ‘Nessa did indeed ruminate on the award before sharing it, I am glad to announce that there was no saliva whatsoever on the award when she passed it along. In fact, it was much like getting a good and playful cyber-hug, something I would call quite the opposite in a very nice way. So I send many thanks to dear ‘Nessa and will give many thinks to the alphabet I am to present to you as a response.

Awesome Blog Content Award

Rules of this award:

1. Pass this on to unlimited fellow bloggers.

2. Share some things about you, using the alphabet.

You know that I am going to put my own spin on the whole thing, because that’s just how my strange little brain prefers to work. While the award’s tradition appears to be that one offers a personally resonant word for each letter of the alphabet with a couple of words of explanation for each choice, I feel compelled to do some of my rhyming play with the puzzle, for no good reason of course, so I’m off to scrawl an alphabet of quatrains.
And as for sharing the award, I must tell you that the reason I subscribe to your blogs and read them as faithfully as time will allow (whether I have a moment to comment or not every time) because your blogs are simply brimming with awesome content. So I would be horribly remiss if I didn’t share this award with each and every one of you with whom I am so happily carrying on commentary-conversations and from whom I am delightedly learning new and funny and moving and useful and otherwise wonderful stuff every single day via my subscriptions. That means that if you’re reading this and we have conversed about our blogs, I am offering you the opportunity to play this amusing game yourself and consider me a grateful sharer of the fun. If you’re too busy, private, tired of blog tagging, or committed to more meaningful activities, believe me, I will not be insulted by your opting not to join in the play. I bless you for choosing to do or not do what suits you best.
Here, then, is today’s Alphabet of Me. I cannot promise to mind my Ps and Qs despite the alphabetical mandate, because behaving properly tends to chafe me. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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A is for Art

Art I seek, and fain would honor Art
with skill and courage, for the larger part
of life and love and light that may be found
awaken to Art’s call, no other sound.
Balance neatly conjured from unlike, unequal parts
is best achieved by using that most delicate of arts
which we might call diplomacy or mediating care
or just the coaxing of agreement from the thinnest air.
Community is my desire: I would the flame become a fire,
the bloom become a garden whole, the note float into barcarolle,
the morsel be a meal complete enough for everyone to eat,
the joy be broadcast far and wide until there is no Other Side.
Doggerel dances its jigs in my brain
until, irresistibly, I can’t refrain
from making up poems as silly as dogs
would be to write doggerel verses for blogs.
Ethereal loveliness, sweetness and grace
all whisper their zephyrs of breath as they chase
my sorrows and fears and my troubles away
and replace them with lyrical words night and day.
Flora, garden goddess thou,
wreathed with flowers upon thy brow,
what scented bowers have you grown
that leave my senses overthrown!
Gothic grotesqueries fill the abyss
of night in my cranium; stranger than this
is that, while they are creeping their hideous way
into my grey matter, it still feels like play . . .
Hungry every minute,
always looking for a spoon,
my midst has something in it,
but I wanna eat more, soon!
Idiosyncratic me,
how idiotic would it be
if I should be less odd? Absurd–
also unlikely, ‘pon my word.

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J is for Jester

Jester to the king and queen and to the populace,
I’d like to have the wisdom and the humor to express
what should be said for betterment and conscience-pricking itch
without offending quite so far as be condemned a witch.

 

Blue, She Said!

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That most fa-BLUE-lous of women, Ms. Cyndi Bookchick, just posted about her eternal color love, blue, and while I’m mostly noted as a whopping fool for unlimited color of every kind, I am, among those multitudes, deeply fond of all shades, tints, and hues of the blues. So with that friendly little bump from Cyndi’s blue-sky moment, I am moved to share some pretty blues with alla youse.photophotoBurning in Midwinter

Turquoise of the hottest hue

(A word not often linked with blue)

Bears in its heart the sun’s true fire

From its desert home, where it may transpire

Even in this day of detachment, cool

And belief in only the Facts of school,

That mystic magic and alchemy

Still stalk abroad and begin to be

Unearthed in windstorm when the stone

Under the sand is polished, blown

To visibly capturing sun’s wild rays

To give bold turquoise stone such blazephotophoto

Order & Disorder

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P&IMost of us seek order in our lives, or at least a sense of order. We want to believe that there are things we can assume and expect and even, if we’re really fortunate, control. Yes, those whose lives full of action and unpredictability and chaos would seem to exclude the possibility–extreme sports aficionados, high-powered businesspeople, rodeo clowns, astronauts, oil-rig roughnecks and those raising toddlers–look for order in their own ways so as make sense of their place in the universe. It might be in simple things like organizing the spice cabinet or sock drawer with obsessive neatness; it might be in the form of how they interact with people outside of the job, or it may be entirely internalized because inside is the only place they can see where they can exert their own opinions and desires and beliefs to the fullest extent.

In art, it’s often what differentiates in its subtle ways between the immature and the mature artist or designer or craftsman. It’s expressed as the creation of thoughtful balances or deliberate imbalances that succeed in creating the visual unity or tension in a composition, between colors, textures, distinct subjects and objects, or other elements of the work. While it’s undeniably true when disgruntled viewers look at abstract and non-objective artworks or some kinds of highly quirky contemporary designs and say “My five-year-old could’ve done that”, it’s equally true that the most sophisticated five-year-old will likely only do so by chance, and then only once, whereas the mature artist usually had a purpose, a process by which he was tweaking the tools and techniques to achieve something that might have as little chance of connecting with any individual viewer as that smarty-pants kid’s work but has a thousand times better the chance to succeed in what the artist intended and is, to boot, repeatable. To live on the less visibly ordered side of the equation is to risk losing communication with a potential audience, but for some artists, that is a worthy risk, most especially because the audience they do reach will be the more attuned to their visual language and will respond in kind.

In truth, the most conventional and marketable of artists and designers may have broader appeal, but can be just as off-putting to some viewers and would-be customers as any avant-garde members of the species. Order, as it happens, is in the eye of the beholder at least as much as is attractiveness in art.P&IConsider the Desk. Nearly everybody who owns or works at one creates his own environment there, because it’s somewhat controlled, controllable space. For some, the orderly desk is a perfect puzzle, each single item in a particular position on a particular bit of real estate thereon or therein. Some are always en route to that Ideal but never entirely there. And some have desks that look remarkably like bomb sights. Yet never assume that this is truly disorder. I have known people with desks whose archaeological depths of debris and deconstructivist demolition could easily hide the crown jewels, a body, or a small automobile and yet who, when they wanted a particular piece of paper or the mini-stapler, instantly knew the precise spot from whence it could be excavated. That’s order of a higher order.

What all of this means in the grand scheme of things is that it’s merely a set of constructs or ideals that varies so greatly from person to person and time to time that we’re all probably best served by finding whatever forms work for us individually and then allowing ourselves the flexibility to understand and tolerate others’ sense of order or disorder, whether we approve of it or not. Mostly, it won’t lead to apocalypse–and if it does, who among us will remain to worry about it? Maybe the ones with the monstrous, mountainous desks, if they can duck and cover under them fast enough. More likely, we will all muddle along as we’ve always done, some of us fascinated with baskets and boxes and cubbyholes and patterns and polish and others delighting in their weirdly convoluted and inscrutable tangles of Stuff.

And nobody Wins or Loses–except if you count losing that one danged Thing that you’ve been hunting for in the pile forever and ever (usually until realizing it is in your left hand pocket).

Come on in, the Water’s Fine!

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Since rain has been scarce here in the last year, today is a day for being happy to see ‘too much’ of it–it’s pouring out here. Texas style. And what, pray tell, is Texas style? If you haven’t already heard, Texans pride themselves on everything they have or do being big, bigger, biggest, and the weather is no exception: when it’s hot and dry, let’s just git on out there and set all time records, like last year’s string of almost unbroken triple-digit temperatures that exceeded all previous years’ totals. That, of course, is hard to maintain with an accompaniment of rain, so the skies simply curled up into an impenetrable ball like a li’l ol’ armadillo and gave up nary a drop of water until the whole state finally retreated into official drought. Our county was the last to comply, being somewhat feisty and all, but we finally dried up too like last year’s roses.

So today’s pelting, while it won’t miraculously restore the lake levels and revive the dead trees, goes a long way toward soothing shriveled spirits. It will, of course, drown some of the poor little sprouts that fought their way to life after the heat relented, and that’s just the way things go in a land of thorny mesquites and tough hombres. So far we haven’t had to build an ark, and that’s a pretty good tradeoff as these Texas-sized weather happenings go. So today I’ll leave you with a little photo-essay and a link to a bit of YouTube rainy-day fun I posted last year, with a little help from my good friends Joe and Eddie.

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The view from the kitchen is decidedly watery today! Hurray!

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No worries about whether the little seed tray I prepped yesterday (sitting on the farther chair) will get watered . . .

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Maybe I should consider installing a koi pond at the foot of the patio steps . . . "Just Add Fish" . . .

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*Now* do you know what I mean by "eavesdropping"? Doesn't really matter if the gutters are clean or not; when it rains around here, they can't keep up with the rivers coming off the roof, so we just have Instant Water Features all 'round the perimeter of the house . . .

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. . . and who doesn't like the soothing sound of a lovely waterfall?

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From the shelter of the front porch, there are new "waterfront" views of ponds, rivers, small lakes and more cataracts showering off the roof . . .

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I suppose the Texas Sage babies I picked up at the nursery yesterday won't drown, at least, because I hadn't set them in the ground yet, so they're still safely raised up in their pots for now . . .

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. . . the little coreopsis I'd nursed through the winter indoors, however, is tucked in and now inundated. We'll see how that fares, never mind the rainbow chard sprouts (microcsopic green specks in the upper right of the photo)--I hope they turn out to be aquatic plants!

So this is how it goes here. Dry as a bone for months on end, and then an outpouring so generous that it might well cause new mutations of several plant species into amphibious forms in one fell swoop. I hadn’t realized we were moving to drought-and-monsoon country, but here we are. The slope of our property has definite ideas about where the water should go, and ultimately it does head for the little rivulet in the ravine behind the backyard, but in the meantime, I do think that directing the flow a bit on our actual lot will go a long way toward making the yard happier, if I can do it right. I was considering a moat around the house, since that’s the level spot where the water from up on the road naturally settles before wandering down-slope again, but I’m afraid the alligators I kept in there would eat too many of the neighborhood pets–or the neighbors–and that just wouldn’t be very sociable of me I suppose.

So I suspect a wiser thing might be to terrace a bit, put in some raised beds, and amend the living daylights out of the impermeable, gluey clay earth here, for starters. In the meantime, I’ll just say that it’s a good sump test for the property to tell me where the natural flow patterns and self-designed ponds like to go and see where it all leads. Good thing I got me some nice, tall, silly polka-dotted, ultra-waterproof gumboots. ‘Cause it’s rainin’ like nobody’s bidness out they-ah.

To Begin with a Seed

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photoThe whole idea that a towering sequoia can be sprung from a single, minute seed is preposterous. It’s not that I think this operation is analogous to those amusing party-trick capsules one can buy for kids, where once the pill-like mite is submerged in water, out springs a dinosaur: a sequoia is not masterfully compressed as a whole, living, full-sized tree into its seed to wow us with its razzle-dazzle emergence.

This is a much subtler, more complex, and truly far more astonishing thing, a seed containing all of the raw material and instructions for growing a full-scale, magnificent conifer. It’s more as if a very small package arrived on the front porch, seemingly from IKEA, yet containing every bolt, panel, screw and window, every necessary iota, for making the whole Empire State Building, and when the box was slit open for a peek inside, the building proceeded to assemble itself carefully and perfectly, over a few years, without any intervention from the recipient. Furthermore, if left to its own devices, it will tend to its own growth and maintenance without any aid from humans at all. Repair and beautification and renewal are included in the package with a tree-lifetime guarantee at no extra cost.P&I

This wonder is replicated uncountable times not only in the massive and miraculous evergreen forests but in every growing thing in the earth that emerges at its birth from a seed. And that’s how, despite my impressive impatience and legendary laziness–which in combination would seemingly guarantee my gardening only with the most mature plants I can finagle onto my property and into the soil, I became enamored of gardening from seed. Oh, I still love the instant gratification of transplants and bedding plants and bare-root behemoths and all of that, but to watch this scarcely-believable process of the infinitesimal exploding (in slow motion, mind you) into the impressively complex is, well, intoxicating.photo

So I have built up a stash of both collected and purchased seeds that I will attempt to nurture into something more substantial over the seasons, and will play the frivolous farmer, the mad scientist of the weed-patch and the proud parent of whatever scrawny or stupendous growing things I can coax out of those jewel cases, their seeds. I will fuss and fume and furrow both the garden and my brow as I try to conjure their beauties out of those weird and fantastical little lock-boxes of seed and I will talk sternly to the reluctant and coo at the flourishing as though I really had anything at all to do with their excellence when in fact I’m just unleashing them to do what comes naturally in the first place. With appropriate respect for their admirable powers, and love for their bloom and fruitfulness, of course. Of course.

High Baroque in Low Places

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Craftsmanship is not one of my greater strengths. I credit myself so far as to say that I have a pretty good eye for fine craftsmanship. But when it comes to my own work, I’m impatient, short of attention, and lazy enough that I’m always that dilettante rushing through to get the job done and hoping it’s enough to hang together as long as needed. Until the homework is graded; until I can hire a professional to come and do the job properly; until I have escaped notice as the maker of said shabby construct.digital photocollageI have an honest recognition of the limitations of my skills, I think, if it is perhaps slightly magnified by my lack of gumption toward improving them in numerous areas. I could argue that I’m doing my part to support true craftsmen in their arts by not competing with them unduly, but anyone would see through that excuse, I’m afraid. Still, I am awed quite genuinely by the beauty inherent in passionate craftsmanship, whatever the cause. I love the artistry of beautifully handmade or hand-finished objects, whether they are intended as art or meant as humble functional things, everyday items that we might pass over in their daily use but for the marvels of their refinement and Fit.photoI’ve long been equally taken with the ridiculousness of both badly designed and foolishly impractical objects that were intended to be functional. Perhaps it’s the extreme contrast they have with fine craftsmanship. It’s silly enough to make something that by virtue of its careless design does not or cannot accomplish that for which it was meant, but often that very malfunction is trumpeted by the sheer ugliness or oddity of the object: one can see by simply looking at it that it won’t work or will be seriously flawed. It takes no time or effort to amass quite the collection of weirdly inept designs, from Patent applications right on up to the failed products remaindered and forlornly dusty on store shelves, and one can be endlessly entertained by the verbal autopsy of such strange husks from top to bottom–gadgets and gizmos meant to do so many unrelated tasks that they were too obviously cumbersome and ill-integrated to accomplish a single one of them. And dressed up in badly applied finishes of bizarre colors probably in hopes of distracting the customer from all other evident failings, but only drawing attention to the inherent cheapness and outlandish impossibility of their ever working as promised.

But there are so many things of the opposite sort that I think it’s too easy for us to gloss over what’s right in front of us or under our very fingertips as beautifully conceived and crafted objects worthy of our admiration for both a thing and its maker. Yes, it’s natural to admire the loveliness of the bow made for a Baroque Violin or the delicate carving on a lute, for a painting or sculpture or print made with evident and painstaking care. But it ought to be equally impressive to any of us when we pick up a dinner fork that is perfectly weighted and fits smoothly in the hand, to eat a marvelously tasty meal that has been made with such loving attention that the addition or removal of any tiny thing would be superfluous to its elegance–even if that meal is a profoundly rustic stew.

When we sit in a chair, do we notice not only how pretty, how well suited it is to the general character of the room, but also how the height of the arms supports our elbows just so and the curve of its upholstered back is designed to magically adjust to the lumbar spine of each individual sitter? Do we ask ourselves, Who made those helicopter blade fittings so exquisitely that after sixty years the contraption not only still flies the way it was made to fly but is a supremely wonderful geometric confluence of sweetly fitted parts, a sculpture of its kind, as well? Do we remember to look at the window sashes on that old house and be moved by how the intensely focused care of their making has enabled those ancient wooden single-pane mullioned windows to keep the home’s dwellers snug through 150 winters and summers?digital photocollageI hope that I, for one–as poorly equipped as I am myself to create that kind of grandeur in simple things, and too impatient to strive for better as often as I should–will always take the time at least to pay homage to the real craftsmen and women among us. To notice the attention to detail and graceful touch that they have applied to rebuilding stone porches, stitching a brocaded lining for a coat, painting a portrait of an old woman because her lined face is marked with history and pain and beauty and not because she is famous or has the money to pay for a portrait. To say Thank You to those who have made something fine and elegant and Right simply because it was what they were compelled to do.

Mrs. Sparkly’s Ten Commandments, I Mean Ten Questions. And More.

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photoI am “It”. No, really, that’s not just my Godzilla-sized ego talking: I’ve been tagged, and I didn’t even know there was a game going on. So very like me to be caught unawares. Least I was wearing more than just my “underwears”!

Among the activities in which the denizens of Bloggervania indulge are those through which we unmask various bits and bobs of our selves for mutual edification or at least amusement. This can be dangerous or great fun, depending upon whom you ask what, but then that’s the way it always goes, isn’t it. The promise of a nice sunny afternoon swapping gossip over a cuppa suddenly turns into a sword-fighting bloodbath. Oh, no, that was the murder mystery I was reading last night. Never mind!photo

Here’s what I got asked, followed by my to-the-best-of-my-knowledge-true answers.

1.  Describe yourself in seven words.

I can do it in 1: Rich. Okay, here are six others, but they’re all extrapolations of the first: loved, happy, curious, privileged, encouraged, playful.

2.  What keeps you up at night?

Brain-spin. I’m a very good sleeper generally speaking, but if I don’t quiet my mind by bedtime and shut down the wacky-factory, there’s no telling how long it’ll keep me too busy to sleep.

3.  Whom would you like to be?

The best version of me I can manage. Too much work to figure out how to be anyone else!

4.  What are you wearing now?

Jeans and a comfy shirt suitable for doing chores between bouts of typing.

5.  What scares you?

Other people’s drama.

6.  What are the best and worst things about blogging?

In my circle, we all seem to experience the same basic risks and rewards: the risk of losing ourselves completely in the effort and time of dedicated blogging, and the reward of working amid and coming to respect and love such stellar folk as populate the blogging community. Come to think of it, that pretty much encapsulates what I think is good or bad about any activity for which one has a passion.

7.  What was the last website you looked at?

Retire Early Lifestyle, a travel, food, culture and off-the-beaten-path-living journal produced by the only friends I’ve acquired through online conversation before I began blogging, and a site that is simply a joy to visit.

8.  If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?

Let go of fear.

9.  Slankets, yes or no?

I have three perfectly excellent reasons to Just Say No to Slankets: 1-The skill a perpetually freezing person develops for dressing in layers more numerous and impressive than those boasted by the best millefoglie, 2-A really cuddly husband, and 3-What, I need to make a bonfire out of my money because I don’t know how to wrap up in a plain blanket to get warm?

10. Tell us something about the person who tagged you.

John comes from good stock. By that I mean that he has great familial roots, and that they are such natural foodies that he learned early to appreciate and make excellent soups, among many other classic Italian dream-foods. He documents all of this, and much more, on the wonderfully warm, witty, artful and delicious pages of From the Bartolini Kitchens, all while being himself ever the debonair gentleman-about-town and as sweet as fragole.

Whom are you going to tag to join the quiz?

I hope I’ve not “double-tagged” anyone. I’ll just go alphabetically here, for fun:

  1. Antoinette at cooking-spree
  2. Bella at winsomebella
  3. Cyndi at cfbookchick
  4. Dennis at thebardonthehill
  5. Eden at litrato-ngayon

photoMy blogging friend Antoinette, she of the wonderful aforementioned site where you can learn from her expertise how to put “Love on the Table” but more importantly, the myriad ways she expands that love into a multitude of life’s little nooks and crannies, all with a measure of mindfulness and gentle good humor–this lady asked me yesterday the perfectly innocent question “how . . . do you do this?” Since the bellissima Bella (also tagged above) soon thereafter made a comment that begged the same question, and I have fielded a few inquiries in a similar vein over the last six months of blogging, I am going to take the self-indulgent opportunity to spout off a bit on the topic today.

Many folk simply wonder how it’s possible for me to post a new and (mostly) different essay, poem, story or combination of them, illustrated with my own art and photography, every single day. They politely edge up to the corollary question of whether I don’t have a big closet full of old stuff that I’m just pinning up in public as I go. If it’s any consolation, yes, I have been producing things like this for a rather long time. Yesterday’s post (https://kiwsparks.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/what-were-you-born-in-a-barn/) is a perfect example: the cow sketch is from some doodling in a notebook nearly 30 years ago (and digitally doctored yesterday); the rooster and hens scratched their way into my sketchbook last year; the birds were among many sketched multi-panel proposals for a set of organ pipeshade carvings around 7 or 8 years ago; and the pastel of the Cheviot ewe and the Highland cow is from about two years ago.

Some of the illustrations I use (photographic or drawn/painted) are completely, hot-off-the-pencil new, a few are practically archeological finds from my vast trove, and some are oldies that have been digitally “remastered” (dolled up or changed) to fit the occasion. Almost every visual image requires some tweaking or re-formatting for the blog medium or to better reflect and expand upon the text in some way. Regular readers will have noticed that I am not averse to using the images’ captions to try to intensify the relationship and relevance, ‘specially if the connection was a little tenuous or artificially-imposed at the start.

In addition, I do have a (digital) reserve of hundreds and hundreds of picture + text images like the ones I used on Tuesday (https://kiwsparks.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/its-foodie-tuesday-and-i-havent-eaten-yet/), set up like book pages, where I guess without knowing it I was practicing a variant of the sort of combined word and image that I’m now putting in this blog. I try not to dip into that storage much, if nothing else to prevent my getting lazy or stale or not producing anything strictly new. There is a remote possibility that they will someday in fact be used to produce actual books, but realistically, publishers are inundated with stuff they find much more relevant and exciting, and like most artist-types I hate the drudgery of trying to sort out the whole business end of book production. Hence my standing on this soapbox handing out free samples daily. And I thank you all for coming by Speakers’ Corner (though since I live in Texas I suppose I should pretend it’s in Rawhide Park) here for visits so I don’t die of neglect and boredom.

digital compositionThe prose of my posts is never older than a few days (and that, only if I happen to have gotten a day or two ahead in writing), but nearly always written on the same day the posts go online. The poems are a mix of old and new. I started wading in poetic and essayist waters as a mere stripling, and as long as twenty years ago spent a twelvemonth writing five poems a day for discipline. Yes, mostly short forms! A couple of years ago, I did a one-drawing-a-day year, and I’m gearing up to get back to somewhat more regular drawing and art-making, so hopefully I’ll be posting more ‘fresh produce’ soon, but having unused images in storage takes an nth of the pressure off of the blog production. As it is, the process takes me several hours of the day to get through both creating the post itself and the related correspondence.

graphite drawing + textAnd it does take time. I wouldn’t be able to do this other than extremely sporadically if I had a “real” job, that’s for sure. Working from home, I can keep up with laundry and cooking and housekeeping and that sort of thing without losing the flexible hours it takes to do this. That’s the big issue for me: I have a husband who values my art and writing enough to have supported my leaving my previous employment and kept us in financial safety with his own work, and that is a rare and fabulous gift indeed. Or a cruelty to you, if you happen to think I should have kept it to myself. But then, I like to think you’re all smart enough to not show up here if I weary you with my nattering.

Having noted that, I suppose it’s time to address the Why of it all. But that’s embedded in the whole Who-What-When-Where-How of it all, isn’t it. I do this because it gives me joy to play with words and pictures, and because I’m not necessarily cut out to do something else, and most especially because by sharing stories I find new marvelous and inspiring friendships and loves, and renew the best of those I already have, all of which serve to infinitely reinforce my knowledge that I am Rich.

mixed media collage

Gold, Mine (detail from a mixed media collage)

Foodie Tuesday: Nothing Sexier than Proper Mise en Place

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Ready for mirepoix-making?

Let’s face it, I’m as predictable as romantic comedies when it comes to many things, not least of all, choosing the path of least resistance when fixing food. If there’s a shortcut to the shortbread, lemme at it. If there’s a snappier way to trim snap peas, I’m on board with that. But if there’s one thing I know is worth any amount of trouble, it’s prep. It’s not glamorous, I’ll grant you, and sometimes gets mighty tedious, especially when there’s a sizable party or elaborate meal on the horizon. But there is nothing that makes the rest of the time in the kitchen more tolerable, even enjoyable, than having the best of mise en place at my fingertips.

I did my time as a house painter, back in the misty distance, and I learned tout de suite that there was no substitute for careful first steps when it came to a fine finished product; I spent some time laboring backstage and behind the scenes in theatres and found that what’s seen when the curtain’s rung up is about a thousandth of what’s been and being done for the production. Of course, my conductor husband works in a discipline where the inexperienced concert-attendee would be wildly off base to think that all performers do is get up onstage and wave arms or pipe on musical contraptions or flap tongues. Even if they have an inkling that rehearsals are necessary, they haven’t imagined the tiniest increment of blood, sweat and tears that went into a performance. And I’m fairly certain I haven’t come across any other field in which that doesn’t generally hold true. What goes on before-hand is such an essential and formative part of what comes out of the proscenium or oven that sometimes I think we’re guilty of assuming everyone would just plain intuit that. We need to tell the inexperienced what a beautiful thing is that dull seeming preparatory work, what glorious jewels are the salt-cellar and oil bottle and dishes of neatly diced Tasso and shredded Reggiano and chiffonaded basil.

Even the finished dish may not look particularly artistic, unless it’s something generally far more designer-iffic than what I’m likely to produce at my board, but it is an infinitely greater pleasure to prepare and serve food that was made easier to prepare and serve by having arranged for good mise en place in good time. There’s both the initial set of ingredients and tools that ought to be at the ready, and then there’s the lineup of Parts that precedes the final plating for presentation, and both serve to wonderfully streamline the efforts.

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The cranberry-mandarin-maple relish that will add a note of piquancy to the Thanksgiving plate is nothing much to look at, but will add its own essential character to the plate . . .

Part of the effectiveness and pleasure of mise en place for a visual obsessive like me is that it allows me to ‘paint’ with the food, whether in creating the individual dishes or in building the presentation, modest though it might be, by considering not only all of the flavors and practical characteristics of the ingredients but also their colors, shapes, visual textures and other attributes that can contribute to the integrity and–God willing–deliciousness of the whole.

So this is why, on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I’ve been brewing broth for gravy, concocting relishes and garnishes, butterflying the turkey and brining it (tomorrow it bathes sous vide, Thursday gets its high-roast crunch on!), roasting potatoes so that they will make heavenly light mash despite the added gallons of cream and pounds of butter, and all of that other ‘peripheral’ stuff. It’s not much to look at, to be sure, but I think I’ll manage to get a pretty fair showing out of it all eventually, because I’m laying the groundwork and setting the foundations first. Amen, let’s eat!

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That's it for today's sage advice.

50 Fabulous Uses for Your Old Microwave

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digital photocollageI’ve always gotten a vast amount of entertainment value from the astonishing and miraculous claims of advertisers and would-be self-improvement guidance gurus. Everybody’s got incredible, and I do mean, literally, incredible stuff to offer me. And asks so little in return! (Often, only $19.95, and if I order before midnight tonight, they’ll throw in shipping and handling, and the second batch is free!)

Why, just this morning there was an email offering to help me confirm the $95K deposit I was (apparently in an out-of-body experience) making in some unspecified account for equally unspecified purposes. No charge for this generous offer of assistance! People can be so selfless, so willing to give of themselves to complete strangers.

I also love the kinds of unsolicited catalogs that appear in the mailbox or sneak in, sandwiched in the middle of the Sunday paper, offering a dazzling array of specialized tools that do things I didn’t even know I needed done, outfits for occasions I would otherwise have dreaded attending for lack of appropriate garb, and mail-order taste treats that I can only assume would make fantastic foundation blocks for the addition to my garage if they are as heavy and solid as they appear in the illustrative “mouthwatering” photos. Not that I am the suspicious type, but do I often check the small print in those last to see if they were sponsored by any orthodontic clinic or the local emergency room.

With my husband’s work as an educator and conductor, he is constantly supplied with offerings of books that will teach him how to be the perfect pedagogue and assume, evidently, Manchurian Candidate-like control of his singers and instrumentalists, not to mention catalogs of instruments used around the world in all of the best (surely they can’t be exaggerating) professional orchestras, Tibetan Buddhist temples, national trophy-winning marching bands, Montessori schools, and the White House at Christmastime. I especially adore the array of costumes on offer for performers, each more likely than the last to make audiences faint in astonishment at the sheer beauty and professional demeanor of his singers. If you happen to judge such things by weight of sequin-age or quantity of yardage when stretched to the full possible extension of the no-iron knit fabrics.

When I was in academia, I mostly received art supply catalogs and sample textbooks that publishers were certain my students and I could no more breathe without than we could imagine surviving a semester of English composition or Introduction to Design unaided by their inspirations. But it was in my work as the university’s gallery director that I got the really good stuff. Along with the usual bibles of workplace safety and inventories of must-have tools (some of which I’m still puzzling over), I got catalogs for ordering more esoteric supplies, like specialty light bulbs that would instantly convert the one-room concrete box gallery into the Quai d’Orsay, archival storage equipment that would only cost me approximately three years of my whole gallery budget for one four-shelf unit (base and casters not included), and my personal favorite, a free subscription to Bathroom World, where I could peruse at leisure (presumably, whilst seated) the marvels of wall-hung thrones, public-proof stainless steel soap dispensers and no-touch trash bins and, yes, signage that would make all of the needy sigh with relief.

I know it’s daft, but I do get sucked in by those 1001-Ways promises of all sorts of how-to pamphlets and book collections and DVDs. It’s not that I fall for the claim that this one will solve forever the mystery of the ages, it’s that I’m so enamored of the fantastic imagery in word and picture that someone labored to cook up to convince me of the claims. If you not only sat down to concoct a mile-long list of things I can do to save the environment using only the old can opener I was going to throw away this week but you even took the time to create flashy illustrations of what a fit, popular, pitch-perfect human being I will become as the direct result of these activities, why–who am I to deny you the opportunity to improve me so?

Ah, I know in my heart it’s all pixy dust. But I do so like dipping my toe in, if only to savor the sometimes fall-down-funny misguided efforts made to better me for my own good. May my admittedly shaky wisdom still keep me safe from all fishy Free Offers, and help me to know the difference between ‘The! Real! Deal!’ and an actual deal. But please, may I also never lose the ability to enjoy an outrageously, stupendously, screamingly awful offer for its sheer audacity and ridiculous beauty.

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Hey, Baby, Wanna Ride Shotgun in My Pinto Wagon? (Daffy Drivers, Part 2)

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I don’t know why it sprang to mind just now. Well, maybe I do. I seem to have been stuck in the previously described drivers’ vortex for a strangely gelatinous trip through surreal-ville lately and I’m thinking of drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists and cars with a certain measure of disdain, loathing, hilarity, terror, and mild psychosis, sometimes in turns and occasionally all in one big deliriously bleary blend. Despite knowing in my heart that traffic in suburban north Texas is marshmallows and candy-floss compared to the traffic experienced in much of the world (just check the all-too-true comments on my previous traffic-related post) I cannot resist a further rant.

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Details, details--automotive fanatics do love their detailing . . .

I have seen (three times within two days) the indescribably death-wishful strolls of different (but each time, ahem, male) pedestrians not only on the wrong side of the road but well into the lane of steady morning traffic bearing down on their armor-less backs, all the while with cars going past at 30+ mph in the next lane over, so NO chance of the drivers approaching said amblers’ backsides actually swerving to avoid hitting them. What do we in the cars get to do? Pot along behind a slowly walking person as though theirs were the most ordinary and acceptable behavior on earth, despite this being within blocks of the university, where every dull-witted bipedal being over age 11 knows that college drivers and mad professors are on the loose? Stunningly insouciant, these moseying moon-brains, to say the least, and irritating, too, by gad.

I live in the land of the “free” right turn–where it’s okay legally, if you’ve stopped at a red light, to proceed with a right turn if (a) there’s no one coming from another direction that has right-of-way by green light or prior arrival at the intersection and (b) you are actually in position to take said right turn. I’m all fine with that, despite being still a bit piqued that an intersection camera once got me dinged for a turn where I was positive I had followed all of the rubrics scrupulously. Recently, however, I got to witness two rather egregious abuses of the privilege right in a row and was glad to get home with skin and fenders intact. First there was the intersection where I stopped at the red light and waited to turn left, where ahead of me on the other side of the intersection a minor accident had stopped up the front of the right-turn lane. I waited for my left turn, which I began to execute when the requisite green arrow shone before me, and found myself suddenly front-bumper-to-front-bumper in a very nearly compromising position with an enormous truck (of that variety known in my heart simply as a “big-butt truck”–the sort that is large enough to haul a full load of heavy equipment to the farm but is waaaaaay too clean and scratch-free to ever have tried it). Mr Truck Driver had arrived behind the stalled accident, whipped out around it, and deemed it logical to grab a free right without ever considering that he was both out of turn and entirely invisible to us across the road.

After our close encounter I took a deep breath, released my crushed brake, took two more deep breaths, didn’t say or gesture anything that I was thinking, let the truck get well away from my vicinity, and went along my way. Not a mile later, I was stopped by a red light in the right lane. As it happened, I was first in that lane, so though I had no plans to take a free right myself (being in need of going straight ahead), I didn’t feel it likely that someone from across the way would try to cut me off by surprise again. Which indeed no one did. However, the young and helmet-less (I’m still baffled that that’s legal anywhere, but it is, so I’ll simply note it here as another risk factor the other driver took) motorcyclist behind me felt deprived of his free right turn, and rather than drearily waiting through another boring ten seconds of red light on my behalf, he swung out into the left lane and blasted around to the right in front of me to turn, just about in sync with the drivers coming from across the way who of course were being treated to an actual green light.

How I got home with both an undamaged car and clean underwear is testament more to good fortune than to my skillful driving or the strength of my nervous system, but I shall leave that musing and my temperamental unburdening here for the nonce and move on to what was really renewing my interest in road-tripping, if I may now use it in the more psychedelic sense. It was, you see, about the automotive beauty pageant.

I’m a dull person when it comes to vehicles. In our family, learning to drive required us to learn a couple of additional fundamental automotive survival skills, things like checking the oil and changing a tire, and, oh yeah, filling the gas tank. Like making sure air filters were changed as needed and seatbelts worn and like how to pump the hand brake in case those other brake-thingies just happened to go out of commission (the latter only happened to me once, but it was at 50 mph and the brakes croaked just as I watched a rock-filled dump truck pull onto the road a hundred feet ahead of me, so I am glad I was given that particular bit of useful wisdom). But outside of that, I wasn’t infused with lust for four-wheeled artful luxury. I’m strictly practical about my expectations from a car. Transportation. Carrying capacity as needed. Inexpensive to buy and to maintain. Generally reliable and safe. And I’ve done pretty well in that, too.

I can admire a beautiful vehicle, don’t get me wrong. I’ve had crushes on a strange variety of cars that struck my fancy at one time or another. When I shopped for my first car (as I was beginning construction work), I was offered a 1957 pushbutton-transmission Mercury that was in nice-but-not-cherry condition for a very fair price. It was a ridiculous Pepto-Bismol® pink and had a more extravagantly fabulous back-end than a Brazilian beach bunny’s, its trunk big enough for Mafia use–or at least for carrying all of the painting equipment and tools I was going to need to haul. But it really wasn’t the kind of car I could seriously contemplate filling with 300-pound paint sprayers and tool buckets and piles of dusty tarps and abusing in quite that fashion. Because it really was more about fashion than about transportation, and much as I could love its ludicrousness I finally opted for the more practical used Volare station wagon with fake-paneled sides and the super-duty shocks that I put in ‘er to hold up my cargo’s bulk. And it turned out I developed a crush on that car’s slant-six engine. Go figure.

There are plenty of supremely handsome vehicles out there, to be sure. A ’29 Pierce Arrow, all decked out. Vintage Bentleys or Silver Wraiths. A perfectly restored period Duesenberg. Not to mention, say, a sleek blue 1967 Barracuda. Flash. Glorious. But any of those beasties would so outshine me that it would seem sacrilegious to even consider such a thing. Not to mention that if I had any sort of spectacular car I would still be unable to support it (insure it) in the style to which it might deserve to be accustomed.

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Smile for the camera!

Meanwhile, there are a whole lot of people who do have deep passions or perhaps even rather unseemly romantic notions regarding their various automotive loves. We’ve all seen those whose car, truck, motorcycle, RV or tractor represents (or, in many cases, clearly substitutes for) their identity as a male, female, or Other. The wheeled transport associated with that distinctive breed of guy-hood truly dependent on its vehicle for its masculinity gets from me the designation TPV, or Tiny Penis Vehicle, for that rather laughably desperate form of self-identification. There are lots of levels of vehicular artistry, from true-amateurs’ loving attentions to purists’ slavish restorations to custom trick-outs to the movable museum-pieces that are one-off sculptural artworks on wheels. So many fun options! I’ve seen the fantastic and the phantasmagorical, the happy and the horrific, and many a piece of magic in motion.

Perhaps my favorites are the outlandish and ridiculous concoctions put together by aspiring molto-machismos on a tight budget–whether of the wallet or of the imagination. The jacked-to-the-sky mini-boxes on massive heavy-equipment wheels so high that the driver can barely herk himself up into the driver’s seat. The I-did-it-myself custom paint job with heavily textured brush strokes running through its thick housepaint coat or the would-be designer approach whose flames and pictorials ended up a little closer to junior high graffitists’ than to graphic artists’ work.

Or one of my all-time favorites: it was an early-80s Pinto hatchback customized with massive tires that appeared to be crammed dangerously into the wheel wells as well as making the teeny car precariously high and teeter-y, and was painted antenna to tailpipe in dull metallic gold spray paint, all with a stingy and shaky hand. I came upon it as its young driver was cruising a mostly deserted street in a semi-rural suburb, and I remained unsure for a long time afterward whether it was pure cruelty on my part to have laughed so heartily on seeing it. Surely such effort deserved, at the least, a joyful response, and that I did give without hesitation.

Truth be told, that’s my reaction to car-love in general. I’m glad it seems to give so much pleasure to so many people, but I’m pretty mystified by it too, and mostly the seeming excess of affection just makes me want to fall on the floorboards howling with laughter. Good thing my seatbelt keeps me from any such thing when I’m behind the wheel myself. Hopefully, in a really outstanding specimen of a silvery-blue ’67 ‘Cuda, rebuilt to my own personal specs with eco-fuel conversion, a skillful on-call chauffeur, comfortably glove-fitting heated and cooled passenger seats for my companions and me, a mini-fridge in the trunk full of the day’s edible necessities and the proper libations for the non designated-drivers to sup during those pit stops requisite whilst road-tripping for joy, plus a lifetime’s supply of fuel, parts, insurance and police escorts to clear the roads ahead and find ideal parking spots. Either that or my ordinary, everyday, plebeian, functional, dependable and non-fanciful car. It’ll do me.

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  • I’m just happy if it gets me from here to there and back again . . .