There’s a World Out There

So – what have you guys been doing?

June and July, in a nutshell:

The Soundtrack of Our Lives came to Urbana-Champaign. We took them to lunch at Black Dog, of course. They played two shows – an in-store at Parasol:

And a full-on show at the High Dive.

There was a party later.

The neighborhood had a corn dog party.

The breadseed poppies bloomed.

The Solstice came.

Lilly went to Cousins’ Camp in Springfield.

Cody came down for his birthday and the 4th of July, also in Springfield.

Jim & I went with friends to a “back-alley dinner” at Black Dog. It sounds terrible, but it was excellent. Smuttynose was the featured brewery.

We had our Seventh Annual B-K Dessert Party. Darth Vader stood watch.

Then I went to the Pitchfork Music Festival. Cody was working as the festival photographers’ assistant, but he made sure I was taken care of.

I wound up seeing a bunch of people I knew from the Days of Yore, which was mindblowing on a couple levels. And –  I saw bands. I was there primarily to see Fleet Foxes, however. They were great, though I think I prefer them indoors, where I can hear every last thing they’re doing. This will happen October 1, when they play the Chicago Theatre.

Then it got hot. It went beyond summer hot and into this-is-kind-of-weird hot. I love summer, but even I thought it was a little scary. Mr. Teacups got sick, we think because of the heat, but then he got better. The tomatoes basically stopped producing. It rained one time in 3+ weeks.

We got Lilly’s student ID for her new school. We still need to buy her books, because summer isn’t over, damn it. She starts in 13 days.

Lilly and I spent a day swimming at my friend B’s house. She lives in Munster, IN – home to Three Floyds and not far from Chicago- and has a beautiful home and pool.

And now we’re here, early August. Jim and I have been married 11 years today.

Read Full Post »

Notes

I pay attention during conference calls, but when the conversation drifts, I make lists.

Email Beth.

Actually, there are two Beths I need to email – a close friend I’ve adored for almost 20 years (!!), and my massage therapist.

Betty Fussell.

She’s a bit of a goddess in the food writing world. She also has great style. I have a photo of her on my bulletin board at my office.

New skates.

My last pair of skates gave me terrible blisters just underneath my outside ankle bone on both sides, something I couldn’t have predicted from wearing them in the store while trying them on. I have tried running, I have tried treadmill dancing, I have tried walking, and while all of them are enjoyable to a degree, skating is what I crave: intense + zoomy + daredevilish + excellent workout. I need recommendations for good skates, though. Help. The internet is a confusing place. Until I find some I’m going to be forced to wrap both feet and ankles in Ace bandages.

One day at a time.

Order new glasses.

I wear them to read and work on the computer. The cheap ones I bought from Zenni were great, and they were cheap at a time I needed them to be cheap, but the plastic is peeling and they’re better suited to pajama time.

Get posters framed.

I have a couple fantastic posters made by my friends Brett and Bonnie that I’ve been wanting to frame for a long time, since before they moved away to Denmark. One is for their bathouse project, which I investigated for the radio. The other is food-related, of course. Here’s a photo:

Day before/day of logistics.

Many things are changing at work this season; I’m realizing that in order to really pull this off, entirely new internal structure is needed for me and my staff. While it’s kind of fun to doodle that stuff out, I’m nervous. It’s going to involve delegation and me not trying to control everything. Could be complicated some days, I reckon.

Phasing.

Today at work I was part of a meeting with some consultants who are helping the City of Urbana with its signage and wayfinding. My favorite part of the meeting was their timeline and phasing graphic – a really simple calendar that demonstrated when each deliverable would be, uh, delivered. I need to do that. Linear thinking is not my forte, though. Maybe I’ll stick to lists.

Small rituals = anchors.

Hot water and lemon in the morning. Fifteen minutes of thinking before diving into work at the office. Friday afternoon pastry at Mirabelle. First asparagus, even if it’s not local. Cutting fruit for my daughter’s breakfast, even though she’s way – way! – past the age of being able to do it herself. Breakfast at Prairie Fruits Farm every Saturday morning – sometimes alone, sometimes with friends – in the eight weeks between first cheese and our farmers market opening. Putting my cold feet on my husband’s very warm legs when he gets into bed.

Bottom up. Never top down.

Sounds rather naughty! Erm. Really, my thinking here is about change, particularly with regards to the food system and politics. We have something important to vote on in Urbana on Tuesday, and residents of the town right next door have a Mayor to elect (we are pro-this guy chez B-K; I wish we could vote in their election). National elections are important, but people MUST! vote where they live. The only way to change things is to start where you hang yr hat.

So many meals in one seed.

Read Full Post »

Influential

Because I never think I should be doing what I’m actually doing, I should be:

– writing the next IMBY segment

– drafting a proposal for my Next Big Idea

– switching the laundry

– working further in the garden, which is a bit of a mess (but home, sweet [muddy] home to the tiny frog I almost hacked in half with my hoe today. There he/she is, in one piece, above.)

… but I’m not. Instead, I thought I’d stop in here while I wait for the Illinois vs Kansas men’s basketball game to begin.

Here are a bunch of books currently influencing me in some way. Well, they’re sitting on my bedside table.

Curation Nation by Steven Rosenbaum: “Creating content is easy; finding what matters is hard.”  Um, I knew that. This book isn’t telling me much that I don’t already know, you know? Maybe I’m missing something. Am I? Isn’t life kinda like one big “curated” mixed tape?

The Unprejudiced Palate by Antonio Pellegrini: Have you read this book? If you love food and cooking and gardens and stories from the early-to-mid 20th century (I do, all four), you must. It’s lovely – of another era and culture entirely. The descriptions of his garden and the meals he cooked from it and his full-to-bursting pantry make me sigh and ooh and ahh. I’ve read this book, oh, about 78,349,585 times. Books like this are why I insist on having a large garden that I can barely manage… in a good year.

Independence Days, A Nation of Farmers, and Depletion and Abundance by Sharon Astyk: This is kind of great book trifecta if you’re into gardening, food preservation and storage, neighborhood and individual self-sufficiency, the effects of resource depletion on communities, doing more with less, etc. I’m a total geek for this crap. Bonus for me: I ordered a copy of Independence Days and was chuffed to discover that the handwriting font I made with my dear friend Chank, Wordier Diva, is on the front and back cover and all over the inside of the book.

I Think I Love You by Allison Pearson: I didn’t read her other book and I’m sure I never will, but I’m totally charmed by this trip down her Memory Lane about David Cassidy fandom. I was quite certain, in 1984, that if John Taylor of Duran Duran could only meet me…. (he’s still quite fine, by the way)

Farm City by Novella Carpenter: Quite possibly one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. I can’t find the actual link to the article Hamish Bowles did in Vogue about her, but this might even be better…

American Terroir by Rowan Jacobsen: I have this, have not read it yet, am interested in further studying the idea of terroir in the US, am afraid of “foodies” wrecking it by being too precious and academic, etc.

When French Women Cook by Madeleine Kamman: See The Unprejudiced Palate, above.

Joie de Vivre by Robert Arbor with Katherine Whiteside: I’m a bit of a Francophile anyway, and Cody just got back from two very-extensively-photographed weeks in Paris, so it’s back in rotation. It’s part lifestyle, part cookbook. Great photos. Sigh. I guess he went over to some young lady’s house a few years ago to cook for her. You can read about it here.

Life by Keith Richards and James Fox: I just finished this. It was all I could think about for days. How, I thought, could someone take that many drugs for so many years and not only be productive, but produce some of the best work of his career? Also, I was born in the wrong decade. And… I must download every Stones record I don’t own immediately. I will say this: I don’t care about much the Stones did after 1974. And, you know, in Keef’s world, all women are chicks and bitches, except maybe his mom. The guy adored his mom.

Anyhow. It’s the 2nd half, Illinois is still in the game, and I have a bizzonkers work week ahead. Hire staff! Write media releases! Answer email! Process applications! Etcetera! So on! And so forth!

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

Ordinariest

Graffiti behind Goodyear Tire in Urbana, IL – photo by me

 

Hi, readers.

I am so very sick right now, felled by a massive cold that got underway not two hours after I’d bragged to someone, knowing it was a bad idea, that I hadn’t had a bad cold or flu in almost 3 years. Things are looking up, slowly, but this cold is the kind that you look at your co-worker sideways for bringing into the office – drippy, hacky, sneezy, involved. People are avoiding me, but it’s cool. I suppose it’s a good thing that it might mitigate by tomorrow, right? So I don’t get the stinkeye from the people I work with? Sigh.

I am very happy at this moment, however, because both of my children are home at the same time – Jim is too – and the four of us are in the same room eating food with the football game on and wisecracking and reading and are basking, quietly, in each others’ presence. With Cody living in Chicago, this doesn’t happen very often. He and I were out procuring groceries and stopped to pick Lilly up at a friend’s… and I had to think hard to recall the last time I was in the driver’s seat with the two of them in the car with me. It’s been more than a year.

Not much else going on – not worth talking about at this juncture, anyway. I’ll be getting back to putting the archived In My Backyard stuff up here soon. I’m planning on putting in a seed order from these folks any day, though the idea of getting into the garden exhausts me right now (I think I have food and garden burnout, but that’s a topic for another day). I’ve been trying to write something, somewhere, every day. I have an unhealthy interest in The Selby.

The Bears fans don’t sound happy. Booing!

Here’s what I’ve been looking at these last few days:

I’m eyeing these boots.

And these.

Editorial about farming subsidies in the NYT.

Mnmlst.

Portland Alternative Dwellings, or PAD. Supercool.

Video documenting a wall-painting in Goteborg, Sweden. From several pals on Facebook.

A show on public broadcast I’d never heard of until very recently.

I’m interested in attending this conference.

I ADORE these color combinations. Need color STAT.

The family togetherness was short-lived – Cody’s off to the cafe until later. Jim has a meeting & is making chili for dinner. I should probably get together a cornbread. Lilly is on the couch, snacking. I gave her Good Omens to read – we’ll see if she picks it up.

 

 

Read Full Post »

Felled

It’s been a rather unpleasant couple of days chez B-K.

A rather nasty stomach virus got two of the three of us (not me so far, knock wood, etc) yesterday morning. Getting sick around the holidays is certainly nothing new for my family, but it’s been a few years, and I’d forgotten how easy it is to get even further out of sync when you’re on Sick People Hours.

Sick People Hours = All Hours. Our house becomes a mess. Work gets spread out everywhere. The TV is constantly on (this time: Despicable Me, Avatar [Last Airbender, cartoon version], Ratatouille, Premier League football, NCAA hoopage). Meals, or what passes for them, are taken at strange times. There is the daughter’s barfing to contend with; there is the feeling of her forehead, searching for fever; there is the secret watching of her breathing. She was never sickly as a small child, but when she got sick, she got sick hard. She puked the most, had the highest fevers, displayed the most virulent chicken pox, etc. Her propensity for really doing it well as a small child is not something I’ve been able to eradicate from my mind.

I stayed home from work today and got a few things done, but this was after a tense night of “sleep” , dressed all wrong for it, up every hour, and worried about the fella upstairs in my bed, too, who was dealing with his own brand of nastiness. That said, everyone seems to be on the mend.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking about the New Year. Another damn New Year! Anyway, here are a few things I’ve run across:

Project Censored’s Top 25 for 2010

My friend Lisa has entered this photo in Saveur mag’s sandwich photo contest

Fun thread about food cart legislation in CHGO (well, it’s fun if you’re me)

This piece about “foodie fatigue” made me a little grumpy. People who like good, clean food often are nothing like the “foodie” stereotype, but whatever. I’ve been around the block a few times. I know what’s up. The comments are hysterical sometimes

Jane Black’s writing and research is actually something I can sink my teeth into, however (haaa!)

I dunno, I just like Astrid

In the “I probably posted this already” department, I think this journal might have been what Gastronomica magazine grew out of. There’s some great, great stuff here. If I hadn’t happened upon an issue at the thrift store about 8 years ago, I would not be… me

I also pretty much love Salvation Jane

Breakfast/brunch food!

Read Full Post »

Wind Ain’t Been Blowing From the South

Snow is falling again.

I was telling my brother, who recently moved here from Ohio, that we’ve had Decembers in this part of Illinois where the grass was still green ten days before Christmas, but we have nothing of the sort going on outside this year. Our first snowfall wasn’t even three weeks ago – it was this total surprise that inspired childlike disbelief and ohmygoshing and willyoulookatthats when we were with our friends at their house, after a dinner of some length at our favorite establishment. When we arrived back at their house at 7 PM, the flurries were just getting started, but by the time we looked up from the fire and our beers and the company a couple of hours later, four inches of fluffy snow had fallen and it was continuing to pour out of the sky, snow-globe style. Our children immediately piled on whatever clothes and boots they could find and disappeared into the back yard. 5 more inches fell before it was over.

It was a nice way to usher in the season; we’ve had pissing rain and howling wind and zero degrees in the morning since then and none of that has gotten any gee-whizzing from me. I’ve decided it’s really not worth bitching about the weather, since it’s WEATHER, and I’ve lived in the midwest for thirty years (Christ, seriously?), and I’ve figured out how to dress for it, and have I mentioned that it’s WEATHER and there’s nothing I can do about it? I can sit here and take it all personally and hate it all winter and be totally miserable, or I can enjoy the snow outside (mostly) from within the friendly confines of my own home, don my Helly Hansens when I opt for heading outside for any length of time, and let my husband do the #1 thing I don’t like to do – drive in snow and ice. Figure out a way to make winter work for you, I say. The vernal equinox (March 20) is only 95 days away, and you’ll be wondering what the hell happened and oh crap I still haven’t bought any seeds. Well, if you’re me, that is.

I mean, come on. Kelly‘s got something like 572 inches of snow at her house and it’s probably still snowing. Our troubles are few.

Here are some open tabs for you:

Commercial kitchen provides way to earn money for un/underemployed people with food chops

My favorite political blog is back, after a 2-year hiatus!

Les Mods

People of my acquaintance are making new music together after 15 years

They’re also touring, a little

Hubble Telescope advent calendar

Interactive school lunch graphic from NYT

Abandoned home Lego creation

Dr. Seuss does Star Wars – adorable!

Tiny Aviary

On the Bro’d – every sentence of Kerouac’s On the Road, retold for bros – OMG

Read Full Post »

Best Practice

I have mentioned it here before, that I was really excited to be away from my office for five work days that didn’t fall in the month of February that didn’t require traveling to Florida. I’m not used to time off. I never saw the point of taking time off if I wasn’t going anywhere. It surely would mean drudgery, housework, boredom, etc. Who needed that?

But after a bizzonkers third market season this year followed by a half hour spent roughing out a vacation schedule for the holidays and February, I discovered I could ALSO take an additional 5 days off (4 vacation days plus Veteran’s Day, which my office observes by giving us the day off) and still have a couple of days in reserve. This time, taking time off without going anywhere sounded like paradise.

I started my vacation from the office with some drudgery and housework, but it wasn’t laundry or dishes or even the embarrassingly-neglected garden. No, it was cleaning out what was passing for a closet upstairs, a catch-all small room about 4′ x 18′ with no purpose other than to store old clothes, hundreds of abandoned CDs, odd bits of small furniture. Shoes. Boxes of photographs and zines. Bad printers and computer towers. Two bags of not-quite-trash that Cody had filled up and, unsure what to do with a collection of old socks, pennies and nickels, and notebooks from 11th grade math, shoved into the closet/room on the eve of his leaving for Cairo back in February. There were small rolls of carpet scrap that had been there when we moved in, still standing at attention under the sloping of the roof.  I made trip after trip out of the closet/room and into our bedroom, dumping random parts of our lives onto the floor, the bed. My recent desire to BE RID of extraneous crap made it easy to donate/throw out the vast majority of what had been kept in there. But why? Why the motivation?

Two things: 1) I have no interest in spending what little free time I have taking care of stuff that no one wants anywhere in the house, including closets, and b) I wanted a room of my own and this was going to be the only way to have one.

An office. A CLOFFICE. Somewhere I could write, process photos, do research, and keep my various and sundry piles and projects without those things getting in the way of our common living space downstairs, because our house is adorable, but TINY. I spent all day Friday emptying the closet, purging it of bags of crappy yarn and extension cords and old, completely useless, why-the-hell-was-I-saving-this-again-never-mind magazines. A path was required to get to the bed.

The next day, I woke up and prepared to go visit my pal B (aka HousePet) in a neighboring state for just over 24 hours, Jim promising he’d work on the, um, cloffice in my absence. I threw my backpack into the Camry and set off, making the drive in about 2 hours. A Gumballhead was in my hand at 1:30 PM, launching a bit of a short bender with B and her husband, M,  the beginning and the end of it taking place in their really great ranch house. The middle part happened here:

Sunday’s was an incredibly muzzy-headed morning. M had coffee out and built a fire by 9 AM. I have to admit, it was a relief to just sit here, talking quietly, wondering what the heck was in that Arctic Panzer Wolf.

When I returned to Illinois in the afternoon, Jim had indeed worked on the cloffice. The plank flooring, which we will eventually paint white, was covered with part of a sisal rug we’d banished to the garage. A small desk was MacGyvered out of two metal IKEA cabinets and a piece of butcher block. A low bookshelf was moved from downstairs. Another bookshelf came up out of basement exile.

So. I have a room. It’s nothing major, but it’s mine. I’m still working on it.

**********

That was written six days ago. I still love this little room – I’m working in it/on it right now – but having my work up here means I don’t spend a lot of idle time on the computer, which has made a huge improvement in the ol’ Q of L. I even picked up knitting needles again. Jim and I are talking about other projects. PROGRESS.

Speaking of, here are our two wonderful children:

Lilly’s BFF went to CA and came home with this vintage owl pin for her birthday. She’s been raiding my collection of silk scarves lately for adornment. She is twelve and verging.

I took this of Cody today and texted it to Lilly. She couldn’t get over his facial hair, but I think he kind of rocks it. I’m glad he’s coming back here for Thanksgiving, even if it’s just for the day; I miss his big presence in our house. He is eighteen and sorting it all out.

Read Full Post »

Immerse in That One Moment

Photo by Cody Bralts

I have some time off from my day job coming up, which I’m hoping to use to clear out all kinds of clutter and detritus. There is the closet upstairs, there is the basement, and there is my brain; all three need some help. I also hope to write quite a bit, and clean up the yard a bit, and read and sleep a bit. I might even get to House Pet‘s place this weekend if I can swing a vehicle. It’ll be good to have some time away from my office.

This weekend I spent some time thinking about Talk Talk and Mark Hollis, the band’s singer, as I often do. I blame iTunes for the frequency of these thoughts, as all of the band’s albums, a live thing, and MH’s solo record come up in the old iTunes DJ feature on the regular. This weekend I was mostly listening to Talk Talk’s Live in London release (1986) and was blown away. Again. In a different way than I was last time. I listen to the damn thing about twice a month, and every time it sends me into a different space than the time before.

I found Talk Talk the same way many people my age in the early 80s in the US found them: on MTV, with this video. A couple of years later, there was this video, and then this fantastic video. Then, later, there was this:

Fast forward many years. A couple of years ago, I discovered some video for the aforementioned Live in London performance:

… and realized that they were far more awesome than I ever realized.  O, to have been there in 1986! It still sounds great. As in, I’m playing this stuff right now and it sounds fabulous. Just last night I was reading something, somewhere, on the internet, that said Hollis and Co. might have used Steve Winwood’s “Spanish Dancer” (from Arc of a Diver, 1980) as a bit of a template for some of the sounds/moods on The Colour of Spring. Some might disagree, but considering Winwood played on The Colour of Spring (Steve Winwood! From Blind Faith and Traffic!), I wouldn’t say it’s too far off.

Talk Talk went on to mess with everyone’s minds by releasing ambient, so-called “post-rock” stuff long before anyone knew what to do with such a thing (Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, 1988 and 1991, respectively). This is “I Believe in You” from 1988:

I hear Winwood’s influence here, too, just a bit. Phrasing, maybe. It could be all that piano. I bet Mark Eitzel of American Music Club gave this song a spin more than a few times. Gorgeous.

Mark Hollis released a self-titled solo record in 1998. I remember the day it arrived at Parasol, where I was working at the time. It was wintry and cold outside and, after I liberated it from the delivery box and put it in the CD player, it sounded like Mark Hollis’ head was in the speaker right near my desk – that voice. That voice! It remains an extraordinary piece of music; it’s spare, with just a suggestion of warmth and light… very much the sound of late winter for me. There was no tour.

Now… nothing. He’s disappeared, retired from the music business, no website, no farewell, nothing. It seems so old-fashioned, this notion of falling off the face of the earth, disappearing. Can people really do that these days?

Read Full Post »