August 2011
1 post
sproutsprout
Considering we didn’t think any of our seeds were going to germinate, I think you could say the first planting season in the courtyard garden was a success.
A big success. BOOM!
A snackerel of carrots and a glory of beets kind of success.
But I’ll let you in on a little secret: turns out there are seasons in LA after all. If you are a wee seed, it comes down to To Hot or Not...
April 2011
1 post
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I've said it before and I'll say it again...
…radishes are totally rad.
Our first harvest…look at those colors!
I wish I had taken shots of the first haul with something for scale, because our second harvest was just b.a.n.a.n.a.s.
Just look at that honker in the middle!
We’re very proud. :)
…and goofy.
March 2011
1 post
Garden update! Day 35...
Everything is up! From the bottom towards the wall: spinach, beets, radishes, carrots, peas. Alas, something has been digging up the beets…
But the radishes are pretty, well, rad!
Now all we need are some hens and a goat and we’ll be in business.
February 2011
3 posts
canning, cavorting, curdling
What MA?
This is a really big deal.
Seriously, you have no idea.
January 2011
9 posts
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9 tags
Bergamot Sunset
Another for the recommended list: Bergamot Station + SaMo Museum of Art. Wandering from gallery to gallery in the sunshine? Yes, please. (These gels were outside a gallery installation-in-progress, but there was plenty of proper art to be found inside, too, of course.) There’s a cafe and a rad paper goods store, too! If only it was still a stop on a trolley running to the ocean in...
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Better than the last
7:00 PM caramelizing walnuts
8:00 PM gathering chard by flashlight
10:00 PM the sailor pontificates
11:55 champagne & aquarius
1:00 AM sleepy kitty
11:00 AM Spanish & cheese?
12:00 PM well it’s been so long since I’ve seen the ocean
Bring it, 2011.
December 2010
5 posts
3 tags
Flan = easy?
Who knew?
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Monday afternoon at the Roadium
Formerly a drive-in theater, now a theater of the third world economy in southbay.
Finds: Olympus Pen EE-S (1962): $8 Plasticized cloth hot water bottle: $2 Roman glass earrings: $10 Argyle knee-socks, 3-set: $5 Earthenware bowls for future kitty: $5
(etc.)
We passed on the katanas and air rifles and millions of cheap undershirts…and, alas, the lovely nude portrait.
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A night at the Orpheum
May 2010
1 post
April 2010
3 posts
4 tags
5 tags
WatchMore insights into the social topography of Los Angeles…
Oil wells hidden in some of the densest centers of the city: on the campus of Beverly H.S., tucked into the Beverly Center Mall, hidden in the Fairfax Farmer’s Market, inside a huge warehouse on Pico…really fascinating in terms of land use over time, and the shifting values and social meaning that use implies.
10 tags
March 2010
2 posts
February 2010
1 post
January 2010
4 posts
It's January, and I've been thinking about seeing.
It seems an appropriate time to take a peek back at Annie Dillard:
It’s January, and I’ve got great plans. I’ve been thinking about seeing.
It occurs to me that it’s fitting that I should have been so taken with her writing—she writes as an ethnographer of the natural world, much like Emerson in his thinking that the Poet’s life should be pitched to the key where the smallest natural...
3 tags
December 2009
2 posts
It’s been snowing out East, it finally feels...
Sunsets + Projectors = Thankfulness
I am thankful for friends coming West for Thanksgiving:
That’s the sunset over the Pacific, seen out the window during Thanksgiving dinner in Santa Barbara. So very different from the associations of turning leaves and harvest colors and squash, but ahhhh sigh, beautiful.
I am thankful for overhead projectors in need of a home:
K and I are going to throw a projector party! Shadow...
November 2009
3 posts
Well hello, Marilee...
Marilee H., that is. She owned my copy of Frederick Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State before me. She was the underline-with-a-ruler kind—you the know the type.
I love seeing what previous readers scrawl in the margins, what caught their attention and meant something to them. But with Marilee, there’s all this truly hilarious stuff—Engels writes of early...
WatchIn case you were unaware, this is what a banjo can do…instill crazy joy!!
And don’t you forget it.
(Captured at the Abbot Kinney Street Fest, Robin Sculpture Garden, while listening to this band.)
the culture of campus
Campus is weird.
Well, first of all, it’s a campus. A real one, like all those movies of college life that I could never relate to, all rolling lawns and stately trees and freshman antics. And that, my friends, is weird. It doesn’t feel real, frankly. I can’t get over it.
But it’s also a freaking CITY, with it’s own police and transportation and catering services....
October 2009
2 posts
And then SHE said...
Some funny things people have said recently that made me feel all cheery and fine:
1. V telling me she thinks of me as an Indian. As in, there are things Americans do, but I don’t do all of those things, therefore…I am like an Indian. I would like to believe this means I am going to be an awesome anthropologist.
2. L and I keep saying we’re going to start a band. Girl learns...
Oh! September (where did you go?)
No, seriously.
...
September 2009
10 posts
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, “40...
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Pedestrian adventures
(That totally should have been the name of this blog.)
It’s strange to look back on the exuberance of my first post; that has dimmed somewhat in the face of the enormity of my imminent task and the enormity of this city. I overheard someone say, laughingly, “Los Angeles is 99% space!” And I thought, Ah, like an atom; and me, but a humble proton…
…and the trajectory...
Field of Bakers (belatedly)
Last week (was it just last week or longer ago…?) I scooted up to Bakersfield to visit family I hadn’t seen in nearly 10 years—whole heaps of aunts and cousins, with a great uncle thrown in for good measure, whose faces and positions in the tree had been distant and out of focus mere days before, so distant as to be nigh on irrelevent. It’s so strange to be thrust so...
August 2009
5 posts
