quotable

Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. - Bishop Desmond Tutu

quotable

"How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone." - Coco Chanel

happy birthday freddie

Happy birthday, Freddie. Your light burns brighter than ever.

quotable

“Modern cynics and skeptics see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.” -John F. Kennedy

font geeks of the world, unite

I'm a typography geek. And I love "Doves". Carry on.

Know This Headline's Font? You're 'Just My Type'
September 4, 2011

Are you an Arial person? A Times New Roman? A Garamond? A Lucida Handwriting? So much of our communication is expressed in text these days that people become deeply attached to the typeface they use to type out their thoughts. Bold or unbold, serif or sans-serif — like the car you drive or the clothes you wear, your font expresses who you are ... and can go in and out of style.
A Font For Radio

Many NPR staffers read scripts all day, so fonts are near and dear to our hearts. We asked some familiar NPR voices share their typeface of choice:
Garamond: "It's got little feet on it — serifs. It's a very clear, simple font."

Garamond: "It's got little feet on it — serifs. It's a very clear, simple font."
Gill Sans: "The cleanness, the simplicity of the Gill Sans is what I really like. I like that you can experiment with different fonts, but finding one that really works is nice. I feel like I'm not wandering through the font desert anymore."

Gill Sans: "The cleanness, the simplicity of the Gill Sans is what I really like. I like that you can experiment with different fonts, but finding one that really works is nice. I feel like I'm not wandering through the font desert anymore."

"Type, like fashion and music, comes in and out of vogue," Simon Garfield, author of Just My Type, tells NPR's Audie Cornish. So what's in right now? "I think now script fonts are making a comeback," he says.

Fonts didn't always hold such a significant spot in the cultural imagination. Before personal computers, type looked largely the same. "Everything basically looked like the typewriter font," Garfield says. "It was a liberating thing in the '80s" when it became possible to manipulate fonts with the click of a mouse.

But with great power comes great responsibility ... and some didn't use their typeface forces for good. To wit: Comic Sans. If you've ever printed signs to advertise a yard sale or sent invitations to your child's birthday party, chances are you've employed the wildly popular Comic Sans. The playful letters became so overused that it inspired a backlash. Garfield is hardly a fan, but he comes to Comic Sans' defense.

"The key thing with Comic Sans and with all fonts is really the use to which it's put," he says. "If you used it ... to invite people to your school fair, that was great. [It was] not so great, however, when it began appearing on the sides of ambulances and gravestones." Garfield recalls one member of the Ban Comic Sans "movement" saying: "If you use it in the wrong place it's like inviting a clown to a funeral."

Then there's Helvetica — a typeface used so widely that for many people it has become essentially invisible. (The 2007 documentary Helvetica chronicled the many uses of Helvetica in our everyday lives, from public transit signage to corporate logos.) In Just My Type, Garfield follows the story of one man who tried to spend a day without Helvetica — and found it almost impossible.

"He couldn't get up in the morning," Garfield says. "His T-shirt label instructions had Helvetica on them. He couldn't use a dollar bill because the numbers were in Helvetica. He couldn't go on the New York subway because [all the signs were] in Helvetica as well. It's really taken over the world."

But fonts come and go, and Garfield says that Helvetica has a rival these days: Gotham. (You may recognize Gotham from Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign materials.) But while fonts today simply fall out of fashion, back before computers, getting rid of a font wasn't simply a matter of waiting for it to fade away. Take, for example, the Doves typeface, which met a rather abrupt end.

"Doves, like the bird, is a fleeting type," Garfield says. The typeface was designed in 1900 by T.J. Cobden Sanderson, who was "a real aesthete. He thought he could invent the perfect, most beautiful type," Garfield explains. (You can see a page from the 1903 Doves Press Bible here.)

Sanderson formed a publishing house that printed using Doves type, but after a terrible falling out, Sanderson decided that he did not want his publishing partner to be able to use the font after he died. "So he took all the letters that had ever been made with Doves and he took them to Westminster Bridge over the [River] Thames and threw them in," Garfield says.

... don't get any ideas, Comic Sans haters.

happy re-birthday to me

Today, I'm eight years kidney cancer-free. Lots has changed in my life since my diagnosis and treatment. I have much to be celebrate. I also have much to be sober about, including the current illness of my father (stage 4 bladder cancer) and other friends who are waging their own battles with pancreatic and breast cancers.

If nothing else, please do as I'm doing today -- take a moment to savor a wonderful meal, hug (and laugh with) your loved ones, and do something healthy for your mind/ body. None of us are promised tomorrow. But we can all make today glorious.

quotable

“Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend.” -Stephen King

why capitalization matters

Capitalization is the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse & helping your uncle jack off a horse.

miscarriage and the luxury of grief

I heard this story on the way home yesterday and it touched me deeply.

It wasn't until I had a miscarriage that I found out that I was joining a club that so many of my girlfriends (and their partners) were already members of, but remained silent about. Their support, along with Leo's, were just what I needed to help me cope during one of the saddest times in my life.

After Miscarriage, Missing The Luxury Of Grieving
by Ken Harbaugh
All Things Considered
August 19, 2011

Ken Harbaugh is a former Navy pilot and an NPR commentator.

It has been three months since the miscarriage. We weren't far along, still in the first trimester, so only our closest friends knew we were expecting.

Annmarie, my wife, is fine. At least, her body is fine. There is something broken in both of us, though.

My wife and I have every reason to be grateful. The miscarriage happened early on. Annmarie was never in danger. We have two beautiful girls already. If we want, we can still have more. But the whole experience left us wondering how one deals with a tragedy that happens quietly at home.

A few weeks before we lost the baby, my wife's grandfather died. His funeral, like any other, was solemn. But also beautiful. Everyone came — all 10 kids, from across the country. Distant relatives, co-workers, people from church stopped by to pay their respects. They mourned alongside the family. We buried Grandpa Kel that afternoon, and woke the next morning with the memory of a beautiful send-off.

There is a reason that such ceremonies exist. Who knows if it meant anything to Grandpa, lying in his coffin, but it meant a lot to everyone else. I gave him my gold Navy wings, pinned to an American flag laid on his chest. He was the only other Navy pilot in the family, and I felt the need to solemnize that connection. Others said goodbye in their own way. Some talked to him, some knelt for a while by his side. Most important, we all said farewell together.

A miscarriage is tragic enough by itself. What makes it worse is the fact that no social custom has evolved to help us through the loss. There is no ceremony, no coming together, no ritualized support. Annmarie and I suffered alone, in silence. Most of our friends had no idea we were grieving. It took me two weeks to tell my own mom.

And it's not as if life stopped, or even slowed down to allow us a moment to reflect. We had jobs to get to, kids to take care of. Real sadness seemed an indulgence we could not afford.

In the months since, I have learned something about this kind of grief. It is not a luxury, but an essential part of healing. So this weekend, after the kids are in bed, Annmarie and I will do something that may seem a little crazy. We will head into the garden with a bulb we've been saving. We will bury it, say a few words, and hold each other. We will finally have our ceremony.

I suspect that watching the first green shoot push up through the earth will hurt. Every time we see it, we will be reminded of what happened to us. But that's alright. Grief cannot be buried forever. With enough time, and a little sunlight, it might just transform itself into something that aches a little less.

quotable

"This is your life. Do what you love and do it often.
Start doing things you love.
Life is short. Live your dream and share your passion." -- The Holstee Manifesto

pollo al ajillo

It doesn't get much better than this traditional tapas dish. Leo and I have a new favorite recipe for pollo al ajillo. We used skinless, boneless chicken thighs and loved this dish. Make sure you've got some good bread on hand to sop up the juices -- they are delicious.

Spanish Garlic Chicken
by Joyce Goldstein
Tapas: Sensational Small Plates from Spain

Yield: Serves 4
ingredients
4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces, or 12 chicken wings, tips removed
Sweet paprika
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1/3 cup olive oil
6 cloves garlic, crushed, plus 2 cloves, minced
3 fresh thyme sprigs
2 bay leaves
1/2 cup fino or manzanilla sherry
1/2 cup chicken broth
Chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley for garnish
preparation

Rub the chicken with paprika, salt, and pepper and set aside at room temperature for at least 1 hour or preferably in the refrigerator at least 8 hours or overnight.

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

In a large sauté pan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the crushed garlic and cook, stirring, until softened but not colored, 2 minutes. Add the chicken pieces and fry, turning as needed, until golden on both sides, 5 to 8 minutes. You want them nicely colored on the outside but not cooked through. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels to drain briefly, and then arrange the pieces in a cazuela or baking dish large enough to hold them in a single layer.

Remove the crushed garlic from the oil and discard. Return the pan to low heat. Add the minced garlic and cook briefly. Add the thyme, bay leaves, sherry, and broth, raise the heat to high, and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and pour over the chicken.

Bake the chicken until cooked through, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and discard the bay leaves and thyme. If the pan juices are thin, transfer to a small saucepan and cook over medium high heat until reduced, and then return to the cazuela. Sprinkle with the parsley and serve at once.

Variation:

You also can complete the cooking on the stove top. Sauté the minced garlic as directed, return the chicken to the pan, add the sherry and broth, and simmer, uncovered, until most of the liquid has evaporated and the chicken is tender, 15 to 20 minutes.

quotable

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”” — M. Radmacher

quotable

"Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children." - Picasso

modern love: eating the ham sandwich

My mother moved to the U.S. as a thirty-something military wife in the mid 1970s. Her upbringing in a staunchly conservative Catholic family in South America burdened her with many neuroses, many of which she inflicted upon me. Her negative messages about sex, power, and men took me a long time to unlearn. I've concluded that fear seems to drive most of her decisions (including all of the unhealthy things she ever said to me about men and sex). The irrational world she's constructed for herself (and for me, expected to be the perfect only child of a narcissist) were suffocating even when I was child.

I distinctly remember the fight that my parents had about me going to prom. I wanted to go with my high school sweetheart. My mother was dead set against it, because she thought that prom was essentially an abbreviation for 'promiscuity' -- that it was really an excuse to have sex (perhaps it was for some, but that wasn't my M.O. for the evening) and with so many unsupervised (I'm assuming she meant predatory) high school boys, one was likely to prey on her daughter. What she didn't realize is that her (and my father's) discomfort with the subject of sex meant that I filled in the blanks on my own.

In the fifth grade, that meant the racy bits in Judy Blume's "Deenie," lots of poring over the entries about vagina, penis, intercourse, etc. in the family encyclopedia that defined things in a decidedly unsatisfying way because there was no mention of how things felt, and obligatory misinformation from friends with older siblings. By junior high, I had a basic idea of the mechanics and consequences, but still hadn't had a sex talk from my parents and (because I skipped the seventh grade) also never had the benefit of a sex ed class.

In high school, I was outraged by the way my mother criticized my classmate for being at a high school basketball game when she was visibly pregnant. And I told my parents as much because they had never said a practical word to me about how not to be in her situation. By that point, I had my first serious boyfriend. We stumbled our way through first base and the rest, but it wasn't until I got older that I started to explore and enjoy sex in the way I do today. Even by the time the high school boyfriend and I got divorced when I turned 30, I was completely naive in the language of seduction, because I was dating for the first time in my adult life.

I enthusiastically dove in and got a crash course on the topic. I got comfortable with expressing my desires and needs and with having really candid (and fun and serious) conversations about what it means to be good, giving, and game. A few partners later, my would-be sexual renaissance came to a screeching halt when I tested positive for a few high-risk strains of HPV. I called a girlfriend and blubbered to her about my fate and she told me that she was HPV positive, too and that it was pretty common. I lamented my luck, given that I hadn't engaged in what are typically considered high-risk sexual practices, had only had a few sexual partners my entire life, and that (with the exception of my ex-husband), I'd never had unprotected sex. But it was helpful in putting the brakes on physicality and focusing on really getting to know someone before getting in bed with him. Slowing down also meant that I met the love of my life -- my partner Leo, with whom I now have a 9-month-old baby boy. The added bonus: my body finally killed off the HPV a few months before I got pregnant.

Leo and I have had our share of conversations about how we plan to parent our children. We've put a lot of thought into the messages we want them to get from us about sex, sexuality, body image, healthy eating, self esteem, and several other subjects. I know that I'll never punish them (as my mother punished me) by not attending their high school graduations if they choose to go to prom. I hope that I won't make sex a taboo and make them or their boy/girlfriends feel dirty if I think they're having sex. And I hope that I'll be able to have an open relationship with them about sex, so that questions are asked and answered, information is shared, and emotions are discussed. More than anything, I want them to understand that sex is a very big deal, that there are big consequences attached to it (I'm talking emotional ones just as much as STDs), that it is a wonderful thing, and that over time they'll probably get a good deal better at understanding and communicating about their sexual needs.

This Modern Love essay was written by someone who also got really negative messages about sex from his mother. In this case, he's a guy who figured out how to move beyond his upbringing.

Modern Love: Eating the Forbidden Ham Sandwich
By ANDREW LIMBONG
May 5, 2011

AT 8 in the morning, I expected some old woman to be working behind the counter of the pharmacy — the kind of person who usually gets up at 6 a.m. anyway. Instead, there was a young guy in tight jeans and one of those faux-ethnic kaffiyeh scarves. I thought about how cold it wasn’t inside the pharmacy. When he asked me if I needed anything, I stepped aside to let my girlfriend, Sam, walk up to the counter.

“Yeah, a morning-after pill?” she said.

“We have Plan B and a generic,” he said. “Which one do you want?”

Sam looked at me as if I would know.

I made a face Sam knows all too well that said, “Uh?”

“How much is the generic?” Sam asked.

“Ten dollars cheaper.”

She looked at me again, then said, “I’ll take the generic.”

“O.K., that’ll be $35.”

I held out my debit card and he took it, looking as if he had done this a hundred times before.

I paid, we went home, Sam took the pill and I’m not a father: all good. But something felt off.

Had that proverbial old woman been behind the counter that morning, I think I would have been more comfortable.

Well, actually I would have been a lot less comfortable at the pharmacy, but I think that would have made me feel more comfortable about the situation as a whole, because we would have fulfilled the archetype that I thought our story was supposed to fulfill: young couple has sex, condom breaks, they feel ashamed buying a morning-after pill and no one speaks about it after.

But as it happened there was absolutely no shame in it at all. Everything was fine, and I was joking about it later that day.

Yes, this was a good thing. But it still bothered me.

On my first day of college, my mother took me aside while my father carried my stuff from the car to my dorm room. She held my shoulders tightly and told me not to hug any girls because they’ll lie, say I raped them and then I’ll go to jail. Either that, or I’ll get them pregnant.

It wasn’t the first time I was hearing this. I nodded along, pretty certain that the chances of a girl accusing me of rape because I hugged her weren’t very high.

I knew a lot of my mother’s attitudes toward women and sex were wrong, but that didn’t keep me from absorbing some of it. Persistence does count for something.

I met Sam when I was 20. She’s my first girlfriend, my first sexual partner and the first girl I’ve ever kissed twice. Luckily for me, she was very patient throughout this whole process.

And it really was a process.

Both of my parents are Indonesian immigrants. They grew up in a strict Christian household, and they did their best to impart all aspects of their home culture to me.

My father never spoke to me about sex. We never sat down and had the “talk” that seems to happen only on television. But I always knew we were a different kind of family from the ones I watched on a nightly basis, because nobody on “Full House” ever got in trouble for kissing a boy, as my sister once did.

I never got that far when I was younger. There was something about girls that scared me. This isn’t uncommon, but most people seem to get over it somewhere around high school. By the time I was 20, I still had this irrational fear of rape, jail, pregnancy, God and my mother. It led to feeling lonely a lot, but at least I knew I wasn’t alone.

My friend Haroon calls this fear the “ham sandwich” effect. Like me, he’s a first-generation American, born to a religious family. He’s Muslim. His parents would tell him not to eat pork because it’s evil and God will send you to hell. They had a similar attitude about sex.

But he was 16 and curious, so why not? He sat down one day, bought a ham sandwich, ate it and then threw up.

He tried again, though, and was eventually able to eat ham sandwiches like any other American.

It was the same way with sex.

A lot of people suffer from the ham sandwich effect, especially first-generation Americans. You can reject the parent culture all you want, but the more serious the situation, the harder it is to get over. And sex is very serious.

Over the course of one semester, Sam and I went from being friends of friends to making out in my bed on a nightly basis. There was nakedness and there was touching, but it never went any further than that because I always felt my mother was there in my room, too.

Sometimes, she would be sitting in the chair across the room, holding a Bible. Sometimes she would just be casually standing by the wall next to my bed. Once I even saw a vision of her in my room with my imaginary teenage son, who started using heroin because I gave him up for adoption.

These characters, these figures, put pressure on my blood vessels, not allowing the blood to go where I oh so desperately wanted it to.

It was like this for a month. Sam was patient, but I didn’t want to wait for her patience to run out.

So I called Haroon. At this point, he had already had sex, or “eaten the ham sandwich,” as we like to say.

He laughed when I called, but not condescendingly. He was expecting this call from me. He had become something of an expert in overcoming the ham sandwich effect. He ran off a list of people we both knew in similar situations whom he had coached through this sort of thing.

His advice? Breathe a lot, do some push-ups and don’t really think about it. “Stop thinking about her as a person,” he told me. “People are animals, and having sex is a natural thing that animals do all the time.”

He probably could have worded it differently, but I was comforted by the simple fact that he got over it and was now eating ham sandwiches on a regular basis.

That kind of achievement wasn’t really my goal, but I did need to stop thinking about it so much. For my blood to go where I needed it to go, I needed to distance myself from my fears, my religion, my mother, Sam and even myself.

So I did, and it happened.

I don’t blame my mother for how difficult it was for me to have sex, to have any sort of physical relationship with women at all. That’s how she was taught, and she was just trying to do her best with me.

Actually, unlike Haroon, I appreciated my mother’s old-school leanings for making sex so difficult. Getting over the mental block seemed like an achievement, an accomplishment, something worth doing.

I tried explaining all of this to her once. The semester before I met Sam, I was studying in London. My parents visited me, and my mother and I took a walk around my campus. She asked me a lot about women. Apparently she thought I went to London to go on a wild sex romp. She seemed almost disappointed when I told her no.

There was a glassy, wet look in her eye, and she asked me if I was gay. And I said no, I was just messed up. She nodded.

A lot of times traditional families can display a certain degree of homophobia. My mother certainly wasn’t friendly with the idea of homosexuality, but on that walk, for the first time, I knew that if I were gay, she might actually be all right with it. It was nice to know.

“Haroon calls it the ‘ham sandwich,’ ” I told her. And I told her about the religious pressure, and the constant clashing of Eastern and Western ideals when it came to sex. She stopped walking, so I put my arm around her. Then she apologized to me. She had never done that before, and she’s never done it since, but that bit of progress was nice.

SO when the kaffiyeh scarf guy in the pharmacy sold Sam that morning-after pill, I think what was missing for me was the ritual of seriousness, the sense of progress that I was doing something big. If the old woman had been behind that counter that morning, I’d like to think I would have asked quietly for the pill. I would have paid the extra $10 for the brand name. I probably would have also picked up some toothpaste and deodorant to act as if I was doing this casual thing that didn’t mean much to me.

But I would have known that she thought it was serious, and that would have been enough.

Andrew Limbong, a runner-up in the Modern Love college essay contest, is a senior at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

brined chicken

We brined some leg quarters before grilling them last weekend using this recipe and technique and loved the result.

Ingredients
1 gallon cold water
1 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup sugar
optional added spices, herbs, chopped onion, garlic, celery, etc.

Preparation

1. Bring 1/2 gallon of the water, the salt and sugar to boil, stirring until both are completely dissolved. Remove from heat, add flavorings, cover and allow to cool completely. Add the remaining 1/2 gallon of water. Refrigerate to below 40F before adding chicken.
2. You can cut the recipe in half, or double it as needed, depending on how much chicken you'll be brining. Make enough so the chicken is completely covered in the brining container. If you brine in sealable plastic bag, you'll need less brine than if brining in a bowl.
3. To keep the chicken submerged, place a heavy plate, or a flat-bottomed bowl filled with some water over the chicken in the brine container.
   

Keep the brine and chicken COLD during brining, between 36-40F. If there's room, place the brining chicken in the fridge. If not, brine in an insulated cooler, and place a sealed bag of ice in the brine with the chicken. Don't put loose ice in the brine...when it melts, the brine will be diluted and it won't do its job.

How Long to Brine Chicken
Use the following brining time chart for chicken as a guide. Adjust within the brining times to achieve more or less salty flavor.

Whole Chicken --4 to 8 hours
Half Chicken --3 to 6 hours
Bone-in Skin-on Breasts --1 to 2 hours
Boneless Skinless Breasts --30 to 60 minutes
Legs, Thighs, Skin-on --45 to 90 minutes
Legs, Thighs, Skinless --30 to 45 minutes

Always brine in a non-reactive container. Glass, porcelain, crockery, plastic and stainless steel are all OK. Aluminum, copper and wood are not.

After brining, rinse the chicken well in cold, running water. Pat dry with a clean towel.

Now that the chicken is brined, it's ready to be seasoned with your favorite dry rub and smoked or grilled. Brined chicken usually takes less time to cook.

oven fries

This recipe is always a winner in our house. We try to make enough to have leftover fries, which typically make their way into a Spanish tortilla.

From-Scratch Oven Fries
Makes 4 servings

Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds medium-size baking potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch-thick strips
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon kosher or table salt
Ketchup (optional)

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 450°. Rinse potatoes in cold water. Drain and pat dry. Toss together potatoes, oil, and salt in a large bowl.
2. Place a lightly greased wire rack in a jelly-roll pan. Arrange potatoes in a single layer on wire rack.
3. Bake at 450° for 40 to 45 minutes or until browned. Serve immediately with ketchup, if desired.

leek potato soup

Soup's on. (I had some leeks left over from last week's CSA share.) This one's a winner. I was skeptical about the buttermilk, but it balances the flavors perfectly. The soup itself tastes like a baked potato with sour cream.

Alton Brown's Leek Potato Soup
Prep Time: 25 min
Cook Time: 1 hr 15 min
Serves: 6 servings

Ingredients

* 1 pound leeks, cleaned and dark green sections removed, approximately 4 to 5 medium
* 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
* Heavy pinch kosher salt, plus additional for seasoning
* 14 ounces, approximately 3 small, Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and diced small
* 1 quart vegetable broth (I used chicken stock)
* 1 cup heavy cream
* 1 cup buttermilk
* 1/2 teaspoon white pepper
* 1 tablespoon snipped chives

Directions

1. Chop the leeks into small pieces.
2. In a 6-quart saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the leeks and a heavy pinch of salt and sweat for 5 minutes. Decrease the heat to medium-low and cook until the leeks are tender, approximately 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Add the potatoes and the vegetable broth, increase the heat to medium-high, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and gently simmer until the potatoes are soft, approximately 45 minutes.
4. Turn off the heat and puree the mixture with an immersion blender until smooth. Stir in the heavy cream, buttermilk, and white pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning if desired. Sprinkle with chives and serve immediately, or chill and serve cold.

street photography discovered

These shots are interesting not just for their artistic merit, but also because they were taken by an ordinary woman with an extraordinary eye. I'm curious how this nanny got to Yemen and some of the other places where she photographed. Unfortunately, much of Vivian Maier's story remains private (for now).

Amazing Mystery Photographer Comes To Fame After Her Death
An incredible story. Vivian Maier was a nanny who lived in Chicago for most of her life and passed away in 2009 at the age of 83. Little more is known about her, except that she was an avid street photographer. Her work was discovered at an auction in 2007, more than 100,000 negatives and undeveloped rolls of film, sold by a storage facility who were cleaning out her locker for delinquent rent. Here is a small sampling of Vivian Maier's stunning work from the Maloof Collection, spanning from the 1950s to the 1970s. Many of the photos, if they had any information at all, only provided a year and/or city.

been there, said that

Seba started crawling last night for the first time minutes after Leo got home from work. It was awesome, because both Leo and I got to see it and cherish the moment. As we headed to bed, I reminded Leo that sleep disturbances are common around the time that a toddler reaches each developmental milestone.

Suffice it to say that it wasn't a complete surprise to me when Seba awoke at 3 a.m. today instead of his usual 5-6 a.m. I still muttered the name of this book under my breath each time I heard him making the sounds he does as he gradually wakes up.

Go the Fuck to Sleep: a storybook for exhausted parents
Mark Frauenfelder at 3:48 PM Tuesday, Apr 26, 2011

Go the Fuck To Sleep is a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don't always send a toddler sailing off to dreamland. Honest, profane, and affectionate, Adam Mansbach's verses and Ricardo Cortés' illustrations perfectly capture the familiar--and unspoken--tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night, and open up a conversation about parenting in the process. Beautiful, subversive, and pants-wettingly funny, Go the Fuck to Sleep is a perfect gift for parents new, old, or expectant. Here is a sample verse:

The cats nestle close to their kittens now.
The lambs have laid down with the sheep.
You're cozy and warm in your bed, my dear
Please go the fuck to sleep.

craigslist jogging strollers

I'm on the prowl for a used jogging stroller. (Yes, I have a great umbrella stroller, courtesy of my friend Martha, but need something a little smoother for my all-terrain walks.) This ad slayed me. BTW, if anyone's selling a BOB (or can convince me why their stroller is as good) I'm all ears.

Dear people who think your USED jogging strollers are worth HUNDREDS - $9000 (San Diego)
Date: 2011-04-21, 4:58PM PDT
Reply to: sale-c6amg-2339615363@craigslist.org

Dear people who think your USED jogging strollers are worth HUNDREDS of dollars:

I've had it with you and your $350 FIRM 3 year old USED Lance Armstrong edition BOB revolution and your $250 "decent" will not budge under any circumstances 20 inch allow wheeled baby joggers.

NEWS FLASH!!!!! You have this sick twisted emotional attachment to these strollers thinking of all your fond baby memories pushing around your little bundles of joy with smiles and giggles while the rest of us trying to purchase these are thinking of how many times your precious baby barfed, drooled, and shat all over the place and if we can even clean them good enough to actually feel comfortable putting our children in them.

You are selling a HIGHLY USED worn out stroller and GUESS WHAT....after three years of use they are not still worth $350 or more.

So, if anyone is interested in selling me their USED jogging stroller for a normal "this has been used for years with my drooly, farty, poopy, spilling baby" price, email me.

Oh and this goes for those of you who are selling USED Ikea furniture at astronomical prices as well.

Sincerely,

Fed up craigslister.

* Location: San Diego
* it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

breaking free of the "man box"

When I found out I was pregnant with my little boy, my friend Sally told me that there's something quite feminist about raising a compassionate son. She's right -- we're raising a little boy who will one day be a man and it's something Leo and I think a lot about.

This powerful TED Talk looks at the consequences of putting our sons into the "man box."
What’s Wrong With Being a “Man”?

At TEDWomen, Tony Porter makes a call to men everywhere: Don't "act like a man." Telling powerful stories from his own life, he shows how this mentality, drummed into so many men and boys, can lead men to disrespect, mistreat and abuse women and each other. His solution: Break free of the "man box."

epic eating in penang

I will forever remember Penang.

Leo and I followed advice from our friends Ash and Reggie and enjoyed many amazing meals. I'm looking forward to taking Seba there when he's old enough to appreciate the UNESCO World Heritage-designated city, gorgeously diverse and friendly people, unique harmony between Buddhists, Sikhs, Muslims, and Christians, and (of course) the food.
12 dishes, 12 hours: Epic eating in Penang! « Street Foodie

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Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time. - Rabindranath Tagore

sweet potatoes, apples, and braising greens

We got a bunch of braising greens in our CSA share this week, so Leo found this recipe and I made this tonight, along with some pork sirloin chops in currant sauce.

The apples alone are to die for. Adding the sweet potato and the greens made for a nice balance of flavors.

Ingredients
4 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut lengthwise into quarters, then cut crosswise into 1/8-inch slices
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus 3 tablespoons melted
1 tablespoon fine sea salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
3 medium baking apples, such as Sierra Beauty or Granny Smith, peeled, cored, and cut into sixths
6 cups loosely packed braising greens such as kale, chard, or collard greens, stems removed and torn into 2-inch strips

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 400°F.
2. On foil-lined baking sheet, toss potato slices with 3 tablespoons melted butter, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Bake until cooked through and slightly caramelized, about 20 minutes. Keep warm.
3. In heavy medium skillet over moderate heat, melt 3 tablespoons butter. Add apples and sauté until tender and golden brown, about 15 minutes. Keep warm.
4. In heavy large pot over moderate heat, combine remaining 2 tablespoons butter and 3 tablespoons water. Add greens and sauté, stirring occasionally, until wilted, about 5 minutes. Lower heat to moderately low and add sweet potatoes and apples. Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until warmed through, 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in remaining 2 teaspoons salt, and 1 1/2 teaspoons pepper. Serve hot.
   

Makes 10 servings

Adapted from Sweet Potatoes, Apples, and Braising Greens by Traci Des Jardins (Jardinière Restaurant, San Francisco) Epicurious, November 2007

the power of vulnerability

Over the years, I've realized that I experience the most joy when I make myself the most vulnerable, when I decide to choose fearlessness and take the biggest chance in hopes of an even greater reward. To be sure, sorrow, fear, and painful disappointment have been part of that equation. But joy beyond words has also been the result. Brené Brown studies human connection -- our ability to empathize, belong, and love by analyzing vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. Her talk on the power of vulnerability blew me away. I've captured just a few of the things she said, but there is so much more in the talk. Enjoy. And be vulnerable.

"Maybe stories are just data with a soul, you know, and maybe I'm just a storyteller."

"When you ask people about love, they tell you about heartbreak. When you ask people about belonging, they'll tell you about their most excruciating experiences of being excluded. When I asked people about connection, the stories they told me were about disconnection."

"Courage -- the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart."

"They were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were."

"They fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful."



"Here's the thing -- I'm struggling. I know that vulnerability is kind of the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness. But it appears that it is also the birthplace of joy,of creativity, of belonging, of love."

You know how there are people who when they realize that vulnerability and tenderness are kinda important, they surrender and walk into it? A) That's not me. And B) I don't even hang out with people like that.

Religion has gone from a belief in faith and mystery to certainty. I'm right, you're wrong, shut up. That's it.

This is what politics looks like today. There's no discourse anymore, There's no conversation.. There's just blame. You know how blame is described in the research? A way to discharge pain and discomfort.

We perfect, most dangerously, our children. Let me tell you what we think about children. They’re hard-wired for struggle when they get here. When you hold those perfect little babies in your hand, our job is not to say, “look at her, she’s perfect. My job is just to keep her perfect and make sure she makes the tennis team by fifth grade and Yale by the seventh grade.” That's not our job. Our job is to look and say, “you know what? You’re imperfect and you’re wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.” That’s our job. Show me a generation of kids raised like that and we’ll end the problems we see today.

But there’s another way, and I’ll leave you with this. This is what I have found: to let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen; to love with our whole hearts, even though there’s no guarantee; to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we’re wondering, ‘can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?’ Just to be able to stop and instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say ‘I’m just so grateful. Because to feel this vulnerable means I’m alive.’ And the last, which I think is probably the most important, is to believe that we’re enough. Because when we work from a place that says ‘I am enough’ then we stop screaming and start listening, we’re kinder and gentler to the people around us and we’re kinder and gentler to ourselves.”

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Believe there are no limits but the sky. - Cervantes

cass' oreo pie

My friend Cass makes a phenomenal oreo pudding pie that consistently wins favorite dessert contests at work. I asked her to share the recipe with me and she did.

1 package oreo cookies, crushed into crumbs
1 stick butter, melted
1 cup powdered sugar
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1 large tub cool whip
1 package chocolate pudding mix
milk

1. Use food processor to crush oreos. Pour crumbs into a pie plate. Pour butter over crumbs and pack to make a crust.
2. Beat cream cheese and sugar until combined. Fold in half the cool whip. Place in a layer on crust.
3. Prepare chocolate pudding. When set, place in layer on top of cream cheese mixture.
4. Spoon remaining cool whip on top of pudding layer.

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"I call upon you to draw from the depths of your being to prove that we are a human race. To prove that our love outweighs our need to hate. That our compassion is more compelling than our need to blame. That our sensitivity to those in need is stronger than our greed. That our ability to reason overcomes our fear. And that at the end of each of our lives, we can look back and be proud that we have treated others with the kindness, dignity and respect that every human being deserves." - Elizabeth Taylor, in her 1993 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award honorary Oscar acceptance speech.

soccer dreams in a floating village

How these boys living in a *floating* village went from being soccer fans to becoming a football club is so inspiring. Whatever challenges you face in life, if you think you can make a difference, you can.

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Cancer, I've found, is a passport to intimacy. It is an invitation, maybe even a mandate, to enter the most vital arenas of human life, the most sensitive and the most frightening, the ones that we never want to go to but when we do go there, we feel incredibly transformed. -- Bruce Feiler, author, father, and cancer survivor.