dirtier fingernails & cleaner minds

Miriam Coleman: Voyagers

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 12:07:02 -0800

Growing up in a community of Jewish astronomers and scientists in Pasadena, Calif., meant searching for God while exploring the heavens.

Tablet || February 24, 2011

Blogging Makes Joan Didion Uncomfortable

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 05:42:30 -0800

Blogging Makes Joan Didion Uncomfortable

Having spent much of the last year living in Mexico, this...

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:57:14 -0700

Having spent much of the last year living in Mexico, this terrifies and fascinates me. Also, I’m pretty sure swine flu is taking over the planet and going to kill us all. But mostly, wow, Mexico just can’t catch a break.

This is an interesting bit of the puzzle, featuring carefully worded language suggesting that the virus may have originated in the U.S. Amazing how, even as this thing is still spreading, governments are taking the time to point fingers.

Sunday mass in Mexico. (via: wreckandsalvage)

Freda: Our current house — my dad’s house in green,...

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:47:07 -0700

Freda: Our current house — my dad’s house in green, blue and brown Mendocino County — is full of future food: seedlings growing on an old ping-pong table in the solarium, chicks growing in an old aquarium in the kitchen.

Four Architects Design the Green House of the Future

The Rios Clementi Hale Studios Home is an edible house, combining architecture and food production with ease. A rooftop reservoir collects water, while helical turbines and solar panels generate on-site energy. The solar panels and living facade provide shade and insulation for the interior, and owners literally harvest foods from their walls for consumption. The home is built of prefabricated containers, which can be moved at any time. (via wreckandsalvage)

The NPR Name Game

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 09:54:31 -0700

This brings me such joy, at such a joyless time in the media universe. So, just call me Fredra Tacuba.

Sadly, this little exercise in NPR love doesn’t work so well for my husband. Good luck inserting a C (for Charles) into Timothy.

Eric and I recently discovered a shared fascination with the slew of impossibly named NPR hosts we listen to every day: Renee Montagne, Steve Inskeep, Corey Flintoff, Korva Coleman, Kai Ryssdal, Dina Temple-Raston.

In fact, we’ve often wondered what it would be like to be one of them. A Nina Totenberg or a Renita Jablonski. A David Kestenbaum or a Lakshmi Singh. Even (on our most ambitious days) a Cherry Glaser or a Sylvia Poggioli.

So finally, after years of Fresh Air sign-off ambitions, we came up with a system for creating our own NPR Names. Here’s how it works: You take your middle initial and insert it somewhere into your first name. Then you add on the smallest foreign town you’ve ever visited.

So I’m Liarna Kassel. And Eric is Jeric Bath. I even have a new nickname for my little brother in Dylsan Rosarita.

(via: liana)

Freda: Mexican street art inspired. via www.sfhoteldesarts.com...

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:44:00 -0700

Freda: Mexican street art inspired.

via www.sfhoteldesarts.com & cakeface

Freda: The other day, while driving home from buying groceries,...

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 23:09:00 -0700

Freda: The other day, while driving home from buying groceries, I saw this:

A simple sedan with the words “Just Divorced” scrawled across its back window & surrounded in sloppy hearts drawn in white paint.

I laughed and thought, “What are these times we live in.”

…the divorce rate actually fell during the early 1980’s recession. And she’s wrong to say it stabilized after that, as divorce rates continued to fall. In fact, divorce rates have been falling for the past 30 years. (via Divorce and the Business Cycle - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com & slantback)

M. Ward, “Rave On” Freda: Two of my favorite men come...

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 07:14:18 -0800

M. Ward, “Rave On”

Freda: Two of my favorite men come together.

(Via nevver)

Freda: I need this in a desperate way — but, then again, I...

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:39:00 -0800

Freda: I need this in a desperate way — but, then again, I also need a lawn to put it on.

Lawn Scrabble (via aja)

Fred’s hands… happy valentine’s! (via robinwhitley) Freda: My...

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:21:04 -0800

Fred’s hands… happy valentine’s! (via robinwhitley)

Freda: My dad’s pinkies are crooked, a trait that I inherited from him. When I was a kid. I looked it up today, and this is what the interweb had to say:

Clinodactyly may occur as an isolated finding in a person who is entirely normal or it may be found in association with other congenital malformations and, sometimes, mental retardation. It is a common component of Down (trisomy 21) syndrome and Klinefelter (XXY) syndrome. No treatment is required for clinodactyly.

“Clinodactyly” is derived from the Greek “klinein” (to bend, slope or incline) and “dactylos” (finger, toe). Other English words formed from “klinein” include “clinocephaly” (a condition that causes skull depression or flatness) and “clinophobia” (fear of going to bed—that is, to bend the head to a pillow.) Other English words formed from “dactylos” include “dactylogram” (fingerprint) and “dactylography” (the study of fingerprints).

I haven’t read the story yet, but this photo…wow.

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:07:11 -0800

I haven’t read the story yet, but this photo…wow.

25 Random Tips for the Busy Facebook User

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 09:50:18 -0800

25 Random Tips for the Busy Facebook User:

Freda: This is so true it hurts. I’m a little ashamed of how many of these “tips” I inadvertantly followed, but also very, very amused.

1) Until third grade I was Scooter – and to my closest family and friends, I still am.

2) I’m a sissy about the cold. If I lived alone, the household temperature would always be set at 82 degrees. If I could, I would live in that blue and gold superwoman bikini that Nitasha bought me for my travels.

3) I have the memory of a goldfish. A small, slow goldfish.

4) I love goldfish. Every one I’ve had, post-childhood, has been named either Elvis, Buddy Holly or Jerry Lee. Once, faced with a sick goldfish, I poured vodka on struggling gills because I’d been told this is effective, relatively painless form of fish euthanasia. Instead, I inadvertently cured the goldfish of its mystery illness. This was an important life lesson.

5) I love to swim. Warm water is best. But the Navarro River is always tempting.

6) My favorite color is green. Sometimes I notice (usually too late) that I’ve dressed myself like Kermit the Frog.

7) When I was a kid, I rescued frog eggs from mud puddles, raising them from egg to tadpole to tiny hopping frog. I once crushed one while trying to release it. Another life lesson.

8) I talk to dogs when I pass them on the street. I’ve been admonished by protective owners, but more often I just get dirty, dirty looks. But I’m not ashamed.

9) I had to stop volunteering at the Humane Society when I was in middle school because I got too attached. I cried and cried when the unadoptables were put to sleep. This is also why I decided that I would make a lousy veterinarian.

10) I’m haunted by Marianne Faithfull’s “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan.”

11) I still don’t know if I want kids. But if we have them, one will be named Henry—and she will be awesome.

12) I was a late bloomer, which was a source of concern at the time but in retrospect it seems for the best. It meant more years of tree-climbing and fewer years of boys.

13) On all sides, my family are rural people: Oregon, Tennessee, Montana, Texas, the hills outside of Naples, Italy. I love cities—the bigger, the better—but I’m a peasant at heart.

14) I think the sum of my political parts probably makes me a social democrat. But you can call me pinko.

15) The summer after my freshman year in college, I moved to Boston on a whim. I had my reasons, but really I think I just watched “Good Will Hunting” one too many times.

16) I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. My weakness is spice and salt. Sometimes I look down to realize I’ve just eaten an entire jar of kimchi, peperoncini or olives.

17) My worst fear is the five minutes between the moment I realize the plane’s going to crash and moment it hits the ground. I don’t like to fly, but my favorite fair ride is the swings.

18) I love Scrabble, hate Karaoke and, a decade after her death, still miss playing Cribbage with my grandma.

19) My restlessness and my nesting instinct are on a collision course. I’m frustrating that I can’t live in new and interesting places all the time (New Orleans! Buenos Aires!) while maintaining a close group of friends and a cozy home with lots of plants.

20) Despite being what Obama calls a “non-believer”—one of his more annoying verbal habits, in my opinion—I love Christmas. I keep Christmas tree lights up year-long. The blue ones are my favorite.

21) When I’m sick, my comfort food is Thai Tom Ka Gai soup and lemon Gatorade. Dungeness crab reminds me of home, and if I don’t have it at least once during the winter, my year doesn’t feel complete. The same is true of fried zucchini blossoms in the summer.

22) I picked Tim up on the street his second week, and my third year, in Santa Cruz. I first saw him at the Red Room, then at Streetlight Records. When he left the store, I realized it was my chance, and followed him for two blocks before getting up the nerve to ask him for ice cream. We went to Caio Bella and shared a blackberry Cabernet sorbet.

23) We had a four-day wedding and two honeymoons.

24) I just watched “Vicki, Christina, Barcelona.” The Maria Elena character reminded me of myself during my freshman year in college. Sadly, it was “the crazy,” not Penelope Cruz’s overwhelming hotness, that was familiar. That was a bad year.

25) I love the rain.

Freda: This is amazing. The windows, which are spectacular,...

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 09:36:48 -0800

Freda: This is amazing. The windows, which are spectacular, remind me of the windows in so many of the art deco buildings in D.F.’s Colonia Roma, including ours.

This is a rendering of the Jean Nouvel building that is going up across the street from Chelsea Piers and next to the IAC Gehry building. I’ve been enjoying watching them build it. The windows are really funky. (fred-wilson)

A Longing to be Wealthy

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 09:32:58 -0800

Freda: I know too well how this feeling can creep up on us. I feel it often in DF, where everyone seems either to be rich and glamorous or very, very poor. We’re neither and it leaves me feeling out of place. If only I were a Fresa, and good sip $10 cocktails and eat sushi with the Mexican movie stars on the roof on Hotel Condesa…

once in a long while, i have a longing to be wealthy. it crept up on me in st. barts, the island of the most, of the oh so high style, of the french. the expression of quality is written here. somehow luxury is almost made clean. and everything on this island— everything— is chosen. because there is not enough rain to support agriculture, 100% of everything is imported. italian linens. limes from mexico. cuban coffee. red tile roofs. gazebos. the sleek rockefeller house gracing the cliff above, with the mark of frank lloyd wright. and the shoes… ahhh, it must have been those shoes in the window… that got me. (robinwhitley)

25 Things I Didn't Want to Know About You

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:11:51 -0800

25 Things I Didn't Want to Know About You:

Yesterday, in a fit of procrastination, I read every single “25 things” that my friends — and yes, friends of friends — had posted to Facebook in the last week. I didn’t have to. I could have ignored them like so much of what shows up on my feed (lil’ eco racer, I’m talking to you).

But I was enjoying myself. I laughed out loud reading people’s lists. I found myself liking — and, sure, occasionally disliking — certain people more than I realized. My acquaintances, by and large, seem to be much funnier or smarter or more interesting than previously thought.

I don’t share Claire’s contempt for the people on my friend’s list. If I did, I wonder, why would I spend time on Facebook at all? Why does she?

It’s not for everyone, I know. And I wouldn’t fault someone for feeling like it’s a giant waste of time. But I don’t understand why Claire doesn’t unfriend some of those distant contacts she has no interest in hearing from, or just ignore their silly posts like the rest of us do. Or, if all of it bothers her so much, why not stay off Facebook completely. It’s not mandatory, after all.

Maybe it’s just that I’m living in a huge city, far from home, where I know almost no one, but it made me happy — and comforted — to read these stream of consciousness exercises. I don’t fault someone for not sharing my amusement — for not reading mine or writing their own. Not everyone has the abundance of procrastination time that I do, or the ability to use it in the most trivial ways.

But I don’t understand Claire’s scorn.

Before “25 Things” was everyone on her Facebook posting articles about Darfur and status updates that read like poetry? What about this particular exercise seems more ridiculous than sending a “poke,” answering a movie quiz, or rating which of your friends is hottest? Facebook is such a cluttered world of applications, requests, updates and postings, we all make decisions about what to read or watch or play there. We all ignore a fair amount of what shows up on our screen.

So, the question I have is why Claire didn’t just ignore the 25 Things that she didn’t want to know? Then again, I think I know why.

Bruce Springsteen misreads the national mood in his halftime performance.

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:35:35 -0800

Bruce Springsteen misreads the national mood in his halftime performance. :

Freda: I don’t agree with all of Metcalf’s points, but I shared his disappointment with Springsteen’s half-time. (And this from someone who once had a 4 ft. by 4 ft. framed poster of Born in the USA’s album art as her living room decor.)

Bruce has always been best at capturing the angst of working- and middle-class American life. In songs like “The River” and, yes, “Glory Days,” he captures the melancholy most of us at least sometimes feel over the disconnect between what we hoped our lives would be and what they’ve become.

When more than now have we felt that sense of lost opportunity? When more than now have we needed a cathartic moment—a moment when we’re allowed to indulge in that melancholy together, with an excuse to immediately move on to drinking beer, shouting at the TV screen, jumping up and down and cheering in excitement?

Partly, I was embarrassed for Bruce when he did his Eddie Van Halen cockslide into the video camera. But more than that, I felt deprived of a moment that I really wanted. As someone who gives Springsteen (“America’s favorite karaoke act”) more credit than Metcalf, I think Sunday’s performance could have done us all some good had it been less hammy and more sincere.

For those of us who don’t follow football—but find ourselves drawn to the Super Bowl because it, like the Inauguration and the Oscars, is a national event that we feel we shouldn’t miss—Springsteen’s half-time show could have been the catalyst for brief moment of national coming together. This might be a cheap imitation for the real thing. (Does watching the Super Bowl half-time show and feeling something at the same time replace shared values or overcome the culture wars? Probably not). But for someone who came of age during the height of the Red versus Blue State, urban versus small town America culture wars, I’ll take whatever sense of “togetherness” I can get. And I think Springsteen missed a chance to give us that.

Stephen Metcalf may well be the single worst cultural critic currently working for a major publication, and he proves it once again by completely failing to grasp that when times are bad, most people want optimism and escapism, not somber ballads of woe. Did this guy totally miss the fact that we voted in Barack “HOPE” Obama? Either way, can you just imagine how PISSED people would have been if he had played obscure sadsack songs during the Superbowl halftime show? Context counts for so much, and it’s always a celebratory event focused on crowd-pleasing theatrics. The Boss gave people what they wanted — showmanship, aesthetic overkill, nostalgia — and really, that’s the kind of stuff that flies whether the economy is booming or busting. (via perpetua)

Steve Martin and his trusty banjo. This man has always been one...

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:49:08 -0800

Steve Martin and his trusty banjo. This man has always been one of my favorite comedians. But this makes me love him even more.

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil..."

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 18:41:59 -0800

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

- Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in Physics (via Rileydog)

Freda: Even I can shout a full-throated amen to this…a...

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:18:00 -0800

Freda: Even I can shout a full-throated amen to this…a beautiful illustrated op-ed by Maira Kalman.

The Ballad of Lucy Jordan That bastard “Twenty Five Things...

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:11:00 -0800

The Ballad of Lucy Jordan

That bastard “Twenty Five Things About Me” that’s circulating on Facebook has provoked an attack of the Marianne Faithfulls.