08 February 2010
for serious, y'all
i have moved, and apparently i'm no longer blogging very much. sad, but these things happen. please come visit my new and infinitely more professional site.
02 February 2009
nothing says loving like cured pork.
la quercia prosciutto, profiled in the new york times magazine. how awesome is that?
the piece reports that, while herb and kathy were developing their prosciutto process, "The couple would move their Volvo wagon out of the garage to weigh and salt legs, then age them in their guest bedroom."
i know that this is true: during the terrible horrible no good very bad summer of 2003, when i visited la and her family, i slept soundly in that very guest bedroom, the pork legs swaying slightly above my head.
the piece reports that, while herb and kathy were developing their prosciutto process, "The couple would move their Volvo wagon out of the garage to weigh and salt legs, then age them in their guest bedroom."
i know that this is true: during the terrible horrible no good very bad summer of 2003, when i visited la and her family, i slept soundly in that very guest bedroom, the pork legs swaying slightly above my head.
21 January 2009
shorter norm coleman
it would be nice if i got more votes, but if democracy fails i'm willing to keep this seat any old way i can.
16 January 2009
news flash
1. in case you had forgotten (i sort of had), david rees is still a genius. 'specially look at the ones a few pages back, during the election season. ooh, and here's a review of the latest gywo collection (NB, rees linked to this review 'cause it's a happy one).
2. in other radical comic strip news, i recently devoured the new dykes to watch out for anthology. please to do so yourself also, thank you.
3. how irritating is it that i am now submitting grant applications to support me for *next year*? how doubly, triply, infinitely irritating (and, well, kind of creepy) is it that i (more or less intentionally) *missed* a bunch of deadlines that would have had me planning for september 2009 through june 2010 during fall 2008?
4. i used to have a plan to put up some sort of a "2008, she done me wrong" country-and-western lament about the year that was. but then i realized that 2008 was character-building. my character used to be a cardboard shack miserably slumping in the rain, and is now a rough-hewn log cabin on the hardscrabble frontier. next year: eco-friendly mansion! or maybe a well-appointed apartment in a city with curbside compost pickup.
5. the other day there was a near-100-degree difference between the low temperature in grand forks and the high temperature here in san francisco. i win!
2. in other radical comic strip news, i recently devoured the new dykes to watch out for anthology. please to do so yourself also, thank you.
3. how irritating is it that i am now submitting grant applications to support me for *next year*? how doubly, triply, infinitely irritating (and, well, kind of creepy) is it that i (more or less intentionally) *missed* a bunch of deadlines that would have had me planning for september 2009 through june 2010 during fall 2008?
4. i used to have a plan to put up some sort of a "2008, she done me wrong" country-and-western lament about the year that was. but then i realized that 2008 was character-building. my character used to be a cardboard shack miserably slumping in the rain, and is now a rough-hewn log cabin on the hardscrabble frontier. next year: eco-friendly mansion! or maybe a well-appointed apartment in a city with curbside compost pickup.
5. the other day there was a near-100-degree difference between the low temperature in grand forks and the high temperature here in san francisco. i win!
19 December 2008
on rick warren at the inaugural
it's just...crass. i don't know if the choice of rick "homosexuality == incest" warren came from the president-elect himself or from an advisor looking to build bridges. but: bridges to what, exactly?
warren deserves at least some kind of credit for acknowledging christians' responsibilities to work against AIDS, poverty, and markets gone wild. but warren was late to the table on these issues, and appears to have digested neither his scripture nor his facts when he finally showed up. in the same interview in which he compared gay marriage to incest, polygamy and divorce (divorce is "a bigger problem," "hands down," golly thanks for noticing), he offered the following history-mangler: "Along about the beginning of the 20th century there were some protestant theologians who started using the term 'social gospel.' What they meant by that was you don’t really need to care about Jesus’ personal salvation any more...in many ways it was just Marxism in Christian clothing."
the point warren was making in this passage is that progressive christians -- the people who exist in his smear-version of the 'social gospel' -- need to attend to personal salvation as well as social transformation. (otherwise we're just Marxists! oh zing!) but a little further down, he breezily notes that his version of "personal salvation" is not something as simple and personally transformative as realizing and following the divinity of jesus christ. no, personal salvation is about "personal morality and pornography and protecting the family and personal moral issues." which formulation puts me, and many others, in the interesting position of being fake christians -- unsaved! -- unless and until we condemn all the usual reproductive-tract-involving fundamentalist hobgoblins.
warren deserves no special credit for dithering on about the "'I' in 'pride'" or for his belated acknowledgment that poverty is indeed bad -- especially when he acknowledges also that his willingness to talk about economic injustice is a theological hostage to the necessity of gay-bashing. warren vocally supported prop 8, blowing wide open his repeated claims that hating gays should be shoved down a couple of notches on the evangelical agenda.
and this is the person chosen to give the invocation at an event ostensibly signaling a new turn in american politics. the fact that he sold a gazillion self-help books and is the pastor of a really huge flock doesn't change the fact that his false gospel hurts people who have done him and his flock no harm. the obama team's willingness to choose someone popular over someone whose words and actions reflect a Christ-centered progressive theology implies a level of cynicism -- not to mention a level of disrespect for queer people -- that i wouldn't previously have suspected.
i worry about what this choice implies about our president-elect. is obama's own understanding of the gospels so unimportant to him that he is willing to misrepresent it in order to "build bridges"? or does he, too, fear and condemn queer people, people whose path to heaven is not through a profession of faith in some nigglingly specific Jesus, people who profess a social gospel? i feel obligated to hope for the former, but it is a weak and disappointing sort of hope.
warren deserves at least some kind of credit for acknowledging christians' responsibilities to work against AIDS, poverty, and markets gone wild. but warren was late to the table on these issues, and appears to have digested neither his scripture nor his facts when he finally showed up. in the same interview in which he compared gay marriage to incest, polygamy and divorce (divorce is "a bigger problem," "hands down," golly thanks for noticing), he offered the following history-mangler: "Along about the beginning of the 20th century there were some protestant theologians who started using the term 'social gospel.' What they meant by that was you don’t really need to care about Jesus’ personal salvation any more...in many ways it was just Marxism in Christian clothing."
the point warren was making in this passage is that progressive christians -- the people who exist in his smear-version of the 'social gospel' -- need to attend to personal salvation as well as social transformation. (otherwise we're just Marxists! oh zing!) but a little further down, he breezily notes that his version of "personal salvation" is not something as simple and personally transformative as realizing and following the divinity of jesus christ. no, personal salvation is about "personal morality and pornography and protecting the family and personal moral issues." which formulation puts me, and many others, in the interesting position of being fake christians -- unsaved! -- unless and until we condemn all the usual reproductive-tract-involving fundamentalist hobgoblins.
warren deserves no special credit for dithering on about the "'I' in 'pride'" or for his belated acknowledgment that poverty is indeed bad -- especially when he acknowledges also that his willingness to talk about economic injustice is a theological hostage to the necessity of gay-bashing. warren vocally supported prop 8, blowing wide open his repeated claims that hating gays should be shoved down a couple of notches on the evangelical agenda.
and this is the person chosen to give the invocation at an event ostensibly signaling a new turn in american politics. the fact that he sold a gazillion self-help books and is the pastor of a really huge flock doesn't change the fact that his false gospel hurts people who have done him and his flock no harm. the obama team's willingness to choose someone popular over someone whose words and actions reflect a Christ-centered progressive theology implies a level of cynicism -- not to mention a level of disrespect for queer people -- that i wouldn't previously have suspected.
i worry about what this choice implies about our president-elect. is obama's own understanding of the gospels so unimportant to him that he is willing to misrepresent it in order to "build bridges"? or does he, too, fear and condemn queer people, people whose path to heaven is not through a profession of faith in some nigglingly specific Jesus, people who profess a social gospel? i feel obligated to hope for the former, but it is a weak and disappointing sort of hope.
10 December 2008
oh, comandante
there are only so many times you can write about the "strategic rear" before i begin to giggle.
05 December 2008
friday food blogging
(also known as friday adventures in procrastination.)
this was our first week as members of the farm fresh to you delivery service. it's a pretty non-traditional CSA, in that (1) it's pay-as-you-go as opposed to a big buy-in at the beginning; (2) it combines food from the capay organic farm with food from other organic producers in order to get a slightly 'less seasonal' (read: more oranges, less cabbage) mix; and (3) it comes straight to our door.
we are so, so spoiled. a big ol' box for $29 a week!
so far this week, we've eaten through all our mandarins, oranges and apples; made a stir fry based on the baby bok choy; done a great salad of napa cabbage, apples, shredded carrots, toasted pecans and vinaigrette-y stuff; and boiled up a large and wonderful potato-leek soup. still left from the box: a large bulb of fennel, some dino kale, and some lettuce, which are all, by hook or by crook, getting used tonight.
because tomorrow is pie-giving! this is an annual event hosted by fabulous friends who now live driveably close. our household is bringing a mince pie and a vegetable pot pie with a biscuit top, both brand new adventures for us. YAY OH YAY.
this was our first week as members of the farm fresh to you delivery service. it's a pretty non-traditional CSA, in that (1) it's pay-as-you-go as opposed to a big buy-in at the beginning; (2) it combines food from the capay organic farm with food from other organic producers in order to get a slightly 'less seasonal' (read: more oranges, less cabbage) mix; and (3) it comes straight to our door.
we are so, so spoiled. a big ol' box for $29 a week!
so far this week, we've eaten through all our mandarins, oranges and apples; made a stir fry based on the baby bok choy; done a great salad of napa cabbage, apples, shredded carrots, toasted pecans and vinaigrette-y stuff; and boiled up a large and wonderful potato-leek soup. still left from the box: a large bulb of fennel, some dino kale, and some lettuce, which are all, by hook or by crook, getting used tonight.
because tomorrow is pie-giving! this is an annual event hosted by fabulous friends who now live driveably close. our household is bringing a mince pie and a vegetable pot pie with a biscuit top, both brand new adventures for us. YAY OH YAY.
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