Walking the dog early in the morning, it is obvious that the homeless population of Sonoma County and specifically Santa Rosa, is growing rapidly. Not a morning goes by that I don't see several people sleeping in the park or in the bushes or in the shelter of some random building. Included would have to be all the homeless who are already up, moving their possessions around or stashing them somewhere, like in the bushes or under the bridge by the creek. Sometimes they are rearranging their stuff, transferring things from one plastic bag to another. To say that it's sad to see trivializes the entire situation.
But I have recently seen another phenomenon: discarded items of clothing. Lots of items, from underwear (very yucky) to shirts, shorts, sweatshirts, skirts, shoes, socks. You name it, I have seen it on a bench or lying on the ground or hanging from a tree or tossed on the top of a trash can. Maybe because they have no way to wash their clothes, they just toss them away. Maybe it's one more possession that is simply too encumbering. I have also seen people, early in the morning, digging through the Goodwill kiosks around town, looking for clothes people have donated. So it isn't that the homeless don't need clothes. It's a puzzlement.
And this leads me to another thought: if I won a bunch of money in the lottery, I would like to create a mobile laundry and shower facility for anyone to use. I know they do this in SF now and then. Anyone, especially those in dire need, could come in and do a load of laundry (wash and dry) and take a shower. There would be a limit of course, one load per person, one 6 minute shower per person. It would be free, funded from my lottery winnings. Even with the current drought, I think it could be done economically and I believe there is such a need for this that it could be operating 20 hours a day. In one hour a person could have clean clothes and a clean body.
Until then, Cooper and I will watch the piles of tossed clothes accumulate and we will wish we could help.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Some books, some halibut, some lemons
Had I know how delicious and handy preserved lemons could be, I would have made them years before. But diced up fine and tossed in a salad, diced and mixed with .... anything, like shallots or scallions or tapenade, with a bit of olive oil and spread on a piece of fish or chicken, or tossed in a stir-fry, and on and on. Delicious. Seriously, two ingredients, lemons and salt, and you have something that will last for months and never let you down. Google "preserved lemons" and pick whatever recipe is the simplest, no herbs, nothing but lemons and salt, let them sit a week in a dark place and then in the fridge forever. I didn't use any water, just more lemon juice on top of the salty squished lemons in the jar and it was perfect.
Then we segue to halibut: was in Whole Foods last Friday or Sunday, I can never tell those two days apart, and the fish guy was lining up pieces of fresh halibut that was ON SALE (so it must have been Friday) at a reasonable $12.99 a pound, never frozen, wild in USA, yada, yada. I got a piece about a half pound, which sounds glutinous but wasn't. Too small to build a fire to grill it so I plopped it on a piece of tin foil, drizzled a couple of spoonfuls of white wine on it, tossed about a spoonful of cold butter (cut up) around the edges and on top, some of Trader Joe's Olive Tapenade, which is the best I have ever bought. I mixed a couple of spoonfuls of that with a small bit of diced preserved lemon (see above) and a few red pepper flakes and a tiny bit of olive oil. Didn't seal the foil, just smushed it up around the top and put it in a 450 oven for about 12 minutes with a sheet pan of asparagus and spring onions, all done at the same time. Hello Dead Fish! I could have eaten a pound of it (well, possibly, we will never know) because it was that delicious. Done perfectly, still moist but flaky, not one bit dry (as halibut can get) and rich and unctuous and with the veggies and a glass of dry white wine from the land of the French, it was the perfect dinner. (Insert smiley face here, but no, please don't, just envision a nice smiling face.)
And on to books. I have been reading a lot of books on death lately, don't know why. Well, I could surmise but that's a blog for another day. I read the latest best seller by the doctor who died: "When Breath Becomes Air" by Paul Kalanithi and another one titled "In the Slender Margin" by Eve Joseph. And I read "H is for Hawk" by Helen Macdonald. The first is moving because Kalanithi is young, is a neurosurgeon and is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He is brilliant and practical and wary and aware, all at the same time. It's worth reading, of course, to know how it feels to know you are pretty much dead toast but still you have hope. It is heart breaking in so many ways. But oddly, I wasn't as moved as I wanted to be. He wrote so well but for me there was a disconnect, which is probably the only way he could write about his death which was waiting for him, teeth bared, in the next room.
"In the Slender Margin" is written by a woman who worked as a hospice counselor. The subtitle of the book is "The Intimate Strangeness of Death and Dying" which is rather appropriate. She writes about rituals around dying from various cultures, how different people deal with death and dying and the history (sort of) of it all. Joseph is a poet, so the book is lyrical in many ways and is a quick read, you can finish it in two or three days. There are passages that are beautiful and passages that give you good insight to how we and others deal with the entire death process.
"H is for Hawk" is about grief, and thus isn't about death directly, but hey, I just finished it so it gets added in here for the monthly book report. I am torn about this book. Great critical acclaim, of course, and the writing is very good but then I have some quibbles. It's essentially the story of a woman dealing with the death of her father and of her subsequently raising and training of a hawk. Not just any hawk but the SuperFly of the Hawk world, a Goshawk. Along the way she delves into the life of T.H.White, a British writer ("The Once and Future King" and others) who also raised a hawk. The book is like one long allegory about grief and letting go and being reborn and retraining oneself to see the world in a new way. For me, there was too much about White and I got tired of her relating her hawk to real people (and she admits she humanized the hawk too much as well) but there are passages that work well and are lovely to read. It seemed a little forced at times, like she needed to add just One More Dramatic Episode of the Hawk Gouging Her and Making Her Bleed. (Yes, I know, I am being petty.) I simply didn't swoon over it as many have. But then, as we all know, I swoon rarely. I am glad I finished it, especially because the last thirty pages were quite good. (Wow, how really lame that sounds, but so it stands.)
But still, I think out of all the books I have read on death and dying and all that, "Being Mortal" grabbed me the most. Maybe because it was the first book of this current genre that I read, maybe because he, Gawande, is clinical in parts and emotional in others, but I have recommended that book to so many people and I will continue to do so.
OK, that's all I have right now, at this moment, on this evening. Now it is time to clutter up the kitchen and make some dinner.
.
Then we segue to halibut: was in Whole Foods last Friday or Sunday, I can never tell those two days apart, and the fish guy was lining up pieces of fresh halibut that was ON SALE (so it must have been Friday) at a reasonable $12.99 a pound, never frozen, wild in USA, yada, yada. I got a piece about a half pound, which sounds glutinous but wasn't. Too small to build a fire to grill it so I plopped it on a piece of tin foil, drizzled a couple of spoonfuls of white wine on it, tossed about a spoonful of cold butter (cut up) around the edges and on top, some of Trader Joe's Olive Tapenade, which is the best I have ever bought. I mixed a couple of spoonfuls of that with a small bit of diced preserved lemon (see above) and a few red pepper flakes and a tiny bit of olive oil. Didn't seal the foil, just smushed it up around the top and put it in a 450 oven for about 12 minutes with a sheet pan of asparagus and spring onions, all done at the same time. Hello Dead Fish! I could have eaten a pound of it (well, possibly, we will never know) because it was that delicious. Done perfectly, still moist but flaky, not one bit dry (as halibut can get) and rich and unctuous and with the veggies and a glass of dry white wine from the land of the French, it was the perfect dinner. (Insert smiley face here, but no, please don't, just envision a nice smiling face.)
And on to books. I have been reading a lot of books on death lately, don't know why. Well, I could surmise but that's a blog for another day. I read the latest best seller by the doctor who died: "When Breath Becomes Air" by Paul Kalanithi and another one titled "In the Slender Margin" by Eve Joseph. And I read "H is for Hawk" by Helen Macdonald. The first is moving because Kalanithi is young, is a neurosurgeon and is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He is brilliant and practical and wary and aware, all at the same time. It's worth reading, of course, to know how it feels to know you are pretty much dead toast but still you have hope. It is heart breaking in so many ways. But oddly, I wasn't as moved as I wanted to be. He wrote so well but for me there was a disconnect, which is probably the only way he could write about his death which was waiting for him, teeth bared, in the next room.
"In the Slender Margin" is written by a woman who worked as a hospice counselor. The subtitle of the book is "The Intimate Strangeness of Death and Dying" which is rather appropriate. She writes about rituals around dying from various cultures, how different people deal with death and dying and the history (sort of) of it all. Joseph is a poet, so the book is lyrical in many ways and is a quick read, you can finish it in two or three days. There are passages that are beautiful and passages that give you good insight to how we and others deal with the entire death process.
"H is for Hawk" is about grief, and thus isn't about death directly, but hey, I just finished it so it gets added in here for the monthly book report. I am torn about this book. Great critical acclaim, of course, and the writing is very good but then I have some quibbles. It's essentially the story of a woman dealing with the death of her father and of her subsequently raising and training of a hawk. Not just any hawk but the SuperFly of the Hawk world, a Goshawk. Along the way she delves into the life of T.H.White, a British writer ("The Once and Future King" and others) who also raised a hawk. The book is like one long allegory about grief and letting go and being reborn and retraining oneself to see the world in a new way. For me, there was too much about White and I got tired of her relating her hawk to real people (and she admits she humanized the hawk too much as well) but there are passages that work well and are lovely to read. It seemed a little forced at times, like she needed to add just One More Dramatic Episode of the Hawk Gouging Her and Making Her Bleed. (Yes, I know, I am being petty.) I simply didn't swoon over it as many have. But then, as we all know, I swoon rarely. I am glad I finished it, especially because the last thirty pages were quite good. (Wow, how really lame that sounds, but so it stands.)
But still, I think out of all the books I have read on death and dying and all that, "Being Mortal" grabbed me the most. Maybe because it was the first book of this current genre that I read, maybe because he, Gawande, is clinical in parts and emotional in others, but I have recommended that book to so many people and I will continue to do so.
OK, that's all I have right now, at this moment, on this evening. Now it is time to clutter up the kitchen and make some dinner.
.
Thursday, April 14, 2016
Mon passeport et ma vie aujourd'hui
In the French class I am taking on Thursdays after work, we come in with "le petite histoire" to read to the class. Our little story can be about anything, what we did that day, how our garden looks, work, walkin0og the dog, or it can be a fictional account of anything. The point is to write something and share it with the class. (The class, by the way, is three people and a teacher, so there is time for all of us to share our petites histoires.)
Today mine was about finding my passports and looking at all the stamps and remembering all the countries I have visited. "Il m'a fait plaisir" means "it made me happy" and it did. I added up all the countries I have visited and the total is more than 18. Wow. (Of course that includes the really small countries like the Vatican and San Marino, but of course they are their own countries and thus I was forced to count them.) As my little story noted, it made me want to buy a ticket, or je veux acheter un billet but I knew I had to wait. It's time to renew my current passport, which I will do soon, and then it will be time to figure out where to go at the end of this year. Somewhere old, somewhere new, I am not sure. I have some ideas, but I always have ideas of where to travel. There is never a shortage of ideas.
"Mon passeport et ma vie aujourd'hui." I should let you all look it up but I will save you the trouble: "my passport and my life today." I wish there was some cool add-on about my life today but other than work, French class, reading and making dinner and now watching some episodes of the current "House of Cards," that's about it. Ma vie est boring, for the most part. But my passports are not. I consider that a saving grace.
.
Today mine was about finding my passports and looking at all the stamps and remembering all the countries I have visited. "Il m'a fait plaisir" means "it made me happy" and it did. I added up all the countries I have visited and the total is more than 18. Wow. (Of course that includes the really small countries like the Vatican and San Marino, but of course they are their own countries and thus I was forced to count them.) As my little story noted, it made me want to buy a ticket, or je veux acheter un billet but I knew I had to wait. It's time to renew my current passport, which I will do soon, and then it will be time to figure out where to go at the end of this year. Somewhere old, somewhere new, I am not sure. I have some ideas, but I always have ideas of where to travel. There is never a shortage of ideas.
"Mon passeport et ma vie aujourd'hui." I should let you all look it up but I will save you the trouble: "my passport and my life today." I wish there was some cool add-on about my life today but other than work, French class, reading and making dinner and now watching some episodes of the current "House of Cards," that's about it. Ma vie est boring, for the most part. But my passports are not. I consider that a saving grace.
.
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
Reality vs delusions
Listening to a book on CD, as I do most times in the car, today a sentence made me stop, rewind and listen again and then turn the story off. The sentence made such sense and I had to think about it for several miles. "It's only before the realities set in that we can treasure our delusions."
That this applies to everything was what made me turn off the sound and ponder. We think we will win the lottery (delusional) and thus we allocate all those winnings to various good causes and charities and a trip to France until we see the winning numbers (reality) and sigh. We are convinced the jeans we buy will fit in two weeks because of the diet we are now going to undertake (delusional) until those two weeks go by and those jeans are even snugger than they were in the dressing room (reality.) We promise that we will be nicer and more tolerant with our co-workers (delusional) until we sit at the desk and fix all the errors and clean up the messes they made while we were gone for one frigging day (reality.)
But it is nice to think, for those few moments or hours or days, that life will be what our delusions can promise us. I suppose it is part of the human condition to have those illusions/delusions. Joan Didion, one of my favorite writers, wrote "We tell our selves stories in order to live. .... We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices." The delusion versus reality is more of the same. It's a story until it isn't, until reality arrives. We can choose option A, B, C, D of the multiple choices but the reality can be none of the above. The stories we tell ourselves are just that until reality bites us in the ass.
All this is relative to not much, just a line from a novel by Anna Quindlen today in the car. A good line, food for thought. Or, as another writer has so aptly put it, food for the thoughtless.
Thanks for reading and thanks for waiting for more than a week. I did write more often a few weeks ago and I will do it again. Oh, wait! Maybe that's more delusion/reality butting heads.
I hope not.
.
That this applies to everything was what made me turn off the sound and ponder. We think we will win the lottery (delusional) and thus we allocate all those winnings to various good causes and charities and a trip to France until we see the winning numbers (reality) and sigh. We are convinced the jeans we buy will fit in two weeks because of the diet we are now going to undertake (delusional) until those two weeks go by and those jeans are even snugger than they were in the dressing room (reality.) We promise that we will be nicer and more tolerant with our co-workers (delusional) until we sit at the desk and fix all the errors and clean up the messes they made while we were gone for one frigging day (reality.)
But it is nice to think, for those few moments or hours or days, that life will be what our delusions can promise us. I suppose it is part of the human condition to have those illusions/delusions. Joan Didion, one of my favorite writers, wrote "We tell our selves stories in order to live. .... We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices." The delusion versus reality is more of the same. It's a story until it isn't, until reality arrives. We can choose option A, B, C, D of the multiple choices but the reality can be none of the above. The stories we tell ourselves are just that until reality bites us in the ass.
All this is relative to not much, just a line from a novel by Anna Quindlen today in the car. A good line, food for thought. Or, as another writer has so aptly put it, food for the thoughtless.
Thanks for reading and thanks for waiting for more than a week. I did write more often a few weeks ago and I will do it again. Oh, wait! Maybe that's more delusion/reality butting heads.
I hope not.
.
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