23 Weeks

What would improve your life?

Ikea has a contest going on right now that is intended to make the world a better place. Ikea will give the winner $100,000 to fund a project designed to help make life better for people within your community.

It is the simplest idea really. But what should we do? I don't know about you, but I'm the queen of saying "If only I had time..." or "If only I had money..." Ikea is offering a solution to those disclaimers but still I'm stuck. What would make the biggest difference? There are a lot of organizations out there doing great work so I'm trying to think of something original. Original and feasible :)

Whether I enter the contest or not, I think its worthwhile thinking about what we could do to make life better for people. A great quote I read recently summed it up nicely, "We can not do great things. We can only do little things with great love." -Mother Teresa

I would love to hear your thoughts. What would improve your life? Any ideas to improve the lives of others?

Freezer paper stencils

Thanks to my wonderful friend Melanie, I recently learned how to make freezer paper stencils. Mel - you need a blog to show off all your crafty skills. You'll just have to take my word for it she is awesome!

The way it works is pretty simple.

1. Draw on the paper side of the freezer paper
2. Cut out your stencil with an xacto knife
3. Put the paper (waxy side down) on your fabric and iron over the stencil
4. Place another piece of paper on the inside of the shirt so the paint doesn't bleed
5. Paint your stencil with fabric paint
6. Wait 4 hours and peel paper away

Here are the ones I have made so far. It is so much fun - try it!

Don't Scream on the Airplane

My husband and I have this inside joke that everything will be ok as long as you don't scream on the airplane. The theory goes that everyone wants to scream on the airplane but my feeling is that if you do it's all over because nothing is holding you back anymore. It looks like my theory has been tested. At least right now, it seems the first part of my hypothesis may be right. I hope for Mr. Slater's sake the last part isn't right. But he did slide, not scream so I think he's ok.

Fashionable men

Fashionable men and tv both get a bad wrap. There aren't a lot of good examples* so people sort of dismiss the attempt entirely. I would like to offer an example of both: all wrapped up in one. Leverage. Yes, it often doesn't make complete sense and Timothy Hutton's "undercover" accent leaves something to be desired but still....

The show has Parker, who is awesome. And it also has Alec Hardison, also awesome AND with great clothes (and a much better "undercover" accent). You'll have to trust me on the fashion as there aren't a lot of photos out there but if you watch the show you'll get a big smile on your face when you spot one of the outfits, I promise.






*Not including my husband, as that seems like bragging a bit :)

Inspiration

I have expressed before that I prefer craft projects that are simple and fast. Once I learned how to knit I was pretty pleased with my simple scarves and may have made ones in different colors for the rest of my life.

It is true that I branched out and made Ciaran a baby blanket, but let's face it - basically it was a larger scarf. Well, things are going to change. My friend Melanie learned how to knit and has branched out from scarves to hats, stuffed animals, and wraps. She thoughtfully sent me the pattern to the hat recently and I am proud to say it is almost done. I have always said that great friends are ones that bring something to the table.

Thanks Mel for the inspiration! Umm and Maeve, I hope you are not less impressed with the baby blanket ;)

From Freckle Rock

From Freckle Rock

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From Freckle Rock

Vacationing in your hometown

When I lived in New York, the summers would get so hot that I was always looking for ways to cool off. One way I remember fondly, was buying a $10 ticket to ride a speed boat called "The Beast" around the harbor. While the boat was clearly aimed at tourists, played cheesy music and was usually driven with questionable regard for safety....the spray from the harbor and the cool breeze as the boat whipped around the harbor was great fun.

From "The Beast" I learned to look in my own backyard for distracting summer fun. This past weekend I went Wine Tasting in Temecula. It felt like a vacation but I was back home by the end of the afternoon.

The tour guide picked us up in a bright yellow jeep in the starbucks parking lot and off we went.

From Freckle Rock

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From Freckle Rock

A Permanent Disclaimer

Recently I was drawn into a conversation about whether the media is beholden to its advertisers. Hearing this thesis always provokes an emotional reaction from me. I understand the sentiment and believe it worthy of consideration but every time I hear it stated, I want to scream from the rooftops that there is an abundance, yes I feel the word is warranted, an abundance of excellent journalism. Truly amazing work. My favorite type of journalism is the sort which explores a subject I have never considered before and once finished with the article am left wide-eyed with amazement at what a large world we live in. So I would like to share those stories as I come across them...and I would like to insert a permanent disclaimer into the argument of whether the media is beholden to its advertisers.*

*Whether it is or isn't, there is an abundance of excellent journalism.

This article is from the New York Times Magazine.

May 17, 2010
Arguing Three Strikes
By EMILY BAZELON

One day last fall, Norman Williams sat drinking hot chocolate with his lawyer, Michael Romano, at a Peet’s coffee in Palo Alto, Calif. At an outdoor table, Williams began to talk about how he’d gone from serving a life sentence at Folsom State Prison to sitting there in the sun. “After being shut down for so many years. I didn’t believe it,” he said of the judge’s decision to release him in April 2009.

Williams, who is 46, was a homeless drug addict in 1997 when he was convicted of petty theft, for stealing a floor jack from a tow truck. It was the last step on his path to serving life. In 1982, Williams burglarized an apartment that was being fumigated: he was hapless enough to be robbed at gunpoint on his way out, and later he helped the police recover the stolen property. In 1992, he stole two hand drills and some other tools from an art studio attached to a house; the owner confronted him, and he dropped everything and fled. Still, for the theft of the floor jack, Williams was sentenced to life in prison under California’s repeat-offender law: three strikes and you’re out.

In 2000, three years after Williams went to prison, Steve Cooley became the district attorney for Los Angeles County. Cooley is a Republican career prosecutor, but he campaigned against the excesses of three strikes. “Fix it or lose it,” he says of the law. In 2005, Cooley ordered a review of cases, to identify three-strikes inmates who had not committed violent crimes and whose life sentences a judge might deem worthy of second looks. His staff came up with a list of more than 60 names, including Norman Williams’s.

Romano saw Cooley’s list as an opportunity. After working as a criminal-defense lawyer at a San Francisco firm, he started a clinic at Stanford Law School in 2006 to appeal the life sentences of some three-strikes convicts. In search of clients at the outset, Romano and his students wrote to Williams at Folsom about the possibility of appealing his conviction. Most prisoners quickly follow up when the clinic offers free legal help. But Williams didn’t write back. At Peet’s, Williams said he’d been too nervous. “I didn’t want to use the wrong words,” he said.

“You were lucky you were at Folsom,” Romano said. “It’s only a couple of hours’ drive from here. So we decided to come up and see you.”

“Yeah, if not, I’d still be there, staring at the walls,” Williams said. “Never had visitors before you came. I didn’t know what the visiting room looked like.”

IN 1994, the three-strikes ballot measure in California passed with 72 percent of the vote, after the searing murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, who was kidnapped from her slumber party and murdered while her mother slept down the hall. When the killer turned out to be a violent offender recently granted parole, support surged for the three-strikes ballot initiative, which promised to keep “career criminals who rape women, molest children and commit murder behind bars where they belong.”

The complete text of the bill swept far more broadly. Under California’s version of three strikes, first and second strikes must be either violent or serious. These include crimes like murder, attempted murder, rape, child molestation and armed robbery. But in California, “serious” is a term of art that can also include crimes like Norman Williams’s nonconfrontational burglaries. And after a second-strike conviction for such an offense, almost any infraction beyond jaywalking can trigger a third strike and the life sentence that goes with it. One of Romano’s clients was sentenced to life for stealing a dollar in change from the coin box of a parked car.

California’s repeat-offender law is unique in this stringency. Twenty-five other states have passed three-strikes laws, but only California punishes minor crimes with the penalty of a life sentence. About 3,700 prisoners in the state are serving life for a third strike that was neither violent nor serious, according to the legal definition. That’s more than 40 percent of the total third-strike population of about 8,500. Technically, these offenders are eligible for parole after 20 years, but at the moment, the state parole board rarely releases any prisoner early.

In 2004, reformers put an initiative on the ballot, Proposition 66, that would have reduced the number of people going to prison for life by removing nonviolent property and drug offenses from the list of three-strikes crimes. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger attacked the ballot measure. He credited three strikes for a major drop in crime — to the frustration of most experts, who point out that California’s dip began in 1991, well before three strikes passed, and ended in 2000. “The great weight of empirical studies discounts the role of three strikes in reducing crime,” states a 2004 report signed by six criminal-law professors, including Franklin Zimring at U.C. Berkeley. Still, Prop 66 fell short, with 47 percent of the vote.

Now California is in the midst of fiscal calamity. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who had been a judge in California, recently bemoaned state sentencing and spending on prisons. In an address at Pepperdine University, he said that “the three-strikes law sponsor is the correctional officers’ union, and that is sick!” And yet Schwarzenegger has vowed not to touch the law. Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown, the leading Republican and Democratic contenders to succeed him in November, are just as unbending.

IF THERE’S A WAY to reform three strikes, it may follow Norman Williams’s route out of prison. Michael Romano, who is 38, got his client released without opposition from the L.A. district attorney by forging a working relationship with Cooley’s office. The 63-year-old Republican prosecutor seems an unlikely ally for a young defense lawyer. He joined the D.A.’s office straight out of law school. His office notched more death sentences last year than the state of Texas, and his lunchmates include Pete Wilson, the former governor who signed three strikes into law. Yet despite his conservative bona fides, Cooley shares the conviction that some number of third-strike offenders like Norman Williams don’t belong in prison for life.

After three strikes became law, Cooley watched one of his colleagues in the D.A.’s office prosecute Gregory Taylor, a homeless man who at dawn one morning in 1997 went to a church where he’d often gotten meals and pried open the door to its food pantry. The priest later testified on his behalf. Taylor’s first crime was a purse-snatching; his second was attempting to steal a wallet. He didn’t hurt anyone. Taylor was sentenced to life. “It was almost one-upmanship, almost a game — bye-bye for life,” Cooley says, remembering the attitude in the office.

Three years later, Cooley ran for D.A. on a platform of restrained three-strikes enforcement, calling the law “a necessary weapon, one that must be used with precision and not in a scatter-gun fashion.” In office, he turned his critique into policy. The L.A. district attorney’s office no longer seeks life sentences for offenders like Norman Williams or Gregory Taylor. The presumption is that prosecutors ask for a life sentence only if a third-strike crime is violent or serious. Petty thieves and most drug offenders are presumed to merit a double sentence, the penalty for a second strike, unless their previous record includes a hard-core crime like murder, armed robbery, sexual assault or possession of large quantities of drugs. During Cooley’s first year in office, three-strikes convictions in Los Angeles County triggering life sentences dropped 39 percent. No other prosecutor’s office in California has a written policy like Cooley’s, though a couple of D.A.’s informally exercise similar discretion.

It’s a mistake, though, to cast Cooley as a full-tilt reformer. He opposed Prop 66 for ignoring a defendant’s criminal history. Instead, in 2006, he offered up his own bill, which tracked his policy as D.A., taking minor drug crimes and petty theft off the list of three-strikes offenses unless one of the first two strikes involved a crime that Cooley considers hard-core. For staking out even this middle ground, Cooley became prosecutor non grata among his fellow D.A.’s. No district attorney, not even the most liberal, supported his bill, and it died in Senate committee.

Cooley could once again pay a price for his three-strikes record. This spring, he announced his candidacy for California attorney general. His Republican rivals have hammered him for his moderate stance. “He’s acting as an enabler for habitual offenders,” State Senator Tom Harman told me. “I think that’s wrong. I want to put them in prison.” The race has developed into a litmus test: for 15 years, no serious candidate for major statewide office has dared to criticize three strikes. If Cooley makes it through his party’s primary on June 8 — and especially if he goes on to win in November — the law will no longer seem untouchable. If he loses, three strikes will be all the more difficult to dislodge.

MICHAEL ROMANO has another, complementary strategy for changing the law. He has won victories for 13 three-strikes lifers in two years, 5 of them with the help of Cooley’s office, and he sees that small number of victories as making a case for larger reform. (He was on a panel I moderated at Yale Law School last month.) While that may sound far-fetched, the tactic has worked before. Romano’s boss, Lawrence Marshall, helped prove the innocence of 13 death-row inmates in Illinois in the late 1990s. His work set in motion a reassessment of the death penalty. A result was a statewide moratorium on executions that has held for a decade. “The hardest step is to get people’s attention,” says Marshall, associate dean for clinical education at Stanford. “And you can only get it with sympathetic cases.”

Romano started thinking about three strikes when he clerked for Judge Richard Tallman on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2004. One afternoon, Romano watched his boss and two other judges quickly dispense with routine matters. One of them was a three-strikes appeal. “This guy, Willie Joseph, was doing life for aiding and abetting a $5 sale of crack cocaine,” Romano remembers. Legally speaking, his case for release was so weak that it took the judges “less than a few minutes” to reject the appeal.

And yet Willie Joseph’s life sentence was effectively the same as the punishment imposed on the most vicious killers in California. While 694 convicted murderers sit on the state’s death row, only 13 have been executed since the Supreme Court allowed for reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. The 3,700 nonviolent, nonserious three-strikers serving life in California outnumber the 3,263 death-row inmates nationwide.

By working with three-strikers, Romano is trying to highlight the plight of criminals he sees as more pathetic than heinous. “I think about explaining to my kids what I do, and I see no moral ambiguity,” Romano says about his work. Capital defendants, of course, deserve representation, he explains. “But there are other lives to be saved, of people who haven’t done horrible things, who haven’t actually hurt anyone.”

In practical terms, Romano points out, the difference between being convicted of capital murder and a small-time third strike is this: a murderer is entitled to a far greater share of legal resources. California spends at least $300,000 on the defense side of a capital murder trial. The courts give extra scrutiny to each capital appeal that comes before them. And it’s only in death-penalty cases that the state pays lawyers to file a writ of habeas corpus, the route to challenging a conviction once direct appeal has been exhausted.

A three-strikes case, by contrast, is just one more file in the stack on a public defender’s desk and a judge’s docket. Romano has a client whose appellate lawyer cut and pasted into her brief for him the more serious criminal history of another man — incorrectly telling the judges that her client was far more violent when he actually was.

In court, Romano and his students don’t simply argue that their clients are minor offenders who don’t deserve to spend the rest of their lives in prison. That route to release is mostly blocked by the Supreme Court’s twin rulings on three strikes. In 2003, the justices voted 5-4 to reject the argument that three strikes violates the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel-and-unusual punishment. Because of criminal histories, the high court let stand the life sentences for Leandro Andrade, convicted of a third strike when he shoplifted videotapes from two Kmarts, and Gary Ewing, who walked out of a store with three golf clubs in a leg of his pants.

But the California Supreme Court has left open a different route to appeal. In 1998, the court told trial judges who were weighing a bid for leniency at sentencing after a three-strikes conviction that they could consider whether a defendant’s “background, character and prospects” place him outside the “spirit” of three strikes.

Romano argues that, as in capital cases, his clients deserve to ask for lesser sentences based on “mitigating evidence” — often of child abuse, mental illness or mental retardation. Romano’s students track down clients’ old files, ask about their childhoods and pry confirmation out of family members. From Norman Williams’s juvenile files and probation reports, Romano’s students pieced together a story of unbroken woe. The 8th of 12 children, Williams grew up with a mother who was a binge drinker. She pimped out Williams and his brothers to men she knew. A social worker wrote, “These men paid the boys money to perform anal intercourse on the boys and they . . . gave the money to their mother for wine.” As an adult, Williams became a cocaine addict and lived on the streets of Long Beach.

Romano’s students laid out this mitigating evidence, which hadn’t been introduced at trial, in a 56-page habeas brief before the state court in Long Beach last year. They got back a one-sentence order denying their claim.

Frustrated, Romano took the habeas petition to one of Cooley’s deputies, Brentford Ferreira. Would he agree that after 12 years in prison, Williams had done enough time? Would he say so to the judge?

Ferreira, a 24-year veteran prosecutor, fired back with questions of his own. “I said, O.K., what you’ve really shown me is that all this guy knows how to do is steal,” he remembers. “So why should I let him out? What are you going to do for him?” Romano knew that Ferreira was right. If just one of his clients got out and hurt someone the whole project would look menacing rather than crusading. Defense lawyers don’t usually act like social workers, but it was vital for Romano and his students to come up with a plan and a home for Williams, from the moment he walked out of Folsom.

Romano’s efforts to help Williams succeed on the outside led him to Eileen Richardson. Once the C.E.O. of Napster, she now runs a $500,000 program, the Downtown Streets Team, which contracts with the city of Palo Alto and local nonprofits to provide janitorial services. The work is done by former offenders and homeless people. Richardson pays them in rent subsidies and Safeway and Wal-Mart gift cards. They attend a weekly support meeting and wear different colored T-shirts as they move up a “ladder of success.”

With Richardson’s promise to give Williams a try, Romano persuaded Ferreira to go with him to see the judge in Long Beach. The prosecutor’s support made the difference: Williams was resentenced to time served. Shortly after he left Folsom a year ago, he started on the Streets Team mopping and waxing the floors of a local shelter. Richardson says Williams hasn’t missed a day of work since.

IF STEVE COOLEY wins the Republican primary for attorney general, on almost every issue — most visibly the death penalty — he’ll run to the right of his probable Democratic opponent, the San Francisco district attorney Kamala Harris. But on three strikes, Cooley will run to Harris’s left. (She didn’t support his 2006 proposal, though she is one of the prosecutors who, on a case-by-case basis, refrains from seeking a life sentence for some nonviolent three-strikers.) It’s a reminder of how far the prosecution of Gregory Taylor, the homeless man who broke into the church, has taken Cooley from the expected comfort zone of a prosecutor.

Cooley is couching his support for amending three strikes statewide more carefully during campaign season. “Any changes to the three-strikes law will have to be in the context of overall prison reform,” he told me in March. At the same time, Romano and Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes, the group that fought for Proposition 66, are increasingly interested in using Cooley’s Los Angeles policy as the basis for a new statewide reform effort in 2012, because it suggests a way to reserve life sentences for the three-strikers who have committed crimes of violence.

Between 2001 and 2008, the Los Angeles D.A.’s office automatically sought life sentences for about 5,400 repeat offenders whose third strike was violent or serious. The office also screened 13,900 cases in which the third strike crime was neither violent nor serious, to find out whether the defendant had a past record of hard-core crimes. During these years, prosecutors asked for life in only 25 percent of these cases. The other 75 percent are the nonviolent three-strikers whom the law could safely be amended to spare, Romano argues. “Those are the folks who shouldn’t be doing life,” he says. If Cooley becomes attorney general, he’d have more clout to put behind a 2012 reform initiative, if he chose to.

Norman Williams will soon move into his own apartment in Palo Alto. None of the other clients for whom the Stanford clinic has won release have gotten in trouble. And Romano and his students recently started representing Gregory Taylor, who is still serving life in San Luis Obispo prison.

he’s out In an online video, Norman Williams talks about being released from prison after being sentenced to life. nytimes.com/magazine

Emily Bazelon, a contributing writer, is a senior editor at Slate and the Truman Capote law-and-media fellow at Yale Law School.

Flying across the country - worth it every time

There are certain things that seem overwhelming until we do them. Perhaps, in retrospect, most things are this way. I am always overwhelmed by planning trips back east. First, there is a the plane ticket. I can never tell if I am getting a good deal on a ticket or when stopping over in Chicago and leaving before any of the airport stores are open no longer making sense to save a bit of money. Then there is picking the date. If its a non-holiday this can be hard because you can go anytime or delay anytime. Recently, I took the good advice of the friend I was going to visit and just booked my tickets. On a trip out to visit me she told me she bought her tickets because she reasoned if you don't, you end up never going. I am sure some of you can relate to this phenomenon. So I booked my tickets and was on my way.

I had quite the incentive to visit. My friend Maeve just had her second baby boy, Ciaran.



When I went to visit her first baby boy, Declan, he was already close to 6 months old. This time I was determined to not wait as long and I made it out there 8 weeks after the birth.



I had so much fun its hard to describe if you were not there.



We talked and ate great food. We walked to the park and folded laundry and watched a terrible movie. We wandered through stores and walked along the beach. I burped the baby boy and mistakenly put the older one's diaper on him. Luckily his mother changed him before bed. We ate pancakes and played with stickers. I witnessed the most lovely reunion between father and son when Maeve's husband, Mike, returned from a trip out of town. It was hard to leave and come back home.

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Conor couldn't make it this time, but will definitely next time. Maeve and I dreamed up family trips to the Pacific Northwest and Tahoe and I can't wait to make those trips happen.

In the picture above you can see the blanket I knitted for Ciaran. Stay tuned for more on that and my prodigious friend Melanie who started knitting recently too!

The Bicycle

Part 2 - I don't know what you call it but I'm happy

When we left off I was reassuring myself that you never forget how to ride a bike. Unfortunately for me, while I may have remembered how to ride a bike I was currently precariously resting on a cycle. I tried to make the best of it. I swapped out the handlebars for cruiser handlebar. I put a cute white basket on the front. It served me well for the winter months. I rode to the library and to the gym. Come summer, I wanted to go a bit farther. My bike was suffering a crisis of identity. The cycle wanted to know why I did not take care of it and get better wheels and fresh tires. The bike wanted to know why I was urging it up hills when it was meant to coast. After two aborted trips due to flat tires, my husband took me to REI to get a new bike for my birthday. I am not sure what type of bike it is, but it is a bike and I'm happy.

From Freckle Rock

From Freckle Rock

I love riding it from La Jolla to Mission Beach. I plan to check out the Silver Strand in Coronado soon. Do you know of any good bike paths in San Diego?

Rich dreams

As a child I imagined that if you had all the money in the world, the coolest thing you could do with the money would be to design a fish tank bath tub. I spent quite a few hours designing this in my head. The walls of the tub would obviously have to be quite thick and the tub itself would need to be quite huge but in the end my mind would always drift back to one luxurious thought...the fish swimming around you as you soaked in the tub.

Looking back I suppose its a bit creepy to have fish circling you but these were not sharks or anything but small beautiful fish. I have never seen one of these bathtubs before and have no idea if its possible.

As an adult I am pretty sure this could satisfy my rich bathing fantasies.


Via Carrie Can and btd

I would scrap the 80s mirrors and add more plants but in general the premise is brilliant. Feel free to comment below about your rich dreams, bathroom oriented or otherwise :)

How do you say whimsy in stamp?

Sorry for the non-original title...it's been a long few days of traveling to nowhere as romantic as this -



but I had to share some new stamp sets from Yellow Owl Workshop (scroll across to see all of the sets). I love these sets because I am not a creative blank slate type of person but if you give me one or two things to work with I can do quite well entertaining myself. A few of you have received these from me....send me something you have made with your stamp sets and I will post the pictures and we can inspire the masses!! you know you want to :)

Books and a vote

When I first saw our apartment, I wanted to rent it instantly based solely on one factor - built-in bookshelves. For me that was it. Seriously, I wanted to rent it before I even saw that there was a bedroom. For some reason because of the groovy ascetic I sort of assumed it was a studio. Quickly, I thought the bed could go under the bookshelves (long time readers this should come as no surprise).

Every once in a while I am haunted by the notion that one day we may move to a new apartment. I secretly plot to make my own shelves if we are forced to move somewhere without them. Readers, admit it the only thing better than built-in bookshelves would be the wonderful feeling of walking into them...if I could describe it in terms of childhood stories it would equal...







My bookshelf inspiration is from ill seen, ill said. Which brings me to the vote. ill seen, ill said makes me want to add some color to Freckle Rock... Ideas? I promise a gift to the best comment. Not quite as cool as this, but I swear I'll send you an awesome book.

How do you say jump in Latin?

Saltare. Every time I feel pessimistic about life, I am going to think of this video.



The energy, discipline and creativity is incredibly inspiring to me. I hope you enjoy too!

The Bicycle

Part 1 - Not quite an odyssey but definitely a bit of a journey

When I first moved to San Diego I was shocked at the number of cyclists. To be honest, before I moved to San Diego I am not sure I ever even used the word cyclist, but there was no mistaking the riders on slim bikes dashing past cars. I am pretty much a complete clutz - I run into walls rounding corners, I slice my finger with the vegetable peeler, I manage to step onto loose snowboards and crash into the ice. Because of this I naturally avoided cycling.

About a year ago, I decided I wanted a bike, but nothing fancy - not something to cycle on. Just something to ride around the neighborhood, maybe with a little basket. I also wanted something used to so I wouldn't have to worry about locking the bike up. For some unknown reason, I went to a hip little bike store specializing in snobbery - I mean really cool bikes. Just my luck, they had an old beat up bike that had not been restored yet and they would give to to me for a steal. I was thrilled and promptly bought it. I think - there, in the moment- I pictured myself in one of those Stella commercials.



Alas, it was not to be. I took it out to the street where our car was parked and was so excited I wanted to ride it right then. I eagerly got on the bike but found my feet couldn't reach the ground and the handlebars were a lifetime away. I was fighting back tears as I argued with myself that everyone knows you never forget how to ride a bike.

Stay tuned for Part 2...

Indoors, Outdoors - should it matter?

I was just telling my husband the other night that I think it is charming when something inside your house seems to bring the outdoors in. I particularly like this illusion in areas where you can see the outside from inside your home. Plants are an obvious choice but I think these fantastic "outdoor" chairs could look lovely in a living room.



Our living room stretches along sliding glass doors. I love how these chairs encourage people to pull them outside or inside - doesn't really matter. The chair come in a wide variety of fabrics and are available here.

Easter

I wish I could go home to Maryland for every holiday. This past Christmas, I received a webcam which has been absolutely fantastic for staying in touch. I talk to my mom most mornings but as these pictures attest - there is nothing like being there.




The webcam makes not being there a little better. Webcams are not very expensive and can be used with Skype, a free service. Check it out!

The Library

Ever since I was a little girl, I loved the library. Even as a child I was aware that things cost money. Part of me has never gotten over the fact that the library is free.

I love browsing the stacks and racks waiting for a book to grab me. Every so often I discover a book that reminds me of why I love the library. I love that you can find a book - that you have never heard of, might never have been interested in, that is not critically acclaimed - and fall completely in love with it.

On my latest trip to the library I found such a book.



Cooking with Mr. Latte by Amanda Hesser is not the best book I have ever read but it struck a chord. Did you ever read the choose your own adventure books? While not well executed, I loved the concept. I think its amazing how books can influence your life. Case in point, if I had not read this book I might never have decided to take an interest in Cooking - Cooking with a capital C ;). But I read the book and I made some fantastic pear muffins, spinach phyllo triangles, and I no longer mind washing dishes as much since every good cook has to spend some time on the boring things.

Pear Muffins (adopted from the Peach Pecan muffins in the Vegan Table)

3 cups whole-wheat pastry flour

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1/4 tablespoon nutmeg

1 tablespoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup canola oil

6 ounces non-dairy sour cream
(I'm sure you can use real sour cream if you want)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

A dash of champagne vinegar
(you are supposed to use 2 tablespoons white distilled vinegar but
I did not have so I used what seemed closest)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 1/2 cups peeled and chopped pears

DIRECTIONS

pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease 16 muffin cups. In a large bowl mix flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, mix oil, sour cream, vanilla, vinegar, sugars and pears. Stir the oil mixture into the flour mixture until moist. Spoon into muffin cups and dust with some brown sugar. Bake for 25 minutes.

Bookmarks

Recently I joined a book club which I absolutely love. I was unsure of how it would work out especially since I didn't particularly like the first book we read. But I found that a nice and mellow 45 minute discussion about the book was very rewarding. Sometimes it seems that conversations are solely either superficial or intense. Perhaps because of that, I thoroughly enjoyed the mellowness of chatting for a bit about a book I didn't particularly like.

I made these bookmarks for the others in the group.

From Freckle Rock

From Freckle Rock

I'm not afraid

to admit that I almost cried at work today. For the past few weeks, whenever I think of the health care debate I get depressed. I don't want to let the angry protesters and name-calling get me down, so I harden myself to reality.



But then I read this article and I soften to the point of almost crying. I have to remind myself for all the negativity out there, there is a lot of positivity as well.

WHEN Jim Brozina’s older daughter, Kathy, was in fourth grade, he was reading Beverly Cleary’s “Dear Mr. Henshaw” to her at bedtime, when she announced she’d had enough. “She said, ‘Dad, that’s it, I’ll take over from here,’ ” Mr. Brozina recalled. “I was, ‘Oh no.’ I didn’t want to stop. We really never got back to reading together after that.”

Mr. Brozina, a single father and an elementary school librarian who reads aloud for a living, did not want the same thing to happen with his younger daughter, Kristen. So when she hit fourth grade, he proposed The Streak: to see if they could read together for 100 straight bedtimes without missing once. They were both big fans of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, and on Nov. 11, 1997, started The Streak with “The Tin Woodman of Oz.”

When The Streak reached 100, they celebrated with a pancake breakfast, and Kristen whispered, “I think we should try for 1,000 nights.”

Mr. Brozina was delighted, but what he was thinking was, a thousand nights?! “I thought, we’ll never do it,” he recalled. “And then we got to 1,000, and we said, ‘How can we stop?’ ”

For 3,218 nights (and some mornings, if Mr. Brozina was coming home too late to read), The Streak went on. It progressed from James Marshall’s picture books about George and Martha (two close friends who happen to be hippos) to middle-school classics like “When Zachary Beaver Came to Town” to the 14 Oz books (which they read four times each), to Harry Potter, Agatha Christie, Dickens and Shakespeare, continuing on, until Kristen’s first day of college.

In those nine-plus years, they survived many close calls. When Kristen was still in elementary school, her father and older sister went to Washington. “The phone rings at 10:45 at the hotel and it’s Kristen,” Mr. Brozina recalled. “She says, ‘Dad, we forgot The Streak!’ Fortunately, I always travel with several books and we read right then and there.”

As Kristen got older, she was active in community theater groups that would rehearse late, and a few dozen times, Mr. Brozina turned up and read to her between scenes. One night, a rehearsal for “I Remember Mama” was supposed to end at 11:30, but the director, upset with the performance, was yelling at the players. “Our rule was we had to read before midnight and it had to be at least 10 minutes,” Mr. Brozina said. “It was 11:45 and he wasn’t letting up.”

“Dad took me off the stage,” Kristen said. “I was 17.”

“We sat in the auditorium and I read to her,” said Mr. Brozina.

Their shared reading provided a shared language. When Mr. Brozina asks if Kristen’s absolutely sure, she’ll answer, “Certain there’s a jertain in the curtain” (Dr. Seuss). If Mr. Brozina orders a hamburger, Kristen will say, “I am a great eater of beef and I believe that does harm to my wit” (Shakespeare, “Twelfth Night” ). By high school, Kristen had a busy social life. “I’d be out with friends, and say, ‘It’s 11:30, we need to stop back at my house.’ A carload of teenagers would come in. They’d play some game or cards in the living room. I’d go upstairs to Dad’s room and he’d read to me.”

“Then she’d go back out with her friends and I’d go to bed,” Mr. Brozina said.

People who knew Kristen and her dad (shown together in the photo above) knew The Streak, and accommodated it. One night, Mr. Brozina was at a woman friend’s house. “Things were progressing very nicely,” he said. “And she jumps up and says, ‘Did you read to Kristen yet?’ Holy smokes, I took off on two wheels.”

Like all earth-shattering acts, there was more to The Streak than met the eye, although for years it was unspoken. About the time The Streak started, Kristen’s family shrunk from six to two in a year’s time. Her two surviving grandparents died. Her sister, who is seven years older, went off to Yale. And her mother left her father. “It was just the two of us,” Kristen said. “The Streak was stability when everything else was unstable. It was something I knew would always be there.

“People kept leaving me, but with The Streak, I knew that nothing would come before The Streak. In high school, I had friends who never talked to their parents. It never occurred to me not to. If someone takes care of you, you want to be with them.”

Her father felt that, too. “With a family of two, I wanted her to be absolutely sure in her mind that I was here for her,” he said.

But he had other reasons. At 61, he’s part of a generation that held reading as an almost magical ticket to upward mobility. He’s been a school librarian here for 38 years, knows most everyone in this modest blue-collar town, and whenever he bumps into one of his former students, the first thing he asks is, “Are you reading?” followed by his mantra: “If you love to read, you’ll probably go to college, maybe for free. You’ll get a better job, get a higher income, live longer.”

Over the years, he has built a collection of 700 of the best books he and Kristen read together. “I don’t have much money to pass on,” he said. “But these books, she’ll read to hers and they’ll read to theirs. And they’ll read to the generations down the lines. It’s a means for me to touch generations I’ll never see. They’ll all be smart. I can’t imagine these books will never be used. Every single one of them is so good.”

“Of course,” he said, “it depends on Kristen.”

“My Streak can be longer than your Streak,” said Kristen. “I’ll start before fourth grade.”

The Streak ended on Sept. 2, 2006. It was Kristen’s first day of college, and it was time. Her dorm room was so crowded with boxes, he read to her in a stairwell. The Streak ended as it began, with L. Frank Baum, the first chapter of his most famous “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” “It was hard,” Kristen said. “Not only was I moving away, but we were ending this thousands-of-times tradition. There’s nothing I’ve ever done with that consistency, not even brushing my teeth.”

“I knew it had to be the last,” said Mr. Brozina.

“It wouldn’t have worked,” said Kristen.

“It would have been stringing it out artificially,” he said. “Did you see Willie Mays at the end of his career? Sad. It was past time.”

This spring, Kristen graduates from Rowan University, a half-hour’s drive up the road in Glassboro. She has performed as you’d expect for a product of The Streak, an English major with a 3.94 average.

“One B,” her father said.

“An unfortunate situation,” said Kristen.

She also won two national writing contests, was Resident Assistant of the year, an editor of the humor and literary publications and won the annual English department award.

During college, she didn’t give much thought to The Streak until recently, when she had to write an essay for graduate school, and hunting a topic, realized, “The Streak is kind of interesting.”

Who knows why anyone gets in anywhere, but you’d have to believe The Streak would be a winner, and recently Kristen was accepted to the master’s in liberal arts program at the University of Pennsylvania. She doesn’t have the money to go. But certain as that jertain, the young woman has a plan: She’s going to get a job when she graduates, save and reapply in a year or two.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/fashion/21GenB.html?ref=style&src=me&pagewanted=all

Knitting

Recently I have been learning how to knit. I resisted this hobby at first because it seemed a bit too trendy. It turns out it is my favorite hobby to date. Its relatively cheap as hobbies go. You see results quickly and there is a lot of room for improvement. Previous hobbies of mine have been ceramics, spanish, guitar, and sewing. All of these ended up being expensive. Ceramics was $200 for 8 classes. Spanish ended up being about $350 for a semester. Guitar was $50 a lesson. Sewing was not too expensive for the class but the fabric ends up being quite expensive. The real draw back of all these though was the results. All that time and money and I had several small bowls, a few sentences, three songs, and one little girl's dress.

Knitting on the other hand is cheap. You can buy one skein of yarn for about $2 - $4 and that is enough for one scarf generally. I made a mistake free scarf on my second attempt. Right now I am trying patterns which is a bit harder but still enjoyable.

Another plus is that knitting is portable and only requires one person. On a recent trip to the mountains I skipped the snowboarding and knitted this scarf instead.

From Freckle Rock

I was able to knit while watching the Maryland-Duke basketball game. Which may be one of the biggest pluses for those type-A people out there - you can knit while doing other things. I could keep going on about knitting but I encourage you to give it a try yourself and let me know what you think.

J.D. Salinger

From Freckle Rock

When I was younger, my brother played little league baseball. I watched with my parents but often had a book in my hand. One particular evening around dusk I remember sitting on a picnic table by the concession stand. I was reading Catcher in the Rye.

At some point around 6th or 7th grade, I had discovered this fabulous room in the library where all the assigned school reading list books were kept. As much as this does not sound like an exciting coming of age discovery -not as movie-worthy as discovering The Smiths or something in that order- for me that room was it. I went to a Baptist school that whited out "damn" in Steinbeck books. Most of the books in this room were completely new to me so I basically went through the alphabet. It was in this room that I found Catcher in the Rye.

As night settled on the baseball field, my Dad looked at the red book I was reading and asked a simple question: "Is that book too old for you?"

I carefully considered the question. Was it a test? Had he read the book and found it objectionable? I had not read the whole book when he posed the question and I quickly reviewed what I had read in my head.

"No," I said carefully, waiting. But that was it. I was a good kid and I had given an honest answer. I finished the book, enjoyed it, and went back to that room in the library for another.

Herbs

For our wedding, we made the somewhat controversial decision not to register. As a result we received many thoughtful and generous gifts that were a complete surprise. One gift was so fantastic that I bought the same thing for my father for Christmas.

From Freckle Rock

From Freckle Rock

For the past month we have been growing cilantro and peppers in our very own hydroponic herb garden. I can't recommend these little devices more. They are easy, fun and delicious. Thanks Jalila!

From Freckle Rock

I know you are already thinking of what herbs you could grow...maybe even a few cherry tomatoes. Anyone out there have their own indoor garden?

The Anti-Hero

I am just going to throw this out there. I have never understood the appeal of the anti-hero. I just finished reading a new book from the library. "Whacked" by Jules Asner. Honestly, I probably should have known from the name. I thought it would be an easy, fun read. Instead it was mostly boring and a little bizarre.



The gist of the story was about the life of a non-fancy hollywood insider - a tv show writer. The hero, Dani, was basically a Bridget Jones that you never really rooted for. The whole book I kept waiting for the hook. She would make a change in her life or wrestle with moral inconsistencies or something...but there was nothing. Nothing except some sort of ironic, anti-hero, satire that I completely did not get.

After watching the first season of Californication, I tried reading Bukowski but had the same problem. It was boring. Honestly, life is mind-boggling enough without heroes that never rise to the occasion.

I wish these books came with a label because at this point I am, in my old age, making a decision that these types of books simply are not for me. Before I really get set in my ways, anyone out there have THE anti-hero book that will show me the light or at least make me reconsider my line drawn in the sand? Speak now because I have it on good authority that, post-30, one's opinions solidify rapidly.

Time spent

To kick off the new year I decided to decorate my office. The bulk of our time is spent at work yet my office had virtually no personal touches besides my diploma. I added a lamp, two rugs, art, and a table. I am looking forward to work tomorrow.

From Freckle Rock

From Freckle Rock

From Freckle Rock

The lamp, table, and green rug are from Ikea. The larger rug is from World Market. The art is from Ikea but it reminded me a bit of Max Wanger.