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...
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
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 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!
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
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.
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.
I made these bookmarks for the others in the group.
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| From Freckle Rock |
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| From Freckle Rock |
Monday, March 22, 2010
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
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
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