wish i were there

I've been away from home, working working working. This has meant spending many days locked indoors in a convention center, which makes me fully savor my few minutes outside, walking to and from the place I've been laying my head at night. It's made me carefully eyeball mosaics by Faith Ringgold in the subway (this one is Josephine Baker), and get excited over corn and bell peppers growing in tree wells in Harlem.

Other good things came of this mini work marathon. One was meeting the people who started Bags for the People.

You see, these lovely people who work at the Union Square Farmer's Market couldn't stomach using plastic for shoppers who failed to bring their own bags. So they started getting fabric scrap donations and making quickie cloth bags to give away with purchases. That's led to environmental talks and bag-making workshops with kids, and "sweatshop socials" to spread the idea. Gorgeous. Now get your paws off my new pink bag.


I've been having a similar, uh, conversation with an unnamed farmer's market about bags. Call me inspired.

In my upstate absence, a tough group of arm wrestling gals were on the teevee. I'm proud to say these ladies have invited me to join them, but I've been too busy-slash-lame to participate thus far. I sure was pleased pink to see this video, and know that their arm wrestling antics have been rolling in the dough for women's shelters. Way to mock machismo while protecting women from it!

Must a r m w r e s t l e. Must m a k e b a g s. Must go to sleep and be brilliant tomorrow.

xena and the faggotry

You'd think that if your neighbor did yard work in a bikini, a visor, and a fanny pack, you'd almost have to like them. But if that same neighbor locks her crying dog out all night, tortures chickens through a full winter as a "project" for her uninterested son, and puts down steel jaw traps to catch groundhogs, the silly outfit isn't nearly enough to win you back.

When you argue with her about the animals, or just beg her to let you humanely trap the groundhogs (and relocate them), and she ends the conversation by screaming insane homophobic slurs at you, it makes you not be able to enjoy the fact of her smoking by her green-black pool wearing socks and high heels.

The fence Xena put up because she's afraid of animals traps a baby deer in, and it's heartbreaking watching their futile attempts to escape.

She blasts Julio Iglesias and pretends to be interested in gardening, and you use giving her seeds as an excuse to discuss the groundhogs again. She says she is growing food for "the church kids." You wish you could pretend to like her. All the other neighbors gossip about her, make up conspiracy theories about her mailbox with the fake address on it. They start to call her "Xena" too, because of her outfits.

Occasionally there are kids hanging around. Teens, I should say. They act bored, like they don't know what they're doing there. They're not gardening. They're not eating food from the garden, because the garden's been forgotten, like the pool, like the dog. They're sometimes waiting while their mothers and grandmothers get their hair frosted in Xena's basement. It's frustrating because you usually find some common ground with hairdressers.

Xena drives by your house super slowly and stares and stares, on her way to her fake mailbox to get her mail.

The census person comes to your house and asks you how to find this address that doesn't exist. She likes the neighborhood, except for its proximity to the prison. You wake up another morning to the dog crying and Xena shouting. You wonder how you've become friends with all your neighbors but one.

And then. Two of the kids, boys, fourteen-ish, are making out on her trampoline, in the sun. For the whole neighborhood to see.

Tangible pleasure. Even later, when the kissing is over and the trampoline dancing has begun, you can't stop smiling.

coincidence or leitmotif

Are you one of those people that gets all new age-y and believe that what you put out into the universe comes back to you? I don't believe it so much on a grand scale, but with little things, it really happens.

When you get something that you've put a lot of thought into, like a bike, or do something you've put a lot of thought into, you start to cruise other bicycles, other people's efforts at the same thing. Bikes are so much more on your radar, then, all the details and variations and reasons, and it starts to feel like they are around you more.

So it is with opossums, say. You see one, then you start to see more, and you notice pictures of them places and mentions of them other places. Or you mention Morocco on your blog, and then start seeing lots of readers from Morocco. Or you say one little thing about balaclavas, and then you find this insane picture, by total fluke, on a religious blog that you would never visit on purpose.

That's just what happens when the new age hits.

zapatista agave syrup

Well, it's not agave, it's honey, but oh how I wish it were.

Some of my friends are very different from me. I saw this honey reviewed on a friend's blog. She's fabulous: brilliant, hilarious, wears full-on party dresses in the daytime, and left corporate land to go to chef school years back. I don't follow her blog because the things I find there upset me. (Her profile lists "butchering" as one of her specialties.) But I got all happy over this, even though I know those bees were blow-torched. I know. I know! The idea of supporting rebel cooperatives by buying their [fair trade] products is alluring, plus the masked activist on the label has a whole 'nother kind of allure. Fer real...their logo is a balaclava. Yes, product marketing has an impact on me.

Alas, I'll settle for the [vegan] Palestinian olive oil from Rebel Imports. (When I can't support lesbo Palestinians Aswat by buying their oil, this is good backup.)

P.S. Many food type postlets have moved over to wintergreens. This stayed because, although interesting, is sooo not local. The multiple locations are making me a bit schizophrenic, but that's just the way.

no nukes

This post of Lagusta's got me thinking about microwaves, my past love of them, my fear of them, and how I use them as an excuse to pat myself on the back.

The short of the story is that I don't have a microwave, and I generally feel good about that. I have an occasional moment of thinking that maybe I'm a fool, and I could spend way less time accomplishing much more if I didn't have hangups about things like microwaves, except that I just do have hangups about things like microwaves.

There is one at work that sits literally 5 feet from my head, and my co-worker puts metal takeout containers in there, supposedly on a "bake" setting, and runs it for 20 or 30 minutes at a time. She sometimes sticks in a fork or two just to get the rays going crazy. I get an instant headache. I literally get dizzy in about 30 seconds, start to lose my vision, and have to get up and leave. I've talked with her about the microwave multiple times, but she either doesn't give a shit, or is pretending to have forgotten. This microwave feels on my brain like those old time mega microwaves in Circle K* used to feel. Some guy would be microwaving his frozen burrito, and you'd walk by, from the lowrider magazines to the saladitos, for example, and feel your flesh melting off your bones from nuke power.

*For those who do not comprende, Circle K is a 7-11 of the west. It's mostly the same: the poor night shift people get held up at gunpoint, they sell lots of lotto tickets and beer. There you get thirstbusters instead of big gulps.

The very first (and last) microwave I had I really loved. Nobody in my family cooked, AND we were always on diets. (Those thirstbusters were diet pop, and I ate buttered tortillas folded into quarters instead of sandwiches, because they were thinner.) 1980 rolled around and we got a mammoth microwave. My mother, a no nukes activist, hid in the other room when we turned it on. I never got headachey from that microwave, but my diet did improve, opening the world to frozen weight watchers and lean cuisine dinners. And little frozen diet desserts in only four minutes! When, in 7th grade, my friend and I invented a language (CAG) and wrote a book (The World According to CAG), there was a word for this machine. Micre, pronounced mick-ree. It was revered.

My parents moved on to smaller models, and the mammoth stayed with me. I went vegetarian and resorted to eating cheese melted on bread for every meal, prepared in my beloved microwave. When I went vegan, the microwave ceased to be useful (no cheese!), and got the boot. But I learned how to cook, then, out of necessity, and was, therefore, able to keep my curves on. I know you were worried I might be some skinny old thing...

Now I'm making baby food (of all things!) and dealing with the land of frozen food. I can see why someone would think a microwave useful. But I can't, I just can't. I've seen too many at people's houses where the insides are splattered with various kinds of food, then nuked into an indistinguishable filth. There was the argument I had with my rocket scientist friend where he insisted I had to believe the space program is valuable (I don't) because I was personally benefitting from access to microwave technology. All those billions of dollars just for microwaves and space trash and satellites that get mistaken for extra bright stars? And then there's my brains melting at work. That's proof, isn't it, that there's something still very wrong with these machines?

No, along with my pride over no t.v. (though now I watch trash on the computer, oh no), I'm keeping my anti-microwave sentiments intact, and feeling clever over it. Even if that makes me an idiot.