READIN

Friday, June 6th, 2008

🦋 Salad

Wilted spinach salad is one of my old favorites. Tonight, I figured out how to make it without bacon, since Ellen and I are trying to limit slightly, how much fat we are eating. The figs have a similar flavor profile -- sweet and smoky. The mushrooms give a meaty texture.

Vegetarian Spinach Salad

Serves 2

• about ½ lb. baby spinach leaves, picked, washed, and dried
• a bunch of scallions, washed and chopped
• 5 dried figs, chopped small
  (fresh figs would probably be good too)
• 6 mushroom caps, cut into quarters
• olive oil
• sherry vinegar*
• balsamic vinegar
• grated pecorino romano

Combine spinach, scallions and figs in a salad bowl.
Heat oil in a heavy skillet; when hot, add mushroom caps. Season with salt and pepper and saute a minute or two.
Pour vinegar into pan -- about one part sherry vinegar to two parts balsamic to six parts oil. Quickly remove from heat and pour over salad. Toss salad up into skillet so that it gets warm and wilted.
Top with grated cheese.

This makes a very nice, light dinner served with bread and cheese and red wine.

*(I had some sherry vinegar on hand from when I was making Redfox's Onion Jam recipe -- so I thought I'd use it. It seemed to give a very nice flavor in this dressing, though I can't think of any other salad where it would really be appropriate. It's not an ingredient I'm really familiar with.)

posted evening of June 6th, 2008: Respond
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🦋 The Red Hat

Thanks, Shelley! Shelley came along to Sylvia's dance recital last month (Sylvia is a student at Lydia Johnson Dance) and took a lot of pictures, which she gave to Ellen today -- I've uploaded them to our family album.

Sylvia's dance was with two other girls (all of them wore baseball caps for the dance) -- the three of them choreographed the moves together.

posted evening of June 6th, 2008: Respond
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🦋 6/6, 19/38: Dates and fractions

Ellen and I were married 15 years ago today, on June 6, 1993. And furthermore: we have been a couple together for 19 years, since 1989. This is half as many years as I have been alive. Happy crystal anniversary, Ellen!

Anniversary plan: send Sylvia to Kaydi's house for a sleep-over; cook a relaxed, interesting dinner with Ellen.

posted morning of June 6th, 2008: 1 response

🦋 Standards

Here are some songs that get played almost every time at the Menzel Violins jam. If I would learn them, I would get a chance to play leads there more frequently.

• Soldier's Joy
• Whiskey Before Breakfast
• Over the Waterfall
• Blackberry Blossom
• Ragtime Annie

(A song I did get a chance to play tonight, with a guitarist whose name I did not learn -- Robert maybe? -- was "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", which turns out to be a lot of fun.)

posted morning of June 6th, 2008: Respond
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Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

🦋 Resolution

...So even as I was writing my last post, news was coming out all over the Internet that Hillary Clinton is leaving the race. I guess my initial perception of the speech as a concession speech was accurate on some level.

In comments at Obsidian Wings, Cleek points out a beautiful bit of date synchronicity:

• August 28, 1963: Martin Luther King gives his â??I Have A Dreamâ? speech.
• August 28, 2008: The first black presidential nominee will give his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.

(And read the post to which Cleek's comment is attached; it's a fine one.)

posted evening of June 4th, 2008: Respond

🦋 The Speech

OK, so I'm feeling bad about leaving the previous post up at the top, and want to at least move it down a little. It was intemperate, and saying "Screw you, Hillary" probably contributes to the atmosphere of misogyny they're discussing over at the Edge of the West.

When I was listening to the speech I had a lot of cognitive dissonance going on. I didn't experience the speech as "graceless" and "classless", like a lot of commenters I've been reading today seem to have; it sounded like a really good speech to me, just totally out of place and not suited to the occasion. So anyway. I'm sorry I reacted that way and I just hope Ms. Clinton will leave the race in a civil way and one conducive to Democratic victory.

posted evening of June 4th, 2008: Respond

Tuesday, June third, 2008

🦋 Returns

Sweet -- so I just turned on the TV and Larry King or somebody was saying that CNN projected Obama would secure the Democratic nomination.

Hillary is going to be speaking in a minute... Come on, Hil! You can do the right thing! You can avoid going down in history as the woman who wrecked America!

...Oh thank you, Hillary. Thank you!

...Oh wait, I spoke too soon. Screw you, Hillary. Screw you! ...But it really sounded to me like she was making a concession speech. What's wrong with me?

posted evening of June third, 2008: Respond

Monday, June second, 2008

🦋 Turkish lit

I just found out about this: a new translation by Maureen Freely is out, not of Pamuk but of another Turkish author named Fethiye Çetin -- the book is a memoir of her grandmother, an Armenian Christian kidnapped by a Turkish officer. This sounds interesting on any number of points, and Mr. Pope's review makes it sound like captivating reading.

See also this longer review and interview with Çetin, by Fréderike Geerdink.

posted evening of June second, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, June first, 2008

🦋 Jammable

So more songs on the Feel Alright mix tape than I would have expected, turn out to be fun to play along with, even for a group with talents as strictly limited as myself, Bob and Greg -- we were listening to it this afternoon and of course the fast jazz is just nice for listening, and of course the rock-ish tunes like "Ophelia" and "Caldonia" and "It's Alright With Me" were easy to play along with -- but there were a couple of surprises too, like "Arpay" which Greg and I did pretty nicely I thought -- a harmonica and pan pipes have something in common -- and "Boogie-Woogie Blues"; and we all jammed pretty nicely on "The Museum of Sex".

We also did some nice stuff on our own, without the tape -- great version of "Ophelia" after we stopped listening, "Dock of the Bay" with this weird-but-appealing sort of accidental key change on the break, "Mr. Spaceman".

posted evening of June first, 2008: 2 responses
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Saturday, May 31st, 2008

🦋 Feel Alright

My mix tape of happy music is now online -- an hour of tunes with the common factor being that they all lift my spirits when I listen to them. ("Easy Listening"?) Download the mp3's here: Feel Alright mix. Track listing and some notes below the fold. Let me know how you like it!

(...Damn, I knew I was going to do something wrong with the metadata. If you add these files to iTunes, they will go in the wrong order. You can, if you wish to, correct the order by highlighting all of the songs, choosing "Get info (ctrl-I)", and deleting the "disk # of #" fields. ...Okay, I think this is fixed now... But if you add them into iTunes and the order looks wrong, well you know what to do.)

Track Listing

1. Robyn Hitchcock & the Electric Trams: mic check/"The Museum of Sex" -- Concert at Arts Theatre, London, 5/18/08 (a date close to my heart)
2. Merle Travis: "Blue Smoke" (1960?)
3. Fletcher Henderson & his Orchestra: "King Porter Stomp" (1932)
4. Luther Strong: "Hog-Eyed Man" (1937)
5. Clarence Samuels: "Boogie-Woogie Blues"
6. Pachacamac: "Arpay" (2006)
7. The Band with Muddy Waters: "Caldonia" (1978)
8. Jelly Roll Morton & the Red Hot Peppers: "Little Lawrence" (1930)
9. The Carver Boys: "Sleeping Lula" (1937)
10. Rick Danko and Levon Helm: "Ophelia" -- Concert in Eugene, Oregon, January '83
11. Natalie MacMaster: selections from "The Fiddling Ladies" (1999)
12. The New Riders of the Purple Sage: "It's Alright With Me" (1973)
13. Dixieland Jug Blowers: "Boodle-am-Shake" (1926)
14. Jimmy McGriff: "A Thing to Come By" (1969)
15. Old & In the Way: "Jerry's Breakdown" -- Concert at Sonoma Fairgrounds, 11/4/73
16. Abrew's Portuguese Instrumental Trio: "Cabo Verdranos Peca Nove" (1931)
17. Delmore Bros.: "Kentucky Mountains"
18. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: "Black Mountain Rag" (1972)
19. Robyn Hitchcock: "Alright, Yeah" (1996)

Notes

I open and close this mix with Hitchcock, just like I did my last one. I'm happy with this, I'll probably do it on my next mix as well. (After all, I mean he is the Alpha and the Omega.) The "Electric Trams" are (I believe) a nonce group, I've never heard of them other than this concert. Personnel include Hitchcock regulars Kimberley Rew and Morris Windsor. The mic check at the beginning of "The Museum of Sex" was sort of what made me start building this mix.

The Luther Strong and Carver Boys tracks are from a collection of early recordings from Kentucky that my parents gave me for my birthday (thanks!) -- if you like it be sure to check out the Luther Strong recordings archived at Juneberry. (Juneberry is also the source of the Jelly Roll Morton and Dixieland Jug Blowers tracks.) There's also some more recent folk-music type recordings here, and blurring over from folk-music into rock and roll. Enjoy!

↻...done

posted afternoon of May 31st, 2008: 3 responses
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