August 20, 2008 at 5:37 pm (Conversations, Movies, Quotes, Son)
Tags: The New Yorker, Filipino movies, summer movies, Anthony Lane, Meryl Streep
After the Olympics are over, self can catch up on her sleep. But last night was another night of staying up until 2 a.m. and then waking (with noise of Gracie’s piteous whining) at 6:30 a.m.
This morning, hubby left for work two hours later than he normally does, Read the rest of this entry »
August 18, 2008 at 3:59 pm (Places, Quotes)
Tags: anticipation, Events, exhibits, Philippines, San Francisco
An exhibit on the Philippine Coral Reefs will be one of the permanent exhibits on display when the California Academy of Sciences re-opens in Golden Gate Park on September 27.
The following is a quote from the California Academy of Sciences Press Release:
The Academy chose to feature a Philippine coral reef because the reef systems in the Philippines are among the most diverse in the world. The new tank will hold a variety of delicate soft and hard corals, as well as sharks, rays, and more than 2,000 colorful reef fishes. All of the animals will be captive bred, or will come from sustainable wild sources, highlighting the importance of in-country research and conservation programs.
For more information, visit www.pusod.org/reef
August 16, 2008 at 6:30 am (Quotes, Son, Surprises)
Tags: exhibits, photography, San Francisco
Weather in San Francisco was bee-yoo-ti-ful.
Self finished her review for the Women’s Review of Books and managed to send it off before she and son left for the City.
Self had never seen a Frida Kahlo painting in the flesh before today. Their colors so luminous, glowing like jewels against the white walls. Some of her favorites:
“Henry Ford Hospital” (1932)
“Self-Portrait: Very Ugly/ Muy Feo“ (1933)
“Self-Portrait with Necklace” (1933)
Read the rest of this entry »
August 15, 2008 at 3:15 pm (Quotes)
Tags: Georgia
Unfortunately, today, we are looking evil directly in the eye . . . I want the entire world to know: Never, ever will Georgia reconcile to the occupation of at least one square kilometer of its territory.
August 14, 2008 at 3:26 pm (Books, Quotes)
Tags: reading, The New Yorker
Books self is interested in reading after perusing the “Briefly Noted” section of the July 7 & 14, 2008 issue of The New Yorker
André Dubus III’s The Garden of Last Days
In the fictional Puma Club, in Sarasota, Florida, a twenty-six-year-old named Bassam al-Jizani watches Spring, a stripper, undress, and finds his “hatred for these kurfa rising with the knowledge of his own weakness.”
Tim Winton’s Breath
Bruce Pike, a middle-aged paramedic, is adept at distinguishing a suicide from an error in judgement; his own turbulent adolescence accounts for this grim bit of wisdom.
Steven T. Wax’s Kafka Comes to America
Wax, the head of the Oregon Federal Public Defenders’ office, writes that when he volunteered to represent inmates at Guantanamo Bay he didn’t know if his clients “would be terrorists or innocents.” At least one, Adel Hamad, a Sudanese aid worker, seems patently innocent, and Wax also represented Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer whose story — he was falsely linked to a bombing through shoddy fingerprint evidence — illustrates the short path from depriving terrorists of their rights to depriving everyone else.
William Davies King’s Collections of Nothing
King, a professor at Santa Barbara, has spent decades collecting things that nobody else would want: food packages and labels (he has about eighteen thousand), illustrations snipped from old dictionaries (seven thousand), linings of “security” envelopes (eight hundred patterns), “the mute, meager, practically valueless object, like a sea-washed spigot, its mouth stoppered by stone.”
August 13, 2008 at 8:28 pm (Quotes)
Tags: diets, reading
The article by Ms. Ivens, from the July MARIE CLAIRE, is called “The Lonely Diet Girl.” Here’s an excerpt:
I had encouraged my bottom’s expansion by being the friend you could always share a chocolate soufflé and a bottle of wine with. What I didn’t realize was that such decadence was a weekly treat for other girls, not an everyday indulgence, as it was for me. Now, with a flagging metabolism, I would have to join the ranks of women all over the world whom I had never understood: the starved, the tortured, the miserable, the calorie-counters.
When I fessed up to my diet plan after week one, I was surprised that, instead of offering kinship and support, a few women were upset with me. As I had been their enabler, my sudden decision to restrain myself at the dining table reflected badly on their decision – or inability – not to. “Go on, let’s have one cocktail! You’re so boring now that you don’t drink!” As soon as my alcohol-free existence was uncovered, getting me boozed up became the mission for many on a given night.
The jealousy was palpable – especially when, after four weeks of trimming fat, sugar, and useless calories, I’d lost 10 pounds. At this point the tone changed from “We’re trying to get fun Sarah back” to “Depriving yourself is scary and dangerous.”
How crazy is that, dear blog readers?
August 12, 2008 at 9:08 pm (Quotes, Writers and Others)
Tags: collaborations, photography, reviews
Here’s what photographer Elizabeth Fleming said on her blog Tethered about friend Stella Kalaw’s work. It meant a lot to Stella because she admires Elizabeth’s work so much :
Combining word and image can be tricky–at its worst it can be like the copy of the Tao Te Ching I bought on Amazon a while back, with its cheesy, typical black-and-white photos of birds in flight and silhouettes of trees against the sky. But I believe Kalaw and Villanueva mostly hit the right note here: lyrical words are paired with lyrical images, each informing the other, quietly taking their time to sink in. I suppose my favorite kind of photographs generally have this lyricism, revealing layers from within their quiet complexity.
August 12, 2008 at 12:29 am (Books, Quotes, Surprises, Writers and Others, Writing)
Tags: reading
Today was a quiet day. Self watered back and front yards, then read in the living room, Gracie peacefully snoring at her feet. She also trolled the web (for hours — as evidenced by her aching neck!) And she landed (somehow) on a website for the Department of Medicine in the University of Minnesota.
Self couldn’t resist perusing the list of recommended readings. And a very interesting list it was, too. Self has a particular interest in reading “cross-over” writers from the medical field, writers such as Atul Gawande, Oliver Sacks and Abraham Verghese. Atul Gawande is represented on the list, as are books by Biloine Young (with the most intriguing title, My Heart It is Delicious), Sherman Alexie (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, still one of self’s all-time favorites), Robert Olen Butler (A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain), Jean D’Haem (The Last Camel: True Stories of Somalia), Donna Gehrke-White (The Face Behind the Veil: The Extraordinary Lives of Muslim Women in America), Philip Gourevitch (We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda), Aleksander Hemon (Nowhere Man), and Ryszard Kapuscinski (The Shadow of the Sun).
And then there is this book, that was published by New Rivers Press quite some time ago:
* Lim, Shirley; Chua, Cheng Lok; Lim, Shirley Geok-Lin. Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing
The site has a short review, and self is most astonished to discover herself described as “well known” — !! To which self’s only response is a hearty, hubby-style BWAH-HA HA HA HA!!.
Without further ado, the review:
This anthology of American writers originally from Southeast Asia (Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaya, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam) includes poems and short stories by 41 “emerging” writers in English. The anthology has been divided into themes such as “Family,” “Eating,” “The Different Past,” and “Returnings.” Some of the writers are already well known (editor Lim, Marianne Villanueva), and the others, with one or two exceptions, have already been published. All the writers deal with making a life in the United States while recognizing their differences, adjustments, and traumas. Particularly poignant are poems and stories by Anh Quynh Bui, Aurora Harris, Hanh Hoang, Joseph O. Legaspi, Lim, Ira Sukrungruang, and Villanueva; but all the works are well written and thoughtful. The editors, both professors of literature at California universities, have chosen well. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
August 9, 2008 at 7:33 pm (Home, Opportunities, Other Sites of Interest, Publishers, Quotes, Surprises)
Tags: Calyx, Publishers, Literary Journals & Websites, Saturdays
Hubby and self slept past 1 a.m. last night, giddy from watching the Olympic opening ceremonies which, in self’s humble opinion, were the most spectacularly beautiful opening ceremonies self had ever seen, worthy of a Chinese costume epic by Zhang Yimou. She didn’t recognize Li Ning, her crush of 24 years ago, (pardon for sounding a bit hyperbolic, dear blog readers) and the Philippine delegation looked cool in their sky-blue barongs (but why no women athletes?), and it was fun to see Rafael Nadal grinning like a schoolboy, and ditto for Jason Kidd and all the other highly paid athletes who seemed thrilled, simply thrilled to be part of the parade. George Bush looked relaxed; Putin did not crack a smile when the U.S. delegation marched past him. Sarkozy did not have gorgeous Carla by his side, and when self saw the Russian delegation she couldn’t help thinking about Georgia, and about her Georgian student at xxxx community college, Joe D, who’d written so eloquently about the bloody decade he’d just lived through and which he hoped (Alas!) would be the last violent decade for his country.
This morning, self keeps glancing at her watch. Realizes she is keeping time, wondering when son and Sean will arrive at the Hotel Domus Aurelia. The hotel staff were so nice, they e-mailed son detailed instructions how to get there from Ciampino Airport. (Estimated time from Termini to the hotel: around 75 minutes)
Then, self picks up a copy of Calyx to relax, and she remembers another student, Gillian, who self would meet for coffee about every other month, right here in Peet’s on Broadway. When they last met, Gillian imparted the sad news that she was shortly to go home to Oregon. Her parents wouldn’t continue to fund her living in San Francisco unless she got a job or enrolled in a regular four-year college. Self had one of those brainstorms that occur to her oh, about once every six months.
“Work for Calyx!” self told Gillian.
Gillian’s eyes lit up.
That same day, self e-mailed Beverly McFarland. The next day, Beverly e-mailed Gillian. And, last week, self received a happy e-mail from Gillian: it was all settled, she’d be interning for Calyx for the rest of the summer. Super!!! Self wrote Gillian: “You and Calyx are a good fit.”
Now, starting from the back of the Calyx journal (which is a habit self started years, perhaps even decades, ago), she sees a most interesting ad for:
invites you to visit the website
celebration1.org
for beautiful Classical piano CDs
including exquisite music
by women composers
to accompany
your reading of
Calyxlovely as gifts with conscience
your check is written
directly to
grass-roots
not-for-profit organizations
addressing global issues
Self must investigate! Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.
August 9, 2008 at 6:14 am (Books, Quotes, Writing)
Tags: Chang-rae Lee
By Chang-rae Lee, from his novel Aloft.
Nonna was his wife, and my mother, and at that point she had been in the brass urn for five years. Pop is by most measures fine in the head, though it seemed around that period that anything having to do with mortality and time often got scrambled in the relevant lobes, a development that diminished only somewhat my feelings of filial betrayal and guilt for placing him via power of attorney into the Ivy Acres Life Care Center, where for $5500 per month he will live out the rest of his days in complete security and comfort and without a worldly care, which we know is simple solution and problem all in one, which we can do nothing about, which we do all to forget.
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