Lunafest

I just got in from attending Lunafest, a festival at the Rio Theater billed as films for, by and about woman with proceeds to women's center, women's cancer organization, etc. More like Depression Fest with films about a woman leaving her abusive husband, a Chinese woman poisoning her baby because the newborn was yet another girl, a woman with breast cancer who gets a mastectomy while her baby is still nursing and the baby screams her head off and ... ugh. I'm ready to get into bed and start eating a lot of rich, gooey comfort food.

There were a few lighter moments, including a short by Shaz Bennett who is an LA performance artist. By lighter, I mean the film brings together her cat, gerbils, sugar cookies and Bacon Bits and made me laugh even though it's basically about the death of her mother. If you need someone to share a deathbed vigil, Shaz might be a good choice.

I found the short film, Top of the Circle, here : http://medialab.ifc.com/film_detail.jsp?film_id=451

Okay, off to bed with me.

Cooking with Florence and Isa and Terry

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by TV cooking shows -- obsessed actually -- especially by one in particular. There were many Wednesdays when I faked being sick so I could stay home from school, blanket to my chin, cup of tea on my nightstand, to watch Florence Hanford's TV Kitchen. It was one of the nation's first cooking shows.

There was something so comfortably Philadelphia and still so otherworldly about Florence P. Hanford-- her tightly-controlled hair -- no strand ever getting into the food -- and constant fast patter, her seriousness about the perfectibility of a meal.

And the dishes she created! It wasn't that my mother was a bad cook; she was just such a predictable cook. Chicken, always broiled, on Mondays. Spaghetti and meatballs on Tuesdays, etc. Mom was also "modern" in that early 1960s sense, meaning that so many of her ingredients came out of cans and the freezer.

Not Florence! Chatting away with her viewers, Florence diced and stuffed and chopped and mixed and whipped and poured and rolled and used so many fabulous utensils that I never knew existed - lemon juicers and garlic presses and wire whisks. I practically swooned over her rubber spatula, the slurping, sloshing sound it made while moving viscous cake batter out of the metal bowl into the cake pan -- a pan that had already been buttered by Florence's confident and efficient hands.

Here's a typical menu that Florence prepared each week -- without ever burning a thing:

Rib Roast of Beef

Milk Gravy

Browned Potatoes

Peas and Carrots with herbs

Cucumber Tomato Aspic

Nippy Mayonnaise

Chive Bread

Chilled Fresh Fruit Cup

Wonderful Loaf Cake

I found this link, where there's an actual clip of Florence in action: http://broadcastpioneers.tripod.com/kyw/hanford.html

Plus, a link with actual Florence recipes, such as her All-in-One salad:http://www.ichef.com/recipe.cfm/recipe/All-In-One%20Salad%20Bowl/category/Salad%20Recipes/itemid/109991/task/display/recipeid/95255/recipecategoryid/61

There's also a tell-all interview with Florence in 2002, still living in the Philly area. She talks about the early days of cooking shows, how she had to use gelatin at 7 times the usual amount so her Jell-o mold wouldn't melt under the hot lights. I never suspected a thing!!!!www.geocities.com/bpofphila/hanford1.html

I never actually wanted to BE Florence. She was too old, too motherly. I wanted to grow up to be her assistant, the lovely young woman in wool skirt, cashmere sweater and heels, who walked the finished dish out of the kitchen and placed it on the perfectly-set table for the end-of-show presentation. Over the years of TV Kitchen, the girls changed. Invariably polite, Florence always addressed them by name. I so envied the Bev or Judy or Darleen or Barbara -- these slim-ankled, pert-breasted home ec majors -- who did the brisk walk, camera following, of taking the Skirt Steak Roll-ups to the table.

Enter ISA AND TERRY with their delighful baked goods. I am so glad to see this tradition of the womanly art of cooking continuing on the Internet. Now I want to trade places with Florence's tattooed, kick-ass spiritual granddaughters -- Isa Moskowitz and Terry Romero --the two culinary stars of Post Punk Kitchen, which can be seen on Brooklyn cable and right here on the Internet.

Thanks to my friend Susie who shares my love of all things domestic (except bathroom cleaning) for sending me this link. http://www.theppk.com/ These vegetarian, guitar-playing, fun-loving girls can really whip up a cupcake (and sushi and matzo ball soup sans the chicken).

Check out their show and recipes. Whip up something wonderful and then invite me for dinner. I'll even help walk the dishes from the kitchen to the table.

AT A PODIUM NEAR YOU

Book Passage, an independent book store in Corte Madera, Ca. has got to be one of the best places for a writer to hold a book reading. Before such events. I tend to get kind of cranky. Not only do I have to write the book, but I also have to stand before a bunch of strangers and talk about it. Despite a lifelong dread of public speaking, I’m getting a lot more comfortable with public readings. They should all be like my experience at Book Passage this Saturday. Despite the 10 am time slot (their usual time for “kid” events), I got a nice turnout, thanks to the store’s excellent publicity and my friend Kathy calling out all of her Marin County friends. Hannah, the young woman who introduced me, obviously read the book and was gracious and welcoming.

While reading sections from Home, and Other Big, Fat Lies, I kept an eye on the kids in the front row and was delighted to see them engrossed. The Q & A sessions was especially fun – from the third grader who asked the intriguing question -- “Do you like all of your characters?” -- to the woman from Oakland who asked – “Do you have a writer’s group?”, which emphasized to me how much I need some ongoing feedback as I make my way through this next novel. The group was lively, but small enough for me to ask a question that has me really concerned. My current novel-in-progress opens with a 12-year-old girl dying and her organs being donated. Is that too much? Would you read a book that stared with something so upsetting and graphic? I was thrilled to look at a row of 14-year-old girls and seeing their heads nodding in support of the idea.

As people came forward to have their books signed, my eye caught the eye of a middle-aged woman who was smiling at me. Something about her looked familiar, and for some reason, my mind leaped back to my high school in Philadelphia and came up with a name: Janet. I hadn’t seen Janet since we were both 17. She recognized my name in the Book Passage newsletter and wondered if it was the same "Jill Wolfson". I'm so glad she decided to come. We both definitely have more wrinkles and more gray, but I recognized her anyway. My Philly accent confirmed I was the right Jill.


Janet and I were never friends, but she was certainly part of my landscape at Northeast High. I remember her as being especially beautiful with a serenity that stood out in a sea of teenage chaos. Janet was popular – That enviable word! -- in a way that I never was. Class secretary, that kind of thing. As she complimented my reading, I laughed to myself about how – admit or not – this was part of every writer’s fantasy – maybe in some cases, the initial impetus to publish. To stand all grown-up and successful before the former high school princess who once seemed to have it all.

But of course, chances are that Janet felt as miserable and insecure in high school as I did. We hugged, exchanged contact information. I hope to get the chance to hear her own story – her 30 year-plus journey from an entrenched Jewish neighborhood to Marin of all places, a path that I’m sure is as interesting and compelling as the path our grandparents took out of the shtetl.



Book Passage offers an amazing number of literary events -- more than 400 each year - in both the Marin and San Fran. locations. www.bookpassage.com

What's Art Reading?

When I was a young-ish reporter writing a profile of someone, famous or not-so-famous, I frequently checked out the subject's bookshelf to get a quick "read" of them. Kind of cheesy, I know, but I figured it would tell me something if they had the complete works of Tolstoy rather than the Complete Set of Reader's Digest. Since those days, I've concluded that "you are more than what you read," just as I look back with a bit of embarrassment how my teenage self harshly judged others on whether they preferred the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.

Still, I find myself fascinated by what people are reading. Obviously, so do others, hence the list of "Books I'm Reading" on so many websites and blogs. Perhaps, you've been wondering what Art Garfunkel has been reading lately. I know I have. Turns out that Art is a passionate reader who's kept a list since 1968. His favorites? Plenty of Tolstoy and others, from the Tao Te Ching to Stephen King. http://www.artgarfunkel.com/library.html It's an intimidating list that makes me wonder just how many of these hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books Art can actually remember.

The Big C

In today's news: "Cancer deaths in the United States have dropped for a second straight year, confirming that a corner has been turned in the war on cancer. " http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070117/ap_on_he_me/cancer_deaths


It definitely doesn't feel that way in my life. Two of the people closest to me are dealing with cancer right now. My dad, soon to be 86, has advanced lung cancer. My beautiful, wonderful, amazing close friend Nancy has been dealing with metastatic breast cancer for the past year and a half. I'm so glad that she started blogging about her experience. I don't know anyone who can write about wretched chemo and CT scans and the painfully exotic language of oncology with more honesty, anger, humor and full-blown insight than she does.

http://nredwine.blogspot.com/

As I read her blog this morning, I was pulled back into my childhood, a time when the word cancer wasn't even said aloud. Aunt Viv "wasted away." The closest the grown-ups came was referring to someone having "The Big C." When my mother first told me about my father's condition, she said, "The other shoe has dropped." My emotionally fragile Aunt Molly was never even told what her "sickness" was and my mother -- her sister -- frequently wonders if "not knowing" allowed her to work and socialize until she died. I don't think so. I just don't believe that innocence is any kind of bliss.

I have been around cancer a lot recently--talking on the phone to my parents, accompanying Nancy on doctor visits. But still. Still, sometimes when I say the word Cancer, I feel it heavy and uncomfortable in my mouth, like a naughty phrase that I let slip out.
Maybe I need to say it more often -- cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer -- in the mistaken hope that I can make it be just another word.

Branching Out

After making countless socks and scarves, I decided to tackle a new knitting project -- lace for the first time. I'm intimated, but my local yarn shop guru assures me that it's fairly straightforward and incorporates all the most common increase and decrease techniques. It will be especially challenging, since I'll be following a chart for much of it. Being a "word" person, I'm more comfortable with written directions.

If you want to knit along, you can find the chart on the web site of my favorite local knitting store:

www.thegoldenfleece.com/free_patterns/show.php?katalog=Leaf%20Lace%20Scarf

For written directions: www.knitty.com. Click on archive and in the pattern file, enter the name of the scarf, which ironically for my first lace experience, is called Branching Out.

I've uploaded a photo of the completed scarf from Knitty. I'm working with a silk-mohair mix in dark blue with highlights of yellow, red and orange.

Wish me luck.

Star with Hair

I was biking home from Wilder Ranch late today, enjoying the orange sunset against the steel gray surf, when I noticed a larger than usual number of people staring at the last bit of day's light, many of them with binoculars and cameras focused on the horizon line. Somehow I had missed the news that a comet was scheduled to put on a show in the western sky. Nearly 10 years after comet Hale-Bopp led to a strange suicide pact, another bright comet would be gracing the early evening sky.
I pulled my bike over to the railing and joined the crowd staring with expectation at the horizon line. According to the buzz, Comet McNaught would be visible any second very low in the western sky shortly after sunset . The night before, some said, it was bright enough that observers could see it with the unaided eye.

Yes! There is was, and then it was gone. After that glimpse, I don't think I've ever witnessed a more spectacular sunset, the sky turning a deeper and deeper orange until I felt myself practically vibrating under its spell.

A comet is a small body in the solar system that orbits the sun and at least occasionally exhibits an atmosphere and/or a tail — both primarily from the effects of solar radiation upon the comet's nucleus, which itself is a minor body composed of rock, dust, and ices. From the Greek word komē, meaning "hair of the head," Aristotle first used the derivation komētēs to depict comets as "stars with hair."

There are some terrific images at this site:

www.spaceweather.com/comets/gallery_mcnaught.htm

MORE TO READ

I got a lovely fan letter from Olivia Selzer, a high school teacher from Erie High School in Erie, Kansas. She just read WHAT I CALL LIFE and found it helpful in understanding the foster children that she comes across as a teacher. She also commented on my daughter Gwen’s list of favorite books that I have posted on my Web site, and offers some more suggestions. She writes,

Some books I have read just this year on the suggestion of a student that BLEW ME OUT OF THE WATER:

Anything by Carolyn Mackler, but her absolute best---The Earth, My Butt, and Other, Big, Round Things

The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin

Stuck in Neutral, and Cruise Control -- companion books by Terry Trueman

Silver by Norma Fox Mazer

Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelson

Thanks Olivia! I plan to read several of these. An invitation to all: Send me your middle-reader and YA favorites

THE SUCCESS OF FAILURE; THE FAILURE OF SUCCESS

For many years, my meditation practice was centered around Kannon-Do Zen center in Mountain View, CA. I so admired (still admire!) Les Kaye, the teacher there, for his straight-forward teaching style. Les has a shaved head and wears traditional brown robes, but he’s very much of this ordinary and extraordinary everyday world. While heading Kannon-Do, Les worked at IBM, maintained a marriage, raised children, grappled with his version of the traffic snarls and life snarls that certainly define my own life. Over the years, I’ve been so grateful for his simple teaching to “Keep showing up.”
I remain on the mailing list for Kannon-Do and receive the periodic newsletter. In the most recent one, there’s a transcript of a talk given by Les, entitled “The Problem of Success,” in which he makes this very intriguing statement: “I have come to believe that the fear of death is a result of a mind in panic over the loss of opportunity for success in a future that is no longer available.”
I’ve been mulling this over for a while now, watching my own fear and panic over letting success elude my desperate grasp.
I also laughed when I paired Les’s comment with a quote by writer Tillie Olsen who I blogged about yesterday. Tillie, an activist until death, wrote: “Well, I'm going to be one of those unhappy people who dies with the sense of what never got written, or never got finished”.
I love the crazy truth of these two seemingly opposite world views. But beneath the surface, I feel that Les and Tillie are actually talking about the same thing. At least that’s the message I get from two people who have earned their wisdom badges on the frontlines of life. I hear them telling me to let go of the desperate chase for success, but at the same time, I must aim for success, putting my heart and 100 percent effort into everything I do.
In this way, I’m sure to succeed, along with failing every step of the way.
The question to keep in mind: What is success?

www.kannondo-org
Book by Les Kaye www.kannondo.org/site/books/zaw.html

Tillie Olsen

I'm on an email newsgroup for women writers in the Bay Area and yesterday, there was a posting from one of the members, Ericka Lutz, announcing the death of her grandmother Tillie Olsen at age 94 in Oakland. Here's what Ericka wrote:
Dear Friends,

My grandmother, Tillie Olsen, passed away last night, January 1, at 11:40 p.m. The end was peaceful -- my mother, father, and my Aunt Kathie were there with her. Other family members had attended to her round-the-clock in her final weeks. My Grandma will be deeply mourned both publicly and privately by the many people she touched with her words, her deeds, her ideas, her humor, her intelligence, her dramatics, her kisses, her love of life and humanity, her belief in justice, and her fierce blue eyes and loving hands. She is, and will be, deeply mourned by me. With love,Ericka

I emailed condolences to Ericka and it was odd to think of myself as one step removed from Tillie's actual granddaughter. Even though I never had the privilege of meeting her, she was an inspirational grandmother figure for me, for many women, I imagine. Jewish, feminist, social and labor activist, writer of short stories and essays, mother. So much of her writing grappled with the conflicting pulls of art and motherhood, of finding a way of giving of her words and giving of herself in the most basic sense, as diaper changer, cook and breadwinner.

For me, her most memorable short story begins, "I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron." What a line. I wish I wrote that.

I no longer keep a lot of books in the house. A long time ago, I got tired of carting them from move to move, so every year I go through and sell even my favorites to the second-hand store. But tonight, when I looked at my bookcase, there was the worn cover of a hardback of "Tell Me a Riddle," the survivor of many cullings.

Tillie's output as a writer was meager, but only in the physical sense. A collection of short stories, essays. That's because she was also busy raising four daughters, working as a waitress, being a wife, a hotel maid, a factory worker, a grandmother, joining the Young Communist League and organizing packinghouse workers in Kansas and Nebraska.

* Here's what the obit in the New York Times said about Tillie: In 1933, she moved to San Francisco, where she would live for more than 70 years, and resumed her pro-labor activities. During the 1934 San Francisco general strike, she was arrested, and promptly chronicled the strike in The New Republic and The Partisan Review.

* Here's what the Santa Cruz Sentinel said: Politically active, class conscious and joined to the world as if every soul were a soul mate, Olsen countered the literary myths of her male peers. She immortalized the woman who stayed home, carried an emotional burden and held things together for her family.

* Here's what Tillie said about herself in an interview: Well, I'm going to be one of those unhappy people who dies with the sense of what never got written, or never got finished.

I hope I can do my small share as writer, mother, advocate and soul mate to the world by moving every day towards that ever-moving finish line that inspired and motivated this amazing woman.

For more on Tillie -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillie_Olsen

Ericka edits Literary Mama, a literary magaine for the "maternally inclined." www.literarymama.com/

Welcoming in 2007

When I search my memory, I can recall only a few memorable New Year's Eves. The teenage one when I emptied my father's liquor cabinet, smoked weed and spent the next few days puking. The first New Years in love with the man who would later become my husband. The raw, dazed and crazed New Year's eve when I knew for sure that the marriage was over. The first New Years as a new mom and the one a few months after we moved to Santa Cruz. The city used to have a First Night with all sorts of musical and theater events taking place in the downtown area. My last few New Year's Eves have felt frantic as I've attempted to come up with distractions that keep me from obsessing about what my teenagers are doing out there. Are they being safe? Are they using good common sense?

But most of the Dec. 31st of my life have blurred together as a night to get through, a night of feeling unsettled and disatisfied. I know a lot of people feel that way, that no matter how we say "it's just another night," it remains a touchstone of where we are and where we want to be and where we have been.

Last night, I turned down a few invitations and spent the time alone. It felt right to give in to my sense of aloneness around this particular holiday. During the day, a few friends gathered at a local cafe to write what my daughter dubbed our New Year's "evolutions." I like the term better than "resolutions," in that it honors the process of change and the decision to point life in a particular direction and then to see what happens, or what doesn't happen.
Maybe New Year's Revolutions? Or Convolutions? Or Restitutions? I wonder how those phrases would alter and shape my own formidable list.

I was boogie-boarding in the ocean as darkness fell and the moon came up, and I stayed in the waves until dark, finally making my way through the kelp and around the rocks to get out of the water. Luckily, it was a low tide. As I pedaled home, my fingers and toes lost all feeling and I swear I could feel ice flakes forming on my wetsuit.

I spent an hour or so cleaning house, no metaphor, real scrubbing and dusting to welcome a new year. Then, I bundled up and took a long walk along West Cliff accompanied by Michael Pollan www.michaelpollan.com on my iPod. I've been listening to his incredible natural history of food and the food industry, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and feel both sickened and empowered by his findings. It was an odd--or maybe perfect--choice for New Year's Eve reading, since so many people were no doubt filling up on corn-fed beef and salmon and high fructose corn syrup in its many disguises. Everyone should read this book. It may -- it should -- change the way you eat-- or at least change the way you think about what you eat. One more personal "evolution" for the year--to be more aware of the connections between the earth's plants and animals and what I put in my mouth that keeps me alive, to really understand and accept my place as a predator, even a vegetarian one.

At midnight, I was warm in bed, connected to the firecrackers and shouts and drunken, happy cheers by a half-remembered dream.