San Francisco: Take one, the countryside.

After the Hazon Conference B and I spent a few days in San Francisco visiting his aunt, famous restaurants and intersections, and hugging redwoods.



The Painted Ladies. You can see the slope of the street.

The hippie in me had to, even though this is a horrible picture. We went shopping here and checked out a bunch of vintage shops. There is also a really awesome sock store where I found turquoise merino wool tights by hue. I decided not to buy them because I thought I could find them at home. I have had zero luck finding them online and haven't had time to go shopping in actual stores. :(

Dutch Windmills! There are two but the other one is under restoration.

the Botanic Garden. Can you see the awesome sunclock?

Bison! There have been Bison kept in Golden Gate Park for many years. I think it started around the turn of the century but I don't remember.


California Academy of Science is located in Golden Gate Park and is a natural history museum, a planetarium and an aquarium. It is huge! It was also packed being over Christmas holidays the kids were out of school and it was therefore crazy. Note to self do not go to museums over school breaks. I LOVE taking pictures at aquariums. I always get images that are extremely beautiful, graceful, colorful and serene (in contrast to the actual environment of the aquarium). I have a ton of aquarium pictures and I want to do a separate post of them so the extreme beauty can be fully enjoyed.

The are some kind of eel. I don't remember what they are called but they pop out of the sand at the bottom to feed and they are very small.

I love this guy. He posed for me and was very patient with me as I took a lot of pictures because I couldn't get him in focus.

Jellyfish are the epitome of photgoraphic beauty.


Sea dragons are my favorite. They are also everyone else's favorite too. They are very light sensitive and their tanks had a no photography sign on them. I think because people use their flash too much (a pet peeve of mine) I never use a flash anyway so I went ahead a took pictures. All the other people around the tank were making comments about me.



I have become interested in taxidermy. Weird, I know. I don't want to be a taxidermist I have just been interested in looking at it and in related objects. Like those frames of different species of butterflies pinned to a board. I think my fascination with Jan Svankmajer's Alice started it and Sleep No More fueled it. The jar and the skulls are from the naturalist's center. They have all kinds of stuff on display and they have a great library where you can do research. Members of the museum are also able to check out the books. I found a few titles I would like to read there. The leopard is from the old part of the natural history museum.

The Eco-roof. It is created in hills to imitate the hills of the local landscape. Circular windows are part of a computerized heating and cooling system. The air from outside is circulated within the museum. They also keep beehives and have botany studies on the roof.

5 famous people...

if you could invite 5 famous people, living or dead, to dinner one night who would they be?

Wendell Berry, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Julia Child, Eleanor of Aquitaine.

I wonder what this says about me,

"Eating is an agricultural act"

That's Wendell Berry. For those of you who have never read any Wendell Berry, you should. I have mostly read his agricultural essays. He wrote about what I now consider to be mainstream foodie topics (Thanks to Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver and Alice Waters) 30 years ago. He is also a farmer who doesn't own a tractor. He has a team of draft horses and a collection of "archaic" non-motorized iron tools. Wendell Berry is my hero. if I could invite 5 "famous" people to my dinner table he would be one of them.

About a month ago I was privileged to travel to Monterey, CA for the Hazon Food Conference. Hazon is the largest environmental organization within the Jewish Community. I had never heard of them until I applied to receive a grant to attend the food conference. They are a worthy organization and worth checking out and getting involved with. I had never heard of them because most of their activity is based on the coasts, NY and LA, because their is an infinitely larger Jewish population there than in Chicago. The conference was a wonderful opportunity to connect with some wonderful like-minded people including my new friend Aaron Lerman, whose review of the conference you can read at the Jew and the Carrot, here. Other notable people worth checking out and supporting are:
Julie Negrin, a cooking teacher with a cookbook coming out in the spring. She lead the first of the sessions I attended and I am super excited about her book.
Abbe Turner, dairy goat farmer and cheesemaker extrodinaire. Her farm, Lucky Penny Farm, is located in Ohio. read LOCAL. A truly amazing person and I want to help her find a Chicago market and go visit her and the goats when it is a bit warmer out.
Anna Hanau, Farm manager at Adamah farm. This girl is intense when it comes to farming. in a really awesome way. She told us the best tractor story ever. I wish I could tell it but it will definitely lose something. I would like to be able to apply and work at Adamah this summer. We will see about that though there is lots going on at the moment.
Jonathan Silverman, farmer in the Bay area with lots of creative projects going on. My birthday fell during the conference and he sang happy birthday to me and presented me with a fancy chocolate bar for my cake/present.
Pesach Stadlin and Vivian Lehrer, husband and wife founders of the Eden Village Camp near NYC, Pesach taught a session on permaculture and incorporating it into your everyday life and was a wonderful teacher. Vivian moderated a Vegetable monologues panel of female farmers that included Anna Hanau and Abbe Turner. Eden Village Camp is in its inaugural year this coming summer and seems like a truly unique and dynamic opportunity for children. There are some discounts and scholarships available so if you know of some children who like to play in the dirt check them out!

I am still weeding through all the materials that I brought home and will probably say more as I do that. There is a group of us here in Chicago trying to get some projects off the ground for the community here and I also have a person project that I am going to use this blog as a platform for in the coming months as I start researching. i will tell you more about that in another post as this one has lots of info already!

Things that go sprout in the night, pt 3

haven't seen this in awhile, huh?

We found this guy when cooking the other day. I thought it was cute how the little sprout is peering out from under the skin.

Boston, part 2

It seems that in my excitement over Sleep No More I forgot to mention what else we did while in Boston! Thanks Amanda for reminding me!

Since B has been to Boston a few time before he kinda knew what kinds of things to do. The first picture in the last post was from Top of the Hub, the Boston equivalent to the Signature Room here in Chicago. It is a bar and restaurant at the top of the Prudential Tower and you can see the whole city. We were there for sunset. And I tried a new drink! A caipirinha. I liked it but I don't remember what was in it or what it tasted like. Fruity, I think.

On our way to SNM I sat next to a lady who was knitting on the T. She was making a table runner from Mason Dixon Knitting that she was trying to finish before the holidays. I hope she did! She also told me that she was using the linen yarn that the book recommended and it was very stiff and painful to work with. The ladies at her LYS told her to wet out the yarn and then freeze and then whack it with a rolling pin or something. We kinda laughed about that but she said it worked and I think it would be great stress relief. I was also informed that there is a cute yarn shop in Brookline right off the T stop where we were getting off for SNM. We walked right by it I kinda wanted to go in but they were closed and I didn't want to be tempted since my funds are low and I don't have any new projects in my head right now. (and did you see the awesome guerilla knitting in south Boston from my last post? Not too much guerrilla knitting here in chi-town, at least I haven't seen any, so I was very impressed!)

We spent Friday at the MFA (Museum of Fine Art). They have a large costume and textile collection so B thought I would enjoy it. They have a special collection room where the costume and textile dept seems to have regular rotating exhibits. i was super excited about this. I get really geeky about historical clothes. We spent the morning wandering around and just as I was starting to get tired and burned out I told B we had to go see the costume room because I didn't want to be tired for that. And there was no exhibit!! It was closed!! I peered through the crack between the doors and there wasn't anything up!! Soooo disappointing! We were gonna go check out the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum afterward but were so tired we decided to go take a nap before SNM (take 2, because really you HAVE to see it more than once and preferably as many times as possible to see everything, well almost everything. You discover new things and new rooms every time you see it!)

After SNM(2) we went to this bar called Drink. B had been there on his trip a few weeks before and really liked it. It is a cocktail bar and they serve all kinds of old fashioned cocktails like a French 75 and a traditional champagne cocktail. After that I was drunk for the first time since college (I am a light weight). I felt like I was talking incessantly and was confused as to why there were so many stairs and exhilarated that I wasn't falling down them. Apparently the drunkenness was all in my head as B said I didn't really seem any different from usual. Also Drink serves cocktails that are not champagne based and they have warm drink concoctions perfect for the winter. Just talk to one of the highly skilled bartenders about what you like and they will find you something or make it up.

We didn't get to all the things we wanted to like the Gardner Museum, the aquarium and a diner in Cambridge that Amanda recommended but I really enjoyed Boston and we did get to have sticky buns for breakfast. It was the first trip in a very long while that I really enjoyed. We got everywhere we needed to go on public transit (the T). It worked for us but I don't think it is quite as extensive as the CTA. Then again Boston is rather more compact than Chicago. I would definitely go back to Boston in a heartbeat (especially if someone decides to send me there before February 7 so I can see SNM again. if you go with me I will buy your ticket to the show AND on of the fancy drinks at the speakeasy bar after the show.)

Boston

A the beginning of December B and I went to Boston. The reason is sort of fairy tale. We went to to see a play. B had been in Boston a few weeks previous for work and saw London's Punchdrunk Theatre's Sleep No More put on by ART. (The beautiful Amanda Atkin's talked about it here. I happened to send this post to B while he was away and thought "oh this sounds interesting. I would love to see it if it were here in Chicago." And thought no more of it.) B came home from his trip and asked if I would go to Boston with him in a few weeks to see this play (B never sees anything more than once). it was that good. I said ok. I wish I had pictures or video or could send you all tickets to see Sleep No More. I wish I lived in this play. If you live in Boston and you do not go see this (It has been extended through Feb 7, 2010!) SHAME ON YOU! and I can NEVER be friends with you. Punchdrunk does experiential theatre which means that the audience does not sit and watch a performance they are part of a performance and so experience the story as part of the story. Sleep No More is a telling of the story of Macbeth combined with a small bit of Hitchcock's version of DuMaurier's Rebecca. (The second Mrs. DeWinter is the King's wife and Mrs. Danver's is the MacBeth's housekeeper) The performance took place in an abandoned school building in Brookline. Think 4 floors, lots of hallway, many rooms, several flights of stairs. The audience members all don masks. Think Eyes wide Shut. You are then taken into the school in small groups and dropped off at different floors. There is no talking allowed and masks must be worn at all times. You roam around, in and out of all the rooms which are set up with meticulous attention to detail to be the rooms of the MacBeth household, outdoor spaces, speakeasys, a post office/travel agency. Some rooms have no action in them so you are free to explore and let your voyeuristic tendencies take over. go through drawers, read letters, open closets, sit on chairs and couches. (I also felt slightly Klepto in the space as there were so many wonderful things around) Some rooms have action in them. The characters portraying a scene. The performers are also dancers and there are very few if any actually lines, which are not missed in the slightest, but there are laughs and grunts and sighs and cries. you watch part of a sea of white masked ghosts all watching too. You get in close with the characters and when one leaves a room you follow. You race, literally running sometimes to keep up and find yourself in another place in another scene in another part of the story. Or you find another scene happening somewhere else. Some characters reward you for your loyalty in following them with little gifts, a charm to ward off evil, an envelope full of sand, or will devote special attention to you, give you the honor of wrapping their shawl around them or take you by the hand into another room alone. The veil between worlds breaks. Scenes happen simultaneously, like they would in real life. You do this for 3 hours. it is dreamlike and surreal. The sights as well as the light, sound and smell all work to transport you.
B bought tickets in advance for thursday night. I asked if we could go again on standby the next night and we got in. 2 nights in a row I spent exploring this world and drinking it in in gulps. i dreamed for a week in the colors of this world. I had a love affair with one character and an intensely personal moment with another (which involved the two of us being momentarily stuck behind a falling door). have I mentioned that I want to live in this play? or at least keep it in a box on my dresser and escape into like Jeannie's bottle when I need a break from reality. Ah-mazing. Well worth the price as it was a bit pricey ticket wise but I also bet it was extremely pricey production wise because everything was just so perfect. I even came home with fake blood on my skirt from the witches gathering. I have Punchdrunk on my radar for when I eventually make it to London because it seems like all the productions they do are experiential like this.

Amanda Atkins and her portraits

I just discovered the artwork of Amanda Atkins and I am in love. Her portraits are simple and yet full of meaning and her style reminds me of cubism and Picasso and Edward Gorey.







(Not that you can see any of my interests through my choice of her work to share, or anything ;)

She sells prints of her original work at her Etsy Store at a very reasonable price and will even print on silver rag paper by request. And for the month of November, her birthday month, she is giving a way a custom portrait to one lucky winner! Make a comment on this post on her blog to enter.

Amanda is also a fellow vintage fashion lover and an animal loving member of Etsy for Animals.