fannie merritt farmer (1857-1915)

the other night, my mom and i discussed her letting me keep our “ump-teen”-years-old Drip-O-Lator (manufactured in massillon, OH) as long as i found a larger one online. now, this aluminum contraption is genius for easily making delicious coffee with no electricity (except, you know, boiling water). no fuss a-tall.

i was able to find a larger one from gloria’s treasures. here’s an example. i’ve been poking around this online store and loving all this classic dinnerware. yes, it’s true. i also like how gloria describes so many of her products as “SHINY IN AND OUT.” that’s exactly what i like to hear when buying some vintage stuff.

anyway, all this excitement got my mom and me talking about old pre-WWII era fannie farmer cookbooks. my mom’s mom had one from about 1936 and learned most of her cooking from it. i never knew my grandmother and i’ve been subsequently learning about her through her cooking. i guess she wasn’t a very good cook (“couldn’t cook her way out of a wet paper bag!” says my mom) because she roasted meat til it tasted like shoe leather and steamed veggies til they were mushy. but she did make a mean fresh orange icing (butter and powdered sugar, creamed, plus orange rind and fresh orange juice).

fannie farmer

(she was an aries)

our fannie farmer cookbook is from the 70’s or 80’s and you can tell which recipes are good cause those are the messiest pages (brownies, for sure). i guess what’s important about the pre-WWII era cookbooks is that they were published before rationing went into effect, which drastically changed how america cooked. there was also food rationing in WWI but mostly on meat and sugar. i wonder whether the u.s. would do well to ration now, to curb over-consumption of junky and high-calorie foods by the people who need them the least. rationing gas might also be a good idea, or taxing gas and using the tax to pay for public transportation development.

anyway, i’m on the hunt. and it’s really not that easy to find a fannie farmer cookbook from this particular time period. there’s a bunch from the 1990’s & after, and there’s a bunch of the original 1896 boston cooking-school cookbooks. fannie farmer was a graduate of the school and later published a collection of recipes she learned and perfected there. in this book she stressed the importance of exact measurements. no more of this “pinch” and “handful” business. she was called “the mother of level measurements” according to wikipedia, anyway.

farmer considered her most important work food and cookery for the sick and convalescent.

Overall, the book reveals Farmer’s touching intimacy and sympathy for the invalid’s needs -something she knew firsthand. The invalid’s tray should be orderly, cheerful, with small portions in dainty china. A heart-shaped bread and butter sandwich will be eaten when the slice of bread and ball of butter would not. She writes: “Men and women are certainly but children of an older growth, which fact is especially emphasized during times of sickness and suffering.”

i like cookbooks from the early-to-mid 1900’s because there’s only about 50 ingredients used to make everything, there’s a focus on seasonable cooking, and i guess it reminds me of everything i’ve learned about cooking from my mom (never wash out a sifter, paprika goes rancid, iron frying pans are essential, never soak wood in water, how to “cut in” butter with two knives, real baking requires serious elbow grease…)

elbow grease–

humorous.

Vigorous rubbing, proverbially referred to as the best unguent for polishing furniture. Hence allusively, energetic labour of any kind.

1672 MARVELL Reh. Transp. I. 5 Two or three brawny Fellows in a Corner, with meer Ink and Elbow-grease, do more Harm than an Hundred systematical Divines with their sweaty Preaching.

(thanks, OED! you’re the best!)

“whopper virgins”

this post is long overdue…but i saw a commercial back in december that directed me to whoppervirgins.com. basically burger king commissioned a team of filmmakers and researchers to find people in three remote locations (thailand, greenland and romania) who had never eaten a hamburger before, much less a burger king hamburger. then they asked the person to compare a whopper with a big mac and say what was better. (whopper won)

i was totally appalled at first.

like–just the use of the word “virgin”–bk’s big dick popping burger cherries around the globe. considering what crap is used in fast food, the environmental impacts of bk’s expansion, the economic impacts around the globe. one requirement of the taste test was that there would have to be a mcdonalds and bk close enough so the burgers would be the absolute “freshest.” clearly, these fast food chains have already taken over the whole fucking world so why root out the few people who haven’t been tainted by icky american food?

then i took a step back…

what if the folks in romania, greenland and thailand find it super exciting/intriguing to see how enthusiastic some americans are about getting them to try a few burgers? i wonder how much they get compensated?

and hey–some people do find hamburgers extremely tasty. what’s wrong with feeding some people, compensating them (i’m sure) and wrapping it up into a neat little video to display on the internet?

at least it’s an interesting ad campaign…

not so fast! this whole thing is a lesson in anthropology –how one people from one culture view another culture and bring back what they’ve “learned.” this is no independent film here folks. these bk guys are in search of people who “really live outside of things” and they are “really curious to see their expressions” when faced with a whopper. like here we are–aren’t we americans great? we are saving these poor (backwards?) disconnected people from a lifetime of wondering what the hell a “sándwich americán” tastes like.

furthermore, what about all those people who said a big mac is better? (the majority is not always correct)

i don’t know. this all just doesn’t sit right with me.

what about a third option: a homemade, grass-fed, free range burger with ripe tomatoes, non-shitty lettuce and fresh baked bread (or even designed with consideration for the individual’s traditional diet). which one do you think would win?

i dream of grilled cheese

i have very fond memories of kicking my feet in my grandmother’s kitchen, happily eating round after round of pumpernickel-breaded, cheez-whiz-ed, jersey-tomato-garnished, squashed-thin-and-burned-to-a-crisp grilled cheese sandwiches. didn’t matter how gross the combination sounds. they were delicious and made with love.

i have only shared this with a few people, and i’m hesitant to share it now. i don’t want anyone to steal my idea. but perhaps one day, when i have some capital and some inspiration, i want to open a diner/luncheonette that is all about grilled cheese. now before you go scoffing “oh, what a limited and unimaginative idea for a restaurant,” hear me out…

there are so many things one can do with bread and cheese and a cast-iron skillet! the key is versatility to suit all tastes/notions!

challa bread! rye & pumpernickel! white bread (gross)! whole grain! focaccia!
muenster! swiss! cheddar! american (gross)! cheez whiz (i know it sounds gross, but it’s grandma’s style)! plus!–tomatoes, pickles, hummus (yes!), onions, bacon, “fake-on,” olives, greens! and then! if we’re going to have a G.C. we need soup (pref. tomato, but you can get creative here too) and salads, and spicy things! (i’m a ketchup fan) and we must have dessert-y things too like GOOD root beer floats and egg creams and chocolate malts.

this place would be open for lunch and then host radical community events in the evenings. maybe a small book store? now i just need a name…

——–

update: i discovered something truly amazing: the grilled cheese invitational held in california. these are my people! this picture is captioned “grilled cheese wins at life”
and it does. it fucking does.

p.s. i promise i will NEVER be as creepy about grilled cheese as this cold war era freak show advertisement.

unbelieveable!

i’ve been earning some extra money indexing files for this woman and i just came across her water bill…

in 93 days her modest house used 700 cubic feet of water with an average daily consumption of 7 cubic feet. total use in gallons in 93 days is 5,000 with an average usage of 56 gallons per day!!

guess how much the bill was for?

only $12.60!!

can you imagine going into a store and buying 56 gallons of water each day? (and then transporting it to your house, no less) you might be able to find a gallon of water for $2 so we’re talking about $112 a day to buy water from a store. that’s $10,416 in 93 days!

i know we both live near the chesapeake watershed area which is the largest (?) in the U.S. but i was just listening to Peter Singer on the radio today talk about his new book/campaign. here’s a quote from the website:

For the first time in history, it is now within our reach to eradicate world poverty and the suffering it brings. Yet around the world, a billion people struggle to live each day on less than many of us pay for bottled water. And though the number of deaths attributable to poverty worldwide has fallen dramatically in the past half-century, nearly ten million children still die unnecessarily each year.

Singer was explaining to Diane Rhem (LOVE her!) how a large part of what all these kids (age 5 and under) are suffering dying from is diarrhea from unsafe drinking water.

america’s water usage (and over-consumption in general) affects everyone in the world. people are dying because they can’t access the water we use to hose out our assholes or whatever. water is NOT FREE. it is NOT CHEAP! maybe if gas & electric bills were made lower (so, you know, people don’t freeze in the winter time) and we made water bills higher (FUCK LAWNS!) then some of these water-consumption issues would be drastically reduced and people would think twice about taking a half-an-hour shower or fixing a leaky toilet.

have you heard what’s going on in california? by the time winter rolls around you might be hard-pressed to find an out-of-season fruit or vegetable. (buy local and can your shit!)

my high school environment science teacher theorized that the next world war will be over water and food. i don’t doubt it.

you down with LBB*?

…yeah you know me!

9:45 pm thursday night i was called downstairs to “help!”

a bat was circling around our dining room! it landed on the breakfast table in the kitchen and emitted the angriest metallic buzzing sound when we poked a broom at it. the cat was totally disinterested when it dropped to the floor. eventually my dad chased it out of the house with a broom.

proof!

i realize this is kind of like a big foot photo cause all you can see of the bat is a little brown blur in the center foreground.

*little brown bat

first green!

came home earlier than usual and felt inspired to go climb a tree. trees are on my mind a lot lately and i can’t wait to see some buds. i got distracted by the dejected-looking compost bin and decided to turn it. we’ve been eating less fresh produce lately and sending it down the sink disposer instead. the compost was getting pretty moldy and gross before then. but it looks so much better now! at least i think so. it soon will be time to fertilize some spots in the yard that need encouraging and then start putting more compost in.

after forking some air into the compost (and letting some funky smells waft up) i noticed a litte–wait–no!–really? green! a full-formed if droopy little green plant with a white flower on the end. i pushed back the insulating leaves and checked around some more. sure enough a handful of little greens poking their ways up out of the ground. turning over more leaves i found a fat worm, some pillbugs and a couple blades of grass.

excitedly, i checked the other beds where i had planted bulbs before the ground froze over. one little blade poking up on the side of the garage. nothing yet by the side of the house.

so cute!

after that, my dad and i raised up the bird feeder so the deer can’t keep stealing the seeds. not 15 minutes later the usual pack of deer came bolting into our backyard. they stayed pretty far back.

then we searched some wildflower books to figure out just what was growing already. my dad’s initial thought was: “snowdrops!” (Galanthus) here’s a picture:

yep i think so too!

i like this official description:

There are 75 different species and varieties of snowdrops. They are all white. Isn’t that boring? This is probably why only two species are commonly cultivated.

another squirrel update; another mystery solved

so there’s a new birdfeeder in town. hanging from the japanese maple tree about 5 or 6 feet off the ground. at first squirrels were all over that thing, two or three at a time, hanging upside down and creating a big mess on the ground beneath it. just in the past few weeks we’ve seen a lot of birds partaking as well.

so i filled up the bird feeder with about 6-7 cups of feed about a week ago. a couple days later it was practically empty. strange! my dad filled it again last night and tonight…we caught our feed thieves [NOT BIRDS!] in the act.

after capturing these bold deer on camera i started toward them. they watched me but felt barely threatened. i chucked a fluffy snowball at them. they barely moved. i got closer and then ran after them in my slippers in the snow. they still clung to the edge of my backyard. i mean, i like deer but, shit…

my job tomorrow is to raise this feeder up higher.

on second thought–it is really freaking cool how one of the deer takes it upon themself (i know, i know, but i really didn’t want to gender the deer) to step up and nudge the seed mix out of the feeder. smart little buggers.

————–

sidebar: last week my dad and i saw a red-tailed hawk perched on our garage. big bird! we were watching out my bedroom window.  it swooped to the maple tree. it looked at the ground in between some bushes right behind our back door and then swooped down to the ground to tget at that spot. apparently, the cat had caught a mouse the day before and my dad flung it between the bushes.

sidebar #2: the roofers seemed to have fixed our squirrel problem by first installing molding around the underneath of the roof where it had previously been open to the wind and rodents. then they installed a squirrel-sized one-way door out from the attic to the roof. i haven’t heard any midnight scratches since then.

super bowl-rejected PETA ad

please watch PETA’s new ad here via perez hilton. apparently, NBC wont allow PETA to show it during the super bowl.

i get that PETA is trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator for a good cause (people should really eat less meat from questionable, if not, horrifying sources) but, really? this is the second(?) PETA ad connecting eating meat with impotence/bad sex. i don’t know what sources hint that eating meat is responsible for impotence but maybe it’s slightly better than the stereotype that all veggie men are crunchy fags. maybe it’s sexy these days to be a vegetarian?

i mean, vegetables are sexy, but–it seems PETA has their campaign all wrong. for example, i can’t believe PETA ’s “chew on this” video lists the #3 reason to be a vegetarian: “because eating meat and dairy makes you FAT.” and why are they trying to get yet another ad featuring mostly naked women in sexy poses to play during the superbowl? isn’t that the exploitation of human animals? (zing!)

however, what is hilarious is NBC’s list of images is would cut from the ad:

* licking pumpkin
* touching her breast with her hand while eating broccoli
* pumpkin from behind between legs
* rubbing pelvic region with pumpkin
* screwing herself with broccoli (fuzzy)
* asparagus on her lap appearing as if it is ready to be inserted into vagina
* licking eggplant
* rubbing asparagus on breast

glad they didn’t mince words! NBC says the ad “depicts a level of sexuality exceeding our standards.” well, that’s not very hard.

Dear PETA,

I read one of your pamphlets in 9th grade and turned veggie shortly thereafter. So thanks. But seriously–WTF?

(also–check out this recent absurdity from PETA)

the discovery of farmer john

while reading in baltimore’s free magazine the urbanite for things to do this weekend, i found a listing for a screening of a film called the real dirt on farmer john “a 2005 doc that tells the tale of cross-dressing Midwestern farmer John Peterson, known for his feather boas and leopard-print coveralls, who created a successful organic farm in the 1970’s” (urbanite 53).

um…yes! i think i found a new personal role model.

then! at that precise second i was reading the description, my dad came upstairs with a book he found for me in south carolina. (my parents were away for a week visiting the area where my mom’s mom grew up). the book was none other than farmer john’s cookbook: the real dirt on vegetables: seasonal recipes and stories from a community supported farm! i cannot wait to make a chocolate beet cake.

in related news, i submitted my resumé and a cover letter to a community supported farm near york, pennsylvania. (i wont give the name just yet since i don’t want to jinx myself). but it seems so cool and i really want this internship that spans the whole growing season. (oh, please!!)

ha-aretz

ha-aretz means “the land” in hebrew, and also the name of an israeli daily newspaper. i feel like i’m going through a “fat” period. like, doing my storing up for winter now that we’ve got some real cold. storing up like eating, and also storing up on ideas.

i’ve been hibernating to some extent, dreaming of the spring instead of focusing on now. the cat’s got the same idea. now that his thyroid isn’t freaking out, he doesn’t pee on my stuff anymore. we’ve been keeping each other warm at night.

child care is hard work, but rewarding. i’m trying to influence their little brains about reading, using one’s imagination, and trying non-chemically foods.

i just read in defense of food: an eater’s manifesto by michael pollan. he spends a lot of time defining just what the hell food is not (factory-produced chemical garbage that makes “healthful” claims according to the current nutrition fad, for example) and gives a seemingly-simple strategy for making good food choices:

eat food. not too much. mostly plants.

i will include a few choice quotes from his book. note his oh-so-dry wit:

[A]s a general rule it’s a whole lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a raw potato or a carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over in Cereal the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming their newfound “whole-grain goodness” to the rafters. (Pollan 39-40)

quoting Weston Price (b. 1870), a dentist concerned with the rise of tooth decay:

“The dinner we have eaten tonight,” [Price] told his audience in a 1928 lecture, “was a part of the sun but a few months ago.” (99)

think about it! eating real food is like eating the sun! but it’s more than that–it’s connecting what one eats (which, when put through the mostly-perfect machine that is the human body, gives life) to the people who grow the food, to the sun and the water and the soil that produced the food, to the process of evolution…i mean, it gets really big.

in the chapter “eat food: food defined” one of pollan’s food-choice rules to follow is “don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” he elaborates:

Is a product like Go-Gurt Portable Yogurt still a whole food?…There are in fact hundreds of foodish products in the supermarket that your ancestors simply wouldn’t recognize as food: breakfast cereal bars transected by bright white veins representing, but in reality having nothing to do with, milk; “protein waters” and” nondairy creamer”; cheeselike foodstuffs equally innocent of any bovine contribution; cakelike cylinders (with creamlike fillings) called Twinkies that never grow stale. Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting is another personal policy you might consider adopting.

now–i enjoy a moon pie as much as the next junk-eating american but the man has a point.

[side-bar: in searching for a link about moon pies, i discovered the official website with a "moon pie memory" contest. this piece won "most unusual":

My favorite Moon Pie memory is one of the most bizzare experiences I've ever had. I was driving my squad car one Summer night, eating a Moon Pie, I received a call of a man walking down the highway, in the nude. I arrived to find one of our local eccentrics (actually bi-polar) named Jack *Smith* walking down the side of the road without any clothes, carrying a box of Moon Pies in his left hand & eating one with his right. As I approached him, he said to me "Here, ya' want one?", and I haven't been able to eat one since. As a joke, some of my co-workers will put a Moon Pie on my desk. I probably need counseling.

W.D.

enough said.]

aren’t there foods that “bring you back?”

birdfeeders and house bugs

my dad put up a sweet birdfeeder a few weeks ago, and apart from the squirrels feeding on the fallen seeds i haven’t seen any birds. one theory is the birds haven’t found it yet. another is that the feeder is in the wrong location, at the wrong height, or something. another is that it’s the wrong food for the kind of birds around here. another is that the vultures control the skies in the area.

the bird food is all thistle seeds (a.k.a. nyger seeds). according to the bag:

Nyjer seed is a treat specially suited for feeding Goldfinches, Pine Siskins and other small beaked birds.

fun fact:

The American Goldfinch is mostly monogamous, but a number of females switch mates after producing a first brood. The first male takes care of the fledglings while the female goes off to start another brood with a different male.

rodent update: no squirrels caught yet with those darn havahart traps. those are some smart buggers. we’re getting some estimates from roofers about insulating the attic/closing up the entryways. only one mouse caught since the 5 mice caught a month ago. this one was discovered in the basement.

(i just returned from “disposing” of the little gray guy, a.k.a. offering it to the vultures/foxes in the backyard. the mouse had been dead for almost a week and i was very nervous about seeing a decomposing mouse, but surprisingly, it looked about the same as a mouse that had been dead for only a few hours. maybe because it is dry and cool in the basement. i would not want to clean up a week-old dead mouse in july.)

_____

now that it’s cold out (but still warmer than usual) i’ve seen a few different kinds of bugs hanging out inside. two weeks ago i started seeing these:

with the help of the old national audubon society field guide to the mid-atlantic states, i determined that the above is some version of a stink bug (acrosternum hilare) and this:

is a small milkweed bug (lygaeus kalmii) note: i’m not sqeamish about touching bugs (except earwigs and silverfish) plus, this one crawled onto my hand of its own accord. also this picture just looks weird in general, like a butt. it’s not i swear.

both of these bugs are way out of season, even for this climate. i wonder if the wacky weather/being indoors is to blame for that.

now those kinds of bugs are gone. i found a dead one after returning from new year’s travels. but instead, there are many fruit flies around the house, attracted to pools of water in the cat dish, on the sink, in the fruit bowl, etc.

squirrels 100, humans 0

time to bring out the big guns.

this afternoon, my dad and i made a big ruckus in the attic areas. we vacuumed up all the remains of maple seed pods. we pried up some floor boards and stuffed moth balls in the cracks where they are clearly nesting. i placed some ammonia-soaked rags in another spot. i re-baited the traps (those buggers ate the p.b. and got away un-captured!) with a combo of peanut butter and duct tape to get them to work at it. grr.

now my room smells vaguely of moth balls and ammonia. a small price to pay when the stakes are this high.

we will not be defeated!

small town antics

after hearing emergency vehicle alarms go off for several minutes, my dad busted out onto the front porch to see which neighbor’s house was burning down. but–no fire, just…

also–that’s my dad saying, “you da man! you da man!” in the background.

______

update: my uncle sent me the video he took of another santa in the neighborhood. a neighbor around the corner is really into trains so every year he sets one up in his front yard. this one has santa riding around on it. you can hear my uncle in the background, too.

the oxford english dictionary

Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else, and by the immobility of our conceptions of them.            (Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, vol. 1, 1922, p. 4).

while searching a few sites for a used book, i came across powells.com’s blog. there’s a contest to win a 20 volume set of the oxford english dictionary (i want this SO bad) and to enter, one submits an english word and the reason why it’s so good. check out the entries.

i’ll share some gems with you:

Kit November 30th, 2008 at 9:10 pm

My favorite word in the English language is YES. Nothing sounds better than hearing that word =)

Brian November 30th, 2008 at 10:53 am

Bullshit – It just cuts through so many other words.

Although I would like the OED so I can learn some others.

Paul M December 23rd, 2008 at 9:34 am

Tortfeasor – Sounds like the person is a villain from a comic book, which I guess is kinda true

rick s. December 23rd, 2008 at 1:07 pm

Rick – Not only is it my name, but it also means a pile of hay. Though I have never asked my parents, I have created my own back story as to how I was conceived, and eventually named. On a crisp autumn Iowa evening, as my parents drove home from eating a nice dinner and sharing a bottle of Chablis, the car broke down. On the way to a distant farm house, they stopped by a pile of hay and did what non-violent drunk parents do. Thereby creating me and my name. The probable reality is they had already seen the syndicated episode of MASH three times and were just rather bored, but a person can dream.

i miss the OED. at school, the library paid for a subscription to the online source and i could spend a few hours looking up a word, then looking up all the words around it, the literary quotes in which the word is used, its first appearances.

i wrote a paper in spring 2007 about the definitions and origins of the word “memory,” using the OED as a reference. here’s me getting all sci-fi:

The definition of memory has changed more recently due to the development of science. In psychology, memory has come to be defined as how the brain physically changes when a memory is formed. In the science of materials, substances are said to have memory. That is, a material may have a natural tendency to return to its original shape. Only in the past fifty years has the word “memory” been used when referring to technology and computers. A computer has the capacity to remember stored information. As this technological science progresses, it will be interesting to discover what effect this artificial memory has on the way humans remember things. If memory is also referred to as “recovering from unconscious,” could artificial memory be the means to an artificial consciousness?

that homework assignment led to the discovery of my favorite word:

mnemon, n. The minimum physical change in a brain, or other system, which constitutes the storage of a single piece of information in the memory; a unit of memory. (OED)

memory takes up space?! i mean i know about using the word memory as in a storage facility, but memories are not cards in a card catalog (wouldn’t that be a trip?). this concept blows my mind. in that same class, we read marcel proust’s remembrance of things past (or, a search for lost time, or, a la recherche du temps perdu), one of the best concept books i’ve certainly ever read. some people would say of all time. i’m not about to read the full 3,200 pages or whatever, but maybe one of these days. proust had really interesting ideas about space and time, involuntary (triggered by, say, a smell) vs. voluntary memory (trying your darnedest to remember this memory from way back when).

i’ll leave you with another quote from the memory assignment:

According to the Dictionary of English Language (1755), “Memory,..[is] Exemption from oblivion.”

a child of nurses, doctors and teachers

the kids i babysit are with their dad today until i don’t know when. so my day is kind of prematurely aborted. i finished the cat who ate danish modern and then talked to my dad about some writing he’s been doing.

my dad just finished his first semester in a nursing program, and being one of the only men, one of a few white folks, and the oldest person in the program, it’s been inspiring for me and others to see his progress and enthusiasm. there aren’t too many 50+ folks who would change careers with such zeal.

he worked like crazy this semester, taking 18 credits in a master’s program. i’m impressed by his diligence. my mom told me that in graduate school in the 70’s my dad would write over a dozen drafts of a paper. ocd? yes. he’s evened out since then except when it comes to, say, organizing the freezer. (i know where i get these habits…)

there are a few experiences that have really touched him and he says he wants to relate how it is to be a man in a nursing program, what men can contribute to nursing. i suggested he make a zine. it’s low-key, low-tech. he can get his ideas down on paper and out there without too much fuss. and it will be fun. i think he’s into it.

i did a genealogy report in middle school(?) and discovered just how full my family is of interesting nurses, doctors, professors and teachers. my mom’s dad wrote quite a few books on topics ranging from how black communities in the south could reduce hypertension through traditional methods of medicine rather than expensive doctors to how mining minerals affected the development of the soviet union. my mom’s brother was a journalist for newsweek during the vietnam war. he died there in an accidental bombing and was m.i.a. for about 20 years. my dad’s parents were both teachers and school administrators in new jersey public schools. my mom is a psychiatrist in the veteran’s hospital and, previous to nursing school, my dad worked for an insurance company researching injury prevention.

quite a list of helpers!

i like education, information technologies, publishing…i’ve lectured for several college classes on transgender issues [make another page about this]. i’m concerned about making sure radical, queer books stay in small public libraries. i like the idea of zine distribution as a form of personalized publishing. like, “oh, you need to get this information out to that group of people? on how small a budget? well, i have just the thing…”

also–a side note. there are two people my dad knows who have shifted careers in the most interesting way. one guy used to design car parts for nascar and, after helping to design a kind of neck brace, is now the one who just got his phd in psychiatric epidemiology, hoping to apply it to figure out how people can bounce back better from brain injuries. the other guy used to be a civil engineer and now he is a genetic engineer. i have a theory about connections between physical map-making and the process of fabricating a life story but that’s for another time…