Seen on Mullholland at 11

Three brilliant films, one album & a book

Three films I want to see again, like, now:

Before Night Falls
Short Cuts
Election

In fact I may sashay my way over to my local video store (how hackneyed does that sound?) and pick them up right now.

Also, I must highly recommend the new Goldfrapp album, which I listen to like dreamy teenager whilst fluttering around the house. I alternate it with my Best of Maria Callas which I know is very amateur-ish of me, but I'm still an Opera Highlights kinda girl.

On the book front, I'm re-reading Brideshead Revisited, which inspired every semi-gay (gay but not out, school buggerings notwithstanding) man I knew at Oxford to start carrying round a bloody teddybear while not fawning over Aubrey Beardsley pen and ink drawings (Rollo, I do NOT mean you).

Inordinate amounts of Gratitude on Leap Day

To celebrate Leap Day and the fact that I didn't sleep all night, I made very buttery, salty scrambled eggs with a little milk, served on organic mill bread (the kind that J hates so I can only buy it when he's not here - for some reason known only to him, he favors sweet Hawaiian bread and butter top). I made my fifth cup of tea extra strong and now plan to walk with Dotsie for two hours in Franklin Canyon (where I got a moving violation for doing a California stop at the Stop Sign - please!) to clear mon tete. I am reeling in soldier onward bravely mode as my dear friend R, who was a reader for Dreamworks before he got serious and studied environmental law (and subsequently works in the legal department of a tv company) has given me brilliant, brilliant, careful, measured, kind notes on the thing that Miss J and I have been writing for what seems like months. Noony would call this "breaking news" as this is the first public declamation of the thing. It almost feels like coming out (I did admit to a girl-crush on the woman who plays Elphaba in Wicked). It feels terrific to get feedback but especially feedback that is constructive and professional. Props also to Miss L & Miss E who were extraordinarily supportive and sweet; I don't care if it's true or not, it just make you feel like pushing on up the hill. I mean, at the end of the day (I'm tired, forgive my cliches) isn't that what friends are for - just to keep you carrying on at what you love, with tireless support? I am a lucky girl on the friend front. I have thousands. Okay I lie. I have a few good friends and I love them all dearly. Miss J should be counted in there too, because when I called her this morning to say I'd been up all night and I couldn't face looking at the darn thing again today after inhaling it for the last three days said "of course, do you need company on your walk." Driving Minks to school, I said, that's a real friend Minky; someone who supports and loves you even when you've been up half the night after drinking almost a whole bottle of Chardonnay and sneaking three cigarettes outside at bed time, like a fourteen year old. Actually I didn't say this last bit. I just said the first bit and teared up appropriately. She's in that weird friend phase at school, where she's really finding out who her friends are. Her besty came running over when we arrived at school and I said, "Don't worry Emma - I packed two forks with the pasta today" and they both giggled. Minks rushed into my bedroom this morning stark naked and asked if I had a razor. I shouldn't be alarmed, I know. I keep forgetting she's 13.

But back to friends. One of my new Facebook friends is a brilliant, brilliant architect who designs buildings filled with beams and windows and light. I looked at some pictures of a Lutheran Church he'd done, and was filled with awe. It actually made me miss Norway. I thought about the Viking Ship Museum in Tonsberg and trolls porridge with cinnamon and those enormous whale skeletons that smell absolutely rank in the Summer.

Fred (the horse) is having a lovely time in his pasture near Fresno. He and a grand prix horse, Alfie, who is also laid up for a few months, are the only white horses there. Apparently when all the other horses graze sedately in the pasture, the two white horses frisk and frolic together in the muddy patch and so now both are completely brown.

So thank you to all my friends who've been kind, supportive, brilliant, and who've made me laugh and propped me up. It's been a long, lonely winter. But I've come through it! And my lovely sister and my Mamma, and of course Miss A who confided to me that she tries out a myriad of different accents when she is alone. And N who thought he could interest me in shooting his new airsoft gun and accepts cups of tea from me sweetly and even forces down breakfast sometimes, and M who calls me Mamma-Lumma and makes me get into bed with her in the morning. And J who is away but loves me from afar (if it's Friday it must be Mexico City). And C who things my paragraphs of dialog are too long but thinks I'm funny anyway. And L with whom I agree that inspiration is something channeled from above. And of course E, who sends me peppy emails every morning even though she's probably addled with ativan. And my bro who kicks my arse at Scrabble, and my other bro who sends me pomes wot 'e wrote. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you. Without you all I'd be a shell.

But now, I really must walk off the scrambled eggs.

Buckley is dead

The first line of the Buckley obit in the NYT is genius. Find the whole thing here.

William F. Buckley Jr., who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, famously arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse, died Wednesday at his home in Stamford, Conn.

My oldest brother (2)

re. British Earthquake
Ok but send food and warm clothing.
Ward j

Huxley

"Next to silence, music is that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible."

-Aldous Huxley

My oldest brother

Q: Are you all okay after the (UK) earthquake?
A: What earthquake ! Regrds. Ward j. Remember we are british and do. Not notice minor events. Few dead


(he's not the best typist but he has a new blackberry and loves it)

Cute Hillary Clinton piece from Washington Post

But she quickly acknowledged not being the most stylish person on the plane, ribbing her traveling chief of staff Huma Abedin, who was featured in Vogue magazine last year (Clinton herself declined an invitation by the magazine to sit for a photo shoot).

"Here I am on the rope line, working my heart out, and people are like, 'She's the one in Vogue. Oh my gosh, she
was in Vogue,'" Clinton said as she imitated people pointing at Abedin. "I'm like, 'I'm running for president, hello.'"

Garbo by Steichen

www.lumas.com

The path to bliss and widsom

Lovely piece on meditation here.

Jamie Tarabay

It's weird to hear Jamie Tarabay reporting from NPR in Washington and not Baghdad. One wonders what kind of post-traumatic stress she's going through and how strange it must be not to be hanging out in a war zone.

Route 77

I found a piece of paper on which I'd written "Be still my soul - Sibelius, M Tab Choir" and Ct 77 Durham Road. I've downloaded the music and I'm going to put this here for posterity:

13.85 miles; from Route 17 in Durham to Route 146 in Guilford.
	Commissioned in 1932, from part of the old Route 112.
	Route 77 is a designated scenic road. The Danbury News-Times writes: "Start at the shore and then head for the hills on this 11.5-mile scenic country road, running from Guilford Center north to the town of Durham. See turn-of-the- century farmhouses, crooked old barns and picturesque meadows. There's even a pond along the West River where you can fish, canoe or simply take in the scenery." Map is here:

Voysey

The Arts & Crafts movement is in my head at the moment and this is an artist I like, Voysey.

Oppdagelsen av fjellet

The National Gallery in Oslo has it own mountains-related exhibit:

"The exhibition shows artistic and scientific expeditions into the mountains in East and West of Norway in the first part of the 19th century. The artists on these expeditions documented their magnificent natural surroundings." Includes work by Gude.

The mountain in Norwegian art

The mountain in Norwegian art (fjellet i norsk kunst) exhibition has just opened at the Henie Onstad center in Oslo. This piece by Peder Balker.

LA Time Op-Ed

This the op-ed piece from the English paparazzo who recently quit, cold-turkey, his Britney chasing.

Big Mike's in Chile

An unexpected and rather beautiful email arrived this morning from my old friend Mike D, former Bauhaus fan and Belsize Park resident. Here's a little piece:
So it's a postcard although we're a long
way from a postbox - I'm not even sure which country
this is. Sat on the deck of a cruiser watching ice and
rock glide by in Tierra Del Fuego. Grey forbidding
waters which a seal pops his head out of between
dives, green trees stacked up cliffs that give way to
moss and then fists of stone buttressing vast
glaciers, alas with waterfalls surging out of their
blue hearts like sand from an hourglass.
Strange mix of boredom & rapture,banality and Zen.
Daytimes I queue in line for rice pudding and
eavesdrop on rounds of bridge ; evenings I watch the
moon gild the waters for us like a lantern held up by
the Gods as an albatross guides us past the wrecks.
'Nuff of my sonorous musing. It's probably just like
Norway anyway. I don't normally do this -the crew are
twentysomethings while the passengers are average 76
but I'm hitching a ride in a great-uncle's cabin from
Buenos Aires to near Santiago to visit Rod Palmer.
He's been writing a book on Chilean graffiti. Then
it's back to my veg garden on the Welsh border and
part-time in an antiquarian bookshop. I think last
time we wrote I was on my way to New Zealand -stayed
for a year and a half and it's lovely, but sometimes
lovely isn't enough.

Rainbow in Beverly Hills

Lunch with Minky (not in nyc)

Extreme Weather

Wicked Weather in NorthEast:
Snow, Sleet Snarl Travel

-- the headline on CNN currently

(Minks is happily tucked into my bed watching Will.i.am's Yes We Can Obama video).

No flights to NYC

Minks & I were up at 4am, in the car by 4:30am and at the United counter at LAX by 5:10am only to be told that our flight was cancelled, that all the morning flights were cancelled and the only possible flight they could put us on was via Pittsburgh (and seriously, you don't want to be stuck in a snowstorm in Pittsburgh at the best of times), due to bad weather in NYC. Jumby, reached at the W, confirmed that Manhattan resembles a winter wonderland, that it had been snowing since 4am and that great banks of snow line the streets (actually I'm taking liberties - that last nugget was from another friend in the city). So, no pizza from Otto for us tonight. No MoMA, no ice skating in the Park, no Hairspray, no crusing down Madison, no Takashimaya. Minksy is being brilliant, very stiff upper lip after initial tears. I feel awful for her.

Laurie Colwin by Anna Quindlen

Can't resist this appreciation, from Gourmet magazine.

More Laurie

"One of the delights of life is eating with friends, second to that is talking about eating. And, for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends."

-- Laurie Colwin, Home Cooking

Laurie Colwin, from the NY Times (2002)

A Virtuoso of Enoughness

By PILAR VILADAS

''There is nothing like roast chicken,'' Laurie Colwin wrote in ''More Home Cooking,'' her second collection of chatty food essays. ''It is helpful and agreeable, the perfect dish no matter what the circumstances. Elegant or homey, a dish for a dinner party or a family supper, it will not let you down.''

Just like Colwin's writing: simple and unpretentious, yet delicious. She died 10 years ago -- a fact I still accept only grudgingly -- of a heart attack at 48. In the early 1980's, as a young woman trying to make sense of life and New York, I devoured her novels and stories. Even today, when I'm having one of those dark nights of the soul, I read a chapter of ''Happy All the Time,'' and I'm myself again, reassured by Colwin's affectionate examination of human foibles; her smart, down-to-earth characters; and above all her richly detailed descriptions of serenely ordered domestic life.

''Oh, domesticity!'' she writes in one of her loveliest short stories, ''The Lone Pilgrim.'' ''The wonder of dinner plates and cream pitchers. You know your friends by their ornaments. You want everything. If Mrs. A. has her mama's old jelly mold, you want one, too, and everything that goes with it -- the family, the tradition, the years of having jelly molded in it. We domestic sensualists live in a state of longing, no matter how comfortable our own places are.''

Colwin, in fact, was as much a domestic sensualist as any of her characters. ''She had a very active, ardent nature,'' recalls Alice Quinn, the poetry editor of The New Yorker and a longtime friend of the author's. ''You felt the zest for people, a solicitous tenderness.'' Colwin felt particularly at home in the kitchen, preparing meals for herself, her family or her friends -- a passion she discusses in ''More Home Cooking'' and its predecessor, ''Home Cooking.'' (A measure of Colwin's enduring appeal is that all her books are back in print, as Harper Perennial paperbacks -- good news for her fans, although it does not alter the sad fact that the stack of her books that sat on my desk as I researched this article will never grow any taller.)

Colwin loved food -- eating it, cooking it, reading about it and, above all, talking about it. ''The sharing of food is the basis of social life,'' she states in ''Home Cooking'''s foreword, and goes on to say, in an oft-quoted passage: ''One of the delights of life is eating with friends; second to that is talking about eating. And, for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends.'' This, I firmly believe, belongs in Bartlett's.

As her titles imply, such eating and talking do not, ideally, take place in some booked-weeks-ahead restaurant. ''The thing about homebodies is that they can usually be found at home,'' she reminds us. ''I usually am, and I like to feed people.'' While she appreciates the kind of culinary artistry you find at a great restaurant, she prefers plain food. ''I myself am not particularly interested in restaurant cooking,'' she says in an essay adapted from a talk that she gave to the Radcliffe Culinary Friends several months before her death. ''I don't really want to learn how to make a napoleon. I'd much rather learn how to make a very good lemon cake, which you can make in your own home. I like plain, old-fashioned home food.''

And when you went to Colwin's home -- first a doll-size Greenwich Village studio, and later a garden apartment in Chelsea that she shared with her husband, Juris Jurjevics, the editor in chief of Soho Press, and their daughter, Rosa -- that was what you got. ''You'd have a perfect steak, lovely string beans, a lemon cake and coffee,'' Quinn recalls. (The steak might well have been an inexpensive flank cut, which Colwin thought underrated, and the string beans were probably organic, as she took a dim view of agribusiness.) Dinner was served on Colwin's extensive collection of vintage transferware platters and table linens, which she hunted religiously at flea markets. It wasn't fancy, but it was a feast. Colwin, says her friend Frances Taliaferro, a book critic, was ''just a virtuoso of enoughness.''

Her opinions were precise. Every kitchen should have a wire whisk, Colwin maintained, but she could do without a food processor, relying instead on her knives, a strainer and a blender for puréeing. She was no chocoholic, but she considered brownies ''in many ways the ideal dessert.'' She disliked elaborate evening parties, but loved tea parties because teatime was the time of day when pretty much everyone -- including children -- was hungry, and there was plenty of time afterward to clean up and recuperate. Still, there were exceptions: on Christmas Eve and the Fourth of July, dinners were a must.

''Laurie had a sense of order; order was very important to her,'' says her friend Victoria Wilson, a vice president, associate publisher and senior editor at Alfred A. Knopf, which published ''Home Cooking'' and four books of Colwin's fiction. ''Order and comfort.'' This produced, Wilson recalls, ''the sort of feeling when you're going home to your family, but without the complications. The only word I can think of is 'coziness.''' That's the word often used to describe the Colwin-Jurjevics household, where the kitchen opened directly onto a book-filled living room; the effect was ''almost like someone cooking in a bookstore,'' says Roger Friedman, a columnist for Foxnews.com, who first met Colwin in the 1980's when he did publicity for one of her books. The apartment was a microcosm of Colwin's world -- which, according to the artist Rob Wynne, was ''very inclusive, very warm.''

And more philosophical, as life got more complex. Once a fanatical chicken-trusser, Colwin abandoned the practice when she found her small daughter making spider webs with her pricey trussing string. But there she is: an old-fashioned girl in a modern world, keeping uncertainty at bay with a roast chicken on a pretty platter, soup in a china cup by the fire, or a nice lemon cake and a lively chat. ''I assure you that if you keep it simple,'' she concluded, ''everything will turn out just fine.''

ROAST CHICKEN
À LA LAURIE COLWIN

1 3- to 3 1/2-pound chicken
3 to 4 cups cubed whole-wheat bread
1/2 cup porcini mushrooms
1/4 to 1/3 cup broth
Salt and fresh ground pepper
Paprika
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon melted butter or water or broth for basting.

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Rinse chicken and pat dry. Combine bread and mushrooms in a bowl and toss with broth. Season to taste. Stuff chicken and secure with poultry pin or toothpick. Place in roasting pan and sprinkle with salt, pepper and paprika. (If desired, surround it with carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic and a red pepper.)

2. Roast for about 2 hours, basting frequently with melted butter and pan juices. The chicken is done when the leg bone wiggles and the skin is the color of teak.

Yield: 4 servings.

Buddha Shakyamuni

Eclipse

I piled the children and the dogs into the car and rushed up to Mulholland to watch the eclipse. The oldest child was, of course, grumpy about the whole thing, but came begrudgingly as he didn't want to miss out. Other people had the same idea and we all hung over the edge of a wooden fence between Laurel & Coldwater pointing our miserably small cameras towards the east where the moon appeared to be wearing a rather jaunty French beret. "Oh God, let's go now" said Noony after we'd been there for all of about a minute. "My darling, you really are turning into a curmudgeon," I said. "Molly-coddled, curmudgeon - why do you always use words that you KNOW I don't know" he says. "No-one uses those words here. It's not Elizabethan England, you know." I have learned to hold my tongue. I'm not terribly good at it but I hold it nonetheless. "What is a lunar eclipse exactly?" he says a moment later. Minks and I both struggle with an explanation. I am scientifically challenged at the best of times and I'm trying to figure out why if the sun has already set in the west, it's somehow now blocking the moon in the east. Minks bravely tries to explain. "You're both just WRONG" he says. We get home and realize that the eclipse is perfectly visible from our driveway, hanging gently above Mount Olympus. I rush over to my neighbor's house and drag her outside "Did you get a new car?" she says sweetly. "No! Look, it's the eclipse!" A tall blonde woman with a small child follows her out of the house and explains that the earth is blocking the sun and that casts the shadow on the moon. The total eclipse is a result of the perfect alignment of three celestial bodies (also called syzygy I believe). Apparently a bright star, Regulus, could also be seen, and Saturn, complete with rings, but try as we might, Saturn didn't reveal itself. This is from Jessica Damiano's blog in Newsday:

It's going to be extra special because Saturn and the bright star Regulus will line up to form a perfect triangle with the moon. Jack Horkheimer, of PBS' "Star Gazer," called it "the moon, the lord of the rings and heart of the lion eclipse," so I'm hoping the snow flurries in the forecast don't interfere with my view of the big event.

That's so romantic, isn't it? Click here for more "Star Gazer."

Enigmatic

Acacia blooms in the rain

February 2o - Total eclipse of the moon, Fidel Castro resigns, Barack Obama wins his ninth state in a row. Is there something happening here? This is just a bookmark, but I think today's an important day.

Alex F, who I'd hoped to find in the wilds of Nepal, is nowhere to be found, and yet, I think he'd be a fun person to re-acquaint oneself with. All this history has been flooding back over the last couple of days and I'm wonder if it's fat with Inner Meaning that I'm not seeing.

The rain is pouring down and the greyness is dotted with yellow acacia blooming all over the canyon. Jumby's father is in hospital and I'm going to see him this morning in the hope that I can cheer him up. Sandy, my mother-in-law, seems to have risen to the occasion in the most admirable and courageous way, and she has everything sorted. He's been in and out of ICU and yet she's remained deadly calm. We're all feeling new levels of respect for the sweet and quiet way she has handled all of this.

J's in Mexico City again. It's tiresome. I feel myself holding in all the frustration at his not being here, and pretending not to care, and letting the annoyance keep a low profile, buried in layers of belly fat and cashmere, but it is beginning to get to me. Admitting it is not easy though, because who the hell am I to complain and whine like a baby over this? Poor thing is working so hard and my bleakness is of my own making. I've TiVo'd all the Jane Austen I can find on PBS to cheer me up, although it does tend to make one's sentence structure somewhat antiquated.

One does feel an acute need to burst out of the minutiae. It's an easy and boring way to spend one's day, bogged down in it, when really what is needed is a busting out, like the acacia, really. Or to "rise above it" as my brother loves to say. Perhaps this rainy day is a perfect time to visit a museum and suck up some heady culture (not that ogling Michael Johns on American Idol isn't culturally fulfilling). Lucian Freud's drawings are in NY and so shall be one thing Minky and I shall visit this weekend.

Vain hope that the clouds will lift so that we can actually see the eclipse. I shall polish my binoculars in case.

yum

I don't know about you, but I'm already dreaming about the Fairfield Tomato Festival, August 16 & 17.

Artie

It's been a long search, but Miss Minks has fallen in love with a big ol' Oldenburg called Artie (as in Artie Shaw, I'm reliably informed). He's a pinto, a gentleman, and she just loves him. As luck would have it, all of this happened on her birthday on Saturday, and now he's hers.

Blake

If the doors of perception were cleansed
Everything would appear to Man as it is, Infinite;
For Man has closed himself up, till he sees
All things thro' the narrow chinks of his cavern


-- William Blake

I must attribute my finding of this, one of my favorite but forgotten quotes, to Victor Vertunni Di Albanella, whom I haven't seen since I was 18 and living on Polstead Road in Oxford, but now, apparently runs a theater company and has recorded a rather beautiful album of Blake's poems turned into songs. And this, of course, is where Huxley got his title from.

pilfered facebook image (beautiful)

Valentina

I got a bit of a snide comment from a friend today after being asked about the the ready-skewered lemon and rosemary chicken from Fresh and Easy. My friends think I'm crazy because I love F&E but now all my family is hooked I can't be alone in my madness. Can I? So my friend's husband says, snitty as you wish on a Valentine's Day, "you'd better blog about the chicken." Well guess what? I'm not going to. So there. I know I'm probably dull and repetitive, but if you don't like it, don't read it. There are millions of blogs out there. Try Bai Ling's, for example.

Stranger things have happened today. Yes, other than the dog eating my 400g Toblerone bar.

First off, I'm extremely fat. No, not fat compared to other people, but for me, I'm what I delicately like to call "winter weight". I'm February Fat, which is incredibly dull because it leads to self-consciousness on the diminishingly slim wedge of attractiveness scale. I can usually get away with it, in heels and a skirt (thank God my legs are still good) with make-up and a fresh blow-dry. I'm not delusional about my hotness quotient. (Despite the fact that I saw the Madonna video from the Berlin press junket and thought, dang I want HER plastic surgeon and despite the fact that all my friends thought she looked awful). But the feeling fat thing is really dull. It comes hand in hand with being called "mam" in the market and forgetting to sing along to songs that you really like, and wondering if anyone would actually notice if you didn't shave your legs. But today, I walked, as I have done every morning since last Friday, with my lovely friend J, in Franklin Canyon. We walked early and we walked pretty fast, both of us scrubbed and be-sweated and be-sweatshirted, and the grass was green, green, green, and the sky was blue-gray, steely as if waiting for a storm. And there were all kinds of dogs out, and men and women running, and idiotic ladies with their dogs who really had no right to be owners of dogs, and buses full of school kids. It was lovely. Lovely indeed. And it does fill one with an eternal optimism which leaks into the day in unsuspecting ways. And what's more, a strange man who resembled a hair dresser or Dijon, or whoever that chap is with the scent that's blasted all over Rodeo Drive on billboards, always in Yellow and Black, said "Hi" not once, not twice, but three times, and then even gave me a look while driving his Very Large Mercedes down towards Beverly Drive. I'm sure that he's forgotten his bi-focals, and he was somewhat ancient, but honestly, it was the best feeling I've had in weeks. Thank you Dijon. May we have many mustardy moments.

But I jest.

Weirder still is as I was waiting at a light at the intersection of Hollywood and Laurel Canyon, after my little sortie to Fresh & Easy (hush now, Mr M, enough with the sarcasm), who popped out of their apartment building, all bearded and rock 'n roll but Charlie. Charlie Manson, right there in the flesh. Of course he didn't see me, waiting patiently at the red, listening to my Kate Nash (can't get enough, I swear), head down in my Prius. The only thing that the Range Rover and the Prius had in common is the color, and clearly Manson is not paying attention to the color. I stare firmly ahead and try to keep my eyes on the imaginary flow of traffic. But talk about ruining your day.

Whoosh whoosh, with all the negative energy. My Franklin Canyon walk brought such benevolence and brightness to a grey day and that I definitely don't need, especially on Valentine's Day.

Senor Mexico City is now home and apparently he was in Chicago, not Mexico City, and it was freezing and a waste of time. We're home and it's cold and the steak (from Fresh and Easy) is on, and the mashed potatoes, and the white squash (only 76c on sale) and All is Well. Truly. All is Well and He is Home and That's That.

Sweet dreams little Valentinas, and especially little Valentina, Amanda & Justin's baby. Happy Birthday!

Hollywood Blvd - V Day

Favorite Headline from TMZ

Amy Wins Five Grammys and a Tooth

David Lynch on Ideas

This is lovely.

Tea

Chinese wallpaper

Amy visits F&E

My friend Amy sent me this funny account of her first visit:

I decided to swing down to Fresh & Easy to see if I could get something for dinner. So first I accidentally drive all the way down to Sunset because I can't remember which boulevard you said it was on. I can't imagine a supermarket on Hollywood anyway, so I drive around the block down there a few times in case I might have missed it. So I get back up to Hollywood and see the sign, but can't figure out where to park and circle around a couple more times. Then feeling sort of nervous down in the quiet parking structure, I manage to ask where the "Fresh Faire" was. I'm such an idiot. Honestly, I was like a little old lady; I went too far up on the elevator, then had to walk down the stairs, then walked in the exit, came back out and went in the entrance to get a cart...I was like Mr. Bean's girlfriend.

Happily, once I did get inside, I was rewarded with a pretty cool store. I loved the wild rocket salad and the fresh balsamic vinaigrette. (That would be the refrigerated version, not the bottled version mind you.) Also the organic marinara was very tasty. Simple, but perfectly delicious. The pre-made pizza crusts, that are in the bakery section are amazing! You just cook them on an oiled sheet pan and they come out great. Please try those. We made plain little pizzas for the kids last night, but I was thinking you could drizzle olive oil, herbs, salt & pepper and serve with pasta or soup and it would be delicious! (yes so delicious you have to have an exclamation point!) Ok. Now onto the mind blower. The cakes. The slices of cake were great. I am so often disappointed in bought cake, I'm not even sure what made me try them. I got a slice of double chocolate layer, carrot, and chocolate cheesecake. They were all really good.

Young pepper berries

Saturday afternoon grass

A very talented actress

For some strange reason, my email is still connected to the general email box of my old pr firm, and though I always mean to shut it off, (especially with so many people wanting to enhance my size so I can satisfy my woman) I never have. Hence, some of the legit letters I get are really amusing. And some are really sad. Here's one I go this morning.

Hello,

My name is N----- M---- and I am currently in search of an publicist. I recently relocated to California to further my acting career. I will try not to take up too much of your time so I will just get straight to the point. I'm 14 years old and I am an entrepreneur. Quite simply I'm trying to brand myself. Now I know your thinking what does this little girl know about branding? Well I know that I'm a talented actress and I am very marketable. Below I have listed the link to my Imdb and by all means please google me to see if I might be of some interest to your company.

www.imdb.com/name/nm-------

I look forward to hearing from you,

N---- M----

Attached are two photos of a very pretty young girl with plucked eyebrows and professionally-applied highlighter. She's pouting at the camera provocatively. She's 14. I want to say "Have you heard of Britney Spears? Where are your damn parents?"

Haphazard Hazard Huzzah!

Very nice shout-out on Haphazard Gourmet Girls this morning. I have terrorized all my friends with a plug for Fresh and Easy market, I am embarrassed to admit. And now it's out there (typos and all), for all to witness -- my strange, homesick desire for a little sapling offshoot of Tesco.

British "Big Girl" singers

Wow! Paul Gambacini (I thought he was dead) is on NPR discussing the new wave of Big Girl British singers, like Amy Winehouse and Amy MacDonald (LOVE HER & you still can't get her on US itunes). Here's the piece.

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

New braces

Green pastures

Fred is now in Fresno. He is being turned out in grass pasture for three to six months to give his blasted suspensory ligament some time to heal. It's not a tear. It's actually only a sprain but it's not healing as fast as we'd like so I'm thinking that Someone Out There is saying, let the horse have a rest, let the horse be a horse and eat grass and get muddy and hang out with other horses. Apparently when he was turned out he galloped around with the other two horses, doing one full lap of the five acre field, head high, tail streaming behind him, and then kept on galloping, with his head turned towards the gate, and didn't realize that his two friends, who are a good deal older, had stopped, out of breath, and he barrelled right into them. Oops.

I know that Spring is making an appearance here and there -- in the yellow mimosa, the acid green of the new grass, the refreshed group of small birds who congregate on my bird feeder.

On Walking

"So we saunter toward the Holy Land; till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, so warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in Autumn."

-- Thoreau, Walking

Ash Wednesday

Feeling dreadfully guilty. After eating an enormous lunch of curried mango chicken and lemony rocket salad, I woolfed down a chocolate mousse that I found the in the fridge. I could have reached out towards the low-fat apricot yogurt, but no. This is a tiny bit alarming because I've always been proud of the fact that I'm not a pudding person, but I put it down to missing breakfast or maybe a latent thyroid condition. I kid you not! This is the age of thyroid and adult onset diabetes, and weakened bones. But the point is: Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Today is the day when you're supposed to give something up not take up eating chocolate mousse for lunch. Today should have been a day of fasting and reflection. But instead, as luck would have it, it's become a day of being a big porcine snorter.

RIP Maharishi

"Don't fight darkness. Bring the light, and the darkness will disappear."

-- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

poem for today from morston quay

whirling bird ,whirling bird beauty in the
sky.
Is it because you love me, you hit me in the
eye.?




Soon to published in Blakeney lavatories.

-- from my brother, JEW

Bob's Guide to the Apostrophe

Mary Oliver quote

"I'd rather write about polar bears than people. The natural world for me is safe and beautiful and leads to sublime thoughts. Beauty leads to virtue. Poetry speaks to that natural world."

-- Mary Oliver

The Desert Twister, February 2008

My friend e, whom I love and adore in profound ways, was trying to tell us all on Sunday night, as we were nestled in a cozy house in Bel Air for Sunday night supper, how she survived a near-death experience at the horse show in Thermal (Coacella) and had forced her thirteen year old daughter (who nearly died with embarrassment) to lie face down on the ground as a huge twister came through the show grounds. She breathlessly told us about being parked in a gulley for half an hour while the monster weather came through, and we of course, smiled politely. Today this missive, which makes me laugh a Whole Lot:

our desert tornado was on the news last night---no one believed us
that it was actually a twister (problem of being a Storyteller) but
the thing blew through palm springs and took down a bunch of
mid-century modern houses and they had Shocked Eyewitnesses
breathlessly recapping. perhaps the oddest part of all of it---other
than the fact that while i was waiting for an airborne 18 wheeler to
land on top of us my life *didn't* flash before my eyes---was that
this massive vibrant double rainbow appeared on the horizon beside us
right after, and i had just had a picture of a double rainbow posted
on the blog. what absurd synchronistic precognizance that comes
from, i have no idea....

bad

So much for lovingly eulogizing my black dog before her time is up; I just came home from a lovely girls' dinner and to find my brand new, never used, pale blue Designer's Guild wallet, with the pale green suede interior, chewed to shreds and lying on Briar's bed next to a loo roll that had suffered the same fate. "Bad" I said, as menacingly as possible while waving it her face. She merely looked sheepish and walked away. Dinner with nine lovely women was very fun indeed and seems so spoiled on a Monday night, devilish almost. All eyes are on tomorrow, super-duper Tuesday - the election and Miss Day's birthday.

An enigma

For a few months now I've found flowers and bits of foliage on the door to my office, or on the pathway or step. We have small children living next door and I'd assumed it was them (children get enormous joy from pulling the heads off flowers). Or my daughter, who is very sweet, and often leaves me billets doux. But the neighbors are now off in Park City for the season, J is in Atlanta, the children are at school and it's only me, Monica and the dogs at home. I came back from lunch today to find two tiny white flowers on my desk. They smell of sage. The door was closed. "Monica," I said, "Have you by chance been in my office?" "No," she said. "It's okay, I just need to know," I said. "No," she said. About a month ago when I'd been cleaning out my stuff and moving the furniture around I left a wooden cd player on the floor and when I came outside again, I found three or four leaves from the butterfly bush, freshly broken off, lying on top of the player. I reminded Monica of this. "Don't scare me" she said, "I have to be here alone." Again today, these flowers are sitting here for me. Everything else is untouched. No-one has been here; the dogs haven't barked. I have an admirer perhaps? It doesn't feel scary at all, though. One cannot draw a shred of malevolence from a carefully placed flower. But it is strange. Lovely, yes, but strange.

From The Week (daily)

Let the sun shine in

My friend's dog, Sunny, is very old. She is fifteen. She has been with him through so much and she is his very best friend in the world. She is no longer eating, and she shivers, and he knows it's time. He called me this morning so very sad, so sad that you could feel the emptiness in his heart. I don't know what I will do when this time comes for me but I do know that we need to believe in another better life, a life of sunny green pastures and bliss and rabbits to chase, and that without this, it all becomes a bit overwhelming.

I sat at breakfast today listening to a terribly nice woman tell me stories and I just kept saying "lovely" over and over and realizing that I sounded like a broken record. I wasn't trying not to be engaged, but I can't have been, because all I heard myself say was "lovely." I suppose we weren't what they like to call "connecting." And I suppose I'm getting too old to do a good job of pretending to be engaged. I am ashamed of this. I would really like to be a nicer person. So when Jack called and told me about Sunny, his dog, named, by the way after Sunny Von Bulow, "because nobody shakes Sunny," I just wanted to be with him and hold his hand while he goes through this awfulness. I look at Briar who is old and rickety and whose back is very thin (and Lucy says she's too thin but she has tummy problems and the meat just doesn't stick to her ribs anymore) but she still wags her nub at me when she sees me, and she still jumps on Noony's bed in the morning when I'm trying to wake him up, and stares at us with doleful eyes. We need to believe in a happier place. We have been heavy with the strain of pessimism and aggression and violence now for so many years; we've all forgotten the headiness of optimism and idealism, and the notion of possibility. We've given up on possibility.

I still watch the Superbowl and listen to the national anthem and cry. It's not even my national anthem and I didn't like the way Jordin Sparks messed with the tune so she could do the hand motion (flat palm moving left to right and then upwards, mimicking the voice). But I still got a lump in my throat. I know this puts me into the deep-dish fromage category.

I spent a rainy hour in Franklin Canyon with Dotsie yesterday. We sat for twenty minutes at the end of the lake and listened to the birds, the sparrows, partridge, duck, coot, woodpeckers. The rain came down on us, but we sat, both of us listening with every nerve in our bodies. There is such variety of sound in nature. So many textures. It's rather nice to listen for a few minutes without hearing a human or a car. And so later, when my friends who'd been to see Mary Oliver at UCLA told me that she feels her job in this world is to be an "observer of nature" I understood. And I understand too why people feel restored and renewed by it (nature) and why too we should be grateful for it. I think gratitude is creeping in more and more. Not sure why. I love that this is the listing for Mary Oliver in Wikipedia under Career - An intense and joyful observer of the natural world, Oliver is often compared to Whitman and Thoreau. Her poems are filled with imagery from her daily walks near her home in Provincetown, Massachusetts: shore birds, water snakes, the phases of the moon and humpback whales. Maxine Kumin calls Oliver "a patroller of wetlands in the same way that Thoreau was an inspector of snowstorms" and "an indefatigable guide to the natural world."

I think it's important never to waste a minute. Here we are for our three score years and ten, or more likely our four score years and ten, thanks to medical science, and we need to live and breathe and feel every damn moment, with goodness and kindness, and letting the sun shine in. We really, really need the sun to shine in.

Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face.

Hello, you who made the morning

and spread it over the fields

and into the faces of the tulips

and the nodding morning glories,

and into the windows of, even, the

miserable and the crotchety –

best preacher that ever was,

dear star, that just happens

to be where you are in the universe

to keep us from ever-darkness,

to ease us with warm touching,

to hold us in the great hands of light –

good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day

in happiness, in kindness.

-- Mary Oliver

Superbowl Sunday

I like these rainy Sunday mornings when everyone is in my bed. I've eaten an enormous breakfast - eggs, bacon, beans, toast and marmalade - a cure for a hangover says Jumby. It's tea and Scrabulous and contemplating a walk in the rain, to work off the bacon.

Little tujunga canyon 7.53am

From our Man in Utah

Well, woman actually. This is from my neighbor, a pretty & spry Southern California girl, who has recently moved her family to Park City for the ski season:

to my husband:

honey, i am so sorry that for the past 12 years (ok, 39 years) i have failed to realize my full potential. utah adventure: 2008 has revealed many more of my innate capabilities than i ever imagined.

since last night, i have moved a mountain. twice.

ok, so it was the same mountain, but i think it still counts. i was told the growing mass of snow on the rooftop outside our 3rd floor bedroom window had to go in order to avoid future water damage. the snow mass at first was lovely, and later amusing, but when it completely eclipsed all view of the street, even i agreed it had to go. i mean, how would i tell if the plows had come overnight to free our car from the driveway?

hours into the job, having successfully gotten some - not most - of the snow over the edge of the roof, my pride of accomplishment was obliterated at light speed as i discovered the mountain from the roof now resided on the driveway. i could only hope the nice snow plow men would see it on their morning routes and move it for me. nope! i shoveled the same mountain from the roof off the driveway so i could liberate the car. did i mention the driveway scene began at 750am?

i must also apologize for not knowing i could lift four 40-pound bags of salt pellets and arrange them strategically over my car's wheel wells to help prevent sliding, drive through blinding white outs without crashing (so far), single-handedly manage to get 2 small and largely unskilled children down a blizzard-laden ski run, 2 gondolas and across a busy snowy parking lot and live to tell, and make what i consider to be quite a tasty meal with a crockpot and a dash of every single spice in our ill-equipped spice cabinet.

and please forgive me, honey, for never taking out the trash, rarely pumping my own gas, and being wholly unfamiliar with the interior of a grocery store.

i should mention that these newfound skills come at a cost. my toes are suffering from lack of regular pedicures, my lashes have seen mascara a scant 4 times since relocating to utah, and the skinny jeans have bowed to my warmest sweats (which share prime time with 2 layers of leggings).

i wouldn't dream of wrapping this apology without sharing the latest utah news. i told you before that the LDS president/prophet died earlier this week, meriting wall to wall news coverage ("the passing of a prophet"). well, to maintain order at his service this weekend, utahans (proper name) must obtain tickets for entry. of course there is a limited number available, but luckily the "family ticket" accommodates two parents and 6 - SIX- children.

only in utah.

am i forgiven?
xo

Dog Fever

The canyon is eerily quiet at 3:25am and I've just made the stupid mistake of letting the antsy black dog out into it (she was walking about, unable to sleep and I thought perhaps her tummy was bothering her again). Now even Dodie Smith should bear witness to the magnitude of the starlight barking. My neighbors must be swearing at me from their beds. I had no idea that so many dogs existed in a half mile radius. Better is the sight of me standing by the door to the deck naked and shivering and whistling as surreptitiously as possible (remember now that the black dog is deaf and half blind too) and gently saying "Briar..." into the cold night air, as politely as possible. My dogs have whipped the whole canine neighborhood into a furor, much like, I would imagine, Jon Bon Jovi at an 80s comeback show in New Jersey.