The READIN Family Album
Me and Sylvia on the canal in Qibao (April 2011)

READIN

Jeremy's journal

Slugs leave trails, sheep leave droppings, bees make honey, and humans leave two things: art and garbage. Where these meet is called entertainment.

Robyn Hitchcock


(This is a page from my archives)
Front page
More recent posts
Older posts

Archives index
Subscribe to RSS

This page renders best in Firefox (or Safari, or Chrome)

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

🦋 Requiem for the Smoke Age

Robyn Hitchcock is releasing (with The Venus 3) a new album on YepRoc, called Goodnight Oslo. His 15th studio album! Features among other tunes, "Up to Our Necks" and "Hurry for the Sky" -- good stuff! He is interviewed about the record in the current Paste. Here is a performance of the title track:



"Goodnight Oslo" -- at The Iron Horse in Northampton, MA, July 9th, 2008

posted afternoon of November 11th, 2008: Respond
➳ More posts about Goodnight Oslo

Monday, November 10th, 2008

🦋 Galdós' narrator

And now our attention must shift to the Dauphin's visit to his family's friend and humble servant, for if Juanito Santa Cruz had not paid that visit, this story would not have been written. Another story would surely have been written, because wherever man goes he carries his novel with him; but it would not have been this one.
The narrator in Fortunata and Jacinta is an interesting case -- he refers to himself in the first person and makes reference to having met some of the characters, but he's an omniscient narrator. I'm hoping he will turn out to play a role in the story, besides as the person relating it -- it seems kind of unlikely but it would be nice.

posted evening of November 10th, 2008: Respond
➳ More posts about Fortunata and Jacinta

Sunday, November 9th, 2008

🦋 Celebration


(Darcy's library includes books about our greatest presidents.)
We went to a party at our neighbors' house last night, a belated celebration of President Obama's victory; we had a good time. I mostly just wanted to post pictures of the books on Darcy's mantle, and of the cupcakes Ellen and Sylvia baked for the party:

posted evening of November 9th, 2008: Respond
➳ More posts about Ellen

🦋 Juanito's parents: exposition

As I started reading the second section of Fortunata and Jacinta, "Santa Cruz and Arnáiz: A Historical View of Madrid's Business World," I got kind of spaced out -- this is looking like a long bit of dry exposition that would give me a flavor of the novel's setting maybe, but without contributing much to my understanding of the characters -- this is what I said to myself and I started reading from a distance, not engaging myself in the text. (It did not help that there's been a long break since I read the first section, so I had to be skipping back to remind myself of characters' names.) The text is certainly very dense, and requires a good bit of effort to maintain engagement with.

But a few pages in, something just clicked when I realized Barbarita was going to grow up to be Juanito's mother. (Again, I would have known this right off if I'd been paying better attention.) Suddenly all the relationships start making sense, and I'm looking at the characters as individuals rather than as representatives of families. I want to quote a long piece from Chapter 2 of this section, but will put that below the fold.

The description of the (newly bourgeois) families' economic lives is holding my attention a lot better now; I'm anxious to find out why Don Baldomero will bequeath his business to his two nephews rather than to his son. Also very nice: Galdós' digression lamenting the disappearance of bright primary colors from Spanish fashion as the Spanish economy comes under the sway of the northern model -- "We're under the influence of northern Europe, and the blasted North imposes on us the grays that it gets from its smoky gray sky."

Read on for a picture of Barbarita's childhood.

read the rest...

posted afternoon of November 9th, 2008: Respond
➳ More posts about Benito Pérez Galdós

🦋 It's All Happening

We went to the zoo and brought back pictures!

posted morning of November 9th, 2008: Respond
➳ More posts about the Family Album

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

🦋 Lyra's Parents: Exposition

Chapter 7 of The Golden Compass is a trip. When Sylvia and I were reading it this afternoon there was a lot of talk back and forth -- "Oh, so that's what was happening!" "Oh, so that's why Lyra was at Jordan!" etc. This is a really nice trick -- there was a lot in the first part of the novel that we were just accepting on faith without really understanding, the exposition is placed so that you've just about gotten used to not being sure what's going on in the plot -- you're just reading and enjoying the characters and the action, and suddenly you turn a corner and much of the mystery is laid bare. (Not all -- there's still the central mystery of what the G.O.B. is using the kidnapped children for, and what's the city in the sky, and why is Asriel being held prisoner.)

posted evening of November 8th, 2008: Respond
➳ More posts about His Dark Materials

🦋 Two recipes: a snack and a meal

Haven't posted any recipes in a while; here are two -- no real connection between them except that I've made both in the last couple days and both have some tangiential relationship to my parents being in town.

Fruit and Nuts

Sylvia and I were playing backgammon this afternoon and needed a snack. Well my parents brought along with them the fruits of the Central Valley, in the form of a big bag of almonds and a big bag of dried fruit from their friend Indira's farm. It's been a while since I had fresh almonds; they are the bomb. Here's one way to prepare them:

  • Roast nuts in a skillet over a high flame. Shake the pan every minute or two so they don't burn. You can sprinkle on top a bit of salt, pepper, cinnamon and sugar. The nuts are ready after about 7 minutes, when you start to smell the toasty flavor.
  • The pan will be quite hot; turn the flame off, remove the nuts and put some pieces of dried fruit (peaches, apricots, plums) in. Press them down so some bits of the flesh burn onto the pan. Then pour in about ¼ cup or less of water -- little enough that the remaining heat in the pan is enough to boil it. Put the fruit in a bowl and pour the liquid over it.
Tasty with beer.

Chicken Lo Mein

Thursday morning, my parents took Sylvia to Kam Man Foods, the Asian supermarket in East Hanover, to buy ingredients for making dumplings -- they also got a chicken, a bag of lo mein noodles, and some vegetables.

  • One chicken
  • ginger
  • garlic
  • scallions
  • soy sauce
  • rice vinegar
  • bok choy and/or other green vegetables
  • mushrooms (those little white ones with the long stem and round cap are best; I don't remember what they're called.)
Directions:
  1. Remove skin and bones from chicken. This is a pain and takes me a while; basically you just pull the skin off and trim away any gristle, and then cut the meat off of the bones. Save the carcass and skin for making stock. Cut the meat into bite-sized pieces.
  2. Peel and chop ginger and garlic and scallions.
  3. In a wok, heat some oil over a high flame. Add the ginger, garlic and scallions and sauté briefly. Then add the chicken and stir-fry until it's just about done. Put some water up to boil while you are doing this and chop the vegetables.
  4. Pour some soy sauce and vinegar over the chicken and add the vegetables. Stir well and cover the wok. While this is steaming cook the noodles -- they take about a minute in boiling water.
  5. Drain the noodles and stir them into the wok. Serve.

    posted evening of November 8th, 2008: Respond
    ➳ More posts about Recipes

🦋 Practicing with the Devil

So I've been practicing this folk tune called "Devil's Dream" -- I happened on it in my book of tunes, and recognized it pretty well so I thought I'd try learning it. It's starting to sound alright -- not 100% yet, and not up to speed, but it's getting to where it sounds like a song. And then today, I was sort of noodling around with the idea of it and started playing a different song, in triple time, which I'm calling "Devil's Drunk" for now -- it is recognizably based on a similar tune idea, but it sounds drunk. Here is a rough recording of the two pieces:

Here is sheet music for Devil's Dream and for Devil's Drunk in PDF format, or both songs in ABC format.

(Thanks for the inspiration, Martha!)

(Sylvia wants to know if there is any relationship between these songs and "Friend of the Devil".)

posted afternoon of November 8th, 2008: Respond
➳ More posts about Songs

Friday, November 7th, 2008

Took today off work for an excursion to the city -- Sylvia and I took my parents to the Bronx Zoo for a fun tiring afternoon. Afterwards we met Ellen at the China Institute in Manhattan, where we watched Weijun Chen's stunning new documentary, Please Vote for Me -- a chronicle of the campaign for 3rd-grade class monitor at Evergreen Primary School in Wuhan, China. Every year up until now*, class monitor has been appointed by the teacher; her innovation this year is to select three candidates and have them campaign for the office. You get to watch the class (through the eye of the the documentarian, who manages to insinuate himself completely into the fabric of the kids' days) independently create a primitive democracy, complete with patronage, bribery, voter intimidation...

The kids are just marvelous, completely unself-conscious on camera, totally engaged in being themselves. I had to sort of guard against over-interpreting what they were doing and saying -- at the beginning of the movie I was trying to read each thing said by one of the children as having special deep significance -- but when I got myself to quit that and just engage with them as children, I was really able to get into it and identify with the three candidates and watch them figure out how to campaign.

I'd recommend the movie strongly to anybody interested in democracy and elections, which a lot of people seem to be interested in that nowadays. It was of course especially great timing for us to see what with Sylvia being that age -- I could recognize mannerisms and behaviors of Sylvia and her friends, from the kids in the movie -- but I think I would have loved it even without that element. It's available on Netflix. (Not only that, it's available for download on Netflix -- you can watch it right now!)

* I'm not completely sure what year this was filmed -- maybe 2005 or 6?

posted evening of November 7th, 2008: 1 response
➳ More posts about Sylvia

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

🦋 Glass Flesh 3

The latest Robyn Hitchcock tribute record is being released! You can see the track list with links to the performers at glasshotel.net, and pre-order a copy if you need the disc. Otherwise wait a bit and the files will be made available for download. -- Also see that page for links to the previous two tribute discs.

posted afternoon of November 5th, 2008: Respond
➳ More posts about Music

Previous posts
Archives

Drop me a line! or, sign my Guestbook.
    •
Check out Ellen's writing at Patch.com.

What's of interest:

(Other links of interest at my Google+ page. It's recommended!)

Where to go from here...

Friends and Family
Programming
Texts
Music
Woodworking
Comix
Blogs
South Orange