I didn't take it

From our junk mail alias: “If anyone has accidentally borrowed a purple mug with the letters [redacted]  written across the entirety of the mug for the past week and a half, I’d greatly appreciate its return in the near future. It generally resides in the cupboard in the fourth floor kitchen until about 8:00 am Monday through Friday, which is where it can be returned. Sooner rather than later would be great, as this is the mug my mother gave to me when I left for college 30 years ago, that I generally use every morning so that I can tell her I still use it every morning, when I talk to her every week…which I didn’t do last week because I couldn’t actually tell her I used it last week. Or this week. Hopefully I can tell her on Saturday that I used it on Thursday. So, if you could just do a quick check to see if it’s sitting on your desk it would be greatly appreciated.”

 

Stripey

Well, I did not know one could purchase a zebra. Perhaps over the weekend I will wander down the nasturtium-strewn path, followed by grey boys, open to possibility, to see if there's room in the back 40, by the girl's clubhouse.

 

 

Sweet Sunday in SF

OK, ended up using sigh, Facebook to post photos:

 

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3116022100493.2126612.1262693524&type=1&l=546a170645

 

Gumps had free dog portraits with the city's best dog portraitist. He was goooooooooooood. Cartier Bresson? Elliott Erwitt? Maybe. His portfolio is here:  http://jessefreidin.com/

 

My friend Leslie's lady, a rescue collie, was very photogenic and behaved very well.. And I fell for an ethereal white standard poodle whose ears reminded me of Marianne Faithful, somehow. The dog works with Alzheimer's patients.

 

(sorry, embedding continues to elude me)

 

 

 

For the beauty of the earth.

And eggs...

 

 

I just vacuumed my office--all the dust shows so clearly in the sunlight. Blows forward, blows back. Next time I turned around, minutes later,  there was a pile of fluffy stuff on the floor, with Huey chewing. Ewwwwwwww he caught and ate a HUMMINGBIRD. It was gone except for a few feathers. Sorry, universe.I'll get the collar with bell...

I stepped aside to let a woman walking her big ole dog get by me, as I was meandering. She had on what looked like Tibetan skiwear (today's beautiful, but chilly). As she passed she said, "Ahhhhhh  it's like having a drunken sailor for a boyfriend, this dog. Wanders around bumping into things, drooliing." We were bumping into things too, the three of us lolling along for a few minutes.

Health Care

Bob's letter to the editor of the SF Chronicle was published March 30, 2012:

The choice: health vs. money

Debra J. Saunders succinctly sums up the Republican view of our medical care crisis in "Why Romneycare outdoes Obamacare," March 27).

It's never the fault of Big Pharma or the medical-industrial complex or the profit-driven machinations of private hospital groups. It's the fault of the people, who use too much so-called "unnecessary care," like the colonoscopy I had seven years ago that discovered and removed precancerous polyps.

Their solution: "cost-sharing" to encourage families to make "smart choices," healthwise and moneywise. The problem is that what is health-wise is not always money-wise. Is that a severe headache or a stroke I'm having? Indigestion or the onset of a heart attack? Can I afford to spend $100, $200, $300 or more to find out?

For all their rhetoric about "government rationing," they fail to point out that their plans will result in a different form of rationing. Many Americans and their families will be forced to self-ration. High deductibles and onerous co-pays will result in more sickness and deaths that could have been avoided.

Robert Madera, Oakland

Enjoy the wind

“An invisible, ancient source of energy surrounds us—energy that powered the first explorations of the world, and that may be a key to the future.” 

 

Talk about information mapping!  http://hint.fm/wind/

 

 

Foxes and camels

A colleague recounted a a when he and his brothers were kids, and his brother ordered a baby fox from an ad in a magazine. Mom didn’t know anything about it until the  call to pick up a small box, with an air tube sticking out, from the airport. They had it for years and years, and  that fox was part of the family. Could run like nobody’s business. Chase those boys. I sniffed around and found an ad from Billboard magazine, April 29, 1944, wherein one could indeed get a pair of fox kits for $10. The next ad was for a 2-year-old dromedary camel…

 

 

 

How to Stay On Plan

Fat David as a reminder to stay with healthy eating...

 

 

Sewing

Back in the day I would sew a lot. Dresses, cowboy shirts for my boyfriends. My father would shriek when he found one of my pins in the carpet with his feet. (Our house was pretty tiny and still is, as it hasn't changed much from 30 years ago). Sorry. Today I resumed a sewing project, the first in oh, about 30 years. Wait, 40. The needle hurts my finger because I was trying to make French seams and I can't quite remember how to and need to roll those over and hem by hand. And oh, the puckers. I was reminded of my Aunt Nancy  who would hand-sew pajamas while she watched the OJ trial, ensconced in her North Hollywood apartment. I'll tell you what:  I shall never be on Project Runway and I fear my days of Vogue tailoring (actually, a level I never quite reached) are but a dream. Making a few pillows here and there, placemats, and the like, maybe (being incredibly myopic makes it a little easier to thread the needle). I inherited from Louise Johnson about 10 cigar boxes of antique threads and odd buttons. If you can give me any suggestions for them, please advise.

 

Super bowl commercials

Personally, come game day (what game day, even tho’ it’s in my hometown and aren’t they excited), I’ll be taking a walk or fast-forwarding through the puppy bowl. Still, if I DO turn on the tube, I’ll be fast-forwarding to these….

 

http://offthebench.nbcsports.com/2012/01/31/super-bowl-ad-power-rankings-enter-the-soup-nazi/

 

 

 

 

 

Third post for Don

After work, I think I going to dig out all my old Funkadelic records:  http://youtu.be/4supWXaFgbc.

 

 

 

A dance line

A dance line, for example: http://youtu.be/lJ5iuWotw3M

 

 

RIP Don Cornelius

RIP, Don.

 

He certainly enlivened many of my Saturday mornings over the years. Let’s all form a dance line this very second.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/don-cornelius-dead-soul-train_n_1246642.html

 

What's on your mind in a 3 am wake-up?

For me, last night: 1) coughing; 2) thinking left-field thoughts: of our Chemex from the 70s and the light reflecting in its curves, of my grandmother's soft inner upper arm (she must have been about my age now), of the flat fields of the farm; 3) then hearing the broken ice maker dumping its 12th daily load of filtered cubes—it won't turn off and seems too expensive to fix. So we have bowls and bowls of ice everywhere.

More photoshop, less plastic surgery.

Even though we had to work hard to get those wrinkles, right? Memento mori: Kodak at less than $1 share.

 

 

 

Go Get TAFFY

Found on my post-Thanksgiving recovery walk, a water-spattered composition sheet with a hard-to-make-out-scrawl:  "Tell Karen I am Really Happy she works with me. She always has my Back whether asked or not [over a good job?]. Give her a little salt water Taffy and Say Thank You. GO GET SALT WATER TAFFY."

Hooray, scallops

I love it that scallops have 40 to 100 eyes circling their mantle; however, this now means I probably won’t eat them anymore. Recommended for science heads:  Evolution's Witness: How Eyes Evolved (Schwab), out Oct 2011.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Evolutions-Witness-How-Eyes-Evolved/dp/0195369742

 

 

 

Decorative contact lenses

The scary part about a Halloween costume shouldn't be the eye damage it leaves behind.

 

http://www.geteyesmart.org/eyesmart/eye-health-news/scary-lenses.cfm]

http://yourwordsworth.blogspot.com/

Part of my uphill loop in the neighborhood...

Am I blue? As I walked down Columbus  through North Beach, a Blue Angel jet flashed by about 50 feet overhead, scattering pedestrians and pigeons alike.  Part of practice for the weekend show. Years ago in a Chanel commercial,  Catherine Deneuve’s beautiful self would murmur, “Come close. Come closer….” “No, no” we would shriek, “noooooooo that’s too close. ”  Yes indeed, Angels too close. Loud and thrilling, but do we have budget for that, really?  Over the weekend, I was fleet-less in bucolic Oakland. Yay, Oakland…

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/10/08/fleet-week-draws-1000s-to-san-francisco-waterfront/

Not much of whimsy has struck my fancy, as of late. However, this just in:

"For example, sales records show that bananas with Pantone color 13-0858 (otherwise known as Vibrant Yellow) are less likely to sell than bananas with Pantone color 12-0752 (also called Buttercup), which is one grade warmer, visually, and seems to imply a riper, fresher fruit."

Being primed by brands at the grocery store--it's enough to make me stick to homegrown everything, but then all we'd be eating, for the new few weeks anyway, is tomatoes, chives, and jalapenos.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1779611/priming-whole-foods-derren-brown

Thrift store art

Paint by numbers, too...

 

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1960176245069&set=a.1897458797172.2096872.1262693524&type=1&theater

 

Counting Crows

I've been noticing more crows than mockingbirds , so I turned to the "big brain" to investigate. Landed on this page:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101118075931AArB2P9 . Became intrigued by the idea of a "Christian Factory."

 

 

 

Which do you prefer

Which do you prefer? We are surrounded, all of a sudden.

Around 6:30 am I wandered groggily down the hallway, past the back door. I looked out to check the fog (nada) and looked down  to see a fluffy baby skunk sipping water out of the basin by the faucet. It was about 8 inches long with a tail that stood up about a foot. It was adorable. So glad I didn't startle it. 'll keep the camera close by in case he/she comes back in the morning.

Sounds of Summer, Part II

I don’t love the sound of gunshots, about 2 blocks away. The teens had a melee Sunday afternoon. One of our neighbors found out, “There were at least 4 squad cars present yesterday between 4 and 6 pm placing numbered cards wherever stray bullets were found lying on the ground. There were at least 30. School hasn't even been out more than a couple of days, so it looks like we're in for quite a summer.” Some injuries to participants. Crazy behavior. I’d prefer the sound of chickens and mowers, thank you very much.

Summer

Fog finally burns off around noon these days. Love the sound of the lawnmower and chickens--as long as they are about half block away.

 

 

I'm stuck

Anything I e-mail post to my blog http://yourwordsworth.blogspot.com/ goes to my facebook wall, with partial text and and missing photos I may have attached. I'm buffaloed. May have to start all over. Again.

Uh oh, I was insensitive

My casual commute involved a conversation with a chatty fun person, a teacher who absolutely adores her job teaching elementary school in the Tenderloin, an area of SF whose reputation is less than stellar. Yes, I said, I feel the same way about Oakland: a little jewel. Oh, really?  Then she told me how folks were shot in front of her house (about a mile away) and people keep breaking into houses around the block and her house is underwater and won't emerge for at least 10 years, and she and hubby are thinking of simply walking away. To Florida? I feel sheepish.

Choking arty

Anyone experienced with growing artichokes?  My first plant is now 3 feet high and 3 feet wide, with 3 or 4 little chokes emerging. Yum. News  and film at 10.

Wouldn't you know it

From a text I’m working on: “The pathophysiology of chronic post-traumatic headache is believed to be due to a combination of organic and psychological factors. Post-traumatic headache may be more common in patients with pre-existing psychopathology. In addition, financial incentives also seem to increase the rate of disabilities among patients with post-traumatic headaches.”

 

 

---

Jeer Review

Maybe only editors will laugh, but Harper’s magazine made me do it and led me to it:

 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1462-2920.2010.02394.x/full

My personal favorite? Perhaps the last on the list: “The writing and data presentation are so bad that I had to leave work and go home early and then spend time to wonder what life is about.” Or a runner-up, “The biggest problem with this manuscript, which has nearly sucked the will to live out of me, is the terrible writing style.”

Collections in the garage

Mother Nature is mad, the president still looks sad (but he's oh so articulate), and I have a ridiculously minute (my newt) problem: whether/how to transfer my excellent record collection that's been moldering in the garage  to MP3. To transfer to MP3 my excellent record collection that has been melting, baking, fossilizing in the deep subconscious morass that is our garage ...whoops, editorial moment. Supposedly the sound of MP3 is questionable, to the fine-tuned ear, but I can't hear that well anyway, so pulling the usb turntable out of the box would be one step farther toward whittling collections and possessions.

The lament of giant fingers

I’ve been passed 2 Smart phones to play with, should I wish to get back on the tech train. All abooooooooard.  But ah, my fingers seem to belong to a giant man, not to me. Jolly Green Me.