Mr. Braugher

Andre Braugher is back.
He is just one of the best actors ever.
There is a new show on FX, Thief.
It looks good and I've read good things about it.
This is from Homicide: Life On the Street.
As far as I am concerned that was just the best TV show ever.
Andre Braugher was also in Soldier's Girl,
one of the best films ever.
It's based on a true story,
and it pretty much blows your mind.

(The woman whose story the film tells is actually in Transamerica.
There is a party scene, and she's one of the guests.)

I played

I messed with the tulips.
It's too easy and way too much fun.

And, oh, another thing about V for Vendetta: the ending is not great. We Are the World, your average Coke commercial... that's what it reminded me of.

that was a long walk

I took a walk this afternoon, and Santa Clara Valley looked like this:
with a rainbow and all.

V

I liked V for Vendetta. I think it's a good movie.
I just read a review that said it was simplistic,
but some aspects of the world we live in aren't
too complicated, so why pretend?

Besides, I always like Stephen Fry.

Wisteria=Spring

yummy

There is a sweet pink grapefruit coming from Texas. Kathy says they grow in the south, towards the Mexican border. I have eaten so many of them lately that this bag of sugar is almost empty:

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

Weird but great movie about a flock of wild birds in San Francisco,
and the guy who feeds them, and learns to understand them.

yep!

Hip-hop kid in my class liked them.
Black kid in Whole Foods liked them.
My spring shoes!

I am really angry

I was talking to one of my students today. Her mother is white, and her father is black. Her twin sister actually came out white, and she came out black. She is about to transfer to another school, because she believes she will be happier at a big school. She wants to "take on the real world" she says.

My student wants to go into journalism. She is working on a story right now about racism on campus. It's an interesting story, but it's not going to make her popular. There are incidents of racism for her to report, of course, because racism is everywhere.

Some people don't want to believe that, though. For some reason it's hard for (white) people to take it seriously, and to believe those who are made victims.

Racism is everywhere. We show weakness only if we don't accept that, and address it.

Unrelated photo of former student:
Unrelated photo of current student:

nothing much happened today

I just think this is a cool picture. It's shopping from the snobby store, sitting on a black metal bench. (The snobby store is Dan's name for a high-end grocery store that I like. I don't think it's snobby though, I think it's good. But it is heavy on the biodynamic and the crowd is heavy on the upper middle class.)

I found a website that lets you draw. Unfortunately they don't let you copy and paste your drawings, so I can't show my blue flower I just made.

Other news: Dan is wearing contacts again. For the first time since he was punched in the eye in November.

Immigrant predicament

The San Jose Mercury News has an article today about the life of an immigrant worker who has spent 25 years away from his family in the Philippines. I don't know how long it will be on the front page, but maybe this link will work for a while. It's kind of heartbreaking.

cool?

Got them. My new spring shoes. It was raining like crazy today but I got them anyway.

And then someone randomly gave me this Dave Chappelle t-shirt:
So all in all it was a good day for casual wear.

Wilco

Today on the ipod: Wilco.
Saw half of a documentary last night.
Great film about the best band.

your average Sunday

The poinsetta died when a lamp fell on it.
Otherwise it was doing real well for a Christmas plant.

Cleaned the bathroom.
Found something I am going to send to Åsa.
(Not in the bathroom.)
Washed my hair. Thereby also putting more color in it.
Went for a walk. There is something about sunshine and Frank Sinatra.
Ipods are great.

Dan knows even the boring commercials by heart.
He is watching way too much television.
(I am too but my memory is not as good as his.)
And we are definitely down to the peanuts in the mixed nut container.
(Trying not to eat them because if I loose a little more weight my OK-sized jeans will fit.)

the ultimate spring shoe

Saw these shoes at REI today.
Somehow they seem to scream spring.
And that's a bilingual pun.

anti-war and anti-anti-war

This is from an anti-war demonstration that was held in Palo Alto today. Among others a few relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq were there, holding signs with the dead young men's pictures and their graves.

A couple of men held anti-anti war signs. One called anti-war protesters "lefty-fascists." Another said "If I was a suicide bomber, you'd be dead."

The entire thing made me sad. So many people have died, and sometimes I can't see how a few good people gathering on a Saturday afternoon will make much of a difference. I know that is not the right attitude, but sometimes it seems incredibly hard to influence things.

Adur

They give awards for paddling big waves. This kid is up for one. His name is Adur, and he is Basque. The photo was taken off the coast of Spain. Adur was in a class of mine last year, when he did a study abroad year in the US.

Dan's new favorite people

Dan's new favorite people are the Dutch, because they are the makers of Stroopwafels, Dan's new favorite cookie. The result of one Johnny Depp movie:
One empty bag of Stroopwafels.

Dinner

This is a side of salmon on a bed of kosher salt. It has slits on the skin side (underneath), and a brush of olive oil on top. It went into the oven: 440 degrees (Fahrenheit, 225C) for about half an hour.
This is the side of salmon after we had dinner. It was yummy. It came with a sauce of yogurt and horseradish and a little bit of sugar.

Åsa's walk to work

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The most American of holidays.
But according to CNN they actually celebrate it in Dublin too.

here you go my favorite Mexicano

Surprise.

the updated truth

Seems Dan picks out the PEANUTS, so that the good stuff will be left.
Seems I pick out the good stuff.

Seems I am the pig.

The end.

the truth

I bought a National Enquirer today. What got me was this headline on the front page:

EXTREME CELEBRITY FLAWS

With pictures. Inside the magazine there is a big spread. Martha Stewart and Courtney Cox have big ugly ears. (And we are talking BIG and UGLY ears.) Angelina Jolie has boney hands. Jennifer Lopez without her makeup looks just like a normal girl. And so on. It was so worth it.

Completely unrelated: my boyfriend picks the cashews out of the mixed nuts. This is irritating to me when I want to pick the cashews out of the mixed nuts. So I have to pick out the almonds instead, and it seems Dan picks out the hazelnuts. And then we are left with all the peanuts. (The two or three pieces or walnuts that are in there to start with are gone so fast it is as if they were never there at all.)

mmm pretty

This is Lysekil, a small town on the Swedish west coast, about half an hour (or so) from where my parents live.

This is the ferry that will get you there:
Right now there is winter and ice storms and cold and nasty over there, but this is what it looks like in the summer. Everybody should visit. It really is the most beautiful part of the world. The California coastline is pretty too, but the grey of the bare little islands and the blue of the North Sea, that's something else. When I lived there I took it for granted, but now when I visit it takes my breath away. (Making me look like a tourist.)

photo by John

More distraction.

from the bottom of the pile

I have so many papers to read it's not even funny.

three hours of Sunday afternoon

So St. Patrick's Day is coming up.
And Dublin and San Jose are sister cities.
What does that mean?
Boxing, obviously.
And Guinness.

Beer and testosterone.
Chieftains and The Pogues in the breaks between fights.
And one of the California boxers draped in the Mexican flag.

I had never seen boxing live before.
I liked it more than I thought I would.
That sticky thing under your feet is Guinness.

not for the faint of heart

I worked in that big brick building summers and holidays and weekends when I was in highschool. It's the hospital in the town where my parents live. And then there it was in the background of a movie I got from Netflix. A Swedish movie, but still. I got very excited. (So I paused the movie and took 50 pictures all of which turned out like this one, grainy and weird.) (Swedish movie: please note the overrepresentation of Volvos in the background.)

And oh, the film. It tells the story of Alzheimer's desease with full on Scandinavian honesty. It's called A Song For Martin, and you might not want to see it.

music

Today on the ipod: Rufus Wainwright.

waste some time

Here you go Kathy. Click. Click.

black white

In the oddest reality show/documentary series ever, Black White on FX, two families switch races. With the help of heavy duty make-up blacks turn white, and whites turn black.

It's weird. The critics aren't all that positive. But I sure know what I'll be doing six Wednesday nights this spring.

oddly related

Horses and a rooster from Dalarna, Sweden, and a bird from Oaxaca, Mexico.

International Women's Day

Speaking of Doris Lessing, March 8 is actually the International Women's Day. Just thought I'd mention it.
And, speaking of that, here is a person whose destiny has touched my students lately. Her name is Nora, she is a Mexican immigrant, and her family is featured on the PBS series The New Americans. Upon leaving her home village at age 19, in a short but significant scene Nora is forced to leave behind her typewriter. She longed to continue her education in the US, but for different reasons that never happened. Instead, a legal immigrant she now works in the fields in California.

she's 86 now

I just read an interview with Doris Lessing where she is quoted as having said this about her most famous novel:

"Nobody is going to believe this, but when I wrote "The Golden Notebook," I had no idea I was writing a feminist book. Because I had been putting into it the sort of thing women had been saying in their kitchen. But something said doesn't have the effect of something written."

I used to go home from work at night knowing that if I had had a good conversation that day, that meant I had done a good day's work. I don't feel that way anymore; somehow now I need more tangible evidence. I think many people are the same way. That may not be a good thing. We should pay attention to what people say. In their kitchens and whereever they are.

Tuesday night

My jeans kind of fit again. (Almost.)

I took a nap this evening and missed the first half hour of The Amazing Race. Which makes the last half hour of the show hard to watch because you have very little idea what is going on.

Tomorrow: Final episode of Project Runway. No nap can come between me and that.

Z people

I really like Monica Zetterlund, and I really like Townes van Zandt. They both sing beautifully. Sad maybe, but never pathetic. If in my ipod artists got alphabetized according to their last names, they'd be closer.
They actually have lots of things in common: they died too young, they drank too much, and they told funny jokes.

Monica Z was born in 1937 in Hagfors, Värmland, Sweden.
Townes v Z was born in 1944 in Forth Worth, Texas.

true story

I caught the very end of a colleague's lecture once. He is in the History department.

-What is this class?, I asked, 'California history'?
-No, 'Racism in the US', he said.

I called it

Yep, I did.

2PM, Sunday

Last year's best film. I am just saying.

end of the road

I walked to the end of Hollister today. It was really pretty.
I found an old tractor. It looked as if it had been doing good work in its day.

great pull

Dave Chappelle's film Dave Chappelle's Blockparty is great. I really liked it a lot.

This car was parked in the parkinglot of the Jack-in-the-box we went to before the movie.
It's an early 1970's Karmann Ghia. You can tell the year on the style of the bumper and the shape and size of the rear lights. The fascinating detail is what you can see below though. A hook. A vanity hook? Karmann Ghias don't pull things.

high tech

When my friend Gunilla and I were growing up we painted a lot. I remember how we figured out that no matter what colors you start with, if you blend enough of them together you always end up with brown. Guess what happens if you put a bougainvillea in Photoshop and mess with it?

tears

Two girls cried after class yesterday. Both are Latinas, and bright, good students with plans for the future. They stayed behind after class and cried because they feel disconnected from the white world around them. I had shown a film in class that hit close to home.

In the same room: white girls who were bored, and had to be told to put their phones away and not be textmessaging during class.

That was March 2, 2006, at 3:30PM.

March 3, 2006

The bougainvillea is back.
Everybody's favorite flower.
(Yeah yeah yeah I know the red leaves aren't really the flower, but you get the point.)