WordyDiva

Departing

Lisa B-K — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:57:51 +0000

It’s time for me to hang it up.

The Wordydiva domain expires at the end of the month, and while I plan to renew it to make sure it stays mine (it’s the name of my font family, see), I have no plans to continue blogging here after 31 October. This blog will come down then.

I’m still a huge fan of the internet, though, and have several places where I let it blurt:

I can be followed on Twitter.

I post photos at Flickr.

I have two Tumblrs - one where I post occasional snippets, and one that’s strictly about food, food systems, food issues, etc.

And so I bid you adieu! Many thanks to readers, if there are any of you left, who kept checking in over the years, whether it was at Madame Insane, MizUntitled, or here at Wordy Diva. It’s been real.

My Noggin is Hoggin’ All Kinds of Thoughts

Lisa B-K — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:48:55 +0000

That? Is what came out of my garden before blight and all manner of negligence took over. Next year.

Here’s a soundtrack-in-progress for Fall 2009:

Beastie Boys/Shadrach JSBX/Afro Ricochets/Little Bit of More Soundgarden/Fell on Black Days Curve/Fait Accompli Black Rebel Motorcycle Club/Love Burns Breaking Circus/Knife in the Marathon Hum/Iron Clad Lou Rodriguez/Rich Folks Hoax Smashing Pumpkins/Starla Black Cab/Hearts on Fire The Go/You Go Bangin’ On Chameleons/In Shreds LCD Soundsystem/Disco Infiltrator Lightning Dust/Take It Home Depeche Mode/Enjoy the Silence Black Mountain/Stormy High Loop/Cinnamon Girl Assemble Head/Mosquito Lantern Kinski/All Your Kids Have Turned To Static

I run (yes, run. I run quite a bit lately, especially since my new skates gave me the worst blister I’ve ever had, but that’s another story, and I kind of LIKE the running) to this music. I’ll be making a sitting-around-with-friends-and-beers soundtrack when the weather shifts for good. I have about had it with this fake “summer” we’ve had since the end of June. Forget it. Come on already, Fall, let’s just get you over with. SPRING 2010, Y’ALL.

I was talking with @RUTHER4D last night on the ol’ Gmail chat and was getting all nostalgic for when I first arrived in CHGO EIGHTEEN EM-EFFING YEARS AGO. He made CHGO so, so fun for me those first two very, VERY weird months. We crammed a lot in, including some benign mutual stalking, being stopped by the cops for open containers on Lawrence Avenue, a couple movies, sharing that first listen to Nirvana’s Nevermind when his promo copy beat mine to the mailbox, many hours on the phone, some wack house partying, quite a bit of drinking, and the birth of his zine (Speed Kills - no Wikipedia entry???? WTF???). O, man. I was not yet 23. I was a CHILD! What was I doing in CHGO all by myself at 22? Having a blast. What else?

Anyway ,all that reminiscing got me a little melancholy - I am not young anymore! OH NOES! Suffice it to say that after our chat last night I was more in the mood for Red House Painters and Codeine instead of Susanna Hoffs and Honor Role, but that is not a bad thing, just a melancholy thing. Stay awesome, @RUTHER4D!

Do You Realize?

Lisa B-K — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:58:20 +0000

Wayne Coyne of Flaming Lips at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, July 19, 2009. Photo by Cody Bralts

I took Cody to the Amtrak station Thursday evening for his sendoff to the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, with a trip out to Portland to see my mom/visit a couple of colleges to follow. We lugged his stuff - he packed light on clothes but heavy on technology - to the ticket window and found out the train was running late. I’ll hang out until 8, I said. That’s fine, he replied.

So I did. I hung out until 8. They have a flat panel teevee in the station now; some of the people waiting for the train to Chicago sat slackjawed watching CNN. Others played with their phones. Cody and I played with our phones and talked about the rather offensive “health care” ads CNN was running. It was the ads, actually, that drove me out of the station at 8, but I could also see out of the corner of my eye that a couple other festival-goers Cody knew had spotted him and, you know, why get in the way?

In keeping with the festival theme, Jim and I watched Woodstock: The Director’s Cut over the weekend. I’d never seen it (I know!), but I’ve seen so much performance footage from Woodstock that I wasn’t sure I’d been missing anything. Turns out I was pretty wrong. Canned Heat! The Who! Santana! Richie Havens looking/sounding like a giant Jose Gonzalez crossed with Tom Jones!

So. Cody has Pitchfork (hardly capturing the zeitgeist [is there even such a thing any more? Can you have a zeitgeist to capture when everything is in your face at all times?], but still a return to non-traveling festivals); my parents had Woodstock (they didn’t go, but that whole generation claims it, I grew up on the music and its influence AND it really did capture the zeitgeist of that approximate moment in time). That leaves me with early 90s Lollapalooza, which was nothing like either of these festivals.

1994 was a weird time for formerly-small/indie-in-spirit music, having lost Kurt Cobain just a few months prior. You could definitely sense things shifting and changing, though into what was anyone’s guess. No one was giving much thought to the internet except for Courtney Love’s ramblings in the Velvet Rope folder on AOL. (I didn’t find an archive after a cursory search, but back then a friend in California had access to this mysterious AOL and would fax - FAX! - me pages of Ms. Love’s postings. I’m sure I still have them)

I went to Lollapalooza that year representing a Chicago magazine, though obviously not as a photographer:

Flaming Lips + Damian of the Frogs at Lollapalooza in Chicago, July 15, 1994. Photo by me, Lisa, using a crappy disposable camera.

Flaming Lips played the second stage, did an amazing cover of Queen’s “Under Pressure” (I’d link you, but I can’t find any good audio), and had a plain old bubble machine instead of putting Wayne in a bubble.

Cody, who was not with me that day, had just turned two.

Pinch

Lisa B-K — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:44:35 +0000

We’re on limited $$ rations (well, more limited than usual) due to camp fees and doctor co-pays and things of that nature, things that always seem to happen at the same/wrong time, so we’re cooking from the freezer/fridge as much as possible. This used to be SOP chez B-K, but with full-time work and lassitude and, yes, laziness, we’ve come to the point of too-full fridge, too-full freezer.

With Lilly off at Cousins Camp last week (this is a week-long sleepaway camp hosted by Jim’s parents and attended by a total of 5 cousins ages 11, 10, 10, 7, and 7), we did not go through the Saturday Market nectarines the way we usually do. Another day in the fridge and the two week-old fruit would become compost, so I cranked out a half-dozen “rustic” (read: quite imperfect) nectarine tartlets with what was left. Good god. It’s been ages since I’ve done something like that, since I’ve made food with what was already there, not needing to go out for a special ingredient or mess around too much with… whatever. They were easy. Jim made Caprese salad sandwiches (fresh mozzarella, leftover tomato, leftover pesto, basil leaves on baguette from Mirabelle) for dinner, the two of us (Cody at a photo shoot and Lilly at musical practice), and then we had a bike ride and came home and had dessert.

We have never NOT had children - we began hanging out when Cody was two and-a-half.

As it turns out, I rather like his company. And he likes my tartlets.

Drilling a Hole With My Soul in the Sand

Lisa B-K — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:14:09 +0000

I kind of covet Ed & Janna’s chickens

We’re all in, summerwise. July denotes the beginning of 5 months’ worth of celebrations - we started with Cody’s 17th birthday on 2 July and will observe our wedding anniversary, Jim’s birthday, my birthday, and Lilly’s birthday, in August, September, October, and November, respectively - and we’re sure to have other random neighborhoody get-togethers, not the least of which will be the Third, Fourth, or Fifth Annual B-K Dessert Potluck in early August.

We looked forward, all winter and spring, to the weather’s eventual improvement precisely so we could have people over. I didn’t grow up in a family that had people over with any regularity - nay, even visits from relatives were rare, especially after we moved to what surely appeared to be the frozen tundra to all of our Florida-based relations - and having friends over was also a rare occurrence. I’m a deeply social person and love nothing more than a good mashup of all our friends in their different permutations, and have been gratified to discover that the guy I married is also down for these endeavors. While he he’s never been antisocial, it’s only in the last several years that we’ve had largeish impromptu gatherings in addition to one or two planned blowouts each summer.

I’ll admit that the planned blowouts were much easier to handle when I wasn’t working full-time, especially since I now work on Saturdays from 4:30 AM - about 1:30 PM, and have to carve out time to make food when really, I should be taking a nap. Jim has taken on most of the other work, especially for the impromptu gatherings, but at the same time I feel some guilt (?) and definitely some resentment about work sucking up all my energy (because, frankly, it does). I think I’m moving into a different phase of my life - I know I’ve alluded to it - and it’s all tangled up in the kids getting older (17 and almost-11? HOW DARE THEY?) and me trying to realign the constellation.

I got my first non-babysitting job when I was 14 years old. I was a turkey leg wench at the Renaissance Festival for at least one and possibly two seasons; the job started out hot and humid in mid-August and ended frosty-like the last weekend September, and was the only way a kid my age could earn good money on the weekends. After making a few hundred bucks over 6 weekends, I was pretty sold on working. Let’s just say I was never much of a babysitter, anyway. Other summer or other non-career, non-parenting jobs I have held:

- house painter - convenience store operator - movie theater schlep - community education art intern - games operator at Valleyfair - pastry seller - barista - diner waitress - schmancy waitress - cocktail waitress - record store clerk - candy maker - temp (oh, the temping positions I have held! Very weird!)

What kind of non-career, summer-type jobs have you held?

In terms of “career” jobs, I’ve either worked in the music business as a sales rep, a buyer, a publicist/A&R type for a record label, or as a journalist (that last was freelance, unpaid, and my flakiness at the time definitely worked against me), or I’ve worked in the food business in non-profit, a cooperative setting, or in a municipality running a large farmers’ market. My career, such as it is, has been short thus far due to doing my rather rudderless thing after graduating -> having kids and staying home with them -> and it’s all been frosted with a commitment to working for small businesses/nonprofits/government. Basically, I’m pretty much resigned to the fact that I’ll likely be working (or looking for work) outside the home for the rest of my life, and I’m of mixed mind about it. I like earning money and I like having health insurance, but I miss my freedom, or what amounted to freedom back when I was home with the kids. I remind myself that while my time was mine (well, mine and theirs), there wasn’t very much money and there was a whole lot of stress, and neither were particularly freeing. But I must work, and in these times, I’m especially grateful for my job. I just don’t want to BECOME my job.

Back when I was 21 and just out of college, I couldn’t identify -at all - with the concept of a midlife crisis. I still think it’s a luxury, a navel-gazey Hallmark creation wrought out of Western ennui. But I can now see how one’s forties, while liberating in so many ways, can also be perplexing. And I’m perplexed. Benevolently, but perplexed nevertheless.

Whoops

Lisa B-K — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 01:11:36 +0000

Still here, yo.

Have been working a lot and thinking a lot about… well, all kinds of things. Today’s walk around the track was a bit of a revelation, but in a rather unimportant kind of way, i.e., no epiphanies, just arrivals.

Perhaps something of more substance soon. I’m terrible at keeping blog-related promises.

Monday on Wednesday

Lisa B-K — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:47:10 +0000

I’m not one to complain, usually, but really.

painting by Hilma af Klint

Car window left open all night during torrential rain, requiring many “ass towels” (that one’s for Jim) yet resulting in wet butt anyway? Check.

Soggy doctor appointment with slightly weird physician? Check.

Schedule appointment for mole removal? Check.

Change out of new favorite pants due to aforementioned wet butt and hate outfit all day? Check.

Incredibly torrential rain causing water in the basement? Check.

Whack head/see stars while assisting in bailout of basement? Check.

Get next to nothing done at work? Check.

Receive bad news about a friend? Check.

More rain on the way? Check.

I think I’ll go hide with a drink and a book.

Closer Than It Appears

Lisa B-K — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:59:04 +0000

It came to my attention yesterday from both good friends and my son (!) that my blog hasn’t been updated in nearly a month. This is mainly because I was feeling (and still do feel) that my blogging is more a familiar refrain of What I’ve Been Doing rather than What I’ve Been Thinking. I guess it’s a place to start.

Though I work full-time year-round, the nature of my work outside the home has shaken out to be an intense 9 months on/3 months kind-of-off situation. Physical preparation for the upcoming farmers’ market season begins, in earnest, in February (though I’m thinking about it all year long, and I’ll be starting even earlier for the 2010 season), and the weeks leading up to the first actual event are, for lack of a better term, completely wackadoo. It is no coincidence, either, that my last blog entry before today was the day before we had ourselves a bit of farmers’ market controversy in Urbana. I spent two and a half weeks sorting that out, and then the season went ahead and started, and things are hopefully settling down. Two solid markets so far; may there be 26 more, with v little rain.

Part of my job involves checking out new produce vendors - the market gardens and small farms who want to sell fruits and vegetables at the Market. [Funny aside - did you know that in Sweden, berries aren’t considered fruits - they’re considered berries? As is “fruits, vegetables, and berries”? Anyway.] Every new applicant gets a visit before they can sell at the Market, and this year every produce vendor, even if I’ve been to their place before, will get a visit from me at some point during the season. I take photos of their places, get the tour, chat for a bit. I get asked a lot of questions about the food and the farmers in my job, so my goal is to have as much information as possible available to consumers about the orchards, fields of sweet corn, acres of tomatoes and potatoes, and berry patches that supply food to many eaters in the C-U area. This means I drive to a lot of places, and occasionally I get lost. Note to self: charge hi-tech gizmo before leaving for 1.5 hour trip on gravel and dirt roads.

******

A bunch of online friends and I were reminiscing last week about the old days, 9-10 years ago, when we all met on a message board, and we’ve followed along with each other ever since. I sighed aloud about how I loved homeschooling my kids back in the early 00s, how much fun it was when they were younger to be with them like that, and how now - now is so fraught with getting things done, getting ahead (whatever that means), really intense planning, and feeling a bit left behind as my kids grow and embark on their young person lives. One of these friends pointed out to me that when I was home with them, I always had one eye a little bit on the future, and that I’m accomplishing what I’d hoped I’d someday do - the kids are thriving, and I’m doing work that I enjoy and that I feel is important. Ya can’t go back. So… what’s next? I keep thinking grad school is next, but…

Happy late Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. I hope your Sunday weather was delicious, that your breakfast wasn’t charred, and that you were able to carve some time out to do whatever the hell you wanted.

Bunny Candy

Lisa B-K — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:47:34 +0000

When Cody was 4 years old, he wrote me a note for Mother’s Day that read, “You are bunny candy to me.” Easter that year had clearly made an impact.

The phrase entered the B-K family lexicon, of course, so today was Bunny Candy Day. We are not churchgoing folk (I’m much more likely to make the rest of the family observe the Vernal Equinox than anything else this time of year), but we dutifully do the Bunny Candy thing.

I’m curious - what are some great utterances by the children in yr life that have stuck around over time, becoming part of the house vernacular?

The Real Dirt on the First Lady

Lisa B-K — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 17:44:19 +0000

Still unable to shake off the last 8 years, I occasionally feel as though I’m living in an alternate reality:

[Sorry about the largeness of the photo. It’s from Reuters and I couldn’t figure out how to reduce it. Anyway.]

From the Telegraph in the UK:

Some of the food grown in the garden will be served to the Obamas and to White House staff and guests. Some will be donated to a local soup kitchen.

I’m surprisingly emo about this.