Diversion

So, I finally succumbed and bought a New iPad (not to be confused with the non-existent iPad 3).  I am learning the ins and outs and differences between this device and my trusty laptop and desktop.  Older daughter asked me yesterday what I liked best about it, and I thought for a moment.  Besides the fact that I really enjoy the "touch" aspect of it, I think I what I like that is different with it is that I can play "Words with Friends" with my younger daughter.  (I can also text, made easier with the voice recognition software.)  Despite the fact that I am woefully unskilled at this game (and Scrabble), it's fun to play a game over several days and have this additional connection to someone I love.

I also look forward to traveling with it instead of a laptop because of it's small size.

So, yeah, it's pretty fun, and I'm sure that I will find more treasures within this cute device.

Banks of Fog

We always start our day with some NPR (KVCR to be precise) including the weather report for the Inland Empire.  This morning we were warned to be on the lookout for banks of fog.  I thought about that phrase, and it occurred to me that it would be fun to write a poem that had the phrase "beware the banks of fog, my son" (with apologies to Lewis Carroll).  However, the day got away from me with this and that and a bunch of time spent with friends playing music (string trio and recorder group), so a poem never materialized.

But, I DID take a few photos this morning before I went to the gym (and before the fog dissipated), and I DID think about my favorite fog poem by Carl Sandburg. Here's a fun little youtube video of a fast-moving fog bank....

New Soup Recipe and a Little Concert

Here's a new "keeper" recipe for a Hearty Sausage and Sweet Potato Soup.  I made it Tuesday night and we enjoyed the leftovers last night.  This time I used spinach as the recipe said, but next time I am going to try kale instead.

After dinner on Tuesday, I heard a student recital at Boone Recital Hall at Scripps which you can read about on my music blog.

Lost in Place

I really enjoy perusing the used book cart at the Claremont Library.  A few years ago I bought a copy of Louise Erdrich's The Master Butchers Singing Club and not only thoroughly enjoyed reading it, but I think I've loaned it out to about 5 or 6 friends and relations who also thoroughly enjoyed it.  I'd say that was $1 well spent.

More recently I came upon Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia by Mark Salzman.  I have read his Lying Awake and seen the movie about his time in China called Iron and Silk, and I know I should have read more of his work before now.

I finally got around to reading this one (if you own a book, it usually gets to the bottom of the pile since the library books are pressing you onward with their due dates).  It was funny.  I liked it very much.  Mark was a kid who followed through on his passions until they wore themselves out - from kung fu to cello to Chinese.  Now I really do need to go back and read more of his work.

Flamingoes

It took a little calculating, but I think the last time we went to the San Diego Zoo was in 1999, just before we went to live in Palo Alto for the year.  I seem to remember that after our trip we learned that the panda we had seen was pregnant.  

Anyway, we enjoyed seeing the zoo again, and it seems to be even bigger and better than we remember with different levels to walk on to see animals from different angles.  

I particularly enjoyed trying to photograph the flamingoes, which reminds me of a great b&w print my dad took at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago back in the 60s.  Unfortunately I do not have a scan of that photo, but if my mom or dad sends it to me, I will add it to this post.

San Diego Model Railroad Museum

As if a spring break trip to Arizona was not enough traveling for us, we spent this past weekend in San Diego.  H had a conference starting Sunday, so we went down with our friends on Saturday to make a fun weekend out of it.  Knowing that we wanted to go to the Zoo, but also do something else, we headed for Balboa Park in general and then looked at the map.  I had forgotten how many museums are in the park.  I don't think any of us had ever gone into the Model Railroad Museum, so we decided to give it a go.  

Along with a troop of cub scouts, we enjoyed all the exhibits and marveled at the amount of time and money that has gone into creating so many different scenes.  Since this is an ongoing project, we could see various stages of completion.  At one point there are just tracks laid out and photos from Google Earth next to them so that the finished models can be accurate.  

Maulik Pancholy at Scripps

Taking a question from a student

Thursday night we went to Garrison Theater at Scripps to hear Maulik Pancholy speak about life in the acting world as an Indian. (He called himself an American Indian which is not to be confused with Native American.) We have seen his work on 30 Rock and most recently on the new sitcom Whitney.   He brought clips of his work from his early days, when roles for his race were quite stereotypical spoofs of Indians in turbans (Pancholy does not own one - I guess they didn't sell them in Indiana where he grew up), through his more recent work where his ethnicity is not his prominent trait.

Arizona Food

It wouldn't be a complete telling of a trip without mention of some of the excellent food we had.  Yes, this was one of our food trips (although the scenery was pretty great, too!).

I will just talk about two of our favorite places to eat, one in Phoenix, one in Sedona.  I think we may have liked Rice Paper the most since we went there twice.  This sweet little place was conceived of as a sushi bar, but then the owner changed her mind and made it into a Vietnamese spring roll bar.  I tried both the Spider Spring Roll (similar to the sushi by that name with tempura crab inside) and the Vegetable Tempura Spring Roll (with asparagus, mango and avocado).  I do like my tempura.... We also shared a bowl of Vegetarian Pho (the picture shows how large one half of a bowl is) both times we went.  The first time we were too full for dessert, so that's why we went back the second time.  We just had to try the ginger creme brûlée.  It was definitely worth the return trip for that.

Our favorite place in Sedona was recommended to us - the Elote Cafe.  This hopping place does not take reservations, and we arrived at what we thought was opening time - 5:00.  There was already a line and a 45-minute wait for a table.  We chose to shorten the wait and sit at the bar which ended up being part of the fun experience.  We enjoyed chatting up the bartender as she made prickly pear margaritas as fast as she could.  This place is pretty pricy, so we decided to try three appetizers for our dinner, and that was a pretty good call.

The signature appetizer is the elote (Mexican name for corn on the cob).  After roasting the ear of corn, it is seasoned with whatever they use to make it completely delicious.  This version takes the corn off of the cob and you eat it with a spoon, or dip it with the chips provided.  I suppose I could buy the cookbook to try it at home, but I am sure that it would come up short in my kitchen.  We also had the seafood tacos (nothing like fish tacos in Ensenada) which were just the right kind of spicy and delicious, as well as the roasted beet salad (with pumpkin seed-encrusted goat cheese balls).

Soldier's Pass - Hiking in Sedona

When looking for a good hike in Sedona, I was overwhelmed with choices, and I think that not many of them are bad.  So, I looked for one that was about 5 miles with not too much elevation gain.  I chose Soldier's Pass because it fit that criteria as well as touting a large sinkhole (the Devil's Kitchen), some arches, and seven sacred pools.

We found the sinkhole and pools (the pools are nowhere as impressive as the seven sacred pools on Maui, but they are still nice to see on the hike), but the guide said that the side hike to the arches was via an unmarked trail on the right, and we passed a number of such possibilities that we didn't want to try them, just in case the arches were not at the end of them.  So, no arches.  But we did see lots and lots of beautiful scenery, including red rocks galore.  

We also ran into some Carleton alums along the way.  They noticed my shirt and started a conversation which gave us not only a pleasant interaction, but a nice 20-minute rest.  They live in northern Minnesota but spend every March in Sedona and April in Palm Springs.

 This is the Devil's Kitchen.

 One of the sacred pools (or puddles).

 Not exactly arches, but some caves in the distance that were pretty enough to photograph.

 From near the top of Soldier's Pass, this is our view with Sedona in the background.  We had about an 800 ft. elevation gain.

 This is a rock formation that I particularly liked.  It looked like a group of people.

Museums and Gardens

Among our many fun activities in Phoenix, visits to two museums made the list.  I blogged about the Musical Instruments Museum at my music blog which you can read about here.

While planning our Arizona trip, I ran across something that made me think there might be an art installation by James Turrell somewhere.  We are enamored of the Turrell at Pomona College called Dividing the Light.  A  little internet searching.... and I found that he is actually working on something in a crater near Flagstaff, but that is not quite ready for prime time yet.

When I found out that the Phoenix Art Museum had a work by Turrell, I put it on our agenda and when we arrived at the place, we were surprised.  First, it doesn't use natural light from the sun.  Second, it is pretty small in scope compared to other works of his.  You can sit there on the floor in front of it and watch the colors change ever so subtly and slowly, or do as we did and watch it for a few minutes, then tour the rest of the museum and return to the Turrell to see how it had changed.

The rest of the museum had some pretty interesting art, so that made our end-of-the-day trip there worthwhile.  Besides, Wednesday afternoons are free or donation at this museum.

A museum of the outdoor sort with lots and lots of natural light - the Desert Botanical Garden - came highly recommended to us by a variety of sources and with good reason.  We happily wandered the various cacti and desert wildflowers for several hours, and we recommend visiting in the morning when the sun is not quite so direct and hot, even though there are many shady places throughout the garden.

More pictures from our whole trip here.

At the entrance to the Garden - these plants are made of glass

Ancient Ruins

I'm not exactly sure why, but I really like to tromp through ruins.  We've enjoyed seeing Mesa Verde, Mayan ruins in Belize and Tikal in Guatemala among others.  I like wandering cemeteries, learning about history (in fact my master's degree is in music history), dabbling in my family genealogy, etc.  The last time we were in Arizona in 2006, we drove down to Casa Grande to see those ruins.  

This trip we saw four sites of the Sinagua Indians - the prehistoric Desert People of the Southwest.  Sinagua is the Spanish word derived for these people which means "without water."  I found that very interesting since, not only does central Arizona have plenty of rivers and creeks (yes, I know it's the desert, too), but the Sinagua in the Phoenix area dug extensive canals and waterways for agriculture.  

The first place we visited was the Pueblo Grande Museum and Archeological Site.  This is a Hohokam village right next to the Sky Harbor Airport.

Pueblo Grande 

On our way up to Sedona, we stopped at Montezuma's Castle as well as Montezuma's Well.  Both are part of the same National Monument, though separated by a little distance.  Though much smaller in scale by quite a bit than Mesa Verde, this cliff dwelling is still picturesque and worth a visit.  The well, which is a large sinkhole, cannot sustain fish since the water is too concentrated with carbon dioxide.

Montezuma's Castle - just for looking at

Montezuma's Well - notice the little dwelling in the upper left-hand corner

Closer to Jerome is yet another site called Tuzigoot National Monument which is a mostly rebuilt hilltop pueblo.

Noel Paul Stookey

Before I write more about our spring break trip, I pause to write about a concert we went to yesterday.  Noel Paul Stookey (the tall middle-man of Peter, Paul and Mary fame), presented his One Light, Many Candles program with his wife, the Rev. Betty Stookey.

Since my childhood, I have been a huge fan of Peter, Paul and Mary, listening to their records on my little turntable as I fell asleep.  I learned how to sing harmony listening to Mary's deep voice.  Even though I didn't know any of the songs in today's concert (save for the final singalong), hearing Stookey's voice took me back to a comfortable place in my musical childhood, like comfort food for the ear.

We ended with everyone singing Blowin' in the Wind, and I saw more than one person wipe away a tear, so I didn't feel alone with my own.

Camelback Ranch

View from Center Field

The main reason for our Arizona Spring Break trip was to catch a few spring training games.  The Dodgers and the White Sox share the stadium called Camelback Ranch in Glendale.  We saw the Dodgers play the Rockies one day and then the Sox play the Angels the next.  Our seats were up the 3rd base line in the first row of the second section of seats (as seen from the photos below).

We really enjoyed seeing games in the smaller venue which holds just over 13,000 spectators.  While we had a great time, it would have been advantageous to have more shade in the park as well as better concessions.  The second day we ate before we made it to the field and brought in our own water.

One great thing about spring training games which don't count, the crowd is pretty laid back, and I didn't hear anyone getting out of hand or swearing.

Dodgers warming up 

Matt Kemp coming in

Albert Pujols in a new red jersey.  He has lots of new fans.

Arizona Spring Break

We have just returned home from a week in Arizona, and I'm sure I have hundreds of pictures to go through for the next blog installments.

In a nutshell we saw:

4 ancient ruins
2 baseball games
2 museums
1 ghost town
1 chapel
1 botanical garden
1 great hike
great restaurants and some not-go-great restaurants

Recipe Fail

Not all recipes from the back of a quinoa box work very well.  I tried the Black Bean and Quinoa Burger recipe I found at Trader Joe's, and while the quinoa tasted fine, it made a lousy burger.  It didn't even begin to stick together, even with the egg as a binder.  I think I will take the leftover quinoa "burgers" and do something else with them.  Maybe fry them loose in the pan with olive oil and serve it as the side of something else....?

Armchair Travel with Food

We often categorize our travels into various categories.  For example, last summer we considered our time in Eugene, Oregon to be the "food" part of our trip (and, of course, family), and the Glacier National Park part to be the "pretty" part of the trip (although Eugene is also quite lovely) which mean that we didn't expect to find great cuisine.

Having recently started reading some Calvin Trillin, I picked up Travels with Alice, and it has made me long for some "food" trips - anywhere!  In this book, Trillin writes about various locales - many in Europe - with his wife and daughters.  Aside from some diversions into babyfoot (known to us as foosball) and something about bulls and swimming pools, much of this travelogue focuses on food.   I am ready to go to France and Italy, and back to New York, too!

Lemons!

Our lemon tree is heavy-laden right now.  

Enjoy this poem Ode to the Lemon by Pablo Neruda.

Recycle Batteries

Ever wonder what to do with dead batteries?  Here in Claremont you can take them to the public library and drop them in this bin.

I am amazed at how many I need to put in this recycler, especially since we have rechargeables, but I guess not all of our batteries are.  How did people use to live before electricity?

Faithful Place

Time for another book club book review.  (With two book clubs, these seem to come around pretty quickly.)  Tana French's third novel takes place in Dublin's inner city - it's a murder mystery.

I don't often read this genre, and if this book is typical of murder mysteries, then I think I can pinpoint why I prefer other kinds of writing.

The characters are pretty black-and-white.  They are either good, or they are not.  They are not terribly complex.  One reason I like the tv shows The Wire and The Sopranos is that those characters can make me crazy.  Crazy because I have invested interest in them.  I love their good intentions and I am dismayed when they make stupid choices.

Faithful Place relies heavily on dialogue.  However, I am not all that interested in 3-4 page conversations which could be distilled and not lose their meaning in half the ink.  I get that the main character has abusive parents.  I don't need pages and pages to get the point.  In fact, I get very impatient with writing that does lots of telling and not so much showing.  This book tells lots, shows less.

There are some Americanisms in the language of this novel that do not seem to flow with the occasional Irish dialect.  Do the Irish really say "get out of Dodge?"  Also, French uses the Irish dialect sparingly, and when her characters inevitably say "Jaysus," I feel as though I have to stop for a moment and re-hear the dialect as Irish.  It would have flowed better for me if she either worked to have the brogue more prominent, or not at all.

Meh.  I'd give it a 2 out of 5.   But that's just me.

LACMA Rock

340 Tons of Rock

I have been following the story of the LACMA Rock much like many people in LA and beyond.  The story has made local and national news, as well as a friend's photo album on Facebook.  The rock has now arrived at its final destination - LACMA - where it will be installed as the main part of artist Michael Heizer's creation called Levitated Mass.

Here is an article about the final leg of the rock's 100+ mile journey from the quarry in Riverside.  This article has a nice selection of photos from the trip at the bottom of the page.

The rock has it's own Twitter account, as well as a ton (ha!) of videos on youtube (including this one).

I've seen comments from people who wonder why "taxpayer money" has been wasted (it is all private money), or what the big deal over "a rock" is, but, really, what a fun story!  With such an amazing amount of time and effort that has gone into this with modern conveniences, it surely gives one pause to appreciate the labor of the people who created Stonehenge, the Egyptian Pyramids, the great Mayan Cities, etc. without this technology.  I look forward to seeing the final installation. (I'm guessing that this one won't travel to other art museums on loan...)

In Ontario

Spring Break Begins

While walking through HMC today, I noticed this calm moment signifying that spring break has truly begun.  

Cell Phones While Driving

Just for the record, I took this picture while stopped at a red light, and I put down the camera long before the light changed.  (I often have my camera easily available.)  If you click on the photo, you will see that Michael D. Myers, lawyer from Rancho, is talking on his cell phone while driving (having just turned from Foothill onto Indian Hill).  While sitting at this spot (and other spots, as well), I often see people chatting away while driving, and it makes me nervous.  I really hope they don't hit me or anyone else down the road.

More Kid Funnies

A few funny things at school recently:

This morning I noticed, yet again, that one of our dear Kinders had her shoes on the wrong feet.  Thankfully they were slip-ons, so I had her take them off to put them on the correct feet.  She immediately crossed her feet so she could put them back on the way they had been.  I had to take one away while she put the other one on her correct foot first.   The teacher says she comes to school every day this way.  I guess I hadn't noticed before, but perhaps it's because she usually sits in the second row.

I told the second graders that I am planning a trip to Arizona.  One of them looked right at me and said, "Oh! You are going to see my tia!"  I said that I didn't know her tia, and she said, very seriously, "But her house is there!"

Probiotic Salad

As much as I like yogurt, I can only eat a certain amount of it everyday.  We know that yogurt is good for the digestive system because of the probiotics.  What other foods have this?  Sauerkraut!  We know how to eat sauerkraut on reubens and Polish sausages at Costco, but I decided to search for other sauerkraut recipes and came up with this salad, Tropcial Sauerkraut with Mango and Avocado Salad.  Since I have a few avocados from my friend Pat that are perfect for eating right now, this seemed like a good choice.

We decided that if sauerkraut can be tropical, then we could pair this salad with egg rolls from Trader Joe's.  The salad has a very strong blend of sweet and sour.  I thought it was pretty tasty, and I'm happy for the leftovers as this makes a huge batch.

LA Phil Chamber Music

We were fortunate, last night, to have been invited to a concert at San Antonio Gardens, hosted by the Foothill Philharmonic Society.  Three members of the LA Phil - violinist Lyndon Johnston Taylor, violist Mick Wetzel, and cellist David Garrett performed a Beethoven String Trio and then spoke about their recent experiences with the LA Phil in Venezuela.

After the concert, I spoke with Johnston Taylor about music education and other things. I asked if these three had ever performed trios before, and he said that this was their first time as a group.

25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

The word was out on the street.  Pomona College's production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee was good enough to spend a few dollars on and wile away/while away a sunny afternoon.  The audience had a fair share of Pilgrims in attendance since the word must have been out at Pilgrim Place, too.

I have not been to a theater production at Pomona for a long time.  Some, in the past, have been good, some, no so much.  This one has a thumbs-up from a friend of mine, and I had the spare time yesterday afternoon.  I thoroughly enjoyed the show.  I have not seen this musical before, so I can't compare it to another version, but given the chance, I would see it again.

Warm Sweet Potato Salad with Black Beans and Feta

It seems as though I can hardly get enough of sweet potatoes and black beans in combination.  Especially when I add a dash of chipotle.  Last night I made yet another variation, and I think this one is my very favorite.

I found the recipe on a blog that I stumbled on.  Occasionally I look at blogs that I follow regularly, or look at the profiles of some of the people who follow this blog and read what other blogs they read.  In doing so last week, I came across a blog called Ben & Birdy which featured this recipe.  It's under the Feb. 24, 2012 entry.

Instead of using pumpkin seeds, I substituted pepitas since I can find already roasted ones at Sprouts in the bulk bins.  I also put my salad on a bed of baby romaine rather than arugula.

Today I will discover whether this salad is good cold on the next day.....

The Other Wes Moore

I'm on a roll this week - two books!  Two friends recommended this book to me, and it came to the library for me, so I had to finish it before it was due back.

The Other Wes Moore is about two young black men with the same name who grew up in Baltimore about the same time (not knowing each other at the time) who ended up on very different life paths.  The author of the book ended up as a Rhodes Scholar from Johns Hopkins, the other is serving a life sentence for armed robbery.

The author has painstakingly researched the life of the "other" Wes and has chronicled their two lives in tandem.  Both Wes Moores grew up without fathers in their lives, both had loving mothers, neither had money.  Yet one made good, the other, not.

I felt as though most of the book gave pretty detailed information about the two lives, up to a point, but then at the end, it sort of petered out.  The author, in the end, asks himself how he got to be where he is, and the other Wes ended up where he did.  He says, in one sentence, that he has no idea.

That surprised me because I felt as though he answered that question in the book.  He had grandparents who had a little bit of wherewithal (they owned a home) and his mother took a proactive stand and sacrificed a great deal to get her son the help he needed by sending him to military school.  I think that made the world of difference between the two stories.

I am sure this book would give book clubs many topics to discuss.

The Joys of Teaching

I am so pleased with a new student who started with me last month.  He took recorder with me at Vista last year as a third grader (and did quite well).   He did not start an instrument in the school music program this fall, but he went to a children's concert by the Claremont Symphony Orchestra in January and came home to declare that he wanted to take violin lessons.

He has had 5 lessons with me so far, and I can tell that he takes his practicing seriously.  He also seems to have a natural affinity to the violin.  Today he told me that his goal is to be as good as Joshua Bell.  At the rate he's going, he can certainly achieve that goal!