one of his

This is a person who, every time he spoke, restored my faith in the human capacity for goodness and love. This may be the only person I'll ever miss who I didn't actually know. That's part of his gift--I think many of us feel, in a way, one of his.

warming my heart

I think I've found the place I want to live. It's the Arizona Biltmore Hotel, in Phoenix. This is the time of year when B Dub and I hunker down with our Netflix, order delivery, and surf the web fantasizing about warmer locales (15 degrees and below most of the weekend).

B is from Arizona, and was holding out on me. We've done the Taliesin West tour (loved it) of Frank Lloyd's Wright's school in Phoenix, but he just told me about the masterpiece of hospitality designed by one of Wright's proteges, Albert McArthur, built in 1929. Some fun facts about the "where I'd rather be" spot of the moment:

Famous weddings at the Biltmore include Sandra Day O'Connor's.

Celebrity honeymooners include Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

The words to the song "White Christmas" were penned poolside at the Arizona Biltmore, by Irving Berlin.

The Biltmore was owned for many years by the Wrigley family, of the chewing gum fortune.

Marilyn Monroe deemed the Biltmore's her "favorite pool."

I'm sure the pool is grand, but I think the interior is the most impressive--I wouldn't mind reading my paper here, having dinner with friends here, and if you're having a wedding reception or gala affair anytime soon, may I humbly suggest this spot, featuring a gold-leaf celing.

If you live in Arizona, or are going anytime soon, please go the the Biltmore and tell me if it's as wonderful as it looks to me right now, while I'm huddled next to the radiator.

back...home?

After a long winter's break, I'm back in NYC for the first time in a month. It's always a weird transition back to the city after I've been away for a while. I always think of New York as a place I live until....something. Until I can't stand living without a car, or washer/dryer, or dish washer, need to own real estate, go broke, finally grow up. I don't really live here. I just live here, until.

Now that I've been here for 3.5 years, 1.5 years longer than I was supposed to, it really does kind of feel like coming home. It doesn't hurt that I had my own little apartment and B Dub to come home to. While I was out and about running errands in my ginormous caterpillar coat, once again re-adjusting to post-car life, I stopped at the farmer's market and bought some hot apple cider.

Hot apple cider, it turns out, is not really a good street accessory for a New Yorker. You can't walk fast (it threatens to splash all over your hand) and you can't get stuff done--banking, grocery shopping--all two-handed activities. So, after a couple of frustrated blocks, I pulled over on the sidewalk and stopped. I just stood there and enjoyed my cider--and realized--I never really stop on the sidewalk...ever. I looked up and down the street and saw how pretty the skyline was against the clouds. I saw a person playing chess on the street. I saw another person selling used books from a card table. In a third-story window overhead someone playing basketball made a basket in an indoor children's gym. Two little girls walked by and said goodbye to each other.

I was struck by how unusual and mundane this place is. I should probably stop on the sidewalk in New York while until lasts.

i hereby resolve

Do you fear confrontation?

Do you have trouble expressing your wishes, especially when put on the spot?

Do you decline to voice your desires, telling yourself you're being polite, and then harbor resentment?

Do you find that you're so out of practice handling conflict situations, that when you do, you're stilted and create the exact awkward situation you were afraid of in the first place?

Do you find that when someone exercises bad manners--such as butting in front of you in line and then telling you to f** off--you are speechless and ill-prepared?

Well then, my friend, join the club--because I do--to all of the above. My New Year's resolution is to be more direct. Take note, this does not mean rude. One of my pet peeves (aside from my own in-directness) is insensitivity in the name of "just being direct." I mean, I want to be gracious when, for example, my dear history buff uncle wants to accompany on a research trip, and I know he will take over and completely distract me from doing any real history research. I want to be able to say "no" in no unclear terms, but I want those not-unclear terms to be, you know, gracious.

If you have any tips on gracious directness, please let me know. I've got a whole year to work on it.

(I know, you were thinking my resolution was to stop blogging. Not true, but actually getting on the computer to do real work isn't a half bad idea.... :)

corn sex, 'n stuff

I can't stop talking about Michael Pollan's book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma." It is exquisitely well-written, and the first section, about corn, has made one of the world's more mundane members of the plant kingdom utterly fascinating.

Did you know that corn coevolved with humans to the point that only animals with opposable thumbs can properly eat corn--because of the husk? Did you know that our bodies are made almost entirely of corn? If a scientist took a fingernail clipping from almost any American and carbon-tested it, the results would be: corn. We don't eat it in the raw form, but all the animals we eat, eat corn: cows, chickens, pigs, even salmon are being engineered to eat corn. Sweeteners? Corn syrup. And all those mystery ingredients in your food--the mono and tri, di, glycerides, etc. =derivatives of corn.

Pollan describes our dependence on corn in a chicken nugget--made of a chicken fed with corn, held together with binding material from corn, fried in corn oil, battered in corn flour that's been flavored and sweetened with you guessed it--corn. Corn on corn on corn on corn. That's us.

Pollan concludes his family's fast-food meal by saying:

if you include the corn in the gas tank...the amount of corn that went into producing our movable fast-food feast would easily have overflowed the car's trunk, spilling a trail of golden kernels on the blacktop.

He also has an entire section on "corn sex" that I shared with my class that makes some really dull writing material (plant reproduction?) quite steamy. It's brilliant. It'll almost make you blush.

A few questions after reading Pollan's book:

What is the alternative to cheap corn?

Okay, so, our dependence on corn is bad news in many ways, including our dependence on oil (petrochemicals provide the fertilizer needed to grow our monoculture corn, energy for transporting and processing corn), and serious soil and water poisoning (fertilizers and pesticides for large-scale monoculture agriculture), and our beef is pumped full of steroids and antibiotics because cows aren't meant to eat cheap corn, but grass, and farmers barely make it and most of the farm subsidy goes toward producing cheap corn for corporations. All right.

But what would be the cost to our food chain, and economy, to change it up? My feeling is that Americans are pretty ingenious at finding smarter/better way to do things, but are we so entrenched in corn that switching to large-scale sustainable agriculture would be a huge threat to the economy, price of food, and national security?

Related question: Does cheap corn really mostly benefit corporations that process it in various forms and sell it to us at an increased price? Or is it really a boon to the average Joe consumer, too?

Is being a "gourmand" or "gourmet" irresponsible, in that it makes one less concerned about the sacrifices and indulgences necessary to provide such food? (Ex. most of us would agree someone who harms animals regularly is a criminal, yet we eat animals raised in inhumane conditions all the time)

Would I be willing to pay significantly more for my food if it were grown sustainably? Would this cost really be off-set by less cancers, better health, healthier environment? Could many people afford it?

Is eating now a political act?

Last: Is there anything left to eat? Between diet fads (low carb, low fat, etc.), fear of eating too much corn, or meat and dairy that might be cruel/packed with chemicals, and vegetables that don't come from sustainable agriculture/are packed with chemicals, I don't know what to eat anymore.

Michael Pollan's book has made me smarter; and left me hungry.

return of the angry muffin!

Aw, yeah. Those of you who saw me at any point between January and May 2007 may remember this little gem...my friend (and yours) the Angry Muffin. I have a baby blue T-shirt with this little guy on it, along with his bubble statement. I was going through my "winter stuff" under my bed and unearthed him the other day and the two of us are back in action.

Reasons I love the Angry Muffin:

It's not a joke, but it is a joke. It's a delayed-reaction joke. It's a muffin that's going to eat you. Get it?

I like visual jokes, and by that, I mean things that make me laugh just by looking at them. For example, Jack Black. He doesn't have to say anything, he--just the way he uses is body--is funny. Exhibit B: The Muffin. The furrowed brow, the rubbery lips and strange, single triangle tooth. It looks funny. The statement is just the icing on this little cupcake.

Last but not least, people inevitably read my T-shirt out loud to me: Ah Munna Eat Choo?? Usually this is because they have to read the phonetic spelling out loud to get the message, or because they just think it's weird. But I get a kick out of people saying, Ah Munna Eat Choo!, especially when they get to the "choo" part.

Like Suzanne Vega's song, the Muffin's threat inevitably sticks in your head, and you'll go around proclaiming it out loud through the day; most likely with a monster or Bobcat Goldthwaite voice. Ah Munna Eat Choo! Go ahead and say it. You know you want to.

Little Muffin...welcome back.

me vs. usps

I suppose we all have things that we feel we should know how to do as adults--but somehow just haven't mastered. Maybe it's driving a stick-shift, or reading a map, or figuring out how to download music from your friends so you really never have to spend another dollar on iTunes. One of the adult skills I have yet to master is properly using the post office in such a way that my needs are met to my satisfaction without a near panic-attack or meltdown.

It's that time of year for mailing packages, and I have made some recent trips to USPS 104 St., my local outpost. The last resulted in a 50-minute trip in which I was given multiple forms and asked to step away from the window twice to fill them out.

After the second time the lady asked me to step aside, I was like, It will only take me a second, please don't make me step aside again--I've been here for an hour. Look how fast I'm filling this out, it's like my pen is on fire.

And she was like, You can't expect me to wait and watch you fill out form 9,268. I'm not just going to stand here and watch you. If you do I'll give you forms 9,269 and 17AB and I'll give you those breast cancer stamps instead of the holiday teddy bears.

And I was like, I'm not going anywhere, postal lady. I see you and your forms and and I'm forming a posse with this old guy behind me who's been drooling for the last half hour, plus this crying three-year old in a snow suit, plus this homeless guy who's been walking around the line asking for change; and we're coming at you like a spider monkey.

Well, most of that happened, up until the post-office posse part. By the time I left I wanted to reach through the plexiglass and strangle someone (now I know why they have the plexiglass).

Can someone who has achieved P.O. Zen advise me on this matter? I feel there is something I'm missing. I know other people who send packages regularly and seemingly without neurotic effects. Tell me your secret so I can go to the post office again without having a restraining order put on me.