at Gravel & Gold

i like that From OFG is right by one of my favorites, Gunta Stolzl.

the other day i stopped in at Gravel & Gold to document From OFG on their shelves, and Cassie, one of the store owners, happened to be talkin' it up with Severine von Tscharner Fleming! and introduced me (and the book) to Severine! Severine is an articulate and groovy young badass farmer-filmmaker-activist, for those unfamiliar with her. i missed the recent screening of the final rough cut of her film, The Greenhorns, but i will definitely not miss the undoubtedly awesome final version.

view part of the film

grey/green

our overflowing yard was cut to the quick recently. our downstairs neighbor takes care of the yard sporadically. i'm not complaining—no one else takes the time. but this last flurry/fury of clipping and trimming and weeding left the yard seemingly barren. the huge quince tree (a favorite of the birds and bees) was sheared in half and totally de-leaved. and my favorite rose bush is nowhere in sight. and my housemate's blueberry bush was transferred from a pot to the yard, though she had it in special soil.

i've actually been avoiding taking a close look at the damage. but on this grey day, the greens were so bright, i had to check them out. well, of course francisco does have a plan. there are new things planted, and they are spaced evenly around the edges of our concrete slab. succulents are being succulent, and a new pint-sized gargoyle in permanent roar watches over the growing. i still don't know how the tree or white rosebush will do, but i trust that the yard needed a makeover and that francisco has a vision.

more, bigger over here

sigur rós today: gong

beautiful photos of mostly bay area artists. found through serena's blog.

congratulations to molly

congratulations to Molly for winning the Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Award for her The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake. her book of poetry will be published soon!

three of Molly's beautiful poems from The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake are in From Orchards, Fields, and Gardens, for which i am so grateful. they move me every time i read them. i can't wait to read the rest of her Middle Sand Lake poems when her book is out!

you can read the two above poems of molly's if you click to view the image larger. the photograph is by terese wallbäck. terese's photos are some of my favorites. to me her photos fit perfectly with molly's poems. from what i can tell, both of their grandparents' had/have a great love for each other and for their grandchildren. so much tenderness in both molly's and terese's work.

early morning clouds

better bigger. more skies. the sky where i grew up.

uncloudy day (willie and dyan cannon)
unclouded day (johnny and his momma)

hairy

just some hairy pavement for you today

and some flickr paths
from sameli
from molly
from ti.mo (this one feels very familiar to me)
from shari

one of my all time favorite songs (though i miss the crickets in this version)

fierce

photo by bob lake, bigger here

this was my second time seeing patti smith. first was about ten years ago at the fillmore. she rocked both times. raw and loving and loud and awesome.

other good stuff
these two drummer-hand tap dancers (via my cousin)
amazing paper artist

grateful: rollin' fog

a whole other post could be grateful: people who are bringing back snail mail. thanks gwen. marimekko perfection.

i was inspired by mati's grateful fridays. and needed to remind myself.

i am grateful for san francisco's fast moving, nighttime fog. the first time i experienced it, i didn't live here yet. i was on a road trip from vancouver and seattle, back down to Santa Cruz with my friend tammy and her friend d. we stopped in san francisco and stayed overnight in a big pacific heights house. (pacific heights is a fancier, mansion-filled part of the city, for those unfamiliar with sf.) i can't remember whose house it was. i shared a bed with d. in an upstairs room. the room overlooked an empty, manicured pacific heights street. from the bed though, i couldn't see the street. i was nervous for various reasons and lay frozen in one position, staring out the window. soon, huge white clouds tumbled by. everything was a thick violet outside aside from the white clouds which moved so fast i couldn't believe it—like a silent, billowing freight train, or like a ghost or a herd of cloud animals. the clouds calmed me down—the wonder of them. they kept rolling by.

living now in the mission district, i'm not directly inside the fog belt, though i can see it in the distance from my window. and fog does pass by/envelop my house occasionally. sometimes i'll take the trash down our back steps late at night, and low clouds will be zooming by overhead. it takes me out of myself every time. reminds me of the larger world and the bigness of weather and nature. i think it's the silence of it that surprises me. here's this big thing happening, and we wouldn't even know it was happening unless we went outside. it seems like so much movement, so fast, would make a noise. it feels like a secret. it must be cleansing for a city to have fog regularly sweep through it like that from end to end. or anyhow, the fast moving nighttime fog is one of the aspects of sf's character that i love best.

slow clothes

i posted a rant about slow clothes over on sew green.

can't believe i only have one book (a place on earth) left to read of wendell berry's port william books. going to savor it and hope he writes more of them.

prickle

i've never seen these pricklers before.

flickr faves
sweden
the rains have begun
rhodesian ridgeback

good stuff

a few photos from flora grubb

i really like this bed found via mieke willems

also really like yelena bryksenkova's work found via lena sjöberg, who has a new book that looks fantastic: cold facts about ice.



some photos from my housemate heather of our general store/kite adventure, which i wrote about in my last post.

general store + kite flying

general store is one of my favorite stores in sf, so i am so pleased that they're carrying From OFG. (i will stop posting about the book at some point, really.)

i love how every time i visit the general store, it has transformed—new shelves inside the store (new goods of course), their little greenhouse built, now a small stony-mossy patch in front of the greenhouse, copious cacti and gardening tools, a great, long wooden bench along the fence—a perfect lounging spot. i missed the blooming of the wildflowers. next time i go, there will be some other development/blooming.

because it's on the other side of town, it makes for an adventure to visit it. heather and i went today and then flew her kite at ocean beach. ocean beach was surprisingly not cold, and the wind was pretty gentle, but steady. the kite flew almost directly above us, a bright rainbow flapping against the blue sky. it mesmerized us like a swimming fish or a campfire. i was only a little nervous that it might take a sudden dive and poke someone's eye out. luckily that didn't happen—all eyes are intact.

spin

more, bigger thisaway

mati's and jennifer's opening, spin, was so fun. their work looked great together, and i enjoyed the playful board game-related theme and their interpretations of the theme.

it makes me smile to look at these photos of cuties mati, hugh, katrina and david.

it was a treat to meet jen hewett for the first time last night too. she contributed a beautiful screen print to From Orchards, Fields, and Gardens. also a treat to find From OFG front and center on the book display at rare device, thanks to lisa c.

jar and cup

my friend sarah and i traded art. now her beautiful jar and cup hangs on my wall. it's even yummier in person. her paintings remind me a little of thiebaud in that i just want to eat them.

flickr faves this week are from some contributors to my book! (thank you all for your purchases!)
under the apple tree by mistubako
3d version of anna emilia laitinen's houses
9 july by shari altman

outstanding in the parking lot

bigger, more over here

this weekend jen and i picked berries and jammed. after about eight hours of making and preserving 17 pints of strawberry + blackberry jam yesterday, jen and bob's neighbors brought out the barbecue for an outstanding in the parking lot dinner, the city version of outstanding in the field. jayn set up her wind-up gramophone! and we watched the full moon rise over the warehouse building across the street. pretty sweet. we also discussed important matters like pig orgasms, which according to our resident pig orgasm expert, leah, (and then google for verification) last 30 minutes. we topped the evening off with vanilla ice cream served the freshest berry syrup on top. YUM. an all around delicious weekend.

norwegian film

whenever i go to lost weekend video, i always check out the scandinavian section. i am obligated to. usually, it's the same shelf all the time: babette's feast, show me love, together, italian for beginners, my life as a dog and a few more. but last time, there was a new addition to the shelf, a 2003 norwegian movie: kitchen stories. it looked like it would be a bad comedy. turned out to be a very sweet, quiet, interesting and a little sad film. it was mostly in swedish, as one of the two main characters is swedish. and much of it is silent, so i didn't actually end up reading any subtitles. i recommend it. i'm not going to tell you what it's about, aside from that it's about a friendship that develops between two men.

above are poor photos of the movie (on my tv). these awesome swedish camper trailers play an important role in the movie. so cute and round.

they're here!

i've updated the book site a bit with some new images from the book. the pre-order price is available until friday at midnight. starting saturday, the books will be $30.

my house smells like bindery glue. 20 boxes are stacked high. 3 empties, plus stray shipping envelopes litter the floor. the place is a mess. woohooo!

memory

pages from a proof

even though from orchards, fields, and gardens is filled with the writing and artwork of others, it feels so personal to me. not surprising i guess considering i've spent almost a year with its stories and images.

you know how you appreciate certain photos or paintings often because they evoke a certain feeling or memory? well, most of the artwork in the book is like that for me. when i first saw abby's photo, i was immediately drawn to and moved by it. i didn't realize until later—until even after i'd chosen it for the book from a group of abby's farm photos—just how closely it resembled a painting that is very familiar to me. the story—

after college, my friend laurel and i eurailed around europe before laurel left for northern spain and then college on the east coast and i left on a train north to go live in sweden. (our dramatic parting is another story altogether, involving multiple barcelona underground stations with the same name, losing each other, bomb threats at the train station, canceled trains to the basque region and phone calls from my fretful mother to the paris central train station, my hardly recognizable name announced over the loudspeaker several times in a thick french accent, just as my train for stockholm was arriving.)

laurel and i traveled around for a month, staying in hostels and rigorously seeing sites and attending museums, surviving on baguettes, fruit and hit cookies. toward the end of the trip, we traveled to cupra marritima, on the east coast of italy, where my mormor's brother torsten had a house. he was there for the summer, and my mormor and her sister, carin, were visiting him there for the first time, as luck would have it. we stayed with them for three days, the first physically relaxing days of our trip. we swam in warm, clear turquoise water and ambled up the beach strip to get our daily gelatos. in the evenings, we all ate on the roof of torsten's house. mormor, carin and torsten reminisced about their childhood. i wish i had a recording of their conversations. i don't remember a word of what they said, but i remember how close they seemed and how they basked in each other's company. i had never really seen my mormor as someone's sibling until then. i knew she and carin were close, but hearing the three of them, i got a different sense of their relationships.


mormor, carin and torsten


carin, laurel and mormor

anyhow, during that stay, torsten (an artist) painted in his front yard. he painted a blue ladder and the fig tree behind the ladder. the ladder stayed in place all day and night, there when laurel and i arrived, and there when we left. later, that painting graced the cover of a book from a retrospective exhibit of torsten's work. i often return to that book with the ladder on the cover. funny that i did not consciously recognize it when i first saw abby's photo.


bigger

beautiful bounty

bigger yonder

some weeks the csa box is more impressive than others. this is one of those weeks. (even pinky leon is impressed—basil sniffing kitty). all of the sudden the colors changed. deep purple grapes and figs and green green peppers. i'm not even a pepper fan, and these look good to me. they look like they are especially crisp, don't they? i had been refraining from buying the hyper expensive figs at rainbow grocery, but they were wearing me down looking so plump and soft and ready to burst. pretty sure i gasped when i opened the box this evening and saw all the figs. just what i wanted. YUM. feeling grateful and lucky.

right now i am reading eaarth (that's with two as for a reason), by bill mckibben. the first half of the book is all about how we cause(d) climate change and about the tragic consequences that change is having across the planet. it's eye opening to read about the crazy many small and large ways climate change is affecting the earth and just how badly we are screwing ourselves. parasite and insect booms, forests dying, species dying, tropics expanding, tundra thawing/releasing bursts of methane, drought, storms. mckibben writes about how we are altering large and important (for earth's climate and for our survival) natural features of the earth (the ocean, the rain forest, the ice caps) so extremely and in mostly irreversible ways! people who like doomsday stories, this might be a book for you. luckily, there's a second half to the book. i'm just getting to that part, but so far it's intriguing and oddly optimistic, given the frightening first half. i'll report back when i'm done with the book. (did you know reagan removed the solar panels from the white house when he became pres? it's almost comical.)

in other news

i've also updated my website. it needs a bigger overhaul, but for now, there are some new design projects added to the graphic design section. a fun one is the centaur-fold. you can read the story on that page, or you can skip the story and just watch the unfolding/see the centaur sail away (in flash).

here's the post about the centaur-fold evening, when my cousin karin and her peter (very, very soon to be married—speaking of news!) visited san francisco.

flickrs
i love rosa's fabric
cakes
wish i was here

Finally, the big news!

I'm happy to announce that From Orchards, Fields, and Gardens: Art and rememberings celebrating sustainable agriculture and good food will be back from the printer mid-August! Until then, you can pre-order the book and get $4 off of the regular price.

The book features writing from 11 authors, and photos and illustrations from 21 artists. The authors remember activities, people, and places that shape(d) their appreciation for small scale food production and processing.

Find out more about the book.

I've been working on this thing for ten months. I often feel that I lack faith that things will work out ok, and this lack of faith makes me not take risks. I worry. And I envy people who believe there's a greater, loving force out there. They must feel more secure. Making this book has tested my (non-religious) faith. But I think it has also generated faith, because each step in the process yielded positive responses. Two friends encouraged me from the start. People I asked to contribute to the book agreed to do so—amazing! When I suggested edits, people didn't seem to think I was a meanie! When I asked (via snail mail because he doesn't do computers) Wendell Berry if one of the contributors could include stanzas from one of Berry's poems, he promptly wrote back, and he agreed! When I asked a long ago ex for help with a final edit, she agreed! When I asked for printer recommendations (after not feeling confident about the one I'd planned on using), a friend sent me to a helpful, flexible, fair, green, family-run press. This project has forced me to ask for help and to let go/not put so much pressure on myself when I can't meet deadlines. I still feel quite nervous about the final product (wondering if I made good design choices, etc.), but I'm also very excited and grateful. Thank you book contributors and friends!

goats

my friend's neighbor has goats. they're the cutest of course. i love how they flick their tails and ears. the tips of the goats are constantly in motion. and their baaas, each with a unique timbre. ridiculously cute.

warm colors

my friend brought this sweet zippered guy back from argentina. i love the colors and the pattern.

pinky leon

next week i should have some news to share here (if anyone is still reading my sporadically updated blog)....

a leaf for a leaf

this is my first, beautiful mati mcdonough original painting! now, where to hang it....

mati and i traded—my leaf for her how to identify trees painting. this painting has been in the back of my mind ever since i first saw it in her little pink houses show, one year ago.

i'm still on a blogging break, more or less. today less.

flickr favorites of late
fuschia
waiting (makes me long for sweden in the summer)
weekend kitchen
Lu (cat pretending to be a bird)