no one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful
This morning we went to the bird refuge near Davis. I worked on some letters--I wrote something long to my penpal M in New Zealand. She's into ghosts, and we talked about that. Erik looked at nature stuff to write haiku about.
Then we went to the California State Library so Erik could look at some haiku journals. It was a strange place. For example, no pens are allowed. I had to write letters in pencil. I worked on a letter to my cousin S and wrote to my Italian-Japanese friend G.
Then when we got home, I had two packages waiting for me, but one of them was empty. Its contents had been lost in the mail due to improper packaging. I emailed the company and hopefully will hear from them soon that they will resend the products. I was really upset about this because included in the package were two Christmas presents. So if they won't resend, I will be without two gifts. Conflict is very stressful for me. Erik says it's not conflict yet.
Then P called wanting to see if I could go practice with her at a senior apartment complex. She needed to play on a real piano so that when she plays on L's real piano at the recital on Saturday it won't be totally new to her. She needed me to go with her to turn the pages. So I went, and it was good.
This evening Erik is at a Zen event. I proofread until I couldn't concentrate, and now I'm going to bed.
Then we went to the California State Library so Erik could look at some haiku journals. It was a strange place. For example, no pens are allowed. I had to write letters in pencil. I worked on a letter to my cousin S and wrote to my Italian-Japanese friend G.
Then when we got home, I had two packages waiting for me, but one of them was empty. Its contents had been lost in the mail due to improper packaging. I emailed the company and hopefully will hear from them soon that they will resend the products. I was really upset about this because included in the package were two Christmas presents. So if they won't resend, I will be without two gifts. Conflict is very stressful for me. Erik says it's not conflict yet.
Then P called wanting to see if I could go practice with her at a senior apartment complex. She needed to play on a real piano so that when she plays on L's real piano at the recital on Saturday it won't be totally new to her. She needed me to go with her to turn the pages. So I went, and it was good.
This evening Erik is at a Zen event. I proofread until I couldn't concentrate, and now I'm going to bed.
posted by Laura-Marie @ 9:04 PM
2 Comments:
At November 19, 2008 9:49 AM,
Anonymous said…
That is the California room, right? Upstairs? With the long tables with the lamps on them?
I like that place.
When I was in college, I spent some time doing research in that room for a paper I wrote for a California history class. The assignment was to research the image of an aspect of California history, rather than its actual history of something. This meant we wrote about how something is portrayed through various media, using primary documents from the time period.
I wrote my paper on the image of California food during the sixties and seventies.
I started out with the assumption that California food was mainly portrayed in popular culture as health or "hippie" food - much like your cliché meal of a few days ago. I also thought the image would heavily draw on on local delicacies like avocados or seafood.
This was partly true, but through my research I learned that the real image of California food was just as diverse as California itself. The image included: a cornucopia of foods brought over from the Old World and other countries; foods involving native Californian ingredients; foods invented here combining ingredients from all over the world; health food; Americana food, like burgers and steaks; food grown on our diverse farms, and on ranches in the expansive Central Valley; and festivals devoted solely to one crop or type: strawberries, garlic, crawdads, asparagus. I even researched the image of the politics of our food. I wrote about Cesar Chavez and the "Uvas No" campaign.
The image of California food shows that we take pride in promoting our inventiveness and the freshness and variety of our food. One thing I particularly interesting was to read about the translation many different ethnic food recipes underwent in California, and how much of what we consider to be authentic Chinese food, for example, was invented here.
Anyway, I got to flip through all kinds of cookbooks, Sunset magazine, and other primary documents from the time period at the California room.
At November 19, 2008 6:20 PM,
Laura-Marie said…
I like that place too.
Post a Comment
<< Home