Notes for Gotes

12/26/10

Und Now, für a Little Comic Relief

Part of the deal when one communicates only with cats and doorpersons and does not check the weather regularly is that one finds oneself in unexpected situations, such as in a torrential rainstorm, or wearing woolen stockings when it is an unseasonable 65 degrees in November. I dropped by my apartment this morning to pick up mail and water plants and work a bit on organizing my bookshelves. Three hours and several shelves of LOC call numbers later, I looked up to realize that I had been severely, gloriously snowed in! The windows looked like huge lint traps from a load of your whitest whites, making the living room into the inside of a very large and cozy dryer.

So then I knew that fate had spoken and decided to continue with my organizational quest guiltlessly. Looking through all my books, I realized it would also be a good time to plan the course I'm going to teach later this spring, an introduction to art history for high school kids. The goal is to get kids who wouldn't necessarily be headed there interested and excited about college. I'm going to interpret that broadly as: "how awesome is art history?!" If you were lucky enough to have a high school teacher or college prof hit you over the head with how awesome something you'd never realized existed is, then you know what I'm talking about.

The rest of the evening was spent geeking out on the course, planning the raddest visual comparisons, group activities, drawing up lists of goals, thinking about all the different methods for talking about art that I'm going to introduce them to, looking up all my art history heroes on wikipedia, and getting sucked into reading Ernst Gombrich's children's history of the world, most of which is right there on google books.

But all of this is not what I came here to tell you. What I came to say, or rather, quote, is a cute anecdote told to wikipedia by Erwin Panofsky's particle physicist son, Wolfgang. It is this:

Panofsky was known to be friends with Wolfgang Pauli, one of the main contributors to quantum physics and atomic theory, as well as Albert Einstein. His son, Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, became a renowned physicist who specialized in particle accelerators. His other son was a meteorologist. As Wolfgang Panofsky related, their father used to call his sons "meine beiden Klempner" (German: "my two plumbers"), which revealed the usual attitude of the German elite educated in the humanities, who looked down upon those trained in the sciences.

Unlike Gombrich, who wrote an entire history of the world for children, Panofsky seems to have had a little of the Sarcastic Patronizing Dad in him. For some reason - and probably because I never had to experience it myself - I find this very cute.

Unsere kleine Bücherwurm

12/22/10

Winter Solstice Is My Favorite Day

Winter greetings to you, dear reader! Are you getting enough sun? Have you noticed that the winter solstice is my favorite holiday. Every year it rolls around and I have an urge to remark on it publicly. Shortest day! Longest night! Witchy vibes! And this year, also, a real live lunar eclipse, not seen for some 537 years or something. Did you see it? Don't worry, someone else saw it for you! I thought I would. I made sure I could see the old moon out the window, but when I looked for it again at the appointed hour, she had moved and I could not go outside to look for her because this is a doorman building and I have a mental block about it. Why? Because I have a strong aversion to being watched coming and going.

This is also why I rarely post on FB other than 'liking' your posts, dear reader, and perhaps as well my deep ambivalence about this blog. (Did you notice it?) But, there are other considerations. One of these is authenticity. Can blogs be considered old media yet? I'll say this: there are blogs I love. I've mentioned some of them before. Sometimes I will go and read through the entire archives of a blog that no longer exists and it's like reading an awesome dog-eared copy of a long-forgotten experimental novel. A narrative-less, impressionistic, vaguely personal, but often secret-coded novel by a person I know or don't know or met once and never saw again, but feel I know somehow. And it is good. I think the more FB and tweets and all that other stuff I can only imagine eclipses blogs, the more I'll feel alright about them (blogs). Good news for you! And future me, who may come back and read the archives of my previous self. I cannot wait. It is already happening.

Some other obvious things I want to say. Sometimes, frequently, I forget stuff. The other day, I saw some people in Bayridge kill a possum with a stick. (Sorry.) It was a real middle-of-the-night mob scene that I thought at first was a random middle-of-the-night pickup street-hockey game but turned out to be not, and it was disturbing and awful. I will spare you the details, but it was gruesome. And then I forgot all about it until a few days later, when I was on the phone with E and suddenly remembered. So, reflection, records, memories. Can blogging make you less solipsistic by helping you remember stuff that happened? Or is the fact that it happened to you make it about you, and therefore actually still solipsism? Does the fact that I forget the stuff that happens make me more or less solipsistic than remembering everything in minute detail and/or blathering on about it in a public diary? (These questions are so 1999! Old media!)

So, I am staying at a friend's, having a mellow time with Leo and a cat (my friend's cat) in a beautiful, well-heated apartment that is not in Bayridge. I am translating and writing and watching many movies on instant and discovering television shows that I had never heard of (Soap? Anyone? Only after midnight), and generally communicating only with animals and doorpersons. It's really cold, but not as cold as Moscow, I imagine, or Canada. The other day I thought I understood Heidegger, but now that I think about it, I've already forgotten what I think I understood or how I thought it was relevant to anything I'm doing. Tonight, I will have people over for dinner and then go pick up someone from the airport and then maybe continue having dinner with all of them together. The days will get longer and I will write some chapters and then one day, I will visit the West Coast and see the desert again and I will try to hold it all in my head.

10/26/10

Guess What I Do for Adventure?

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON from Dean Fleischer-Camp on Vimeo.

10/14/10

Connect 4

What the heck us linked in and hi5 and all these other weird networking sites? Do these people know they're spamming me, or is there a whole online world I'm not even aware of? What about the whole other real world I'm not even aware of? When will my inbox get an invitation from there?

9/30/10

Apparently,

a period of weariness has set in.

What does it mean that this is probably the most often repeated statement I come upon in my research? And is today's weariness as good as yesterday's? I'd like this on a t-shirt, with russian on the front/english on the back.

8/8/10

I'm not afraid of a simply reusing a plate in Jersey City, NJ

Browsing yelp reviews for lunch spots while waiting for my dentist appointment in Jersey City...

"The wife and I went on a day where they had the buffet style service. Now, normally I hate buffet style eating, as it usually is a sacrifice of quality vs. quantity. But I was pleasantly surprised, and it was indeed very good. I was able to try a larger variety of foods then from the menu. All the indian familes in the place, were going for the buffet, so we did too. I suppose one could have still ordered from the menu.

I reckon this is as authentic indian food as it comes, as the wife and I were the only non-indians in the entire place. Most of the woman were dressed in sari's, etc.. The buffet had a good variety, and was kept neat and clean. The check for us two, came to only $21.00 which I consider a bargain. $10 each plus tax I assume. The only thing that weirds me out about indian buffets in Jersey City, is that people refill the same plates instead of taking new ones. I wonder if this is a violation of health dept rules? The restaurants even have signs explaining that this is the expected practice. i.e, Use the same plate over and over again!

It does not bother me per se, but I do find it a bit odd. I have lived through Street vendor foods and ice-cubes in my drinks, in my many travels in Brazil, Philippines, and Thailand, so I'm not afraid of a simply reusing a plate in Jersey City, NJ. I have just never seen it done before in the USA."

Indeed.

8/3/10

Adding to the Wishlist

With the CSA providing vegetable bounties bi-weekly, I have a request of the universe: a website where you plug in some ingredients and it spits out some suggestions for things to cook with them. I know, I know, there is such a thing already. It's called "your brain," and is sometimes also referred to as "your imagination." Or even the "noindex" in your friendly volume of How to Cook Everything under the Sun. But, you know, I'm kind of lazy. The veggy drawer currently contains beets, potatoes, leeks, sweet corn, onions, sage, carrots, and thyme. I'm seeing leek-potato soup, beet-potato-carrot-veganaise salad, and corn on the cob. But how awesome would it be if there were some kind of thing I could make that would involve ALL of the above? Perhaps this is what my mother had in mind when she would regularly make her famous(ly reviled) "vegetable soup."

6/22/10

Words, Don't Come Easy*

I have recently and thoroughly fallen in love with the words of Tony Judt. It started with the essays about his ALS in the New York Review of Books and proceeded to Postwar and now Reappraisals, which sings that old song - my favorite one - about our loss of historical consciousness and shared history. Plus, he's a silver tongued messenger, as he himself freely admits. This last essay in the NYRB is lovely and good food for thought: not only what it means to live in conversation, but who gets to speak? How do people become vocal and eloquent? (What lets them know that this is good, OK, etc.?) I'm into everything he says, except the last line. Words, thankfully, are not all we have. We also have actions.

*Best tag line ever, from FR David

6/17/10

CSA Wish Fulfillment

1st week of CSA was quite satisfying, though according to the veterans in the volunteer corp yesterday, the early weeks are a bit light on the harvest. I am not disappointed, though. I picked up:-spinach
-kale
-romaine lettuce
-cilantro-sage
-thyme
-radishes-garlic ramps
These came in generous bunches, and I even got extras for volunteering!

This is what garlic ramps look like:

First CSA meal included: coconut rice with lemony fried seitan and vegan sage-nutmeg creamed-spinach with coconut milk for the cream. With salty radish on the side and almond bits on top.

The spinach is Bittman's, though the addition of coconut milk to all my cooking should properly be credited to roommatenews.com, that is EB.

Sunday Afternoon

6/16/10

The Joy of Song

I'm not one for babies, as some of you may know. But I thought this mama's description of seeing her kiddo dancing for the first time was pretty universally amazing. I know at least one or two of you might enjoy reading it. (ahem, kg.) The rest of ya, carry on as before. I'll get you with tales of veg tonight. Preview: purslane.

6/15/10

CSA Suckas!

Among the many and varied pleasures of summer, I am so excited to be picking up my first CSA share tomorrow. Will report back with the results.

The fact that I already paid for it makes the fact that I will soon stop receiving a paycheck feel pretty okay. Oh, summer.

6/12/10

Oh No, Sigmar!

Sigmar Polke, Higher Beings Command: Paint the Upper Right Hand Corner Black!, 1969

The first work of Polke's I fell in love with was this one above. An absurdistist send-up of avant-garde authority from just the other side of 1968. Not that that was what I thought at the time. The thing was just so funny on its own.

And then, further down the gallery wall, I saw those weird funny drawings of capitalist fantasies. Pop art but not quite so obsessed with products. Surrealist tapping of the subconscious, but not confusing shoes with female body parts.

Sigmar Polke, Liebespaar, 1967

Anyway, it was ironic. But not in a mean way.

And then, and then! The paintings on printed sheets!

Sigmar Polke, Palm Trees, 1964

The works on resin!

Sigmar Polke, Untitled, 2001-2006 (resin on polyester)

I hate that he was called an alchemist. Like it was a whim. Like there wasn't thought or politics behind it.

Sigmar Polke, I Live in My Own World But It's OK, They Know Me Here, 2002

About the previous image: "The Afghan horsemen photographed by satellite in The Hunt for the Taliban and Al Qaeda (2002/3) reappear in History of Everything II (2002), and again in I Live in My Own World but it’s OK, They Know Me Here (2002), where they have been magnified to the point of disintegration. This repeated image reflects the rapid circulation of imagery within the mass media and shows how easily images can be manipulated, thereby drastically changing their meaning and significance." (From the Tate)

There are so many images in the world and so many paths and channels along which they circulate and appear to us. Most of them make me want to block them out. Predictable, deodorized, or giving off the scent of money. (I know, I've got issues.) But what I like the most about Polke's images (and I don't like them all--I'm not enamored of the cowboys and guns and lifeguard chairs and water towers) is that they seem to drag their histories behind them like cans on a string. He seemed interested in both the images themselves and in their print/re-print histories, the permutations, changes of context, strange printing mistakes. His pictures, the best ones, were like worm holes in the visual field.

Plus, this (from the NYT obit): "Basically he behaved as if every aspect, ritual and protocol of art and the art world was available for manipulation." WORD.

6/7/10

Mission Accomplished

6/3/10

No NO NO NO NO!

Rivka Galchen? Come ON!

6/2/10

Jacob Riis Beach

6/1/10

Rainout!

People! It is raining! This horse can't swim. Rain date: this sunday, 2pm. Be there or be SQUARE.

Sorry!

-mg/the hoss

5/29/10

This Just In

Read all about it: the de-Russification of cauliflower soup!

There is a vegetable soup that my mom used to make pretty much every day of the week after work that was followed by some kind of meat or fish dish that usually varied from day to day. The cauliflower soup, however, nearly always stayed the same and it always kind of grossed me out. It had mushy pieces of cauliflower and carrot shavings floating in a wan broth and had oily bubble slicks on the surface whose job was to collect and pool the multitudes of tooth-clogging, cough-inducing little dill shavings. My job, as it seemed to me then, was to try to get all the oily little bubbles to form one big bubble in the middle of the bowl. (I seem to remember being made to sit with it late into the evening if it was not consumed... Sorry, mom!) Anyway, can you believe, I had a bona fide nostalgia craving for the cauliflower soup yesterday? It's true. Turns out it's not as bad as I remember it. Plus, I discovered an ingredient that saved it from the murky depths of the usual dilly cauliflowery pervoe (1st course) of traditional Russian dinner. Rice wine vinegar! Strange, but true.

--

Not Your Mama's Cauliflower Soup

-1 head cauliflower, cleaned and chopped into bite-sized pieces
-1 carrot, peeled and chopped into circles
-1 yellow onion, chopped
-2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
-as much dill as you can handle
-olive oil
-vegan bouillon cube, if you so desire
-wheat pasta spirals
-rice wine vinegar
-fresh basil leaves
-chopped black pepper

1. Saute onions in olive oil until translucent. Add garlic and carrots. Stir around to get everything coated.
2. (Optional: roast cauliflower before adding.) Add cauliflower, dill, pepper. Stir and cook covered so the vegetables sweat a bit.
3. Meanwhile, boil some water and dissolve the bouillon cube in a bit of it. When the veg is nearly ready - still crunchy - add the water and cube and bring to boil.
4. Once everything is boiling, drop in some handfuls of pasta spirals and cook just until al dente. Turn off heat and sprinkle with some rice wine vinegar.
5. Serve garnished with fresh chopped basil.

I wonder how adding the vinegar at the sweating vegetable stage would change things? I like how adding it at the end gives it a vinegary kick. Maybe cooking it in earlier would mellow it out and make it a more "mature" melding of flavors? Based on the previous anecdote, though, I probably prefer my soup in its juvenile state.