Yummy Family Traditions

I'm making one of my families Polish recipes tonight, Golabkis. This is one of the recipes that was passed down from my dad's dad's family that came over from Poland. I remember loving Golabkis when I was a child and I hope to make them just as good. For anyone who doesn't know, Golabkis are ground meat, onion, rice, and tomato sauce combined and rolled up in cabbage leaves.

I love making food from my heritage. My grandfather, when he was still around, would also make homemade Polish sausage (kielbasa). My uncle Don and Allen, my brother-in-law, have both started making homemade kielbasa from the original recipe. Jason and I would love to start making it ourselves. We would need to purchase a sausage maker, but one day we'll make the investment. It's so good in the morning with beets, eggs, and home fries.

Digging Down the Creative Strata

Digital artwork affords a perspective previously difficult in the creative arts. The ability to go "backward in time" through the stages of a finished piece, from its finished state back through to its earliest drafts. It's a really interesting process, even if you only just recently finished work.

For me it works like this. Each time we make revisions to a commercial, video, graphic design, etc. for a client we upload it to our servers. Each further revision is posted under the same name with the version number updated by one. Therefore, at any point after the project is complete you can go back and watch each previous version in reverse order, back to the earliest posting. It's a great way to get perspective on the finished video as you see it deconstruct itself one revision round at a time.

What strikes you often is just how different the final is from the initial conception. Changes are gradual, and often made by committee. So you have multiple viewpoints changing a single vision in a stutter-step fashion over time. Sometimes the only way you can truly appreciate the genesis of the final project is to watch it's creation in reverse. Many times it helps you recognize why the changes needed to be made, but just as often you find yourself lamenting excellence lost in the edit.

I'm glad I work in a medium that allows historical viewings. I like having that record of where a project came from. Sometimes I appreciate the final outcome all the more because of the path followed to get there.

Nail Polish

I love the way nail polish looks on your fingers or toes. I started really enjoying the aesthetic look of nail polish from seeing the French film The Dreamlife of Angels. The lead actress wore dark black or brown nail polish on her fingers and it was half way coming off, but it really added to the tone of the film for me. It just looked really cool. I know I'm a bit of a strange one, but there are aesthetic details that I sometimes really enjoy visually.

I shot a Halloween party and wore a conglomerate of a few different things I had in my closet and said I was a fashionista (or a Norwegian Supermodel, I could not decide). I put dark red nail polish on and it's starting to come up which of course is when I like it most. I will always love small visual details in life and in film.

The Prospect of a New Phone

My cell phone is rapidly deteriorating. The phone crashes occasionally, has enough paint chipped away that you can see the interior guts in places, and, worst of all, gets a screwy keyboard issue where the second row of buttons turns into the first (press S, get a W...press W, get a W.) It makes doing most anything nearly impossible. But my contract has finally expired, and I can't wait to exercise my right as an American to lock myself into another two-year contract in exchange for a moderate discount on a new cell phone.

Unfortunately it's not going to be an iPhone. It's still tethered to AT&T, and I can't wait long enough for its emancipation. So I'm going for either some flavor of Google Android phone, or a Palm Pre (leaning toward the Android phones now.) Both options are pretty strong contenders against Apple's offerings, so I won't feel too deprived.

I can't wait. My "need a phone that works" and my "want a fun, new gadget" itches both need scratching. The biennial ritual of getting a new cell phone is a great excuse to spend money on a slick new gadget even when there isn't a good reason to upgrade. I'm just glad I can still afford it, because I just can't live without a good cell anymore. That's one of the reasons I never bought an iPod.

Fast Friendly Connections

I'm really starting to notice that I give off good friendly energy in even a short amount of time. I just worked my last day at GBMC and a few of the nurses said they were really going to miss me. They said I was their favorite photographer. It felt really good and it was so sweet. I gave them my card and hope to hear from them soon.

I think the thing I'll miss most from this gig is the interaction I had with adults. I'm strictly going to be conversing and playing with kids in my new job and I won't have a real adult connection to many folks, except for my co-workers. I also really enjoyed working in the hospital environment. We'll see, maybe I'll be there again one day.

I also worked with three great families today. There babies were adorable and they all gave me high reviews for my photos. Overall it was a really great last day. Another chapter in my life is about to close. Tomorrow and Sunday morning I work at St. Joe's for the final time.

Slick File Service

I've been looking for a good way to send large digital files to people, i.e. music to my sister, and I think I found a good, reliable, free service. Yousendit.com let's you email as many 100Mb or less files to as many people as you want, as often as you want. It's easy to use, seamless and quick. I'm a big fan, now.

I discovered it a few days ago when I got a Yousendit.com email from one of our vendors at work. He's a composer, and he uses Yousendit to email his large audio files to clients. It worked well, so I filed it away in case I needed it. Tonight was the perfect test opportunity. Kate took a bunch of pictures of the house for our real estate agent to use in advertisements, and the final file size for the bunch was 120 megs. Far too big to send via standard email unless I tediously sent each of the 35 photos in their own individual email. So I split the photos into two ZIP files, each smaller than the 100Mb limit and set them through Yousendit. Worked like a charm. The upload from my system to the Yousendit server was fast, and I already know from my experience with our composer that downloading is pretty quick.

Overall it's a good service for a freebie, and if you need to you can upgrade your account to a payed tier, which lets you email up to 2GB files! Nicely played, Yousendit.com.

Well Deserved Comfort

After a long day of hard labor there's nothing better than a hot shower and a cozy bed to lie in. Jason and I just finished getting the house ready for potential buyers. We put it on the market tomorrow.

I worked for Our365 this morning and then went over to the house to start working right afterwards. I worked at the house from 2pm to 10pm. I don't think I've ever worked that hard before. I'm finding bruises and scratches all over me and my feet and hands are raw and sore. But really all that truly matters is that it's complete. We of course may have to do a few touch-ups here and there, but the hard strenuous labor is over. When I got home I went straight into the bathroom and took a hot shower. It was probably my most well deserved shower and it felt amazing. I wish there was a way to take a shower sitting down. I guess you could have a bigger shower with a sit built in, that would be perfect. Now I'm laying in bed and ready to pass out, Jason won't stop talking. Sometimes all I need is quit and comfort. Good night!

The New Yankee Workshop

The world of professional woodworking doesn't have rock stars. "I want to sand and plane all night....and turn some wood on the lathe" isn't a lyric that drips with excitement. But if building a coffee table inspired by a Parisian sheep-shearing table did pull 75,000 screaming fans into stadiums across the country the man most likely to be the featured act would be Norm Abram, the Oak Zeppelin of furniture builders. He makes other master carpenters look like awkward, pimply-faced teenagers, and the "wood guys" that work at Home Depot like crippled, three-toed marmosets.

Norm got started in television as the head carpenter on This Old House, opposite Bob Vila. In 1989 the producer of that show, interested in expanding into new programming created a spin-off show with Norm as the host, The New Yankee Workshop, which is where I first discovered him.

The show's not exciting. Not at all. In fact it often lapses into boring and mildly repetitive. But it's old school PBS programming, so glitz and flash is not what you watch for. But it is fascinating television. What Norm can do with wood never ceases to amaze me. The formula is pat. Most episodes start with him visiting some historic location and examining a piece of vintage, antique wood furniture. Then he goes back to his shop and builds a similar piece from scratch. Imagine that...being so familiar with the physical language of woodworking that you can easily translate objects without needing to disassemble them. He simply looks at a piece of furniture and quickly decodes the necessary construction steps, steps that generally aren't simple or intuitive (at least not to novices like me.)

I've written previous entries on my desire to give real woodworking a try. Norm Abram is the reason and the inspiration. I love watching him work. He makes it all seem so easy even when it's clearly not. And his collection of woodworking tools is enough to give John Holmes penis envy. At the end of each episode, when he's showing off his finished piece I'm always left wishing I could have the same experience, creating something useful and beautiful completely from scratch, using just my hands (and power tools, of course.)

Norm Abram, Wood Star Extraordinaire.



Note: As I filled in the labels for this post I found that both Norm Abram and The New Yankee Workshop had already been used before. I went back and, sure enough I'd already written an entry on the show. A much better entry than this one, in fact. Here's a link. But it didn't feature the rock star metaphor, and since I can't throw away an entry I spent 20 minutes writing in good faith that it was the first time I'd focused on the topic, I'm letting the new entry stay. Norm, you're only person that's not family that's been written about twice in this blog. Please have me as a guest on your show to return the favor. Thanks.*

* That's apparently impossible now. I just read that, as of earlier this month Norm has elected to cease taping The New Yankee Workshop. Such a bummer.

Light is Approaching

The Stevenson House is not done yet. We've over shot two of our previous deadlines. But we're trying to keep positive the best we can. I can honestly finally say that I see a light at the end of this dark and stormy tunnel (especially stormy since it has practically been raining since we started this project). We only have cleaning and some painting to do and the house will be viewable. We have a new goal of having a perfect home by this Friday and I do see us finally making the set deadline. It's been a tough road, but Jason and I kept our heads up and soon our lives will go back to some form of normalcy.

False Alarm

DB's fine. He started eating again in earnest this afternoon, and all his tests came back normal. Why'd he stop in the first place? Anybody's guess. But he had lost weight, was behaving sluggishly and was slightly more than moderately dehydrated. So something was out of kilter, but not dangerously so.

I think DB's body is a system in flux, always teetering on the edge of extremes. He has so many minor issues that can sometimes add up in unexpected ways. I think in this case he somehow wound up more dehydrated than normal, which may have caused more gastro-intestinal distress than he normally finds himself in and made swallowing difficult or painful. He stopped eating which led to listlessness and a lack of motivation. Once we got him drinking again, which took a few hours to really take hold, everything seemed to start turning around.

Or maybe he's just experimenting on us. I wouldn't put it past those befuddled masking keenly aware eyes to rattle the cage every so often, just to see who's paying attention.

We are, you schmuck. Now cut it out.

Day to Day

Day Planners were one of the best organizational tools ever created, I used to use them all the time when I was busy in school with a part-time job and then when I was a free-lance production assistant in NY. The four years I was at Renegade I didn't use a personal one only one for work that I kept there. I now am using a personal one again, it's needed badly for things like photography gigs, my Our365 schedule, Dr. Apts, family and friend affairs, birthdays, vacations, and unemployment and school deadlines. I'm just a busy girl with a lot on my plate. Unfortunately I misplaced my day planner a few days ago and I'm hoping I can remember all my upcoming engagements. I did not realized how important that book was to me until it was gone. Time to start a new one.

The Hunter Gatherers Had a Few Things Right

Clearly not too many of us are interested in living in thatched huts, cooking over open fires and depending on the random bounty (or lack thereof) of nature for our survival. Mankind invented agriculture and domesticated animals for very good reasons. But our hunter gatherer forbears, and other early tribal cultures can teach us a lot about how society, even large industrialized civilizations, should treat its members.

First and foremost, every member of a tribal community is directly responsible for every other member of the tribe. If a member falls ill, the rest of the community cares for them. If they cannot participate in the hunt, or go out gathering fruits and vegetables, they are provided for. Those that have at any given moment care for those that don't. It's understood because in a small community, there are no superfluous parts. Each person has a function, a meaningful place in society, and that society's health is determined by the optimum functioning of each member.

Industrialized societies have forgotten that level of care. We've managed to create a very large community that can function even if not every member is participating. People have become marginalized, and there is a substrata of society that is, for all practical purposes, unnecessary. At least that's the perception. And while it's incorrect, the perception has dire consequences.

Take health care for example. From my perspective every human being on the face of the earth has the right to reasonable, affordable heath care. Is not one of the most basic functions of society to protect its own members? In tribal, hunter gatherer societies, affordable and available health care (even if it was witch doctors and herbal medicine) was a given. A blight on one member was a blight on the entire group. How are we any different? How can we consider ourselves to be an enlightened, humane society if we systematically deny and overcharge for live-saving care? It's absurd.

Humanity strives for meaning. Purpose. Everyone on the planet yearns for a "reason to be". Take that away from them and they can decay from the inside, and take society down with them. The old parable, "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime," has a secondary benefit. Teach a man to fish and he'll have something meaningful and useful to do with his life. And not only can he then catch fish for himself, he can catch fish for others.

I think if we tried to think of ourselves in tribal terms, life for all of us would benefit. Each member of a society is valuable. Each one has a unique perspective. A unique skill set which can, if given the chance, be brought to bear on problems. The more each member of our modern societies feels cared for, valued and respected the less problems overall we'll have to face. If we look at each other as tribesman instead of just neighbors, or worse, strangers, we'd see better the intrinsic value innate in each of us, value as measured by service to others. To our fellow tribesman, in the tribe called humanity.

It's not stupid. Drop five people in the middle of the forest, and watch how desperately each member depends upon the other four for survival. Increase the number to 50 and while the desperation subsides, the need for support remains intense. At 500 some people begin flying under the radar, mooching off of the work of others. At 5,000 the problem grows. At 50,000 you begin to delineate those with power and those without. People become cogs instead of family. At 500,000 and beyond you begin to fall into society as we know it today. Add technological advances and major labor-saving devices, and you've created a civilization stratified into the haves, the have-a-bits, and the have-nots.

I'd argue that people are most satisfied with their lives during the early numbers of the above demonstration, when each person is needed, sometime desperately. Life makes sense when it's lived in service to the survival of others as well as yourself. Otherwise selfishness and greed sets in. If we could work out a way to live in the 5,000,000 or 5,000,000,000 and above rungs as if we were still only 50, desperately working to claw out happy, meaningful existences for each other, societal problems would evaporate.

Seriously. They would just go away. Isn't that worth reevaluating modern thinking?