Electric Ladyland

holy @#$! here comes tiger!

so i'm slowly getting my act together on a saturday morning after another late night and i'm listening to beck's sea change, perfect for a rainy day.  i'm taking it easy, thinking "oh, ok... i guess i'll go do that upgrade to tiger now."  then, while i'm putting together some breakfast vittles in the kitchen tiger does its thing.  about an hour later here i am with something really amazing that woke me up in a hurry.  this is something to get excited about!

i have to confess i was a little skeptical of the dashboard idea.  apple has been trying to get us to love a concept such as this (and failing at least in the case of yours truly) all the way back since they introduced the launcher with OS7.  i don't like anything cluttering my workspace and i had a lot of trouble getting comfortable with the introduction of the dock in OSX for the same reason -- i saw it as a reincarnation of that blasted launcher.  my way of getting around the issue of having the dock so in my face as it was was to shrink it radically in size (so as to fit more links on it and get it out of the way as well) and keeping it from suddenly ballooning when i went to choose an application from the array of commonly-used programs i'd set up there.  my dad has it hidden by default unless he moves his cursor down there.  that's another way to go.

after i upgraded to tiger i was forcibly escorted into the dashboard and it got me annoyed right away, so went back to some other tasks for a moment.  but when i was done i did decide to give this dock thingy a chance and discovered pretty quickly that it could be mighty handy to me.  along with the usual calendar, calculator and sticky widgets they have a nice weather app (a classier version of the weather bug program so many windows users seem to love) and an itunes controller.  those are all nice conveniences but here's where it gets really interesting:

• an instantly searchable dictionary/thesaurus widget
• an equally sleek and functional phone book quick search widget

but here's the kicker -- there's a built-in translation widget as well!  mine was set for english to japanese by default, probably because i already had japanese language features enabled in my previous installation of OSX.  this could be very useful and i'll give it a thorough test.  hats off to apple for putting this in there.  however, i'm a little skeptical as to how on the money its translations are.  it seems to prefer using である (as in 我が輩は猫である) to だ／です／でございます／etc.  i have never heard anyone say 私はアメリカの女性である, for example, yet that's what the dashboard widget recommends for "i am an american woman."  oops.  needs a little work.  but kudos to apple for making this a feature of their latest OS release.  for those of us tuned into a more international/multilingual world it is a benefit and a blessing.

while i was checking out dashboard and other goodies (got my mail imported into the new version of apple's mail program, for starters) i heard my hard drive being accessed pretty heavily and discovered that spotlight, the new powerful search feature which is the centerpiece of OSX tiger, was busy indexing everything on my computer so it could wow me with its ability to find anything and everything i could ever want.  this is supposed to blow away the traditional concept of a nested file and folder organizational structure.  i'm very curious. 

on to figure that out.  time for some new music too.  sea change was good for the lazy morning while i was trying to get my own systems back online, but i'm too awake for sea change now.  i could stay with beck and move on to his latest album, guero, since it is very different (last night i found out one of my coworkers had also set up beck as a genre in his media player just like i had in itunes, for example, because his music is so hard to classify), but i'm thinking maybe a little celebratory de la soul or beastie boys might be more in order for the moment. 

oh yes, and on top of all of this i got my new powerbook battery yesterday.  it replaced the pitiful joke of a battery that had me tethered to my power cable no matter where i went.  no longer -- i really am mobile.  woo woo!  between tiger, the battery and getting my ipod's syncing fixed the other day i think i've taken a great leap forward with my own personal computer setup.  sometimes it's hard to find the energy when you've been working intensively on an office network all day, but it does pay off for personal productivity and, let's be honest, geeking out.  :-)

born cheese proselytizer

yesterday i was at whole foods indulging in my erstwhile passion of discovering new foods when i happened (not accidentally) upon the cheese counter.  the last time i was there i was feeling a bit shy, so when one of the cheesemongers came to me and asked if i had any questions i was rather at a loss for words.  can't blame him for approaching me, though, because i had been ogling the cheeses for a long time and must have had eyes as big as saucers because they get that way when i'm ogling good cheese.

well, this time around it occurred to me that i did in fact have a burning question about cheese and i knew that, considering how solicitous and kind the cheesemongers were -- their demeanor seemed to say please ask us anything about cheese! -- i should definitely ask one of them.

so i asked.  my question was this:  what is the story with the quince paste (aka membrillo) or fig jelly that you tend to see for sale alongside spanish cheeses like manchego?  i'd seen it for sale online at murray's cheese while buying a care package of spanish cheeses for my father (he started all this, mind you -- after he got back from a recent trip to spain i heard nothing but stories about the cheese, cheese, cheese and it got me curious) and wondered just how you paired it with cheese.  so i asked this cheesemonger, who looked a lot like eric idle or so it seemed, and you could just see his face light up right away.

according to idle the cheesemonger, only within the past few years have americans started to foray into this area of cheese degustation.  he says the traditional pairing is manchego with quince paste, but he personally prefers fig jelly instead.  just put a little quince paste directly on a slice of manchego, he said, and good things will happen.  it might take a while to get used to the combination of the sweet quince and pungent manchego, but it would be worth it, and you could have a piece of bread once in a while to cleanse your palate.   i said i was curious about the fig pairing but would start with the traditional combination and then come back to try the fig jelly later.  he replied that most of the fun in exploring cheeses was trying new things and seeing what was out there.  i couldn't have agreed more.

i did try it last night and have to say that it's taking some time for me to really warm up to it, but i'm going to give it plenty of time.  i'm appreciating it the more i test it out.  you'd think it wouldn't take much time since i've always enjoyed sharp, pungent cheese with apple slices and this doesn't seem so far from that.  whatever the case, it's nice to finally know what the story is with that quince paste stuff.  and now i definitely know who to consult when i have a cheese question.  the folks over at whole foods could not be more eager to share what they know about that subject. 

field of dreams

back from a very nice weekend at the home base in massachusetts.  there was the food parade, the ceremonial viewing of ALCS 2004 Game 4, the visit to the corner liquor store to introduce that store's owner to floc de gascogne, and much more.  plenty of literal trips down memory lane.  i even ran into someone i hadn't seen since high school.  seen here at left is the bleacher (just one bleacher) by the softball field where i used to practice back in the day. 

it's covered in grass now.  the day we made the pilgrimage was just after a rain storm, so it was soggy too.  there were dandelions and small wildflowers growing here and there.  there's been talk of converting that lot to a different use.  that would make me sad.  but nobody seems to be playing softball there now either, which is also a real shame. 

i remember joining a game there at the age of 7 or so only to be approached by one of dad's coworkers who thought he had to teach me how to bat.  what did he think dad was doing all those years, slacking off?  c'mon... i found i did much better once i started ignoring that guy's advice, nice as he was.  you can't see it in the photo, but dead back behind the outer reaches of center field is a small waterfall and a brook crossing all the way past the outer edge of right field.  i've seen my dad hit balls way out there only to get carried away by the water and never return.  ah, those were the good days.

the food parade

it's about to rain in new york city and i'm off this evening to the home office in massachusetts for the grand food parade.  it's all about wine, wine (someone actually gave me a bottle of bordeaux to take home in addition to the cabernet franc i'd already picked out), dessert wine (floc de gascogne... mmm), foie gras, terrine, confit, mustard... and the list goes on.  there will also be baseball.  if i luck out i'll actually get to play some on the diamond around the corner from where i grew up.  guess it depends on the rain. 

gettin' our giggle on

this is all you'll see of my trip to the daily show today:  the waiting room.  they wouldn't let us take pictures from inside and getting kicked out of a taping of the daily show wasn't my idea of fun, so i played nice.  i didn't know this until recently, but i'm separated from jon stewart by three degrees -- not too bad -- and so the friend of a friend was able to get my coworker and i VIP tickets.  ooo, VIP!  that just meant we had guaranteed admission, got to sit down in this waiting room you see here, and then were seated first inside the taping room.  not bad.  it was a sultry day in the city.  we didn't mind resting a bit.

was fun tonight -- rob corddry had a really funny report and dennis miller came on as the guest.  man, he just riffed and riffed and he didn't stop.  "he's on fire!" my friend said.  yeah, jon just let him rip and we were all like "da-hammmnnn..."  ... well, that is dennis miller after all.  and he wants you all to know he's libertarian, not republican, just for the record.  i think he said that three times.

was a lovely evening when we emerged from the taping.  still a bit sultry but just cool enough to be absolutely perfect.  i melted into the midtown crowd and fed off the city's energy.  went out to get contraband for this weekend's food parade at the home base in massachusetts, then just basked in the lovely atmosphere.  was a nice day to have some play time.

memories in high definition

web searches take me in the most unlikely directions sometimes.  i remember once reading in some astrology writeup that "all data is interesting" to my star sign.  that must be true because every so often i end up with dominos of little facts spilling all around, leading in all sorts of different directions. 

a friend told me about google maps, so of course i went and checked out the satellite maps of the homes i have known.  first, my hometown.  after a bit of futzing around i was able to make out the two lakes in our town.  from there i could see the city center, the church i went to as a child, the baseball field where i used to play ball with my dad, the old music building, and all the features i remember from years ago. 

after that i looked for my home now and that was an immediate bust.  the satellite map reminded me of a borg ship.  new york is too developed;  everything's on a grid in perfect squares.  i got bored quickly.  i found my office;  that was easy enough.  new york is a lot more interesting when viewed from down here on the ground, i decided.

then, of course, i wanted to see if i could find spots in france and japan where i used to live.  both france and japan were a bust because the satellite imagery wasn't detailed enough for foreign countries. 

then i went back to plain google and googled the town where i lived in japan.  that eventually led me to a tea producer, masuda-en, (english) to which i have an unusual link.  one of my best students belonged to the family that owned the company and when i returned home from my time in japan, to my surprise, i started noticing their tea in the japanese stores here.  i remember my student once gave me tea cookies.  they were delicious and shaped like little tea leaves to boot;  much nicer than some of the funky recipes listed on masuda-en's cooking page (tea mayonnaise, anybody?).  even nicer than that, though, is the fact that even after almost four years we're still writing each other letters.  that tells me more about what those years there meant to me than a satellite photo ever could.

i'm with the band

i was with these guys (plus members of assorted related bands and one of the coolest women i know) yesterday night and i forgot just how good it feels to be in their company.  there were hugs all the way around, people i hadn't seen in ages, and it was like being with family.  i was so relaxed.  they were rocking a great show (i think they opened with this song and i know they also played this tune) and i thought to myself how far they've come since i first heard them play in some dive bar near port authority back in the fall of 2001.  ashley told me i had no excuse for not stopping by to hear the band since she knew i lived in jersey at the time and it was on my way home.  glad i went.   they're still rocking.  and erika rocks too (she's a member of the band).  i'm hoping to get my hands on the cd soon -- i hope it's got "office blow boy" as one of the tracks.  they played it last night for us because it recalls the bad old days at our former place of employment which shall not be named.  hey, if it could inspire that fun a song i guess it was worth it in the end.

remember the stranger

nicholas kristof of the new york times has written another excellent, impassioned article on the genocide in sudan.  in this particular piece he brings in a personal dynamic:

Since I'm of Armenian origin, I've been invited to participate in various 90th-anniversary memorials of the Armenian genocide. But we Armenian-Americans are completely missing the lesson of that genocide if we devote our energies to honoring the dead, instead of trying to save those being killed in Darfur.

he goes on to mention which various groups have joined in the effort to save darfur and which have not as of yet:

Europe, aside from Britain, has been blind. Islamic Relief, the aid group, has done a wonderful job in Darfur, but in general the world's Muslims should be mortified that they haven't helped the Muslim victims in Darfur nearly as much as American Jews have. And China, while screaming about Japanese atrocities 70 years ago, is underwriting Sudan's atrocities in 2005.

i know a little something about the american jewish response to the genocide in darfur and one of the central points underlying the reasoning for our organization's continuing drive to stop the violence there is that jews cannot let another holocaust happen on their watch.  i believe, like kristof says, those of us who come from communities that have suffered genocide have not learned anything if we do not act to prevent another one from happening.

that makes me wonder whether or not the huguenots have thought about darfur in connection with their own historical massacre at the hands of french catholics during the wars of religion.  those were religious wars, different from genocide, but they did result in mass murders of people based on their faith.  from the time of the saint bartholomew's day massacre of august 24, 1572 throughout that october over 70,000 protestants were murdered in france.  i remember the first time i was in paris riding the bateau mouche listening to the audio commentary suddenly take a dark turn to inform me that near the bridge we were crossing, during the massacre, the river was blood red and filled with huguenot corpses.  i gulped.  lucky for me i arrived over 400 years later.  i kept learning about sites like that throughout paris even the last time i was there in january of this year.

so much time has passed (unlike for the armenians and the jews) that it has faded from memory for me and, i suspect, other huguenots.  when i think of what it means to me i think of how our family's decision to convert to protestantism in the 16th century (and subsequently flee france before most of these horrific events occurred) led to my being born american.  if we had stayed catholic i would probably have been born in france instead.  one branch of the family did just that and is still there.  but our family, huguenot as it was, went first to holland and then to the united states, both safe havens for protestants. 

despite the hundreds of years that have passed since huguenots were under the threat of mass murder, i've recently learned that some of them have not forgotten the lessons of their ancestors.  while doing a little research on huguenots at wikipedia i found that an entire huguenot town called le-chambon-sur-lignon in the auvergne sheltered jews from the nazis, even forging IDs and ration cards for them so they could escape to switzerland, during world war II.  they may have saved between 3,000 and 5,000 jews during that time and, as a result, were honored at the yad vashem holocaust memorial in israel. 

why did they do this?  the chambon foundation's page about the 1989 PBS documentary, "weapons of the spirit," explains:

They remembered their own history of persecution, and it mattered to them.  They also read the Bible, and tried to heed the admonition to love your neigbor as yourself.

that's very much in line with our organization's reminder to "remember the stranger," as jews were once strangers in egypt, and i support the feelings behind it.  it is important to always nurture compassion in your heart for anyone who may be suffering whether or not they are obviously linked to you.  many of the people of sudan, having lost everything, had it in their hearts to welcome the stranger when kristof visited to see what was going on:

On each of my three visits to Darfur, the dispossessed victims showed me immense kindness, guiding me to safe places and offering me water when I was hot and exhausted. They had lost their homes and often their children, and they seemed to have nothing - yet in their compassion to me they showed that they had retained their humanity. So it appalls me that we who have everything can't muster the simple humanity to try to save their lives.

i will be keeping his words in mind as my coworkers and i continue to work creatively to spread the word on what is happening in darfur.  we have continuing projects in the works plus special events to in connection with yom hashoah (holocaust remembrance day).  i just wonder about the huguenots.  are they aware, now, of the genocide in sudan?  is there such a thing as an activist huguenot humanitarian group out there?  i know about the chambon foundation now but i suspect that they focus exclusively on the nazi-era holocaust.  but i'll write to them and ask.

too many keyboards

this is not my personal record but it is an indicator that i need a bigger workspace.  well, a KVM might also be in order come to think of it.  (!)   my poor beloved powerbook g4 looks a little washed out in this shot but it is indeed there among the pile of other techno bits.

seeing red. sox, that is.

first off, i will be seeing this guy pitch tomorrow in the borough with the mostest, queens.  finally.  i had expected to see him pitch on monday, but alas... no dice.  ah, the vagaries of pitching rotations.  sometimes (especially with pitchers like pedro) i think they use a ouija board to get it all worked out.  a coworker told me the marlins have some good pitching this year, so let's see if she's right on that one.

but i would be so remiss if i didn't mention what i missed last night!

apparently, the sox and the yanks really had it out due to a boneheaded sox fan taking a sideways swipe at gary sheffield (whaaa?).  yeah, not one of fenway's finer moments.  and don't they know there's going to be retaliation when the sox next show up at yankee stadium?  hey, bozo, i don't know about you but as a red sox fan living in new york i'd appreciate it if i could go to a game without people like you taking pot shots at me.  ahem.  i've gotten teased in a playful way at the stadium, but never has it gotten ugly.  on the contrary, it's just an excuse to cut up and have some fun.

so i missed this game but my yankee fan of a boss came looking for me today just to put me on notice that i might have to watch my back now that the sox-yankees hostilities have commenced.  he also said it was one of the most amazing games he'd ever seen.  the sox did pull off the win in the end.  i just signed up for mlb.tv, so i'm going to try and watch it archived sometime this weekend so i can see what the fuss was all about.  i don't want to be out of the loop!