Cooking With (No) Gas: Eggs-periment!

#1 - Find a good specimen.

In the interest of science and fun, I endeavored to cook a egg in a  microwave to see what happened, with the not-so-secret desire that it would explode. 

#2 - Place egg in bowl of water.

My little experiment proved to be no disappointment. It popped with a satisfyingly loud "BLAM!", but I did discover that it was indeed cooked all the way through.

#3 - Set timer and let it cook.

Next time, I'll monitor it more closely with better results, because you can't be a good cook without breaking a few of eggs. 

#4 - BLAM! Satisfying explosion occurred.

Oh, and this entire experiment was inspired by the many Peeps trials, long may they live in book form and on the internet, forever and ever, as an inspiration to all. Amen.

Inspiration: The Great Peeps Experiments.

Books: The New York Botanical Garden

The New York Botanical Garden, Abrams (2006).

A couple of mornings ago, I spied this on a shelf and I just had to look through it, because it called out loudly to me. The book turned out to be a two day deal: the night before, and then waking up to an open spread the next morning. 

It's an incredible layout, and the subject matter was so inspiring, it informed the photos I took around town this week of edible plants and gardens. Add in this unexpected nod to illuminated manuscripts, and that's the incredible power a great book has over us. It's unforgettable on so many levels. I use that power wisely.

What do books inspire you to do?

Nature: Edibles

Wild onions by the side of the road.

Years ago, when I was a little girl, my grandmother told me she used to gather dandelions with her family from the side of the road in New York City; hard to believe but true, because I asked her how that could be done.

Small apple orchard at the local park.

She explained to me that roads were a lot less traveled back then; fewer cars meant less exhaust, and besides, my grandmother said, most people still had horse carts or used the trains. She and my grandfather were avid canoers, too. They met through a pre-arranged date for just such an excursion. She said they often went swimming in the East River back then, when it was clean enough to do so.

Wild mushrooms on someone's front lawn.

She said that they made salad from dandelion greens, and home brewed dandelion wine. When she was a little girl, her mother bought a rabbit from the market and kept it in the bathroom tub. She loved the little bunny, and was horrified to come home to a meal of rabbit stew simmering away on the stove, which she refused to eat. She thought the bunny was her pet because she named it.

More wild mushrooms growing near the sidewalk.

Since then, I've been aware of the environment around me as food. As Girl Scouts, we learn all about edibles during outings: which birch tree was the original root beer, that then we peeled with our pocket knives and smelled, wild onions, wild carrots, and mushrooms, which are trickier because some are poisonous. 

Someone gathered a nice collection on a park bench.

I've always wanted to gather some items to cook, but so far I've been too shy to do so. It's weird enough picking flowers and walking these days, let alone taking out a camera, then collecting specimens in a bag. Talk about being in the spotlight! Today though, the spotlight shines on these local beauties I found. Please don't eat anything you collect in the wild without consulting an experts' opinion first.

 Happy hunting!

Street Art: NYC

Street pole in Pearl River, N.Y.

Small Town America: Raise the Flag

Old stone garages, in Pearl River, New York.

Small Town America: The Butterfly Garden

 

 

Scenes from The Butterfly Garden in Nyack, New York.

Small Town America: Cemeteries

It's no secret I love cemeteries: they're old, they're cool, and they're usually really beautiful, kind of like sculpture parks for the dead. They're fun to explore, and because they're taboo, they're usually devoid of humans, too (live ones, that is). 

Walking back and forth from the local library, I caught street signs for the town cemetery, and one day when I had more free time, I took a detour to look at the headstones. It did not disappoint. You can learn a lot about a local area's history looking at the names and dates.

I found some old French names among the oldest stones, which made me happy, believe it or not. Being an Acadian is sort of a rare thing in lower New York, so seeing signs of earlier settlers with perhaps the same lineage comforted me, especially since this town is now predominantly Irish, and not in hyphenated form. 

As much as I love that part of my ancestry, it is not present in my surname, which makes my family history rather hard to explain to someone of decidedly singular Western European stock. It's a bit epic, and the story of who I am is not always well received. I was glad to see that I wasn't the first one to walk these parts.

It also took me back to the hikes of my childhood, hunting down old graveyards in the wilderness of long-abandoned towns, so we could do charcoal rubbings of the headstone designs. I thought they were incredible then, and I still do. If you get the chance, why not take a walk through history sometime? You might just find your roots.

Small Town America: Flood Zone

Flooding near the Palisades Center, in West Nyack, New York

Every year during this time, we have pouring, flooding rain storms, and every year the exact same people complain about it. 

The funny thing is, it's the same type of folks who watch the evening news and get angry over residents living out west in the tornado zones: "Why would anyone live there?!" 

For the exact same reason we live near the coast, at sea level: because a) we love it here, b) it's our home, c) our families, friends, and loved ones live here, d) no place on Earth is really safe (because life isn't like that), and e) because we love it. We love it here, and it's our home. There. Now you know.

Second Chances

There's an old adage that says it's never too late, and I've always taken that to mean we are never too old to truly live. Once we decide that our lives are over (for whatever reasons, be it sickness or grief or trauma), we become a shell waiting to die, trapped in a unnatural stasis that's a purgatory of our own making; taking up space, maybe feeling worthless or hopeless, slowly leading up to the final ending in death. 

To falsely entomb ourselves in an amber where nothing ever changes is to deny the essence of life itself: we change, we breathe, we move, we adapt. It is constant, and that can be quite comforting. The world keeps on spinning, despite the trivial happenings here on earth, because the universe endures forever, or so it seems to one small human on one small planet moving through a seemingly infinite (to us) vastness of time and space.

We are actually part of a much bigger miracle, so when I saw this lovely piece about empty nesters who are giving new life, and getting a new life, by raising another person's child (now their child) with their resources, I know they're the type of people who get the message. Despite the touchy-feely, nonjudgmental credos that exist in pop culture, there are basic concepts like right and wrong, and good vs. evil. I believe at the end of the day, no matter how much mud I walk through, it's the goodness in people that ultimately triumphs, because it's who we are as part of a greater divinity that sings and dances to the eternal music of the heavens.

How do you know it when you see it? Because it feels really good, and it is beautiful. What can you do today that adds to the greater good? Go out there and do it! Get in the game before it really is too late, because every day that you're alive, it's not the end.

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/52051170#52051170

Nature: Brood II

5th-century silver cicada brooches, at The Morgan Library Museum

Many of you may have noticed the return of Brood II. Intergalactic space aliens, evilly hatching from hidden eggs that were transported on UFO's and buried in the Mohave desert years ago, with the intent of destroying the human race and taking over our world? No, they are cicadas with 17 year breeding cycles, laying dormant in the ground, which is a miraculous feat in and of itself, and an amazingly rare life cycle for most species on our planet. The ones we saw in recent weeks are the same type Thomas Jefferson documented at Monticello.

I saw a few very large (and dead) ones squashed right outside and inside the entrance to an office park in Pomona two weeks ago, with bright red eyes and deep dark blue bodies. They were huge, and I just had to point them out to my mom. We'd never seen bugs that big before. If you get the chance to see one, try to conquer your fear for a closer look. They don't come around often, maybe only every 17 years or so.

 http://science.time.com/2013/06/01/7-things-you-didnt-know-about-cicadas/ 

Osu!

Over the years, I've trained in martial arts, and because of that, I've collected a nice set of belts in different forms. Years ago I started it off proper with Taoist Tai Chi, but I didn't receive any belt rankings.

Fast forward years later, and I began a fitness course towards kickboxing and then grappling that became MMA, which got me into Jiu Jitsu. It was fun, but the injuries suck when you aren't getting paid to be hurt and the bills keep coming in, so I took time off.

Recently I've gotten back into Tai Chi, in a shorter form that incorporates animal styles, Wushu, and Qi Gong. It's a blast, and its actually hard for me, because it's the exact opposite of MMA. Whereas one style needs twitchy muscles and quick explosive action, the other strives for precise, carefully considered hand-and-foot placement, slowed down to an almost inhumanly graceful art form. It's the "Yang" to the "Yin"—the total opposite—and I'm finding muscle control and limb placement as challenging as the very first time I threw a punching combo. 

But none of these forms would amount to any kind of sense for me if I hadn't undergone some serious ballet training as a girl. I liked it, but I didn't love it as passionately as an artist has to, in order to make a living from it. I left it behind, not looking back, to continue wrestling and fighting with my bro. We loved martial arts, but none of the strip mall places around our town appealed to us at the time, in the more common dojo forms of Judo and Tae Kwon Do. My middle bro would go on to belt in TKD, BJJ (twice), and even Krav Maga, but it wasn't until we put everything together in an MMA class that it finally made sense to us as a fight form.

I hope I go back to it at some point, but for now, I'm belting in Tai Chi Ch'uan, and staying in the moment, enjoying an art form that I didn't know had masters who gave out belt rankings in service to it. Here's my tally so far:

Taoist Tai Chi: 1 year, no belts
Tiger Schulmann's: 2 years, 6 belts
BJJ: 10 mos, 1 belt
Tai Chi Ch'uan: a month's reintroduction, 1 belt. I have 2 belts.
UPDATE: got a 2nd belt in tai chi ch'uan at the end of the summer
-----------------
Total: 8 belts   Make that 9. Nope! Make that 10!

And I want more.

What's your favorite cover?

So the very next question I get after "What do you do for a living?" is: "What's your favorite book cover?" The answer is blessedly, and somewhat surprisingly simple, given my expert and professional familiarity with all things book-related:

It's the first story we know of in Old English (along with The Canterbury Tales), and it remains the defining, classically mythic tale of a warrior, a monster, and a quest. Along the way, Beowulf encounters every pitfall an epic hero must face: the trials, the tribulations, the doubts, the tests of character, the feats of strengths, and then the one flaw in his character leading to failure that, while momentary, results in an enormous fall from grace, and finally his battle and ultimate triumph of good over evil, which is the life every great person leads. It's the story of humanity, the stuff of legends, and it is the very nature of life itself. You don't get better than that.

Incidentally, while I'm here at home in the country, amongst the places I was raised, it seems fitting for me to thank my senior year H.S. English Lit teacher Mr. Bennett, for making us read aloud in class the original fable in Old English before we read the translation. It was hard, it was painful, and it was a lot of work, but in the end, I wouldn't be the publisher I am without that rock solid foundation. It formed the basis for my deep love and appreciation of the English language that has never abated, much maligned as it is worldwide as the blunt, simplistic business language of Capitalism, commerce, and money. To those of us who know this tongue well on a very deep and intimate level, it is every bit as mysterious, seductive, romantic, powerful, poetic, strong, lyrical and beautiful as the Indo-European, Norman, and Anglo-Saxon roots it sprung from, remaining an anomaly amongst the Romance and Latin-based languages of Western Europe. Rock on to Kublai Khan, Mr. Bennett. You are one cool dude. 

PS-Me and Karen totally spotted you riding your old car with the windows down on Main Street in Nyack back in the day (1987), shirtless and smiling. We waved to you and you waved back. What a great model you are for a purpose driven life. Kudos!

What do you do?

For me, the question is this simple, and it's this hard:



Welcome to Monday, people.

Small Town America: Café Land

Cafe table with Guinness

There were not a lot of opportunities for me to people watch and gaze at the scenery growing up. The cul-de-sac lifestyle of the typical track home, split ranch 70s suburb did not afford such luxuries, nor were those types of charming little spots easily accessible. Petty battles over cars, gas usage, and mileage became standard teenage fare, as a means of exerting control and drawing turf lines. 

Fortunately for me, I love to walk, and I can adapt to most mass transit schedules, but I still didn't know the good places to go, because I didn't have the freedom to roam and explore. Now that my family has switched up locales, I'm enjoying the small town experience a lot more as an adult. There's much to be said for living within range to a town with amenities. You see more, you exercise more, you live a little more. It's a great way to go when the world doesn't pass you by in a blur of speeding images.

For many of us, we moved to the city after college simply to have access to a better lifestyle, because the rural 'burbs can be hard for many people who live an active life, and also love fine dining. Driving a car after hoisting a few is certainly not the way to go, and designated driving is one of those ideas that sounds good in theory, but doesn't pan out in real life. I hope you find some time this weekend to safely stop and smell the roses, or a bouquet of the finest. Slainte!

Nature: Bunny Rabbits!

Rainy day, young bunny rabbit

Two adorable young rabbits have taken up residence near the dwelling where I currently reside, and it couldn't be more charming. Both had short little "bun bun" ears (Yes, I do squeal to no one in particular when I see them, "BUN BUN!") when I arrived, which have lengthened and scarred as they aged over several weeks. A larger bunny developed a tear lengthwise, and another has a small indent on its' previously perfect baby ear. 

Neither seem afraid of humans or cars or artificial noises, proving that nature becomes infinitely adaptable despite human encroachment. One night as we watched them rest close to us, cleaning, grooming, and almost sleeping as they pressed into the ground, it was a comforting thought to turn over in my mind, sitting on the balcony: that nature endures and always prevails, one way or another.

Small Town America: Cow Towns

http://www.deephollowranch.com/

I came across an article in a travel magazine the other day that I wanted to share with you, the reader, because I found it so interesting. It's contrast lies in direct proportion to the typical American myth that cowboys only live somewhere Out West, where the desert is dry and tumbleweeds blow, and men ride on horseback wearing big ten-gallon hats, squinting through the dust à la John Wayne. Not so.

The first cattle ranch was established in 1658, and it lies on the eastern tip of....wait for it... LAWNGUYLAND! That's Long Island, for those of you outside of the tri-state area. It's called Deep Hollow Ranch, and it still functions as a ranch, though mostly in horses, way out in Montauk. 

For those of you who want to grove to the beat of a horses' hooves, 
it really can be as easy as a drive on the L.I.E., or as we fondly call it, The Long Island ExSTRESSway, because the traffic is so bad, that if you weren't in sore need of a vacation before you set out, you sure as hell need a cocktail (or two, or three, or four) and some beach time at the end of your ride to get out there.

Hmm. On second thought, maybe you are better off taking your chances on a dude ranch somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The accents will be just as hard to understand, anyway. Write me if you go horseback riding at Deep Hollow, or even better, send me pics.  
Enjoy, New York!

A Walk in the Park: Kennedy Dells

Mushroom Tree

One of the nicer aspects of any homecoming is revisiting those areas we have fond memories of. 

I discovered Kennedy Dells Park years after I moved away out of sheer necessity. My very large and energetic Malamute anxiously needed lots of space for his urgent morning walk, and like any harried parent, I rushed to the computer for an online search of just such nearby places in Rockland County.

Out of the woods

Growing up in New City, I mostly hiked the Harriman State Park system because of its' close proximity and enormous intersection of trails; infamous, historic ones at that, like The Appalachian Trail and The Long Path, overlooking nearer spots, or maybe this park just wasn't around at the time. Whatever the case, I come back to this place time and again throughout the seasons, and I'm always struck by the beauty of New York's wooded paths, with its' variety of nature so close at hand.

Field of green

Path through the thicket

I honestly had my heart set on hiking High Tor State Park yesterday, but it was closed. More on that trip later in the summer. In the meantime, here's some of the wild lush beauty I saw on Memorial Day, so alive and teeming with growth, that the very vines seemed to grow before me, like magical apparitions out of a child's fable.

Nothing but blue sky and fields to roam

The happy hiker

It was the perfect Spring day: warm and sunny but not hot, cool in the shade without a chill, and a bright, crisp, cloudless blue sky overhead. Add in the burger and fries I had, followed by a hot fudge Sunday, and you've got one healthy slice of the American pie. That’s the kind of day it was.

Treeline and sky

Small Town America: Nyack Memorial Park

Nyack Memorial Park, Memorial Day Weekend 2013

Hello, Readers! This weekend may have begun cool and rainy, but it ends with something grand: the remembrance of heroes past. I started practicing Tai Chi Chuan again, here in this beautiful park (weather permitting) and at the end of class, our venerable Lao Shi (Teacher), told us that it is a law for Americans to take a moment of silence today at 3:00 pm for our vets. 

Of course, no one will come to your house and arrest you if you don't, representing another brilliant, beautiful part of our shared American experience: freedom. Oftentimes, I make work about the inequities and flaws within our system, but it is always done with the greatest of love. 

I believe that our society and government represent the ultimate experiment ever endeavored in the history of the human race: the quest for a true equality. That's certainly something worth fighting for, don't you think? All of us living together in relative harmony, here on Earth. It's a lovely thought, and a worthy ideal. Peace! Osu!

Small Town America: Memorial Day

We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields. 

 

excerpt from We Shall Keep the Faith, Moina Michael, November 1918

Small Town America

I thought the traditional kick off for summer here in America, this weekend's upcoming Memorial Day holiday, served as a great time to introduce a new series of mine called Small Town America. 

I've recently relocated back to the county of my childhood, which is Rockland County, a mostly inconvenient NYC suburb that still retains some of the farm roots it had when we first moved here as a young family from the city. 

It wasn't always easy to be a curly-haired artist in these here parts, but growing up in this beautiful country planted within me a love for the rural, wild, natural beauty of upstate New York that remains undiminished for me as an adult. 

I'm looking forward to seeing the towns and lands of my youth through the eyes of mature, seasoned artist for the fruits that it may bear. Stay tuned! There’s more to come.

White building with flag.

Around Town: Clouds and Haze

A storm front moving in from the lower Catskills.

For the people of Oklahoma.

Small Town America: Hitchin' a Ride

Bus stop reflection

I love road trips by car, bus, or rail. As a result, I feel comfortable using mass transit way more than your average, car-obsessed American. I like looking out the window at the scenery, or maybe taking a few pictures, or listening to music, or just thinking (or not), which is easy to do when someone else is doing the driving.

Thumbing it for the camera

I grew up in a suburb that is mass transit-challenged, because it serves mainly as a bedroom community for city workers. In the morning and the evenings, hopping on a bus or a train is great because it's quick and easy, but other than those specific times, you have to wait for the slow bus that ambles up to the stop on country time.

On one such day, I took pictures and danced around to pass the time, because in the burning daylight of a noontime bus stop, there ain't much else to do.

  Happy trails to you, today.

Around Town: East River

The Williamsburg Bridge

Fisherman

Around Town: Hawthorne in Bloom

Happy Mutha's Day, New Yawk!

Sometimes it's best to stick with the classics. For the residents of Pearl River, N.Y. who saw me at CVS yesterday, reading cards aloud to my mom, welcome to my life. This. Is. Real.

One Flew by the Cuckoo's Nest

Creeping vines, at the Rockland Psychiatric Center

This is a series of images I shot during a bus commute to and from New York City. One circuitous route takes riders through the Rockland Psychiatric Center, a facility that has a large abandoned portion of its' campus, most likely due to modern health care cutbacks. Talk about the heebie jeebies! It's a weird scene, man.

Long shadows, at the Rockland Psychiatric Center.

Like something out of a horror movie, even in the sunny light of day, there's empty building after empty building. We stopped at the end of one such block, and two riders got on, jabbering nervously about their latest bout of nerves, the more frightening being a skinny, stringy-haired woman with black roots and peroxide hair who reeked of stale smoke. What nightmares these buildings must elicit from some poor soul, brutally tired from a trying nighttime commute home after a long, hard week at work! I hope I captured the haunted feeling of the ghosts of restless spirits past. What a truly creepy place.

Around Town: The answer is love

Love is the answer

Art: The Scream

The Scream, at MoMa.

Edvard Munch was mental, y'all. I got that right away looking at his work up close for myself, and frankly, I'm tired of the whole crazy artist schtick. Maybe back in the day it sold tickets to the freak show but honestly, me and my friends could not perform at the level we do as often as we do if we were totally bat shit insane. Not to mention that his technqiue looked about as interesting as opening a box of crayons and telling the doctor where it hurts. Yeesh.

Novelty acts are great fun and all, but the true test of endurance comes with consistency paired with craft, and there are no shortcuts. My big secret (which is no secret at all) is that I go to bed at a decent hour so I can get plenty of rest, so I can wake up early the next day and do it again....and again....and again. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

And also, Da Vinci rules. That is all.

Street Art: Hookah Jellyfish

Jellyfish likes hookah: in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Around Town: Sakura Matsuri

Cherry Blossoms in Stuyvesant Town

Stuyvesant Square Park

Spring's lush bounty is brief and beautiful in New York. I'm savoring the sights and picking small bouquets as often as I can. Enjoy.