George Scithers, Rest in Peace

http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=xover&group=sff.discuss.obituaries

A sweet, gentle man who loved science fiction and trains, and knew an enormous amount about both.  There's a nice article about him, with an oldish photo (though as I remember, he ALWAYS wore that jacket), at http://2001.worldcon.org/gscithers.html.

-- Rachel Holmen

Lost Bus Pass

During a precarious, busy week, worried about finances, lost ALL my bus passes.  And discovered, by checking my TransLink use online, that somebody else has been using them.  *&)*(&)&#&*#&*).  Turned off the Translink.  The BART pass, however, and the monthly Muni pass, are lost causes.  I have approximately $2.83 to my name; this will get me home tonight, but not back to work tomorrow.  My mailing address is ON the Translink card; clearly the thief didn't care.

I finished listening to WICKED

Was a bit disappointed by the ending; the author seemed determined to jumble into the last few pages of the book all the things that were needed to match the Baum telling of the story, without having it make a lot of sense.  Yes, officially most loose ends were tied up, but why did Elphaba suddenly become so UNsympathetic?

Not sure what I'll listen to next. -- Rachel

New-to-me Cat Settling In

I've taken a friend's cat, and the first two nights she just hid. Tonight, coaxed out from under the bed with a dancing bit of junkmail on a string, she was much more social, curled up on my bed, and then went off to eat some of her dry food. After that, she actually came back onto the bed. 

She has her own blog (yes, I know, it's rather precious of me to pretend to know what a cat might think), acatmia dot blogspot dot com.

-- Rachel

WICKED

I'm currently listening to WICKED, the audiobook. Some of it is very amusing, but the current section is quite serious. I am impressed by the author's creation of names for his characters, and his universe-building skill.

The book is based on the Wizard of Oz story, but tells it from a different point of view, with some interesting parallels to pre-World War II Germany. There's a long wikipedia article, but I'm not reading it until I have finished the whole book. And there are two sequels.
-- Rachel Holmen

Laissez les bon temps roulez!

(And how about donating some $ to KSCM, the San Mateo jazz radio station, which played FABULOUS Mardi Gras music during drivetime this morning? -- Rachel Holmen

Aloo Gobi recipe to watch

I just watched BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM and then watched some of the add-on features. The one that cracked me up was "How to Cook Aloo Gobi", where the director, an Indian woman raised in Britain, shows us how to cook this dish -- with added advice and grumbling by her aunt and her mother. Worth checking the DVD out of the library just to watch this 5-minute episode.

(Yes, I'm very behind the times in my film-watching; I checked this one out of the San Francisco Library, which has a branch near my office. And I probably haven't had my TV on in, oh, eight or nine months. Another fab film I got from this branch was CHILDREN OF PARADISE, a French film made during World War II.)

-- Rachel Holmen

All Lit Up

Here's the tree with its tiny string of battery-operated lights.

Live, small holiday tree

I don't usually have a Christmas tree, I have a WREATH on my front door. But this year, I kept buying little tiny ornaments, and while I could have put them on a wreath, I realized I wanted a tree, and the scent of pine in the house. So I bought a dwarf Alberta Spruce. It's not gorgeous, but I'm hoping that as it grows, it will improve. Its full height is only six feet, so eventually I will plant it in my yard.

Last night, I had great fun making an extemporaneous garland from red wire and fake pearl beads. I even have lights on it, but until I buy 2 C-cell batteries, they won't light up.

Happy holidays!
--Rachel Holmen

Handsewn leather

Years ago, I made a split-cowhide vest for my brother Scott. He outgrew it, and gave it back to me, barely worn. (Around the same time, I hand-sewed -- ENTIRELY -- two jackets, one for my Dad and one for my boyfriend, out of shearling -- sheepskin with the fur still on it; but I later realized that nobody could wear them; the fur made the sleeves so bulky, nobody could get an arm into the jacket sleeve.) I ran into the vest recently in a closet, and I recalled how I created the design I put on the back of a thistle - I went out into my yard, sketched one, simplified it, stylized it, cut it out of colored suede, tacked it in place with rubber cement, and hand-sewed it on with a glover's needle.

Glover's needles look really odd -- instead of a sharp point and smooth, cylindrical sides, they have 3 sharp edges for a quarter inch or so back from the point. And you must sew with a sure hand. If you make too many attempts at one stitch, instead you have created a hole in the leather.



Here are a couple of photos; I'm still proud of the design, and the workmanship.
--Rachel Holmen

Salvaging a Cooking Mistake

It was, oh, 1970 perhaps. I was poor. I was hungry. AND, I had friends visiting, including handsome auburn-haired Jimmie. I wanted something for all of us to eat. I boiled water and added the only package of noodles in the house, drained the noodles when they were done, and stirred in some melted butter. So far, excellent. Then I went to add a little garlic powder -- and the lid came off the jar. In dumped WAY too much garlic. I scooped out some, but a lot was still in the dish. There were no more noodles. What to DO????? I tasted the dish, and it had so much garlic in it, it was bitter.

I searched the kitchen, found a block of mozzarella cheese and a big can of whole tomatoes, maybe 24 ounces. I drained can of tomatoes, added them, stirred everything up, grated a whole lot of cheese on top, and put the dish briefly into the oven. Success!!!

"What do you call this dish?" Jimmie asked. I confessed the dish didn't have a name. "Glop!" Jimmie pronounced, and I still call it that.

(Now I make the dish on purpose. Often I include hamburger meat crumbled up in the frying pan, cooked, and drained before adding to the noodles.)

I'm cooking up some today, for my quilting group; the weather is grumpy-looking and grey, and this will be just the dish to sustain us on a cool evening.

-- Rachel Holmen

Food for Colder Weather

I had an old family favorite meal today for lunch:  Campbell's tomato soup made with milk, with Cheerios in it.  (Plain, old fashioned Cheerios, not the sugar-coated ones.)  Good on a chilly day. -- Rachel

Bridge Open Again

They did manage to get the bridge open again -- and some idiot promptly earned himself a Darwin Award by taking the new curve too fast and driving over the rail. For a day or two afterwards, other drives actually slowed down for the curve, but by now, two whole weeks later, most drivers take the curves too fast.

SG Gate info on the fatality: link

-- Rachel Holmen

Bay Bridge Broken Again - Oct 27, 2009

I took the 108 bus from work to the TransBay Terminal, and there was my J bus. The driver opened the door for me, but a dispatcher waved me away. "The Bridge is closed," he said. Luckily, I had a BART ticket, so I took that home, but it was pretty crowded, and with one extremely quick stop at a grocery store for frozen veggies, I got home just before 10 pm. The word I'd heard in the bus terminal was: closed for 24 hours. What SFGate is now saying is, Closed Indefinitely.

I'm not a big fan of BART, either. TOOOOO noisy to hear my audio books; in fact, I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action lawsuit about deafness among the ridership.

-- Rachel Holmen

Home-made cards

My talented friend Keli made me these cards, on what looks like hand-made paper. If you're interested, contact me (reh at sff dot net) and I'll put you in touch with her. She is a wizard at birthday cards, and could probably come up with designs appropriate for other occasions as well. (And if you know great sources for rubber stamps, I'll forward that information to her as well. My favorite store, in Petaluma, seems to have disappeared.) -- Rachel Holmen

Another cat lost to me

My gray cat, Pearl Too, died two weeks ago today, leaving me once again sad and angry because, as another cat-loving friend reminded me, Pearl forgot the part in her contract about living forever to be my companion. Some cats have a lot of personality, do silly things you can retell to your friends. Pearl wasn't much like that, although of course she did have her moments. But mostly, she just wanted to be wherever I was, watch whatever I was doing, and if possible sit in my lap and purr. So she leaves a big hole in my life, especially when I'm home in the evenings. (And those darn grocery stores. Do you know, they have PET FOOD aisles, just to taunt me?)

This is What Real Baby Carrots Look Like

My friend Amy grows carrots, under something called Reemay; boy, they are tasty. Those things you buy as baby carrots? I hear they are actually broken chunks of big carrots, shaved round by machine, stored in bleach prior to sale. -- Rachel Holmen

Massively Ambitious: Bay Bridge renovations

Next weekend, the Bay Bridge across San Francisco Bay will be closed. For some info about what's being done, see baybridgeinfo.org. You'll be able to see what's happening on Google Earth, even follow the action on Twitter.

-- Rachel Holmen

Phil Marsh and the Freight coffee house, and further ramblings

I ran into my old friend Earl Crabb on Saturday night at the Phil Marsh show at the "old" Freight, the very last Satuday night they'll be at that venue, now that they're moving into their new building downtown at the end of the month. I think about ten people in the audience were under 55, and they were probably children and grandchildren of the old regulars, and there were about a hundred of us. We sang a hymn (not "angel band" but another fine old bluegrassy song with good harmony possibilities) in memory of Mike Seeger, who died this weekend, and Phil sang a lot of great old George Jones songs, stuff from the Royal Calypso Orchestra, and a lovesong with clever, tightly-packed lyrics about a long distance call, Tokyo to Tulsa, between ichiban number one cowboy and Su Li Su. (Special thanks to Gary Salzman for the calypso, and to Laurie Cohen for sonorous cello backup which particularly pleased my cello-playing seatmate, Carla de Haas.)

Phil was part of the Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band, which was the first act at the Freight a zillion years ago. The band had a reunion I had to miss recently since I was out of town, so I was tickled to get a second chance this summer to see Phil.

And seeing Earl reminded me that when he and I had been dating (and he lived in Palo Alto), we used my house to host a HUGE party late one Saturday night, for the Cleanliness and Godliness band, the Mark Spoelstra band Jade Flute (now there was another man I had a crush on, Mark Spoelstra), and the visiting-from-Cambridge Jim Kweskin Jug Band. Geoff Muldaur and I compared notes and he claimed me as his "soul sister" since we get the same awful nervous rash on our hands sometimes. Tall fiddler Richard Greene was amused that I was both a singer and a seamstress. (I had started a small career, first with sunbonnets and then with men's shirts, sellling them in local boutiques.) I remember moving Maria Muldaur's fur coat into a closet since people were stepping on it, the party was so crowded; she'd taken it off and set it in a corner. The party didn't even start till about 1 am since all the bands had played gigs that night; and Country Joe and the Fish were invited but they were in Seattle, so they phoned in and said hello to everybody. But in the way of things, the bands remember Earl, and not me; and in justice, I have to say that Earl has made a serious avocation of taking photos at folk venues over the years, while I'm just a paying member of the audience. But I do pay, since I think it's important to support live music, not get by on the freebie guest list at the door even when I do know the singers.

The Freight got its name from its FIRST location, when they took over a bulding on San Pablo Avenue. Too broke to put up a new sign, they just added the words "coffee house" to the sign left there by the previous busines -- Freight and Salvage.


However, that venue held only about 78 people according to the fire marshall, and it's hard to make a go of a business that can't hold a lucrative capacity crowd when that crowd wants to show up. So they moved a few blocks away, just off San Pablo, and slowly fixed up the much-larger building they now had. (But the ladies' room still only held two stalls, leading to LONG lines during intermissions, and the green room was pretty small and there was no room for a kitchen, just a fridge and a counter for selling drinks and snacks.) The sound was okay as long as you didn't sit next to one of the walls, and the chairs were a ragtag collection, most of them not TOO uncomfortable, but that was about the best you could say about them. (Generously, you could bring in your own folding chair and use it, and people often did.)

The new venue promises to be so stunningly perfect and large, I wonder if all of us old folkies will be scared away! But opening night is sold out, a good sign. If I think I'll be in town, I'm gonna FINALLY see Rambling Jack Elliott in live performance. (He owes me; I bought a ticket to see him at the Jabberwock once, and he forgot the gig and, sometime after the show was scheduled to start, was located still in Los Angeles, 400 miles away.)


Oh, and there's a JABBERWOCK memory website now on the web, started by a friend of Earl's named Corry. Lemee see if I can post the link. I'm going to dig through old posters, scan them, and email 'em to the site. Here we go: http://www.chickenonaunicycle.com, chicken on a unicycle dot com. Corry said that Bill Ellert has died (I did see Bill at some folk event at the big auditorium on the Berkeley High campus about five years ago, and turned down a chance to go with him to the after-party because, as I told him, I'd enjoyed the concert but was afraid that the party would be full of drunk and stoned musicians, whose behavior would probably just tarnish my memories of them), so I'm glad I did get to see him a few years back.

-- Rachel

Braiding Trick from a Friend

I was showing my Kumihimo marudai to my old friend Kitty Crowe when I saw her on the bus. Well, she'd clearly done more with this craft than I have yet! When I mentioned that I had trouble keeping track of where I'd stopped and where I would need to begin again, she said:

If you are working a 2-step move, do the first step, then stop. You'll always know where to begin again.

-- Rachel