Ummm... Zucchini?

Res ipsa loquitor.

Pending lasagna.v

Vegan lasagna!

Pretty much just what it sounds like, with lots of caramelized ONIONS!

2015: a year in books

As I have for a number of years, I'm posting some numbers of the books I read in 2015.

The basics: in 2015 I completed 29 books, for a total of 8,583 pages. This put me significantly ahead of 2014, when moving five or six times left me only with time to read 19 books, for 6,406 pages, and closer to 2013, when I completed 30 books for 8,903 pages.  None of these figures include books I didn't finish, since I'm happy to put a shitty book down if I have any better options.

As for 2015 highs and lows: some of the best books I read included a couple shorts ones by a favorite author, Cormac McCarthy: Child of God, and The Gardener's Son.

Cliche though it may sound, Room by Emma Donoghue was excellent, if dark as fuck. (I have no real interest in seeing the movie.)

I also really enjoyed Paper Towns by John Green, as cute, moving, incisive, if somewhat improbable coming of age fiction. I mean, it's hard to not enjoy a book that has teens doing fairly realistic urban exploration of abandoned buildings.

I also finished some really shitty books, notwithstanding my note above. Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris was one of the worst books I've ever finished in my life. It's stupid, contrived, forced, and feels like little more than a throw-away to meet a contract with a publisher that people only bought because they like This American Life. I really should have put it down, but it was kind of like rubbernecking a really bad pileup on the interstate: you know you shouldn't look, but you kind of can't help it.

Going Home by "A. American" was just plain fucking bad. I genuinely really like dystopian and post-apocalyptic books (and movies), and I'm willing to put up with some prepper silliness to read the genre. The basic storyline was cliche and trite and predictable, but not in itself terrible. The tinfoil hat conspiracy theory nonsense was... just that. But the most irritating part was the constant, relentless name brand product placement that did zero to advance the story. I swear there are single sentences that contain three or four name brand product placements, like, "I crawled out of my Brand A sleeping bag, pulled my Brand B boots on, grateful for clean Brand C socks, and located my Brand D backpack while chambering a round in my Brand E .45 semi-automatic with Brand F hollowpoints..." And this nonsense went on on nearly every one of the 388 pages. It was awful.

If you wonder if I'm overstating it, you can read Chapter 1 on the book's Amazon page. Here's one example:

"Lying beside the driver’s seat by the door was my ESEE 5; I laid it on the pile. I put the Devildog on the pile as well. As my EDC, it had a number of things in it that I would need. There were two spare mags for the XD, an Otis tactical cleaning kit, a Sylva compass, a Wilderness Outfi tters SOS survival kit, Swedish FireSteel, and other assorted items that I thought essential."

Here is another:

"I walked around and grabbed a couple of bags of Jack Link’s Beef Jerky; all I could think about was the Sasquatch commercials. Chuckling to myself, I went to the aisle with the little packs of meds and grabbed a few Excedrin packs, some Rolaids, and two packs of Imodium pills."

I actually made a point to finish two more books in the last few days of 2015 so that this piece of crap wouldn't be the last thing I finished in the year.

So, that's the report. Dear readers: what did you read in 2015 that you loved? 

Who knew?

It turns out that it's an absolutely real possibility to set a cookie on fire in a microwave.

Ringing in the new year

What better way than with vegan chocolate chip cookies?

Vegan food fun!

Curry with tofu, okra, onions, broccoli, and other good stuff. And for dessert, banana bread!

Obscure

'Cause sometimes you just gotta blog things that only certain people will understand.

Xmas tofurky!

Yep, just what it sounds like!

Leftovers today for lunch!

Gobble gobble!

Errrrr...

Xmas morning breakfast vegan food porn!

Vegan sausage and bacon, and (actual) NYC bagels.

This is how most Americans start off Xmas day, right?

Notably, the vegan bacon is some of the best I've ever had. And the company, Sweet Earth, happens to be based in Pacific Grove, California, where my father grew up. (No, he would probably not be a fan.)

It's already in the high 50s here in Boston, with an expected high of 60. It's bright sunshine, so much sun streaming in that we have every window in the apartment wide open. Global climate chaos, anyone?

Vegan Enchiladas: Round Two!

Here's the making table: a mix containing caramelized onion and poblano peppers and garlic, vegan soyrizo, fresh home made pico de gallo, and fried broccoli.

And here is the finished product!

Vegan enchiladas. And stuff.

Onions! And poblano peppers, anaheim peppers, zucchini squash, sauce, and oh thank goodness I'm home in Boston.

More library love. And some of my politics leak out.

Some of you already know these stories, but here are a few highlights of my nearly lifelong love of libraries.

1) It starts with books. Of course, right? Pretty much every day (that it wasn't raining) on my walk to school, all through the first through eighth grade, I read a book while walking to school.

2) In middle school (seventh and eighth grades) I volunteered in the school library. I had a contest in the seventh grade with another library volunteer to see who could read more books (in a quarter, I think?), as proven by our library checkout cards. Which were paper, with handwritten titles and authors, and a date stamp. It was tight for a while, but I pulled ahead and ultimately won by reading the entire Louis L'Amour collection. Yes: our little library absurdly dedicated nearly an entire bookcase to spaghetti western, and we had nearly all ~100 L'Amour books that had been published.

2a) I didn't know it until just now, but L'Amour died that June as I was finishing the 7th grade. This apparently wasn't sufficiently newsworthy for the Sacramento Bee, or the Sacramento Union (a shitty little reactive right wing rag of a daily newspaper that I delivered as a kid, which one journalist described as “a mouthpiece for the fundamentalist Christian right, preoccupied with abortion, homosexuals and creationism.”)

3) I first started hanging out at the Belle Cooledge branch of the Sacramento Public Library during that time as well.

3a)  Belle Cooledge was Sacramento's first female mayor, elected in 1947. That's pretty cool that my first public library was named after her. She was also an active member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, a historically racist organization that denied membership to otherwise eligible women because they were African American until 1977. That's not cool. Well, at least they sneaked in just ahead of the Mormons admitting African American men to full "Sainthood" in 1978.

3b) But let's not stray too far afield here. Even though I do, as my readers know, consider public libraries to be temples of freedom, this is about libraries, not the denial of basic liberties and freedoms. Hmmmm... Wait just one damn minute.

4) I was a Boy Scout, of course also a famously bigoted institution, denying membership to LGBTQ youth until 2013, and LGBTQ adult leaders until July 2015. I know, you're thinking hey, wait, they're solid now, right? Don't clap just yet.) There I go again, ranting about freedom. But, hey, my first Boy Scout troop was housed in a Mormon church, so...

4a) Anyway, as a Boy Scout, I helped with another scout's Eagle Scout Service Project, which was moving every single book from the existing branch of the Belle Cooledge library to the newly built branch a mile away. I loved it. I genuinely loved just about every minute of it.

4b) I later quit the Boy Scouts after a rather contentious summer camp experience where I exacted revenge on the scoutmaster's son and his best friend. They had been consistently bullying a developmentally delayed fellow scout, in really cruel ways. That's a story for another time. Here's the teaser epilogue: from what Creepy Uncle Google can tell me, the best friend doesn't exist anymore (or changed his very unique, very google-able name) and the scoutmaster's son made Eagle Scout, and is now a lighting technician.

5) Forward to high school, where I spent only typical kid amounts of time in the library. Well, that;'s probably not true: a lot of fellow students at my high school, which had a dropout rate of 40-50%, and football team stars and Student Government members openly smoking pot and dropping LSD in the gym bathrooms, probably spent less time in the library than I did.

6) In college, I spent many long hours in the library hanging out with our fantastic college archivist, an assistant director of the library, talking about the school's history. (I also spent many hours hanging out with the director of the facilities and buildings department. Hey, I was am kind of a nerd, okay?) It's a bit of a strange story, but I also had access to the library after closing hours. Kinda. And made good use of it.

7) In law school, I had a work-study job in the law library. It was great. In my first semester I realized that I didn't have to buy the outrageously overpriced textbooks since the law library kept a single one on reference for every course, so I did most of my course reading in the library from there on.

8) That I can think off of the top of my head, I have had public library cards in at least eight different states, and at least twelve different cities.

9) I LOVE LIBRARIES.

10) I LOVE FREEDOM.

11) LIBRARIES = FREEDOM.

Freedom

And actually, before I went on that longwinded discussion of libraries, that last post about two of my favorite things was going to be about libraries, and a favorite new word I just learned:

eleutheromania (n): an intense and irresistable desire for freedom

A shout out to the Cycling Dutch Girl blog for teaching me that fantastic word! (You should really go check out the blog: she has been traveling more or less constantly for fourteen years and counting, and has great posts and gorgeous photography.) 

Two of my favorite things

What are two of my favorite things? This isn't a pop quiz, but it also won't come as much of a surprise to anyone who actually knows me, or who even just follows this blog. (BTW, who are you who don't know me, but follow this blog? I'd love it if you would say hello. You can do it in the comments section which I moderate, and I won't post it. Promise.)

Anyway, I digress. Two of my favorite things:

1) libraries
2) books

No, they aren't, anymore, coextensive. So many people in the library these days are there for things other than books. Sometimes, I think this is wonderful: newspapers, events, films, warmth, high speed internet for folks who often can't afford it, classes and education, available bathrooms, mostly non-judgmental staff who don't expect you to buy anything, and many other things.

Sometimes I think it's just a little sad: e.g., a couple nights ago I visited the main branch of the Boston Public Library to check out a copy of the Raymond Chandler classic The Big Sleep. P met me there, and on the way out I pointed out the longest line in the main lobby. She explained it is for DVD holds.

On the one hand that I'm very glad that libraries continue to be viable and important third places, and much of this is through making digital media and services available. On the other hand, when I sit in reading rooms and see more than half of the people on their devices, it's a little sad to me.

Wherein comes the comparison between the main reading rooms in the Boston Public Library, and the New York Public Library. This kind of isn't totally fair: when I lived in NYC last year and early this year, the gorgeous Rose Main Reading Room at the Schwarzman Building (main branch) was closed (and remains closed) for renovations. As a result, I spent most of my time in the Periodicals Room, a gorgeous but much smaller room than Rose. I liked it because electrical outlets were, as far as I could tell, non-existent, putting an inherent limitation on the number of people on laptops. The library rentacops would wander through on the regular, but mostly leave people alone. (This compared to another reading room in the Schwarzman Building, third floor IIRC, where the rentacops stand around imperiously and meanmug people, and where I watched a rentacop almost make a young lady studying a TOEFL guide almost cry for drinking out of a closed coffee travel mug.)

In the BPL, I migrated toward the great big and beautiful Bates Hall reading room. I appreciated the very clear norm of people being silent. Almost eerily silent: with probably 75-100 people in the room, you could hear the rustle of newspaper pages being turned. Unlike most libraries these days, almost nobody was on an electronic device.

So, it's kind of a comparison-not-comparison. On balance, I'll take Bates Hall at the BPL any day over pretty much any room in the NYPL Schwarzman Building. But I need to go back after the reopen the Rose Room and update the comparison.

And local branch comparisons? There is none: BPL wins hands down. I'll take any part of either of my two local BPL branches, Honan-Allston, or Brighton, over any part of what used to be my local branch in NYC, Seward Park, and don't even get me started on the Hamilton Fish Park, surely in the top ranks for Loudest Public Library in America.

But comparing libraries is a little like deciding which of your children you like best, and that age-old (and often untrue) claim that most parents fall back on: that they love all of their children equally.

Ahhh, libraries. I love all of you. I just like some of you better than others. 

white male body entitlement and privilege

Yes, in case you're wondering, there are many people standing on this MBTA red line train. Including with strollers, young children, and baggage.

Hotel room vegan food porn

Pretty tasty!

@ SLC airport

Vegan food porn, NY Thruway Edition

It's a burrito kinda day: chipotle first, now Moe's.

Many miles to go before I sleep.

Veganpalooza

This is just right in yer face food porn. Rice, tofu with long hot peppers, kale salad, and caramelized onions. Yum!

Building from trash

These are discarded dresser drawers from the back alley, turned into closet shelving. I love making stuff out of garbage!