Infernal blocks

In the "Why didn't I think of that?" category, we find Dante's nine circles in Lego: In Your Spare Time. 

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Late November arrives

Walking with the dogs down by the Mississipi River.

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Romaine Brooks

By Carl Van Vechten, 1935

I'm reading a bio of Romaine Brooks because it was at the top of a list of ebooks, but she was pretty interesting.  She had a flair for drama yet good business sense, very butch.

Her portraits are worth checking out.

More later when I get further into the book...

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Flash mob plays "Ode to Joy"

Wayzata Community Orchestra in 5 minute concert, IDS Center, Mpls, 11/16/15.

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Downtown

Edge of hipness

Hennepin and fourth

The skyline, she is a changin'...

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Day hiking

The Connor Hotel, Jerome

Mining museum

Just Before Sunset

Navajo pottery

Jerome

Jerome

Rattlesnakes in Sedona.  Cliff ledges, wet rocks, and loose stones on the trail down to partway down to the bottom of the canyon.  Annoying and boring loud-talking hiking dude echoing up and down the trail for hours.  A ghost pushing bottles and toiletries to the floor in the Jerome hotel. But we made it back.

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Grand Canyon Suite

Sunset crater

GC

Montezuma's Well

Another ruin near Wupatki

GC

"Scenic view"

Wupatki

I have the LP somewhere.  The canyon really is grand.  Even the stress of threatened gov't shutdown couldn't dampen our recent trip, and we got to see lots of nat'l monuments and the main attraction after all.

Montezuma's Castle and Well,Sedona, Flag, Walnut Canyon, Williams, the Canyon, Cameron, Wupatki and Sunset Crater, and Jerome.  The pix say it all.

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Swedish noir

I've been working through the Steig Larsson trilogy, books,and movies, with the last book in French.  The last one got boring so I skipped to the movie.

Better than I thought.  The movies are good Swedish practice, and nicely edited.

I also got hooked on Danish sitcon "Rita" and crime drama "Dicte."  Funny and well done.  I learned Danish is too hard.

Trying to find a Finnish class has proved daunting, but I listen to Finnish and Russian learning podcasts alternately.  Odd and politically/culturally iffy, but it's working for me...

Thanks, Cle, for the greetings.  I dunno if Xena and her moment can be replicated, but something that longlastingly awesome would sure be welcome...

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Third day's the charm

Back home

Working dogs

Durfee creek.

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More SHT

I read it like that too...

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Superior Hiking Trail

Over the previous weekend, I joined a family backpacking trip to the SHT, planned from Judge Magney State Park to a trailhead where the trail goes on to Pincushion Mountain, all above Grand Marais.  Autosuggest wanted "backpacking" to be "hellish," but it was mostly quite fun, if arduous.

We had three dogs, which meant a forced fast pace, some wrangling, a little grumpy growling at naptime, and lots of thrills and chills at cliffside.  Everyone survived.  A sprained ankle required half our party to be helped out and taken home early, but not due to dog antics. 

My dog, a Husky Border Collie mix, pulls like sled pulling alternating with checking back in and herding.  So she pulls when going downhill on rocky sliding trails, but slacks as we go up hills, busy looking back to urge me on.  I did not get the dog assist the other hikers did from goal-oriented, non-herdy breeds...

The campgrounds were full, and our reserved site even had some freeloading Freegans in it when we arrived at 10:30 pm...  But the backpacking sites and trails were only sparsely populated, and we camped alone in a nice beach cove and then up in a large group site on a forested ridge.  No nightly critter visitors, except some small scurryings and bugs.  Good food and dog behavior in the tent.

Customer service at the Tettegouche State Park visitor center was disinterested at best, but the Java Moose and Pie Cafe in Grand Marais were awesome.  Food tastes good after camping,tho our cooks did well in the dried foods department.  We had more trouble hanging bear bags with all white birches...

Anyway.  Pictures tell more.

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Only Lovers Left Alive

Music, madness, Marlowe, Motown.  I expect nothing more of Jim Jarmusch, and this movie delivers.  His take on vampires really nails it.  This is no asskicking murder mystery solving vampire story, it's a requiem for the zombies.

Like Tiptree said, Hello, that's us.

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Women photographers of Russia, Eastern Europe, far north/east

Wow: 29 photographers

http://calvertjournal.com/lists/show/3787/in-focus-29-women-photographers-picturing-the-new-east

Amazing collection.



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That time of year

Finally, a use for the Ginzu...

Too much zucchini and eggplant.  Never enough tomatoes.

I killed my squash plant by accidentally uprooting it weeding out actual weeds, thanks to the netting that was protecting it from rabbits.  But eggplant is something I have to buy every time I hit a farmers market, because it's so pretty, and tasty.

My new solution: eggplant bacon.  Still perfecting my recipe, but... where has it been all my life?

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On S.E. Hinton

The New Yorker had an interesting article about S.E. Hinton's role in the development of YA fiction.  I am only slightly dissembling if I say my butch identity was largely formed by her books, particularly That Was Then But This is Now and The Outsiders.  The latter made me want to be greaser cool but the former made me think about ethics and masculinity, if not sexism.

Apparently, I'm not the only one
influenced by Sodapop and Ponyboy.  That looks just like my well-worn copy, which came to me already dogeared 35+ years ago...

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Hungry

Vegan blintzes for Helsinki 2017/ Worldcon 75!!

I'm reading lots of Estonian, Finnish, and Swedish fiction these days. Mostly not sff, tho some literary specfic like Mati Unt's Diary of a Blood Donor.  Definitek not written to be a thriller or what if, but a political satire/critique. 

I'm also reading from and about Barbara Deming, feminist, lesbian, CR, and peace movement activist and theorist of nonviolence without a religious focus.  She was born around the same time as Tiptree/Sheldon and Highsmith and started out as a poet and film critic but ended up a direct action activist and nonfiction writer, of memoir and theory.

I don't have much to say about the books.  It's early, and I'm hungry.  I will share the best sourdough pancake/waffle recipes I've found, in pretty extensive testing:  Here. 

http://breadtopia.com/sourdough-waffles-and-pancakes/

Read the comments there if you have questions- lots of good advice.  I sub arrowroot powder (1 Tbsp w 2 Tbsp water) for eggs and soymilk with no problems.

Jackie's sourdough pancakes

3 eggs
1 cup milk
2 cups Sourdough Starter
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup butter melted

Beat eggs in a medium bowl. Add milk and sourdough starter. Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and sugar; add to the egg mixture, mixing well. Stir in melted butter. Lightly grease a hot griddle. Drop the batter by 1/4 cup onto the griddle and cook until light brown, turning once. Makes 6 servings.

Jon's sourdough waffles

(I sub vegan things and whole wheat,

Heat the following in a pan until the butter is melted and then let cool to room temperature.

4 oz (1/2 cup or 115 g) butter
8 oz (1 cup or 225 g) milk

Add the milk-butter mixture to: 9 oz (about a cup or 255g) white starter
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp (packed) brown sugar
6 oz (about 1 1/2 cups or 170 g) all purpose flour

Mix these together to form a thick batter, cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature for 8-14 hours. If you do this before going to bed, you’ll have the batter ready for breakfast the next day.

Preheat your waffle iron for 10-15 minutes. Uncover the batter and whisk in 2 large eggs and 1/4 tsp baking soda. Pour 1/2 to 3/4 cups of batter on the hot waffle iron and close the lid. Let cook for 3-5 minutes until golden brown and crisp.

Mmmm.

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Cascade Falls

7/6 /15: Yes, it's July.  I just picked the first real handful of raspberries from my yard while watering the vegetable garden.  Yesterday was low 70s, today high 80s, mild so far after an early and hot start to summer.

I appreciated the fact that MN still funds its state parks, instead of selling them out like Walkerland, when we camped in Cascade Falls st pk over the 4th weekend.  The trails are very steep, with many tall stairs and ascents or descents where your feet have purchase only because of tree roots.  This makes for great views, though, and adrenalin rushes if you tie yourself to hardy dogs.

Reststops were, as usual, a good reminder of the less evolved attitudes towards gender diversity out there, but nothing too bad.  People at the campground were friendly enough: MN nice has its good side. 

Up North had more diversity than I remember.  (It's been awhile, and I only went once.)  I'm inclined to spend more time up there, at least in the woods.

I was reading The Howling Miller, by Aarto Paasilinna, which takes place in the woods in Lappland during the 1950s.  The miller, an outsider, restores the old grain,and saw mill in town, but he likes to howl like a wolf at night.  He makes friends and enemies, and this plays out as it can in small towns. 

Satiric and moving at the same time, the novel really moves along and manages to come up with some real surprises as plot twists.  I already love Nordic style humor and the pace and style of folk tales, but the political subtext and philosophical side were a plus.  It was translated from a French translation of the Finnish original, but read very well.

More later... (delayed by technical difficulties, i.e., human error.)

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Vegan Scones

Too easy.  No butter.

Tomato Rosemary Scones (adapted from Vegan Brunch, Isa Chandra Moskowitz)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

3 cups flour
2 Tbsp baking powder
Up to 2 Tbsp brown sugar/honey (Less is more)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Mix.  Make a well.

1/3 cup olive oil
14 oz. tomato sauce (1 1/2 cup)
1 tsp cider vinegar
2 Tbsp chopped/crushed rosemary (fresh if possible)
Pinch thyme
(Options: chopped olives, peppers, or nuts, grated lemon rind, chili flakes, ?)

Add.  Mix gently, as little as possible to make a wettish dough.

On floured surface, with well-floured hands, divide in two.  Pat out each ball of dough to make six-inch wheels.  Cut into slices.  Put on greased/ nonstick baking sheet, bake 400 degrees for about 15 minutes til they are firm enough for your taste.



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Cloud control

 Annalee Newitz for Gizmodo on the future of google.

I'm slowly reading Terms of Service, by Jacob Silverman.  Slow because I'm reading on the light rail 30-40 minutes a day, and because there's a lot of information packed into each page.

I've been waiting to read more science fiction that tackles the kind of issues raised in these books/articles.  Mostly there's a lot of vague handwaving towards a totalitarian scenario, or it's a metaphor for oppression.  Detailed tech-savvy analysis of where the social media, data as the monetizing factor, no privacy scenario is headed, not so much.

Guess I'm gonna have to write something this summer...

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Purge

Purge (Puhdistus), an older novel by Finnish-Estonian writer Sofi Oksanen, is a real tour de force.  It's hard not to use cliches to describe a book that powerful. She pulls few punches, and there are tons of little details planted here and there that layer the ironies and macabre humor thick enough to keep the horrible stories of women's lives in times of war and under totalitarian dictatorships moving fiercely forward. 

And backward.  Time jumps and skips in this novel, a structure which heightens the suspense and emotional impact.  Lola Roger's translation from the Finnish to English is excellent- she is batting 1.00 by my reading of 4 translations so far...

As Oksanen's website notes:
Narrated through a polyphonic choir of individual voices, Purge tells the suspenseful and dramatic story of Aliide Truu, an old Estonian woman whose hands are soiled with the crimes she committed during the Soviet era, and Zara, a young trafficking victim who in the present has managed to escape and has come to seek shelter at Aliide’s countryside home.

Also:
Purge became a runaway success, and Sofi Oksanen’s major breakthrough: No. 1 bestseller in Finland with sales exceeding 200 000 copies, Puhdistus has won its author numerous literary prizes, including Finland’s premier literary award, The Finlandia Award, as well as Nordic Council Literary Prize, the biggest literary prize in Nordic Countries. Purge has also won the 2010 FNAC prize in France. It was selected from 300 works published in France. This is the first time the award has gone to a foreign author.

Well deserved awards.  This book really blew me away.  Another cliche, but true.  I'm on to her recent release, after reading Kameron Hurley's new series opener and Arto Paasilenna's The Howling Miller, because due at library.  Still working on Terms of Service, during the commute.  It's dense, in a good way.  Information rich.

The range of different covers says it all.  As a review said of the American cover, where are the maggots to tip off the reader that this is not a pastorale?

 Interesting talk by Oksanen.  And interview.