Nutgraf

I’ve been struggling with this blog for a while – trying to figure out what I want to do with it and what I want it to do for me. And the more I think about it, the closer I get to the immortal words of Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything.

I don’t want to be a meta blogger, blogging and pontificating about blogging (present post excluded), and I don’t want to use the words “meme,” “leverage” or “blogosphere.” I don’t want to be a social media expert, and I don’t want to concentrate on the medium.

I want to tinker with topics and develop new, short-lived obsessions before being distracted by something shiny and moving on to the next new thing. I want to pick the brains of people who really seem to be getting something right, who have found something they care about, have developed an expertise and who seem to derive great joy from what they do. I want to poke at and pick apart some of the mysteries of daily life. I want to read books and talk to people about it, and I want to learn about things that are just totally awesome. And I just want to be funny and make people laugh. Is that so wrong? And I don’t want to be hemmed in by picking one topic or one community. The world is just too full of cool shit to pigeonhole myself.

And so the struggle will continue. I can only hope that you enjoy the ride as much as I do.

Navel gazing concluded.

Enormous orange cucumber

Since the Snowpocalypse, I’ve been fantasizing about hot summer days, citronella-infused evenings, and growing some more mutant produce in my yard. Every year I learn something new – like that neglected cucumbers turn all orange and terrifying, and that these Earth Boxes produce an alarming amount of… produce.

So I’m thinking about what to grow this year. Tomatoes are a given, I’m afraid. I think it’s genetic. My grandmother grew them, my mother grew them, and now I do. I think I’m the worst at it, but I just. Can’t. Stop.

Had way too many peppers of various heats last year, and the cucumbers almost took over the world the year before that. On the menu for 2010, we’ve got various herbs, two kinds of the ubiquitous tomato, some small crunchy cucumbers and… what? I’d like to try something new, and am looking for a good candidate with a long harvest period that we’ll actually utilize.

Free-form advice welcome in the comments below, also feel free to get your vote on.

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Also, not that you asked, but here are a couple of gardening-related sites that I’ve really come to love. Ketzel would be proud. Or appalled.

American Meadows – their wildflower seed mixes are pretty cool, and I just love their attitude. Great prices, product and service.

Seed Savers Exchange – dedicated to saving and sharing rare and heirloom seeds.

Seeds of Change – rock on with your organic selves.

Local Harvest – don’t want to grow your own? Find a farm, a farmers market or a CSA program near where you eat.

When I was in grad school, one of my instructors assigned the class to read The New Yorker each week. Most of us subscribed, many of us got hooked. My weekly commute is – conveniently – about one New Yorker long, when Metro is behaving itself. Which has been great – the magazine fits neatly into my purse, and I get to maintain that smug sense of self satisfaction that comes with feeling reasonably well-informed.

It was a good system for several years. Then a bunch of stuff started interfering (trains running in a nauseating manner that was not conducive to reading, that damn iPhone having so much fun in it), and I fell behind.

And here we are – with two feet of snow on the ground, and five magazines to get through.

January 11, 2010

Chainsaw class? Phyllis Diller? A great start to the issue, but I’m afraid I’m just not going to get through the big economics feature. Too antsy watching the state repeatedly plow us back in after Spouse shovels us out. Stupid state. Meanwhile, there’s a really interesting article about the fountain architect who brought us the spectacle at the Bellagio, and another (and very long) about Justice Sotomayor. The review of Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book (Committed) is way better than I thought her first book – which was kind of solipsistic and itch-provoking.

January 18, 2010

The Sure Thing: Oh, Malcolm Gladwell. Your analysis of what makes a (wildly) successful and predatory entrepreneur is as engaging as it is useless to me. No way will I be able to just balls my way through making a multimillion dollar company into a multibillion dollar enterprise. Guess I’ll have to stick with my day job.

Udder Madness: I think only Jews from New York use the word “homunculus.”

Rodarte looks cool, Ted Olsen and David Bois are unlikely allies in the fight for marriage equality

January 25, 2010

I usually don’t get into the fiction so much, but “The Trailhead” was pretty great – and ants are totally violent, but not as violent as King Lear (what with the eye gouging and assassinating and stuff), a review of a half-assed production of which follows. Also, the tricky thing about memoirs, in addition to mortifying friends and family, is that so many of them turn out to be embellished or just not true. On the other hand, no one really seems to care if things “happened,” as long as they “feel honest.”

Didn’t make it the whole way through, but this is great progress!

Good God, I’m dull.

This is my rockstar Grandma. She lived with cancer for years. Gave up a kidney, part of her bladder and part of a lung to the surgeons, which bought her some relatively smooth sailing. Then, about three years ago, the lung cancer came back or started over or turned up or whatever you want to call it. Since that latest diagnosis, she underwent an enormous amount of chemotherapy, had every side effect in the books, a couple of other conditions, some old, dessicated bits removed and some shiny new bits installed.

She was one brave, strong lady. She had friends of all ages, who gave her rides to the doctor when she needed a hand, took her to the ER when we weren’t able to get there, and stayed with her nights when she was unwell. In a world that is often distant and cold, her neighbors called often, stopped by and dropped off little things, helped her around the house and were generally warm, wonderful and kind. The network she had was just incredible and it’s a real testament to the goodwill she generated over the decades.

Her spirit and determination kept her alive and living a relatively full life until pretty recently. She told us all to get stuffed when we tried to get her to get more help around the house, drove until dismayingly recently (just in the neighborhood, you understand), and insisted on living more or less alone because she didn’t want anyone else in her face.

Last week that rat bastard cancer won.

The rest of the details are as boring as they are awful. And we’ve all seen it before. And I’m just so fucking sick of it. She deserved better.

So I’ve launched a new Web site to tell cancer what I think of it. And I think it can go fuck itself.

Cancer is an Asshole

Kind of says it all, doesn’t it? Basically, I’m hoping to aggregate some good resources, and maybe generate some donations for the worthy cause of telling cancer to get stuffed. Check it out and let me know what you think and any ideas you may have for other ways to stick it to cancer.

DeathSnow2009!

It’s blizzarding out, and snow days always feel like special occasions to me. Maybe it’s all of the training from childhood – where you got a surprise vacation that involved hot cocoa and a softly padded world. But whatever the reason, it seemed like a perfect day to launch my newest blog notion: BookGraf.

What is this BookGraf of which you speak?

Yeah, the name could use some work. But Book Nut was already taken, and I’ve not always felt like the people who searched on “nut” were getting what they were looking for when they arrived at my site.

I like books. And had the good fortune to belong to a fantastic book club for a time. We read some super fun and interesting books, and we totally failed to take anything seriously or insist that people actually read the book. We enjoyed one another’s company, cheap wine and some very lovely canapés from Trader Joe.

In that curious but casual tradition, I’m going to feature here some of the things with which I’m feeding my head. Cookbooks, Italian mystery novels, ye olde classics, how-to, and new releases. I’ve got a broad range of interests and am always looking for recommendations.

Why would I do such a thing?

I want my kids to read.

As part of my ongoing (and probably profoundly annoying) advice project, I decided that one of the most important things I can hope to impress upon my children is an insatiable appetite for reading. I want them to read online, read books, newspapers, blogs, magazines (bonus points if it’s The New Yorker or The Economist), cereal boxes, e-mails, angry screeds, loving epistles…. All of it.

I want review copies.

Also, I must admit, one of my goals in life is to be on the receiving end of review copies from publishers. I’ve come close a couple of times, and am afraid that I let other professional aspirations distract me from this most pressing matter.  Never again. It made me feel awesome when books arrived unbidden. It meant that someone wanted me to read their stuff and tell other people about it. They thought I had an opinion, an audience and a platform that suited their needs. How awesome is that?

And last but not least:

I want to learn new stuff.

Fiction, nonfiction, biography, how-to, history, mystery and science… you can learn from it all. A new and fabulous turn of a phrase, a plot device, recipe for hazelnut biscotti. There is so much out there. And a lot of it is bad, but a lot if it is also good, and some of it is totally awesome. And I don’t want to miss those parts.

Hit me.

I’ve got a bunch of books in the queue, but please do hit me up in the comments here or at thea [at] nutgraf dot net if you’ve got a suggestion or recommendation. Your comments on my comments are also welcome.