28.6.04

I don't have a whole lot to say lately.

The swimming pool is murky with the diluted sunscreen of a million marco-polo-playing kids.

La India at Pride. Blueberries! The pineapple-based cocktail I shared with Amy the other night when we were matching by mistake, both carrying light blue purses. Oops. Hee hee....

20.6.04

Woohoo!!!!! All that torturous grant-writing has finally paid off! The Creative Work Fund is dropping some serious bucks on the Southern leg of the Chinese Restaurant Project. I'll be collaborating with Chinese Historical Society of America for this part of the project, visiting Chinese restaurants in Alabama & Mississippi later this year. Work generated from this trip will be shown at the CHSA gallery in 2005. Details to follow! Very exciting! I can't quite believe it's real yet....

17.6.04

It's been a while since I posted any "earliest memory" survey replies. Here is an excerpt from James, self-described Honky:

My parents and I went on vacation to San Francisco where we went to my first Chinese restaurant. I was about 6 or 7 years old (so it must have been 1960 or so) and I loved going out with my folks to restaurants and having fancy meals and this was the fanciest yet. I remember it being a dark room with accenting table lighting and white table cloths and black suited waiters. I think the decor was a lot of black and red. There were chop sticks, but none of us had a clue as to how to use them. When we got back home I was determined to master them.

After the meal we went back to the hotel and in the middle of the night my eyelids swelled up so tightly that I could barely see out of them. We assumed it was an allergic reaction to the "strange" food we had eaten at the Chinese restaurant. The irony of the connection between eating Chinese food and getting "Chinese Eyes" did not escape me. It became a running joke in my family for years to come.

Remarkably, my eyes still swell up from time to time and for years I couldn't figure out what was doing it. I've only recently (after 40 some years) figured out that it was from the preservative many restaurants use on raw shellfish that was doing it. In fact, it was never the Chinese food at all but a crab cocktail I'd had on Fisherman's Wharf earlier that day.


Always the scapegoat! This little memory is really packed w/ all kindsa, uh, deep stuff, wouldn't you say?

15.6.04

PR update: I'm in Giant Robot's 10-year anniversary issue, which should be hitting the stands right about now.

Dang, I couldn't get online for the past few days. Serious withdrawal symptoms. So pathetic. Although it's a wonder how much you can get accomplished in the rest of your life when that happens. I know, I already said pathetic.

In the meantime, summer has arrived! The temperature yesterday must have shot up about 20 degrees in the late afternoon. Time to iron some linen sundresses....

Nothing (knock on wood) can keep me from the Garden of Memory, my favorite way to spend summer solstice evening. I missed it last year because I'd stupidly made another commitment. Won't make that mistake again, no way!

5.6.04

Memorial page for Gloria Anzaldua.

4.6.04

So... about the South: based on this "practice trip" I now have a much better idea of how to set up the Real Southern trip. Just for starters: we're not in Wyoming anymore, Toto. The greater Atlanta area, indeed all of northern Georgia, is absolutely rife with Chinese restaurants. My database has over 500 for the state, & I'm quite sure there are lots more than that. I'd have to say I only got to think about taking out my pin to scratch the surface. We hit about a dozen restaurants between Nashville & Atlanta (including one in North Carolina, even!), bypassing many others along the way. It's dense down there, is what I'm trying to say, just like the air is dense with humidity, compared to the dry, thin air of Wyoming. Sort of overwhelming, but good. We interviewed a restaurant owner in Atlanta who had the perfect Chinese Southern Belle accent, a way of speaking that I could only have dreamed of before. Good thing my new mic & the rest of the sound equipment all worked beautifully! Other highlights: fried chicken at Swett's in Nashville; visiting Martin Luther King Jr.'s actual church; & all the sleek, healthy horses in their lush green pastures. Oh, & of course, the sweet balmy evenings... I wasn't cold once the whole trip.

3.6.04

Best of the Southern Mini-Trip: a field full of fireflies in Tennessee. More later... I'm nursing a mild cold. Friends who warned me I was trying to cram too much into a one-week trip: you were right!