correction.

Right. Railroad Engineer -- not Mechanical Engineer. I inferred too much (and wrongly) from the imdb.com synopsis for The General. Probably given my affinity for mechanical engineers.

But the rest of it was right on: Number 37 on Premiere Magazine's list of 100 all time great movies. Unbelievably cool stunts and slapstick. Buster Keaton's favorite of his own films.

Best Railroad Movie ever made.

my rake: let me show you it.

Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Just before the curtain went up (so to speak) on Buster Keaton's silent film classic "The General" in which the Mechanical Engineer gets the girl.

Never mind that he's a Confederate.

Accompanied by some remnant of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, working from the original 1927 cue sheet by Dennis James and Eric Beheim. Conducted by Richard Kaufman.

Bargain seats: Two rows from the back at the tippy tippy top.

Posting by cameraphone from Symphony Hall, Chicago, IL.

and it was good.

and it was good.
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Intelligentsia Coffee
Chicago, IL

Posting by cameraphone
the Loop

nick's silver shears

nick's silver shears
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

I've taken to trawling men's barbershops in the afternoons, hoping to catch a glimpse of a lathery shave.

(Not really. Just needed an interesting caption. I'm so tired of winter already.)

Posting by cameraphone from Hinsdale, IL

parse me

clash
Originally uploaded by Box and Arrow.

Flickrite Box and Arrow's posted an informatic take on the Clash -- and dropped it in the Flickr Song Chart Pool.

View the slideshow »


via Sourjayne

diebold formally apologizes to their shadowy puppet masters

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Courtesy of The Onion. Via my Dad.

[trans.] Jalisco, you do not crack!

A friend of mine who's an anthropologist once told me the story of how the Virgin of Guadelupe saved his hide in a small Mexican town where he hoped to camp out and learn a little something about the doings of the folks around there.

The townspeople warmed to him, the gringo, when they saw he was wearing the Virgin as a pendant. And once he explained his purpose -- that he came from up North, that his people didn't know the ways of the Fiesta, and he had come to study so that he could learn and return to enlighten his people -- they let him stay.

They were saddened, he said, to hear that anyone didn't know the ways of the Fiesta -- it's core importance to the welfare of the people.

A sentiment which, maybe, explains the rash of Spanish-language tunes that have popped up in support of Barack Obama's campaign. Because, as everyone knows, music is a core component of any Fiesta:


Video: viva Obama

== & ==


Video: Vota Obama!

& my personal fave:


Video: la caminata

(dude: there's a ringtone for this one. I've gotta track it down.)

But it certainly can't even begin to explain this one, which I offer without comment:


Video: Ted Kenedy sings ¡Jalisco, no te rajes!

Update: dianeburnett has provided the proper translation of ¡Jalisco, no te rajes! which is: Jalisco, don't give up! (Although I continue to nurse a certain fondness for Babel Fish's inept translation: "you do not crack!")

how 'bout a little bacon?

Because it’s still winter, g*d*it, as much as I want it to be spring. Might as well break out the bacon.

Edna Lewis’ Red Rice

• 5 to 6 slices of BACON (center cut’s good for this one -- little bit lean; whole lot tasty)


• 2/3 cup chopped onions


• 1 tsp dried thyme


• 1 green pepper ick. no. roast a poblano chile. brown paper bag it while it cools. strip off the charred parts and pull out the seeds -- but do it through plastic somehow so you don’t get that chile fire under your fingernails. ick. no.


• 2 small round hot peppers if you do this with a poblano (see above) you’re not going to need these


• 2 cups fresh tomato puree (or canned romas pureed in a hurry. after all it’s still winter: where are you gonna find good fresh tomatoes?)


• 1 tbsp brown sugar


• 2 cups cold water


• 2 cups Carolina or popcorn rice I used a fragrant basmati and it worked beautifully


• 1 cup or more small pieces cooked ham or fish (I used some of the Virginia ham that my sister sent at Christmas time, half of which I kept frozen until now. Yum. but I'm thinking smoked trout might work well in this dish too.)


• salt & fresh ground pepper (sea salt, of course. we’ve talked about this.)

Cut the bacon into 1/2 inch pieces and cook it up in a heavy-bottomed saucepan (I used a Creuset round oven which meant I didn’t have to transfer dishes later.) until crisp. Remove and set aside. Pour off half the bacon fat if you need to -- if you’re using that center-cut bacon you may not have a whole lot to work with, so save it all.

Add the onions, stir and simmer ‘til soft. Toss in the thyme and the poblanos, which by now you’ve sliced into little strips. Mix well and add the tomato puree and brown sugar. Add water and stir in the rice.

Cover and simmer on a low burner until the rice starts to cook -- add the bacon and ham. Stir it up good and set in an oven preheated to 350 degrees and cook for 45 to 60 minutes, until the rice is tender. (If you used a regular saucepan earlier you'll want to transfer it to some kind of casserole now.)

Serves 4, and doesn’t keep too well, so if you’re serving fewer make sure you’re really hungry. Dish is so tasty that overeating is readily induced.


Freely adopted from Edna Lewis’s cookbook: In Pursuit of Flavor, which I picked up a little while back at Monticello. It's loaded with classic Southern-style dishes -- simple, pure and good.


Image: That would be Francis Bacon, of course.

speaking of crankiness

for crankiness
Originally uploaded by JKonig.

For Hillary.

Crankiness serum, courtesy of JKonig.

bedazzling's back, baby.

Sunny beats gloomy.
Consistency beats flipping.
Bedazzling beats begrudging.
Confidence beats whining.

Maureen Dowd in today's New York Times, commenting on the political truisms that Hillary has crankily ignored while she wages her campaign against Barack Obama.

I only heard the press reports of Hilary's "capitulation" to Obama in Texas, after which she reared up all fierce-like and has been working consistently to hammer her opponent. But it seemed to me, when I heard her say she was "honored" to share the stage with Barack Obama that it was a characteristically female language pattern [1] -- we girls are really good at showering a little praise, and we generally expect reciprocity.

I.e.: I give you a little love; you give me a little love.

It's the polite thing to do.

I suspect she was surprised when Obama didn't shower her back. And then horrified when she realized it made it look like she had caved.

There has been much research into the ways women bring different strengths to management roles -- unfortunately there's not enough available data to determine what variable techniques, if any, are more successful when a woman is running for president.


[1] It would be interesting to see if Deborah Tannen has weighed in on that moment.


p.s. This just in, from bobcatrock »

pick me

Closing a door on an option is experienced as a loss, and people are willing to pay a price to avoid the emotion of loss.

Dr. Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, as quoted in this morning's New York Times.

Ariely's research concludes that closing doors -- limiting your options to focus your energies on what remains (just as Cortes did when he burned his ships on the shores of the New World and set off one of the most horrifyingly productive genocides in the colonialization of the Americas) -- is a good thing, but that human nature resists what's best for us, because it feels too much like the parts that suck.

You can play Ariely's door game to see how you fair »

(The site serves up a lot of cool visual illusions, too.)

Once upon a time I was faced with a whopper of a decision to make. I found myself in San Francisco and decided to take the time to walk their Labyrinth -- I'd heard it was a good meditation device, and I thought maybe it would help me figure things out.

Right.

Walked the one in the cathedral twice. Then walked the one outside.

Nothing. I still didn't know what I was going to do.

I decided to hit the gift shop on the way out -- the back of the shop was packed to the rafters with racks and racks of cards and I pushed my way through to a rack in the very far corner, picked up a single card (it had a couple of doors on the front) and opened it. It read: "Whatever decision you make will be the right one."

Later, I shared this story with my friend Enyasi. She said: "You know, my mother would have said: Whatever choice you make, make it the right one."

'Nuff said.

swarmin'

In a study conducted by researchers at the Stern School of Business at New York University, an examination of 108 albums that hit record shops in early 2007 determined that those that had been the subjects of 40 blog posts before their release date had sales of triple the average.

Cited in this morning's New York Times.

cat aerial

cat aerial
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Charlie the remarkably fat cat (we feed
him remarkably little, and yet he remains
remarkably fat) ponders what's inside
animal minds, while I work too much.

Posting by cameraphone.

non<strike>-</strike>entity

Maybe we should just drop the apostrophe altogether, not just as a nationalist statement but because I'd like my alarm call to work in the morning.

Niall O'Dowd, editor of the Irish Voice, commenting in Apostrophes in Names Stir Lot O' Trouble on the common problem that most computer systems have with apostrophes, dashes, and surname prefaces like "Van".

That is: If they exist they make trouble, so the systems usually make them go away.

O'Dowd is also referring to British colonialism which, according to the AP piece, is responsible for the Irish apostrophe:

The Irish apostrophe began with the British, who put it there because they believed the O looked odd without a link to the rest of the name. Many Gaelic speakers in Ireland refuse to carry an apostrophe, considering it a vestige of colonial days.

He's also referring to the fact that he's unable to subscribe to an online alarm call service because of the apostrophe in his name.

On a more sober note: The apostrophe problem was responsible for thousands of votes that went uncounted in Michigan's Democratic Primary.

oh behave

Video: Yes We Can

They once called John Kennedy the first television president, and I think it's fair to predict that Obama could turn out to be the first internet president.

John Dukakis, Sr VP-branded entertainment at Boston ad agency Hill Holliday, and the son of past-presidential contender Michael Dukakis, as cited in today's AdAge piece Creatives Have a Crush on Obama.

The piece, which speaks to the facetime that Obama's receiving online and the creatives who have made gratis contributions to Obama's efforts to take the White House, also cites Shepard Fairey, who's created several pro-bono print pieces for the campaign, and leaks the fact that he'll soon be revealing another that he developed in cooperation with the Obama campaign. (Still pro-bono, though.) Says Fairey:

His politics fall perfectly in line with what I do as an artist. In advertising and marketing, things are simplified to accentuate the positive and utilize soundbites that are really powerful; it's about economical communications, and [Barack Obama] is really good at that.

That type of approach to politics -- when it seems like he really has conviction, too -- is really easy to distill down to marketable images. It felt really easy for me to make a poster for him.

Most disturbing quote of the piece? Barack Obama "behaves like a well-defined brand".

getcher glam on

Really, really good.

Juno screenwriter and Oscar winner Diablo Cody, commenting on how Harrison Ford -- whom she sneaked up behind on the red carpet to sniff -- smelled. As quoted in this morning's New York Times.

I was expecting to hear more about the dominance of International talent at this year's Oscars in this morning's paper. The New York Times was a disappointment -- probably because it went to press before the results were in -- but the BBC delivered.

Love movies of course, but love too the sociology of the Oscars, the way it tags the stories that matter to us now. Not that I always agree that the best performances and talent take home the statues, but I'm fascinated by who wins and wonder mostly at the why.

And I've gotta wonder if the dominance of International stars and stories last night -- including but not limited to Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Javier Bardem, Tilda Swinton -- is an apology to the larger world for our self-centered American ways over the last so many years. An acquiescence that we're listening, that we know our stories aren't the only stories that matter.

That we're ready to make amends.


Update: The New York Times has weighed in »

homecoming

I think she knew him
in spite of the rags
in spite of the salt spray
that carved that deep cleft
between his eyes

Twenty years
is a long time
to be away.

her breasts soft
and slack
now pay attention
to his approach

Twenty years.

the rivals?
all hundred of them
encamped
soon to be slain

what woman wouldn’t want
for that kind of attention
her husband gone

Twenty years.

what woman would want
even one of the bunch
when the one she chose
disappeared

Homer tells of the weaving
undone in the dark
to keep the hundred rivals at bay

I say it was to keep the
widow at play

disappointed in love
but never wanting
for something to do

and then he comes.

the old dog knows him
and dies
from what -- gratitude?

the nurse knows him too.

of course his wife knows
but she’s no dog

and she will teach Odysseus
what all travelers know
the price of the road
is to win your way back in again
is to win your way back home

That said, Book 23 of the Odyssey, aka "The Great Rooted Bed", (preferably the Robert Fagles translation) has gotta be one of the sweetest, sexiest reads in epic poetry.

leaving logan

leaving logan
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Logan International is saturated with the
suffering of displaced persons wearing day
old underwear.

How we suffer, & how we make others suffer,
when weather hammers our well-laid plans and
reminds us how small we are, how ineffectual
against anything that Mother Nature can cook
up when she's had enough of us.

But there are exceptions: The TSA agent was
kind and generous and twice my age and I promptly
fell in love with him when he called me "friend".

Outbound to Philly where I hope to connect
to Chicago.

Posting by cameraphone from Logan Int'l.

Exhibit C

Exhibit C
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Which shall remain unnamed, because I've forgotten the name of this place and now can't read it off my tiny handheld (maybe you can tell me?).

Posting by cameraphone from Boston where I'm waiting out the storm.

Update: Cantina Italiana. (Thanks, annicmcq.)

Exhibit B: Modern Pastry

Exhibit B: Modern Pastry
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

More pink & green Boston neon
shot along Hanover Street.

Posting by cameraphone.

Exhibit A: Ida's

Exhibit A: Ida's
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

It's early yet, and I'm working with a limited dataset, but my suspicion is: Of the neon that populates this fair city of Boston, pink & green predominate.

At least in the North End.

Posting by cameraphone. Shot these along Hanover Street (Exhibits B & C to follow shortly).

two if by sea

two if by sea
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Old North Church where Paul Revere did his thing.

Sign on the door apologized for closing early due to blizzard conditions.

Posting by cameraphone from Boston.
In the snow.

copp's hill burial ground

copp's hill burial ground
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

In the snow.

Posting by cameraphone
from Boston, MA

yer out.

yer out.
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Blizzard. Flight home canceled. Poking around Boston in the snow. Trying to follow the Freedom Trail -- marked, so they say, by a steady red line that snakes past Revolutionary War sites.

But snow is working to obscure that line some, so I'm pulling a J Alfred Prufrock, making my way through certain half-deserted streets, (Eliot wrote that here, right? or Cambridge maybe, next door.) sometimes finding an historical marker, sometimes finding a coffee shop -- like this one, the Boston Beanstock, where I'm fortifying with a tender tomato basil tart and a steamy joe before heading out again.

Happy.

Posting by cameraphone.

to boston & points north

to boston & points north
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Massachusetts Bay on a particularly cold & snowy day.

Snow's dropping at the rate of one inch per hour. I'm hoping it holds up just enough to let me get home to Chicago, by way of Philly.

Ten inches in the forecast.

Posting by cameraphone enroute to Logan Int'l.

philadelphia story

philadelphia story
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

This is Philly.

Or a very small slice of it, any way. At the airport.

Next to the women's restrooms.

Which were closed for cleaning.

Which necessitated a much larger
exploration of the Philadelphia Airport.

Posting by cameraphone.

total eclipse of the heart

moonshadow
Originally uploaded by JKonig.

Last night’s lyrical lunar eclipse reminded me of Art class, 7th grade, where I sketched the best hands ever and Mr. D---f failed to recognize their genius.

Mr. D---f was a dirty old man who was disappointed with life and frequently peeked down the shirts of the newly-developing girls in the class. We all knew it. We all talked about it. We all expected it. We all found ways to position ourselves to prevent it. Well, most of us.

But we talked about it quietly not because we were afraid he might hear us, but because his daughter was in our class, and we all felt sorry that she had to have him as her dad.

I had Mr. D---f’s class the day of the solar eclipse. Maybe you remember (or maybe I’m just much older than everyone here): When the world went dark and school children all over America made camera obscuras and avoided looking up and marveled at the story that unfolded on the paper at their feet?

Well I don’t. Because Mr. D---f’s decided we wouldn’t trouble with the eclipse. We’d just keep on with our school work, let it pass by unnoticed.

To this day I’m surprised that none of us rose up in protest. I remember the rage was real: our classroom was a corner room, wrapped on two sides by glass. It was a sunny day in the Pacific Northwest, and then slowly, poetically, it grew dark, and then light again. I stopped working and watched the light change, my heart soaked with longing and anger and frustration.

I hated him for controlling my hour. I hated him for keeping me in that room, for preventing me from seeing the miracle that was happening outside.

All of us watched in silence. Only his daughter kept her head down. And it was probably her presence that prevented any of us from rising up, leveling him with our easels, and storming the door.

Years later a buddy of mine and a big reader of Carlos Casteneda would tell me about Casteneda’s idea about petty oppressors -- those folks you encounter in life whose oppression helps you forge your values, helps you clarify what matters to you. Mr. D--f was one of those. I learned in that room that day that the most precious possession any of us have is our time. Nobody owns that. We might share it, but it’s always a gift.

I hold this in mind during any business meeting I’m responsible for -- this is why we end on time. It’s present in the gratitude I feel when a friend has time to meet me, the regret I feel if I’m running late. It’s there when I’m traveling, even if just for work, there in the hours in the margins that I milk for what experience I can. Right here. Right now.

A realization born of that hour, of the light cycling through dark, of the miracle just out of reach.


[Photo by the incomparable JKonig]

detritus is eclipsing.

back soon.

beauty shop

beauty shop
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Pay up.
Hinsdale, IL

Posting by cameraphone

blinding me with science

Video: Incognito Octopus

That's a vexing question. We don't know how it works.

Dr. Roger Hanlon commenting on the fact that cuttlefish are blind, and yet, though "they see the world without color ... their skin changes rapidly to any hue in the rainbow" when they apply their camouflage. As cited in Revealed: Secrets of the Camouflage Masters in this morning's New York Times.

Also vexing, according to Hanlon, is the "magical way" in which cephalopods -- the whole family of cuttlefish, octopi and squid -- apply patterns that are to scale with the environmental patterns to which they're trying to conform.

Hanlon and his team believe they've identified the three core variations that these tentacled creatures, whose "smart skin" is "all wired up" with a network of nerves that run from the brain to the skin, apply camouflage. Namely through variations in:

• Uniform color,


• Mottled patterns, and
  


• Disruptive patterning.

And of course you've heard about the cuttlefish who cross-dresses to get the girl »

Plus, more underwater biological goodness from David Gallo @ TED (and I'll spare you my memories of swimming in that bioluminescent bay in Vieques under moonlight. for now.)


p.s. http://squid.us

prosthesis

Spoke with my grama last night. Our calls are so disorienting -- for me and for her -- that I, in my cowardice, make too few of them and instead send her little notes and artifacts -- a news clipping, the Colorado Review cover that came out a little while ago. Chocolates. Flowers. Hope being that they'll anchor her scattered mind somewhere in space, give her something to return to, read again. Enjoy. Remember.

Unlike a call which she'll forget shortly after it ends, and descend again into loneliness, to be roused when the phone rings and she answers it, repeating my name as if I were back from the dead, asking Where are you? and I tell her again: I'm in Chicago, Grama. This is where I live now.

Which gives us a good run of remembering: How she was born here. How her mother never wanted to leave. How they did when she was three, for Seattle, her parents divorced.

We stay in the past awhile: the light's better there. And then wander again into the now which she can barely describe anymore. It's all scrambled, she says.

And I fill my voice with smile and ask her small questions about her days that she's unable to answer and if I'm lucky the tears don't start to fall until I hang up the receiver.

Last night luck wasn't with me and they fell steadily almost from the very moment she said my name, searchingly, although I managed to keep my voice from cracking until the very very end, when it crumbled as I said I love you.

O, Omphalos

a found poem

The umbilicus serves
then withdraws
leaving but a single
footprint
where it stood

The navel, wrinkled
and cupped
whorled and domed
blind and winking
bald and tufted
sweaty and powdered
kissed and bitten
waxed and fuzzy
bejeweled and ignored

Reflecting as graphically
as breasts
seeds
or fetishes
the omnipotent fertility
in which Nature dangles
her muddy feet

The navel looks in
like a plugged keyhole
on the center of our being

It is true but

O navel
though we salute
your motionless
maternity and the
dreams

That have got tangled
in your lint

You are only a scar
after all.


Found in Tom Robbins' Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Chapter One, Page One.

even cowgirls get the blues

Daffodils from a Kite
Originally uploaded by GoodMolecules.

In the summer of my freshman year my uncle generously gave me a job in the Skagit Valley -- a curvy waistline of landscape that lies halfway between Seattle and Vancouver, about an hour and a half distant from either.

My plan had been to spend the summer in Seattle, stay with my grandparents, and work somewhere nearby, but nobody wanted someone who’d be leaving at summer’s end and I was too lousy at lying to pretend that I’d be sticking around, so my uncle (at my aunt’s gentle suggestion) gave me an administrative job in a cable office that he was just opening up in LaConner. I needed to work: nobody was paying my college tuition but me. So I took it.

The office occupied the first two floors of an old three-story house; I lived that summer in the top floor which had a bathroom of its own, but the kitchen of course was on the main level so I always felt like I was still at the office while I was making my dinner. Or sneaking down in my PJs to make a pot of coffee before everyone else arrived.

I spent the weekends in Seattle, but the weeknights were long and quiet and mostly lonely. The noise and busy friendships of school were subsumed to silence under a single ribbon that I used to tie up the letters, so many letters, that we all wrote back and forth. (Internets being not so big back then.)

But the memories from then are sharp and vivid; loneliness has a way of doing that. After the office closed I’d ride my borrowed bike through the unending fields, that sometimes grew tulips and daffodils and often grew every other kind of wonderful produce. Once I stupidly raced a crop duster that was lowering its poison dust across the field. (yeah. check in on me in another ten years. by then the cancer should have me.)

In the long twilit nights (Pacific Northwest summer nights have a way of stretching on past 10PM) I dutifully read the Englishman Somerset Maugham (wanting to love him. hating him so much.) and guiltily, greedily read LaConner local Tom Robbins.

I was embarrassed to love Robbins as much as I did -- his stuff was so earthy and juicy and vernacular. His proximity was palpable: he lived in town, was one of our cable customers even, calling the office to complain about his service; and, as a contemporary American writer -- not someone dead and dry and removed -- I didn’t know how to squeeze him into my idea of “great literature” as a college freshman who felt like I was already running out of time to read all the “important” stuff.

Thank god for growing up and learning how true it is that even cowgirls get the blues.

Robbins wrote a lovely description of the dawn kissing that valley in one of those books which I have utterly failed to find online (I’m lazy, and I reach my limit after half a dozen misguided queries -- plus I was distracted by a sweet snippet about belly buttons).

But all of this is to say that I received in the mail yesterday a tender view to that valley, a catalog for a exhibition of photography called Harvesting Light: Images of Contemporary Skagit Farm Life, produced by the Skagit County Historical Museum and curated by a friend, Karen Marshall, who is now Director of the museum.



The book catalogs a project that was born of photographer Vince Streano’s idea to have local photographers document a year in the life of Skagit Valley Farms. Eleven photographers participated and 4,000 images were produced; a selection of these were then curated by Marshall for the show.

The results are poetic -- large sweeping landscapes, laboring hands, and the product their labor produces.

But it’s also nearly elegiac -- Skagit County farmland is disappearing, of course. The earth that we need to sustain us is being eaten up by real estate development, like it is across much of America. And without much thought. As David Hedlin, one of the local voices that pepper this volume says: “We’re basically a society whose idea of long-range thinking is buying green bananas.”

I’ll be filing a friendly complaint with Karen regarding the impossibility of buying this volume online -- it doesn’t appear to be listed with Amazon or on the Skagit County Historical Museum’s website. In the meantime I can put you in touch with her for your own copy -- or you can stop by for that cup of tea and take a look at mine while the water boils.


p.s. You can also browse the Skagit County Flickr Pool »

The pool doesn’t include shots from the show, but it will give you a sense of that beautiful place.

enjoy yourself with no regrets

Video: R.E.M.'s Supernatural Superserious

New album -- Accelerate -- coming soon.

(Diggin' their teaser site experience »)

Many thanks to derekeb and bobcatrock for the heads up.

good eatin'

Video: Muhammad Ali, A Recipe for Life

take a few cups of love
one tablespoon of patience
one teaspoon of generosity
one pint of kindness
one quart of laughter
one pinch of concern
and then
mix willingness with happiness
add lots of faith
stir it up well
spread it over the span of a lifetime
and serve it to each and every
deserving person you meet

A Recipe by Muhammad Ali.

have a seat, friend, andI'll put on the kettle

Yi-xing, my kitchen table.

Earlier today.

caped crusader

Obama with cloak
Originally uploaded by Trophiogrande.

John Hodgman spoke.

Triophiogrande listened.

(ApeLad, it seems, was busy.)

asking the ghost to dance

This is my M’bira. It was a Valentine’s Day gift a long long time ago, a collaboration between my ex-, who knew I wanted one, and our buddy TD4, who played and taught and shared African music (much in Boulder, CO, frequently elsewhere) and knew how to get one.

This one was made by T.W. Chigamba of Zimbabwe, which makes it a big deal.

Tom taught me to play. As a teacher he was as kind and as gentle and as quietly, wisely prodding as he was a friend. Like sunshine coaxes a bud to bloom, that’s how his friendship worked.



The day after his memorial service I ran into his partner over breakfast at Lucile’s. We hugged some, we cried. I had only met her the day before: the time that they had been together I’d been too busy and far away to visit their home. Recovering from my divorce; too broken up with memories.

She told me of a voicemail that I had left for Tom and of course her questions: “Who’s this D--?” And Tom, she told me, trying to tell her who I was, and maybe answering a question that she didn’t tell me she asked, summed it up as: “We loved the music together.”

My M’bira has sat quiet for some time now. I’ve tried, several times, since losing my teacher, to play, and every time it brings me to tears.

I know I need to take lessons again. The ghost needs to dance.



Today I took it down from the shelf where it sits mostly now, dusty and quiet. The light was nice in the kitchen (although cold. winter light.) and I was shooting odd things -- a seed pod that I’ll post soon; a teapot. I started to shoot the instrument. The light on the keys and the wood and the Fanta bottle caps that buzz when it sings.

And yeah, of course, I started to cry.

Because it seems it'll have its music from me, somehow.



p.s. Tom brought the instrument by shortly before the day we got the pu-erh.

nothing but net. (no. not even that.)

Our research shows that organisations will never be able to remove all latent risks in the protection and security of data held on IT systems, because our brains are wired to work on automatic pilot in everyday life.

People tend to conceptualise the world around them in a simplified way. If we considered and analysed the risks involved in every permutation of every situation, we’d never get anything done! If I make a cup of tea, I don’t stop to weigh up the probability of spilling boiling water on myself or choking on the drink.

Professor Gerard Hodgkinson, Director of the Centre for Organisational Strategy, Learning and Change (COSLAC) at the University of Leeds, as cited in Workplace autopilot threatens security risk perception

Upshot: You'll never be safe. Get used to it. (Next stop: Have you been breached?)

barack obama built you a robot

http://barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com/

go 'head. click it.


via Gaper's Block

(Actually: via Gaper's Block weekly email newsletter The Party Line, but I can't go ahead and link you to my email Inbox now, can I? That would be kind of pervy.)

embiggen

To make bigger, to make larger, to make size increase.

Definition courtesy of Urban Dictionary. Just spotted in use on Boing Boing.

No past. No future. Just the present.

guggenheim.jpg cannister
Originally uploaded by mickey1.

Flickrite Mickey1 shoots pinhole with a film cannister which, compounded with his brilliance for composition and magic in the darkroom, produces works of sinuous grace.

I asked him if he sold online (first time I've ever been moved to want to buy work I've seen on Flickr) and he replied:

I am a street artist and sell at Union Sq. in New York weather permitted...cu on the streets

Note to self: Union Square. Next time I'm in NYC.

And in the meantime »

(Many thanks to davidbivins for the introduction.)

in celebration of sex & chocolate(aka Valentine's Day)

Video: Cadbury's Flake Girl from 1969

See, now: this wasn't part of my childhood.

We just don't show our children things like this in America.

I'm not saying I object. I'm just sayin'.

Stumbled across this important cultural icon -- Britain's "Flake Girl" from 1969 -- in an AdAge piece on how Cadbury has signed the singer Joss Stone to do the new one.

And I do mean do.

but not only this

"life's too short to have sorrow"
Originally uploaded by grace*c*.

The inimitable grace*c* posted this delicious iPhone loveliness this morning (love me a cameraphone shot -- love me even more an unexpected surreal cameraphone shot) and serendipitously introduced me to the Jesus was a communist pool, which I have fallen in love with for its description alone which reads:

Shots of a small street in venice (italy) in which a communist party section is wittingly paired with a small religious kiosk with a jesus christ icon.

But not only this.
REMEMBER!

To be part of this group you don't need to be communist or to be jesus, but just be yourself [yeah.. philosophic]

*WARNING*: if you really want to be part of this group you need to know very well what "lo sciocco in blu" means (not to be confused with "lo shocking blue").

I don't yet know what "lo sciocco in blu" means. But, slowly, I'm learning »

genius: it's what's for dinner.

I’m dazzled! Your genius frightens me!

What Futurist F.T. Marinetti claims the girl said after he cooked her dinner, according to Tony Perrottet in Pornography of the Kitchen.

Marinetti's dishes include: Italian Breasts in the Sunshine, Candied Atmospheric Electricities, Simultaneous Ice Cream and The Excited Pig.

Many thanks to Martin for the link.

karma credit

The most significant part of this story is that while [information and communication] technologies do indeed consume some energy, the net effect is that they cause society and the economy overall to use less energy.

Richard Hirsh, a specialist in energy history at Virginia Tech commenting in Internet helps Americans save more energy every year in today's Christian Science Monitor on a study by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) that found that for every kilowatt-hour of electricity used by information and communications technologies, the US saves at least 10 times that amount.

@choka

Chokaonit.com, the world's longest poem, brilliant brainchild of b1-66er and undying patient of the ever patient birdhead, is now accepting Twitter Tweets.

Sweet.

To Tweet to Choka On It:

1. Create a free Twitter account


2. Go to: http://twitter.com/choka and choose to "Follow" choka


3. Post your couplets via Twitter as Choka replies: e.g.
   
   @choka Web's fine filament are we / predator or prey?
   
   Before too long they'll appear automagically within the couplet thread at Chokaonit.com.


4. When posting, follow good Choka ettiquette, i.e.: first line = 7 syllables; second line = 5 syllables; separate each line with a slash "/" (More about what the Choka's all about here »)


5. Go forth, be fruitful, and tweet.

and then

this is the memory that
persists
feeding larger fires
like kindling

that great distance
your voice far from me

thunder
rain
clouds
crowding the sun

and then

the parched earth
serves its thirst
remembers its sweet
sticky nature
recalls how to
clump and hold

dust now receptive ground
welcomes the plow

who blogs?

26% of all adults say they regularly or occasionally blog
53.7% are male
Almost half (44.7%) are married
28.4% hold a professional or managerial position
1 in 10 (10.4%) are students
Bloggers are 37.6 years old on average
69.7% White/Caucasian
12.2% are African American/Black
3.7% are Asian
20% are Hispanic
Average income: $55,819
Average education: 14.3 years

Findings by BIGresearch’s Simultaneous Media Survey (SIMM 11) of 15,727 individuals.

I suspect “all adults” means “all American adults who we could round up for this survey”, but the researchers themselves do not specify.

Also reported: "More Democrats than Republicans are blogging, but Libertarians are #1".

I apologize

Video: Oscar Brown Jr., I Apologize

If you free the music the music will free you.

—Maggie Brown, quoting her father, Oscar Brown Jr., over a week ago at a Steppenwolf Traffic production in his honor.

Saw Maggie Brown and her sister Africa the Monday before last, in a tribute show for their daddy, Oscar Brown Jr., but the week got to moving so fast that I didn’t have a chance to sit down and write about it.

In a nutshell: great show. Peopled by extraordinary artists -- musicians and poets -- some of whom had a hand in the Afro-Centro movement (Kwame Steve Cobb was there, playing percussion and reading -- sweet merciful lord -- reading I Apologize. See the video clip above for Mr. Brown reading it his own dear self.).

Others --- Keith M. Kelley and Jeff Baraka -- who are writing new stories, giving new wings to the ancestors’ work. The sisters even brought out the kids -- nieces and nephews and sons and daughters culled from all the siblings, eight in total -- and the littlest of them all brought the house down with his dance moves.

Left me with that solid feeling that comes only rarely when you’re a white girl living in America: the knowledge that there’s a whole chapter of American history that we simply don’t talk about enough. And the awareness that there are daily slights committed against our fellow Americans whose skins are dark. Slights that I only feel if I’m with a friend who’s black and the air turns chill as we’re shopping or dining or just walking down the goddamn street. It’s not omnipresent, but it rears up like a fog, and me unfamiliar with it it always takes me a brief WTF? moment before I realize: Oh Sh*t. Here we go again.

And then I get to leave it behind. Because my skin’s white.

Ignorance is my inheritance as a white girl, because no one forces this knowledge on you when you’re the same color as the men in charge. I first felt it for real the day the verdict (or lack thereof) came down against the policemen who battered Rodney King, Jr. I was working as a freelance researcher and graphic artist for an office in downtown L.A. and drove in late, without a radio, so I didn’t hear the news.

After I parked the car I stopped in the Post Office that I was used to frequenting, and there was a chill in the air. All the women who worked there were African-American, and what was usually a warm and receptive place full of laughter and jokes was stone cold and mostly silent. From there I walked to the office, where two men -- the security guard who I greeted everyday and another fellow who worked in the building -- were speaking in hushed tones at the front desk.

I held the elevator and the gentleman got in, with a small nod of thanks, his body turned from me. I asked him what was going on, and he told me about the verdict. Quietly, dispassionately. My response was immediate and violent: One loud “WHAT?!”

In that moment I made a friend, and he turned to me and we talked about the injustice. A warmth grew between us. Neither of us knew that the city would burn that night, but both of us could feel that something had to break loose. Something had to set this right.

It wouldn't of course -- set things right, I mean. But if you were there when it happened it all made sense somehow. Terrible, sad, sense.

It was after he stepped out and I did too that I realized what I had felt in those few feet -- from the P.O. to the front desk -- I carried my white with me. Unshakable. Branded. With judgment on my head.


p.s. Here's another story about those days in L.A. »

just drop off the key, lee

It’s like the Hotel California. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Nipon Das, director at a biotechnology consulting firm in Manhattan, commenting on his unsuccessful attempts to leave Facebook in today's New York Times. Mr. Das tried unsuccessfully to delete his Facebook account this fall.

Steven Mansour, who left Facebook and then returned, has documented his own experience trying to leave in: 2504 Steps to closing your Facebook account.

Rx

(Feeling decidedly non-verbal today.)

I can has a dream

How cool would it be to have a Grammy winner in the White House?

a little bit of christmas

Christmas cactus put out a bloom.

sunday morning, slippered feet(winter light)

Cup of coffee, Sunday paper close by.

Gong Xi Fai Cai!

lantern festival
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Happy Chinese New Year!

(Okay: I'm a little late. It's been a long week.)

It's the year of the Rat -- symbolizing renewal and new beginnings -- and a little unlucky for the Sheep, Rabbits & Horses among us (dangit) -- but never fear -- if you happen to be one of these, a simple change of underwear will help you stave off bad luck -- red panties should do it.

At least that's what I learned on the Internet.

Also learned which candidates are which Chinese Astrological signs. Turns out John McCain's a Rat -- as was Richard Nixon. But don't let me bias you.

The Year of the Rat Race: What the top Presidential candidates’ Chinese zodiac sign reveals »

the four elements

Image, Text, Motion, Music -- these are the four elements. Earth, Wind, Air, and Fire.

Philip Glass speaking to the interplay of inspiration (paraphrased, actually) during the Q&A tonight at the Art Institute after he read a smattering of poetry by Allen Ginsberg and Patti Smith to the accompaniment of his own compositions -- some of them new tonight -- as performed by long time Philip Glass Ensemble member Michael Riesman.

Good stuff. Didn't know we were going to get poetry going in -- I was expecting a "conversation" as billed in the blurb -- and Phil coulda used a little tighter diction, but when Philip Glass wants to read you some poetry by some of his friends (who just happen to be legends in their own right) -- phrased to his own music -- you simply sit down and listen.

One of the most curious takeaways of the evening was hearing that Ginsberg really always wanted to be a singer and went so far as to take singing lessons from "Bobby" Dylan.

Which may be the reason why Mr. Ginsberg never realized his dream.

(I'm just guessin'.)

Posting by cameraphone.
Shot under the Tiffany Dome at the AIC.

tokyo hotel

tokyo hotel
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Just off Ohio
Chicago, IL

Posting by cameraphone

blood ties

Illus: Am I Not A Man, And Brother?

1830s Anti-Slavery Banner

I'm just going to spit this out, because it's bugging the hell out of me.

My mother's doing research on our family history and has traced down the fellow who kicked off her father's line in America -- the fellow Goochland, Virginia was named after. And, as you might suppose, having shown up in the 1600s, he became a landowner and a businessman and, goddammit, a slave owner.

GODDAMMIT.

Which completely contradicts my sense of my family history. My story, the story that's close to me, is just three or four generations old: huddled masses arriving in America and working the boardinghouses and box factories and copper mines of the American West. Rancher. Construction foreman. Stagecoach station operator and a saloon owner.

I wasn't counting on this.

My first impulse is to practice cognitive dissonance and discredit my mother's research. After all, her previous claims that we're related to Mark Twain, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman AND John Steinbeck were somewhat dubious. But I know I have to dig into it for myself and get to know this ancestor. Hear this part of the story. And then figure out what to do about it.

Goddammit.


More on American Slavery on detritus »

polari

Polari, or "The Lost Language of Gay Men" as Paul Baker has it in his wonderfully readable lexicon of that name, is the secret parlance through which gay men secretly communicated with each other during most of the 20th century.

According to a recent article in the Guardian ("What brings you trolling back, then?" by Colin Richardson), it flourished between Oscar Wilde's trial in 1895 and the decriminalisation of homosexuality (in England) in 1967.

Polari-speak is not so much "lost" now, as part of our common culture—witness "cruising", "cottaging", and even the most basic gay word, "camp". By the way, the next time you "cold-call" someone, looking for a positive outcome, you are speaking Polari.

Discovered deep within Evan Zimroth's fascinating read about the coded sex-diaries kept by the Economist, John Maynard Keynes at MoreIntelligentLife.com.

(Not recommended for the easily offended.)

kisses are a better fate than wisdom

Some 650 million members [or 10%] of the human species have not mastered the art of osculation, the scientific term for kissing; that is more than the population of any nation on earth except for China and India.

Observed by Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt in his 1970 book Love and Hate: The Natural History of Behavior Patterns and referenced in Affairs of the Lips: Why We Kiss in the 31 January issue of Scientific American Mind.

Also in the piece and of interest, if you’re one of the remaining 6 billion-some members of our species who generally are interested in kissing:

• 80% of people tilt their head to the right when kissing -- which curiously does not correlate with right-handedness (according to the article: right handedness is four times more common than the act of kissing on the right)



• Of the 12 or 13 cranial nerves that affect cerebral function, nearly 40% are employed when when we kiss, shuttling information from our lips, tongue, cheeks and nose to the brain about temperature, taste, smell and movement



• Researchers were surprised to find that oxytocin levels (a pleasurable hormone induced by social bonding) rose in men after kissing and dropped in women -- they expected a rise across both sexes (their theory: woman need more than a kiss to bond)



• However, stressful cortisol hormones dropped in both genders after kissing, asserting the hypothesis that kissing is a stress reliever



• In Mongolia some fathers do not kiss their sons. They smell their heads instead



• A Gallup survey found that 59 percent of 58 men and 66 percent of 122 women admitted there had been times when they were attracted to some­one only to find that their interest evaporated after their first kiss

And, perhaps one of the most important tips provided by the article: Be careful when kissing a bonobo -- unless you don’t mind a little tongue (‘cause he’s almost sure to slip you some).

In closing, an attribution:

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

— e.e. cummings

on the download

I am not listed on the United States Department of Treasury list of Specially Designated Nationals, Specially Designated Terrorists, and Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers, nor am I listed on the United States Department of Commerce Table of Denial Orders.

I will not use the software for, and will not allow the software to be used for, any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, for the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons of mass destruction.

The strangest thing I've ever declared before downloading freeware.

To be fair: it also included export clauses. So, in addition to affirming that I am none of the above, I agreed that I wouldn't share the software with any of the above.

(I want our old world back.)

at the movies

[Photo: Hiroshi Sugimoto]

Star Wars
Blade Runner
Aliens
Gremlins
Batman Returns
Darkman
The Little Mermaid
Blazing Saddles
Cape Fear
Young Frankenstein
The Lost Boys
Cocoon
History of the World Part 1
E.T.
The Princess Bride
Empire of the Sun
Arachnophobia
10
Spaceballs
Hook
Flatliners
Mother, Jugs & Speed
City Slickers
Rain Man
The Twilight Zone
The Turning Point
Ironweed
My Favorite Year
The Milagro Beanfield War
Victor Victoria
Mosquito Coast
Pee Wee's Big Adventure

A small selection of movie posters designed by John Alvin, who passed away yesterday.

I miss you already Mr. Alvin, and I didn't even know I knew you.

Many thanks to Vasta for the heads up.

ruby shoes

I shot this a few years back on the island of Kos on a stopover, having just stepped off a boat from Lakki, and where I was now waiting for my puddlejumper flight back to Athens. I had spent the previous two weeks sleeping on the deck of a sailboat falling asleep under the stars, being nudged awake by the dawn, showering much less than one might have hoped and conditioning my hair not at all. Stopped wearing makeup on day two. I was baked to a fray and more relaxed than I had ever been in my life. Or have ever been since.

The trip was a trade for work: Two weeks on a "women's only" sail around the Dodecanese, which meant leaving (my then) husband behind in Seattle and traveling alone.

Or nearly so -- the details of which could fill a small book (the sail included, among other players, a male first mate who was also a Naturist) -- but we'll save that for later because on this day, on this island, I was most remarkably alone.

The day I shot this -- by setting the self-release timer and taking a wild guess that my cheap little point and shoot would frame up right when I set it down on the stump of an old column in a tumble down ruin just off the city square -- I had rented a scooter from a fellow in town who failed to tell me two things that I needed to know: 1) that the scooter was nearly out of gas and 2) this being Sunday everything would shut down by 2 PM, if it hadn't already. Including the petrol stations.

At the moment I rented it all I knew was that it was about 1.30 PM.

My plan that day -- in just the few spare hours before my flight would leave -- was to visit the ruins of the Asclepieion.

Something you should know: I dig ruins. And I especially dig Ancient Greek ruins. This site in particular was one I'd done some reading on, because it has a fascinating purpose. It was a healing sanctuary, where Asclepius, the man behind the cadeuses, may have done his thing. Hippocrates was thought to hang out there too.

One of the remedies for those who came to the Asclepieion to be healed was to sleep in a large room in which crawled many many snakes.

And you were wondering where those snakes on the cadeuse came from. Well, now you know.

Sleeping with the snakes was supposed to provoke dreams that provided the answer to whatever it was that was wrong with you. And if it didn't? Well, you went back and slept with the snakes a little longer until it did.

Whatever. I wanted to see it.

But first I had to get gas. Which, given that all but a single station at the farthest reaches of town were closed, took a while. And given that the proprietor of the place was infuriated with me when I started to fill the tank of the little scooter with, apparently, the wrong kind of gas, it took a little while longer.

But. Finally. Off to the place.

Where, being shortly after 2PM, they were locking the gates.

Tourists were streaming out as I walked up. I had a brief conversation with the guy who had his hand on the lock and chain, reviewing the obvious and discovering that he had *no* sympathy for either my plight or my passion for that place.

So I stood there in disbelief as they locked it up, as the parking lot cleared out. I sat and sulked under the sign that promised severe recriminations for anyone who attempted to enter the site in unorthodox manner, until it occurred to me: I was probably not the first tourist to ever sulk before these locked gates on a Sunday afternoon.

This was an important revelation.

I got back on my scooter and started driving the fence line, looking for what I knew had to be there.

And there, finally, it was. Hidden behind a tree by the road and obscured by weeds: A hole in the fence. Conveniently human sized, where sulking tourists had gone before me.

Now, I like to think I'm a law abider. I'm not, really, but I like to hold an elevated opinion of myself (don't we all) and I have a healthy respect for the rule of law. So I was faced with a decision: Should I step through? The sign up front was pretty strident, and I had to wonder if Greek prisons were anything like the Turkish prisons I'd heard about.

Of course I stepped through.

Because, of course, I had decided I would the moment I started looking.

And for a little over an hour I wandered through the Asclepieion, just myself and the three other sulking tourists who spotted my scooter and found the hole and were wandering around with the same dazed and delighted and guilty expression that I was wearing.

I hit all the hot spots on the main level -- mostly big open holes with placards which required feats of imagination to populate -- but things really got good when I found the trail that led up the hillside, passing an old Ionic temple site -- solid and refined and oh so Fibonaccian -- and then kept going, through a grove of cypress and into a small clearing where there was a small Doric temple -- its few remaining columns stocky and a bit thick around the middle. Fragrant and slightly shaded and scented with pine (I wonder now if the Ancient Greeks dug evergreens for the same reasons the Mayans do), I just sat myself down awhile and took it in.

All mine. Alone. Divine.

Later I'd get on a plane and layover in London for just a night on my way home. By choice. I wanted to stay on Russell Square and hit the British Museum, even if only briefly. On the Tube ride in I met an elderly Japanese man who, it turned out, had retired from a lifetime of working as a landscape architect in LA to a neighborhood just down the hill from me in Seattle. He too was laying over for just that evening, and approached me, thinking I was a Londoner (don't I wish), asking me for directions to his hotel.

Which, it turned out, was very close to mine.

He was nervous and uncertain about finding it, so I offered my assistance: I dropped my bags at my hotel and then walked him to his, which was only a few blocks away. It was after Midnight when we got in, and those few blocks were dark and a little bit foggy, and quite a bit frightening. Clips of Jack the Ripper movies kept flashing through my mind. But I walked it with him, and got him where he was going, and got myself back again, in time enough to buy the most amazing sausage-like dog on a floury bun with hot mustard and relish from a street vendor just outside my hotel.

It was nearly 1AM by now. And, it so happened, the day after my birthday. And I knew, but not just then quite how much, that I'd been born into something new by taking that time to travel alone, to climb through fences, and offer dangerous favors to elderly strangers.

My marriage would end in the year ahead; everything would change. The strength I needed to work my way through it I found, without knowing it, on that trip.

Or maybe, like Dorothy, I just figured out I was already wearing the shoes.

cowardly lion

paris. once. a long time ago.
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Watched Paris, Je T'aime last night -- a scattering of short vignettes just a few minutes long each, bundled into a full-length film, designed (I suspect) for the attention deficient among us. (That would be me. Long week.)

Each short film leaves its own sweet moments and memories behind, each one of them bearing the impression of the arrondissement in which it resides, and something about the juxtaposition of all those very different stories about this one very same thing called love brought home the importance of that essential ingredient that clears the path and makes room for it. Any of it. All of it.

Courage.

Courage enough to say the first word, to reach across that great distance for the first time ever and touch the unknown. To respond. And, later, when love missteps and wounds as it almost always surely will (human beings being the oafs that we are) courage enough to see the wrong in ourselves, to voice it. To be met, if we're lucky, by the generous heart, also the offspring of courage. To be met, if we're lucky, by love.

meanwhile i miss you

meanwhile, i miss you.
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Snowy tree trunks.
Just outside my dentist's office.

(Nothing like a visit to the dentist to make you long for something else entirely.)

Posting by cameraphone

another couple of reasons to love flickr

new spin
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

'Cause first a random someone stops by and says:

Hi there, we are actually the company that made the exact PVC cone in the picture, is it possible that we can ask you for favor , that if we can get a copy of this photo for our website?

What are the odds of that? And how fun is the PVC Cone component of this random encounter?

And then benmurphyonline randomly adds me as a contact -- by which I get to randomly discover his design work »

Love. Flickr. So. Much.

sunrise, san mateo bridge

sunrise, san mateo bridge
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Posting by cameraphone
from the Bay Area

good. morning.

good. morning.
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Bookending a business meeting in San Francisco with a couple of good meals and conversations with dear friends; woke this morning steeping in an abundance of sizeable graces and huge gratitudes.

And the memory of some of the best Chinese food *ever* (Hunan Homes? Maybe House.) in Los Altos.

Posting by cameraphone from just outside San Francisco on HWY 101, heading South.

Update: Hunan Home's
4880 El Camino Real
Los Altos, CA 94022
(650) 965-8888