Underground Books -- I love independent bookstores

Written last night:

Dear Friends,

Thursday my Uber driver told me he’s new to town. He also said he writes poetry and plays guitar. I told him about a bookstore where poets hang out — actually, I’ve never been there myself, just heard of it. He wanted to know more, so this morning I visited; it was closed, but I sent him the info and acquainted myself with the place -- Underground Books -- as well. 

Love,

k

Window at Underground Books, with 35th Street (and Rosa!) reflected

Sacramento looks good!

Jerry, light the Christmas tree!

Written last night:
Dear Friends,

This afternoon Zing and I walked to the Capitol to see the big Christmas tree. Although it was only 4:45 p.m., it was getting dark. (In winter it gets dark early here.) But the tree wasn’t lit! I asked two women who were taking pictures of each other in front of the tree if the state was saving power. No, they said; it should be lit. “We’ll go tell Jerry to light the tree!” one woman joked. “Yeah, you go do that!” challenged her friend. I gathered they work at the Capitol and everybody there slyly calls Governor Brown by his first name when he's not listening. I turned my back to pick something up off the grass (Thanks, Zing!), and when I turned around again the tree was lit. Soon there were lots more people gathering to take photos of themselves and our big California Christmas tree.

Love,

k

Filling the dome with music

Written last night:
Dear Friends,

I just came back from Chanticleer Christmas concert at the Cathedral, which is nearby — a block from the Capitol. The ticket says Chanticleer is “an orchestra of voices” -- 12 men singing a cappella. Clark loved to both listen and sing like this. I love it too, and this night was heavenly, a medieval oasis where troubles near and far just disappeared. 

I drew the cathedral dome while waiting for the concert to begin. It does no justice to the soaring sound that soon filled this space.

Hope you have Christmas music of your own!

Love,

k

Christmas juggling act

Written last night:

Dear Friends,

I’m not good at organizing. This time of year I juggle airplane trips and party dates and Zing care and getting to the post office … It might seem easy to you, but I’m swamped!

Luckily, each day I find a person who inspires me. Saturday at the post office on Alhambra it was the postal worker who maintained his cool, even as as the line got longer and people were pressing at his counter and it was closing time. “How do you do it?” I asked him. “I pray a lot,” he said. 

And my neighbor, who spoke to the City Council last week, calm and composed, while he is usually electric with energy. "How does he do it?” I asked his wife. “Practice,” she said.

And this evening at the CVS Zing and I ran into a woman and her small dog. The woman was 101% gracious, talking kindly as our dogs collided. She did not ooze; she was just naturally fine. “Have a wonderful holiday!” is the last thing she said to me.

Who knows who I’ll meet tomorrow?!

Here’s the home where I went to the poetry party last week. 

Love,

k

Christmas in the kitchen

Written last night:

Dear Friends

And today — 

I hung ornaments over the sink. 

Love,

k

Christmas party

Written last night:
Dear Friends,

We’re deep in Christmas preparations. At the end of a busy day there was tonight's HOA holiday party.

Love,

k

Christmas oranges

Ukulele Holiday

Dear Friends,

It would have been so easy to skip the ukulele lesson tonight …  Christmas traffic and everything … But I went and I loved it. Wish you could hear Mele Kalikimaka, a Hawai’ian Christmas song. I’ll play it for you … next year. 

Until then, I want to draw something every day, or mostly, and now it’s all about Christmas.

Love,

k

Sailing across a bridge

Written last night:

Dear Friends,

Yesterday  Kate and I drove to the Sundial Bridge in Redding, CA — it was on my must-see/must-cross list. Redding is 2+ hours north of here, where the mountains begin, and it was a beautiful drive. On the way I kept asking Kate, “What’s that?” and she kept saying, “Huh?” because she has often made this trip to visit family, and everything looks normal to her. But we passed the Sutter Buttes, a heap of rocks that used to be a volcano; here, she said, a community of Sikhs, among others, has settled. And up ahead, just beyond Redding, is Lassen Peak  a volcano.(You might remember its sister (brother?) volcano, Mount Shasta, which is a bit farther north.)

Oh, and the bridge! It’s in a park, and it’s for pedestrians and bikes, across the Sacramento River, which is blue here. The architect Santiago Calatrava designed it with a glass floor, and a cantilevered, cable-stay form — although it's a real sundial, to me it resembles a sailboat, which makes me love it already. To see it is to sail it. Unlike a boat, the bridge is landlocked, stable. But it soars, and I love every inch of it. 

Then, beyond, there’s a simple little wooden bridge crossing a creek. And I love it too.

Love,

k

Sacramento River from the Sundial Bridge

That snowy white peak is the volcano

Trees on my mind

Written last night: 

Dear Friends,

Today went quickly. I was preoccupied with Christmas trees. 

Love,

k

Lights are lit

Written last night:

Dear Friends,

I imagine some of you are also thinking: Christmas tree, lights, soon.

Today I didn’t think. But it happened anyway.

What a lovely, lousy-weather day! Perfect for lazing, the last of the holiday. 

Nevertheless, these lights got lit. Want to make the most of it.

Love,

k

I'm grateful for leftover pie

Dear Friends,

What Thanksgiving means to me:
Pie for breakfast on Friday

Shallow, maybe, but I do love that leftover pie, don't you?

I was going to draw it, but somebody ate it!
So here's the rest of my breakfast: a bowl of oranges and cranberries.

Love,
k

Mom cooked like this all the time

Dear Friends,

Yay! I consolidated all my Thanksgiving recipes! From Pinterest, Epicurious, New York Times -- and all are seasoned with memories of Mom. Her kitchen was in another era, and her recipes from a different cookbook, but she was one great cook! I can’t share a holiday meal like Thanksgiving without marveling at what Mom created every day. 

Hope you are relaxing thankfully!

Love,

k

Dry-Brined Turkey

Turkey Gravy

Gratin Dauphinois

Gratin Dauphinois

2 pounds potatoes (I used a bag of baking potatoes) to make 5 to 6 cups when sliced
1 large clove garlic, crushed
2 C. milk
1 1/2 C heavy cream
3/4 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
1 T. butter (for buttering pan)
1/2 C. grated Swiss cheese (I use Gruyere)

Peel the potatoes, then wash and dry the whole potatoes thoroughly. Slice thin. Don't put them in water now because you need to conserve the potato starch. Combine potatoes with garlic, milk, cream, salt and pepper in a large heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil on medium, stirring to prevent scorching. I use the low-heat burner because I have burned them many times.

Bring to a boil, stirring, until mixture thickens slightly.

Butter a shallow (1 1/2 inch)  baking dish (I usually use the oval copper gratin pan; yesterday it was a 9" x 13" foil pan) and pour the potatoes in. Cover with grated cheese.  I usually put the pan on a cookie sheet to catch drips. Bake at 400° for an hour or until potatoes are soft and top is browned. These are even good cold.

Pie Crust

The Flakiest, Butteriest Crust

1 cup + 2 T. chilled unsalted butter
2 1/4 C. flour
1 T. sugar
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 T. apple cider vinegar
3 T. water

1. Cut butter into 1" pieces. Chill it while you measure the dry ingredients.
2. Mix the flour, sugar and salt together in a big bowl. I use that bowl you see in the photo above.
3. Add the butter and toss it until it's coated with flour. Then use your fingers and palms to work the butter into small, irregular pieces. This is fun. Stop before the butter gets warm. You should still see some pieces of butter.
4. Mix the vinegar with the ice water.
5. Drizzle the liquid over the flour-butter mixture. Mix it up quickly with your hands so the dough kind of sticks together. It will still seem pretty dry.
6. Turn the dough onto a piece of waxed paper (no extra flour needed) and knead it a few times. Don't let the butter get all mixed in. The idea is to keep some butter in discreet pieces.
7. Push the dough down and cut it in half. Press each half down to about an inch high, and wrap the two pieces in plastic wrap and chill in refrigerator 1 hour to 3 days. (OK, I'm doing a few more than three! Let's see -- Thanksgiving's four days from tomorrow. In a day or two I'll:
8. Roll it out and fit into pie pan.
9. Blind bake or fill and bake according to recipe.

Cinnamon Crumble Apple Pie

City Hall : impressively boring

Written last night:

Dear Friends,

Today I went to my second City Council meeting. So boring! So many citizen speakers before getting to the published agenda. In their two minutes at the podium, they spoke of Indigenous People’s Day, The God Particle, bathrooms for the homeless. Unrehearsed, unimpressive, perhaps. Yet I ended up impressed. It was people talking to their representatives. 

Then the council swiftly approved items 1 to 13, which included some licensing and zoning for cannabis. 

All passed as if routine. Which it is. There were several more cannabis-related items on the agenda, but I left before the council got to them. 

Now I feel at home. I know how to get to City Hall. I don’t need to go back soon. I think I went because it’s where Clark might be.

While the meeting wore on, I drew the people.

Love,

k

News break

Written Sunday night:

Dear Friends,

Do you believe your news sources?

Today I went to the library to hear experts* talk about "Fake News." I hate that term, because I think the President inserted it into the national conversation for his own benefit — but I guess we are stuck with it. They said the predictable: we might prefer news that confirms what we already believe, and we should question our biases as we gather news. I came away realizing that the media are not respected, and that we all need “media literacy.” I think that means be more active and questioning -- remembering that most media are also businesses out to capture viewers/readers, and they might skew their presentation to lure us in. 

No one used the word lie when they said fake news. But that’s what it is. Depressing. 

I still love the news;  do you care about news?

Then, for relief, I went to the River City Quilt Show. . 

Love,

k

* ABC 10’s Lilia Luciano, Kim Nalder of the Project for an Informed Electorate, and Chris Nichols, Politifact Reporter for Capital Public Radio

River City Quilt Show

Dear Friends,

Yesterday I slipped into the River City Quilt Show an hour before it closed. Just made it! They didn't even charge me the $10 entry, and I got to see what the Sacramento quilt guild is up to. I'm sorry I don't have credits for that cityscape in the middle.

Love,

k

Strut Your Stuff
Phyllis L. McCalla
embroidery, beading
28" x 28"
(detail below)

Improvisational quilt with hand-dyed fabric

29" x 31"

Jan Soules

Backstage
Denise Schmidt

Jump dance and ukulele

Written last night:

Dear Friends,

This is that busy season when festivals abound. And I love it. 

This morning Zing and I went to the farmers market — bustling as ever. We bought apples for a Thanksgiving pie. Then I went to a basketweaving demonstration at the Indian Museum, a cave-like space full of visitors. Signs said don’t take photographs, but I was tempted! Instead, I sketched and copied facts from the information on the wall. I was peering and writing in my small notebook when a woman started talking to me, describing the Jump Dance ritual of the northern coastal Yurok tribe that so engrossed me. Men wear the feathers of sand crane hawks and woodpecker crests. They bend on one knee and then fling that leg out, dancing troubles away from the people. Behind them they have erected a wooden wall; the spirit ancestors reside behind it, separated from the living dancers, but listening. 

Then my stepson Keith invited me to an ukulele fest at the Buddhist Church (not temple — not sure of the difference), which is close to my condo. There was a community room full of people, members of groups that took turns on stage. It was not a public performance — simply a large get-together, with tables of food and an urn that said “Japanese tea.” It was people entertaining each other. One group wore pineapples on their heads. Keith’s group was more restrained!

Love,

k

Put it in your coffee

Written last night:

Dear Friends,

If you love spicy Christmas coffee like I do you’ll be interested to know that this morning I put a cinnamon stick in my coffee as it brewed. Yes, delicious. Tomorrow, cloves, and after Thanksgiving, maybe a chip off a peppermint stick. Really, try it. 

Later I faced the truth that I love to draw, but I hate to draw well. I’m going to draw more and not try so hard. I think you already knew that I am not Michelangelo.

Love,

k

Close your eyes and ...

Written last night:

Dear Friends,

I just came back from learning three ways to meditate. It was at the library in Davis, that little college town 20 minutes from here. I didn’t want to get into a religious thing, just to learn more about meditating. You know I’ve been meditating off and on since I was 17, so it’s a part of me. It’s one of those back burner things that I want to bring to the forefront of my life. 

There were eight of us sitting around a table in the dimly-lit library meeting room. With the lights on low it felt intimate. A woman and her husband (I’ve forgotten their names.) organized this. She gave a brief introduction of each method, and then led us in practicing it. We each had some wooden beads and a card with words on it -- each of them a Sanskrit way to say God. 

So, three ways to meditate:

1. Breathing 

You sit down and relax and then you say the word (Gauranga was ours) silently to yourself when you breathe in and then say it out loud when you breathe out.

2. Beads (also called Japa)

On each bead you say your mantra out loud. I lost count on the beads, but it doesn’t take long — maybe three minutes. *

3. Group meditation (Kirtan)

You sing or chant the mantra. First the leaders sing it, then the group sings it, over and over. This was beautiful. Her booklet says you can sing mantras to any tune you like, with or without musical instruments. Maybe I can work my ukulele in somehow … 

Love,

k

*I drew the beads on my new gold sketchbook (Thanks, Mary Kaye!), sharing space with today's other inspiration (Rosa Parks, Joan Didion, Gustav Klimt's The Kiss) and humdrum to-do lists:

Embroidered dresses, hand-woven dish towels

Written last night:

Dear Friends,

It’s the beginning of Christmas art fairs, and today I went to the Art to Wear market at a lovely nearby park. They sold everything from embroidered dresses to hand-woven dish towels. I bought some dangly green earrings and two small black bowls with golden-orange designs. The artist told me Matisse inspires her. Maybe tomorrow I’ll draw the bowls, so I can be inspired by Matisse too. Later, I tricked myself into cleaning up my studio space; the piled-up papers have been taunting me for more than a week. 

Weather here is beautiful, and the trees are turning colors.

Love,

k

Something is stirring again

Written last night:

Dear Friends,

Something is happening to me. I am becoming confident. Clark always told me I have substance, and I tried to believe him, but it all melted away when he died. Now it’s coming back, and I’m sure he’d approve.

Like this morning: yesterday I ran into the question on the Sacramento Utility site asking the square footage of my home. I felt stupid not knowing. I thought about 1,200 square feet, but I wanted to be sure. Today I called the Homeowners Association, and they acted all, “Now, now, lady, you know we’d have to come in and measure your walls, don’t you? We can’t know every unit’s area.” I didn’t get wimpy and weepy. I kindly (I hope) noted that in the entire building there are three floor plans, three square footages, and furthermore, shouldn’t they know this as our representatives? They admitted they should. Then, with a quick Google search I found the answer. (Mine is 1,261 square feet — and the others are 845 and 1,683.) When I told her she apologized. I  know this was just routine household business, but I felt my spirit stirring again, and I can hear Clark saying, "It's about time!"

Luckily, the end of the day was softer: Judy, Keith and I celebrated all our birthdays at Thai Basil  a midtown restaurant that is relaxed and busy — and delicious. I love getting together with them.

Love,

k