Food, Friends, Humor, Travel November 21, 2016November 21, 2016

Barcelona: The Food

“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

When discussing what we wanted to do on our holiday with friends in Barcelona, we narrowed it down to three major priorities: 1) eat, 2) hang out with them, and 3) precious little else. Tapas, traditional Spanish and Catalan food, seafood, random weirdness–we wanted to try as much as we possibly could.

We were beautifully situated for local dining as we were in a residential neighborhood that had about a million bakeries and coffee shops, gastro pubs and tapas joints, and even a massive produce and meat market about two minutes away from the flat. We were spoiled, no question about it. But again, thanks to Kelsey’s boss travel prep skills, she had already mapped the gastronomic system of the city and we knew we had some spots that simply had to be hit, but we also knew where playing it by ear would most likely pay off in a fantastically good meal.

Welcome to Barcelona Food Week on SDS!

Carrer de Blai

This is a street full of almost exclusively tapas restaurants where a mini food culture or trend seems to have originated. All the food is bite sized and served on slices of bread, held together with a skewer. You can eat as much or as little as you want as you pay based on unit and your skewers are tallied at the end of your meal–prices can be indicated by different colored sticks–and you can either call it a night…or head to the next joint to see what they have on offer. Guess which choice we made?

It turned out to be prescient as we also discovered a bodega specializing in empanadas and indulged in those as well.

Barraca on the beach

We wanted paella and we wanted it in the most appropriate setting: seaside. My photo quality may be lacking, but the food was not! Traditional dishes like gazpacho and seafood, expertly done.

Pasapalo

I wasn’t blown away by this place, in spite of a plethora of good reviews, but I was also the lone group member to not have a burger and so my review may be suspect. The ambiance and style, however, were great!

Street food

There is so much good and cheap food in this city that it’s almost unbelievable. On every street corner we saw sellers roasting sweet potatoes and chestnuts, to be wrapped in newspaper and taken to eat on the go. And on every street there seems to be a place where you can get an excellent cut of meat grilled or roasted up for your pleasure. Meanwhile there is no end to the tapas options, and you can wander into the vast markets and come away with cones of traditional cured Spanish meats and cheeses. I repeat, handfuls of meat and cheese. Nirvana exists, kids.

Desserts

And finally: pudding! I shan’t overdo this one expect to say that there is a traditional dessert somewhat similar to creme brulee called crema catalana, and that your life is incomplete if you have not yet partaken of it.

Family, Humor, Links, Weekend November 20, 2016

Weekend Links

“I have learned that to be with those I like is enough”
― Walt Whitman

There was a loss in Jeff’s family so he’s back in the States this weekend attending the funeral with the tribe. It was his grandmother, a gentle woman with a spine of steel and greatly beloved. I keep saying it, but I keep meaning it: 2016 has been rough and needs to go.

Sir, I for one am ready for the mic drop.

Great piece. I might have got a bit emotional.

Why Ms. Marvel threatens Superman.

One half of the former Civil Wars (still heartbroken about their band breakup) gives an ace Tiny Desk Concert.

Beauty therapy.

Old British houses are not exactly pinnacles of comfort and modern convenience.

Humor, Travel November 18, 2016November 18, 2016

Barcelona: The City

“Nature and man are opposed in Spain.”
― Gertrude Stein, Picasso

I am bad at holidays and relaxing in general. Most of our big holidays in recent years have been to visit family which, while always good, can still have stresses–trying to see and catch up with as many people as possible, major family gatherings, road trips, running practical errands like renewing drivers licenses, etc. It matters not that its been a couple blissful years since I had to brave the DMV, a visit always returns old angst with fresh horror. Even the one pure pleasure trip of recent memory (our visit to New York) was too short to be a real switch off.

Spain was the perfect learning experience. Having never been before, we were largely in the hands of our fabulous friends (who we love traveling with) and to say they didn’t lead us astray is an understatement. Spain is a delight! For a solid week we did what we wanted, explored where we wished, and were as busy or a lazy as we wanted. As always, food and wandering were the priorities.

Barcelona is a crossroads city: Moorish, Mediterranean, and Northern European culture, art, architecture, and food all clash wonderfully. Having never been and therefore having no specifically Spanish frame of reference, I kept seeing traces of buildings and colors that reminded me alternatively of Italy and Paris, while Jeff kept getting flashes of California. It was an amazing combination.

All credit in the world goes to our pal Kelsey who found an amazing place to stay near the Mercat de Sant Antoni. We were in a residential neighborhood rather than the typical tourist centers and so got to enjoy all the local tapas joints, bodegas, bakeries, shops, and streets. We were a reasonable walk away from the Gothic quarter containing the medieval heart of the city and near a metro station for the handful of excursions that required it. It was also Kelsey’s idea to do a bike tour of the city, which turned out to be a brilliant way to get the lay of the land. The girl knows how to travel!

There’s a least two other posts coming so let me just summarize the overall experience by saying we had perfect weather all week–summer in November–and managed to really get around. We spent a day climbing over and around Montjuic (site of the Olympic park), another day taking a trip out to olive oil and cava country, and then made sure we did the required Gaudi pilgrimages and paid homage to paella.

Gorgeous city.

It was great getting a sense of the dual (and sometimes dueling) Catalan and Spanish identities. From an ethnically diverse modern population to a controversial statue of Columbus, an Italian who opened up the New World and flooded Spain with riches that eventually resulted in crippling instability, to 20th century upheavals, Barcelona really wears its history on its sleeve.

It’s hard to convey how pretty this city is. Even the medieval streets of dark and heavy stone were typically festooned with street art, intricate architectural design, flowers, and decorations.

Good bit of Gothic–fake as it turns out! Stay tuned…

Color was everywhere and not subtle. I imagine this is how many ancient Mediterranean cities once looked, as we know that white marble was not how the Romans and Greeks rolled. They liked bright and vivid shades, sometimes the more garish the better. I loved it.

There’s quite a tale to tell about the beach later as well, but we all of course had to spend some time on it.

More posts coming but trust me on this: bump Barcelona up on your list of places to see. It’s worth it.

Humor, London November 16, 2016November 16, 2016

Mudlarking

“TWENTY bridges from Tower to Kew –
Wanted to know what the River knew,
Twenty Bridges or twenty-two,
For they were young, and the Thames was old
And this is the tale that River told:”
― Rudyard Kipling

Went exploring the north bank of the river for a change and decided to go rouge on a revealed beach at low tide and look for treasure. There’s plenty of junk to be found, but there are also the beams and wooden plinths of old docks, glass and fired stone, and the pulverized remains of an age old city to see if you keep your eyes peeled.

Found a shard of blue and white ceramic, handfuls of seaglass, a bit of pottery, and a clay pipe stem, probably Victorian but might be older. Lots of history on these banks!

Humor, Links, Weekend November 13, 2016November 12, 2016

Weekend Links

“…it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Every single person I have met or spoken to, in person or on the phone, has asked me to comment on election. In pitch meetings, in coffee shops, random markerters. It’s been surreal. Lots of conversations with lots of inspiring female friends have been good to process initial anger, writing has helped organize thoughts, and work has been good to keep things feeling normal. But the great takeaway for me this week is that voting isn’t enough and anger needs to be harnessed. I’m going to be speaking up more and more importantly looking for ways to act more for causes I care about and learn to be a better ally.

In the meantime, we’ll return you to mostly regularly scheduled topical content next week, pending any other major socio political shocks. But I’m sort of begging 2016 to give us a bit of a break for the holidays. This has been a rough year, universe!

Roxanne Gay says much of what I feel.

In a relatively recent conversation with a family member I opined that, for all I am strongly left leaning, I do not dismiss conservatism. I think there are intelligent and compelling cases to be made on a number of issues–none of which seemed present in this election cycle. I opined that the “elder statesmen” of the party seemed to have vanished and with them a range of skills and experience in politics, negotiation, and compromise necessary for the sake of more broadly accepted policy and collective governing (by which I mean republican democracy). I may be a liberal, but I do not cheer this: I find it dangerous. Hence I found this piece from just before the election worth reading. Curious to your opinions in the comments, kittens.

There were some cracks put in the ceiling, never fear.

Sharing one more time for good measure, because yikes.

Things are going to have to get awkward for a bit, kids. Buckle up and get to work.

Get inspired.

You also a bleeding heart liberal? Find some causes and donate. If you can’t give money, give time.

And finally, I’m willing to wait and work for it.

I would watch the heck out of “The Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean.”

So, this is apparently where the professional promised land is.

Planet Earth II has started here in the UK and this clip from the first episode is the stuff of inspiration/nightmares.

Ha! (h/t Savvy)

Finding some optimism in this medical story.

Humor November 12, 2016November 12, 2016

Thoughts on Echo Chambers

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
― Oscar Wilde

A few years ago, in the midst of a faith breakdown–by far the most personally painful experience of my life–I had a moment of realization. To take you through it I have to explain a few things.

First of all, you need to know that there is a vibrant online community focused on Mormonism and Mormon issues. It’s slang nickname is the Bloggernacle, a play on “tabernacle” which in the biblical stories was a portable worship place that was used by Israelites in the wilderness until a temple could be built. It’s significant to Mormons because there is also a building called the Tabernacle at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah where the church is headquartered, that functioned for well over 100 years as the faith’s most important meeting place. The Bloggernacle’s function was similar in that for decades now it has served as a sort of cyber meeting place for people across a wide spectrum of faith to debate and discuss and even privately disclose deeply personal matters of belief or the lack thereof.

Secondly you need to understand how diverse this group of platforms is. There are sites and messages boards on Reddit, standalone blogs and discussion forums, social media accounts, and more. Some of these are academic focused, some give tips on apocalyptic prep. Some are feminist platforms, some focus on Sunday School lessons. It’s vast and depending on your interests you will quickly be able to find a community of like-minded individuals who share your interests, potentially even your cosmic perspectives.

This was powerful stuff and truthfully, when I came across these platforms, I was so so happy to have found other people–lots of them–who had the same issues and concerns as me within our shared faith community. Gradually my wide ranging readership and participation in the Bloggernacle narrowed. I found the platforms that focused on the issues I cared about most and read them regularly. Topics or writers who didn’t interest me faded away or were purposefully set aside. It didn’t happen overnight, it took a couple of years and I barely noticed the shift.

It was a moment of energy in the Mormon Feminist community in particular and the women I had connected with (many of whom I knew in person by this point) were organizing events of solidarity or assembly. For a long time I was fed and sustained by the connections I found. But at some point, things started to change. Our mutual stories fed and activated one another in times of pain, but in hindsight I also see how reading and hearing the pain of other people often compounded my own in unhealthy ways. Empathy is vital, but in some ways I became masochistic, constantly seeking out news, the topics of which enraged me, but also seeking the relief of having my anger and confusion validated. This is also powerful stuff. Every time the church or the cultural community did something I badly disagreed with, I read about it over and over again, often to the exclusion of other news or events. Most of my friends were either involved in these groups or deeply sympathetic to them and our conversations were dominated by the problems of faith, lack thereof, feelings of disenfranchisement, questions of conscious, and often anger. I had created a cocoon space that existed of a very few (very draining) emotional feedback loops.

The realization that eventually hit was that living in and among only people who agreed with me and validated all my feelings (especially negative ones) was not making me happy.

When I woke to the fact that I was living within an echo chamber, I made a decision. I unsubscribed from all the platforms, stopped seeking out stories of actions and policies that made me angry. I stopped courting upset and validation. I tried to stop talking as much and actively tried to start listening more. I broadened my news outlets, reactivated interests that I had let slide, and pointedly stopped focusing on mormonism, for good and bad. I took a break. Shock surprise, a more complex and gratifying life and social circle immediately followed. My head cleared. I was able to make big decisions about my spiritual life from a a steadier and healthier place.

Why the long and rambling story? Because this week we have new and abundant evidence that the echo chambers that make up our society are everywhere and far more powerful than we might have thought. I managed to find a relatively small one in an even relatively smaller and obscure religion that took over my life. My YouTube and Amazon.com suggestions come from algorithms built on my past preferences. My social media feeds, far from being impartial are equally curated spaces, the extent of which I probably don’t even properly comprehend.

It’s increasingly clear that this election was not just about political parties, it was about two separate realities. Complete with different news feeds, priorities, fears, and worldviews. I count myself among the many who didn’t realize how deep the divide truly was, partially because of the echo chambers I myself still move in. Once again I need to stop seeking out platforms and people who validate me and my opinions and do better about finding not just opinions but facts that challenge my thinking, broaden my view, and complicate my world.

I don’t think our echo chambers are making us happier as a nation. Most of what I see in our discourse is bitterness along the lines of, “Why can’t the poor deluded other side just get its head out of the sand and see the light?!” We have work to do in overcoming opinion and prejudice to find common cause. The alternative is continuing our poisonous gridlock, or worse.

The sobering part is just how hard separating facts and opinions has become. And just how many people and businesses are invested in blurring them.

To end on another quote:

“It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.”
― Aristotle

Feminism November 10, 2016November 10, 2016

The Woman Card We’ve Been Dealt

“We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.”
― Margaret Atwood

Still processing my thoughts, and I’m trying to stay classy about it but the honest to god first thought I had the morning after was, “Wow. America really doesn’t like women.” Do I mean everyone? Of course not. Do I mean explicitly? No. Next to no one in this country is running through the streets with “Down with women!” signs or stroking cats evilly in a dark room somewhere, contemplating wrapping us in burkas.

I mean that as a culture, women are often instinctively reacted to as unworthy of being believed, supported, or followed. From rape survivors and wage equality to work leadership and our own health and care, we are not considered trustworthy in making decisions, telling truths, or seeking advancement. Suspicion and wariness are often the default. Our narratives are questioned before they are listened to much less believed.

I did not vote for Secretary Clinton because she is a woman, though goodness knows I found the idea of the first female president breathtaking. I don’t think most people who voted against her did so because she is a woman. But I do think the culture and undercurrents about and towards women played a significant role in how she was perceived and treated by media, her opponents, and a lot of the electorate.

As women, almost every day, we see examples and stories of how our ambitions are threatening and (worse!) unattractive, our stories of victimization are suspect, those of us needing help are lazy or manipulative or moochers, our desires for control over our bodies are antagonistic or selfish, our expectations of work life balance are unreasonable, our emotions are unstable. We are not trusted. And I cannot help but see much of this inherent distrust in how Secretary Clinton was viewed and treated in this election. Her ambitions were unseemly, her cautiousness weak, her outspokenness offensive, her experience invalid, her whole candidacy insufficient and suspect.

Am I partisan? Yes. I have seen examples of sexism throughout my personal and professional life, and in the lives of women and girls I know and respect. These experiences of course inform my point of view and my politics.

But I don’t necessarily think that means I’m wrong.

*This post expanded on comments left on a Broadside post.

Expat November 9, 2016November 9, 2016

Where Do We Go From Here?

“The private life of men of power isn’t what we expect, sometimes.”
He jerked up his chin. “People have some very odd illusions about power. Mostly it consists of finding a parade and nipping over to place yourself at the head of the band. Just as eloquence consists of persuading people of things they desperately want to believe. Demagoguery, I suppose, is eloquence sliding to some least moral energy level.” He smiled bleakly at his boot. “Pushing people uphill is one hell of a lot harder. You can break your heart, trying that.”
– Lois McMaster Bujold, Komarr

The Brexit vote was when I realized it was an actual possibility. Until that point I had dismissed him as ludicrous, a tangerine wannabe demagogue with absurd hair and even more absurd ambitions. After the vote I never discounted him again, but I didn’t think he’d win. He couldn’t. His language was so ugly, his platform xenophobic, his sexism proudly displayed instead of sheepishly passive, that I thought it would be his eventual downfall. Like so many people, I’ve been reeling to see how wrong I was.

The first words said to me by a Brit today, preceded by a cautious look, were, “My god. Your country.” I flinched.

My country, yes, but one that I don’t feel in particular harmony with at the moment. What Mr. Trump seems to have tapped into is very real and painful fear and resentment and I don’t dismiss that. If anything, I think the one thing his campaign should get some credit for is helping to reveal that we as a nation to not have our **** nearly together as we would like the rest of the world to think. We scratched our surface and found a lot of damage under what turned out to be a thin layer of gloss.

But even in spite of that I didn’t think he would win.

I’ve been very open about the fact that I found Mr. Trump’s campaign both ridiculous and repugnant. I am baffled at how a privileged seeming-narcissist, several times over a failed businessman who somehow apparently retains an obscene amount of money, a bully, a braggart, and self-proclaimed prophet of self-interest managed to convince anyone that he would be the champion and voice of the dispossessed. I don’t get it.

I am not particularly afraid of Donald Trump individually, indeed I’m wondering how he will find the office of the president in actuality vs. the perception of the office. History shows us that many men may covet thrones, but seldom do they covet the accompanying desks and paperwork. His temperament, crassness, impatience, utter lack of humility, and apparent inability to focus make him, in my opinion, imminently unsuitable for the role. I anticipate he will rely on a bevy of advisers for support, which is not unusual in and of itself until you review their CVs; these men (mostly speaking) and their self-avowed agendas do frighten me.

Whether out of genuine conviction or simply because they saw a way to leverage rage into power, or some poisonous mixture of both, these people who he has chosen to surround himself with (or have managed to surround him, I’m unsure which is the case) have stoked the fires of racial resentment and misogyny. They have purposefully fanned flames of mistrust so that even reputable facts and data is suspect or rejected if it does not support opinion. Science has been dismissed, minority groups targeted, women attacked. The jury is out on whether some have tried to wield the power of non-elected offices and positions of information privilege in a biased way.

I am baffled that so many of the same people who eight years ago decried then-Senator Obama’s “lack of experience” as disqualifying and his candidacy as divisive, are now lauding a reality TV personality who kicked off his campaign accusing a whole community of being druggies and rapists–before going on to mock or attack the disabled, veterans, PoC, women…basically every facet of the population besides white men. I think a lot of people have been sold several ideas in this election (walls, unconstitutional religious tests, sweeping statements of action that exceed the limits of the office) that will likely never come to be. I wonder if the anger will eventually turn back against the hand that has fed it when these promises don’t materialize. I wonder if only promises would have proved be enough to calm fears of and resentment against a changing world. I wonder which is ultimately worse.

Brexit was only one side of this. Mr. Trump’s victory is just another. There is a rising tide of nationalism, xenophobia, and rabid fear of a world that is getting smaller and closer all the time. This tide is what I am afraid of. Intensely. But even seeing that this is the big picture, the election feels deeply and painfully personal to me.

My country has followed the election of its first black president with the election of a man who has been endorsed by the KKK.

The glass ceiling remains. My country would rather see a man elected who incites violence, speaks in racial dog whistles, lies outright without shame, and brags about sexual assault among other misogynistic speech, than a woman.

My country is divided. Mr. Trump has run a campaign of disenfranchisement and divisiveness and now has to bring a country together. Good luck. Both political parties have engaged in intense partisan rhetoric and actions over the last decade, but my opinion is that the right has invested far more in fanning fears and resentments in an effort to win back power. They have actively engaged in rabble rousing and now the rabble is roused. Anger may be vindicated, but I don’t believe it will simply go quietly away.

We’ve elected a reality TV personality. That’s humiliating. Politics and entertainment have long been mixed, but this is downright dystopian.

I’m disheartened. I’m afraid for the implications for the LGBT community, existing legal rights for women including abortion, minority communities, and others.

I genuinely thought the power of fear, distrust, and any number of -isms, was weaker than it is proving to be in my eyes. I believed my country looked different, thought differently than it is proving to do. I will answer calls for unity, I will take Secretary Clinton’s gracious concession speech words to heart, that “fighting for what is right is always worth it.”

But I am tired. I am disappointed. And I don’t think the problems raised (and in many cases purposefully manipulated) in this election are resolved.

Humor November 7, 2016November 5, 2016

Five Things I Loved in October

“Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her…In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.”
― Elizabeth George Speare, The Witch of Blackbird Pond

A few days behind times but still in time to celebrate some of the good things in life, trivial though they may be, before we get a spike of anxiety on the morrow.

Minions, share your monthly finds with me in the comments: books, films, exhibitions, lipstick (always lipstick), or anything else worth spreading the good news about!

Urban Decay Cream Vice Lipstick in F-Bomb. This is a punchy blue-based red that, on me at least, looks precisely like shiny red patent leather. Sexy, lethal looking, highly pigmented. ‘Nuff said. I foresee it will get a lot of usage as the holiday season creeps up on us.

The last thirty seconds in the first episode of Netflix’s Luke Cage. Internet troubles hindered my attempts to catch up on pop culture for the first couple of weeks this month, but we did manage to start the latest of the Netflix/Marvel universe iterations. There is a moment where the eponymous character slowly and deliberately pulls his hoodie up around his face and looks out at the viewer. The screen cuts to black…and I about lost my cool. It’s small perhaps, but seemed a deliberate callback to Trayvon Martin’s murder and felt like a much needed middle finger to the racism and ugliness that this summer has seen in the US.

Black Mirror, Netflix. Sorry to give you a double Netflix whammy, but I’m late to the Black Mirror party and needed to catch up as I’d heard nothing but rave reviews from friends on this series. I was not disappointed, this show is properly twisted! I’d classify it as mostly “techno horror” as it’s made up of individual, self contained episodes that each envision a world scarily near to our own (or at least not inconceivably far in the future) where technology and society come in to sharp conflict. Mob behavior online is juxtaposed with actual insect swarm behavior. Our deepest secrets can be carried around with us in a device that can fit in our pocket and may not be as safe as we think it is. Cache on social media blurs the lines between happiness and performance…not that unfamiliar, right? Well, never fear, there is always a twist and some are properly spine tingling.

67b38c8602acad72378125eb441b62a6 — Image via NailsInc

NailsInc NailKale in Montpelier Walk. There is a very specific Urban London Rich Girl look that I admire from afar. I’m neither tall nor blonde enough to pull it off, to say nothing not possessing the required levels of svelteness. I also insist on mucking up perfectly acceptable all-black style choices with too-vibrant color, buying weird stuff when I should buy “tasteful” standbys, and fail utterly to understand how to style my hair for the weather. Regrets = zero, but I salute the women who make it an art form and occasionally flirt with some of its trappings. A very good nude nail is one of them and praise be, I’ve finally found one I like. Is this because it was recommended to me by a fantastic and whip smart woman who nails the ULRG look and always looks impeccable, or because the name reminded me of my favorite first lady (Dolley Madison)? YES. The answer is yes.

A Seat at the Table, Solange. This album has been on repeat pretty much since it dropped. It is ridiculously good–personal, powerful, soulful, and an education to listen to.

Humor, London November 6, 2016

Small Dog Syndrome

Barcelona: The Food

Weekend Links

Barcelona: The City

Mudlarking

Weekend Links

Thoughts on Echo Chambers

The Woman Card We’ve Been Dealt

Where Do We Go From Here?

Five Things I Loved in October

Talking About the Weather

Humor. Opinions. Life in London.

Humor. Opinions. Life in London.

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