Family Heirloom Project: Flowered Print Dress
From the Family Heirloom Project. My mom made all her own clothes the entire time I was growing up. It had been awhile since I had seen her wear this one. I can’t even remember when I saw her in it. But it is typical of the kind of fabric she would buy. She did sew some some elegant things. But curtains and the occasional dress got the gaudy treatment with outlandish prints, usually with lots of blues and greens.
Everyone’s Dead
Tommy and Parents
That’s a terribly morbid title for a blog post, and I don’t really mean to be morbid. But it just struck me that everyone in this picture is gone now. My Thea Sophia passed away from cancer in about 2002. Then her boy, Tommy killed himself in 2008. Then my Uncle Peter, Theo Pano, passed away a year ago. So now it is just Tommy’s sister, Aglaia, and their brother George, who has down’s syndrome.
Today is Tommy’s birthday. He would be 54 years old. It has been over three years since he passed away, and I still miss him. A lot. And I still feel guilty and think about what more I should have done to try to prevent such a thing from happening. It’s not like a think about it all the time. But when I do think of it, it’s the same ton bricks it was when I first got the phone call. Why didn’t I take his melodramatic pronouncements more seriously? Why wasn’t I more insistent about what was not his business to worry about? I know that there’s no answering such questions.
Sometimes I think about these things I’ll never have again, or the people I”ll never see or hug again. It is like each loss is a loss of a little part of my own self, my history, my story, my being. Of course, the life process goes on incorporating new things into the story, making new meanings from our of day-t0-day lives. But these just get us by. Their deeper value now lies in their being the raw material of certain other’s lives, of the next generation. Children live in the present; they burn right through it. So, there is no way to see at this moment how this present is being incorporated into the memories that will form their consciousness. But it is happening. And someday, 30 years from now, my son may wonder in turn about how to hold to what’s left of the people and things that are his story, his memory. I only hope he has fewer regrets.
Long Day
Shot at MacArthur BART while wait for Sarah to pick me up and go into the CIty.
Well, It’s been a long day. I think I’m too tired to write much tonight. But here’s some outlines.
I left for work about 8:15 and took the BART to my work at the Oakland Federal Building.
Two interesting things happened at work. First, one of the high-ranking respondents to a request for feedback on a draft business process guide I have been working on editing for months and months finally sent his response today, the very last day of the response period. He basically said this will not fly (contains unauthorized methods) and to stop the development process immediately. And that he’ll get back to us. Thanks.
The second thing that happened was that from my cubicle up on the seventh floor I heard what sounded like a car alarm going off down in the street below, along with some strange, pre-recorded muffled talking. After trying to ignore it for about 10 minutes by turning up the music in my earbuds, I finally got up to make a snide comment about it to a co-worker. After another five minutes of group snarkiness, the security officer came back through and told us to evacuate the building immediately. Oops. And don’t take the elevators. I walked down to about the fifth floor when I got word that the “drill” was over. Not sure but, I think we have failed the drill. Good thing it wasn’t one of those fertilizer bombs or I’d be in deep shit.
The day at the office was followed by two art openings. The first was a small show in a small cafe a block from my office in the street level shops of the Tribune building. I have one piece in the show. Thanks Sarah Filley! So, I walked over after work. I saw friend Paula Wirth, who curated the previous show I had some pieces in, and which led to one being in this one. And I had good time talking to Paula’s friend Will, a jazz vocalist and a photographer. After a couple glasses of champagne it was back on the BART to MacArthur Station where my Sarah picked me up to go into the City for more festivities.
The second art opening was friend Seth Dickerman’s show at Muse Gallery in SF. The show is great. I really like his dreamy layering of motion anyway, but here the technique is used with multiple panoramic-style shooting that is rendered with distinct frames or panels rather than stitched into a single frame. This gives it a motion-picture-film-strip quality. Nice. Afterward, a bunch of us went to dinner at a taqueria on Valencia in the Mission. Overstuffed, mildly buzzed, and exhausted, I arrived back home 14.5 hours after leaving this morning.
Now, I’m really too tired to write another word.
Update: and judging by the typos I had to correct this morning, I was too tired to write the words I did write.
Disaffected Youth
Theo on Telegraph / © 2011 neo serafimidis
Is a picture really worth a thousand words? If so, which thousand? Who determines which thousand words it is, the author, or the viewer? Or someone else?
The day before Halloween we went down to the vintage stores on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley to find costume material. The first store we went into was having a closing sale and all items were $5. I scored a complete costume for $10. I figured I’d saved about $30. We were out in a jiffy, and afterwards, Theo and I waited outside while Sarah fought the lines in the hat store.
We goofed around and took pictures. I asked him to go stand by the wall. He walked over and turned around. I don’t know where he learned to put on this look of teenaged disaffection already. He constantly walks around with his jacket hanging off his left shoulder like this. It drives me absolutely crazy, but no amount of my pulling it up and zipping it up, and telling him to straighten up has any lasting effect beyond about about three minutes.
But appearances can be deceiving, as we all know. Beyond this obliviousness to his own appearance, and genuine stubbornness–thanks mom, for passing the genes along–he’s actually still very affectionate, concerned with fairness, and does not like cursing.
While we were taking our pictures and waiting for Sarah, our meter expired just a hundred feet away. As Theo and I walked up to the car to sit down and wait still more for Sarah to come out of the hat store, I saw the envelope. We had a $40 ticket, quite literally within 2 minutes of the meter expiring. How? Where had they come from? Did they sneak up? Did they get an alarm when the minute passed?
Immediately, the disaffection ran upstream from the son to the father. I dropped f-bombs in disbelief.
And just as quickly, I was chastised, “Hey! You said bad words, Daddy!” I looked at him with his jacket hanging down, and an expression at once concerned and mischievous, and I said, “I’m sorry, Theo.”
Oakland Oldsmobile
Oldsmobile and House, Oakland, CA. 2011.
Sometimes when I’m working from home, I’ll go to a cafe and work. Today I met up with a programmer friend who also likes to work outside the house at a favorite cafe, Local123 in Berkeley. The trouble was that once we got there, there was nowhere at all to sit. This is the second time in a row that I have arrived there and had to move on. It’s a nice place and it is great for the owners that they are so busy, but it looks like I have to find somewhere else as a first-choice work spot. In any case, we headed down San Pablo Avenue to Actual Cafe in Oakland.
Actual is located in the neighborhood where I used to work and go for lunchtime photo walks. As soon as we turned off San Pablo to park, it all came back to me, and I remembered what a photographically rich area the neighborhood is. Everywhere I looked I saw a shot. It would have been very easy to get totally distracted and just go for a stroll, but I resisted the urge. Instead I just took a couple shots and headed into the cafe to get working. But I made some mental notes of things to come back for on the weekend.
More Duck Fat
Duck fat fried potatoes - © Neo Serafimidis, All Rights Reserved
It happened again. I came home from work and immediately started on dinner. I decided we’d have potatoes with the healthy turkey sausages. What would it be, baked with just a spot of butter and plenty of salt? Mashed with some 2% milk?
Then I heard it calling my name from the fridge: “neo, put me in the pan… let me lube your spuds… let me caress and envelop your earthy apples.…” That naughty duck fat!
Before I knew it, I was at it:
- peel and slice the pototoes
- steam them for just a few minutes, so they soften up a bit but are still a bit undercooked.
- remove potatoes to a bowl and sprinkle with salt and pepper, and dried Greek oregano, then squeeze a half a lemon or so and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil. Toss gently to mix and coat being careful not break them up.
- Heat a couple tablespoons duck fat in a big skillet over high heat. throw ’em in. After they release from the initial stick, keep turning to brown as evenly as you can manage.
- Eat them hot and crispy.
Joy then Disappointment
Olives
Although getting last night’s post done kept me up super-late, once I shook off the rich food and wine hangover, I was still totally psyched about meeting Nancy Pelosi last evening, and I was sure it was going to be a great day.
Near the top of my list for the day was to finally harvest olives from Clara’s trees across the street. I spent more than a couple hours on a ladder out there and ended up with a 5-gallon bucket about two-thirds full. And I barely made a dent in the crop. Since the trees are right on Brighton, there were lots of passers-by and I met a couple people who live in the area.
I was very excited to score the olives and couldn’t wait to get to work prepping the and getting them soaking. At home I started sorting through what I had, tossing the sticks and leaves and obviously bad ones. That’s when my joy started to erode into disappointment. I had inspected some pretty closely last week when I went to ask Clara about picking some. They seemed to not be infested with the dreaded olive fly. But now, in my kitchen I could see that the crop was moderately infested. Total drag.
I have been wanting to cure olives for years, and I’ve been waiting for my own young trees to produce enough fruit to make the effort worthwhile. But even the first tiny crops had fly infestations. Now I am ready to totally throw in the towel on curing olives. It is just to much of a pain in the ass.
In the first place, picking olives doesn’t go as fast as one might wish, and there were a couple times I thought I would topple off the not-so-level ladder. Then, when I started sorting and realized that some, maybe 30% looked infested, the sorting and inspection process slowed dramatically. Just image facing a 5-gallon bucket of little nicoise-size olives and checking every single one carefully for signs of entry by fly larvae. God only knows how long it will take just to get through this step. And the result of the step is throwing out a third to half of the crop. And after that is the knowledge that you have surely missed some and will be getting a little extra protein here and there (although, I guess this is just a plain fact about purchased olives too).
So, I’ll sort a couple jars worth and forget the rest. I can use the time saved to get back to other things, like learning jQuery and ASP.NET, or just reminiscing about the time I shook Ms. Pelosi’s hand.
Kokkari Stars
crispy zucchini cakes with cucumber & mint-yogurt dressing - $8.75
Beet salad with dill
Grilled octopus with lemon, oregano & olive oil - $11.75
It turned out a little different than I had expected it would, than any of us expected it would. Not that I didn’t have high expectations. I did. I have been hoping to dine at Kokkari for a long time. We just never quite seemed to be able to get it together. But when we saw Jim and Kelly a couple weeks ago, we all talked about getting together soon in the new year, and I suggested Kokkari as a possibility.
That suggestion stuck with Kelly, and she made reservations only the day before. So, the earliest we could be seated was 8:15. What a fateful decision that was.
We arrived, waited a few moments for our table, and then were led through the restaurant and around to a round booth near another large table with a party of eight or so. After a few minutes we noticed something distinctive about the large party.
In the meantime we ordered and started drinking our first bottle of Greek wine. By the time the appetizers came, we were giddy. We started out with crispy zucchini cakes with cucumber & mint-yogurt dressing, oven-baked giant beans with tomato sauce, olive oil & herbed feta, grilled octopus with lemon, oregano & olive oil, and beet salad with olive oil and dill. They were all fantastic. The octopus was perfectly cooked, tender, delicately charred and nearly transcendent.
It is true that we had started with wine back at house, and wasted no time getting going at the restaurant. But that’s not exactly why we were giddy. Nor was it the appetizers. Rather, we determined that one of the people in the large party at the next table was Nancy Pelosi. She may not be the Speaker of the House at the moment, but her star power is utterly undiminished!
Nancy Pelosi at the table next door
But before our entrees arrived, someone else did: Gavin Newsom and wife stopped over for a brief hello with the Pelosi party.
Gavin Newsom
As the introductions went around we discovered that the gentleman sitting with his back to us was former Senator Christopher Dodd, chair of the Senate Banking Committee. By now we were beside ourselves.
Retired Senator Christopher Dodd
Grilled sea bass
Dry-aged rib-eye
That’s when the entrees came. Sarah and Kelly each had the Mediterranean sea bass. Jim had the dry-aged rib-eye. And I had the grilled lamp chops. I ordered them medium-rare and they came perfectly cooked. I managed to eat every bit, though all the portions, appetizers and entrees alike, were quite ample.
Lamb chops
Heavenly galatobouriko
Baked apple with mastica ice cream
Finally, we finished up by sharing a couple desserts: a spiced baked apple served with mastica ice cream, and galatobouriko, which was absolutely transcendent. The house brought us a round of muscat dessert wine from the island of Samos.
As we were finishing the politicos got up to leave and as they did, Chris Dodd, turned to us and said, “I hope weren’t raucous and bothersome.” That was all the opening we needed to engage him in conversation. We talked about his young children, and his trip here working on the financial reform. When I thanked him for his service, he said “that’s really nice to hear, thank you”, and seemed genuine and sincere. Ms. Pelosi shot us a smile and a wave, too.
Finally, as were leaving the restaurant, the group was still stuck at the entrance, and with the secret service detail thrown in, it was a traffic jam. I took the opportunity to say to Ms. Pelosi also, “thank you for your service and great work.” She thanked me and shook my hand. We burst out into the cold night air still giddy and more than satisfied with our selection of restaurant, the fabulous food, and the stunning star sighting.
Tape Music Festival
Building with Lights, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco CA.
This evening I managed to attend The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2011. I enjoyed it immensely. There were some really wonderful pieces and an appreciative audience. Of course, many in the audience were probably participants waiting their turn on this or one of the next two nights–I recognize that this is not a hugely popular genre. Nonetheless, it was good to see a decent audience out for this kind of art. I myself would go fairly regularly to see and hear experimental music if I could, but life is different now than it was when I was in college with few real obligations and responsibilities.
In any case, the first half consisted of works by Adrian Moore, Mauricio Kagel, Paul Dresher, and bran(…)pos. It was a solid set that really showcased the power of electronic music experienced in a good venue with a terrific multi-channel sound system. The second half was more mixed with a piece by Christian Marclay being the standout. To be fair, by the time the second half began, my ears and brain were tired and I was surely not as receptive as I was earlier in the evening. The relative accessibility of the Marclay piece, with its turntablism aesthetic, gave it a leg up at this point in the evening.
The concert was at the Southside Theater at Fort Mason Center. I have never been to this particular space before, and had not been out to Fort Mason in a couple years, so wandering the foggy cold grounds for a bit after the show was a treat in itself. The Exploratorium has some installations along the water that focus on the nature of SF Bay, and they were interesting to see.
Beyond being a consumer, I was really inspired to again be a producer. Following on yesterday’s confessional post regarding picking up the guitar again, I’m now entertaining a commitment to using the gear that has been set up and dutifully standing by for years. It has sat here day after day as if any second I would just jump in and start working again at composing electronic.
I used to compose a lot, and even naively thought of it as a career track. I wish I had pursued it more rigorously and with determination. I’d love to have a job making experimental electronic music. And making fine art photographs. And perhaps putting the two together. Can’t I just have a patron?
Brain Re-wiring
Manny and the Gretsch
Recently, Sarah and I went back to Fresno to attend a loosely organized get-together of people from the arts and music scene of the late 80’s and early 90’s. At least that’s how I think of it, because we left town in 1993. In fact, many people live elsewhere now, but come back to town over Christmas break to visit the family.
This year also included a bonus: a reunion gig of The Miss Alans, a popular Fresno band that really nearly broke through, but not quite. The reunion gig really turned out to be the centerpiece of the weekend. I was not really part of the TMA scene back then, but was really looking forward to seeing the couple members of the band that are friends and to seeing them play. One of the great things about the show was having an opportunity to really work on taking concerts photos in the low-light and high-contrast conditions. I had never had much luck with this before. But with my D300s, I was able to get some shots I was really happy with.
Then an awkward thing happened. During the last song of the show, guitarist friend Manny hopped off the stage to get a beer or something, and suddenly one minute I was slugging beer and taking photos, and the next I had a live guitar in my hand with the band vamping, waiting for someone to do something with it. Unfortunately, long ago were the days when I played guitar almost at all, much less in front of lots of people, and my brain was no longer wired for serendipitous improvising. So, deer-in-headlights syndrome was the result.
Yes, I was a little embarrassed by the whole thing. Even writing about it now is cringey. And it made me wonder why I even still have instruments taking up space in the closet and next to the computer. I had the realization that it was really time to get rid of this clutter in the house and in my psyche, this part of my ancient past.
Then a funny thing happened. My climate scientist friend Bill is taking guitar lessons and insisted we get together to try to work on some kind of modal soloing ideas he was introduced to at his guitar lesson. I didn’t really want to do this, think about this, face this. But I did. So, tonight we did that. We traded twos and fours over some progressions, and it was hard, but we both really got into it and had a great time. We came away exhilarated. So now we are planning on jamming every week, figuring it out, and getting it down.
Yeah. Face the fears.
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