Raw, adjective: 11. unprocessed or unevaluated: raw data

Today we did this.












And this.















And a little of this.








And some of us did this.

Others of us landed on our faces with our feet stuck behind our heads. It was awesome. The bruises on my ass are beginning to make themselves known.

There was a CBS camera crew filming this afternoon. It was a bit disconcerting, given that they showed up at the end of our 5-hour practice, so we were all wobbly and dehydrated and loony. We did a few minutes' quick demos of some of the prettier postures, Bikram barked charmingly, adjusted his Speedo and told a few dirty jokes, and that was that. Not sure where or when it's airing. I'd rather not see myself falling out of asanas sweaty and exhausted, anyway.

Advanced series is so different from the regular Bikram series. It's much less cardiovascular, much more intimate; it's quieter, more individually-driven, less authoritarian. At least, that's how it feels to me. Pretty much like a pleasant 2 hours of trying out party tricks with your most flexible buddies. Helping each other balance, adjust your grip, fix your pelvis, etc. It's kind of great. Easy. A natural camaraderie unrolls. You're all struggling with seemingly impossible asanas. You're all falling on your faces. And Bikram sits and watches and listens, lets you fall, get back in; there's a different spirit of experimentation, a trust that you as a veteran know what you're doing with your body; a resting. There's almost a vinyasa flow feeling in the beginning of the series in the Salute to the Gods and Goddesses and the Sun Salutations, followed by a lot of bendy Lotus work and balancing and whatnot, ad infinitum.

In surprising developments, I'm hardly sore anymore. This rocks. I definitely credit the pushing through the pain. It's such a better means for coping with soreness than backing off and leaving the torn muscles alone.

I'm sad to see the week nearing its end. I sat in the moonlight last night on the water listening to tropical birds hooting, working on some new writing projects, and the air was thick and warm and I felt so content and sore and lived-in. And then a gondola pulled up. No joke. (Where the hell am I?) Even now, sitting at my desk looking out the open patio door past my balcony, the mountains hover in the distance and the sun will be setting over them in just a few hours. Charmed life.

Emmy and Rajashree both headed back to LA after this morning's classes, so it's Bikram from here on out. I'm glad. Ready to get my ass kicked again tomorrow, both classes. I leaned back into Camel today to find peering at me from behind Rajashree herself, practicing in the back row, rocking the fuschia spandex. Love it.

I read an interesting mantra in a yogic theory book last night. So much of this philosophy emphasizes the letting-go process, the release, the emptying, the deconstructing; this theme is of course rich across Taoist and Buddhist and Hindu theologies alike, but I find it so central to this yogic project, too. Emptying the mind, clearing the body, flushing the nadis (energy meridians), lightening everything from so much kapha heaviness. And a natural extension of that lightening is an emphasis on childlike humor, the kind of wonder that doesn't take itself or the world too seriously, knowing how impermanent and constantly in flux every element of reality is. So this mantra reminds the meditator to set this intention: "Leave every room lighter than you found it."

How great is that? We've all known that person whose Eeyore energy brings a grave heaviness to a room. And we've all known his opposite, the kind of person whose presence lifts the vibe. Not because of some sunny-ass Pollyanna bullshit, but because they wield a certain lightness. You know what I mean: an openness to whimsy, a self-deprecating lilt. The kind of person who doesn't take herself, or this life, so goddamned seriously.

You can't help but practice that when you're stuck on your back with your feet behind your head like an overturned tortoise on the beach, abandoned. That's the natural built-in good humor of this yoga. When you're swimming in a pool of your own sweat and your ass is hanging out of your too-short shorts, it's just all gravy, then.

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions

I meant to write about death, only
life came breaking in as usual.

~ Virginia Woolf, Diary
17 February 1922

*

The practice of dying little by little,
every day, brings yoga.

~ Pattabhi Jois

Raw, adjective: 6. ignorant, inexperienced, or untrained: a raw recruit.

That is about how I feel right now. Ahhh.

Today, Emmy Cleaves taught both the regular and the advanced series. Emmy is Bikram's long-time right-hand woman, a rockstar in her own right, who happens to be 80-something and still bending into Lotus and sticking her legs in the air. She presided over the group in her bathing suit, and reigned with an iron fist. I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to practice under the direction of a woman I've heard so very much about. (Wouldn't mind being able to bend like she can when I'm 80, either.)

The class was much more physiology-focused; Emmy's all about alignment and precision, which was exactly what I needed after two days of just trying to stay alive. Today the heat was considerably less oppressive, which meant that I could actually focus on technique and extension instead of not dying. It was great, and I felt invigorated after the 5-hour session, as opposed to the other days, when I felt like I'd been run over by a Mac truck. In a good way. The bruises attest.

Ominous desert clouds have rumbled in this afternoon and it's, very strangely, threatening to storm. There's news on the franchising front; all of the hubbub over the last several years about Bikram's effort to patent "his" yoga has apparently come to a conclusion, because at the end of class today he introduced his patent lawyers and new franchising director. I'm headed to a lecture about this right now. Incredibly intrigued by this complicated development, given my interests in commodification, spirituality, and the body. We'll see what unfolds in the next few hours. I feel torn about seven different ways about the whole thing.

Raw, adjective: 4. painfully open, as a sore or wound.

Aloha from Palm Springs, where it's currently 108 and I'm chillin' in a little Tittibhasana. At left, that's a quick pic I snapped on looking skyward toward sunset last night. The palms here are out of control.

The asana pictured below is one of, oh, 70 or so that we worked on today. Along with the other 5 hours' worth of heaving and bending and lifting and pulling. (And sweating. Don't forget the sweating.)

So much to report, I'm a little stuck for knowing where to start. You're going to get some stream-of-consciousness action, because while I'm taking pretty copious notes in my trusty notebook, I'm not really feeling the "big conclusions" thing yet. Blame exhaustion, or bliss; take yer pick.

So far? The bod's holding up, though two days in a row I've come the closest I've ever felt to thinking I was going to a) die, b) vomit, or c) pass out in a sweaty jumble of limbs during both Bikram's and Rajashree's classes. The humidity in the studio here feels more intense, and combined with the desert heat, it makes hydration the perpetual driving concern all day, every day. I'm living on fruit. Literally. Just hoovered a whole cantaloupe. In one sitting. (Godblesscantaloupe.)

Bikram's classes yesterday kicked all of our asses. (I'm sure that was kind of his intent.) In spite of the fact that I usually practice in long pants and long sleeves to make the class more challenging, and the contrast that I'm practically naked here in my booty shorts and sports bra, the 5-hour stretch seems tough for all of us, which is a bit of a rude awakening considering that we're a group of teachers and teacher's pets, the yoga dorks of our respective studios who are used to being the top dogs. And now we just feel like dead, wet dogs. Wearing bikinis.

But it's getting better already. We blew through much of the Advanced series yesterday, and this morning I found Rajashree's calm, graceful spirit a tonic to Bikram's fiery, confident, over-the-top bombast. She's lovely. I hope she teaches tomorrow morning, too. (I've always hated Dandayamana Janushirasana, but when you're forced to hold it an extra 2 minutes in 115 heat and a man in a headband barks at you when you fall out, you kind of want to die.)

I'm practicing all kinds of pretzel-y tricks. Super bendy. That's such a benefit of the thick humidity: mad flexibility. The days are settling into a good routine: coffee and breakfast early, yoga 8:30-1:30, a quick lunch, laps in the pool (and, er, sunning, and reading, and sleeping), and generally drinking as many liquids as is humanly possible. It's pretty much my ideal vacation: yoga, fresh food (there's a Ralph's across the drive that's sent from Shakti), sunshine, swimming, and time to catch up on so much writing and reading and work.

Honestly, the whole thing reminds me a lot of cheerleading camp. Lots of hot athletic people, a fair measure of checking-one-another out, that sort of veiled competitive vibe (I'm more "yoga" than you!), constant sweating, minimal clothing, hotel life, motivational speeches. There's thankfully not a lot of Enforced Mingling, which is a blessed relief for this one; nothing's worse than awkward mandatory social functions when you really just wanna learn the shit and do yer thing. Nice balance of practice and retreat.

The attendees are what you'd expect: lots of hardcore buff bodies, serious badasses with crazy muscles and no makeup, hippie clothes, some dreads, you know the drill. Super-diverse, too; I'm one of the few attendees from California that I've run into so far; there are folks from Ireland and Australia and all over the country. I dig it.

Bikram's yoga is notoriously light on philosophy, heavy on physicality. And a lot of people really discount it for that. But I've been so pleasantly surprised thus far by the way Bikram and Rajashree have built the philosophy into the practice without having to state it heavy-handedly; Bikram's introductory spiel Sunday evening was as rich with yogic theory as it was with ball jokes, and Rajashree in particular really brought out some good points about prana and breath and holistic health and mental stillness this morning.

The desert vibe - pastels, tropical shirts, cheesy hotel decor, golf - feels so far from my San Francisco reality. No one walks here. There's a steady trickle of us Bikram-ites who walk back and forth to Ralph's; we're the only ones on the deserted sidewalks. What a different world from my biped existence in the cool, foggy city. It's a shift I'd never want forever, but for a week, it'll do.

(I discovered this weirdly hilarious show on TLC the other night when I got home. "Cake Boss." Have you seen it? Reality show about an Italian family bakery near NYC. Enraptured; laughed out loud. How weird to have a TV, and a king bed, and bad reality programming, at the same time. I see how people get addicted.)

(Also, Bikram swears like a sailor. Which I love.)

Plenty more to come; lots of thoughts on commodification and the Eight Limbs and Pizza Hut and laughter and American culture; but for now, I'm browning nicely, hydrating constantly and happy to be here. And not minding the sore muscles much when the mind-blowing benefits are so clear.

Raw, adjective: 6. ignorant, inexperienced, or untrained: a raw recruit.

Hopping a quick flight to Palm Springs in the morning for a week of intensive training with Bikram and Rajashree. At left you can see the miserable destination where I'll be sweating, stretching and bending for the next seven days. Poor, poor me. (Current temp: 110 degrees.)

Today has been a frantic melee of packing and laundry and yoga-training and list-making and putting the finishing touches on the draft of an article due Monday. Much to discuss, more to learn in the days to come. I'll be blogging poolside from the Desert Springs JW Marriott, while hopefully blowing through a few new tomes, drafting a few new articles, and sculpting out a few new muscles as I study the 84-asana Advanced Series with Bikram and his wife. The 1940s Esther Williams bathing beauty swimsuit is packed, the yoga booty shorts are stocked up, and I'm planning to budge from my deck chair as little as possible each afternoon, following the 5 or 6-hour yoga training in the mornings. Got a whole travel bag chock full of raw foods, right next to the sunblock, which should hopefully prevent too much raw skin over the course of the week; raw muscles, however, are completely and totally to be expected.

Look for updates throughout the week. You'll hopefully get a few long-overdue bundt updates, as well, as I catch up on life in the evening hours. (There is hot news on that front, as well. Get excited.)

I'll see you in the desert.

Om shanti, kids.

Raw, noun: 13. unrefined sugar, oil, etc.

If you haven't yet been up to the SFMoMA's Rooftop Garden since it opened last month, one of the many treats you'll discover on alighting on the fifth floor is the little Blue Bottle Coffee Co. cafe tucked into the back wall of the garden. And if you take the time to grab a cup, you'll find yourself chuckling on discovering the sweet little pastries they've developed to complement the art and the java buzz out there in the sun and the wind.

This morning's Chron has a little piece about the pastry chef, Caitlin Williams Freeman, who took her sketchpad throughout the museum and drafted ideas for pastries that might echo the works on display. The results? Charming little Mondrian-inspired ganaches, Thiebaud-cakes, and more.

You can't help but love the combo: art, sunshine, pastries, prana, coffee. Seriously all of my favorite things in one place. Read the article; it's twee in the most un-irritating kind of ways. After seeing Freeman's pastries, I'm inspired to make every creation an homage to my favorite modern artists.

Freeman Makes Artistic Desserts at SFMoMA (SFGate)

Raw, adjective: 5. crude in quality or character; not tempered or refined by art or taste: raw humor.

Sometimes I wish I could turn off my internal copy editor.

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions

Every Sunday morning the Chron's Style section features a running blurb called "On the Couch." Usually it showcases a snapshot of a couple sitting - obviously - on their couch at home, and tells their story in little anecdotes: how they got together, why it works, why it doesn't, tough odds, etc.

You'd think this'd be cheesy as hell, but since they started doing this a few years ago, I've come to look forward to reading each week's profile. This being the Bay Area, the couples are generally interesting, traveled and non-traditional; no Ozzie-and-Harriet backstories to be found here. Lots of interracial and same-sex and childless and several-times-married couples, etc. And usually the pieces carry enough of a healthy dose of cynicism to counter their potential sappiness.

So last week's was once again a nice down-to-earth snapshot, and there was a throwaway line from one of the partners that has since stayed with me; it struck me as such a good, well-adjusted, realistic way of looking at relationships, sans unrealistic expectations or future projections or any of the kind of crap that usually dooms a love affair.

Early on, Jim told Sara: "I like being in the world with you."

Isn't that lovely? A present-tense, very Buddhist, very yogic kind of observation, this emphasis on the here-and-now "being" nature of being with someone, none of this crap about what might be or whether it'll still be in 5 years or whether their landed gentry families' estates run parallel to one another's or whether their genes are good for reproducing or whether their decorating tastes might work well together. Just a being in the world together. What a nice vision for a healthy relationship of any kind: friend, family, lover, etc.

I like it.

The time was right, like in the movies (SFGate)

Raw, adjective: 1. uncooked, as articles of food: a raw carrot.

New favorite thing!

Stumbled across this Vegan Parmesan "Cheese" while loading up my basket at Whole Foods yesterday. Dig it. Ingredients: Raw organic walnuts, Red Star nutritional yeast, Celtic Sea Salt, and (naturally), LOVE.

(Erghh.)

Raw, delicious, good on salads and much, much more. Check out the Chipotle Cayenne flavor for some spicier action. (After seeing "Food, Inc." the other day, I'm searching for every possible non-dairy substitute I can find. You'll do the same thing after witnessing the horror show that is the industrialized food system. Get in there.)

Eat in the Raw - Vegan Parmesan

Raw, adjective: 1. uncooked, as articles of food: a raw carrot.

How cute is Paul McCartney? Have you read about the new "Meat-Free Monday" campaign that he and his equally cute daughters Mary and Stella are launching today?

Click on over to their website and read up on how this newest clever campaign aims to cut carbon emissions and improve your health by encouraging people to go veg one day a week (if not more). I always respected Linda McCartney's outspoken vegetarian activism and her passion for animal rights, and it's touching to see how Paul & Co. have carried her work on long after her death.

I try so hard to be a gentle vegetarian, not hostile, not proselytizing, not judgmental, and I usually manage, on the outside, at least; but at my heart, and even though after 13 years of this no-meat action I've learned not to say it out loud, I really do believe it's foolish and socially irresponsible to eat meat anymore, given ALL the vast evidence against it: ethically, health-wise, environmentally, socio-politically, etc. Anyone who says he wants to save the rainforests or solve world hunger or fight cancer or be healthy and then continues to financially support the meat industry and in so doing silently endorse the environmental and human/animal violence it perpetrates is just, well, full of it...period. There's too much research out there showing the direct connections to pretend you're ignorant of this one easy step you could take 3 times a day, every time you put food in your mouth. The personal is indeed political, my friends.

So practice what you preach. Like Sir Paul says, cutting out meat is one of the easiest ways to actually make a difference in climate change and your own health. Seriously. It won't kill you. And even better, it won't kill anything else, either.

(End of rant. Back to gentle veg. Eat a carrot. Then please read Carol J. Adams' The Sexual Politics of Meat or John Robbins' Diet For a New America. You'll get it then.)

Meat Free Monday

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions

Picked this up the other day after having heard decent reviews last spring when it came out in hardcover. Gessen's the editor of the literary magazine, n+1, and it seemed like a quick read, a good dive into fiction again after some heavy time with theory and philosophy and whatnot.

It didn't disappoint. I finished the last few pages Friday morning, and my heart felt hollow for the rest of the day. That heart-echo is always a reliable marker for a good read, my mainstay barometer of authentic writing.

Mark, Sam and Keith - the three main characters, Ivy-educated, too smart for their own good, living on the East Coast, working, living, loving (?) and attempting to navigate their late twenties and early thirties - are certainly the sad young literary men I've known and continue to know, in real life, that is.

Zip through it for a quick and melancholy glimpse at the more interior lives of the dudes you see kicking it with a PBR at that dive bar around the corner. And then feel the echo in your heart when the tumbleweeds blow by at the end. Disappointment, hope, resignation, fear, fondness, indifference, ambition, defeat; it's all there. I think I need a drink.

Sunday Times Book Review: All the Sad Young Literary Men (NYT)

Raw, adjective: 2. not having undergone processes of preparing, dressing, finishing, refining, or manufacture

"Food, Inc." opened here over the weekend, and oh man, am I excited to see this one.

If you've read any Michael Pollan or Eric Schlosser, or are at all familiar with Alice Waters-style food ideologies, none of the material they cover will be a revelation. But the media is comparing this new film version of these food progressives' ideas to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and I can really see why. Now if only this docu will hit the masses the way that one did.

Interviews with filmmaker Robert Kenner abound right now, but I've read two good ones that should give you an introductory glimpse into all the issues going on here: industrial power, the invisible costs of cheap, unhealthy food, the politics of eating local, the potential power of consumer choice, the frightening future implications for the environment, jaw-dropping health problems to come unless things change quickly, and so much more. This is some rich, meaty stuff. No pun intended.

I love how Kenner emphasizes that this is not a Republican/Democrat kind of wedge issue. It's a general human well-being issue, a matter of whether you want to live, and if so, if you want to live well in the doing. Period. One in three Americans born after 2000 developing early-onset diabetes doesn't look like that. It's a quality-of-life issue. As Kenner says in his Salon.com interview, "You don't have to be a Democrat or a Republican to not want to eat meat with fecal matter on it." Zing. Exactly.

Check out the Salon and Chronicle articles linked below; watch the trailer, and keep your eyes open for a screening near you. "Food" opened this weekend in the coastal cities, and should be expanding to wider release soon. I'm seeing it tomorrow - can't wait.



(And is it me, or does Eric Schlosser remind you eerily of Ed Harris? Just sayin'.)

Behind the Food Industry's Iron Curtain (Salon.com)
'Food, Inc.': Documentary on Your Dinner (SFGate)
Official Site - Hungry for Change?

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions

Very little blogging of late because life has been a whirlwind of art and music and opera and dance and cafes and books and sunshine and so on and so forth. Making an effort to catch up. It's nice to see you again.

Tuesday night I had the distinct pleasure of sitting about ten rows back from the orchestra with a bunch of rich aging socialite-types for the opening night of the SF Opera's summer season offering, Porgy and Bess. And dear god, was it worth every extra dollar I shouldn't have spent on those tickets.

Porgy is Gershwin, of course, so I was destined to love it before the curtain went up, but nonetheless: the singing soared, the staging engaged, the sets enthralled, the orchestra sailed, and the standing ovation went on and on. This jewel isn't so often staged, but opera director David Gockley apparently has a soft spot for it, so here we find it, sold out already for its limited June run.

Check out the Chron's review, and try to score a ticket anyway you know how. (Prostitution?? Might be your only bet with this one.)

Opera Review: Powerful 'Porgy and Bess' (SFGate)

Raw, idiom: 14a. in the natural, uncultivated, or unrefined state: nature in the raw.

Last night I went to a modern dance show down in a performance space South of Market, and while the dancing was fantastic, the space itself was stifling and airless. I waited until the last possible minute to come inside from the briskly windy June twilight, and rushed outside as soon as possible when the show was through to catch a deep breath of fresh air again. Inside, the still, hot, stagnant air must have been misery for the dancers onstage, let alone those of us sitting in the audience.

It reminded me how important fresh air is - pranayama, circulation, breath, all of those ideas so central to the yogic project - and it reaffirmed my commitment to spending as much time outside as possible (hello, geography of prana), and it made me think of this quotation from Indian philosopher Krishnamurti, which I read the other day in passing and thrust into my bag, knowing I'd be glad I'd kept it:

"It is essential sometimes to go into retreat, to stop everything that you have been doing, to stop your experiences completely and look at them anew, not keep on repeating them like machines. You would then let fresh air into your mind. Wouldn't you?"

I like this idea of letting fresh air not just into your body, into your breath, into your living room, but into your mind. We could all use a dose of that mental fresh air from time to time. (And aren't the arts a good gateway to that?)

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions

Garrison Keillor has another heart-stopper over at Salon today.

Somehow Keillor manages in his usual melancholy, no-bullshit, Upper Midwestern kind of way to draw plane crashes and rhubarb pie and urbanity and aging and regret into some lovely knot called Chopin, and in so doing, to reflect on the potential of the arts to stop us in our tracks and make us feel alive in bodies that otherwise get so easily distracted by economics and sorrow and summertime parties in the backyard.

Exquisite.

The Heart of Saturday Night (Salon)

Raw, adjective: 11. unprocessed or unevaluated: raw data

Interesting article over at the NYT on the potentially redeeming social implications of blushing. Who knew?

For those of us prone to blushing, it's hard to imagine there's anything good about this annoying tendency. As for me, a quickness to flush remains the last relic of the shyness of my youth; over the years, I've learned well how to be a professional extrovert, having grown up in theater and music, and I harbor no fear of public speaking or teaching. But in spite of all that, I can blush the hell out of myself when it's most inconvenient, e.g. when a hot dude walks into my bar. (Sigh. I have no game. Seriously.)

I even blush vicariously for other people, when I feel their embarrassment; it's ridiculous, and I'm the butt of jokes for it (ask anyone what "Paleta Payaso" means, and they'll tell you it's my red-faced nickname), but I can't do anything about it. So how lovely to read this little pop-sociology article that argues that blushing might be in fact not be such a bad thing, that it might, in fact, lead to fondness and camaraderie and social cohesion.

Charming little piece. Check it out.

Hold Your Head Up. A Blush Just Shows You Care. (NYT)

Raw, noun: 13. unrefined sugar, oil, etc.

Meet my newest babies!

We've had classic summertime fog this week, a thick morning blanket perfect for getting up early and baking in the hush before the clouds burn off. And I've been experimenting with my baby bundt pan.

I call these little guys "Black & Blues," because they're a black/blueberry cream cake recipe. You've seen this recipe in various shades here before; this time I just had some fresh fruit dying in the fridge, so I decided to throw both types of berries in. I frosted the little guys with a basic cream cheese frosting and added fresh berries on top.

Finally, I pulled the arrangement of wild thistle and statice from the coffee table and finished the baby bundts off with lavender, deep purple and mauve blossoms, and a few little sprigs of bear grass.

I'm totally smitten.

Can't wait to share them.

Raw, adjective: 2. not having undergone processes of preparing, dressing, finishing, refining, or manufacture

I'm a little bit in love with this new book, and probably its author, as well, although a good fifteen minutes spent with an excerpt from last week's NYT Magazine will have to suffice until I can get my grubby paws on the tome itself.

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, by Matthew B. Crawford, combines all of the best aspects of the sociology of work with embodiment theory and some economics, too, to create a beautiful little treatise on labor and bodies and work and nourishment and meaning in contemporary America. I've kept the NYT excerpt open in my browser window here all week, reminding me of these themes every time I turn to my laptop, which has meant that all this dishy stuff about the sociology of labor has been swimming around in my consciousness ever since. When I've come home in the wee hours after shaking martinis all night, body sore and tired and spent and covered in vodka (and maybe a little bit glowing and alive?), it's been utterly affirming, thought-provoking and inspirational.

Crawford's work brings to light all of those rich Marxian ideas of alienation and sensuous labor, the hope that it's indeed possible to find work that engages the mind and the spirit and the body all at once, that nourishing kind of labor that feeds the soul and fires the imagination while actually employing the body in its service. Whew. Dreamy. Crawford's got mad intellectual street cred, a Ph.D. in various heady theory and whatnot, lots of teaching and policy experience, but the man now runs a vintage motorcycle repair shop in Richmond, VA, and his book addresses the cultural tangles we find wrapped up with work and manual labor: class and status and education and prestige and capital and skill and freedom, oh my.

When Crawford writes about the physicality of motorcycle repair, the careful subtlety and stealth intellect involved in solving mechanical mysteries, it's hard not to see the poetry, the elegant back-and-forth dance, of this kind of work. And then when he goes on to describe the powerful community ties and relationships inherent to his line of work, you'll see what a great richness might lie in revaluing this kind of denigrated labor.

Read the excerpt - "The Case for Working With Your Hands" - for a good starting point. Enjoy his edgy honesty, his authentic sensibility, his seemingly-subversive call for a revaluing of manual labor in the light of changing economic and technological atmospheres. (Crawford cites Marge Piercy's "To Be of Use," which I've posted below, because it's just so damn good.) Pick up the book itself. Question whether your paper-pushing might feed you the way a little dirt and grime and soreness might otherwise. Dig into these big questions of labor and meaning and life and fulfillment. It's soooo dishy. Mmm.

The Case for Working With Your Hands (NYT Mag)

Raw, adjective: 2. not having undergone processes of preparing, dressing, finishing, refining, or manufacture

To be of use
~ Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

(And that's Diego Rivera's "The Flower Carrier," 1935, of course.)

Raw, noun: 13. unrefined sugar, oil, etc.

Bundt Cake Saturday ... on Friday!

Morning: fresh
Mood: pleased
Music: Dario Marianelli's "Atonement"

And here we are again. I thought I'd throw this puppy up a little early since you've been subject to some major bundt slackage of late. Tomorrow marks another in my series of yoga workshops, so I'm baking early again and will have the cake all set for our lunchtime potluck following the morning asana. I've got about 10 minutes until it's ready to come out of the oven, so let's see if we can't knock a little post out before it finishes.

This recipe is one I'd experimented with several weeks ago on the heels of Ben's Birthday Tower of Bundts. It crashed and burned, to put it gently. Once again I made the overeager mistake of trying to add too much to what would otherwise be a classically simple recipe. After throwing that first version straight into the kitchen trash bin, I tweaked a few things and gave it a second shot this morning. I think we'll be much happier with the results this time around.

We haven't had a chocolate cake in a few weeks, and I've been increasingly curious about the blend of chocolate and fruit flavors of late. Pomegranate has been relatively "hot" for some time now, and I was curious to see how fresh Pom juice might work in a recipe. So, I threw together a few basics and ended up with this delicious-smelling

CHOCOLATE POMEGRANATE BUNDT CAKE

Simple, really. Pretty, too. And I think it should come out quite nicely. You shouldn't have a hard time rounding up the basic ingredients.

INGREDIENTS

1 chocolate cake mix
1 package instant chocolate fudge pudding
4 eggs
1 6-oz container of Rachel's Pomegranate Acai yogurt
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup Pom juice
1/2 teas. vanilla extract.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees; grease and flour your bundt pan. Mix together cake mix, pudding, eggs, yogurt, oil, juice and vanilla. Beat well for 3-4 minutes until smooth. Pour into prepared pan and bake for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove from oven, let cool in pan for 10 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Easy, no? And how 'bout that "Rachel's" Pomegranate Acai yogurt, eh? Must be meant to be. If you can't find a variation on Rachel's yogurt, you can always substitute a basic chocolate yogurt instead. Last time I added blueberries, thinking I'd make a Chocolate Pomegranate-Blueberry cake; let's just say that I got too excited about the berries and added too many, resulting in a gooey, gushy off-balance cake that fell apart in my hands. Lesson being: keep it simple, stupid.

Frosting-wise, this one's easy: just take your basic chocolate frosting and stir in fresh Pom juice until it reaches a good drizzling consistency. (You might want to heat it a bit on the stovetop or in the microwave in the process). Drizzle this over your cooled cake, and then go to town on the decorating.

I vacillated between adding some bright ruby-colored flowers that were dying on the coffee table, fresh raspberries or some rich velvety dried petals I had saved back in my kitchen. I ended up with the latter petals, and added a few switches of bear grass, as well. Perfect.

(Did I mention that I made two of these today? To the left is the heart-shaped version I'll take along to share with my co-workers and regulars tomorrow night; at right is the spiral version - not so unlike a spinning chakra or a yogic mandala symbol - to our final yoga philosophy potluck tomorrow noon.)

Cheers. Enjoy.

Raw, adjective: 1. uncooked, as articles of food: a raw carrot.

Slightly crazy about GoRaw's solid selection of live granola bars these days. Do you know them? The Live Pumpkin Seed bar in particular has quickly become a staple of my 4 o'clock hour: it's so loaded with protein, nutrients and fiber that it just powers me through the evening.

Check out these simple but so-nourishing ingredients:

• Sprouted Organic Pumpkin Seeds
• Sprouted Organic Flax Seeds
• Organic Dates
• Raw Organic Agave Nectar
  
• Celtic Sea Salt

That's it. No extra crap. And 14 grams of protein and under 300 cal. in each one. You really should be eating pumpkin seeds every day - they're mad-good for you, full of minerals, energy-boosting, anti-inflammatory, anti-carcinogenic, and yes, even proven to be libido-boosting. (Um. I will vouch.)

Order some online if you can't find them at your local health-food store. And read up on the vast benefits of pumpkin seeds over at World's Healthiest Foods.

GoRaw website
World's Healthiest Foods: Pumpkin Seeds

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions

Really interesting article over at the WSJ highlighting the ways in which the Obamas are shaking up the art on the White House walls. Out with the dated frontier landscapes; in with the hot modern artists: Diebenkorn, Ruscha (his 1983 piece pictured at left), and Johns, just to name a few favorites that made my eyebrows raise.

Still pinching myself. Can these cultured and arts-conscious people possibly be in the White House? Can Obama possibly have earmarked $50 million in the stimulus package for the National Endowment for the Arts? I'm dreaming.

Read the article for an illuminating peek into the politics of choosing White House art. I had no idea it was such a complicated process: committees and approval and blah blah blah. All for a little inspirational Ruscha on the walls.*

Changing the Art on the White House Walls (WSJ)

*(Did you know he's Nebraska-born? Me neither.)

Raw, adjective: 10. not diluted, as alcoholic spirits: raw whiskey.

Bundt Cake Saturday!  But Monday instead!

Morning: clearing

Mood: beat

Music: the cars on the street outside the bay window

Wow, good morning.  What a weekend.  I shook a lot of martinis for a lot of very content holiday weekend-ing people.  (And am reminded how much I love my job...and my sore muscles...and my resulting full social calendar...but that's another story.)

Basketball playoffs and Carnaval celebrations in the Mission and Spamalot opening downtown, oh my.  So much going on right now.  I dig this time of year, here on the precipice of summer.  The fog has reliably rolled in these past several days, blanketing the City in cold and wind, and I've been rocking the long sleeves/jeans/sweater/coat combo, which can only mean one thing: June is afoot.

Again with the delay this weekend; sorry.  It's not like you're reading this anyway; you're staring into a smoky grill poking hot dogs on skewers wearing cutoffs and a halter top in 80 degree sun right now, not sitting in front of your computer.  Saturday was busy with brunch and people and things going on, and yesterday likewise, so here you go with your [exhausted and slightly hung-over] bundt cake edition.

This week I wanted something summery and citrusy, preferably alcoholic in honor of all the imbibing going down over the weekend, and luckily this recipe fell right into my lap on Thursday when Molly offered it to me out of the pages of the Examiner.  It's easy, quick, and alcoholic: what more could a girl want out of Memorial Day weekend?  So squeeze up some fresh OJ, pour in a handle of vodka, and let's make a

GRAND MARNIER BUNDT CAKE

Grand Marnier - a classic French orange-infused liqueur, if you're not familiar with it - is great for baking, especially with chocolate.  We had a bottle on hand in our ever-expanding liquor cabinet, so I pulled that out and went to town.  The result was pleasingly citrusy and moist.

INGREDIENTS

1 yellow cake mix

1 small box vanilla pudding

1 cup orange juice

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 cup nonfat orange yogurt (I used apricot-mango)

I teas. grated orange rind

3 eggs

1/4 cup Grand Marnier

Preheat oven to 350; grease and flour your bundt pan.  In a mixing bowl, combine cake mix, pudding, orange juice oil, yogurt, orange rind, eggs, and orange liqueur.  Mix until blended.  Pour into prepared pan.  Bake 40 to 45 minutes or until center of cake bounces back when touched.  Remove from oven and cool in pan for 10 minutes; invert to wire rack and cool completely.

If you don't have Grand Marnier, feel free to substitute Cointreau or Triple Sec instead.  I baked this Friday afternoon and let it sit overnight; came home from brunch Saturday and was planning to use the orange marmalade/Grand Marnier glaze outlined in the original recipe.  Once I made it, though, it was disgusting - lumpy and gross - so I threw it out, did some quick Googling and came up with a homemade Grand Marnier buttercream frosting instead.  It was ever-so-much better.

Pretty simple recipe; just trust your own judgment to mix until the right consistency: 

1/2 cup of unsalted butter, melted 

2 cups or so of confectioner's sugar

Splash of Grand Marnier

Splash of orange juice

Just beat that with an electric mixer, adding OJ and liqueur as necessary, until it's thin enough to drizzle.  Then pour over the finished cake.  The light and fluffy glaze has just enough of a hint of Grand Marnier to really give it some spark.  You may want to poke a few holes in the cake with a fork as well to let it soak into the bundt itself.

I had some fresh raspberries in the fridge, so I sprinkled them over the cake, and grated some remaining orange zest on top, as well.  Finally, I added a few shoots of bear grass and zinnia leaves from the arrangement on the coffee table.  And that was it.

Great new recipe.  Consider it for your next summer function.  Cheers.

Raw, adjective: 5. crude in quality or character; not tempered or refined by art or taste: raw humor.

Hehehe.

Thanks to Joseph for sending this one along.  So totally true - that is a rare kind of love, indeed.  Talk about exchanging bodily fluids!!

(And on another note, the website this comes from is seriously hilarious.  Check it out.)

Raw, Idiom: b. Informal. in the nude; naked: sunbathing in the raw

Salon had a great interview with Jessica Valenti the other day, and it's full of fiery potential conversations.  Valenti's got a new book out called The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession With Virginity is Hurting Young Women, and it sounds pretty damn fascinating.

In a cultural-historical moment when Bristol Palin is suddenly the face of abstinence-only sex ed and those bizarro purity ball things are taking place across the Bible Belt, it seems only appropriate to be publishing this book.  Just yesterday I saw a clip from the Tyra Banks Show (erghh, I know, don't ask) in which Tyra interviews a super-"Christian" couple who stayed celibate until marriage and then had so many issues about fear of sex that two years later they still haven't had sex.  HELLO, can you say: time to talk about culture and sexuality?!?  Valenti's book couldn't have come at a better time.

Tracy Clark-Flory's interview with Valenti centers on the idea of an American "virginity fetish," a phenomenon which is of course tied up in all kinds of religious and socio-political crap.  Read the exchange; it's so rich with potential conversations that I found it kind of overwhelming.  It'll probably push at least a few of your own buttons, wherever you stand on all of this.  

Here's a killer blurb, from when Clark-Flory brings up the case of the 22-year-old who's auctioning off her virginity to the highest bidder:

What do you think about the young woman who auctioned off her virginity?

I don't know why we're so surprised by it. This is going to sound terrible, but that's essentially the same thing the abstinence movement is saying: “Hold off until you can auction off your virginity to the person with the biggest ring.” It's really the same thing, only done in a more explicit and economically honest way. I think it's really interesting whom we decide to call whores. [Natalie Dylan] is a whore because she's being really upfront and honest about it. But you would never think to call a woman who is getting married [for financial security] a whore.

Ouch!  But - the double standard - so true.  Valenti hits on the commodification inherent here.  And I really love her for having the balls (ovaries?) to state it the way that she does.  The rest of the interview engages other interesting questions of "purity" and argues that a definition of "virginity" itself doesn't even exist; it's just one of the many social constructs surrounding sexuality that we so often incorrectly take as truth.

Read the interview, get a little fired up, check out the book itself.  Great conversation fodder.

The Virginity Fetish (Salon.com)

Raw, adjective: 2. not having undergone processes of preparing, dressing, finishing, refining, or manufacture

The NYT featured an article about the caretaking lifestyle over the weekend.  If you've got a little flexibility, an open mind and a willingness to get your hands dirty, it's really something to look into.

The article mentions a few of the sweeter deals: former corporate types who quit their jobs to caretake enormous estates and now spend their time diving in coral reefs, chopping down trees and writing novels; that sort of thing.  But on a smaller scale, too, the caretaking option is really viable for most anyone sans small children or an oppressive mortgage.

I first learned about The Caretaker Gazette (which is featured in the article as a means of finding gigs) as a college student, and the connections I found after subscribing to this simple newsletter fueled a year of traipsing around Europe, living with warm and generous people, and having all kinds of adventures that I otherwise wouldn't have known about.  The Gazette offers not only caretaking positions, but house-swaps; you can trade your SF flat for an apartment in Paris for a few weeks if you'd like; it's a pretty great little resource if you'd rather live like a local in a new city than feel like a traveler staying in hotels and eating in diners.

Read the NYT article; check out the website itself for details on subscribing.  And then watch the world open up to you.

Have Mop, Will Travel: A New Wave of Caretakers (NYT)

The Caretaker Gazette

Raw, adjective: 11. unprocessed or unevaluated: raw data.

You don't have to feel guilty for drinking coffee anymore!!  

In fact, your liver might even thank you.

(Thank YOU, LA Times.)

Read This Over Coffee (LA Times)

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions.

Following last night's reading, naturally I stuck around and dropped too much money in the hallowed ground that is Books, Inc.  There really is nothing like a good indie bookstore.  (Ahh, sanctuary...)

One of my killer finds was this series of children's books by Susan Goldman Rubin.  Rubin combines two of my favorite things - modern art and rhythmic writing - to create a series of vibrant and vital children's books that can be used to introduce babies and toddlers to the wide world of modern art.  Naturally I picked up about 16 copies for all the babies in my life.  

The Jacob Lawrence book, which uses a rat-a-tat rhythm alongside 11 of Lawrence's paintings to capture the energy of city life, is pictured at left.  Rubin also features titles using the artwork of Magritte, Warhol, Thiebaud and Matisse.  I'm in love.

Buy a few for the future artists in your life. 

Susan Goldman Rubin: Amazon.com

Raw, adjective: 2. not having undergone processes of preparing, dressing, finishing, refining, or manufacture

Last night I went to an author reading down the hill at Books, Inc., a great local indie bookstore.  Mark Kurlansky was reading from his newest book, Food of a Younger Land, which hits on all of those hot foodie topics: social history, the politics of food, regionalism, seasonality, the onslaught of fast food culture, etc.

Here's a blurb from the Publisher's Note:

Award-winning New York Times-bestselling author Mark Kurlansky takes us back to the food and eating habits of a younger America: Before the national highway system brought the country closer together; before chain restaurants imposed uniformity and low quality; and before the Frigidaire meant frozen food in mass quantities, the nation's food was seasonal, regional, and traditional. It helped form the distinct character, attitudes, and customs of those who ate it.

In the 1930s, with the country gripped by the Great Depression and millions of Americans struggling to get by, FDR created the Federal Writers' Project under the New Deal as a make-work program for artists and authors. A number of writers, including Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and Nelson Algren, were dispatched all across America to chronicle the eating habits, traditions, and struggles of local people. The project, called 'America Eats,' was abandoned in the early 1940s because of the World War and never completed.

Kurlansky spent a lot of dusty hours in the Library of Congress digging into the many abandoned writings that had been commissioned for the 'America Eats' Writers' Project.  His work here gathers his gleanings from those lost pieces.  His spiel was an interesting one - including a laughing mention of some poem or other about "Nebraskans and Their Weiners."  (?!)  I imagine the book contains even more, uh, "questionable" foodie poetry.

Pick it up.

Raw, noun: 13. unrefined sugar, oil, etc.

Bundt Cake Saturday - er, Monday!

Morning: foggy

Mood: content

Music: Kings of Leon

Ok, so we're a little late this weekend.  You'll forgive me for that when you understand that in the last two days we here in SF enjoyed our few 80+ degree doses of sunshine for the next few months.  The fog reliably rolled in this morning and put an end to that, which means catching up on all the indoor shit that I couldn't be bothered to do over the weekend.

After yesterday, I smell like beach, my Sunday Chron is faded and crusty with dried salt water, and I'm still shaking sand out of my shoes.  But even better, the sunburn damage is minimal.  (It only took 30 years, but I finally figured out how to apply sunblock, and liberally.  Good job, Rach.)

Our boy Benny turned 30 over the weekend, and in preparation I spent Friday morning covered in espresso powder and chocolate cake.  The result was particularly pleasing.  Please find at left Ben's Birthday Tower of Bundts.

You'll recognize the recipe from last summer; I tweaked the old Devil's Food Espresso cake, which turned out some 35 mini-bundts (using Baby Rach's mini-bundt pan), and made a chocolate hazelnut coffee icing.  For the frosting, use your basic chocolate recipe, but add 1/4 cup strongly-brewed coffee, 2 teaspoons espresso powder, and 2 T Torani hazelnut syrup.  Heat until fairly liquified, and then drizzle over the cooled cakes.

I toasted 1 cup or so of hazelnuts, candied them with some of the Torani syrup, and then chopped them up after they'd cooled; then I just sprinkled them over the hardening frosting, and they were set.

We had a few sweet little tulips around the house, so I plucked the petals, added a few leaves, and finished off the presentation in the cupcake tower with a few of those flowers.  I was so pleased with how Ben's cakes turned out.  People were really lovely about them, too.  You can look forward to seeing more of the cupcake tower in the months to come.

Happy Monday.

Raw, adjective: 4. painfully open, as a sore or wound.

Did you catch this article in today's NYT?  The one about "plus-size only" yoga classes?

I think it's great.  The first half of the piece basically lays out the reasoning and the need for this kind of class: the fact that walking into a roomful of 90-pound gymnast types is often alienating and intimidating for anyone even remotely heavier or less-flexible than they.  I can't tell you how many times I've heard that excuse from friends - many of whom are athletes in their own right - for why they don't want to try a yoga class: they feel self-conscious, awkward, not flexible enough, not fit enough, not tiny enough, shy.

It's a chicken-and-egg kind of thing.  You don't wait till you're flexible or fit to go; the yoga itself MAKES you flexible and fit, in the going.  As the second half of the article points out, ideally ALL yoga classes should be full of all body types and welcoming to whatever kinds of modifications are necessary.  And there are some teachers who are great with this; over the years I've seen one-armed fellow students rocking Half-Moon with the rest of us, and 83-year-old grandmas with brain tumors holding onto the windowsill in Standing Bow, and all varieties of bodies using towels and blocks to make their bodies stretch into positions they otherwise wouldn't.  And I've been that person in the back row myself; when I sprained my ankle two years ago, I spent two weeks of classes on my ass, modifying the standing postures as I sat on my mat, hungry for at least a taste of the yoga that I wasn't yet healed enough to do.  So there's room for that.  And a taste is better than nothing, right?

But at the same time, as this article argues, there really is something to the idea of creating a safe space for people who feel alienated by the overwhelmingly stereotypical yoga aesthetic.  Even if it's just a matter of providing that supportive introductory sanctuary until the student feels more comfortable walking into a mainstream class at an all-types studio.  If it's a matter of doing the yoga or not doing it, I say: do it.  Whatever it takes.  Be there.  The least-flexible or the most uncomfortable in their bodies are the ones who need and deserve the opening and healing experiences of yoga the most, anyway, right?  And we all stand to benefit from a little bending and stretching, whether that means touching your toes or not.

Striking a Pose for Girth (NYT)

Raw, adjective: 5. crude in quality or character; not tempered or refined by art or taste: raw humor.

In case you've missed it, Yoga Journal has been steadily adding new webisodes of the "Inappropriate Yoga Guy" series over the last few months.  Check out their website here for the trailer and 5 short episodes, most of which were filmed in YJ's offices down the street on Sac'to and Sansome, in the Financial District.

Some are more funny than others; none of them lives up to the first Ogden video, I'll admit, but they're cute nonetheless, and it's interesting to see what the writers do with Ogden's blue-and-yellow Spandex-clad buffoon, strumming a ukulele in the corner office overlooking the streets of SF.

Take a few minutes; have a good laugh or three; promise you'll never be that un-self-aware.  And then go eat some goji berries, please.

Ogden: The Inappropriate Yoga Guy (YJ)

Raw, adjective: 2. not having undergone processes of preparing, dressing, finishing, refining, or manufacture

Bill Cunningham's latest NYT "On the Street" audio slide show offers yet another sweet edition of his folksy photography and commentary.  Check it out for some of the most over-the-top spring hats this side of the Kentucky Derby, trotted out for a recent Central Park fundraiser.  I want them all - especially the rakishly-angled ones, and the lopsided ones pulled low and loaded with buds.

I have to disagree with Billy C.'s conclusion that cardigans are the new cropped jacket, however.  Whether Michelle Obama rocks them to meet the Queen or not, they'll never be more than a suburban throwback to me.  Twinsets be damned; I'll take a structured, double-breasted little 1960s riding jacket over a bland pastel cardigan any day.  Mr. Rogers is the only one who could pull off a cardigan without looking like a sexless suburban housewife.  And there are so many easy alternatives with more panache: a shawl, a poncho, a pashmina, a gauzy wrap, even a little shrug.  Just no cardigans, please.  

Unless you're going for the Carol Brady vibe, in which case, don't forget the pearls.  Or the gay husband.

"On the Street - In Bud" (NYT)

Raw, adjective: 5. crude in quality or character; not tempered or refined by art or taste: raw humor.

Not gonna lie; the obligatory overearnest oozing of canned filial love out of the cultural pores every Mother's Day kind of makes me twitchy.  It's that whole institutionalized-emotional-outpouring-packaged-by-Hallmark-for-your-convenience thing, you know.

Luckily, Salon's Heather Havrilesky - a mom in her own right - feels the same way.  She's got a great send-up of all the syrupy sentiments flooding the interwebs today.  Read her snarky little piece and let it exfoliate away all the sugary nothings stuck to your skin on this Sunday when the restaurants are full of amateur diners and the flower shops all sold out of cheap carnations before noon.

Quick blurb from her ode to the single childless sadsacks who are - sigh - gulping down tequila in hot pants today instead of receiving a crayon-crafted masterpiece from a sweet but sticky little tot:

It makes me feel so incredibly sad, this Mother's Day, to think that not only won't these unhappy singles receive a mass-produced greeting card (which I now recognize is a deeply significant expression of heartfelt emotion), but they might never know the real meaning of love, which involves doing six loads of laundry in a single day. My heart breaks to think they might never experience the indescribable joy and immense philosophical insights that arise from wiping the same little butts over and over again!

Hee hee.  Read it.  You'll smirk.  And then, for realz, go hug your mom or mother figure or Mother Earth or motherboard.

Mothering Heights (Salon)

Raw, adjective: 5. crude in quality or character; not tempered or refined by art or taste: raw humor.

Did you see Obama's remarks at last night's White House Correspondents' Association dinner?

Sometimes I think we're all just still getting used to the idea of having a POTUS who's competent and resoundingly well-received.  And then I see things like this, and am even moreso knocked over by the fact that he's also suave and self-mocking.  With a hot wife.  (Oh, and capable of being hilarious.  That Rahm crack about halfway through...)

Raw, adjective: 1. uncooked, as articles of food: a raw carrot.

Bundt Cake Saturday!

Morning: not anymore

Mood: thoughtful

Music: Jimmy Eat World

Ohhhhhh, I'm really happy with how this one turned out.

After being stuck in a bit of a baking rut there for awhile, last week's Betty Crocker extravaganza really re-inspired me.  I'm feeling pretty en fuego right now, totally fueled up on fresh flowers and seasonal fruit and delicious extracts and new flavors.  It's nice to feel so creative again.  I think it has something to do with spring, too.  May rocks my world.  Blossoms everywhere.  And peonies in abundance.  Hello, world.

So this morning I crafted a new recipe, inspired by a pretty little cherry-pear tart that our girl Jilly brought in last week from La Boulange.  The cherries gave such a zing! of a flavor, I had to find way to use a big bag of bings in bundt form.  And I think this simple recipe is just the ticket.

[That's Bob Fosse above, of course; the first thing I think of when I hear "cherries" is his classic choreography to "Life is Just A Bowl of Cherries," so it only seems fitting to have him here.  For the record, there's a helluva lot of godawful cherry art out there.  Beware the Google image search for "life bowl cherries."  It'll make you throw up a little in your mouth.  Aprons and Mary Englebreit and kitschy paintings, oh my.]

So after loading up on a great bag of cherries and a few ripe pears, I modified a classic, my true-blue cream cheese recipe that has worked so well in so many forms, and came up with this vibrant 

CHERRY-PEAR ALMOND BUNDT CAKE

Delicious-sounding, no?  I thought so.

INGREDIENTS

1 package yellow cake mix
2 small packages cheesecake pudding
1/4 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup fresh pears, finely chopped
1 cup fresh cherries, pitted and chopped
Handful of slivered almonds
Cream cheese frosting (make your own or buy some, lazy!)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour a 10 inch Bundt pan. In a large bowl, stir together cake mix, pudding and sugar. Make a well in the center and pour in eggs, cream cheese, oil and almond extract. Beat on low speed until blended. Scrape bowl, and beat 4 minutes on medium speed. Stir in pears and cherries. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.

Easy enough, right?  The best part was pitting the cherries.  Talk about meditative.  Chop one, eat one; chop one, eat one.  (Heh.  I'd forgotten how delicious fresh cherries are.)  Make sure not to go overboard with the fruit, though; it's easy to want to dump in as much as possible, but if you add more than the called-for 2 cups, your cake will be mushy and crumbly.  (Not that I know from experience or anything.  It only took me about six overeager months to learn that important lesson.)

I turned the finished cake out on the wire rack and ran to yoga while it cooled.  A few sweaty hours later, I mixed up a quick cream cheese frosting, adding 1 teaspoon of almond extract to make it match the cake flavor.  I'm pretty in love with almond these days; the frosting smelled divine.  Heat that up a bit to soften it a little, and then drizzle it on top of the cake.  (Throw your slivered almonds into the oven at 350 for about 5 minutes to toast them while you do this.)

Now, the best part: making it pretty.  Sprinkle a handful of the toasted slivered almonds on top.  Add a few fresh cherries here and there for nice splashes of vibrant red.  Finally, I have some fresh spring stock flowers on my kitchen countertop right now, so I pulled off a few leaves and added them for a touch of green.  

And there's your Cherry-Pear Almond bundt.  Not gonna lie - I'm crazy about it.

Cheers.

Raw, idiom: 14a. in the natural, uncultivated, or unrefined state: nature in the raw.

The SFMoMA's brand-new Rooftop Garden opens this weekend!

Come with me tomorrow afternoon for a special Member Preview, or bring Mom on Sunday when the garden opens to the public.  Starting on Tuesday, Blue Bottle coffee will be pouring mugs in the sunshine, so you can bring your latest good read, grab a cup of joe and while away the hours amongst the sculptures overlooking the City.

See you there.  I can't wait.

Rooftop Garden: A New Space for SFMoMA

Raw, adjective: 11. unprocessed or unevaluated: raw data.

I woke up this morning and scrambled groggy-eyed to my laptop so that I could check in and see how my dear ones' early-early-early morning C-section had gone over in Eastern Standard Time.  And how happy I was to meet the little girl who's the newest favorite baby on my ever-growing list of favorite babies.  (Welcome, Josephine!  We're so happy you're here.)

Happier, then, was I to see that she'll go into the world bearing such a classic and original name.  (Not that I ever doubted you, Hearns).  But there are just so many, erghh, ugly ones out there right now.  Missteps.  Sweet naive young parents who think they're coming up with the world's most original name when in fact every small child you meet in a stroller on the street is bearing some variation of that name.  (Kaden?  Jaden?  Really?)  

Witness: Madison.  Or Madeleine.  The latter especially is an exceptionally lovely name that would've been so original a decade or so ago, but has since been overtaken by misguidedly "creative" alternative spellings and will soon be the "Jennifer" of the post-millennial generation.

And I swear: if I meet one more "Ava" here in SF - and have to pretend I haven't met 64 before her, all wearing the same infant onesies - I'll gag.  What a beautiful name.  What a creative idea.  Ten years ago.  And now: mainstream hell.  Just like "Emma."  Which, according to the SSA baby name list (conveniently released today), rides atop the list of names for 2008.  I'm sorry, but that name hit its cultural apex when Ross and Rachel on "Friends" named their spawn Emma.  In 2002.  At that point, saturation.  No mas.  That's it.  You really wanna name your kid after some washed-up sitcom seven years past its prime?

Read the list.  Pray that yer kid's name isn't on it.  The boys' names tend to be more unchanging; lots of old-school Biblical names and whatnot, interesting when you look at the sociology of baby names, which has long shown that boys' names tend to be more classic and girls', more trendy.  Note that "Isabella" is #2.  Nod your head and recall all the babies you've met in the last year whose well-meaning parents thought they were being super-creative by naming their tots "Isabella" and calling her "Bella."  Be glad you didn't.

And be glad the wide-eyed babies in your life* are called sweet things like "Zoe" and "Henry" and "Mia" and - the newest! - "Josephine."**

Emma Overtakes Emily as Top Baby Name For Girls (AP)

* This is also an excellent excuse for me to post a gratuitous photo of my adorable and impeccably-named goddaughter, Rachel D.  Don't you just wanna squish those cheeks?

** Love it, Team Hearn.  Congrats.

Random shit I wanted to post that has no feasible connection whatsoever to any definition of "rawness"

I was just minding my own business yesterday at Whole Paycheck, mingling with the snap peas and the hippie boys, when look what I found:

Ostrich Eggs!!

I laughed out loud.  These things are as big as my head - and heavier.  It took two hands to pick one up.  The sign says (well, other than advertising the low, low price of $29.99 EACH) that they're from some ostrich farm in Tehachapi.  You're supposed to "hit lightly with a hammer or metal garlic press" (!!) to open and "cook like a regular egg - scramble or hard boil (2 hours)."  Two hours!  My god.

Brunch at my house, folks.  Come on over.  Scrambled ostrich eggs for everybody.  Hee.

Raw, adjective: 11. unprocessed or unevaluated: raw data.

I really love this latest Salon interview with writer Lenore Skenazy, who's penned an audacious new book arguing that in spite of news reports and fearmongering, children today aren't any less safe than they were 30 years ago, and as a result, we should back off and let them run more freely than the contemporary culture of fear would normally encourage.

Free Range Kids strikes me as such a welcome alternative to the normalization of "helicopter parenting" that seems to be increasingly ubiquitous.  Maybe it's a result of growing up in a relatively idyllic Great Plains college town where we walked to school at 6 or 8 and spent hours on rickety bikes pedaling from park to park, but this growing culture of parenting fear - assigning cell phones and curfews and GPS trackers and whatnot - makes me shudder inside.  That freedom to roam until dusk brought the locusts and the fireflies out was the best part of being a kid.

The whole interview is worth a read for Skenazy's refreshingly down-to-earth opinions, but I especially appreciate what she has to say at the very end:

...we've started to think of our kids as the most vulnerable, the most endangered, the least competent, the most, uh, dumb generation in history that needs the most supervision the most hours of the day, literally, than anybody until now.

And when you get a little perspective, you can take these little baby steps and say: "OK, maybe I can let my 9-year-old trick-or-treat [by himself]. After all, at this age if he were living in the Philippines, he'd be running his own vegetable stand, or he'd be riding on the back of a moped with three other kids and a chicken trying to go get dinner for mom."

I also think about what we do give our kids when we give them the chance to do something themselves: to get themselves out of boredom, to get themselves to school, to become competent and to become worldly, and actually be safer in the long run.

This is so absolutely true.  I think her emphasis on competence and worldliness is so key; the most liberating gifts my parents ever gave me were tied to the fact that, well, they left me alone to run out into the world and make a few mistakes.  And the result of that kind of freedom to run is a fearlessness about taking on new situations, a self-sufficience that eliminates any daunting quality of moving solo to a new country or continent or even just across town.  I have great disregard for the kind of helicopter parenting that refuses to let this so-important independence bloom.

On another note, I was also glad to see Skenazy mention the increase in fear-based paraphernalia out there that pressures parents into buying useless crap (e.g. kneepads and helmets for toddlers!) and guilts them into feeling like they're not "good enough" or "loving enough" if they don't.  Good parenting isn't about being well-stocked with the latest consumer contraptions.  It's about knowing when to tighten and when to loosen the reins.  And a rejection of the cultural mandate to parent based on fear/worry is a fundamental part of that.

So chill out, my dears.  Yer kids will be just fine.  And they'll thank you for it someday when they're not afraid to pick up and move to Tahiti.

Stop Worrying About Your Children! (Salon)

Raw, adjective: 9. disagreeably damp and chilly, as the weather or air: a raw, foggy day at the beach.

"Bundts on Board!"

You didn't get any bundt action last Saturday because I was busy cake-wrangling my way down to Santa Cruz.  After padding into the kitchen in my stocking feet right around daylight, I turned on the coffee pot, preheated the oven and emerged some 9 hours or so later sporting frosting in my hair, red food coloring under my fingernails, and a helluva lot of pastel teacakes.

Some of my peers are very busy right now buckling newborns and infants into child safety seats.  I buckle bundts.  Evidence at left.  The winding roads on the way to SC were no match for the solid gold protection of those backseat belts.  An hour and a half into the drive, the birthday bundts emerged unscathed, no worse for wear, in spite of the rain and the bumpy highways.

None of the recipes below are new to you; I've detailed them all here before, so you can find them in the archives if you want specifics.  However, bearing a new teacake pan, lots of cream cheese frosting and a few tiny bottles of liqueur, I switched some things up and discovered a few interesting new twists on some of my most well-received recipes.  Pics and info below.

Lemon cheesecake teacakes with a lemon cream cheese frosting and an almond cream cheese drizzle.  Garnished with sliced strawberries, mint, and fresh blueberries.

Variation on the Chocolate Raspberry Fudge Red Velvet recipe I've featured here before.  I added more chambord this time, and used a vanilla buttercream frosting, with fresh raspberries and lilac leaves to garnish.  The fresh flowers in the middle are called "stock."  They're one of my favorites - very fragrant - but tend to wilt quickly and leave an especially pungent smell.  Be careful using them to decorate unless you have a fairly short window of time before cutting the cake.

These are coconut cream baby bundts.  (Thanks to the Durbanos and Baby Rach for this great pan.)  I topped them with a coconut milk frosting, fresh coconut flakes, and more fresh blue/blackberries, raspberries and mint leaves.  (Fresh coconut makes for such a pretty garnish.  I really recommend using this as often as you can get away with it.)

Berry Cream - another variation on a theme.  This time I baked blueberries, blackberries and raspberries into the cream cheese recipe, using the spiral Heritage pan.  Topped it with an almond cream cheese frosting, fresh berries and mint, a few lilac leaves, and one last piece of the stock.

I still have several pretty white Gerbers and a stem of lilacs blooming on my desk that I'd like to throw into the mix here.  Might have to bake a cake and send it up the hill to my friend N, who's slowed by chemo right now.  Lilacs especially make a beautiful filling for the hole in the middle of the bundt.

(Now that I've just gone all Betty Crocker on you, I need to go balance this out with some hard liquor and pole dancing and maybe a little motorcycle riding.  Preferably in assless leather chaps.  Sayonara, bitches.)

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions.

My super-talented bro-in-law is celebrating his album release this week.  Meander on over to his site to check out the action.  Go here to give a few tracks a listen.  (I'm partial to "Better Together.")  Sit back and enjoy his funky roots rock.  Then buy 16 copies and distribute them amongst your favorite friends, baristas and bus drivers.

Cheers, Paul!

Shouldn't Be Said

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions

Have you read any Adrienne Rich?

If you haven't, well, my love, you need to get yourself to a library, immediately. Poet and essayist Rich's "On Claiming an Education" changed my life as a quietly political 16-year-old, and her "Compulsory Heterosexuality" continues to be a must-read on every syllabus in any kind of class dealing with bodies, sexuality and society. That piece in particular is worth your time whether you identify as hetero/homo/bi/asexual or anything in-between.

That said, Rich has a new collection of essays out right now, and the Chron's Book section gave it a look in last Sunday's edition. A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society, 1997-2008 gathers a number of Rich's recent writings on poetry, social justice, aesthetics and activism. Reviewer Michael S. Roth writes that in her work, "Rich continues to refuse to separate the artistic from the political, and she articulates in powerful ways how a truly radical political agenda can draw upon an aesthetic vision." (Whew. Is it wrong that I'm a little turned on right now?)

Give it a read.

'A Human Eye,' by Adrienne Rich (SFGate)

Raw, adjective: 11. unprocessed or unevaluated: raw data.

Today there's someone I know sailing down the interstate in a sweet-ass VW van listening to bad talk radio and chucking sunflower seed shells out the window.  His left arm is sunburned from hanging out the window, but it's all good because the sun is shining and the wind's whipping and the horizon just keeps stretching ahead.  And I'm sitting in the passenger seat, bare feet on the dashboard, right arm browning in the sun, and it's a long haul, but a good one, and the sun just keeps shining, so we just keep driving.

Raw, idiom: 14a. in the natural, uncultivated, or unrefined state: nature in the raw.

The wind in SF this week has been straight-up prairie wind.  It blows me down the hill, it blasts me off the sidewalks into the street, it whips my hat off and spirals it down the block.  It's a tease, a flirt, bearing memories and musings.  And man, do I need a dose.

Sigh.  Willa C. will have to do.

             ~ 

Prairie Spring

Evening and the flat land,
Rich and somber and always silent;
The miles of fresh plowed soil,
Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness;
The growing wheat, the growing weeds,
The toiling horses, the tired men;
The long empty roads,
Sullen fires of sunset, fading,
The eternal, unresponsive sky.
Against all this, Youth,
Flaming like the wild roses,
Singing like the larks over the plowed fields,
Flashing like a star out of the twilight,
Youth with its insupportable sweetness,
Its fierce necessity,
Its sharp desire,
Singing and singing,
Out of the lips of silence,
Out of the earthy dusk.

-- Willa Cather

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions.

Another crackling film for you to see once you schlep yourselves out to Enlighten Up:

Neil LaBute's Your Friends and Neighbors.

And no, it's not just because I've had this LaBute thing going on lately.  And no, it's not just because Aaron Eckhart is my latest movie-star boyfriend for whom, although I'm not really the marrying type, I'd quickly slap on a ring.  And no, it's not just because it's dark and cynical and smart and sexy.  Although that's part of it.

Really, you should see it.  Released in 1998, so it feels a little dated, if only in the fashions and the fact that most of these ensemble players have moved on to legit celebrity-sized careers.  Ben Stiller, Catherine Keener, Amy Brenneman, Jason Patric, and of course the above-mentioned Eckhart all shine in LaBute's comedy-drama of manners.  It's dark and it's anti-suburban and it's, well, yeah, I'd say it's pretty damn anti-marriage, and it's realistic and sharp and snappy and snarky and so frankly, well, frank about sex and relationships and gender and the fact that we talk not enough or too much or not about the right things, and on and on and on.

Watching this, I thought to myself: my god, I know these people.  The acting is nuanced and sharp and the writing even moreso; LaBute is so unflinchingly in touch with the real textures of relationships, particularly as related to the complexities of sex and monogamy and plain irritation, that I just laugh even thinking about the incomparable drivel being produced by other rom-com writers like Nancy Meyers right now.

Seriously, watch it.  And not just for the usually-dreamy Eckhart's transformation into mushy suburban mustachio'd mode.  But for LaBute in fine form.  And a searing look at YOUR friends and neighbors.  Because you know this is the really gritty and delicious stuff of life going on behind the tight smiles on the stiffly-posed family Christmas card photos that land in your mailboxes every autumn.  You know it.

Delicious ambiguity.  LaBute scores again.

Raw, adjective: 10. not diluted, as alcoholic spirits: raw whiskey.

Gary Regan writes some consistently excellent articles for the Chron under the byline of "The Cocktailian," keeping tabs on the local bar scene.  I enjoy getting his take on the latest hits and misses in what is one of the hotter cocktail markets in the country.  I missed this particular piece while out of town last week, but luckily spent a few minutes rifling through my old copy of the Sunday Chron and stumbled upon Regan's "keeper" of an article: his "10 Essential Cocktails You Can Make at Home."

Cut it out, paste it on your refrigerator, make yourselves comfortable with a few of these basic recipes.  Regan offers some terrific tips on how to stock a decent home liquor cabinet, how to shake a few of these most classic cocktails, and how not to mess them up in the process.  Watch for a few digs in his writing style - I like the way he lets his personality shine through.  And that old-school daiquiri recipe of his - sans blender and faux-fruit flavors, naturally - looks like a winner.  Might be the next Manhattan-style comeback craze?  Perhaps.

Cheers.

10 Essential Cocktails You Can Make at Home (SFGate)

Raw, adjective: 5. crude in quality or character; not tempered or refined by art or taste: raw humor.

Sign spotted on my usual Monday evening walk to class.  

(Just another day in paradise.)

Raw, adjective: 6. ignorant, inexperienced, or untrained: a raw recruit.

Yesterday I attended  a preview screening of the new film Enlighten Up!, which opens here in the Bay Area this weekend.  We were also lucky enough to have a few minutes of Q&A with the director, Kate Churchill, following the screening.

While reviews seem to be somewhat mixed, the piece being what it is - I really enjoyed it.  And I recommend taking an hour or two to catch it yourselves if you have time.  Whether you're a yoga expert or a novice, it's a pleasant little travelogue-style introduction to the questions of transformation, spirit and body inherent in the whole yoga project.

The obligatory website blurb:

Over 16 million Americans practice yoga today, and it has become a multi-billion dollar industry. For some people it is a workout, for others it is a spiritual path, and for others it is a great business. Filmmaker Kate Churchill is determined to prove that yoga can transform anyone. Nick Rosen is skeptical but agrees to be her guinea pig. Kate immerses Nick in yoga, and follows him around the world as he examines the good, the bad and the ugly of yoga. The two encounter celebrity yogis, true believers, kooks and world-renowned gurus. Tensions run high as Nick's transformational progress lags and Kate's plan crumbles. What unfolds and what they discover is not what they expected. Featuring B.K.S. Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, Norman Allen, Sharon Gannon, David Life, Gurmukh, Dharma Mitra, Cyndi Lee, Alan Finger, Rodney Yee, Beryl Bender Birch, Shyamdas, Diamond Dallas Page and many more!

Nick Rosen makes for a pretty dreamy guinea pig, and Churchill & Crew's many jaunts across the world to meet these gurus and practice at various studios offer an entertaining glimpse of the international yoga scene.  Though Churchill's project doesn't necessarily end the way she thought it might, the real yogic lesson of the film might in fact lie in that very lack of resolution.

I tried to scribble a few notes in the dark theater, which pretty much just resulted in a few pages of illegible chicken-scratches, but the few juicy bits I did retain are worth remembering.  These themes will not be unfamiliar to anyone immersed in any kind of yoga study.  They include, among others, 

• The idea that the only thing that will ever really transform you is practice.
• That the physical is often the starting point for spiritual transformation.
• Dharma Mitra emphasizing that the real gurus and saints always say: "I am nothing."  "I don't know."
• "Don't do anything for your small self."
• Charisma isn't enough.  Rosen wants facts.
• In my favorite line of the film, guru Norman Allen tells Rosen the best way to achieve enlightenment (moksha - liberation), in the Tantric worldview: "You know what you need to do?  Go fuck yourself."
• David Gordon White says the old-school Indian yogi was a sinister wandering sorcerer type, a dangerous vagabond, someone to be feared.  I dig this.  Screw that Lululemon soft wanky crap.  I knew there was much more edge to this whole thing than the softies would like to admit.
• Diamond Dallas Page's hilariously racy alternative to the ubiquitous "Namaste" greeting.  (I won't ruin it for you here.  See the film.)
• "Whole life.  That's practice."  Says Pattabhi Jois, father of Ashtanga yoga.
• Laughing yoga.  So much like theater, in many ways.  Emphasizing the playfulness of being in a body.  The ability to put on and take off identities and identifications.  The idea that one becomes spiritual by "raising your spirits, and raising someone else's spirits" via collective laughter.
• The danger of throwing the word "transformation" around.  What the hell does that mean, anyway?  We need to keep asking this.
• Yoga brings Rosen to reflect on his relationships with his family.  Isn't that an interesting byproduct of his many travels and classes.
• The idea that the "real" yoga is not asana, but is instead bhakti yoga.  (Bhakti = God).  
• "Questions are never stupid.  Answers are stupid."
• "It is not important what you are doing.  It is important WHY you are doing."
• The importance of being one's true self.  "As much as possible, try to get rid of what you are not." I like this.  It draws up the notion of neti-neti, once again.
• Happiness is not outside.  It is inside ourselves.

Ok.  So none of those ideas are probably unheard of in these parts.  But there was something lovely about seeing them worked through onscreen in the midst of beautiful vibrant colors, lush cinematography and meandering music.

Rosen wrote a quickie piece for the HuffPost a few weeks ago about his experience making the film.  Give it a read here.  And then wander on over to the official film site for a trailer, video clips, and details on the film's run here in SF and beyond.  Official opening weekend is Friday, and Churchill will be making a few more appearances at screenings, so take a close look at the flier at left for details on that.  There's also a brief interview with Rosen and Churchill over at NPR if you feel so inclined.

Going to the Mat: Confessions of a Yoga Guinea Pig (HuffPost)  

Enlighten Up! Official Site

Film Asks if Nirvana Through Yoga is Possible (NPR)