The Empty Nestrance: journal by Lenore Weiss

Two Places

2012-01-02T10:40:00.000-08:00

Louisiana, home of a thousand Family Dollar stores
and cotton farms planted with corn for ethanol
I think of you as I return to Oakland,

report for jury duty with a hundred
others waiting to be screened for weapons,
swiping smart phones as if they could save us.

Louisiana, camouflaged in brown leaves
on a breast pocket of lottery tickets and cigarettes.
Another weekend I drive to my house,

pass a coral reef that covers the hills of San Francisco,
in window panes of white waves,
I'm lost in a place between two places

where fresh produce arrives from WalMart
and everyone can be a po'boy at the gas station.
Louisiana, my hand shimmers in your bayou,

in the Ouachita River, where grandmothers
mounded themselves like almonds
along barges of earth.

A bay and a cypress and the word hosanna.
We open doors in two places.
Our hearts meet in one place.

Trickster

2011-11-30T22:26:00.000-08:00

I want to out-run the clock, look up from my book, see

there’s 10 minutes to throw on a pair of jeans and a sweater,

grab car keys from the dining room table and swing the laptop

over my shoulder. Hi-ho I keep on going.

This morning I had two cups of coffee, watched the news,

spoke with my boyfriend from six states away and finished reading

the newspaper. Time to tap dance on the kitchen tile,

unscrew energy efficient lightbulbs and note what kind of hybrid bird

flies out before I grab the laptop.

Inside the car like an otter beneath a hood of water watching

the sky pull itself into threads of orange taffy, my mind backstrokes

to Chicago and the punch press factory

where I met Johnnie with mahogany skin and straightened hair

and Eola from New Orleans who said:

Life's like powder on a powder puff, just ready to blow off,

when a lugging machine punched a hole through my finger

and the foreman delivered me to the hospital where I spent the evening

filling out worker's compensation forms and didn’t make my quota;

something about the thinness of the sky today,

how an airplane balances on a diagonal wire of exhaust,

or the way Chow Yun Fat did in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,

walking on tree tops, which is a good trick if you know how to do it.

Charon Speaks to Psyche

2011-11-28T18:17:00.000-08:00

I lived in shadow

along the edge of wet stairs,

watched stone lose out

to the incursion of lapping insistence,

a place where I gathered myself, a sensation

of cold and sometimes not so cold, even warm

as sun bullied its way through iron railings.

Which way? I heard myself ask,

no longer a barnacle stationed for eternity

at some breathing crack
I was never going to leave.

I grew up as the Gatekeeper,

the one who ferries shadows across the chasm,

back and forth I watched men and women,

lips drawn into a horizon as they dredged fear

from a bucket of cold blood, while I,

who knew the water like the back of my hand,

sang a dirge and understood how some things can only be faced.

Never have I spoken until you bordered my craft,

etching rivulets with your finger across the saw-toothed waves,

consumed by a hope that toys with us all and makes fools famous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon_(mythology)

http://www.goddessgift.com/goddess-myths/greek_goddess_psyche.htm

Ode to Oaktown

2011-11-13T15:30:00.000-08:00

I wired my sorrows into Klieg lights and let them shine all over Oakland,
city of Black Panthers and Hells Angels and General Strikes,
driving from the Bronx in a green Toyota Corolla searching.

Was it freedom, or a film I wanted to make something of myself,
took refuge in Oakland's Lake Merritt, caught breadcrumbs and fish,
a wayfarer dressed in boots and dreams of Fifth Avenue Peace Parades

to a West Coast of two-story buildings and pastel houses
and summers where the sun did not bother to get up until noon.
Okay, I said to myself, you have to begin somewhere. That was my beginning.

Oakland Raiders won the SuperBowl.
I sailed a stroller around Lake Merritt and through her Garden Center,
past houses with calla lillies that hugged grey gas meters

even though they were ugly. Oakland took off her clothes slowly
like a woman who wants to know she is loved. I followed her trail in Joaquin Miller
filled with monkey flowers and second growth redwoods,

nuggets of neighborhoods and librarians, the Oakland Museum
surrounded by a moat of golden koi where children entered into culture,
art, and people who hung on walls together.

Let me park my car one last time and walk to the Paramount,
remember old hotels and faded curtains stuck on brass rings,
where restaurants and condos have become the hope of a business community

that wishes for homicides to fade like fog,
a place I've come to know with gunshots and fireworks,
the way my history has been pressed into a new release.

Oaktown
City of Oakland
Lake Merritt

The 99% in Crossett, Arkansas

2011-10-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

When you're in the belly of the monster

You don't consider if your lipgloss is sticky

Or if your hair spray is crunchy

Or how Steve Jobs, if he found himself in the same situation,

Would've connected the dots.

Even when distraction and evil influence rule the day,

And the EPA is scheduled to show up at the ash pit where you eat your lunch,

And you know that the company the contractors you work for have fungled everything,

Financial titans who threaten to eat their own children,

Who have tempted the spawning multitudes with their own extinction,

In the great red light of the world's afternoon, inside yourself

There's a quick change artist

Who can do things accidentally on purpose,

You take a leak on the opposite side of the pond,

Hang your goggles from a side-view mirror,

Pray to gods of the Internet and magicians of High Hogwarts,

This better turn out good.

Blood Thinner

2011-10-11T22:09:00.000-07:00

Owner of the house. Senile. A hospice nurse milks the catheter. Packs ice cubes into his stomach pours a cool one. He starts drinking a Blood Thinner With Water. In the meantime, tenants write out checks to Malthus. A realtor for short sales and foreclosures. Karrena is a single mom who collects rent for the house and has two kids. A fish tank bubbles in every room.

Just One More Thing: For Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T19:14:00.000-07:00

The lawn was trampled to mud on a rainy day when the skies appropriately opened up and poured forth unseasonal rain throughout the Bay Area; people were taking pictures with their iPhones, speaking quietly, some crying, visually moved by the death of a brilliant innovator who meant so many things to so many.

I visited 1 Infinite Loop today to see the shrine gathering there for Steve Jobs, Flowers, candles, pumpkins with writing, pictures, boxes of iPads and iPhones, free organic apples that are in the cafeteria every day for employees to take from large galvanized buckets to place on trays along with their lunch or dinner. The memorial included many Apples with a bite removed, all of us Eve in search of knowledge.

I work at Apple as a long-term contractor in a group that earlier in the week was getting ready for the launch of the latest “black box” project. Vaguely, like many I assumed it was about introducing the iPhone 5 to the world. The media decried the substitution of a more powerful iPhone 4S for the really big announcement. Nice phone, but so what?

The next day I was notified by my group not to drive down to Cupertino from Oakland because the area was swarming with police officers and SWAT team members who were hunting Shareef Allman. Allman had gone on a rampage following a safety meeting at a local quarry, and had killed three people and wounded six, a single father whom all his neighbors and friends said hated violence and produced a local cable show about conflict resolution.

Fast forward to the afternoon when I received the email from the manager of our group, “This is a sad day for Apple…”

I fell back down on my couch. It was a moment in my life similar to the time when I saw scribbled on a blackboard, “President Kennedy has been shot.” While everyone knew that Steve was seriously ill and had stepped down as CEO in August, the news hit me in the gut.

This is was a person of my generation, someone whom I as far as I could tell, had helped to shape the idealism and revolutionary spirit of the sixties with his own sense of purpose. I saw so many who had worked toward peace and justice in the civil rights and anti-war movement, sign on to a new cause that offered communication and a collective ethic as opposed to the stultifying hierarchy that had held this country in a top-down grip. This was “counter-culture.”

Jobs understood that creativity comes from people working together. He helped to foster that environment.

It took me years to be able to work at Apple. Thank you, Steve. For everything.

Grandmother's Tattoo 6

2011-09-07T07:58:00.000-07:00

She listens to his notes dapple the cottonwoods

with sadness and laughter that reaches

toward outstretched leaves.

When Mew finally raises his face from the chin rest,

he signals with his bow toward her.

She must play her part and find Section P.

She says good-bye and walks, the same way he told her,

alongside a rock wall covered with moss.

Her gold hoop earrings play hide-and-seek in her dark hair.

She doesn’t want to get lost.

What if she meets her grandmother?

Will she be angry at Maggie for losing the tattoo?

The stone wall keep winding around. Stone steps go down.

There is a woman whose skin is the color of moonlight.

In shopping aisles of the dead, she says,

waving her fingers at a swarm of fruit flies,

some of us get marked up and some of us get marked down.

We all get buried in the same store.

Now that’s what I call a bargain!

Grandmother?

Maggie?

Her grandmother’s silver hair is stuck at the back of her neck with bees.

Life is a seasoning that tenderizes us,
breaks down our rough edges so we can bend.
Come closer. Tell me how you’ve been.

Maggie traveled this far on her skateboard to get some place,

goes there now.

Maggie says her mom died several years ago.

Dad is gone for most of the time,

sits in a restaurant and drinks wine.

Worst of all, Maggie has lost grandma’s tattoo.

Does grandma fill up like a water balloon and burst?

Instead she explains how during the war,

she buried herself beneath a haystack and escaped,

tattooed numbers above her wrist.

Until the other day when a messenger boy

gave her the same tattoo. That’s when numbers joined each other like Siamese Twins and shared bloodlines.

Where each number began and the other stopped,

stuck together like teeth to candy.

Grandma scooped something from the dirt,

fixed it above Maggie’s ankle.

No numbers in the red.

One world.

There on her ankle, a glowing orb.

No countries, boundaries.

My granddaughter, tell them.

Grandmother's Tattoo 5

2011-08-23T11:54:00.000-07:00

Facing west, there are aisles through gravestones.

Everywhere, the same thing, cottonwoods blazing yellow.

A peacock sweeps the ground with his tail.

Hi-ho, he says, and flutters his fanny.

Maggie thinks this is a 3-D animation

or maybe the Pasty Lump Lady with more tricks.

His reedy voice is like a clarinet's.

Maggie misses her grandmother's tattoo,

the only remnant that remains of her family,

her one connection stolen by a boy

with eyes the color of melting honey.

Or does she miss the boy?

I'm lost, she explains,

gestures toward the broken skateboard,

and I’m on foot.

The peacock extracts a long feather from his tail.

My gift to a girl,

guaranteed to get you wherever you need to go.

He swishes his feathers and disappears into the yellow cottonwoods.

Maggie waves the feather and hopes for magic.

Nothing doing.

She wants to return to a delta of square one,

to pop-up from the middle like a seed from a plum.

But the Pasty Lump Lady has stolen her hunger.

Even so, there’s more to Maggie than pancakes.

At the intersection of Sections I and M,

vines cling to trees like long lost relatives.

In another part of the graveyard,

the sun burns a hole in an apron and busts out.

Maggie draws warmth around her like a cashmere sweater.
She accidentally drops the skateboard to the ground. A chase.

In Section C, she finds the skateboard.

There’s a boy playing a fiddle, his face as white as a ruffled shirt.

The fingerboard has a ketchup label,

the fiddle, Norwegian Codfish.

He says his name is Bartholomew, Mew for short,

sees the feather,

and tells her he used to play softball with the peacock.

And you?

Maggie of the Misfit Foot. She tells him everything.

He not so much.

I rescue music from garbage heaps. That’s all,

and begins to walk away.

She wants him to stay, offers the skateboard as a sacrifice.

And like a man about to buy a new car, he considers--

Solid wood. Gold rims. No financing. Sweet.

He plays the fiddle until his music fills the grove with sunlight.

Grandmother's Tattoo 4

2011-08-11T22:55:00.000-07:00

Chewing on words like camp, railroad, gold teeth.

Little snot go wipe your nose
or Mr. Potato Head will plant a carrot between your toes.

She wakes up to a day that is half night,
morning throws off a purple bathrobe.

Birch trees point trunks
like arthritic fingers in different directions.

Hungry. She combs her hair with two fingers,
jumps on the skateboard to hunt for breakfast.

Mountains breathe an ancient cold in her face,
which makes her think of pancakes,

yeasty bubbles erupting from a warm skillet
with the sweet smell of maple syrup.

She steers down an aisle hoping to find a food court,
bends her knees and waves her hands, a thrasher,

leans toward a clearing with white tents
surrounded by grave markers and live peacocks.

Her gold wheels screech to a halt. A woman
whose flesh is attached to her arms in pasty lumps
steps out to meet her.

Maggie throws caution through a window, and breaks silence.
She asks for food.

So. Hungry Girl got money?

Maggie is only a poor girl without an allowance

who happens to be hungry.

And why is hunger, she asks herself,

not its own winning argument?

She knows the only thing her fingers will find is lint.

She digs inside her pocket anyway.
Her hand strikes an empty seam bed.

Not so fast, says the Pasty Lump Lady.

Not so Lackawanna Railroad.

She says if Maggie dislocates a wheel from its axle

and gives it to the Pasty Lump Lady, breakfast will be served.

Pasty Lump Lady steals Maggie’s hunger.

She feeds her pancakes, eggs, syrup, until it is time to fold up shop,

uses the glint from the gold wheel
to wrap sunlight inside her apron.

It was daylight just a few moments ago.

Maggie's mind is a basket filled with broken stuff.

She stuffs the skateboard under her arm.

Time to pack up what she jumped off.

Grandmother's Tattoo 3

2011-08-07T17:46:00.000-07:00

Yoo-hoo! Girlie!
What's the big rush like you've got a date or something?

There's no one here to give you the right time of day,
and in case you're wondering,

I'm the voice of the graveyard,
alive, but not in your 1-2-3. Capice?

So much for introductions.
So much for this and that.

Let's get real and nail the coffin.
You're Maggie of the misfit foot.

Here's what to do:

Under the lidless eyeball of the sun,
keep riding until you find Section P.

When you hear a kid
playing music from a garbage pile,

take his hand and he'll help you find your Granny.

That was it? Really?
To trust a voice echoing through leaves?

Somewhere a railroad car screeched to a halt.
Or maybe it was a dog barking.

Soft smell of cypress.
Maggie rolled the skateboard beneath her head.

A handbook of dreams wheeled her away:
Snowberries attract birds and require little water.

At an airport security check:
Everyone must remove all belts and empty pockets.

A host asked during a game show:
What do most people want to see when they die?

There is a light above her head.
She never asked to be here,

alone as the tongue in her mouth.
God.

Grandmother's Tattoo 2

2011-08-06T19:45:00.000-07:00

Would she rather be at the shopping mall checking out clearance racks
than sailing on this red shoe of a skateboard moving her closer to the abyss,
not that Maggie knew what the abyss looked like.

Maybe a new department store where designer clothes
were scattered higgledy-piggledy on tables, not even hangers.
The Abyss.

Forget shopping. Right now in this moment,
the first order of business,
to rescue her grandmother's tattoo
from the hands, calves, or chest of that buffoon

who had absolutely swept her off her feet,
only to abandon Maggie to an off-duty traffic cop
who hoarded skateboards.

Now she was inside her own video game,
her hands clammy with a thin coat of luck.

On her left,
she saw a mountain as sharp as a swear word,

and sailed her carpet to its widow's peak,
looked down once again, saw the tabula rasa

where in former times, her grandmother's tattoo
had encircled her ankle. Now robbed, bare, uncertain,

Maggie felt she was the last live link in a line of women,
who had arrived here.

And where was here?

She heard an old woman's voice,
Your eyes are open like a cow on the hillside.

All she could see was a slope
covered in a tureen of red autumnal leaves

marked by several hundred monuments
pimpled with rocks.

Grandmother's Tattoo

2011-07-27T20:44:00.001-07:00

Maggie stares at the tattoo on her ankle

the same moment

a boy with a baseball cap

hoists her on his skateboard.

Her breasts are buttoned to his back.
Who is he?

Together they speed past car door handles.

A stop at a traffic signal turns purple.

She looks down.

The tattoo--

Where is it?

Gone and so is he.

Before coming to occupy
the bone of her ankle,
the tattoo first appeared on her grandmother,

a woman who kept truth near,

until the tattoo peeled loose from her foot

with the crazy-glue of family history.

Theft.

She wants an officer to file a report.

Get someone to draw a character sketch.

Post the picture with the tattoo on the Internet.

Instead, an off-duty cop slides a board beneath her feet,
confiscated from some young punk,
points out its gold rimmed wheels and rhinestone studs.

He told her to handle the board
like a certificate of completion and to go forth.

Before she could say Harry Potter,
she'd zoomed past several fire hydrants.

The board had its own life and she was gaining balance,
everything coming quickly.

Tomorrow is today.
Bunk.

Office of the Alternate Defender.
As long as you have dinero.

Isle of Silk.
Baklava.

All the time she was growing up,
her mother had sunk the tattoo
at the bottom of a couscous jar.

Mom didn't know how to wear the tattoo,

and now Maggie, its legitimate heir,
had become victim of some freaky tattoo marauder

who'd galloped away in the night like a bridegroom
kidnapper without an amber alert.

Discovering Jay-Z

2011-07-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

Decoded is a book about music that’s a work of art.

The inside cover describes it as “A collection of lyrics and their meanings that together tell the story of a culture, an art form, a moment in history, and one of the most provocative and successful artists of our time.”

The artist in question is Shawn Corey Carter, better know by his stage name Jay-Z, hip-hop artist and entrepreneur par excellence. By the time this reader turned the last page, there was a desire to pile up more nouns like philosopher, political scientist, spiritual seeker, communicator, and poet-in-universal residence.

Everything about Decoded is filled with intentionality. This includes its cover, layout, notes, and graphic art. The front jacket image, Rorschach, is by legendary pop artist, Andy Warhol, and the back cover by Jonathan Mannion who took pictures for Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt album, and who since then has made a career of photographing hip-hop artists.

Reading Decoded is a textural experience that alternates between Jay-Z’s lyrics appended with footnotes that are filled with explanations about poetic decision-making, to photographs and illustrations of people who are key to the overall story. Add illustrations, disc covers, and a typography that contributes to an overall rap feeling, borrowing from different places and art forms and piling them on in one place to a strong beat.

Like many of my generation (boomer), race (white), and gender (female), I have assiduously avoided rap for its misogyny, violence of language, and use of the n-word. As a friend of mine once asked, “Would you want your own child to listen to that language?” But the reality is that young people everywhere listen to rap. It is the music and poetry of what is now an international generation, which is why this book is important; it goes directly to rap’s emotional roots.

The opening pages of Decoded serve up a view of the Marcy Houses projects in Brookyn’s Bed-Sty area with pathways connecting twenty-seven six-story buildings. In this labyrinth of tunnels and benches, Jay-Z describes how the rapper and the hustler blend together and how the beat is everywhere.

“It’s been said that the thing that makes rap special, that makes it different both from pop music and from written poetry, is that it’s built around two kinds of rhythm. The first kind of rhythm is the meter. In poetry, the meter is abstract, but in rap, the meter is something you literally hear: it’s the beat.”

Reading Decoded, I understood how some rap, called by Chuck D, “the CNN of the ghetto,” could be understood as work songs. By that I mean stories of making a living through hustling, selling crack and walking the tightrope of police and dealers and drive-by shootings without.

Jay-Z writes, “This is why the hustler’s story—through hip-hop—has connected with a global audience. The deeper we get into those sidewalk cracks and into the mind of the young hustler trying to find his fortune there, the closer we get to the ultimate human story, the story of struggle, which is what defines us all.”

Through Jay-Z’s songs, we follow his metamorphosis from street hustler to rap artist who wants to win at the game. And not only do we get to read his story. The book provides us with a snapshot history of rap in the eighties and nineties. Reading these lyrics is to see how rhymes flow and connect and change. It’s an appreciation of rap’s artistry. Jay-Z’s footnotes, which explain specific references and street lingo, also illustrate his awareness as a poet who layers meanings with deliberate word choices, using line breaks, repetition, and references to cultural icons, and relating stories embedded within other stories that reverberate inside the beat.

In “This Can’t Be Life” with Beanie Sigel and Scarface on the Dynasty album, Jay-Z explains how Scarface received a call in the recording studio telling him that a friend had just lost one of his kids in a fire. But art is survival. Scarface continued the recording session and the end of the song reads like this:

“Lovin your kids just like you was ours / And I’m hurtin for you dog; but ain’t nobody pain is like yours / I just know that heaven’ll open these doors / and Ain’t no bright side to losin life; but you can view it like this / God’s got open hands homey, he in the midst of good company / Who loves all and hates not one / And one day you gon’ be wit your son…”

The Epilogue is unexpected. Jay-Z recounts his meeting with Oprah Winfrey who had voiced her skepticism in the past about hip-hop “particularly the use of what she’d call the ‘n-word.’”

While Jay-Z muses upon the fact that Oprah has championed Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison who also use violent and raw images, he writes ,“To her, it’s a matter of acknowledging the deep and painful history of the word. To me, it’s just a word, a word whose power is owned by the user and his or her intention…The key is to change the person. And we change people through conversation, not through censorship.”

Decoded is also available in a downloadable version., complete with videos and interviews.

Jay-Z, you’ve made a new convert.

Decoded by Jay-Z, Spielgel & Grau (a division of Random House), New York, 2010, 308 pgs, $35.00

The Widow Discovers the Secret of Leona Canyon

2011-06-25T15:55:00.000-07:00

Before dog-walkers with squadrons of panting beasts
pull up in SUVs, I arrive early--a woman without a pooch
who can be trusted to make a game of counting packets of shit

set aside for some doggie walker's return trip.
I start early, knot a hoodie around my waist,
hiking in the sun I want to lose myself,

balance on a branch of a buckeye tree
with its candelabra of mock lilacs,
walk past hemlock that lace the trail,

everything is a blaze of white
as spring marries summer and loosens her veil.
I dip my hands in water and wash my face.

Anna's hummingbird, with her red crown
and red spotted throat, sips right along with me.
Shepherds follow their off-leash flock up the canyon.

The Widow Rapsodic

2011-06-16T09:53:00.000-07:00

The beat is everywhere, but life has to find its own flow.
Jay-Z

Take out your purse and lip gloss this--
Woodpeckers are eating my roof
I'm so nervous--
like a rookie cop on a new beat.

Day after day, I hear them hammering--
a chorus line with 100 pairs of feet--
Friends say I should join AARP.
What for? To get a discounted rental?

I dial insurance for the interview--
Each time I look out the window--
another shingle bites the dust.
My life's savings are going bust.

The agent on the line whines
there's nothing he can do to stop her--
assumes the bird's a she and not a devil--
But do I look like some Harry Potter?

Like this is a video conference
and you could really tell.
The bank refi is not going well.
Rain washes out my eyes

with a new vacancy rate--
I watch my furniture float away--
drive by a fork in the road
and decide to go straight.

Blue, Green, and Red

2011-06-01T09:09:00.000-07:00

Freeze-dried memories
dissolve in the waves
along Highway One
and turn blue, green, and red.

Blue for the times
I ran my finger
on the sharp edge of love
and stayed quiet,

green for the passion
that blooms in Lorca
and grows in the city
between pavement blocks,

and red, red that burns hot
like a soldering iron
that pits soft skin raw
to join sandstone with hurt.

The Widow Revisits Golfball Graveyard in Dimond Park

2011-05-22T21:21:00.000-07:00

Afternoons we stayed in Dimond Park
and mornings, too, when young bodies
sang with new notes inside a pendulum
swinging up and down.

The children climbed monkey bars
and screamed on the slide in the sandbox
where every kind of dog buried its shit
and walked away pleased

until it was time to hike the canyon
filled with mudrocks and ferns.
Green parasols shaded wet feet
as we heaped mouths with blackberries,

and wove fingers between hairy thorns.
In summertime, it was quiet and cool.
Bay laurel trees arched above our heads,
a processional to the graveyard

where golf balls
from the driving range at Trestle Glen
lay buried at the edge of the stream
like giant roe waiting to be fertilized,

some orange, many white, a few
had already shed their outer peel.
They were not our keepers.
Something else had found them.

The game was about how many balls
children could stuff inside their pockets
without rolling back down.
Not the kids. The balls

swelled our pockets, lumps
which were less like grapes
and more like lymph nodes
nursed by loving hands.

And now as I look up the canyon,
past the tangled blackberries
and water spilling over rocks
with pyramids of dog shit

edging the path in mold, all I have left
are hard bits of memory
that line my own pocket.
I touch them over and over again.

Landays by Afghan Women & Poet Sayd Bahodine Majrouh

2011-05-16T12:05:00.000-07:00

I discovered the poet Sayd Bahodine Majrouh on a flight from Oakland to New York. Prepared for the six-hour trip to visit my family, I had brought along a number of magazines from my dining room table. The stack included a National Geographic magazine with an article about Afghani women. The article included several amazing landays that I learned had been translated by Majrouh that identified him as the preeminent Afghani poet of the twentieth century. The article went on to note that he had been assassinated during his exile in Pehawar, Pakistan on February 11, 1988.

What had caught my attention and led me to Majrouh were the landays, a form that I later learned means “the short one.” It is a poem consisting of two verse lines of nine and thirteen syllables. These poems are largely anonymous and meant to be sung. Majrouh had collected these verses among Pashtun women in the valleys of Afghanistan and the refugee camps of Pakistan. They were first translated into French. Songs of Love and War: Afghan Women’s Poetry published by Other Press, offers these landays in English translation.

The books’ Introduction discusses the landay and explains, “In a strict sense, they exist off-screen—off the cultural screen that is reserved exclusively for men and, consequently, off the social screen.”

Here are several examples:

My lover wants to keep my tongue inside his mouth,

Not for the delight of it, but only to establish his steady

rights on me.

Oh rooster, wait a little with your song!

I have just come into my lover’s arms.

Gently slide your hand inside my sleeves,

The pomegranates of Kandahar have blossomed and

they are ripe.

My friend, which of these two to choose?

Mourning and exile arrived at my door together.

Tears are streaming down my face.

I cannot forget Kabul’s snow-topped mountains.

Your love is water and it is fire,

Flames are consuming me, waves are swallowing me up.

The outlaws stripped everyone down to the bone.

I was plundered beneath my lover’s chest.

Young mean, defend me, defend your very honor!

My father is a tyrant who throws me in an old man’s bed.

See the dreadful tyranny of husbands:

He beats me and then forbids my weeping.

Bracelets on my arms, jewelry around my neck,

I’m leaving with my beloved, we are going home.

Majrouh collected these voices., a poet walked the way of the Sufi and the philosophers, a man who fought for the independence of Afghanistan and for a future that would respect individual liberty.

After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1978, Majrouh went into exile in Peshawar where he founded the Afghan Information Center, which broadcast reports on and analyses of the resistance across the world. He is regarded as the literary heir of Rumi and Omar Khayyam. Majrouh’s three-volume epic, Ego-Monstre, sadly, is not available in English.

Medical Insurance Companies Suck the Big Bone

2011-04-02T23:51:00.001-07:00

I’ve been one of those fortunates who had medical coverage for most of my working life. However, several years ago my job disappeared. No worries. Now I could get COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act) passed by Congress in 1986 that gave certain former employees, retirees, spouses, former spouses, and dependent children the right to temporary continuation of health coverage at group rates. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provided COBRA at a reduced cost, which for me meant that I would roughly pay one third, $390 per month as opposed to $1200. Still, this was a lot of money for someone who had been covered for many years through my employer. But I could meet that cost, at least for awhile.

Q. What happens when COBRA expires and the iceberg starts to melt?

A. What iceberg are you talking about?

Q. Health coverage. You know.

I figured I could not be without health coverage. As a teenager I had been in and out of hospitals with an undiagnosed case of colitis at a time when not much was known about the disease. Later, I had a serious case of pneumonia that nearly had me packing my bags to the afterlife. Both events left me with a lasting impression about the importance of medical coverage. It also singed upon my person the need to play an active role in maintaining personal health.

I do not need any prescriptions. Blood pressure is good. So is cholesterol. I exercise, eat right, and have friends, which is to say I’m in great health. Once COBRA ran out I was confident I could apply to my health care provider, Kaiser Hospital, for individual coverage. But guess what? I was denied.

Q. Why?

A. Chronic renal failure otherwise known as lousy kidneys

“But I have never been diagnosed with chronic renal failure,” I cried to myself. “Were those medical miscreants looking at someone else’s medical records?” Then the light dawned. Last year during my round of check-ups some miniscule amounts of blood were detected in my urine. My doctor had sent me in for several tests to ensure that my kidneys were in good working order. They were. However, the initial diagnosis had placed me in a medical netherworld that no insurance company would now touch.

Upset not only because number one -- I was being denied medical coverage -- and number two – assigned a diagnosis that didn’t exist, I appealed to my doctor who sent me in for a number of very detailed tests to establish that my kidneys were in good shape. She wrote to me, “It is not unusual to get the kind of treatment you are experiencing. The bean counters in the health plan are charged with the task of letting only the healthiest patients who won't overutilize resources get through.”

There you have it. I appealed the decision and received two letters dated on the exact same day. One said that “Please be assured that we take this matter seriously and it is currently under investigation.”

The second later informed me, “Our record review indicates that you have been diagnosed with chronic renal failure, stage III. This condition does not meet our KPIF enrollment criteria."

I have filed a grievance with copies of my new medical tests and await Kaiser’s next decision. In the meantime, I urge you all to file letters if you are denied coverage. Stuff email boxes. Raise your own legal hoops. Talk with your representatives. This has to stop. Our country is being taken over by people with priorities that have nothing to do with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Lenore Weiss
http://techtabletalk.posterous.com/

Park Bench

2011-03-18T22:06:00.000-07:00

TVs are cinema-sized, computers
in a back pocket, a world imploding
like an elderly person, shorter every year,

or like a garbage compacter
from a movie where villains
are compressed into a metal Chiclet,

others scratch out their name
with the back of a fingernail
on a park bench with splinters.

The Widow's Ghost Visits Her Daughter

2011-02-25T10:49:00.000-08:00

You've moved out.

Tell yourself this time you really mean it.
Recall how I used to twist
my marriage band around my finger.

Or maybe it's nothing like that at all.

You're nine months and feel a contraction,

make the mistake of calling my old number.

At the next Stop sign, you grab something

that sticks to your finger like batter to chicken

when you moan, Oh.

Or maybe this week you're driving the kids to their soccer game.

You're lost, turn on the GPS.
November butting up against the holidays. You remember

the macaroni and cheese our family ate one year

and how you still can't get yours to taste like mine.

Which is when I come in,

a visit from my permanent vacation spa

where sparrows dip into the jar
of morning, noon, and night.

Open my mouth to tell you I'm here,
run my voice across your thick hair.

Now it's my turn to miss you.
We sit quiet together.

Black is the Color of Marlon Brando's Motorcycle Jacket

2011-02-15T12:33:00.000-08:00

Black is the color of my true love's hair
and Marlon Brando's motorcycle jacket,
each tooth a silver zipper.

Black is the color of roadies
drinking beer down the street
at the Big Dipper.

Black is the color of Johnny Cash
who kept praying for 'Nam
to be over in a flicker.

Black is the color of T-shirts
of high-tech workers
designing glass slippers.

Black is the color of a woman
stoned on a red carpet
because a veil didn't fit her.

Black is the color of people who fade
behind the sidelines of center stage.
Black is the color of our grueling age.

Chorus:
And sorry, I drive a Ferrari.
Bob Dylan (or insert another name)
didn't wear black to the Grammys.
He wore gold.

Dancing to Your Own Music

2011-01-29T12:26:00.001-08:00

When an email arrived from the theater dance and performance studies programfrom the University at California at Berkeley announcing a lecture “about “Doing Dance Criticism,” I decided to go.

I thought the lecture would be a healthy experiment. With a half hour before the program was to begin, I landed a parking spot and walked through Sather Gate and located Room 315 in Wheeler Hall, which was already filled with people. There I found the famous quartet of dance criticism composed of:

Sarah Kaufman, dance critic for The Washington Post, won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Wendy Lesser, editor of The Threepenny Review, regularly writes about dance, music, and opera. She is the author of eight books, including The Amateur: An Independent Life in Letters and Nothing Remains the Same: Rereading and Remembering.

John Rockwell, former dance critic, music critic, and editor of The New York Times Arts and Leisure section, is the board chairman of the National Arts Journalism Program.

Lewis Segal, formerly the staff dance critic for the Los Angeles Times, is a freelance arts writer based in Hollywood and Barcelona.

Sarah Kaufman referred to her experience checking in at the airport and asked, “Why do people recoil from physical contact and prefer a quick, but questionable technology,” contrasting the pat-down to the x-ray scan, perhaps thinking of the theme of her next dance article. Wendy Lesser responded to Kaufman’s question and offered, “The scan is faster.” As a recipient of two hip replacements, which requires Lesser to undergo pat downs all over the world, she said that the scan procedure means that people can keep a closer eye on their computers rolling down the security assembly line.

But what about dance criticism? There were a variety of thoughts ranging from the notion that dance on stage, or to what the panel referred to as “concert dance” represents an accumulation of inputs from everyone who touches a performance. The age-old question posed by the poet, W.B. Yeats, “How can we tell the dancer from the dance?” was described in the same way that the poet did—we really can’t. Another panelist said that the ability to write well in evocative terms, crafting language to describe the physical experience of dance, was a big plus. The last speaker held by his motto, “We don’t make the scene; the scene makes us.”

One of the critics let the cat out of the bag and voiced a concern for the future of dance criticism. As newspapers shrink and arts publications die, Rockwell acknowledged that bloggers on the Internet have challenged the relevance of dance criticism. He said, “We’re in transition to a new business model that may eventually allow some people to earn a living.” He also hinted that the Internet may evolve into a pay-as-you-go model.

Segal also acknowledged changing business models, recognizing that new TV sets now offer access to the Internet. As a result, he said, the “difference between cable and web sites will become blurred” and offer dance websites a viable future.

However, the critics did not mention the impact of TV programs like “So You Think You Can Dance,” or “Dancing With the Stars,” in bringing dance to new public audiences, until that question was posed from the floor. Then everyone pitched in about articles they’d written on the subject. Some offered that the programs were “vulgar,” others were more positive in recognizing that dance-savvy judges offered the public an opportunity to become “dance literate.” Another critic wondered why the public needed to know about what steps composed the “Paso Robles,” for example, when they could simply discern “the movement,” which sounded like a Marie Antoinette “let them eat cake” attitude if there ever was one.

My take-aways? I learned that the world of dance, like every other place, is being seriously impacted by technology. I also felt that these four dance critics may be falling behind the public as You-Tube, the Internet, and TV programs legitimize forms such as B-Boy and Hip-Hop and bring dance to a new audience. Do these audiences have an interest in a criticism that can expand beyond the world of concert dance?

Maybe the panelists are dancing to their own music...

Manduhai Across the Router

2011-01-23T19:16:00.000-08:00

On weekends I Skype you,
wash sheets I bought when you lived here,
fall down on the bed.

There's no coffee in the house.
I remember my dream where ribs of darkness
decayed into a sandstorm of lightbulbs.

Nothing about coffee.
Fire, glass, and alcohol were part of it.
The Borromeo String Quartet scanned

Handel from laptops on music stands.
The iPhone glowed blue
with our songs.

I pressed Shuffle
but they fell flat,
technology

a Genghis Khan
shooting from the hip
and the World Wide Web,

a Spice Trail across
routers with worm holes.
Later from the estuary

I emailed memories
scented in lavendar, rosemary,
and the back of your neck.

Manduhai the Wise

2011-01-11T00:12:00.000-08:00

In the Year of the Tiger

when people could not sleep in their tents,

or birds in their nests,

I, Manduhai, Mongolian queen,

did not lift the tent flap of the man
whom people thought to share my bed,

but carried the spirit pole of my ancestors,
Dayan Khan, a cripple whose

bones were massaged with camel's milk
warmed in a silver bowl. I rescued the boy,

strapped him to my horse in a basket,
raised him on the battlefield

to be Great Khan, heir of Genghis.
Girls threw offerings of milk in the air.

Later when the steppes became mud,
we stepped through mud together,

and when it was cold,
we warmed out hands by the same fire.

With him, my waters gave birth to eight sons
and together we covered Mongolia

with the hooves of our mares.
From the Tuul River to the Orkhon,

we were two shafts of one cart
drawn by a white camel.

And when I could no longer
bear armor,

his memory was silk
on my heart and limbs.

The Last Days of Genghis Khan

2010-12-05T20:31:00.000-08:00

Forgive me, my sons,
gathered inside this tent
with its smoke hole open to the Great Sky.

I wasn't there to watch your feet

stretch into stirrups, or to guide your arm

as you raised an arrow to bow.

What can I say? I've failed to show
how a Mongol can make a mountain
change places with horses and men.

But even as frost leaches my breath,
I wish to be a father who fills your saddle bag
with what I've learned,

to teach how being a leader
is to master pride,
more difficult to quell than a wild lion,

or anger, harder to subdue than the greatest wrestler.
Never think of yourself as the strongest or smartest.
When animals climb to the top of a mountain,

they cast a shadow
along rocks where they stand.
Remember to say only what needs to be said.

A loose mouth leaves crumbs for the wind
to heap upon the plates of your enemy.
Have vision and goals,

easy to throw away once a fast horse
and jewelled women adorn your arm.
Conquering an army

is not the same as conquering a nation.
You conquer an army with tactics and men,
a nation by winning the hearts of its people.

Loyalty to family is what you have as brothers
and the only thing you will ever have
in this smoky world of dreams laced with cinnamon.

It's in the Code, Sucka

2010-11-26T14:46:00.000-08:00

"To study the history of mentalities is to enter the arena of human experience most resistant to change."
--Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft

You have to be aware of cultural differences, if marketing wants to insert periods after each letter of UK, or if the German store wants to translate into either high or low, and whether the Japanese approve of a wayward Kanji character. I start with English. There's something pastoral about baskets on a bicycle. Think Liza's flower basket festooned with posies. Jars of lemon curd, smoked oysters, a package of biscuits, a bottle of wine. All the makings for a picnic. In the United States, we lock-up purchases behind bars and bail them out at check-out. Do time in our homes.

Driving to work I watched clouds cast shadows over the foothills, the hide of a prehistoric animal wrapped around my internal text. Light moves closer to autumn. With GPS I moved straight toward a target, a self-directed arrow that knew where to exit. No more days of getting lost, making a right and discovering a scenic look-out, a road side stand with the best strawberries. See white rabbit enter building through rear security gate and swipe badge past the employee reader. Green. Down an orange hallway, engineers tuck laptops beneath their arms and run to take orders from the next table.

Past the mall towers of Hayward and Fremont I drive with a nail in the sidewall of one of my tires held together with goo that I'd injected through the tire's stem cell, the old Nummi plant now transmogrified into Tesla, an electric car manufacturer; past Solyndra, solar panelist that was anointed with a half a million dollars by the feds this summer to be a bright star. But what's that I hear? KZSU, companion of these 50 minute rides down to Cupertino where the deejay is having broadcast problems because she's doing homework at the same time that she's doing her show. That's her talking, not me. "Wow, it's been a really bad day. No one has called in for tickets." I pass cows. Really? Cows in Fremont, remnants.

He bent me through the prism of whomever he thought I was, which hurt. So I composed an email, which didn’t help. Soon I found my way to Lake Tahoe, which wasn’t Lake Tahoe, but the Great Salt Lake, so many conference rooms named after lakes where I was invited to sit around the table with helpings of stale pretzels and fudge cookies to thrash out the next business requirements document with team members dialing in and hooked up through a bridge. Yellow stickie notes on a white screen, an entire wall covered in arrows and boxes, petroglyphs from a high-tech era. When I returned to my desk, my email was empty.

I got my first café latte this evening and it was good. Then I toured a management tool and visited products, parents and children gathered under one roof. In God We Trust. Scaled down design with a special spigot at the sink that offers cold drinking water. Forget your bottle. I notice a defibrillator cabinet installed outside the bathroom where toilets have both automatic and manual flushing options. Beatles today on the front cover of the web page. They look like high-tech employees, Men in Black. On the late-night shift, I talked with Elena who gathers up the day’s refuse and inserts a plastic liner into baskets and also stacks towers of cups beside the coffee maker. She’s looking for a better job in the cafeteria where it pays more.

Time is tied to the device. There are no clocks anywhere. I walk softly and try not to look like an idiot. At the coffee bar I wanted to sprinkle cinnamon on my coffee, but instead I dusted the counter. D'oh! At meetings today with a Russian program manager, also with a director from England who's hoping that her boss doesn't get his knickers twisted around his neck when he hears about new due dates. My notebook floats in acronyms. Everyone says that it will take at least six months before I understand what's going on.

Invite polarities within the container of a circle. There's no tooling around. I'm in the throes of database archeology. Morning. Ask not for whom the grass blower whines. Outside my window and sitting on a Jeffrey Pine, a crow croaks. It's time for coffee with a dose of Dr. Oz. Working on swing shift has opened up a new world of late night television, Jewelry TV with its siren call of tanzanite and mocha diamonds. I put the program on mute. Odysseus was on to something. Boot up the computer on my living room table layered with a history of Genghis Khan whose armies made no technological breakthroughs. Instead, they passed skills through mountains, rivers, plains, from one civilization to the next. A pony express.

Wouldn't it be a century birthmark if a company chose to strategically invest its capital in developing great tools for its employees--software tools employees use to hold up the company's electronic face. Beautiful tools. A well-honed axe. A stone awl. Is there some kind of law that says behind the face of simplicity must lie tangle, permanently in need of being untangled? But isn't Nature always using conditioner and how does she do that? It's in the code, sucka. I'm not talking about the relationship between simplicity and complexity, but an electric vocabulary that can be exchangeable, copiedleft. Just imagine. If employees had the same wonderful tools on the inside as consumers did on the outside, a singularity, boundaries falling down.

I'm having an out-of-cart body experience. Jewelry TV says there's only 60 more seconds left on the tanzanite cross. I've passed by that station. Genghis Khan assembled representatives from the world's religions for a theological bake-off. No side was able to convince the other of anything. Soon alcohol took center stage. Christians stopped with the logical arguments and started to sing. Muslims, who did not sing, responded by reciting the Koran, and Buddhists retreated into silent meditation. It was Shabbos for the Jews. Unable to convert or kill one another, they concluded the way most Mongol celebrations concluded, with everyone too drunk to continue. There was a real toad strangler last night and in the morning, tree branches were clenched in prayer.

The BBC announced that on Black Friday, Americans will boost the economy by spending lots of money, cheerleaders dressed in jogging suits filling up shopping carts with different things. Remember there are no baskets at WalMart, only carts. I stood next to an Asian woman near a shelf stocked with every kind of thing a person might need for Thanksgiving--pineapple rings, cranberries, chicken broth, baking powder and tins of cinnamon. Standing room only for jars of mincemeat and bags of marshmallows on the opposite side of the display. She circled around like a hawk, looked at me and said, "Prices are so low. I can't believe it. This is the first time I've ever been here." She turned around and walked away.

Flying Home After Election Day

2010-10-25T09:05:00.001-07:00

First I saw a man who wore a baby on his belly like a bright bow,

a midget who carried a dragonfly on his shoulder up a long ramp,

and tourists who clustered before a plate glass window to price homes.

On the flight back, an attendant collected
alms in a white garbage bag. I tossed mine in.

A loud discussion from window and middle seat people
about a bookclub and who elects what to read.
Once I returned home, my cat tripped me
until I filled her bowl. She believes in one thing--
the straight meow.

6. A Sparrow in Search of Spring

2010-10-13T17:32:00.000-07:00

Temujin, wolf-man with cat eyes

came to me in a goat-skin cape

to replace my companion of months,

a shadow. Now my twin flies

like a sparrow in search of spring

away to a peak covered in grass,

or like a sturgeon that leaps

with the oar of its tail.

I twist free into a deer.

Night is studded with pearls

and wraps us in black velvet.

No one sees

or can dream what we do

in each other's den,

backs are etched raw

by root and stone.

Thunder from our sated voices

makes a stream-bed.

Who we are together

Is locked in our eyes.

The child that is mine

is now his.

Temujin has come back.

I remove straw from his beard.

Winners and SemiFinalists in the Cleantech World

2010-10-10T17:50:00.001-07:00

What organization has raised 280 million dollars in the last five years for clean technology companies? A few hints: It’s an organization with nary three paid full-time staff members. The group currently runs five regular business competitions covering 22 states in the U.S. Oh, yes in another month they plan to award $200,000 to a national prize winner.

Give up? Cleantech Open is a five-year old organization that “finds, funds, and fosters entrepreneurs with big ideas,” according to Executive Director, Rex Northen who spoke at the October 8 California Regional Cleantech Open hosted by Chevron in San Ramon, California. At the end of the day, six new companies each walked away with awards of $18,000.

Many fledging companies have been assigned mentors and are given business plan assistance. Cleantech wants to help commercialize clean technologies. Corporate sponsors also are part of the backbone with expertise and support from companies such as Autodesk, Chevron, Kauffman Foundation, Google, PG&E, Reed Smith. San Diego Gas and Electric, and Wells Fargo, and others.

Andrew Hargadon, Professor and Soderquist Chair in Entrepreneurship at the Graduate School of Management at the University of California at Davis gave the keynote. Hargadon focused on assembling a network around an idea. Citing Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, neither of whom actually invented anything, Soderquist advised to “Find the path to deliver to as many people as you can as fast as you can. And if it takes several centuries that’s not scale—it’s change.”

In the judging panels and during the “innovation exchange,” many venture capital firms were on hand, Both Nancy Floyd, Nth Power, and Nancy Pfund, DBL Investors, acknowledged that environmental companies are at the “tipping point.” Don Riley of Chevron Technology Ventures extended an open invitation for entrepreneurs “to contact me.”

I served as a scribe on the Energy Efficiency Judging Panel and heard about a slew of technologies, everything from a specialized pump and software algorithm to collect the natural gas spill-off from oil rigs, a new resin insulation for the high-speed transmission of electricity, and a social networking utility to allow people to track their carbon footprint.

Congratulations to the six regional California winners and semifinalists. Here’s how they stacked up:

Category	Winner	Runner-up
Energy Efficiency	Suntulit	Enovative Kontrol Systems
Transportation	Pressure Sentinel	Conderos
Air, Water & Waste	Fog Busters	Mango Materials
Green Building	Stramit Strawboard	Bellwether Materials
Smart Power	SmartSense	Intuitive Energy
Renewables	Pure Solar	Nascent Solar Technologies

The six finalists participate in the national judging on November 15^th and 16^th. National awards are held on November 17^th at the 2010 National Awards and Expo, at Parkside Hall A, 271 South Market Street, San Jose.

Lenore Weiss
http://techtabletalk.posterous.com/

5. The Strongest Hand

2010-10-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

Soldiers drink horse's blood,
fill moats with dead bodies,

pile catapults with excrement
near a thousand flickering fires.

Quivers of horn and wood
hug arrows for their intended.

Ashes of men rout a birch
with locust memories.

Now I pour ashes into my palm
and blow breath on them,

men who ride into a season of slaughter
and disappear beneath a saddle.

When I was a child,
my mother carried me on her hip.

I wore boots as soft as doeskin.
One day she found a mare

escort to a pool of water
between shoulders of earth.

The sky grew black. I could see back
to the beginning

before I was a nub who held a horse's mane
and breathed its sweet sweat.

I sat and wondered why people kill each other

and then scatter to the strongest hand.

4. A Wolfskin with a Silk Rope

2010-10-04T14:50:00.000-07:00

My ears hear everything at night.
My eyes see everything during day.

I could not tell who entered my tent
through the evening smoke-hole and stood

with his legs, an arrow's width apart.
Then I saw a man.

Sky blue. Even his nose.
Maybe he was a cloud.

In his hand, several wolfskins tied
with a silk rope.

He said: From the water of your waters
will grow a nation. Four sons

with the strength of a wolf pack
tied together.

He placed a bundle in my lap.
When I awoke, it was my head's soft pillow.

Then I knew Temujin would come.
Who else could be the father of such men?

Part of me wanted daughters to braid my hair,
to brew tea

when news of the tangled grass
reached my ears.

Piles of dead trees like rotting bodies.
I am not prepared.

3. Wild Onion and Pear

2010-10-01T09:29:00.000-07:00

Lying next to this man, Chilger,
through the smoke-hole of our tent,

I hear a grasshopper
burrow in the sheep dung.

He throws his hand over my chest
like a lasso pole to draw me in tight.

His breath travels up an elk-path
and comes back down, snorting.

All night, even without sleep,
I cannot rest.

I'm the one who holds his willow branch

until it topples,

and in the morning, the one who fills
a leather bucket with mare's milk

until it runs down his face
and drowns him in a white river.

I draw my lips over my teeth.
With my teeth

he wants to capture a smile.
He can bridle me. No one commands my heart.

Only the child that floats on its back
with fingers pressed against my belly.

I will dig in the ground,
feed him wild onion and pear.

2. The Lichen Clan

2010-09-28T17:31:00.000-07:00

Stolen from Temujin to this mirror camp, days
stick in my throat and sicken me.

I see men, women, and children
with the same two arms and legs.

They walk
and wait for me to circle them.

If I remove my silver necklace,
I must bow my neck.

How long can I nurse emptiness,
a heartless child?

The fire at night warms bootless feet.
My silver gelding with a black tail does not run toward me.

I search the Altai Moutains for rising dust.
Before a cooking fire, I dry

a blanket, the same color

as an arrow that pinches the sky

near the curved tip of a falcon's wing.

I see it.

Men come to crush each other,
and every woman and child with two arms and legs.

Stallions mash bones with hooves
into the black rock of Lake Baikal,

rock with the faces of lichen
that speak as one clan.

Loudly and Softly, Börte Keeps Temujin Alive

2010-09-25T08:51:00.000-07:00

I am Mongol, loyal to one master.
When that other khan

touches my cheek, it turns into a salt pond.

Nightmares rim my eyes with darkness.

My husband, Temujin, is a gray wolf

who kissed my mouth.

I remember when Temujin lifted

the fringe of my silk banner

with his spear.

Now his spirit pole is gone from my tent.

I drip candle wax along the fissure of my heart,
drink warm kumis.

A woman in black sable

calls me to stand before my dream.

Floating seeds join each other in air.
I hear them laugh.

The seed in my bowl is not his.

It doubles me.

I will slip away like the whip of a horsetail
upon the frozen steppe.

I was not born to die in another clan's tent.

The Blue Sky follows me between branches.

The face of the marmot and falcon is Temujin's
face. The birch hides my secret.

Driver Turned into a Plastic Bag

2010-09-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

A plastic bag floats over the highway,
glances at each driver through the windshield.
Where are you headed and where are you going?
Roll down your window and bring me along.
He looks for the opening of a moonroof,
a hand to break his free fall.

Sails above another moonroof
and scouts for a come-on on the highway,
hopes to knock out the gravity of his fall,
uses his handles as a shield,
also to propel his plastic along.
He has to keep it going.

Before the free fall,
he knew exactly where he was going,
slumped before a windshield
with a broken moonroof
stuck on the highway,
hunger as a passenger tagged along.

He shifted along-
side electrified guardrails, fell
for a woman who cursed him on the highway
to flap his wings unmotorized, an empty bag going
out of his mind for a slice of moonroof
to face the jury of a windshield.

Now a hitch-hiker who chases windshields,
he looks for a thumbs-up to grab him along.
Show him an opening through a moonroof.
Let him return as a waterfall
flows. One day he's going
to leave the highway.

There's a shield of wind over Bridal Veil Falls
kicking up white foam, going along
where he forgets moonroof, highway, everything she ever said.

How to Impact Green Legislative Policy

2010-09-03T09:56:00.001-07:00

SARTA (Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance) sponsors a leadership series to give local entrepreneurs and students of emerging technologies an understanding of how green business works.

The desired outcome is to speak with state energy agencies and venture capitalists about solving real problems with new energy efficient products and saving people money.

The topic of the Leadership Series Clean Tech Track, held at Drexel University on September 2 was, “How to Influence and Impact Clean Tech Regulatory and Legislative Policy.” Drexel offers eleven doctoral and master's programs, including in all things entrepreneurially green.

The September 2 discussion included instructors  Michael Faust, CEO and President of the Northern California World Trade Center; Will Gonzalez, Owner, Gonzalez Public Affairs; Jan E. Schori, Of Council, Downey Brand,  and Jan Smutny-Jones, Executive Director, Independent Energy Producers Association (IEP).

Places on the Internet to start getting informed include high-priced and free publications. Possible sources with a mixture of both are:

Don’t forget about using Google Alerts with specific keywords and TweetFeeds to get information about the energy movers and shakers of the moment.

“Get in Early, Tell Your Story, Keep it Simple”

High on the list of questions was how to go about identifying the leaders in any community once there’s a real product in hand. The advice was to:

Know the local Chamber of Commerce
Informally introduce yourself to local elected officials
Describe your product in non-technical terms in a way that addresses the WIFM (what’s in it for me?)
Query both groups about whom they consider local community leaders
Contact those people and talk to them

The district director of any federal or state legislator can be of tremendous assistance in identifying local leaders and subject matter experts, advised Michael Faust.

Policy Highlights

There were many other tidbits including the fact that Southern California is probably more fertile ground right now for green products since they are dependent on coal to meet a large percentage of their energy needs. Talk with Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power if you have a solution to that particular problem.

With the coming of electric vehicles, there will be tremendous drain on “the grid” which has a whole other crop of officials grinding their teeth. Bundling home audits with grid pricing, suggested Jan Schori, may be one innovative way to package a solution in this area.

Lastly, the speakers recommended to thoughtfully attend conferences with a game plan.

Don’t feel badly if you can’t contribute money to a politician’s fund because in the long run, it won’t do that much good, said lobbyist Will Gonzalez.

And finally, even if AB32 gets clobbered with a yes vote on 23, there’s enough legislation in place to keep energy regulations going. On the other hand, said Schori, a yes vote will send a message to venture capitalists that California is turning away from its commitment to clean energy, which will not be a good.

I wanted to end this discussion on a high note. Be sure to check out the upcoming SARTA Clean Tech Showcase, Tuesday, October 26 at Sacramento State, the region's largest event highlighting the clean tech sector's innovators, investors, educators and companies. And contact Lenore Weiss if you need a great writer to communicate a strong message that will get your customer’s attention.

Lenore Weiss
http://techtabletalk.posterous.com/

Posted via email from TechTableTalk: "It's Not Over Your Head"

A Piers Plowman

2010-08-15T22:18:00.000-07:00

Traffic grows heavy
as days thin to their core.

A candidate promises
she'll do everything except change history--
I sit in front of a computer

dressed in a nightgown of reversible darkness
that slides across my shoulder,
watch you sweat pixels
transported across a browser,
reassembled on my home page.

Listen to pine needles stir up the morning,
see fog outline the coast--
Still no state budget.
Emptiness catches me by its hand.
Canada geese plow trees overhead.

Lilac, periwinkle, and violet
with shades of ash. When I stare
at cactus on the patio,
color shifts from green
to a crinoline.

Outside I hear a cathedral
gone mad, bangles
on a woman's skull
like a torn shopping bag
stuffed with a mall.

I watch a leaf on a linden tree
loosen its grip.
File for unemployment.
Send an application online,
someone answer me.

George II Mahogany Wing Chair

2010-08-09T23:30:00.000-07:00

"There's no life without furniture."

Joseph Brodsky

She scouted the resale shop, picked up embroidered tablecloths,

silverware needing a shine, caved leather boots,

a white linen outfit crisp in the Bay Area heat. In the back, a lady

who had tied her ponytail with a plastic flower, stacked National Geographics

rescued from bathrooms and T.V. caddies. Then there was the chair.

Feet that could hitch a ride sticking out over the curb of a street corner.

All curves. She fell into its green silk upholstery and leaned her head

against its flank. One hundred dollars divided into four payments.

Once she loaded the chair into the trunk of the Toyota,

the ponytail lady raised a hand to her throat and watched it go.

She stationed the chair on the parquet next to the heater, but out of range.

No toasting in the dining room allowed.

Cared for the chair the way she did her family, dusted its wood,

turned over its seat cushion, ran her finger around the chartreuse

piping like a runway for fingerprints.

She felt rich, the way her body came together in one piece,

arms on wings, head pressed against its fluted back.

In the lap of others especially on evenings

when her husband remained in his bedroom, the chair

held her close, a friend willing to be more if she needed.

Not things, although she continued to go to the resale shop,

a rotary egg beater, the kind her mother used, a pewter bread tray

crusted on the levee of other hands,

objects with their own pyramid of touch,

a safety net for disparate thoughts
from a day of check-off lists,
to a night of silence and closed doors.

Oakland Twisted Revisited

2010-08-05T10:04:00.000-07:00

Oakland parts company and grabs your collar.

Oakland drives people to live some where else.

Oakland thinks trees are dust mops for buildings.

Oakland hides the sky as if blue were a gang color,

Strokes its hills with purple thistle and jealousy.

Oakland parts company and grabs your collar.

Oakland can eat you like a Pop-Tart for dinner.

She can move to a groove, but don’t fool yourself.

Oakland thinks trees are dust mops for buildings.

Oakland smokes in a corner and asks for blood donors,

Gives free advice, doles out soap and celery.

Oakland parts company and grabs your collar.

Oakland is star spangled with glass, a girl

at the Paramount acting out of impulse.

Oakland thinks trees are dust mops for buildings.

Oakland catches me in her windowpane like a daughter

Wearing purple dreads that look falsetto.

Oakland thinks trees are dust mops for buildings.

Oakland parts company and grabs your collar.

Tap Dancing on the Silverado Trail

2010-08-02T17:28:00.001-07:00

Vineyards reach as far as a BART train

for several stations down a two-lane highway

stretching into night and hugging the ground

where love walked away grabbing her hand.

In a hybrid car she told her mother

how a man cleaned her out with a dab of his finger,

traced her lips, the crows feet in her eyes

then called her name to the stars in disguise.

Together they altered weather patterns,

changed a winter storm into a summer caftan.

Those first few months from couch to car,

they stirred clockwise into each other

tap dancing on the highlights of dawn

in rivulets, torrents, up-side-down

guitar strings stretched for several octaves

along a fault and into mountain ranges

leaving the bones of her smashed life set,

injury into dust disintegrated.

Listening, her mother understood how love

shakes a woman down for everything she’s worth.

Report Drunk Drivers

2010-08-01T18:01:00.001-07:00

He gathers empty boxes from Lucky’s parking lot to stay busy.

Across town, I read an article to stay busy.

Along the road, I see a sign to Report Drunk Drivers.

A retired engineer grows artichokes and red lentils to stay busy.

I rub lavender pellets between my fingers and release the scent to the ground.

From his window, he watches a two-year old boy chase squirrels to stay busy.

Grapevines, more green than his eyes, grow in never-ending rows.

He locks the front door and starts the Harley, cycles to stay busy.

I buy a white glass with a decal of olives and a bottle of Merlot. Go home.

Crossing my arms against the ocean, I study a seagull to stay busy.

Tisha B'av

2010-07-18T20:20:00.000-07:00

The highway was closed in two directions.
Sun glinted white on dashboards.
Later I heard about a wounded police officer.

The rest of the day I waited for you to call.
I left a message on your cell phone.
We were supposed to go swimming.

Along the firetrail near my house I saw smoke puffs
of thistle. Hemlock as tall as two people.
Only daisies bloomed. I did not pick those petals.
.

Networking and the Spiritual Search

2010-07-16T12:22:00.000-07:00

I've finished reading "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert. I'm glad that the author placed "eat" first in the line-up. It's important to satisfy our material needs before we can evolve up the chakra. I'm not sure I want to see the movie with Julia Roberts although I can't think of any one who could better play the leading role, a free spirit who knows what she wants. Maybe I feel that the film version would trivialize the spiritual searching aspect and replace it with a love story. On second thought, maybe the soul-mate kind of love is the result of a spiritual search, so why be put-offish?

These days I'm trying to be frugal. I can always wait for the DVD.

But movies are not uppermost on my mind. I'm on my own spiritual quest. I want my job to find me. I know that's easy to say and an excuse for sitting around the pool with one hand holding a good book and the other wrapped around the cell phone, but not really. Here's why.

Depending upon who we are I think we create a network according to our own fish ponds. Simply put, my network is different (and maybe bigger, smaller) than your network. But who cares? I may like lagoons. You may like waves off the coast of Maui.

"Hi," I say to the meeting coordinator after the event as everyone else in the audience scrambles up to the podium to hob-nob with the high-profile guests. "I'm writing up this event for my blog and I'm wondering if you can give me the speakers list? I want to spell their names correctly." And so might ensue an exchange of paper, including business cards. And more often than night, I can send the speakers a link to my blog post and engage with them in a short dialog.

I try to keep the waves rippling outward. None of this was intentional. Duck because here comes that word authentic which is bandied about in many job club meetings. The demands of looking for a job have burned away my detritus, otherwise known as bullshit. I don't have time for my own games. I've cut back to chasing myself.

On a weekly basis I reference lists like workit.com to see what's happening and plunk these meetings into my calendar, always scheduled around visits to the gym. Actually it's been wonderful not being required to sit in front of a computer for seven straight hours a day. Maybe I won't be visited by carpal tunnel syndrome any time soon. I've made a mental note and want my new position to allow me to work more with people and sit in front of the computer less. In scheduling my calendar I pay attention to the kinds of meetings that interest me. After all, this is the Bay Area and there's a virtual sea of meetings. What I choose is information about me.

What I'm saying is about "taking inventory," the kind of advice Richard Bolles, job-hunting guru, and his heirs insist upon. The primary dictum is "know thyself," or as Shakespeare put it, "to thine ownself be true."

If I'm like anyone else, it's difficult for me to be my own mirror. But my interactions with the world can serve as that mirror. Like when I went to a women's networking session hosted by FoutainBlue in Palo Alto and experienced the great generosity and openness of women who were all trying to be helpful, not embarrassed but simply asking, "What are you looking for?" Yes, I enjoy working with women managers. I made another mental note.

Every week I bobble along in my hand-made boat. I'm hoping that after being at sea with the elements, I will arrive on the other shore tanned, fit, and with a sharper knowledge of myself.

For right now, it's time to address basic needs. I fold up my towel, rinse off the chlorine, and make a favorite dish.

Avocado Row-Boats
One avocado
One lemon (or lime)
Cheese or salsa, your choice
Corn chips

Here's a quick version of guacamole. Cut an avocado in half. Scoop out the wonderful green stuff by sliding a spoon around the outside of the shell. Save the shell. Mash up the avocado. Think like you're making devilled eggs. Now fill each skin with the mash. Squeeze a half of fresh lemon (or lime) juice over each half. Top with a dollop of cheese or salsa. Serve on a plate with enough chips for scoopers. Serve with some lovely bubbling water.

What is a Passive House?

2010-07-09T22:21:00.001-07:00

What exactly is a passive house ? A refuge for passive-aggressives? A space where the lights are out all the time and its inhabitants sit in quiet contemplation before a burning candle? Well, actually none of the above.

I was hoping to find out more about passive houses at a talk presented by Build It Green in Berkeley. Build It Green, a nonprofit membership organization that offers training and certifications in green building from Sacramento to Downey, California.

Amid a lovely dinner served with ample bottles of thirst-quenching waters and sparkling ciders at Truitt & White, a roomful of building types gathered to hear more about the building of the first Passive House in California on a land trust in West Marin County at 11560 California 1.

According to Build It Green, about 20,000 passive houses have been designed, built and retrofitted over the last 10 years in Europe, 12 in the United States, and one in California, which may offer another reason to drive to Pt. Reyes.

Most simply put, a Passive House receives and captures energy. In doing so, it slashes heating and energy costs by 90 percent. Of course this is a loosey-goosey definition.

There are Passive House standards that a building must meet to be certified. The Passive House Planning Package (PHPP), is a software package constructed like the popular TurboTax income tax program, allowing builders to plug in numbers and to receive automatic calculations for projections of heat load, loss, and energy usage with updated calculations for climates around the world. It’s a package that continually improves with updated data.

Here’s a bit of history. The notion of the Passive House (“Passivhaus”) was first developed in Germany in the early 1990s by Professors Bo Adamson of Sweden and Wolfgang Feist of Germany. They put together solar design ideas from North America with “low energy” European building standards to create the notion of a house that could maintain a comfortable interior climate without conventional heating and cooling systems. A Passive House can be operated without the help of large “active” mechanical systems (i.e. furnaces and boilers), thus the “Passive” moniker.

In 2003, Katrin Klingenberg, a German designer, built the first Passive House in Urbana, Illinois. Klingenberg established the Passive House Institute U.S. (PHIUS) in Urbana with builder Mike Kernagis. In January 2008, PHIUS was authorized by the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt as the official certifier of Passive Houses in the U.S.

Got it? Now back to Berkeley where James Bill, Katy Hollbacher, and Terry Nordbye, architect,engineer, and builder who worked together on West Marin’s Blue2 House, discussed what it took to build California’s first certified Passive House that soon will be occupied by a family. All agreed that the Passive House model goes far beyond Energy Star standards, a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy’s effort toward more cost effective environmental solutions. “In the past compliance, not energy usage, is what people looked at,” said Hollbacher.

Retrofitting an entire home to meet Passive House standards may not be cost effective for the average homeowner in the temperate Bay Area. However, the Build It Green presenters agreed that incorporating different aspects of the PHPP methodology may be the incremental best way to go.

In any case, it's going, going, going green.

Lenore Weiss
http://techtabletalk.posterous.com/

The Public Good is Good Business

2010-07-06T20:25:00.000-07:00

Everywhere I go these days seems to be lined with flower borders: white alyssum edging blue lobelia fronting on red begonias. From one condo to the next shopping mall to the museum in the city, there’s the same flower invitational. I’m not sure what to make of this. Either Home Depot was having a sale on sixteen packs for the last several weekends, or some one landscaping company has nailed down every contract within a 30-mile radius. Flowers speak of beauty and formal order. Outside of that ring, I find frustration. Some is my own, but not all.

Why, for instance, did it take Wells Fargo Bank eight months to tell me that I do not qualify for the Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP) because I had in the past co-signed on a loan? I only received that bit of news after jumping through a tunnel of hoops that began with a Joe McCarthy litany: “What is the property address? Do you plan to continue to live at the residence? What is your telephone number? What are the last four digits of your social security number?” I wondered if I seemed like the type of person who moved around every two weeks. I don’t think I could pack and unpack my boxes that quickly.

For months, I spoke to any number of agents in the “Loss Mitigation” department who nearly caused me to lose my mind by the amount of misinformation that was ever dispensed through the handset of a telephone. Only after finally writing a letter to the Executive Complaint Department located in Des Moines, Iowa, did anyone call with helpful information.

Then there’s the thrill of having to deal with the unemployment office, otherwise known as the Employment Development Division who up until the month of May, was located in an easily accessible location with ample parking. But their offices have been moved downtown with only metered parking. Everyone knows that you can’t go in and out of EDD without spending copious amounts of time. I thought we supposed to be unemployed and were saving money?

Sure, I’m whining, but I have a strong sense that our institutions are failing us. Somewhere there’s a bottom line that says that the public good is not good business. I haven’t been to a civics class lately, but I believe that already has been disproved by the Founding Fathers and several Greek philosophers who created the basis for our democracy.

Okay. But what I really need to do is find a job. Then I wouldn’t have so much time on my hands to be bothered by this stuff. But this may be another part of the Marie Antoinette --"Let them pay parking" -- thing. Keep people so tied up working one or two jobs and what happens? We don’t have time to write letters or to get our squeaky wheels out of the shop.

This morning as I edged my way to the computer I heard two phrases: “Focus” and “Go Deep.” You must know that I’ve been to a great number of career counselor motivational type speaker presentations. Everyone, like Gypsy Rose Lee, has their own particular gimmick, advice to share with the job-seeking sisters and brothers, and like Wells Fargo, much of the information is contradictory.

Some say to polish your resume until it shines like a diamond from Tiffany’s. Others advise not to bother, but to bet your money on networking (as though anyone can get beyond the word to understand what it means). Some counselors think that we must brand ourselves like cattle from different box tops, offering a particular service that can be summarized in a sentence. I could go on, but this morning as I sat in front of my laptop smelling a peculiar odor which I gathered had to be my cat relieving herself beneath my desk after sharing the apartment over the weekend with two little dogs, I realized that I needed to select what was useful from these offerings, all with their own shelf life. Here’s what I understood:

It was okay for me to be confused, mixed up and not knowing where to start because I had to begin someplace.
Going to job connection meetings has not been a waste of time as I told myself every time I came home from a job connection meeting because if nothing else, I knew I was not alone.
There is no one “right way,” only useful tools and different approaches.
Know what you want. That’s the hard one. So after reading the 200^th job description, see which ones start to look interesting, and try to understand why.
Move in that direction.

To be continued. But right now I feel like treating myself.

Public Good Brownies

Who needs a recipe for brownies? Everyone has one. But here’s mine that I’ve taken from the back of a chocolate chip bag with some added stuff .

2/3 cup flour

½ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup of butter, softened
¼ cup peanut butter

½ cup sugar

¼ cup brown sugar

2 cups total semi-sweet chocolate chips (divided into 1 cup each)

1 cup total of miniature marshmallows (divided into ½ cup each)

1 tsp vanilla

2 eggs
powdered sugar, sprinkles from last year's Xmas cookies, or coconut (whatever you've got)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Put 1 cup of chocolate in a glass bowl with ½ cup marshmallows. Microwave in two 1 minute sets (one minute at a time). Set aside to cool.
In small bowl, combine flour, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon and set aside.
In large bowl, cream butters (including of the peanut variety), sugars, and until they are looking “fluffed out.”
Add vanilla and eggs. Beat well.
Stir in melted chocolate/marshmallow mixture. Blend.
Gradually add flour mixture to chocolate mixture. Stir well.
Stir in remaining 1 cup of chocolate chips into the batter.
Spread half of the batter in a buttered 8” square baking pan.
Sprinkle the rest of the marshmallows over the top.
Cover with the remainder of the chocolate batter.
Bake in preheated over for 30-35 minutes. Cool. Sprinkle with some powdered sugar, sprinkles, and or coconut when done.

Van Jones is a Green Horn Looking to Create Investment

2010-07-02T13:36:00.001-07:00

Listening to Van Jones speak at the Commonwealth Club last week, which is one of my new favorite hang-outs, gave me a glimpse of our green future.

Jones, a former Obama administration appointee as Special Advisor for Green Jobs who was smeared by Republicans last year as a radical and finally resigned his office so as not to distract from the discussion about health-care legislation, said that our green future is part of a movement for a “voter-owned rather than a corporate-owned democracy.”

With the vision and courage to speak his mind, it’s easy to understand why Jones would ruffle a few feathers. This was my first time hearing him in person although many Bay Area folk know him as the founder in 1996 of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a California non-governmental organization (NGO) that is now focused on a green jobs campaign in addition to reducing violence. While many of us only knew to associate Saint Patrick’s Day with the color—Jones has been a green activist for a long time, building organizations and advocacy groups toward that end.

He spoke for the need for a climate and energy bill to ensure that no one gets to pollute for free. Jones maintained that the oil companies are “baking the planet and have been able to do that since the Industrial Revolution.” He advocated for the government to serve as a midwife to create a “New Green Deal” both in the United States and other industrialized nations. “If you want to solve problems,” he said, “you have to unleash market forces by bringing investment into green technology,” which is the only way he said that we are going to get out of the current recession.

Describing a moment for change that includes every “color, class, gender, and sexuality,” Jones said that going green is not about jobs versus the environment. “The government doesn’t count what counts,” he said. “Our metrics are off. There should be a movement like ‘Accountants for Transformative Change.’”

If you’d like to get more detail about the new economy, pick up a copy of his new book, or set your Kindle or iPad to “The Green Collar Economy” with a forward by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that ends, “Let the revolution begin.” While the sixties were about the struggle for political and social equality, perhaps a new chapter is opening up about the struggle for economic justice.

Lenore Weiss
http://techtabletalk.posterous.com/

Richard Bolles, the Dean of Summer

2010-06-29T15:43:00.000-07:00

There's something about the summer that turns me away from my job search. Again, if the EDD (Employment Development Department) is listening, this is only meant on a metaphorical level. Mostly, it's about the weather, those days when in reverse backward I'm a kid at the beach with the incoming tide lapping at my toes, or in the country with the incessant scream of cicadas drowning out every other sound: hills brown, grass dry. Everything slows and nothing seems particularly important except a cold drink. Lemonade or a cold beer will do fine.

The warm weather puts the job hunt into perspective, sun bathers at the pool discussing the merits of various floatation devices, those that require complete or partial inflation; exchanges that deflect me from more grave matters in the world like the oil spill in the Gulf, hearings for a new Supreme Court Justice, and certainly the whereabouts of my latest job application. Everything becomes more stretched out on an event horizon.

These are days when I smell oatmeal and scrambled eggs wafting from some imaginary kitchen, a hunger for elementary days, for a song that grabs me from a set of speakers and won't leave me all afternoon on a blanket. Which is why I enjoyed listening to Richard "Dick" Bolles this morning speaking at the Experience Unlimited Meeting in Contra Costa. In different ways he advised against being frantic. His publication nearly 40 years ago of "What Color is Your Parachute," has been updated over the years, a kind of bible for job seekers in 26 countries and translated into 20 languages.

Bolles looked like my stereotype of a Texan, 6'5" with pristine white sneakers, which except for their color were big enough to double as planters. Bolles exuded a kind of Bob Hope warmth, a kid on the first day of summer camp looking for friends. At 83, Bolles has been entertaining the troops long enough on the job search trail to have won a lifetime achievement award. If he hasn't already, he should. Bolles said he owes his longevity to drinking a swig of formaldehyde every night.

Basically, he told us to relax into our job search, to do the assessment, the personal inventory. Of course that's also called doing the work, but he made it sound simple. He told us to take the time to get to know ourselves.

"The secret to having hope in a job search," he said, "is having alternatives." Instead of relaying on the resume to be the foot solider opening doors, he counseled to develop a number of strategies, least of which was to "capture your own vitality, your own energy. All the world conspires to rob your of that."

It was enough to make me jump into the swimming pool.

Tonight I'll don my new summer dress that I bought with the idea of an interview in mind -- blue flowers on a white field -- (I wanted to visualize the occasion). I'll go amongst the minions of policy makers and network like I really meant it. But not before creating my next dish made with orange soda. After all, it is summer.

Stuffed Orange Chicken: Summer Side Up
Approximately 1 pound of boneless chicken thighs
1/2 cup of orange soda
1/2 cup of orange juice
2T orange marmalade or apricot jam
1/2 cup of chicken broth
1/2 onion
5 cloves of garlic minced
2T of olive oil
1/2 cup of fire roasted peppers from the condiments aisle of your refrigerator
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1-2 sprigs of rosemary that you brought home from your friend's garden
A bunch of fresh thyme from the patio garden
Slice of bread (whole wheat is best)

Saute onions and garlic in oil on low heat. When onions are clear to partly brown, add peppers and saute together for 3 minutes. Add rosemary that you've plucked from the stem. Add the thyme. Pour in all the liquids. Tear slice of bread into small pieces. Cook on a low to medium heat for about five-ten minutes more. This is not your deduction of olden days, but the reduction. We are reducting. Remove from heat.

Wash chicken thighs and place in 8 X 10 baking dish. Pour liquid over chicken. Open the boneless thighs and make sure you place some of the pepper/onion/garlic/herb/ bread mixture inside. Fold thighs over the goodies. Bake in a 350 oven for an hour or until golden brown.

Water Fountain

2010-06-28T09:46:00.000-07:00

Igloos in the schoolyard

metallic with sour milk
poured on stockpiles

of wet tissue paper bombs

where a quarter-size button

made a snake dance

like a boy’s pee on the sidewalk

An Opening the Size of a Bread Basket

2010-06-25T10:40:00.000-07:00

I had one of those job-seeking days that motivational speakers like to hold up as a model: networking meeting in the morning, interview in the afternoon, trip to the gym mid-afternoon, and a glass of wine with an old friend in the evening. Most of the time I manage to do one or at most two of those things. But not all of them combined. What followed was unpredictable. The next day I hit the doldrums. I suppose I had it coming. I looked at the parking attendant as I walked to the gym and thought how lucky he was to have a job. I smiled at the woman behind a glass booth who took my parking ticket and wanted to trade places. The interviewers of the part-time job I had gone to suggested that I check job possibilities on another web site, which I took as I sign that I wasn't going to be invited back. How positive and upbeat can one person be about not having a job without falling apart every so often? There must a corollary for that sort of thing. The bank called for the umpteenth time about my mortgage restructuring, offering me an escrow account for the privilege of my being considered, and allowing me to pay $300 more a month than I am currently paying. I needed to wallow in self-pity, to moan to my cat every time I lifted up my head from the computer. If nothing else, I had earned it. All my going to meetings and making phone calls, really, what good had any of it done me? I remained in my pajamas the entire day and did nothing, crawled into a hole and stayed there until I got dressed around 6pm, put gas in my empty tank at a pricey station near my house and drove to an event. On the way back, the sky was fingerpainted in orange. I sat on the couch and listened to dogs bark.

So what happened to my support system? I had landed in an area that hadn't been zoned for despondent job seekers. There's a first time for everything. The next day I managed to pick myself up with several cups of coffee and opened the folder that I had set up several weeks ago. I sighed. I remembered my burst of positive energy that had led me to Costco to get a new black printer cartridge. Here were the names of individuals from green-based companies.

So didn't I hear one of the career consultants say at a meeting several weeks ago that networking alone wasn't going to get the job, cold calls were the way to go? I dialed the head of the company. A real voice answered the phone. I gulped.

"Hi, I'm one of the many unemployed who's looking for an opening the size of a bread basket. I'm calling to see if you can use my services." I could hear that he was hooked. Oddly enough, the voice on the other end of the phone waited for me to continue. I explained my background.

"We just finished a large project," he said, almost apologetically.

Then in a burst of resourcefulness that came from some unknown place deep within the recesses of my memory bank, I said. "Is there a list you can add me to in the event that another project comes up?"

He said, "Why certainly. I'd be glad to." I felt better, refueled for my quest, a saga on YouTube with foootage of me sitting in front of the computer screen with my cellphone to my right, the landline to my left, bubble voices overhead flying out in 3-D, The Beatles' A Yellow Submarine in the background, episode 1, 2, 3, following into infinity, cutting my Shepherd's Pie into increasingly smaller squares. I need so little encouragement to keep me engaged, to keep me going. I'm also a cheap drunk. So what's on the menu for tonight? I didn't feel like cooking. Horror of all horrors. Microwave popcorn.

The Interview

2010-06-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

I knew something was going to happen, but nothing did. Of course, Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart announced their wedding and British Petroleum agreed to give the victims of the oil spill 20 billion dollars, and of both events I am very glad. Plus a Steller's Jay landed on my patio and waved its crown of feathers around for several minutes, which I thought was quite spectacular; the handset I needed to return to the store suddenly changed its erratic tune. The day wasn't totally uneventful.

It started out with the interview. I had stayed up the night before reading about the company on the Internet, a web design and consulting firm with a killer website, a nice mash-up of solid content and unique design. It was like Goldilocks' porridge bowl: they got it just right. The company needed a person to come on board as a Web Content Project Manager and although they had listed a certificate in Project Management as a highly desirable, the agent had assured me that this wasn't a "deal breaker." The more I read, the more I liked the company. The fact that it was located near Fisherman's Wharf made it seem like a position that included a view. I found my zip drive and went through my portfolio, downloaded a variety of files to demonstrate my ability to project manage. I arranged the files in folders for quick retrieval and rehearsed my explanation.

The next morning I showered and donned my interview outfit. I wore a pair of slacks with a shirt trimmed in metallic gee-gaws and an upbeat jacket. My daughter, home from college, had gone to the mall to help make the selection.

The only thing that I'd left open-ended was whether I was going to take public transportation or drive. Since the interview was scheduled for mid-morning, I figured I could miss the commute traffic and arrive less ruffled. The only wild card was in finding a parking spot, but I left myself plenty of time, an hour and a half including a quick stop for gas. All was well until I approached the Bay Bridge to San Francisco. Not having commuted to the city for years, I wasn't familiar with the traffic patterns. Smooth sailing turned out to be slowly moving grid lock. I took my position in the lava flow of traffic, nervously glancing at my GPS device. It kept reassuring me that I would arrive in time. I did and found street parking without a meter. I was five minutes early.

I entered an office with large windows and lots of light. The receptionist was on the phone so I sat down. In a few moments a man stepped outside his office and invited me inside. This was J.E., the managing director who looked like he couldn't be more than 35 and had already served as a vice-president and a technology director, which is not to say that I was intimidated, but only to appreciate that this current generation has mega smarts. We talked for a half hour. At the end, he told me I wasn't the one. I lacked experience in financially managing a project. We exchanged business cards, thanked each other, and I drove home.

Although I knew the job was not for me and it had been a case of two people feeling each other out and not liking what they found, still I couldn't help but feeling lousy. Once again I had come up short in the job market. I bemoaned my misspent years as a full-time employee, unable to find a mentor who could appreciate my talent and dedication, someone who would help me make sense of the corporate culture and direct me into greater areas of responsibility. Or maybe I had been fooling myself and I had resisted guidance all along.

The usual ring-tones went off in my head. I hadn't been one thing or another--worked in a marketing agency or on a development team. My specialty was in serving as the link between different user communities and development groups. I wanted to be valued for who I am without the embellishment of PMIs, or the need to know some one thing or another. I'm not sure I'm being realistic.

Like I said. I knew something was going to happen, but nothing did. You've heard about the whole lemon thing. Here's my recipe with lemonade:

Lemonade Chicken Drum Sticks
Package of drum sticks (about six)
Juice of one lemon
1/2 cup of lemonade
1/2 cup of dry vermouth standing in the corner from New Years
Salsa of some kind (1/4 to 1/2 cup)
Molasses (1/4 cup)
Salt, pepper to your taste

Mix everything together. Turn drum sticks around in the lemonade soup.
Drizzle the molasses over everything.
Bake in the oven at 400 degrees until chicken legs are brown and caramelized.

Give Me an Extension

2010-06-24T07:31:00.000-07:00

Lately what excites me is hearing that my unemployment benefits have been extended. But before I get myself into big trouble, let me make it perfectly clear to the Employment Development Department that Yes, I want to work, and No, I have not misrepresented myself on any of the paperwork that I've sent back to your office.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's say that I've changed.

In the past, raising young children made taking any kind of job okay. As long as I got a regular check and benefits, I could endure an amazing amount of corporate dysfunctional nonsense, a typical parent who put my kids first, glad to have the financial stability and structure, plus I liked what I did well enough to make it all acceptable. As long as I came to work every day and responded to the requests of a manager whose primary modus operandi was to cover his own posterior, I could tick off the months into years.

In a way, the job and I used each other. But now that my children are grown, for the first time I have a chance to demand something else from my job, something that matches who I am, something that might allow me to be a singer instead of slogger, if I could only find the right stage.

For example on my way to a real interview, a plum position for a major health organization, I shuddered as I entered the building. It was the first thing in the morning, one of those typical sleek and sterile office monoliths. I walked into the lobby and signed in at the security desk, as instructed. This involved being photographed, after such time, I was handed a white identification badge to stick on to my clothing. Properly identified, I climbed aboard one of the stainless steel elevators as people crowded inside. I got off at the 22nd floor and followed a circuitous route until I found the hiring manager who invited me to sit down.

Without going into great detail, I bombed, nervous, tongue-tied, a maniac. I beat myself up about it for several weeks afterward, having made the cardinal error of handing over a less than perfect resume. After healing from my self-inflicted stupid wounds, I realized that shutting myself away for another long stint inside a corporate castle, sitting at a computer all day and walking back and forth between my cubicle and the bathroom with only five o'clock to rescue me, was no longer appealing. I didn't want to do that anymore. But I hoped I could find out what I did want to do before my unemployment ran out.

So in the language of genre writing, I had a "a ticking clock," something that Alfred Hitchcock built into his plots. The birds are going to invade the town, Mrs. Danvers in going to go off any moment now, the other shoe is going to drop. In my particular case, I had only so much money and time, but isn't that what we all have?  Ask not for whom the clock ticks...Nevertheless, how was I going to plot the journey between Point A and Point B and be ready for the journey to points unknown?

I could not rely on the universe to drop something into my lap. These days, the universe seems to be in serious survival mode. Networking, success teams, and job clubs were helping, but I needed to back up a bit.  Maybe I was the kind of girl who needs to finish the peas on her plate before attacking her potatoes. I wanted to find out who I was at this juncture of my life. I wanted to believe that I could create a new way to work. I wanted to know what I wanted.

I Need Something Sweet Chocolate Croissant

Sliced whole grain bread
1/3 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips (dark chocolate is good for us)
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Lightly toast the whole grain bread.  At the pop,  remove from toaster
Sprinkle the semi-sweets on the bread. Depending upon your appliance situation, heat a standard oven to 250 degrees until the chocolate is melted or place in a microwave for 30 seconds.

Spread the softened chocolate on the bread. Sprinkle on the cinnamon. Roll up. Ummm.

Gray and Groovy

2010-06-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

Many people at job meetings look like me: "mature," fiftyish, and whose children are about to enter or finish college. Our idea of a great gift is a remote to find the last place we left our eye glasses. We're not too sure about text messaging, video gaming, and social networking although out of necessity, we do get LinkedIn. Having survived the predominance of corporate influence in many of our democratic institutions, we are now asked to brighten our teeth to remove years of coffee, wine, and other forms of abuse, the very things that have made us who we are. But oh, how times have changed.

To be competitive in today's market place we are advised to create a brand as though we were Post Toasties right out of the box. Our joblessness has spawned a new industry of counselors, coaches, advisers, and marketing professionals who are lining up to tell us what to do with ourselves as they collect our money. Don't get me wrong. Someone has to work.

Initially, I toyed with the idea of getting several tattoos to update my image. A butterfly on the back of my neck. Or maybe a rose cascading down my forearm. Body decoration is in. My job counselor gave me a card for his own tattoo parlor, highly recommended, guaranteed to run a clean ship. And then the ultimate recommendation. "This guy is a real artist."

But as much as I wanted to show that I had not mildewed in the corner with my copies of "The New Yorker," I backed off from tattooing in favor of highlighting my hair. It was much easier. I could always shop for a new outfit, being sure to bring along my daughter to to guard against my buying the same black suit.

Once I only wore blue jeans.

We are the baby boomers, the ones who created the generation gap and proclaimed "not to trust anyone over 30." Now we are hoping to be called for the first round of interview hoop-jumping. No longer radicals storming embassies and marching down the streets of metropolitan cities to protest wars and demand civil rights, we desire a job with health benefits to ferry us through the gap between collecting retirement (if we're lucky) and MediCal. Let's be honest. National health care is an apparition that may materialize within three years, but no one seems to know what the heck it will look like.

Now we have something else we never had before: an understanding of how time is finite. Maybe instead of getting just any old kind of job, we are seeking a position in the nonprofit industry where we can "contribute something back to the community." Because while we were stuck for years sitting in commuter traffic, we have become a society that no longer can afford social services, adequate health care, and teachers. Isn't that something? Maybe the legions of unemployed baby boomers will fill social service and educational posts that have been cut to the rib cage. You know it could happen.

This past week when I attended my aunt's 100th birthday celebration, I noted how every one of the flight attendant's had wrinkles. A charming blonde with crowfeet, a bald guy who kept passing out peanuts and pretzels like they were going out of style. Is the sixties generation revolutionizing the spirit and style of aging in the same way that we created political shock waves with Bob Dylan's "The Times They are Changing" as our personal anthem?

I'm not sure we're quite there yet. I can envision two half-time employees sharing a full-time health benefits package. I can see researching cultures where age is valued for itself, and not just for being a pool of accumulated wealth, although there is that, too.

I am convinced as one of those aging boomers, there is a great need to create new ways to work and for that, even the Leftover Chef has no easy recipes.

Elevator Pitch

2010-06-04T00:42:00.000-07:00

Then there's the emphasis on having an "elevator pitch," a 30-second summary that tells a person who I am and what I do. But I rarely talk to anyone inside an elevator. Maybe I should. But my conversation is usually limited to figuring out if "S" means basement or street-level.

Wedged at the back of an elevator, I've been known to ask a person standing near the button panel to press a floor. Of course, in the days when I did have a job, traveling in the elevator meant knowing the location of sandwiches and salad left over from an earlier board meeting. Of course, many Monday mornings it was more about catching up on football or baseball scores listening to Tony from the mail room comparing notes with other the Tony from the seventh floor. Inside elevators we are all captive audiences waiting to run out.

Maybe elevator speeches can be effective depending upon who is traveling inside an elevator. But how are we really supposed to know? Maybe the best thing is to come right out with it: "Does any one know about a job opening, preferably one with benefits?"

If someone speaks up, I would want to know more. But with my luck the doors would open, my source would leave, and I'd be left kicking myself for including the benefits part as a deal-breaker. Timing is always important. But I could always follow him, assuming a him, and ask, "Excuse me. About that job..."

"I've got to go to the bathroom," he says, holding on to the chrome door handle.

"This will be real quick," I say, and notice that he's beginning to unzip his fly. The man is actually going to flash me. How uncouth. Instead, I turn back to the bank of elevators. I'm thankful when one lands on my floor. I go down, all the way down to "S" or street-level and find another office building. I'm hoping this time I'll get lucky and I enter the elevator.

This one is packed. There's some kind of management meeting on the 24th floor. I know this because a number of people are holding agendas with the name "Bill Briggens" on top, and something about "Meeting Your Quotas." It's now or never. We're passing the 19th floor and I have exactly five more floors to go before the crowd bails. "Does any one know about a job opening?" I ask, and this time forget about the benefits stuff.

"Gee," I don't know, answers this one guy with a tattoo of a dragon blowing flames over his collar. He turns to the back of the elevator. "Any of you guys know anything?" Silence. I know what I can do with that. But then the dragon guy looks at me and says, "Why don't you just come to the meeting and ask?"

"Really?" I say.

"Sure," he says. "Anyway what do you do?"

I think for a moment. "I give speeches inside elevators."

"Cool."

Eggs Long Hand

My Aunt Jeannette first cooked this breakfast dish for me in her trailer. She had long hands, hence the name of the dish, and made the dish with the last two eggs in her carton. When I've found myself in similar circumstances, I think of her.

Two eggs
one slice of stale bread
1/2 a red or yellow onion or even two scallions
Handful of blueberries or strawberries
Pinches of Salt and Pepper
1 T Oil

Heat pan. Pour in oil. Heat oil.
Dice onion. Saute in oil until soft and shiny.
Tear bread into one-inch pieces and cook in onion until crusty.
Mix eggs together with a Tablespoon of water or milk
Pour eggs over the bread
Put in your pinches of salt and pepper
Throw blueberries in the pan like you're rolling dice
Wait for eggs to set and serve immediately with lots of black coffee.

A Floating Oil Spill of Indifference

2010-06-01T23:10:00.000-07:00

Monday means going downstairs to the parking lot in front of my house and seeing the empty parking spaces of my neighbors who have left for work. Then there's my car. So why is this a big thing? Because I'm at home as scores of people brave the highway and use mass transportation to begin their week at work.

Monday also means I need to organize my game plan, to come to terms with this week's quota of phone calls and meetings. To network is a thing to be wished for, but according to the English version of the Job Seeker's Bible, remaining in front of the computer all day completing online resumes is not a productive use of time. These last few days I've sworn off the computer and decided to enjoy the pleasures of house cleaning, discovering dirt where I never looked before, repotting plants, washing linens, and remembering to eat carrots every single time I reopen the refrigerator--to find something.

So today I want to write an open letter to the kindness of strangers. It seems as good a place as any to start. I'm convinced there are many out there because as hard as I am looking to find work, surely they are working equally hard to keep their jobs. Possibly, they have a family member who like me is unemployed. We're expressions of the same economy, Jacks and Jills sitting on either edge of a see-saw. And even as this fact seeps into my brain, I become less fearful of reaching out into that undifferentiated miasma, want to break it down one email at a time. So...

Let me take a moment to thank a speaker at a forum for saying that when your company has an opening you will consider hiring me, even if you didn't mean it and your only motive was in having me scratch your name off my contact list. Your kind gesture offered a brief ray of hope on an otherwise uneventful day. Likewise, many virtual hugs to a woman whom I contacted after hearing a presentation by the San Francisco Business Times about reaching people who are leaders in their field, for distributing my resume throughout her organization, and emailing it to someone who was recruiting for a particular job. She took a moment to believe in me in this vast floating oil spill of indifference.

A shout out to an instructor of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques who is connected to everyone there is to know on LinkedIn, who allowed me to attend his class for free and blog about it, a magnanimous gesture that provided me with my most successful headline to date: "Beer, Wine, and SEO Techniques." And also to the hiring managers who wrote to tell me that I was carefully considered, but did not get the job. It means a great deal to know where I stand.

I will get through my Monday, which will undoubtedly become the weekend, not because there's no work for me to go to, but because that's when I get to stay home like everyone else.

Can-do Salmon Croquettes
One can of salmon that you bought six months ago in an effort to change-up from tuna fish.
One onion grated
2 T fresh (or not) lemon juice
One scallion diced (if you have any)
One grated carrot (if you have one)
One clove of garlic diced
2T Parsley (if you have any)
One egg
1 T Mustard
Pinch of Salt
Pinch of Pepper
Pinch of Paprika
Any combination of capers, pickle relish, or pimento olives (if you use olives, dice 'em.)
Breading ingredients: Seasoned bread crumbs, oatmeal, flour or cornmeal (about 1/3 to 1/2 cup)
Olive or canola oil

Leftover Chef recipes are always flexible. Mix some combination of the above ingredients with the canned salmon. Form into approximately six patties. Coat with cornmeal or any combination of the breading ingredients.

Heat pan. Heat oil. Cook on medium heat until brown, approximately 5 minutes on each side. Have a tomato around? Slice and serve on the side over a leaf of lettuce.

Alice, Please Send Help

2010-05-31T10:48:00.000-07:00

Here in the Bay Area where the sky usually denies any existence of clouds, after weeks of rain the sun has finally appeared. I sit on my patio with the Sunday newspaper and a stack of magazines from the computer industry that have been piling up on the dining room table either to be read or recycled. I decide to catch up on what I've been missing, not a programmer but a technology scribe who writes user manuals and maintains content on web sites.

My cat sits at the screen door meowing to join me, but I try to ignore her even though she's doing a great job of being pitiful. I'm not moved, especially since she's started using a large planter as her litter box. Instead, I point to the pet door and explain how she can lounge outside on the concrete steps leading to my condo. I've started talking to myself, but it's not myself. Is it? I'm talking to my cat. In awhile, she gets the message and leaves. All I hear is my iPod from the living room and turn back to picking out articles.

With so much information, it's important to be selective, focused. But despite my best efforts, I'm verging off on my own internal hyperlinks, my mind skipping along, looking for a lifeline. Now I'm back again. The magazines are filled with articles about mobile devices, security issues, big companies merging with other companies to get an edge on an upstart, software floating on a cloud and settling on a network, databases that are no longer relational but elongational.

Once I stood at the threshold of computer development. I've watched the Internet grow from the bastard child of the defense industry into an international communications megalith. Technology is moving at an incredible speed. I'm falling down a rabbit-hole with a trampoline bouncing me off the wall. An old professor appears and requests shrimp. My grandmother has suddenly zoomed into life and says I can ask her three questions before she disappears. I keep bouncing. It's a good thing I've been going to the gym, but still, this isn't fun.

I promise myself that I'll stop insisting that my pattern pieces for this Bronx doll fit together. But which way is the way and is there a way? Alice, please send help.

Right now, I need to bring a dish to my Women's Salon, a group of poets and writers who share inspiration and food. I look in my refrigerator and there's not much there. I dig behind an empty plastic bag, which I'm not sure why I'm trying to refrigerate. But I do find a pound of string beans that are beginning to go wrinkly, a perfect foil for my next recipe.

Au Go-Go Green Beans
A pound of use-to-be fresh green beans
A bulb of garlic
Red chile flakes
Salt
2 Tablespoons of sesame oil
Parsley (handful as in a 1/4 to 1/2 cup)
A cup of so of garbanzo beans
Soft cheese (optional)

Put up a pot of water to boil. In the meantime, trim the green beans. No need to wash. Once the water boils plunge the beans into the cauldron. They'll turn a bright beautiful green. Keep them boiling on medium for about four minutes until crunchy. Drain.

While the beans are cooking, heat sesame oil in a large frying pan on low. (Better to heat the pan first on low before pouring in the oil.) Take about 10 garlic gloves (less if you don't like a strong garlic taste) and smash them in salt on a cutting board. Dice into small bits. Saute the garlic on low, keep stirring. Make sure the garlic doesn't burn. In about 2 minutes pour the drained beans into the frying pan. Stir with a wooden spoon, coating the beans with the oil and garlic. Keep it up.

Get two or three pinches of red chile flakes and add to the mix. Salt. Chop parsley (can be wilted) and throw into the pan. Keep coating. Now open a can of garbanzo beans. Add about one cup to the fry pan. Keep the mixing action going.

Find some soft gunky cheese that you've ignored for too long and slice into small bits. Toss into the fry pan and keep mixing until melted.

Serve either warm or at room temperature. Goes well with white wine.

Recruiters and Dogs with Sticks

2010-05-24T20:36:00.000-07:00

The fire trail behind my house is where I walk after staring at job boards and postings on LinkedIn, a place where dog owners can let their pets roam off leash. Today after passing many packs of doggies, I wonder why they all seem to be partial to sticks--chewing, pawing, licking, and happily carrying them inside the vise of their teeth.

Sometimes dog owners pick up a second stick and throw it down the trail. Some dogs go for the chase, while others ignore the subterfuge. But this does not explain the basic stick fascination. I polled dog owners along the fire trail about this phenomenon. They reached a consensus: dogs like sticks because of an instinct before doggie domestication to hunt and carry prey to the den. As someone growing up in the apartment buildings of New York City whose idea of a pet was a goldfish or a parakeet, I thank dog owners for their insight.

Now I'm almost up to the second bench along the trail, a marker that lets me know how far I've come before the path angles upward and climbs to the back of a local community college's parking lot.

I'm hitting my stride, relaxing into a new way of life called unemployment. In my particular line of work, I've discovered that there are a group of recruiters largely based East Coast who all seem to have the same job opportunity. I've been doing this long enough to know not to take them seriously. Any time they call they are in "round-up" mode, recruiters who need to submit a daily quota to their account managers who operate higher up on the frenzied chain. Once my resume is submitted, they drop away from me like road kill along the Internet highway.

In a discussion today with a local recruiter, I didn't immediately jump at the job bait. I wanted to find out more, let her know that certain recruiting practices can give people like her a bad name. She seemed to want to prove that she didn't run with that crowd. All afternoon, she sent me email. By the end of the week, I still hadn't heard a thing.

Then there was that phone number on a yellow stickie, a note I had written to myself. I called and it was the head of a well-known local agency; how I got the number I don't remember, except he put me in touch with one of the agency's recruiters who called 15 minutes after we had finishing talking and encouraged me to send along my resume and any attachments, which I did. By the end of the week, I still hadn't heard a thing, called and found out the client wanted some specific experience that I lacked.

Silence means it's time to move on.

I hadn't dropped the ball, but I dropped my stick. I got home hungry. It was time to make:

Very Poor Boy Sandwiches
Fish fillet (about 3/4 of a pound) from your cousin's fishing trip that have been at the back of the freezer for six months
Hot sauce
Lemon juice
Salt, Pepper
One Tablespoon of olive oil
Rolls (stale is okay)
Condiments to choose from (olives, pickled veggies, mustard, chutney, relish, ranch dressing, ketchup, etc.)

Defrost fish fillets.
Drip hot sauce on the fillets and squeeze out the juice of one lemon for a marinade. If the fish is a little on the stinky side, this will help. Season with salt and pepper. Let fish sit while you heat up a pan on a moderate setting. One the pan is hot, add oil. Once the oil is hot, add fish, and depending the thickness of the fillet, cook about 4 minutes on each side.
Heat up rolls. If they're stale, sprinkle with a little water to freshen and pop in the oven or microwave until toasty.
Spread rolls with your chosen condiment, or combination of thereof. (For traditionalists, add lettuce and tomato.)

Unemployment and "Creating a Brand"

2010-05-22T18:23:00.000-07:00

I listened to my job support group and began to network. Network? The idea of sidling up to a stranger and striking up a conversation was more than I could handle.

As a young girl I sat at my mother's kitchen table listening to her converse with friends as they sipped pots of strong black coffee, wondering how they knew what to say to each other and when to switch from one subject to the next without hesitation. I looked for signs, gestures, changes in expression, but saw none.

I believe my life-long career as a listener began at this point, not because I was interested in what other people had to say, but because I didn't know what to say myself. But to talk to strangers! To network! To move toward inquiring about jobs was more than I could handle, which is why I initially became the Leftover Chef. It gave me something to do in between collecting unemployment checks.

My idea was to "create a brand" for myself, which is what my job club had advised. You see, I was listening!

I realized that I was someone on a fixed income who could demonstrate how to get by without buying anything. My elevator speech unfolded right before my very eyes. Night after night after I prepared dinner from the few fixings in my cupboard, an idea began to form. TV's Food Network made altogether too many demands on the budget, requiring that the cook had actually gone grocery shopping earlier in the day to prepare for some themed repast. Stews, barbecue, Southern cooking, tiered desserts, French omelettes. Not in my condo, which was now seriously underwater; I carved my meals from the back of my refrigerator and from the very shadows of canned food shelves where I had never gone before, a kind of Star Trek of the stomach. I decided to share, collect recipes and market myself to a niche that as far as my preliminary research had indicated, was nicheless. And so I offer these recipes.

All recipes are meant as guidelines for your own hands and tastes to annoint. They are not from a famous food author who has spent a lifetime researching the cuisine of a certain culture. No way. They come from daily life, from ingredients that the average household has forgotten.

In time the innards of the refrigerator become exposed. Ketchup, mustard, relish, chutney, horseradish, jams, not to menton the many food items a shopper may capture one weekend from the supermarket thinking to experiment or try a new product only to be swept up in the demands of the week. However, in the world of the Leftover Chef, job routines in addition to a regular paycheck, have ceased to exist, which offers a new-found freedom.

What now stands in full view is the reminder of a food budget poorly managed. This is where the Leftover Chef steps in to concoct all manner of new approaches to eating. See it as a challenge of having to do with less, or a part of the green movement to recycle leftovers.

Use the recipes to plummet through the shoals of your creativity, an invitation to discover your own potential in lean times. Here's the first step:

Cabbage Concoction
Half a head of cabbage
Any part of an onion
Tomatoes from the rejected produce section
Any other wilting veggies
Bits of leftover meat (optional)
Salsa molding at back of the refrigerator (dig to the bottom where the stuff is okay)
Liquid of any kind including chicken broth, white wine, or plein de water
Cooking oil
Seasonings like chile powder or hot sauce
Noodles of any kind

Directions:
In a separate pan, boil water, cook noodles, drain and set aside.
Heat up a large frying pan on the stove. Pour in about 2 tablespoons of oil.
Don't cry. Put on sunglasses and dice the onion. Things will get better. If you have different onions wrapped up in plastic like a half of a red and yellow, both or either will work. Saute in the oil.
As the crow flies north, cut the cabbage into strips and place into the pan with the sauteed onions. Mix around on a low flame until everything is soft about 5 to 10 minutes.
Slice your tomatoes and throw them into the pot to create a nice mush.
Slice and add any other wilting veggies like celery or broccoli from the "crisper." Cook everything together for another 5 minutes, stirring during commercial break.
Dice any leftover meat like chicken, turkey, or tofu sausage. If you don't have any, don't sweat it.
Just get the salsa from the side of your refrigerator and measure out about 2 Tablespoons into the mix.
Add a cup of some liquid.
Add seasonings to taste.
Mix in the cooked noodles and cook and stir some more.

Serve with a cool glass of water. For a nice touch, add a lemon slice.

Plug Into Your Electric Vehicle (EV) Future

2010-05-21T17:55:00.001-07:00

Surely you’ve heard about the May partnership announced between Toyota and Tesla to start building electric cars at the recently closed NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing Inc.) plant in Fremont, California. For the past 25 years General Motors and Toyota had worked to manufacture cars together, seeing it as an opportunity to learn about each other’s production methods. The plant was closed earlier this year by Toyota as a cost-cutting measure; now it is being resurrected in the name of electric car development.

And who is Tesla? The only manufacturer of EVs in the United States at prices that none of us can afford. But that may change with Toyota acquiring a $50-million stake in Tesla and the two companies poised to rumble on the assembly lines together…but don’t look now…the Tesla-Toyota partnership may have competition.

At a Commonwealth Club meeting in San Francisco this month, speakers representing different spectrums of EV car development including a representative from General Motors, discussed the possibility of these electrically powered cars becoming the future vehicle of choice.

Tony Posawatz, Vehicle Line Director of General Motors’ New Chevy Volt and also Co-Chairman of the Electric Drive Transportation Association, announced that he had driven a Volt to the meeting, and offered that the car will be in retail development by the end of this year “with GM being the first to mass market electrically driven vehicles in the U.S. and around the world.” Currently, the Volt has a 40-mile range with an extending gas generator that produces enough energy to power the car along further on a single tank. Posawatz spoke of that initial range being upped from 40 to 100 miles and that the Volt is not “a single play for GM.”

Look around the corner. Motorcycles also are being slated for electric development. Jit Bhattacharya, CEO of Mission Motors whose new Mission One Motorcycle (funded with help from Silicon Valley venture capitalists) claims to be the fastest production electric motorcycle in the world, said that the company is looking to “improve range, performance, and cost.” Current EV technology is based on lithium-ion batteries, commonly housed these days in laptops, PDAs, cellphones, and the Toyota Prius.

Mission Motors is exploring a partnership he said with China, which is using electric bikes and scooters to help address the issue of smog. This was an environmental problem that was highlighted during the Beijing Olympic 2008 games. Apart from all other considerations, “The electric motorcycle is just more fun to ride.”

More fun, but what about practical, what about the massive infrastructure and development that needs to support the transition to EV? What about the growing demands on the power grid? Mark Duvall, Director of Electric Transportation at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), an independent, nonprofit center for public interest energy and environmental research which receives most of its funding from member electric power companies, said “The industry has a responsibility to serve with a job to just deal with it.” He cited how power companies have stepped up to increase service as newer technologies like computers and plasma TVs draw more juice from the grid.

Technology is improving here also with the development of what many refer to as the “smart grid” giving buildings, most immediately those owned by the government, the ability to monitor light and heat usage by wiring systems together and controlling them from a central software panel. Ultimately, we will be able to monitor energy usage in our homes. All of this will require massive amounts of capital investment. The Feds have already kick-started the process, he said, with a 130 million dollar investment, but suggested that power usage may get more expensive with different pricing tiers, encouraging consumers to power up EVs during off-peak hours. There's even talk about being able to sell power from a EV car battery back to the power grid, much the way people today with installed solar sell electricity to local power companies.

Yeah, and what about plugging in those vehicles? How is that going to happen? Richard Lowenthal, a former Mayor of Cupertino, California, and founder and CEO of Coulomb Technologies, Inc., acknowledged as a leader in electric vehicle charging station infrastructure worldwide, anticipates that this will happen differently depending on different situations.

For example, in an urban area like San Francisco where the majority of people do not live in single-family houses, drivers may plug-in vehicles while they are shopping. “Most stations probably will not charge because businesses want people to shop in their areas.” He anticipates charging stations becoming “a normal piece of parking lot furniture." He also said that the home permitting system is changing to allow for these stations. “It’s just like installing an appliance. It’s not a big deal,” although Lowenthal did acknowledge that older homes will have to do “a lot more work.”

More immediately, the future of EVs “will be blended,” said Posawatz, with an exploration of lithium-ion batteries augmented by biofuels and flex fuels. The EV “is not only for enthusiasts and early adopters. This is a car every one will love.”

Who knows? The American automobile industry, supported by power companies and infrastructure development, may have some life in it yet.

What do you think about our EV future?
Lenore Weiss
http://techtabletalk.posterous.com/

Posted via email from TechTableTalk: "It's Not Over Your Head"

Every Weekend

2010-05-16T15:13:00.000-07:00

I don't know where I live anymore. In a condo
by Leona Canyon or in your apartment
through the Webster Tube in Alameda?

Every weekend I climb past tomato sandwiches
tossed on your staircase, a high-tide apartment building
shoring up families with views of storm drains
weeping hot tears into the Pacific
then over to a part of town where drug lords
visit funeral parlors with loaded guns.

"Be Stupid," reads a t-shirt in San Francisco.
White letters on a black background, a call
to Fools everywhere.

Where do I belong? Tasting your cypress lips,
winding my fingers through your hand that anchors my love.

Choosing HTML5 Over Watching American Idol

2010-05-12T20:46:00.001-07:00

Sure I wanted to see the last four contestants engage in their duet duels on national TV. But we’re talking HTML5, the next generation in hypertext markup language that the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) international standards organization has been hard in work in developing. Plus, it was a total geek-out held at Microsoft’s San Francisco offices on the heels of the Web 2.0 conference at Moscone Center and sponsored by three local user groups: PHP, Java, and HTML5.

I stood my place in line waiting to grab a slice of pizza, and a cup of broccoli salad. (Mixed with currents and red onions, the stuff was tasty!) Many around me consorted with their cell phones while I grabbed a seat and gazed up at dual screens on either side of the room with the speaker podium placed <align=”center”>. Sponsors introduced themselves (Google, Guidewire, JetBrains, Kaazing, Marakana, Medallia, Oracle, O’Reilly, and Teksystems), and then it was on with the show.

So what is HTML5? Very roughly it’s a markup language for the Web that originally made its debut around 1990 and has been progressively upgraded since then to allow for the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and the implementation of AJAX with Javascripting to create in the eyes of the beholder, a more information-rich Web.

The lessons learned using HTML these past 20 years are being incorporated into tags and objects that may have previously existed as JavaScript work-arounds to satisfy growing user expectations, an approach one speaker called “paving the cow paths.” Browser support isn’t totally there, but Chrome, Opera, and Microsoft’s Internet 9.0, are all mapping the divide.

The first speaker was Brad Neuberg from Google’s documentation team. Neuberg painted a wide HTML5 swath, demonstrating how the new standards matter to consumers and developers. This includes a new specification called “workers,” which allows developers to run code that won’t block the browser, meaning that it will remain responsive while it’s parsing lots of information. With the growing use of maps, there’s a geolocation object that will pass browser latitude and longitude coordinates to a browser for map display, handy for social networking sites. There are semantic tags to break content into more discrete sections, including the printed page’s “sidebars,” all allowing for better search engine indexing.There also are new link relations to define icons (think mood icons) and pingbacks. SVG (scalable vector graphics) will be available via new CSS selectors to offer the automatic definition of column number, text stroke, opacity, rounded corners, gradients, and controls to play audio and video (think YouTube on steroids and beyond).

Microsoft’s Giorgio Sardo, took the stage, explaining how Explorer 9.0 is using the memory stored in GPUs (Graphic Processing Units), and in the double-core of “double-core” computer processors to allow for the display and resolution of HTML5 elements, pushing browser technology to a new level.

The last speaker was <a href=” http://www.web2expo.com/webexsf2010/public/schedule/detail/12021”>Peter Lubbers </a>from Kaazing and co-author of Pro HTML5 Programming (Apress 2010). He dove into a subject that was near and dear to the hearts of many developers who have been using household web development techniques such as “AJAX” and “Comet” to simulate real-time information on the Web. The truth of the matter is that information can only flow in “half-duplex,” or in one direction, which is the reason, Lubbers explained, that the recent “Times Square bomber” (Faisal Shahzad) was not immediately intercepted on his way out of the country because the “no-fly” list cannot be updated in real time. HTML5 brings a full-duplex solution to the table and it’s called “web sockets.”

As all this settles, browser support will be spotty, but certain HTML5 elements are available in Chrome, Opera, and Explorer 8. You can inject a certain amount of browser HTML5 muscle into Internet Explorer by adding a meta tag, Google’s Chrome Frame.

Got to go. Need to turn on the results show for American Idol.

Lenore Weiss
http://techtabletalk.posterous.com/

Shabbos Song

2010-05-08T17:37:00.000-07:00

Together on the futon after a week

of finding parking spaces in packed garages,

I watch your lips move toward my face,

smell the air as it tunnels inside your ear.

I am the lupine that grows behind our place,

a trellis of seed pods with a few purple blossoms

at the bottom of my stalk where

you bend to pet them

my body dissolves
in the wet wood covered with pine needles

and my mind escapes through my mouth,
naked, a hole

you sniff for a den.
I want you to find me.

I'm not anywhere to be found.
You ask, Can you feel me?

A Frog Named Gretchen

2010-04-30T15:37:00.000-07:00

If I had rubber frog named Gretchen and slept in a hollow log

With an owl, eagle, and three hawks

And a brown snake with a yellow braid down its back—

It would feel crowded.

I would take Gretchen to the stream

And tell her not to be afraid as we step

Together over a bridge of rocks

Covered in green mud

Sticking to our socks and between our fingers

In our ears

Until we no longer hear the roar

Of the Maniac who tries to weed-whack us

With the sickle of his fingernail.

All the time we keep moving—

My heart is like melting wax, fear

Stretches marks inside my soft thigh.

I know we have sprung to this moment unprotected
As stinging beetles scream a cupcake of obscenities.

Press Gretchen’s clammy mouth to my mouth

Until we are almost past the past.

Bill McKibben and 10/10/10: Show Fossil Fuels the Emergency Exit Now

2010-04-25T20:43:00.001-07:00

Bill McKibben looks like an aging basketball player, tall and lanky, when in actuality he is a Methodist Sunday school teacher in Vermont who has spent a great deal of time according to his own account, “in a basement coloring.” But looks don't tell the whole story.

Bill McKibben also is an educator, environmentalist and author of more than 10 books on climate change. He helped to organize the most widespread day of political activity on the planet when on October 24, 2009 according to CNN, 5,200 separate events were held in 181 countries including beneath the ocean at the Great Barrier Reef.

Speaking April 23 at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley to publicize his latest book, “eaarth,” McGibben wore a t-shirt with the numbers “350,” a commitment to limiting the amount of C0₂ in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, which according to scientists is compatible with life on the planet. The number currently hovers at 390.

McGibben built the climate change case from ground-up evidence and discussed how there is now 25 percent less ice in the world including the glaciers of Greenland and the Andes. Scientists are now panicked, he said, with “every visible system beyond the top of its boundaries. Last summer typhoons marched over Asia with 9 ½ feet of rain,” he said. With five percent more moisture in the atmosphere, there’s also more evaporation, and more drought.

“Even things that are too big to change are changing,” he said, “causing problems for organisms at the bottom of the food chain. Global warming and fossil fuel emissions are creating more acidic oceans. Some at the top of the food chain like cruise liners are being denied anchorage in places like the Maltese Islands, a country that is shifting its dollars from the tourist industry to moving the island's population before it floods due to global warming

Instead of continuing to build starter castles for entry-level monarchs and listening to people like Alan Greenspan, “the tiny tired wizard behind the curtain,” McKibben flatly said “our civilization stands at collapse.” While acknowledging the growth in the number of organic farms within the last 50 years, he also noted that assuming a six or seven degree temperature increase, many of those farms will not be successful. Nor will changing to energy efficient light bulbs impact the affect of global warming.

McKibben counsels that our entire civilization needs to transition from fossil fuels and learn new habits for a new planet. “Gas, coal and oil is the single most profitable enterprise in the history of the world,” which is why the world looks the way it does, he said.

“The only moral response is to do everything we possibly can to change the odds and that requires our full participation,” which brings us back to the idea of “350” a measurement that was proposed by James Hansen and his team at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. Hansen was one of the earliest scientists to raise broad awareness of global warming. Today he advocates a rising price on carbon emissions with fees collected to promote other energy sources, a proposal that doesn’t sound totally unlike levying taxes on cigarette smoking with money going toward prevention.

Earlier this year at the Copenhagen Climate Change Accord, 117 of the poorest and most vulnerable countries who directly understand the affects of global warming, agreed to reduce carbon emissions by 2020. But the United States still has not planted its feet firmly on that terra firma.

McKibben and others involved in organizing a global 350 movement, want to continue turning down the fossil fuel heat. They announced that this coming October 10, (10/10/10) will mark a “global work party” toward reducing carbon emissions. Go to www.350.org to sign up or to create a work party in your local area.

Also keep your eyes peeled for discussion in the coming weeks about a bill that is being introduced as a “New U.S. Senate Climate, Jobs, and Energy Bill by Senators John Kerry, (D-Mass.) Joseph Lieberman (I-Connecticut), and Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) “It’s a giveaway gift to the industries that created the problem,” said McKibben. Find out more by reading the bill that will be published in coming weeks on Senator Kerry’s website.

Lenore Weiss
http://techtabletalk.posterous.com/

To the Engineer Who Left a Prototype of the New iPhone on a Bar Stool

2010-04-25T09:11:00.000-07:00

Outside the plate glass at the beer garden where
girls jogged in pairs and younger guys
did sidewinders on skateboards,
you forgot an iPhone on a bar stool
and handed over the prototype on a platter of buffalo wings
with hot dipping sauce and too many mugs of beer.

All over the Internet,
cheers about the number of pixels,
four times as many as the previous model
plus a second camera to use for video calling.
Leaf-blowers up and down the Valley whined on and on

about your birthday bash. Tough break, engineer.
If we lived in a country that had long-term memory
nothing could be lost or found, only shared.

What I Cut Out From the Newspaper

2010-04-18T10:43:00.000-07:00

4th century Lod mosaic the largest mosaic floor ever unearthed in Israel
recipe for beef brisket discount coupon for juju fruits
something about Gary Allan: No one peels back scabs like him, Get Off on the Pain and See if I Care The Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin with violinist Midori Seiler the 4 Seasons HMC902061
“The Transmission” at hawaiiup.com by Ryan and Jen Ozawa also

Diamond mountains, dictionopolis, lake of dreams pipple popple, land of a million wishes, dundonald castle, nightmare abbey, elven halls of mirkwood, empty hats, other end of nowhere (see george kubler, the shape of time) gem of truth island, Balinese orchestra, graveyard of unwritten books, orphan’s island, image of paradise in the collective imagination, mountains of ignorance, mountains of spirit, the history of the world is marked by examples of how brutal we can be to each other, marco rios and kara tanaka in death’s boutique, promesse, research clay spohn (artists) grace mcgann morley (SFMA), then find a physical object that is shared virtual content

Growing Up

2010-04-18T10:26:00.000-07:00

With the cuffs of her socks
edged in nylon lace
she sits on a lawn and watches trees—

apple trees that shed white blossoms
and sift to the ground
to become a bridge for pill bugs
that journey around a water hydrant
and beneath a rock
whose color changes
whenever she shifts her head—

the bus is taking a long time to arrive

she plucks dandelions
with teased crowns of white hair
that gather between her damp fingers like strings of a harp.

She knows how this works, but forgets to wish.

People are gathered in front of the bus stop.
It’s taking forever.

Report for the Day

2010-04-14T17:19:00.000-07:00

how a mouse click

gags in the throat

with teeth on edge

until I float perpendicular

to who I am