non-nutritive fruit varnishes

As part of an effort to revive the short-lived but undeniably sparkly series, Fruit Facts, I’d like to talk about wax coatings on fruit. According to this page, non-nutritive fruit varnishes do have a purpose beyond appearance enhancement, such as:

• inhibiting mold growth
• protecting fruits and vegetables from bruising
• preventing other physical damage and disease.

Each of these items is worthy, but I’m stuck on the “enhance appearance” aspect. I look at my 12-pack of apples from Costco, and those things look exactly.the.same. It’s a tiny bit disturbing. It makes me think, give me some dirty fruit. Where can I get my hands on some. Fruit with a little dust (of the non-pesticide variety), some odd curvatures, and un-uniform coloring. Fruit with character.

Really what I want is to be able to pick apples again like we used to do in the fall up North. Clearly that’s not going to happen, and even if it did, it would only be seasonal. But damn, those things were good. They were all different sizes, matte-not-glossy, good old-fashioned, straight-from-the-tree apples. In the meantime, my Costco apples sure are tasty, and the price is right, but I feel like they’re more than a little homogenized, which makes me sad on behalf of the fruit, and on behalf of all fruit eaters everywhere, who surely feel that uniqueness trumps sameness any day of the week. Lastly, I feel sad knowing my children will likely miss out on the all-important character-building experience of finding a worm in their apple, which obviously would never happen with fruit that’s been coated in shiny wax.

WinterLand, by M

For my last post before falala land, I leave you with what i did to my office over a few days... had i not actually had to leave, there's no telling how far i would have gone... i was thinking paperchain streamers... dangling ornaments... *sigh*

I need to leave more often, by M

I haven't felt so warm and fuzzy since the great winter warming of '88. Leaving was the best christmas present. I have all these awesome friends giving me travel things, and saying goodbye and it just reminds me to appreciate each and everyone of them. You guys frickin rock and blow me away!

photographic evidence

Tree!

 

 

Cross-section: lots and lots of ornaments.

 

all you need is Bug!

I’ve been feeling…hectic this month. I’m kind of vexed that it’s already December 8th, and my Christmas decorations aren’t all up. My proper 5-week enjoyment period has suffered a serious bite. Maybe if I hadn’t been all *lazy* Thanksgiving weekend, but by lazy I mean powering through several hours of work. There’s a lot available for me right now, and not for J.Lo; hence it’s sort of all on me. And I’m a stickler. If I have to work twice as many hours to make the same amount (which, literally, I do), hell if I’m not going to reach that mark. However, I like my Christmas decor, too, and want to have it up already. The tree, with several hundred ornaments, typically takes me 3 days. J.Lo put it up this weekend, and I (still working, and granted, doing pesky little things like finishing one of my books) didn’t get to the decor. I should also mention that this year, I’m decorating around N.Lo’s sleep schedule. Because, um, he’s 1, and doesn’t know how to walk that well yet, but does very much know how to grab, crush, and eat just about every hand-sized object, as well as pull up and climb. Not a good combination with a Christmas tree. Not unmanageable, just a pain in the ass I’d like to avoid.

Anyway, this whole sense of feeling behind brings me to this afternoon, when I decided to put some decorations on the tree, testing how well K.Lo would do with it. And don’t you know, we decorated the entire tree in one afternoon. I have never, ever decorated my tree so fast. She didn’t really *get* the hanging of the ornaments, but she initiated a sort of assembly line, pulling nearly every single ornament from the box and handing it to me. Total teamwork. She was even super-duper careful with all the glass stuff, which really surprised me.

The best part, though, was that she exclaimed over every ornament: “Look, Mommy! *Gasp.* Look what I found!” like it was the greatest thing ever. I mean, honestly. If that doesn’t put you in the Christmas spirit, what will. I pretty much love each and every one of my 5 million ornaments, even the ugly ones, and it’s usually me exclaiming over them in my mind (aww, this one! I love this one!), but this year, I had the most enthusiastic ornament co-cheerleader I could ever ask for. And I didn’t even have to pay her extra.

The Bug may be *two,* and might throw exasperating tantrums over dumb crap like wanting to watch Rudolph instead of eating two bites of her lunch, but man, that girl can be pretty darn cool, too.

My Mom is more awesome than your mom, by M

I had these beads for 2 years. And i've admitted to myself that I dont like doing jewelry. The whole construction process is tiresome, but mom with much mercy and sacrifice did it for me. Because she actually likes figuring out how things are going to fit together. Frankly I just want it to work. This was an important step for me. Identifying and releasing myself from my visions... If i can't outsource it forget it! Though I didn't mind making my washer necklace because it was like linking chain mail. More on that one later. But here's to mom, best necklace EVER.

Ciao.

last words on lacma, by m

I love that this woman, started seeing a pattern. Sought it out, collected it, and behold, glorious. You can read the blah blah blah below but I like this girl in the paintings, bcs she's wearing red and shes the saint of abused women. Fabiola. And I found this much more engaging than the vanityfair exhibit. And because its not of the ubiquitous icon, mary for instance, I can enjoy that people are venerating her, and engage in a dialogue somehow that all these people are joined in the mutal recognition of this figure.

Francis Alÿs: Fabiola
September 7, 2008–March 29, 2009 Ahmanson Building
Commissioned by Dia Art Foundation and curated by Lynne Cooke, Francis Alÿs: Fabiola was first installed at the Hispanic Society of America in northern Manhattan from September 2007 to April 2008. Francis Alÿs, a Belgian artist who relocated to Mexico City in the early 1990s, has assembled a significant collection of nearly identical paintings and other depictions of fourth-century Saint Fabiola over the last two decades. All of these are based on a renowned, but lost, portrait by nineteenth-century French academic painter Jean-Jacques Henner. This much-venerated image has been so assiduously copied by amateurs and professionals alike that it has become a popular icon, a phenomenon that, as the artist stated, "indicates a different criterion of what a masterwork could be." Gathered from flea markets, antique shops, and private collections throughout Europe and the Americas, Alÿs's collection offers a window onto aesthetic, sociological, and theological values over the past century and more. This exhibition will display Alÿs's group of more than three hundred Fabiola portraits, all of them copies of a lost original: most are paintings, and there are several versions in needlepoint, wood relief, and other materials as well.

And Then There was 1, by M

There's a new blog in the neighborhood. A fancy travel one. So all of you that have left November feeling robbed over the startling low number of posts, lowest ever actually, besides that one month where we went on hiatus, and were beginning to see that December was going to show much of the same, there should at least be some travel bloggings happening on the horizon. We can't promise that there will be copious # of posts but we hope, all the same, that Schu is going to do her best to post post post and bring that writerly wit to bear. And with some much needed assistance from Penelope and Cath, there should be some interesting and humorous things to read inbetween. Naturally it will dazzle and astound.

http://schutravels.blogspot.com/

All Good Things, by M

Come to an end... Goodbye dear CGI's. My artistry of you is at an end. Apparently the company after feeling adrift in the sea of what we wanted, took flight and decided to become insulted by the obvious brilliance of my own cgi suggestions... alas. Alas. Goodbye. May storyboards come into my life on some other far flung day... work now returns to a dull place of research and fact checking. Did you know Pilot Whales, part of the dolphin family, can plummet to deep depths and sprint down down down in chase of delicious squid? It's true. They also can eat 30lbs a day, and have upwards of 48 teeth.... all 3 tons and 20ft of them.

fav line so far from this book

(The last line.)

“It’s an old story: When Prout and Liebig nailed down the macronutrients, scientists figured that they now understood the nature of food and what the body needed from it. Then when the vitamins were isolated a few decades later, scientists thought, okay, now we really understand food and what the body needs for its health; and today it’s the polyphenols and carotenoids that seem to have completed the picture. But who knows what else is going on deep in the soul of a carrot?”

--from In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan