Last week, Marcia and I went on a road trip to the place where I grew up: Humboldt County, California. We stayed at Trinidad Bed and Breakfast in Trinidad. We had an entire apartment to ourselves with a kitchen and a full wall of windows looking out on the bay and lighthouse. In the morning, they brought us breakfast to eat in front of the windows.

Problem was, it was raining. In August! I was prepared for fog, but rain? Anyway, we made the best of it and went out to dinner and talked and watched people and then the next day we went hiking in Trinidad and then the Humboldt Redwood Forest and looked up at a the tallest tree in the world. Marcia said I grew up in the Ewok forest. That is what I’m telling people now.

I had not seen Humboldt with adult eyes before. There are lots of things I could say about that, but I would rather post pictures, so I will say a few quick things:

a. Arcata is almost exactly the same. I could take Marcia into a store I hung out in over a decade ago and not only did it look the same, they had the same items on the shelf. It was weird.

b. All the things I criticized the place for as a teenage were totally spot on.

c. However, I didn’t appreciate the good things about Humboldt. Aside from the stunning beauty–which I recognized—it is a unique place. The people are specific to the area. Yes, they are mostly liberal hippie-types, but specific liberal hippie types. It is its own place with its own identity, and that is a good thing.

d. Throughout high school I moaned about the lack of good bookstores not realizing how absolutely kick ass Tin Can Mailman is. I found five obscure books I’ve been wanting for awhile and I thought I had to buy off the Internet. And they were good editions. And used. And cheap! I was happy.

Pictures:

View through one of the windows of the lighthouse and bay

Specific hippie types

Beach on Trinidad hike

Wild huckleberries. During the hike, I also pointed out thimble berries, Oregon grapes, wild strawberries, blackberries, and salal berry plants. I explained how as a kid, foxes would eat the salal berries–which don’t taste good–and then leave purple feces on our deck.

Purple fox feces. Ah, nature.

Ahhh

hhh

Nature…

There are lots of cool plants up there. Marcia observed that unlike Sonoma County, there are more varieties in shades of green in Humboldt, which makes everything lusher in some ways. It also give the forest a more dramatic atmosphere.

Because what plant could be more dramatic than this one, the tallest tree in the world? (Or one of them anyway…I get confused which is which.)

As someone who works at home, I felt a special affinity to my article on coworking in Northbay Biz Magazine. Coworking is a trend where creative professionals such as writers, software developers, graphic designers, etc., go in together on the rent of a space and use it as a shared office. The idea is to cut down on the loneliness of working by yourself and increase productivity by sharing your day with other creative workers. There’s a coworking office in Penngrove, and I got to meet the people running it and see their work situation firsthand. While I’m not ready to give up working in my pajamas yet, I thought it was a pretty cool set up.

Excerpt:

Working at home may mean you get to keep your own hours and work in your pajamas, but it also has a downside. Too often, working by yourself can leave you lonely and floundering at the keyboard, fighting for focus and productivity. For some creative professionals, the solution to this problem is to take their laptops to the nearest coffee shop. For others, there’s coworking.

Coworking is a movement where freelancers co-lease space and use it as a shared office. Although this movement started in urban areas like New York and San Francisco, Sonoma County’s SoCo Depot was created earlier this year.

More here.

(Bing Crosby, Bebe Daniels and June McCloy sing “When the Folks High Up Do The Mean Low Down” from 1931.)

One of the coolest parts of my job is that I get to go experience people’s lives every now and then. Last week I interviewed local artist Mike Garlington for the North Bay Bohemian. I visited Garlington at his studio and watched him take a picture of a girl with a live ferret in her mouth for his twisted fairy tales series. I know! Then Garlington very generously showed me how to develop photos in a darkroom. Here’s an excerpt:

Michael Garlington is photographing a woman with a ferret in her mouth. The ferret stands on a stump, its head deep in the back of the woman’s throat. It is licking saliva off her tongue, its white feet trembling to keep balance.

The woman is Cassidy Slater, one of many models who pose for Garlington for no payment other than a print of the photo. Slater is the model Garlington calls when he has a particularly weird concept, because, they both explain, she’s “up for anything.”

Today, Slater is wearing a drop-waist dress and her long hair is in ponytails. She’s sitting by a fence at the end of the country road outside of Petaluma. Garlington, who is standing a few feet away with a Polaroid camera, tells her to look at him while the ferret is in her mouth.

“That’s so good,” he says, looking through the camera. “The eyes will be like, ‘Am I doing something bad?’ Oh, this could be such a good fairy tale. ‘Hungry, hungry Etta, sitting by the fence.’”

More here.

Michael Garlington’s website.

Summer Activities List (Updated):

Hiking
Tennis
Camping
Blackberry picking
Listening to live music
Canoeing/kayaking
Picnics
Something involving a fire on a beach and hot dogs
Going on a boat
Wine tasting
Art galleries
Daytrips (Gualala/Mammoth Lake)

So I decided to go blackberry picking today. I drove out to the country and started to pick berries from the bushes on the side of the road… and quickly discovered that this was a dumb idea. Picking the berries was messy and tedious. Every time a car drove by I felt exposed and shy. And then, a big spider scared me.

I decided to go home instead.

A couple of weeks ago, Marcia and I were lamenting the lack of molecular gastronomy restaurants in San Francisco. What is molecular gastronomy, you ask? It is a branch of cooking where chefs use physical and chemical processes of cooking to create different, creative dishes. For example, they might use sodium alginate and peach juice to create faux caviar, which they would serve on top of oysters. Or they might print a menu out on edible “paper” that you are expected to eat. Or they might use liquid nitrogen to make ice cream. (Here is an article on the subject if you want to know more.) While there are only a few restaurants in the world that specialize in this cuisine, somehow it seemed like one them should be near me. This doesn’t seem to be the case, however.

I don’t have access to liquid nitrogen or edible paper, but I was interested enough in this to experiment with some of the easier-to-understand concepts. Therefore, the Molecular Gastronomy Dinner Party was born. We invited 10 friends to my house and treated them to a multi-course meal with molecular gastronomy-like twists. We served the meal tapas, or small plates, style.

It sounds very complicated but it really was just us having fun. At some point, Marcia looked up at me and said, “We are playing restaurant!” And that is what it was. We were pretending to have a restaurant and all our friends were the guests.

Marcia in my kitchen

Everyone who came helped out by making some food, loaning us their silverware or glasses, or by cleaning up. Sous-chefs! Here is how the party went:

Appetizers:

Reversed Martini. Kyle thought this one up. Since vermouth is a traditional aperitif for fancy dinners, we had vermouth aperitifs with olives touched (barely!) with gin. It was a twist on the American martini, which is gin with a touch of vermouth and a side of olives.

Deconstructed Pesto, which Justin and Stephanie made for the party.

Dinner Part I:

Drink: Champagne Cocktails with Creme de Casis “Bubbles,” which you can read about here and here. With the champagne, we toasted everyone’s accomplishments since everyone I know seems to be getting promotions or moving or making other life changes. We also had non-alcoholic ice tea.

Zucchini “Spaghetti.” Raw zucchini cut to look like spaghetti, tossed with olive oil, garlic, parmesan, pepper, basil, and fresh tomatoes. Everything came from the garden.

Nasturtium Flower, Grapefruit, Spinach, and Roasted Beet Salad.

Vichyssoise. A vegetarian soup (also from the garden) served in shot glasses. Here is Leona drinking it.

Salmon with White Chocolate Wasabi Sauce and Faux Caviar. The caviar are tapioca pearls that I soaked in soy sauce and vinegar and then rinsed in oil. This dish surprised me. The flavors were pretty good. (Did I mention that I hadn’t made any of these dishes before?)

Jalapeno Fire and Ice. We have a bunch of jalapeños from the garden, so we prepared them two ways: One, I made a spicy salsa and served it with veggie chips. Two, I made a jalapeño sorbet, which we served in frozen limes.

Dinner Part II:

Drink: Champagne Bellini with Peach Foam. Marcia got this cool contraption that lets you make foam using a pressure valve of some sort. I don’t know how it works, but it’s neat. We made the foam by mixing egg whites, peach syrup, and fresh peach juice together and poured it on champagne.

Veggie Bruschetta made by Krista

Cuban Cigars that Marcia made. The ingredients of a Cuban sandwich wrapped in phylo dough to look like a cigar.

Duck with Pear “Onions.” This was the only dish I didn’t come out as well as I would have liked. I had this plan to cut pears to look like onions and stack it on a duck breast. It didn’t work out, so I just ended up sautéing a duck in pear/onion sauce and serving it. It tasted fine.

Cheese Plate arranged by Troy

Fig from the cheese plate

After all this, we hung out and eventually had dessert: Strudel that Avi made and “Coffee and Cream,” Italian coffee ice served in coffee cups and topped with whip cream.

Then we played Rock Band.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking this dinner party sounds insane and you would never put yourself through something that elaborate. I confess that the next morning I woke up and thought, why did I just have a giant dinner party with all that weird food? I guess sometimes I do random, complicated things and drag my friends along with me. However! I the party was a big success and very fun. And I am so very grateful to Troy for helping with the dishes:

I wrote an article on homeschooling for this week’s issue of the Pacific Sun. I grew up in a church basement school and have been around homeschoolers all my life, so I was surprised to learn that a. a lot of people actively dislike homeschooling, and b. homeschoolers are very protective of what they do, to the point that it was difficult to get people to talk to me. Much of what I found out when I did talk to them surprised me. Excerpt:

Ever since homeschooling came under fire last February, Marin homeschoolers have been nervous. A ruling from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal in a case looking into abuse in a homeschooling family stated that parents must have teaching credentials to educate their kids, something that has never been required before.

“When that court case came down, people freaked out,” says Tamara Markwick, a homeschooler living in San Rafael. “It seemed like the majority of the way people are homeschooling might become illegal. People didn’t want to talk to the press and have their name out there. They didn’t want to say something that could come back and bite them.”

More here.

I keep meaning to put pictures up of the elaborate dinner party I had last week, but I haven’t had time. I will put them up sometime this week. There are so many other things going on right now that the dinner party seems like old news.

I like lists, so here is a list of life right now:

a. Last week I had three deadlines, one of which is 6,000 words of mini-reviews for a book contest.
b. Just visited my parents in Miwuk (up by Yosemite) for the weekend.
c. While there, I went through all my childhood toys. As a child, I drew a lot of pictures of women in beautiful dresses and comic books about wisecracking dogs.
d. I also carried on passionate correspondences with my pen-pals, a practice I now envy. I don’t know if I am capable of writing as good of a letter now as I was then, if judged on honesty, time, and intensity alone.
e. Kyle’s birthday is Tuesday. We are just going out to dinner.
f. I’m seeing Nellie McKay tonight and Dar Williams later this month in Petaluma.
g. Kyle is going to Tahoe in the middle of the week for his company off-site—a team-building getaway some former cheerleader thought up.
h. I am going on a road trip with Marcia to Humboldt County later this week.
i. I haven’t really looked at Humboldt with adult eyes, so it will be interesting to see what I think of the place where I grew up.
j. I hope there will be decent weather. That place is perpetually foggy.
k. We are staying at a Bed and Breakfast in Trinidad with a separate entrance and a view of the bay and lighthouse! Plus they will bring us breakfast at 8:45 in the morning. Classy!
l. Apparently, Kyle and I might also go camping later this month
m. In early September, we are going to Kentucky for over a week.
n. I said I wanted to go hiking in Kentucky, and Kyle said he had never heard of anyone doing that.
o. I am opening a bank account specifically so that we can put money aside for trips and vacations. Travel is very important to me. The first place we are going to is Puerto Rico. We’re thinking of going this winter.
p. Puerto Rico:

Well hello. I interviewed singer Nellie McKay for the North Bay Bohemian last week. It is on newsstands now. Excerpt:

Nellie McKay may have artistic ADD. The singer-songwriter, who performs at the Mystic Theatre on Aug. 18, doesn’t just write songs. Recently, McKay has acted on Broadway and in the movie P.S. I Love You, shown up in rap videos on YouTube and written book reviews for the New York Times. This is on top of recording three albums of her own music, most recently Obligatory Villagers, released last September.

“I’m jack of all trades, master of none, you know,” she said in a recent phone interview. “I have a short attention span. I wish it wasn’t so, truthfully. But there are two ways to approaching something creatively. One is to focus on the good stuff and aspire to be like that. That’s the depressing way. The other is to focus on all the bad stuff and pat yourself on the back when it comes out OK. That’s my approach.”

I plan so see McKay when she performs in Petaluma on Monday. Here is a sample of her music for the uninitiated:

Mother of Pearl by Nellie McKay (mentioned in the article).

Columbia is Bleeding by Nellie McKay

I’m judging a book contest again. In general, the books are much better than last year, but I have a few thoughts on character names.

Character names are deceptively important. The name you give your main character is a word your reader is going to read over and over again throughout the book, so it’s important to pick a good one. Here are some things I have learned not to do from my reading the last few weeks:

Don’t pick obviously symbolic names. Don’t name the wife in the book Jewel or the honorable politician Noble. Just don’t do it. Odds are, you are not being as clever as you think, and your reader will roll her eyes and have prejudices against you that you don’t want her to have.

Don’t give important characters names beginning with the same letter. If you repeat the first letter of a name, the reader will mix the characters up. Last night I read a book about two brothers, Greg and Gary. I am still not sure who is who. I kept confusing them and confusing their points of view. If the writer had simply named them Greg and, say, Bobby, this would have been avoided.

Avoid long/difficult last names. According to a random website I went to, the longest last name in the world is: MacGhilleseatheanaich. You know what would be a bad choice for a last name of a character? MacGhilleseatheanaich. Unless the whole point of the story is that the character has the longest last name in the world, stick to something simple and pronounceable.

Avoid melodramatic names. This is especially for all your fantasy writers out there: every character cannot be named Zapphora, Emerald, Lady Gondara, and Willow. Sometimes people are just named Susan.

To be clear, I’m not saying that every character has to be named Tom and Jane. I just think you’re better off with simple names than trying to be clever or dramatic. If your character is well-developed, he or she will fill the name up and give it life, not the other way around.