The above is a video on Vivian Maier, a French-born nanny who after her death was discovered to be an amazing photographer. She took street shots of people in Chicago. Here are few shots:

Self portrait

It looks like Vivian Maier never did anything with her art, which is sad because now this guy who lucked into discovering her work–and who seems to find it rather burdensome–is going to reap all the benefits of it. Of course, there’s no telling why someone with this talent would sit on her work like that, and I’m sure it had something to do with being a female artist in the early part of the 20th century, but things like this always make me think of that parable in the Bible of the person who gets the talent (a coin) and buries it in the ground because he is afraid of using it. He loses the talent anyway in the end. So I guess I’m saying, don’t bury your talents in the ground, people.

1/1/11. 1/1/11. 1/1/11.

That is fun to type.

2010 was a great year for us. It is the first year I can say that I am happier, better off, and farther along in all the areas that are important to me. That’s not to say there weren’t a few bumps and hiccups along the way, but nothing too devastating or serious in the long run. There is much to be grateful for.

Here are some highlights from 2010:

* I published more short stories than I have ever published before.

* I also published several articles.

* I gave a reading.

* I judged a book contest.

* Kyle got a new job. This month, he will be starting at Cyan in Petaluma, which is just down the road from our house.

* Kyle published the second edition of the Official Ubuntu Server Book

* He also published articles, mostly for Linux Journal.

* Kyle’s column, “Hack and /,” was voted “Best Linux Journal Column” by the magazine’s readers.

* Kyle spoke at several conferences.

* We went to Spain!

* We got chickens.

* We bought a Karmann Ghia.

* We bought a kayak and used it until it got too cold.

* We went camping in Humboldt.

* I went to the AWP conference in Colorado, which I wrote about on the Word Pirates site.

* We went to Santa Barbara for our anniversary. We didn’t like Santa Barbara, but I’m still glad we went.

* I took a road trip to California gold country with Marcia.

* Kyle and I continued all our food hobbies. We made duck confit, bacon, beef jerky, strawberry jam, and other beers for the first time.

* I took a photography class at the community college, but I didn’t like it and dropped out.

* We made progress on the remodel of the bathroom. I hope to finish this spring.

And so on!

Our family also did well this year. My parents bought a house. This is a huge deal since my parents haven’t had a home of their own since I was in high school. Also, my mother-in-law’s business is starting to do well, which is gratifying because she has worked so hard to get it off the ground.

Our friends are doing cool things, too. Justin and Stephanie are traveling the world–and blogging about it. Marcia wrote her first book, which is coming out in April. You can pre-order it here. Word Pirates, my writing group, is doing great too. We are publishing more and seem encouraged to work toward our goals in a new way lately.

As usual, I read a lot. In particular, I read books on gardening and some classics, including Walden by Thoreau, Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham, Plato’s Republic, some Wittgenstein, and some Shakespeare. I also read new books as well, including the much-hyped Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, Jennifer Egan’s enjoyable A Visit from the Goon Squad, and The Best American Short Stories 2010. Every year, I intend to read the cool and happening writers my contemporaries read, but somehow I never get around to it and end up following strange threads instead. This fall, I became obsessed with Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald and read three biographies on them in the row. Now I seem to be over that, which is kind of a relief.

Another thing that happened this year: I hit a stride in how I handle my work, and this has been fruitful for me both intellectually and creatively. Something changed in my discipline and concentration. I would make a goal, devote time to it, and then my goal would be achieved–without the agonizing and worrying that usually accompanies this process. I also started free-writing in the morning for 20 minutes a day, which produced an astounding number of short stories and essays, many of which I polished up and published. And I kept a private journal all year, which not only helped me keep a better record of my life, it helped me remember just what the heck happens to me. Otherwise, I forget with alarming speed.

So that’s it for 2010. In 2011, I would like to:

* Go to New England in the fall. I want to see fall leaves and visit nerdy literary sites and eat maple syrup.

* Go to AWP again in Washington, DC this February, which is really a big excuse to visit the spy museum.

* Finish the book. You know the one.

* Use the kayak allll the time.

* Go on mini-trips in the convertible.

* See the Kentucky Derby in May, which also means we will be traveling to Kentucky.

* Finish remodeling the bathroom.

* Put a patio in the backyard. Goodbye ugly concrete slab.

* Plant an even bigger garden. I am going to put in blueberries, a pomegranate, a cherry tree, an apple, and lots and lots of flowers, as well as the usual vegetables. Our water bill is going to be enormous.

* Have a party in my lovely new backyard by the end of summer and invite all my friends.

Happy New Year.

This feels very true.

I was so excited to go to Barcelona, but ended up thinking it was overrated. I guess I expected it to be a Spanish version of other major cities I’ve been to in Europe—Rome, Paris, London, etc.—but it isn’t really up to their level. Barcelona is touristy, expensive, and the people are kind of mean and grumpy, and yet the city doesn’t have the great museums or sites that make putting up with all that worth it. It is not that I regret going; you have to see Barcelona when you’re in Spain. But we were there too long. We went for three days, and two days would have been plenty.

All the guidebooks told us to go to La Rambla, a popular street that everyone walks in Barcelona. We thought it had an unfortunate Las Vegas-like feel about it and soon learned to avoid it. La Rambla is jammed with tourists, scam artists, questionable restaurants, and overpriced stores selling things like this for $700:

Luckily, there is the Barri Gòtic (Gothic Quarter), which was more our speed. It has little alleyways that you can wander and, with a little hunting around, we managed to find a few good restaurants, some cool shops, and a nice vermouth bar, where we sampled Spanish vermouth. We also bought a piece of art by the photographer Willy Rojas and other souvenirs.

Alley in the Barri Gòtic

Barcelona is different from the rest of Spain. They even speak a different language, Catalan, and as a result (because no one else speaks Catalan) they tend to speak more English in Barcelona. Also, although I found the food to be lacking, Barcelona style is worth paying attention to. There are unexpected quirks everywhere in the city, cool statues or weird manhole covers or a buoy shaped like a boy staring up at the stars:

Of course, many of these details descend from Antoni Gaudi, the architect whose work is all over Barcelona. We stood in line for an hour-and-a-half and paid $40 to see the Sagrada Família, otherwise known as Gaudi’s cathedral.

Gaudi’s cathedral was the single thing that lived up to its reputation in Barcelona. It was amazing. Inspired by churches like Notre Dame in Paris, which took 185 years to complete, Sagrada Família was designed by Gaudi in 1883 and is still being worked on today. Although they hold services on Sundays, it really is a construction site–there are workers and cranes and hammering going on everywhere.

Here is what I wrote to a friend about Sagrada Família while still in Spain:

It takes an hour-and-a-half to get into the cathedral, and then you realize that you have paid $40 to walk through a construction site. (The cathedral may take a couple hundred years to finish. It is already in year 114, or so.) But you walk in and you forgive because it is so amazing and beautiful–long columns like the branches of–is it flowers? trees? human bones?–and just the start of all the color–stained glass along the walls, “jewels” of glass on the columns. Some day, the building will be completely covered with color, but right now they are just starting to put it on. The outside of the cathedral is covered in intricate details and figures, all depicting the life of Jesus. It may be one of the only long-term projects I have seen where people who work on it can feel proud that they are contributing to something lasting and real.

Pictures:

Inside the cathedral

Stained glass

Spires with the beginning of color at the top

Turtle holding up the weight of the world

Jesus carrying the cross

The crucification

Inside, again

Another picture to give a sense of the size of the cathedral

We also went to Park Guell and toured Gaudi’s home. He lived a rather stripped down, Spartan existence and seemed more sober as a person than I expected. The park itself had great views of Barcelona:

But other sites in Barcelona disappointed. We walked down the Block of Discord, a section where Gaudi has two houses, but found they would cost us $60 to tour, which didn’t seem worth it. We also drove to the nearby town of Figures to see the Salvador Dali museum, and then wished we hadn’t. The museum was designed by Dali at the end of his life, after he had become a full-blown hack and had sold off all his good paintings. There are probably 3 or 4 paintings worth looking at in that museum. The rest are holograms and pretend bedrooms and toilets glued to the ceiling and so forth. It all looked dated, plus the museum is expensive and really crowded. Skip it.

Finally, we went to the Picasso museum, which I had mixed feelings about. The museum clearly demonstrates what a genius Picasso was. I mean, he painted this when he was 15 years old:

But the museum only has a few of Picasso’s major works, which would have been okay except that the way it is designed sets up expectations that you will see most of his great paintings. When you don’t, you feel a little ripped off.

Woman teaching a class about Picasso

So that was Barcelona. Overall, Spain was one of the most exciting, interesting, and surprising places I’ve ever been to. It is well worth the cost and trouble to visit. And look! They had a Spanish translation of one of Kyle’s books in a Barcelona bookstore:

How can you not like a place with such good taste in books?

Spain 1: Madrid
Spain 2: Tarifa and Morocco
Spain 3: Granada
Spain 4: Barcelona

More Spanish countryside

Oh you’re still here? Okay, so the third part of the trip was Granada, which was a lovely town. Kyle and I agreed it was our favorite place we visited in Spain. It was small enough to be friendly but big enough to be interesting. It had a great old Ottoman section with rambling alleyways and free tapas in every bar. Here is a picture of the downtown from above:

Granada also has the coolest street lamps ever:

This is the place where Christianity triumphed over Islam. The Moorish empire set up Al Hambra, a huge castle that we visited, toward the end of Muslim rule of Spain in the 1300s. Then Isabella and Ferdinand took it over in 1492 and ran the Islamic king, Muhammad XII, over to Africa. Spain officially became Christian. To this day, Isabella and Ferdinand have thumbprints all over Granada. We even toured the church where they are buried.

And of course, we went of Al Hambra, which is one of the major sites of Europe–although not that popular with Americans, it seems. Because I did not get tickets ahead of time, we had to get up early and stand in a long line in the dark in the hopes of getting in. Luckily, we did and it was probably the best thing we did in Spain. The castle is at once romantic, gorgeous, historical, and educational. I felt enriched after going there.

It is hard to sum up something like Al Hambra , but I will break it down into a few key points:

1. It is huge. It is the kind of place where you can’t take a good picture of it because it is so big. The castle spans on and on and you just can’t quite take it all into your brain. It has to be experienced to be appreciated.

2. The history is visceral. Here is an example: after Ferdinand and Isabella took over the castle, Columbus came to them and proposed a journey to India, which led to the fabled discovery of America. I walked through the room where he made that proposition to them, and the ceiling, 20 feet above my head, was wooden with an inlaid golden milky way of stars and moons and planets. When you see this, you can’t see how Isabella could have said no to the man. She was sitting under the “sky” in the castle she had just conquered while he proposed expanding her kingdom all over the world.

3. It is gorgeous. I had never seen Ottoman art before and I was amazed by it. The carvings was everywhere, on the walls, on the doors, on the ceilings, and it changed constantly. One moment the ceiling was a milky way, the next we were walking inside a giant honeycomb, and the next we were standing in a courtyard surrounded by fountains and plants. Everything was designed so that your gaze feel naturally to the prettiest places. And the carving–all hand done, of course–was intricate and perfect. Random sample:

Pictures of Al Hambra:

fairy tale…

Kyle

Me in the garden

Spain 1: Madrid
Spain 2: Tarifa and Morocco
Spain 3: Granada
Spain 4: Barcelona

View from the train on the way to Tarifa

Tarifa is the Southern most city in Spain. We decided to go down there, spend the night, and then cross the water to Morocco to spend a day in Tangier before returning to Tarifa that night.

To get to Tarifa, we took a five hour train trip and then a 30 minute bus ride. Along the way, I got to see a large part of the Spanish landscape. It is a beautiful country with big mountains, dramatic valleys, craggy white buildings, and zillions of olive bushes. Although we saw a variety of agriculture, including cotton, sheep, wine, and lemons, Spain had more olive bushes than I have seen anywhere. I understand now why you get a bowl of olives with every drink you buy, just like you do with pretzels in the United States.

Tarifa is on the poor side, but it has a great old Ottoman section that is completely charming with winding alleys and interesting little shops. We stayed less than a block from the ferry terminal, which every takes people across the Strait of Gibraltar to Morocco every 40 miutes. I was surprised how close Africa is–we could see it from our hotel.

Looking across the Strait of Gibraltar at the famous Rock of Gibraltar.

We liked Tarifa. As is usually the case with little towns compared to big cities, people in Tarifa were much friendlier than the people in Madrid. They chatted with us and tried harder to bridge the communication gap. We wandered around and shopped and took pictures. Here are some of them:

View of Tarifa’s old town from on high

Beach with the Rock of Gibraltar in the background

Inside of of St Matthew’s church, built in the 16th century

Example of the narrow roads

The other cool thing about Tarifa are all the medieval ruins that are around the town, including the Guzman castle, an old Ottoman castle built at least 800 years ago. (The Islamic conquest of Tarifa lasted from about 900-1300.)

Guzman

Guzman Castle was a pleasant surprise. It was inexpensive to get into, only $4 per person, and has great views and lots of cool, old details. In some places, you could see the original paint and got a glimpse of how beautiful and colorful the castle must have been back in the day.

Walking the top of the castle

Turrets with city view behind

Kyle by a colorful roof

But not everything about Tarifa was great. The next morning I woke up with food poisoning. I had eaten some bad tapas and something was really wrong with my body.

I had a choice then: I could stay at the hotel and rest, or I could do what I came to Tarifa to do, which was go to Morocco. I chose to go to Morocco. Even though I was sick–and boy did I get sick that day–I was not going to let it stop me from seeing what I could while I was there. So I accepted the fact that I was not going to have the great day in Africa that I had planned, but I would work within my limitations and get what I could out of the day.

So we took the ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar. I started getting more miserable on the ferry and it just got worse and worse. I won’t get into specifics, but it turns out that food poisoning is not something you can walk off. By the time we started walking around the Kasbah, Tangier’s shopping section, I had crippling stomach pains combined with waves of nausea that doubled me over. I lasted about three hours in Morocco and then we took the ferry back to Spain.

I realize this state of mind probably affected my point of view, but I did not like Tangier. It wasn’t the poverty so much as how threatened I felt as a woman. Really, the poverty is pretty typical: there is grass growing into the cracked sidewalks, stray dogs and cats running around, people with goiters and teeth trouble and so on. But on the other hand, the people seemed generally well-fed and everyone seemed to have a modicum of material possessions. It certainly wasn’t the worst I have seen.

But even though I had made a point to dress modestly, as a woman I felt a little threatened. At one point, we stopped to take a picture of an old cannon sitting over the side of the city. As Kyle was taking a picture, I walked literally 4 feet away from him and a man rushed by me, turned to face me, and began to make lewd gestures at me. Kyle told me to not leave his side and to not look at the men at all. This felt very strange but I soon saw Kyle was right. The men seemed visibly angry if I glanced over at them. (Although many of the people seemed angry anyway, so maybe that’s just how they are.) When we went into a shop, I became conscious of my confidence, how without thinking about it, I stand with my legs apart and my hands on my hips in a natural power stance. This is just how I was raised as a Western woman, and it was strange to see how cultural it is, and how much it can threaten people in other circumstances.

In contrast, the women in Tangier seemed very meek. At one point, Kyle agreed to take a picture of a tiled door. A woman was sitting on the stair by the door, and she didn’t want her picture taken. Did she just stand up and walk away? No, she dropped her eyes to the ground, then she slowly raised her head and looked over to the side for a moment. Then she slowly, slowly, stood up and walked away. Here was a woman is torn between her modesty and her meekness and she didn’t seem to know which to give her allegiance to. Keep in mind, Morocco is one of the more liberal Muslim countries. I didn’t see many burkas. Most of the women dress like New York grannies with long robes and scarves on their hair. King Mohammed VI even allows his wife to be seen in public sometimes… although not his mother. No one has ever seen his mother.

I wasn’t able to take any pictures that day, so the following were all taken by Kyle:

Street scene

Women in a market

Spices

The aforementioned door

Spain 1: Madrid
Spain 2: Tarifa and Morocco
Spain 3: Granada
Spain 4: Barcelona

Okay, this is old news now, but did you know I went to Spain? It was a very nice trip. October is a great time to go. The weather was beautiful, in the low 70s the whole time. We went all over the country, and to Morocco too, and found Spain to be a beautiful, clean, and interesting place. Here is a rough map of our route:

In order, the cities were: Madrid, Tarifa, Tangier, Granada, Barcelona, Figueres, and back to Madrid.

The first day in Madrid, we were jet lagged since we couldn’t sleep on the plane despite being upgraded to business class. Our hotel was just a block off Plaza Mayor, the central plaza of Madrid, dating back to 1576. Here is a picture of it in the early morning–thus the dark shadow:

It was a Sunday, which is when the El Rastro flea market goes on, the biggest flea market in Europe. We wandered blocks of booths filled with scarves, jewelry, antiques:

And pretty much everything else I’ve ever seen at a flea market. Then we went back to the Plaza Mayor and had the first of many, many ham sandwiches. I took some pictures:

Man and woman dining on Plaza Mayor

Businessman walking through the plaza

Crowd scene with a bubble floating overhead

As you can tell, there were many street performers around. They included several Mickey Mouses, people dressed like pirates, an Asian man mournfully playing a sitar, and this thing:

That is a hobbyhorse covered with a blanket of tinsel. A man crawled inside and made it move up and down while eerie music played and bells jingled. Then it started flapping its gaping mouth at people. Maybe that has some kind of story behind it that I didn’t understand but I found it creepy. I don’t know why anyone would give it money.

That … thing… was my first introduction to a dark zeitgeist that goes on in Spain. It’s hard to explain, but it is as though there is a surprising, very specific way of looking at things in Spain that is a little dark and a little odd and very much them. Within its context, the hallucinogenic creations of artists like Goya and Picasso and Salvador Dali and Antonio Gaudi make perfect sense. Of course art like that would come from a place where a man pretends to be the head of a corpse resting a table that talks to you when you pass or where they make zombie teddy bears for Halloween or where a cashier’s job is to stand all day in a counter so that her body looks cut off:

I really liked this about Spain. I had the coolest dreams while I was there because everything was so dramatic and eerie and ripe with stories.

After our nap, Kyle and I did the tapas crawl, which is also a thing on Sundays. I will write a separate post on food in Spain because I found it so different from what I expected, but the tapas crawl was a good introduction to the people of Madrid. The restaurants were so crowded that it was hard to get in the door. And since no one speaks English—another shock! People in Spain speak Spanish!—this was a little intimidating at first.

Here is a picture of a plaza outside a restaurant during the tapas crawl. Everyone was sitting around tables or standing holding little plates of food, chatting like a loud flock of birds.

I liked Madrid much better than Barcelona. For one thing, there are a lot of really great sites there (not the case with Barcelona). There is the Prado Museum, which is one of the best museums I have ever been to. Its collection includes Velázquez, El Greco, Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (truly one of the greatest paintings I have ever seen), Italian art such as Reuben and Botticelli, and pretty much every important painting by Goya.

I have always liked Goya, but after visiting the Prado, he is now one of my favorite painters. Walking around the Prado, you can see him change from an imitator of Velázquez to a satirical portrait artist to the tormented creator of the black paintings, which are amazing and terrifying to see in person. His psychological changes were palatable in a very vivid way.

We also went to Madrid’s Museum of Modern Art, called Museo Reina Sofía. It is also full of good art, including some good-period Dalis and Picasso’s Guernica, a giant masterpiece he did about the Spanish Civil War. I was not allowed to take a picture of it (they are very controlling about this in Spain), but here is the whole image. And I did take this picture:

Another site worth seeing in Madrid is what I called mini-Versailles. Turns out that in the late-1700s, Charles IV, who I believe was the grandson of Louis XIV (of Versailles fame), lived in Madrid’s smaller version of Versailles, called the Royal Palace.

Like everything else in Spain I wasn’t allowed to take pictures, but it was quite lovely—and quirky—inside, with Goya paintings hanging satirically in the middle of plush bedrooms, 1700-century ideas of Japanese decor, an entire room made out of ceramics, and crystal chandeliers as big as cows hanging over inlaid wooden ballrooms. Definitely worth the line and hassle to see.

We also went to a Flamenco performance. I thought it would be touristy, but I figured, hey, I am in Spain, right? And while I am sure that there is touristy Flamenco in Spain, there is no doubt in my mind after seeing (a good version of) it that it is a serious art form.

The performance we went to was in the back of a restaurant. We crowded into a dark room and sat by tall tables while a group of five guitarists/singers came out and sat in chairs on the back of the stage. Then they alternated between playing Spanish guitar and singing and the Flamenco dance itself. The dancers, a man and a woman, were telling a story that I didn’t understand, but was somehow emotionally moving anyway. They moved only the bottom half of their bodies, stamping their feet and snapping their fingers, while the top half of their bodies held still. The woman dancer was particularly amazing. Really, this photo says it all:

Is this my entire trip to Spain? No, this is just the first three days. Do you see why I have taken forever to post this?

Spain 1: Madrid
Spain 2: Tarifa and Morocco
Spain 3: Granada
Spain 4: Barcelona

I know, you have been expecting me to write about Spain on here. And I will. But in the meantime, here is our new car: a 1970 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia convertible.

My 1993 Honda Civic is on its last legs, so we needed a new car. (Or should I say “new”?) We bought this Karmann Ghia from a cute little German lady who bought the car straight from the factory showroom in Germany in 1970, had it shipped over to the USA when she moved here, and has been driving it ever since. She has kept immaculate care of the car. We are its second owners in its 40 year lifetime.

We decided to get a classic car for lots of reasons, including: the high resale value, Kyle’s desire to learn how to fix cars, the pleasure of sticking it to the current car companies (and their prices), and the coolness factor. Karmann Ghias are a mixture of Italian design–the body is made by the same firm that designed Porsche bodies–and German mechanics, which is kind of mind boggling and awesome.

I’m a little nervous about owning such an old car, but so far it is a lot of fun.

Karmann Ghia!

This is a little hard to photograph, but what you are looking at the linen closet that came with the house. It is a mess, but I blame the shelves, which were about 8 inches deep. Behind this was one of two closets in my office.

We decided to sacrifice one of the closets in my office and remove this linen closet. Then in that space, we would put in a bathroom vanity and a new sink.

But first we needed to purchase a new linen closet to replace the old one. We shopped around and ended up buying a wood closet organizer from Lowes. Here’s a picture from their website:

We modified the organizer by putting in drawers and a cabinet to hold tablecloths, sheets, placemats, soap, etc. On the bottom of the organizer, we screwed three drawers together and I sewed a liner for our new customized laundry hamper. Now, one cabinet holds our linens and acts as a hamper for the dirty clothes.

Next, Kyle began demoing the two closets. He took out the old linen closet and removed the shelves from my closet. Here is a picture right after he did this. As you can see, the doorway from the office closet is still open, allowing you to see into my office:

I kind of liked this, actually. It felt like having a private bathroom in my office. But we are going to put a vanity and sink in that area, so we needed to have a solid wall. Kyle sheetrocked it:

So that’s where we are. Next, Kyle is going to do the plumbing for the bathtub and sink. I think after that, we’re going to put in the vanity and sink. Or maybe the tub next? I can’t keep it straight. Either way, demoing is done, and we are moving on to the next phase.

Two weekends ago, it was very hot around here, so Kyle and I went to the coolest place I could think of: Humboldt County. We decided to go camping.

Kyle was uncomfortable with just setting up a tent in a random park (although I told him people do that all the time in Humboldt, believe me), so we went to Patrick’s Point, near Trinidad, and paid to have an actual campsite. Here it is:

Note, please, the scary looking thicket-like cave near the tent. I couldn’t tell if it were natural or man made. Ambiance?

It was actually a lovely day in Humboldt but foggy around the camp. That was a nice balance, since we spent time in downtown Arcata and Blue Lake where it was sunny, and we hiked the trails in the fog around the ocean. I love how dramatic fog can be.

We hiked down to the beach and up to the very top of this rock:

It was fun. We saw a lot of banana slugs, a chipmunk, and at least five little bunny rabbits. This one was eating a fern.

The only other animals we encountered was some kind of fight that happened while we were in our tent. We had a glimpse of whatever-it-was earlier, some sort of small, light-colored animal about the size of a house cat. (But it wasn’t a cat.) Later we heard crashing in the bushes and a snarl. Animal fight! I said it was a bobcat. Kyle thought it was a possum. My story is more interesting, so let’s go with bobcat.

We also went to Blue Lake, as I mentioned, and sampled the beer at Mad River Brewing. Excellent beer. I can see why they are winning awards.

Here is our sampler after it was done.

Overall, a nice little weekend getaway for us. I was happy to learn that we missed the hottest day of the heatwave, which made me feel very smart.