I’m starting a new series on the blog today. I realized the other day that I have had a nearly lifelong habit of rewriting stories that drive me crazy—usually because I love them but they just took a wrong turn at Albuquerque, but sometimes because a particular character didn’t get what was coming to them,Continue reading “I Have Notes….for “Welcome to Samdal-ri” (plus bonus ending for Wuthering Heights)”
Category Archives: redtailhawk
Letter of Recommendation: Lard
Look, I’m not even going to try to argue that lard has been misunderstood and is somehow good for you…. This is quite obviously not true. But! I do think that, in the first place, it’s no worse for you than any other fat that’s solid at room temperature (provided you eat meat in theContinue reading “Letter of Recommendation: Lard”
One-Minute Reviews
So, the bad news is I have COVID again (Hat Trick). The good news is (a) COVID has never been too mean to me and (b) I’ll be posting to the blog a lot more this week! Starting with super-fast reviews of a bunch of books and audiobooks I cleared over the holidays: Americanah, ChimamandaContinue reading “One-Minute Reviews”
Chef-y Recipes
I called a recipe chef-y the other week—I think it was this one—and one of my Experimental Supper Club buddies asked me what I meant by that. I thought about it and said something like, “A chef-y recipe calls for like 2 more hands, 4 more ingredients, and 8 more hours than you’ve got.” IContinue reading “Chef-y Recipes”
The Grocery Store
I realized last week that one of the most significant and long-standing relationships of my life hasn’t been with a person but with a place: the grocery store. Naturally, there have been many grocery stores over the years, but if taken together they make this sort of Ur-space where I have worked out some ofContinue reading “The Grocery Store”
Ceramics Saturdays: Jōmon Ware (and other treasures from the Tokyo National Museum)
Anytime I visit a museum in Japan I’m struck by how much of what we call “modern” art and design in Europe and the U.S. looks like very old Japanese traditions. It’s not just a coincidence of forms, either: when Japan re-opened to Western trade during the Meiji, Japanese arts and crafts flooded the EuropeanContinue reading “Ceramics Saturdays: Jōmon Ware (and other treasures from the Tokyo National Museum)”
Aikido and Rhetoric: Flow, Still
Look at the adversaries through the opportunity. Never make the fatal mistake of looking at the opportunity through the adversaries. J. Stuart Holden, Giant Steps If your heart is large enough to envelop your adversaries, you can see right through them and avoid their attacks. And once you envelop them, you will be able toContinue reading “Aikido and Rhetoric: Flow, Still”
Ceramics Saturdays: Oil-spot glazes
Hey, it’s photographing things on the dining-room table day! Actually, no joke, I have the perfect table for this–it’s a Hans Wegner table I lucked into (though the cross-bars at each end bark my shins with regularity, which is like, who designs a table with bars at shin-height? Hans Wegner is who…) and it’s reaaaaaaallyContinue reading “Ceramics Saturdays: Oil-spot glazes”
Loading…Review of Tunic
I’m inaugurating a new series on the blog with this post because I finally have gotten up the courage to come out as a gamer. I didn’t think of myself as a gamer until recently for a couple reasons: 1. Up until the Pandemic, I was pretty sporadic, and I usually just played little gamesContinue reading “Loading…Review of Tunic”
The Cocoa Krispies Method
In Psychology 101 in college, one of our experiments was training a rat using what’s called a Skinner Box, named for the famous behaviorist B. F. Skinner. I put my assigned rat (named Bianca, for the heroine of The Rescuers) in this box, which was empty except for a lever she could push down andContinue reading “The Cocoa Krispies Method”
The Rookery 