In the Hood

Guess who's moving to the hood. That is correct - "Mr. Smooth" Justin Timberlake. Apparently JT has just purchased a kickin' crib in the backcountry of Greenwich. That means that I will be sure to see him bouncing down Greenwich Avenue or will run into girlfriend Jennifer Biel lookin' fresh at Sephora. Booya. For sure we will have to be schoolin' JT to know the ledge.

Greenwich Times got down to the gritty with Greenwich man breaks into home, cuts pubic hair . Apparently the jack broke into a crib while the owner was away, cut his pubic hair and left the trimmings, police said. So cold.

In my hood what is happening can be found at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC_pivmmDVY. This is a video entitled Raccoon vs Cat and Singing Mom. Raccoons are clockin' and fronting on the Kenny's porch and face old school ire.

"Aight. Be easy.

The Color of Light

I have a friend who suggests that each person has an essential question. She poses that her essential question is "Where would I put that?" That is the question she asks herself before she acquires anything. Consequently, she rarely buys or accepts things "on the fly." I, on the other hand, have always felt that if I fancied something, I could make room for it in my life. That explains the 5 trips to the dump we made recently, but I digress. The question I am always asking myself is "How would I paint that?" I am fascinated by the way light plays off objects, such as moonlight or sunlight off the water, the contrast of light versus shadow, and how light influences the perception of color. This same question formed on my daughter's lips on our recent trip to the Met, when she observed Bierstadt's painting The Rocky Mountains Lauder's Peak. Bierstadt was a member of the Hudson River School, painters who emphasized the details of their landscapes with the use of light. Bierstadt's use of light to guide the eye to the center of this painting, following the waterfall from the upper right corner of the painting to the center, is expert and breathtaking. His use of light, shadow, and color helps create tremendous depth. There are many artists who use light powerfully. One of my favorite paintings is J.M.W. Turner's The Grand Canal. Turner was know as the "painter of light", and he certainly proved the title in this painting.

Artists such as Vermeer and Impressionists,

such as Monet (Musée de

l'Orangeries des Tuileries in Paris has a spectacular collection) carve atmosphere with light in paint. It is their abilities I crave when I experience the light of a San Diego morning or a sunset at Menemsha, wishing to capture that impression forever.

Hot Time in the City

My husband and I went into NYC yesterday to visit our daughter. We all popped over to the MET, where outside I bought a nifty "pashmina" that I instantly lost. I am usually able to hold onto my things, particularly new things, so I was really bummed. However, some really good Karma is in store for the kind individual who returned it to the Information Desk.

The MET has opened up their new American Wing and I had not seen it. It is magnificent. There is much glass and light, and many period rooms, which seem to make the paintings, furniture and textiles come to life. We ended our visit with some Egyptian antiquities, and again the architectural elements of the room were as much art as the displays. Thanks to my daughter who explained to me how I can transfer photos from my camera phone for my blog. She is a beautiful genius.

We then schlepped across the city to meet our daughter's roommate (Mad) for dinner. This bright and lovely lass was waiting for us at Rosa Mexicano's with gifts. Mad is the Personal Assistant for Jim Serpico at Apostle Productions and brought us Rescue Me t-shirts. Thanks Mad! We love them. We are Rescue Me fans and therefore these shirts are much appreciated. Mad is a longtime friend who has been there for our daughter through thick and thin. She is a gem. The girls and my husband ordered an interesting dessert. Looks like summer!

After dinner we went back to their apartment, where we visited with their kitties, Josephine and Piepan. Piepan is my granddaughter and she showed me how bright she is and how ready for the upcoming school year. All in all it
was a super fun day.

Computers

My kids went to a magnet school where they were taught to embrace learning by being unafraid to try things and to think outside of the box. That approach to learning was in stark contrast to what I experienced growing up. I went to a private parochial school, where I was taught that there was one correct way to approach anything, one colored inside the lines, and one began reading a book on page 1 and then read each page sequentially to the end.

Consequently, when we bought our first computer I was terrified to even turn it on by myself. My son assured me that it was okay to play around with all the buttons, nothing bad would happen, and everything was reversable. He was proven correct one day when he changed the language of the computer to Dutch and we had to wait until my husband returned home to change the setting back to English. My kids have been my best teachers and I have taken their tutelage to heart. This blog is proof of that assertion. I created it all by myself, by just clicking on choices provided. I proceeded with the thought that anything I did could be undone. I was fearless, so yesterday I implemented Adsence on this blog. I was assured that Google would read the contents of the blog and place ads appropriate to the content. In my mind's eye I was seeing ads for books on knitting or gardening. The first ads to appear were about buying fig trees and rosemary plants. That was alright. I was less thrilled with the blurb for herbs to alleviate the symptoms of menopause. What frosted my cookies, however, was one big stinking ad in red print that began, "Hello, my name is Marcus...." So, I quickly tried to undo what I had done. I found out that I had to remove the HTML code that I had inserted on my page. Easier said than done. I kept getting messages that indicated that my code was not formed correctly. Yes, they had suggested that before I changed my code I copy the code template in case I needed to reverse my changes, but I didn't do that. That would not be fearless, and, truth be told, I had grown an inflated sense of my own abilities. So I was reduced to searching out a HTML "code for dummies" page and tried to figure out how one constructs correct and proper code. After multiple attempts I got lucky. Things are back to normal. I have a feeling I will be leaving well enough alone, at least for the time being. I feel like I dodged a bullet. I would have hated to bail on the blog because it took on a life of its own as a crazy dating site.

Perchance to Dream

This morning I was awakened by the phone ringing at 7:47. I was in the middle of a dream and it took me a minute to shift gears and attend to my caller. I expected the call to be from my husband, who will be winging his way home from California today. However, it was the nice man from the lumberyard, calling to say our order had arrived. He had lots of questions and I found it difficult to coordinate my brain with my mouth, which was dry and not ready to work. Two hours later my brain still felt foggy. I think it was because I was in the middle of a dream that got cut off before its time. I am a vivid, lucid dreamer. Several times each week I report, in detail, the previous night's dream to my husband. He thinks this habit of mine is rather bizarre, because he rarely remembers his dreams. Humans spend about 6 years of their lives or 2 hours each night dreaming, so I think not remembering is a shame. When I gave up smoking in 1996 and wore a nicotine patch to help me break the habit, one of the side effects I experienced was an increase in vivid dreaming and the dreams seemed extremely odd, but life like. What I know about dreams from reading about memory is our dreams appear to be part of the process we use to consolidate information in our long term memory. Sleep and dreaming are really important. Non-REM sleep, the sleep we get when we don't have Rapid Eye Movements, helps us consolidate declarative memory. That is our memory of facts, personal events, stuff we learn in school, the "what" of memory. REM sleep helps us consolidate procedural memory, the "how" of memory, such as how to ride a bike, drive a car, swim, etc. Studies show that if one crams for an exam and does not get at least 7 1/2 hours of sleep afterwards, the ability to recall the information that was studied is significantly impaired. Dreaming also replays informations to consolidate it or "re-file" the information in a new way and also delete information that is no longer necessary or useful. That may explain the crazy connections that appears in dreams.

At times the solution to problems that I have had difficulty figuring out and solving in my waking hours have been presented in my dreams. Also, a few times I have dreamt about something happening and then woke to find it happening. Spooky. These non-linear events are the kind that make dreams seem magical. For centuries people have reported visitors appearing to them in dreams, to tell them to do or not to do something. From my old Chemistry Club days in high school I remember how August Kekule sought to discover the structure of benzene, and in 1886 as legend has it, discovered the answer in a dream. So cool. There has been much speculation about the function of dreams from psychiatrists and psychologists. Freud (wish-fullfillment), Jung (commumicating with your unconsciousness), Adler (tool to help problem-solve), Hall (visual representation of thoughts), Hartmann (expressions of emotional states), Griffin (lowers stress by completing patterns of emotional expectation) and others had their own understanding of the function of dreams. All I know is that sometimes, as I wait for sleep to slip over me, I think thoughts of what I hope to dream and that sometimes makes for a lovely night.

Be the Change

When looking at the world and its problems, I think most people would like to somehow change the world for the better, but the prospect seems too grand and the problems overwhelming. On my refrigerator are a series of square quotablemagnets that have helped inspire me and that help me remember what is important and what is doable. The first magnet that I bought (What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?) challenged me to consider returning to graduate school for advanced degrees. As I needed encouragement or focus I added others:

If you are going to doubt something, doubt your limits - Don Ward

In the long run, we only hit what we aim at - Thoreau

Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do - Dr. Spock

Never, never, never give up - Winston Churchill

Be the change you wish to see in the world - Gandhi

I realized that ultimately what was important to me, to make my life worthwhile and meaningful, was to help children and change their lives for the better. I know people who change many children's and adults' lives in a big way, such as fund raising to build schools or clean water systems in Third World countries. I value, respect, and support their work greatly, and would like to think that I could be a person who could do that too. The reality is I can't, at least I can't right now. What I can do and have chosen to do is to try to change one child's world in a small way, by identifying their learning difficulties so that they can be more successful in school. It seems like a very small thing to do, but that which I am capable. Then yesterday I stopped by my office and found a package and a copy of a letter from grandparents of a child that I had assessed. The two-page letter was addressed to the new Superintendent in Greenwich and copied to the Director of Pupil Personnel Services. It praised the evaluation that I and the two other members of the Central Evaluation Team performed and declared it superior to other private prior evaluations produced by highly respected and published PhD evaluators, for which the grandparents had paid thousands of dollars. It ended saying that thanks to me and the other two evaluators, their granddaughter has a chance to become a productive member of society, rather than a burden to it. "What these professionals do matters, and matters deeply." The package contained a beautiful crystal paperweight inscribed with a quote from Garrison Keillor: Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. One doesn't ever enter into the field of education become rich, but today I feel like a million bucks.

Figs on My Mind

I've got figs on my mind

I've got figs on my mind

I've got figs on my mind

And there's nothing particular wrong

It's a feeling I feel inside

When I woke up early this morning

It was staring me straight in my eye

Natalie Cole sang about love. I am singing about figs. Last week I was picking up some produce in Whole Foods and I paused beside the display of figs. An employee stocking fresh lettuces shared with me her favorite way to enjoy figs. Slice the fig in half, insert a bit of goat's cheese, wrap with a slice of prosciutto, and grill for 1 minute. Brilliant! Country Living recently had 3 fantastic ways to prepare figs. The first, from Nancy Oakes, chef-owner of Boulevard in San Francisco, suggested tossing a pint of figs into an ovenproof dish, roasting the figs for 10 minutes at 350F and then drizzling then with an aged balsamic vinegar. Stephen Pyles, chef-owner of Stephen Pyles Restaurant in Dallas, combines 2 tablespoons each butter and sugar, a pinch of salt, and 3 tablespoons sweet Spanish sherry in a skillet over medium heat. Once the mixture is lightly caramelized, add 8 whole figs, toss to coat and cook until the fruit is soft. Serve over vanilla ice cream. Sheila Lukins, of the Silver Palate Cookbook, suggests halving fresh figs, slathering them with mascarpone and sprinkling with chopped pistachios. The edible fig is one of the first plants that was cultivated by humans and subfossil finds suggest that the cultivated fig may have been planted and cultivated intentionally, one thousand years before crops such as wheat or rye. The Romans were fig aficionados and used figs, among other things, to fatten geese for the production of a precursor of foie gras. Interestingly enough, the word sycophant (Greek roots skon phainein) mean to show a fig, so if one was attempting to gain someone's favor, they brought them a platter of figs. I would love a good explanation of where the expression "I don't give a fig" originated.

I have been bitten badly once again by the crafts bug. That is a great deal better than getting bitten by a spider. Yesterday I heard of 2 dastardly occurrences of spider bite. My cousin, who was to visit for dinner on Wednesday, was bitten by a spider over the weekend. This resulted in a trip to the hospital and he is now medicated and unable to travel. Another acquaintance suffered a spider bite that required 3 stitches. What the hell.... I would have been much more afraid of cleaning my basement if I had heard this news earlier. My basement was "Spider Central." While there are 12 venomous spiders in the U.S., the two most common spiders to cause such problems in the Northeast are the Black Widow and the Brown Recluse. While these photos make the spiders seem gigantic, they are usually between 1/4" and 1/2" big. Spiders like to hide amid cardboard and clutter, so if one must clean crawlspaces and basements, gloves may be a good protective idea. I tend to lead with my vacuum hose, sucking up dust, debris and spiders before they can get to me. If you do get bitten and the site hurts or has a bluish tinge, seek immediate medical treatments, because what you want to protect yourself from is a staph infections, which can accompany a spider bite.