How's Robb?

... Due to the rapacious forces of chicken and snail, our vegetable garden isn't looking particularly impressive.  Robb is busily designing a fence, and we hope to get this under control soon. However, all is not lost.  We still have our persimmons.  Although the tree dropped a huge amount of fruit this past summer, we'll still get a decent crop.  Our Fuyu persimmons are best eaten when firm, and our fruit is just reaching ripeness.  Slightly hard fruit is great for baking. We really should branch out and make other recipes, but this frangiapane (almond paste) persimmon galette is just too good not to repeat. During all the years that Robb and I lived in apartments, I dreamt of having a modest little orchard.  Now that we actually have our own tiny home and fruit trees, I just cannot believe my good fortune.  We're able to enjoy fresh-from-the-tree fruit, and we can share it with our friends and neighbors.  What could be nicer than that? (To se

... Robb and I were at the local Home Depot -- a place I hate with all the burning fires of hell -- when I got a message from my friend Stefani , saying that she'd thinned her strawberry patch and had plants to share.  What could be a better antidote to the soul-sucking place-less-ness of Home Depot than a gift of local garden bounty? Stefani gave us a box bursting with beautiful strawberry plants, and a massive bag of limes.  We wandered around her backyard farm and chatted about the pleasures and pitfalls of urban gardening, chickens and bees.  Sometimes it feels like we live in a small town.  We may bump into each other online, instead of in line at the post office, but the effect is the same.  We exchange garden gossip, catch up on the news, and share some home grown goodies.  It's all very neighborly. It seems that many of the local chickens are moulting.  Our back yard looks like the site of a half-hearted pillow fight.  Stefani and the other chicken keep

... Last October, our neighbors Brent and Nestor gave us their martyred fig tree, Jesús. I didn't get Jesús into the ground last year because I wanted to wait until we'd gotten the place painted before planting trees right next to the house. Now that the rainy season is here, it is time to plant trees.  So what if we only got halfway through painting this year?  We'll built tree-protecting something-or-others when the rains stop and painting resumes.  At the rate we're going, this will be some time in 2016.  It's been said that the best time to plant a fruit tree is twenty years ago, and the second best time to do so is right now. So, this weekend, I set to work digging up the miserably heavy clay-silt soil on the side of our house.  This soil is so dense that it literally cannot be dug in the dry season.  When it's wet, it turns into the gloppiest sloppiest clay ever to stick to shoe or shovel.  I dug four holes, and totally wore myself out.  You sho

... If you had been standing in our back yard this morning, you would have noticed that air was filled with bees.  Lots and lots of bees.  Way more bees than usual.  You would have heard me and Robb debating whether the bees were (or were not) swarming.  The air was swarming with bees, sure.  But we both knew that bees are not supposed to swarm in the late autumn.  Swarming is a reproductive behavior, and there are no male bees at this time of year.  Were they or weren't they?  And what were we supposed to do, if they were? Well, they were.  Goodness knows why.  The bees flew up into one of our tree, and coalesced into a clump about the size of a grapefruit, twenty feet in the air.  Robb and I dragged out our bee gear, we lit the smoker, and got suited up. And then we thought better of it.  We really didn't have any way of catching those bees, and we weren't really sure that we wanted to keep bees that engaged in this sort of behavior. So, in the end, we let t

.... Because we're Total Dorks, Robb and I have been watching far too many Mark Bittman cooking videos.  I've never been one of the people who believed that Julia Child filmed her cooking show while drunk (Don't you be talking trash about Miss Julia), but I'm willing to consider this as a possibility about Mister Bittman.  So, for your enjoyment, here's a particularly demented cooking video. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  May your travels be uneventful, your cooking be pleasurable, and your family drama minimal.

..... We've just started getting ripe persimmons off our tree.  It has been a strange year.  The tree dropped a lot of unripe fruit throughout the summer, and much of the fruit has cosmetic damage on the skin. Nevertheless, this tree never disappoints.  The fruit, while not as lovely as it has been in previous years, is subtle, silky and delicious.  We're sticking with the story that "rustic" fruit bestows a certain "authenticity."  Yeah.  That's it.  (Actually, I think they do look rather nice in the basket we picked up at an estate sale this weekend.) We probably should branch out, and make some other recipe than this almond-paste galette.  But it's so ridiculously tasty that it's hard to bake anything else. Ah, the winter pie season..... 

... When Robb and I harvest honey from our bees, we crush the honeycomb and strain out the honey. At the end of this process, we're left with a fair amount of bees' wax.  Sometimes we wash the residual honey off the wax, and make mead. Most of the time, we set this crushed wax outside and let the bees reclaim the honey that's still sticking to the wax. It doesn't look particularly impressive or useful at this point. The comb is not pure wax. If the comb was used by the bees for brood-rearing, it will likely contain other materials, like the secretions the bees use to line the brood cells, and -- you know -- bee toenails and eyelashes. We filter out impurities with cheesecloth.  Our method is very simple.  We suspend cloth over a vessel of water, and out the while thing in a barely-warm oven.  The wax melts through the cloth, and floats on the water. The kitchen smells ambrosial during this process, and the bees go a bit crazy, trying to get insi

.... Earlier this week, some of the folks from Pixar's sets department came to visit the studio where I work.  They're semi-neighbors, being based just one town away, and had hosted our props artisans a while back.  We were returning the favor, by opening up our studios for a tour. The Pixar group got to see where we engineer and build the scenery we put on stage at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, our prop shop and also my scenic painting studio. The tour was running behind, and the person keeping the schedule was determined that we wouldn't serve our guests a late lunch, so the Pixar folks got a ridiculously fast whirlwind tour of my workspace.  Despite this, I think it was time well spent. In preparing for the visit, it had occurred to me that what my scenic artists and I do is sort of the inverse of what the Pixar sets people do.  They enginee graphic images, based on some wonderful version of the real world. We are given pictures and create real things, solid,

... We've been having a bit of a James Bond film festival at our house. I'll say this, Daniel Craig can bring conviction to just about any stupid bit of script writing he encounters. Furthermore, his tailors are freaking super heroes. As I was digging up the garden this morning, I was thinking about the opening sequence for a strange play Robb and I worked on when we lived in Baltimore. Robb played James Bond in Double-O-Xmas, or I was a Reindeer for the CIA. Picture the opening sequence of just about every Bond film you've ever seen. James Bond walks into frame, shoots his gun directly at the camera, and then a circular shutter closes in on him. The music starts, the silhouetted naked ladies start writhing, and the credits roll. Now picture this live onstage with cross-dressing Bond Girls, a live band playing a brassy Shirley Bassey pastiche , and Robb being utterly suave in the midst of the mayhem. No matter how silly or serious the situation, Robb will alw

... Over the last few days, my scenic studio has been working like mad to create a series of stencils for the upcoming show at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.   (The White Snake -- see it, it's beautiful.)  We're trying to make some brand-new custom-built furniture look like actual antiques. I love this sort of challenge. But I'll admit that all this stencil-cutting is a bit hard on the body. I have to consciously unclench my jaw when I'm working, and take breaks so that my hand doesn't cramp. I've been working with Margot, who did the scenic painting fellowship with me two years ago. She's wonderful.  Apparently the carpenters, who were working on onstage notes asked Margot where I was, but when she told them that I was at the studio, making stencils they mis-heard her. They thought she said I was making stem cells . This lead to a strange line of discussion, about how we could stop building scenery, and just grow it in giant vats. But then w

... Long time readers of this blog might have noticed that I find maps really fascinating.  Here are two that caught my fancy. (These may not display properly in all browsers. My apologies.) A Princeton map of the 2012 United States presidential election results, showing a more subtle break-down of voting. I find it interesting to see the shades of purple, and not just the blue-versus-red graphics.  The places where you can see the demarcation of states is particularly fascinating -- look at the Eastern edge of California, for example. And another map , showing change over time. In this case, there's a third color in the mix. Green indicates voting for a third party. Here's how I understand these breakdowns of years where third-party candidates played a significant role (please correct me if I'm wrong). 1968  Richard Nixon (R) narrowly defeats Hubert Humphrey (D).  Many Southern Democrats vote for George Wallace (American Independent Party) instea

... This pretty much sums up what I love about my neighborhood in Oakland. We are a nation of many. Many cultures, many views, many needs.  We may sometimes disagree about details, but when the work needs to be done, we pull together and do it. 

... Blog Readers! Please leave us a message, telling us about your voting experiences.  (Robb and I will be voting after I get home from work today) I am interested in hearing about  the local issues on you ballot.  What was up for a vote, this time? Let's keep the conversation civil.  I want to know that you voted, not why you think the candidate you didn't chose is a monster.

... Nell Dorr (1893-1988), Bethany Holding Chicken, 1942-1943, Gelatin silver print  Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas Someone on the Internet has declared today Hug a Chicken Day.  All righty, then.  Our chickens are not cuddly.  They treat any attempts at Chicken Touching with the deepest suspicion.  I suppose folks who don't keep chickens will have to console themselves by going to the grocery store, and hugging some cut-up chicken parts. If you're a vegetarian, you could hypnotize your housecat into thinking she's a chicken.  Don't believe her when she tells you that she's laid "eggs" in her "nest box."  Cats, even those hypnotized into poultry-tude, are notorious liars.

... A few weeks back, I officiated at Sheri and Kyle's wedding in Henderson County Tennessee.  Although we all had very busy schedules, I managed to do a bit rambling. I love living in California, but I'll admit that I found myself very nostalgic for the Eastern United States. I do miss the more dramatic seasons, autumn in particular. Here in Northern California, we really only get rain in the winter months, so I have not seen a good summer rain in years.  I haven't walked in the warm wet woods in ages.  It's strange the things that one misses, like the quiet hush of light rain in the forest. Heck, I've missed recognizing the spiders.  I've always relished the experience of being a stranger in a strange land, a fish out of water.  But sometimes it's nice to recognize things.  To feel cozy, and at home. It was nice to meet up with Daddy Long Legs, creatures I've known all my life, but haven't seen in years.  (I can'

... As part of my job, I manage and maintain a large paint studio. Almost every scenic artist who walks through my paint shop remarks on how well organized it is.  I take great pride in my workspace. I keep a clean studio, but when I get home I just tend to sit on my butt and ignore my own messes.  I'm a lazy slob at heart.  A lazy slob who gets stressed out when things are in disarray.  Poor Robb. I've read some of the hugely successful online sites for home organization, but they tend not to be a good fit for me.  Either they feature gigantic stark minimalist homes with virtually no contents, or they go on about expressing love for God and one's family by being a perfect housewife.  Uh, yeah. Recently, I've been noticing moths in our house.  This is a huge, huge problem for knitters or spinners.  Moths are the enemy.  Ignoring them is not an option.  I have come to believe that moths do not in fact prefer dirty or stained wool. They'll chow down on (an

... Hey!  Let's pretend the grass is made of boiling lava, so we have to walk on the furniture.

... This year was probably the biggest year for trick-or-treating we've seen since we bought our little house. I was a bit too busy to paint some new decorations, so we re-used the Hell Mouth from last year.  (This photo is from last year as well, the house is now a pale green-blue-grey color, instead of being dirty white.)  The kids just loved it, and their parents took a loads of photos, as their children were walking back down our stairs. As always, the little ones who came trick-or-treating were very young, super-excited, and unfailingly polite.  Our neighborhood seems to have very strong families.  It was nice to see kids going house-to-house.  I thinks it's really strange how that tradition is dying out, in favor of trick or treating at shops.  Why are homeowners dangerous, and shop clerks safe? This makes no sense to me.