at the ballet

 
it was such a special night seeing alessandra ferri in wayne macgregor's woolf works with american ballet theatre at the met!

friday the 28th . .

listening to brian lehrer this morning . . 

 

such lovely books . . 

and beautiful crocheted artwork.

book recommendations

 
the old capital by yasunari kawabata . . i checked this out of my library through the interlibrary loan program. i was enthralled with kawabata's story of a young woman abandoned by her own family as a baby and raised by a couple in kyoto who kept a wholesale shop. i enjoyed learning about the culture of kyoto in the 50's/60's and how its residents deal with the changes being made by outside (western) influences and also engrossed in the personal story and choices that the main protagonist chieko must make. kawabata creates fascinating characters and shows us the physical beauty of kyoto through spare sentences but with the most colorful choice of words.

i loved this book. raja shehadeh's world has changed so drastically and continues to change by the physical presence of soldiers, walls and settlers, that he can no longer walk about unconstrained as he and his ancestors once did. reading about the beauty of the land that he knows and loves and about the history of that land which is shared by three religions, is illuminating and feels essential. he also describes some of the legal arguments he attempted to use as a lawyer in order to keep the homes and farms for the people of ramallah. one of my favorite parts in the book was his description of a walk to the monastery of st. george . . !

anticipating . .

greg stopped at burdick for my birthday gift on his way home tonight. i'll wait and open it on friday.

i finally brought out my lamp oil candle which my sister bought for me as an early birthday gift in april when we were visiting in connecticut. i put it in a small glass vase with a bouquet of fresh thyme. (dinner was leftover salad and chicken from saturday.)

(i filled the stem with castor oil which is clean burning with no fumes.)

a zoom and voting day

family zoom today at 12:30 . .

chanda's photo of last week's strawberry moon . . 

photos from a hike she took . . 

(that's a deer in the top right corner . . )

protecting a piping plover nest . .

a newly published book she found at the library about tackling the problem of invasive flora and fauna around the world. 

voting with korrina today . . 

and pastry and a cold lemon yuzu soda afterwards . .

(at the sleeping cat cafe . . )

walking home i passed a city worker trying to fix a broken traffic light . . 

(car horns were honking . . people were not happy).

birthday dinner with kendall at balaboosta . . (they have such good food) . . 

(baklava with pistachio ice cream gone too soon.)

monday night dessert

today a cool wind howled up the street and through the courtyard incessantly. it felt like march, except for the 80 degrees, which actually felt very cool and refreshing after the hot 96 temperatures we had.

i wanted to walk cross town to veniero's for dessert (we hadn't been since . . i don't know! over a year ago? we've been for cookies, but not to sit down in over a year . . ), but it was so windy in a scary way that i almost turned around. 

however, i persevered . .

i had a cannoli and a decaf mochaccino, and greg had an affogato and new york cream cheese cake (!). it was all very good and entirely worth the windy walk.

an nyu art installation we passed on the way home.

the library . . 

and a beautiful sunset . . 

poem on a hot summer sunday and sunday dessert

in the mountains on a summer day

gently i stir a white feather fan,

with open shirt sitting in a green wood.

i take off my cap and hang it on a jutting stone;

a wind from the pine-trees trickles on my bare head.

by li bai (poet from the tang dynasty around 701)

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it's been very warm these past few days . . today it's supposed to go up to 96 again . . fortunately, it's cooled down to the middle 70's at night with a good breeze. we had put the air on yesterday for when jeanette and tony were here, but then turned it off before going to sleep. 

above is pluto lolling about on a hot afternoon . . 

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leftover dessert from yesterday . . 

our old shoe bin has finally collapsed and is very wobbly . . 

but zuzu doesn't care.

saturday brunch

i was busy all day yesterday getting ready to have our friends tony and jeanette over this afternoon. we had a fun time catching up on each other's news and just being together. i was thankful they made the hot trek in to visit, as it's quite sticky and steamy outside and the walks on either end of the train journey are not comfortable to make. and, of course, on the way home they had to transfer to a bus as the f wasn't running and the d train doesn't take them to their neighborhood. there's usually a snafu somewhere.

i ended up making a greek grilled chicken salad that i found on a cooking website. it was very good, but i didn't like the marinade for the chicken as much as i thought i would, and it was too much work for not enough flavor; just cooking the chicken without the fuss of the marinade would have been fine. the salad dressing was very good (just the juice of two lemons with oregano, salt, pepper and then add the olive oil slowly while beating vigorously). the salad itself was comprised of a green pepper, lettuce, frisee, panisse, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced shallot, kalamata olives and goat cheese.

and jeanette helped me put together a caprese salad.

for dessert i made a vanilla panna cotta from the around the world cookbook, by abigail johnson dodge (morgana met her a number of years ago for an interview with the meet me at the corner episodes - virtual field trips for kids . . i don't have a post for the cooking episode, unfortunately, and the series is no longer being made, but you can see an interview morgan did with a fashion designer in nyc's garment district at this link.)

solstice morning

the sun will be at its most northern part of our sky today at 4:50 pm. it's the earliest in 228 years, since 1796 (you can read more at the earthsky website). the sun is shining and it's supposed to go up to 91 today. here's a solstice poem by shailja patel i found on poets.org:

solstice re-pot

more than the obvious metaphor

of depth for roots to fully extend

of leaves elevated to eat blue light

of fingers smooshing generative dirt

it's when i hear myself sing to you

crassula ovata, as i upheave you

croon ballads as i displace you

shawl melody around earthquake

as if to say to your bright fat leaves

nothing is promised, sweet green girl

i know the terror of unhoming

dance this one with me

shailja patel, 2024

a day off of work

greg had off today (in honor of juneteenth) so we wandered around . . he specifically requested to visit the chocolate shop where i had treated myself to an iced hot chocolate on monday . . a very rich and delicious cold drink.

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where are we now? after the iced hot chocolate lunch and a long hot walk afterwards, we stopped home to feed the cats and to watch the movie jerry and marge go large, based on a true story which you can learn about on this 60 minutes episode:

(interesting! and amazing . . )

and then we went out to dinner . . our anniversary was friday, june 14th . . 38 years . . that feels so strange to write. korrina treated us to a delicious dinner in 2019 when she worked at riverpark which was very special. this evening we ate at a restaurant which i think korrina would enjoy. it felt as nice as riverpark, minus having such a special chef looking out for us. we had the fried okra, smoked cod cakes and spoon bread . . 

and this huge pork chop which we shared . . and also brought home. i also had a zero alcohol "mocktail" called the "herbalist" which was very good. i was hoping to look up the ingredients online right now, but it's not listed on their website. i can't remember what was listed in the little menu i ordered from.

strawberry shortcake dessert with coffee and cream.

it was fun to celebrate.

at the park when walking home the air was heavy with the scent of the linden trees in full bloom by the dog run . .