Now I just had to figure out what the average person was spending. So I did another search, this time using the terms “average food budget” and “united states." A lot of message board and blog results came up, usually involving people trying to figure out how to lower the amount they were spending at the grocery store. While some of these were interesting and even had useful advice, they didn’t have the kind of hard data I was looking for. I finally landed on the Bureau of Labor and Statistics website in the Consumer Expenditure Survey results section. There is a great deal of information here, as well as lots of nifty little tools like data tables you can query using combinations of factors. Nerdy girl that I am, I really enjoyed this. Anyway, based on what I found using various different combinations of data the average individual in my income bracket spends anywhere from $33-$53 (approximately) a week on food eaten at home. (I was also curious as to what percentage of total income people were spending on certain categories other than food, such as gas and health care, but I feared become lost in the endless data table loop and therefore sacrificing an entire afternoon, so I decided to save this for another, less pleasant, day.)
I was still not entirely satisfied with these numbers, so I kept looking. I remembered reading a blog post over at The Simple Dollar which mentioned something that the government called "a thrifty food plan." So I popped that phrase into Google and the first thing that came up was the USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion from which I got to the August results for "USDA Cost of Food at Home at Four Levels: US Average." What you find at the "thrifty" level are the numbers which form the basis of Food Stamp allotments. Based on what I found here, I determined that a woman my age would spend just under $36 weekly on the thrifty food plan, and just under $45 on the low cost plan. (Just in case you're curious, the moderate plan is about $55, and the liberal one is about $71.) Based on all of these numbers, combined with a quick review of my monthly expenses and pending home repairs, I decided on a weekly food budget of $40. Based on my budget as a whole and the fact that I am trying to clean up my diet and lose some weight, eating out regularly isn’t really an option at this point. The occassional tarted-up coffee drink that I indulge in will have to be funded out of the “emergency $20” I try to keep in my wallet. The “other sources” mentioned in the food stamp calculation will consist of some gift cards I have lying around, the munchies that appear regularly in the library staff room, and the occasional dinner date.
Now that I have some budgetary guidelines, on to the next questions: What to buy and where to shop for it?

Jeremiah 20:9

in his grip

Passion Rising Team

About this time a lot of articles on “the food stamp diet” started hitting the news. Various government officials both local and national were committing to live for a day or a week on a food budget that equaled what the average food stamp recipient in their area received. Of course, most of these officials had cooks, and so they didn’t have to devote time to shopping, planning and preparing the way the average person would. Still, this might inspire me to cut out prepared foods and make the effort to cook more things from scratch, therefore getting a better grip on what’s actually going into my body. Was it possible to eat a truly healthy diet if I were shopping on the equivalent of public assistance? You always hear a lot of snide remarks about people on food stamps stocking up on junk food, so I began to wonder just how far those dollars would go when spent on fruits, veggies, and lean protein. Could be doable, I thought, pushing my cart around the perimeter of my preferred grocery store, studiously avoiding the center aisles where all the packaged food lived.

And then it happened: week after week of screaming headlines and top stories about food recalls. E. coli was showing up in everything from hamburger to spinach.

Spinach?!?

Spinach?!? Come on! What’s wrong with this picture? I’m not even safe eating salad?

Just when I had concluded that going the produce and protein route was both physically and fiscally responsible, I had to rethink the plan.

Hasn't quite worked out that way, but there are days like last Tuesday, where I succeeded in getting off my lazy ass and went to go look at some art. I went to the experimental exhibition space called The Lab in the Mission District and checked out their current show called Code Switchers.

Now, I'm not a very eloquent art critic, in fact, I'm not an art critic at all but I did find a few things at the show that were of interest and I thought I'd share. There was quite a variety of work. A little of everything, photography, video, painting drawing….some of it didn't really say much to me but a few pieces did catch my attention.

An artist whose work I've seen before, Lauren DiCioccio had a few pieces in this exhibition. I have a soft spot for embroidery of any kind and DiCioccio does a lot of it as well as soft sculpture. The image attached shows the composition book she made out of felt and thread. She also uses newspaper images, wraps them in semi-transparent fabric and embroiders the images and the text often leaving them unfinished.

Work that most caught my attention was on the south wall by Klea McKenna titled, 14 days (all your fear just turns into relief). It seemed like one of the most inconspicuous pieces in the show however it directly addressed and encourages the act of translation. The works were produced during a trip where the artist had to care for her sick mother in a foreign country. McKenna took the issues of translating for basic needs and took it a step further by pairing photographs taken during the trip with Braille paragraphs. The prints with braille were humbly tacked to the walls with a sign that said "please touch the braille". Something about the work made it very difficult to walk away from it. Part of me questioned why the Braille? Another part of me felt like the why didn't matter simply. I was touched by the exposure of such a personal event accompanied by the proposition to the viewer attempt to translate it into another sensory experience. I'm not too sure if I'm expressing myself clearly but I really like her work. Worth checking out: http://www.kleamckenna.com/

I also loved Badges by James S. Pitt. This wall installation of these series of irregular, ambiguous wood "badges" painted with acrylic.

The show goes through October 11th.

Like many of my generation I have a very large soft spot in my heart for Jeremy Irons, no doubt borne from years of suckling at the teat of The Lion King, plus a Jesuit education that meant an annual diet of The Mission could not be avoided. And it’s true that there are few of his generation, Alan Rickman (his would-be-on-screen brother in the Die Hard series) being a possible exception, who could match him for sheer charm and Englishness.

So when I heard that he was to be giving a talk at my alma mater last week, there was no question of my missing it. And what a charming little evening it was. A polite eccentric – in contrast to the stern and narrow-eyed characters he has tended to portray in the past – he seems more Charles Ryder than any of the others. When the topic came up of the new version of Brideshead Revisited (already out in the States, due here shortly), Irons said: “We had the luxury of 13 hours to tell the story, they’re trying to do it in 2.” A fair point.

He then added: “There’s some things you can’t do quickly… well.”

Quite. Trust such a droll man to sum it up quite so simply. Other questions flew back and forth from the audience, revealing, amongst other things, that he has come to terms with being best known for The Lion King, was never approached for Die Hard 4, and was certain that he was going to win his Oscar, largely because the odds all seemed in his favour (one could a joke about fortunes reversing but that would be unforgivable). Perhaps most interestingly he admitted that the work he is most proud of is, of all things, playing Humbert Humbert in Adrian Lyne’s Lolita, one of his more controversial films, although a performance I for one found incredibly powerful.

Eventually the question asking came to me, and I elected, as I do, to ask a rambling question with a touch of wit and a fistful of flattery. “While I was watching Kingdom of Heaven,” I began, “it was all going really well, the film had a good trajectory, and then your character announces for no particular reason that he’s going to Cyprus (this is utterly true mind, Tiberias does just up and leave as soon as the going gets tough), and you leave and suddenly the film becomes utterly unwatchable (an exaggeration, I confess, but it certainly becomes a hell of a lot more stupid). So there’s this direct correlation between your screen presence and films being good.”

The audience got a giggle out of this, but Jeremy Irons, perhaps just flattered though I suspect more bemused, smiled and asked, “Are you free for dinner after?”

Sigh. I was. For him I was. But of course the niceties of such events meant the request was all in good humour. But still, Jeremy, if you’re reading this, I am free, any time, night or day, here or there, anywhere.

Yes, there’s nothing like a good dose of starstruckness to get you back at your keyboard and blogging again. Right where I should be.

Andrew Mueller reviews Radiohead live at The Forum, London. Photo Steve Gullick.

13 years later can we name the others in the band yet? Well there's Johnny Greenwood and there's another Greenwood, a brother, but I can't think of his name off the top of my head. And then there's an Ed something or other but the drummer, the drummer I still can't name. Which is all the more funny because I've just remembered that I have actually met him at Reading Festival. 1998 I think. A friend I was with knew Radiohead from growing up in Oxford and he joined us for a drink. I am sure we were introduced but then I'm terrible with names as I've just proved so who knows. All I know is that I don't know his name.

Radiohead are supposedly big on the environment aren't they? It's a good enough link. Please do take the time to watch this brilliant, brilliant animation about climate change and its causes. 10 minutes very, very well spent - I guarantee you that you'll learn something. Apparently Thom Yorke employs a woman to trawl the web for him, searching out things he might like and bringing them to his attention. Well Thom - you should like this.

http://wakeupfreakout.org/film/tipping.html

Elsewhere Neil Kulkarni expresses his love for Coventry while in the process of reviewing Eat Static at Coventry University and Lisa Hoftijzer (who?...anyone?) is "moved deeply...to the bar" (drum splash) by The Mission at Rock City, Nottingham. Which reminds me of another little memory from around this time.

It's early morning, 6am or thereabouts and I stagger, bleery eyed, into Hereford train station cafe. I don't expect to see many people at this time of the morning but I certainly don't expect to see the whole of the fucking Mission sat around a table playing cards, waiting for the London train. One of them has a copy of The Independent. One of them is wearing shorts. This is all I can remember. They sit on the train at the next table to me. They carry on playing cards all they way to Reading where they get out but not one of them speaks for the entire journey. I don't know if they'd had an argument or what but it definitely felt odd, more than odd in fact, it felt grim. And tedious. It made being in a band seem like really fucking hard work, which I suppose it is, especially when you've been flavour of the month and are still flogging a dead horse 10 years after the adulation has faded. I suppose this is why I've managed to remember it. Having said that I probably never would have if I hadn't sat down to scan this in tonight so thanks for jogging my memories Lisa, whoever and wherever you are.

Aquesta versió és molt especial, doncs en la mateixa, Julianne Regan, cantant del grup All About Eve, va pujar a l'escenari per acompanyar el seu antic xicot Wayne Hussey, com ho va fer en la versió original del disc, el 1.986.

===============================================================

El primer álbum de The Mission, God's Own Medicine, es uno de los álbumes debut más brillantes de los 80's, y dentro de un buen grupo de grandes temas, como Wasteland, Garden of Delight, Let Sleeping Dogs Die, And The Dance Goes On, Stay With Me, Sacrilege o Love Me To Death, una de las que goza del favor de la mayoría de los fans del grupo, es, sin duda, Severina, que no falta casi nunca en los conciertos del grupo británico.

Esta versión es muy especial, puesto que en la misma, Julianne Regan, cantante del grupo All About Eve, sube al escenario para acompañar a su antiguo novio, Wayne Hussey, como lo hiciera en la versión original del disco, en 1.986.

• No idea what I want to do for the next 3 days. May go into SF today. Was toying with the idea of going down to San Jose anyway, regardless of the Jolie situation. Still not sure what to do about that. Sure, if she didn’t reply – that’s fine. Don’t know how much is her not wanting a visit, and how much may be just her ability to swing in and out of existence. Meh. It’s her deal.

• Stull feel like finding ’09 Poet’s Market before going home. Like it would give me some work to do.

• Back in the Mission. Daunting price of 3-day Muni pass sent me back on the BART. $18 for 3 days, I can’t justify. I may not even cross the bay again after today. The next 3 days are a mystery. Eric wants me to go with him to the Rites of Jupiter being performed at some strange bookstore, not sure whether I will go. But what instead? Tomorrow will probably see me on a train to San Jose anyway, out of boredom.

• Hooray! Word today (last night) from Jolie promises to perforate my boredom. At least with phone conversation, if not actual hanging out. I’m hoping for the latter, but whatever. Looks like I’m heading to SJ after all. Well, we’ll see. Waiting for word.

8/20

• Wrote a more non-traditional poem today, called Voicemail. It’s an adaptation of what I can remember of an email I received from a jealous husband – foundless of course. I imagine that it was, at least in part inspired by my reading of both House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, and Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall in the past months. Both books take impressive liberties with form and style. The poem is obvious and simple, but I think that’s what I like about it. Hoping to draw more inspired poetry from mundane sources like emails, text messages and the like in the future.

• Made it to Dolores Park in the Mission. Now I’m curious why it took me so long to check it out. It’s huge and great. It’s plunked down in the middle of everything (with the Mission on one side, and Castro not too far on the other,) and has a commanding view of the downtown area. It was a great day to go there too, sunny, no clouds overhead. Some down by the bay, but certainly far from my concern.

• Didn’t seem to make it to any museums on the trip. Not for not trying of course, but I am loathe to pay to see priceless art. It should just be there for us, the world, to appreciate. The redeeming quality of my trip is that I have attended a respectable quantity of parks and beaches, and been sailing twice, which, according to my standards, puts me firmly in the category of rugged outdoorsman.

• After Dolores park, wandered over to the Castro. Had coffee at a quaint little place by 20th (I think) and Castro, then wandered to the streetcar at Market and Castro.

• Took Muni to Civic Center stop on Market, where I got off due to crowds on the car freaking me out. Hipsters I can take in large numbers, but tourists and welfare cases get to me. The reality of their lives is too heavy for me. Makes me emotional.

• Thick packs of tourists on Market caused me to escape down to Mission, where the sidewalks were more accommodating. Walked past a smiling man who was screaming about taking a shit. Tourists coming out of the mall stores. I was on the phone with Shayne when I stumbled on the Yerba Buena Gardens, where I sat for a while, watching people sell Street Sheet, or throw frisbees. Again, good weather to sit around outside.

• Back to Berkeley in the evening for some food and sitting in Tully’s on Shattuck. Had a big conversation on Facebook with Asha, whom I sadly only get to talk to every couple years. She’s married and living in Texas now, though she doesn’t seem like the Texas type.

8/21

• Made good headway in the Shorts Project story. Plot is now on solid ground.

• Got out early and headed across the bay. Got off at Embarcadero stop and had tacos. After that, had coffee at a Peet’s nearby. Killed a little time there, checking emails and stuff, and headed to the Caltrain to go to San Jose. Luck being with me, there was one scheduled to leave 10 minutes after I arrived, and so I got a day pass ($15 for unlimited rides). For all intents, it is the same as Chicago’s Metra. Pricing was ok, 1.5 hours one-way from SF to San Jose.

• San Jose was a pretty big let down. Not a peep from Jolie, and I walked around for a while, stopping at a Kinkos to check in for my flight and print my boarding pass. After that, I wandered around, looking for some cool places, but came up empty. It would have been nice to have someone with who knew the lay of the land, because it’s pretty easy to lose control when you’re in a giant mall with a population. I think that’s my main beef with SJ, everything was very clean and polished and corporate. San Jose will be our sadly homogenized future, if we fail in the revolution. I think people were looking at me strangely, with my tattoos and piercings, and wearing shorts. It was something out of Demolition Man, I was expecting Denis Leary to climb out of the sewer.

• Back on Caltrain, I made my way eventually to Berkeley where, while waiting to meet up with Sean for dinner, I witnessed two completely independent groups of people passing joints around in the little commons next to the Downtown Berkeley Bart stop. Now, I know you can get medicinal marijuana in California and everything, but a bunch of youthfully healthy hippie kids sharing a thick blunt is probably not exactly what the medical community is trying to facilitate. Eventually Sean showed up, and we hit some Italian/American place for dinner. It was tasty, and Sean got to watch the second half of the Bears game.

• After dinner, went home and packed, made it an early night.

8/22

• The final short leg of my trip. Woke up around 9am and showered (trust me, I had been showering on a regular basis, just didn’t think it was significant enough to put in print.) Made sure that my bags were packed properly and headed downstairs with my camera. I wanted to document for everyone where in Oakland I had been staying, to prevent anyone from adapting a suspicious tone about my lodging.

• After pictures, I was free to read and relax until it was time to head to the airport. I took down a couple chapters in my Alatriste book (which, now on the plane, I have finished,) and bummed around until we went to Berkeley to collect Sean for the ride to the airport.

• Now on the plane, I am excited to make it back to Chicago. These past 18 days have been incredible in many ways. Not many people who weren’t with me on this trip could claim to have sailed (and I mean, participated in the operation of the boat) on the San Francisco Bay. I saw – which was one of the chief ambitions of my trip – City Lights Bookstore. Birth of a new literary era in the fifties, a good source of my inspiration decades later as I prepare myself to become a bookseller and publisher. I made it to the Haight/Ashbury and Berkeley scenes 40 years after my mother did (during the height of the free love movement) - a legacy I didn’t know I was carrying on until I had come and seen. I witnessed Gnostic ceremonies and was exposed to more of the Occult than I could have anticipated, while staying in Oakland with Sean’s friend (and now mine) Eric. I saw darkness and feared for my safety in stories I have yet to determine whether they’re mine to tell.

• Now I return home to heat and humidity. Determined to make my ambitions into successes, and in short time at that. California has been good to me in many ways.

I am not one of those people.

There are others for whom the origins of a meal are even more important than its aesthetics, those who feel that each bite of food is a moral and ethical statement. For these people no effort is too great when it comes to insuring that every ingredient of every dish meets their stringent requirements in terms of means of production or place of origin.

I am not one of them, either.

What I am is someone who needs to eat a healthier diet, and who is concerned about the effects of her food choices on both her body and her environment. Like most Americans, I work full time and live on a budget, which means I have a limited amount of both time and money to spend on food shopping and preparation. I am not a vegan, nor do I plan to become one. Neither am I a vegetarian, and at this point I really do not see myself becoming one. I am basically an unrepentant omnivore, albeit one who is growing increasingly concerned about the origins, production methods, and transportation of the food I eat.

So where does that leave me? 

I have limited cooking skills. I can put together the kind of meals that enable one to survive, presuming anyone wanted to continue to live after a few days of my cooking. I have a limited budget. As a librarian in a small public library, I have a high degree of job satisfaction, but earn somewhat less than the median income for the county in which I live. I have limited time, because I have a full time job and do some occasional freelance gigs. I have an older home, an older car, and the kind of bills that come with both.  On the plus side of the ledger, I have had the kind of education that gives me above average research skills and access to an entire network of people whose mission it is to ferret out, evaluate, and disseminate information in various forms. Since I live alone, I have a great deal of flexibility in terms of food choices and discretionary spending. As a public librarian, I have the (relative) job security of a civil servant, and access to the information provided by a moderately sized library system. Last but not least, living in NY’s capital district gives me access to chain supermarkets, warehouse clubs, food coops, and farm markets, most of which are within reasonable driving distance.

This leaves me with some questions. Can I eat a healthy, environmentally sensitive diet for a reasonable amount of money? How much time and effort will it take to do so? What resources are available to the average person, like me, who does not have a personal chef, personal shopper, personal assistant, or personal trainer to keep me on target?

No way to find out except to try. And so – the Hungry Librarian, the story of one woman’s attempt to integrate as much real food as possible into a real life with all its complications while sticking to a real budget that I just can’t afford to blow.

Stay tuned…..

The nameless tune has been with me for as long as I can remember and has been impossible to find. Ever try going up to somebody and saying, "Name this tune!" and seeing their blank face as you hum it? Occasionally I'd hear it on a BBC trailer (they use it at least once a year) but I've never been able to track down the name.

All I knew was that the music conjured up images of jungles in my head and that it was definitely the theme to a film or a TV show. I spent at least a decade thinking it was the theme from Life On Earth, until I watched it last year and discovered it wasn't. I can still remember my disappointment, knowing my quest was going to have to continue.

Last week, inspired to find it one more time, I spent an hour wandering around iTunes, clicking on various film and TV themes and being disappointed over and over. Finding a random piece of music with no name? Impossible. My mission to find the home of those four rising notes was hopeless.

Until last night, when I decided to watch Roland Joffe's The Mission for the first time since my childhood. Four minutes in... and there it was! Playing over the jungles of South America was that incredible melody that had haunted me for two decades! At last I knew who composed it (Ennio Morricone) and, needless to say, I downloaded it from iTunes within minutes and keep getting chills as I play it over and over again. [NB: If you want to hear it yourself, look for the soundtrack to The Mission on iTunes and download the song named "Falls".]

There are two things that disturb me now: one, that I spent twenty years on a mission to find something from The Mission... And two, now that the quest is over, I don't have anything else to hunt for.

But at least I have something to listen to while I don't.

With August Bank Holiday coming up I thought it'd be fun to post this ad for Reading Festival. When you look at all these bands, most of whom have broken up long ago, it rather puts into perspective how well 7th on the bill, My Bloody Valentine have done. New Model Army are still together though!

Just discovered that Spin magazine put their entire magazine online for free via Simon Reynolds recent piece on My Bloody Valentine. Amazing!

This is the funniest thing I saw all week. Watch to the end...it really kicks in around 1.10. Hold tight!

FRIDAY, Aug 8
10pm - 2am
(Samala set time after 12am)

Just added to the Olympics: Dancing and Drinking

Come and compete in our version of the Olympic games...of Drinking and Dancing. Our monthly installment of funk, soul, hip-hop, and afrobeat is back once again to make your lower-ends shake. DJs Mr. Grant, Spinnerty, Samala, and other accomplices will be on the decks giving you what you want.

NO COVER!

The Mission

Luther

Fratello sole sorella luna

If you're interested, from sf.eater.com:

THE MISSION—A reservation you might want to make ASAP is the following: Ryan Scott and Mission Beach Cafe will play host to Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard this Saturday: "The two star chefs, who met as fellow contestants on this season's hit TV show, will co-create and present a tasting menu highlighting their signature styles. This is truly a once-in-a-lifetime dining experience ... The 5-course, prix fixe dinner is $95 per person." [City Dish]

Oh yeah, Ryan Scott is the executive chef of the place, but his act on Top Chef wore thin after a while. I didn't shed a tear when he packed his knives.

I‘m not scared anymore
I‘m not scared of the dark when I sleep with you
And I‘m feeling alive
And I‘m feeling strong again when I‘m with you
And it hits me
Just like a runaway train
And it blows me away
Just like a hurricane
You make me happy and I hope you feel the same
You make me feel just like a child, a child again

Oh sweet thing
I‘m born once again
For you sweet thing
Just like a baby again
You make me happy and I hope you feel the same
You make me feel just like a child, a child again

One of my most favorite films of all time, "Blue in the Face" is a love letter to the place.

preferata mea, Gangster Trippin, nu a fost la the Mission anul acesta.

Multumim celor care au pus filmele online.