When I Am an Old Woman, I Shall Have a Purple Cable for My iPhone

Do you remember that poem, "When I Am an Old Woman, I Shall Wear Purple?"  It was popular in the 1980's with women who were not yet old but were giving it some thought.

I was wondering what had prompted me recently to re-read that poem and even get it in French and Spanish translations, and then I remembered.

When someone stole my handbag and I had to replace my iPhone, the man at the AT&T shop told me, "I can give you a purple cable."

I said, "Oh, good!  Because now I can say that when I am an old woman, I shall have a purple cable for my iPhone, an update on an older version of what an old woman has and does--but with the same color."

Note:  The poem did not come out in the 1980's, when I guess it was resurrected. It came out in the 1960's, when the author was not yet old.

Here she is reading the poem now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cACbzanitg

A Gutter without a Grate

Last night I fell asleep to the Audible recording of Jonathan Franzen's Purity and woke up to someone's description of a person or mind as "a gutter without a grate."

I loved that "without a grate" addition, as if it weren't filthy enough to be a gutter.

But while I was dreaming, I think I incorporated other parts of Purity.  Is there a sex scene in which a woman pretends to be a squirrel?

I'd better go Google.

A Binder on Vegan Matters

This evening two friends and I are seeing a DVD of the 1978 film Heaven Can Wait because as a birthday treat for one of them, we went to Filoli, where some scenes were filmed.  (I just looked it up, and it seems that outdoor scenes were filmed at the Pendleton Mansion.)

I'm taking a vegan moussaka, which I hope is good today.  I made it in advance except for the baking part, which I'll do an hour before leaving.  My lovely friend was trying to accommodate me (rather than the animals in factory farms or the environment), and said she would make two versions of a semolina cake--one with eggs and one without.  For the vegan one, she said she'd use yogurt as an egg substitute.  Then she realized that yogurt might fall into the same category as eggs--an animal product.  I looked up vegan semolina and found this on the website ONE ARAB VEGAN:

http://www.onearabvegan.com/2012/08/vegan-basbousa-semolina-cake/

I'm not trying to be difficult.  I just believe that vegan dishes--even cakes--can be just as good as ones with animal products, and because I think they're much kinder to animals and the environment, I no longer say, "Oh, don't worry about me."  I encourage friends and restaurants to try vegan.

This evening I have a book on how to tie scarves, something my friend really wants, and I have a bag full of scarves to try out the "recipes."  But I'd better have what she really wants at the bottom of the bag so the vegan-related items won't be cast aside.

I'm lending her Anna Lappe's Diet for a Hot Planet.

I'm also taking her a binder of articles, and this is a good incentive for getting it in order!

The most recent addition is an article in the Style section of the San Francisco Chronicle on Sakara Life and its founders Daielle DuBoise and Whitney Tingle.  They started a plant-based diet for beauty's sake and saw such good results that they made it a business venture in New York four years ago.  Now they're expanding their vegan-meal deliverying service to the Bay Area.

Another new-to-me venture is one reported back in February, "Restaurateur Ravi De Rossi to Give a Vegan Makeover to His 15 Restaurants & Bars."

https://www.clearlyveg.com/blog/2016/02/11/restaurateur-ravi-derossi-give-vegan-makeover-his-15-restaurants-bars

Others:

Vegetables take center stage from the Spring 2016 issue of VIA.

Bill Gates' 2013 article "Future of Food."

https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Future-of-Food

Truth of Drought's "Save Water, Eat Plants!  Join the Movement" (for restaurant owners)

"Is your cheese killing the planet?" by Lisa Hymans

Jerry Brown saying "If you ask me, I think you should be eating veggie burgers:  June 9, 2015.

"What exactly does 'cage free' mean:' by Tara Duggan April 27, 2016

"More People Want Vegan Food in Restaurants" by Kathy Freston, September 17, 2015

"Is anything safe to eat?"  Tara Duggan, December 27, 2015  (Names seafood, meat and dairy & even some nuts, grains, legumes, and fruit).  The good news she reports  is that the UN has designated 2016 the International Year of Pulses:  lentils, chickpeas, kidney beans and black-eyed peas, which the U.N. wants to promote as good for human health, global food security, and the environment.

http://www.fao.org/resources/infographics/infographics-details/en/c/414726/

I'd better stop now so I can arrive on time with this wealth of food stuff--not to mention the scarves.

Sakara Life: Vegan for Beauty?

I just wrote to a beautiful friend with a cc to another about dinner tomorrow night.  I'd wanted to have them over here both because my house is clean and because it's an extended birthday for the person whose birthday wish turns out to be hosting.

I also hoped to prepare them a delicious vegan meal that wouldn't leave them wishing for meat or any other animal products.

I said:   I switched to vegan after realizing that  all animal products cause the same suffering in factory farms and for the environment.  But people like you can show that not eating meat doesn't have to be a sacrifice but a win-win choice.  (I don't think I'm as convincing as you, but I'm working on it!)  There's an article today on two beauties--supported by Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Hudson--who have established a vegan catering service not for animals or the environment but for beauty!   Beauties like you and Beth don't further that cause!  XO

The beautifies I was referring to are Danielle DuBoise and Whitney Tingle, who founded  Sakara Life in 2012.  It's an organic,plant-bsed meal-delivery service expanding to the Bay Area from Sedona, Arizona.  

Bambi and Vegan Thai Bursting Through Concrete, Sherman Aleski

Sherman Alexie, at the Bay Area Festival of Books, bemoaned that because his host was a vegan, he wound up having vegan Thai.

Later he referred to a writer who named herself Bambi because "Bambi is a survivor."

A third reference he made was to flowers bursting through cement.

 He didn't seem to see how all of these were related.

As I sat there, I wrote a verse:

Those flowers bursting through concrete

            Are vegan Thai.

Survivor Bambi's mom was meat.

            You'll get it by and by.

I tried to rent the movie (1942) of  Bambi, but it's never been released on DVD.  I wonder why.

The Little Golden Book was based on the Disney film that was in its turn based on Felx Salten translated by Whittaker Chambers.

I looked up Felix Salten and found out that he was an Austrian Jew, born in Hungary.  His family moved to Austria because Jews were given full citizenship there in 1867, two years before his birth.

Here are some excerpts from The Little Golden Book of Bambi:

The great stag uttered one dreadful word:  "MAN!"

Later, as Bambi and his mother lay safely in their thicket, his mother explained.  "MAN.  Bambi--it was MAN in the meadow.  He brings danger and death to the forest with his long stick that roars and spurts flames.

Peter Pan at 70 Reviewed by 30-year-old!

Those of us in the discussion group following Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday liked the play a lot more than the reviewer had, and someone suggested that the reviewer might have been younger.

I thought the reviewer was Robert Hurwitt, not so young, I thought, so I looked up his age, and even though I didn't find that, I saw that he was playing in the Mime Troupe's Miser in 1966!  That would indicate that his age was more advanced than even mine.

I also found out that he had retired!

http://www.theatrebayarea.org/news/278591/Robert-Hurwitt-to-Retire-from-the-San-Francisco-Chronicle.htm

Taking his place is Lily Janiak, and she is thirty-years-old!

http://www.americantheatre.org/2016/04/29/lily-janiak-succeeds-robert-hurwitt-as-sf-chronicle-theatre-critic/

Thirty!  That explains a lot!

Frisco, a Novel by Daniel Bacon

I've been a fan of Daniel Bacon since I first took one of his Barbara Coast tours more than 15 years ago, so I was excited when his novel Frisco came out in April of this year (2016 for future reference).

When I finished reading it, I wanted to go on Amazon.com to review it, but since  it was at a book launch that I bought the book (two copies--one for a friend), I can't review it on Amazon; only books bought from them can be reviewed on their website.

So...I recommend this book for those who love San Francisco and are interested in history (specifically the 1930's), and those who believe in the importance of  forming and keeping "a more perfect union," which means country AND Union with a capital U.

Through a love-and-hate triangle, this novel brings to life the struggle of the Longshoremen to create a Union that really represented their rights to a safe environment, decent pay, and reasonable workload and workweek.


I'm going to a book reading of Frisco this evening at 7:00.  Here's the blurb for that:

http://www.booksinc.net/event/daniel-bacon-books-inc-laurel-village

How Do We Vegans Get Our Grams of Protein?

This came up when I was having lunch with my sister, a vegan, and a friend who's like a sister, a vegetarian.  My sister wondered whether she was getting enough protein.

We looked at packages she had around to see how many grams of protein were in a serving--1/4 cup--of each kind of nuts:

Peanuts 7 grams
pine nuts 4 grams

Once home, I took a look at the packages I have.  (Packages in bread drawer vs. in freezer vs. in air-tight jars is a topic for another day.)

I see that oatmeal has 6 grams, but that's for a half-cup serving.  Put some nuts in our oatmeal, and we have another 5 grams if they're cashew nuts, 7 grams if they're almonds.  Add two tablespoons of Chia and that's another 4 g.


Macademia nuts have only 2 grams per 1/4 cup serving, and raisins have only 1 gram.
According to a Vegan Resource Website, it's easy for vegans to get enough protein, and the way we get it is healthier than if we were eating animal products

http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.php

The Camino in Howard's End

Yesterday I got my boots for the Wimps' Walk segment that Bill and I are doing in September, but the price wasn't wimpish.  Here they are as still life along with the tower of books I'm reading on the Camino.

I can write more about that another time.  

Today I just had the urge to write about the "pilgrimage" that the male protagonist of Howard's End, Leonard Bast, relates to the Schlegel sisters.  I found that I marked up the pages where it comes in Chapter XIV. 

 I like the idea that he was trying to walk in an area he'd read about in novels, so he walked all night, and when the Schlegel sisters ask him whether it was wonderful, he says, "No."   

That causes them to respect him more than all his previous allusions to literary works like The Ordeal of Richard Feverel and Robert Louis Stevenson's Prince Otto and Virginibus.