"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. I prefer the latter." -Einstein
I went to Thai Pasta on a rainy spring day...I seem to be
on a Thai roll, with several Asian carts grouped together. (The last few food cart adventures have been Phat Kart, Krua Bangkok, and Rice and Noodle.) We love our Asian
food in Portland! When I returned to Oregon after three years in Asia, Portland
had very few Asian restaurants outside of Chinese...only one Indian, a few
Japanese, and a handful of Thai. Now we have a preponderance, and the food carts are no different.
I had the mango red curry with chicken at Thai Pasta, which is one of
the longest-standing carts in the pod. (I've always found that to be a strange
name--I think of pasta as an Italian thing). I asked for medium spiciness, which was a bit of a risk having never
eaten there before. I was happy with my dish, which had nice big chunks of
mango in it. I paid a dollar extra for brown rice (I love that I never have to
pay extra at Dosirak!). Fortunately,
between the spiciness (which made me eat slower) and the size, I had
enough left over for the next day...not bad for $8.
I do love Thai food, but I'm ready to change things up! Looks like Indian is next in the pod.
My mango red curry with chicken
My verdict: I will return. After a break from Thai food for awhile! I love it, but am ready for a change.
I'm feeling rather fed up because I wrote a post about our great concert last night, and then it got swallowed up by Blogger. This has happened to me several times before, but I still, clearly, haven't learned my lesson to draft my posts on Notepad and then drop them into Blogger. Silly me.
In spite of this setback, I'm excited to share with you my thoughts about the concert I went to with my 16-year-old son, Chris, last night, after he won tickets on Tixie. My post will be shorter this time around!
Chris has never met a concert he doesn't like. Many of our discussions revolve around his efforts to persuade us to go to concerts or music festivals, with the entire family in tow, even! He is completely besotted with concerts...even if he's never heard the band before. On the other hand, I'm less interested in going to concerts of bands I do not follow--I value my time and money too much!
But free is appealing, and I listened to the groups beforehand and knew I'd like them. Chris, though, deliberately did not listen to the music before the concert. The reason he bid on the tickets on Tixie was that he liked the band name (Milk Carton Kids)!
The Barefoot Movement
This group of young, amazingly talented musicians, the Barefoot Movement, hails from North and South Carolina and Tennessee, where they attended Eastern Tennessee State University, which offers a major in bluegrass, old-time, and country music. Noah Wall sings vocals and plays a kick-ass fiddle (and writes most of the lyrics), Tommy Norris plays a mean mandolin, Quentin Acres sings and plays rhythm guitar, and Hasee Ciaccio plays the upright bass and sings. I think they are the youngest band I've ever seen perform live--so young that Hasee is turning 21 today, and one of them had never traveled east of Memphis. They play old-fashioned bluegrass amped up several notches. I love their sound!
I bought their most recent CD, Figures of the Year, and will do my best to get my hands on their other one too. Here's one of my favorites, "Do What You Please" (this video is from 2011, when they were even YOUNGER!):
I will definitely be following this group and looking for an opportunity to see them again when they return to Portland one day. And they made my teenager appreciate bluegrass--he loved them too!
Here's a quick clip of their recording of the Blind Melon song, "No Rain" (with some interviews):
Before yesterday I'd never heard of the Milk Carton Kids, a duo from California, but I loved them as well. Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale sing beautiful, smooth two-part harmonies, prompting comparisons to Simon & Garfunkel and the Everly Brothers. How they differ from those two groups is that although many of their songs are sad and soulful, they are HILARIOUS. I think they spent nearly as much time joking and bantering as they did singing! (Well, maybe not...)
With a dry, quick wit, Joey loves to tell stories and tease his bandmate. Kenneth is an amazing guitarist. Before one song, Joey told us how much he'd been practicing his guitar, and how critical it was that we watch HIS hands during the next song. Then they started the next song, and Kenneth was just all over that guitar! Here's an example of Joey's banter, as he's explaining that they put up their first two albums (Prologue and Retrospect) for free on their web site (which I downloaded today!):
Here's a good example of Kenneth's guitar playing (see how you think they compare to Simon & Garfunkel!!):
Here's another song I like...Kenneth wrote it for his hypothetical future daughter, Charlie. I realized when they started describing it that I'd heard it on the radio (either KINK or NPR) just a few days ago:
I didn't buy their most recent album, the Ash & Clay, but I might have to do so. They are extremely generous musicians, not only offering their albums for free on their Web site, but also offering the entire album on youtube. They also still record their albums on vinyl and used these gorgeous, handmade microphones (made in Portland):
If you get a chance to see either of these two great bands, I strongly encourage you to jump at the chance. Such great talent! It's so much fun to discover new bands.
I'm behind in my posting and have two food carts to review, both Thai/Asian.
Krua Bangkok
A few weeks ago Mike joined me for lunch and we tried out Krua Bangkok. According to 1859oregonmagazine.com, Krua Bangkok is operated by the Ratanavetin family, originally from Nonthaburi, Thailand. The family aims to "keep all dishes as traditional as possible" and purchases ingredients from local Asian food stores. Krua Bangkok is unique in the pod because it's open until 6:30 p.m. (for dinner!). Mike and I visited Krua Bangkok on a lovely summer day.
A friendly young man took our orders
My food cart date
As you'll see on the orange sign, they had a "fish lover" special that day. But I also saw the "Tuna Aloha" on the menu, and I naturally assumed the dish was made with fresh ahi tuna. Silly me! Mike loves ahi tuna, so I pointed it out to him. Unfortunately, it was made with CANNED tuna! Who stir fries canned tuna? He was more than a little disappointed with his meal.
Mike's tuna thingy
I, however, had the mango chicken special, and it was lovely! It had lots of vegetables and mango--perfect--and just the right amount of kick.
My mango chicken
Eating my food out in the sun at a 70s-era concrete park near my office
My verdict: I'll be back, but I will steer way clear of anything with tuna in it!
Rice and Noodle
Rice and Noodle gets an award for one of the most boring names around...like the "Burgers" cart I refused to try. It's very simple and straightforward. Rice. And Noodles. :)
I had to wait awhile for my order, so I was guessing they were making it from scratch. Who knows? Some carts are incredibly fast, while some others take their time.
Another sunny day in Portland!
I had the cashew chicken, which is one of my favorite standby Asian entrees. This one was packed with zucchini and red pepper (two of my favorite veggies), and also had plenty of cashews. Score!
My verdict: Not the best Asian cart in the pod--and certainly not very focused on branding, but I enjoyed my meal. I might try it again!
This week's Monday Listicles is "10 worst band names." I found an awesome "bad band name generator" online, which allows you to create your own bad band names. For example--this is what it did for me:
Nautical But Nasty
Love Me or Heave Me
Despina's Lovely Baubles (I actually like this one!)
The Obscenities of Dr. Scholl
Nuns Are Funny
Renegade Teacosy Collectors (like this one, too!)
1000 Screaming Headmasters
Dalek Humbug Principle
The Nippleclamp Operators (um, yuck!)
Exoteric Bananas
I found some truly awful actual band names (Lake of Anal Mucus, anyone? Or "F-ck Her, or the Terrorists Win"? Ugh!!). On the other hand, many band names people hate I think are kind of creative. So because I'm a writer/editor by day and spend a lot of time correcting other people's spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors, I thought I'd focus on band names that have deliberate typos in them. I'm leaving out Limp Bizkit because so many people list that one...ugh. Here they are (I could list far more!):
Korn, Kreed, Thousand Foot Krutch, and Uncle Kracker (can't stand K perversions of words)
Plain White T's (apostrophe errors are one of my biggest pet peeves!)
Teh Soup Rebellion (what the heck happened with "the"?)
Dear and the Headlights (no dear, it's "Deer in")
You Love Her Coz She's Dead (now that's just sloppy!!)
We Versus the Shark (Us, please...not we)
Teehn Bwitches (who don't know how to spell)
The Monkees and the
Byrds (clearly, we had a spelling-challenged zookeeper)
Phish (my 16-year-old and I have different opinions on this band, but one thing we can say for sure..."phish" is not the correct spelling!)
The Beatles (this has become such an accepted name that we've forgotten that it's actually a misspelling. Beetles is spelled with two "e"s, remember?)
Enjoy this listicles of band names? Check out the others at Stasha's blog, The Good Life!
I first met my friend Shelia when Nicholas was just a baby, when she began coming to our church. We both find it amusing to look back, now, at our first impressions. She thought I was standoffish, and I thought she was overly religious and standoffish too! (I wasn't used to seeing people genuflect at the altar.) It wasn't friendship at first sight! In fact, Mike got to know Shelia before I did...she thought he was much nicer than me! (Which he is...)
Our kids together at Washington Park, 2008
Our friendship really cemented when we went to Holden Village in 2007, and we discovered how much we had in common, especially our shared love of sitting on the porch after the kids had gone to bed, drinking wine and talking. We've spent a lot of time on those porches over the years, and it's one of my favorite memories of Holden Village. I was so sad to learn, soon after we returned from Holden, that Shelia and her family were going to move to Boise, Idaho, just after we'd become friends! So sad. It reminded me of when I was planning to be locker partners with my church friend Debbie in junior high (we had gone to separate grade schools), and she called me up the week before school to announce that she and her family were moving to California! (This left me without a locker partner for junior high, not a great start!)
Visiting Shelia and Ken in Boise, 2009
Over the years, we've maintained our friendship through e-mail, Facebook, phone calls, visits to Holden Village and the beach, girls' night getaways, and trips to Boise and Oregon. Shelia also lived in Japan and traveled a lot when she was younger (she and her husband took their own grand traveling adventure through Asia for their honeymoon.) We share many of the same values and religious and political beliefs, and we both love quotations and inspirations, in addition to shopping for secondhand clothes! We also share the creative gene, although she is WAY better at using hers than I am. She applies her creativity to her job as a kindergarten teacher now!
Holden Village, 2009
She's also a phenomenal cook and a great mom to her son and twin daughters. And our kids get along like a house on fire. I would love to see her at work in her kindergarten class...I have no doubt that she is an exceptional teacher.
Shelia and kids at our house, 2010
Although I miss Shelia in Portland and often hint to her that she should move back, she's happy in Boise so I must resist that temptation. She's coming to Portland more often recently for visits because her dad is sick. I am sad that this is the reason, but glad to have the opportunity to see her more often.
On the porch at Holden, 2011 (Shelia's mom Mary on the far left)
Happy birthday, my Idaho friend--hope you have a fantastic birthday! I appreciate you and love to hang out...thanks for making me laugh!
On the porch again, 2012
April and I saying goodbye to Shelia at Holden, 2012
Every once in awhile, Blogger completely screws up and I lose everything I write. That happened the first time I wrote this post, so I'm finally trying again.
This is my monthly recap of the books I've read and reviewed on my book blog. For full reviews of these books, click on the title to go to Marie's Book Garden. In April, I read only two books--one I liked, and one I loved. You should also check out "50 reasons to be a bookworm"...not that most of us need any more reasons! The Little Book, by Selden Edwards
I would give this historical time travel adventure a solid three stars, but I felt bogged down by some of the overambitious plot. Selden Edwards tackles fin de siecle Vienna, the life of Sigmund Freud and Gustav Mahler, World War II, Mark Twain, and Adolf Hitler...oh, and baseball and rock music and supposedly the beginning of the feminist movement, too.
Too-perfect Wheeler Burden is the protagonist, who goes back to Vienna in the year 1897, where he falls in love with his grandmother and befriends his now-dead father. (Yes, he was in love with his grandmother...is that weird and creepy or what???) I enjoyed the descriptions of Vienna and the formation of Sigmund Freud's ideas and the rise of fascism in Europe...and I find it intriguing to consider: what would I do if I could change the course of the world by pre-empting an evil dictator's rise to power? But the book also had some serious flaws. Many of the plot elements didn't seem important for the story. And what finally makes my head hurt in this whole time travel adventure is that we never really learn how they are able to time travel. This book was wildly inventive and wacky, and I give kudos to Selden Edwards for dreaming it up. Perhaps if he had worked on the book for fewer years and not tried to make it so full of meticulous research, I would have found it less frustrating.
A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki
A Tale for the Time Being is the first full-price hardcover book I remember purchasing for myself, ever. As I wrote in February, Ozeki has long been one of my favorite authors, and I was thrilled when I read that she had finally published her third novel. She recently became a Zen Buddhist priest and clearly, this informs this novel. I found myself reading this book very slowly--it took me most of April to read, in fact. Ozeki is a poetic, lyrical writer. I am often drawn to her books because they feature Japanese or Japanese-American characters. This was no different.
Teenager Nao is living in Tokyo but spent much of her childhood in Sunnyvale, California. She is mercilessly bullied by her classmates and even her teachers. Her father keeps attempting suicide. The only bright spot in Nao's life is her 104-year-old great-grandmother, who is an anarchist, feminist, novelist Buddhist nun, who she calls Old Jiko. She decides to tell the story of Old Jiko's life in her diary. Ruth, a Japanese-American novelist living on an island in British Columbia, finds Nao's diary washed up on the beach. As Ruth begins reading the book, she becomes captivated by Nao's life and begins to care very deeply about what happens to her.
I loved so many things about this novel. So much of it was deeply sad, but ultimately, the novel had great redemptive power and spiritual meaning. I highly recommend it--A Tale for the Time Being will definitely be at the top of my book list for the year. Read my full review if you want to know more and see Ruth Ozeki's beautiful book trailer, set on the British Columbia island where she lives.
Think about doing something different this Mother's Day...
I was gobsmacked to read that Americans are expected to spend $20.7 billion on Mother's Day this year, an average of $168.94 per mom, according to the National Retail Federation. That figure just blows me away! Of course, much of the money will be spent on flowers, jewelry, candy, tacky gifts, and electronics.
Yeah, don't get me this.
However, an online poll conducted by Harris Interactive found that 31 percent of American moms have to pretend to like the Mother's Day gifts they receive from their family. So that means that $6.4 billion of the money being spent will be completely wasted. The Harris Interactive poll also found that 64 percent of moms would prefer to receive a meaningful gift that would help someone else instead of a traditional Mother's Day gift.
So here's how we move that apostrophe...
In 2010, four women were inspired by the wonderful book Half the Sky (Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn), which shone a spotlight on the oppression of women and girls in developing countries. When these women learned that Americans spend $14 billion/year on Mother's Day (notice how that amount has gone up dramatically in three years--now to $20 billion?), they decided that we should rethink our giving priorities for this holiday by starting the Mothers' Day Movement. How can we continue to spend billions of dollars on things we don't need, when mothers all around the world are struggling to feed their families, keep out of prostitution and trafficking, and just plain survive?
Each year, the Mothers' Day Movement focuses their campaign on a different charity whose mission is to improve the lives of women and children. This year they have chosen the Fistula* Foundation, which focuses on reducing maternal mortality during childbirth. Hundreds of thousands of women suffer from fistulas. Most are young women and many live with the condition for up to 25 years. The good news is that it can be surgically repaired for about $450.
I asked my mom and my sister to join me to forgo personal Mother's Day gifts this year and instead make donations in each other's honor to the Fistula Foundation. They agreed to join me!
I've also told Mike that I'd like cards or letters from him and the kids, or homemade gifts, and instead of spending money, he can give a donation to the Fistula Foundation. Mike was very happy to hear of our plan, because he always struggles with what to give me (I'm the gift shopper in our family)!
Won't you join us in moving the apostrophe to help as many mothers as possible on this special day? Just click "Donate Now" on the Mothers' Day Movement web site. Your mom, sister, wife, or other recipient will receive a thank you card from the Fistula Foundation. Please pass this on and share your thoughts!
*Definition from the Fistula Foundation: "A fistula is a hole. An obstetric fistula of the kind that occurs in many developing countries is a hole between a woman's birth passage and one or more of her internal organs. This hole develops over many days of obstructed labor, when the pressure of the baby's head against the mother's pelvis cuts off blood supply to delicate tissues in the region. The dead tissue falls away and the woman is left with a hole between her vagina and her bladder and sometimes between her vagina and rectum. This hole results in permanent incontinence of urine and/or feces. A majority of women who develop fistulas are abandoned by their husbands and ostracized by their communities because of their inability to have children and their foul smell. Traumatic fistula is the result of sexual violence. The injury can occur through rape or women being butchered from the inside with bayonets, wood or even rifles. The aim is to destroy the women and the community within which the sufferer lives. Once committed the survivor, her husband, children, and extended family become traumatized and humiliated. The Panzi Hospital in Congo is a pioneer in treating victims of traumatic fistula."
