I used the first of my garden-grown yellow squash as a sausage replacement in a polenta last night. At last! Squash I don't hate.

Most recipes with yellow squash are things I wouldn't like with another vegetable, so it's no surprise I hate most everything I tried to cook with it (baked, broiled, casseroled - ew, yuck). So I grew some, and now I'm going to use it instead of meats in things I actually like to eat.

( THE RECIPE )

Piko (the car) periodically reminds me that I mean to write about design as expressed in the Cube audio system. These reminders come in the form of soaring music of various sorts; most of the time she gets to pick what the iPod plays.

It's not touted as an amazing stereo. It has, you know, 6 speakers. Whatever. It'll play your iPod! This was a big marketing thing, and a strong selling point for me. But not a lot of talk about the sound.

Compared to the Scion I used to drive, which has this Super Special Scion Audio Shenanigans Spectacular (SSSASS), the Cube is surprisingly superior sound-wise. See, a big part of the SSSASS was its ability to make the car vibrate. The interior walls and dash, specifically. This was a Huge Big Deal from Scion when they rolled out the car. It probably has a lot to do with the 14 year old boys who stopped and stared at the car: it was a sound system designed for someone who'd think it was exciting to make the car vibrate. Pioneer speakers and a decent subwoofer, all built at angles that amounted largely to extra wall vibration.

You know what doesn't contribute to your aural or emotional experience of music? EXTRA WALL VIBRATION. It can obscure some music, even. Mostly it's irrelevant.

The Cube does not play that. The first time I played Peter Murphy's I'll Fall with Your Knife (which is soaringly dark - it's a really affecting piece of pop music), I nearly cried. These simple, unvaunted speakers are arranged in a way that points music right at the driver's heart. With the right music, it's like my own personal concert hall - not live music, but pretty effing amazing.

And someone designed that. How much time does a design team spend on a car's audio system? This one was well worth the time, with no explicit marketing credit to the team who built it or the product they created. The marketing literature talks about the bulldog exterior, the waves-planet-cocktail-lounge interior [Here, someone got a little carried away with metaphors - like each team had their own, and the copy writers just wrote all of them down. The interior is physically coherent and pleasant, but its explanation is like a Cat Power song.], and not the good work of the audio system.

It got me thinking about the design can be talked about - as a feature list rather than an experience. I thought at first that this was a difference between 14-year-old-boy design and design for grownups, and that's still partly what I believe - but I think it's a more complex set of demographics. In a Lexus, where the brand image is more about driving comfort, an audio system like this might have gotten marketing play as a feature; in a lower-end car that's mostly about appearance, overwrought visual metaphors get most of the copy. And if you're going for cute visuals (possibly "feminine" design) over an aggressive driving=power thing (stereotypical "masculine" design), there's no need to have a throbbing subwoofer complete with extra wall vibration.

But. If that's true, then I'm perplexed: why did they design such an affecting stereo set up at all? I don't think it's an accident.

One of the agilist dudes is writing a series on kanban for individual/personal work. It's an impressively simple and practical explanation of kanban, and good reading for agile/lean people.

And? Even if you know nothing about those two concepts, it's an effective personal organization system. When I tried applying Scrum to getting things done at home, it sortof evolved into kanban: it became "I can do X things at a time, I'd like them to fall in Y categories - which were like personal value stream elements- and it makes the most sense to have them all be similar in size", and the iterations fell away (planning happened in a fluid way to queue up more Xs, I didn't really retrospect or review with myself on a set cadence, done was the equivalent of shipped, etc.).

So, worth reading if you're interested in ways of organizing your doings. Whatever you happen to do.

Thanks to people re-taking that old "what religion are you?" quiz, I rediscovered beliefnet. It's like the MSN of spirituality and religion now.

Take, for instance, this slideshow about kindness. It follows all the design tropes of a "10 ways to incorporate day-glo into your winter wardrobe" piece. Except it's about something else.

Speaking of kindness, I liked this take on generosity...

The Buddha said, “If you knew as I did, the power of giving, you would not let a single day pass without sharing.” We all have something to give: it may be material, large or small, it may be a smile, or an attentive conversation in the elevator. Perhaps you let a stranger get ahead of you on line, or give a co-worker a small gift, or write a late-night note of appreciation. Any act of generosity--material or of the spirit, small or large--is a meaningful expression of kindness.

I do not have to identify with my role so inflexibly that I cannot step out of the director shoes and allow another person to step into them and look at the play from the director's point of view. In fact, this stepping away on my part while, say, the sound designer steps in, can be very useful for our shared process. (Anne Bogart's blog)

That? Is real collaboration. It's also something people have an extremely hard time doing. Someone stepping into your shoes or your window or your territory feels like an indictment of your expertise, an assumption of failure on your part; we've studied ownership and accountability for so long.

This is, I think, what collective ownership is really about: we own the product together, and everyone is able to look at the product, build the thing, from many angles. I like the notion of collectiveness as empathy -empathy with the product, with the space and the people around us.

It's not the exclusive domain of theatre, though I've seen some of the most passionate collaboration there - it applies anywhere people make things together.

Your thoughts?

It makes me crazy happy to decide I want basil or cilantro in something and just hop right outside to get it. Best gardening idea ever, putting those two so close to the house.

I have something like 20 little squashes growing, and an absurd number of tomatoes, all now on 5' tall plants tied to stakes & the fence. Hurry up! I want to be able to decide that I want cherry tomatoes and just go pluck a handful.

Anyone want squash? Tomatoes? Or massive banana peppers? The squash especially is going to overwhelm me quickly. The peppers are coming in now, and the squash I'm guessing 2 weeks. My parents brought cucumbers and jalapenos to the beach with them; I am jealous, since neither of those is producing tastiness for me yet.

Pina Bausch died this week. I know her as an influence (and collaborator?) of Anne Bogart, one of my own huge theatrical - and as it turns out, life - influences. Bausch and Bogart blur the lines between visual theatre and theatrical dance. Which is which? Who stops where?

It doesn't matter. I see the world differently thanks to Pina Bausch, though, and I would love for you to see it too. Not that Youtube can adequately express live dance, but at least it can try.

Here's some of Vollmond, I think my personal favorite example of her being awesome...
part 1
part 2
part 3

It's like joy and gut-wrenching, on stage. She could also create work that was deeply creepy, even offensive. Her most famous work shows a little of that...
Sacre du Printemps/Rites of Spring
Cafe Muller

I saw this earlier but didn't know what the speaking was. This version has English subtitles.

Here they are.

These two really amuse me. This is us playing around at the Lego store. I couldn't stage a clearer illustration of the difference between a relational, people-driven person and an abstract, idea-driven person.

What T built (notes to people at home, carefully photographed and texted):


What I built (bridges across other bridges until I ran out of bridge pieces, trying to get my work to fall down):

I think that my tomatoes all grew 6 inches yesterday. I planted them a little too close together, and now they look... well, rather ominous for tomatoes. This yard is looking as a whole a bit like a Hawaiian zoo. The early girls are already making baby tomatoes. [There's a bad innuendo in there somewhere.] I should have some yummy veggies to share this summer. Tonight I had basil I grew myself. That was tasty.

Also thriving: the cucumber and squash plants the birds didn't nom as seedlings, the two princess trees (Audrey III and IV) in the back corner of the yard (which I am likely not killing, though they are invasive and monstrous), the pokeberries (aka Moses Myers berries, one of the best smelling things ever and arguably native, which I am definitely not killing - though they are rapidly approaching 8 ft tall, no lie), bananaish peppers, jalapenoish peppers, the eggplants, the basil, cilantro, the lilies and roses, everything on the upstairs porch, the jasmine, and DEAR $DEITY the morning glories and moonflowers and climbupis - anything that can twine around anything else is going mad in the backyard - the pear tree, several young treeshrubs of indeterminate origin, an infestation of english ivy (ARGH), some sort of maniacal wood strawberry that ate my compost pile, and of course... weeds, some quite impressive.

Not thriving but not dead: lavender, both fig trees, grape vines, onions, the hydrangeas, spinach & swiss chard, some soon-to-be weird green zinnias.

Possibly dead, or at least shy: hibiscus (I hope soon to be supplemented with rose of sharon, also a hibiscus), rhubarb, brussels sprouts, chives, grass that isn't technically weeds. I think I may have planted sunflowers and radishes, but I don't recall.

Ghosts: the poor hanging baskets on my front porch. Tragic, really. The flowers were such interesting colors.

I listened to a guided meditation this morning that told me "your breath happens without any help from you". I'd been having a conversation with myself about all of these Things I Have to DO, that can't go on without me.

Ha! Many - maybe all - of those things can also happen without any help from me. What in your life is like breathing? What could be?

I suspect the thought process that makes a person - or the fringe element of any political group - think let's put a stop to this violence... by committing acts of violence is deeply ingrained in our culture (cf most wars). This is sad. It makes people behave in stupid and cruel ways.

George Tiller (a Kansas doctor who was known for performing late-term abortions) was shot on his way into church today. I can only imagine what his life has been, knowing the volume of hate and violence directed at him for doing what he believed was right - providing a medical service that is legal in this country.. Gah. Go in peace, Dr. Tiller.

Strange to think people can still be martyred in 2009.

I picked up Piko, who is a 2009 Nissan Cube SL, the other day. My usual post-purchase review is "I bought it. Of course I like it.", but you kids keep asking me about the car. So. I have thoughts.

( My thoughts. Let me tell you them. )

Anything else you want to know?

My undamaged rear license plate came in the mail today. Insurance and the various tow companies kept trying to catch the car in transit, and it appears to have finally been grabbed at the auction lot.

It's on my altar (aka the mantle in my bedroom, which is becoming so full of important reflections that I may need to store some of them elsewhere soon.

In the meantime, I am negotiating online over car prices, which is very slow but less irritating than negotiating face-to-face.

One of the reasons I don't watch much television is that teevee is the second worst (after, I think, magazines) medium when it comes to misrepresenting The Fat. Today I'm thinking of the stereotype that fat people are these giant emotional eaters.

Well. Duh. EVERYONE eats emotionally, because food contributes to our emotional state. That is how food works.

I'm thinking about this particularly because I am struggling to eat this week. Things keep looking and smelling good but tasting metallic or dusty or tasteless. Ever had a metal-flavored tomato? It's enough to put me off eating for another several hours. I'm generally eating once a day when I get so hungry that food starts to taste like food again. I tried forcing a more level approach, but that just made me not want to eat at all, so - I'm just going with it - eating the most delicious and nutritiously full thing I can find, once a day. Or a cheeseburger [Yes. Even though I am back to being vegetarian.], if that's all I can stomach. It's a post-trauma thing, and it will gradually go away.

My point is: that is a form of emotional eating. I am a giant fatty, and when I'm emo, I don't eat. People do all kinds of different things with food, and emotional "overeating" isn't the exclusive province of fat folk. Hmph.

Internets! I have to tell you something.

I am going to start writing a book. It is going to help everyone who reads it see that they are not only not broken but also containers for brilliance and possibility.

That is all. Please go about your evening.

I do the vast majority of my gardening at night (which is the title of an old REM song, so). It's pretty effective when handling actual plants - dirt is easy to see, plants are fairly tactile.

The mistake I made awhile ago was planting several different varieties of seeds in a fairly confined space. With lilies. And onions. Because I have no idea which seeds got planted where. In fact, I'm a little iffy on what I planted, period. I plant seeds because they're so inexpensive that I won't be sad if they fail, and that first batch I apparently paid almost no attention to. There might be radishes, but that could also be a batch of cilantro at this stage. It's possible that there are cherry tomatoes. The only thing I'm sure about the is the cat grass, which I should dig up and bring inside since the outdoor cats all just followed Richmond around.

I did better last night - I put the seed-based greens in lopsided little rows in front of the tomatoes and peppers.

( 75 QUESTIONS YOU'VE PROBABLY NEVER BEEN ASKED )

You really don't need to read that. I just needed to type for a bit.

While I was away, one of the outdoor cats I feed - I'd been calling her Richmond - died. Roommate found her and buried her under the pear tree, which I suspect was quite traumatizing (and thanks, if you're reading).

Poor kitty. She was sweet, and we have no idea what happened to her; there were no signs of injury. I don't even have a photo to show you her prettiness.

Hummus and tabbouleh raps! [No, I did not forget the W in rap.]