land of fire and ice and soup and bread

Last week the family and I went to Iceland! It was, in a nutshell, amazing. We opted to stay in Reykjavik and did day trips from there (versus driving the Ring Road, which would have required a few more days - maybe an extra week - that we didn't have). Here's a slide show that condenses the week into 50 images over about a minute and 15 seconds. And here's what we did:

We flew to Iceland from Oakland via Seattle on Saturday evening, arriving in Keflavik at 9:15 am on Sunday. I wasn't very impressed with Icelandair, provided with just one beverage for the entire flight, and no free food, not even a bag of pretzels. On the other hand, the country on the whole seems pretty kid-friendly/centered, with the 11yo the only member of our family to receive a snack box and a little goody bag including a sleep mask and a small puffin stuffie. Everywhere we went her ticket price was less expensive than the adults or, in many cases, free.

There are a handful of rental car companies located at the airport, but most are a short drive away. Not unusual, but the way you find the rental car shuttle was unclear and chaotic, with tired travelers milling about near the exit and drivers coming in holding up signs with the rental car companies listed. So it took awhile to get our rental car after landing but we enjoyed hot coffee/chocolate while we waited (it was cold and windy!). 

From there we drove straight to our Airbnb in Reykjavik, our host allowing us to check in early. After settling in and freshening up, we walked 15-20 minutes into town and saw all the key sights, sharing a couple of sandwiches from Plantan Kaffihús on the way: Hallgrímskirkja (and up the tower for the views!) the Leifr Eiricsson statue out front, on down to the harbor to see the Sun Voyager sculpture and the Harpa concert hall. We walked back to the Airbnb via a grocery store to pick up breakfast and lunch items for the week. I could have easily fallen asleep at that point, but we rallied for dinner at Loving Hut. I didn't make it to the midnight sunset that night but I was awake again around 1 am and took a quick video of the light outside and - the weirdest part - the birds chirping.

On Monday we did the Golden Circle day trip, albeit in a sort of noncircular way since we had lunch reservations at Friðheimar, a restaurant in a greenhouse where they grow tomatoes year-round. The all you can eat tomato soup and bread there was probably my favorite meal of the week. The tomato soup was brothy (as opposed to creamy) and a bit sweet. The bread was amazing and there was coffee included after. Otherwise, we spent time at Þingvellir National Park (free that day because it was Iceland's National Day!), Geysir Geothermal Area, and Gullfoss. After a quick detour at Secret Lagoon (I'll write more about this later), we made our way back to Reykjavik via Kerið Volcanic Crater and a late dinner of veggie burgers at a hot dog joint in Selfoss (the sun may set at midnight but, as we quickly learned, most of the restaurants still close at 9 pm). 

It was about 10 pm!

On Tuesday, we headed to the South Coast, stopping first for a quick pic, Oaklanders that we are, next to the Hella sign. From there we continued to Hvolsvöllur to check out the Lava Center. We ate PB&J sandwiches on the way to Sólheimajökull, hiking to but not on the glacier (you need the right gear and a guide for that and in general we opted for things we could do on our own to manage expenses and maximize what we could see in a week). Thank goodness there was a Hungarian street food vendor there in the parking lot because it was another late dinner of pizza back in Hvolsvöllur after a visit to the Reynisfjara black sand beach and Skógafoss on the drive back. I would have liked to check out one more waterfall (Seljalandsfoss, the one you can walk behind!) and the old plane crash but we ran out of time.

On Wednesday we'd booked tickets to the Blue Lagoon. Our plan to drive a bit less that midweek/mid-trip day was somewhat thwarted by the detour caused by damage to the road to Blue Lagoon due to the recent eruptions near the fishing town of Grindavik. We drove over relatively recently cooled lava and steam to get there, which was pretty wild. The Blue Lagoon caters more to non-Icelandic visitors and is pricey but I felt was totally worth it. And if anyone in your group is squeamish about the customary communal shower sans swimsuit, I would recommend it over a more traditional/local lagoon like Secret Lagoon or really any of the pools. But if you're OK showering with strangers, you'll have a lot more options for a warm soak during your time in Iceland. More PB&J sammies on the drive back to Reykjavik, where we spent the rest of the day searching for cats and secondhand Icelandic sweaters and popped into plant-based Mama for dinner before walking back to our Airbnb.

On Thursday we headed north to the Snæfellsnes Peninsula (we'd changed our itinerary a bit due to the rain all week...it was mostly dry up north on Thursday!). A bit more driving than I'd like before the first stop (and again at the end of the day), but in the end all that driving was worth it. We did a little hiking around Kirkjufell mountain and waterfall (yes, we had PB&J sandwiches for lunch; no, we did not climb all the way to the top of the mountain) before moving on to the Vatnshellir lava cave via a brief pit stop at the Snæfellsjökull National Park visitor center. After the cave, we hiked to and just inside the Rauðfeldsgjá Gorge, then backtracked a bit to Hellnar Church and an early dinner (more soup & bread!) in Arnarstapi. Final stops on this part of the itinerary included Búðakirkja (Black Church) and the seal colony at Ytri Tunga beach. 

I was pretty tired of driving by this point in the week but Friday being my son's 16th birthday we gave him the option of having a final full chill day in Reykjavik (museums! more cats! more food options!) or stick with the plan and head to the Westman Islands (Vestmannaeyjar) by ferry. He opted for the latter and I think he made a fine choice. It's about one hour, 45 minutes of driving to the ferry and since we hadn't made advance reservations, while there was no problem getting seats we did have to wait until the literal last minute to know if we'd be able to take our car there and back. Hard for me to imagine now my original idea of renting bikes to explore the island. It's not very big but it is hilly and was pretty cold and crazy windy that day. I was very happy we had the car, after all! After a quick snack at Vigtin Bakery we drove to the first of two spots for a brief hike and attempt to see puffins. No luck at the first stop, though the views were amazing, but we did spot puffins from a distance (and some flying pretty close to us) at the second spot. From there we made our way around the island to the Eldheimar Volcano Museum to learn about the 1973 eruption that added to but also buried part of the island and then hiked the Eldfell volcano we'd just learned about. After that we had dinner at Gott before taking the 7:30 pm ferry back to the mainland.

On Saturday, we had a few hours in Reykjavik before we needed to head to the airport so we squeezed in one museum (the Saga Museum), explored nearby Þúfa, and had lunch (more soup & bread!) at the plant-based restaurant at the Nordic House on the University of Iceland campus. Returning the rental car went much more quickly and smoothly than getting it a week earlier so we had plenty of time at the airport to check out the duty free shopping and buy some sandwiches for the flight to Seattle. The first flight was uneventful; I read several chapters of Alicia Kennedy's No Meat Required and watched Bullet Train, which I enjoyed, then tried to watch Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, which I did not enjoy, and fell asleep for a couple of hours instead. We had a nearly 4-hour layover in Seattle which, due to delays, extended to over six hours in the Seattle airport. We could have flown almost all the way back to Iceland in that time! We did get a meal voucher out of the ordeal, however, and enjoyed a second dinner at P.F. Chang's. We were all so tired by the time we finally got home around 2:30 am but managed to get a few more hours of sleep so jet lag hasn't been too awful this week. Yesterday was the first day I didn't wake up at 4:30 am and feel dead tired by 5 pm.

In summary, Iceland is a truly magical place and I highly recommend a visit if you can swing it. This was definitely a bucket list trip, as they say. One thing we briefly considered after reading about it is planning a trip to mainland Europe with a one or two-day layover in Reykjavik. I'm glad we devoted this trip to Iceland only but that's an option if you ever find yourself in that situation, content with visiting the capital city and maybe one day trip. We created a pretty detailed itinerary for this trip, inspired in part by a combination of Rick Steves, one of Neal's coworkers who'd done the ring road a few years ago, and, just for fun, an AI-generated itinerary, combining all of those and our own research into a schedule that we mostly stuck to, adjusting for weather and not getting to one or two things each 11-12 hour day. We all wore hiking boots every day and had our rain layers for, well, rain, but also waterfalls, hiking into ravines, that sort of thing. It's a very active, rugged place and while we were pretty well-prepared for everything we did, I was a little skeptical a couple of times, coddled American that I am, I guess, about the safety of some attractions, like the stairs to the top of Skógafoss, or the hike into the Rauðfeldsgjá ravine, scrambling over wet and slippery rocks with huge chunks of ice dangling precariously overhead (okay, maybe not all that precariously...I'm sure they melt slowly over time but what if a chunk broke off and fell on your head?? It could happen!). But that's part of why it's all so magical and it was refreshing to get out of our comfort zone a bit.

the dead hand of the past

Nope, it's not a horror flick to kick off the month of Halloween. It's a line from The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, a book I mentioned finishing recently in last week's newsletter. It's an example of climate fiction (or "cli-fi") set in the not-so-distant future. So many of the fictional events in the book—heat waves, flooding, etc.—have happened in the last couple of years this past summer as extreme weather events, made worse by climate change, break records that were themselves records only a year or two prior. There is a glimmer of utopian fiction in there, too, though pretty late in the book, in my opinion, and as will likely happen in our reality, things get pretty bad before they begin to get better.

I wanted to highlight a few moments and quotes in the book in keeping with my "mostly vegan" category of posts on this blog. But first, a local reference, as some of the book takes place in California, like the chapter that opens with a character visiting the Bay Model, "a giant model of the California bay area and delta, a 3D map with active water flows sloshing around it." I've been to the Bay Model only once, and relatively recently (August 2018) given I've lived in the Bay Area for most of the past 26 years. 

Photo of the Bay Model by Neal Grigsby

Otherwise, there are a handful of quotes that are so poignant, so relevant to our current moment, sadly validating for folks like me, frustrated by the lack of urgency around these issues as I observe things around me, even in so-called progressive Bay Area. 

"Of course there is always resistance, always a drag on movement toward better things. The dead hand of the past clutches us by way of living people who are too frightened to accept change. So we don't change, and one hard thing now is to go through a time like that, like ours during Paris, two hundred days of a different life, a different world, and then live on past that time in the still bourgeoisified state of things, without feeling defeated."

Or this one, about the cult of growth above all else: "This was the world's current reigning religion, it had to be admitted: growth. It was a kind of existential assumption, as if civilization were a kind of cancer and them all therefore committed to growth as their particularly deadly form of life." Man, do I feel this one lately. Grow, grow, grow, when really, we should be way more focused on maintenance and stewardship of what already exists around us. The relentless pursuit of growth so often prevents us from doing the right thing on all levels: personal, political, commercial.

So what is plan B? Where do we go from here? "Big parts of it have been there all along; it's called socialism. Or, for those who freak out at that word, like Americans or international capitalist success stories reacting allergically to that word, call it public utility districts. They are almost the same thing. Public ownership of the necessities, so that these are provided as human rights and as public goods, in a not-for-profit way. The necessities are food, water, shelter, clothing, electricity, health care, and education. All these are human rights, all are public goods, all are never to be subjected to appropriation, exploitation, and profit. It's as simple as that."

As simple as that. Later in the book, Robinson goes beyond the basics to write about dignity: "This is what I think everyone needs. After the basics of food and shelter that we need just as animals, first thing after that: dignity. Everyone needs and deserves this, just as part of being human. And yet this is a very undignified world. And so we struggle. You see how it is. And yes, dignity is something you get from other people, it's in their eyes, it's a kind of regard. If you don't get it, the anger rises in you."

A still from the 1964 film adaption of 'The Masque of the Red Death' directed by Roger Corman and starring Vincent Price

Perhaps one of the most chilling references, though, is to Edgar Allen Poe's The Masque of the Red Death, the syndrome/avoidance being one pathological reaction to "news of biosphere collapse." Robinson writes, "the syndrome is thus an assertion that the end being imminent and inevitable, there is nothing left to do except party while you can." A "bourgeoisified state of things," indeed. We saw this in the early days of the pandemic lockdown, when we abandoned earlier efforts to reduce single-use plastics, for example, in favor of supporting take-out operations at our favorite restaurants whose survival was suddenly threatened by folks staying home. And I get it, and I was happy to do it, but it's beyond time to return with urgency to tackling the greatest existential threat to humanity. (Or how rich folks escape to their lake cabins when air quality in the Bay Area from wildfires reaches unhealthy levels.)

It's a dark read at times, especially if you actually care about this kind of stuff. But I was urged along with the promise of a glimmer of hope by the end. And it does turn toward optimism, eventually. Regarding the Paris Agreement: "weak though it might have been at its start, it was perhaps like the moment the tide turns: first barely perceptible, then unstoppable. The greatest turning point in human history, what some called the first big spark of planetary mind. The birth of a good Anthropocene." Let's hope.

P.S. just for fun, I, a fan of being on time, love what Robinson writes about punctuality in one of the final chapters: "What is it but a regard for the other person? You are saying to the other person, your time is as valuable as mine, so I will not waste yours by being late. Let us agree we are all equally important and so everyone has to be on time, in order to respect each other." If I was a college professor, I would share this quote with my students at the start of every semester.

P.P.S. another sort of out of context gem, on playing music, he writes: "music was adults at play." Love this.

P.P.P.S. Finally, a bonus pic of me and my daughter at the Bay Model. We were there for an event that also included, apparently, face painting. Imagine prioritizing her generation's future over our present day desires. Imagine that.

the world is not your oyster

"What's the opposite of 'the world is your oyster?'"

I think of this line, from Noah Baumbach's film While We're Young a lot. Usually with respect to what I thought my life would be like (creatively, professionally, etc.) compared to what it's actually like as I settle into middle age. But this scene came to mind again last weekend at the Mindful Eating Film & Food Festival in San Rafael. A fundraiser for Rancho Compasión, the festival is sort of like a vegan Sundance...or at least, aims to be! One day. In the meantime, the third iteration of this event (the first one was in early 2020, then they went virtual during the pandemic, and returned to in-person this year) included a line-up of five feature length documentaries, several short films, guest speakers and panel discussions, and a whole range of vendors providing free samples, vegan meals, and tons of information about living a plant-based life. 

If you know me (and/or read this blog) you'll recall that I began the transition to being vegan early on in the pandemic (having already eliminated beef and pork from my diet years earlier). I've been describing myself as "mostly vegan" since because being 100% vegan is, at times, still aspirational. But many, if not most days I eat a totally vegan diet and have taken a close look at other areas of my life as well (I don't buy anything made with leather, wool, silk, etc.). I participated in Veganuary back in January but relaxed the rules again ever so slightly when the month was over. Attending the festival reinforced my commitment to being vegan and I thought I'd share some of that renewed (com)passion in a recap here.

Filmmakers Jamie Berger and Shawn Bannon with Miyoko Schinner.

The festival began with the west coast green carpet premier of The Smell of Money, which examines the devastating impact of the pork industry on the surrounding community in eastern North Carolina. (Coincidentally, I had just learned about Smithfield Foods a few days earlier when Direct Action Everywhere activists disrupted the SF Giants game at Oracle park; read more about the issues here. Activism works!) 

In addition to yummy vegan food and drinks at the reception preceding the screening, I also met Susan Hargreaves, an activist featured in The Heart Whisperer, one of the short films that screened before each of the feature-length films the next day.

On Sunday, the lineup included four more feature-length documentaries over the course of the day, one of which I'd already seen (The Game Changers, which is streaming on Netflix). I watched the first three films and took in as much of the rest of the festival as I could between films. Up first on Sunday was Elk Water, about the Tule Elk at Point Reyes National Park, effectively being held captive and restricted from accessing natural water sources (which are dwindling due to the ongoing drought here in California) reserved for the dairy ranches on park land. You can get a gist of the issues here and see tons of related videos from producer Skyler Thomas here (I suspect he'll add Elk Water eventually). Stylistically speaking, it wasn't my favorite film, but it was produced as a direct follow-up to The Shame of Point Reyes, (supporting data can be found on the related website here) which kicked off this event back in 2020 (the event took place on the very land at the center of the documentaries!). There was a related panel discussion I was unable to attend because it conflicted with one of the other films.

Loaded tostones from Oakland-based Casa Borinqueña for lunch.

Next up was The End of Medicine, about the relationship between animal agriculture (and our general treatment of animals) and things like pandemics and antibiotic resistance. It's not a good sign when someone says something like, "you think climate change is scary, just wait 'til you hear about x!" Most doctors, and by extension their human patients, are more knowledgeable about overprescribing antibiotics now, but there is effectively no regulation of antibiotic use in animal agriculture, which accounts for at least 70% of all antibiotic use. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria will kill us before climate change does if we don't make some dramatic changes soon.

The final film I watched was Eating Our Way To Extinction, which takes a hard look at our increasingly insatiable appetite for animal meat and the disastrous effect fulfilling this desire is having on our planet (if you think being pescatarian is the solution, this is the film for you). This screening was preceded by 73 Cows, which was probably my favorite short film, about one beef farmer's journey to transitioning to a plant-based farm in the UK (Miyoko's Creamery has a transition program for dairy famers who want to make a similar change).

Have you noticed a theme yet? Are you surprised that it's not necessarily animal welfare? I tell people lately when they ask why I aim to live a vegan lifestyle that I came for the animals, and I stay for all the other reasons. The culprit in all of these films, whether they deal with native species, human communities (disproportionately affecting communities of color and lower-income folks), pandemics, or the planet is animal agriculture. If you think to yourself, sure I could kill a chicken in order to eat it, but you claim to care about any of these other issues, you should be very concerned. As Miyoko Schinner (of Rancho Compasión and Miyoko's Creamery) says in the Unbound Project short that preceded the screening of The End of Medicine, "everyone is a pre-vegan." You can choose to make changes now or you can wait until it's too late to do so in a way that starts to curb some of the downright dystopic effects of slaughtering 80 billion animals each year so that 7.8 billion humans (minus the vegan and vegetarian ones, of course) can continue to eat meat. Because the world is not, in fact, your oyster! As Eating Our Way to Extinction suggests, and a question that came up in the panel discussion that followed the screening, we simply must turn our personal desire into personal responsibility.

I will admit I was apprehensive about attending this event. I had a hard time watching the documentary Eyes without crying (a short film about animal activists, Moby among them, who gather in the middle of the night to greet trucks full of pigs on their way to slaughter, to be witness to and give them some small comfort during their final moments of an otherwise miserable life). But I left the event feeling a guarded mix of energized, empowered, and hopeful. I'm encouraged by the fact that it's easier—and more delicious—than ever to be vegan, and buoyed by statistics like these (according to this, about 10% of American do not eat meat). But I worry, like I do with minimal progress on emissions and other climate-related solutions, that it's happening at a pace far too slow to make enough difference in time to avoid doing irreversible damage (not to mention the billions of animals that will suffer in the meantime). 

But these concerns only underscore my commitment and my desire to share something I'm passionate about in a joyful way (animals are amazing! vegan baking is fun and delicious!). I'm grateful I'm not alone and that there are people with voices much louder than my own behind documentaries like these. The End of Medicine producer and actor Joaquin Phoenix, in his famous 2020 Oscar acceptance speech, points to the commonalities of all these different issues celebrities use their platforms to address (a common theme in all of the festival's documentaries as well...everything is interconnected!). At the end of that speech he quotes his late brother, River, urging us all to "run to the rescue with love and peace will follow." Love and compassion, not just for the animals, but for the farmers and the workers involved in factory farming, the communities directly affected by these practices, and even the proud meat eaters who dismiss the research and data in documentaries like The Game Changers as simply confirmation bias. As the late Tommy Raskin is oft-quoted as having said, "I’m working for a vegan world, not a vegan club." This is an all hands on deck situation, folks, not an exclusive club. You don't have to be perfect to make a difference. You don't have to attend the film festival to see the films (most of them are streaming for free!). The first step is to simply not look away.

give chickpeas a chance

Well, folks, I did it. I survived Dry January. I survived Veganuary. I survived the combination Dry Veganuary! I know a lot of folks pooh-pooh these sorts of month-long self-imposed challenges as examples of toxic diet culture, but the reality for me is the period of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas saw me bending my usual rules and limitations around food and drinking more than I’d like. And I didn’t feel great about it. I was starting to feel - once again - like I wasn’t in control of my relationship with food, and using food and alcohol as a vice or crutch or reward more often than I’d like. The New Year presents a fresh start, a departure point for hitting the reset button and maybe implementing some longer term positive changes along the way. As I’ve written about before, I’ve been “mostly vegan” since May 2020, when we went totally vegan for one week. I’ve had fish a couple of times since and continued to eat eggs and a little bit of cheese, plus some non-vegan candy with popcorn during Saturday movie nights. But about 90% of the time (that is a totally unscientific estimate) my diet is 100% plant-based. In January 2022, other than one sip of a smoothie my daughter made that included cow’s milk yogurt (she assumed all the yogurt in the fridge was non-dairy), I ingested neither alcohol nor animal products.

And it really wasn’t that hard. When you’re already “mostly vegan,” going totally vegan for one month mostly entails cutting out foods you shouldn’t be eating too much of anyway, like cheese and candy. The dry part was even easier. I listened to this NPR Life Kit episode for some tips (the social part is still, nearly two years into this pandemic, kind of moot).

We had some seltzer leftover from our holiday delivery driver snack basket and I’m not usually a fan of seltzer, but it was nice to have something other than water to accompany dinner every now and then. I really only missed that glass of red wine with pizza toward the end of the month, but what I didn’t miss was the inevitable sleepiness that would no doubt follow for the rest of the evening but not necessarily translate into an early bedtime or a good night of sleep. Not drinking, on the other hand, did not alleviate the increased joint aches and pains I’ve been experiencing on the weekends. Maybe I need to cut it out of my diet for more than a month? Maybe two extra hours in bed and skipping my weekday morning workouts isn’t great for the mild arthritis in my low back and knee?

So other than the seltzer sub, what did I eat? Probably more than I should have! I definitely fell into the trap of “if it doesn’t break the rules, it’s OK to eat!” more than once. Oreos are vegan and alcohol-free but maybe not a great afternoon snack? With that, here are some highlights of the month:

My favorite weekday lunch is a leftover burrito bowl. Rice, beans, “meat”, some vegan cheese and sour cream, topped with avocado and a handful of corn chips. All vegan.

We get donuts for a weekend breakfast once a month. I love Dick’s Donuts for classic and Donut Savant for fancy but neither are vegan. This is where Vegan Donut Gelato comes in. They’re a bit of a drive compared to our usual non-vegan spots, but so worth the extra time it takes to fetch these.

Veganize it! You don’t need to follow only vegan/plant-based recipes (although there are a ton of really good vegan cookbooks and Instagram accounts one can follow for recipes and ideas). Many recipes are really easy to makeover fully plant-based, like these peanut butter white miso cookies from New York Times Cooking. I used Miyoko’s vegan butter (the best!) and a flax egg and they turned out perfectly.

There are some really good non-dairy ice creams on the market now, so if you’re into that sort of thing and you’re nervous about cutting out dairy, don’t be! This is a newer flavor at Trader Joe’s, but my favorite is any and all Ben & Jerry’s plant-based flavors. The 8yo, on the eve of her 9th birthday, is requesting ice cream sundaes for her birthday dessert and approved the B&J’s vegan flavors I purchased. They're that good.

So, yeah, if there’s a lesson to be learned here, it's don’t be chicken! Be adventurous, try new things. Like plant-based “chicken”. If you haven’t already, but you’re plant-based-meat-curious, you simply must stop by the Don’t Be Chick’n food truck. The family meal is a pretty good deal but the chicken strips are my favorite.

Try the vegan portion of the menus at places you already frequent. If you're into plant-based options, let the world know it! I really think as demand for vegan options increases, so will supply, and honestly that’s when cooks get hella creative. Like Senor Sisig’s extensive vegano menu. Hello plant-based crunch-wrap supreme with vegan queso dipping sauce!

One of the non-vegan staples in my otherwise “mostly vegan” diet was scrambled eggs with cheese. It took a minute to get used to it, but I’m totally content with a JUST Egg patty (you can buy these in bulk at Costco and pop one in the toaster to warm it up!) and a slice of Daiya cheese melted on top. I don’t plan to ever go back to real eggs. The vegan muffin from Arizmendi, delicious as it is, is getting a little boring, though, so whether or not I sneak in the occasional non-vegan scone from time to time remains to be seen (and in case you’re wondering, I long ago switched to Silk half & half in my coffee).

The other weekly staple is non-vegan candy with popcorn on movie nights. This one was tough, not gonna lie, partly because we had so much candy and chocolate leftover from the holidays going into January. We still have peanut M&Ms and an entire box of See’s chocolates that I will, now that January is over, have to polish off. But after that, I’ll try to stick with the vegan alternatives I discovered over the course of the month. Some of them are not cheap (but the Unreal peanut gems - not pictured above - are so good!), but, y’know, I probably shouldn’t be eating too many of them anyway.

So, clearly, lots of hits here, and it wasn't that hard. Any misses, you might ask? In two words: vegan bacon. This non-vegan food is best forgotten altogether!

pandemic diaries: encore

It's funny how my last post is titled "this is how it ended." I thought I'd end these pandemic diaries with the end of the 2020-21 school year. The kids went to summer camp and eventually back to school. But as we all know the pandemic has not yet ended. First delta and now omicron have made sure of that.

So what did we do on our summer vacation? For 4th of July weekend we stayed in an RV (never again) in Noyo Harbor (where parts of Overboard were filmed). We learned that the 8yo is serious when she says she's getting car sick, that #vanlife is not for us, and—wow—I really dislike the smell of any kind of wood-burning fire anymore. I do like the price of a small town pitcher of beer, though.

A $7.81 pitcher of beer.

In July, for the first time in about a year and a half (not including the kitten adoption events of summer 2020), I returned to volunteering at the shelter during open adoption hours! For awhile the shelter was open on Thursday evenings, which was perfect for my work/kids schedule at least so long as both parents are working from home. But eventually it got too dark, cold, and rainy to handle most of the adoption process outdoors, so now I'm there every other Sunday afternoon. I didn't realize how much I'd missed socializing cats and adoption counseling until I was able to do it again.

Me, with a kitten, circa 1982 or so, Reno, Nevada.

I continued to settle in to my now full-time day job, especially with the kids finally out of the house for at least a few hours each day. I attended a "reach your potential" style professional development workshop and learned that in a world seemingly dominated by jackhammers, I'm definitely 100% a hummingbird. I've been in this role for over two years now (first as a part-time contractor), but I'll celebrate my official one-year full-time anniversary next Tuesday. More on that in another post.

As mentioned above, the kids returned to full-time in-person school in early August and I can honestly say it's been wonderful for everyone. I know that's not everyone's experience but my kids have been so much happier being in-person again and their schools have experienced relatively few COVID cases (0 at the 8yo's elementary school!). I'm nervous about how 2022 will begin with omicron raging as it is (although both kids are fully vaxxed and Neal and I are boosted), but if we've learned anything over the past 20+ months, it's how to take things one step at a time.

Shortly after the kids returned to school, I decided to give Neal a break and take the kids on a short road trip to Winnemucca, Nevada (to visit some family on my Mom's side...it's also where she and my grandmother are buried). It's so interesting visiting a truly small town and then returning to the Bay Area, where there's a real uptick in the "born and raised" discourse lately, which to me is not all that different from the small town mentality. So many of the conversations I was overhearing in Winnemucca, population less than 8000, reminded me of conversations I hear all the time lately in Oakland: who gets to claim this town as their home, who gets to stay, who should go, and what are the reasons people are leaving? As someone who moved around every 2-4 years for the first 30+ years of my life, it never ceases to be a curious thing to observe.

In EV news, we finally got rid of our Leaf, which we'd nicknamed our Oakland golf cart because the battery was so old and we could only drive around town a bit before needing to recharge. We leased a 2022 Chevy Bolt and I'm convinced it's cursed. It hasn't caught on fire (yet) but we've already had to repair the side mirror, replace one of the front lights (which of course was not a simple thing we could do ourselves), and take it in for more substantial repairs after a minor road rage motivated fender bender (not my fault, although I could have done a couple of things differently—and will in the future!—to decrease my contribution to or escalation of such events). Otherwise, I love it! I was referring to the Bolt as "the Leaf" so much in the beginning, I decided to name it Leaf.

Things have been so busy since school started, but I have managed more weeks than not to spend a little bit of time a couple of evenings and an hour or two on the weekends in the studio. I'm quite pleased with how my current body of work is progressing (follow my art insta here) and hope to start documenting finished work in order to submit an exhibition proposal to a specific venue in Oakland in early 2022. That said, it's turning into one of those projects I can imagine working on indefinitely, not unlike the Winchester Mystery House or David Ireland's house, both of which we toured this fall.

Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, CA.

David Ireland House in San Francisco.

I started a (peri)menopause book club of one. Here's what I'm reading.

In podcast news, I discovered Debbie Millman's 'Design Matters' podcast, attended her webinar about how to interview people, and have season 2 of my own podcast all planned out, complete with a kind of sponsorship in the form of gift cards for guests from a local art supply chain. I just need time to do the interviews and edit the episodes (and, y'know, ask the interviewees if they'd like to be guests on the show, which I'm weirdly nervous to do). On a related note, if you're into podcasts and art, I highly recommend the 3-part series about the art world/market that recently aired on Freakonomics (parts 1, 2, and 3).

I painted a picture of my cat. So now I've painted both of my cats and neither has any reason to be jealous of the other (although Wolfi's painting is bigger than Penelope's...).

I finally had my eyes examined after about 5 years and got new glasses for the computer and reading. Ah, the inevitability of aging.

In running news, I successfully completed the Alameda 10-miler and walked Hellaween with the kids.

Shortly after that I suffered what my doc thinks is a meniscus tear. It took forever to get a follow-up visit with the sports medicine doc and my MRI is finally coming up next week. It feels a lot better since I haven't been running, but I'm missing running to the point of dreaming about it, so I'm really hoping the MRI confirms it is not a root tear and I'm given the green light to start training for the Oakland half-marathon in March.

A persimmageddon that wasn't! While we estimate our tree produced about 1000 persimmons last year, we only got about 100 persimmons from our tree this year. Earlier this week I put the final few to use in a last batch of veganized lemon-glazed persimmon bars (they were easy to veganize: just sub one flax egg!).

New hobby: playing with my new camera. Neal got me a Fujifilm X-T30 for my birthday and I got a zoom lens for Christmas. I've taken it out for a spin a couple of times. So much to learn!

Otherwise, our post-Christmas road trip to Los Angeles was canceled due to the 13yo breaking a bone in his ankle on Christmas Eve Eve. I may never book another Airbnb again.

Joan Mitchell at SFMOMA.

P.S. Did I ever write about the sunflower seeds the 8yo got from her garden teacher last year? We planted them in late spring with no real expectations so you can imagine how blown away we were when we experienced them in all their wonderful majesty. The 8yo and I checked out the Joan Mitchell exhibit at SFMOMA on my birthday in October where I jotted down this quote about sunflowers: "They look so wonderful when young and they are so very moving when they are dying." Isn't that lovely?

pandemic diaries: this is how it ended

Okay, I know the pandemic isn't exactly over, but the 2020-21 school year is! Hooray!! In fact, the kids are already a couple of days into week FOUR of their summer break, that's how early Oakland schools get out. So how did the year end? 

Post distance learning feels.

Well, in a nutshell, as a marathoner (I've run more than one marathon so yes, that makes me a marathonER), I can confidently say it was very much like the last .2 miles of the race. After a grueling metaphorical 26 miles, those last 6 weeks (the .2 miles in this race metaphor) were just a slog, day after day, juggling full-time work and 24/7 kids and endless snacks and cleaning up after all that eating and trying to maintain some semblance of a healthy routine and a positive attitude. The 2nd grader's hybrid return to minimal in-person schooling in late March was a drag logistically, but of course we did it because we knew she'd enjoy - and benefit from - the social interactions with her teacher and classmates. We also, a month or so earlier, recognized the urgent need for our kids to safely socialize with at least one good friend or two, so planning backyard playdates and weekly hikes was another thing to do and make happen.

Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve

In a nutshell, why yes, I'd say I was definitely languishing. But then Daphne came home from one of her in-person afternoons one week having made me this. So this is what I'll remember.

On a positive note, though, while the middle schooler didn't return to any in-person instruction at all this year, he was able to do his band concert report on a real, live performance after reporting on two recorded concerts in previous semesters. It was also our first time at Yoshi's, which is kind of nuts considering how long we've lived in Oakland.

Anyway, at last the school year was over. The kids and I celebrated with traditional end-of-year froyo at Yogurt Park near Cal Berkeley. If you know, you know.

Later that long weekend I toasted the end of the school year with some fellow room mamas (in person!), ending my four-year tenure as room parent coordinator, an unpaid gig I took on when I wasn't working (but now I am, full-time, and especially after this crazy year, I'm very much looking forward to a break).

Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge in Alameda

In other news, Daphne planted some sunflower seeds she got from her garden teacher earlier this spring. It's not sourdough bread, but the results have a very early pandemic project vibe.

Another article about how the pandemic has impacted working parents, especially mothers, in the workplace made the rounds. Here is my reaction to it, including a thread of posts I've written about it over the years right here on this blog.

And, um, okay, so I guess I'm not the only one feeling like the pandemic has dramatically altered my social life forever. Desperately seeking a post-pandemic perimenopausal posse. I've been really enjoying Jessica Grose's writing on the topic, and even put together a reading list so let me know if you'd like to join my book club.

 

Otherwise, I successfully snuck in little chunks of studio time over the last several weeks of the school year and I'm hoping to do this a bit more consistently this summer (and beyond, if all goes well and kids return to in-person school in the fall), kind of digging where this project is going. I started a new Instagram account devoted just to my creative practice and related shenanigans (looking at art, etc.). I've also been very keen to start work on season two of the podcast, but worry if I do, it'll take up all the little bits of time I need in the studio. Which is fitting since that's kind of what season two is all about. Sigh.

As a family unit, we are now 75% vaxxed! 

In local foodie news, we discovered the vegan pizza from Square Pie Guys, which might be my favorite yet, and bought some fancy vodka for a good cause (design by Oakland-based artist Shogun Shido, for the fundraising collaboration between Treecraft Distillery and Oakland Art Murmur - read more about it here). 

So, yeah, an enthusiastic cheers to the end of the weirdest school year we've experienced as parents. Let's hope we never have to do that again.