From the Mountains to the Sea

I had hoped to show a completed sweater and skirt today, but no sewing or knitting got done this weekend. Here are some pretty pictures instead.

Yesterday, Iris and I drove to the Los Angeles Zoo for a behind the scenes tour. (I hope to post about that later.) Iris took this picture from the back seat of the car as I concentrated on driving. Aren't the snow-capped peaks behind the downtown skyscrapers pretty?

Today, while Iris was visiting the Heritage Square Museum with a friend, Bad Dad and I enjoyed lunch and a walk on the pier in Manhattan Beach.  Look at the choppy surf.

We saw two tankers and a very large ship I can't identify.  On the left is a tanker that has finished unloading and is departing.  I can't figure out what the boat on the right is doing.  Is that an empty container ship with nowhere to go?

This tanker is docked at the offshore platform for unloading. 

There is an underwater pipe that leads from the platform to the Chevron refinery in El Segundo.  In fact, the town of El Segundo is named that because it is home to Richmond Oil refinery #2.   (#1 is in Richmond, CA near Berkeley.)

You know the saying about steering a supertanker?  (Make small adjustments, far in advance.)  You really understand it when you see the supertankers slide next to the platform very very very slowly.  When they are done and leaving, they go much faster.  They also ride higher in the water when unladen.

Ethnic Cleansing (and Knitting) in Doonesbury

I read today's (24 Jan 2010) Doonesbury this morning in the Sunday comics section. I am only showing the last panel of it because I don't want to get in trouble for copyright infringement.  You can look it up by day at the Doonesbury archive at gocomics.com.  My first thought was, "Is she wearing the ruffles scarf from Scarf Style?" Because that is a really cool scarf and it's in my queue of stuff I would like to knit someday.

My second thought was WTF?  That cannot possibly be a cafeteria at MIT. But all eight panels, showing various figures walking in the background were guilty of the same thing.  I showed it to MIT alum, Bad Dad.  His first thought was, "Cool, MIT is in the comics!"

"That character has been at MIT for years.  Is there anything odd about the picture?" I asked.

"Is this supposed to be present day MIT?"

"Yup, and he's killed off all the Asians at MIT."

I shouldn't have typecast.  I expected better from Garry Trudeau because he appears to be a liberal.  But I guess liberals are just as racist as anybody else.

The Backstory
I lived in many places as a child, but spent more time in the San Francisco Bay Area than anywhere else.  I consider that my hometown.  When I moved from Berkeley to Boulder, I was homesick.  When I heard about a new TV show set in SF called Party of Five, I tuned in to catch a glimpse of home.

It was sickening.  I was physically ill.

It wasn't just incredulity that these financially-struggling orphans could be living in a multi-million dollar mansion in pricey Pacific Heights (with Danielle Steele for a neighbor).  It was a classroom scene with 11-year old Claudia who supposedly attended a public school in SF.  The camera panned across the classroom and all but one student was white.  There was a token black kid in the back row of chairs*.

We were wiped out of the picture.

I told Bad Dad about the disturbing scene and the dearth of Asian characters in movies and TV overall.  He said that, to be fair, a lot of movies are constrained in their casting by their genre.

"How so?  Which genres?" I asked.

"Science fiction and things set in the future."

"Are you saying that, in the future, a virus has wiped out all the Asian people on earth, over half the world's population, and it is never mentioned in the story lines?"

Now that is creepy.

In the original 1966 Star Trek TV series, there was Sulu.  (OK, one character represented all the Asians on Earth, but at least he was there.)  Fast forward to the four Star Trek series from 1987 to 2005 and all the Asians in the universe had died out with the exception of Sulu, who made a brief guest appearance.

Other TV series purportedly set in SF were no better.  Dharma and Greg, Suddenly Susan--all ethnically cleansed.

A friend told me that televisions are not designed to bring entertainment to people's homes.  It's designed to deliver eyeballs to advertisers. 

If TV shows are going to advocate ethnic cleansing, then they will have to do it without my eyeballs.  I haven't watched network television (with the exception of the Simpsons) for the last 15 years.

And now you know the secret to my knitting and sewing productivity and why I have time to read so many books (and blog)!

I grew up in the burbs, but Eric attended public HS within the SF city limits.  Would he care to state the ethnic breakdown of his senior class?

* At around that time, I read in the newspaper that the public school population of SFUSD was about 80% Asian-American.  The rest were mainly Latino and black.  See the current demographics.  Whites (second column) now make up 10% of the district overall and Asians represent about half.  I wonder when we will see that on TV or in the movies?  I won't hold my breath.

Links
See pictures of present day MIT when we attended Bad Dad's college reunion last year.  I need to print a retraction/clarification about what Iris was emulating in the photo.  She was not taking a swig as I had joked; she was emulating a park ranger who had shown her how to tear open a paper packet of gunpowder with her teeth and load a musket (and then fire the musket at redcoats).

The informal food network

Or perhaps I should have called this post, "How to barter backyard fruit."

I have a surfeit of Meyer lemons.  I gave some to a coworker who gave me kumquats last year.  This year, he gave another bag of kumquats to me (as well as periodic pictures of the ripening kumquats in his yard).

There is a retired lady on my block with 4 mature avocado trees.  There is no way she can possibly eat them all so I asked her if I could trade her some Meyer lemons for her avocados.  She said yes, she could use three lemons.  I went home to fetch her three.  Upon my return, she handed me six avocados and told me I could come by later for more.

Then I brought some to Dave's Olde Book Shop near my home because the lady who works there on Sundays (I forgot her name) is a fan of Meyer lemons. 

I also brought some to Neighborhood Grinds to thank the owners for distributing our CSA boxes.  They use the lemons for the lemon water they serve gratis to their customers.  We buy a prepaid card at NG and reload the card about once a month.  That way, Iris can stop by with her friends or her Tae Kwon Do instructor and buy a round of treats.  I stop by at least once a week for a soy latte and Mark goes on weekends for a vacuum flask of their 'single origin' coffee.  Our habits should cost us about $25-30/month.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that our account was down only ~$10 last month.  The owners have been slipping free brownies to my kid.  (OTOH, I did sew a swirly dress for the 3 yo daughter of one of the owners, which he claims is her favorite dress.)

And why is she buying treats there for herself and her TKD instructor?  Because he drives her from her elementary school over to the community center for class (while Bad Dad and I are at work).  As some of you know, we lost the world's greatest nanny when she transferred to a 4-year university and moved away.  We couldn't find a replacement that suited Iris.  So Bad Dad and I were stuck taking time off from work to get her to TKD class.

When I heard the principal of her school complain about a karate instructor's failure to return the principal's phone calls, I quickly asked him if he was willing to consider TKD instead.  Score!  Her TKD instructor teaches a beginner class at her school (with Iris as the teacher's aide), and then they grab a snack (Iris misses snack time at the afterschool daycare on these days) and head over to the community gym for the intermediate class.  We pick Iris up at the gym on the way home from work.

At first, I didn't know about the missed snack time.  But then Iris let it slip that she went to McD's weekly.  How can that be?  Our family rarely goes to McD's, and then mostly on our road trips.  Not only had her TKD teacher been driving Iris to class, but he'd been buying her snacks at the McD's next to the gym.

I figure, with the money we are saving not paying for after school care and a nanny to schlep Iris around, the least we can do is pay for both of their snacks.  And she loves being a teacher's aide.  She says the little kids in the beginner class are so cute.  Remember when she was one of the little kids?

If you shop at the South Bay Gardens nursery on Manhattan Beach Blvd, under the power lines, they sometimes give you free fruit with a purchase.  The owner gives away Valencia oranges from his orchard in Ventura.  One of the employees gave away Fuyu persimmons in December.  Hmm, it's orange season and I need a few things...

Oh, we got kohlrabi in our CSA box today.  Don't they look like purple UFOs?  If you see me in person, don't forget to ask me to tell you my hilarious UFO story.

Here's the rest of the box.  I posted about it at the CSA blog.

It's not backyard fruit, but I also bring apple-persimmon cake to a coworker who brings me Hashiya persimmons from the Santa Monica farmer's market whenever he sees 'the persimmon lady'.