Starry Wisdom

4 years ago, before he was running for President, Barack Obama was running for Senate in Illinois. Here is a little song I found on his website back then. Enjoy.

Obama for Senate

Here are the search terms which have lead people here in the past week:

• ENCEPHALOMALACIA AFTER CRANIOTOMY
• digging at straws

That is all

I went to the SF Museum of Modern Art to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit with a friend Saturday. Sounds good right? It should have been, Kahlo was a great artist, and they have amassed a great collection for this exhibit. But, sadly, it is too popular for it’s own good.

They have timed tickets which are designed to keep the crowds down – you have a 20 minute window to enter (set 30 minutes apart) and most people spend 30-45 minutes in the exhibit. Of course there are also a bunch of people with the audio tour, more on them later. This is a good plan, except that it means that you have a huge cluster of people entering at the entry times (they try to meter it, but we’ve all seen the meters for highway entrances that seem to have no effect on traffic). So you have a big crowd in the exhibit, everyone trying to look at the same paintings, as you basically are railroaded in to a particular viewing pattern (which might be good, because they are chronological). And to make matters worse, about 10-20% of the people are on the audio tour, and oblivious to those around them. So, instead of being able to move between paintings at your own pace, you are railroaded to spend a long time at some paintings, because the guy in front of you is just standing there listening to his headphones, or people are discussing the next one.

My friend basically was done immediately, and I was soon overwhelmed by the crowd and lack of ability to see the exhibit in a reasonable way. I don’t really know of a better way to deal with this sort of exhibit, but it does make me sad that I couldn’t enjoy it properly, and I wonder how many other people are put off by things like this.

Inspired by my friend joan, and a bunch of plums from my CSA, I have started up a batch of umeshu. Well, sort of umeshu, since these aren’t green plums, and since I couldn’t get rock sugar, I used evaporated cane juice. Oh well. Here is a picture of the jar of 1000g of plums, 1000g of sugar, and about 1.8L of shochu right after it was put together:

I need to keep shaking it daily for the next couple of weeks, and then let it rest for about 6 months before it will be ready to drink. Expect another post then!

My cousin Allan Goldberg passed away in June at age 40, from cancer. He survived cancer as a teen, against almost all the odds, and pretty much dedicated his life to living it to the fullest since then. Soon after graduating college and moving out to San Francisco he joined the non-profit world, and started to work for Camp Okizu, a summer camp for children with cancer and their siblings. It is designed to help them enjoy a more normal life. As their director of financial development he raised money for them at crucial times. Al had the ability to make things work, despite the long odds.

Eventually he decided that he wanted to go back to school, and got a Masters from Harvard. He then went on to work for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and from there to become a director at First Descents, an organization for people in their 20s and 30s with cancer to experience outdoor adventures.

Through his work at these various foundations Al touched many lives in ways that I can’t even being to imagine. Yesterday there was a memorial for him at Crissy Field, attended by well over 100 people. My aunt and uncle and his one of his sisters and her husband came to town from the East Coast to attend, and I went to the memorial with them. Listening to a wide variety of people speak about him was very sad, and also very uplifting, because he made so many lives better.

The saddest part, for me, was that even though i had known him my entire life, and was a blood relative, people who had only known him for a couple of years knew him better than me. Obviously I can’t take all the blame for this, but I do feel sad about it. His death was tragic, but it was great to see the immense amount of good that came out of his life. I had last seen my aunt and uncle exactly one year ago for a memorial for my Grandmother, and my cousin, well, I don’t think I had seen her over 15 years, and I had never met her husband. It’s sad that it takes a tragedy for me to see my family.

Some articles about Al below, and a web search will reveal a lot more, including many blog tributes to him:

New story on his stretchathon
Chronicle tory about the memorial
Washington Post obituary

So, that iPhoto problem from last night… solved it. iPhoto made a secret little directory to mimic the mounted USB drive, and made a fake library there. Once I found that, i was able to disable it, then point iPhoto at my real library, and Bam, pictures back.

Next, I played with Garageband to make some ringtones for both my and my pal nvrlnd’s iphones. The Leekspin song makes a good one.

I get to get my 18 month MRI tomorrow. Basically it’s to get a baseline for what the contents of my skull should be like for the future, but hopefully it will be the last one I need ever.

If you never have had an MRI, it’s sort of like being inside a clothes dryer with a pair of shoes. Except you don’t move around. But it is a round tube, and it is thumpy. Good times!

I am back home. Yay.

iPhoto might have eaten all my digital photos from the past 18 months, including many of the ones from my trip. Boo.

I might be able to ressurect them, but the album information will be gone. Ambivalent so far.

Today’s my last day in Chicago. I am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight. I’ve had fun the past couple of days, had dinner and drinks with friends last night and saw Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, and had a wonderful brunch this morning with my parents, brother and sister-in-law. I need to pack now, and then go stop by my Grandma’s for a few minutes to say goodbye. All-in-all this was a good trip.

So, I taught my mom how to send text messages this week. You see, a year or so ago my mom called me when I was at a movie. More than once, because my mom is a bit weird like that (more on this below). After the third time my phone vibrated I sent her a quick text “Im at a movie, call you later”. And she somehow managed to eek out an “OK” as a response.

This year we were seeing a movie last weekend and while we were waiting for it to start, my mom had me show her how to send a SMS, not just reply from her phone. I will admit the interface on her phone is kinda kludgey, but we figured it out. Cut to Tuesday of this week, I am out to dinner with my brother and old friend, as I posted about earlier in the week. While driving home my mom manages to send the following to me:

“Neil did you get this” – 11:33PM

“Dont know how to get message” – 11:33PM

“Laundry” – 11:49PM

“Did you get my message” – 12:07AM

Well, it’s something at least. Then last night I was out again, this time meeting a friend from SF who was having a homecoming of sorts to Chicago (he just moved out West earlier this year) at his old hangout bar. I figured I might as well go, since I am in town and all. After a while we leave that bar and go to another, that some people I met last night didn’t want to go to, there was a third bar they wanted to go to which interested me a bunch more – I mean it’s called Hungry Brain! Eventually I did make it to Hungry Brain with Courtney and Joe (who had just arrived before we headed out), and we hung out there for a bit, because it was approaching 2AM last call time. But they have IPAs on tap, so I have to give them a lot of credit. And a brain motif, including a sculpture of a brain with an Jeigermeister IV.

Anyway, after last call there, the two people I was with call the other people to see what they are up to. I figured I needed to head out east anyhow, as my car was there, so when they said “People are going to blah blah at 4200 Clark, I figured that put me a bit closer to my car than I was at the time, so I was game for hanging out some more. We got there, and hung out, and no one else came, so we decided to call it night. Just then my mom SMSed me:

Mom: “Hi are you having fun”
Neil: “Yeah probably headed home soon”

Hey, she’s getting the hang of it. So we go outside and say goodbye to Joe, who lives in the neighborhood, and Courtney and I share a cab, as my car was on the way to her place. On the drive south I get two texts:

“How is it going?”
“I am getting good at this sort of it just takes me a long time”

Courtney asked me who I got a text from, as it was getting close to 3am. I told her my mom and she thought it was hilariously cute that a) my mom figured out SMSing and b) that even at almost 33 years of age, she was waiting up for me. Yes, that’s the other strange part about my mom. When I’m staying at my parents house, she can’t go to bed (not sleep, she was asleep on the couch when I got home) until I get home. Which I guess is endearing in a way, but also sort of weird.