San Diego on Fire! · 22 October 2007
After a long drawn out evacuation process, I've taken refuge in Los Angeles. The cats just may forgive me for putting them in the car for 5 hours. Fortunately for them, they are blissfully unaware of the massive human evacuation and once they realize that I remembered their food, they should acclimate just fine.
I know it's been somewhat hard to get specific information on mandatory evacuations and homes that have already burned down s for those that have fled the county like I have and still want to keep tabs on what is going on, here are a few of the sites that are easy to access:
- NBC Local News - Full Video coverage of the breaking news in San Diego
- Audio news from KPBS (local public radio)
- CBS has a list of homes that have been destroyed
- Pictures weren't on my mind as I was making my way out, but there is a good collection of one of the larger fires, the Witch Fire from SignOnSanDiego.com
There are also many city, county, and government offices sites that are linked to on the news sites. They seem to be a little bit overwhelmed with bandwidth, but they have been up and down.
Unfortunately, this is slated to be worse than the Cedar Fires four years ago. The Red Cross is already mobilized and it is really amazing to hear all the people calling in to the local radio stations that are in unaffected parts of the county and offering to help out. News stations were reporting that more than 250,000 people had been forced to evacuate their homes, and this was before a huge swath of the highly populated Scripps Ranch area was ordered to pack up and get out.
For those reading from other parts of the world, please keep San Diego and Southern California in your thoughts.
-
Share this article
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi · 20 October 2007
There are times where I get the best kind of validation that I wasn’t adopted. In addition to having a flat spot on the back of her head exactly where I do, my dad’s cousin is a book lover and a food lover. When I visited her recently and offered to cook dinner, I mentioned that I might be posting about what I cooked. Normally I cook with a book in mind, but during pre-vacation rush I didn’t have one for this meal. She looked at the finished fare and said, “So what are we eating, Reading Lolita in Tehran?”
We weren’t, but I decided to take a good cue when I saw one. The book had been sitting on my shelf for months, and so I took it on vacation with me.
Reading "Lolita" in Tehran is written by a professor of literature who is dismissed from her university in Iran. She then holds private discussions in her home with a handpicked group of girls in Tehran. Throughout the book, the author explores the different ways in which living, and teaching, in Tehran shaped her life. Nafisi uses authors as bookmarks, first Nabakov, then Fitzgerald, James, and Austen. She vacillates between telling the story of her life and providing excellent insight into masterpieces of literatures. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a book lover’s book and like all books I’ve read about other books, it left me with a longer reading list than when I started.
Nafisi is one of those authors that writes as if she is speaking to you. She has a voice with a soft, firm, tone that invites your confidences and your compassion. The book is semi-autobiographical, in that Nafisi speaks of her own life with candor, but admits to changing the details of some of the other characters in order to protect them. There are several moving and poignant passages in which the reader is acquainted with personal horrors that took place during the Iranian revolution and the subsequent decades.
In a way, I came to feel that Nafisi may have been writing this book as the only apology she could give to the country she ultimately left. She admits there is much to love about Iran, but in the end she chose to leave it. Nafisi’s struggle will sound familiar to anyone who has walked away from a difficult person or relationship and the obvious conflicts that Nafisi faces in choosing what to include in her novel add to its strength.
I first became interested in this book after hearing this interview last year on NPR about the collection of stories Literature from the Axis of Evil and Other Enemy Nations. In it, Nafisi speaks on the importance of literature and of the people that live in the countries that President Bush labeled The Axis of Evil. I’m still waiting for a copy to come up on PBS, but I think that my appreciation of the collection of the stories will be enriched by reading Nafisi’s story first.
I wouldn’t have chosen pizza as the food for this novel, but I’m grateful that my cousin nudged me in the direction of reading it. It was a perfect way to start vacation, in contemplation of the spirit and the written word.
Recipe for this vegan pizza (along with a much better picture) can be found on Albion Cooks, one of the prettiest and tastiest vegetarian blogs out there. I highly recommend it for those who are thinking about adding some vegetarian food to their diet. When I made my pizza, I skipped the zahtar, substituted regular pesto for eggplant, and used roasted eggplant hummus. Quick, simple, and delicious, though I fear that when I hit up the Farmer’s Markets this weekend, heirloom tomatoes will be gone until next summer and so repeating this recipe will have to wait.
-
Share this article
I’m Back! · 15 October 2007
What a great trip it’s been. I’m now slightly less crazed than before I left. Never underestimate the power of a good vacation to make you feel like you can do the impossible.
Even though one of my stated purposes of this blog is to help concentrate on the important things in life, and not the nit-picky everyday “chores” we have to do, I was dangerously close to stressing out a bit about stuff that shouldn’t bother me prior to leaving. On vacation, I dropped it all.
I had coffee and pastries for breakfast, I “forgot” I wasn’t a morning person and woke up early to walk the streets of London, Venice, Florence, and Rome while most of the tourists were still in bed. I saw amazing art, architecture, and landscapes, and had an awesome time catching up with my sister and two friends we grew up with. Every day since I’ve been back, I remember a little something from the trip and smile, so my vacation buzz is still running strong.
I took 272 pictures, quite a feat for someone who is rather horrible at documenting events. Many of them have been uploaded to my Flickr account, and I’ll probably put up more next month, as I’ve just about maxed out the upload space Flickr will give me for the month.
And, of course, I had plenty of time to read during the plane and train trips. Even though I got a bit of ribbing from my travel companions about my first choices as being inappropriate “fluff” vacation material, I finished:
Reading "Lolita" in Tehran - As suggested by a dinner adventure shortly before I left, I’ll talk about this book in the much-hyped forthcoming pizza post.
City of Pearl
Invisible Monsters -
By the author of Fight Club , the work dealt with the same underlying themes using different characters and life circumstances. The main character, a former model living under the name Daisy St. Patience, is recovering from an accident that has left her face grossly disfigured. The story is narrated by Daisy in a series of non-linear vignettes and memories spanning her childhood to the present day. By using the main character’s recognition that her life has only been a performance for the camera, Palahniuk decided to present many of the scenes by having the Daisy narrate who each character is playing to, and what emotions the photographer in their head is commanding they show the lens.
I really liked how Palahniuk used a minimalistic writing style to make it seem as if all the action was fresh, even the memories. This is the first book I’ve read by Palahniuk, though I’ve seen the movie Fight Club, so it’s quite possible that all his works feature the gusty, over-exposed first-person narrative that he uses in Invisible Monsters, but it was new to me. Unfortunately, his material wasn’t as fresh as his style, and at times I felt like I was reading Fight Club re-hashed. Invisiable Monsters was worth the read, but after scanning his other titles and seeing that they deal with similar themes I don’t know that I’ll pick up more by Palahnuik in the near future.
I Just Want My Pants Back - A fun, chick-lit-esque book told from the perspective of a twenty-something, pot-smoking, hard-drinking, girl-loving, lost Jewish man in New York City. This one received the thumbs up as appropriate vacation material by the group. Fun and believable, and deemed “fluffy enough”.
Party Girl - I picked this one up from the lending library in one of the hotels. It was there; I was there. It was set in London; I was staying in London. There was nothing horrible or wonderful about the book and at the end, it was pretty predictable. If the bookstores hadn’t been closed, I’d have gone and bought something else but I kept on to the end because it was neat to hear the characters talk about a neighborhood and then walk to the same neighborhood the next day.
Going Postal -
One of the latest in the Discworld series. Going Postal’s main character is Moist von Lipwig, a man who believes in hope and angels, and has therefore been appointed by Lord Ventinari as Ankh-Morpork’s newest Postmaster. Moist is a scammer by trade and tackles the job as only a scammer would. I always enjoy Pratchett, and this book was no exception. Plenty of puns, plenty of Ventinari, and interesting commentary about words, messages, and our expectations for modern communication made Going Postal one of my favorite Discworld novels yet.
I’ll slowly be making my rounds of all the blogs that I normally read, catching up on what you all have been up to in the last month, and getting back into the swing of the RIP Challenge. It was nice to get away and experience new things, but it’s also good to be home.
-
Share this article
