Power Outage

We just got the power back on from a power outage. We had friends over for dinner, and just after nine when the conversation was heating up, and the kids were all ready to do their circus performance for us, the power went out. We heard a couple of sirens--I'm assuming that a car hit a main box or something. Anyway, it went out, then went on, then went out, then went on, then went out and stayed out for about 45 minutes. We were wracking our brains--where are the candles? Huh, do we have any candles? Finally, Hibi remembered she had some in her room--two--but we decided that we are woefully unprepared for even the smallest emergency. Need to get prepared.....a tsunami or earthquake could happen any time, and we need to be prepared.

After the friends left, we walked down to the corner. It was strange to see Taraval, a street full of businesses, all dark. A neighbor came by and said "it was my fault! I put a TV dinner in the microwave!" We all laughed, and he said he needed to mail a letter anyway--that's why we had the power outage, so he'd get out of the house and mail it.

We went back home and the kids got their pajamas on by candlelight, and then we were sitting in the living room thinking of stories to tell, to calm us all and settle us into the dark. We were just getting comfortable when the lights came back on. It was kind of unpleasant! Zachary went and turned them all back off so we could finish.

Kind of fun the camaraderie that happens in situations like this.

Crime and Punishment (short version)

On Saturday when I went out to buy that basil, I found a ticket on my car. We have no off-street parking, and parking tickets are ubiquitous around here. Someone's always parking somewhere at the wrong time. They clean the streets at least once a week (depending on how much traffic the street gets) and you're not supposed to park there for a two-hour period (usually) on that day. Well, I noticed right away that the ticket left on my car was just the ticket, no envelope for sending payment. And I was *sure* I'd mentally checked whether it was okay to park there when I'd parked it on Thursday. And sure enough, when I looked at it, it was a ticket for someone else's car! I'm thinking there are two possible scenarios: 1. Someone got a ticket and figured they'd give it a shot at getting someone else to pay it or 2. The person dropped the ticket and someone found it and put it on the windshield of the nearest car.

But a deeper issue is punishment. We use punishment in our society to keep people in line. No one likes it, but we keep the system going. When Paul was in seminary, the maintenance staff at the school used a sticker system for awhile. When you parked where you shouldn't, you found a huge orange sticker that was next to impossible to remove right on your windshield. Did this work? All it did was humiliate, in my opinion. One of the seminarians would carry around some kind of razor scraper and would remove the stickers wherever he found them. Whenever I think about this particular man to this day, I think of him as an angel of mercy.

Our friend Mark, who is formerly homeless, currently in prison, and probably soon to be homeless again, will be released from prison at the end of July. He was put in prison for a parole violation. He had been in prison previously on a drug charge--they say he was selling, he said he was just holding some for a friend. Either way, they let him out on parole, and then he didn't report because he was addicted to heroine. So, he was put in prison again. Will he stay clean this time? Yeah, he's been off drugs for three months--one way of thinking is that it's a free ride to kicking an addiction. But what are the root causes of addiction, and have they really been addressed?

Paul was talking a few days ago about how the system really encourages recidivism. They say oh, yeah, you can go free on parole. But they aren't really free, and the problems the prisoners had in the first place haven't been addressed. They aren't put into programs--how about making that mandatory, instead of just reporting so we can reprimand if you've been bad? How about something that will really work, instead of this, which has an astronomical recidivism rate? California has a jaw-dropping number of prisoners in it's system. And we keep wanting to build more prisons. Wouldn't this money be better spent on prevention?

fresh baked pita bread and our homeschool day

Ah, I feel so domestic when I make these, in an old-fashioned cooking-on-the-hearth kind of way. Pita bread is one of those very rare things that I did well the first time I tried. It was back, oh, around 12 years ago, right after we became Orthodox and soon after I began regularly baking bread. The recipe was even 100% whole wheat, which I didn't do back then. Back then if 1/3 of the flour in bread was whole wheat, I was baking whole wheat bread. Anyway, I made this absolutely scrumptious pita bread and took some to church for a potluck. We were attending an Antiochian Orthodox Church (translation: lots of Arabic people) and the older ladies just raved over it. "But why are you calling this 'pita bread'?" they asked. "This is *Arabic* bread!"

This bread is pretty easy to make, but it does take some work. It's made a lot easier if you have a baking stone. You bake the breads right on the stone or on the oven floor if you don't have a stone. Which means a lot of bending into the oven to put the rounds in or flip them or take them out. But the results are scruptious with butter and honey, or tomatoes and cheese, or falafel (we had so many fava beans in our CSA box this spring that I tried making falafel with fresh favas....with delicious results) or even just peanut butter and jelly.

Zachary begged me to make him a number line. Or, *another* number line. He's been fascinated with the concept ever since I introduced him to number lines probably a year ago. He wanted a *big* one this time, so I made one that continues over hte whole page, with four lines in all. It goes to 109, and he's been busy writing out problems for himself to solve and then solving them.

And Hibi made a foray into the land of cooking today. She's of the "cookbook? who needs a cookbook?" ilk. And this time it came out alright! She made carrot soup.

There's our homeschool day. I like blogging about days like this, because I feel like a successful homeschool mom! ;-) I probably won't blog about the days when we're all at each other's throats and we sit around eating junk food.

Tonight's dinner

We discovered Indian food about two years ago, and have enjoyed eating Indian food in restaurants since then. But I've had limited success making it myself up until tonight. Tonight I made something scrumptious!

I have the book called The Vegetarian Table: India (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-0811811441-4). I made Marawadi Mixed Dals, with tomato and cilantro, along with brown basmati rice and homemade chapati. It really hit the spot! Dal is so easy to make--it takes an hour or two to cook, but it's easy. It's basically pea/bean/lentil/legume soup, but it's the glorified version. :-) Mmmm....

Finding new yummy cuisines is so much fun. And Indian food is so vegetarian friendly. Oh, the whole meal was vegan, actually, so Hibi was happy. I did add butter to my portion.

home and garden and restaurant review

We live in the cool, foggy part of San Francisco--the part where we might not see the sun all day long in the summer and it might not get above 63 degrees. I have been very chagrined that this means that I cannot grow basil! I get basil in my CSA box, but there's nothing that can compare to fresh-grown basil, that is picked right before you need it, in quantity.

CSA....I have to stop and comment here. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. The concept is that you subscribe to the services of a small, usually completely organic, family farm. Then, each week, you get a box full of whatever is currently growing. This idea is right at the heart of eating fresh and local. The fossil fuels used to bring the food to you are minimal--my CSA farm is located 73 miles from here, not in Mexico or Chile. The food is fresh, because it was just picked within the last couple of days before it comes to me. The food is organic. The food is diverse, because the farmers know they are catering to a group of people who don't mind trying new (to them) vegetables, like rutabega, kohlrabi, or baby turnips. Oh, those are winter vegetables--nowadays, we're getting heirloom tomatoes, summer squash, corn, cucumbers, and yes, basil. Mmm. I've been enjoying receiving basil every week, and even so I have to ration my bunch of basil each week, because I love the stuff so. And I can't grow it! Until now....

Yesterday, in the Home section of the newspaper, I read about a variety of basil that grows well even in this climate! It's called Italian Blue Leaf. I hurried out to Sloat Garden Center and bought me three plants of it. (I thought I was buying five, but in my haste and giddyness I accidentally bought two of another variety....) They're in my garden now! I'll report back as to how they do.

So, now I come to the restaurant review portion of this post! ;-) The kids declared a "Dad and Kids" day, and they went off to a movie together and pizza afterward. So, I treated myself to a "Mom and bookstore" day! Afterward, I went to Chow on Church St. Whenever we're in that area, trying to find a place to eat, I always say "we could try Chow..." and then everyone else says "no, let's just have pizza." :-( So, today I went where I wanted to go. My dinner was so scrumptious! I had something called Garden Noodles, which was soba noodles with a peanut sauce, cilantro, bok choy, and tofu--all very flavorful. I burned my mouth because it was too hot, but I couldn't stop shoveling it in. A wonderful glass of Merlot was had with it, with chocolate cake and a scoop of vanilla ice cream, drizzled with chocolate sauce, for dessert. My tummy is still very happy. :-)

Mother Maria

We were gone yesterday--we traveled to Santa Cruz to the church of the Prophet Elias to celebrate their feast day with them. (To my non-Orthodox readers....read on, it's not all about Orthodoxy, but also about social justice and resisting the Nazis.) It was a nice day. But July 20 is not only the feast day of Prophet Elias on the Orthodox calendar, but also the feast day of Mother Maria of Paris.

Mother Maria was a Russian immigrant to Paris. She was a member of the Russian Orthodox Church. She was approached by her bishop, asking her to become a nun, but she knew she could never be the kind of cloistered nun who shut herself away from the world. Her bishop gave her his blessing to be a nun who worked and lived alongside the poor of Paris. She opened a house of hospitality in Paris, where she fed the poor every day, and housed anyone who needed a place to stay. When the Nazis invaded Paris, she and the priest who also worked at the house of hospitality began to hide Jews. Fr. Klepinin would also issue fake baptismal certificates to Jews so they could possibly avoid being sent to concentration camps. They and some with them (including Mother Maria's son) were eventually sent to concentration camps. There is some evidence that Mother Maria died in place of another sent to die.

When she was made a saint in May of 2004, we attended her canonization in Paris. What a great experience! We found the apartment building where her house of hospitality used to be, where there is a plaque telling all about her resistance to the Nazis. Mother Maria was of the theology that says responding to one in need is more important than prayer. We are trying to follow her example.

For more info about Mother Maria, go to http://incommunion.org/contents/mother-maria

We didn't get a whole lot of pictures in Paris, and none of the canonization, due to the fact that I dropped the camera and it was irreparable. :-( But here's some pictures of us in Paris.

Paul, Hibi, and Zac in front of San Eustache

Hibi, Zac, and Elizabeth in courtyard at the Louvre

Hibi, Zac, and Elizabeth in courtyard at the Louvre
Originally uploaded by sanfranfamily.

fun with insects

Hibi found a leaf out in the garden that covered, on the back, with tiny eggs. She brought them in to confirm with me that they were eggs, but we had no idea what kind. She decided to put the leaf into a jar and (at my insistence) keep the jar covered, and see what hatched out! Well, we're now the, uh, proud parents of a bunch of teeny, tiny worms--each about half the width of your little fingernail. They are all crawling all over the jar. A pretty cool unschool experiment.

I don't know what she's going to do with them now....maybe keep the jar (hopefully outside....) until they turn into insects and see what kind they are.

It's here!

At long last, our wait is over! The newest Harry Potter book is here. (As if you didn't know!) We celebrated in fine style at some friends' home last night. What a great party! For book Five, we went to Barnes and Noble, because we lived near Fresno and it was either that or Borders. No choice to visit a cool indie bookstore--that was it for choices. And BN was a mob scene. They handled it as best they could, but that was just how it was.

So, last night we gathered with friends and had a great time. The kids played a house elf game, where socks were scattered all over the floor and the kids on either side of a rope had to "clean up" by throwing all the socks on their side to the other side. It didn't get very clean! And they wrote "howlers" and then read them, loudly, about how excited they are about the new book. There was quite the spread of Hogwarts' inspired food. Ginger Newts, Butterbeer, Yorkshire Pudding, Pumpkin Pasties, Snape's Brains (rice crispy treats), and more.

Costumes....we almost had to not go in costume, because some of us were getting obsessed to the point of tears....but in the end we were all able to handle it. Hibi went as Fred and George, Zac was Zacharias Smith, Paul wore his priest's cassock and was a random villager, and I went as Prof. Trelawney. At the party, there was a Harry Potter, a Hermione, a Prof. McGonagall, a Voldemort, and we dubbed one little one who kept running screaming through the room "Peeves." :-)

The wonderful thing about this party is that, at midnight, we didn't all have to make a mad dash for a bookstore. The bookstore came to us! That's right--the local neighborhood bookstore made deliveries of the Half-Blood Prince at midnight. We were very skeptical that they'd actually get there anytime around midnight....but they were there at five minutes 'til! The two women entered with a box, to great applause from children and adults alike! It was so exciting! Then we did a countdown to midnight, at which time, the box was cut open and the books handed out. We then ate cake and I read the first five pages to the eager children while they ate. Then it was home for us, as some members of our family were fading fast.

Now we are in the throws of reading, reading, reading. Hibi read book Five by five pm on the day it came out. But then, we were blessed with three copies, as we picked up copies for friends. The system worked like this: one copy for Hibi, one for the adult who was reading to Zac, and one for the other adult to read to him/herself. This time we only have one, and it's going to be a challenge. Hibi gets the book whenever we're not reading aloud to the rest of us. We can only read out loud for so long, so perhaps it'll work out afterall.

Book Review

Paul went to the library and brought home this book: _The Death of Innocents_ by Sister Helen Prejean. Several years ago, we watched the movie Dead Man Walking. It was an extremely disturbing movie, a very powerful movie, and we feel a very important movie. Sister Helen Prejean is a Catholic nun who works directly with prisoners on death row. She acts as spiritual advisor to them, and has walked several of them right to death's door and witnessed their execution. The movie Dead Man Walking shows one such relationship from her first contact with a prisoner right up to his execution. It is very difficult to watch, and we were very glad to be watching on a 13 inch screen instead of in a movie theater.

After watching the movie, we read the book by the same name. Sister Helen is an ardent supporter of abolishing the death penalty, for reasons that the state should not be killing in order to teach not to kill. But in this new book, she takes on cases where those executed are not violent criminals, but who have been scapegoated. They are just someone to punish because they don't have hard evidence on anyone.

She starts out talking about Dobie, whom she walked with to his death. Dobie was a young black man, with an IQ of 65. He was home on leave from a minimum security prison, where he was serving a term for burglary. He was deemed not violent, and so he was allowed to go home for the weekend. When there was a murder in the middle of the night, and the husband of the woman murdered said his wife had yelled "A black man is killing me," they went and found Dobie, at 2 am, roused him from sleep and hauled him to jail. At every turn, he was discriminated against. He was black, so he fit the description that the woman cried out. When DNA testing came available, the judge only allowed one test to be done by the prosecutor, and he chose a lab of dubious ethics. They declared the DNA test to be conclusive, even though it came back inconclusive on several points.

And that's only chapter one! That's as far as I've gotten, since it IS Paul's book....I'll be reading it when he's done, or maybe when he's gone to work.

Another great San Francisco weekend

Well, it was this afternoon that was so great. Yesterday we just stayed home and cleaned house. Dull, but necessary. This afternoon we picked Paul up from church (he was there late doing a baptism) and took him to the hospital to visit a family who had a tragedy--a car accident that killed the grandmother and put the boy in a coma. (He's awake now, though!) Paul is playing real parish priest this month, while the "real" priest is gone to Greece for the month.

Anyway, after all the church stuff got taken care of, we went to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (www.silentfilm.org). I would have liked to have seen more than one of these great films, but we only saw one: The Scarlet Letter. I have to say that while we usually think of silent movies as a thing of the past, how movies got started but they're irrelevant now, and that movies have gotten so much better. But this one was amazing. Lillian Gish rocks! She was truly amazing with her facial expressions. She communicated so much without words. She could say paragraphs just by opening her eyes wide.

There was a talk beforehand that we didn't know was going to happen....and in some ways was rather long-winded and boring. But we found out some things that were interesting and we wouldn't have known otherwise. Like, the guy who played Rev. Dimmesdale was Swedish. He didn't speak a word of English! So, what you see on the screen is Lillian Gish speaking English to him, and him answering in Swedish. And, as they lecturer said, what does it matter, in silent film? He was also very good--his eyes would get really wide, and his body would shake all over when he was afraid.

Another thing we learned at the talk was how hard they worked to get this one restored. They thought the original was lost for a long time, and that the only thing left was a poor quality, grainy, dark copy. But at last they found it and painstakingly restored it. What a great thing.

Fillmore St. Jazz Festival

One of the great things about living in San Francisco is all the great street fairs. One of the not-so-great things about lots of those are that they are JAM PACKED! We went to the St. Patrick's Day festival this year, and left as quickly as we could, because 1. there was nothing good there and 2. it was so crowded we could hardly move. (Paul just added #3: the only thing everyone seemed to be doing was drinking voluminous quanities of beer, and it seemed the only reason to go.) So, we were just hoping yesterday, when we went to the Fillmore Street Jazz Festival (http://fillmorestreetjazzfest.com/) that it wouldn't be like that. And it was crowded, but not so much that our agoraphobic tendencies took over (at least not too much). And it was really fun! Free jazz, everywhere we went. The best of what we heard were these guys: http://www.syncopatedtaint.com/main.htm They were so versatile, and one of the guys did things with a clarinet that we've never seen done before.....uh, musically. They were a lot of fun to listen to. The head guy, after each song, would bark like a dog into the microphone, which definitely added the element of freak. :-) Paul thought their band should be named The Wailing Geeks, as they were geeky-looking white guys with fedoras and horn-rimmed spectacles.

I don't know the name of the first band we listened to, but they were good, too, and brought to memory the roots of jazz: African American music. They had a little kid playing a drum for some of their songs, and he was really good! He got rhythm, for sure. And, I'll tell you, I've never seen anywhere else in San Francisco where you can buy breaded okra and catfish nuggets. We settled for frozen lemonade for the kids and margaritas for the adults, and garlic fries. Ooh, these were the real deal....NOT fries with garlic powder on them, but real chunks of garlic that could keep vampires away for months. Mmm, they were good. We could smell them way before we saw them. Lots of good art and great clothing, too.

Sheri and Anne

Tonight we had our friend Sheri over for dinner. Sheri is formerly homeless. We met her on our second day living here. She was panhandling over on the corner, just half a block from our house. We were walking to the train to go to the beach for a much-needed break from unpacking. Paul saw her, and walked right up and introduced himself. We could tell pretty much from the start that we were going to be friends with Sheri.

There's a lot of stuff about Mark, her former partner, that I could tell here, but this isn't about Mark, and I don't have the time to chronicle everything about them. Mark is currently in prison, but he'll be out next month. Maybe I'll write more about that later.

Sheri is currently in a detox program. She is doing so well! She's been off alcohol for almost three months. She's going to graduate from the program she's in now this month, and go into group housing. In the short time we've known her (10 months) she has made such great strides. We've seen her at her worst--she spent the night before going into detox, and we saw her trying to wake up and get out of bed and shaking like crazy. Her body needed alcohol, and she kept saying that she just wanted to wake up in the morning like a normal person and drink coffee and wake up gracefully, like we do. I've been so happy to hear her say things like "I'm so happy to be sober, because now I can feel things and do things and drink coffee in the mornings and read my Bible."

Anyway. Tonight we were talking about the many problems she still faces, and there are a lot. She's been trying to get on welfare, and has been turned down for the last two months. She doesn't have any money coming in, and as she says, recovery is a full-time job. She wants to get a job and "be a normal person" as she says, but knows she doesn't have the inner strength now, but needs lots of work. And she's doing it.

So I've finished the Anne Lamott book I was reading on vacation, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, and also while we were on vacation we listened to the audio version of Traveling Mercies. (I succeeded in my mission to get Paul hooked on Anne Lamott, and he's now reading Plan B. :-) It suddenly came to me that hey, Traveling Mercies would be such a great book for Sheri to read, as Anne tells all about her journey to recovery from drugs and alcohol. And it's such an honest account. She really gets down into the nitty-gritty. And so I said, hey Sheri, you should read Anne Lamott's book Travelling Mercies. And she said, "I know Anne Lamott! I grew up with her. We were best friends in elementary school!" She had no idea that Anne was a writer, but said she always knew she was a special lady. I was going to take her to Booksmith on Haight street and buy her the book Traveling Mercies on the way back to her place, but it was closed. But we decided that, since Sheri really wants to see Anne again, and I'd really love to meet her, that we'll try to get in touch with her and I'll drive Sheri up to meet her. Hey, being driver has to have some perks. :-)