Eating with Friends and Eating Out

Monday night we had a last minute small feast served by Anchorage friends wintering in LA near their grandson. Thanks again J and B.


Tuesday night we ate at LAVegan, a tiny place, which also turned out to be Thai based but the menu reflected a wider range. We discovered this place Saturday night when we went to Casa Sanchez which is across the street. Tonight Sanchez was so quiet - compared to Saturday - that we really weren't sure it was open. Both (LAVegan and Casa Sanchez are on the 4500 block of Centinela - just south of Washington Blvd. The LAVegan picture gets easier to see if you double click on it.

Gate Almost Done

A lot seemed to get done yesterday. The section of old fence went back up on the new framing and the new fencing went up on the new framing between the front yard and back yard.

Today things seemed to slow down as Brian built the gate. That took more thinking and visually, there was much less progress to see. But the big deal was getting the gate frame done and on hinges so that it swings easily and freely.






So here's where it was yesterday afternoon when Brian had to go to meet a lady about a bike. The frame is ready, the wood is sitting there to be sized and nailed on.

You can see the old gate and almost dead tree and the ivy as it looked last week here.

Garbage

LA residents now have green, blue, and black garbage cans. Green for compostable stuff from the garden, blue for recyclable materials, and black for other stuff. They can also have a once a year special pickup. (When I went to the link just now, I see that there is a once a year garden clean up collection and also a bulky item collection. I guess we combined the two.) Today we had that pickup, getting rid of stuff I've been cleaning out of the garage and yard, and also a lot of the tree and ivy we cut off the old fence, some of the old fence including the gate, and whatever else we had.

Here's the stuff we had out waiting for the truck - this doesn't count filling up my mom's regular three garbage cans as well as the neighbors' (who are out of town) cans.




The guy who picked it up couldn't have been nicer and friendlier and we were delighted that he took everything, even though we came up with a few things that weren't on the list when we booked the extra pick up.

Eating Prickly Pear

It started with two of these that I picked up from the grass in my mom's neighbors' yard. I went over to their yard to see what the fence stuff looked like from their side and to get some of old cans to throw out with our big garbage pick up. Their back hill is mostly prickly pear as you can see in the picture below. Even though the one above is a bit bruised, it was fine inside.

The whole cactus is called a prickly pear and so is the fruit. You can see the red fruit mostly in the upper right. When you see the closer shots below, you can come back to this one and spot them easier.

This morning I had two prickly pear fruit in the house and thought I'd throw them into the oatmeal. But first I checked the internet and got this ten minute video on how to prepare prickly pear. It's ten minutes long and could be edited, but it goes from picking the fruit to getting rid of the pricklers, to eating. [UPDATE October 2017 - I noticed the video was not working any more, so I've replaced it with another from YouTube.]




So with renewed confidence, I scraped off the glochids (prickles) and cut it in half. (When you look at the fruit, the round spots are glochids, clusters of tiny prickles. The individual prickles are nearly invisible. )

Here it is up close. I cut it up and added it to the oatmeal.

Some more pictures of the fruit growing on the cactus. Think about all the fruit growing naturally, without irrigation or fertilizer or even attention, that could
be eaten instead of just rotting. Though I'm sure it feeds lots of birds and other critters. And in Mexico and other places it is part of the diet.

Some species of prickly pear cactus were introduced into North America from tropical America a number of centuries ago. The fruit of these cultivated prickly pear cactus is a common delicacy in Mexico and is sold in markets as "tuna." While all prickly pear cactus are of the genus Opuntia, the non-native Opuntia megacantha is one of the tastiest and most popular. Some native species, especially those with dark purple fruit, are not as flavorful. (from Desertusa.com)

And for Alaskans, I learned one more use for duct tape - to get the prickly pear glochids out of your skin.

Good Morning, Glory

How can flowers be so incredible? These morning glories were even more glorious than they are on this untouched up photo.

Being Where You Can Find Out What You're Good At

A great part of individual 'success' and happiness comes from living
a) where you have the opportunity to discover your talents, and
b) where those talents are appreciated.

We rode down to the beach and the Venice Skate Plaza again and found a variety of skills.




Right near the plaza is a place where you can do your own graffiti legally, but you need a permit.







At the skateboard plaza we saw people with varying levels of skills.





































Whoops.
















And then there was this seven year old girl who skated like the board was part of her body.



This kid has an obvious innate talent here and is in an environment where she could discover that talent and where it was nurtured. She's only seven and skating with a natural skill and at a level that I only saw in a few of the skaters here over the four times I've dropped by. Finding our skills and being able to develop them; much of success is just being at the right place at the right time.

Elegant Tern

J and I passed some gulls at the beach last week
and I noticed one didn't quite fit. It was mostly
white with a bad toupee.

I pulled out the camera and took some shots.
Then I forgot for a couple of

days, but finally emailed the pictures to
my bird experts Dianne and Catherine.

Both independently declared it an elegant tern. They hang out in Southern California and Baja. There's a hummingbird that drops by my mom's regularly, but haven't had the camera ready fast enough. And J spotted a small hawk/falcon like bird on the telephone pole behind the house yesterday evening. There used to be lots of sparrow hawks around here when I was a kid. You could tell by the way they hovered in the air like a helicopter. One of the reasons they were here I'm guessing is there was a huge swamp just down the street full of small animals including frogs. Now it's Penmar Public Golf Course. Better than houses I guess, but not as much food for the top of the food chain. Here's Penmar a couple of days ago.

Does Race Matter? - 2

This is the second post with this title. Here's a link to the first, which is probably more thoughtful and in-depth than this one. Today I'm just adding some new examples.

We have a black President so it is clear that the US has come a long distance since I was in high school and segregation was the law in the South. But the fact that we have a black President has made those who still define themselves primarily by race feeling desperate. As I pointed out in the previous post with this title, White Supremacist groups are planning for a new civil war so they can be allowed to live with their racial compatriots.

While most people don't want to talk about it, I suspect everyone is expecting some crazy racist to take a shot at our President. The first thought I had, after the surprise of hearing Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize so early in his administration, was that perhaps they were afraid to wait too long since they only give Nobel Peace Prizes to living people. (There's an interesting account of how Gandhi did NOT win the Nobel Peace Prize on the Nobel site and how the decision was made not to award it posthumously.)

While most overt, "You can't come in because you're black" racism is gone, it's still buried deep in all our psyches. You can't have watched US movies and television and not come away with a feeling that blacks are, with some exceptions, not as good, not as desirable, and not as safe as whites. Even the most liberal whites, even blacks, have this buried deep in their souls. That's one of the reasons that Obama's election itself, even if he did nothing as President, was so significant. It symbolized that the US that elected Bush twice, was also capable of looking beyond race. I think the Peace Prize was justified simply because Obama's election changed world dynamics and the chances of peace in general. I had people in Thailand tell me that the fact that a black man was elected president of the US made them - as darker skinned people - feel more powerful and hopeful. Name anyone else who had a bigger impact on peace and reconciliation in the world.

If you doubt that racism still lives inside us all, consider your reaction to the idea of marrying outside your race, particularly if you are white and the other race is black. Yeah, it's ok for other people, but wouldn't you find some good, rational reasons why your daughter would be making her life far more difficult when she brings home her black fiance? Be honest. Even if you said, "No problem" didn't you hesitate just a little? If you didn't you're unusual.

Here's a study done by a computer dating company - OKCupid.

We’ve processed the messaging habits of almost a million people and are about to basically prove that, despite what you might’ve heard from the Obama campaign and organic cereal commercials, racism is alive and well.

My son sent OKCupid's report to me. Using their computer dating data base they studied how often people responded to others based on race. They controlled for other aspects and just focused on the race of the person sending the message. I'm trusting my son, who's far more statistically savvy than I am to have checked the data before sending it on. The tables of data are there for you to look at on the site. Here's the summary:

* Black women are sweethearts. Or just talkative. But either way, they are by far the most likely to reply to your first message. In many cases, their response rate is one and a half times the average, and overall black women reply about a quarter more often.
* White men get more responses. Whatever it is, white males just get more replies from almost every group. We were careful to preselect our data pool so that physical attractiveness (as measured by our site picture-rating utility) was roughly even across all the race/gender slices. For guys, we did likewise with height.
* White women prefer white men to the exclusion of everyone else—and Asian and Hispanic women prefer them even more exclusively. These three types of women only respond well to white men. More significantly, these groups’ reply rates to non-whites is terrible. Asian women write back non-white males at 21.9%, Hispanic women at 22.9%, and white women at 23.0%. It’s here where things get interesting, for white women in particular. If you look at the match-by-race table before this one, the “should-look-like” one, you see that white women have an above-average compatibility with almost every group. Yet they only reply well to guys who look like them. There’s more data on this towards the end of the post.
* Men don’t write black women back. Or rather, they write them back far less often than they should. Black women reply the most, yet get by far the fewest replies. Essentially every race—including other blacks—singles them out for the cold shoulder.
* White guys are shitty, but fairly even-handed about it. The average reply rate of non-white males is 48.1%, while white guys’ is only 40.5%. Basically, they write back about 20% less often. It’s ironic that white guys are worst responders, because as we saw above they get the most replies. That has apparently made them very self-absorbed. It’s interesting that white males do manage to reply to Middle Eastern women. Is there some kind of emergent fetish there? As Middle Easterners are becoming America’s next racial bogeyman, maybe there’s some kind of forbidden fruit thing going on. (Perhaps a reader more up-to-date on his or her Post-Colonial Theory can step in here? Just kidding. Don’t.)

That's the subtle racism - from people who wouldn't think twice about hiring someone of a different race and might never tell a racist joke. But despite how far we've come, out-and-out racism is still alive and well in little pockets, even among public officials who deny people their rights based on their race.

The LA Times has a short AP piece in the paper today which shows us that racism, in its most blatant forms, is still alive and well in the US. A government official, a Justice of the Peace, in Louisiana regularly refuses to marry mixed race couples. I found a longer version of the AP story on The Grio:

A white Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.

Go to the Grio for the rest.



So Obama is one of those children this guy is concerned with. He's concerned, what, that they may become president? Or the black and white blood is mixed inside them? Blood is red.

Race does still matter. For some barely at all. For others, only when it gets close to family. For some it's still an all consuming issue and while most still mask it with other issues (people opposed naming 9th Avenue in Anchorage because "it would disturb the numerical integrity of the street names"), but some, like the justice of the peace in the story above, still believe the races shouldn't mix.

Casa Sanchez

You can click on the yellow button with the black arrow to get into the mood.
Casa Sanchez Mariachi by AKRaven

We picked from among seven nearby Mexican restaurants tonight. Casa Sanchez seemed to be the one that stood out. It sounded like a bit more than the little Mom and Pop places we've been going to when it said to get reservations. It was seven and we got reservations for 8:30pm.

When we got there I didn't find out it was valet parking until I pulled into the parking lot from the alley. The waiting room was quite a different style from any place we've been.

We were seated pretty quick (we did have reservations).

About 9pm a band came on stage. (If you haven't pushed the yellow button with the black arrow, do it now." Since I'm running low on my startup disk, I just made and audio, no video.)










Then another band was recognized (they were eating in the restaurant) and then the musicians fanned around the room to tables where someone had a birthday. The violinist was at one nearby table and a trumpet at another.

Then the wait staff brought out the birthday cakes.







And the trumpeter posed with my mom for a picture. (It was pretty dark so it's quite grainy.)




And there was more dancing as we left.

The bill was 2 to 3 times what we've paid at other places, but the food was good and the atmosphere was great. This was more than the kitchy mariachi bands you hear everywhere.

Fence and Gate are Moving Along

Brian got a lot of work done today. I bundled the ivy and tree branches that were piled in the driveway for collection Monday. Tomorrow is a day off.





Here's the pole he was drilling in the section between my mom's house and the neighbors.



The picture on top goes to the left of the picture below. The old fence is leaning there against the house and will go up on the hill where Brian's working above. There's new fencing for fence and gate in the picture below.
You can see the earlier pictures here. It's amazing how you get used to a space and don't think about how it could look if you made a few changes. Just opening up the fence changed the look a lot. This evening I thought, gee, we could take out some of the hill and put a little table for breakfast in there. Nothing 'is' permanently and often problems force us to something better than we would have done. In this case the bad gate is offering new opportunities.