Sex Ed. in Espanya

So I was walking home from school with my soon to be six year old Zoe and she said,"When I was born was it natural or was it by caesarian?" She said this while making a cutting motion across her stomach. "Uh, naturally", I responded trying to look as cool an as unpuzzled as possible. "So do you know how we are made?" "Well, yeah, you mean how are we conceived?", I said trying not to use the phrase "where babies come from." I mean the kid's fluent in four languages and regularly uses words like profound and facile. "Do you?", I asked with a slight amount of apprehension. ""Yeah, sure, the man places his penis in the woman's vulva and then he gives the woman a baby and she makes it grow." Note that when Zoe mentioned penis and vulva she touched mine and then of course hers. This went on on one of the busiest pedestrian streets in Barcelona. "Is that right?" "Yep, about 95% of it is right on the money." "You and Mommy did that?" "Yep," Laughter ensued.

I spoke with Senyor Casas who owns the school that Zoe attends about the conversation that I had with her. Mr. Casas is a swell guy and is always available to chat about things like penises and vulvas. Yes, in Spain schools are required by law to educate the children in kindergarten about, gulp, sex. Being an American I was a little bothered by this. But you know, why not? They take the dark mysteries out of it right away. The kids don't seem to freak out with this info. It sure beats my introduction at a much older age which lead to all sorts of confusion regarding appropriate orifices. The less said about this the better.

Quintessential

The older I get the more annoyed I get when "things" don't work. I'm going to start posting pictures of great things. Things that don't break. Things that work every time. Things that are perfectly designed to serve a purpose.

Here's number one: The aluminum espresso maker.

Darrell is a genius, again...

This just in from Darrell Williams:

The Enormous Nothing

The leaves moved across the sand like lizards until there were no more leaves and only the soft sound of countless specks of former mountains moving in slow-motion along the never-never. David Kngwarreye stood motionless in the sun. Today would be a better day, of this the birds had sung. Sky would turn to water, snakes would dance in the wind, and David would cross the Kakadu in bare feet like his ancestors before him. Tomorrow would be his death. Of this, he was sure. But today stretched before him like eternity and that would be a good thing. He was alive for today, and that was a good thing.

Makes you want to read more which is more than I can say for a lot of fiction these days. Darrell's abilities as a film-maker are so evident in his writing. It is just so visually and emotionally evocative.

Three gold stars

I bought myself a present for my birthday; a chromatic harmonica. Now this is not your usual chromatic harmonica it's a custom tuned (G diminished, if there are any musicos reading along) number made by a little company located what was formerly Eastern Germany.

The whole process of getting this beauty was a lovely experience (more on this later) but todays topic is a few thoughts on learning and accomplishments. OK let it be known that I have an aptitude for music. I can pretty much make a passable noise on a bunch of instruments. But with this aptitude comes laziness which has hindered my ability to move to a higher level of skill. Translation: I can fake it, so why bother with all the tedious stuff? I've been playing piano since I was 4 years old but if even you put a gun to my head I still couldn't play a scale the "correct" way.

I've been playing harmonicas off and on since my debut with Dave Johnson and Devan Garlock in the Fremont Jr. High talent show. I played the french horn (?) line on Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer." It was the beginning of my short but sweet academic "popularity phase" where at lunch time I actually got to sit at the same table as the groovy kids. Anyway, I kind of get harmonicas and can do (fake) some pretty mean "Chicago" blues riffs on the diatonic (OK jargon watch, a diatonic is the short one favored by cowboys, sharecroppers and burley black guys in sharp suites). The chromatic is another instrument all together. It has all 12 notes available (the diatonic, "officially" only has 7). Fewer people play the chromatic and as such there really are only a handful of relatively famous players. Toots Thielman is probably the most well known but Stevie Wonder started his career (when he was known as "Little Stevie Wonder") spicing up his lovely tunes with a chromatic.

Anyway I made a promise to myself to not to just dink around with this new intrument. I want to learn it properly; starting with the basics and then moving into tunes and then improvisation.

Allow me to bore you for a bit. The diminished tuned chromatic is a pretty novel harmonica. You can play all 12 keys by learning just three simple patterns. Compare this to a normal chromatic where playing 12 keys require you learn 12 patterns (some of which are pretty nasty) and you can see it's advantages.

So I gave myself a goal; one pattern in one week of 1/2 hour sessions. Well I was too generous with needed time, basically it took me an hour per pattern to more or less "get it."

By learning the patterns I felt as though I had really accomplished something with a small but well directed amount of effort. I then decided to reward my self by learning a tune. I've always wanted to play John Coltrane's beautiful ballad "Niama." You know what? On the "dimi" chromatic I had it picked out in half an hour! So reward rewarded it' back to the wood shed; task: play the patterns descending. Once that is acomplished the next reward is learning Charles Mingus' "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat." Another slow wonderful ballad that I've been dying to play for years.

It seems that just about everything in life is so intangible. What are we successful at? Being a parent? Our work? Friendships? Relationships? So much effort is put into day to day life and to be honest the rewards are often pretty hard to percieve. Money. Affection. Acknowledgement. Acceptance. Other than dinero these are all so vague. I've always wished there was somebody out there to put a gold stars on the top of the notebook paper of my life. I guess it's up to me to put those stars on. Getting this instrument maybe the best thing I've done for myself in years. Three gold stars for Robin. "Good Job! Keep it up!"

Spaghetti a la Hobo

Last night I got creative with the left overs. OK some of them were pretty high end, particularly the Jamon, but still it was a bold session of winging it.

First I chopped up a sad half an onion. Then the aforementioned ham. Hey, I've fallen in love with using scissors in the kitchen, it made quick work of an aging but still tasty, sort low level Jamon Serrano. OK, there was a scrawny weeny in the fridge too and rather than look at for the rest of my life I sniped that up as well. To be honest weenies will not be visiting this dish again...

In to the magic cast iron skillet it all went, of course with a little olive oil. I should have done the onions separately but who's counting.

Now comes the free form section. I tossed in some left over spaghetti, stirred it around and hey it looked pretty good but it certainly wasn't dangerous and out there and I suspect has been on Italian farm tables for 500 years. So to shake it up I broke 2 eggs, added some pre-grated bag guyere to the noodles and commenced to moving the stuff around the pan with two wooden spoons. After the eggs looked more of less cooked I sprinked on some Parmesan and tested the concoction on Zoe who gave it a favorable review by cleaning her plate and asking for more.

Alas this was not possible because there was just enough for moi. OK, I did slip her a few strands of pasta. Like I said, the only mistake was the old hot dog. Maybe spaghetti and hot dogs go together in the world of "Franco-American" but not in my kitchen. Hey no disrespect meant to "Spaghetti Os." I used to love that stuff. Who would of thought it, spaghetti in a can. Post war America was soooo easy.