Happy Thanksgiving!

This is what out dinner table looks like tonight:


At this point, our tradition is to substitute hotpot for turkey.


I hope you all have a wonderful holiday, with family and friends and much to be thankful for!

The People's Climate March, a Recap

Over the weekend, I went to the People's Climate March. I went alone, one of more than 300,000 people who attended the New York City event (similar marches were staged in cities around the world), and was warmly welcomed by perfect strangers, from climate scientists to concerned parents pushing baby strollers. There was universally an acknowledgement of solidarity, of common and overarching cause. There was a determination that the United Nations should hear us, on the weekend of the Climate Summit.

The March spanned more than fifty blocks on Manhattan's West Side, from 86th Street down to 34th Street. I joined about halfway through, having rushed across the river from the Brooklyn Book Festival, which was unfortunately on the same day. I tried to document what I could; my batteries gave out partway through...

I took this photo from just outside the barricade; it gives a good sense of the density of marchers along the route.

Marchers flocked to New York from colleges and universities throughout the Northeast, bringing handmade signs, slick printed banners, and matching t-shirts. (You know it's a real campus group when it has special t-shirts!)

There were also members of a diverse array of disproportionately-impacted communities, from indigenous populations to farmers to anyone who happened to live in a low-lying coastal region, included most Hurricane Sandy victims in the tri-state area (an unsurprisingly well-represented group).

Activists of all ages carried signs and slogans, and looked pretty happy to be here. It wasn't just young, idealistic college students!

These marchers, though, look like young, idealistic college students... The "fill-in-the-blank" signs were handed out to marchers at the beginning of the day. There was a wonderful diversity of answers, from the indisputably factual to the unflinchingly personal.

There were some interesting pieces of green technology along for the ride. I was especially taken with this tiny solar-powered vehicle, which reminded me of a cross between a VW Beetle and a golf cart. (It was moving at slow enough speeds that children could clamber on.)

I fell in with a group of scientists, some of whom had come all the way from the U.K. to participate in the march. They had an incredible prop: an enormous rolling blackboard covered in real data. The evidence was clear, from more than ten feet away!

And of course, the scientists came prepared with clever exoplanet jokes.

This photo was taken towards the end of the march, as the afternoon was just giving way to early evening. As the lighting is lacking, the signs read "Tuvalu," "Save the Arctic," and "Stop the tar sands at the source." This was indeed the delegation representing the tiny Pacific archipelago of Tuvalu, which is in danger of being submerged by rising sea levels. Some of them probably came a very long way to be heard in front of the United Nations.

As for the media round-up, my favorite pieces about the March:

• The New Yorker ran an excellent article about the event, as well as a interview with the environmentalist and scholar Bill McKibben, one of the primary organizers of the March.
• The New York Times also covered the March, including audiovisual material that gives a great sense of the numbers and diversity of the marchers. A follow-up article provided deeper analysis of the economics behind climate change mitigation.

The U.N. appears to have gotten the message -- but it remains to be seen in the months and years ahead how seriously its member states take their new vows on climate action. It will require intricate policy and sustained initiative to see them through the vagaries of politics, of course. But no country can claim that its citizens do not care or will not be affected by climate change.

An Extremely Literary Week: BEA, Housing Works, and Shakespeare

I have just had possibly the most literary week of my life (outside of majoring in English at university), and it was spectacular. Here are some of the highlights:

BookExpo America

This is the annual trade fair for publishing in the US (which also attracts a lot of foreign exhibitors). As I did last year, I borrowed a pass from one of my coworkers and attended the fair for a few hours on Thursday. I got to gawk at the exhibits, catch up with some former colleagues, and grab a pile of galleys that I'm very excited to dive into (not literally):

And parked right in the Javits Center was the Penguin truck!

The moment I spotted this reminded me of being seven years old again, watching the ice cream truck come around the corner. (Maybe I was a weird kid.)

Housing Works Book Fair

Over the weekend, I volunteered at the Housing Works Book Fair. It's a great organization -- all proceeds from the bookstore go towards combating homelessness and AIDS. They have a street fair every summer where used books and media are sold very cheaply ($1 books!), with food, live music, and other festivities. There were pavilions full of books, which I was helping stock:

And at the end of the day, there were still boxes upon boxes of books remaining, so we constructed a great wall of books along the sidewalk (from which the books were loaded onto a truck):

Shakespeare in the Park

Tonight, my friend Deb won tickets to Much Ado About Nothing, the first play of this summer's Shakespeare in the Park. I adore Shakespeare, and though I've entered the lottery for (free!) tickets many times, I've never won. I was thrilled to finally be able to partake of this New York summer tradition, and it was every bit as excellent as I expected. I'd forgotten how funny Much Ado About Nothing really is (I read it years ago), and it's so much better live than it is on the page. I can't wait for King Lear during the second half of the season!

And that was my week. I'm looking forward to more literary pursuits in the coming months!

R.I.P. Rizzoli Bookstore

As the bibliophiles and New Yorkers among my readers might have heard, the city's iconic Rizzoli Bookstore is being evicted from its iconic Midtown premises, to be replaced by a luxury high-rise. Despite petitions and protests, this historic location was denied landmark status on a pure technicality; the bookstore is housed in what used to be a piano showroom, with vaulted ceilings and massive cast-iron chandeliers that make visitors feel as though they've stepped into the pages of history. (Appropriately, Rizzoli is known for its stock of art books.) Today was the store's last day in business, and it feels a bit like the end of an era.

There's been an outpouring of grief and outrage on the internet, unsurprisingly. One of the most moving  and articulate pieces about Rizzoli is this rather personal New Yorker article by Jon Michaud:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/01/rizzoli-and-selling-books-to-madonna

It recalls an almost Gatsby-esque old New York, doesn't it? (And of course, the pictures are stunning.) I love the idea -- and it's more than a mere idea -- of a bookstore as the sort of village that raises exemplary young adults. It seems to be a recurring theme both in literature (Christopher Morley and, more recently, Robin Sloan come to mind) and in real life, and it saddens me to think that such an education might no longer be available to coming generations.

I will have more thoughts on this later, I'm sure. For now, though, allow me to wallow.

Christmas Tree!

Today we decorated our Christmas tree! It looks like this:

And here it is in the dark, with all of its multicolored, flashing lights:

It never quite feels like the holidays are upon us until we've put up our tree. Every year, my sister and I petition for a larger one, and every year, my mother insists that we buy a smaller one. This year, we compromised at "just a little taller than my father."

Even though I'm a "real adult" now, having a Christmas tree with some presents underneath never fails to make me feel like a little kid again. It's good to be home for the holidays. 

Carl Sagan Day

Happy Carl Sagan Day!

Carl Sagan was one of the first and most well-known American populist scientists. That is, he championed the worthy cause of bringing science (especially astronomy) to the non-scientist public. (For comparison's sake, he was a contemporary of Freeman Dyson, another such luminary, and the forefather of scientists like Brian Greene and Neil deGrasse Tyson.) Sagan is perhaps best known for his novel Contact, subsequently made into an eponymous film, and for the television series Cosmos. It's fitting that he should have his own day of celebration (he would have been 79 today), wherein people contemplate the great beyond.

In addition to popularizing science, Sagan was also one of the great advocates for SETI in his day, as well as a proponent of nuclear disarmament. He was, as were many great scientists, a profound humanist. He was the originator of the saying "We are all stardust," one of my all-time favorites. (If I were ever to get a quotation tattooed somewhere on my body, this would be a top contender. It helps that it's short.) In another life, I might have gone into astrophysics -- largely because I grew up reading books by people like him.

Addendum: the Library of Congress recently acquired Carl Sagan's papers, which include his reading lists. This is facinating stuff!

R.I.P Seamus Heaney

A literary luminary died today:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13930435

I've owned a copy of Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf for as long as I can remember, and I've read it cover-to-cover at least three times. It's beautiful, and not just because the parallel text (with annotations!) indicates just how faithfully Heaney translated from the original Anglo-Saxon. Rather, given the cadence and word choice of his modern English, it becomes immediately evident that the translator is himself a poet.

Few poets have been as universally revered in their lifetimes as Heaney was. It has been said, even before today, that he was Yeats's successor as Ireland's foremost poet -- and one would be hard-pressed to find a competitor for the accolade. His original poetry was not only sublime, but also widely accessible -- he was a true poet of the people. His laurels are too many to count (including the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Struga Golden Wreath, and the Irish PEN), but in my mind, one of his most significant accomplishments was that he brought poetry to those who might not otherwise consume poetry, who might consider the art too academic, too arcane. He brought beauty and wonder to generations of readers who saw something of themselves set on paper in his words.

He was, by all accounts, a compassionate and upstanding man who was profoundly aware of his position as a voice of the people in a land often rent by civil and religious strife. He tried to balance a sense of cultural heritage and pride of place with a concern for individuals that was evident in everything he wrote. One of my favorite of his poems, "Digging," describes his work as a natural continuation of the life's work of his forefathers, telling the story of several generations in just a few verses. (You can hear Heaney's own rendition of it here.)

A star has fallen.

Edit: I just discovered that Seamus Heaney's last words, delivered via text message, were "Noli timere" (Latin for "Be not afraid"). How fitting -- he was a poet to the last.

R.I.P. Met Admissions Tags

Just a few days after my trip to the Met, I saw this article in The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/arts/design/metropolitan-museum-sheds-its-metal-admissions-tags.html?hp

Starting today, the Met is retiring its iconic metal admissions tags in favor of admissions stickers. While it's a logically sensible decision, the child in me mourns the passing of an era. I hung out at the Met in high school (I probably went there about as often as most normal girls went to the mall), and amassed quite the collection of Met tags:

Yes, I have a special bowl for them. I think I'm still missing one or two of the "official" colors (and I likely have a few colors that have since been discontinued):

It'll be a bit of an adjustment next time I go -- I'll receive a sticker, and stare at it for a second in bewilderment, before realizing that the colored tags with their Leonardo Ms are no more.

If I Used Twitter

tonight's post would be:

2nd place at YPG spelling bee: winner got "quixotic;" my word not found in OED. Still, pretty cool consolation prize: tinyurl.com/oac7w92.

It's a very graphically interesting cover design:

That is all.

Today

was wonderful and quintessentially New York -- the sort of day that makes me enormously thankful to live in such a vibrant, diverse city full of old friends and affable strangers. I don't mean to turn this blog into a series of diary entries -- that would seem rather self-indulgent -- but today was full of sights and sounds and people that I want to remember.

It began with brunch with a dear friend who is returning to the city after college, a relocation for which I'm grateful because I've missed her these few years. We go back a long time; we played together as children, went to the same elementary school and Chinese school, and have seen each other through our best and worst moments ever after.

We ate at a Greek place in our neighborhood in Queens; we've been coming here once or twice a year since high school. I had an excellent crêpe and we caught up on each other's lives -- we talked about work and friends and our grand ambitions in life. She's one of the few people with whom I discuss the latter topic; despite pursuing radically different fields, we have similarly coherent and somewhat lofty visions of the future. Kindred spirits, I'd say.

After brunch, I met up with a college friend in Manhattan. On the way there, I spotted a group of people in 1920s garb:

There seem to be a number of Jazz Age-themed events going on this summer, even more so than usual (likely prompted by the recent The Great Gatsby film). I was reminded of the Gatsby party I attended in May -- exactly a month ago, as it happens -- which was an industry event hosted by Fitzgerald's publisher and included a costume contest. (I dressed up but didn't win; there were some truly spectacular costumes!)

So I got bubble tea in Chinatown with my friend (it seems like I have quite a few moments that involve bubble tea...). He's a Californian who moved to New York a few months ago, whom I didn't realize was in town until I bumped into him at an alumni event on Monday! He was a few years ahead of me in school and we'd lost touch for a while after he graduated, but he's now working at a start-up in Silicon Alley and lives downtown. 

We met up with one of his friends in Central Park, who was hanging out on the lawn with a few other people we didn't know. It was a gathering of, at least from my perspective, friends and strangers connected to each other by a few tenuous degrees of separation. Though it seems unlikely that I'll encounter these people again -- and in a few months I would be hard-pressed to even recognize them on the street -- for an hour or so, we shared a blanket, a conversation, a patch of sunlight in the Park -- a tiny slice of New York.

At one point, there was a moment of silence -- a completely natural, contented lull in the conversation. We watched a group of small children chase each other around on the lawn, and soon observed that they were all following one small boy who held aloft some sort of styrofoam disc. I was distinctly reminded of The Lord of the Flies -- it was an uncanny analogue of the conch! I said as much to the others, and we had an entertaining few minutes trying to spot the Piggy of the group.

Our group splintered apart in twos and threes. My friend and I wandered through Central Park conversing and taking in the sights and sounds of summer. We stumbled upon a guitarist/vocalist duo performing in front of the lake (with a very professional sound system) and sat in the grass for a few songs. We found a large, fenced-off section of road where people were rollerskating in circles around a rock band which had set up in the middle of the walkway. There was a chalked-off section next to the band where people were dancing, and so we ended up swing-dancing to live music in the middle of a roller derby! (My friend is, incidentally, an excellent dancer; it's a shame we didn't overlap at school for longer.) We also happened upon trio of busking musicians consisting of two drummers and a bagpiper:

The snare drum (obscured in this photo by the man in black), the djembe, the bongos, and the bagpipes seem like a highly unlikely combination (especially the bagpipes!) but they work surprisingly well together. It was a perfect microcosm of the diversity and cooperative spirit of this extraordinary city. (My friend got their card, afterwards; apparently they have a website.)

We then got coffee with a third friend, another Stanford alumnus making his way in New York. We only had an hour, but it was an hour well-spent: a potent reminder that even in this bustling, hectic place, we make time for each other because it's the small moments as much as the grand gestures that comprise any human understanding.

We had dinner near his apartment in Greenwich Village with his roommate. We tried an American restaurant she suggested, and passed a merry hour or two getting to know each other. She's an architect from Hawai'i, so naturally I broached the question of whether she can play the ukulele! (Passably, was the answer.) My friend plays the guitar and also, to a lesser extent, the ukulele, so we're going to play for each other sometime. (I didn't know this about him until today.)

And then we went our separate ways, the two of them to catch a film in the Village, and I to the F train headed into Queens. I spent a quiet hour reading on the subway, with the rumble of the train and a dozen indistinct conversations in the background. In Queens, I stopped by my favorite neighborhood bakery to buy a cake for Father's Day tomorrow.

All in all, it was a lovely day in the City. Here's to more such days in the future.

Today

I performed at an open mic for the first time in a while. I went to the one at Pete's in Brooklyn, a cozy, non-judgmental venue I've played on occasion in the past. I had a new song to try out in front of an audience, and I don't think I have been this nervous about performing in quite a long time.

Art -- true art -- is terrifyingly honest, terrifyingly intimate. I would liken it to a flaying of the soul, so that complete strangers can see my bones and sinews, the colour of my blood and the ticking of my heart. It's the baring of the darkest and most vulnerable parts of oneself, the parts that make us most human. The fact that we can write about such things, can continue to sing about them and use them to fuel our greatest creative works, means that we are every day surviving them and weaving them into the fabric of our existence.

Part of what moves us to create, what drives us (or at least me) to write, is that it's an extension -- even a distillation -- of self. I've often heard writers say that there's a piece of themselves in every work of literature they produce. One's creation never quite lives up to the vision in one's mind, no matter how we strive for perfection, but seeing it actualized on the page fulfills in us a primal need to see ourselves (our thoughts, our dreams, our nightmares) reflected in the world around us -- the wonderful, frightening, and utterly strange place that it is.

So I sat on a barstool, under a spotlight in a dark room where I didn't know anybody, looking out into that small sea of upturned faces. I was there to play a song that I was in serious danger of not being able to finish -- I am still too close to the material. I had other pieces I could have performed instead and no one would have been the wiser -- and for a few heart-stopping moments I considered switching songs -- but I felt that I owed it to myself to bite down and see it through. The very nature of art, it occurred to me then, meant that -- if I was doing it right -- I would always be, in some capacity, too close to the material. It's not supposed to be safe or comfortable or without risk. It's meant to be honest, a reckoning you're never quite ready for.

On that stage, fingering the first few notes on my ukulele, I realized that I couldn't make out a single face in the crowd -- that I wasn't playing for them at all. I wasn't thinking about whether they would enjoy it or what they would think of me. All I knew was that, in those five minutes, for all that it would leave me gutted and flayed, I had to get through the song for me. It was the most perfectly selfish thing -- and it was exactly what I needed.

I sang it with my eyes squeezed shut. I left out one or two chords in the middle of the piece. My voice cracked once -- I may have choked up at some point. But I remembered all of the words, and in the right order. It was not my best performance, but by god, it was art. 

And the moment of silence before the applause, when all I could hear was the buzz of the stage lights and the thundering of my own heartbeat in my ears -- that was a small victory in itself.

BookExpo America, or, "Hey, Look, a Galley!"

Today was my first time attending BEA (BookExpo America), which is the largest publishing trade fair in North America (and possibly the world, though the ones in London, Frankfurt, and Bologna are probably bigger). It's held at the Javits Center, which might be one of the most inconveniently located spaces in New York. 

BEA was... huge. I was not expecting it to be quite so huge, even though, considering it's attended by all of trade publishing in the US, I really should have known. I saw some old friends from Algonquin, snagged a cupcake at an author signing, and of course, picked up a tote bag-full of ARCs:

(The tissue box is there for perspective. I lugged that pile from the West Side back to Queens in ninety-degree weather, and it's absolutely worth it.)

Advance reading copies -- and free finished books -- are one of the best perks in publishing (which, admittedly, is an industry without that many perks). I have fond memories from my college internship days of scouring the Penguin Classics overflow shelves for books on my autumn quarter syllabi. This time, the loot is mostly historical fiction, literary fiction, and women's fiction, with a random cookbook that I got from a friend at Workman in there (third from the bottom).

Other things seen at BEA:

I think they're Pokemon? (How many sales assistants does it take to assemble a five-foot Lego statue?)

This, too, might have looked more normal at Comic Con... :-P

Themed cupcakes!

(The post title is an inside joke, for those of you who are really confused.)

Today

is the 55th anniversary of the death of Rosalind Franklin, an unsung heroine of biophysics (Watson and Crick got all the credit, including the Nobel Prize that she should have been jointly awarded). Women like Franklin -- like Marie Curie, like Ada Lovelace -- were among my childhood idols.

I am reminded of a blog post I wrote a few months ago, wherein I discuss feminism and dead people. Perhaps mine is not the generation in which we achieve true gender equality, but it is inevitable -- I have faith that the inexorable progress of our species is headed in such a direction -- and I hope to see it within my lifetime. Someday, female scientists, artists, leaders, and thinkers will be extraordinary for their accomplishments alone; someday, no one will even think to mention that a Nobel Prize winner was female -- that she won will be accomplishment enough.

And here are some pictures of very colorful (very pretty) corn in honor of Franklin's work on the structure of DNA:
http://milkwood.net/2012/05/12/glass-gem-corn-and-other-heirloom-jewels-of-the-corn-cabinet/

From China (or Just Home), With Love

This is what my bed looks like this week:

You wouldn't be able to tell from the picture, but the bears, chicks, and leaves are actually embroidered felt patches. It's like I'm sleeping in a cocoon made of children's television shows and Sanrio-filled dreams. (I'm guessing that my mother bought the bedcovers/pillowcase in China.) Adorable, but makes me feel like I'm five again.

Vote Today!

It's Election Day. Please vote. No matter who you vote for or whether you live in a swing state, your vote matters.

That is all.

Updates on the Storm Front

For all of you who are concerned in the wake of Sandy: I'm alive, my family is safe, we have power and water, and our house is fine. My office is in the blackout zone, so the building has no power and even our servers and emergency hotline are down; I won't be returning to work until they get electricity back. (Not to mention that public transportation is down and Manhattan is essentially cut off from the rest of the city.)

I hope everyone else in the Northeast is safe!

Update 11/03: The office building finally has power back!

Happy Bunsen Burner Day!

In honor of the 201st birthday of Robert Bunsen, I thought it would be eminently appropriate to share this picture -- it's probably the most beautiful Bunsen burner I've ever seen:
http://hiox.org/13831-bunsen-burner-day.php

Yes, I've seen quite a few. Mostly at a distance, or on Youtube, but still.

Happy Pi(e) Day, or, Things I Have Baked This Year

In honor of Pi Day, I thought I'd post the list of stuff I've baked thus far. (I love having a kitchen!) Many of these were done at Midnight Pie (after Friday Night Waltz). Midnight Pie is an event I first cooked up (no pun intended) last quarter. Because there were several weeks where I was unable to attend FNW due to midnight paper deadlines, I invited friends over for post-waltz pie instead. It became A Thing last quarter, and less so this quarter, but I'm really hoping to bring it back.

Anyhow, the list:

apple pie (x6)
blackberry-pear pie
blueberry-blackberry pie
chocolate chip cookie scones (they were meant to be cookies, but came out more like scones)
apple-banana-walnut pie (x2)
pumpkin pie (x3 -- twice with canned pumpkin, once with fresh pumpkin)
gingerbread
cranberry macadamia chocolate chip cookies
"apple" pound cake with strawberry jam and green icing
potatoes

One of these things is not like the others.

Note: most of these (the pies, at least) are modifications of recipes given me by my dear friend John, who's much better at all of this than I am.

R.I.P. Encyclopaedia Britannica

A sad day indeed:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/

We have an old set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica at home. It's from the 1980s, I believe. I was given it by my godparents after their daughter moved out, and it's been ensconced in a place of honor on the mantlepiece above the fireplace ever since. I remember using them as reference materials, of course, but more than that, I used to go downstairs and read an entry once in a while, just for fun (and to procrastinate on homework). It was a bit like the low-tech version of the Wikipedia game. I think it was one of the main reasons I was decent at trivia and parlor games, even though I generally fall flat on popular culture (a rather massive quiz bowl weakness, if you're playing individually).

We never did get another set -- which was probably a financially sound decision. I'm glad to have the one we do, and it saddens me that future generations of children might not have the opportunity to leaf through the Britannica on rainy afternoons. I thought nothing of it at the time, which was exactly the point -- such a pastime should be commonplace, and it won't be, anymore.

Fire and Ice (by Robert Frost)

I presented this very famous poem today in a history class about Einstein and his work. It's a beautiful little piece, and it's interesting to consider in the context of relativity and nuclear technology. 

Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost (1920)

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

I'm doing my paper on the cultural conversation between 20th century literature and Einsteinian physics. Relevant authors (of which I'll be discussing some subset in the paper) are people like Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, T. S. Eliot, Kurt Vonnegut, and of course, Robert Frost.