Epic It-Feels-Like-Saturday Rooftop Feast

What an epic day, thanks to Miss Morgan. (Dear, START A FOOD BLOG. :*)

We started off at the Renegade Craft Fair - I feel like that will need to be a separate post, because I have so many beautiful cards and crafts and wonderful treasure finds. But alas, they have not yet been photographed or scanned, so that will have to wait until tonight when I get home.

Here's a snap to keep you tided over until then:

We spent the rest of the day recovering from the overload of people and crafts and crowdedness with an EPIC rooftop feast. Joan invited us into her beautiful home (full of crafts and found objects and art) and we assembled a buffet the likes of which has never been seen.

Clockwise from left: cheese plate with 5 kinds of cheese + white nectarine + orange, caprese salad, wine with swedish fish "ice cubes," and homemade guacamole.

Clockwise from left: toasted brie with apples, walnuts and honey; salami; cured salmon with peppercorns; smoked salmon; basil.

Heading up to the roof.. (+semifreddi's sour batard!)

First plate (of many):

Miss Joan enjoying the sun:

Aaand last but not least me & Morgan each wearing one of Joan's beautiful handmade wood-burned earrings. This girl is amazing - from what I could gather, her parents are woodworkers and toymakers, so she works with a lot of recycled and organic wood and other interesting found objects. So inspiring! Keep an eye out for her work under the name Sentient Salvage, coming soon.

I couldn't believe how inspired I felt by Joan's home - she's lived there on and off for about 7 years, and you can absolutely feel the love and warmth she has infused into her home. So many different art pieces and hangings and knickknacks, and yet nothing felt cluttered and everything was very clean and tidy and easy to maneuver. Definitely a house made for comfort. I am inspired to nest more in my own home! I always have this vaguely anxious urge for flight, to not get attached to anything or anyone. But we become attached to people and places whether we want to or not. Why NOT nest in my own home, regardless of whether I'll be there for a month or a year or a decade? It's a hard mental block to get around, but I think it'll ultimately feel really good.

I've already got three new projects going:

1. Rearranging my bedroom so my bed is diagonally in the corner by the window (love sunlight on my bed in the morning!)
2. I found a white nightstand down in my garage, and am going to paint it sky blue and buy new knobs and replace my wobbly stack of milk crates with an actual bedside table. Plus it's got doors and two shelves, plus a drawer. Perfect! And free!
3. I have an old oval mirror that's pretty chintzy, but I was thinking of stringing some ribbons or wire across it and making it a necklace or earring display. I love mirrors.

Feeling pretty inspired (although exhausted from everything) and ready to craft...

Friday

Today is Friday - let's see what Flickr has to say about that... I know I'm wishing for a little Friday relief. Busy workday today (which is actually a great thing) and a busy weekend ahead (also a great thing) - still, I'm wishing for a few moments to myself, to read and relax...

DAMN does this chair look great:

1. kaylovesvintage

2. wansoo

3. sabinche

4. inazuman

5. davidlev

(click the images for links to the flickr pages.)

TGIF indeed.

Citybound

Being away, even for a day, always makes me miss home/the city - never used to be like this. Wonder what changed?











1. Root Elements
2. teenyredshoes
3. kooop
4. Xxxtine
5. alpha haidork

Serge Hambourg

I spent a few minutes after my last lecture today speaking to my GSI, just wrapping up the course in my own head and telling her what a great job she's done as an instructor. One thing she mentioned was that I showed a sort of knack for descriptive journalistic writing, which I have always enjoyed. (I say this without ego - I am merely repeating her words.)

After speaking with her (and eating lunch at the lovely Cafe Muse, of course), I spent the rest of my break between lectures exploring the bowels of the Berkeley Art Museum. Since I've written two papers on the Borderlandia exhibition alone, which has been running since mid-February, I've somewhat neglected the rest of the museum. So I spent some time looking at the collection of Serge Hambourg's photos from the Paris clash of 1968, and of course I gave in and bought the gorgeous catalogue (which is, as we speak, arranged lovingly on my bookshelf which is already overflowing). 



I've been unable to find most of the images online, so I'll provide a description of the work: Hambourg (at the time a photographer for a French tabloid magazine) photographed in black and white the riots and protests that eventually led to the fall of the French de Gaulle government. The photographs themselves are artfully captured images of the face of the revolution and of the sentiment that powered the movement itself. The protesters were of all classes and creeds, but there was an enormous student faction that was wildly successful in its actions.



Of course most of my favorite images were those I was unable to find online, and which were the most revealing as to the strong student presence in the Paris protests of 1968. I guess what I found compelling when I viewed the entire exhibition was this glimpse of what a student revolution would actually look like. I go to the University of California, Berkeley, which everyone knows is a hotbed for revolutionary action and reformist fervor. Right? Wrong. The Berkeley of the 1960s and 1970s was an important base of operations for student movements fighting for a range of causes, but the students here now (sadly, myself more often than not included) are more occupied with creative ways to get A's without working for it than championing the weak and the oppressed. 



In Hambourg's photographs, I identify with these students who, dissatisfied with their government, united in revolutionary fervor. And yet I am saddened by the fact that this kind of revolution seems so impossible in the United States of today, where students are often dismissed as children and no one really cares. What Hambourg's photos (and any kind of documentation of various student movements of the 1960s) make me really want is this kind of unitary action on the part of today's students. Are we so spread out as a generation that fighting effectively for a cause is impossible?