Continuous City

Farsi Beat

2010-06-27T22:30:00.002-04:00

Are you there internet? It’s me Deb.

Please anyone out there listening feel very free to use the comments section at the bottom of this page to help a sister out over here.

I’m not saying I was at all witty to begin with but what few wits I had, I am definitely now at the end them. The child is becoming too much to cope with and her quote unquote father is giving me no love from his big, important we-are-the-world job or whatever it is he’s doing.

In a desperate move to fix this, I turned toward my faithful solution, shopping, and headed out looking for retail miracles.

I ended up in Brixton Market, looking for Latin American products and after some hunting around these lovelies appeared:

Authentic fresh cactus sold by a Jamaican fellow. I cannot bring the child to her daddy in Mexico but it is possible to bring a little bit of Mexico to her. Between cactus and liberal applications of Mano Poderosa spray, perhaps I can make headway.

The stroll through Brixton Market was superb—as I paused to marvel at another impressive array of tropical vegetables and fruits, an extra-friendly chatterbox of a merchant struck up a conversation with me from across the aisle.

This is Farzan.

He told me he was from India, from Delhi and had been in London for 12 years, selling hair care products and cosmetics to his mostly African and Caribbean clientele.

Farzan had big plans for taking me to India with him, to Goa where he told me there were “lots of white people”. Flattered though I was, I told him I saw plenty of white people all the time and didn’t need to go all the way to Goa to see any more.

I asked Farzan if he spoke Hindi and he said “Of course and Urdu also and Farsi”. Why Farsi? Because actually Farzan was born in Afghanistan and moved as a child to India, a part of the story he left out. I asked “You are Sihk, right?” He told me that yes, all the “organic Sihks” come from Afghanistan.

This is Deb in the City saying, Khoda hafaz, namaste, wa-hey guru and goodbye from Brixton, Lambeth where more than 157 languages are spoken and many more are understood.

Please Sir, May I Have Some More?

2010-06-23T10:13:00.008-04:00

Hello internet, Deb in the City here, live from uncharacteristically sunny London, England.

So I decided to try and do some real sight seeing and in the spirit of Oliver which was very influential for me, I trekked over to Kings Cross to the Foundling Museum.

Starting with Charles Dickens, a strong case can be made for Britain’s genius in converting the social tragedy of abandoned children into a lucrative export product in the entertainment industry. A movie, a musical, a movie-musical, numerous television adaptations and an animated series can all site "Oliver Twist" as their source.

Dickens apparently based much of his well-known book about London orphans on stories he heard from children at what was the Foundling Hospital,

In the basement, there is a wonderful exhibit of art work by young people who have been “looked after” in foster care.

This picture, done by a young lady named Amy Brittan carried a quote alongside:

“You can do anything you want with art, it can be rubbish to other people, but good to you”, not unlike this blog.

I managed to find the modest gift shop, because an American, it is my god-given right to buy something on any occasion and I picked up a couple of very nicely done orphan paper dolls.

Grateful for being born in the 20^th century and not the 18^th I wandered out once more on streets that have been here since before my country got mad at this one and jumped ship. I know it’s uncool, but I am amazed by all the history around here.

But London’s modernities are impressive too and I am very curious about civic signage that I’ve seen.

There is the ubiquitous:

And accompanying camera. Americans love to be on camera and we are bred to believe that we deserve to be on television and become famous, so to me closed circuit tv is still tv. Watch for me on the next installment of Farnborough’s Got Talent.

So, whenever I talk to my friends back in the States, they always say something annoying like “Did you see the Queen yet?”, as if Her Royal Majesty is on some kind of permanent display for tourists, which she probably would be back in the US.

But just the other day when I was lost in the cement back alley of the Southbank Center I ran into a small crowd of people waiting by a very non-descript entranceway. I looked to the curb and saw this beauty:

The royal flag and lack of license plates gave it away so I patiently waited, feeling a little bit like a fake since I’m not even a subject of the crown, or anything official like that. Everyone around me in the little royal scrum was telling me stories of their last royal sightings and all I could contribute was that I’d seen President Obama’s dog the last time I was in Washington.

My patience was rewarded and in a few minutes, there she was.

I found myself suddenly queenstruck and though I am not at all a monarchist, I totally spazzed out and the next picture I took

betrays my royalty panic. I have to say though, when the driver turned the key on that Bentley, dude it purred like a kitten. I don’t really understand queens and stuff but as a Yankee, I am glad that Missus Betty Windor has got a sweet ride.

This is Deb in the City, where I have been up to London to visit the queen, like the pussycat. Mrrow.

London Calling

2010-06-21T09:46:00.000-04:00

Hiya internet. My name is still Deb and welcome back to my blog, Deb in the City.

Like most misguided people on the web, I feel I have something to say that someone else would definitely want to listen to and I have access to a high-speed connection. Plus, I just moved and instead of my usual gin-and-tonic stress management, I’m trying to cope creatively. That's called harm reduction.

As you can probably tell from my keyboard accent, I’m not from around here. And by here I don’t mean the digital everywhere of the internet but, I mean an actual place, London, England.

And by London I mean Farnborough. And by Farnborough, I mean here:

This is my home now and I like to think of it as a little slice of America, with enough garage space and pavement to give me a feeling of security, just 23 minutes by train to Waterloo.

So, I moved here to London with extensive knowledge about the place that I gathered from movie musicals like Mary Poppins, plus a television combination of Ab Fab and Helen Mirren on late night repeats of Prime Suspect. And I know, like every person who was a child in the English speaking world that London Bridge is falling down.

My first day out, with hesitation I walked across the famous span and it felt pretty solid. How long must children sing their song to get satisfaction? Keep up the optimistic singing kids, and maybe one day this reinforced concrete ode to civil engineering will obey.

After crossing and meandering for miles in the wanderers’ paradise of this massive city, I eventually found myself in an incredible shop called Original Products, the "foremost source of spiritual supplies, herbs and books". Standard holy cards and medals of saints sit side by side with blessing candles depicting more secular figures like Martin Luther King, Jr.

Another shopper in the store was trying to buy an image of Jesus:

Which looked pretty standard to me but I heard her say “in my country, this is the one that works”. I struck up a conversation with her.

She told me her name is Elliqua and that she is from Togo. Sadly the particular Jesus she wanted was not for sale.

As a nanny, in charge of a willful 8 year old, I thought Elliqua might have some tips on a special nanny charm or spell or prayer that could help me with my situation. She suggested I try an easy solution with this product, "Mano Poderosa" or "helping hand":

a quick, handy aerosol version of what is a much more complicated series of rituals to invoke divine help that my busy nanny schedule does not allow the time for.

This is Deb in the City, on the move in the Big Smoke, London England.

Melancholy Danes

2009-08-12T13:02:00.001-04:00

Internet, help me. Now there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. And it is not a murdered king and his melancholy son with the suicidal girlfriend.

OK, I had to go see Hamlet’s castle because all my friends back home keep asking me about it. So, there you go, that’s it. Pretty impressive, no? I have to say the gift shop was sort of disappointing because it was a little too tasteful. I did buy an Elsinore fridge magnet which wasn’t quite the Ophelia mouse pad I was hoping for but it’s better than nothing. They did have an Ophelia pretty princess outfit that came with it’s own little pink castle:

And Helsingor is a cozy little town, full of Swedes visiting from across the water, come to buy cheaper alcohol in Denmark. This is a little monument to Sweden I found at the waterfront.

Back on my bike in Copenhagen after my journey to Helsingor, I took a wrong turn on some gade or strade and ended up in front of this butcher shop:

Not to be silly, but I could not tell if butt was the name of the butcher or if the store specialized in a particular Danish rear-end specialty that I didn’t know about. I went inside the tiny, spotless shop and the cases were empty because it was the end of the day and everything was sold out.

This is Ibrahim Butt and he is the proud owner of the Butt Butcher. He is Pakistani and he opened the store about 6 months ago after being in Denmark 15 years. Ibrahim speaks Danish, English, Hindi and Urdu and as we talked of sausages, I heard a bird singing in the next room. I asked him what kind of bird it was and he said “a little brown one”. I asked, "is it your pet?" He smiled and said no. I asked "Is it your dinner?" And he laughed and said "no, it belongs to a friend and I am just taking care of the bird." "You’re babysitting the bird?" He smiled and said "yes, babysitting, people leave things sometimes for me to take care of." I knew exactly what he was talking about.

This is Deb in the City on the babysitting continuum saying farvel, goodbye, rama rama and salaam from Copenhagen, Denmark.

Modern Danish

2009-08-10T12:40:00.004-04:00

Hi internet, I’m still here living the good life, Danish style. Fifty per cent taxes on income seem high to me but in THe United States, my thirty per cent income tax pays to bail out failing banks and brokerage houses. Hey I'll gladly pay fifty per cent to have free education, cradle-to-grave universal healthcare and incredible minimalist teak furniture!

So today I was roaming around town on my bicycle while the child was at school and the other thing I really love about Copenhagen is that I can go practically anyplace on my bicycle which gives even a trip to the Irma Supermarket a feeling of great adventure.

Anyhow I was stopped at light and saw a fruit stand and the strawberries were calling to me so I parked and picked up a box and as I was paying, I saw some things I did not recognize as edible:

The nice woman at the stand, Pia explained to me that these were fresh hazelnuts and that they were in season now along with the strawberries. I have never eaten a hazelnut fresh before so Pia gave me a lesson in how to get the nut out of the elaborate wrapping and then she clobbered the shell with a cobblestone and presented me with the delicious fresh nut inside. Pia also told me I should watch my bag because there are a lot of “pocketpicks”. It was so adorable, I did not have the heart to correct her English.

Then I got a little lost of course since I’m still having a hard time with the street signs which number one are so tiny and number two Danish has three bonus letters that we don't have in English. Lost though I was, I found this amazing store:

Store is not quite the right word because really it is more like a museum inside.

This is Connie and she and her husband run Herold's Varehus. She is the fourth family generation to operate the store and some of the stock in the place is actually from the original Herold that opened the place. Connie says that people from the national theatre and various museums come all the time to buy old toys and paper decorations and all the other amazing things she sells.

For instance, I bought Mr. and Mrs. Viking paper dolls which Connie told me were from Norway but then she reminded me that Norway used to be part of Denmark, back in the day. I guess the United States used to be part of England back in the day and a lot of countries went through that British Empire phase. The British even left some souvenirs behind here in Copenhagen

This cannonball is stuck right in the wall of a building from 1736 where it landed in the Sankt Gertrud Strade when it was shot by the British Fleet when they shelled Copenhagen in 1807. I found it hard to believe that there was no museum built around this little piece of history or a whole theme park like it would have back in the States.

Speaking of history, we did manage to elect the first African-American president in the US so it was kind of hard to leave the just when things are starting to get good. But I have been able to ease my pain with special Danish treats that nobody back home is having:

This is a Superflyer, a true Danish treat. I know it would sound perfectly obvious to any Danish person but the idea of ice cream with two salty licorice sticks inside and covered with frozen licorice is just not a flavor combo that’s crossed the Atlantic. Sadly for my fellow Americans.

This is Deb in the City saying so long from Denmark where herring is for breakfast, hazelnuts are eaten raw and licorice goes on ice cream and they’re all delicious.

I heart KBH

2009-08-06T12:25:00.001-04:00

Hello there internet. Welcome to Deb in the City. I am Deb and I am going to show you my city here on my blog. OK, I know it is a vlog because it’s video but the word vlog sounds like it’s going to be a hot spiced wine drink and not something to do with the internet.

Deb in the City is my new coping mechanism since I’ve had a little stress lately because I just moved and I can’t say I saw this one coming but I now live in Copenhagen. And I mean Copenhagen, Denmark not Copenhagen the tiny town in northern New York State. Denmark is way more fabulous.

I get to live in this amazing house:

OK, it’s not in Copenhagen exactly but it’s in Hellerup, near the beach. It has 5 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms and a Jacuzzi in each one. This domicile is small compared to the house in the United States where I moved from

This is one design area that we do better in the USA: ugly and extravagant. The Danish idea of luxury is so much more modest and everyone is very, very patient with me even when they don’t quite understand when I want to be excessive. But it’s comforting for Americans to overdo things.

So, I moved here without knowing too much about Denmark, besides what I gleaned from Hamlet and that Hamlet was really upset and thought that there was something rotten here. I know that was a long time ago but really, I have not seen one rotten thing since I’ve been here.

Oh, I knew about Danish ham that we were given as a very, very special treat when I was a kid. "It’s from Europe", my mother used to say with great respect in her voice.

And of course like every American, I knew about the pastry named for an entire people, the breakfast Danish. My first day here I marched myself into this bakery:

which is called the layer cake house in English (how fantastic is that?) and I asked the nice woman at the counter for a Danish and she did not understand so I pointed to this:

and she said "oh, you want a Vienna bread!" But in Vienna, they call them "Kopenhagener Gebäck", according to herre google. Or is it fru google? Is Google a lady or a man?

As a nanny, it’s pretty important for me to understand the landscape and vocabulary of pastry and cake and cookies when I’m dealing with an eight year old. Because when nothing else will solve a crisis, sweets can put any disagreement to rest. Sugar is the great tranquilizer.

This is Deb in the City, saying goodbye from Copenhagen, Denmark the number one place where European businesspeople want to be stationed, the number one most livable city in the world, and the world’s best design city.

Global Village

2009-06-05T12:12:00.000-04:00

Internet, my constant companion, help me please. Deb in the City is at the end of her nanny rope and not even these,

which are the Greek version of Timbits that I bought on the Danforth can soothe my frazzled constitution.

The Child has gone to a new level of internal combustion and her deadbeat dad is giving me no love in the parental guidance department. But, she is just a little girl and I am supposedly the responsible, mature adult. In an effort to bury the hatchet and smoke a peace pipe (which are probably both politically questionable euphemisms) I went out to find something to try and make her happy.

And I ended up over in Kensington Market at this amazing store, La Perola. They sell all necessary staples of life from Latin America and pretty quickly I found what I was looking for.

Fresh cactus paddles, 2.49 a pound. As gringa nanny I am unequipped to deal with the thorny issue, haha, but lucky for me safety cactus comes in a jar. I can’t take the kid to Mexico to see her dad but I can bring a little of Mexico to her. I hope it works.

Walking through Kensington is like waiting for someone at the international arrivals terminal at Pearson Airport. The stores sell products from many meridians of the globe and it’s possible to go from Portugal to Somalia to Jamaica in less than a city block.

Patty King called to the blood sugar spike I was negotiating after the last of the Greekbits and I went inside looking for a nice savory vegetable patty or maybe some doubles.

At the counter, I ordered a patty with cocoa bread from this lady

Her name is Ann and she’s been at the Patty King for about six months. She immigrated from Viet Nam to Canada a few years ago and she works with an efficient crew of Viet Namese ladies who own and operate the bakery, making traditional Caribbean foods. Ann says she missed Viet Nam when she first got here but now she doesn’t want to go back. Now, this is home.

This is Deb in the City, saying yassou, adios, goodbye and tam biet from Toronto, where home might have been someplace else but is here now.

Toronto The Good

2009-06-05T11:15:00.000-04:00

Hello internet. I am still Deb and you have clicked once more upon my blog Deb in the City. I know this is technically speaking a vlog because it’s video but I can’t say the word vlog without feeling silly. It sounds like the brand name for the new ugly shoe of the season. As in: "dude, I know they look funny but my vlogs are soooo comfortable."

Deb in the City is my new coping mechanism since my friends did an intervention on me and took away all my scrapbooking stuff. See, I’ve had a little more stress than usual lately because I just moved, which according to the interweb is the third most stressful thing you can do after getting divorced and dying.

I can’t fully absorb it but I now live in Canada. Toronto, Ontario to be exact. It is fantastic here, truly but arriving and settling has been a workout. And the Canadians are nice about immigrants. Look, we have our own magazine.

Stress aside, Toronto is an amazing place. I get to live in a fantastic house:

OK, It’s not actually in Toronto proper but in the GTA. Richmond Hill, to be exact. Brand new house, where a bungalow once stood. The march of progress.

So, when I first got here I was really excited to go skating immediately at Nathan Philips Square with all the other new immigrants and I was shocked to discover that there is no ice in May. Contrary to my dumb Amercian notions about Canada, it is not perpetual winter here.

Slightly crestfallen, I decided to soothe my Yankee sensibility and went to go look for something to buy. I got on the wrong streetcar and got totally lost and ended up here:

Did I go inside? You bet I did! Honest Ed’s is an amazing discount-shopping parallel reality, with a fantastic show biz glitz design going on. Ed’s sells just about anything you would need to set up your life on a sturdy foundation of useful products at a deep discount. And sold in a unique florescent light slash neon and chaser light setting.

Groceries and sporting goods! Meat and furniture! Maple syrup in the adorable leaf-shaped bottle!

It’s incredibly tidy in Ed’s and as a nanny that deals with child-induced clutter on a pandemic basis, the neat rows of everything put a smile on my face. I spent ten bucks at Ed’s and left with a huge bag of useful discount joy.

This is Deb in the City saying so long from Toronto, Ontario, where the two official languages are French and English but if you have to call 911, the city can respond to you in over 150 languages.

Aw, Sugar, Aw, Honey Honey

2009-06-03T11:59:00.000-04:00

Hi, Deb in the City here, coming at you from Ontarie-arie-arie-o. OK, I’ve been trying hard to get my Canadian on and I’ve signed up for curling lessons for the fall. Very exciting! But in the meantime, I found these:

These little hunks of friend dough heaven are what are called Timbits and they are one of Canada’s culinary gifts to humanity. Dangerously bite-sized and lethally delicious, it is possible to polish off a whole box of these suckers on Hockey Night in Canada before Don Cherry has given his first period intermission report.

Today I was over on Bloor west in Koreatown and found another amazing tasty haven. This gentleman is Kim

in front of the amazing machine that makes Korean walnut cakes which are like the unofficial snack cake of Korea. They are frighteningly delicious and I’m thankful that Kim’s bakery is far from home because they are deelish, reasonably priced, hot, fresh and plentiful:

Like a Timbit, Korean style, filled with a half a walnut and red bean paste or sweet potato. Kim’s machine makes 1500 cakes an hour. Kimbits!

I wandered back downtown on the subway, happily hands-free to devour my Tim-and-Kim bits. I got off at the King Street stop by mistake instead of St. Andrew but realized that I could just walk underground in the PATH system.

Now, I don’t want to sound like a spoiled American who needs a GPS device to get anywhere, but is that system confusing or what? It’s like an underground shopping labyrinth, where all the landmarks are nearly identical. There are several food courts with stalls named things like Mr. Wok, Mr. Sub and Mr. Sushi and I swear I went past this same lottery stand four times.

And yeah, I did buy a 649 ticket each pass. OK, I know I have poor impulse control when I’m unsupervised. I was lost in the PATH for so long, the jackpot went from 14 to 16 million dollars by the time I finally climbed back up to street level. I headed south to the foot of Jarvis at the lake.

Tracing my sugar binge to the source, I ended up at the Redpath Refinery where there is a most fantastic sugar museum in the administrative part of the factory. It traces the history of the sugar industry in Canada, covering sugar import, modern refinery and extinct sugars, like beet sugar.

The sugar hut is awe-inspiring, a huge unassuming steel structure on the lake from the outside but filled to the ceiling with 10,000 tonnes of raw sugar in the inside. The air was misty with sweetness and before my pancreas conked out entirely and stopped producing insulin, I booked it out of there.

This is Deb in the City, parting, which is such sweet sorrow, from Toronto, Upper Canada, the former beet sugar capital of North America.

chino latino

2009-05-31T10:49:00.000-04:00

OK, internet, ayude me, ayude me! Deb has reached her maximum tolerance for vigilancia de la niña. She is driving me crazy and her father is no help and so before I dress her a pretty little red cape and send her to the bulls, I have to do something.

So, I went to find something to make her happy. To try, anyway. I asked around but there are not really any stores in Salamanca that are Mexican. But lucky for me, Mexican food is now an international treat and so at the hipermercato Carrefour, I found tortillas de trigo, wheat tortillas. Made in Belgium, hecho en Belgica! I can’t take the kid to have a burrito with her dad in Mexico but I can bring a burrito to her. I hope it works.

Afterwards, I was in town and walking around looking at more old stuff and I wandered into the Las Duenas Convent, seeking spiritual comfort.

It is very serene and calm inside the convent but even better the Dominican nuns have a gift shop that sells their baked goods! Finally, spiritual enlightenment through cookies. I bought a box of the most heavenly almond cookies, galletas de almendras. Since they are made by nuns, they are heavenly in all senses of the word. Y sin manteca!

Then in front of Casa de las Conchas, another cookie epiphany.

This gentleman is selling chicarros. They are fragile and delicate straw-shaped cookies and they are not sold in stores. He told me he is perhaps the last street vendor of this cookie. He also sells obleas, the flat ones that are remind me of holy wafers from church. Another heavenly cookie.

As difficult as life is, I can’t eat only cookies so I stopped in for some lunch at this place, El Café Te Pacifico.

It is a Chinese restaurant run by a Buddhist family from Taiwan. Since they are Buddhist, they are vegetarian so I had a Chinese style pork bun that was made with vegetable pork! In Salamanca, with so much good pork this is nearly heretical but I must say, the bun was delicious.

Yi came to Salamanca and fell in love with the city and culture and decided to stay. He and his wife have two kids and they teach Mandarin to children who have been adopted from the Chinese speaking world, so that they can retain their mother language. They give these classes for free.

Yi’s son entertained everyone in the restaurant by trying to teach us words in Mandarin. I told him that Spanish was still difficult for me to understand. This woman told him it was too hard for her to pronounce Chinese and he smiled and said, "Oh come on, it’s easy!"

This is Deb in the City, saying goodbye from Salamanca, Spain where Spanish is hard and so is Chinese, depending on how you look at it.

Viva Jamon!

2009-05-25T10:21:00.001-04:00

OK I have good news. According to El Google, Santa Concordia is the patron saint of nannies! Sadly, Santa Concordia is not Spanish and does not live in Salamanca but I’m very happy to know that the catholics have nannies covered in the saint department.

Today I was in town and discovered the other religion of Salamanca when I passed this beautiful stadium:

I thought it was for futbol or maybe Flamenco Dancing with the Stars or something. Que boba! No one dances with stars here, but there is dancing, the dance of death, le corrida. Sadly I have to wait until September when the bullfights begin.

But there is plenty of bull activity anyway because Salamanca is where the best bulls are born and raised. I drove outside of town and found this place:

Dehesa de Rodesviejas where they grow the bulls. The youngsters are so cute! Look! Mira!

Just like little kids. And they are domesticated animals. Just like kids. As a nanny, I thought a little bit of bullfighting might teach me a thing or two about dealing with beasts. At the finca, they let me go for a capea, which is an amateur bullfight.

I don’t want to brag but they said I have some talent. I did not get the ear of the little bull, but I made my entrance, first try. Beginner’s luck.

Salamanca is very proud of its bulls. But, Salamantinos are also proud of another animal, the pig. Pata negra, or in other words, the best ham in the world, comes from the province of Salamanca and the region raises special black pigs, that eat acorns and produce premier ham or jamon and pork or puerco products.

The culture of jamon is incredible here. Jamon is everywhere.

There is even a special bag to carry your jamon in that you can buy at the supermarket:

Ham is so dominant actually, that it is pretty hard to find things to eat without ham in them. Even cookies.

I was enjoying my afternoon cafecito con mantecados the other day, and I started thinking it's funny because manteca is the word for lard. Yes, that’s what makes them so good.

This is Deb in the City, saying goodbye from Salamanca, España, the cerda, cochina, puerco, marrano, conchinilla y lechon capitol of the universe.

Viva España

2009-05-23T09:59:00.000-04:00

Hello internet. My name is Deb and you have clicked on my blog, Deb in the City. Do you use the word blog in Spanish? Probably El Blog, no? Or La Blog? Blogs are girls or boys? No se.

Anyway, Deb in the City is my new coping mechanism since my doctor said I should stop eating churros. See, I never expected this but now I have moved to Spain and I live in Salamanca. It’s fantastic here but a little stressful because my Spanish is so terrible and everyone here speaks such a pure Castellano. It’s embarrassing because in the United States a lot of people speak Spanish and I only know enough to negotiate the laundromat. It’s pathetic, no? OK, don’t answer that.

But I live in a fantastic house.

It’s a luxury green farmhouse. Green means it’s friendly to the environment. The water of the three jacuzzis is recycled. Very ecological. This house balances out the other house, the one in Mallorca:

We go here on the weekends with all the other Americans and waste a lot of water together. It’s comforting for us.

Salamanca is probably the most beautiful city I have ever seen. So well-made and old. Everything here is really old to me as an American.

The new cathedral for instance, is older than the United States. Salamanca and Spain have profound history. The United States has “classic” rock.

And Salamanca has many many religious and folkloric traditions which I hope to see. Like El Colacha near Burgos.

This man, dressed as the devil jumps over babies to cleanse them of their evil. Because babies are so evil.

Sadly, I came too late for Holy Week this year so I will have to wait. But the Virgen de la Vega festival is coming

so I will get to see my first procession and my first Virgen. Spain has a lot of different processions and a lot of different Virgens.

And the Spainsh are a balanced people and so that everything in Salamnca is not all just virgen, virgen, virgen there is also llunes de aguas festival which is after Easter, to commemorate when the prostitutes are invited back to Salamanca after being exiled across the river for Lent.

I hope that maybe there is a festival and procession for nannies or at least a patron saint of nannies that I can pray to here in Salamanca.

This is Deb saying goodbye from Salamanca, Spain la ciudad dorado, the Golden City.

Goodbye, Columbus

2009-04-15T15:55:00.004-04:00

With God all things are possible.

This is the motto of the state of Ohio and though I am not very churchy, I am willing at this point to go with God because I am at the end of my nanny rope.

The Child has become officially impossible and her deadbeat dad is off roaming someplace and has left me hung out to dry with a difficult little buckeye on my hands. But, she is just a kid and as Woody used to say to me when I was sitting on the bench, paralyze resistance with persistence.

So in the spirit of persistence, I went out to Morse road to try and find something to make peace with her. And I found this amazing store.

They sell just about everything from Mexico and pretty instantly I found what I was looking for.

Fresh cactus, right off the tree, bush, vine, whatever. But, the thorns were still in place and I don’t know how to deal with them but lucky for La Gringa, safety cactus comes harmlessly tamed in a jar. I cannot take the child to her dad in Guadalajara but I can bring a little of Mexico to her.The Mexican supermercado is muy fantastico and this shrine to the virgin of Guadaloupe that is next to the produce section says it all. When I was wandering by the meat counter I started chatting with this woman, Margaret who was buying spicy chicken to grill.

Margaret is from Cameroon in west Africa. She told me that she can get any African products she needs here in Columbus, right at the supermercado, actually. Margaret said she misses her parents but otherwise she loves it here.

Next door to Michocana is another store, the Jubba Halal meat market and it is run by this fellow, Farrah.

Farrah is from Somalia and I bought some amazing coconut cookie bars from him and we chatted about the complicated politics of his country. He too said that he loves it here, and the "USA is the best country in the world", which kind of surprised me, considering our recent history with his homeland. He told me he was from Mogadishu and when I asked him what he missed about Somalia he told me “I miss walking for miles and miles in my city. And playing soccer.”

This is Deb in the City, globetrotting on Morse Road from Mexico to Cameroon to Somalia in Columbus, OH.

Sporting Fools

2009-04-13T15:30:00.000-04:00

Deb in the City here. OK, not to dwell, but Columbus is crazy for sports. There is a lady football team, OK? The Columbus Comets are a pro women’s team and I can’t wait for their season to start so I can go watch Chelsea and Whitney and Ashley and Ebony dominate on the gridiron. Behold their awesomeness:But it’s not all contact sports, there is also Columbus’ native son and legend of the links, Mr. Jack Nicklaus. He has his own fantastic museum over on the OSU campus and though not directly related to the Golden Bear or his gift shop, I did notice that I can also go to my final resting place with a golf theme.This casket is called the Fairway to Heaven and even though I don’t really get golf, the thought of being buried in this makes a passion for the links burn in my heartplace. New hobby, here I come!

So today I was walking around looking at insurance company buildings (very impressive array) and I came upon this park downtown. From the street, it looks kind of regular but once I passed through the gates and walked in a bit, it was like a trip to the Louvre in Paris or something.

OK, it’s hard to tell because my lousy snapshot does not do it justice but this is a topiary recreation of the Stephen Sondheim musical, Sunday in the Park with George! Seriously! I could not believe it. It is incredible. Look at the shrubbery lady walking her shrubbery dog.
I don’t know what kind of bush clipping genius took on this beautiful notion but it is truly amazing and I think the bushes themselves speak to the majesty of this vision.

Maybe it’s just me but cenral Ohio seems to like things that are made to look like other things. Bushes that are shaped like dogs and buildings that are just amazing. This is the corporate headquarters of the Longaberger Basket Company in nearby Newark and I cannot say enough about the basket passion that made this possible. Longabergers are highly collectible, handmade baskets and they are sold through a shadowy network of 45,000 basket agents around North America. Perhaps it is possible to be buried in a human sized picnic basket, for devotees of the basket cult.

Besides a good cult, I really like a good hall of fame and the OSU campus has a couple of excellent ones. I headed over to the Fisher College of Business, wearing my buckeye necklace to blend in with the crowd, looking for the accounting hall of fame there. I was bummed to find there is no real hall with plaques and it’s just an award given to the titans of accounting. Personally, I think this is a rip-off for the winners.

Then I wandered into the Agricultural Engineering building where I found this first-rate hall of fame.
Yes, this is the Drainage Hall of Fame and it recognizes the visionaries and innovators in the field of agricultural drainage. Humble water, the giver of life, has to go somewhere after it falls out of the sky and these gentlemen have made it their life’s work to figure that out so all the rest of us don’t have to. Personally, I’m pretty happy about that because I would not know the first thing about draining a field, though I bet I could flood one if given the chance.

This is Deb in the city, saying so long from Ohio, where the state insect is the ladybug, the state rock song is "Hang on Sloopy" and the state beverage is tomato juice. And the state tree is the buckeye. But everybody knows that.

High in the Middle and Round on the Ends

2009-04-12T15:09:00.001-04:00

Hello out there wide world of webs. My name is Deb and you have clicked on my blog Deb in the City. OK, I know, I know, it’s not really a blog, it’s a vlog because it’s video. But seriously, do I have to use the word vlog? It sounds like some part of the Starship Enterprise that Chekov might refer to. (with bad Slavic accent) "Captain, the vlog accelerator has reached maximum!" It’s just too hard for me.

Anyway, Deb in the City is my little coping mechanism since the economy has gotten rotten and I’ve had to curb my discretionary spending. So, no more Precious Moments collectibles and I am trying to deal with the fact that I now live in a fabulous new city, Columbus, Ohio.

I get to live in this fantastic house.

As you can see, they sort of ran out steam on the lawn there. And landscaping is not in my nanny job description.

The house is in a community with its own name, Marble Cliff Crossing.
Here’s the marble cliff, which according to the Google is technically made of Columbus Limestone. The cliff has its Crossing as I mentioned and its own gate and community center and concierge service. Oh, and self-watering lawns. Sweet!

When I first got here, everyone kept telling me about Buckeyes and how they were so great and I looked into it, once again, on the Google and it did not add up for me that everyone was so devoted to a nut off a tree that you can’t even eat. It’s poisonous, actually. What's with worshipping this killer nut?

But the locals were really kind with my misunderstanding and set me straight that the buckeye is just the symbol for the people that live in Ohio. And that the real site of worship, the cathedral to buckeyes past and future is this edifice.
OK, this buckeye worship is a very well developed cult and I’ve discovered that living in Columbus and becoming a buckeye is essentially a cradle-to-grave deal, literally. Start here:

With the Buckeye pacifier.

And end here:

It is possible for me to get buried in high Buckeye style with an Ohio State University memorial casket or if I decide to go with cremation, my ashes can sit on a shelf in a handsome OSU licensed urn. As a domestic worker I like the idea of leaving a legacy for somebody else to dust.

This is Deb in the City, singing off from Columbus, OH where Cristopher Columbus parked his ship after he discovered America with the Pilgrims.

SANTA MARIA?

From Mexico to Viet Nam

2009-03-22T14:40:00.000-04:00

I am Deb
Deb in the City
wtf?
I feel so...shiny

World wide webs, please hear my desperate cry for help. OK, I am loving my new SoCal lifestyle, including my retirement to Champagne Village but I am really really getting fed up with my tiny responsibility, the reason I came here at all, The Child.

I want to stick with this job and all but she’s in a bad place. Her deadbeat dad is off globetrotting and I am here hung out to dry. But she’s just a little kid and so I went on a mission to try and broker peace with her. And I found what i was looking for in Old Town.

Fresh cactus, right on the bush but I did n't think it was right to just steal it out of the parking lot and I wasn't sure if it was the right kind.

So I headed to San Ysidro, down Mexico way. OK, it is fantastic there, and the streets are lined with stores that sell all things Mexican. I figured out a possible solution to my parent trap pretty soon in a fabulous supermercato.

Edible cactus, fresh and con espinosa, which I realized were a bit beyond my cooking skills. Ouchy. But lucky for La Gringa, safety cactus without the espinosa comes in a jar.

I cannot take the child to Guadalajara to see her father but I can bring a little bit of Mexico to her.

Wandering back north and once again taking the wrong exit, I ended up on the service road behind what turned out to be an entire strip mall that was Vietnamese. A huge beautiful supermarket awaited me there too, like a giant Ralph's but this one was full of all things Asian. Check out the instant noodle mesa.

And those were only the ones on sale. There is a whole noodle canyon down one aisle.

I wandered in the meat department which was huge and full of all parts of the animals. There were lots of feet.

They might want to consider calling it the Feet Department.

The produce section had all kinds of stuff I’ve never eaten.

This is a jackfruit. It looks so familiar to me, I have a feeling it must have been used as a prop on some low budget sci-fi movie I saw as a kid.

Lingering at the jackfruit I struck up a chat with an older asian woman, dressed casually for shopping. She was very shy spoke no English and I speak no Vietnamese.
She wore beautiful rings I tried to ask her about them but we only managed to exchange our names with the universal language of pointing. When she said her name was Fanny, in sort of husky voice, I realized she had not been born as Fanny but became her at some point.

Fanny the tranny. She gave me a sweet shy smile and took off. Jackfruit and Fanny, my strange, beautiful fruit of San Diego.

This is Deb in the City, surfing the diasporas, saying goodbye, adios and tam biet from San Diego, California

Champagne Taste on a Beer Budget

2009-03-20T14:25:00.000-04:00

Deb I am
Deb in the City
I'm superbad
and looking pretty.

Wow, I just cannot get over the whole paradise aspect of this part of the country. It’s like paradise improved though, with on and off ramps everywhere you’d want to go.

Was out by Escondido today and came across a window into my future. That is, if the whole stimulus package thing works out and the world economy doesn’t skewer us all and if my employer is indeed paying into my social security like he claims.

Yes, at the corner of Champagne Drive and Lawrence Welk Boulevard, is the Welk Resort and Champagne Village, where I can easily see myself in about 25 more years. OK, ten. The village has all the amenities I could want for my retirement:

the Fountain golf course, the Canyon restaurant for fine dining and a Pizza Hut for a quick breakfast. But more impressively it has a Lawrence Welk Museum, located in the lobby of the resort’s theatre!

Yes, friends, that is a giant champagne glass made out of crystal made for the 25th anniversary of the LW show’s broadcast. Speaking of broadcast, it’s possible to stand in beside the man himself and be on his show.
I’m no Lennon Sister but I’m looking forward to a bubbly, time-shared future in genteel southern Cali style.

So then I was back in town and I missed my exit but there was a pot of gold at the end of the concrete rainbow. The swap meet! Now, I’ve been to a lot of flea market, swap meet, yard sale type things and San Diego knows how to do it right.

They sell everything from 12 pairs of tube sox that say USA on them to cell phone chargers to Mexican cowboy outfits to genuine junk dragged out fo someone’s basement to Tickle Me Elmo pinatas. Amazing. I had the most delicious snack.
Watermelon, cantelope, jicima, coconut, cucumber and orange slice, served in a plastic baggy and covered with lime juice and chili powder. Que delicioso! And for only three bucks. So good.

On the way out I bought a 20 pound bag of fresh oranges for three dollars. I am really getting used to the bounty of the Golden State.

This is Deb in the City, saying adios amigos from LaJolla California, movie home to Top Gun, Some Like It Hot and Charlie’s Angels Full Throttle. I feel the need, the need for speed.

David Hasselhoff, Where Are You?

2009-03-17T14:02:00.001-04:00

Hey there world wide webs. My name is Deb and yes, I am part of the blog revolution and you have clicked on my brand new blog, Deb in the City.

Deb in the City is new coping mechanism since I quit going to bingo. I’m trying to manage my stress without doing harm to myself, and I hope that’s not going to take all the fun out of it. I have just moved to a brand new place and OK, I didn’t ever expect this but I now live in LaJolla, CA.

It’s incredible here though, paradise with easy access of the 5, the 81, the 78 and the 1. See, I can talk California already. And I get to live in this incredible house.

The house is brand new and everything works inside, all five bedrooms and five and a half baths. It's not quite finished yet and as you can see it's what we call "shovel-ready" nowadays. If anyone out there has a shovel, please feel free to come on over.

Before I got here I thought about southern California as this sort of life-sized set for Baywatch and I expected to get here and find everyone talking about grabbing their buoys. There is beach and surf culture, no doubt. And there’s the zoo of course, the other thing the world knows about San Diego. And Sea World and the Wild Animal Park. It’s all about the surf and turf here, but before it gets to your plate. San Diego loves its wildlife.

Yesterday, I was driving up in the hills on a tiny two lane highway in the beautiful high chaparral countryside when I hit a traffic jam in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. The reason:

Yes, those are camels and they live right here in San Diego County. They reside at the Oasis Camel Dairy (http://www.cameldairy.com/) in Ramona, the only camel dairy in the US. Oasis is run by these wonderful folks, Gil and Nancy.

They have a couple dozen camels that they milk and turn the milk into incredible soap.

The camels are also in show biz and do a brisk business around Christmas time, playing to sold out crowds at several nativity pageants around the area. Gil and Nancy can set you up with the whole nativity scene too, since they have pigs and donkeys and all sorts of exotic birds. Oasis going to start camel safaris in July.

Camels are herd animals, like children, so I plan on taking a safari to try and get a little horse sense about the pack mentality. As a nanny, I feel this will give me a nanny edge when I’m at the playground, confronted with a swarm of eight year olds. Head ‘em up and move ‘em out.

In case you’re wondering, and I know you are...

They are truly sweet creatures, toes and all.

This is Deb in the City saying so long from the Oasis Camel Dairy in Ramona, CA where every day of the week is hump day.

Chapped in Chapel Hill

2009-02-22T13:48:00.000-05:00

Deb in the City here, with a chapped ass in Chapel Hill.

Pardon my cursing internet but I am about at the end of my nanny rope here. The child has tested my patience and I am hung out to dry here by her deadbeat dad so I gotta try something to get her back to her Pretty Princess state again. She’s just a little kid.

So I went over to Carrboro in search of something to make her happy. And my search was rewarded at this adorable place.

Tres Amigos, over on Main street. I can’t take the child to her dad in mexico but I can bring a little bit of Mexico to her. They had these insanely colored bright bottles of soda.

I found what I was really looking for, fresh cactus but ouchy.

Lucky for gringa, safety cactus comes in a jar. I also had a killer plate of tacos while I was at the tienda. Mucho gusto.

Then I wandered on down Main and came upon this woman,

setting up her corner store, literally on the corner. This is Luci and she is from Mexico.

She sells those flowers, which she makes and bracelets she weaves with names on them. I ordered one with "SAM" on it and will go to pick it up tomorrow.

Luci did not speak hardly any English at all and my Spanish is even worse but we were able to talk a little bit. She gave me a piece of paper, a copy of a letter in English from a family she worked for here. It said she works efficiently and is thorough in her attention to detail. Luci is responsive to suggestions and uses good common sense to tackle novel situations. She works very hard and makes the house gleam! If anyone out there in Chapel Hill needs a fantastic helper around the house, give Paula Craige a call (919-7893) and she knows how to get in touch with Luci.

In the spirit of the stimulus package,
(this is Obama's Stimulus Face) I’d like to propose to Luci that she and I tend the child and I split my salary with her. It’s the Nanny Bailout Bill, microfinance style.

This is Deb in the City, saying adios from Carrboro, the sister city of Santa Cruz de Juventino Rosas in Mexico. Si se puerde!

Southern Charmed

2009-02-19T13:32:00.001-05:00

OK, Chapel Hill is loaded super-intelligent people. I’m hoping a little of that is gong to rub off on me. Ever since I was told it was something I wasn’t by my mean brother, I have aspired secretly to become the sharpest tool in the shed.

This part of the country has produced some really smart people and some really smart inventions came out of those people.

Astroturf, for instance, has made my life better and that was invented nearby at the Research Triangle Park.

I went and visited the other day and I was hoping for a crisp isosceles or even a nice right triangle in a pinch. I admit I was a little disappointed that the park is not really in the shape of a triangle. This error I could forgive because the park is loaded with companies like Kryosphere

Syngenta

and Glyconix

that are busy inventing all the things we are going to need once the future gets here.

This handsome old-school logo is for the Association of American Textile Chemists and Colorists and this organization tests all textiles and fabrics to make sure the dye stays put and all sorts of other qualities. Thanks to this non-profit organization, your clothes do not burst into flames. Unless you paid for that feature.

Meanwhile, back in Chapel Hill I stumbled upon this structure off a road at the edge of the campus.

Yes, that is a castle. It is the home of its own secret society, the Order of Gimghoul which was started by a group of enterprising U of N students way back in the day. From what I can get out of the locals, the society is for invited upperclassmen and faculty only and is exclusively male. But not all-male like Legends in Raleigh and I heard that rules also make for an all-female guest list at their parties.

I’ve got my hoop skirts ready, so if there’s any Gimghoulers out there listening, I’m ready for an invite and I’m not going to hog the keg.

This is Deb in the City, your southern belle in training, saying that’s what I like about the south from Chapel Hill.

Nothing Finer

2009-02-18T13:04:00.000-05:00

Hello internet, it's me again. My name is Deb, but my friends call me Deb. And you have clicked on my blog, Deb in the City which is my little project to help me adjust to my recently-readjusted life. OK, I did not see this one coming but I now live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Yes, the Carolina that nothing could be finer than from the old song. But I’m getting ahead of myself. For starters in the finer department, I get to live in this fantastic house.

It has a two-car adult garage plus a child garage on the right for the Barbie Jeep and the pink peddle car Estate Wagon. Which is actually pretty cool.

OK, this house is not in Chapel Hill proper. It’s in another little town and the neighborhood has a name all of it’s own.

Governor’s Row is a row, but so far I have not seen the governor of which the sign speaks. Maybe "governor" is more informal, like in olde England. I am still getting used to southern habits.

Chapel Hill on the other hand, does have a legitimate hill and the University of North Carolina sits right up on top of it. There was once upon a time a chapel too but now there is a big beautiful antebellum hotel, The Carolina Inn.

Well, it’s in the antebellum style since it was built in the 1920’s. Technically speaking it’s après-bellum or post-bellum, I guess you’d say.

The University dominates the city, and as the oldest state funded school in the country, I think it’s earned that right. And Tar Heel pride dominates every corner of this city.

I didn’t understand about Tar Heels before I got here. I thought Tar Heels were the people that lived in the Tar Nation. But the locals set me straight about it. Tar itself is still a little confusing for me though. Last week I had a flat on my bike and a nice Southern gentleman with a genuine drawl asked me if I needed help to "change that tar". Slowly, I’m learning how to speak southern.

And to fully get my southern groove on, I am cultivating two habits: sweet tea and chewing tobacco. I made the mistake of trying them both at the same time and I would not recommend this.

This is Deb in the City, basking in southern charm from my front porch rocker, saying so long, y’all.

Quand a Liege...

2009-01-24T12:24:00.000-05:00

When in Liege, do as the Liegoise. Peket is dangerous. There is no other way to say this. Went last night to the House of Peket and now I see why Tchantches has a wooden head because I have one too. Oufti.

Meanwhile, the child is drifting far away from me and I needed to find something to try and bring her back. She’s just a little kid with a lost father and I am not getting support here so I have to try something.

I looked all over town but there are just not any Mexican people or stores here. So there are not Mexican stores either. Finally I found these at the supermarket.

Mini taco tubs! I cannot take the child to her father in Guadalajara but perhaps I can bring a little of Mexico to the child.

My search took me to a neighborhood across the river, where most everyone seemed Arab, with all the ladies in their hijabs and the butcher stores advertising halal products. I found a fantastic supermarket, named Ali Baba which had an incredible selection of all things North African and Arab and Mediterranean.

The cheese department covered cows, goats and sheep and sold yogurt in buckets of 10 kilos. We just don’t have that in America.

I came here with the idea that it was going to be all frites and chocolate and beer and waffles and chicons. And all of those things are here of course, but goat cheese in a can? Fantastic!

Then I found a tidy Spanish market and poked around. The woman that owned the place was very friendly with me and patient with my terrible French.

She told me her family moved her from Asturia in Spain when she was a little girl so that her father could work in the mines. She said that the mines are what brought the Italians, the Polish, everyone. Except the Chileans, who came to get away from their bad government and by that time, the mines were mostly closed. Even with the mines shut down, the people come anyway, looking for a better life. It has always been so.

This is Deb in the City, traversing the diasporas, saying adios, au revoir and farewell from the glowing city of Liege.

La Goute Locale

2009-01-23T12:16:00.000-05:00

Deb in the City here, live from Liege, looking for local flavor.

So I was walking around today, looking at old stuff. Europe is full of old stuff, and that’s interesting for Americans, since nothing we have is that old really.

Found some peculiar new stuff in a shop window for a video games store.

Here is Bruce Lee with his girlfriend the flamenco dancer. Are they dancing or fighting? This is the mysterious beauty of it. It’s profound, right?

I was excited because I was going to the Museum of Walloon Life.

The museum is in a beautiful old abbey. It’s a very nicely done modern museum, all new, with lots of video and all the media tricks. Very impressive. I went through the entire museum, listening to the electronic device that told me all about coal and iron and crystal and all the thing that were manufactured here in Liege.

And I got to the end and I was really mad because I read in a guide book that the museum had a waffle in the shape of the crucifix and yes, that is the main reason I went. And then, it was not there anymore.

I went home and looked for it and googled "waffle cross Belgium" on the internet, and this is what I got.

A waffle in the shape of Texas. I don’t think it’s in Belgium. And it’s not a cross. It is a waffle. Sometimes the google does not work.

This is Deb in the City, looking for waffles in all the wrong places, in the waffle capitol of the universe, Liege.

Liege, Mon Amour

2009-01-22T11:56:00.001-05:00

Hello internet. I’m Deb and you have clicked on my blog, Deb in the City. I know, I know, technically speaking this is a vlog because it’s video but the word vlog sounds like a car made in the soviet union. Vlog, vlog, vlog.

Deb in the City is my coping mechanism to help me adjust to my new life. I have just moved out of my comfort zone and now live in a city which is new to me. I did not plan it this way but now I live in Liege. Wow, or as they say here Oufti!

But, I live in a fantastic house here.

It has a gate and as you can see and it has columns and shrubs with artistic styles. And a Jacuzzi in the bathroom. It’s not in Liege exactly, not in the city but is close enough that I can go to town on the bus.

The city of Liege has a mascot that I see everywhere is this fellow, who is called Tchantches, the Wallon name for Francis. Wallon is the local language. We would call him Frank I guess in English. Frank is a fun loving marionette who was born between two paving stones here in Liege.

He has a couple of theaters that do his plays and a whole museum devoted to his costumes and puppet lifestyle. He is a marionette who likes to drink. OK, he's basically an alcoholic puppet.

And as an American, I am used to alcoholic puppets.

I must admit I am a little sad to be in Europe and miss our new president coming into office though I am delighted that everyone here seems as happy as I am that the alcoholic puppet is retiring to Texas with his Nanesse, leaving his big mess behind for the next guy to clean up. As a nanny, I’m a little sick of cleaning up after others, but I am willing to help the new guy.

This is Deb in the City, contemplating ma vie europeean from Liege. Oui, nous pouvons!

Sixteen Tons, Whaddaya Get?

2008-12-06T11:41:00.000-05:00

Deb in the City here, another day older and deeper in debt.

OK, I know I am starting to sound like a broken record here and if you are too young to know what a record is and how a record player operates just consult the Wikipedia. It’s an old-fashioned way of saying that I am repeating myself.

But seriously Troy manufactured so much it is staggering.

The ink to print all the money in the US.

Fire hydrants and the valves for the locks on the Panama Canal.

However, there are more important present day matters to attend to than the glories of local industry past. Like, for instance, how to make peace with Sam. If we were really living in the past life of Troy, she’d probably be working over at the nail factory like every other able-bodied 19th century child.

Alas, I cannot send her to hard labor everyday and must find another way to raise her.

I searched around Troy for what I hoped would make her happy but Troy did not have what I needed.

So I hopped on the bus and headed for Albany, the big city. After asking the locals for Latino products, I was sent to this place.

Now the name Frank and Giovanni’s did not really inspire confidence since those are Italian names, the last time I looked. But once I got inside this bustling store, my prayers were answered.

Yes friends, cactus from Mexico comes in a jar and I purchased some. I can’t take Sam to her dad in Guadalajara but maybe I can bring a little of Guadalajara to her. She’s just a little kid with a deadbeat dad and I’m a desperate nanny.

When I was in the store I asked a clerk with a Bluetooth in his ear if Frank or Giovanni were there, sort of as a joke, since from the Latino product line, it was clearly not possible to buy anything Italian in the store. Bluetooth guy pointed me in the direction of Frank, however.

Frank owns the store and bought it with financing help from the Italian former owners and he has a good business feeding the surrounding community with yucca, plantains, and all Goya products. Everyone in the busy store cheerfully chatted with one another in high-octane Spanish and Frank went effortlessly back and forth between them and me in English.

There was a Puerto Rican flag above the register and I asked Frank where he was from and he said “I’m from the Bronx”. I didn’t ask him if his name was Frank back home. But I’ll have to next time I go for tortillas

This is Deb in the City, shifting through the diasporas, saying ciao, adios and farewell.

Horseshoes, Shirts and Other Marvels of Troy

2008-12-04T11:24:00.001-05:00

The other thing about Troy, NY that is not like ancient Troy is that so far I have not seen Brad Pitt anywhere.

I have been hoping to catch a glimpse of him in his superhot Trojan outfit from that documentary movie he was in but so far, no Brad.

Meanwhile, I have discovered a whole other side of the tracks of Troy, that’s not all Hollywood and epic wars. This small city was a giant of manufacturing during the Industrial Revolution and starting in the mid 1800’s, the town just could not make enough stuff for the rest of the world to use.

First, iron! This is what remains of the Burden Iron Works, which was once a huge complex of buildings devoted to iron and its products that was worthy of Vulcan himself. Mister Burden was a sort of genius of metal and invented a machine that made one horseshoe a second for about fifty years. Not to brag, but Troy, New York basically made all of the horseshoes for the Civil War! For the winning side, just to clarify.

Next, shirts! This building was once the home of the Cluett-Peabody Company, which any Trojan over the age of 40 can tell you, made collars, cuffs and entire shirts as part of the pervasive shirt empire marketed under the Arrow name. Troy was once called "Collar City" because at one point this powerful town produced 90% of all the removable shirt collars and cuffs in the world.

Next, inventors! This is the Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, which has been a kind of factory for geniuses since 1820 something and Troy has kicked out hundreds of the world’s craftiest minds. The inventors of the Ferris Wheel, sunscreen, fire sprinklers and the guy who invented the Brooklyn Bridge all went to RPI.

I went wandering around the campus and I got to talking to this lady, Barbara Dean who works at the school. She told me her father Christy Morris, an English immigrant to Troy, had gotten a sneak-degree from RPI by figuring out what courses he needed in engineering and then quietly sitting in the back row of all the classes. He could not afford to pay for the education, but he got it anyway and went on to work for the shirt empire and then across the river at the arsenal.

Barbara said her father had a precise and inventive mind and he was always looking at things and figuring out how to improve them. He used this gift at the arsenal for many years, saving our government and all of us that employ the government lots and lots of money.

Oh, Mister Christy Morris, how we could use you now!

This is Deb in the City, leaving plenty of room for improvement, saying so long from the former shirt capitol of the known universe.

Modern Troy

2008-12-03T11:12:00.000-05:00

Hello internet! You have clicked on Deb in the City, the official blog of me, Deb.

Deb in the City is my desperate-cry-for-help coping mechanism. I have recently moved to a new place and I’m trying not to freak out (too late). Thanks for tuning in to my cheerful display of adjustment.

OK, can’t say I saw this one coming but I now live in Troy. No, not ancient Troy over in modern Turkey but modern Troy over in upstate New York. I can’t believe I am here. First of all, I get to live in this incredible house.

Look at the tree in the front yard. Isn't it brave?

OK, to be honest, this house is not in Troy proper. It’s a little north of the city in a beautiful community with a name all its own.

Yes, Sheldon Hills at Halfmoon is where I really live. It has an incredible clubhouse and basically, you get a whole lifestyle when you buy a house at Sheldon Hills at Halfmoon. It’s gated community living, minus the actual gates.

Troy is what the guidebooks like to call a gem of a Victorian city. But, where is Troy’s ancient past? Where are they hiding the horse full of sneaky Greeks? I poked around town but found nothing but a few Grecian columns here and there. Then, I stumbled upon the Parthenon, over at the Russell Sage College.

And in much better shape than the ancient one plus, it has air conditioning and central heat. The modern Trojans are an industrious people and I’m thinking of capitalizing on the name myself and starting "Trojan Nanny: child distraction services".

Give a call and a giant My Lil’ Pony appears on your lawn and once the children are mesmerized, I am deployed from within to wreak nanny calm within your walled citadel.

This is Deb in the City, saying so long from inside the belly of a horse. But a horse with very, very pretty hair.

Celebs in the City

2008-11-17T10:42:00.002-05:00

OK, I learned about this place from watching Sex in the City, just like everybody else in the world. New York is the city where the streets are paved with famous people. So to see the town, I found a few famous-person-was-seen-here web sites, got a little info and headed towards the city.

First stop, Sarah Jessica Parker territory. I went to her neighborhood, the West Village and prowled but no SJP. Was hoping for a glimpse of her with her adorable son with their cranky nanny, but nothing.

I did get a close-up of her trash can though.

Then I headed over to Union Square because I really was hoping to see Ethan Hawke who hangs out at the Starbucks there, according to the Google.

But I got there and wtf, which Starbucks?

There are three, if you count the one in Barnes and Noble.

I tried them all and no Ethan. I need to try a more reliable famous-people web site. Maybe Celebrity Blackberry Sightings?

It is just not that easy to find famous people. They move around too much. Even getting myself on the Twitter celebrity-sightings instant feed, I just could not get to Queen Latifah’s location before she had moved on from the Madame X lounge.

Then, just when I had moved on from celebrity stalking, I was back on Long Island at the Syosset Starbucks and I totally saw Alicia Keys in the drive-through!

She lives in Muttontown. And OK, she was in The Nanny Diaries so we would have a lot to talk about. I’m just sayin’.

This is Deb in the City, celebrating my triumph with a humungo holiday pumpkin spice latte, saying baaaa from Muttontown.

Old New York, New New York

2008-11-16T10:24:00.001-05:00

"I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me."

And curious questionings they are, Mr. Whitman. Deb needs to know, for instance, where does one buy churros in this town? I needed to find something to try and make peace with the child since I’m clearly on my own here. She’s just a little kid with a deadbeat dad.

On the train going towards what I thought might yield churros results, I smiled at this woman and gave her the secret nanny solidarity glance.
She was wrangling two toddlers and I lacked my nanny prop of the child to indicate I was of her clan so I don’t think my united front registered with her but she was cheerful and smiling still.

Then my prayers were answered at the Metropolitan Avenue stop.

Churros, two for a dollar, right there in the subway! I tried to ask the lady selling them if she’d made them but she was too busy texting someone to answer my questions.

G train churros. How fantastico is that? I cannot take the child to Mexico to her dad but maybe I can bring a little of Mexico to the child.

Once more I arrived at Fort Greene and I meandered into DARE Bookstore, over on Lafayette Ave run by Desmond, the store’s owner-operator.

Desmond is another Jamaican transplant to Brooklyn, and has lived here for decades. He was chatting with another customer when I walked in and he said he was so grateful to have lived during the times he had. He saw his first tv when he moved to NY at age 17 and got to see a black man elected president.

But Desmond also said that he was about to close his store, which specializes in African American literature. His main source of income is the contract he has with the city department of education and he lost his account, along with about 100 other small contractors, when the city chose to use one giant megacorporation instead.

Desmond has plans though which involve moving to a warmer climate and building up his own publishing house, DARE Books. "I never expected anything from anyone", he told me. Perhaps in our Obama-victory nation, Desmond can soon afford the luxury of expectations.

This is Deb, living just enough, just enough for the city.

Emporers of the Empire State

2008-11-14T10:02:00.000-05:00

Ended up in Brooklyn again today, at the Green-Wood Cemetery in search of the emperors of the empires and I was not disappointed. First of all, this place is beautiful and anyone can get to it by taking the R train to 25th street and walking a couple of blocks up the hill towards the trees. It’s so lovely actually, that in the 1850’s it rivaled Niagara Falls as the main tourist attraction in the country and over half a million people visited annually to have picnics with the departed.

Green-Wood is bursting with famous “permanent residents” and I was humbled to pay my respects to them and thank them in a small way for their mighty contributions to this earthly life.

First stop, Leonard Bernstein, Emperor of Broadway and the New York Philharmonic.

Next I found Peter Cooper.

19th century industrialist who built the first steam locomotive, made a fortune in glue and iron production, laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable and invented, with the help of his wife Sarah, what we now know as Jell-O. He had little formal education and could not spell, and because of this created the Cooper Union for Science and Art which still confers degrees in engineering, art and architecture, free of cost. Cooper was the emperor of philanthropy, setting the standard for successful industrialists that give back to the community. We miss you, Pete.

I was wandering around looking for the grave of prematurely departed artist Jean Michel Basquiat

When a cemetery security car rolled by and the driver asked if I was “off to see the wizard”. He directed me to a grave nearby.

Occupied permanently by Frank Morgan, the actor who played the wizard in the movie, along with four other characters.

The security officer, Tommy
was taking pictures of the various monuments to note any damage for the maintenance records of Green-Wood. He has been working there for only a few months but spent his whole life in the neighborhood, and was raised in a house that overlooked the cemetery. He started playing there when he was four years old and clearly loves the place. It’s nice to work here, I said and he replied that he never wants to leave. I asked the next logical question: will you spend eternity here?

Tommy answered happily that he had already got that settled and that he owned two plots in the place but he wasn’t sure which one he’d be buried in. I gotta see who moves in around me, you know. Yeah, you don’t want noisy neighbors for the afterlife, I said. That’s right, Tommy smiled.

This is Tommy’s favorite monument in the place, the lady on the stairs, as he called her:

She was murdered and she’s just beautiful, he said.

Of course this got me thinking about my own memorial and what that should look like. First of all, granite or bronze or a combo is a must. Marble just does not hold up over time. I cannot claim to be the Emperor of the nanny empire, not yet anyway. I have my aspirations. My fellow nannies of this city are ripe and ready to recognize their status as caretakers to the future, so maybe that’s my calling. A little community organizing can get you far these days so who knows.

Deb in the City, contemplating eternity but trying to stay in the moment, saying so long.

Living for the City

2008-11-13T09:30:00.000-05:00

Hello there internet. In case you've forgotten, I am Deb and you have clicked on my blog, Deb in the City, which is my coping mechanism to deal with my recent move to a new place. I now unbelievably live in New York. New York City, just like I pictured it, as the blind poet sang. I can’t believe it. OK, I get to live in an incredible house.

And as you can probably tell it’s not really in New York City proper. It’s in Nassau County, Syosset to be more precise. It’s in a beautiful planned community with its own name:

Yes, Stone Hill at Muttontown is where I live. If you go to the web site of Stone Hill at Muttontown, you can hear the soothing theme music and take the virtual tour and see the clubhouse where there’s an indoor pool and you can see a picture of the gates of this gated community. All this, right off the Jericho Turnpike.

But I’m really close to “the city” as the locals call the big town at the western end of the Long Island Railroad and I am drawn there, like a moth to a bug zapper. Pretty hard to get a handle on this giant melting pot and I find a psychic oven mitt of willingness to get lost helpful.

The commuter train required me to change at Jamaica, something I thought geographically impossible, but New York City does have everything, Jamaica included. I duly transferred towards Flatbush and emerged right into Walt Whitman’s “Brooklyn of ample hills” and began my wandering, as Walt would have done. Fort Greene was his neighborhood, after all.

The economic downturn has me in a thrifty mood so I found myself in the Goodwill where I struck up a conversation with fellow home economist, Patrice.

Who it turns out, really is from Jamaica! Patrice was buying things to fill up her barrel of goods to ship back to Jamaica for her family there before she returns for a visit in January. She misses her mother and her sisters, she told me and the hot peppers back home, "that keep you healthy". Patrice is also a fellow nanny and the woman she has worked for the last 20 years recently got fired from her job at one of the famously-collapsed citadels of finance. Patrice does not know if she will have a job for much longer.

Patrice got me thinking that this high-end nanny lifestyle does not offer that much security and I wondered is there a nanny union? We could band together, pool a little money each month and microfinance each other during tough times.

This is Deb in the City, thinking globally but acting locally, saying so long from Long Island.

On a Mission

2008-11-04T11:40:00.000-05:00

Headed to the Mission district today and was bombarded with purchase options from everywhere in Latin America. It’s muy fantastico over there and right away I found what I was looking for in one of the many many produce outlets on Mission.

Cactus! So pretty! But also so peligroso. The thorns are still on them but I am in luck because safety cactus comes in a jar.

The guy who owns the produce place was behind the counter and he was amazing. Check out the giant original oil painting behind him, the Virgin of Guadalupe appears to the cowboy grocer. Only in the Mission, friends.

The Mission is a 99 cent store jackpot and I wandered into this great big place at around 18th. I bought myself a nice windup alarm clock, that features a chicken image on the face, with a head that bobs up and down and pecks with each tick of the clock.

I started chatting with the guy behind the counter, Ramon.

Ramon it turns out is not latino, though he speaks Spanish and English. He also speaks Farsi because he is originally from Afghanistan. He asked me if I voted and I said yes and he said he voted for Obama. "We have to give him a chance", he said. Ramon got the money to open his 99 cent emporium by going back to his country and working for the US Department of Defense. "Good money", he said, "220 thousand a year." I asked him if it was dangerous and he said "Look, someone can come here and boom boom shoot me. Only God knows when it is your turn to go. And until then God protects me." I hope Ramon, you are right about that. So far, so good, my friend.

I forgot to ask him what his name was back in his country. I doubt it is Ramon.This is Moe, sifting through the diasporas, saying adios and salaam and farewell from the Mission.

Windmills of my Mind

2008-11-04T11:19:00.001-05:00

Today I hopped the 71 Muni bus from The Haight where I had spent some of the afternoon wandering around while trying to convince myself that I really do need medical marijuana to control my restless leg syndrome. No, seriously I do have restless leg. And don’t leave a lot of comments about how it doesn’t really exist. You try my legs on for a night.

Anyway, the 71 was a long ride so I had time to chat with the driver, a nice fellow from, as he said, “the Phillipines, m’am”. Today was his day off and this was not his regular route and he’d taken an extra shift for the overtime. His family lives in a house he bought in Sacramento and he sees them only on his days off. He was shy so didn’t want me to take his picture but here he is, picking up a customer.

What can I say? I’m a public transit romantic. This driver stays with his brother when he is in the city working. His whole family is part of the largest export product of the Phillipines, labor. Human beings who work hard are the primary resource of that country. Nurses, teachers, construction workers, domestic help, cover bands at nightclubs, Filipinos do it all and they do it all over the world.

The 71 deposited me once more at the beach on another gray, otherworldly day. Wandering along the edge of the ocean, lost in damp thoughts, this emerged:

I was having a psychedelic experience, completely drug-free. Yes, that is a Dutch windmill, not 300 yards from the coast of the Pacific. It’s actually the largest Dutch windmill in the world, having the largest sails, according to the plaque that’s stuck on it. It was built to pump water from an underground well to irrigate the “useless” sand dunes of the 19th century that are now the lush and beautiful Golden Gate Park.

A sign said that the garden beneath the windmill is the “Queen Wilhemina Tulip Garden”. Alas, tulips are out of season, as you can see from the flowerless beds in the foreground. But this is San Francisco, so queens are never out of season and the scrubby underbrush trails around the windmill play host to a robust crop of them.

It hard to see the gents I saw go into this shrub together and in the spirit of keeping the anonymous in anonymous sex, I let them have their encounter, minus the prying eyes of the internet. There are plenty of other sites for that, if you really have an interest.

Icons, literally

2008-11-03T10:44:00.002-05:00

Today I went on an excursion, out to the beaches of the mighty Pacific Ocean.

It was all gray and fogged in again. Not the California of the Beach Boys today but that of the Mamas and the Papas when all the leaves are brown and the sky is gray. Dreamy.

I wandered around the nearby residential neighborhood, which was once called Carville, because disused horse-drawn streetcars had been sold to beachgoers in the late 19th century to be used for beach shacks. A few houses still exist that are made of the old cars, though it’s impossible to tell from the street nowadays. Maybe this one is one, since it’s so skinny and they used to just pile the cars on top of each other:

Here’s the interior of one house that still exists, though I couldn’t find it on the street. The benches that the passengers sat on are still intact along with the gas lamps at either end.

Didn’t find a house made of a street car but I did find a house of the lord over on Geary that could have been plucked from the steppes of Russia.

This is the Holy Virgin Joy of All Who Sorrow Russian Orthodox Cathedral

The various eastern orthodoxies really know how to do a cathedral. With its golden onion tops and wall-to-wall iconographic interior, the cathedral definitely hails from the “more is more” school of interior decoration.

Pictures of saints, icons in the truest sense of the word, are amazing but I have to say the real flesh and bones of an actual saint really ups the ante.

This is Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco a for-real saint, taking visitors at his earthly resting place in the cathedral. I must admit, I did not take this picture myself but got it off the web. I wanted to go inside and see Saint John but I did not have a skirt on and I did not wish to be disrespectful. The Orthodoxies of the world have dress codes which are more strict that my nanny dress code. The Holy See does not recognize catalogue items from the Limited or track suits.

Nonetheless, I will return with proper attire another day. Not that I am some sort of obsessive who is into dark tourism of the religious sort, but seriously, I’ve only been here a little while and I’ve already seen the relics of a Buddha, and the relics of a Russian saint make for a nice fusion of perspectives.

This is Moe, striving for balance in these polemical times, saying so long.

Open Your Golden Gates

2008-10-30T10:21:00.002-04:00

To everything, turn, turn, turn.

Now, I'm in San Francisco, CA, which is not someplace I ever dreamed I’d live. OK, that’s not true because doesn’t everyone with half a brain dream of living in San Francisco? But given my history of under-employment, the Bay Area never seemed like a practical choice.

But here I am and I can’t believe it. I get to live in this incredible house.

Actually I get to share the incredible house that the cars live here. There are more of them than there are people at this point. The house really isn’t IN San Francisco proper as you can tell by the amount of yard and stuff. It’s in Walnut Creek, far from the wagging fingers of the public transit vigilantes. This is still California after all and it’s nice to be able to feel cozy with your vehicles under one roof. Or six roofs, as the case may be.

So, sure there’s plenty of cars in California, just like they told me there would be. I just got here so stereotypes are a nice shorthand way of getting a grip on the place. There’s the California beaches and the ocean, another icon. Though it’s cold and gray now that daylight savings time has begun, it’s still beautiful out there on the edge of the wild Pacific.

Other icons of San Francisco: Victorian houses and gays and cable cars and cults. Eventually I will encounter them all.

Let me give you a for-instance. I was over on 22nd street and went inside this building:

I thought it was another gothic-esque church but it’s been repurposed by the Hua Zang Si Buddhists. Here’s their main Buddha which resides on the second floor:

There are offerings to the various Buddhas all over the place. This one has one thousand golden cups of water in front of him along with fruit and incense and sound, which are all part of the Buddha gift bag.

In the middle of the room is this glass case. It’s kind of hard to tell what it is from the picture and it’s also hard to tell when you are standing right in front of it.

This is a sculpture of Mt. Sumera, which is an important place in Buddhist cosmology and is basically due north of the known world, where we are now. So, to me here in San Francisco, it’s like Marin. Inside that sculpture are two sacred relics, actual pieces of Satyamuni, the medicine Buddha.

It got me thinking about starting my own spiritual movement, the Nanny Orthodox Temple.

I have a captive audience of ready-made followers at the park. We will meet in our small cabals in plain view at Gymborees and fast food coffee shops like Dunkin' Donuts where there will be colorful distraction for our tiny bundles of responsibility, necessary while we plot a spiritual path for ourselves from the comfort of our tracks suits.
I think these ladies are an underutilized source of strength and I want to harness the power of nannies for enlightenment. Lately, just about anything has a ring of possibility to it, doesn’t it?

This is Moe saying goodbye while continuing my search for Nirvana in the Bay Area.

Minneapolis: Staying Power

2008-10-18T15:28:00.000-04:00

Not to get all socialist here, since that is right next to communist, which is right next to terrorist from what I can gather from the current presidential race, but let me just say that flour milling is not the only bygone industry that made the Twin Cities great. I am humbled by the incredible manufacturing power of the workforce of this city and region. Or what it was in the generations before me. There’s still the Ford plant for now but I fear the economic downturn is not going to be good news for light truck production. Sigh.

South of town however, an oasis of manufacturing success holds strong in the town of Austin, which is very close to the Iowa border. Austin is proud home to the Hormel main processing plant and the birthplace of Spam. I am talking about Spam, the luncheon meat, not spam the digital litterbug from your in-box.

The people at Hormel have really gone all out with their Spamarium. It is an impressive modern museum that will teach you all you need to know about Spam and its universe of influence. There are state of the art, attention-grabbing exhibits that are now the modern museum-going standard, which miraculously transform meat in a can into an entertainment experience. When I say museum, I mean something closer to Epcot Center, offering a low-impact educational environment that leaves virtually nothing open to interpretation. So, not like a museum where you look at things and get to decide what you like or do not like about them. At the Spam Museum, there is little room for anything but fun.

These two gents are Misters Hormel, junior and senior, apparently sculpted out of museum-quality lard that has been frozen in place by an undisclosed Hormel lard secret. Not all of the pig goes into the can of Spam, so lard is a “value-added” by-product of the process.

Hormel made other things along the way too and they own and operate the Dinty Moore line of canned stews etc. Dinty Moore stew was a huge treat in my childhood and we only had it for the special occasions when mom didn’t feel like cooking and actually listened to that feeling. I loved its comforting canned goodness, enhanced by mom’s own relationship to Hormel products during the war. When I say war, I mean one of the older ones where the moral compass points were clear.

There was a little info at the museum about what it is like to work at Hormel, but they kind of just show the fun parts on that too. Let’s face it, it’s a slaughterhouse which I imagine is not a pleasant situation for all creatures concerned. I did get to try on the cool shark-proof glove that the workers in the plant wear so that no fingers end up contaminating the food stream.

I have to say that personally, the gift shop was really the best part and I am proud to say that I contributed to the GDP during these troubled economic times by spending 65 bucks there. I bought two cans of Spam, Hickory Smoked and Garlic flavored, even though I will never eat them. The Garlic type is sort of a special-edition collector’s item because it cannot be purchased domestically and is produced entirely for the export market. Spam is crazy good, as the commercials tell us and is crazy popular in asia.

But my favorite splurge purchase was this piece of headgear:

which is going to make a nice Halloween appearance first and then will go into my daywear wardrobe. I am Spam, Spam I am.

It's hard to tell from this picture but my Spam hat was attracted to the colossus of spatulas that was displayed near the exit. The bigger picture wouldn't load right, sorry Dear Reader.

Until next time so long from Moe, your favorite canned ham on the internet.

Hands-Free

2008-10-18T13:36:00.000-04:00

Today I went down by the riverside to lay down my sword and shield. No baptism took place but I did get a glimpse of Minneapolis’ former life as the flour capital of the universe.

The Mill City Museum is really well done and I can say that I now have basic understanding of how the river was used to power all those giant mills along its banks. The water goes in and pushes a big thing around that turns a lot of other big things. Those big turning things transform little things like grains of wheat into even littler things like flour. Or the turning things make blankets, socks, electricity. The river was crazy useful.

And the old buildings of the former mills are crazy handsome. Majestic in their size, they give perspective to our place as specs in the universe. Like the pyramids or the Corn Palace in South Dakota, they are humbling.

Hard to believe that every single one of those mills has now been converted to luxury urban housing. Or so explained the docent at the museum. The museum itself is a new building that was somehow slipped into decrepit ruins of the old Washburn Mill A. And the condos got slipped in too. The Residences at the Ruins. Strange, but the buildings are beautiful, even ruined and if putting condos in them is going to be how they get saved from the wrecking ball, I’m all for it.

Then I was over in the Somali neighborhood, Cedar Riverside where there are again, bustling shops and modest cafes and restaurants that cater to this community of very recent immigrants. I chatted with a merchant, Farah who got my attention when I picked up a package of biscuits named Glucose and he remarked that these were his favorite and I bought them to give Glucose a try. Farah said he has been here for ten years and that he has been “treated like a king” since he arrived and has been able to open his own shop and prosper. He said that after 7 wars in his country it was time for him to find another life.

Farah’s store is in the shadow of a soviet-style housing complex that is an architectural ode to poured concrete:

There were plenty of people walking around to do their marketing and small clusters of men chatting on the sidewalks. The women were dressed in hijabs, some of them very very beautiful in their flowing miles of fabric. I know it’s not considered very feminist of me probably but their dress was beautiful, especially compared to the guys who sport wester style clothes.

One woman I saw driving a minivan was talking on her phone and had ingeniously jerry-rigged a hands-free situation by simply tucking her cell underneath her head scarf so that it clung to her head while she drove. And I thought, wow that lady is really clever and then two minutes later I saw this woman waiting at a bus stop:

Sorry this is sideways too but I am having issues with the upload. Technology has its own ideas...

The Mini-Apple

2008-10-17T12:55:00.000-04:00

"Minneapolis-St.Paul: going your way"

According to the sign in the airport, that is the motto of the city. Or was it the motto of the airport? That would make more sense.

Just arrived here and spent the day scooting around the Twin Cities with my new best friend Allison and her one hundred per cent ADORABLE daughter, Anna, 18 months old. At 18 months, I’d say from observation that the human animal peaks in terms of irresistible cuteness, and little Anna is a prime specimen. I know it is wrong to intervene in the growth of anything, but if Anna were my kid I would consider longer than I’d care to admit the possibility of giving her those growth-stunting hormones, to kind of freeze her in place at her apex of perfection. I know there are serious ethical implications in that kind of thinking but hey, I’m a serious person.

But first things first. When in Saint Paul, go visit the saint himself. Allison drove me over to the holy side of town, which is a city unto itself. Found the impressive cathedral on the hill named for Mister Saint Paul.

I really wanted to see St. Paul, or maybe a tiny sliver of his holy shinny bone or something, and I was very disappointed to find out that he does not in fact reside here in Minnesota. That is always such a bummer for me when I go to a big church named for a saint, and in the case of Paul, a really important one, only to discover that there is no real saint there. In Italy, this is not a problem. Mexico either. I have seen some saintly bodies or little parts of them in my day and I can’t say why but I do find it comforting, like an open-casket funeral. It’s important to see the body. Habeus Corpus, and all that.

So, no Saint Paul, though they put up this incredibly impressive cathedral named after him and here is a granite likeness of him from the outside of the church. And it turns out, this is his jubilee year to mark the “bi-millenium” of his birth, which is estimated between 7 and 10 AD. Paul had quite a potboiler of a life story, from the road to Damascus where he was converted to Christianity, right straight through to his martyrdom in Rome. Dude got put in jail seven times and nearly killed in many other incidents of preaching and whatnot by angry mobs. Don’t forget about his shipwreck on Malta! He traveled all over the Greco-Roman empire and is considered the “apostle to the gentiles”.

No Saint Paul, however there are loads of Latter Day Saints around Minneapolis-St. Paul, as the Google taught me. Though they are prolific producers, the Mormons are not really giving the Lutherans a run for their money around here. So many varieties of Lutherans, who knew? Latvian, Evangelical, Norwegian. And one called Faith Free Lutheran, which makes me wonder where the clarifying hyphen should go in that name. Faith or not, you choose. Personally, I would be torn between Creamy Ranch and Nacho Cheese Lutherans.

I know, it’s easy to make Lutheran jokes or hot dish jokes or you-betcha-doncha-know jokes. I’ll try and refrain in the spirit ot trying to say something new.

Went over to one of the latino neighborhoods and to a swell market called mercato central which was full of bustling stalls of sellers, hawking everything from tamale platters to baptism dresses that look like wearable wedding cakes. Sorry the picture is sideways but I am just not that adept in the technology department.

I bought a bottle of water from a pupuseria which had this touching sign on its counter.

Strange to see the word “corpse” used, so without the usual gentle coating I associate with the language of death. It was downright medieval, especially against the backdrop of the cheerful food court area.

At Mercato Central, it all is in the mix. Life, death, tamales, devotion. There's a lovely little shrine to protect the shoppers right by one of the entrances.
So much more comforting than passing through metal detectors!

I Find a Friend

2008-09-16T12:20:00.001-04:00

Hola! Estoy Moe! Moe en la ciudad! Bienveneidos!

Today I went over to the other side of the tracks again, the north side of town to the fabulous store above.

Mas Amigos! Su tienda amiga!

Most friends! Your shopping friend! Roughly speaking.

Inside, Mas Amigos is like a Mexican wonderland, right here in Urbana.

They sell absolutely everything from Mexico and Latin America and absolutely nothing from "El Norte", Gringo America. Look at the impressive hot sauce display:

I bought corn lollipops with chili flavor! I’m excited and scared all at the same time.

The nice lady who ran the store was there and I wanted to talk with her but she was on the phone. I had a million questions for her. Like, which tamarind soda is better, Jarritos or Boing?

I bought them both and will have a taste test and let you know.

I loved finding Mas Amigas. It was like a little trip south of the border, down Mexico way. It was fiesta and we were so gay. And can I just say, the Mexican people know a thing or two about corn and how to make the best of it. My trip to Mas Amigas confirmed that. I know I'm all corn-centric but we are products of our environments, so the psychologists tell us and right now I'm as corny as Illinois in September.

A Bao Grows in Champaign

2008-09-10T16:42:00.001-04:00

I was toodling around Champaign today on my bike and I ran into this most awesome trailer park out by the interstate. It doesn’t look like much from the street but when you get inside, you can tell the people who live there are house proud.

They have painted the trailers bright colors in some cases and at the very least, the yards are kept up and sometimes full of kids' bikes and other signs of life.

I found this one trailer at the back of the park that had this amazing garden growing against the sunny side.

I saw these squashes and gourds and vegetables that I did not know the name of though I’d seen them before in markets and it made me think that probably Asians lived there. The front of the house had gorgeous flowers and I waved when I saw somebody in the window and they waved back. That made me bold and so I went up on the porch and said hi. A little boy came out with his mom and I said I saw the garden and admired it. The boy said “is it some kind of a contest or something?” and I said no, that I just saw the garden and thought it was beautiful.

His mom smiled and then apparently asked her son what I was saying. He translated and then she smiled more and said “garden good”! I said yes, very very good. I asked about one of the squashes in the back and the boy grabbed the mom and they took me around back to look.

This one is called bao in Vietnamese. Which is where these people are from. They have been in Champaign for 5 years. The son is in fifth grade and does the talking when nice white ladies show up on the front porch. His name is Tuan. His mom’s name is Tu.

Tuan and Tu and I had a broken but animated conversation about all the vegetables. She was explaining to me about the mint and I said yes, like in Pho which is like the national dish of Viet Nam. And her eyes opened really wide and she said in perfect English “you know pho?” Oh yes, I know pho and pho knows me.

Then the boy’s father appeared and he spoke a little English and we discussed the various vegetables some more. I asked him where he got the seeds because I did not imagine they came from the Farm and Fleet. He said someone gave them to him. Hand to hand seed dispersion.

I asked him where he worked and he said the name of a company that I didn’t recognize but explained that they boxed up toys and sent them around. I think that’s what he said. He said back in Viet Nam he was a fisherman and that he had worked the shrimp boats in the Gulf of Mexico out of New Orleans for the first ten years he was here, saving enough money to bring his wife and sponsor her and their son.

When they arrived they moved here and he bought their trailer for $5000. Good price, he said. New trailer is 25,000. He had fixed it up inside.

He said they wanted to go back to their country but “no money, no money”. I couldn’t tell if that meant no money to get back to Viet Nam or that there is no money in Viet Nam. Probably a little bit of both.

I asked them if they have a good life here and he smiled and said yes, yes good life. "My son, he learns English well. Hard work. But no work, no money."

Then he asked me how many children I had and I said none. And he seemed sad for me. Sad but hopeful. "Some day you have family", he said and he got a big smile on his face.

Seems every farmer I meet, Russ with 2300 acres or Tu with a beautiful pea patch, wants to marry me off and turn me into a farm wife. Now, that wouldn't be the wosrt thing in the world, would it?

Corn Update

2008-08-27T15:59:00.001-04:00

Moe here. Evening Crop Report.

So, I was crabbing about corn, because that’s my favorite parlor game since I got here. And you know, I’m important enough in the agricultural tradition and industry of Champaign County at this point, that my opinion matters.

Turns out, corn is not just some annoying plants in a field that have been put there on purpose to drive me crazy.

I was thinking about this farmer I met at the market, Russ Roth from Morgan, IL. Here’s Russ:

Mr. Roth his son cultivate 2300 acres of field corn, along with the vegetables and sweetcorn they sold at their market stand. He sold me an Armenian cucumber, something I’d never seen. You have to peel the thing, and then it’s like a regular cucumber on performance-enhancing steroids on the inside:

OK, not to dwell but this thing was huge:

And it tasted like a cross between an American cucumber and a honeydew melon.

Mister Roth shucked a piece of his corn right there and made me try it, raw. Which I did and it was as he promised, the sweetest I’d ever tasted. Then he paid me probably the nicest compliment I've had in a while. He asked me if I was a farm girl. Who ever thought I’d be flattered by that question, but I was.

And Another Thing About Corn

2008-08-25T15:13:00.001-04:00

My love affair with corn began for real last weekend at Urbana’s Annual Sweetcorn Festival. These people LOVE their corn. This is a wise strategy for survival, as they are completely surrounded by the stuff, for miles in every direction. Don’t want to make the crops mad at ya and have them close in.

To recap, for those of you that don’t live near a farm, here’s what corn looks like:

And here's what I look like at the Festival, trying to blend in with the scenery:

The Sweet Corn Festival even had corn entertainment, not just corn and corn dogs and funnel cake. Watched a local favorite, a band called Cornmeal which was an amped-up bluegrass deal that favored Grateful Dead-length solos, which were greatly appreciated by their dancing, tie-dyed fans.

Note the pile of Birkenstocks in the foreground, put together for safekeeping, Strength in numbers.

My night at the Corn Festival was finished off with a Led Zepplin tribute band called ZoSo. The band's commitment to replicating Zep was truly something to behold. It was night so the photo's not the greatest but just check out the gauzy shirt and rock and roll hair of a bygone era.

ZoSo is beyond a tribute band and I would place them in the higher category of "re-enacters". Some guys like to pretend they're Ulysess S. Grant in the Civil War and other guys like to pretend they're Robert Plant in the greatest band of all time. They're all living the dream, each in their own way.

State Fair

2008-08-23T14:51:00.001-04:00

Did I mention that Illinois is the Land of Lincoln?

So I went to the State Fair and that was also wall-to-wall Lincoln. Here I am, in front of a larger-than-life, young Abe.

The Lincoln theme has started to get on my nerves but I decided to be adult about it and do my best to join in the community spirit of Lincoln pride. Here I am, wearing my best five dollar bill face.

If you look closely, you can see my attempt to replicate Honest Abe’s lazy eye, which the museum in Springfield spent an entire audio-visual show focusing on.

The fair had lots to offer though and I really wish I’d taken the kid there with me one day during the week, so I could’ve seen the poultry prize winners and stuff. I only really had the time to cover dairy and do it any justice.

Here I am as a dairy farmer, trying to look strong and gentle.

There’s plenty of dairy pride too in this state. Have a look at the prize-winning yellow cheese and the prize-winning white cheese.

And the cream of the crop, so to speak of chocolate milk.

That is THE BEST chocolate milk in the state of Illinois you’re looking at.

But words do not describe the butter drama that was being played out in the center of the dairy building. Behold!

Yes, friends, that is a life size cow sculpted out of butter! And if that alone was not impressive enough, the cow is a player in one of nature’s conflicts, immortalized in pure butter. Here you can see the butter cow’s little son facing off with a couple of butter skunks!

Note the detail, and how the butter artist has captured the inquisitive baby bull and the unflappable skunks just as they are about to turn tail and leave their calling card.

Nope, this is just not the kind of thing I would be able to see back home. This is home now, butter cows and corn/soy/corn/soy in every direction and just real nice people. I’m trying to get used to that. It was not my plan to be here, but that’s life, right?

Organ Donors

2008-08-22T14:40:00.001-04:00

I decided to go over to the Illinois State employment place and see if they can help me find a side job. Yes, it’s come to that. It’s on “the other side of the tracks” of course. Here’s the tracks, literally.

It was a relief to walk around in a more regular neighborhood. By regular I mean less fancy. But people were sitting on their porches and chatting and said hi to me when I walked by, even though I wasn’t from around there. Nobody goes outside the house where I live with The Child, except to scurry down the driveway to get into the Hummer that’s too big for the garage.

Things looked familiar where I walked and people there don’t have a lot to spare. But it doesn’t mean they’re not generous. Look:

Free for the taking. There’s some joke in there about organ donors, but my tank is empty and I lack joking stamina right now.

Meanwhile, I’m looking into my moonlighting options. Next stop, Kraft Foods on the other other side of the tracks. There's a lot of tracks in Champaign.

Honest Abe

2008-08-18T15:28:00.002-04:00

The presence of Abraham Lincoln is very strong in Illinois and he is memorialized everywhere, as you can see from the above USMC Illinois vanity license plate. Abe was The Great Emancipator, as he’s referred to by the people at his museum and library, which is a couple of hours away over in Springfield. The museum is quite a fantastic place with top-rate exhibits that condense giant complex movements in history like slavery and the Civil War into about 17 minutes of action-packed, state of the art audio-visual spectacle. It is a fabulous museum, only they do not allow photography, except in the rotunda.

Here’s the one picture I snapped, waxy Abe and his waxy wife and offspring and perhaps some very real-life descendants of those he freed, eying each other.

You can also go see his house in Springfield, a few blocks away in this historic district that is kept up in pristine Colonial Willamsburg style by the National Park Service.

The house has its own dedicated parking lot
since the park service forbids parking on the street in front of the Lincoln residence.

I guess they’re trying to maintain that Ye Olde Historical feel and that air of authenticity. Oh, but there’s more authenticity: here’s his actual real nameplate that actually bears his name:

Cool, huh? And here’s the whole house:

It’s like living history. I know that sounds dumb but really when I saw the mailbox of Abe Lincoln and looked at the fence that he painted with Tam Sawyer and saw the bus stop bench ad for the souvenir shop that bears his name...

it gave me chills.

As HIgh As An Elephant's Eye

2008-08-14T15:13:00.004-04:00

Urbana, IL

So I was riding my bike around town yesterday and the thing is about Urbana and this part of Illinois is that CORN IS KING. If I ride in any direction for long enough I eventually end up in a corn field. Sometimes, I ended up in a field with these other bushy little plants, very cute. Whichever, the fields stretch endlessly in all directions. When I stand looking at the flat of green it is hard to imagine that somewhere the fields end and there is Chicago or Canada or the Rockies. It’s like a giant parking lot, with deep-pile green carpet. Corn. See above.

And the little bushy plants which everyone was quick to tell me are soy. Fascinating! I had never seen actual soybeans outside of a Japanese restaurant so it was slightly thrilling for me. Look, I’m a city girl, what can I say?

I was directed to a part of the campus of the University of Illinois that features prominently in the corn/soy drama of this part of the world.

As you can see from the sign the Morrow Plots are the oldest experimental fields in the USA. Mr. Morrow and a couple of his colleagues figured out here what any Native American who was around at the time of white settlement could have told you: that corn needs to be planted with other stuff so that the soil continues to produce fruitful yields. You know, amber waves of grain and all that.

Morrow and his pals discovered first that oats were helpful in replenishing the soil of its nutrients once corn had been grown and depleted the earth. That is called crop rotation. Nowadays, corn is rotated with soy. Here they are, side by side, soy in front, corn in the back, on the very same plots of earth that Farmer Morrow planted.

Behold Corn! The US grows nearly one half of the crop for the entire world. That’s around 270 million tons, which translates into enough Fritos to go to Saturn and back, placed end to end. OK, the Fritos part is a lie but the tonnage is true, friends.

Behold soy! Happy producer of nitrogen for the soil and everything from printer’s ink to frozen dessert treats for human usage.

Check out the close up people, that’s edamame, fresh on the bush. Aren’t they so cute and fuzzy?

And here I am, among the corn plants, looking scared. But, corn is a gift for which I am grateful. Corn was given to the world by the native people of the Americas. It was first domesticated about 9000 years ago in central Mexico and was called maize in Taino, the language of the indigenous people that whitey came across when he got here. Corn is an old English word that means any grain in general and the rest of the world says maize pretty much. Don’t get me started on the maize mazes. It’s too cornfounding. Har har.