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just gathered: twenty-twelve.

December 31, 2012 by justgathering

I took a long hiatus from blogging this year. I could say that life just got too busy, but it wasn’t that. I just couldn’t think of a good reason to do it anymore. Sometimes you just want to live your life instead of pausing to photograph it. Sometimes shocking things happen in this world, and writing about the latest loaf of bread you baked feels painfully small.

Obviously, though, I’m at it again. I missed blogging, and I realized that I do it because it makes me happy. I like reflecting on the meals I’ve made and the things I’ve done and documenting life as it happens. I like finding out that other people out there experience the same questioning and fear and excitement that I do.

Plus, I have a really bad memory (yet more evidence that I am someone’s Nana reincarnated). If I don’t write something down, it’s like it never happened. This is a curse when it causes me to fail someone I love, but it’s also what makes me so fascinated by language and texts and what makes me good at getting things done. (When your instinct is to decide what’s necessary to know and let everything else go, it’s easy to do instead of dwell.)

But before 2012′s chances are up, I want to dwell a little. These things really happened.

january

egg launched, and the very first poem found its way to the computers and phones of the earliest subscribers.

Meanwhile, Daniel and I started making preparations for our move from the Upper West to Brooklyn. (Was that really less than a year ago?) I ran in Central Park nearly every morning, enjoying every crunchy step of the frozen reservoir.

And I stockpiled bottles of kombucha. Yes, the SCOBYs made the move to BK, too.

february

We moved! We spent our first few weekends painting the walls American white and charcoal gray.

And hunting for deals on typewriter tables and filing cabinets at the Brooklyn Flea and Build It Green.

Daniel fulfilled one of his lifelong dreams when he rented and drove what he insisted on calling a “pick-em-up truck.”

Midway through the month, I ventured out for my first long run (back) in Prospect Park.I lived near the park for much of 2010 and ran the loop most days, so this felt like a homecoming run.

march

Nesting came next. March was cold, and we both dug into making our new place comfy and toasty. We made a lot of things: bread, bowls, bloody mary grilled cheese.

Daniel set to building, as he does.

(Although—it has to be said publicly—this pile of books is still waiting for bookshelves.)

Our place will never be finished, and I think we both like it that way. Lately we’ve been talking about [renters' versions of] bathroom renovations and kitchen cabinet makeovers.

A home is a living thing, able to accommodate growth and change and a whole lot of Pancake Sundays.

april

Spring’s transitions for us started early and kept coming. At the very end of March, I started a new job, which meant longer work days but a big boost in happiness. I became more intentional about my weekends, bent on exploring every street in Brooklyn and experiencing every restaurant in our new hood. Daniel gave me my birthday present early: a new bike to facilitate our adventures.

We left Brooklyn on occasional weekends, too, going upstate for a Saturday hike in the Appalachians…

… and learning about and sampling some quality coffees at Craft Coffee.

April was also when we planted our roof garden and, thrillingly, saw tiny sprouts practically overnight.

may

May in Brooklyn was amazing. We celebrated my birthday with beers and lots of friends at Washington Commons.

Followed by Ample Hills, of course. We live dangerously close to this place.

The garden exploded.

And we did the Googa Mooga thing. Googa Mooga, in case you weren’t around for it, was a food and musical festival that got a lot of hype and a whole lot of backlash when the first day featured long lines and sold-out vendors. We had tickets for the second day and almost didn’t go because the tweets about it were so negative, but Sunday at Googa Mooga was absolutely fantastic.

I guess a lot of people were scared into staying home, because the crowd was totally under control. We tried a ton of delicious beers and food from Brooklyn and Manhattan and parked ourselves on a picnic blanket with friends to enjoy the sun. Many thumbs up.

june

I don’t get to go home to Illinois very often, but I made a quick trip home for Father’s Day.

Sisters. I love my baby girl.

Back in BK, we hit up the Flea every other weekend. Daniel is like a metal detector that’s been finely tuned to find old pieces of machinery, cogs and gears.

I egg him on. Our apartment is full of so many thingamajigs that will one day be beautiful furniture.

Also, why are there no pictures of Barbara in this post yet?

Remedied.

july

Fionnuala, one of my oldest and furthest-away friends, spent part of her summer in the states, and part of that part with us. We wanted to show her the quintessential Independence Day in Brooklyn Bridge Park, complete with potluck picnic.

What we didn’t know beforehand: the bridge blocks the fireworks. But the sunset was lovely and we practically had the park to ourselves. Fine by me.

Daniel got into grilling on what is possibly the most un-manly grill in existence.

Fionnuala ate her first real hot dog and had her first s’mores experience with us, and we introduced her to the phenomenon that is the tiki bar. We are officially good friends and good Americans.

After Fionnuala hopped back across the pond, I embarked on a ladies’ weekend getaway to a much smaller pond: Long Pond, my friend Anna’s home in Massachusetts.

Let me pause right now and say I am ridiculously thankful for my friends. These women are smart and funny and kind and tough, and they’ve seen me through a lot. I feel lucky to know them and thankful that, of all things, our blogs brought us together.

And on a Tuesday morning at July’s close, Daniel and I became official domestic partners. Yes, this is done side-by-side with civil ceremonies at City Hall. No, we are not married, despite what most of my Foursquare followers believe.

But we do have these nifty rings, made by (who else?) my official DP. (His favorite of all my nicknames for him.)

august

The third annual Ice Cream Sunday was in August. This was one of my favorite events of summer 2011, and it didn’t disappoint this year either. Crazy and creative ice cream flavors on mini cones, including this one, with ice creams made from three different kinds of eggs—duck, quail, and (if my rusty memory serves me for once) ostrich.

We spent one August weekend with friends in New Paltz, where I joined our hostess and her regular running buddies for a 7-mile trail run up a mountain.

The next weekend, we camped out at Windflower Farm, the amazing farm upstate where our regular CSA produce box originates. We met Farmer Ted and hung out with other city-dwellers who belong to the CSA. We toured the farm, learned how to make jam, endured a rare (for 2012) summer thunderstorm, and partook in the most epic potluck I’ve ever witnessed.

september

September was a month of travel. We spent weekends in each of our hometowns, celebrating friends’ weddings. And it was in September that I encountered Arizona. The opportunity to go to Phoenix for work took me by complete surprise and I practically lunged at the opportunity, but I wasn’t sure how much I would like the desert.

I travelled there for a few days in mid-September and started to get a feel for the place. It was completely unlike anywhere I’d ever been before—the insanity of the flora and fauna! The HEAT. I liked it, though. Arizona appeals to the adventurous side of me (which still requires a semblance of routine and quiet order). When I look at the desert, I see at once the human potential for open-mindedness and adaptation and our almost compulsive need to transform the space around us.

So I committed myself and made the leap. Daniel and I considered the prospect of a time apart, and his unflagging support throughout all of it makes me love him even more (if that was possible). We’ve undergone many a seasonal shift, but now I know we can take the truly unpredictable.

october

My team and I landed in Phoenix on October 1. Barbara and I spent the month transitioning: finding a home, working from temporary spaces, and (occasionally) relaxing poolside.

I kept running. I’ve moved 7 times in the past four years, and this running habit has been pretty much my only constant, serving to remind me that I’m still the same. It helps a place feel like home so much more quickly.

The Madison Improvement Club also had a hand in making Phoenix feel welcoming. My coworkers and I discovered this spin and yoga studio on our second or third day in the city, which also happened to be its third or fourth day of existence. We’ve been regulars there ever since, and I can’t say enough about the refreshing mix of classes and the ridiculously welcoming, upbeat teachers and staff. Plus, the cafe has green smoothies. Feeding my addiction.

november

When I move to a new place, I like to seek out the small, unique things I love about that place and build my life around those. Happiness, after all, is made mostly of gratitude. The fall in Phoenix feels like the summers of my childhood, so I spent November weekends embracing the sunshine and biking around, Barbara in tow.

The Old Town farmers market is a favorite weekend stop.

I’m working on a compilation of my favorite Scottsdale sites, and, already, I feel like I could show an out-of-towner a fantastic weekend. It probably shouldn’t have surprised me, but Phoenix and Scottsdale have a really great food and drink culture.

Speaking of foodie paradises, Daniel and I skipped Thanksgiving and rendezvoused in Seattle for a week of drinking and eating and more drinking.

I’ll say it again: the beer was good. And I think I’ve had maybe two beers since then. Overdid it a bit…

december

This month—and this year—it still hasn’t sunk in how much we’ve done and how things have changed.

I’ve been settling in Arizona: cooking often, running what have become my regular routes, focusing on the work I love to do, the reason I’m here.

And ending the year perfectly: with Daniel and our friends and our family (in Philly, Chicago, and New York), reflecting on how crazy life is, and how unexpected.

From 2013 I anticipate more happiness, more challenges, and, above all, surprises, always more surprises.

photo credit: the lovely Anna Chapin (http://annachapin.tumblr.com/)

The end of this post is cheesy. Whatever. Sometimes I’m cheesy.

Happy New Year, friends. Cheers to the year that’s gone and the year to come!

Category eat., explore., grow., learn., make., nest., run., write. | Tags: 2012,Barbara Walters,Brooklyn,Daniel,moving,Phoenix,tin gully,year in review | 8 Comments
just made: bloody mary grilled cheese

March 15, 2012 by justgathering

You heard me.

A few weeks ago, I met my friend Leslie at the Bearded Lady on Washington. Leslie is a writer (of fiction, grant proposals, no-longer-public blog posts, and the occasional poem), and I love to meet up with her to discuss what we’re working on. And have $4 happy hour beers. By the time Daniel joined us, we were ready to order food, and we were all intrigued by the sound of a grilled cheese sandwich with horseradish.

The sandwich was good, but it prompted the question: what if you put all the ingredients to a bloody mary on a sandwich?

A quick Google told us that no one [who's internet-savvy] has gone there. Daniel and I set about to change that.

Our friends Emily and Eliott were in town from Illinois, and they were down to make the Bloody Mary Grilled Cheese happen.

The components:

The steps: 1. Slice some bread (we used whole wheat sourdough from Bread Alone) and grate some cheese (we chose Consider Bardwell’s Rupert).

2. Make a (warning: potent) mixture of horseradish and Worcestershire sauce.

3. Add to that some finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes, spread the whole mixture on bread, and top it with pickles.

4. Add your cheese, as much or as little as you like. A mixture of different cheeses would also be nice.

[Side note: when Emily, Eliott, and I were buying this cheese at the Union Square Greenmarket, we informed our handsome cheesemonger that we needed enough to make four grilled cheese sandwiches. He proceeded to try to sell us a hunk of cheese about the size of the heel of my hand. Of course, we were quick to correct his mistake. "No, no. We're Midwesterners. Quadruple that, please."]

5. Pile high with greens. We used arugula for a peppery kick.

6. Grill. We coated our bread in olive oil rather than butter, reasoning that (a) butter might be too rich to evoke the pure, clean taste of a blood mary and (b) we didn’t have any butter.

A darling is born. Go. Make. Eat. Accompany with a good light beer. Or, you know, a bloody mary.

Category write. | Tags: bloody mary grilled cheese,Midwesterner jokes,Recipe,sandwich | 3 Comments
long-standing preoccupations

March 9, 2012 by justgathering

I mentioned a few of my creative obsessions, but I woke up this morning and thought, why not share the whole list?

I like it when one of these things sneaks into my writing, because it’s usually a sign that I’m getting at something very real to me. I like it even more when they crash into each other.

I wrote this poem in the summer of 2006:

Unkind of Winter

Snowshine in moonlight is a reflection of a reflection:
the fields in February are dim by morning.
This is day at its clingiest, holding onto night.

Stiff fingers on steering wheels protest,
complaining of the cold,
breaking the back road quiet.

In a ditch, a truck has gone halfway through a fence
and, abandoned, waits for release.
The driver’s door hangs open at an exposing slant.

The fields in February speak of death often:
this is where deer collapse,
in the darkness, masses of quivering muscle.

Category make., write. | Tags: poem,preoccupation,writing | No Comments
motto for March:

March 1, 2012 by justgathering

“Jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.” — Ray Bradbury

Read the full and fantastic Paris Review interview here.

Category explore., learn., make., write. | Tags: | No Comments
one thing that helps me write

February 20, 2012 by justgathering

Perseverate: to repeat a thought or action after the stimulus that prompted it has ceased.

I spent the summer of 2005 working at a center for gifted children (as in, 6-year-olds with SAT scores high enough to get into decent colleges), and one of the habits we were trained to watch out for was perseveration: there was an ultra-fine line between nurturing a kid’s obsession with existence theorems and allowing it to spiral out into compulsion.

Perseveration—to be completely consumed by an idea to the point that one is unable to let it go—is a marker of both giftedness and autism. It’s also a habit of very good writers.

Good writers take the simplest ideas and simultaneously unwind and expand them through perseveration. They give their narrators the freedom to pause at the tiniest details of life, things most people would pass over, and to ruminate, exploring every tangentially related line of thought, exhausting all possible meanings. These narrators will harp on a mispronounced word, a pleasantly burnt smell, a certain light at a particular time of day, picking at it until it is exposed entirely.

My favorite narrators are the ones who know they do it. Leo Gursky from Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love: “There are things I find hard to describe. And yet I persist like a stubborn mule in my efforts…. Over and over, I read the pages of the book I’d written as a young man…. But. I didn’t get any closer to solving the mystery.”

The characters we love are all big-time perserverators. It is their obsession that leads us along as we read.

A while ago, I made a list of my own preoccupations as a writer, things that pop up again and again in my writing, the fixations of my subconscious. Harsh seasons. Milk. Misrememberings. Prairie grasses. Some mornings when I sit down to write, I begin by choosing a topic from my list. Then, I unleash a narrator to do a little perseverating. What I’ve found: allowing my characters to get a little hung up is usually the only way to really get anywhere.

Category write. | Tags: narrators,obsession,perseveration,preoccupation,writing | 1 Comment
hatching egg

February 3, 2012 by justgathering

If you and I have bumped into one another sometime over the last six months, or grabbed coffee, or made pancakes together, you probably know a little bit about egg. Well, here’s a little bit more.

Last August, I was craving more poetry in my life. New poems, surprising poems. Poems that felt real to me. More than that, I wanted poems to interrupt my days. I wanted living and poetry to become the same thing (still do).

I remember walking around the city on a very hot day that month, telling Daniel all of this (over chocolate ice cream cones, I think),

and it hit me that if I want these things, a lot of other people must want these things too. So egg was born.

Inspired in part by the Dial-a-Poem poets of the 60s (yes—call a number to get a poem!), I decided to take advantage of this amazing technology we’ve got called email. I would send out a poem via email to anyone who wanted to sign up. For free, of course. Because why not?

(Image of John Giorno, from Katie Beha’s Become Your Own Yawn in which she describes Dial-a-Poem as “a way of experiencing art through the very facts of our daily life.”)

But I wouldn’t send out poems from the books on my shelves, partially because I don’t like to make a habit of infringing copyright but mostly because I wanted to see what was out there. I wanted to see what would come in if I opened up egg for submissions.

Daniel and I got to building egg right away. I sketched out the simple design in my head.

Daniel programmed it and put a lovely speckle on it.

Then egg spent a few months incubating. The subscribe page displayed a message that the project was in beta, and I watched the subscribers start to slowly trickle in. I used two forms of advertising to bring in subscribers: (1) word of mouth and (2) one mass email to the all poets I know that both explained egg and called for submissions.

To my language-loving friends:

I’ve been working on a little side project, and it’s about to get real. I’m letting you know because I think you’d like it.

It’s called egg, and it’s an online poetry magazine, delivered one poem per week via email. Sign up, get a poem every week. Simple and awesome, right?

Even better: submissions are reader-generated. It’s incredibly easy [and free!] to submit a poem and get your writing out there.

If you think that sounds pretty sweet, sign up. Better yet, submit a poem. Better still, forward this little announcement to anyone you know who might be into it.

Here’s to making awesome things in 2012!

Shayne

I had a tiny but persistent fear at the beginning that no one would submit. That I would tell everyone about this great new poetry email and then be forced to write poems under pen names to send out every week—or worse yet, never deliver at all.

Turns out, though, plenty of folks were into it. Not only did the subscribers keep rolling in, but lots of people were submitting, people I’d never met before, people who lived in Ohio and California and Arizona. I was right; there were more people out there who wanted a mid-week poetry interruption.

In December, Daniel and I created a MailChimp template that looked just like the website. By this point, I knew enough html and css to make it look almost like I wanted it to, but he taught me some pretty cool tricks along the way. Ah, the benefits of living with a handsome computer genius.

When I felt like I had enough submissions to sustain the email for a while if all the poets were to suddenly stop writing, egg launched.

The first email went out the first week of 2012. Since then, egg‘s been tweeting lots of lines from poems.

each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then/ the heart moves roomier — A. R. Ammons, The City Limits

— egg (@eggpoetry) January 3, 2012

And people continue to subscribe, one by one, and people keep submitting their poems, which takes a whole lot of guts and awesomeness.

Sitting at home on a Saturday morning, writing poems? Send one our way and you might see it in “print”! eggpoetry.com

— egg (@eggpoetry) January 28, 2012

So, what next? I’m happy to let egg grow organically and see where it goes. I’m also dreaming of a one-off print version, perhaps a collection of the best of egg at the end of the year. We’ll see.

If you’re intrigued by the idea of a poem a week in your inbox, try it out. And if you’ve got a poem that the world should see, send it my way.

And finally, if you want to make something, make it.

Category learn., make., write. | Tags: egg,email,make,poetry,writing | 1 Comment
putting it out there

January 14, 2012 by justgathering

Have you yet had the pleasure of stumbling upon this project out in the wild?

Before I Die is a Candy Chang brainchild. That would be the same urban planner/public interaction artist who brought us I Wish This Was. [I know, you totally love her.]

Daniel and I encountered this installation near Borough Hall sometime in the fall, and we each made a declaration. Mine:

No, not world peace. Just a book. One book. The book that’s been forming in me since I decided to become a writer at age 4, when being a writer meant being an illustrator.

I fully believe in the power of just putting something out there. So here it is: I’m writing a book. A long work of fiction. I am getting up early to spend an hour finessing a hundred words. I am allowing a handful of people I’ve made up to consume my thoughts and refusing to curtail my mind wanderings. I am jotting notes and collecting photos and starting and stopping scenarios. I am going on writing dates with friends who like to sit in silence and make things side by side.

If you see me, ask me how it’s going. That’s how this whole thing works.

Category write. | Tags: Before I Die,Candy Chang,fiction,make,writing | No Comments
3 things that rocked my 2011

December 24, 2011 by justgathering
This year I: started a new job, moved in with a pretty cool guy, finished my 9+1, ate a lot of ice cream, and closed the curtain on the food blog I’d been writing for 3.5 years. I loved this year. So much change, and most of it good. So now that it’s almost over, here are 3 things that made it great.
1. Instapaper. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep on evangelizing about this app: it seriously changed my life, by changing the way I read online (and off). 90% of the reading that sparked my creativity, challenged my misconceptions, taught me awesome things, and/or made me want to put good into the world this year, I read (and usually discovered in the first place) through Instapaper. In a world of supposedly shortening attention spans and never-ending busyness, it delivers probably the most valuable thing you could ask for from an app: the feeling of having more time. Don’t have time to follow that thread of links down the rabbit hole but desperately want to? Save that intellectual expedition for your subway ride. I balked at the $4.99 price tag at first, but knowing what I know now, I would gladly pay $20. [Not a bad use of your commute: making your way through The Paris Review's huge collection of interviews.]
2. Running Classes. I took a weekly running class with the New York Road Runners from May through October. Signing up was a totally last minute decision that turned out to be an awesome one. When I started, I was struggling to get my mile under 8:25. After five months, I ran a 6:48 Fifth Avenue Mile. I’m not a natural runner and have to work really hard to improve—and these classes are by no means a shortcut. The workouts are tough. But I never would have gained so much (so fast) on my own. My two hours every Tuesday night ended up being the highlight of my week because they left me feeling so gosh darn accomplished.
3. Writing Workshop. My stellar running class experience set me off on a class kick, so the next thing I signed up for was a 10-week writing workshop. I quickly discovered that the payoff was nowhere near as immediate. Progress in writing is much more difficult to measure than progress in running, and I had to put a lot more time in outside of class. I ended up having to miss one class because of work and showing up to another with nothing to share. But that was okay. The point was to get me writing regularly again, to get into that mindset where anything and everything might make a great first line. And that happened. Plus I met some really cool people. Success.
2011, for me, was about mind opening. Learning things, learning about ways to learn things, finding more things I want to learn. Next up: a Skillshare class or two, a knife skills class with this awesome dude, and actually learning how to code.

I’m thinking that 2012 is going to be kind of dynamite.
Category learn., run., write. | Tags: 2011,apps,classes,Instapaper,learning,writing | No Comments
When last we met our protagonist…

October 18, 2011 by justgathering

… she was beginning to slowly make her way through a peck and a half of apples.
And she now offers to you:
Places this month has gone.

I’ve spent it mostly baking and cooking with apples.

Pancakes topped with maple syrup and apples sauteed in butter, brown sugar and cinnamon.

Pie crust, made with 3 parts flour and 1 part crushed walnuts.

Flipping said pie crust.

It’s only blurry because of my ninja speed skills.

Yes, I greased the pie plate with walnut oil.

Making a pie crust does not have to be that hard. Delicious taste does not require a fancy lattice. It doesn’t even require butter, in my opinion, although this particular pie had plenty.

Apples, skins on, simmered in maple syrup, cinnamon, and lots of bourbon.

Fill the crust.

Not the most beautiful pie in the world, but a darn tasty one.

And while it was baking, Daniel and I made a little dinner.

Because it’s just so easy and autumnal, acorn squash, halved and filled with beans, onions, and cheese. His and hers.

Guess which is which? Hint: I don’t require an entire block of cheese with my dinner.

Other things I’ve done this month?

I ran the Staten Island Half Marathon for the second year in a row.

1:52:59. Beat my PR, set at this very same race last year, by about 7 minutes. Happy runner.

And last weekend, Daniel and I escaped with a few friends for an end-of-season trip to Fire Island. Nothing but cooking, eating, playing games, walking on the beach, and relaxing.

And I might have snuck in an island run as well.

It’s been a wild and crazy fall, and the coming weeks promise no respite. But there’s sure to be plenty more good food, great running, and opportunities to get creative. So all I can say is: I’m down.

Category run., write. | Tags: acorn squash,apple pie,apples,bourbon,breakfasting,desserting,Fire Island,pancakes,pie crust,staten island half marathon,supping | 7 Comments
Short Races, Long Runs, and Divine Sandwiches

September 18, 2011 by justgathering

Yesterday was the Fitness Mind, Body, and Spirit 4 Miler, a race for which I signed up quite a long time ago.

It was also 10 miles on my half marathon training plan. What to do? Run a 4 mile race in the middle of a 10 mile long run, of course.

I left my apartment around an hour before the start of the race and charted a course that took me downtown and around Central Park on the roads. I wound up at the start of the race with 4.6 miles down. I chatted with friends who were running it, ate a handful of sport beans, and took off for the speedier part of the long run.

This race was a little unorganized, but it was fun. I wasn’t taking it seriously at all, so I didn’t mind too much when a random lady tried to cross the road right in front of me as I sprinted toward the finish line. She probably minded when I body slammed her, but I’m pretty sure she was fine.

Official time: 34:22, a PR. I grabbed an apple on the way through the finish and kept on running for the last 1.4 miles. Then, with 10 miles under my belt, I wandered through the little expo with my lovely friend Amy and ate my free food.

Delicious apple.

Yogurt, berries, and granola. Definitely a nice change of pace compared to the usual bagel.

I actually really liked running a short race in the middle of a longer run. It broke up the long run into manageable chunks, and it was a good mental exercise to pick up the pace for a few miles in the middle. I might start doing this more often.

Today was purely relaxing. Daniel and I joined Leslie at the Brooklyn Book Festival. We checked out all the book stalls, ogled some literary magazines and nonfiction anthologies, and successfully attended a ticketed reading (quite the feat, apparently).

We also ate some amazing food. Sandwiches from Tazza, where we ate on Labor Day.

Our experience there was just so good that we had to expose Leslie to the wonder that is Tazza. Daniel and I split two sandwiches again.

Tomato, basil, and fresh mozzarella.

And roasted eggplant, red peppers, and goat cheese on focaccia.

Followed, of course, by ice cream. Blue Marble mint cookie, to be exact.

Not a bad weekend at all.

Category run., write. | Tags: Brooklyn,brooklyning,Central Park,long run,lunching,races,snacking,tazza,training | 7 Comments

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