I recently bought a new camera lens off of someone on craigslist. When I met up with the seller in a sunny Burger King parking lot, turns out she was a mom with a little one in tow.
As I fiddled around with the fixed lens, she graciously allowed me to snap some shots of what was obviously the flyest subject within five miles: her son Elon.
I know, friends, I know. Almost every recipe I post basically amounts to: me quoting Heidi Swanson quoting someone else.
But, you know, most of the time in the kitchen I’m not shooting for originality. I’m shooting for total deliciousness.
This bulgur pilaf with spicy harissa shrunken tomatoes, lemon-cinnamon caramelized onions, wilted spinach and minted yogurt fits the bill. Try it. You’ll see.
love,
katie
Saturday I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge to spend the day (and overnight) at San Francisco Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm with my friends Michaela and Sarah. Michaela, a newly ordained priest, has lived on the farm for the last 5 years, and since ordination in September, will undergo 4 more years of training before becoming … a more official priest! Or something. I’m not quite sure how the Zen works. And Sarah, who has taken her lay vows, is not only the executive director of Buddhist Peace Fellowship, but also a true SFZC baby, raised by Zen teacher parents among its three campuses: Green Gulch, Tassajara, and City Center.
Anyhow, the two of them go way back, and it was a delight to spend a while walking, joking, thinking out loud, and generally hangin out with these amazing, brilliant, passionate dharma sisters. And the setting, while old-hat to them in some ways, for me was … well. Green Gulch — a functioning subsistence-plus-sales farm, as well as a practice center, located in one of the wealthiest counties in the US — has its issues, is evolving, is imperfect. And has its gorgeousness, my, my.
This week Kloncke is gonna be pretty foto heavy. Because I’ve been spending time in pretty places. Thinking a lot about land, too, and my connection to it (or estrangement from it).
Here, some shots from an amazing afternoon at Panther Beach, on the outskirts of Santa Cruz. Some of the best of Northern California, in its own way, I think. One of the things I love most about spots like this is the visible age and marks of motion in the stone. The oldness of the cliffs, and the patterns of waterwear and erosion. Makes me feel patient and slow and humbled. Kind of like being among elder redwoods.
Sorry I didn’t get a chance to post on Friday, folks — this weekend was a particularly busy one. Starting Friday evening, we (at the Faithful Fools) hosted about 16 participants in a three-day gathering for Buddhists and friends dedicated to social justice. “Working for Liberation,” we called it: the culmination of, oh, about six months of co-planning between me and the lovely Tyson Casey of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, with guidance from Carmen of the Fools and Alan Senauke of Clear View Project (also vice-abbot of Berkeley Zen Center and author of the newly published The Bodhisattva’s Embrace: Dispatches from Engaged Buddhism’s Front Lines).
I wanna say more — much more — about the weekend, but I gotta run back to Sacramento. So for now I’ll leave you with these two images of our final weekend ‘activity’: a performative outreach effort in the Sidewalks Are For People Campaign, or “No on Prop L.” A grey, drizzly Sunday morning; chilly but thoroughly enjoyable.
Today, in honor of World Homeless Day, folks with Homes Not Handcuffs and other groups hosted a “Creative Housing Liberation”: a rally, unpermitted march, and occupation/liberation of a 68-unit apartment building that has been vacant for years now. Coincidentally, that building happened to be right around the corner from our home at the Faithful Fools — a stroke of luck that allowed us to run back and grab a couple of “donations” (a chair and a vase of flowers) to offer to the building.
The event was really well done, and so far everything has gone off without a hitch. Crowd energy was strong; the occupiers had the banner drops all ready for us as our march turned the corner down Eddy Street; they had a dope sound system, powered by a generator, that transformed the corner into a dance party; Food Not Bombs even hooked it up with a tasty dinner for everyone.
Also fortunate: the landlord could not be reached by the police. And since the cops can’t break in and apprehend people without first getting the go-ahead from the landlord, the occupiers will hold the building at least until tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow, if I have time, I’ll try to add a bit more of my own perspective and analysis on housing occupation as a response to racist, heterosexist state violence in the form of denying people adequate housing. According to the event organizers, 30,000 housing units remain vacant in San Francisco, a city with 15,000 people living in homelessness. In light of this, does occupation of empty buildings seem morally wrong?
More germane to my line of questioning these days: what role can fun, vibrant, direct actions like today’s play in a larger strategic movement to transcend an economic system where, as Introducing Capitalism: A Graphic Guide puts it in a euphemistic half-truth, “the means of production are privately owned”?
(Note: very first chant of the march, as we took the streets? “Homelessness is not a crime! Capitalism IS a crime!”)
Hopefully by November I’ll have a little time to actually learn how to use this new camera. So far I’ve just fiddled chaotically with it, and since I got it used I don’t have a manual or anything. (Nor even basic knowledge about photography.)
So until I can study up on my own or take a free class, I’ll stick with appreciating the colors. Mmm, colors.
Some friends threw an utterly beautiful “Radical BBQ” yesterday in Oakland. Young and old, different races, different genders and presentations, fun, kind, relaxed, co-operative, joyful, political. Food (good heavens — Dani made these amazing stuffed stromboli and vegan bread from scratch); music and dancing; a speech from a MUNI driver (SF public transit) on the struggles they’re facing among the rank-and-file; wonderful art (check the Advance the Struggle banner: gorgeous). And they even provided art supplies for people to do their own thing. I took advantage and sketched out a small banner to use for Radical Sangha. Took it home and spent the night painting and finishing it up.
The banner may come in handy tomorrow evening, as the scheduled Radical Sangha will be meeting and then carpooling to San Quentin prison to join the protest of the first death-penalty execution in California in four years. Albert Greenwood Brown is scheduled to be killed by the state on Wednesday. The decision to resume executions (backed by Jerry Brown) was sudden, and has shocked a lot of folks who’ve been doing anti-death-penalty work for years. I only heard about it last Thursday, through folks in Oscar Grant organizing.
I’ll be writing up some thoughts and questions soon on tactics and strategy for radical organizing (sparked in part by an event the Faithful Fools catered yesterday: a talk by lifelong activist and frequent prisoner Father Louis Vitale, a Franciscan priest who works around anti-nuclear intervention and the School of the Americas Watch). Part of me feels ambivalent about attending a protest of the death penalty, with no clear mechanism for affecting this structural, state violence. But I also feel that with the proper perspective, and in tandem with different types of tactics and organizing, it can be a fruitful part of a holistic, loving, politicized life.
What really bugs me is that I won’t be able to make it to another dope event featuring my friend’s mom: An Evening of Solidarity with Women of Haiti. If you’re in the Bay area and not coming to the execution protest, think about hitting this up instead.
And a good Monday to y’all.
Hey friends, sorry this post is so late. As I mentioned, my dad’s in the hospital, so I’ve been running between SF and Sacramento, juggling work and family and friends and politics — so what else is new? — but right now with more emphasis on the family.
Unsurprisingly, as tough as it’s been to see my dad sick, it’s also offered many opportunities for grounding, reflection, and appreciation. That’s how this clear-sightedness stuff works, sometimes, in the midst of difficulty.
And it’s reminding me of a less-serious incident, a couple weeks back, when Ryan and I arrived, stomachs bellowing with hunger, at a highly recommended Thai restaurant tucked away in a corner of Oakland, only to discover that it didn’t open for another half hour. (I say this event was less serious, and it was, but I think we can all agree that when crap like this happens to us it can feel pretty damn grave.)
So there we were, ravenous and cranky. But as luck would have it, the same alley that housed the restaurant also contained a tiny, art-filled park. “Dog Shit Park,” as a wooden sign proclaimed. (Or warned.)
Busted pianos, colorful sculpture, plants and trees and chairs for sitting. And so, as we’ve seen before here on Kloncke, an inconvenience turned into a lovely opportunity.
Last night on my way home from Oakland to SF, I boarded the bart train with no intention of handing out any flyers. It was late; I was tired; also feeling a little shy.
I’d been burned the day before while trying to hand out a different flyer on a similar theme. This one announced an October 23 rally sponsored by the Oakland/SF local (Local 10) of the ILWU longshoremen’s union, in solidarity with the Oscar Grant movement. The ILWU has a history of militant, class- and race-conscious organizing: to challenge apartheid South Africa, they shut down the shipping yards along the whole US West Coast. It’s a pretty inspiring labor-community connection (more explanation over at Advance the Struggle blog), and I was jazzed to be talking to folks about it at the Ashby BART seller’s market on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
But you know, rather than talking politics, most of the men I approached were more interested in hitting on me.
Now. As I’ve discussed here before, hollering doesn’t alarm me too much and I generally respond with friendliness or neutrality rather than coldness or anger. But this day, man, I was not in the mood. The previous night I’d been up at a radical politics discussion in Oakland from 9pm til 3 in the morning. Exhaustion left me exposed and tender, with little energy to break through the banter and engage the humans behind the Gaze.
Kloncke 
