©Alice Gao
This is what happens when photographers shoot photographers. Alice Gao has F&W Classic Photo Project cohort Chris Ozer hold her cone at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen.
Love the focus and the colors here. Also see some juxtaposition with the sticky feeling from seeing melted ice cream with such dreamy and airy focus/colors.
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From Anna, at Door Sixteen I may be a big planner, logistically, I am not a big dreamer. I have my own ambitions but by our American standards of adventure - they’re pretty modest. Giving yourself (myself) permission to just be you (me) is never not powerful. |
People being angry about ~dem gays~ on Target’s Facebook.
I just want to give my two cents on this and tell you a story.
A couple weeks ago, I was hired at Target. I have a job at Target. Not a big deal right?
It is a big deal because i’m a transman.
It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that it’s hard for me, my brothers, and sisters to get a job. There are legal restraints regarding the job and if you don’t pass, it’s hard to be taken seriously at a job interview.
Right on the application, it asks what your preferred name is. It also asks if there is anything that target should know. I put the fact that I am a transman, expecting not to get a call because usually when you put that down, people will throw out the application. I got TWO interviews.
At the interview, they asked me about it. I told them I am on hormones and they told me that they didn’t care. Not in the sense that they don’t emotionally care, but that it didn’t matter. I was male and that’s all that mattered. They also told me that they give sex same couples benefits in states that do not recognize them as a married couple.
At my job orientation, I was not misgendered once. Even my supervisors who weren’t sure of my gender avoided pronoun use, which I found only happens when you’ve had pronoun training. They gave me a name tag with my preferred name and didn’t ask questions. I felt safe and respected, which is huge for a trans* person.
TLDR: Target is amazing not just for the LGB, but also the T. Shop there for the rest of your life.
It would take quite a lot for me to stop supporting Target.
A young college grad asks an economist for advice.
I’ve been having a lot of conversations in the last couple of years about the ideas we’re taught around passion, hard work, careers, and joy. Growing up I promised myself that I would only build my career around something I loved to do; I wouldn’t come to dread my workday or fall into the trap of a monotonous office job and see my life turn into Office Space.
For a lot of years I even had a skeleton of a plan, with the goal to be a film editor, by way of a communication degree. Then in college I realized how hard it is to follow your dream while also becoming less convinced it really was my dream. I learned I loved communication (as a field of study) and I loved learning and I am pretty good at doing school. So maybe my dream was now to never stop? So sights get set on grad school, but what’s the rush? Let’s take my time to really figure out what I want to study and spend all that money on. Never mind I just finished eighteen years of school - which I more or less loved - and while there’s something to be said about momentum, there’s also something to be said about just taking a break and being selfish and maybe a little indulgent. I’ve found a job I enjoy going to more often than not, learning more about myself and uncovering skills I didn’t know I have. I live comfortably and enjoy the life I’ve found so far.
When I was a young child I announced that I wanted to be a philosopher. I wanted to be paid to sit all day and just share my thoughts and ideas about the world. I guess my dream of being a student for forty years isn’t much different. Six years later and I still haven’t been convinced that being a life long student can actually be a thing worth doing, given the actual cost and the opportunity costs. Or I’ve grown to like my own small life in its way. In any case, I’ve spent six years trying to find what I’m passionate enough about to do day in, day out, for forty years. So far all I’ve come to figure out is that I’m not even sure I want to do what I love most that many hours a week for that many years. I admire people who can do what they love and still love it, but I’m not sure I’m one of them. (I did work at KFC for three summers and I still love KFC. So maybe I’m also selling myself short. Or I need to work in the fried chicken industry.)
This was passed around a couple weeks ago, but has been open since then for me to share.
The last book my book club read was Beyond the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo. It’s a non-fiction account of life in one of the slums in Mumbai and while it doesn’t spend a great deal of time discussing the intersections of corruption and Westerner’s good intentions/volunteerism, it does mention it more than once. Before reading this I had been becoming more uncomfortable with the ways I feel and see a lot of privileged Western people and organizations try to donate money or volunteer time without necessarily doing the work to understand what is actually helpful and needed. I don’t mean to demean the good intentions these volunteers and donors have, but it has to get to a point where they are doing just as much harm - if not more - than good.
This article does a good job putting that feeling into more concrete words while also not shaming the desire to help. This is an op-ed, so doesn’t have in depth research or data, which I’d like to see more of somewhere else - to either refute or support the general impression that’s been building for me recently.
Prepared February10, 2013. Mushroom Bourguignon from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook.
(I realized that I haven’t been numbering these recipes. In real-time I just know that I average 1 per week, but when they’re being posted a few months after the fact and not with consistent regularity, numbering them might be nice. Also, posterity. This one is #5.)
This recipe was pretty good. It wasn’t a standout for me but it was super easy. If you’re being particular you may notice that we jumped from Jan 27 to Feb 10. Skipping a full week. I make up for it later this week, so don’t fret about falling behind.
Instead what happened was I went to prepare this meal and discovered the hard way that the ceramic deep casserole dish I had was not made for stovetop. The “hard way” being “it broke on the stove and the hot oil fell into the element and I started an actual honest to goodness grease fire”. Here I am almost three months later telling the tale and you’ll have to take my word that you’ll soon find out the counter backdrops in these photos aren’t about to change - so it was put out fairly quickly. Not without a panicked moment where I realized our baking soda was kept above the stove and I’d have to reach over the flames. And would flour work just as well or should I try a towel? (My friends in the room at the time were impressed I remembered baking soda at all - thank you life skills class at Chase Middle School, ca. 1998.) Long story short I got the baking soda, put out the fire, ordered a pizza, and bought a cast iron pot at Bed, Bath, & Beyond the following weekend. Put to use immediately with this dish, round 2.
Prepared January 27, 2013: Wild Rice Gratin with Kale, Caramelized Onions, and Baby Swiss. From Smitten Kitchen cookbook.
I had never cooked with kale before this recipe and as far as I know I had never had kale. Except maybe rarely as a kid when my mom would sneak it in. I also wouldn’t say I’m a convert or that I’m making my own kale chips now, but I definitely won’t avoid it.
I’m a big fan of casseroles and this is essentially a fancy casserole. It was also my sister’s favorite recipe so far (at least at the end of January - but I also haven’t heard her make any similar claim since).
thestarsgowaltzingout:emilytea10:invisiblecashews:
Actually, the photographs are spaced ten years apart, not sixteen.
1912 to 1922.
The young, homeless (but no less dapper) wanderer shown in the first survived the sinking of the Titanic and swam to the shores of West Egg. There he built a life and a large, empty house, in an effort to win the heart of the wealthy, upper class woman he’d fallen in love with a decade earlier and had been separated from against his will.
He shed his earlier identity, and changed his name to reflect his new station. Jack was now known as Jay Gatsby, the eccentric millionaire who threw parties every night in the hopes that one day his love would show up and spin with him as they had long ago in the dance hall of the lower decks.
holy shit
And then, at the beginning of Inception, he starts out washed up on a shore.
still no oscar
Leo’s entire film career of unrelated projects has better continuity than glee.
(Source: margaritka2005)
Prepared Jan 20, 2013. Gnocchi in tomato broth, from Smitten Kitchen.
We’re only nearing the end of January so I’m clearly running behind. Let me be brief, there were two notable things about this recipe:
Unknown to me my best friend (same best friend who gifted me the SK cookbook) also made it the same weekend and also raved about it. So essentially this was kismet.
Making the gnocchi was a giant pain, but oh so worth it. I’m a huge fan of gnocchi and despite the paste that plastered my kitchen after making this, it was one of my favorite recipes so far. Even in a tomato broth (I’m more of a cheesy-cream sauce myself).
