neotoma

Last night I went with greenygal, the Vegan Knitter, and A Person To Be Pseudonymed Later (aka Euterpe) to see Madame Satan, Cecil B DeMille's only musical at the AFI.

It was fun, though the male lead character does not deserve his awesome wife -- she's so much more interesting than he is, because he's just keeping a vaudevillian as his mistress, and she's willing to crash at the mistress' apartment, force her husband's friend Jimmy to keep up the charade that the mistress is actually his new wife, and when that doesn't solve the problem of her husband's straying, she crashes the masquerade ball that Jimmy is hosting on a zeppelin in a regal and extremely reveling dress as 'Madam Satan', who speaks with a French accent and captives her husband away from the mistress.

There is an extended dance sequence with 'Electricty' that is definitely influenced by the robot creation scene in Metropolis, and was performed by then-famous dancer Theodore Kosloff and an ensemble dressed as gears and mechanisms.

The film abruptly veers into a disaster film as the zeppelin gets caught in a thunderstorm and has to be evacuated via parachute. The film was made in 1930, which was after the USS Shenandoah disaster, but 7 years before the Hindenburg disaster, so the disaster in the movie is based on the Shenandoah, which crashed in three pieces.

The sound quality of the film and the singing styles of the time also means that I missed most of the words of the songs, but it still made sense without them.

Afterwards, we had dinner at Charm Thai and discussed how you would remake the movie today -- consensus was, we'd absolutely have to change the ending, possibly by having the wife and mistress run off together.

This morning, I went with ellen_fremedon and the Vegan Knitter to the Brookside Gardens Spring Native Plant sale -- they picked up some plants to replace the dawn redwood sapling they had to take out of their front bed before it grew big enough to damage their home's foundation and to replace a hosta and a boxwood in the back. I picked up a miniature rose, a stonecrop, a gold-edged hen-and-chicks sempervivum, and a pot of lance-leafed loosestrife (which has a lovely bronze color).

We swung by the Ace Hardware to get some leaf mould fertilizer and then by my place to pick up my garden fork, and then went to their place to get the boxwood and hosta out -- which was a lot of work, as the hosta was actually mass of hostas that we had to excavate around to get out. The soil here is mostly clay, so we mixed about a third of the bag of leaf mould in before putting the native plants in the ground.

greenygal and I went to Cleveland, Ohio, to see the total eclipse; Cleveland was chosen because we both have relatives in the area. We flew out on Friday the 5th and got back today, Tuesday the 9th.



The totality was amazing. The sky turned silvery and twilit, and the sun was a black disk lined in silver and corona. It got noticeably cooler, and the entire horizon looked like the moment just before dawn when the light is not quite above the horizon. The change from totality to partial was like someone had set off a flashbulb across the entire sky.

We went to the Total Eclipse Fest on the grounds of the Great Lakes Science Center; NASA was there, doing a lot of talking about Artemis among other things. They were also handing out postcards with retro art; I collected the entire set and will see if I can get them framed together.

I took this panoramic photo because we had been at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History the day before and one of the staff gave a talk on what to expect during the totality. She specifically mentioned the entire horizon would look like a sunset, and we were in a location to take a good panorama.

Other things we did:

• Severance Music Center -- a concert consisting of Gabriella Smith's Breathing Forests, Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, John Adams' City Noir.


• The Cleveland Museum of Art -- including the vandalized cast of Rodin's The Thinker


• West Side Market

Gruyere-bacon wheel, almond croissant, lemon tart quart of whole milk, quart of plain yogurt, quart of maple granola, macaroons (pistachio, lemon, lavender), chocolate cherry bread, sirloin steaks, pink lady apples, bosc pears, corn bread mix, 3 Nigerian beef handpies, 2 lentil picadillo handpies, a roasted veggie corn muffin, an
extreme chocolate chip stack, a snickerdoodle stack, a chewy ginger stack, and apricot almond butter cookies.

While I was making my last loop, a woman stopped me to ask if my hat was the Swan Tam, pattern by Ron Schweitzer. She is involved in getting his website (https://www.knittingtales.com) up and running, and had never seen a Swan Tam in the wild before -- which is not surprising. The store that sold his designs has been closed for around 20 years and I am literally the only person who has made one listed on Ravelry.

She asked if she could take a picture, and I was okay with that as long as my face didn't appear. She was also wearing a Ron Schweitzer sweater, one of his sheltand patterns that goes through gradients of natural colored wool.

I'm glad to know the patterns are available online now -- I'll probably buy the Swan Jacket pattern again (so I can finally finish it) and maybe one or two of the others. They are really pretty, just a lot of work.

Later I joined my Meetup group for a short-ish hike through Rock Creek Park, and was so glad I wore layers so I could take them off. I'm tired now and I'm probably going to be sore tomorrow.

3 pulled pork handpies,a lentil picadillo handpie, a sage sausage corn muffin, a berger cookiepack, a pumpkin spice bar, an extreme chocolate chip cookie stack, and apricot almond butter cookies.

I had Thanksgiving dinner with ellen_fremedon, the Vegan Knitter, VK's parents, and greenygal. And we are planning to have Christmas dinner there as well -- I am looking around to see where I can get a goose (if all else fails, Butcher's Alley). Tentatively, the plan is goose, chestnut stuffing, spaetzle, springerle cookies, and quark cheesecake, with Ellen figuring out the vegetable and vegan dishes.

I went to the Native Art Show at the National Museum of the American Indian today, and bought some things.

This brooch made by Melvin Lonjose (Zuni)


This shirt from Penny Singer that I will be using as a summer jacket



And this seriagraph by Peter Boome that I have been eying for several years.


There was an Aleut basket-maker whose pieces were gorgeous, but the moment they said their pieces were made of baleen I knew even the miniatures were way out of my price range -- Don Johnston.

Eugene Tapahe was back with his absolutely stunning photograpy -- Tapahe Photography

Last, Porfirio Gutierrez returned with Zapotec natural dyed rugs -- I have a miniature from him, but it will be a while before I can afford a full sized piece.

The only things that weren't there that I was hoping to see was someone doing quillwork and someone with wampum jewelry -- the NYC show had a jeweler with wampum.

Spitzenburg apples (yay!), magness pears, shallots, 3 sloppy joe handpies, 2 spanakopita handpies, a walnut fig scone, an almond pillow cookie two-pack, pbj squares, a caramel apple stack, a chewy ginger stack, and a peanut butter cookie stack.

It's also the first weekend of Noir City DC, so I met up with a friend to see Shakedown. We were supposed to see The Dark Corner as well (Lucille Ball in a noir!) but the film hadn't arrived yet, so they had to substitute Naked Alibi -- which I've already seen before (it's not a great film, but the child actor playing Petey played John Harper in The Night of the Hunter the next year, and the cinematography - the framing and blocking of a number of shots -- is remarkable; the cinematographer did A Touch of Evil in 1958, so no wonder).

We swung by Loyalty Books, and discovered Tales of the Talented Tenth, no. 3: Robert Smalls, who definitely deserves to have a movie about him. The first and second volume are about Bass Reeves and Bessie Stringfield, respectively, and I'm looking forward to stumbling across more of the series.

We went to Trattoria da Lina afterwards to eat -- polenta fries, tagliolini alla carbonara, and the lightest, fluffiest pistachio cake you can imagine. I definitely want to go back there!

I went out of my friend Pseudonym A's house today and helped her with her garden. She bought this last year, and we put in some fall vegetables on Labor Day.

Today, we ripped up the landscaping cloth from two flower beds, put down better soils, mixed some of the underlying clay up, and then planted one of the beds with candy roaster squash, pie pumpkin, pickling and regular cucumbers, and two kinds of melon. I also planted a corn and a succotash been in each mound, so at least they should be identifiable when those sprout up. I looked over the cabbage, kale, and cauliflower that we'd put in along the wall last year -- most of them were bolting, but they'd done pretty well, so she could definitely place more brassicas in those places.

We swung by her local Lowe's and picked up petunias, three flats of marigolds, six strawberry plants, some potting soil, and black mulch.

Back at the house, we paused to have some lemonade, then spread most of the mulch in the pumpkin bed, potted the strawberries in a multi-pot that the previous homeowners had left, ripped up more landscape cloth from under what might be a camellia, planted the petunia, and then planted the marigolds as edging in that bed.

Lastly, I scattered a lot of different flower seeds -- nasturium, foxglove, sunflower -- and some radish and green pea seeds -- then mulched it. That bed is just going to be catch as catch can this year, I guess.

Afterwards, we sat in the sunroom suitably distanced and ate delivery Japanese food. I might be sore tomorrow (it was about 6 hours of work), but it was a lot of fun.

Yesterday I finally went to a grocery -- I hadn't been since March 23rd. I was careful to make a list so I that I didn't get distracted from necessities that I can't get at the local farmer's market like ginger root, cream, bananas and parchment paper, all of which I was out of.

I went about a half hour after noon, so it wasn't too busy. They were surprisingly out of almost all bar soap -- just a package of Irish Spring, a package of dial, and few individual bars of a fancy coconut oil soap left on the shelves. Dish soap and dishwasher detergent weren't quite as stripped bare, but they weren't much better

Also they were out spray-oil, having only Pam with flour and a toasted sesame oil left. I would have liked to get some, as it makes oiling a bowl for bread to rise in easier, but neither of those would do.

The canned beans were pretty ravaged, and also the mac-and-cheese aisle. There wasn't much sugar left, though there was some. They did have restaurant-labeled bags of flour, but I don't need 25 lbs of flour; that's definitely overkill for a one-person kitchen.

Most people were good about masks, though there were a few who had them pulled down to expose their noses, so yeah.

Next time I'll bring my shopping cart. It will make carrying things easier and I'll be able to judge how much I'm buying better.

Went out with fabrisse tonight to Port Au Prince restaurant as they have a live jazz band on Tuesday nights.

I'd never had Haitian cuisine before, but the twice-pressed plantain was excellent, and the fried turkey quite good, with a bell pepper sauce that was extremely peppery. White rice with black bean sauce is excellent.

I am definitely interested in doing it again, as it's about a 20-minute walk from my place, the food was excellent, and tonight's jazz trio quite good.

We will probably go back

I went to my eye doctor this morning, and things look okay -- the eyedrops are working. He also got a fancy new machine to measure the thickness of various nerve layers, so I won't have to take off Mondays twice a year for it anymore.

I then went to Eastern Market, which is a lot of fun to walk around even if you're not interested in buying any of the goods. There are some gorgeous pottery and furniture being offered, along with more usual fare. I have a blue catfish po'boy for breakfast, along with hibiscus agua fresca.

Then I swung by Labyrinth Games and Puzzles and asked about 5-Minute Dungeon. They were all out of the game, but they did have a 5-Minute Marvel variant (you can play as Squirrel-Girl!). Instead I bought Ravine on the recommendation of one of the clerks.

I met up with greenygal and A Person to be Pseudonymed Later, and we walked to the Tidal Basin to look at the cherry trees. It was a crush, as it always is. The blossoms are gorgeous, of course, and there seemed to be a kite festival at the Washington Monument.

Then we went to the Sackler, and walked through the underground parts of the complex until we came out of the African Art Museum, and from there walked to the Metro, so that we could go have lunch at Clyde's and I could then go to my appointment at the hair salon.

I had a long day, I had a lot of fun, and now I am tired.