Art for fun

Art Hop:
Excuse for artists and friends to roam around town for two days and look at each other’s work.
Opportunity to participate in no-pressure pop-ins, to see art you don’t have to buy (but can), then move on.
Showcase for Takoma Park’s artsy fartsy-ness, saturating everything from the hardware store to the toy shop.
All of the above.

And, this year, there’s an infusion of new talent. I’ll  not only get to rub elbows with the uber hipsters (and friends) who have anchored this town’s art scene for decades, I get to hang with some younger talent as well. Like Martin Swift.

He is seriously talented.

Full disclosure: he calls me Mom (as in, he visits my own kids enough to feel like a part of the family), so yeah, I would say he’s talented. But also, it’s true. This is not your average, just-out-of-college kid dipping his toes in the water and showing his “art” at non-juried, come-one-come-all shows. This is serious stuff, and this is a bold guy, unafraid of putting his (very distinctive) work out there on its own merit – not because it fits a particular genre or market, but because it’s who he is and what he has to say. Plus, it’s selling.

You’ll just have to see it for yourself, at Trohv, during Art Hop.

Which, even without Martin, is one awesome event. I mean really, what other city of 17,000 has the collection of talent we have? Sure, some of it is whimsical and crafty, but I would dare to say (since I’m not an art critic, but cleave to the old trope, “I know what I like”) much of it is high-end whimsical. You will not find plastic beads strung on earring wires. But there will be handmade beads, glass-fired beads, and an enthusiastic explanation of how they were made from an artist standing yes, right there, hoping you might dish out $30 for a pair of earrings. And even if you can’t really afford to, you probably will. Plus, there are other artists who have not quit their day jobs; their price tags are lower. And. You don’t have to buy anything. You can just come and enjoy the art, right where it is, and feel enriched because you live in this place where artists thrive.

The vibe here is open and unpretentious, the artists mostly have fun visiting with friends and each other, and if there are art patrons, you wouldn’t be able to tell them from the rest of the crowd. It’s basically a party, that happens to have art as a running theme.

The official Art Hop spiel goes like this: more than 60 emerging and established artists, variety of media (painting, textiles, photography, collage, hand-crafted jewelry), in shops, galleries and restaurants all around town. So, you’ll see collage at the hair studio and sculpture at the florist.  Saturday and Sunday, April 13 and 14 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Plus, there’s a kick-off tonight, Friday the 12^th from 6 to 8 at Trohv. Martin will be there.

And so will I.

The photo: Artist Bobbi Kittner, who helped found Art Hop, Bulent Ceylon who runs the shop, Covered Market, and John McQuillan, who runs Salon Jam hair studio. Photo by Sam Kittner

Warmth of community

Yesterday, one of the first warm days of spring, there were signs of the season everywhere in Sligo Creek Park. Brilliant yellow flowers carpeting the banks of the creek. Mallards paired up in the water. And my favorite, a pair of socks had been left behind, spread out on a rock where a boy must have liberated his toes and switched to barefoot for the summer.

On these gloriously warm days, people come out again. It is as if we are sparkling water, bottled up all winter long, until we unscrew our caps and the effervescence of our lives explodes.  There are more runners. More bikers. More gardeners and dog walkers and grillers.

And we talk more. We want to catch up with our neighbors.

I’ve found the perfect spot for this: at the new gelato store, kitty korner from the town clock. At about 5:00, the commuters begin walking home from Metro, and the young mamas are still out with their strollers. The merchants are around, too. Everyone is out, eating gelato, or drinking coffee, or popping into the hardware store, greeting one another, lightened by the warm weather and each other.

Yesterday I caught up with Dave, who I haven’t seen in six years. And Jane, who lives just down the street but with whom I haven’t shared a conversation in months. We sat in the sun and greeted people going by and chatted about our kids and our work and the new businesses in town.

Even strangers greet one another. Back in the park, one of the dog-walking regulars – an older guy with white stubble and two labs, one black and one white – leaned over the fence at the playground and called out, “How’s the new slide?” The young mama answered over her baby’s wailing, “We’re about to find out!” and looked up to find her toddler negotiating the top of the slide.

I have an old card posted on my refrigerator: “How to Build Community.” It’s a vintage sentiment but it still rings true. It is the unwritten code of Takoma Park.

Leave your house. Know your neighbors. Greet people. Sit on your stoop. Plant flowers. Share what you have. Help a lost dog. Take children to the park. Have potlucks.

 I am going to a potluck now. At my neighbor’s house. I will probably visit with another neighbor on the way.

And it’s not just because it’s spring – but that helps.

 

The photo is Marcello Minna, the very friendly Italian who runs our new gelato shop, Dolci Gelati. Building community.

Agricultural revolution

On a recent morning, as I walked my dog around the block, she lunged at something just out of my sight, on the other side of a neighbor’s car. Probably a cat, I thought.

No. A chicken.

Two chickens, in fact.

And I live in Takoma Park, a Washington, D.C. suburb within walking distance of a subway stop into the city.

The chickens did their high-stepping waddle around the back of the car, scolding the dog in their gentle clucking voices as they went. The dog, utterly confused, and, thank goodness, on a leash, alternately lunged and backed off. 

I know these chickens. They belong to a friend who lives across the street from where they were pecking at the neighbor’s lawn. They are out during the day, but mostly stay close to the coop and are gathered in at night. I thought of knocking on the door to let my friends know “the girls” had wandered across the street, but then they started to cross on their own. In front of a car.

Oh, no! I put out a mittened hand to alert the driver, who stopped to let the birds cross.

At this point I was laughing at these busybody hens bustling themselves home after their morning adventure, oblivious to automobile traffic and focused only on the patch of ground in front of them. The driver, unbelievably, was not amused, and acted as though she was waiting for a child to cross the street, nothing unusual about two chickens in her path. She continued her conversation on the cell phone and never made eye contact with me, or the chickens. 

I chuckled all the way home.

Then I toasted some cornbread for breakfast and slathered it with honey from the hives of another neighbor, across the street.

Who says you have to live on a farm to have the best of everything? 

 

A whelk to remember

New York Times, food section article: Elaborate photos of a little seashell-encased delicacy served beside a ramekin of unnaturally bright green parsley and garlic butter, with a glass of white wine in the soft-focus background. International overtones: the Italians call them scungilli, the English have popularized them as whelks – along with talk of executive chefs and lists of high-end-sounding restaurants that serve them mixed with “crispy duck tongues,” or dressed with “fenugreek-cashew pesto.”
Really?
These are the same little seashells I picked up on the beach when I was a kid, excited to be gathering up something we’d be eating for dinner that night, far from the linen-covered tables of Manhattan.
As I remember it, the whelk is a humble little critter, in the way a dragonfly is humble: common, in its habitat, but stunningly and intricately beautiful when you take time to really look at it. The whelks I encountered all those years ago were a study in black and white, like a houndstooth tweed whorled around a spiral snail house.

I don’t remember exactly how we ate the whelks – probably steamed until we could ease them out of their shells, and dipped in butter, if we had it. We were living aboard the Glad Tidings, a 40-foot sailboat that was home for a family of five (sorry, Jean, you’d disembarked by this time), and on this particular occasion we were in Virgin Gorda, in the British Virgin Islands. One expanse of coastline, called the Baths, is all rock, great for 9-year-old girls like me: I climbed and scrambled and explored, discovering the dips and recesses in the rock where centuries of crashing waves had worn the granite into smooth recesses, now filled with seawater warming in the sun. These still pools were full of tiny fish and shellfish, the sort that are perfect for filling small pockets. And they were full of whelks.

Our guide, Cap’n Tony, a boisterous, dark-bearded sailor and ex-pat we’d met at the dock a few islands back, told us the whelks were edible. Full of 9-year-old purpose, I began to collect them.
I kept one of the shells for years, proud to know the provenance of such a thing – but aside from that keepsake, I’ve never encountered whelks since. Until the New York Times.
In typical fashion – it’s what I love about this publication – the Times is thorough: I read that whelks are closely related to conch, the other Caribbean shellfish we learned to eat on the boat (we would follow their trails in the sand, visible through gin-clear water, then dive down for them). Whelks are usually sold as scungilli, often for Italian pasta sauces, and they are a by-catch (like the rock shrimp and stone crab my dad used to get in his shrimp nets, years later in Florida).
All good information. But the most important thing to remember about whelks, for me: that magical day I spent gathering them from the rocks, under a Caribbean sun.

Winter jam

This town knows how to do winter.
We do not slouch around in our pajamas all day, mourning the light and warmer weather of other seasons. No. We make an effort.
One recent weekend, I met with friends to celebrate three birthdays at Takoma Park’s OliveLounge. We had so much fun we decided to make it a weekly gathering. And we went again this past Friday. I saw two other friends there and the outing turned into dinner. What a great place to hang out! I always see neighbors, the wait staff is good-looking and attentive, and they let us hold a table until all in our birthday party had arrived. But mostly, it’s the gathering of friends that makes this place work.
Some of the folks who gathered this past Friday went on to hear some music two blocks away, at the Carroll Cafe. Another group went to Restaurant Week in Washington, one of the perks of living so close to the city’s border: during slow months (like February) some of the more expensive restaurants give a deal for a week, fixed price for three courses at lunch or dinner. I’d done the same thing for lunch earlier in the week. Yum.
On another weekend, I missed a writer’s meeting in order to get some housework done –but I could also have met my new neighbors, who had an open house to get to know the folks who live around them. The Takoma Park Jazz Fest sponsored its annual Jazz Brawl, for musicians to compete for a spot at the June festival. And on a Thursday night, a blues band was playing at El Golfo, a Mexican restaurant just over the Takoma Park line in Silver Spring. Midwinter Play Day was also that Thursday, with board games, yoga, dress-up, live music and more for kids and adults at the Takoma Park Community Center.
I did get to my hairdressers, Salon Jam, for a Valentine’s Day Art open house, where I saw my friend (and artist) Bobbi Kittner and met a couple artists I didn’t know before. The housewares store, Trohv, had a pop-up coffee shop the same day, with luxurious-sounding coffees described as if they were fine wines – and while "almond and sage aromatics, full body and cherry acidity" isn't everyone's cuppa, I loved sipping along with my friend.
The list goes on: yoga classes at the fabulous Willow Street Yoga; dance performances and classes at the Dance Exchange, and in nearby Brookland at the Dance Place; local bands at the VFW-HellsBottom, where anyone can pull up a stool for $1.75 beer; house concerts a block from my home; community center concerts with international musicians as well as local (in a Community Center that feels less municipal than professional, with new sound and lights for the stage); art shows and openings, also at the community center; everybody-sings events through Carpe Diem, a local ad hoc chorus; weekly open drum circles at the Electric Maid.
The problem with winter is not so much the hibernation that draws us all in – the problem is all this effort to overcome the urge to withdraw is packing our calendars so that the occasional evening cuddled by the fire becomes the exception. Which is not really a problem, after all.
Photo is from the house concerts I mentioned -- and it's by Sam Kittner, yes, Bobbi Kittner's husband. Thanks!

 

Fashion after 50

Skinny jeans are everywhere, in bright colors, like fistfuls of pick-up-sticks with legs in them. Cheery. Fun. Great with boots and bulky sweaters.

I want some.

But my mother’s voice sounds a warning: “teenage grandmother,” she’d say, rolling her eyes when we’d pass a woman (and there were lots of these in Florida) dressed in clothes my mother thought would be far more appropriate on a girl one quarter the woman’s age.

I am not my mother.

So I take a look at my favorite shop (the one with “thrift” in the name), and find two pairs of skinny jeans in what I think are my size. One pair is blue denim, the other black – disappointing, as what I really want are the crayon-colored legs I see in the magazines, but I don’t want to go on a full-out shopping spree, so I settle.

These are pretty ridiculous pants. I have to point my toes to get into them, then pull them up as if they are tights. You could tear a fingernail doing this—even a short one, like mine. Then I have to inch them up my legs. This reminds me of the girls in high school (not me) who would lie down on the dressing room floor to zip up pants they had no business wearing. I was so disdainful of that sort of thing. Fashion. Puh.

I begin to wonder if these skinny jeans are worth the trouble, and whether they’ll look like “they’re painted on,” another of mom’s favorite put-downs, once I have them on over my, well, healthy thighs. Yes, me and Beyonce. I have to tug to get them over my rear end. And then there’s a little adjusting of curves before I’m entirely comfortable.

But once they’re on: they look good. They feel fine. I like them. My boots go over them without looking like I’m trying too hard, with jeans tucked into my boots, as if to say, “look at my boots!” I check for muffin tops: sigh of relief. It is a little dicey if I squat down to pick something up – these particular skinny jeans could be higher-waisted and that would be good – but other than that, they’re great.

The second pair doesn’t fare as well. They’re also skin-tight, in a good way, but only up to the knees. Then there’s a lot of extra fabric and a funny gap at the top in the back. Plus, the fabric feels chintzy. They remind me of the jeans your mother wants you to buy – usually Wrangler, as I recall – that are just not cool at all, but you can’t explain how they are uncool. Something about the stitching, or the cut, something invisible, only to be felt.

Still, I have one pair of skinny jeans. I feel like I’m 20 again.

Mom, that’s not a teenager. Plus, I actually own a pair or Wranglers. And I like those, too.

 

Grandma Jean's coleslaw

I came home tonight with no particular plan for dinner, other than what I could dream up in the car on the way back from dance class. I decided on my old stand-by, grilled cheese and tomato. But since I was out of salad greens, I had to be creative if I wanted something besides carrot sticks on the side. I had to make due.

Turns out I am good at this, probably the result of frequently avoiding the grocery store: if I can make something work from what I already have in the pantry, I will.

Tonight’s side veggie came from an old piece of red cabbage and a carrot. That’s really about it. I was going to shred the vegetables and then improvise a dressing, maybe throw some mayonnaise and lemon together and call it coleslaw, but then I thought of the Southern cookbook Ann gave me a few years ago – I’d just baked cornbread from it, and I figured it would have a good coleslaw recipe as well.

The book, The Gift of Southern Cooking, is by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock, and though they contribute to it at least equally, mining their southern childhoods and subsequent journeys into all things culinary, it’s the only cookbook I have by Edna Lewis, and I think of it as hers.

According to the New York Times, Miss Lewis (as she was known) was the first to elevate southern cooking  beyond its “knee-slapping, cornpone image.” She was born in Freetown, Virginia, the granddaughter of a freed slave, and wound up bringing her kitchen traditions to New York society through restaurants and cookbooks. She became the doyenne of southern cooking, widely respected and admired by top chefs and glitterati. She died at age 89, in 2006.

I love this book. It really is a team effort; Peacock, it turns out, was so close to Lewis that he lived with and cared for her in her final years, and they were widely known (again, according to the Times) as “the odd couple of southern cooking” – she, an elderly, African American widow and he, a young, white, gay chef. The coleslaw recipe is his, developed when he was chef for the governor of Georgia in the 1980s, cooking for countless political barbeques. I know this because the story is included in the book: The bits before the recipes are at least as good as the recipes themselves. In addition to the provenance of the coleslaw, the explanations and stories turned me from disdain over lard, to wondering where I can buy some; and convinced me that I should make the homemade baking powder, to avoid that occasional metallic taste in my muffins and biscuits when I use the store-bought variety.

The recipes here are solid. I can vouch especially for the lemon chess pie and the biscuits, I am charmed by recipes like “cat’s tongues” cookies, red-eye gravy and chow chow, and I want to bake my way through nearly an entire chapter on cakes.

Tonight I found another reason to love this book: coleslaw. This one involves a cooked dressing, just like my Grandma Jean’s. Hers was finely shredded, and so is Peacock’s (though I have to admit, mine strayed far from the actual recipe, and I just shredded it coarsely since I was hungry and didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it). The dressing is heavy on the vinegar, too, a trait that puts me right back in the kitchen at Bixley Heath, the street in Lynbrook, New York, where my grandmother served my family Sunday dinners when I was small.

The recipe is simple, really: equal parts vinegar and sugar, boiled together for 3 minutes with a little salt; to this you add some Dijon mustard and half the amount of oil as vinegar, then the dressing gets added to the vegetables – Peacock calls for cucumbers with the cabbage, but I used carrot to stretch what little cabbage I had (and I had no cucumbers). There’s also a little cream and sour cream to finish the dish.

I think of Grandma Jean’s coleslaw with “cold cuts,” a favorite short cut for lunch or a casual dinner at her house. It also makes me think of her potato salad, which we called “German potato salad,” though I’m not sure why. She was actually Scottish and Irish.

As such, she would probably find it pretty funny that I now think of this pair of southern cooks as her compadres in the kitchen.  I love how cooking unites all kinds of people. Maybe she and Miss Lewis have found one another in some sort of culinary afterlife.

Thanks, Ann, for this book. As you can see, it’s a winner in more ways than one.

 

Photo is by John T. Hill, and ran on the cover of Lewis' book, The Taste of Country Cooking.