Month: June 2009

Artomatic 2009

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The first weekend of June was a busy one for us, and we kicked it off by going to the opening night of Artomatic. This was the first time I’d been to an Artomatic in a new building, and it was a bit odd. The two I’d previously attended had been in buildings that were about to be torn down, which made the whole experience kind of spooky and reminiscent of unauthorized versions of these events that people I knew used to have in abandoned factories and warehouses in Philly in the mid-90’s. This time around, we took the elevator to the ninth floor and had panoramic views of the mall.

Our first stop was to see our friend Todd’s work—conveniently located on the ninth floor, meshing well with our plan to ride up and walk down. After spending some time stalking him in order to congratulate him on his pieces, we wandered over to the robot drawing area, easily identifiable by the many young children crowded around the tables. As promised, the robots we drew on postcards and submitted to the RobotDisorder folks are now part of an Artomatic poster! (Mine is sixth from the left in the top row and my partner’s is fifth from the left in the second row down.)


Our robots.

While little can compare to getting to draw your own robot, there were several other displays that I particularly liked. I was sorely tempted to purchase an insect with spatula wings, but I couldn’t think of a suitable place to display it. Now that the living room is painted, I’m tempted to go back for one for the unoccupied end of the mantle. Another favorite was the work of Novie Trump, an artist who lives nearby and whose work I’d seen at an Artomatic preview show that Todd took us to inauguration weekend. Her forms are lovely, and she has an excellent ability to mix texture and color in her use of clay; I find her small works melancholy and yet alive. Although I wasn’t moved by all of his pieces, Rick Braswell had a beautiful photograph of an Italian piazza that I could have stood and looked at all night.

The beauty of Artomatic is that there’s truly something for everyone: my partner spent much time with the action figure dioramas of one group of Frederick artists and the comic strips of another, ending the evening by getting his photo taken with the lifesize peep. I wandered down to the PostSecret area, joining the crowd in looking through a pile of actual postcards, but wasn’t brave enough to be recorded as part of the video project even if I could have come up with a secret on the spot.

Since we’re old now, we only got through three floors before it was way past our bedtime. Our plan is to return next before the end of the show, but the weekends are filling up quickly. The beauty of Artomatic is that there’s always more art to be seen.

Artomatic 2009

home : faucet-mounted water filter

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Just a month after starting to regularly use the Brita pitcher again, I dropped it and it broke. Which is a shame, because it was over ten years old and they just don’t make them as streamlined or user-friendly anymore. In the course of trying to choose which new pitcher to invest in—larger with unnecessary trimmings or too small to be of any use seemed to be our two main options—we decided to try a faucet-mounted filter. Most of our friends with small kids have one of these, and they seem to work relatively well. Online research (e.g. reading the reviews on Amazon) indicated that a system with metal threads on the connection was really the best way to go to avoid pressure-induced cracks. Target, of course, is still the go-to place for small home appliances such as these.

In the water filter aisle, the only option with metal threads was the Pur system, which has the added benefit of a higher NSF-rated filter option. Living in the DC area where toluene and atrazine are actually present in the water—albeit in amounts that have not yet been determined to be detrimental to our health a la the poison-prevention model of public safety regulations we apply in the United States—I wanted a filter that would take them out. We’ll see if the system lasts longer than a few months without springing a leak in the housing, something Amazon reviewers assure us is inevitable. The reviews also assure us, however, that Proctor & Gamble will feign surprise and replace the unit when that happens, so it appears that we’ll have options.

In the meantime, I’m drinking more water and happy to have had the opportunity to replace the o-ring at the bottom of the faucet stem, taking care of a leak that had appeared some months ago.

home : faucet-mounted water filter

food : muffins

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I’ve been promising friends the muffin recipe(s) that we use, from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home, and I realized that I did post the recipe a couple of years ago. It should be said that we never make the banana version, since bananas don’t grow in our region; we pretty much cycle through the muffins based on the seasonal availability of the fruit and vegetable ingredients.

Last year, we added a sour cherry variety to our repertoire, and it was fabulous. Much more like dessert than the other varieties, even with the same whole wheat flour and egg substitutions; cherries just make food fancier. For those muffins, substitute 1/2 tsp almond extract for the vanilla extract and use 1 1/2 cups sour cherries (we used frozen, but fresh would no doubt work). Delicious!

food : muffins

yoga the Iyengar way

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For the past eight months, I’ve been taking an Iyengar yoga class in town. The teacher is really wonderful: she steered me toward a slower-paced class in the beginning&#8212where the predominately over-60 folks made me feel quite welcome—and has nudged me forward to not giving up quite so quickly when I start to get tired. The Iyengar approach, with which I was unfamiliar before starting this class, is well-suited for my particular challenges with its emphasis on props and modifications. I have flexible but achy joints, strong but chronically tight muscles, a skeletal structure that likes to slide out of alignment with minimal provocation, and a history of injuries that can make it difficult to know when pain is something going wrong or just the aforementioned tight muscles finally opening up a bit. Having just a bit more time moving into and out of the poses makes an enormous difference in my ability to actually get something out of them, and having a good teacher makes me confident that I won’t be either pushed beyond my limit or allowed to slump into something that really isn’t a pose at all but feels easy at the time. After attending more than one yoga class taught by a skeletal 20-something exhorting me to feel the burn, this class is a relief and a joy.

Knowing what it’s like to struggle to find a yoga class that fits, I was quite interested in the recent New York Times article discussing the pros and cons of having yoga classes specifically designated for larger people. Since I participate weekly in a class designated for people over 60, who have been kind enough to allow me to join them despite being a few years short of that marker, I see the benefits of having classes tailored for groups of folks with similar kinds of challenges. Certainly people over 60 are not excluded from the other classes our teacher offers, and it is a testament in part to the Iyengar method that there are a mix of ages and body sizes in all of the classes I attend. I know from experience such diversity can be hard to find, though, and I’m not sure I could hack another class where I was the largest and the oldest and the slowest. That had been my experience at all classes besides those at the Ann Arbor zen center, once I crept up to and beyond age 30. Not that being larger and older necessarily means being slower, although it often can; it certainly doesn’t mean being weaker, it just often means needing a little more time to get everything into place without injury.

To return to the article, I do agree that it’s the responsibility of every teacher to be able to incorporate modifications and adjustments for the variety of students in their classes, to prevent injury and make sure that students are getting the benefits of the poses. From the teaching perspective, I also agree that there is a typical pace to a class at each level and there are limits to the degree to which pauses for modifications can occur without disrupting the flow of the whole process. Some balance between the two interests is required. As much as I would like philosophically for everyone in the United States to just calm the heck down and stop treating yoga like aerobics or spinning classes, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. I also am not sure that I would trust teachers in that mindset to offer me modifications that were suited to my body rather than to their goal of moving me into the correct alignment for each of the poses we were attempting. Certainly I was much better off seeking out a different style of instruction than I was staying and trying to make it work, and I was somewhat surprised to not see Iyengar mentioned at all as an alternative.

In the end, the question posed as the premise of the article is a bit silly, because of course people should be able to attend classes where they are comfortable and shared needs are addressed. The real issue is whether classes are welcoming places for larger students and whether there are classes for all ability levels. While it may be surprising to some people to consider that it’s harder to stay as long in a weight-bearing downward pose when you’re bearing 250 pounds of weight rather than 115, it’s not exactly neuroscience. Ditto with standing poses and arthritic joints or forward-bending poses and large stomachs. Certainly teachers should learn how to modify poses for all students, but that’s not the same as saying that all classes should accommodate all abilities. Rather than always being the one to go into a pose last and come out of it first, however supportive the teacher and other students might be, it’s far nicer to be one of many in a class moving a different pace.

yoga the Iyengar way