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“an example of how wonder and humility can build up in the same way as toxins in nature and in ourselves”

I was delighted to accompany DB last-minute to Kronos Quartet’s 50th anniversary gig at Carnegie Hall on Friday night.

This was the set.

  • Severiano Briseño, “El Sinaloense (The Man from Sinaloa)” (2001; arr. Osvaldo Golijov)
  • Gabriella Smith, “Keep Going” (2023, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall; New York Premiere)
  • Peni Gandra Rini, “Movement 1” from Segara Gunung (2023, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall; arr. Jacob Garchik and Andy McGraw; New York Premiere)
  • Laurie Anderson, “Nothing Left But Their Names”, from Landfall (2012)
  • Tanya Tagaq, “Sivunittinni” (2015, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall; arr. Jacob Garchik)
  • Tanya Tagaq, “Colonizer (Remix)” (2021; arr Tanya Tagaq, Kronos Quartet, and Joel Tarman)
  • Ariel Aberg-Riger / Hamza El Din, “Swimming with Rachel Carson” (2023; World Premiere) / Escalay (1989; real. Tour Ueda)
  • Traditional, “We’re Stole and Sold from Africa” (arr. Jake Blount and Jacob Garchik)
  • Michael Gordon, gfedcba (2023, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall; New York Premiere)
  • Wu Man, “Silk” and “Bamboo”, from Two Chinese Paintings (2015, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall; real. Danny Clay)
  • Moondog, “Choo Choo Lullaby” (1977; arr. Brian Carpenter)
  • Rahul Dev Burman, “Mehbooba Mehbooba (Beloved, O Beloved)” (1975; arr. Stephen Prutsman and Kronos Quartet)
  • Terry Riley, “Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector” (1981)

The performance included collaborators from throughout their career, and the Terry Riley piece brought all of the performers from earlier pieces and many more together in one huge jam. This included the Aizuri Quartet, Attacca Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, PUBLIQuartet, Sō Percussion, Laurie Anderson, Gregg August, Jake Blount, Peni Sandra Rini, Brian Carpenter, Jacob Garchik, Iwo Jedynecki, Ayana Kozasa, Reshena Liao, Son Leon Lyuh, Tanya Tagaq, Wu Man, and more. Terry Riley gave a very endearing recorded introduction before his piece.

It’s super hard to decide… But I think I was most enchanted by Hamza El Din’s Escalay with Ariel Aberg-Riger’s spoken word and visual art. It was an incredible combination, and unexpected.

I knew very little about Rachel Carson, and about the forcible relocation of so many Nubians when the Aswan Dam was constructed. (To be honest, I know embarrassingly little about Nubia in general.) The program noted that the water wheel was the oldest mechanical device used for farmland irrigation in Nubia, and “Escalay is a representation of how to start the waterwheel and let it run.” El Din was introduced to Kronos by Terry Riley, and this is the piece he wrote for them.

Towards the end of Aberg-Riger’s “Swimming with Rachel Carson”, she said something about how Carson set “an example of how wonder and humility can build up in the same way as toxins in nature and in ourselves”. (That is not a perfect quote since I couldn’t write it down fast enough, forgive me.)

Something to strive for.

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Chicken tinga recipe

Makes about 8-10 servings, depends on how you’re serving it. Takes about 10-15 minutes prep to chop and mince, then about 1½ hours of relatively hands-off cooking.

Heat a large pot over medium-high heat. Add about 2 TBSP of oil of your choosing, and then two sliced onions. Cook the onions until translucent, then add about 1 finely chopped chipotle in adobo (or more if you like it spicier), 3 cloves minced garlic, ¾ tsp salt, 2 tsp ground coriander, and 3 tsp ground cumin. Cook for a few minutes longer until fragrant.

Next, add everything else:

  • One 14.5 oz can of crushed tomatoes
  • About 30 oz water (two can-fulls)
  • Two bay leaves
  • Four medium carrots, peeled and cut in half
  • One celery stick, broken in half
  • A few grinds of pepper
  • One 1.5-2 lbs pack of boneless, skinless chicken thighs
  • 3 tsp oregano
  • 1 tsp chicken bouillon
  • ½ tsp salt

Turn the heat up to medium-high, and give it all a good stir. Once it is bubbling profusely, turn it down to a simmer and cook it for at least an hour until the thighs are super tender. Stir it occasionally, maybe ever 15 minutes or so and more frequently as you get further in to the cooking time to prevent sticking.

About 40 minutes in, remove and throw out the bay leaves, carrots, and celery.

When the thighs seem to be falling apart, gently remove them with tongs and set them on a plate. Let the sauce continue simmering while you shred all of the meat with two forks, then set the meat plate aside. You want to reduce the sauce until is pretty thick, so make sure you stir it pretty frequently.

Once the sauce is the desired consistency, use an immersion blender to liquify the sauce in the pot and then add the meat back to the sauce as well as the juice of 1 lime. Give it a stir, then taste it. Add more adobo sauce if you want it spicier, salt if needed (it will probably be needed), or more lime juice if you want it a little more tangy. Then let it simmer further, stirring frequently, until it has reached the desired consistency.

Serve it however you like. Tacos are great, just put the big pot of tinga on the table with some little warmed tortillas, sliced radishes, cotija cheese and/or sour cream, hot sauce of your choosing, and cilantro.

Read notes

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◯

Been thinking about Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” a lot (again) recently.

Tonight, I came across Jeremy Keith’s journal post “Decision time” and instantly thought, “Yes, and I wonder if he’s read that essay…” I was going to recommend it, but wanted to read it again first to double-check that it is as relevant as I remember.

So I pulled Dancing at the Edge of the World off the shelf. I never noticed it before, but there’s a little legend in the Table of Contents. Feminism ♀, Social Responsibility ◯, Literature □, and Travel →. The essay is tagged ♀ and ◯.

The “Feminism” tag doesn’t surprise me at all. “Social Responsibility” though… it doesn’t surprise me either, but it’s an interesting way of labelling it. It’s right, of course. And the symbol tickled me, TCBOF has always felt like a circle.

Related: I made a print-on-demand t-shirt of my favorite phrase from TCBOF a little while back. If you’re interested LMK.

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Visiting Storm King

We took a little day trip up to Storm King with some friends this past weekend on the most terrifyingly summery day of Autumn.

B seemed to love it. Of what we saw, I think that Calder’s The Arch and Noguchi’s Momo Taro were his favorites. I think he was just bowled over by the scale of The Arch, every time he saw it on the horizon he shouted “SCULP-TURR!!”. And he got a real kick out of sitting in and rambling over Momo Taro.

I was 90% sure that he and his little friend were allowed to crawl all over Noguchi’s piece based on Storm King’s guide and map. But I didn’t really know the extent of it until I looked up the piece on Storm King’s site just now.

The full realization of Momo Taro depends on the interaction of visitors, who are invited to not just touch, but to enter, to sit, and to unite their bodies with the work — to participate in its existence. Noguchi’s flat bench provides a welcome site for rest and contemplation. The “center” of the piece — the hollowed-out granite “peach pit” — serves as a peaceful retreat. Even on the hottest summer days this interior remains cool. Noguchi expressed his wish that visitors, especially children, would not only climb into the cavity but also sing inside it and enjoy its special aural resonance.

🥲 Wish granted! B’s buddy declared the “white one” to be her favorite sculpture when they left the park.

And B was such a trooper, he walked all over the Meadows and Museum Hill before we took a loop around the park in the tram. Then we headed back to the cafe for some lunch and picked up the stroller to walk all the way over to see Andy Goldsworthy’s Storm King Wall.

I was looking at the map on our way home and couldn’t believe how much we missed considering we spent about six hours there. We basically didn’t do the North Woods, Maple Rooms, or South Ponds at all. But it was never about completionism, it’s a good excuse to plan a trip back soon. Would love to go in the summer to check out Moodna Creek as well, though I don’t think it’s safe for swimming.

Not gonna show any photos of sculptures because too many of them have B in them, and there are better photos of them online anyways. But the landscape was gorgeous, so here’s some overexposed sky and grass.

A partly cloudy sky in autumn with tall grass in the foreground

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@piperhaywood.bsky.social

Finally went ahead and joined Bluesky, @piperhaywood.bsky.social (missed out on @piper, ah well). Thx for the code, Sam. 😘 Definitely not planning to leave Mastodon any time soon, but it felt like it was time to give it a go. IDK, Mastodon has started to feel… very pessimistically cynical? Understandable, but also exhausting. I probably need to refine my follows a bit, haven’t done that in a while.

I skimmed past a New Yorker headline earlier titled “Why The Internet Isn’t Fun Anymore”. And yeah, agreed, it’s definitely not as happy-go-lucky as it was in the past.

But I still find it fun! Maybe even more fun in some ways? So many great people are carving out their own niches online (by that, I mean personal sites or newsletters), and that’s where the real fun lies.

In other words: it’s all about RSS, baby! A place to really nurture your braincells away from any prying eyes or algorithms, where you can follow and unfollow with abandon without wondering, “well if I unfollow, are they gonna think insert-ridiculous-worry?”

And I’ve been hearing unexpected folks talking about RSS, family members and that sort of thing. Whisper it: is RSS becoming mainstream? 🤞 A girl can dream.

Will Bluesky also spark that joy? I’m skeptical. Mastodon is close but isn’t *quite* up there with RSS for me. We’ll see!

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Current listening: “Transatlanticism”

Currently listening to Transatlanticism 🐦
 by Death Cab for Cutie.

One of my best friends from college just invited me to the Death Cab + Postal Service 20th anniversary gig at Madison Square Garden on the 20th. I am SO pumped.

Listening to Transatlanticism is giving me major high school flashbacks. Driving home past curfew on cool East Bay summer nights and knowing that I couldn’t possibly want, need, feel, any more than I did.

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Manifesting cake

All of the birthdays in our little family fall within a 15 day period in the middle of the summer. There was a lot of cake around for nearly a month. And then we went to the UK to visit family who kindly wanted to celebrate all of our birthdays, so we did it all over again.

Now, B asks for cake after nearly every meal, sometimes for breakfast. Obviously we’ve been trying to phase it out, explaining that there’s none left. But there have been enough times when he’s asked for it at random moments and it has been around. So there’s no way he’s going to chance not asking for it.

This was the conversation the other day at his Nana’s table during lunch.

“KEHK??”

“No buddy, there’s no cake.”

“… Happy bur-day?”

“No buddy, there’s no cake. It’s no one’s birthday.”

“…… Happy bur-day Nana?”

“… 🤦🏻‍♂️”

It had been my birthday, Sam’s birthday, and his birthday already. But we hadn’t celebrated Nana’s yet, so it was a logical ask to be fair.

I asked him what his favorite song was yesterday, and he started singing Happy Birthday. (This was 100% a ploy for cake, his actual favorite song is “Hey Jude” because he likes to yell the NAH NAH NAH part.)

He’s still getting over jet lag since we arrived back from the UK last weekend, lots of 5:30am-ish wake-ups. This morning, he wandered sleepily out of his bedroom to go use the potty and the first thing he said was, “Bur-day?”

I’m pretty sure he thinks he can manifest cake.