October 2011
1 post
Cooking with Vinegar in Spain's Former Colonies
This is tilapia escabeche from Tienda Morelos. 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false In countries where refrigeration came late, freshly caught fish is often preserved for future consumption in Spanish-inspired techniques now associated with the Mexican ceviche. A variation is escabeche, lightly cooking the fish then marinating in vinegar and spices, a...
September 2011
1 post
Discovering Nectarines and Other Drupes
See the full gallery on Posterous I’ve lived in North America for over forty years but I’ve never had a nectarines until a few days ago. How could I have missed it? What happened was, I think, the fruit appeared toward the end of summer when I’m usually sated with the bonanza of fruits the season brings and I just skip its arrival as a non-event. Or maybe I thought the...
August 2011
2 posts
A Fitness Formula That Works
I’ve heard it so many times, I’ve even preached it myself, but sometimes we don’t act until we’re in a corner and have to do it. Fitness is a lifestyle and improving health and fitness means modifying my lifestyle. When things are going well, too well, it is easy enough to swell our ego with talk but nothing gives true confidence, faith if you will, than seeing the...
Easy Summer Fruit Sherbet
As the sun blasts us and the earth in July and August, we can still take comfort in the abundance of fruits and vegetables burgeoning from the fertile earth. What to do with this bonanza while trying to stay cool? Think fruit sherbets! The old way if you don’t have an ice cream maker is to blend the mix, freeze in an ice cube tray, stir every 15 minutes while the mixture solidifies until...
June 2011
2 posts
The World Is Flat
Unless you’ve been living under a bushel (not letting your light shine as beacons for others and without nearby WiFi) you’ve noticed our world has changed. It’s no longer the world of your parents or even the world you yourself were born into. It’s the same earth but, at least on the surface of it and on what paleontologist and Jesuit priest Teilhard du Chardin and Russian scientist Vladimir...
On Writing
See the full gallery on Posterous In the June 20, 2011 issue of Time, David McCullough discusses writing and its importance (10 Questions): “The loss of people writing—writing a composition, a letter or a report—is not just the loss of the process of working your thoughts out on paper, of having an idea that you would never have had if you weren’t [writing]. And that’s a handicap. People [I...
February 2011
1 post
Mung Bean Stew with Jackfruit and Spinach, and...
Mung Bean stew is an old favorite from childhood days in the Philippines. I never cooked this when I still lived in the islands. In fact I didn’t cook much until I came to the Promised Land. So when I cook Filipino foods today I base the recipe on memory. Nostalgia is a powerful teacher, much less necessity in the old saying about invention. Today’s stew, cooked while freezing rain...
January 2011
2 posts
Pinakbet Tagalog Style, Vegetarian
Ingredients: 3 garlic cloves, peeled, crushed, chopped 2 shallots, medium, sliced 2 Roma tomatoes, chunks 2 Tb. Olive oil 3 C. String beans, cut 2 in. long 1 ½ C. Okra, frozen and defrosted, or fresh 2 C. Butternut squash, steamed till fork-tender, 1 inchchunks Salt to...
Setting Food Consumption Right
To prepare for New Year’s Eve this year I cooked minestrone then refrigerated it. Tonight I reheated the vegetable soup, added cooked cooked white beans and had it with a green salad, a slice of my homemade French bread and a Moroccan clementine. Healthy. This new year I want to get back to eating home-cooked meals more, and more vegetarian. I think I can make the switch to complete...
July 2010
1 post
Morning Coffee for the Creative Juices To Flow
Now that I’ve substituted going to Lifestyle Family Fitness for going for a cup of McDonald senior coffee, a once-in-a-while treat is brewing coffee at home. For coffee like what you get at a café on the Champs-Élysées or the Piazza Navona, without ther vaunted ambiance, of course, the Bodum is eminently suited. The French press, also called a cafetiére á piston, was popularized in New...
June 2010
2 posts
Fitting into the Mainstream
There is much to be said for being average. You don’t get hassled as much i.e. you get hassled the average amount in grade school and high school, certainly not in college unless you opt for a fraternity, and never to the point of getting PTSD unless you join the military. Everything works out seamlessly, from babyhood to toddler to grade schooler to dating in high school and the first...
Gerald Brenan on how art should be judged
I’m meeting with the Pen2Paper Meetup group at seven tonight. At lunch I brought along my folder of short stories. I was newly impressed with how thick the file was and how many stories I wrote between 1988 and 1989. I had always remembered those stories as being overwrought, prose too flowery, plot limited to self-indulgent, self-fulfilling stories. I read three stories this afternoon. Two...
May 2010
2 posts
Developing concepts for video projects
San José, Museo Iloilo, Philippines I have two ideas for a video project. One I’ve had for a couple of years now, especially after I started shooting young Indiana models. I am meeting with Arron to brainstorm with him. I’d like him to be part of the project, as subject or co-writer or co-photographer. I want to document how young people in America, in this case, small-town Indiana,...
Documenting Small Town Life
My sister and I drove to Michigan last week. It was our first trip for the sake of traveling in decades. We stopped traveling in the U.S. when we discovered Europe. This trip whetted my appetite to travel more. Working at home is ideal for slugging along but unfamiliar scene and experiences ignite more explosive energy. I have never been able to work steadily, daily, even when I don’t feel...
April 2010
8 posts
Attraction and Lust: The Ethics of a Shoot
One of my projects is to shoot nudes but capture images that awe rather than inflame, connecting the viewer with the beauty of bodies like the beauty of mountains or water or sky. The line between pornographic and art is thin, even hazy at times. Think Robert Mappelthorpe, a boldly artistic photographer with his brazen images of black men that burst stereotypes of beauty and candor. When I shoot...
How the East Was Won
We live our four-score years a matter of genetics, family influence, personal choice, and, largely, luck. I’d like to think I make deliberate choices. I’ve bought into the American dream: individual freedom reigns. But I’m Asian at the core: interconnection determines not only the life we live but who we become. We are jewels caught in Indra’s net that weaves us into one, indivisible fabric.While...
Fields of Violets
They say old men more and more dwell in the past. In the past is innocence like unto the innocence of the couple before Eve took a bite of the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and persuaded her spouse to do likewise. Product marketing in the U.S. keeps coming up with the “original” this and that, as if the unimproved version from bygone times is somehow...
Murmur of the Heart Today
After a winter chuck full of dark, cold days, spring is welcome indeed. Without any disruptions this year (in Kansas, my sister reported a spring snow storm that froze daffodils), bulbs, shrubs and trees have taken their turn showing off their reproductive strategies. Tulips are still opening but the daffodils, except the late-blooming varieties, are crunchy paper-thin ghosts. The almond trees...
Can conversation alone make a movie?
“I love the notion of long, enduring friendships that clearly are complicated,” says Charlie Rose at the close of his interview of Wallace Shawn and André Gregory of the 1981 movie, My Dinner with André. Gregory told Rose he and Shawn were “best friends,” a category Shawn waltzed around. He, on his part, can’t say he knows himself, much less knows Gregory so he can he...
A Natural Cycle of Failure and Gain
I have a photo shoot with Jacqueline and her boyfriend, Austin, on Saturday. She is competing at the 2010 Natural Buckeye Classic Figure competition and has been training intensely to rid herself of extraneous body fat. Her physical energy is down to basic. She asked me for my take on whether to do the shoot on Saturday or put it off after the show.My natural inclination these last fifty years is...
Easter Day with Echoes East and West
It rained yesterday and more rain is expected tomorrow but today the sun is out for Easter. People mill at the grocery store where the long table full of forced tulips and hyacinths now just holds debris. A few plastic trays remain on another long table that appeared last Friday, laden with iced cakes, cookies and other desserts. Spring festivals mean lamb and ham. In the Philippines the...
Being Productive with the Energy Roller Coaster
Local boys pose at the town plaza, La Paz, 1999 Stephen King with over 350 million books sold writes in his memoir, Stephen King on Writing (Scribner, 2000), how his prodigious writing impetus goes through dry (no pun intended here) spells. Many writers and artists talk about the depression that drops down when the book or the painting is done. In fact, many artists are alcoholic or what today we...
March 2010
15 posts
Sappho's Gift This Spring Morning
Can passion or creativity come ex nihilo? I don’t know but I believe they can be cultivated; they can grow. I know for me passion for photography and video is greater today than even just last year. I think images all the time now—when I’m on the treadmill at the gym, while driving to UPS or sipping my McDonald’s senior decaf looking at what’s new in the spring garden. A...
Paying the Dues of Passion and Time
In 1989 I read Marsha Sinetar’s book, Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow: Discovering Your Right Livelihood (available at Amazon.com for $11.56) and liked how it sounded. I was years then from discovering for myself how this principle worked. I’m a thinker, late on doing. I was seduced by the promise of digital movies in 2006 when I did a week-long certification seminar on Final...
Untitled
Shi mian mai fu in Mandarin, directed by Yimou Zhang, was the second Chinese movie I’ve seen in the past week. I watched it in Blu-Ray and the first thing that struck me was the opulence of colors. The costumes and the interiors made me think China’s old culture was every bit as decorative and beautiful as Europe’s. Maybe Chinese art has been more perishable. Everything in the tropics unless made...
Disrupting Comfort for Seeing
In photography (and videos, or, for that matter, any creative enterprise), we need to break beyond the familiar to explore something new in ourselves. Every shoot for me, when successful, explores the unfamiliar and cracks the comforting, conquering certainty of what I already know. After working in videos for the past eight months I did a photo shoot last Saturday with a male and a female...
Knowing When You're There
Terry Gross’s last interview with singer Johnny Cash in 1997 was phenomenal. The man was at the peak of his life, wise, modest without being falsely so, generous to those who’ve helped him on his rise to success and fame, still the genuinely respectful boy he was growing up with his cotton-farmer dad and mom and a man who still remembered the moment when he had arrived. After a false...
Living, Writing & Creating with Boldness and Dash
I listen to Terry Gross’s guests on Fresh Air (named aptly) and think: I should live with more of their brash and brio, more of their daring and dash; I should create more wildly and in life take more risks instead of cowering in my corner, afraid of making a mistake! When the sun is shining as it is this early spring morning amazement and gratitude flood my soul. I am really blessed. I may...
Photo Shoot - Think Fun, Think Surprise, Think...
I don’t think the weather would allow us to shoot outdoors at the pool on Saturday so it will be an all-studio shoot. Props would be important: bright-colored beach balls, basketball or soccer ball, bright beach towels, gym towels, sweat bands. A clean bike would also be a nice prop, or inline skates or surf board. Windbreaker or jacket and shades for action and lifestyle shots. Vintage...
Valentino the Last Emperor, and the world and...
I rented Valentino: the Last Emperor from Netflix because it was on Blu-Ray and featured fashion and the fashion industry. It was just the thing to watch this morning. Uncanny and freaky-unpredictable, events sometimes come together, the outside world with the inside, the dream with the jogging reality. After Coty emailed me to say he was ready for a photo shoot, the energy shifted direction. When...
Back to Stills Model Shooting
I am preparing for a photo shoot next week. I have not shot still images in months so I am brushing up on exposure, shoot styles and techniques, and lenses. I have a small but nice collection of lenses that frankly I have not learned to use to their full potential. For model shoots I like to use the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L, EF and 24-105 f/4L and the cheap but good EF 50mm f/1.8 on my Canon. Preparing...
Casting to Concept and Back
See the full gallery on posterous Filmmakers and photographers cast for projects they want to produce. I do the reverse. I find the models then develop the concept for the projects in which I can use them. It’s not a bad way to work, not until I’ve acquired enough skills that I can devote time to starting with a concept then finding the talent to work with and realize it. I’ve...
The Right Time for the Right Products
Ideas took shape as I watched Charlie Rose interview three tech journalists about Apple’s iPad. My goal at this time is still to gain the skills and craft in writing, photography and videos. Since January I’ve been posting to YouTube; since February to Facebook. Posting videos and text on the Internet is my market research for what people like, for what the market wants or is ready...
Life and Drama in Photographs and Video
By dramatic images I mean images that convey mood or emotion not only by the model’s facial expression but by his or her whole body. I like to capture close-up, full-length or three-quarter images of a single model and employing multiple models adds more possibilities for portraying emotion and relationship. This would involve acting that models already do without thinking they are acting....
Wes Bentley in The Last Word
The Last Word (2008) was directed by Geoffrey Haley who also wrote the story. I’d not heard of him so it was because of Wes Bentley who played the main character, Evan Merc, that I chose to watch the movie. I liked it. I liked the character of Evan, a reclusive writer who made his living writing suicide notes. The character is not only reclusive but restrained, his range of emotions,...
Attaining the Crest of the Curve
Sorrento 2007Yesterday was my best day of the week and it shouldn’t be. I was groggy from having stayed up till half past three and was up again at eight. I’ve often wondered if I do my best work, whether editing videos or writing, when sleepy or when pushing myself into the morning’s wee hours. I stayed up Thursday into Friday morning to finish my video, The Amalfi Coast from...
Dan Andrews Location-Independent Lifestyle
Kalanchoe in the WindowEarly this morning, while waiting for my video to export, I checked my email. Someone had started following me on Tweeter and this person’s location was the Philippines. I followed the link to Dan Andrews’s site, Tropical MBA, and watched several of his “Lifestyle Business Podcasts.” Since signing up with Tweeter everyday I get notice that someone...
February 2010
14 posts
Purim in Israel with April
My sister is in Israel, a guest of the Swedish Theological Institute where she is studying liturgical music. Part of the program goal is to educate the participants not only about the religious sites of Jerusalem and Israel but also about the Arab-Israelite conflict. I sent her a message on Facebook: Did you talk about the origin of the conflict? How the West agreed to the recreation of Israel on...
Purim in Israel with April
Did you talk about the origin of the conflict? How the West agreed to the recreation of Israel on Palestinian land? Before that, how the Jews were forced out of that land by foreign conquest? Who has right to the land under our feet? In the Philippines, Christian Filipinos pushed Muslims out of their land leading to the conflict there. But did the Muslims own the land? My conclusion is that if we...
Blu-Ray Players Adds Astonishing Connectivity to...
Blu-ray technology is changing how we view video content. Despite what naysayers proclaimed initially that entertainment delivered by disk was going to be completely supplanted by Internet-streamed content, the Blu-Ray Disk player appears to be staying around and may even become part of the future way content producers deliver products to consumers. The introduction of BD Live, an implementation...
A Temple in Turkey Older than Civilization
“Standing on a hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins.” Patrick Symmes’s article in the March 1, 2010 issue of Newsweek tells of a find in southeastern Turkey that suggests that 11,500 years ago hunters-gatherers in the last Stone Age built and used...
A Temple in Turkey Older than Civilization
“Standing on a hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins.” Patrick Symmes’s article in the March 1, 2010 issue of Newsweek tells of a find in southeastern Turkey that suggests that 11,500 years ago hunters-gatherers in the last Stone Age built and used...
Khaled Hosseini describes writing Kite Runner
Street Scene, Downtown IloiloKhaled Hosseini describes his first novel, Kite Runner, as a “slowstarter.” Sales were small initially but by word of mouth they grew to make the book an international bestseller -1.25 million copies two years later in 2005. Even before the manuscript was published by Riverhead, NY, it had already been optioned by Dreamworks and the producers who with Mark...
Amazon's Book Video Preview
Adam Haslett’s Union Atlantic, published last February 9, is available on Amazon. How it is listed brought on this meditation on books and publishing. Amazon offers the book for 42% of its hardcover price. The listing makes note the book is bound with “deckle edge” paper and explains what this means: the pages are bound to resemble handmade paper by fraying the edges so they...
Writing Tips for Success
Store Sign in Oviedo, SpainDan Fante, author of the novel, 86’d, spoke with Terry Gross after the novel last year. They spoke about Fante’s books, his writing style, and his relationship with his father, Hollywood screenwriter and author of Bukowski’s discovery, Ask the Dust. Fante told the Fresh Air host how he started writing when he lost everything again following an alcohol...
Art and Art
Rias GullI made myself go to sleep last night at 12:30 instead of working on video or short story. I wanted to see if I can be just as productive working during the day. I may end up going back to working after nine at night when the mind censors are partially silenced and I am more likely to take risks in the creative choices I make. But I still feel guilty when I get up in late morning or early...
Audrey the Writer
Thawing IceThe snow is melting but not with rain. The clouds that hover motionless above the city are exuding tiny drops that little by little are uncovering bits of grass by the side of the road, at the foundations of buildings, and around the trunks of trees. I started reading Bishop Spong’s Liberating the Gospels when I woke up this morning at nine. I thought of calling Frank and asking...
Snow Today, Gone Tomorrow
Frozen LakeEverybody is talking about how this is our snowiest, coldest winter in years. We had three snow storms the first fifteen days in February putting this month among the top 10 of all time. Fox59 meteorologist Brian Wilkes said that if the pattern continued this month could break all records. Last year this time we saw 50s and 60s of mercury. In December when the onslaught began I battled...
Skillet-broiled hamburger
I can’t believe that I haven’t posted to duendejoes since January last year. Can memory be so unreliable? I thought surely I’d posted photos and squibs about food since then? I do admit: I have not cooked at home much since last summer when I would fix lunches for Tony. Tony was my excuse to drum up meals so I would eat hot meals at home. Of course it didn’t work like...
Like Conquistadores of Old
Ingrid’s CoffeeWe had more snow yesterday. I stayed home, my typical hibernal Monday. I am tasting hardwired brain pathways. In just a few months habits become indomitable. I must drive to McDonald’s for my brew those mornings I feel a need for extra umph! I must read my email before I can do anything else. Most egregious of all: I must take lunch at a buffet to get my afternoon...