Food cart yumminess

Yesterday I was in Portland with daughter J, back from Nairobi and needing to pick up some cargo at the airport.

  We dawdled in northeast Portland before coming home. Happily it was lunch time, which meant a foray into the ubiquitous food cart culture.

 Many neighborhoods have alleys and formerly-empty lots converted into small spaces for food trucks. Portland-unlike a lot of cities-has encouraged the proliferation of these entrepreneurial little places and the area has attracted young chefs wanting to make a name for themselves while on  shoestring budgets.

 You could spend weeks in Portland and not run out of fun places to have lunch.

 An assortment of dumplings and a big, steamed, curry-filled bao from Stumptown Dumplings...can you say yummmmmmy?

 Japanese katsu on a bed of cabbage, with rice on the side: $5.00.

 Our son and his family have just moved back to Portland from Chicago, and although I loved visiting the Windy City I'm really glad for the excuse to get to the City of Roses more often.  Pretty sure there will be more food carts in my future.

Cephalopod Coffeehouse: The Secret Life of Pronouns

It seems like a lifetime ago that I was a student of applied linguistics at the University of Wisconsin. The year was 1988, just on the cusp of the computer age. The university computer labs ran 24-7; without windows or anything resembling comfortable furniture, they looked like stuffy, oddly lit caves in which it was easy to lose track of time. They were like casinos without any fun lights, food,  or music. It was a lucky thing to major in a subject that required me to spend zero time in such places. 

But one day a syntax prof said, "Computers are the future of linguistics. In your lifetime there will be computers with whom you will converse, and computers that will try to understand the meaning of what you write. However, the nuances of language and social convention will make this very difficult to achieve." Twenty five years later, thanks to computational linguists, we have Siri answering questions on iPhones and Google analyzing email for possible ad targeting.  This month I read a book that describes how computers can psyche me out by counting the number of times I use pronouns and articles.

 

The Secret Life of Pronouns is a book easily devoured in a couple of sittings, but I hesitate to recommend it to anybody but the geekiest. It's written by a psychologist so passionate about his  computer analyses of a vast array of written English (Lady Gaga's tweets, Shakespeare's King Lear,  Lincoln's Gettysburg address, John Kerry's campaign speeches, Enron emails...) that well...you might tire of it. But for word buffs, James Pennebaker's faith in his number crunching of "stealth words" in a wide variety of contexts is interesting.

Pennebaker, image from Yale Scientific

 "Stealth words" are those little guys that we never pay much attention to: pronouns, articles, and the like. Merely counting the number of times that a writer uses the pronoun "I" can indicate  gender, state of mind, and social status. Pennebaker's computer analysis of poetry is scary-accurate in its ability to predict the authors' suicides. Depression, self-deception, honesty, love, support, and the language of power are all covered by computer word-counts of "stealth words." Could this become a psychologist's tool? Maybe.

Always skeptical of technological fixes for human issues, I thought I might hate this book. The prose was approachable, if a bit odd...why suggest that the reader could skip the first chapter, and then say you might regret it, for example? But I did not hate this book. It was fun, and that's a big thing for a non-non-fiction reader to admit. I enjoyed his analysis of Obama's much-criticized use of "I," and I loved what the computer thought of Woody Allen's male characters' lines.

Final word: if you're a word buff, read this book. If you're mildly interested but don't want to buy the book, go to the website and take some short quizzes and do the exercises!  You'll become part of the ongoing research in applied linguistics, and you may learn something about yourself.

And then come back and tell me how you did on the "I" test. :-)

 For some more book ideas check out Armchair Squid:

Just wondering

1. If you use an RSS feed, which one is it? If you used Google Reader what did you switch to?

2. What's your favorite car? If you had two big dogs and an infant car seat, a need to drive on mountain roads, a wish for decent gas mileage (but a mechanic who dislikes hybrids), and didn't want to spend 30K what would you buy?

 

 3. Finally, what are these things and why would I find a pile of them at the edge of a field of grapes?

Just wondering.

Marquee poetry

One of the things I like about the small town where I live is this sign, rescued from a demolished drive-in theater, and sporting poetry in the parking lot of a bakery downtown. New poems go up sporadically. Would you like to submit a poem? There are only a few rules. Why not try it? I think you have to live near me though. Might be worth the move.

Filling buckets

Living in wine country is pretty great. We have friends who bought a vineyard a few years ago, and are actually making a go of it. Every October they put out a call for help on a Saturday, see who shows up, and everybody goes out to snip grapes and haul buckets. This year we picked Riesling grapes.

It was a gorgeous sunny day and there were plenty of snacks.

Vineyards here in Oregon commonly use sheep to graze around the vines after they've lost their leaves in the fall. It beats mowing with a tractor, right? And then of course, you also deserve a sheep dog.



  

New this year is Lulu. She is 7/8 Great Pyrenees and 1/8 Maremma, bred to sleep with and guard sheep, she is just 1 year old. Very love-y towards people & kids, not so much towards other dogs, who may pose a threat to the sheep.

This year my job was to pick up filled buckets...

...but I had to pause to admire the late-blooming Queen Anne's lace.

Reisling grapes filling a bucket.

Take-home pay was two bottles of wine. 

 Do you work for wine? If so, come on by; somebody could use your help!

A gift

Last year we had the pleasure of hosting one of my favorite people on the planet, my 95-year-old father-in-law, for two weeks in December. Before flying out to be with us he asked what I wanted for Christmas. Aside from his presence I had trouble thinking of a single thing. Who needs more stuff?

Finally I asked for any recipes that might remain from my mother-in-law, who died in 1999. He wasn't sure what was left in that kitchen drawer where they resided all those years, but he dutifully brought me what scribbling he could find.

It turned out to be a treasure trove, not only of recipes but also of glimpses into Eliza's life. I can just see her enjoying a salad at a bridge club meeting, quickly jotting down the dressing ingredients on a score sheet.

Much of the fun in this old collection is her choice of paper. If you were born after 1985 you may not recognize where this little card is from, but on the other side you will find the scrawled directions for making orange sherbet.

This recipe has no title and so few directions that I haven't figured out what it's for, but it must've made sense to Eliza. Check out the ingredients...how much would 15 cents buy these days? However I'm pretty sure what she means by  "1 good teas."

This little brochure from the 40's still contains a coupon, and a strange recipe for "English Rocks."

As the decades ticked past, new ideas began to show up...granola? Looks like the grandkids were paying a visit at the time.

The paper is so fragile that most of Eliza's recipes can bear little handling. Still, I took this one out yesterday afternoon and baked orange macaroons.

Made with no shortening, just eggs, flour, sugar, orange zest, and almonds, these light little delights are like something you might pick up in a Parisian bakery. I don't remember her making these sophisticated treats but I'm glad she left me the recipe all these years later.

Five close family members celebrate birthdays in the next month so this sour cream cake is on my short list to make real soon.  My father-in-law's gift just keeps on giving.

My photographer friend Rebecca in Pennsylvania points out that I finally have a post for Friday Shoot-outs because the topic this week is "handwriting." If you'd like to see more, check it out at Friday My Town Shoot-Out.