Monthly Archives: July 2010

bridge the gap

July 31, 2010
By
Rainbow Bridge, Lake Powell

Bridges bring places together. Food brings people together. Food is a bridge. Strangers or friends, from near or far, each and every day or for special occasions, food is a bridge that connects us. Everyone has time to eat, and why not eat with someone. Grab a quick bite with a friend or sit down for a long drawn out Thanksgiving dinner with annoying relatives you haven’t seen in ages. Sit at a table and laugh or yell or cry. Food gives us a reason to slow down, stop and spend a few minutes or hours with another person and maybe, just maybe, even score some real life human interaction. The common denominator here is food; it’s what’s on the table. Birthdays, first dates, graduation, last dates, weddings, holidays, business meetings, there is almost always a meal involved. Food can take you to a far away country, too far to get to by bridge.  It can teach you something about a far away time. Food is the bridge and we are the bridge builders. 7 Mile Bridge Chicken Soup 1 whole chicken 1 Avocado, cubed 1 chopped onion, quartered Blood (or hot sauce) 3 Key Limes Sweat (can NOT be substituted) [...]

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the avantguardian’s summer playlist!

July 30, 2010
By
the avantguardian’s summer playlist!

Fire up your barbecue and drown out Mother Nature's pleasant murmuring with this AvantGuardian summer-flavored playlist. Shut up cicadas! Shut up hoot owls! Rip the lame-ass earbuds out of your iPod and plug in some speakers, sucka, because these warm days won't last forever.

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the other side\/\/damn it looks so good!

July 29, 2010
By
the other side\/\/damn it looks so good!

Blues.

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the expositor\/\/building bridges

July 29, 2010
By
the expositor\/\/building bridges

Bookworms are usually thought of as somewhat solitary, socially inept people. Websites such as BookCrossing like to portray books as a bridge between people, a means of connection for those with like minds, all over the world. Read a lot, they imply, and you will find literary company wherever you go. But, is it really true? Is a well-stocked bookshelf a way to win friends and influence people? Here are five interactions from the life of The Expositor. You be the judge: 1987: I was a messy kid. Rather than suggesting I brush my hair and make some friends, my father encouraged me to obtain a copy of a story about a magical woman named Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle who cured a girl of slobbery by planting radish seeds in the dirt in her ears. Unfortunately, the book was only available at the public library branch in Pawtucket, RI – maybe a twenty-minute drive from our home in Providence, but an Odyssey in the estimation of my Pennsylvania-bred father. Still, he loved his disheveled little bookworm, so he bundled me into his Volkswagen on a snowy winter evening and promptly got lost. A more reasonable person – such as my mother – [...]

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political scientism | bridge me up, buttercup

July 28, 2010
By
political scientism | bridge me up, buttercup

Tip O’Neill, former Chairman of the US House of Representatives’ Grammar Committee, once declared that “all politics is local.” Very true, Tip. Here in Miami, it’s also the case that “toda la política es loca.” And I mean crazy in a bad way. As in, “Did you see that crazy drag queen stab that hobo?” and not “Did you see that drag queen’s crazy dance moves?” (I should also note: since the South Beach Diet® craze caught on, all politics in Miami have been relegated to the “let’s get crazy hot.” And that’s a matter for a future blog post). The area where the effects of this phenomenon are perhaps most pronounced is on the issue of bridges. Though I’m not talking about the traditional “bridge over water,” don’t think that’s not a problem here; it is. We’ve got a drawbridge that cuts straight through downtown. So every time Jose Canseco decides to move his yacht from his mansion to his manor during rush hour, it shuts down an entire metropolitan area of nearly 2 million people. Brilliant. Our real bridge problem, though, is Miami’s shortage of “urban land bridges.” Don’t distress if you’ve never heard of an urban land [...]

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visual knowledge and performance

July 27, 2010
By
Eye_(red)

Would you mind indulging me for just a second? Take a breath, close your eyes and listen. Listen to the street, footsteps on the pavement, glasses clinking, your own inhalation, anything that is around you. Listen and be still. Now, feel your hands and drop into your body. Without your sight, what bubbles up for you? What is it like to have 360 degrees of stimulus? How is the energy behind you different from that in front of you? After a few minutes, open your eyes and see what is surprising and how quickly the mind reacts to vision.  How quickly do you make stories out of the objects that you see? While the above exercise may seem overplayed,  it is one I cherish and do routinely. Not only is it a great meditation but it makes one painfully aware of how ocularcentric our bodies and minds have become. It’s probably no surprise to you when I say that we live in a visual culture. We rely immensely on the objects we can see for reason, and clarity. Without them, the world could seem chaotic or overwhelming. Especially in western cultures, we ground ourselves in the eyes and perform accordingly. [...]

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a very american south africa

July 26, 2010
By
a very american south africa

I’m scared of bridges. A couple of years ago, I made a wrong turn and accidentally ended up on the Mystic River Bridge. It must have been under construction, because I got the nauseating impression that it was going to spit me out in midair every ten feet. I just wanted to stop my car, call the fire station, and ask them to get me down now. Fear of Bostonian drivers, however, overwhelmed my fear of bridges, and is probably the reason I’m not stranded on the Tobin Bridge to this day. In honor of Bridge Week, and my experience of not falling in to Mystic River, I’m covering another Clint Eastwood title: Invictus. Before I saw it, by the way, I kept confusing the titles Invictus and Inception. I have no special fondness for Leonardo or his shape-shifting head, but Inception looks impressive. Anyway, in Invictus, the only date we get is in the beginning of the movie: February 11, 1990, the day Nelson Mandela was released from prison. In case, like me, you were in middle school and don’t remember, Mandela became President in 1994; in case, like me, you are indifferent to sports and don’t care, the [...]

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this week on the avant guardian\/\/bridges

July 26, 2010
By
800px-Portland_Dawn

Bridges to nowhere Bridges to somewhere Bridge festivals Bridge games Ruby Bridges Jeff Bridges Big bridges Old bridges Small bridges New bridges Image Credit: Wikimedia

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sub-entry 17>> episode 50.6 \/\/ on ghosts of places and people

July 25, 2010
By
sub-entry 17>> episode 50.6 \/\/ on ghosts of places and people

As I drifted underneath the electric lamps of Spanish Fort, passing by the upscale restaurants and cabaret shows and heading towards the amusement park rides, I tried not to make eye contact with the ghosts.

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the secrets in the sauce

July 24, 2010
By
recipe thieves beware

Cooks have a reputation for being superstitious to the point of paranoia. Reveal any recipe at your own risk: you could end up at a dinner party 3 months later eating the dish prepared with that same recipe. It might even taste better than you ever made it, all of the guests would be raving, and the hostess with the mostest would pass it off as her own. Can you imagine? The chutzpah! I had dinner at the home of one of my fairy godmothers not too long ago. She prepared an amuse bouche for all of us — a delightful chilled cucumber soup. I asked her about the ingredients: Me: “Is there cream in here?” Fairy Godmother: “No.” Me: “Is there yogurt?” FGM: “No.” Me: “That’s so strange — I’m amazed that it could have such a creamy taste.” FGM: “Oh…well, I did add some sour cream.” If you ask me, sour cream falls under the cream category. I understand that everyone wants to be the secretive and mysterious chef, the one who all the others want to emulate. Don’t worry — no one could ever even aspire to your culinary mastery, because no one knows what the hell [...]

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