In the most recent New York Times Magazine, “On a Line by Proust” by Adam Giannelli. Then, from the “graduation dinner” for the 1990-91 Fellows at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, my “class poem”, “Les vrais paradis sont les paradis qu’on a perdus” (the very line by Proust). The Giannelli is a villanelle of sorts, for a general audience; mine is very free verse, also occasional verse written for a small community.
In chronological order.
… and toucans, but not, surprisingly, pandas, despite the brand name.
Originally encountered in ads from the Footwear etc. stores (a California chain with a store on University Ave. in Palo Alto): Wanda Panda,
We Are Wanda Panda
Shoes, ankle boots and sandals for women. Made in Spain. [The company’s headquarters are in Alicante, on the Costa Blanca]
Hours of attention: Monday to Thursday, 9:00 – 13:00, 16:00 – 18:00, Friday 9:00 – 13:00 [notably Spanish hours]
Phonemically /wandǝ pændǝ/ in English, apparently involving the bamboo-eating bear Ailuropoda melanoleuca (I have two friends with the panda as a very serious totem animal, so I’m alert to pandas) — but phonemically /wanda panda/ in Spanish, with no allusion to (el) panda ‘panda’ at all; instead the reference is to (la) panda ‘gang, crowd, group of friends’ (in European Spanish slang). And the Wanda Panda mascot is a cartoon toucan (tucán in Spanish):
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Some notes on the shoes. And then a digression on why Wanda and panda don’t rhyme in English (though they do in Spanish).
(Hunky male model in skimpy underwear and swimwear, comments on male bodies, but nothing X-rated — though not to everyone’s taste.)
It starts with the Daily Jocks ad on the 14th for its Underwear Club, featuring two shots of a Jor model I’ll call Carlos: in a tricolor “athletic brief” (red, white, blue, top to bottom) in the style called Navy; and in a differently arranged tricolor thong (blue, white, red, top to bottom) in the style called Frankie (perhaps to suggest France, whose flag is blue, white, red, left to right).
Along Homer Avenue in Palo Alto, half a block south of my house, the street trees are mostly Chinese elms. In particular, the north side of the block from Ramona (my street) to Emerson (the Whole Foods street), it’s all Chinese elms, six of them. Here’s the one across Emerson from Whole Foods, in front of 201 Homer:
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An excellent street tree, both pretty and tough, especially satisfying in hot and/or dry areas. Here you can see the interesting mottled bark.
Just in: from a National Weather Service report on 9/11 tracking Hurricane Florence (unintentional phallicity); and gift bottles for the Italian liqueur Limoncello (pointedly intentional phallicity).
In a fancy planter outside a neighborhood business just up Ramona St. from my house: stunning blue cranesbills — the hybrid Geranium ‘Johnson’s Blue’, here in an image from the web:
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And with this, sweet memories of my first time in Palo Alto, 37 years ago, arriving here just after my birthday (9/6), to start a year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences — on the foothills above Stanford, amidst untamed meadows in which a wild cranesbill, rosy-red Geranium dissectum, flourishes once the rainy season gets going.
(Not suitable for Facebook, because double entendres and incidental naked men, but not actually X-rated. Mostly about food.)
Fruit cream tarts, one with pansy. Plus a little Echeveria plant. These are more birthday presents from the 6th, from Juan Gomez and the aging care company he works for (a big tart — not merely una tarta, but un tartone — plus the little succulent) and from Kim Darnell (a cute fruit cream tartlet with a pansy).
Another birthday report, from the 6th: a sushi lunch at Kanpai (Lytton Ave. in downtown Palo Alto), a gift from Kim Darnell — with mostly standard items, but featuring toro katsu (and there lies a tale of borrowing words from one language to another). Photo of a man, bowl of miso soup in hand, seriously contemplating Japanese food, wanting a photo of the meal, and really not wanting a photo of himself:
(#1) The author with a Kanpai lunch special
Your left to right: bowl of miso soup, salad of fresh baby greens with Japanese dressing, toro katsu (with tonkatsu sauce, sriracha mayonnaise, and cooked broccoli floret), bowl of rice; then a platter of California roll and sashimi (tuna and salmon), mug of green tea (with images of sushi on it, labeled in Japanese and English), glass of Chardonnay. The side order of eel (unagi) sushi has not yet arrived.
A birthday present to me from Riitta Välimaa-Blum, this gorgeous display of plants:
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Not just plants, but particularly luxuriant houseplants — mostly gorgeous enormous Dieffenbachia plants. Apparently in a rainforest setting, either in the wild or in a conservatory (or as Riitta would say, un jardin des plantes). Riitta tells me it’s in a real rainforest, on the island of Réunion, in the Indian Ocean. Remarkably, Réunion is a department (state in US terms) of France, which just happens to be about 5700 mi (9200 km) from the department of France where she lives (in Nice, in the department of Alpes Maritimes). (Compare the US state of Hawaii, about 2500 mi (4000 km) from California, where I live.)
… and a bad grandpa pun, in the One Big Happy from 8/14:
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(The characters, left to right in the first and last panels: the neighbor boy James; the son of the OBH family, Ruthie’s older brother Joe; and Joe’s grandfather.)
Grandpa reproduces a bit of culture lore, about liaisons between housewives and milkmen. The boys are no doubt somewhat vague about what would be involved in a woman’s running off with the milkman. But, more pressingly, they don’t know what a milkman is: the N + N compound is scarcely transparent semantically, so unless you’ve actually had milkmen in your experience, tales of women and milkmen are just baffling.