Once I started chemotherapy for triple-negative breast cancer, I became obsessed with having my hair buzzed at a barbershop before chemo could take it from me.

Not that losing hair is new to me. My hair has been falling out for fifteen years (Thanks, Grandpa!), and I got a buzz cut last year just to see how I liked it. I have to say, it wasn’t my favorite ’do—I didn’t like the look of the top, which was longer than the rest—but I could live with it. Especially in places like Seattle or Portland, where I saw a lot of women walking around with extremely short hair.

Todd was nonplussed by my insistence on a barbershop. He didn’t understand my desire for a haircut involving hot towels and a straight razor. For a while, I considered going to Proper Barbershop in Denver, but then I decided that a cold PBR and vintage Playboys weren’t that important to me. Neither was gender integration of that particular haven for men. I left it to the boys this time.

Instead I chose Al’s Barbershop, which has a location on the Hill in Boulder convenient to my appointment with the oncologist late that afternoon. The first thing I noticed upon my entrance was that all the pictures of fabulous hair featured men. Judith, my certified barber (Al won’t let you use a straight razor on customers until you’re certified), decided she would use scissors and a comb to shorten my hair, instead of a trimmer. So she divided it into sections and got to work. 

She was amazingly quick. In no time at all, I was under half an inch all over my head. It was relaxing to have the comb scraped (gently) up and down my scalp. Then came the real treat: hot foam and a neck shave. 

Judith didn’t have any reason to use hot towels on me, but she did promise I could come back when my hair got patchy and have my head properly shaved. Then, she said, she would use hot towels and polish my scalp until it shone.

I’m still not sure if I want that.

Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center lies southwest of the Ballard neighborhood where we stayed in Seattle. Located on the western edge of Discovery Park, it overlooks Puget Sound. Years ago, Indian activists wrested the site from a parcel of land the city was redeveloping.

I got there by crossing the Ballard Locks and moseying through the neighborhood. It was a long walk, but worth it. On the way to the center, I stopped at this sign, feeling torn. “Land’s End” always sounds so enticing. 

But I chose the detour instead. When I was done exploring the center, I entered the forest remnant nearby and had a green, peaceful hike back to the road. I love finding havens in cities that make you forget the city exists.

This pond was lush with reeds and ferns. The latter were a treat, since I have seldom visited places abounding in ferns.In September, it was still coated with green algae that made it resemble pavement.

Alas, all good illusions must end, as mine did when I found this extremely un-primeval landmark. 

I took Cancer Vixen literally. After reading it, I thought the first couple of days after chemo would be easy. The steroids would keep me pumped until Sunday, at least.

Maybe Prednisone works that way, but the Dexamethasone didn’t do it for me. It’s prescribed primarily to stave off side effects, and I will say that I had very low levels of nausea over the weekend.

I went in Friday, January 13, met with my doctor, and had chemo for several hours. First the nurse stabbed me in the chest with a wicked-looking needle that has a slight curve. That hurt, but only when she stabbed me. (Having this port in my chest freaks me out.) After the anti-nausea drugs and more steroids, she pushed Adriamycin in over 10 minutes, and when she was done, she hooked me up to the Cytoxan, I think, and let it drip. The Taxotere came last. Or maybe it was the other way around.

When I unplugged my chemo dispenser and dragged it to the bathroom, I discovered the Adriamycin had turned my urine pink. That lasted for a couple of days.

Todd and I ran errands in Broomfield after we finished chemo and then headed back to Boulder, where we were staying with a friend. I had to get a Neulasta shot on Saturday morning to support my body’s production of neutrophils (a type of white blood cell), so it was best to spend the night in Boulder instead of driving back and forth to Denver on Saturday.

Todd and I had made plans to attend a banked-track roller derby bout in Colorado Springs. We had lunch first with friends, and then I fell asleep on the way to the venue—a sign of things to come. After we arrived, Todd ran around doing video things, and I edited photographs, but the brain fog and light sensitivity that had crept up the night before got worse. I slept through the second half of the bout and all the way home to Denver. Todd said I took 4 naps on Sunday. I don’t remember.

On Monday night, we went to watch a movie with some friends. I was feeling very uncomfortable in any position, and my jeans seemed to bind my knees. It occurred to me the next day that I was experiencing the achiness associated with Neulasta, and I should have taken Claritin the day of the shot and the next day. I made it through the movie Monday night, but it was a physical struggle.

As I said, I had very little nausea, probably because I took Compazine (Prochlorperazine) until Monday or so. But it made my head feel swollen. I kept wanting to massage my temples, and the drug seemed to thicken the fog that surrounded me. I tried to do productive things, but the most I could manage was to edit a few photographs.

On Tuesday, I felt much less tired, but I needed to figure out how to manage my heartburn. I didn’t want to take more Compazine, but when I got up in the morning, feeling hungry, and ate something, my stomach hurt. I took a nurse’s advice and tried Prilosec, but so far it hasn’t helped all that much.

My tendency to eat when my stomach bothers me didn’t help matters. I couldn’t resist a frozen dinner with Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes for lunch, but the first bite fell into my stomach like a rock. Saltines helped calm things down, but then I allowed Todd to persuade me to eat at Go Fish, where I avoided raw fish and ate gyoza and tempura vegetables. I began to feel my GI tract was a distant galaxy where stars were forming. I started taking a Senna laxative, but because I took only 1 at a time, at first I felt more discomfort.

Wednesday was the worst day for stomach problems, and something was waking me up at night, so I wasn’t getting much sleep. I walked to K-Mart to buy pajamas, and my stomach was tender. Once I got home, Saltines came to my rescue. I felt so good that I agreed to meet a friend for dinner, where we ate cheese and a light pasta dish and drank wine. It was great food—especially the Gouda with nettles—and great company, but my stomach winced at each new bite.

Lessons learned:

• Take Claritin before and after Neulasta, and take two Senna each night, starting the night of chemo.
• Stop taking Compazine as soon as possible and switch to Prilosec or something else that reduces stomach acid.
• Drink lots of broth and eat lots of bread. Tame the mouth monster that wants constant stimulation, and feed the body instead.
• Avoid social engagements until the fifth day after chemo (and the period will get longer as I get to the later treatments).
• Be aware that as my stomach begins to feel better, my white blood cell counts are dropping. Stay away from crowded places where I might pick up an infection.
• Save the restaurants for the 10-day mark or later.

Tonight I’m taking Ativan (Lorazepam) to help me sleep. Maybe it will soothe my stomach as well.

***

Slept like a baby, and woke up to spotting. I think chemo-induced menopause has begun.

I had a port inserted today so that I can receive chemotherapy (and have blood drawn) through the port instead of through a vein in my hand or arm. The left side of my chest is a little sore now, and I can’t really turn my head to the left. I have to turn my body.

When I was doing my third year at the University of Sussex, I got such a major crick in my neck that I walked around for at least a day with my head tilted to the side. One of my professors wanted to know why I was holding my head that way. I felt that way today, talking to a friend who stopped by to drop off baked ziti and salad and bread. (I think it’s about time for a second serving.)

It was a comedy of errors this morning at the Department of Interventional Radiology. When I was in the pre/post room, being attended to by three different nurses, a handsome young man with bed head approached me. I asked if he was the surgeon, and he replied, “I’m one of them.” (UCH is a teaching hospital, after all.) He said they were going to put the port on the right side.

“The same side as the tumor?” I asked. “Shouldn’t it be on the other side?” I knew there was a good reason for my question, though I was far too sleepy to think of it. He said they would discuss it in the OR, explained the procedure, and left.

Once in the OR, I was hooked up to various machines. There was a bank of 8 monitors, 6 of which had my name on them. I found that life-affirming, or at least ego-affirming.

The man with the goatee set up a tray for the surgery and then had to redo it because he hadn’t realized I was allergic to latex. (I’m not sure I really am allergic to latex, for that matter. After one dive trip, I got a rash that lasted for a few days. I attributed it to wearing my latex dive suit for 4 days straight, but who knows? It could have been anything.)

The next step was to help me get my right arm out of the gown so he could clean my shoulder. By this time, I had asked two or three people whether the port should be on the left side. He explained to me that it’s easier to put the port on the right because the vein into which the tube is inserted makes a little jog on the left side.

Then he swabbed my shoulder with an icy substance that left a blue residue and proceeded to cover me artistically with blue drapes. (Does anyone else think “Two by two, hands of blue” from Firefly/Serenity when they see those new hospital gloves? Creepy. Can’t get it out of my head.)

Just as I was almost tented in, a woman whose name/rank/serial number I never caught snuck under the drapes and informed me that, yes, the port should be on the left. If they put it on the right side, it would make post-surgery radiation more difficult. This was the “Time Out” that I had been told would happen, so they could make sure they got everything right.

Right arm back in the gown. Left shoulder out. Icy wash again. I hoped I didn’t flash the man with the goatee, but I didn’t really care either. Tenting on the other side, and all I could think was, “Are they going to recycle all that plastic? Reuse it?”

I asked the man with the goatee if he was doing all right. I thought he was frustrated because he had to keep redoing all his prep work. I hope it didn’t come across as snotty, because I didn’t really mean it that way. It might have been his fault that he didn’t catch my so-called allergy, but it certainly wasn’t his problem that the doctors hadn’t “done rounds” and didn’t know where my port should go. Especially since I had brought it up with one of them almost an hour before I went to the OR.

The last thing I remembered before surgery was the (fourth) nurse telling me she was giving me sedatives now. When I woke up, someone on the other side of the blue drape was tugging at my chest. I think it was one of the surgeons finishing the sutures.

For the rest of the day, all I did was get crabby with Todd about all the traffic on Colfax (which he controls because he has his own galaxy) and lie around and, finally, eat a real meal. Now I’m having blueberries for dessert.

How appropriate.

She has gray hair and sleeps in the doorway. She fits her back into it, concave, her face out for safety.

Sitting on her bedding at 8:30 in the morning, she packs her small troupe of possessions for the day.

Where does she go until the evening? Why does she choose this street busy with restaurants?

When I was in San Francisco last month, my cousin invited us to eat at Mandalay, one of two Burmese restaurants within a few blocks of each other in San Francisco. I knew nothing about Burmese food, but I was expecting something like Thai food. Burmese food, however, strikes me as less heavy on the chiles than Thai food and more about balance among the ingredients.

Mandalay is a small restaurant and seems to be popular, but we didn’t have to wait long for a table. The three of us squeezed around a table meant for two along one side of the restaurant.

Todd and I started with some frou-frou drinks: in his case, coconut juice sipped from a peeled coconut, and in my case, a refreshing nonalcoholic drink flavored with ginger and cilantro.

There were several dishes with tea leaves on the menu, including the Tea Leaf Salad. The three of us eventually settled on the Ginger Salad, which is similar. The pickled ginger is in the middle, surrounded by peanuts and jalapeños, soy nuts (the menu listed lentils), sesame seeds, fried garlic, and tomatoes. The server brought it to the table this way and mixed it for us. This dish doesn’t really match the American vision of a salad, but the ginger and peppers added a bit of garden freshness to the crunchiness of the other ingredients.At my cousin’s recommendation, we ordered the Mandalay Special Noodle with chicken, which you see here after it had been mixed (my apologies for the blurry BlackBerry photo). The chicken is hiding in the middle under the fried narrow noodles, surrounded by wide noodles, cilantro, onion, and yellow peas powder (at the bottom). It was delicious, but I tried not to hog it all for myself. Our final dish was the Smoked Tea Duck. I wanted to try at least one dish with tea leaves, since that seemed to be an important aspect of Burmese cuisine, and the duck was wonderfully tender and lightly smoked. But I have to admit I didn’t notice a distinct flavor of tea leaves. It was a little awkward to divide this entree among three people, but we managed.

I’m an impatient person who is getting lots of lessons in patience lately. My life seems like a film shoot: wait, wait—a flurry of activity—and then more waiting.

I just got the results from the biopsy of the mass in my right breast. Now I officially have breast cancer. Not that there was much doubt after the biopsy of the lymph nodes in November, but, as one doctor said, “It’s always a little disappointing when it comes true.” I’ve chosen a surgeon in Denver and an oncologist in Boulder, from different groups. I sometimes ask myself, “Beth, why can’t you do things the easy way? Pick one group or another?” But I didn’t. I picked the doctors who talked to me in a way I could understand. And I picked the surgeon, especially, because she was the only one of three who mentioned that she tries to minimize the trauma under the arm, where the lymph nodes are removed.

But now the holidays have come down like a pack of Dementors, and it’s cold and everyone is trying to get away. (Can you tell I’ve been watching Harry Potter movies?)

I knew I should have taken that 700-page editing job! Then I would have something to keep me busy, something other than looking for a place to live, editing the thousands of photos I took in the last 6 months during 12 Cities, 1 Year, or starting a photography business.

The truth is, the only thing I want to be busy at right now is treatment. But it’s not happening yet.

Cancer has made me into a patient, but it will never make me patient.

Sentences like that one make people hate to learn English.

Two days after moving into the basement of another friend’s house, I unpacked some of the items in our camping box. I wanted the blue polyester napkins I’d had since graduate school and a couple of glass storage containers. When I opened one of the containers so that I could wash it, out fell a ball of twine, neatly secured with rubber bands.

What an adventure I had planned to go on in 12 Cities, 1 Year. I wanted to have everything with me, everything we could possibly need. No matter that bringing along all this stuff contradicted the spirit of the digital nomad lifestyle. I was going to protect myself with balls of twine (I think there are two in there) and dried sweet onions and a glove for getting things out of the oven. No telling when I might have to pick up something hot.

Yet I always knew I would forget something essential on this trip. And I realized what it was on November 21, three days before Thanksgiving.

That evening I learned I had cancer. I was standing on a sidewalk in San Francisco outside Ramen Dojo, talking to my gynecologist about the results of a biopsy. “It’s not good news,” she said. And it wasn’t. In a way I pitied her. It can’t be fun to spend your evenings calling patients about breast cancer.

And if I could think about her, then I didn’t have to think about myself.

I went back inside the crowded restaurant and told my husband we would talk about it later. Then we ate our garlic ramen, wonderfully rich but a little too spicy. I couldn’t finish mine, but the diagnosis didn’t stop me. I was able to eat mochi for dessert, after all.

We turned down the sidewalk toward our car. I wanted to speak. I breathed carefully. I wanted to tell him, but we walked a block before the words came out of my mouth. “I have cancer,” I said. I often find it difficult to say what I have to say, but this time the words seemed to be pulling up so much fear with them.

That evening I remembered what I forgot to bring on our 12 Cities, 1 Year trip: my health. I was so accustomed to my health, so used to having it with me, that I didn’t think to bring any extra.

Doing things makes me feel better. So I went back to our hotel room in San Francisco, and wrote out an email to my friends and family. I’m not that fond of talking on the phone. I’m much more comfortable with email. And the kind, loving responses started rolling in: sorrow, comfort, recommendations for doctors, offers to help.

The first time I talked about my diagnosis to someone besides Todd, in person, I felt so cold and tight inside. I thought I might start shivering, right there at the Thanksgiving table, over chocolate cake and pumpkin pie. I worried that I might be giving the cancer more power by admitting to it, as if it were some kind of cellular Lord Voldemort.

Every time I talk about the cancer, or listen to a surgeon tell me which body parts I’ll lose, it both relieves and exhausts me. Having a clinical discussion about cancer is easier than crying about it, but both let that cold fear rise a little closer to the surface.

The other night, I watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in which Professor Lupin compliments Harry on being more afraid of the Dementors than of Voldemort. It shows, Lupin said, that Harry was afraid of being afraid. Lupin thought that wise.

I hate being afraid. Thinking about this cancer is like looking over the edge of a pit. There’s a staircase twirling down into it, one of those black metal dealies that you can see through, all the way to the bottom. I dislike heights, and I know that I’ll be terrified walking all the way down that staircase, and all the way back up.

But I also hate waiting. If I stop looking and step down, at least I’ll be doing something.

I’m sitting in my sister’s house in Kansas City on a Friday night, listening to the train in the distance (last night I heard a great horned owl hooting in the backyard). In a way, I’m enjoying a respite from my travels: visiting family and friends, working, and hanging out without feeling the need to do much. In another sense, though, I’m still on 12 Cities, 1 Year, staying in yet another place where I don’t live. In a few days I’ll be back in Denver, and then we’ll fly back to the West Coast and start the slow trek down toward San Diego.

Today I had lunch with a high school friend whom I haven’t seen in 30 years. She’s fighting the good fight as a civil rights attorney for the Department of Education. I’m impressed by what she’s accomplished, but I’m also glad I’m not supervising 10 people. I’m glad I work for myself. As I told her, I never really liked having a job.

One of the great gifts this year keeps giving me is introspection. With each new city, each new exploration, I get to find out more about myself and what I really want. Some days it seems I’m still living the old life, still exploring and blogging about it, still copyediting. Other days, life seems completely different than it did six months ago.

In Portland, I decided I had to visit a French restaurant. This craving had started in Vancouver, but I had been putting it off because French restaurants are almost always expensive, and we had been spending far too much money on food.

My last weekend in Portland, I could resist no longer. After I listened to Ursula K. Le Guin read her long poem “The Conference” at Wordstock 2011, I crossed the Steel Bridge and walked from NW Portland to downtown. I went into one French restaurant, only to be told they were serving brunch and nothing but that day. I kept going.

I found Occupy Portland and watched their decisionmaking process for a while, but when the group split and went off in two different directions, I headed for Brasserie Montmartre.

I wasn’t the only one to show less-than-perfect dedication. 

It was 2 pm on a Sunday, and Brasserie Montmartre was having happy hour. I had a Croque Madame and a green salad and left a generous tip, all for about $12. Although I was a woman dining alone (WDA), the service was excellent.

After I ordered the sandwich, the waiter warned me I wouldn’t be able to eat it with my hands. You can see why.

The innards? Pork belly and Gruyère on brioche. Outside, a fried egg and Mornay sauce on top. All soft and warm and creamy, and the bread was toasted and, I think, brushed with butter. Because there’s not enough dairy in this sandwich.

Lately I’ve been photographing a lot with my BlackBerry. It doesn’t have a very good camera, but it’s a lot lighter than my Canon DSLR. I carry it with me everywhere, so it’s the camera of choice for spur-of-the-moment photography.

One of the themes of the 12 Cities, 1 Year tour is conquering fear: of not being settled, of living in all these different places, of not having a steady job. And, for me, minimizing my fear of heights. I don’t have any ambitions to conquer it; I’d rather go to the bottom of the ocean than the top of a mountain. But I do want to wrestle with the fear a little.

In Portland, Todd and I lived in the SE neighborhood, and if I wanted to get to the credit union, I had to cross the railroad. There were two bridges I could take; the one pictured below was definitely in need of renovation. It leaned to one side, and some of the boards were rotting. It wasn’t in any danger of falling down, but I wouldn’t want to jump up and down on it. As I crossed it, I was breathing hard, saying out loud, “You can do this.” Luckily for me, a train didn’t pass by underneath while I was crossing.

On the North Steel Bridge near Portland’s Rose Quarter, it was a different story. A much sturdier bridge than the one shown above, the Steel Bridge has lanes for walking and biking, driving cars and riding buses, and riding the light rail. From the Rose Quarter side, it looked intimidating to me. But once I got out over the water, I felt rather protected by all the concrete. Walking across didn’t bother me too much, at least not until I reached the middle section, made of metal. For some reason that unnerved me.The railroad ran underneath on its way to who-knows-where.North Steel Bridge had a different vibration depending on what was crossing it at any given time. But the view from it was spectacular, even on a cloudy day. That day I was thinking my fear of heights masks a desire to leap off the bridge and see how long it will take to hit the water and how it will feel. I always feel safer walking above water than walking above land. I guess my brain figures water is softer, but of course that depends on how far above it I am!The Broadway Bridge crosses the Willamette River to the north, and on the other side of the river from the Rose Quarter is this marina, serving some riverside development in NW Portland. I tried to get a picture of every kind of transport crossing the Steel Bridge, but I was most interested in the light rail. Here two trains, going in opposite directions, pass each other. The pedestrian/cyclist lane is wider than it looks here, but nevertheless I kept checking behind me to see that no cyclists were trying to get by.And here, at the NW end of the bridge, I saw the tail end of the Portland Marathon.

I don’t honestly know how much of an effect these experiments have on my fear of heights. It has definitely worsened with age, but I find that when I do confront it in some small way, I can “Keep Calm and Carry On” through the fear. Sometimes it isn’t so bad, sort of like a fizzing in my stomach, and sometimes I feel quite lightheaded.

In any case, I dislike being afraid, so I will go on challenging myself in these small ways. Don’t expect me to start climbing mountains or building high-rises, though.

I took the picture below in Pioneer Place in Portland on a rainy Saturday night before the AIDS walk. Looks pretty standard, right? Just a landmark, a tourist attraction, etc. The red carpet on the bottom right was set up for the AIDS walk.

What’s important is what I left out of the picture: the young man who came bounding into my camera frame, begging me to take a picture of him and “send it to my Mom.” I don’t know whether he was serious about that, but he did his best to charm me into photographing him. I wouldn’t relent, though. By God, I was going to take a photo of a landmark, and no random resident of Portland was going to get in the shot! Finally, he gave up and walked away.

Later I wished I had humored him. I regretted being so rigid. After all, didn’t I set out on the 12 Cities, 1 Year trip to meet new people and learn new ways of doing things?

I have to remind myself, sometimes, that it’s okay to change direction in mid-course. To plan things one way and have them turn out entirely different. Sometimes I am far too committed to consistency. But, then, what else would you expect of a copyeditor?

I’ve posted a lot of pictures from the 12 Cities tour on Flickr. Go check them out. I’d love to have your comments.

There must have been 10 coffee shops within easy walking distance of our apartment in Ballard. This vegan doughnut came from Café Mox, which is attached to a game store.

The Counter, located in Ballard Blocks, is definitely worth visiting. The build-your-own burger Todd ordered was fabulous. You could order a burger patty on a salad, so I tried that with a veggie burger topped with pineapple, but the idea was more interesting than the reality.

Hi-Life was located along NW Market Street and was always packed. We intended to go there some Sunday for the fried chicken but ended up at brunch with this obscenely thick French toast.

I had oysters several times in Seattle. Here: Penn Cove. The server at Emmet Watson's Oyster Bar in Pike Place Market (not where I got this one) explained that August and September may not be the best months to eat oysters because they're spawning and they may taste funny. After I left Seattle, I read about several people getting sick from Washington oysters. I was lucky.

Salted cod with ajilimojili sauce from La Isla, the Puerto Rican restaurant in Ballard. Lovely fried fish.

Todd had the pernil, a pork dish. This restaurant had tasty sauces; I believe the red sauce is mojito sauce. It also had a waiter who wasn't comfortable looking at me, for some reason, even though I was paying.

Portage Bay, a large cafe near Ballard Locks, offered a toppings bar with French toast and such. Here it is.

The great thing about Portage Bay's toppings bar was that you could order just the toppings for $6, so I did.

I began with berries and I’ve ended with berries. There are berry brambles fruiting in Portland right now, but they’re not ripe yet. I think it’s so cool to be able to pluck berries as I’m walking along. I’ve never before lived in a city where that was possible.

I got a good haircut in Missoula the week before I left, but by the time I got to Portland six weeks later, my hairline in back was pretty shaggy. Yesterday I was walking to our rental from K & F Coffeehouse and noticed Gilly’s Salon on Clinton. I’d also noticed Sei Bella salon while looking at Ladd’s Rose Garden Circles and Squares, which is an X-shaped set of streets a few blocks from our apartment. I checked out both on Yelp and decided on Gilly’s.

When I walked in, I saw a woman reading a magazine and told her I’d like to make an appointment. She said she could cut my hair right then and introduced herself as Gilly (with a hard G). I told her that my hair has been falling out for 15 years and my husband thinks I should just buzz it again but I’m still fond of running my fingers through my hair (all 3 to 4 inches of it). She thought I still had enough hair for a style, especially in the back, so after some negotiation about how to style the back, she got to work with a razor.

It was the longest I’ve been in a stylist’s chair for a haircut alone, probably more than an hour. She was meticulous about shaping the hairline over my ears and the layers in back. All the while, we chatted about southern Oregon and the differences between Portland and Seattle and our similar reactions to shaving our heads. She said she wished she had bought a house in the SE part of Portland before it got so hip and expensive.

Toward the end, I was feeling sleepy and thinking, “Are we there yet?” But when she showed me the neckline, I was very happy with it. My hair feels so short now but still has volume on top.

Gilly’s uses Organic Color Systems to color its clients’ hair. So if you’re sensitive to the chemicals in traditional hair dye or you are looking for less toxic hair products, this is the salon for you.

To eat at Señor Moose Cafe is to experience the despair of never being able to try everything on the menu. Even the selection of salsas was eclectic. The peanut sauce (top) had the most heat, whereas the tamarind in the lower right was mild. The second time I ate there, for dinner, I wanted to try Filete enchocolatado (steak sauteed with bitter chocolate, wine, and onion) and about 10 other things. I settled on Enchiladas de la plaza because I’d never been to a Mexican restaurant that advertised a sauce with cream and egg.Señor Moose originally opened as a breakfast place, but then the owner, Kathleen Andersen, realized nobody in Seattle was serving the comida tipica from Mexico’s central plateau (Michoacan, Nayarit, Jalisco, and Mexico City) that she had been craving. So the staff started adding breakfast specials that Andersen had learned to make while eating at fondas (mom-and-pop restaurants) and making food with friends in Mexico. Then the cafe added a full dinner menu.

That kind of variety doesn’t come cheap. It costs a lot more than the $10 you might drop on a meal and a drink at El Taco de Mexico in Denver.

The name of Todd’s entree alone was worth it: Puerco en nuestro mas reciente mole. Among other things, the sauce was made with 4 chiles, almonds, sesame seeds, chocolate, and sweet spices. The pork cooks in the sauce for a long time, resulting in a darker, hotter flavor than the relatively mild sauce on my enchiladas filled with potatoes, corn, and carrots. Todd’s entree was flashy; mine was squishy but still good. When you walk into the restaurant, there’s a counter on the left and a dining room on the right that ends in a bar with the sign: “No Minors. No Firearms.” The room with the counter seemed blazingly hot both times we were there, so we sat in the other room and got served by the same no-nonsense waitress who reminded me of my friend Catherine. During our stay in Seattle from August 17 to September 17, there was an art exhibit in that room featuring a painting on a ironing board. It’s a funky little place.

The morning of our first visit, I ordered huevos ahogados, expecting tomato soup with a few poblanos and some cheese and 2 poached eggs. It wasn’t my usual breakfast fare, but that was, of course, the attraction.What I got was a smoky tomato broth absolutely loaded with chilies. I ate the eggs and drank as much of the broth with chilies as I could; the broth itself was lovely—salty and spicy—but the chilies defeated me. Todd ordered machacas con papas. I remember the beef being crispy; he doesn’t. In any case, it was a hearty meal.Writing this review from Portland has made me want to drive back to Seattle to have just one more dish. If you’re in Seattle, go up to Ballard and try Señor Moose. It’s open for breakfast and lunch until 3 and then from 5 to 9 or 10 for dinner.

On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I wanted to be around people. So I took Todd to one of the few Seattle events commemorating 9/11 that was happening at night. We drove down 99 and over the Seattle bridge to Alki Beach in West Seattle.

First we stopped at the Loghouse Museum, a small museum about the arrival of the white settlers in 1851 run by the West Seattle Historical Society. Although the settlers soon moved up the coast to what is now downtown Seattle, Alki Beach was the place they first landed. It is called the “birthplace of Seattle.”

Alki is a word in Chinook Indian jargon that means “by and by.” I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as Chinook Indian jargon, which I believe was a language created to facilitate trade. The Chinook Indians recently achieved recognition by the federal government.

The Duwamish tribe, of which Chief Seattle was a member (he was also Suquamish), does not have federal status. They were recognized by the Clinton administration, but that decision was overturned by the Bush administration, probably in the early 2001 frenzy to overturn anything from the Clinton era. The Duwamish have, however, found the money to build a longhouse, which is located east of the West Seattle Golf Course on Marginal Way.

After we went through the museum, we walked down to Alki Beach and ate dinner. Then we joined the crowd around the replica of the Statue of Liberty on Alki Beach, where people brought flowers and offerings in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. People put flowers and stones and writings around the base of the statue. The West Seattle Historical Society showed up with items salvaged from the original memorial, as well as candles, and people began lighting the candles and arranging them in front of the memorial. The mood was quiet but not really somber. Occasionally someone broke out in song.

There were lots of people taking pictures and video. Just down the beach, children played in the cold surf. As we walked back to our car, we noticed the moon was full.

I put my pictures of the Alki Beach 9/11 memorial on Flickr.

When Todd and I planned our 12 Cities, 1 Year trip, we anticipated that moving from one city to another every month might get a little tedious. Now we’re two months into our trip, about to head to Portland, and I haven’t gotten sick of it yet. My heart lifts when I think of going to Portland. A new place! It’s still my thrill.

I was doing the dishes tonight, though, and realized that repacking all our kitchen gear will definitely not be a thrill. Our situation has improved since June: we’ve gotten better at packing quickly and leaving enough room to see out the back window of the Prius. But we still have a lot of crap we have to fit into a small space. Todd has mentioned sending the camping gear to his parents, and I can see why, though it’s possible we might want to camp in California or Arizona. So I’m torn.

All this is part of a process of pulling up stakes, going somewhere, and resettling. But we settle somewhere only long enough to become acquainted with the place. We’re not spending enough time anywhere to get sick of it. And even though I don’t like the fact that our current bed sits right on the floor—no frame—I can’t get worked up enough about it to care. It will be history in less than two weeks.

I’m surprised that I’m not more bothered by the variability of our living quarters. After 15 years of living in one house, I expected to mourn all the comforts I gave up. But so far, I’m not. Maybe it was good that our first rental was a house; maybe that was less shocking than moving straight to an apartment after not renting for so many years.

I hope it never bothers us very much. I hope we become more flexible and tolerant this year, not less.

I wouldn’t say I’m a connoisseur of fish, and I’m certainly not a fisherwoman. I leave that to my father-in-law. But I do enjoy eating sushi and various types of grilled or sauteed fish. Salmon, especially, I love raw or smoked, but I have never had very good grilled salmon. It has always been a little too stiff and tasteless, no matter where I’ve eaten it.

Then I went to Ray’s Boathouse, located on Puget Sound on the top side of Salmon Bay. That is, in Ballard, the Seattle neighborhood Todd and I are staying in until mid-September. I saw it on a map one day, and when my birthday came around, I knew I wanted to go there for dinner.

I chose the Boathouse rather than the Cafe, although the Cafe is cheaper and offers outdoor seating (and blankets if necessary). The former was much pricier, but I wasn’t looking to economize. I don’t usually order a bottle of wine for just the two of us, but since the Boathouse had won lots of Wine Spectator awards, I decided to try one of the gruner veltliners on the menu (a dry blend with riesling), and Todd chose a drink made with cachaça (I can’t find it on the website, so I can’t tell you its name. I don’t think it was a capirinha). Each of us had a salad before the meal. Mine was the Boistfort Valley Farm salad, with locally grown peas, pecorino, mint, and an onion vinaigrette.Mostly, I remember that the cheese was nice. Todd ordered the Boathouse Salad, with butter lettuce, Point Reyes Farmstead blue cheese, almonds, and a raspberry theme vinaigrette. His salad is very colorful.Todd finished his drink and started helping me with the wine. Then our entrees arrived. Both our entrees were smoked with mesquite; his salmon on a bed of couscous was so tender it made me like grilled salmon again. I had sablefish, which I’ve never eaten before. It tasted lightly smoked and was lusciously fatty, like pork belly. They warned me there might be a few bones in the middle. The reasonable portion of risotto was crisp around the edges, and the apricot coulis was nice but hardly necessary. I took this picture with my BlackBerry, and the shallow puddle of coulis looks quite huge and solid here.

We decided against dessert, having already filled up on wine and fish and the sunset over Puget Sound.

After our interview with Kate Sheridan at UM Flat (way back on July 25, the day before we went to Glacier National Park), she left to have lunch with a friend, and we headed over to #1 Gyros, also on 5th Avenue, but on the west side of Higgins Avenue in Missoula. (This is the second restaurant I’ve seen in Missoula that has “Watch Your Step” way down on the ground there. It’s a little passive-aggressive, I think.)The restaurant was pretty empty when we arrived at 12:45, but people did trickle in after us. It was a good thing because I took a while to make up my mind about my order.Our landlady had recommended that we order the Greek fries.Made with oregano, salt, and lemon juice, they were the best thing we ate. Winner in the most startling category: the thick, uber-garlicky hummus. Don’t eat it if you have to interact with people before you can brush your teeth. Or if you prefer hummus that tastes of lemon—I couldn’t taste anything but the garlic. I have to admit, though, I enjoyed the purity of the experience.I must have been craving gooey food that day because I ordered the special fries (with feta, cayenne, and tzatziki). If you want spicy fries, you should ask them to add extra cayenne. They were a little too loaded for my taste, but the tzatziki did add a nice lemon-yogurt flavor. Both of us preferred the Greek fries. And, finally, there was the gyro. I thought it was appropriate that it seems to be drooling. I realized as I was writing this that I don’t really expect much from gyros. Perhaps I’ve had too many generic sandwiches from Falafel King in Boulder. This one was good, but the gyro I remember is the one I had in Vancouver. The dollop of tzakziki on it was very thick, and the gyro-maker slit a whole pita so far down that he could fill it and then wrap the contents to make a falafel that looked like a burrito.

And do I remember the name of the restaurant? No, but if you go west on Robson Street in Vancouver to the Blue Horizon Hotel and look across Robson, you will see a Mediterranean restaurant. And maybe the man who wraps falafels will be there.

Saturday I shot my first banked-track roller derby bout, a home team championship for the Tilted Thunder Railbirds. I took more than 700 photos; god knows when I’ll have time to go through them.

All that time spent with my right arm up in the air, camera pressed to my greasy nose, mouth grimacing from looking through the viewfinder, was hard on my body. I consciously tried to pull back my shoulders, stand up straight, and not let my face twist into such strange expressions. Even so, my right shoulder, back, and legs were very tired after 10 hours of sports photography.

Todd was on his feet all day too, shooting the first team for his documentary. On Sunday he went to their practice arena, which is within walking distance of our apartment, and interviewed a couple of skaters. He had a good time and met a lot of people. I noticed that he was much more gregarious than I was. I felt shy asking people if I could take their picture (though I didn’t feel at all shy at the Ballard Farmers Market). I met a couple of photographers, mostly because they came up and talked to me. The first, Pete Eaton, usually photographs ballroom dancing. The second, Steve Messerer, loves to shoot roller derby.

Steve said he typically takes 1,000 photographs per bout and likes about 20 of them. That sounded like the right ratio to me.

At first I focused on the jammers (the people who can score), but before long I started trying to get good pictures of blocking. It’s harder than you might think. I took a lot of photos of action just before or after the block. I shot in high-speed drive mode, which is sometimes useful for getting such shots. Mostly, I ended up with 5 photos of the same 3 seconds.

Here’s an OK picture of 2 jammers (far left and right, with star “panties” on their helmets) trying to get through the pack. It was shot at ISO 2500, and I’ve done hardly any editing on it.I spent time at the bout taking pictures of the other photographers. Sometimes it’s very amusing to turn your camera on your own kind, as shown by this picture from the Celtic Festival in Missoula. These two men were shooting the Young Dubliners.Next time I shoot an event as long as this championship bout, I’ll be sure to take more breaks. I don’t know if I can take fewer photographs, though I’m sure I’ll learn to judge the action better as time goes on.

I will be spending my time in Seattle going through my photographs and finding some that are worth trying to sell. I’m looking forward to that.

I’ve been wondering how this 12 Cities, 1 Year trip should change me.

I know one thing I want to change: the anxiety that besets me when I’m about to do anything new or meet anyone new. You must admit, that’s a disadvantage on this kind of trip.

I’m pretty sure it didn’t used to be this bad. Not that I was ever worry-free or a social butterfly, but I don’t remember worrying so much. I don’t remember constructing worst-case scenarios in my head (in the space of a few seconds) that would prepare me for whatever might go wrong.

That brings up two questions:

1. Why do I always have to be prepared?

2. Why do I always think things will go wrong, especially when they so seldom do?

As the Flaming Lips say in “Fight Test,” “’Cause I’m a man, not a boy / and there are things you can’t avoid / you have to face them when you’re not prepared to face them.”

It would be better for me as a person, I think, to stop trying to anticipate every possible outcome.

I really don’t remember when preparation became so important to me. I know that after my mother died in 1992, I felt vulnerable. When I was out and about, I began to fear random attacks more, to regard people with some suspicion. I guess her absence from the world left me feeling unprotected.

Only a few years after her death, I started freelancing. I sat at a desk in a room at home, by myself, and wrote fiction or copyedited books. I cleaned the house and worked in the garden. I talked to my neighbors and did some volunteer work, but mostly I spent the time alone in my office.

I’m pretty sure that’s what did it. Something about living that way fostered a low level of fear. My routine became my security blanket. Now I have no need for a routine, but I find myself trying to impose it, doing the same things I did when I lived in Broomfield.

The other day, I was at the Ballard Market in Seattle, and I saw milk in glass bottles. I thought, “I should have Todd get some of that milk in glass bottles after we run out of the milk we have.” Why? Because I had milk in glass bottles in Broomfield. There are other reasons, health and environmental reasons, but really it’s just a habit. If I could, I’d like to fit my old habits into my new life.

And I really, really don’t want to do that. I don’t want to carry my old life with me. I want to adjust myself to what’s around me, sort of like the Ousters in Dan Simmons’s Hyperion and Endymion novels, who chose to adapt to space in order to fill the galaxies with life. I want to be a chameleon, not a stick-in-the-mud.

Any of you travelers out there, do you know how long it takes to shed an old life?

I’m a sucker for stories with magical gateways, portals, paths that lead to Fairyland. And in real life, I am constantly seeing gateways in the most ordinary places: an arch in a hedge, a dim path through trees, even a street.

I went out one night to photograph such a magical place and found myself captivated by fauna instead. The fauna, however, were captivated by flora.

Guess how many fawns there are in this picture.This shot was taken from about a block away. I kept approaching when the doe looked away. They moved away as I came closer.

All of a sudden, someone was yelling at me. I turned sharply to see an old man on a bike, admonishing me to “photograph the sunset!” I looked behind me. There was a little color in the sky, but nothing special. I shrugged and added him to my list of people who annoy me when I’m looking through a camera or binoculars.

He rode down the street a little and then stopped, saying, “Oh. Deer.”

I guess this picture explains why people go to such lengths to deer-proof their yards.

They walked around the side of the house to the backyard.All the attention was making them nervous, yet I was hungry for more photographs. I don’t have the lenses for wildlife photography, so I made the most of this opportunity.

The fawns began to get antsy, racing around. I remembered that this new camera had video capabilities. While I was fumbling with it, the fawns wore themselves out and slowed down a bit, but the flags were still flying. After a few more minutes and 1 very boring, shaky video, I realized we were approaching Higgins, a busy street in Missoula that goes by the university district. Then it occurred to me that the deer probably wanted to eat more succulent plants from the Garden City’s yards, not cross a thoroughfare. So I turned around and went home, having been delighted by a bit of ordinary magic.

Paul’s Pancake Parlor doesn’t brag about itself. Why should it? Todd and I have been there twice and it’s been packed both times. But it does tell it like it is: “All our batters are homemade.”

And what a selection of batters there is: chocolate chip, chocolate chip caramel, buckwheat, five kinds of rolled pancakes (on the crepes side of pancakes), and many more. Not to mention waffles, regular egg breakfasts, burgers, and sandwiches. And two kinds of desserts: pie, and pie à la mode.

I always feel happy about a place that declares, “Breakfast served all day.” As I’ve said before, staying open from dawn until dusk seems to be a Missoula tradition.Or that talks about great-grandmother’s sourdough starter.

On my first trip, I had the rolled Swedish pancakes with lingonberry butter. No syrup required.I declined to have them stuffed with cream cheese. As it was, I ate only two, and these “pancakes” are thinner than the regular ones so that they can be rolled.

On our second visit, I ordered an egg breakfast, and it was OK. The eggs and the hash browns both seemed a little undercooked. The bacon was purple and greasy, and I had 4 pieces, so I gave one to Todd. Turns out his “Western” omelet was a little different: it was filled with bacon. The onions and peppers and ham and cheese were on the wrapping, made of eggs. Let’s just say he didn’t lack for bacon that day. His order also included a stack of pancakes and a half-plate of fruit that the waitress was kind enough to re-plate for him. It looked neater before we started eating it.I loved our waitress. She was beset by many tables but stayed calm. I flagged her down to get a cup of coffee, and then after I’d had two sips and she wanted to refill it, I said no. Her response: “Oh, sure, waving me down for coffee and now you don’t want any.” I didn’t say no after that.

The other thing I loved about Paul’s was the art on the walls, especially the sign for the mixer on the right below: “Why beat it by hand?” has become the motto of our age. Why do anything by hand when you can get a computer chip to do it for you?

If you go to Paul’s, take friends and order several different kinds of pancakes. Reviews on Urbanspoon suggested the burgers were also good.

That’s the trouble, you see. Here I am starting the 12 Cities, 1 Year tour, and I don’t have the faintest idea how to do it. How do I distill the essence of a city and then write it for you?

Part of the problem is my reluctance to intrude. I’m a bit of a lurker at heart.

But to know a city, you have to meet at least a few of its people. I could, of course, just walk around, take pictures of neighborhoods and farmers markets and powwows and downtown buildings, and that would give you, my readers, a sense of the place. But it feels cowardly to me.

I could describe it for you, but it would be better if locals described it for you.

One local we met suggested we try to get an audience with the mayor. I’ve been thinking about sending an email but still haven’t done it. Honestly, I’d be impressed is a mayor would take the time to meet with us.

I can see that I will need to get out of my comfort zone a little.

The day before we left the park, Todd and I took two trips to Norris Geyser Basin, north of Old Faithful and south of Mammoth Hot Springs. First we arrived in the morning, just as the photographers were leaving, and we were the only ones on the boardwalk. As I went back to get my camera, other people began arriving. I took this photograph of Black Growler Vent that morning.

We went back later that night and had most of the basin to ourselves. It was the best time of day to be there, mostly because we didn’t have to get up early!

Our last day in Yellowstone, we went to Old Faithful. On the way I snapped a picture of this bison bull, who looks like he’s starving.

So far on this trip, Todd has arranged almost all the accommodations, including our rental in Missoula. Two places along the way I particularly liked were motels, one in Buffalo, Wyoming, and one in Montana south of I-90.

The first, the Z-Bar Motel, graces Highway 16 in Buffalo, Wyoming, on the way to Yellowstone. Todd found it on the Internet, on Trip Advisor, I believe. Here’s the office, which faces the highway and is right across from the new criminal justice center. The center was still under construction, hence the orange cones in the first picture. I couldn’t decide whether having a criminal justice center across the street from a motel was a plus or a minus for the motel.

When we arrived, the office was closed; the landlady had put the key in an envelope and taped it to the door. Todd met her later, after she had returned from her errand, but I never did. Our “room” was a tiny, stand-alone cabin among other cabins arranged around a lawn. We were able to park between it and the next cabin. There was about a foot between the end of our bed and the bathroom, which had a nice shower. Here the door to the bathroom looks like the gateway to hell because of the limitations of my BlackBerry.We had a hard time finding room for our gargantuan suitcases in this room. At one point mine was blocking the door to the room, causing a fire hazard.

We discovered the second motel, the Riverside in Ennis, Montana, on our way from Yellowstone to Missoula. I had been looking for hotels in Butte, Montana, and both the reviews on Trip Advisor and the prices were scary. By the time we reached Ennis, on Highway 359 south of I-90, we were ready to quit driving for the night. We spotted two motels along the highway, and the Riverside looked significantly better than its competition.

We went into the riverside and met one of its proprietors, John (his wife is the other; they split their time between Montana and Florida). He gave us a deal on the fanciest room in the hotel, the one reserved for groups of anglers. It had a metal rocker out front and two queen beds and a kitchenette and a very nice bathroom. Just as soon as he had offered us a great price, another man drove up and wanted a room, but John told him he had just given it to us. That was nice of him, considering that, as he said, people in Ennis have “four months to make it or break it” for the year.

One reason the Riverside looked so good, we learned from John, is its recent paint job. Several foreign exchange students, all female, spent time at the Riverside this year, and he taught them to paint and had them help him put a new coat on the buildings. If you look carefully at this photo, you’ll notice the side of the triplex is white. John and the students weren’t able to finish all the buildings, but almost all the ones I saw had been repainted a light green.

At the beginning of this trip, Todd and I stayed at the Waconda Motel along Highway 24 in Kansas. Both these motels were quite a bit nicer, but they’re all the same kind of place: drive-in motels with smaller rooms than most people are used to these days. All three had WiFi, though, and two of the three had free breakfasts. The character of these motels makes up for the small rooms and occasional lack of amenities. They’re definitely worth seeking out.

Todd and I spent the night in Buffalo, Wyoming, at a locally owned motel (more on that in a later post) and had breakfast the next morning at Busy Bee Cafe on North Main Street. It originally opened in 1927, closed down for a few years when the original owners retired, and then reopened recently.We had been directed to Pistol Pete’s as the place to eat in Buffalo, but we were very happy that we ended up at Busy Bee. I had a couple of oversize pancakes and this beautifully presented fruit salad. The waitress assured me the fruit had been cut to order, which I think is something of a rarity.

Todd had the Busy Bee breakfast, which I can’t find on the menu I reached from the Facebook page for Busy Bee Cafe. (The entry page, for the Occidental Hotel next door, is quite annoying.) It was your basic egg breakfast, with meat and potatoes, but the large pieces of rye bread were notable.

What I loved most about the Busy Bee was the hospitality. Our waitress was a delight. At one point I realized I was blocking her way as I photographed this old stove that was serving as a coffee station. She waited patiently until I noticed.The cafe was full of so many cute details, it was hard not to photograph all of them.I was also amused by the number of women who kept emerging from the kitchen to get something from this bar/soda fountain. My last count was four, in addition to the waitress. I wondered how many could fit back there.

The Busy Bee is located right along a creek (there was a stack of sandbags along the path, but the water didn’t look that high in early July) and has a charming dining room for breakfast and lunch. If you’re in the mood for something small, a fountain drink or a pastry, you can sit at the bar.

After eating at Etta’s Place in Sundance, we drove to Devil’s Tower, the first national monument in the United States. I made Todd circumnavigate it with me.

There are all sorts of stories about how the tower formed. One says the vertical “lines” in the sides are the marks of a bear, clawing to get up the tower. And, of course, if the tower is truly devilish, it could call clouds.

On the way to Devil’s Tower, we stopped in Sundance, Wyoming, for lunch. Imagine our surprise at finding an upscale restaurant at the site of the old Longhorn Bar, named after Etta Place, the woman who accompanied Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to South America.

If you search online for “Etta’s Place,” you’ll find a B&B in Fort Worth, Texas. On Urbanspoon, this restaurant is listed as the Longhorn Bar. In any case, if you’re in northeastern Wyoming, I suggest checking it out. Todd and I ate there on Tuesday, July 5, and really enjoyed the quiet, elegant atmosphere and the lunch.

The chairs caught my eye, for looks as well as comfort.

I thought this cold strawberry soup was made with yogurt, but the waitress insisted that chef Beverly Doll made it with cream and wine. It was a bit like eating a smoothie with a spoon, but less sweet, and the cinnamon was a nice touch.To go along with the soup, I had a salad, with flavorful beets, strawberries, cantaloupe, and red pepper and house-made blue cheese dressing.After days on the road through Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota and a surfeit of meat, I was very happy with my light, fresh meal, all the more so for it being so unexpected.

Even the bathrooms at Etta’s are worth recording. I especially liked the double rolls. “Just in case you’re going to be here for a while…”

On our way to Missoula, the first stop on our 12 Cities, 1 Year tour, Todd and I stopped at Badlands National Park, right next to Buffalo Gap National Grassland. In my opinion, we didn’t get to spend nearly enough time at either. After we set up camp near Mount Rushmore, I went back one night to take more photos and was mesmerized by the birds warming themselves on the dirt roads. There were nighthawks, doves, sparrows, and horned larks just hanging out in the road, eating insects or enjoying the lingering warmth. I could have watched them for hours, if it weren’t for the mosquitoes. Here is a picture I took in the Badlands, on Sage Creek Road, which rises from Highway 44 to become the rim road. The next picture was actually the purpose of my trip; I wanted to photograph the yellow-and-purple-striped mounds in better light. Unfortunately, the drive took longer than I expected, and I lingered too long with the birds on the road and the curlews flying overhead.

Our next stop was Mount Rushmore National Monument, which impressed me more than I expected. To be honest, I don’t really approve of carving things into mountains; I’d rather we stopped blowing up mountains for coal or carving our likenesses into them and just leave them the way they are. But the entire setup was kinda cool. What I liked most at Mount Rushmore was the performance by Jasmine Pickner, Lakota, nationally ranked hoop dancer. She mentioned that hoop dance has traditionally been performed by men, but that the last world championships were dominated by the two female competitors (of which she was one). She also talked about how some people she knew were surprised that she would dance at Mount Rushmore; she turned it into an opportunity to talk about her tribe and its history. She danced with dozens of hoops that she made into several shapes; in the preceding pictures, she’s building a sweatlodge for the finale.

In the next three pictures, she gathered a group of children, whom she called the “super-duper hoopers.” She showed that when she finishes her schooling in elementary education, she’s going to be a great teacher. I didn’t ask her permission to take these photographs because she was giving a performance in a public space, but when Todd and I go to the Standing Arrow Powwow this weekend, neither of us will be taking pictures.

I wrote the powwow committee and asked them about the rules, and they said we would need to get permission from each dancer (and written permission if we wanted to sell the photos). In other words, they didn’t want us to take pictures unless we were dedicated enough professionals to go to the trouble of talking to each and every dancer on the floor. I understand the history behind the committee’s rules; they want to prevent whites from profiting from Indians without their knowledge or permission. But what if we want to photograph a group of dancers on the floor? It seems a little ridiculous to ask us to get permission from all the dancers, especially if only some of the dancers are recognizable.

Our last stop in South Dakota was Crazy Horse Memorial. Both Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse were complexes or campuses, with museums and stores and places to eat, but Crazy Horse is funded through a private foundation. The plans for Crazy Horse are quite extensive, including the American Indian University and Medical Training Center. I took many pictures of the monument from different angles, starting with my attempt to get as many models in one picture as possible.Next is the large outdoor model of the carving.If it rains, the model can be retracted into a covered area, and it was while we were there.There is a large deck from which to view the carving. Or you can take shelter in the equally large museum and check it out from there. If that’s not enough, you can take a bus down this road to get closer. We didn’t.

My dearest friend, whom I have known since middle school, met me for Italian food in South Kansas City the last week of June. I was excited to see her and to try North Modern Italian Cuisine, but I’m afraid it wasn’t much fun for her. She was supposed to have a temporary crown replaced by a permanent one and thought her appointment would take all of 30 minutes. But instead the dentist got to drilling, I forgot about her appointment and kept texting her about why she was late, and she ended up having dinner with a sore mouth.

It was still great to see her, and the food was pretty good too, definitely better than Brio Tuscan Grille, the other chain Italian I’ve sampled in Kansas City (both, only once), but not as authentic as Il Posto in Denver. North is owned by Fox Restaurant Concepts, which also started the Bloom restaurant chain; I ate often at the location in Broomfield, Colorado. There is a North restaurant in Cherry Creek in Denver.

The waiter, who knew my friend from the many Wednesday nights she spent at the restaurant drinking half-price bottles of wine, brought us pretty butter whipped with red pepper. My friend ordered the zucca chips, which were a little soft (like the focus) but good.She then moved on to pizza, which apparently didn’t do anything to make her mouth feel better as she took most of it home. I ordered the scallops with corn risotto infused with white truffle oil. The scallops were perfectly moist and tender, with no grit, and the risotto was good. I was impressed by the number of scallops in the serving and by the fact that the dish was not too heavy.Thanks for meeting me for dinner, my friend. I hope you’re feeling better, and I’ll check out your new kitchen in November.

On Wednesday Todd and I made our first BBQ pilgrimage in Kansas City, to Arthur Bryant’s original location at 18th and Brooklyn, near the old jazz district. I had been there before—in the late 1980s, I believe, with two friends who soon afterward got married.

It was a hot day on Brooklyn, and the warehouses in the distance did nothing to reduce the heat.A steady stream of customers walked up to the clear partition, picked up a plastic plate, and leaned down to give their order. When I ordered burnt ends, a KC BBQ specialty, the guy behind the counter wanted to know if I was from here. “Grew up here,” I said, and that combined with the request for coleslaw got me a fist bump—plastic glove and all. I couldn’t resist ordering a red cream either.  The styrofoam cup has a little speech on it about how styrofoam cups weigh less than paper cups; the implication is that their lightness makes them better for the environment. (But what about the toxic manufacturing process? And the way styrofoam breaks down into tiny, little pieces that animals can mistake for food?) Despite the speech on the cup, we got real, albeit plastic, plates, and metal utensils.

The burnt ends were not pieces of beef, which is what I sometimes get served when I order burnt ends, but gooey strings with blackened edges, doused in a tomato-based sauce with bottom, rich, spicy, and sweet. (The next day, Todd and I ate at BB’s Lawnside BBQ on 85th near Troost. I had burnt ends soup there, which had a wonderful broth, but it was basically beef and vegetable soup.)I couldn’t eat more than half of my serving, though I did manage to sample Todd’s pork sandwich with fries. After lunch we waddled along the Missouri River path for a while. I found a shady spot from which to take pictures. The river was definitely high down at Riverfront Park, but it wasn’t flooding there as it was along I-29 in Nebraska and Iowa.Every time I come back to Kansas City and drive over the Missouri, I think, “Now that’s a river.” I know the Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon and all, but the bits of it I’ve seen driving across Colorado and Utah don’t impress me as much as the big Midwestern rivers. It’s not fair, I suppose.

Our last stop downtown was Christopher Elbow chocolates. He has a store in San Francisco as well, though I don’t know where he got his start. He specializes in caramel infusions; I heard of his chocolate store because I went to Latte Land for a coffee one winter day in 2009 and saw “rosemary caramel latte” on the menu. He provides the infusion for that seasonal drink. So I had to order a rosemary caramel truffle.I also ordered the chicory truffle because it reminded me of a truffle made by William Poole of Wen Chocolates (formerly in Denver; now relocated to New Orleans). This shot shows the wonderful lighting along the counter. And here’s Todd emerging from the very cold store into downtown Kansas City summer weather. Talk about the heat island effect!

As we walked up to the library in Burlington, Colorado, this morning, we saw this mysterious sign: No cake pans in the book drop … OK. At first we thought it was one of those ridiculous warnings now common on products: “Don’t submerge this electrical device in water!” “Don’t stab yourself with this knife!”

We went inside, printed what we needed, and went to look for the bathrooms. And then we found this unusual little alcove. While I was there, a mother came in with her two children, a boy and a younger girl, and they picked out pans.

I love discovering little secrets like these.

I hope the next year is full of them. Burlington was our first stop in our 12 Cities, 1 Year project (though the first official stop is actually Missoula).

Todd and I frequently eat dinner at Magnolia, a restaurant in Lafayette where a friend of ours womans the sushi bar a couple of nights a week. If there are seats at the bar, we sit and laugh with her and buy her a drink and take her suggestions on the specials. And what better to go with raw fish than raw meat? It comes with smoked sea salt, fried capers, pickled mustard seeds, and pepper crackers.

Aside from two meals from the restaurant menu that sounded better than they tasted, Magnolia’s food is good. The bison is great, as is the mac and cheese.

The owners brought in someone from the Med in Boulder to help with running the restaurant. I’m looking forward to seeing some of his work.

There’s an Italian restaurant along 17th Avenue in Uptown that I truly enjoy. I’ve been there twice, both times sitting on the patio when it was cool enough outside that I started to shiver. This picture was taken from the table closest to the large open window.

The server started each of us off with a taste of prosecco. We paid for it later, but it’s a nice touch. I gazed longingly at the tagliere (cheeses and meats) on the neighboring table but didn’t order it this time. Instead, we got the burrata plate with its sweet, creamy cheese. After the crusty bread with an open crumb and Todd’s salad, our main dishes arrived.

Both of us felt slightly adventurous that night (but only just; wouldn’t want to go overboard, after all). Todd ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, the chewy guinea fowl with crispy skin. The asparagus was sliced lengthwise, a trick repeated with my fava beans. I want to know how that’s done.

I was dithering between the pappardelle with sausage and the tagliatelle with halibut belly. I chose the latter for the sake of adventure, and the meat itself was interesting: some of it had the consistency of a steak, and other bites were lusciously fatty. The tagliatelle itself was cooked al dente (ever so slightly crisp), but the other ingredients  (artichoke and fava beans) didn’t really add much. Overall, the meal was a bit bland, but both the pasta and the fish  stood out.

Il Posto is located on 17th Avenue near Thin Man and St. Mark’s Coffeehouse.

It reminds me of the Squeaky Bean in this way: you have to order a lot of food to get full, and the bill shows it.

My food critic friend Denveater loves oysters, and I’ve been bugging her to take me out and introduce me to some. Sunday night we stopped briefly at Ocean Prime in Larimer Square but decamped when we discovered they served 1 type of oyster. One seated at the bar at Oceanaire, we ordered a happy hour chef’s choice plate of 8 oysters. Some of the oysters on the menu were new even to her, which made me happy.

As we waited for our first dish to appear, I made a fateful decision: I would take my photos without flash, in order to avoid having blindingly white plates in my pictures. All the pictures in this post were taken at 6400 ISO, mostly because I could. But then I had to go home and unleash Noise Ninja on them. As I was editing them, I thought, “Why am I taking pictures at such a high ISO, then using Noise Ninja to remove noise, and then sharpening them? It’s silly.”

First up, Chef Creek from British Columbia. As Denveater said of West Coast oysters, it was a bit sweet, mild with just a touch of brininess. The Riptide, from Massachusetts, was my favorite of the four types. It was saltier and had a more robust flavor. It’s also prettier, though I don’t know why that should matter.The second East Coast oyster came next: Alpine Bay from Prince Edward Island (shades of Anne of Green Gables!). It was less salty than Riptide but definitely had more grit. I liked it too.The Nootka Sound oysters, again from British Columbia, were my least favorite, with a less distinctive taste. After all, if you’re going to toss something rather slimy down your throat, it should have some flavor. Denveater thought the Nootka were a little chewy.

Of course, we didn’t stop with oysters; we took full advantage of the happy hour food and wine menu. We started with deep-fried asparagus, which were a little undercooked. Then we moved on to beef sliders, soft and oniony.

It may have been lowbrow, but I wanted to try the cornmeal-friend oysters and fries. Apparently, Sunday is no-carb-left-behind day.We finished up with friend green beans, which were perfectly cooked. The bacon-flavored aioli was just spicy enough. I’d give them the prize for best snack, though the fried oysters were good too; I especially liked the textural contrast. This was my second meal at Oceanaire. I went there two years ago for Denver restaurant week and enjoyed the food and drinks then as well.

I was out Sunday in extremely uncomfortable shoes, snapping tulips on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder. They’re just about done for the year, and although I wished I had gotten there about a week earlier, there were still some beauties left. While I was there, I ran into Eli Vega, the instructor for the FRCC class “How to Sell Your Photographs.” He suggested I try shooting at a very small aperture and very low shutter speed while the wind was blowing. He said it might create the effect of double exposure. The picture below is my best effort. It looks a little bit like a painting. Although I don’t think it’s good enough to try to sell, it was fun to play with this technique.

This photograph was shot at ISO 100, F36, 1.3 seconds.

I highly recommend Eli Vega as a teacher. You can take his classes at Front Range Community College and Boulder Digital Arts. (I think his class at BDA is new, so it might not be listed yet. You could email BDA to find out.)

I was tempted to title this post “Weird-Ass Cupcakes” because it seemed appropriate. But then I remembered all my foodie friends and thought I should temper my opinion.

I was in Boulder a month or so ago, longing to get the Hot Chocolate Soup from Belvedere Belgian Chocolate Shop, but it was closed by damage from the fire at Oak, which is next door on 14th Street. So I went to Tee and Cakes on the other side of Belvedere and couldn’t resist trying the cupcake with bacon on top.

Everything in the cupcake tasted fine by itself: the bacon, the cake infused with maple syrup, the chocolate frosting. It was a little like having French toast-cake with bacon and chocolate. I think I would have liked it better if the bacon had been chopped up fine and incorporated into the cake. I wonder if it’s possible to bake a cupcake with scrambled eggs in the middle too? Would the eggs taste good after sitting for a few hours? If so, then people could get this cupcake and have a shot of chocolate with their full breakfast!

Last Saturday, I visited the Boulder Farmers’ Market for the first time in 2011. In addition to stocking up on locally grown vegetables and cheese and salsa, I bought a few mini-cupcakes from the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless. I can’t recall seeing a booth for the homeless shelter at previous farmers markets, so I am assuming their donations are down and they need some extra cash. I give money to the Boulder Homeless Shelter every year because I like the fact that they shelter the homeless without imposing religion on them (unlike the Denver Rescue Mission).

I don’t know who made these cupcakes. Perhaps one of the volunteers at the homeless shelter? I started out with these two babycakes, avocado and black pepper and chocolate with caramelized banana. I ate the avocado first because I believe in delayed gratification. Trouble was, I couldn’t really taste the avocado. The pepper came through, as did the cream cheese frosting. The chocolate cake with caramelized banana was so great that I went back to get one for Todd. (I swear I gave it to him!) The little crunch in the banana was nice with the moist sweetness of the cake.

I told the people at the booth that I couldn’t taste the avocado, and the woman at the booth said that was the thing she tasted most. Perhaps the fruit wasn’t evenly distributed through the batter, or maybe it was something I ate beforehand.

Note 1: The only Belvedere retail store open nowadays is in Glenwood Springs. The store on Colfax closed, and the store in Boulder will be closed until further notice. When I went by last week, I didn’t see many signs of renovation happening. I hope it reopens!

Note 2: For the record, my favorite cupcake shop in the Denver area is Mermaids, just off the 16th Street Mall on Champa. My favorite place for small chocolate oblivion cakes is Indulge Bakery at 95th and Arapaho in Lafayette.

In case you’re wondering when I’m going to write about some adventures on this blog…well, I am too. I should be having lots of adventures this summer, but right now I’m working on getting my house sold and finishing editing jobs.

I have a lot on my mind these days.

Todd and I are getting ready to sell this house and travel the western half of the United States for a year.

It’s not good timing. My father is in assisted living, and my siblings and I have to deal with all that sets in motion. Of course, in this situation, it’s hard to know what would be good timing. I’ve wanted to travel like this for years.

I will continue to copyedit while traveling, and I hope to be able to sell my photographs on the road, though I’m not sure how that’s possible without a permit, and how will I get a permit in each city when I’m there for only a month? Todd is trying to convince Polycom to let him work remotely and planning his next movie, to be shot on the road.

There’s some risk involved. It’s possible, though unlikely, that we could burn through all the profits from the sale of the house and not be able to afford to buy a new one. It’s also possible we’ll keep traveling after this year.

That’s what I like about this situation: I don’t know what’s going to happen.

We have a route planned, which you can see on our 12 Cities, 1 Year website. We have some general ideas of what we want to do in certain cities. That’s about it. We welcome suggestions about things to do in each city.

Right now, though, our focus is on selling the house. We were planning to take it to market next week, but I decided I needed another week to work on the yard. After that, we have to get rid of most of our stuff, which I think will be a bigger chore than selling the house.

When I moved to Boulder in 1987, my sister and I brought a carload of stuff. After my arrival, I bought a bed and a cardboard dresser. I enjoyed not having so much stuff, and I think I will enjoy going back to that state.

I’ve been so busy lately preparing to sell our house and editing books that I haven’t had much to say on my blogs. I hope you enjoy this picture.

I had a wonderful evening in downtown Denver Thursday night. It was cool out but not cold, and the streets and bars and restaurants were full of animated people. I got off the B at Wynkoop and 15th and sped over to Translations Gallery between 17th and 18th on Wazee. I had been there the day before to see their photography exhibit, but the artist statements weren’t up yet, so I went back Thursday. Mark remembered me and came over to tell me that I had refocused his attention on the artist statements, especially on the kind of equipment they used (which was my primary interest).

One of the photographers used large-format film cameras (Bryan David Griffith); 2 others digital, a fourth used multiple exposures, and the last made prints from film, including a homemade film using arsenic.

My favorite Griffith image was of a pine tree against the sun shining through fog; the rest of the print was dark. It seemed to open up the more I looked at it.

Jillian introduced me to Diane Huntress, who photographs buildings in the Denver area and then cuts and pastes them together so that, at first glance, it appears she looked up through the camera and took a shot. Thus details of buildings combine to form an abstract composition. Other artists were Cecelia Feld, Alex Benison (the photographs on the website as of Thursday night were not the large prints shown at the opening), and Izah Gallagher (the artist who made some of her own film).

After talking to Diane for a while about how she had taken pictures of the Rio Grande building on Blake and the Union Station sign and juxtaposed them, I ran back to 16th Street and down to the Tattered Cover LoDo. There Jeremy N. Smith was talking about his book Growing a Garden City, which describes 15 people involved in the local food movement. Smith complimented Denver on its innovative approach to urban gardening. I’ll be writing more about that on my other blog, Restoration Nation, in the next few days. So keep checking the link in the sidebar to your right!

Turns out he is from Missoula, which is perfect, because the first stop on the year-long trip Todd and I are taking is to Missoula.

On March 12 I saw so many movies about women, I was beside myself with happiness. It was the Voices Film Festival at the Denver Film Center on Colfax. Although the Denver Film Society has been doing Women + Film at the festival for years, it was the first time Voices has had its own festival.

I missed Soul Surfer, about the female surfer whose arm was bitten off by a shark. Take that, James Franco!

My favorite film was Waking Lions, directed by Allison Otto, from which I learned that a Colorado woman, Shannon Galpin, had sold her house to found Mountain2Mountain, which “invests in the world’s most underutilitzed resource: women and girls on the fringe.” The movie portrayed her adventures in Afghanistan.

Galpin has visited women in Afghan prisons (some of whom are victims of rape but were charged with adultery), supported a school for the deaf in Kabul, trained women in midwifery in rural areas (where male doctors are not allowed to see women under any circumstances), ridden her bike in rural areas (many people in Afghanistan consider it obscene for girls and women to ride bikes) because she hopes midwives might be able to travel that way, and has supported education and training in critical thinking for women and girls.

For a long time I had wanted to go to Afghanistan but was under the mistaken impression that you couldn’t just go, that you had to get permission from the military or something. Galpin said no, that there were even people who went as tourists to Afghanistan. That gives me hope that someday I’ll be able to go. I spent so many years of my life following what the Taliban were doing in Afghanistan, when hardly anyone in the United States had heard of the Taliban, that I would like to go there now that it’s safer and see what’s happening.

Mountain2Mountain also contributes to Beyond the 11th’s programs for widows. Beyond the 11th was founded by 2 American women widowed by September 11 who decided to help women in Afghanistan widowed by that country’s 30 years of war. Beyond Belief, the film by Beth Murphy telling the story of their organization, focused much more on the lives of the two American founders but also included emotional footage of their trip to Afghanistan and their relationship with an Italian aid worker who was kidnapped.

The film I was looking forward to most, Pink Saris, was the most disappointing. It may have had something to do with the structure of the film, which was essentially a collection of vignettes. The director, Kim Longinotto, has been directing documentaries since 1982, and that may be her style.

But I think the real problem for me was my disillionment with the founder of the Gulabi Gang, Sampat Pal Devi, whom I had read about and believed to be a defender of women’s rights in rural India. But in this movie, most of her work involved disputes with families abusing their daughters-in-law, and her solution most often was to yell at the family and then send the woman back.

It seems to me she could have spent that energy forming a women’s cooperative and could have used donations to buy a piece of land where these women could live and farm. Perhaps that is completely unrealistic.

There was nothing in the movie about the Gulabi Gang, that is, the group of women who wear the pink saris. They were shown from time to time, but their purpose was not explained.

I hope that you will check out these movies, especially Waking Lions, and attend the gala put on by Mountain2Mountain on April 28 at the Denver Museum of Art. “Streets of Afghanistan: A Cultural Exhibition,” will be showing.

Todd and I visited both Casa Bonita (his idea) and Colt and Gray (my idea) one night in February, and the only other thing that connected them was that I acted like a crazed photographer at both, to the point of annoying Todd (and probably other people). And racing around that way didn’t do much for my photographs either.

I realized later I could have sat down at our table at Casa Bonita and eaten “dinner” (my taco salad was a relatively safe choice), talked more to our dinner companions, and then taken photographs afterward. Probably, I would have gotten the same quality photographs without bouncing up and down like a Jill-in-the-Box. But I had just bought a new camera 5 days earlier, and I couldn’t wait to try it out.

It was a humbling experience. My new Canon 60D is a great camera, but the limits of its flash were fairly apparent at Casa Bonita. The pop-up flash wasn’t powerful enough for the dark interior. It worked well enough for members of the mariachi band, who stood close to our table.
But it didn’t work so well when I tried to capture the acts near the waterfall.

Those two photos had to be lightened up considerably, even after I bumped up the ISO to about 1,000.

Taking a photo from behind the waterfall gives some sense of the size of the place.

I think that the waterfall is behind the tower shown here. Our seats were on the top level, and there is at least 1 other level, possibly 2—I can’t remember. I know that we entered the restaurant, stood in this line, which reminds me of the security line at DIA,

and then walked up a ramp to get to our seats (right by the waterfall).

I wonder how much money Casa Bonita makes in an evening. There’s no reason to linger over dinner, but it’s worthwhile to hang around to watch more acts like this magician, buy cotton candy or toys, and play games in the arcade. One of our companions goes every year for her birthday. I can’t see myself going that often, but I would go back with a better flash and more time to concentrate on photography.

Colt and Gray is almost the complete opposite of Casa Bonita. The former is a small restaurant on an urban street in Denver’s Central Platte Valley neighborhood. It focuses on local, lovingly prepared food, and its bar features “mixologists” and locally made liquor such as the Leopold Brothers’ products shown here. Its dinner menu includes the category “Offal.” There is one similarity, though, between CB and C&G: it’s fun to sit at the bar and watch the bartenders in action.

So far, I’ve had the Spaniard, the Martinez with Old Tom Gin (spilled on me by an overly vigorous bartender, who promptly replaced it with a mix of tequila and mezcal and spicy vermouth), and the Fernet cocktail. Todd has had the Fancy-Free, which like the Fernet is on the current cocktails menu. But my favorite drink by far came after I requested a drink with chocolate. What I got in the absence of chocolate in the bar was a mixture of Root liqueur, Upslope Brown Ale, Bourbon bitters, and a whole egg. It was luscious, growing sweeter toward the bottom. It also caused the most annoying photo-incident of the night, because I had great difficulty getting the flash to focus. I finally managed it, but Todd was not happy about the strobe-light effect. And I was not happy when I went to edit this picture and discovered the white balance was set to tungsten (I had forgotten to change it to AWB after taking pictures at Casa Bonita). Thank goodness for RAW files.

I’ve been served one dinner at Colt and Gray (on an earlier visit) and lots of snacks. This burger was cooked properly (that is, I asked for medium and got a burger that was pink inside), but the real star of the meal was the broccoli with rosemary anchovy dressing. Broccoli is not my favorite vegetable, unless it’s grilled and has this salty dressing poured on it. Then I could eat it all day.

The gougeres crusted with blue cheese were nice enough, warm and bready, but I wasn’t as impressed by them as I expected to be.

What I wanted from Colt and Gray that night (besides something to wash the taste of Casa Bonita food out of my mouth) was a sweet, and the rich drink didn’t change that. I ordered the sticky toffee pudding with bourbon ice cream. The sticky toffee lived up to its name, but the best part of the dessert was the whiskey-flavored ice cream. Colt and Gray is a Denver restaurant to visit again and again, for dinner or for snacks and drinks. As Todd said on our first visit, “It’s a good day when you get grease stains all over your notebook.”

After two visits to the Squeaky Bean (one last fall, for brunch, and one the weekend before Valentine’s Day, for dinner), I recommend it for artfully plated, flavorful food. But the middle-class Midwesterner still lurking in me complains that if you spend more than $50 per person, you ought to be stuffed. That’s not an easy thing to do at the Squeaky Bean unless you have money to burn.

We showed up at the Squeaky Bean at 5:30 (the only reservation we could get, unless we wanted to wait until 8), and the hostess bowed to me when I complimented her argyle tights. We sat at a small table by the window.

I ordered the Smoking Frenchman, consisting of Pierre Ferrand Ambre 10-year cognac, Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur (fortified with cognac), Angostura bitters, lemon bitters, and a Talisker rinse (single-malt Scotch). It was sweet and smoky and strong. Todd ordered the Castelvetrano olives with Marcona almonds, and then we followed up with a small plate of pears and roquefort with walnuts and olive oil cake. The globule at the bottom is pear juice, which our waiter said the kitchen compressed by wrapping it in plastic (this during Plastic-Free February). The cheese was pungent, and firm slices of pears contrasted well with the cheese mousse and the pear juice.

After that, I felt the need for something hearty and asked for the No-Bake Shepherd’s Pie. Todd chose the seared Hiramasa (yellowtail amberjack). You can see the orange on top there, along with sliced fennel on top and a roasted leek on the bottom; the dish also included lentils and a tomato broth infused with proscuitto, which was poured into the bowl at the table. That was a nice touch.

Despite the variety of ingredients, Todd’s dinner was rather bland. Neither one of us could taste the ham in the tomato sauce.

The shepherd’s pie arrived, every bit as tasty as it looks here. The lamb, which included shoulder and roasted leg, ranged from lightly seared to well done, and I thought the latter was somewhat better. I was struck by the use of Chex in the little dollops of mashed potatoes (to look like eggs, I suppose) and by the pleasant saltiness of the sauce. Even so, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed at its delicacy. I know chefs want to reinvent old standbys, and I thought this reinvention was lovely, but I wanted twice as much.

One of the things Squeaky Bean emphasizes on its website is the use of locally sourced ingredients, from its own garden or Aspen Moon Farms in Longmont. I couldn’t help but wonder just how much of this meal was local: the lamb, perhaps, and the veggies if grown in a greenhouse, but not the Hiramasa, certainly, or the pears or the oranges.

A truly local, seasonal menu would not offer nearly as much variety, of course, and given Americans’ expectation of fresh fruits and vegetables year-round, a restaurant that stuck to seasonally available foods might not stay open for long.

Our desserts were plated as beautifully as everything else, and since we weren’t at the Cheesecake Factory, we didn’t expect to them to be massive. I chose the chocolate and blood orange three ways (I think someone is imitating D Bar, which frequently has “threeways” on its dessert menu), and Todd wanted the peanut butter.

Is it just me, or has blood orange been overused lately? The orange gelee on the chocolate mousse was pretty to look at, but its texture put me off, and I preferred the truffle without the candied fruit. The drink was my favorite, nut-flavored with an orange finish.

If “romantic dinner” means “cuddling” to you, then I wouldn’t recommend the Squeaky Bean, with its cafe atmosphere and tables spaced too close for truly intimate conversation. But if you want attentive service and food prepared with care and imagination, then grab a seat on the patio the next warm weekend day. Here’s the version of Pigs in a (crepe) Blanket I had last fall, with fig. Todd had a frittata.

The Denver Jewish Film Festival, which ran February 10–20, 2011, always has an intriguing selection of films. The one and only movie I saw this year was Anita, an Argentinian film by director Marcos Carnevale.

Anita‘s star, Alejandra Manzo, is an actress with Down syndrome playing a character with Down syndrome whose mother is the mainstay of her life. When her mother doesn’t return one day after going to the AMIA Jewish Community Center to handle some family matters, Anita wanders the streets of Buenos Aires, finding disregard and compassion in equal doses, and learns to manage a little bit more on her own.

This is not a cheery film, especially at first, when Anita uses her limited communication skills to find help. Some of the early scenes were hard for me to watch. Chance plays a big role in the plot, but what matters most is Anita’s character. People misunderstand her, sometimes willfully, but always come to see her more clearly.

I wanted to see Anita because my niece has Down syndrome; I thought my sister might like to see this movie. When I told her about it, she said lots of people with Down syndrome are getting parts in movies and TV shows.

Dana Romanoff has been traveling to Oaxaca since 2006, photographing the families left there in the wake of migration to the United States. She went there because she had been following the stories of migrants on the East Coast, and she wanted to find out how their families were doing.

I heard her speak at Su Teatro in Denver about her photojournalism project, “No Man’s Land: The Women of Mexico.” Previously I had taken a photography class with her at Boulder Digital Arts.

She will tell you things about Mexican farmers and U.S. food you didn’t know. For example, in the nineteenth century, Mexican peasants saw their land given to large landowners to grow crops for export to the United States. During the Depression in the 1930s, Americans blamed Mexican workers for taking their jobs and deported half a million of them. But only a decade later, we invited them back because the United States needed farm workers during World War II. And once the GI Bill was passed, former soldiers left the family farm behind to go to college and get a better, easier job. That contributed to the decline of the family farm, the growth of agribusiness, and an ongoing need for migrant workers.

As Romanoff pointed out, Mexicans and people from countries farther south have been coming here for a long time to work. But it’s only since the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994 that immigration skyrocketed. From 1990 to 1994, about 400,000 undocumented immigrants came to the United States. But since January 1994, half a million per year have crossed our southern border. Some of these immigrants are not yet teenagers, but they travel north because so many other people in their families have done so.

That is especially true in Oaxaca, one of the poorest states in Mexico (located on the Pacific Coast, near the bottom of the country). Parts of Oaxaca are “Pura Mujer”: purely women. And their children.

What caused so many Oaxacans and other Mexicans to come north? Remember Ross Perot talking about the “great sucking sound” of jobs going south if NAFTA was approved? Well, that works both ways. NAFTA made it easier for US companies to sell corn (and other products) in Mexico, and since our corn is heavily subsidized, it costs about 25 percent less than Mexican corn. People found it difficult to make a profit off farms or even feed their families, and when that combined with drought, as it did in Oaxaca, the results were devastating. (Just to clarify, the people in Oaxaca whom Dana photographed grow agave for a living, not corn, but I suppose some of them grow corn for their families.)

I asked Dana if the government of Mexico was doing anything to make rural areas more livable and prosperous, and she mentioned both government and nonprofit programs but said they weren’t enough. Oaxacans are frustrated at the lack of opportunities in their area.

But getting north is more difficult than it used to be because of the border fence, and more expensive. Immigrants have to hire someone to take them across and often find it difficult to pay that person back. In addition, since the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) relocated to the Department of Homeland Security and changed its name to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), detentions of immigrants have increased, and that continued after the 2008 election. Apparently, Barack Obama does a more thorough job of deporting immigrants than George W. Bush.

So what, you say? They’re breaking the law? True. But detaining them is costing us a lot. Each migrant costs $141/night to detain. About 33,400 are detained each night, costing us $4.7 million/night. In a year, these detention costs amount to $1.7 billion. It’s good business for private prison companies, which Romanoff said helped write the controversial immigration bill in Arizona. But what is it doing for the rest of us?

I think it would be more sensible to let immigrants stay and work and pay taxes, because immigrants are estimated to be contributing $9 billion/year in tax revenues. Some people think the taxes paid by immigrants keep Social Security afloat.

I don’t know if that claim is true, but I have heard it before. Dana said her information came from a professor at Brandeis University and from government records.

Dana’s solution? More temporary work visas. In Virginia, she met two brothers who return to the same farm every year. They get to go home to see their families when work slows down, and they can come back to the same job year after year.

Right now, Dana is writing grant proposals so that her photos and short video can be exhibited across the United States. If you want more information, you can go to her website and see her photos of the women of Oaxaca. She is also publicizing a microfinance program in Oaxaca (I couldn’t tell if she had founded the program, but you can contact her for more info).

You might also check out Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America, by Helen Thorpe, the wife of Governor John Hickenlooper (which I haven’t read), or The Latinization of U.S. Schools by Jason Irizarry, forthcoming from Paradigm in Boulder this year (I did the copyedit on the latter). Both books present the stories of Latino/a high school students, some of whom are undocumented because their parents brought them here when they were young. It’s very sad to think those kids cannot get into/afford college because of their parents’ actions and U.S. policies. Let’s hope the DREAM Act passes soon. I want as many U.S. residents as possible to have good jobs and pay lots of taxes so that I can get Social Security in 20 years!

Savoring quiet—that’s what I did recently at Walden Ponds/Sawhill Ponds, a gravel mine turned wildlife reserve in east Boulder County.

Mine was the only vehicle in the snowy parking lot, around noon on a Friday. Cottonwood Marsh was white, as was the sky. I saw a red-tailed hawk on a power line and an eagle even farther away, but I couldn’t hear any birds calling. The ponds were frozen, with only a few cracks to indicate an upcoming thaw. The only noise was traffic pacing the edges of the wildlife reserve.

I hiked back to the “woods” and, to my delight, easily found a great horned owl sleeping on a broken snag that formed an inverted V. A jogger in red sped by so quickly I didn’t have time to point out the owl. He was the only person I saw for most of my hike.

I couldn’t find any signs of a nest, though owls have nested in this area for years. No doubt it was too well hidden. A hairy woodpecker’s high-pitched call broke the silence, and a chickadee buzzed its warning.

On my way back I noticed bird tracks intersecting mine. This great blue heron must have crossed the trail while I was hiking.