Marie Javins's Blog, page 55

Marie's Project Waste Reduction Update: Part 1

I've been trying to be more aware of my own use of non-renewable waste.

I started carrying my own supermarket bags in 2001 after a month in Berlin during my first MariesWorldTour. This was not a conscious decision at first—it's just how things were done there. But it stuck, and I adopted this habit on a permanent basis within a year.

Other things I've been doing lately:

Using reusable produce bags.Using reusable nylon Of course, my carbon footprint is a stain upon the earth given my number of airplane flights over the year, so while the above sounds good in theory, all it really does is improve my disposition.

To be fair, my disposition could use some improving, so Project Waste Reduction is a win for everyone around me.

The African American Civil War Museum

My final panel ended at 2:45 today. I hurried out of the convention center and up 8th Street, and made it just in time to whirl through the African American Civil War Museum before it closed at 4.

This museum has been there for 20 years but I'd never heard of it before spotting it near the convention center on a map. (I grew up here but left a lot longer then 20 years ago.

"The mission of the African American Civil War Museum is to correct a great wrong in history that largely ignored the enormous contributions of the 209,145 members of the United States Colored Troops. It tells the stories and perserves for posterity the historic roles these brave men of African, European, and Hispanic descent played in ending slavery and keeping America united under one flag. The Museum uses a rich collection of artifacts, documents, primary sources and technology to create a meaningful learning experience for families, students, Civil War enthusiasts and historians about the period from the American Civil War to Civil Rights and beyond."

A Look Back

I'm at Awesome Con this weekend, and I had something I wanted to check out near Dupont Circle, so I went over to Connecticut and M.

I had not been by this intersection in decades—why would I? Just a typical downtown corner with offices and stores.

But I wanted to see what it looked like, because this was where I'd go to my first office job, my first non-Roy Rogers job. Home to DC/101, a radio station where I was a high school intern in 1984.

It's been a while.
Apparently, a title firm is in this office that once housed Howard Stern. He'd left for New York right before my arrival, and instead I got to hang out with the later-notorious Greaseman.

I was an intern in the promotions department, so I spent many nights attending events with the promotions director. Sometimes I had to run them myself, like Duran Duran video night at a Georgetown nightclub (and here you thought I hated Duran Duran because I'm naturally contrary).

I don't remember much of those days aside from handing out t-shirts and mugs advertising Greaseman for President. I do remember a few star visits to the studio, the most important being Joe Strummer. And we took a sweepstakes winner in a limo to see the premiere of This is Spinal Tap. 

That was fantastic.

I tried to play it cool being in a limo for my first time, but the movie was too great to be cool about.

Fun Marie Fact

My mom found this in an old box or scrapbook, and wrote the following:

The time Marie got a scholarship to travel abroad from the Arlington Civitan club, 1983. They got her name wrong but she got to go to Finland!

Out Back

My mom gave me a battery-powered motion-activated game camera. I stuck it out in my Jersey City backyard a few nights ago and learned my yard has an active social life.

My Birthday Gift to Myself

Unusual, I know.

I spent my birthday hiring a guy to refinish my porcelain enameled cast-iron pedestal sink in my 1895 castellated-brick rowhouse in Jersey City.

The sink is from around 1930, so it did not come with the house. This bathroom was "modern" in the old real estate listing photos I've seen from the early 2000s, so the previous owners restored it to include the pedestal sink and cast-iron tub. Thank you, previous owners, because the seventies-style bathroom looked like crap.

I spent the rest of the day coming down with food poisoning, which sidelined me for most of the week. So that was fun.

Loew's Valencia Movie Palace

I love checking out of movie palaces, and today I had the opportunity to see one which is seldom open to non-churchgoers.

The Valencia is one of the five wonder theaters Loew's built around NYC in 1929-30. The one I've been to the most is, of course, in Jersey City at Journal Square. I've been to that one more times than I can count since it's home to ongoing movie screen series and the occasional band. And I went to the Manhattan one once when Bob Dylan played there. I haven't been to the newly renovated Brooklyn one yet, and god knows when I'll get a chance to see the Bronx one, but today I saw the Queens one. 
I caught the E line from end-to-end, starting at World Trade and going all the way to Jamaica, then walking a few blocks. I passed the bank I'd gone to for the closing on refinancing my Avenue B condo back in the nineties. The closing clerk had contacted me after for a date. He seemed perfectly nice but I was so startled I scrambled to get off the phone as quickly as possible.
"I've never had that much fun at a closing before," he'd said. I was just like "what the actual fuck is this ethical" and went into "flee flee" mode. That was not charitable of me, though I supposed it's no different than the time the guide at the Amazon lodge looked up my contact details in the guest book and then called me when he got back to New York. That was really icky and I fled that time too. But then this was before everyone had email. I did then, but I guess it was uncommon to hand out email addresses the way we handed out phone numbers. How things change.

Ethical or unethical to swipe someone's contact details and call them? I think the latter, but this could also be the basis of a hit rom-com, so who knows?

The Luggage of Living on Two Coasts

The TSA agent who had to inspect my bag last night must have been really confused.

I had a small trashcan in my luggage.

What actually happened is the trashcan in my JC kitchen had a handle that kept coming off, and I had the same model in Hollywood and didn't need it anymore once I moved to Burbank.

I was checking a bag yesterday, so I stuffed the Hollywood trashcan into my bag and brought it along.

But I like whatever story the TSA agent came up with better.

A Look Back at Luxor

Digging around my old photos this morning.

Ballooning over Luxor, 2007.


Original blog entry from that day:
Tuesday, March 13, 2007

"Marie? Who is Marie?"

The balloon pilot was passing out certificates of achievement. After all, it isn't every day that one stands passively in a basket while floating through the air above Luxor's West Bank. Surely the early hour alone merits some kind of trophy. Not everyone gets out of bed at 5 while on holiday.

I stepped forward onto the patch of dirt to claim my prize. The wind had been strong, blowing the hot air balloons far beyond their normal landing range. Rural men with donkeys gathered around, momentarily distracted from working their fields. Young boys poked us and said "Hello baksheesh," while the balloon staff tried vainly to shoo them away.

"Ahlan baksheesh," I'd respond. My Arabic hello gave them pause. They'd grin, then a moment later again ask for baksheesh.

"Marie?" I'd claimed my prize, but it wasn't the pilot calling me this time. It was another crew member. He was smiling, beaming at me.

"Train to balloon!" He said, congratulating me with a handshake. Apparently my transition had made an impression in the Sindbad Balloons office. Not everyone hops off the sleeper train from Cairo and onto a hot air balloon.

But what else is there to do at 5 a.m. in Luxor? Sit in the hotel lobby? I'd already been awake. Multitasking would save me the trouble of getting out of bed early tomorrow.

A man with a van had whisked me from the train station to a series of boats, where dozens of tourists waited. We'd crossed the Nile and gone to the launch site. I'd been partnered with Iola, a single woman from Northern Wales, and during the "landing position" drill, I'd gotten rather intimate with her as we were required to crouch down together in a fitted position, with her sitting on my knees.

Gouda, the pilot ("like the cheese"), released plumes of flame into the balloon. It expanded and tried to rise while the ground crew played tug of balloon war with the ropes. Then, they let go and we floated smoothly up into the sunrise.

"The Valley of the Kings is THAT way," whispered Iola. Damn. She was right. We were floating south, towards farms and not towards tombs. Though we could see the temple of Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh who ruled Egypt 3500 years ago. The real successor to the throne of her husband had been a small boy, so she had ruled as regent for 15 years. In modern terms, her temple was the site of a horrendous tourist massacre in the late nineties.

We floated for an hour above the fields and above the temple of Ramses II--Shelley's Ozymandias. You may have heard of this guy. "King of kings." The point of the poem is that he thought he was hot-shit, but in the end, Ramses is just another dead guy with some leftover columns. He's remembered more for a poem than for his military victories. I wonder how old Ramses would feel about that. A wee bit concerned, I'd wager.

Nothing beside remains: round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away.
And stretch away they did, to far away mountains of sand. But to the east was a clear demarcation, a brilliant green border. To the east, the Nile gives life to Egypt through flooding and fertile soil. To the west, the sands were so dry that 4,000 year old tombs were still hanging around.

 When we finally landed in the far fields, Gouda admitted that the winds had been unusually strong.

"Al hamdullilah," he said as the basket came to a safe halt on a field. Thank God.

Artistic Choices

Remember that painting student in Jacmel, Haiti who sold me this piece for twenty bucks when I said "Here's twenty dollars, you choose the painting for me"?

I am finally getting around to framing it and my rule is I can't pay more to frame it than I paid for the painting.

So here I am with my miter box, wood glue, some craft wood, and a band clamp on a Sunday afternoon, making a frame. I'll stain it black when it's dry.

It's not a professional job, but it's in keeping with the aesthetics of the art student's aspirations.