Hanne Blank's Blog, page 2

Who You’re Sitting Next To At This Dinner Party: Gordon Edgar

This year, I’ve decided to run a series of short interviews with some of the marvelous people I know or have worked with (or both), because I know far too many fascinating people not to share. Each person answers the same questions. All of them give thought-provoking, interesting, wonderful answers.

These are the people you’re sitting next to at this dinner party. Enjoy.

Gordon Edgar loves cheese and worker-owned co-ops, and has been combining both of these infatuations as a cheesemonger at Rainbow Grocery Cooperative in San Francisco for since 1994. Edgar has been a judge at cheese competitions, a board member for the California Artisan Cheese Guild, and has had a blog since 2002, which can be found at www.gordonzola.net. His cheese memoir, Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge was published in 2010 by Chelsea Green. 

Gordon reads the future in the cheese rinds.

 

Please describe yourself in 25 words or less. 

A cheese-obsessed, punk rock-reared Californian who has an awesome white schnauzer that is smarter than me. I am currently working on a book about Cheddar.

What are three things about you that most people either don’t know or wouldn’t expect?

I have 2 Junior National Gold medals for a sport I haven’t participated in since 1985.

I work at a place where everyone starts at the same wage and pay is not related to job.

I still work my day job full time even though I wrote a book. (Please note: other writers are not surprised by this, but everyone else seems to be.)

Of the things you’ve done in your life so far, what are you proudest of?

I’d have to say finishing Cheesemonger and getting it published. While it’s something of a collection of my thoughts, observations and anecdotes on my years working in cheese, thinking I could turn it into a publishable book was definitely a leap of faith. I decided early on – since my track record as a writer was not large – that I would write the whole thing before trying to sell it, which is not the way that non-fiction usually works. I was working full time as a cheesemonger when I wrote it (and still am now, by the way) and there were a lot of times I could have just said, “Forget this, it’s taking all my free time. This is too much!” but I just needed to get it done — even if it cost me some friends because I cut out most of my social life to do it.

It didn’t make me rich and famous but I feel like I did the topic justice. It’s funny, it talks about food politics, and I think it demystifies cheese, but I also like to think of it as a book about service retail disguised as a book about cheese.  It’s all of those things, but there is a delicate aspect to writing honestly, using my real name, about a job where you work behind a counter helping customers all day. That I work in a co-op allows me to write about the experience of work and not get fired, so I feel like it’s my responsibility to represent what the work is like. Grocery work is becoming less unionized (thanks natural foods industry!) so cheese workers, generally speaking, are selling fancier and fancier cheese and getting paid less and less. The book seems like it’s becoming a cheese-community cult classic, which makes me super happy.  I hear from folks all over the country who work behind cheese counters.

The other thing, which comes pretty close, is to help found the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives in 2004. Our co-op volunteered to facilitate all the big meetings at the founding conference and we managed to pull it off. I facilitated the introductory meeting of a couple hundred people, most of whom had never met each other. I think it set the tone for an incredibly positive weekend where we formed the first national member organization for people who practice workplace democracy. Anyone who’s ever been to a big gathering like that knows how easily it can go off the rails.  This easily could have been the worst memory of my political life.  Instead, we started something that will hopefully live on for decades into the future.

What’s an as yet nonexistent thing about which you’ve thought “why hasn’t someone created that yet?”

Well, I am not much for this kind of question.  I’m more of an in-the-moment kind of person.  But I would really like it if someone could invent a real-time human/dog translation machine for my schnauzer.

If you could get everyone who reads this to do one thing, just once, what would you get them to do?

To try and feel empathy for their political opponents.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying don’t fight or that you have to forgive people who have done you wrong.  I just truly believe that there is no good political action or community building that happens without empathy.

* * * * *

Hey!  Do you like cheese?  How about other kinds of food?  Why not subscribe to my new project, A Girl’s Gotta Eat?  

A Girl’s Gotta Eat is a cookbook for people who like to read, and food writing for people who like to eat, in the form of a 13-month serial… check it out!  It’s almost at 25% funded, and if I make 50% by May 1, I’m going to share my Top Sekrit recipe for my thin, melt-in-your-mouth lemon sable cookies with everyone who’s helped fund it that far.

 

                                      

A Girl’s Gotta Eat

I’m excited to invite you to join me for the launch of my latest project!

A Girl’s Gotta Eat is 13 months of seasonal, delicious recipes, each accompanied by a story, essay, bit of memoir – maybe even a rant or two – that arrive right in your email inbox.

From July 2013 to August 2014, it’ll be like having your foodie writer friend show up at your house once a month to tell you stories about this thing she’s been cooking, while she shows you how to make it yourself.

Check it out — and support the project — at http://igg.me/at/girls-gotta-eat/x/2136804

And if you can’t support it yourself, pass it on!

What kind of recipes will be in A Girl’s Gotta Eat?

Oh, you know… just some of the recipes I relied on to help me beat a Type II diabetes diagnosis… win a cookie competition… run an underground pop-up restaurant selling locavore dim sum… make traditional homemade liqueurs… and earn the title “best restaurant in Baltimore” from houseguests.

Dazzling homemade preserves?  You got it.  Main dishes that satisfy and impress but don’t take all day or cost the earth?  But of course.  Desserts so good they’ll make you want to slap your mama?  Do you even have to ask?

Whether you’re a vegan, a vegetarian, or an omnivore, you’ll find things to love in my kitchen.  Vegan substitutions, and replacements for common allergens will be given wherever they seem realistic.

As a bonus, each issue will also include helpful tips and a short description of a particularly cool food or food-related item I’m really excited about at the time each issue goes to press, with info on where to get it and what to do with it once you do.

A Girl’s Gotta Eat issues will be available in PDF and/or EPUB format.

For as little as $5 you can get a taste of A Girl’s Gotta Eat, with full 13-month subscriptions starting at just $25 

Find out about all the perks, at subscription levels from $5 to $1000, with  goodies to match — at http://igg.me/at/girls-gotta-eat/x/2136804 !!

 

 

                                      

Who You’re Sitting Next To At This Dinner Party: Almah LaVon Rice

This year, I’ve decided to run a series of short interviews with some of the marvelous people I know or have worked with (or both), because I know far too many fascinating people not to share. Each person answers the same questions. All of them give thought-provoking, interesting, wonderful answers.

These are the people you’re sitting next to at this dinner party. Enjoy.

Almah LaVon Rice is a creativity consultant and a word aromancer for hire at *mahLa Creative*. Her writing has appeared in several anthologies and magazines, and has earned her the National Ethnic Media Award (aka “the ethnic Pulitzer”).

Almah monkeywrenches your hindbrain in the most wonderful ways.

 

Please describe yourself in 25 words or less. 

Hummingbird in human drag. Relentless voluptuary. Glitter geek. Regularly f(l)ailing muppet. Gift economist. Fat fairy. Queer kitten. Shepherdess of dew. Misfit toy.

What are three things about you that most people either don’t know or wouldn’t expect?

I have an alter ego named Serge Septime, who is a French philosopher, surrealist, flaneur.

Contra dance and kayaking are two things that once I get started, I can’t stop.

Queer housing ads, Kickstarter appeals, and similar announcements are my daily devotionals.They fascinate and comfort me but I’m not sure why. Maybe because it’s like reading a queer church bulletin?

Of the things you’ve done in your life so far, what are you proudest of?

Self-advocacy in extremely hostile territory. Being a change artist is a close second.

What’s an as yet nonexistent thing about which you’ve thought “why hasn’t someone created that yet?”

A dating service for muppets. We really need to find each other. Pining from afar for Pepe the King Prawn is getting old.

If you could get everyone who reads this to do one thing, just once, what would you get them to do?

Watch Babette’s Feast and bring a just-because, extravagant, and gratuitous offering to your community.

                                      

Who You’re Sitting Next To At This Dinner Party: Chanel Dubofsky

This year, I’ve decided to run a series of short interviews with some of the marvelous people I know or have worked with (or both), because I know far too many fascinating people not to share. Each person answers the same questions. All of them give thought-provoking, interesting, wonderful answers.

These are the people you’re sitting next to at this dinner party. Enjoy.

Chanel Dubofsky is a writer in Brooklyn, New York. She is interested in your personal choices.

Chanel Dubofsky wants to hear all the dirt.

 

Please describe yourself in 25 words or less. 

I write words. Sometimes they’re true, sometimes I make them up. (Like this, this, and this.)

What are three things about you that most people either don’t know or wouldn’t expect?

I’ve been told I give a really good wedding toast. (I know, it’s weird.)

I don’t like biting into directly into things like really big sandwiches or fruit.

When I write on paper, I start at the middle of the page and write down, then up. (The other day, I was doing this on the subway, and someone asked me about it when I got off the train.)

Of the things you’ve done in your life so far, what are you proudest of?

I’m proud that I started paying attention to the instincts that I ignored for way too long, for no good reason. Doing that means giving myself the permission to move and create and take risks. The Marriage Project came out of that, deciding to ask questions that women weren’t being asked, or asking themselves, or encouraged to engage with. Listening deeper has resulted in my politics getting more radical and more unapologetic. (There is something wrong, I’m not crazy. I do not have to be what/who I’m told to be.) I’m done asking for permission, or waiting for it.

What’s an as yet nonexistent thing about which you’ve thought “why hasn’t someone created that yet?”

I read an Op-Ed in the Times back in October, about a woman who hadn’t had children, and wondered if there could be a situation in which we all take care of each other when we’re old. I thought that if we took this seriously, if we paid attention to what mutual aid could be, instead of deriding it as “unrealistic” or something equally stupid, it could happen. It has happened. We can make it happen over and over.

If you could get everyone who reads this to do one thing, just once, what would you get them to do?

Stop being afraid of your imagination. (This may take practice.)

                                      

Who You’re Sitting Next To At This Dinner Party: Stacy Bias

This year, I’ve decided to run a series of short interviews with some of the marvelous people I know or have worked with (or both), because I know far too many fascinating people not to share. Each person answers the same questions. All of them give thought-provoking, interesting, wonderful answers.

These are the people you’re sitting next to at this dinner party. Enjoy.

Stacy Bias can see the future, and it is fattastic.

 

Please describe yourself in 25 words or less. 

Stacy Bias is a 38 year old fat, queer femme. Perpetual activist, serial entrepreneur, and founder of TechnoDyke.Com and FatGirl Speaks. Currently returned to higher education in London, UK studying Anthropology & Media.

What are three things about you that most people either don’t know or wouldn’t expect?

I grew up super religious and I used to picket abortion clinics (I’ve done penance for that!).

I don’t like hot liquids of any variety (soup, coffee, tea, etc.).

I’m a pretty good singer and was nearly signed to A&M Records at 19.

Of the things you’ve done in your life so far, what are you proudest of?

Picking up and moving to a different country at 37 was pretty scary and I’m proud of myself for doing that — especially the bit about returning to higher education with colleagues I could have given birth to. But I don’t think anything so far has topped standing at the back of the venue on the night of the first FatGirl Speaks. The show had unexpectedly sold out and turned away 100 at the door. The energy in the room was almost unbearably joyful — I mean my heart was nearly ripping out of my chest. The crowd was constantly on its feet in standing ovations and the performers on stage were absolutely glowing. Everyone was so full of celebration. I’ve felt nothing like it before or since.

What’s an as yet nonexistent thing about which you’ve thought “why hasn’t someone created that yet?”

An oral history project of fatness. And as it so happens, that’s what I’m working towards.

If you could get everyone who reads this to do one thing, just once, what would you get them to do?

Forgive themselves.

                                      

oh yeah, hi!

So sue me, I fell off the blogging horse.  That happens sometimes.

How’s your 100 Days?  Mine’s… intermittent, to be completely honest.  Things have been a little much around here in all kinds of directions.

The big news is that I’m going back to do a Ph.D.  I’ll be starting at Emory in the fall, in history.

The other big news is that I finished writing a book.  I’ll let you know when there are details about when you might have said book in your hot little hands, but for now, at least it’s written.

The other other big news is that I’m still writing about singing (and not) for The Rumpus, and the second installment of my series can be found right here.

There are Plans Afoot.  Things, and also Stuff.  Things and Stuff which may be of interest to you.  I do my best to be a little better about keeping you updated.

                                      

Who You’re Sitting Next To At This Dinner Party: Carla Pfeffer

This year, I’ve decided to run a series of short interviews with some of the marvelous people I know or have worked with (or both), because I know far too many fascinating people not to share. Each person answers the same questions. All of them give thought-provoking, interesting, wonderful answers.

These are the people you’re sitting next to at this dinner party. Enjoy.

Carla Pfeffer will school you, and you will love it.

Carla A. Pfeffer is an assistant professor of sociology whose work focuses on intersections among sex, gender, sexuality, queer identities, bodies, and families. She is serving as the guest editor of a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality focusing on “Trans Sexualities” and is also working on her first book (Postmodern Partnerships: Women, Transgender Men, and Twenty-First Century Queer Families), under contract with Oxford University Press. Her most recent work has been published in Gender & Society, Journal of Lesbian Studies, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Teaching Sociology.

Please describe yourself in 25 words or less. 

I’m a queer feminist sociologist professor living in the Midwest with two cats, my partner, and our brand new baby. Wish us luck (and sleep)!

What are three things about you that most people either don’t know or wouldn’t expect?

Something that people might not expect or know about me, since “college professor” was just rated the “Least Stressful Career of 2013″ (http://www.careercast.com/jobs-rated/10-least-stressful-jobs-2013), is that I generally work ten to twelve hours per day in order to conduct and publish academic research while managing a very heavy teaching load (up to nine courses per year). The fact that I’m responding to these questions at 3am on a Sunday is pretty much par for the course.

People also might not know just how much I appreciate personal paradox–the ways in which our personal politics, ideologies, and behaviors can get really messy and tangled in everyday practice. For example, one of the groups that I study is fat and size-acceptance advocates and activists. I find that, despite holding personal politics and beliefs that are pro- body and fat acceptance, it is often much more difficult to fully accept one’s own fat body without desiring or acting to change it in some way. While it might seem easy to dismiss this sort of dissonance as hypocritical, it makes sense to me. I think it simultaneously points to our need to develop more in-depth understandings of people’s subjective experiences of their own bodies and to consider the ways in which a fat-hating and shaming culture affects and shapes these subjective experiences for all people–fat, thin, and in-between.

One final tidbit that people may not know about me is that, despite being a sociologist who studies families, I lost my third-grade spelling bee by misspelling the word “marriage.” Fortunately, I’ve gotten that one down now.

Of the things you’ve done in your life so far, what are you proudest of?

When I was growing up, my dad worked overtime–both weekdays and weekends–at an automotive factory outside of Detroit and my mom worked day in and day out raising my sister and me. In their “spare time” they created a family business buying dilapidated houses, taught themselves how to renovate them, did all of the work themselves, and then rented the houses in order to save enough money to send my sister and me to college. Both of my parents made it clear that they wanted us to have access to education so we might be able to have different sorts of possibilities and opportunities in our lives than those that had been open to them. I became the first person in my family to graduate from college. The proudest moment of my life was earning my Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and having my entire family with me at graduation. President Obama delivered the commencement speech that day, but my family members were more excited to see me; they were beaming.

What’s an as yet nonexistent thing about which you’ve thought “why hasn’t someone created that yet?”

All email should be fully retractable–a technological boomerang that remains faithful to you no matter how haphazard your toss.

If you could get everyone who reads this to do one thing, just once, what would you get them to do?

Tell the people who make you feel special and loved just how special and loved they make you feel. Loving, kindness, and consideration–whether it comes in the form of an I-love-you message written in the sink in toothpaste or someone holding your hair while you puke–is part of what makes life so meaningful. It deserves to be acknowledged and paid forward. A critical aspect of my work on contemporary families focuses on emotional labor–the sorts of unpaid, often-unacknowledged work that we do each and every day to maintain and nurture our connections with one another. By bringing this work from the background to the foreground, we affirm just how integral and undervalued it really is.

                                      

100 Days: Day 30

Welcome to Day 30.  About 1/3 of the way to 1oo days.

I am, at this point, well past the honeymoon phase where it’s fun to have a new thing I’m doing.  This wasn’t much of a honeymoon phase anyway for me, because I got the flu, and I never have managed to pick up that momentum again, but I’ve been slogging through more or less.

It reminds me that part of the point of a 100 Days experiment is that it’s about sustaining a practice.  Everything we do regularly ends up being a practice.  We’re not always excited and jazzed about doing it.  We don’t even necessarily want to.  But we do it anyway because it needs to be done, or because we need to do it.  It becomes a matter of persistence and of showing up.

There are rewards, yes.  But the rewards no longer come in the form of  excitement and accomplishment that you’ve done the thing itself, whatever it is.  When what you’re doing is has become a practice, the rewards  are the things that come because you’ve continued to show up and do the work.

Over the years, in various arenas of my life, I have come across a lot of different approaches to practice.  Some people recommend a technical approach to practice, choosing one very discrete thing that you’ll work on in that day’s practice,  stopping your practicing when you’ve achieved the thing.  Others talk about practice as a self-disciplinary thing, where the point of practice is that you put the act of practice first, and you exist for a time in service to making that practice happen.  For other people it’s about forming habits.

I like to try to think of it as an experimental thing, a chance for me to find out something new or to notice something that’s different.  When I do my body practice stuff, I try to pay attention to what’s going on and see how it feels today, what feels good and bad, what’s hard and what’s easy, whether things feel out of whack, whether something feels significantly different than it has before.  It always makes me feel like practicing is at least a little productive, because there’s always something to notice.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers when it comes to how to make sustaining a body practice more rewarding.  I do know, though, that when you keep showing up and doing it, the rewards do arrive.  Not necessarily as often or as dramatically as one might ideally like, but nevertheless they do arrive.  Keep it up, y’all.

                                      

Another turn around the sun

Sometime in the next 24 hours, I turn another year older.

In some ways, of course, I’m not really going to be all that much older then than I am right now.  Dates and times are just conveniences, but necessary ones: time passes regardless of how we count it and yet it passes just the same.

I’ll be spending my birthday driving, making another of my perigrinations between snowy central Massachusetts, where today’s snow shoveling confirmed that late February is still definitely wintertime, and Atlanta’s early spring.  I’m assured that not only are there buds on the trees there, but some have even begun to flower.

I like the idea of spending my birthday in transit, moving between one thing and another.  In many ways I have spent the entire last year that way, either metaphorically or literally, which has been by turns wonderful and terrifying, awful and magical.  Things are very different now than they were a year ago.  This time next year they will — if all goes well — be very different still.

Thanks to those of you who’ve been reading along.   It’s nice to have fellow-travelers.

See you in Georgia.

                                      

100 Days: Day 20

I missed Day 15′s report.  C’est la vie.

So today’s Day 20.  We’re 1/5 of the way through 100 days of body practice newness.

How’s it going?  Around here it’s rolling along, feeling rather like I’m earlier in the proceedings than I am, because of time lost to the flu and then a lengthy period of recuperating in which nothing physical felt good and everything felt like it took far more effort than it should’ve done.

I seem to be more or less back to normal now, though.  I quite enjoyed my fitball time yesterday after I came home from the gym, though, which I attribute in part to the fact that I’m now able to do my accustomed time on the elliptical trainer again.  Ellliptical trainer time always makes my brain a little happier, which makes other things feel easier.

As for the technical singing practice, that has taken longer to get back post-flu, and does not yet feel entirely pleasant, but I’ll get there.

In related-yet-unrelated news, today marks the debut of a new project for me.  I’m very excited and proud to say that I’m writing a monthly essay series for The Rumpus about singing and my complicated relationship to it.  The first one appeared today.

I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to join forces with The Rumpus on this very personal project. It feels like a real gift to have this particular forum to speak — and sing — in.

I hope you enjoy the first installment of Deep Throat: On Being and Unbeing a Singer.