Monthly Archive for November, 2004

Sini

Published on November 19, 2004 in italy. 0 Comments

In Italy, there was an old man in the village named Sini. He was Italian, but had lived in Egypt and Australia. He had a wizened, tanned face and deep brown eyes that crinkled at the corners; wiry grey hair, and large hands. He always smiled, and always wore a tweed jacket. Everytime he saw me, he would call out, “Caterina! Caterina! Abbiamo un caffè! Venite con me!“ My Italian name is Caterina; for the fourteen months that I lived there, I was called this. But I cannot roll the Italian “r,” so I mispronounced my own name. Sini would walk across the piazza to meet me and greet me with a kiss on each cheek, and link my arm through his and lead me to the nearest café. We’d stand at the bar, and he would order due espresso doppia, sometimes with a side of grappa. We’d chat and he would smoke cigarettes, gesturing with his hands the whole time he was talking and scattering cigarette ashes everywhere. The enoteca (wine bar) in town was only frequented by men; women could come, but had to be accompanied by men. Sini took me to the enoteca one day, introducing me to the rich pleasure of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and Brunello di Montalcino wines seeping through my tongue and sluicing down my throat. I learned about good Tuscan wine and cheese from Sini at this enoteca.

I could never say no to Sini. Even if I was on my way to the store or the studio, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. No matter how much I protested – “but Sini, I want to get back to the studio and work on my art!” – he wouldn’t hear it. “But Sini, it’s too late in the afternoon. If I have an espresso now, I’ll be up all night!” And I was up all night. But I was productive! I made a lot of art during this time.

Towards the end of my Italian stay, I was running out of grant money and knew I was going to have to return to the States soon. I didn’t know where I was going to end up for sure, but something kept pulling me towards California. The best photography markets were in New York, Florida, and California. And something kept saying, “California.” One day, while standing in a café with Sini, I told him this. I told him that I thought I should go to California. He said, “I think you should go to California too.” “Why?” I asked.

“There’s love waiting for you in California,” he said.

He was always nagging me about being single and not having a boyfriend. “It’s not right,” he insisted. “You need a boyfriend.”

“Why do I need a boyfriend?” I questioned. I didn’t want to be with anyone. I was still recovering from a loss, and I wasn’t in Italy to stay forever. I didn’t want to get entangled with an Italian man. I needed to be alone. I was happy being alone.

“Boyfriends are important. Love is important. Without love, there is no life!” Sini insisted, waving his hands in the air and causing the wispy smoke from his cigarette to leave contrails.

He seemed convinced that there was someone in California waiting for me, though I barely only knew one or two people there.

“Trust me,” he said. “You’ll find love in California.” He smiled and patted my cheek, and then ordered a shot of grappa for each of us.

I left Italy and moved to California. I returned to Italy three years later to visit. Sini recognized me immediately when I walked past the enoteca and came ambling out with his familiar “Caterina!! Caterina bellissima!” He was slower than I’d remembered, and looked very sleepy. His English faltered, and my Italian was even worse after not having been used for three years. He was quieter than usual this day.

We went in the enoteca and he ordered me a very dark, blackish-red Brunello. We toasted, and I took a sip. It had been a few years since I had wine like this. He looked at me and smiled. He didn’t ask me about love, or whether I had found it in California. At that time, I hadn’t.

But I did find it eventually. I guess he was right, after all.

Olives

Published on November 14, 2004 in food. 0 Comments

Yesterday I purchased fresh green olives at the market. Today I prepared the olives for curing. First, I soaked them in boiling water; this removes the oil from the skin so that the brine, vinegar, and other seasonings will be allowed to permeate the olive flesh.

This changes their color a bit; they went from bright green to brownish-khaki-olive green at this point.

Next, I dissolved 1/2 cup of sea salt with 1 gallon of water; this will be the brine that the olives will soak in for the next three weeks or so. One olive was too soft and bruised to go in the brine, so I sacrificed it to my roommate so he could inspect it. He’s never seen fresh olives before. He sniffed it, and put his tongue on it, and winced. Raw, fresh olives are bitter. I started thinking about how food becomes palatable, and the process in discovering how to make it so. Olives have been around since the beginning of civilization. It is believed that they originated on the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus and Crete, and in Syria, beginning six thousand years ago or so. Somewhere along the line, someone figured out that if you cure them in brine, they become edible – someone looked at this fruit that no one can eat in its natural state and devised a way to make it enjoyable, and how to extract oil from it. It reminds me of fugu (blowfish) in Japan – someone figured out that if you only eat certain parts of the fish, you don’t die. Interesting when you think about it.

Egyptian mummies were preserved in olive oil; olives were left in the tombs of the Pharaohs to provide food for them in the afterlife. The Old and New Testament, the Koran, other mythological references, and the Torah all have references to the powerful and healing properties of the olive. After the Great Flood, a dove brought an olive branch to Noah to let him know that the world was at peace and that it was safe to come out again. Jerusalem was found at the foot of the Mount of Olives. Warriors anointed their bodies with olive oil.

(Quoted from another website:)
The ancient Greeks believed that the olive tree was a gift of the gods. It was said that Zeus, the king of the gods, decided that he would give the patronage of Athens (the jewel of the ancient Greek world) to whomever among the gods would make the most useful invention. Poseidon (god of the seas) created the horse – the ultimate (at that time) weapon in war – and Athena (the goddess of wisdom) produced the olive tree – the fuel of lamps, salve of wounds and provider of nourishment. Zeus chose the more peaceful gift, and Athena became the patron of Athens. The olive tree was so revered among the Greeks that in the time of Solon, “the Lawgiver”, it became a capital offence to kill one or to cut it down.

The olive was introduced to Italy by the Greeks, and the Romans spread it throughout Europe. The village I lived in in Italy was surrounded by groves of olive trees, some that had been planted 2,000 years ago by the Romans or were descended from propagation/cuttings of Roman trees. I visited the ruins of the ancient villa of the Emperor Hadrian, and olive trees dotted the landscape. In November, the olives are ripe; I joined the villagers on the olive pick. The olives were carted back to the farmhouse by the bushelfull, either in trucks or on the backs of mules, and put into an old-fashioned wooden press so that the oil could be extracted. This method has changed very little since antiquity.

The Spanish brought the olive to the New World, where it seemed to grow best in South/Central America and in California.

I scored my olives with a knife, and then added them to sterilized jars and filled them with the salt brine. Over the next three weeks, I’ll change the brine once a week. On the third week, I’ll add seasonings and spices.

Rear window captioning and The Incredibles

Published on November 8, 2004 in deaf, movies and rear window captioning. 0 Comments

Last Sunday, my partner asked me not to make any plans for the following night as he had a surprise for me. He was giggling and wiggling like an excited puppy. He told several people about it (in front of me, while covering his mouth so I couldn’t read his lips) and from their reactions, it looked to be a good surprise.

We hopped on his motorcycle and he took me to the Metreon. OK, so it’s a movie … hmmm, but we’ve seen many captioned and subtitled movies before, so what’s going to be special about this one? *scratches head* Hmm. I still hadn’t figured out what it was, and in the meantime, he was still grinning ear to ear.

He bought tickets for a show, but I didn’t know which one, yet. He went to the lobby office and picked up something and tucked it inside his jacket. He took my hand and led me into the theater … and I finally saw that we were going to see The Incredibles. Hmmm, OK this is cool, I want to see the Incredibles, but what’s the big surprise? Then I looked up towards the back of the theater – there was a LED screen projecting text backwards. Hey, this theater has rear window captioning! The thing he tucked in his jacket was a screener.

Why this is cool: Usually when I see a film, it’s a foreign film with subtitles, or it’s an open captioned film. In San Francisco, the open-captioned movies are usually shown in Fremont, since there’s a large deaf population there. Fremont is a bit of a drive, though, and not all films are open captioned, or they don’t come to all the locations.

Also, when a film is open captioned, they have to wait until they can buy the reel from someone (usually a few weeks or months after the movie premieres) and then laser-cut the subtitles on it, and then travel the reel around the country. Open captioned films are usually only seen in certain theaters at certain dates, usually only 2 days per city.

Rear window captioning can stay in the theater for however long the movie is playing, so I can see that film anytime I want as long as it’s in the theater. And I can see that film on the night it opens.

Also, I think rear-window might be cheaper than open captioning, so maybe that will help it spread further and faster. In plus, since the text isn’t embedded on the film, people who don’t want to see captions don’t have to see them.

The only negative I could see was that open captions are much easier to read than rear window captions, but it was a very minor issue for me.

So, The Incredibles was very good. I was genuinely impressed with the CG FX — the characters’ lips were moving so well phonetically, that I could lip read them sometimes. To me, that’s usually a significator of “this is good” rather than “this is ass.” I have a friend who works at Sony Imageworks who specifically works with animated characters’ speech to make sure their lips move correctly as the words are formed. At one time, he was talking about bringing me in to be a “lip reading tester.”

I hope the Metreon has more rear window shows. At print, only The Incredibles is captioned.