Skate or Die No Longer a Choice

Nothing gets you ready for fall like deli slices of people's bodies! Yesterday I went with my friend Trista to see the Body Worlds 3 Exhibit at the California Science Center in Exposition Park. Wow. I was excited to see it because I had heard so much about it. But when I got there, it felt very strange. Not strange like "bodies!" but strange like "these were people." I was remarking to Trista as we were waiting in line that I bet the people who donated their bodies to science had no idea that they would be displayed in positions like "flamenco dancer" or "skateboarder."

I wanted immediately to amend my donor status, as I have the little pink dot on my license. Do you think you can put some restrictions on it? Like, "no plastination positions that involve crouching, bending over, or touching other plastinated bodies. Also, in no way is my body to be displayed in association with defects or diseases (especially relations to being "fat, overweight, large in size, etc.)." I think it's a new priority for me. I was disturbed by the posing, and by the effects used to make them seem more human; for instance, their faces had added skin parts in areas like eyebrows, noses, lips and they had glass eye balls.

It definitely brought them to life, and made me wonder if the learning that was happening around me was worth the questionable dignity of the exhibit. Men's naughty bits were hanging out all over, and ladies breasts, but the vulva was shrouded in secrecy. There were reproductive organ displays, but there was no equivalent to the plastinated penises. No outside lady parts, just uteruses (uteri?), fallopian tubes, and ovaries. Cross sections of obese people and cancerous lungs made for a cautionary tale. So afterwards we immediately had to wash off the ick factor (and the serious B.O. going on amongst the patrons) with a little shopping and eating on Santa Monica's 3rd St. Promenade.

My bounty from the shopping trip was a few bird things:

It was a good gals night out, and I did some learnin' which makes things worthwhile. I have to say, as someone who was kind of weirded out by the exhibit, I can only imagine the dinner discussions that followed amongst the families that were there. There were infants, toddlers, little kids, and tweens there. I probably wouldn't have brought my kid to horror central. My drams last night were not about bodies, though. I dreamt that Jason Statham and I were in a literature class together and he asked me out on a date even though he knew I was married. What is THAT about?

Grandma's Recipes

My grandmother was a very interesting and resourceful person.
She always managed to make things happen and get things done. Her mother died when she was young and at 15 she left home. She talked about living in boarding houses and going down to the ice box late at night to steal some milk, then replacing what she'd taken with a little water so no one would notice. It must have been a traumatic thing for her, because her refrigerator always had at least one gallon of Vitamin D real deal milk. And she'd freak out if we ran out- you had to go get some ASAP. She was diabetic, but she loved sweets (if you tried to buy her sugar-free sweets, she'd pretty much laugh in your face). She was always joking and making fun of people. She's where my whole family gets its sense of humor.

After the revolution in Cuba (in the 60s), she had five children to feed and managed to do it using the government-approved ration cards and the black market. She sewed up shoes out of rubber and canvas and traded them for meat to cook for dinner. My mother and uncle used to deliver these shoes by hiding them at the bottom of a bag of oranges. She had a high standard for nurturance. So much so that when a pair of swallows made their nest in the overhang of her roof (now my mom's roof- this picture is from today!), she got mad that sometimes the mama bird would let her baby die if it fell out of the nest. One year she refused to even let her make her nest because she was a "bad mother." I guess seeing the hungry chicks reminded her of something. You can see three hungry babies in that nest today, mouths open. They just hung open like that forever. I took something like 4 pictures! Once I realized mama bird wasn't returning because she was waiting for the giant camera wielding monster to go away, I stopped snapping photos.

I'm going through her old recipe books as part of a project I'm working on with a friend to publish our grandmothers' recipes. Her grandmother is Polish and also has some interesting food-related stories to tell. I picked up the books at my mom's house. My mom said that my grandmother would often sit at the kitchen table writing out recipes carefully in a book so that we would have them when she passed away. It was totally morbid at the time, which she acknowledge, but such a treasure to have now, even if nobody sees them but me. This picture to the left is just so...her. She didn't have a stapler with her or a paper clip, but she had a sewing pin. Viola!

This is a project I'd really like to make happen. I am going to be going through these recipes, doing translations, making the dishes, and photographing them in my spare time. Maybe by the end of January I'll have enough to start doing some research (January will be mydown time at work) on the historical side of things. If you have great original recipes from your grandmother and an interesting story to go with them, preferably with a connection to a historical event or period, we'd love to see it! Leave a comment with your e-mail (Don't worry, I won't publish it for the world to see).