foreseeable forecast is damp and 99% vegan
How about Thursday for a weekly(ish) newsletter update? It’s almost the end of the week without competing with all the other Friday newsletters. Let’s get to it!
It seems I have survived a 4th RIF in about 18 months. For now, anyway. Been thinking again about
’s wonderful essay Layoff Brain, posted around this time last year.Are you trying Dry January this month? How about Veganuary? How about Dry Veganuary? I tried and failed to be perfectly sober and vegan as of 1 January 2024, but we had open wine bottles and vegetarian-but-not-vegan snacks leftover from the holidays and I wouldn’t want to waste anything. That said, I do like to hit the reset button at least once a year (it’s how I feel about resolutions in general) in order to achieve my daily aspirational goal of being vegan (I’m not perfect, perfection is hard, which is why I tell people I’m “mostly vegan” if/when they ask even though the reality is most days I’m, like, 99% vegan). I respect and admire the folks I know who are truly 100% vegan (and/or dry), but for me, for now, this is a more balanced, more achievable approach to reducing both alcohol and animal product consumption.
One thing I am pretty vigilant about, however, is not eating meat (other than the anchovies, assuming there are some, in Zachary’s caesar dressing). To that end, I’m looking forward to reading
’s No Meat Required, a book I received as a gift for Xmas, and have watched half of the new Netflix series You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment. If you’ve seen it and you want more, I wrote about a handful of documentaries I saw at the 2022 Mindful Food and Film Fest here (this new Netflix series is from the same team that made this doc back in 2018, also streaming on Netflix).I also got a Chefwave Milkmade for Xmas and I absolutely love it. We’ve been experimenting with various nuts and beans over the past couple of weeks. We make soymilk, our staple, every 2-3 days (since you can only make 10 or 20 ounces at a time), but we’ve also tried macadamia (probably my favorite flavor/creaminess-wise but soy has more protein) and hazelnut and I bought some pistachios to try this weekend. In addition to avoiding dairy (from an animal welfare POV I sometimes think dairy is actually worse than meat) and saving money in the long run (1 tablespoon of soybeans produces 20 ounces of milk…most of what you’re paying for if you buy nut milk at the store is, of course, water) making your own plant-based milk is also zero waste! Every time I broke down one of those nut milk cartons (is it landfill? is it recyclable??) a little bit of my soul died (like Alan sitting on leather couches).
One of my shorter-term resolutions for 2024 has been to catch up on all the Bay Area art shows I was too busy to see last fall. Last weekend we went to the de Young Open on Saturday and Into the Brightness at OMCA on Sunday. The latter kept reminding me of a C.S. Lewis quote I shared a few weeks ago here, about the value of something like art and its importance to our humanity: “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival” (emphasis mine). I’d still like to see Takashi Murakami at the Asian Art Museum before it closes in February and Bay Area Now at YBCA (more time for that one, which is on view until May).
I really enjoyed this recent NPR Life Kit episode about learning to play an instrument later in life. Not only do I want to get back to playing our digital piano more (definitely going to look into buying this recommended resource), the key takeaways are really applicable to a studio practice as well: carve out a consistent time to practice (guest Joel Snape’s example was when it’s his wife’s night to put the 6yo to bed) and know what you’re going to practice before you get to that time you’ve carved out. While I would add a third requirement for studio practice, which is a dedicated space of some sort, I think that second takeaway is critical and explains why so many artists flounder a bit between projects. It’s much easier to make use of 30 minutes here, 15 minutes there (especially as a working parent artist!) when you know exactly what you need to work on and can get right to it. Coming up with ideas or getting started on a new project requires much longer blocks of time, in my opinion, e.g. a weekend day free of interruptions and obligations or, better yet, some sort of residency or weekend away (a DIY residency!).
It’s a shorter list this week, but I leave you with these incredible mushrooms I spotted on my bike ride on Sunday (I didn’t crash!) then went back on Monday with the 10yo - a mushroom enthusiast - to properly document.
It’s been a tough week but somehow looking at these mushrooms from time to time has really cheered me up. I hope they bring a smile to your face, too.