Huntington Beach Kites

These pictures are from a long time ago, when I stumbled upon a kite festival at Huntington Beach with Tom and our friends G and Jim.  The four of us used to go on Orange County adventures- that's how I first got interested in poking around this weird county in the first place.  It is sad that the inspiration to explore and go on adventures has outlived either of the relationships (meaning me&Tom and G&Jim- Katie/G is still going strong), but what a great legacy and memories for all of us, even if they are tinged with sadness now.  If I remember correctly, we found the kite festival on our way to something else.  We were driving down the PCH and saw hundreds of kites in the sky by the pier, and had to stop and look.  I love unexpected adventures.  They require a willingness to abandon the original plan and pull over quick when something catches your eye.

When we walked onto the beach, I was blown away.  I had never seen kites like this before!  Some of them were gigantic and so detailed.  The one above is a giant puffer fish.  I like how making a puffer fish kite requires a reinterpretation of the form of a puffer fish- the finished product looks abstract and pretty goofy but very impressive up in the sky.

This octopus kite was another of my favorites.  Watching the long legs move in the wind was mesmerizing.  I love the creativity of the kites.  Kites in general are such a good idea.  I love that they use wind to bring an otherwise unimpressive object to life.  I feel like kites are evidence of the inherent playfulness and creativity of humans.

The kite festival was also interesting to me because I have an ongoing fascination for hobbies.  I find it really interesting that there are activities that people become very passionate about and involved in that have no "practical" value.  I like that people become experts in an activity that is outside the realm of work or home.  Buying, maintaining, and learning to fly some of these huge kites requires commitment.  It requires time and money and simply a high degree of sticking-with-it.  There are entire complicated realms of knowledge and skill specific to giant kite flying (or bass fishing or bird watching or driving remote-controlled trucks up rocks in the desert).  To outsiders, it might seem simple, but if you talk to someone who is really into one of these activities you will soon come to realize that it can take a long time to become really proficient.   I think it would be fascinating to do a project where I interview really committed hobbyists of all different types about their hobbies.

One of the most amazing things about the kite festival was the collective nature of it, and how striking it was to see all of those kites in the sky at once.  This feels like such a basic point to make, but there is something amazing about the synergy that happens when a bunch of people show up to do something together.  One giant kite is cool, but dozens is breathtaking, and everyone flying a kite and everyone watching knows it and revels in the simple fact of being together with other people and participating in something really beautiful.

logo

I saw this logo on a little work-truck thing (I have no idea what it's function is) parked outside the Orange County Museum of Art.  I love the logo, and the fact that it is cut out of the metal instead of being stamped or otherwise stuck on to the outside of the truck.

The social life of playgrounds

I have a thing for playgrounds.  I think they are awesome.  The playground above is at an abandoned elementary school in Irvine, the old Vista Verde School (below).  I also love abandoned things, so I have a special soft spot for this playground.  A couple weeks ago my friend Giulietta had the amazing idea to dress up like a leprechaun and hide in various places around the abandoned building so our kids could find her, at which point she would shower them with chocolate gold coins.  That is a whole other story though!

I have been thinking about how interesting playgrounds are.  Of course I go to a lot of playgrounds because I have little kids and they insist on it.  I really enjoy the normal day to day life of the playgrounds we go to- watching the kids play, getting excited when they do something new they couldn't do before.  Now that they are getting a little older playgrounds give them this opportunity to practice the social rituals of meeting, introducing yourself (it is so funny to watch little kids approach each other- when they were younger a lot of times they would just walk up and kind of stare at each other until a grownup facilitated and introduction or they wordlessly ran off to play, lately Stella and Charlotte have sounded kind of like little adults- "I'm Charlotte.  You can't call me Charlie.  This is Stella.  You have a pony!"

Now that they are older I also get to join the ranks of adults who stand around the edges of the playground or sit on benches, making nice conversation or just getting to be quiet for a little bit until your kid calls you over for help with the monkey bars.  This is such an improvement over the days when I frantically trailed my kids around the big toy, holding my arms up to make sure they didn't fall out the opening by the sliding pole or face-plant off the ladder.

So I really enjoy the playground, especially the dual social aspect of kids interacting with other kids and me interacting with other grownups.  That is kind of the everyday way we tend to think of playgrounds.  But I think they also serve these other interesting social functions- lots of people use them, not just people who have little kids.  During the day, I often see older kids at the playground- especially middle school aged kids, not old enough to drive yet.  Kids this age need to go out and wander around, by themselves or with friends.  They have so few places to go in a lot of suburban landscapes, but I think being able to wander around, free of adults, is actually pretty important for kids.  Playgrounds give them a place to go and hang out, a place that feels pretty safe but also they are on their own.  In a neighborhood without a park or another public place to go, playgrounds also become places for grownups without kids to be outside in public.  I met this cool guy at the Vista Verde playground who was playing guitar- he had a guitar with an amplifier built in and ended up talking to me about old blues music.  he had a little glass thing he used to press on the frets.  I know nothing about guitars, but I learned something and it was great to hear music at the playground.

I think playgrounds are particularly interesting social places at night.  I still sometimes visit a playground at night if I need a place to walk to, to sit.  When I was in middle and high school, I would regularly go back to my elementary school playground at night.  I used to hide  a pack of cigarettes there, and I would swing on the swings and smoke a cigarette.  I visited it because it felt like home, and it made me feel safe, and it gave me a place to go to.  I wonder if other people do this?  I have to assume they do.  I also went to the playground with my friends.  Sometimes we would get into a little trouble (cigarettes, a beer) but it was basically harmless.  We loved to play games.  It would be a bunch of 17 year olds, playing tag like third graders.  Or I would just go with a few friends and sit and talk.  It felt like we owned the night, it felt a little dangerous to be out after other people were in, and to be in a space that wasn't really meant for us, and mostly it just felt really really good to be outside on a warm night with stars and breezes and friends.

Saturday adventures

Yesterday we had a day full of adventures.  One of my favorite things to do is set out with some kind of loose plan and then see what we find.  When I visit a place, I love to spend time wandering around.  With the kids I usually need to have more of a plan, but it still feels good to stay open and visit new places and see what we find.

We started at the Jerome Community Garden, an awesome garden in Santa Ana that is run by the Grain Project, which my friend Lara is one of the founders of.  It was my first time at the garden and I loved it- we helped to plant beans and water all kinds of vegetables.  There were all ages of people helping and just hanging out, enjoying the morning in the garden, and we had so much fun.

Next to the garden they were setting up for a bi-annual fair in the park.  We played on the playground, then wandered around to watch them set up rides and games.  The carnie who runs the ferris wheel told us they have used him and his ferris wheel in a lot of Hollywood movies.  The food stands all smelled delicious, there were tortas and my favorite, bacon-wrapped hot dogs.  We got a huge horchata to share.

Then we met Lara and her awesome family at the UCI arboretum.  I have never been there before, and it is a really nice little arboretum.  There were all kinds of succulents, and a rubber tree that made a perfect place for Stella and Charlotte to hide.

It was a silly and lovely day, and we were all exhausted at the end of it.

Kid artwork

It seems so corny to post my kids' artwork, because I'm sure all parents think their kids are artistic geniuses.  I am, of course, totally enthralled by the endless art my kids produce.  I thought this project was especially funny and interesting because my daughters (they are three year old identical twins) took such different approaches to making their "sculptures."  Even after we brought these home Charlotte was trying to squish her popsicle sticks together into one bunch.  She wanted them to be just so, and had developed a careful technique to make them stay this way.

Things I have let go of

Lately I have been thinking a lot about letting go.  I have been thinking about it both in relation to my research and my life (what I am interested in with my research is usually related in some way to what is going on in my life, whether I am aware of it at the time or not).  Two things have really got me thinking about it: one, my friend Julka helped me clean out and organize my closet and think about my wardrobe, and two, I had a conversation with my friend Marisa about observations we are both making in fieldwork about letting go.  I had been thinking about how this particular theme is the one thing that really ties together two of my projects.  An old project of mine was about how and why people decide to use a new cooking stove in rural Mexico.  Now I am doing a project on (partly) how technologies are used as part of childbirth.  One thing I have noticed in both settings is that even when a new object comes in that is supposed to represent a complete paradigm shift in the way things are done, it often does not have this effect.  In Mexico, people would get a new stove and start to use it for some things but keep all of their other stoves- they would have 2 or 3 or 4 stoves, one of those being an open fire.  In the hospital, I am looking at charting practices.  The hospital recently got a high-tech new electronic medical record program for charting.  So now they have this new program, but they still chart in two old programs plus keep a paper chart.  The process of bringing something new in often seems to involve folding the new into the old, rather than tossing all of the old objects and ways of doing things and forming a totally new way of doing something, whether it be cooking or charting in a hospital.  Marisa is doing fieldwork in a nigh-tech software company, and she has seen the same thing- we talked about how letting go is a process, and a hard process that requires conscious effort.

Cleaning my closet has been an amazing process that gives me some personal insight into this process of letting go.  While we were looking through my clothes, Julka said that she could actually see the evolution of my style in my closet, what it had been, what it was now, and how it came to be what it is.  I thought about how clothes come to be part of my life.  Some clothes just kind of find their way in without a lot of fuss, and they become like a second skin.  I don't even know they have become part of me until someone else points it out.  I have a belt that I have worn routinely since I bought it at a thrift store 12 years ago.  It is kind of an unassuming belt, but I like it a lot for some reason.  It just resonates with me.  Other clothes have an essence of giddiness or bravery- these are things that crossed a boundary.  By seeing myself as someone who could wear them, I pushed past some previous version of myself and into new territory.  These are clothes that saw me through or maybe even pushed me into some slight (or major) change in identity, helping me feel and present myself in a way that was different than what I had been doing before.  A recent example are these slouchy pleated trousers I got that feel kind of effortless and simple and a little masculine.  They make me feel at-ease but a little androgynous and tough- they're just a bit more grown-up than I was before.  I also started to think about how I put my clothes together into outfits, and how some outfits fit me perfectly at one time and then seem crazy or totally off later, but some of the parts of the outfit are things that I keep for a long time and use to put outfits together in all these different ways over time.

When it is time to let go of something, even something that no longer fits, works, or feels right at all, there is all of this other stuff to consider.  I will keep writing about it as I think about it more.  For now, I want to talk about a couple of things that I have let go of.  Someone suggested to me once that I take pictures of things I need to let go of to help me do it...

I loved these Kangaroo shoes when I was a teenager.  Most notably, I wore them on trip to Europe I took with my friend Bryan when I was 18.  I took almost nothing (literally, I packed all my stuff in the school backpack I had used to carry books in high school- Bryan's luggage was similarly spare) and this was my only pair of shoes.  I had heard it was easy to get mugged in Europe so I kept my money in the pockets on the sides of the shoes.  I thought it was a brilliant idea, although I'm sure the various people who had to take my money were less than thrilled to get stinky wadded cash out of the shoe of some dirty American kid.

I found these rather ugly saddle shoes with a stacked wooden heel captivating from the time I found them at the thrift store at age 16 through my early 20s.  They were kind of  a cornerstone of my look.  My favorite outfit for a time consisted of these shoes with some thrifted wide leg jeans and a navy blue tie-neck secretary blouse with white polka dots.  I still cannot bear to part with the blouse, although I'm working on it.  A guy I thought was really cute one time called my shoes "so tech" (this was up-and-coming lingo he had brought back to Ohio from a stint living in a bigger and cooler city) which helped to cement their position right in the center of my heart.  Goodbye, old friends.