Go map geeks! These maps & cartograms are totally fascinating. Also this purple states map.

Looking at these various visual aids, I see that I was wrong about being in red territory during our Southern trip. I think we actually spent much of our time in bluish-purple areas. I guess that would explain all the Kerry signs, huh? We did cross through various red & reddish-purple areas, so overall I think the trip was a pretty good mix. Could we feel the difference? Maybe. This might be coincidence, but I found Birmingham quite depressing, for no particular reason I could name at the time. If you look at the map, it's a much redder purple than you might expect for a city of its size, especially compared to the bluish-purple Memphis we had just left a couple days before.

But you know, even these relatively nuanced maps are still huge generalizations. The highlight of Birmingham was our visit to Joe Minter's sculpture garden, African Village in America. We had spent a good hour or so wandering through his amazing installations & were about to leave when he happened to come home. He very generously showed us around & talked at length about his work. I was struck by the realization that people in Birmingham who see Joe on the street with his heavily-decorated staff must think he's a total nutcase, & yet out of all the people we met & spoke with on the trip, I probably identified with him the most. Which makes sense because I'm sure a lot of people in clean-cut Birmingham think Berkeley is full of raving wackos, & I feel right at home here.

Here is Joe with his staff. He also has a big piece he wears around his neck, which I think contributes a lot to the nutjob perception, but he'd taken it off by the time I took this picture.

Sorry Everybody is unexpectedly compelling; so compelling that we sat together clicking slowly through 29 pages of it on our old-school dial-up connection last night. Gonna have to go someplace wireless to look at the remaining 100-plus pages. I think because it's so validating, comforting & earnest, & also so handmade. Much better than, say, slogging through postings on a message board. I wanna post something! As soon as I take care of some bits of Chinese restaurant business today. People to see, phone calls to make....

I probably don't need to point out that the back of the T-shirts could almost pass for a tour of remote Chinese restaurants. You knew that was coming, didn't you? Here, do you need me to draw the Venn diagram? What does this mean? That queer-friendly folks demand lots of good Chinese restaurants? That Chinese Americans are open-minded & queer-friendly? If people don't have access to lots of good Chinese food, they become cranky, bigoted & spiteful? Too many crab rangoons make a person vote for Bush? Hmm....

Oh, I also just added lunchboxes & tote bags to the store. I couldn't help it... the lunchbox, especially, was so shiny & inviting.

Now for something a little different.... I was so glum all day yesterday that the goddess took pity on me & sent me an obsessive idea to cheer me up. In the spirit of Queer Nation, I spent today whipping up some smart (if I do say so myself) graphics to slap on a T-shirt that commemorates this, er, interesting historical moment we're in. If you're as outraged by the same-sex marriage bans as I am, maybe this T-shirt will cheer you up some.

Here's the front of it:


And the band-tour-inspired back:


Go on, lick your wounds the American way, with a little retail therapy. I'll donate half of the profits to organizations fighting on behalf of queer folks.

Some post-election coping methods... just as when the war began, I find the creative intelligence of art & music to be potent antidote for stupidity & violence: thousand-year-old buddhas & 20-year-old prints at the Asian Art Museum; a sweetly intimate sound performance by Loren Chasse at Berkeley Art Museum; Carla Bozulich's spine-chilling cover of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" closing out a set of mostly brand-new material at Cafe Du Nord's Swedish American Hall.

At home: Robert Johnson, Cat Power, & a fluffy new bathrobe... oops, one of these things is not like the others. Okay then, some things to keep the bathrobe company: potato-leek-celery root soup, Lagerfeld roses from the garden, perfect pears. Still on the jello thing too.

If you're looking for a pep talk, this one is better than Michael Moore's or Margaret Cho's.

Or you can just stay in your pj's & eat jello. That's helpful too.

More geeky progress: I do believe I got the site feed goin on. I barely understand it, but I tried it out using Bloglines & it appears to work. So aggregate away, if that's what you're into.

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On a more cheerful note, & providing instructive contrast, here's
what humorous Chinese-American self-representation looks like in New
Orleans. I can't remember if these are campaign treats or Mardi Gras
favors, but in any case, they're magnets of Sheriff Harry Lee, who I
mentioned before. (He was the one who treated us to fresh-caught
fish.) I could probably sell these on ebay, but I'd rather stick em
to the side of my flat files.

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While I'm on the subject of misery... sorry this photo is a little
fuzzy, but I think you can still see clearly enough that the worst
racist stereotypes are readily available in the form of Mardi Gras
beads, made in China -- how's that for cruel irony? The good news is
that I only saw these particular beads in one shop out of many, many,
many similar tourist traps in the French Quarter.

More bad news, though: "retro" black caricatures, big red lips & all,
were distressingly widespread, not just in New Orleans, but also in
touristy shops along Beale Street in Memphis. So white tourists from
the North can come to the South, experience racist nostalgia by
touring antebellum mansions, maybe visit a few Civil War sites, &
then for souvenirs they can bring home these horrible icons of the
Black people they probably never even talked to on their trip. Is
that the idea? Or are these trinkets meant for white tourists from
other parts of the South? What are all the Black tourists supposed to
bring home as souvenirs of the South? I didn't see any cute little
dolls portraying ignorant white racists.... oo, getting a little
mean. Blame it on post-election ire.

Misery loves company.

snack stash

Chocolate lovers love bargains! Wandering the dazzling, decadent aisles of Whole Foods yesterday, I discovered that the baking aisle contains a hunky 9.7 oz. slab of Scharffen Berger Semisweet for $7.99. Whereas, in the candy bar aisle on the other side of the store, 1 oz. bars of Scharffen Berger are almost $2, and 3 oz. bars go for $3-something. Do the math.

It's kind of overwhelming being back here in the Land of Organic Plenty after 24 days in the South. The Whole Foods in New Orleans was mini & cute; its scale reminded me (ironically) of Manhattan stores, with narrow aisles, vertical space carefully exploited, & many items only available in the smallest sizes. In Birmingham, we wrote up a full grocery list for our trip to Golden Temple, only to find that it was about the size of a corner store, with a produce section to match: maybe a dozen kinds of organic veggies, only a few specimens of each, pre-bagged & stored inside glass-doored refrigerators, along with a few baskets of apples, pears & bananas. To their credit, most of it looked in pretty good shape, & some of it was not too expensive. We bought a head of lettuce, some bananas & apples, & sheepishly asked for directions to the nearest supermarket. Gotta hand it to those folks for keeping the faith. In Tupelo, while checking out we asked the motel clerk for a brunch recommendation. She said, Shoney's across the street. (Shoney's is ubiquitous in the South, as is Waffle House, Applebee's, McDonald's, Burger King, &c. &c.) I clarified my request: is there anything local? She shook her head & said, all the mom & pop places are gone. We got in the car & fled, nibbling rye crackers & dried apricots from our snack stash.

that hand thing

Why I Love Artists: at Swimming Gal's birthday party, I was introduced to someone named Laetitia, who looked vaguely familiar. It took me a while to figure it out, but eventually it came to me: "Oh, you're the one who does that hand thing, aren't you?", I asked, as I wiggled a hand in the air. She smiled, "Yes, except it's the other hand", putting her left hand up & wiggling it the way I was wiggling my right (wrong) hand. Oh!

cupcake

Foodporn fans, I do believe these are the best cupcake shots I've ever seen.

Pearl River Delta

These beautiful red flowers were everywhere in the South, but I never found out what they were until now. Lycoris radiata, hurricane lilies. Turns out they're native to China & Japan. Which reminds me that I was going to comment on the striking similarities between the Mississippi Delta & the Pearl River Delta, where a lot of the older Mississippi Chinese families originally came from. The weather is basically the same. Both places are in the southeast part of their respective countries & continents. I think there are some cultural similarities too, but that part is more of a gut feeling, not so easy to pin down or explain. Basically it seems to make sense that someone from a Guangdong farming village could feel comfortable in Mississippi. In Greenville we heard about someone's grandmother who used to farm an enormous garden full of Chinese vegetables & hand them out to all the Chinese families in the area. I bet those veggies grew there just fine.

Red states

It's quite validating to see that I'm not the only person who's been wondering how the whole Red States / Blue States designation became so (seemingly) entrenched. People have been asking me if Mississippi & Alabama are red or blue states. The answer is red, meaning Republican. I hadn't actually been sure until I checked, because I kept thinking about all the African American voters, who usually tend to be Democrats. However, my gut feeling was that we were in very red territory, especially one night at dinner when the old Chinese dude I was talking to said, somewhat accusatorily, "You're from Berkeley? You're probably a Democrat!"

Also one pollen-filled evening in Birmingham, Donna bought some Sudafed, which is like, a controlled substance down there because people are using it as an ingredient in their speed recipes or something. So Donna had to get it from the pharmacist, who joked, "I can't sell it to you if you're a registered Democrat." Verrry funny.

Do I need to remind y'all to get out & vote? Blue! Blue! Blue! So there!

You know, it's nice to be home. I turned on the radio & instead of "Redneck Woman" there was all this beautifully melodramatic fado, a slew of smokin salsa, & good bluegrass, & also some really old (I mean 1980!) Cindy Kallet, which I hadn't heard in ages & was the perfect Music To Roast Vegetables By.

Trey Yuen & the Sheriff

Fear not, the blogging won't stop just cause I'm not on the road anymore. Although it might pause for a few days while I recover from this massive exhaustion. I don't even know why I'm awake right now, except to say it's a shame that Frank Wong's fierce gumbo isn't on the official menu at his restaurant, Trey Yuen. Frank & his 4 brothers all run this restaurant together & apparently have a fine old time in the process. They each get a whole week off every 5 weeks. How's that for a vacation schedule?! Talk about some serious contrast to all the struggling restaurant owners we met who slave away 24/7. Dinner with these cheerful guys (plus their pal the famous Sheriff Harry Lee, who'd caught 45 fish that day & shared one with us) was a nice upbeat way to end the trip. More later when I'm not so tired.

some more pictures for y’all

the home of the blues

My body woke up at 7 am thinking that it was still 9 am somewhere in the South. Time to get up, eat breakfast, reconstitute the whirlwind of objects all over the motel room back into the dense blocks of luggage, figure out how to proceed with the day from town to town, restaurant to restaurant. But no! I'm home & the only thing I really have to do today is meet Sarah for gelato before her play opens at the Berkeley Rep tonight. (I decided I better wait to see it until all my brain particles have arrived home properly.)

The weather is drastically different. The last couple days in New Orleans were in the upper 80s & sticky muggy humid tropical. I have several new mosquito bites that all itch at once. Here at home it poured torentially all day yesterday & the temperature is in the low 60s. It's all a bit of a shock to the system. That was a long, long trip. On the plane coming home I finished reading Anthony Walton's Mississippi: An American Journey. While I was reading a section about Robert Johnson, Donna was in the seat next to me reading Alan Lomax's The Land Where the Blues Began. Clearly we had not really left. Even now I can hear that lonesome train whistle coming up from the tracks in Emeryville, & the feeling it evokes is subtly changed now. I've been listening to those train whistles for most of my adult life, ever since moving to the East Bay in 1986. I think for a lot of people that sound is somehow inherently tied to the blues, & for me it's been no different, but now that I've been to the home of the blues, seen the cotton fields, driven the highways, I hear the train & it summons up so much more. I remember having to pause for several minutes in the middle of interviewing Van Tran at his gas station/Chinese takeout place, while the long, long train rumbled & roared by, drowning out all other sound. I remember hanging out with Lansing in his old-time corner grocery store when a customer came in & asked for chips; Lansing said there weren't any chips, sold the customer some cookies or something else instead, & then came back & told us how the chip delivery man was so unreliable. For the chip man, Lansing's little store was a trivial & superfluous nuisance compared with his stops at Walmart & the big supermarkets in town. Lansing refused to be interviewed, saying that everybody wants to do a documentary about the Delta Chinese, "but it never does any good, it never changes anything".

What he didn't say (& we didn't bring it up either) was that those documentary makers must have practically peed in their pants over him -- mixed Chinese & African American, almost old enough to be called an old man, full of mildly eccentric wit, opinions & stories -- soundbites! -- repairing computers in the back of this grocery store that looked like it hadn't changed in a hundred years. Even the few groceries themselves looked vintage, sparsely populating worn wooden shelves. I've been in that position before, being the photo subject of choice because of some perceived exoticism, because I could be used to represent something on someone's agenda. So we left all the equipment in our bags & just hung out. He pulled a cardboard box off one of the shelves & opened it to show us his childhood Chinese readers that he had never studied. I smiled to myself, thinking, he probably thinks he's torturing us because we wish we could get this on tape, but he doesn't realize it's not the same kind of project. It's not about having everything, capturing everything. It's about the experience, about the people & their stories, how they get inside me somewhere to mix around with all the other chop suey ingredients. He ranted about food stamps & obesity, how we were in the most obese county in the whole country & it was because people could eat anything they wanted with food stamps. "You don't need food to work on! You just need food to sleep on! One meal a day, that's all you need!" I asked, what did people eat before they got food stamps? He said grits & juice in the morning, beans & rice & greens in the night. Now they eat chips & cookies all day long. So it was just as well that he wasn't carrying chips anymore: "bad for you anyway!" He gave us cold bottles of water while we were there & then more for the road & wouldn't let us pay for them.

sweet chicken

Sometime in the past couple days I decided it was time to eat at one of those big buffets. Here's what I learned:

There are two kinds of chicken: fried chicken & sweet chicken.

If it's not fried, it's sweet. If it's not sweet, it's fried. In some cases (such as sweet & sour chicken) it's both. I don't care if you call it sesame chicken, teriyaki chicken (wait! that's not Chinese! but it's on the buffet!), honey chicken, or supercalifragilisticexpialidocious chicken. They are all sweet. Sweet, sweet, sweet. I shudder to think how much sugar these cooks are going through. No, I don't think it's just that one buffet I ate at. There is something going on with the fried stuff & the sugar stuff around here. A conspiracy? Donna said we could be doing the Chinese American version of Supersize Me. (We're not though. We're sensible like that.)

Oh, also: CHICKEN IS A CRUTCH! Get the chicken away from me! I don't want to eat any more chicken for months after I come home. Do you hear me? Months!

serendipitous

This serendipitous thing keeps happening when Donna either makes a wrong turn or needs to take us on some side errand that would seem to have nothing to do with Chinese restaurants: we run into some unexpected find, like this gas station annex in Laurel, Mississippi today. (At least I think it was Laurel. Waynesboro? Oh dear.) Anyway it's like our own little project angel is guiding Donna toward all the hidden Chinese restaurants. It doesn't seem to happen in quite the same way when I'm the one driving.