Month: December 2018

Wine tasting

Posted on by Liz

I have a vague memory of once being at a winery tour and maybe seeing some barrels and being in a big room drinking a glass of wine with a group of people but this may be completely imaginary. My sister took me today to Quixote Winery where we had an appointment for a wine tasting. I had no idea what to expect, maybe a tour of a cellar where I would not want to go down a million steps so would sit and read on my phone while a tour guide took other people around?

Instead it was just a very quirky interestingly built house and garden. As we went up the flagstone path to the weird looking house on top of a small hill we noticed & were commenting on the patterns of the paving stones which were set in rivery random looking designs, brick, stones, and I think maybe also tile. The building had a lot of tile mosaic bits – outside and inside – and a gold leaf covered tower like a minaret. I kept muttering “quirky Alhambra” to myself….

We sat in front of a fireplace and this lady explained about 5 or 6 kinds of wine to us as we tasted them. Mostly Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Syrah. We were there basically because my sister has a book about the architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser. I gathered the building has no right angles. Even the bathroom was really beautiful and had a sort of tile path across the walls, over the doorways, hard to describe. And, fat, chunky, bulbous columns in somewhat Minoan colors, orange and turquoise and gold and purple. Tiles or other elements were cracked and re-assembled or seem like they are flowing into one another. I like this guy’s aesthetic. The building fit the hillside, it fit the idea of California, it fit “Quixote” in a particular way, and it made me feel happy, dynamic, sort of mind-explody in a good way, comfortable (the movement and chaos feeling very homey, like how I think). Laura talked about how even when you have a strong vision (like this) of how you want something to be it is very hard to get it across to others and to get them to actually do it or to accept your vision to the degree that it takes to overcome the various tendencies to do it the way you (the other people) want (like the clients) or how it is easiest or most convenient (for you the workers digging holes and laying tiles and cement and so on) and about the ways sexism plays into that dynamic.

hall and column of winery

We sat in the patio for a while for Laura to sketch. I was taking notes for my text adventure game and then just gazing around to appreciate things, looking at the gold and green hillsides and the distant cliffs (Stag’s Leap… part of the terroir or the viticultural district. I had just been reading in my Roadside Geology book about how dark volcanic soils and oceanic crust soil makes for good and complicated red wines. Pretty cool! While I’m not sure I really know one kind of wine from another, everything we had there tasted interesting, complex, and delicious. 15 minutes and Laura had made a super cute sketch. She will probably do more from photos later.

laura sketching

watercolor sketch

Somehow all day she was asking me phrases in Spanish which will help her communicate with her landscape crew (she is a landscape designer/architect) so it was stuff like I’m not ready to plant these yet, Put them over here, No, over there, I’m still thinking about it, The tall ones go here, the short ones in front, How are you, How is your family, I’m sorry, Excuse me, I had a nice weekend how about you, and a lot of variations on Fuck these fucking fucked up plants, because everyone needs to be able to swear to express their personality properly.

liz in front of mosaic wall

Flaneur time

Posted on by Liz

Loafing around. Swimming. More swimming. Scootering around. More writing (notes for the text adventure I’m writing with Milo) and gossiping with Laura. Playing Ingress and Pokémon around the resort.

Mud bath in the spa (a strange sequence: shower, mud bath for 15 minutes, then another soaking bath that was mildly sulfurous, with a little wooden ledge to rest your glass of cucumber water on), then, clutching our faceclothes wrapped around an ice cube (?) into a steam room with the MOST amazing gurgling noises which must be the 1882 steampunk plumbing straight up from the geyser) then we were sort of tucked into bunks like burritos with towels carefully folded around us and cucumbers on our eyes. There should have been a step where we got to scrub ourselves in the mud bath since we were floating in a sludge of almost uncomfortably hot ash and pumice.

In the mud bath I pretended to be gradually waking up from a thousand year sleep, floating peacefully in low gravity in my nutrient slurry stasis chamber, about to step off onto a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. Also, a Roman empress (alternating, though, I should really have combined the two.)

I also bought some boutiquey stuff in “downtown” Calistoga. Now the proud owner of a metallic gold vest with a lot of zippers on it, and a skirt with excellent pockets, printed with books and cats. This has been a nice mini vacation!

Petaluma, petrified forest, Calistoga hot springs

Posted on by Liz

At a hot springs resort !

liz in bathing suit

My sister and I had a good leisurely trip up 101. Lunch in Petaluma – on our way to find a riverside cafe we were accosted suddenly by some really nice people with film equipment who asked if they could interview us about the women’s march. They’re organizing Petaluma’s first women’s march this coming January. I agreed (my sister did not) and they fussed with lighting and screens and sound for a bit, and then said something nice about how I marched with my kids and a disabled women’s contingent with huge banners at the Women’s March in 2017 in Oakland and it was not going to immediately fix anything politically but it is great for feeling solidarity, hope, and love which are all important for giving us strength to keep working to improve the current bad situation.

Somehow, I just thought it was hilarious that we were in a kind of deserted corner of Petaluma downtown and out I pop like a magical funny haired wheelchair gnome to do a reasonably competent off the cuff sound bite. But then I really needed to run off and find a bathroom and some food!

We noticed during lunch that across the river there was a strip mall with a Merle Norman makeup store. “Jesus! That still exists!?!” “Pretty much if you’re wearing that makeup you’re likely to be nearly dead.” I suddenly wondered who Merle Norman was. Wikipedia save me! But no. She’s not in there! The rest of the internets inform me how she started her business in the 1920s, blah blah blah. It was almost interesting… But not quite….Maybe if I read up a little more I could write Merle Norman’s wikipedia entry. But why?

Onward to a 3 story antique store in a giant old bank building complete with vault! It was amazing! I recommend it! I got a nifty chinese medicine chest sort of thing with tiny drawers. I’ve always wanted one! Need to translate the characters. One of the ladies in the bank vault elevator told me they have a ghost in the building. There was other gossip which I’ve forgotten already but I told another lady at the checkout (who told me a little of the history of my medicine cabinet) about a book I read where a girl goes to stay with her stern great aunt and there is a chest with dozens of tiny drawers each holding a different object, and when she opens the drawers and looks at the thing (like a pair of gloves or a locket) she is sucked back in time to different days and then realizes that the old timey girl she makes friends with is really her great aunt. I could be remembering the story wrong and I’ve never found this book again, but the point is it would be so cool to have a card catalog-ish cabinet and put things in the drawers…. Which I will soon do.

I read a little bit out of Roadside Geology of Northern California, about the Cotati Valley and the volcanic ash all over this area.

We stopped again at the Petrified Forest in the hills just west of Calistoga. The giant sequoia and redwood trees were blasted flat by a Mount-St-Helens-like explosion & covered with hundreds of feet of ash (I think several million years ago but am too lazy to look it up to check right now). We went on a loop trail up a steep hill. Model CI took it like a champion and I had a blast just being able to do that at all. We went backwards around the loop since I thought the end of the trail being paved looked easier for going uphill. Robert Louis Stevenson was here! I am his huge fan! Now I have to read his book The Silverado Squatters which is apparently set in this area and maybe mentions “Petrified Charlie” (?) There was a grotesque statue of Petrified Charlie and his burro. Also a lot of fire damage to the trees from last year’s wildfires but everything still very lovely, the buildings were saved (we learned later from the guy at the front desk) by the volunteer fire dept. coming heroically to fight the fire. The petrified trees were truly enormous, some of them half excavated from the hillside of cemented ash flow, with huge live oak trees growing through cracks in their petrified trunks. Satisfyingly, near the top of the hill as we went down, there was a sign (facing the other direction) that said “Suggested Wheelchair Turnaround. Thank you”. You can imagine how I got a huge kick out of this!

liz-turnaround-sign

The hot springs place is super nice, we had some free wine and cheese, unpacked, laid in the hammock out back of our room under some palm trees, then wandered around, had dinner at their restaurant, and went swimming. Perfectly clear night so we got to float around in the hot pool and look at the stars, just as I had hoped.

The people next to us in the restaurant seemed like they were dating. I wasn’t really noticing them much but when they got their food the lady in a fluffy white sweater was having halibut and she said with charming enthusiasm to her date, “Have you ever caught a halibut?” There was a sort of weird pause. “That’s a great question,” he said, in the tone of someone giving a talk who was asked something a bit unexpected and they need time to think of some sensible response. (I am not sure he really thought it was a great question. On the other hand, I enjoyed it.) “I can’t say I have.” “Well, they really put up a fight and then you just sort of spin them out [ed.: or some such fish talk – i’m a little hazy on the details]. Just like a flounder!” she said happily as if we all knew what it was like to catch a flounder even if we hadn’t been lucky enough to catch a halibut. “I’ll have to tell that to the boys,” said her hapless, square, not-knowing-things-about-flounders date. “Is it hot in here?” she later asked me. “Yeah it’s warm.” “I should just take my sweater off!” “Actually I already took mine off.” “Oooh! Well, I mean, I HAVE CLOTHES UNDER IT. THEY’RE CLOTHES! *charming laugh*” (she shimmied out of the fluffy angora sweater giving me a little eyebrow wiggle, which I returned.) I would totally fish with her.

My sister and I wrote lists of the things we did this year so that if we felt despairing and like we hadn’t done anything at some later point we’d be able to look at our retrospective of Things Done and feel comforted. They were good lists! I’ll write mine up soon!

Afternoon in Golden Gate Park

Posted on by Liz

I zoomed all over a small section of Golden Gate Park today, the gardens near the De Young and Cal Academy, through some tunnels, down into a ravine full of redwoods near the Rose Garden, and on many winding unpaved paths in the Botanical Gardens. What a blast! I felt so free! Hills, deep gravel, deep wood chips, mud, wet soggy grass…. my giant tires got me through all of that.

Little winding paths are my favorite, where you have lots of choices and can’t tell where you’re going to end up!

I haven’t been in trees in a park for way too long, and have been imagining it for months – ever since the summer and my last trip to Golden Gate Park. So, this was very satisfying. A gorgeous winter afternoon, no fog, warm enough for no jacket when I was in the sun.

liz in bamboo grove

The Red Pearl

Posted on by Liz

I continue to read the Morland Dynasty series by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles and if I don’t get to the end and they’re on Mars or in some other galaxy I’m going to have to write some serious fanfic. Imagine the Mars sheep farms, cyber-horse breeding programs, their genetic engineering and cloning dramas as they sleep with the wrong people hundreds of years in the future. Sleek spaceships! Courtly Martian life! Oh the tragic accidents they could have in the dome in York colony!

Going off sleeping pills

Posted on by Liz

I’ve dealt with insomnia ever since I can remember and it changed my life for the better to go on sleeping pills, helping me feel secure that I would sleep and helping me have structure in my life, be healthier, get to work on time, and so on. It’s hard to describe the desperation of not being able to sleep and the way the night goes and how I’d then sometimes fall asleep just as the sky turned grey and the birds started up.

Given the current research into the down sides of hypnotics I’m going off them as best I can. It sounds like your risks go down substantially when you stop. I went to a 3/4 dose, then a half, then a quarter and now had 2 nights of ok sleep with zero and with no rebound effect. I have been scared of the rebound thing (where you just can’t sleep for a couple of nights at all) because it would be physically painful and put me at some risk for a general flare up of problems. But, all was well, tapering worked, and I’m feeling positive. I’m hoping that my life is stable and settled enough that maybe I won’t have this problem so much, also, since I have slowed down my pace of life a lot maybe I won’t end up in such pain at the end of the day that it keeps me awake.

A Catte

Posted on by Liz

I spent the day puttering around the house and reading. I’m on book 3 of an endless series of historical fiction by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, who has an amazing-sounding name and a love of describing angst and drama that spans many generations. Book 1 started out in the 14th century during the Wars of the Roses. Book 2 was mostly Henry VIII. And Book 3 is mostly Queen Elizabeth, well, not mostly about her but the family the books are about, the fictional Morlands from … somewhere near York, I think, are sometimes at court. So it’s against a backdrop of Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots and so on.

This has led me to lots of Wikipedia reading – like I wanted to know all about the guy who married Mary Queen of Scots and his unhappy ending (syphillis maybe but also murdered and THEN blown up as well by some barrels of gunpowder) and then the unhappy ending of the other guy who married her (maybe abducted and raped her, then married her?) (thrown in prison but I’ve forgotten the exact events – but he was chained to a column in a Dutch prison for 10 years and died there.)

These gruesome deaths led me, though, to strike gold:
Mary Queen of Scots’ embroidered badge of a ginger cat wearing a crown playing with a mouse, embellished with her initials MA intertwined to look like a rune. Maybe the cat was her cousin Elizabeth and she was the mouse!

a-catte

Whatever it may have meant, it’s delightful!!! I think it would make a really neat replica embroidered badge! Someone should get it manufactured and sell them on Etsy!

The books can be a little traumatic (I was squicked by the amount of 14 year olds who marry old guys) and there is like, constant weird incest and trauma, and children who are super charming and beloved and then DIE DIE DIE or maybe everyone dies, and I got really sad about Anne Boleyn, but they aren’t like “The Kingdom of Little Wounds” level of trauma and that has got to be the #1 gross book ever for its multiple times we get a syphilitic Queen’s very public ob/gyn exams described; keep in mind I absolutely love that book but I have to warn people when I recommend it that it goes deep.) I continue reading them since I am very curious how Harrod-Eagles is going to sustain this strange family all the way into World War II. I’m also admiring the volume of her output, I mean, from her Wikipedia page it sounds like she works full time and writes these doorstop epic novels on the weekend and there are like, 30 of them. So impressive. Anyway, I am getting just slightly INTO the vibe of these books. Is there someone sympathetic? Is there someone they absolutely shouldn’t shack up with, like, their secret half brother or their actual uncle or their husband’s brother or a hoydenish Scottish girl who rides into battle and hates men, or, their paralyzed and sickly first cousin, or like, a travelling homosexual actor or a bloodthirsty Earl who may have murdered his first and second wives? In Morland logic this is like catnip to a catte. The more inappropriate the match the faster they freaking leap into bed, get INSTA-PREGNANT and then their children and grandchildren accidentally do it all over again.

Meanwhile, a list of things I have glued today: my thumb to danny’s glasses frame; the glasses frame to itself; a large flowerpot in 6 pieces; a small bone china horse. I had to soak my thumb and the glasses in nail polish remover for several minutes before I was able to scrape my thumb free of the glasses with a knife.

Visit to the SF Lighthouse

Posted on by Liz

As part of the CripTech symposium I went along on a tour of the Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired a couple of weeks ago. Chris Downey, an architect who is on their Board of Directors, kindly gave us the tour and the benefit of his insight into the architectural design of the space.

The lobby was designed to feel welcoming to people who might be coming to the Lighthouse for the first time, or really for anyone. It’s a spacious central space in the complex, connecting through a large, open, glass walled stairwell to the floors above and below. It’s possible to hear people talking or laughing from other areas so you are aware of social activity nearby in the space. I was really impressed with the auditory environment, as I really could feel the warmth of “other people are here” without it being distracting or echoing in any way. The walls were lined in some kind of sound baffle type of felt (I think) with a design of wooden slats overlaid that affect the acoustics of the space and are also quite beautiful.

After being there all morning, the street and then the food court we had lunch in were noticeably inhospitable in their acoustics. I realized I felt more relaxed and able to focus while we were on the tour of the building.

There is plenty of natural light, and also bright but not overwhelming overhead lights in long strips going north to south for extra orientation cues for partially sighted people. There were also interesting “light walls” with big glowing panels, and sliding controls which anyone can adjust to play with the color of the light.

stairwell with wall of windows

The flooring is set up so that there are navigable edges for shorelining through the hallways. Travel paths are polished concrete, and seating or other areas are carpeted with metal edges to give more information to cane users about navigating the space. The stairs have distinctive kinds of wood (I think different at the landings so that there is a different sound from a cane tap) and bright but not overly reflective metal edges for high contrast (again, good for people with partial vision).

One especially beautiful touch – the handrails around the stairwell were the softest, silkiest wood with an unusual and nice-feeling shape, slightly concave on the side facing the travel path, and then curved in a slightly irregular way – not a half-circle or half-oval but a more organic feeling shape to fit a hand. If you visit, don’t miss feeling the handrails.

Here’s a picture of Chris demonstrating another thoughtful and elegant touch: the reception area countertops have subtle niches in the edge of the counter to allow a white cane to rest there without slipping to the floor. The photo also shows the wooden acoustic slats that line the wall and the thin metal boundary between concrete travel pathway and carpeted reception area.

Chris Downey

We saw the event rooms, training kitchen, science lab which I think is for making things and doing electronics or computer workshops, and a little maker space with large braille embossing printers and 3-D printers. The art all around the space was really neat, a lot of it from the collection of Donald Sirkin, the guy who left over 100 million dollars to the Lighthouse in his will. There was also a memorial wall talking about Sirkin and his life. (On my to-do list: write a Wikipedia page for Sirkin.)

As a wheelchair user I also noticed the spacious design, since there were several wheelchair users along on the tour we would get into a few narrow hallways, but each time that happened and there was a sort of bottleneck, I was able to go around the circumference of that section of the building and circle back to the “front” of the tour. There were points at each end and at the middle of the building on each floor where the hallways opened up to wider spaces so there were opportunities to regroup and the space didn’t feel claustrophobic. I appreciate not feeling trapped and being able to move freely around a space!

A few years ago I wrote a short text adventure for an unconference space, along with obtaining a tactile map of the interior of the building. It was a simple hack job to give the layout of the rooms. I started thinking through ways to make a much better one for the Lighthouse. So, a textual game where you can walk through a space and develop a feel for its geography and layout. To be done well, this should integrate a holistic impression of the different spaces and how they can be traversed or explored, rather than some straight “visual description” information it would need to include the ways that a space can be experienced by someone blind or with partial vision.

Playing with similar ideas a bit in Inform7, in writing “room” descriptions from the point of view of a wheelchair user, which for me, includes not just an awareness of slopes but of the feel of surfaces and whether they are pleasant (marble is amazing) or jarring (literally). One or two words can indicate that “you” the reader are wheeled. I think that can have an interesting effect on game play. For the Lighthouse, I might try just describing the lobby and a couple of connected rooms as an experiment. Since I am not blind or vision impaired I would need to pair up with someone or do lots of interviewing folks to do this project well if I did it for real! My 4-room experiment of being in a sort of fantasy world game setting, on wheels, gave me a little shiver of recognition to play through, even though I had just written it myself and it was not a surprise be in a garden and then to see the words “You roll into the gazebo.” Yet it was still a surprise, a pleasantly non-alienating one. Is there a word for de-alienating in a healing way, that makes you realize the ways you are alienated (from yourself or from participation or acknowledgement) in default representations? It made me think that representing “you” the player of interactive fiction as disabled along different axes (as living and experiencing reality in particular ways) could be a really powerful game.

Thanks again to Chris and to the Lighthouse and to Karen Nakamura who invited me to CripTech! I particularly enjoyed the tour and am still thinking hard about aesthetics and universal design & how our concept of whose experiences are important affect design & engineering decisions. A beautiful example of technology in action to make a pleasant and functional environment. If we do get a San Francisco Disability Cultural Center someday, I hope it will take the example of the Lighthouse and follow their lead!

In which I rant about a minorly negative random encounter

Posted on by Liz

Don’t be this weird hostile bus stop lady….

I was going to the bus stop yesterday, on a wide sidewalk on Mission, and I passed a couple who were standing by the bus stop bench about to sit down. I was hugging the wall by the pizza place and nail shop and about to turn to wait for the bus just a little ways down from the bus bench. So, I was something like 8-10 feet away from the couple.

The woman looked up as I passed and said “OH!!! Sorry!!!! I didn’t see you!” and kind of mimed as if she were getting out of my way. This was weird, since she wasn’t in my way, I wasn’t in her way, and there was nothing indicating that I was about to be anywhere near them.

“Uh…” I said, super coherently. “Well, I saw you, so, ok.”

Then I waited for the bus without anything further happening but I could see her weird discomfort. She was still bothered. She kept looking at me and kind of acting agitated. Her “Sorry!” was actually not a sorry but was more like a hostile accusation as if I had done something wrong and actually I was supposed to apologize.

This happens all the time (basically a microaggression). Like what happens when someone exaggeratedly holds a door open for me, and I don’t want them to, and I have to ask them to move out of the way because they think they’re holding the door open but they are literally blocking my path through the doorway and I don’t want to run them over. Or even if i can get by, I don’t want to put my face in their armpit.

People doing this kind of thing aren’t helping — they get angry if you don’t respond “correctly”, and then it becomes clear that they started out angry with their bogus offer of help. They are full of resentment and are uncomfortable with my presence and they want me to behave in a way that is apologizing for my presence.

Once you’ve experienced this multiple times a day every day, as you are just minding your own business, you will know what I mean.

And, actually, I’m not always so proud, I often act in a placating manner to make other people comfortable, especially in a crowd, while waiting in line, on the bus, and so on, because honestly it just makes thing easier. For example I normally feel like I am “supposed to” thank the bus driver at least 6 times while getting on and off the damn bus, once at every stage of the interaction like, they see me and start to lower the ramp or lift, they then offer help of various kinds or do stuff, or they give me unneeded (bad) advice or warnings, and I have to acknowledge it and I try to be polite. Probably, y’all get on and off a bus with maybe one “thanks” if you exit at the front but that is not my experience.

So, back to our story.

Time passes. I sit at the front of the bus playing Pokémon, and everything is remarkably peaceful for a middle of the day ride on the 49 bus. The driver remembers I’m there and also, I remembered to push the “ramp please” button well ahead of time and there is only one guy in front of me who is kind of trapped and has to get off the bus to let me off by the ramp, but the driver still yelled at the top of her lungs, “WHEELCHAIR COMING OFF WATCH YOUR FEET I SAID WHEEEEEEEEELCHAIR COMING OFF” I thanked the driver and said have a nice day. While the yelling is often unnecessary and unpleasant it does get the job done. The thing is I can say “excuse me” or “con permiso” myself to the people who I need to get by who are usually looking right at me anyway and can tell I am intending to get off the bus and can see perfectly well what needs to happen.

OK so, now I’m off the bus and it’s an even wider sidewalk than on Mission where I started. The sidewalk is at least 15 feet across. I suddenly realize that same couple who were at the bus stop with me had gotten off at the back of the bus and were on the sidewalk, again near the curb while I was on the far right side of the sidewalk by the buildings. The woman fidgeted around (not sure how to describe this – but it’s like someone doing a lot of “pay attention to me!” body language like they are about to speak to you – as if awkwardly trying to get the attention of a waiter including being frustrated at not already having that attention). And she did a little laugh and said “Oh!!!! I’ll TRY not to get in your WAY this time!!” and mimed “getting out of my way” again even though I was nowhere near her and not aimed anywhere near her.

It was so irritating!

I said “You weren’t in my way before and you’re not in my way now” and stared at her with what was probably the rudest face possible of incredulousness as if a cartoon though balloon that said “You’re an idiot” was floating over my head.

“Gaaaaah! I was JUST JOKING!” she said huffily…. making a little scoffing noise. Her husband stood there looking awkward and probably wishing he could sink into the ground with embarrassment.

I did not behave with the proper level of humility for this beeyatch to accept my presence on the public sidewalk!

I beetled uphill at a goodly clip, my maximum 5 miles per hour, wishing I were a goddamn rocketship to get away from this rude person even faster!

Lady… Let me just be clear…. Madam Fussypants, stick-up-your-butt, REI-clothing-wearing-probably-a-unitarian-white-lady-who-loves-calling-the-cops lady from my neighborhood…..I can snap judge you too! (Thusly.) I dunno what your deal is but you want me to perform some sort of role here for you that I am unwilling to perform!

I am notorious for chatting in a friendly way with total strangers on the street but she was such a jerkface that instead she got my “fuck off” attitude and nearly got me to stop dead in my tracks and pop off in an enormous harangue that would not have helped her obvious feeling of discomfort with my MERE PRESENCE IN THE PUBLIC WORLD.

Whatever demon she is wrestling with, whatever fear of disability…. I wish she would go deal with it in therapy and stop letting it hang out all over the sidewalk. I can’t be the only wheelchair user she ever sees in this town especially if she takes the goddamn 49 bus! What is her problem!

As my mom would say… Some people just need a good slap!

OK, so, all of y’all, don’t do this shit, it’s ridiculous!

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.