tongue and groove

Tom the Knitting Trucker

At the end of my La Salonniere interview with Brenda Ponnay, I mentioned her dad, Tom McConnaughy. Tom is a trucker with a fun hobby...he knits! He specializes in slippers and has an Etsy shop. When I talked about Tom in that interview, I mentioned that he was knitting me a pair of slippers in World Champion San Francisco Giants colors, orange and black. The slippers arrived last week and I love them! Now I'm all set for Opening Day on March 31. And guess what, Tom is a Dodgers fan. California baseball fans will take you that the Giants and Dodgers are arch-rivals. Just goes to show you what a great guy Tom is.  ;)

Tom's knitting was featured in a Wall Street Journal story on truckers who've taken up stitching. You can read the article here.  But I have a scoop that the Wall Street Journal doesn't have: Tom's story about how he came to be a knitter. Here it is, in his own words:

My grandmother taught me how to knit when I was about seven years old. Once you learn something you don't forget it. 

I guess about six or seven years ago Brenda decided she was going to learn to knit so she could make a handbag. She bought a kit from the craft store and brought it out to our home on a weekend. I said to her, "Get me some knitting needles and I think I can show you how to knit." We have a picture of Brenda and I sitting side by side. I have this half-finished yellow blanket that my wife found in her fabric closet on my lap. I said to my wife, "I'll take this yellow blanket with me on the truck. One of these days when I don't have anything to do I'll finish this off and the grandkids can have it for a dolly blanket." I found that after a long day on the road there was no better therapy than to just sit in my seat and let my mind relax while I knitted awhile. I soon started knitting scarves for anybody who wanted them. I made them for my students' wives.

One day my wife Sue said her feet were always cold in the evenings and could I make her a pair of wool slippers. So I started looking at slipper patterns and made a whole bunch of really goofy looking somethings. It took me awhile to get it right, but I finally produced a couple of slippers Sue would accept. Now several years later she still wears them to bed, kicks them off during the night and we have to go looking for them the next day. I look for lumps in the covers and sure enough I might find two pairs under there!

Thanksgiving two years ago we were at Bethany Actually's house in San Diego and I was experimenting with this Fun Fur, trying to make some slippers for Bug and Annalie. Brenda said, "Dad, you have to get that in brown and make bear paws!" So I started making them. Again, many pairs before they even resembled anything close to a bear paw. Sue suggested making claws on them, so I took some white yarn and now all the bear paws and grey wolf slippers have claws. My student suggested double thick soles.

Brenda and CC set up my Etsy shop and last Christmas I sold over $150 worth of slippers of all kinds, including to a lady from Mississippi who wanted a gold and black pair. Apparently she or her significant other are fans of the University of Southern Mississippi Eagles football team. So the orange and black aren't the first fan slippers! I sold a pair of bear paws to a lady that works at our Werner terminal in Denver. When she got home her husband took them away from her so I had to make another pair.

While my students are driving, I have to log a bunch of hours observing them. I tell them, "If I'm over there knitting, you know you're doing just fine!"

If you'd like your own pair of slippers from Tom the Trucker, head on over to Etsy.

Thanks again, Tom. I'm looking forward to rocking my orange and black slippers through another successful Giants season!

P.S. And guess who the Giants play on Opening Day? Yep, the Dodgers.  ;)

La Salonniere hiatus

for the past few months, Mondays have been devoted to posting about new interviews at La Salonniere. there isn't a new interview today because La Salonniere is going on hiatus. details are here.

thank you for reading at La Salonniere. i hope you will catch up on any interviews you may have missed along the way and continue to enjoy them in the future when you need a little creative inspiration.  xo

a moment for Japan

please join us on Monday, March 14, at 7 pm EDT / 4 pm PDT to pause for a moment to send love and light...prayers...healing energy...good thoughts...whatever feels best for you...to all of those who are suffering in Japan and around the world. if you'd like to RSVP your participation via the Facebook page, it's here. there's no elaborate ritual required, and you don't even have to let us know if you're going to participate. we've seen so many images of devastation in Japan over the past few days, we just wanted to take a moment to send loving energy to all who are suffering there. thank you.

 

since it's Monday, there's a brand-new interview up at La Salonniere. this week i'm absolutely delighted to feature one of my favorite people in the creative blogosphere, Jamie Ridler.

Our Lady of Monetization

Jesus would have killed on social media. he would have had more Twitter followers than Ashton Kutcher and Justin Bieber combined. think how many hits his YouTube videos would have gotten. he'd have broken viewing records if he'd streamed his sermons at UStream. everyone and their uncle would have been clamoring to be his apostle. he could have been keynote speaker at every conference. his product line could have grown increasingly expensive and his retreats even more exclusive.  his blog could have been such an effective marketing platform. the gospels could have been sold as downloadable e-books, earning important revenue streams for his affiliates.

what a shame he was born way too early.

Brenda Ponnay

This week's featured La Salonniere interview is with my favorite online (pretend) spy, Secret Agent Josephine (Brenda Ponnay). It's a really fun look at her life with her daughter, Bug, and how they instill creativity into just about every aspect of their lives. The post is chock-full of fun photos, courtesy of Brenda.

Click on over and get some Secret Agent Josephine inspiration! You can read the interview here.

 

 

(Photo copyright Brenda Ponnay. Used with permission.)

feed reader

my feed reader is the bane of my online existence. i like the idea of a feed reader--utilizing a tool that can make my blog reading more efficient and, therefore, more pleasurable. but my feed reader hasn't felt like my friend--it's felt like a burden...for years.

for several years i used Bloglines, but it reached a point where for some reason some of my favorite feeds weren't getting updated. a couple of years ago i switched over to Google Reader and even though i use it in the most basic way (privately and just to read blogs--i don't use any other bells and whistles), it works just fine for my needs.

that said, i've still felt burdened by it. i have eclectic interests, so my tendency is to subscribe to way too many feeds. i can be an impulsive subscriber, but i'm also quick to ditch a feed if it turns out that it's not relevant to what i thought i wanted from it and/or it just doesn't resonate with me.

over the last year or so i've been gradually tweaking my feed reader, but how to choose what to keep? it had reached the point a couple of years ago where it was taking me 2-3 HOURS to get through my feed reader every time i opened it! i don't know about you, but i'd like to have a life!  :)  how had i manifested such a burdensome obligation for myself?! every time i opened the damn thing, there were a couple  THOUSAND unread posts!

part of the problem was that it took me years to create a few folders--to cull out a few feeds that i read solely for interest in the subject matter, but was never going to feel compelled to pop out of the feed reader over to the blog to leave a comment. that helped a little. then i made two decisions that might seem like common sense to others, but took me years to arrive at: 1) i decided that i only wanted to 'have' to open my feed reader once or twice a week, and 2) i wouldn't be considered a 'bad' online friend if i didn't leave a comment on every post. (i have some serious issues about politeness. certain lessons were drummed into me at a young age and i'm still working on shedding them.) those decisions helped...a lot.

but a curious thing was at work: the more time i had to spend online, the less time i wanted to spend there. once i'd removed myself from a workplace situation that made me incredibly thirsty for the pleasures of my online life, i didn't need to drink so deeply from the well because my real life had become more pleasurable. i found myself struggling with the next layer of my feed reader dilemma. i wasn't reading my friends' blogs as regularly as i used to because a) i wasn't opening my feed reader as often, and b) once i did open it, i still had too many damn feeds to read, or at least way more than i wanted to be reading in my new less-time-online life. i had begun avoiding my feed reader the way one does a bill collector.

fast forward to this morning when as i was making coffee, i thought: (sigh) i should try to get through my feed reader today. i was feeling guilty that i was slacking on reading my friends' blogs, but i still felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of unread posts in my reader. and then it hit me: OH! i could create a "friends" folder and then i wouldn't feel so overwhelmed just reading their blogs! and there you have it: the obvious solution that only took me SEVEN YEARS to figure out.  :)

i'd love to hear how you handle your blog-reading activities. if you feel like sharing in a comment, please do.

Mill Valley

(snapped a few years ago one evening when J was playing at Sweetwater with Joe Louis Walker)

seeing Linda's post about Joe's Taco Lounge in Mill Valley instantly made me want to spend a day there. in Mill Valley, i mean, not the taco lounge...though given how much i love tacos, that wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility.

Mill Valley and i go way back. somewhere around 1980-81, i lived there briefly, in a house on the east side of town with two roommates. one was an old friend, a dancer and choreographer; the other was someone i didn't know, a Scientologist who worked at Heath Ceramics in Sausalito.

i was working at an upscale men's and women's boutique in the heart of downtown Mill Valley, on the corner of Miller and Throckmorton. (the last time i was there, a coffee place was in that space.) it was a store geared to the affluent Mill Valley crowd...$400 linen shirts for women, Italian gabardine slacks for men, Lucchese boots. i was paid the whopping sum of $5/hour and was basically in charge since the owner and her partner mostly hung out in the office in the back.

one day a quiet, middle-aged man came in and purchased some slacks. i recognized the name on his credit card. he changed into his new slacks and as i kneeled on the hardwood floor to pin the hems (did i mention that my $5/hour, no commission pay included having to hem every pair of slacks i sold?), i thought how odd it was to have come of age during the Watergate era and now find myself hemming the pants of Daniel Ellsberg. Jim Lange shopped there. i once waited on a barefoot, coked-out woman in ratty jeans who paid for her purchases with a huge wad of hundred dollar bills she had stashed in her pocket.

the first time i ever saw a car phone (back when cell phones were car phones) was while working at that job. i was standing at the counter when i saw a guy in a gold Mercedes convertible (of course) turn left onto Throckmorton. i thought, "was that...? was he holding a phone?!" it looked like something out of Get Smart.  :)

after work, i'd walk around the corner to Sweetwater, sit at the bar and have a glass (or two or three) of white wine. i've spent many a night in Sweetwater--seen lots of live music there. it was  probably my all-time favorite music venue and i was heartbroken when it closed. a friend of mine in Marin actually looked at buying it at one point in the late 90's. i was also sad when Village Music closed since it was one of the most amazing record stores in the country. maybe i sound like an aging baby boomer whining over the old days, but these were cultural institutions. (if you don't believe me, start Googling.) and to replaced by what? another cupcake store?

in the evenings i'd sometimes go to an aerobics class in a studio above a bookstore not far from my house. a bookstore where Van Morrison could sometimes be spotted reading at a table in the cafe. i'd see Carlos Santana having lunch at my favorite sandwich spot. when you live in Marin County (which i did for a total of about 8 years in 5 different towns), you're used to seeing celebrities--it's no big deal.

i love Mill Valley. i've never known why it tugs at me so hard. maybe it's the physical environment. there are redwoods there and since i'm from redwood country, redwood groves instantly make me feel at home. when i read Linda's post, i suddenly realized i didn't know anything about Mill Valley's history. my genealogy research has given me a new fascination for history. so i looked it up at Wikipedia. well, looky there...in the mid-1800's: "Some of the rest of his land was leased out for dairy farming to Portuguese settlers.^[13] A majority of the immigrants came from the Azores Islands." i haven't yet figured out how my paternal great-grandparents made their way from the Azores to Del Norte County. wouldn't that be something to learn that as part of their journey, they went through Mill Valley. and this: "...Ranch 'B' is one of the few remaining dairy farm buildings and located near the parking lot at the Tennessee Valley trailhead." i haven't been to Tennessee Valley in ages, but i've hiked to the beach there dozens of times in the past and probably looked at and walked right by that building.

the more i study my family's genealogy (on all sides), the more i realize just how small this world really is...and just how much wonder is waiting to be discovered.

why the Oscars blew it.

poor James Franco. i'm not going to waste time reading any reviews of this year's Oscars telecast, but i suspect that his work as co-host will take a lot of blame for why the show sucked. but i don't think it was his fault.

last Thursday he posted a photo to his Whosay account of what appeared to be the telecast's writing room. take a look, and make sure you note the large man with the Prince Valiant haircut, red glasses and blue t-shirt. you know who that is, right? Bruce Vilanch. for anyone who might not know, Vilanch has been writing jokes for the Oscars shows for over 20 years. some of you may know him for his uproariously funny work (NOT) as a performer and joke writer on Hollywood Squares. (although it might sound like i do, i mean no disrespect to Mr. Vilanch. he's clearly carved out a very successful career for himself in mainstream Hollywood comedy.)

this, to me, is the crux of the problem: the people who run the Oscars telecast still think we're living in a Hollywood Squares world.

the Academy acted like it wanted to rocket the show into relevance by casting James Franco and Anne Hathaway as hosts. this was breaking the mold! this year was going to be different! this would surely get the kids to watch!

the first sign of trouble in my opinion was when the opening montage (which had been pretty good up to that point) suddenly presented us with the aging Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox in their Back to the Future roles. if you really wanted to skew younger demographically, i'm not sure i'd have gone with a reference from 1985. but that's just me.

i'm trying to understand what the thought process was in the writers' room when someone suggested, "hey, you know what would be really great and funny? let's have 94-year-old Kirk Douglas teeter out there on his cane to present!" or: "i know! we'll put Anne in a tux and then she can sing a really corny song about Hugh Jackman. and then we'll send James out dressed like Marilyn Monroe! because she'll be dressed like a man...get it?! that'll KILL!" because nothing skews hipper than a sight gag that Hollywood's been doing since Uncle Miltie days.

the only reason i even watch televised awards shows anymore is to read the accompanying Twitter snark. if Twitter didn't exist, i wouldn't even waste my time--i'd just watch the video clips online the next day. Twitter's the only thing that makes it tolerable. the only time i laugh is when i'm reading tweets.

during Sunday's show, the consensus on Twitter seemed to be that James Franco was baked. i laughed at all the tweeted Franco jokes as much as the next person, but i actually didn't think he was stoned. (though if he wasn't, he probably wishes he'd been.)  :)  maybe i'm old-fashioned, but he seems to come from a pretty tight-knit family. i guess i have a hard time believing that he'd have his parents and grandmother sitting 3rd row center just get really high before he performed in front of them. i felt bad for him. he could only do what they asked him to do, and they didn't ask him to do much. and the tone was all off. Anne Hathaway is a lovely, adorable young woman and a good actress. but she was coming off like a gushing, fawning cheerleader rather than a host. it would have been even weirder for Franco to adopt her tone. so he was left to stand there in his tux, next to Anne and occasionally recite some corny words written for him by a roomful of highly-paid Hollywood writers.

he was taking some bashing online for his backstage posting, but maybe firing off those photos and very short videos during the show was the only thing helping him get through the show. i was watching the video clips as he posted them and i found one of them very telling. James is with Jordan (Rubin, i think). he says that Jordan is the head writer and points out that it's all his responsibility. Jordan says there are other writers--that he can't take all the credit. to which James replies that, no, it's his responsibility. Jordan says James has improvised a lot. James insists that he's said the lines as they were written for him. watch.  :)

what was the point of Billy Crystal's appearance? (and why in god's name was he given a standing ovation?) was that a nod to the 60+ crowd to say: we didn't forget about you--here's someone you know and love. and just to drive the point home--and make sure that the 80-somethings didn't feel left out--they also included Bob Hope. because lord knows, nothing says 2011 like a hologram Bob Hope.

James Franco often blazes his own path and last night was no exception. and with a mother like Betsy, it's no surprise. my favorite quote from this profile of her last week: "If your partner doesn't understand creativity, just find somebody else." from reading about Betsy and her husband, it's clear that the Franco kids were raised in a home where creativity was not only encouraged, but valued:

"My kids are very, very inspiring to me," said author Betsy Franco. "They are so fearless. I consider myself fearless, but no way, by comparison, when I see what they are doing. If you are willing to fail, you can pretty much do anything. If you pick yourself up and keep going, you can do anything."

James Franco, some will say that you failed as an Oscars co-host. i applaud you for being willing to try it. i'd even argue that it was the Academy and its writers that failed you.

and where is James Franco today? based on this photo, my guess would be he's right where he wants to be...back at school.

Maya Stein

This week's featured interview at La Salonniere is with poet Maya Stein of San Francisco. If you enjoy and appreciate writing, poetry, road trips, photography and/or catering, I hope you'll check it out because you'll find all of that in the interview and more. Maya's words are truly inspiring, and there's an extra-special treat at the end. ;)

You can read the entire interview here.

If you like what you're reading at La Salonniere, I hope you'll take a moment to subscribe. Thank you for visiting and reading.

screenwriting

this is a fascinating interview with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. Happy Oscars Sunday!