Plume went for a walk in the Laurentians yesterday, with some friends recently returned from France. You can tell she’s artistic from her wonderful sense of colour.

I’m hung over this morning, I think. It’s been about thirty years since the last time so I’m not sure, but I had a lovely time last night eating and drinking in the garden talking about current affairs and unions and now I’m kind of fuzzy-headed.

Picture me now, lying in my hammock as I copy out the recipe for what we ate from the New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant cookbook. I would be happy to eat this every warm day all summer long.

Summer Sauce for Pasta
Serves 4

On those hot, lazy, sultry summer days, when, like a character in a Tennessee Williams play, you haven’t got the energy to do much more than lie around the house in an old tattered slip, try this quick, uncooked sauce. It’s fragrant, refreshing, and light.

6 ripe tomatoes, chopped
2 cups sliced mushrooms (8 ounces) [500 g]
6 to 8 ounces [200 g] mozzarella cheese, grated or cut into thin strips
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon salt

1 pound [500 g] spaghetti or linguini

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (1 ounce) [30 g]

Mix all the sauce ingredients together and let sit at room temperature for an hour or so, for the flavors to mingle.

Cook and drain the pasta. While the pasta is piping hot, serve it in well-warmed bowls, topped with a ladleful of sauce and garnished with Parmesan cheese.

Of course I don’t make it exactly like that. I use fewer mushrooms, less olive oil, more garlic (which I crush instead of mincing) and I hate Parmesan so I use Romano instead. But you won’t make it exactly like that either.

Enjoy!

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Alston on Alston
Here’s some cached text from youngadultcancer.ca. It’s Alston talking about going on the “July 11-23, 2009 – Owyhee River Kayaking Expedition, SE Oregon, USA” trip organized by YAC and the subject of the film Wrong Way to Hope.

Until May 1, 2007, I led a trite and meaningless existence. Just kidding. Until that date, life was pretty great in most ways. I had just started a new and interesting career in video games. And then…well, you know what happened then. The details: esophageal cancer. One of the worst ones, and unusual for someone that was only 32.

This is a bio, which normally means that it is very much of a compilation of who you are and what you’ve done. It’s part character sketch and part CV. But unlike many other major events in life such as marriage, first child, etc., this one tends to obliterate your life B.C. (before cancer). The effect of this is that UI and many others focus much less on the past and put more emphasis on the future, but especially the present. And that is why I am going to travel for 2 weeks on the Owyhee River with others like me.

This trip is an opportunity to make an impact in people’s live right now. Instantaneously. People around me are organizing themselves in order to realize something they believe in. I personally am reminded of my vitality and ability to contribute to something important to society. And it gets me out of the limbo of uncertainty that surrounds people my age hit with some serious disease.

I am a man, alive, relevant and vital. I am here, right now.

One of the ducky things about a beloved who works at home is that you can receive cheery mid-day pictures like this one of Plume in her bed next to Mark’s desk.

Elevator music in hotels.

I’m home now, but “Let your love flow” is still coursing through my brain.

Mark sold this to me as A Lesbian Movie! Which I suppose is technically correct according to the Bechdel/Wallace test,* because right at the end a woman asks a thirteen year old girl what grade she’s in. But ultimately it’s about the spiritual and emotional sterility and soullessness of non-reproductive sex and the potential redemption to be achieved through reproductive sex. 

Not very lesbian at all. 

Any better suggestions? In 1985, Bechdel/Wallace identified Alien as a prototypical lesbian movie because the two women in it get to talk to eachother about the monster. Has there been anything since then? 

*The Bechdel test [from Wikipedia]

The [Dykes to Watch Out For] strip popularized what is now known as the Bechdel test, also known as the Bechdel/Wallace test, the Bechdel rule, or Bechdel’s law. [Alison] Bechdel credits her friend Liz Wallace for the test, which appears in a 1985 strip entitled “The Rule”, in which a character says that she only watches a movie if it satisfies the following requirements:

1. It has to have at least two women in it,
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something besides a man.