I just made a lunchtime risotto that took a turn for Spain.

1 cup Arborio rice
~4-5 cups chicken stock, at a slow simmer
1-2 cloves garlic and some choppen onion if you want
2 tbsp olive oil
1 pre-cooked chicken Andoullie sausage, sliced
1/2 cup chopped red pepper
1 tsp spicy paprika

Heat the oil in a heavy 3-4 qt pot for a minute or two on medium-low. Fry up the garlic and onion until just soft, then add the rice and cook it for 3 more minutes, stirring. Add a cup of hot broth, the paprika, and about 1 tsp salt and some ground pepper and stir & simmer as you would risotto. Keep adding broth and stirring for 8-10 minutes.

Meanwhile, brown the sausage in a cast iron skillet on medium-high, then set aside.

After 8-10 minutes the rice is coming along pretty well. Add the red pepper and browned sausage. Then just keep adding broth until it’s all done. It should take ~25-30 minutes in total.

The paprika + sausage really makes it happen. Enjoy.

for Brickbottom Open Studios, Nov 20-21

This is a selection of photographs from my recent travels. Most of the color photographs were taken near coastal New England towns, and the black & white photographs are snapshots from a summer I spent in Europe.

Up until the last week—indeed until the very last moment—this show has been about cropping. Photography in general is about cropping, in two ways: first, take the whole world and crop it down, zoom in, and press the button when some sort of essence emerges in the frame. Then, when it comes time for exhibition (or the family slideshow), crop your thousands of photos down to the final handful that makes sense of it all. I’ve been doing the first kind of cropping since I started photographing in college. But the second kind of cropping is somewhat new to me. It’s given me a chance to look back at what I’ve been shooting and see that my photographs vary wildly in subject matter, style, and feel. And while I could have chosen my favorites and put them up on the wall—confusing everyone but myself—what I really wanted was a theme; I wanted to find a set of photos that fit well together, were consistent, and maybe even had the same subject matter. And while I can’t say that I’ve “made sense of it all” exactly, what you see here is my best effort so far.

(on the left are paintings by Karl Cronin, on the right are my photos)

A few weeks ago a friend had a pre-thanksgiving thanksgiving party. She made 3 different versions of each of these Thanksgiving mainstays: a “greens” dish, a stuffing, a potato casserole/pie, a cranberry sauce, and a dessert. Then she invited a dozen people over to eat and vote on their favorite dish (she’ll be making the best when the real turkey comes around next week). I don’t remember which dishes won when she tallied all the votes, so this story doesn’t resolve itself cleanly with a list of “perfect” thanksgiving recipes. But I did remember which dishes I loved in particular. And here they are:

Corn bread and chile stuffing
Cranberry Sauce with Cherries and Marsala and Rosemary
Leek and Wild Mushroom Stuffing

I’m tanked on caffeine and am getting ready for Brickbottom Open Studios this weekend. It’s all coming together! Its become really exciting now that it’s only a few days away—I guess I work well under pressure. I’m making about 150 inkjet photo cards to sell for $3 a pop, and I’m framing a handful of 8x10s and 11x14s to sell for something just short of usurious (though a lot less, I think, than most photographers seem to want to charge). The word from Pauline Lim is that there are a few thousand people wandering around throughout the weekend, so I’ve upped the ante with myself. But this has been such a nice process so far, I almost don’t care whether I make my $135 back at this point. I’ll soon release a revised and possibly friendly Artist Statement.

Karl and I gave a little talk for the Harvard Sq UU church group around this topic. We split the group into pairs and had each person interview the other for 15 minutes. Here are the interview questions we used:

Interview Questions on connection experiences…

Spaces: What environments allow you to feel most connected to others (general and specific; e.g. volunteering at the YWCA, or when Geoff and I have long talks over tea)? What social spaces do you feel you can bring you whole self to? What are the attributes of these spaces? Tell a story.
Group Settings: Think of past group experiences that have challenged you to grow or have revitalized your soul. What were the attributes and people involved? What size and type of group do you thrive in? (Consider any group setting: previous living environments; workshops/conferences; groups at your job; study groups; supper clubs?)
People: Whom do you surround yourself with? What draws you to them, or them to you? What is it about the relationship that makes you feel connected?

What doesn’t work: What specific social environments or spaces do you encounter that are apparently designed to bring people together but don’t? What causes them to fail?

Themes: What is your conception of connection? What is necessary? What is its function/value for you?

These are simple questions, but there’s definitely enough here to talk about for at least a half hour. If you spend a lot of time in group settings, you should understand what works for you.

Anyway, after the interviews, we got back together and discussed our answers. My answers reflected a desire for the following group dynamic:

• small groups to get “real work” done, large groups for more “fun” or reflective things (usually with one leader.. like carolling!).
  
• a mixture of group time and personal time— I need time to mull over stuff.
  
• a group must have a reason to be together, or I get disinterested.
  
• an atmosphere of mutural respect is important to me.
  
• alcohol doesn’t help
  
• nature is a great place to gather: no distractions.
  
• if I’m meeting a large group for the first time (eg. a conference), I’d prefer to spend at least a few days with them.
  

At the end of the evening, we left time for people to reflect and possibly apply their answers to their own lives:

Questions for reflection…

Have you identified areas where you’d like to grow? Are there any new patterns you’d like to start but haven’t, or ones that clearly don’t work for you? Reflect on how you might encourage more meaningful connection experiences for yourself and others in the future.

Barriers: What barriers do you face in making connections in your daily life (social, fiscal, emotional, etc.)? Day to day, would you make any changes in how you seek out social connections?

After all this, I really wished I’d taken a group dynamics class in college. But instead I’ll start looking for books on the subject. Any suggestions?

If you’re in the Boston area, come see my photography live and in person, along with the work of 100 or so other Somerville artists at the Brickbottom Open Studios event on Nov 20-21. Brickbottom is an artists loft building filled with live-in studios that’s been around since the 1980s when a bunch of Boston artists couldn’t afford Boston anymore and became Somerville artists. It’s a great chance to see some wild artists in their natural habitat.

Brickbottom Open Studios
One Fitchburg St
Somerville, MA
(near Union Square at McGrath/O’Brein Hwy.)

Sat and Sun, Nov 20-21, open from NOON to SIX pm.

I’ll be showing (and selling) photos alongside Karl’s paintings in the Cannery, in apartment #C525 on the 5th floor. I hope you can make it!

I can’t stand most bars. They drive me crazy. Maybe it’s the detached clumps of three and four people who, lacking the courage to merge in any meaningful way, perpetuate the anonymity and loneliness of big city living, holding alcohol-fueled conversations that slosh around, never staying on one topic for too long, never really getting to the heart of the matter, postponing reality.

Can solid connections and warm, meaningful conversation be expected from this environment? What other social settings that really foster a community spirit? Where and when do you have social interactions that allow you to bring your whole creative self to the table (or pew, or stoop)? Occasionally we all have group experiences that just work out perfectly, that transform our mood, our perspective, maybe our whole life. All of the parameters come into alignment somehow, and we feel so good; we feel a deep connection with others, with the experience, and with the space and time, though maybe we don’t even notice how powerful it all was until it’s over. This experience—I’ll call it a “conductive experience”—has all the ingredients for lasting connections with people. It’s a space and time where everyone feels safe, comfortable, and respected, and where the full value of community is exemplified, not commoditized.

Look at the spaces we inhabit around town: Apartment buildings full of people living together who will never meet, who will never have a deep understanding or an enlightening disagreement. Or bars, clubs, coffee shops, and other commercial establishments that have only a vague interest in building community, that provide space for consumption but ultimately impede or, at the very least, do no harm to social conductivity. Bringing people together in a meaningful way is nearly impossible when conductive experiences are not actively pursued.

What do these places lack? Is there anything they could do to bring people together in a meaningful way? How do we make up for their shortcomings?

I did a google search for this because it’s exactly what I want to make around this time of year, when everyone seems so cold and sad. I wasn’t expecting anything, since it’s such an obscure thing to want to cook, but the Internet was in rare form tonight. So here it is, a dessert to ameliorate your electoral woes.