I saw this movie recently called “The Real Dirt On Farmer John.” It’s the story of a maybe eccentric (maybe just a regular, slightly wacky boomer, i.e. kindred spirit) who took his legacy, the family farm in Illinois, on a journey from traditional farm, to a hippie haven in the sixties, to a big, fat money-loser in the eighties, to a what is now a fantastic, thriving model for CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).
This movie is worth seeing. Whether or not you respond to his personal story, it’s tough to argue with John’s mission: he’s the Al Gore of farming.

In a nutshell, what he’s got is a farm supported by shareholders (regular people in the community) who pay a yearly fee to receive the bounty of John’s all-organic harvest. Each week, at pickup points around the Chicago area, shareholder families get boxes of whatever’s growing that season. And if they really want to get involved, they can go to the farm themselves and pitch in, show the kids where their food comes from and dig in the dirt a little.

Since I have a poor attitude about entering a grocery store, I find the idea of somebody delivering a box of lovely organic vegetables on a weekly basis very appealing. Luckily, just as I was thinking I’d move to Chicago to avail myself of this new approach to food supply, I heard about a similar farm in the Los Angeles area called Tierra Miguel Foundation Farm. I am signing right up. Although it’s unlikely I’ll be able to get my teenagers to go with me to visit the farm (they have issues with vegetables), I might go myself, just to see what it’s all about.

I’ll let you know how it goes. Or to see for yourself, start by visiting www.tierramiguelfarm.org.
And click here to see a trailer for “The Real Dirt.”

Here’s a quick follow-up to my previous post about the Albany baby who fell from a window into the arms of a postal worker:

Another child, a one-year-old girl named Cindy, fell from a window in Queens last Wednesday.

She plummeted four stories, but landed on two balls in a backyard stairwell, which saved her life. She’s in stable condition in the hospital.

What’s up in New York? It’s raining babies, but luckily, miracles are in abundance. I mean, two balls? Not one ball, which would have been insufficient to prevent disaster, but two. Who leaves two balls in a stairwell? Not a human, an angel. Maybe the same angel, or a close personal friend of the one who placed the postal worker in position to catch the Albany baby in his arms.

Although it seems like the angels are on the job, if I were in New York and the parent of a little one, living above the ground floor, I’d put some bars on the windows. This baby-falling thing seems to be a trend, and the angels might be exceptionally busy just when I need them. They’d be rushing to and fro to catch other falling babies, all of whom, including the girls in Albany and Queens, should some day have a party to celebrate the miracles that saved them.

I’m told that even while Martha Stewart was in jail, she couldn’t stop cooking. She and the other inmates were limited to using a microwave, but she did her best with the materials provided to enhance the reportedly dismal jail food.

Apparently, she even harvested dandelion greens from the prison yard. I don’t know how she prepared them, but I know my family would rather eat prison food than anything that green.

Speaking of my family, if I were in her shoes, I’d view my incarceration as a lovely opportunity to not cook. I’d sit back, read my “Living” magazine, graciously accept my three squares a day, and revel in not having to think about what to make for dinner.

Come to think of it, I might consider committing a wee misdemeanor, just to grab a few weeks in jail, so I can get a break from daily food prep.

My family would miss me terribly, because they would be chef-less, living on peanut butter and takeout for the duration. But the traditional method of facilitating my escape would be beyond them: they are way too culinarily challenged to bake a file into a pie.

If you are the type who would actually desire to escape from jail, here’s a recipe for Jail Escape Pie even your family can make. They smuggle it in to you, you eat the pie and use the cleverly enclosed tool to file your way through the iron bars to freedom. (That is, if you consider cooking three meals a day for picky people some perverse form of freedom.)

If you like the pie a lot, or if you just enjoy having your family prepare food for you, a thing that only happens once in a millennium, pretend it was confiscated and tell your family to bring you another one. Keep this up until you grow either suspiciously fat or sick of eating pie.

JAIL ESCAPE PIE

Pillsbury ready-made pie crusts
One jar Triple-Cherry Pie&Cobbler Filling (at Williams-Sonoma)
One file suitable for jail escapes (ask at your hardware store)
2 Tbls. milk
1 Tbls. sugar

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

On the package of pie crusts there are directions for making a cherry pie. Follow them exactly. When you come to the part about adding the cherry filling, slip in the file along with the Triple-Cherry stuff.

When the pie is assembled, brush the top of it lightly with milk and then sprinkle with sugar. Take a knife and stab the crust in a few places to provide vents for steam.

Bake for ten minutes, then reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake for another forty minutes or so, until the crust is golden and looks, you know, done.

P.S. While your pie is baking, click here to read about how Martha Stewart failed to win the prize at her prison’s Christmas decorating contest.

I wanted to paint my walls white. How hard could that be? You go to the paint store, buy a few gallons, and slap it on.

So I did that first part: I went to a paint store. I gravitated towards a salesman who resembled the coach of the Boston Celtics.”Um, I’m looking for white paint,” I said helpfully.

The Coach pulled out a, what’s that called, a color wheel? A rainbow spread? There’s a name for that thing that opens up like a fan to reveal 657 different shades of white and throws you into a full on panic attack. (I’ve never responded well to a multitude of choices.)

“Can you narrow it down to the creamy ones?” I asked. The coach licked his fingers and snapped shut a third of the Panic Wheel, leaving me with only about 400 decisions to make. I grew a whiter shade of pale; moisture sprang from my armpits. “Uh, what do most people pick?” I asked, lamely.

“Lady, it’s a personal thing.” The coach checked his watch.

It was too much for me. I started to get that feeling I get at the shoe store when I’ve tried on four pairs and none are good but I feel like I have to buy a pair anyway because I’ve made the man walk to the stock room four times. I neede to abort the paint mission before I felt obliged to buy a gallon of “Winter Dust,” or some other irrelevant color.

I went home and launched a large-scale obsession. I asked for opinions from friends and relatives. I visited my neighbor on the pretext of borrowing a can opener and secured the name of her paint color. I called a hotel where I’d stayed and whose walls I’d admired. I asked the bookseller, the neurologist, the florist, anywhere I saw a good white, I asked someone what it was. I went online, did some social networking, picked the brains of people I do not know.

When I’d finally assembled a group of color candidates, a portion of my dining room wall became a patchwork of samples, which I checked on at different times of day to note changes as the light shifted. I concealed my madness behind a portrait of my great-grandfather, who must have been twirling in his grave.

I also painted the colors on white Bristol board and carried the samples from room to room. I made decisions, booked the painter, panicked and unbooked him. I threw away rejected samples, and then, in a frenzy of uncertainty, re-bought them for another look.

I kept all this activity covert, under my husband’s radar, so he wouldn’t have me committed.

I did eventually make a few selections, and it worked out all right, if not perfectly. (One room suffered through two repaints.) I offer here a list of my top choices of white wall paint (which are really almost-but-not-quite white) from a variety of manufacturers. This will save you weeks of trial and error, time better spent mastering the tango, buying a new garden hose, or writing your congresswoman. (If you do write her, please ask what color she painted her bathroom.)

Benjamin Moore: ($20-$50 per gallon)
I used both “Oatmeal” and “Linen White,” the latter being more yellowy, the former more, well, oaty, but both nice colors. “Swiss Coffee” is another one I have used, which is like white with a little splash of espresso. “Alabaster” as a good B.M. color for trim, also.

Donald Kaufman: ($90 per gallon)
“#28″ is a beautiful creamy white my sister-in-law has all over their house. I was too cheap to buy it, but D.K.’s paint is amazing, more like light than paint, so you might want to splurge in a room or two.

Farrow and Ball ($70 per gallon)
This manufacturer makes my favorite colors, all of which have inspiring names. It’s pricey, so I limited myself to using “Matchstick” in my office only, but if I were going to splurge I’d have also gone for “Satin Slipper” or “Clunch,” colors so interesting they inspire conversation.

4. YOLO ($40 per gallon)
If you are in green mode, these paints are non-toxic and low VOC, and “Air.01″ and “Air.02″ are lovely whites.

5. Restoration Hardware ($32-$36 per gallon)
“Mediterranean White” and “Buttermilk” are good choices here, and “The Right White” is great for trim.

Today it was announced that one hundred new words and expressions were being added to the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, including ‘infinity pool’ (first found in an English-speaking publication in 1992), ‘kiteboarding’ (1996), which is not a new form of torture but a water sport, and a personal favorite, ‘wing nut’ (circa 1900), which is slang for a radical person.

But the word on the list that caught my eye was ‘pescatarian’ (1993), defined as a vegetarian who will eat fish. A secondary definition would be a pesky dinner guest with irritating food preferences, like my cousin Jack, who occasionally drops by unexpectedly, usually at dinner time. On one such visit, he announced, just as I was slathering a little more marinade on the briskly grilling spare ribs, that he was a pescatarian. Luckily I had some edamame on hand (this is also a new M.-W. word this year, dating back to 1951) as well as some potato salad, which Jack ate with relish. (I mean, with ‘relish’ defined as that green stuff you put on hot dogs, not ‘relish’ defined as zeal.)

I think Mr. and Mrs. M.-W. have their work cut out for them, as people seem to be getting pickier about what they eat. For example, what are they going to call a person who only eats steak, like my electrician? A carnetarian? (Maybe you’d just call him a guy who needs Lipitor.) What if someone’s a vegetarian who eats chicken? A poultrararian? An ornotharian? (A bore?) What about my friend Lyn’s son who only eats white toast, or Annie’s dad who eats nothing but avocadoes and eggs? (Actually, I think he’s covered: think ‘wing nut.’)

We can all look forward to seeing what food preferences will be covered in next year’s new word list. Meanwhile, here’s a recipe for salmon, just in case Jack (or some other pesky pescatarian), drops by for dinner. It’s so incredibly easy, you can make it and still have time to go kiteboarding in your infinity pool.

PESCATARIAN SALMON

Ingredients:

Six pieces of salmon fillet
Tamari soy sauce

Put the fillets in a pan, skin side down. Schmear them with Tamari. Broil for fifteen minutes, until cooked through and crispy on top.

(If Jack is with you for dinner, serve with relish. Right, the green stuff.)

As everyone knows, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was recently rocked when the Child Protection Services of the State of Texas rounded up all their kids for (presumably) safe keeping.

On TV, we saw countless images of girls and boys in clothes reminiscent of another era: the nation was captivated almost as much by what the kids were wearing as by the sad strangeness of their plight.

Now that things have settled down a little back on that compound, FLDSers have set up a website where you can buy those demure garments. Click here to shop, but be forewarned: a teen vest dress will set you back close to seventy-three dollars. At those prices, I think I’ll be sticking to the sale rack at Gap Kids.

So, as many of you pointed out, shortly after I wrote about George W. and the cherry tree chopping, archeologists discovered Ferry Farm, G. W.’s long lost plantation, and the cherry tree story reared it’s apocryphal head once again.

However, one journalist reported that no cherry trees were found on the property (not to mention a mutilated one) and no hatchet. They did find thousands of other artifacts in the dig, including wig curlers, wine bottles and a clay pipe (the dude could party), but ix-nay on the atchet-hay. So that myth went back to bed.

They also pointed out that, unlike the way it’s portrayed in certain portraits and literature of Washington’s time, his house was no rustic cabin. It had eight rooms, and what’s described as one and a half stories (whatever that means), as well as, excuse me, slave quarters in a separate building. Most people of normal means at that time lived in one or two-room houses, and that includes, by the way, big shots like T.J. So no more crying a river over poor George’s humble origins.

Also in question now is the story of W. skipping a stone across the Rappohannock River. (Frankly, even as a child I had my doubts about that one.) Archeologists have found no stone, although they have noticed the presence of a river.

So, where does it end? Next thing you know they’ll tell us he wasn’t really six feet two, but five feet seven, or maybe even that he wasn’t actually the president, but the president’s butler.

Of course, there’s plenty of evidence to support what we know about our current president’s character, about what he thinks and what he’s accomplished. I guess the lack of mystery surrounding this century’s G.W. is something we should find comforting; it’s good to know exactly who your president is.

Isn’t it?

Okay, this is one of the more imaginative recycling efforts I’ve come across. This guy (I can’t be more specific as his name is unknown, although we know he lives in Oregon) collects used chopsticks (in China), cleans and sanitizes them, and uses them to construct a wine rack. Who would even think of such a thing, let alone be savvy and patient enough to put it together so it really supports all those wine bottles?

Not me.

But a myserious Oregonian did it, and here it is. If you can’t get your kids to make you one (come on, it’s summer…what else do they have to do besides Facebook?) you can buy it at Livingreen in Culver City for a mere $300.
(www.livingreen.com)

I promised you a recipe for cherry salad and here it is. George Washington could not possibly have eaten this with those wooden teeth of his. Or were those dentures also a figment of the imagination of a parson named Weems? (See the section of this blog devoted to the first G.W.).

CHERRY SALAD

¾ pound cherries, pitted (I know it’s a pain. Live it up and buy a pitter.)
¼ c. dried cherries
1/2 c. crumbled feta cheese
½ purple onion, thinly sliced (optional)
Arugula, enough for four people
½ c. almonds, toasted* and chopped coarsely

Dressing:
2 tsp. Dijon mustard
¼ c. good quality balsamic vinegar
½ c. virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and pepper to taste

Make the dressing: in a bowl, whisk together the mustard and vinegar, then slowly whisk in the oil, until dressing is emulsified. Add a little salt and pepper to taste.

In a salad bowl, mix arugula with fresh and dried cherries, feta cheese, onion if you’re using it, and as much dressing as you like. Put the salad on plates, sprinkle with toasted almonds and serve.

(Serves 4.)

*To toast the almonds, put them on a baking sheet, in a 350 degree oven for 10-15 minutes, or until they start to smell fabulous.

Variations: Add some grilled chicken and you’ve got a meal. Add some sliced Belgian endive and you’ve got even more of a meal.

Since it’s almost the 4th of July and we’re having an exceptional cherry season, I find myself recalling the story of how George W. (no, not him, I mean the first president) was lionized for copping to the fact that he’d chopped down a cherry tree.

We all bought this story, until it was exposed as bogus: G.W. did neither the chopping nor the copping. It seems a parson named Mason Locke Weems wrote a biography of Washington shortly after his death, and found his subject so boring, he did some imaginative detailing to juice up G.W.’s tedious story, including the cherry tree business.

In the days when I believed the story, I wondered why nobody ever questioned Washington’s motives for chopping the tree down in the first place. I mean, if my kid took out the orange tree in our backyard, I would see it as a random act of rage worthy of a visit to the therapist. (Luckily my kids are too busy on Facebook to bother chopping an onion, let alone a tree.)

I’m thinking that, had the cherry tree story circulated when Washington was running for president, the outcome of the election could have been very different. Voters might have stopped to consider, before they pulled the lever, the following question: when the red phone rings in the White House at three a.m. (or the 1789 equivalent, some Paul Revere type shows up), would you be comfortable with a president who’s capable of an act as irrational as random tree-chopping?

Food for thought. And speaking of food, click here to check out the recipe for cherry salad in The Crabby Cook section of this blog….

Now that Hillary and Barack have stopped accusing each other of cherry-picking, it’s time to switch topics from politics to the fruit in question. They’re only here for a few more weeks (the cherries, not the candidates), so get ‘em while you can.

In the interest of preserving some cherries before their season ends, I listened to a radio chef talking about making cherry jam. I got very enthused for a good twenty seconds and then I came to my senses.

The thing is, you need to pit about a million cherries. I guess you can use a cherry pitter (I’ve heard of people using a chopstick) but still, it’s essential to multi-task while you’re pitting or you’ll go nuts. Snap on “Beauty and the Geeks” and watch while you pit.

If you have any patience left after the pitting ceremony, you cook the cherries with some sugar for a while (Monsieur Le Chef was not specific), then throw the whole mess into some jars.

M.L.C. had to be prompted to explain that the jars must be sterilized before and pressurized after they’re filled with jam. But what if you mess up the sterilizing and a hardy bacteria slips through? You proudly give the jam to your relatives for Christmas and they’re all dead by New Year’s. (Don’t get any ideas.)

It’s much safer (and less labor-intensive) to go to Williams-Sonoma and buy La Trinquelinette’s cherry jam. Or get the awesome version from Loulou’s Garden, sold at City Bakery, or Cerises Griotte cherry fruit spread from Le Pain Quotidien. All delicious, Loulou’s is best on vanilla ice cream.

Williams-Sonoma also carries Triple Cherry cobbler and pie filler, which I haven’t tried yet but I’ll get back to you when I do. I’m also going to post a recipe for cherry salad next week, so stay conscious.

P.S. When Christmas rolls around, instead of that homemade jam, give the folks the gift that keeps on giving: a cherry pitter.

Like my dog Oliver, I prefer to sleep where I can be a) cool and b) near a human.

Unlike Oliver (seen at left, napping on hardwood), I am choosy about sleep surfaces. This is why I paid a visit to a store called Livingreen in Culver City, a shop that sells eco-friendly furniture, bedding, and cleaning and building materials for the home. I made a beeline for the mattresses.

The shop carries Mary Cordaro’s collection, with a “talalay” natural latex core surrounded by cotton and wool. I plopped down on one, and it was as cozy as it gets. I closed my eyes and started to drift off, until another shopper lay down next to me, causing me to make an embarrassing shriek and leap to my feet.

Driven both by a quest for rest and an interest in getting green, I was just about ready to buy that mattress. Then the saleslady issued a caveat: the mattress, when it arrives, smells “like tennis shoes,” on account of the latex core. I hadn’t noticed the smell during my aborted nap. Relentlessly honest, the sales lady said that bed had been on the floor for a couple of years, airing out.

I don’t know about you, but this strikes me as a drawback. If I wanted to sleep with Nikes I could crash in my daughter’s room.

So, you can lie awake at night worrying about the nasty chemicals emitting from your regular mattress, or lie awake at night objecting to the smell of your all-natural tennis shoe mattress. (Or follow Oliver’s example and hit the floor.)

It’s a tough call, but if you go for the tennis shoe, prices start at about $1300 for a twin.

Check out www.livingreen.com.

Apparently, if you go to the Ford Ampitheatre next Friday, the 20th, you can be part of a “Scarface Swearalong”: you get to watch Brian dePalma’s classic “Scarface,” and try to keep up with Tony Montana as he makes his way through a couple hours of Oliver Stone’s curse-heavy dialogue.
I’m told that this movie has a rabid fan base, and they’re ready to take on Pacino, word for word, swearing away the night, under the stars, maybe even bringing picnics. Probably not great for a family outing, but it’s nice to know that there’s an alternative out there for those who are seeking something a little edgier than the Pacific Park ferris wheel.

Thanks for your comments/questions about the identity of the artist who did an illustration for the blog about YSL. That fabulous person happens to be Lindsay duPont, who is amazing (and happens to be a relative, thanks goodness, so I get the cheap rates.) She also contributed some of the squiggly stuff you see on this home page….See a link to her website on my links page…..

I don’t know about you but I can’t wait to ride the new ferris wheel at the Santa Monica pier. The old one sold on Ebay in April for about $132,000, and its new owner is a real estate developer from Oklahoma who has an idea of incorporating it into one of his residential developments. (Way to liven up a gated community.)

The good news is, you can ride the new wheel and leave concerns about your carbon footprint at home: this model, which cost $1.5 million and is 130 feet high, and whose 160,000 LCD lights probably make it visible from Mars, is using 75% less energy than its predecessor.

So if you’re looking for a bright idea for an evening outing, go to the pier for a well-lit, green(ish), thrill-filled spin.

Okay, so I found these Reborn disposable plates at City Bakery, and they are all-natural, completely biodegradable, made of “naturally-shed betel palm spathe (I’m too lazy to look up that last word in the dictionary) that is collected, cleaned, and heat-molded at sterilizing temperatures.” So don’t think too much about the carbon footprint you get from all that production or about how pricey they are (eight dinner plates will set you back $10) and you will feel SO virtuous when you frisbee them into the woods after a picnic, knowing they’ll just blend right in.

When I’m desperate (5pm, no idea what’s for dinner), my default plan is to roast a chicken. Nobody doesn’t like roast chicken, which makes it a Miracle Food in a house like mine which is full of picky people. You throw it in the oven and then you’ve got an hour to figure out what you’re going to serve with it, or to address more compelling tasks, like making a martini.

I have to resist the temptation to serve this every day, it’s such comfort food. Just ask my fat dog Oliver, who made off with last week’s chicken when my back was turned, and had a smile on his face even after the verbal abuse.

Here’s a picture of my fat dog Oliver from the perspective of the roast chicken, shortly before the chicken’s disappearance.

Ingredients

One chicken, 4-5 pounds (get organic or free range, it’s much better)
One lemon, cut in half
One garlic head, cut in half
A couple sprigs of rosemary
2 Tbls. butter, softened or melted
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

Directions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Rinse the chicken and dry it with paper towels. Salt the cavity, and put in a half a lemon, half a garlic head, and the rosemary.

Rub the chicken with the butter and season with salt and pepper.

Roast it for an hour, or until it’s done the way you like it.

Let it sit for ten or fifteen minutes before you carve and serve it with pan juices, but keep it out of reach of your pesky dog.

Variations

Ditch the rosemary and use thyme and/or parsley. And if you’re really on top of things (I’m SO not), you’ll throw in some potatoes to roast with the chicken. Just cut up some Yukon Gold or new potatoes into chunks, rub them with a little oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and hurl them into the pan. Then your dinner is SO done, except for the struggle of preparing something green to go with it.

Last week I was desperate for an outfit. I was going to an A-list Hollywood party and had nothing to wear except for the sixteen other Hollywood party outfits that I had worn and retired.

I took my fashion crisis to Beverly Hills and endured a few devastating try-ons in a shop where all the dresses were too tight, too low-cut, too short and too strapless. (Apparently we are living in a “Sex In The City” world.) Suffering from shopper shutdown, I decided to go home and re-shuffle the old outfits to create a new one. I’d take the sweater from outfit number five and mix it with the blouse from outfit number eleven and nobody would be the wiser.
As I was stumbling down Rodeo Drive in search of coffee, I spotted the Yves St. Laurent boutique. I had never entered it, and something told me it was high time I did. I put on my art gallery attitude: I resolved to look at the beautiful stuff and get the hell out before I spent the family nest egg.

As the shop’s doors swished open, a saleswoman with an intriguing accent welcomed me warmly, but I could read her mind: “Who is this loser with crazy hair and bad jeans?” she was thinking. As I always do when I get this kind of mind reading, I resolved to prove the saleswoman wrong in her judgement. I tried to act like a worldly shopper, unimpressed by the breathtaking style and gorgeous fabric. As I was not wearing my glasses, it was easy to feign nonchalance when I checked a price tag.

Then I saw a dress that, for a brief moment, made me get over myself and notice that I was in the presence of greatness. The dress was long, formal and dramatic, made of some kind of miraculous fabric that fell over the mannequin’s shape like melted gold. I had to try it on.

The neck was cut high, just the way I like it, and the dress subtly expanded right around that area of the hips that needs forgiveness. It was designed to accommodate a multitude of body issues, and yet it was incredibly sexy. In other words, the dress was perfect.

“It looks beautiful on you,” the saleswoman said, and her mind agreed.
However, as I was not going to the Academy Awards with George Clooney, but only to a sleezy cocktail party, I reined myself in. Feeling that particular guilt that comes from wasting a saleswoman’s time, I changed back into my baggy pants and went home to revisit my crammed closet.

The cocktail party came and went (it was outdoors: all outfits were obscured by darkness) and two days later came the news of Yves St. Laurent’s death. The obituary reminded me that he had introduced a whole new level of comfort to the well-dressed woman, popularizing the trench coat, the flat shoe and the ladies’ pants suit. (Hello, Hillary.) I was fortunate enough to grow up just in time to benefit from this fashion revolution. When I think of my mother strapping herself into a girdle, stockings, heels, and hat, I say my own private little prayer of thanks to Monsieur for sparing me that painful dressing ritual.

I also thank him for that perfect, gold dress. Designed to make a woman, even one with certain body flaws, feel both comfortable and spectacularly glamorous, it’s reassuring just to know it’s there, and that although Yves St. Laurent had been retired for some time, his line still represents his respect and love for women.

If I ever do go to the Academy Awards with George Clooney, I’ll know just where to shop.

Illustrated by Lindsay Harper duPont

Okay, here are some more tracks I found in my iTunes library that are not really intended for kids but are clean and suitable:

When Toots and the Maytals sing “Never Grow Old,” I defy you not to dance with your child. Paul McCartney’s “Dance Tonight” might also inspire you, as will one of my all-time favorites, “The Littlest Bird” by the Be Good Tanyas.
If you’re a dad with a daughter, play her Paul Simon’s declaration of love, “Father and Daughter,” and keep the Kleenex handy. Or, for those moments when you are swept away with baby adoration, choose one of the great recent love anthems: Alicia Keyes’ “No One.”  If you’ve heard it too many times, try the Curtis Lynch reggae remix, which is even better than the original.
A real morning song (for those five a.m. wakeup calls) is “Sunrise” by Norah Jones. It’s hard to tell if it’s the sun or the music that gives the nursery th”at glow. Another great way to start the day is to play Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World.” My daughter’s kindergarten teacher played it every day when the kids arrived, setting a sweetly positive tone in the classroom.
On those occasions when a child needs a little encouragement after a bad day,  song with a fabulous message wrapped in a stunning production is “Pick Yourself Up” as sung by Diana Krall. It’s impossible to ignore her suggestion that you “dust yourself off and start all over again.”
So, when you’re looking for music that’s both kid and adult-friendly, check out some of these tunes, and search your own music library. You will most certainly find more gems like these.

As a writer of children’s music, I always make a mental note when I hear an artist performing a song that was not intended for kid listeners but would suit them just fine.
There are lots of songs like this, but most of them are from another era, when lyrical content was less, uh, robust than it is now. Kid-friendly songs in the adult marketplace are harder to come by these days, but I scanned my iTunes library and came up with a substantial list of cool and current tunes I’d be happy to spin in the nursery.
“We’re Going To Be Friends” by the White Stripes is as good as it gets: simple, sweet, an ode to friendship with lyrics that could have been written by a six-year-old poet.
“Heavenly” by Harry Connick, Jr. is a swinging lullaby, performed with great retro style. It’s a love song about the man in the moon (who’s in love with the girl in the world) and it’s gorgeous. For other old-fashioned sounds check out The Puppini Sisters, who brind their inimitable charm to a new version of “Jeepers Creepers” and to a cover of “Sisters” that’s a must for multiple-girl families.
If you are looking for some inspired goofiness, try Ben Kweller’s cover of “Lollipop,”  or The Flaming Lips’ “If I Only Had A Brain.” Also, “Bathtime In Clerkenwell” is a bubbly nonsense song by The Real Tuesday Weld that’s perfect for tiny tub-lovers with a sense of humor.

I will get back to you with many more kid-friendly tunes from my library very soon…..meanwhile, start downloading.

If you’re not bent over a barbecue at 11am, come to Barnes and Noble at the Grove. I’ll be signing books and the store will make a donation to WriteGirl, a non-profit I work for that provides mentoring services for teen girls….

Winter is not very robust in Los Angeles: we just get a few, fierce rainstorms in February to remind us what month it is, and that’s pretty much it. Then we’re into what passes for spring.
Unlike other parts of America, we don’t really have serious spring here, just Spring Lite.
A moderate change in temperature occurs, then the air smells of jasmine, and there’s an occasional heat wave so the roses cautiously appear, but that’s pretty much it for the season’s indicators.
Now that you mention it (or did I mention it?) we don’t have much fall either. We have wildfires, and then it’s winter, which, as I said,  is less hot and often features rain.
What we do have, in spades, is summer. It goes on so long (last year til November) that you want to move to Seattle.
But then you visit Seattle and change your mind.
Anyway, like it or not, here it comes. Memorial Day is just up ahead and with it, several months of summer behavior, like barbecuing and going to big noisy movies and splashing in bodies of water.
Today, I’m loving the warm weather after months of sweaters. But check in with me in October. I may be singing a different tune.

I will be signing books at Barnes and Noble at The Grove on Sunday, May 25th at Barnes and Noble….and the good news is, a portion of all proceeds will go to WriteGirl, the non-profit organization I work with that provides mentoring services for teen girls.

So, come on down! It’s going to be lively…..

The LA Times book festival was, as always, hot, in both senses: it was a billion degrees and a billion people attended.

My favorite of all the attendees was a fourth-grader I met named Sophia. She was visiting the WriteGirl booth, we struck up a conversation, and she revealed herself to be an exceptionally precocious and prolific writer. She has published her own magazine, is writing six novels simultaneously (one of which is a story of Eva Peron’s interesting relationship with a middle-aged man), and is, well, a writing machine.

I was inspired by her inspiration. If I’d been that energized at her age, I’d be Joyce Carol Oates by now. I rushed home, pulled out my laptop, and got serious about my next book.

It was thrilling to see a child so passionate and motivated to write, and I hope her flame never burns out. Go, Sophia!

One amazing story in the news recently concerns a baby in Albany who tumbled out of a second-storey window (while her mother was momentarily distracted) and fell into the arms of a postal worker who stood below.

Talk about being in the right place at the right time! This story gives new meaning to the term ‘postal service,’ which most people regard as an oxymoron.

If you were that postal worker, wouldn’t you think you’d been designated an angel, at least temporarily? How else could you have been so miraculously positioned? And even if that ended up being your only angelic act ever, you’d get to go through the day and the year and your life knowing that you’d saved a tiny child. You might figure that you no longer had to work to get to heaven, that this event bought you a golden ticket. But hopefully you’d go on looking for opportunities to be angelic, in spite of your elevated status.

How about the child? What will she think, many years from now, when she comes to understand the divine intervention that allowed her to live past the age of eighteen months? Will she meet the postal worker, get to know her angel? Hopefully, at the very least, she will carry around a little shock and awe ad gratitude that will serve her well in life. Maybe she will keep her eye on high windowsills, checking for adventurous babies.

Now let’s consider the third party in this miraculous triangle: the mother.

I know that, although I’ve always had minor anxiety, when my first child was born, I began to worry in earnest. My imagination exploded with possible baby-threatening scenarios: SIDS, drowning in one of L.A.’s omnipresent swimming pools, kidnapping. Even now that she’s a teenager, I inhale when she hops in the Honda and exhale only when she returns safely from the madness of our city’s freeways.

Most parents feel this way, to varying degrees, and I’m sure the mother of the Albany baby is no exception. So how was it for her as she ran down the stairs to recover her child after the fall, all her maternal anxiety finally justified? She must have been gripped by devastation, guilt, hysteria and grief; she must have been insane. Then, when she burst through the door to find a postal worker holding her cooing baby, it’s hard to imagine her transition to ecstatic disbelief.

Now, some weeks later, how does the mother feel after her worst fears were realized and then so quickly dispelled? Aside from putting new locks on the windows, how will she respond? My guess is she’ll get the gift near-disaster gives: a greatly expanded sense of her daughter’s preciousness.

While this mother’s emotional rollercoaster ride is way beyond anything I’ve personally known, I feel the impact of her story. When my daughter came home from college a few weeks ago, I worried while she was in the cab to the airport, worried more whiles she was in the air, and worried again until she rang the doorbell. She got home safely; angels watched her every step of the way. And when she fell into my arms, it was not from a high window, but I flashed back to the baby in Albany, and I hugged her a little harder.

Drawing by Lindsay duPont