From Jezebel: A powerful story, great parents: Meet Jackie, A Transgender 10-Year-Old With Full Parental Support

NPR: Mark Bittman on Fresh Air (part of Fresh Air's "All You Can Eat Week")

Left: made my first pie yesterday! Along with fresh, fragrant, blackberries from my roommates garden, I used this recipe for the crust and this one for the pie, and these instructions for the lattice top. Gotta say, it tastes darn good.

Also: dried apples in our homemade (not by my household, sadly) dehydrator (a good intro to dehydrating here), and made my first batch of tomato sauce to eat now and to freeze for later deliciousness (we loosely based it on that recipe, but added peppers and roasted eggplant from the garden, plus sauteed onions).

Uh, confession. After all my planning and bragging, I totally forgot that I was supposed to start my "month of Bikram" yesterday - what can I say, September snuck up on me. But, I'm not using that as an out! After a week of truly lazy vacation, I took a 30 mile bike ride today, and I'm all set to hit up Bikram this afternoon. I'm pretty nervous to return to that hot, sweaty room, and face myself (in the mirror and on the mat), but excited about what 30 days of Bikram will look like...

My love for cranky detectives with deep dark secrets and tumultuous internal lives is well documented, but my most recent discovery (courtesy of the fine folks at Murder By The Book) has been a surprising and welcome change: The Coroner's Lunch is the first in a series about a 72-year-old doctor (now reluctant coroner) named Dr. Siri Paiboun, who lives in Laos. Wonderful writing and storytelling, a refreshingly unique protagonist, and the chance to learn more about a country I know very little about.

Excellent, hilarious, true: Why Yoga Can Be So Irritating (Although You Should Go Anyway!) (The part about "There are teachers and students who think flexibility is some kind of indication of how good a person you are," especially rings true to me - so much (self) judgment!) Related: I've decided September I will tackle a month of Bikram - every day for 30 days....

I've heard great things about Gun Hill Road, looking forward to seeing it.

I'm in the midst of a week long vacation (much of which has involved being unplugged, hence the lack of posting). I spent the weekend in Portland, eating a lot of good food, looking at a lot of nice stuff, drinking a lot of excellent beer, and generally indulging. Now, I'm back home, trying not to get bogged down by the "to do on vacation" list....So far I've been doing exactly what I wanted, which is sleeping a lot, and reading a ton - most recently Bel Canto, An Ordinary Decent Criminal, Borderlands, and Nemesis. (Image: I'm also drying peppers (outside), drying tomatoes (in the oven), and generally tackling some domestic projects I've had in the works for a while...more to come)

Some tips for fellow introverts: How To Get Some Time To Yourself.

"Slow gardening," eh?

From Serious Eats, this video: "Janus Youth Programs has operated community-based programs for children, youth, and families in Oregon and Washington since 1972. They have a network of over 20 programs includes, including Janus Food Works, which employs 14 to 21 year-olds from Portland. The youth get involved in the planning, growing, selling, and donating of over 4,000 pounds of organic produce each year from the one-acre organic farm on Sauvie Island."

And your untouchable face

Despite the somewhat off-putting title and the blurry pinkish color (it's the love!  Slipping away!) I recently read, and appreciated, The Love They Lost: Living with the Legacy of Our Parents' Divorce.  Without going too much into what I got from it personally, I will say that I think any adult child of divorce will benefit from reading the book.  Whether your parents stayed friends (like mine) or had a rough relationship post-divorce this book doesn't attempt to break new ground or propose huge ideas, but instead listens to the stories of various interviewees and provides comfort by normalizing a variety of responses to divorce.  The general gist of the book is that while many of us dealt with our parents divorces as children, new issues and realizations about the divorce can surface when we ourselves are facing decisions about marriage and children.  Worth a look.

On a not unrelated note, I also have been reading Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray by Helen Fisher. Dr. Fisher is an anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History and allegedly "explains it all in this four-million-year history of the human species. She demystifies much about romance and pairing that we tend to believe is willful or just plain careless. She offers new explanations for why men and women fall in love, marry, and divorce, and discusses the future of sex in a way that will surprise you." Unfortunately, I was disappointed, and often annoyed, by this book.

I'm obviously no scientist but something about the approach of the book rubbed me the wrong way and constantly left me feeling like it wasn't a legitimate approach. Fisher of just tosses things together - there isn't much of a narrative of flow, it's just "hey, here's a collection of different animals that like bright colors - that's why humans like makeup!" She seems not to talk about culture at all and instead only circles around this vague idea of an evolutionary impulse. For instance when talking about the fact that many species find partners attractive who are able to support them, she says that American women like guys who have nice cars, etc. OK, I get what she's saying, but that's a really broad statement...and a pretty surface one. Does this vary amongst cultural groups? Has it always been true, or have there been times in American history where it is truer than others? It's this sort of sweeping generalization that continually rubbed me the wrong way.

In addition, it's completely heterocentric.  There is a discussion later in the book about homosexuality, but why couldn't it be part of the first general few chapters about flirting and attraction?  Why are all the examples from those chapters "man and woman" and "him and her"?  Totally unnecessary and not reflective of the scope of sexuality seen in nature - both human and otherwise.

V.O.T.E.

I love this story of a long-lost painting in CNN.com: "300-year-long lost painting heads to the auction block." It reminds me of a novel I very much enjoyed, Headlong by Michael Frayn (2000). I may just have to reread that book, actually....

Via Gawker: "Roll Call reports: 'The juror who was dismissed from the criminal trial of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) to attend the funeral of her father in California admitted Monday that her father had not died, and that she went to California to attend a horse race.' Everything about the Ted Stevens trial was and is hilarious." I can't get behind all the Alaska hating in the comments section, but it is pretty incredible that someone would lie in a federal trial so that they could go bet....Sigh. Alaska. Wild place.

An ongoing discussion about being out in the legal workplace at AboveTheLaw.

"Top 10 Wired.com Yellow Photos, Decided by You."

I thought this was a rumor but it appears to be true...Palin prank.

Also, Hulu's got all the new episodes of one of my favorite shows/guilty pleasures, Bones.

Courtroom 302

I just started reading Courtroom 302 and, despite finding it hard to put down, I'm not sure it was a good idea. The book is the "story of one year in Chicago's Cook County Criminal Courthouse, the busiest felony courthouse in the country," and starts out with the newly tagged "criminals" in processing. If the account of this dehumanizing process (before they have been found anywhere near guilty) doesn't make you have some doubts about the way our criminal justice system works, I would be shocked. For my part, however, I don't know what to do with the book. I'm already upset about the criminal justice system, I already work two days a week at a pretty stressful courthouse, and I don't really need a book to remind me. So while I'm glad Courtroom 302 exists, I'm not sure how much of the book I'm going to make it through....

On The Page: "A Yellow Raft in Blue Water"

"A Yellow Raft in Blue Water" by Michael Dorris (1987)

I just read this book after years of encouraging from my mother, and on the recommendation of another friend. While I'm sorry I put it off so long, I also tend to think that books find you at the right times. And this was definitely the right time for me to find "Yellow Raft." Simply put, what an amazing book. It is definitely one of the best novels I've read in the last few years. In addition to being moving and very readable, it's also (as many a critic has pointed out) amazing that a man could narrate the lives of three women in such a truthful way. A powerful story of three generations, "Yellow Raft" is (to me) a book about the misunderstandings in families, the complications of relationships, and the power of understanding, love, and forgiveness.

The book follows three generations of Native American women living in the mid-to-late 20th century. Through the unique voices of each, we learn more about their secrets and the motivations behind previously inexplicable decisions we have seen them make. I'm trying to let this book sink in instead of plowing onto the next tome. Having recently been at a three generation family reunion, I have been steeped in thought about the ways that, while being critical of previous generations, we must also accept that we will never know the full reasons behind the decisions that shaped us.

Another note in conjunction with this book: Michael Dorris was married to the author Louise Erdrich and, sadly, committed suicide in 1997. Having just finished his masterpiece, it is heart-wrenching to think that someone so talented could have been so tortured as to take his own life. However, his book also shows how finely attuned he was to the lives of those around him. To be so aware, so bare to the world, undoubtedly must have taken a toll. What a complex life he led...