[sarah sosiak]

The Educated Imagination

Literature speaks the language of the imagination, and the study of literature is supposed to train and improve the imagination. But we use our imagination all the time: it comes into all our conversations and practical life: it even produces dreams while we’re asleep. Consequently, we only have the choice between a badly trained imagination and a well trained one, whether we ever read a poem or not.

-- Northrop Frye in The Educated Imagination

London Shadows

Neat. The current Google Maps aerial view of London features nice crisp silhouettes of the buildings along the south bank of the Thames.

Close up of the area around the OXO Building and Tate Modern here.

Update: Another close up, showing the HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge here.

The Future – 1 : LHC – 0

Story here.

The Sunset Tree

Friday night's sunset, from Strawberry Hill.

Remixed

Remix of the Creative Commons logo by Shepard Fairey. Get your tee by donating to CC's Fall Campaign.

Mmm...Q4 Food

 

Thanks to the bounty from a pumpkin picking up in Sonoma on Sunday, it's Squash Week at Casa Sosiak. For dinner tonight, I made this butternut squash with browned butter, and am about to start in on roasting my first pumpkin to make puree for pumpkin muffins.

Good Morning

Sunday morning with tea, a pecan bun from Arizmendi Bakery and the New Yorker.

Patio Lights | Norwood Club

 

From the archives. This photo's popped up on a few other blogs, so I suppose it's only proper that I post it on my own. The back patio of the Norwood Club in NYC.

Day at the Beach

 

I found this photo -- from a beautiful evening at Crissy Field last spring -- on my phone the other day. Now that we're deep into San Francisco "summer" (read: cold and foggy with a side of wind), it's living on my desktop as a reminder of warmer times.

29 000km later…

Update: It was pointed out that my photosets didn't capture some of the highlights of the trip, so now...with more words. (And a map.)

June, from just east of the Baltic to the middle of the Pacific, in pictures.

View Escape the Fog - 2009.06 in a larger map

Helsinki (on Flickr)

Where I fell in love with delicious cardamom pastries, experienced 120 straight hours of daylight, climbed a church to get to the park on its roof, visited the gorgeous Kiasma Museum of Modern Art, wandered the Finnish Museum of National Photography, ate a lot of great tomato-cheese-lettuce-on-rye sandwiches, and explored Suomenlinna, the Swedish-then-Russian-then-Finnish sea fort off the coast of the city.

Tallinn (on Flickr)

Where I fell into conversation with a local, and spent the afternoon wandering the off-the-tourist-track bits of the Old Town talking about heavy metal and life in Estonia.

The UK (on Flickr)

Where I spent quality time with good friends, went geocaching in the woods and accidentally found a film set, took a quick trip to Oxford, saw a Body Worlds exhibit, visited the Cabinet War Rooms, spent an afternoon in my favourite building in London (St. Pancras Station) and discovered the genius in using butternut squash to make a veggie burger.

Hawaii (on Flickr)

Where I spent more quality time with more good friends, climbed the rim of a volcanic crater tuff cone, celebrated Pau Hana on Waikiki beach, went for a moonlit swim in the ocean, visited a Buddhist Temple, surfed, body boarded and ate a lot of fish.