Well, yeah, of course: art. What is life but art? The Earth moved for me when I saw my first van Gogh. I'd like to visit The Louvre someday, but when I go to Paris, I seem to get stuck at the Musée d'Orsay ... or, more specifically, I'm stuck in the the room of van Goghs at the Musée d'Orsay.

Oh how I miss it.

I learned to read from comic strips, and the medium has fascinated me all my life: comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, and animated cartoons. It's sad to see how much of the potential of this medium goes unfulfilled. There was a great blossoming of comic book and graphic novel talent in the 1980s, and maybe someday I'll devote a web page to those glory days. For now, all I've got is a nice little funnies web page, focusing mostly on comic strips.

I seem to have a preference for dark food. I like my coffee roasted dark. I like my chocolate dark, too: in the U.S. I need a constant supply of Chocolove or Swartenbroeckx, both from Belgium, but what I really want is Cacao et Chocolat, from Paris. I prefer breads and pastas made with whole flours (otherwise, where's the flavor?). My favorite beers are stouts and my favorite wines are red.

I was born in the U.S. state named for a forest and grew up on Forest Avenue. My birthday is the Autumnal Equinox, which some say makes me a "wood nymph," with a special affinity for trees. I'm inclined to agree. Naturally, I'm also an unrepentant tree-hugger.

On summer evenings I half-expect to hear cicadas, but there are no cicadas where I live anymore. Instead there is the scent of night-blooming jasmine. Other scents of jasmine have been captured, in flowers clipped from the plant or in essences distilled into bottles; but this scent is unique to the ones that bloom at night.

Books are also really important to me, and I also read a lot of periodicals. I like to explore ideas, so I'm an avid reader. No time to read? Here's an idea: kill your television!

The first time I took care of a rosebush, I read some books and ignored most of the advice they gave, which seemed like pretty extreme pruning. Instead, I went with what the plant seemed to be telling me, and was rewarded with many wonderful blooms.

My Rose Photos on flickr: Alas, flickr implements things with JavaScript, so if you're smart and turned it off, you can't see my photo thumbnails here. But you can still click below. More >>

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. A lot of things attracted me to this area, but foremost among them was when, during my first visit to the area, I took a walk through the East Bay and met friendly folks of many races, living in the same communities. (I would later learn that Oakland is the world's most integrated city.)

San Francisco itself, of course, is well-known as a city open to folks with sexual orientations up and down the Kinsey Scale.

This is not to say that there aren't plenty of problems with racism and homophobia in the area. Indeed, there are varieties of racism and racist stereotyping out here that I didn't even know existed! Nonetheless, an integrated society is exactly the type of society I want to live in. Here's a good start.

I first became aware of typefaces when I noticed that a lot of books published in the 1970s had covers featuring a really nifty typeface, with interesting diagonals and some really fun ligatures (a word I wouldn't learn until much later on). The typeface was Avant Garde, and to this day I associate it with the exploration of esoteric ideas ... in paperback format.

In the 1980s, a handful of Queer Nation activists with a Macintosh and some fluorescent stickers came up with a very dynamic and distinctive look that was soon copied far and wide. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's a church auxiliary tea 'n' bingo newsletter somewhere with a masthead rendered in Antique Olive Bold on a neon green background.

The typeface used on some of the title headings on these pages is Caslon Antique, and I'm quite fond of it, even though it's starting to be overused these days. It was resurrected from obscurity by Earth First!, and now you see it on everything from coffee cans to yuppified neighborhood newspapers. I was particularly amused when the Sierra Club -- presumably attempting to regain their edge -- made Earth First!ish ads calling for the protection of ancient forests, featuring this very typeface.

There's a webpage about the use (and misuse) of period typography in movies. Clearly its author is way more into it than I am!

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