Fall comes to Browne's Addition

Well, hell. If I'm not going to write, maybe this can at least be a photo blog. Fall has arrived in my neighborhood, and it's a beautiful thing.

Bleeding heart

I'm working on an essay for Jew-ish.com that promises to be the most personal thing I've ever published anyplace other than here. It's about Jewishness and compulsive overeating, which seem correlated, though mostly through semi-anecdotal evidence and studies from quite a few years ago. I mentioned in therapy today that talking about my struggle with food addiction is a way of cutting through the shame of that insidious, widely misunderstood problem, and I think that's true.

It's possible that opening my heart in a piece of writing that the whole world can theoretically see isn't the wisest move. But I think there are some advantages to our tell-all Internet culture; one is that if the majority of people give TMI, it's no longer such a faux pas. I doubt anybody will decide not to hire me because they Googled my name and found me waxing philosophic about my Lexapro use or disordered eating.

It's certainly possible, but I think the positive aspects of putting it out there outweigh the negative ones. It's not like there's anything online that truly impugns my character. Talking about struggle, making it public, means it's no longer a secret. It also suggests a readiness to deal with things directly, to come out of isolation and embarrassment and work with myself as I am, not as I wish I was. That's why I chose my friend Michelle's recent picture of me as a Facebook profile photo:

My decision to take off my glasses makes this a slightly strange portrait, but what I focused on when I first saw it was its unsparing nature. It's easy to see my weight here: It's in my face, my cheeks, my chin. This is how I actually look, and while I'm not doing cartwheels about it, I'm trying to view this image with clear eyes and a peaceful mind. This is what I'm working with, and it's hardly perfect, but it's not a disaster, either. It's a pretty decent place to start.

Oberlin, day by day

The admissions office at Oberlin College, my alma mater, has put together one of its most impressive recruitment tools to date: an online "poster" made of gorgeous photos taken on or around the campus by an OC student. Click around and you get an aptly scattershot sense of what the college is like. Makes me want to hop in my car and road-trip it back. I'll be flying back at the end of May for my second cluster reunion, so probably best to skip the cross-country drive. With enough other Obies in the car, though, I bet it'd be a ton of fun.

Snapshots from the past

I scanned some more old photos today to make a Facebook album. The older I get, the more gratifying it is to share these images with people I know, and simply to look at them and marvel at how far I've come, and how much has changed. Check out the rest of the pictures here.

Gratuitous portrait of two dogs related to my mom's dog

Wilbur's on the left, Miranda's to his right. It's rare that they stand still long enough to pose -- especially Wilbur, who's only 18 months old. They've played nicely this weekend with Juliet, Miranda's mother, who lives with my mother. Seems like a joint human and canine family tree is in order these days.

Cat on a hot steel cab

Or whatever cabs are made of. Found the image at the Capitol Hill Seattle blog, which even non-Hill residents might enjoy.

Sign of the week

Reed snapped the photo at Uwajimaya, presumably with his fancy iPhone. Nothing says vegetarianism like halibut and pork!

221.8 pounds

That's how much I currently weigh, as of this afternoon, per the doctor's scale. According to the Body Mass Index, I'm obese. Then again, the BMI is a questionable tool, as a helpful Flickr set illustrates. Particularly effective are the images that juxtapose a confident, beautiful person with the "obese" label:

Cassie is "obese"
5'4", 175 lbs., BMI 30

The American way

Coke, a white picket fence, and a miniscule dog. Does anything say "U.S. of A." more than that? (Additional photos here; thanks to Sheri for the tip-off.)

A nice marquee shot

I love old-fashioned, neon-powered movie theater marquees, and the Guild has one of the prettiest in town.

Caption contest

Any suggestions?

Watch out, world!

The Forward article came out today, featuring a photograph by yours truly. Woot!

Everyday style

Kate introduced me to the new photoblog Face Like a Blessing, a diverse and gorgeous catalog of faces. Says its creator, Jasmine:

Some will be friends, some strangers, some fashionable, some not -- it'll be a slightly different focus from Pike/Pine, but I hope just as interesting and enjoyable for you and me.

Pictures from my mom's recent trip to Poland

She took them on her newish digital camera and uploaded them herself. I'm so proud!

In their natural habitat

A few days ago, Juli at Teapots and Polkadots posted some of the better pug pictures I've seen in a while.

Pepsi strikes back

Tiny dogs provide the best product placement. The wee chihuahua who loves Coke finds a worthy adversary in a Yorkie who's all about Pepsi:


Will this madness ever end? Tip o' the hat to Sheri Quirt, who sends me these images from NWsource.com's classifieds section.

Note to owners of baby chihuahuas

Please do not caffeinate your dog until he or she is old enough to understand the ramifications of stimulant use. Thank you.

Oh, and cat owners? Kittens aren't toys.

15 minutes

Guess who's featured on Jew-ish.com editor Leyna Krow's captivating photoblog? I'll also be included in a soon-to-be-published point/counterpoint piece in PresenTense magazine. Some other character will sing the praises of Hebrew school, and I'll voice a dissenting opinion. Good times.

As the world stopped turning

You've probably already read all about the P-I, and I'm so behind I didn't even get a copy of the final issue, but just in case, here are some highlights.

Sifting through the P-I's massive photo archive is a tremendous treat. I thought the following picture, of the Space Needle in progress, was particularly wonderful:

He ain't heavy, he's my father

During my visit to L.A. last weekend, I looked at some pictures I'd never seen before -- old photos my sister Lore brought out for us to peruse together. In one of them, my father is surrounded by his three children from his first marriage -- my half-siblings, including Lore -- as well as his first wife, Patricia. What struck me immediately was how large he was. When I was alive, my father was big, but I didn't think much of it until my teenage years, when I went from overweight to anorexic via a self-deprivation plan of my own design.

When I was at my most deluded and paranoid, I looked at people who were overweight and thought: I'd rather die than end up like that. Seeing the old picture of my dad this past weekend really moved me, and helped me realize how far I've come since the last time I visited my sister in California -- 15 years ago, when I was deep in the throes of my eating disorder. In 1994, she weighed me daily during my visit, as my parents and the growing number of specialists following my case insisted she had to. I, of course, hated being weighed and watched and told to eat what was in front of me. These days I still struggle with eating and weight and body image -- during my recent physical exam, I found out I'm back over 190, which is what I weighed when I unsuccessfully gave Weight Watchers a shot in 2007 -- but I've probably never had a healthier, more even-keeled outlook on those interlocking subjects, and that's worth appreciating, or even celebrating.

What struck me about the photo was that my father must have struggled even more than I have with his size, since he clearly passed out of adolescence and into fatherhood at an unhealthy weight. He never did what I did; he never fled the problem of being too heavy with all his might -- with such fervor, in fact, that he overcompensated, went too far, and ended up with a different, no less dangerous problem. Also, all of his children are doing better today than he was in that picture, and that's a nice way of regaining perspective when I give myself flak for overeating or not exercising enough. I've told several people lately that I still can't quite grasp how others, friends and acquaintances of mine, can actually enjoy exercise. For me, the act of exercising is still weighed down, so to speak, with middle-school baggage (being the fat kid, failing to do even one pull-up, all the humiliation that accompanied that kind of failure, etc.).

This year, I hope to develop a better relationship with exercise by doing things I actually enjoy -- softball, classes, bicycling -- rather than forcing myself to pay for yet another gym membership I can't afford and will likely underuse, or never use at all. I guess my heart broke a little for my dad when I saw that picture, but I was also glad that by the time he became my father, he'd lost at least some of the weight he'd carried around as a younger man. And as I try to get a better sense of what he was like at my age, I imagine it's inevitable that I would start to think of him less as my infallible, all-knowing father and more as a human being, flawed and well-intentioned and funny and good. He's been gone for nearly six years, and it saddens me that he'll never see me get married or have children. But if old photos and stories I've never heard can help me get a better sense of him, I'll settle for that.