What's Right with Boulder?

Everything else! Haha--I've just had one of the very best weeks of recent memory, connecting to my friends here, always good to do that physically. The altitude is mind-adjustingly extreme in the way I remember from having lived here for eight years. I'm very glad about that. California was lovely in its own ways--America is vast, folks who haven't been here or haven't been here a lot, or who have just been to one or two parts of it. But for some reason many of the closest friends ever have been from Boulder.  Is my psychoanalyst of 21 years my friend? Oh, sure, why not. He took a huge shine to Simon (9) who has been a total treat for me and everyone else who's been in his presence. Simon is one of the big reasons this trip has been amazing. My daughter Claire (14) is at a meditation camp in the mountains. I'll find out tomorrow whether it rained too much up there. Simon and I drove up to the highest road in America (well, the highest you can enjoy--another one, also in CO, is about 100' feet higher but you can't really stop and admire the way you can on this one), Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park (it's part of highway 34). It's like Tibet up there, aka tundra and tiny alpine flowers, no trees, then no flowers, but lichens still. Amazing. We chanted the heart sutra in the ornate and magnificent shrine room at Karma Dzong (I like the old name). Alfalfa's proves to be a lovely shop, and now I can afford it, just about lolol. I crippled myself financially here when I walked there all the time for groceries (didn't have a car, it was the closest shop available). Zooming around hairpin bends (or whatever you like to call them, switchbacks or whatever) has been great too. Thanks everyone, see you soon!

What's Wrong with Boulder, Colorado?

Kid-unfriendliness, that's what. What a shame, because I came here for the week hoping to have a nice time while my daughter is in meditation camp. 

I just posted this review on the Facebook page of a restaurant called Sushi Zanmai: 

I used to live in Boulder. I used to love coming to Sushi Zanmai, which I did almost every other week in the later 1990s. I've just had an experience there that has made me realize I can't ever go there again. 

I took my son Simon, who is little, to the toilet. The wait staff cleared all our food away. 

When I complained to the manager, she tried to make it my fault by saying that I hadn't left something at the table to identify myself. What? My wallet? My $1000 phone? 

She tried to tell me that I had been treated well by being given two items of food afterwards--that were part of our original order. 

Wow. I'm so sad. I can't possibly go to Sushi Zanmai again. It just goes to show how kid-unfriendly Boulder can be. You can enjoy this town in your twenties, if you're white. Otherwise, forget it. 

I have a whole week left to avoid going to my favorite restaurant. What a shame.

I'd like to point out that this has never happened to me before, ever, on Earth. I visit a lot of countries with Simon (9). 

(Oh, and the town remains sooo embarrassingly white.)

Frankenstein

This is the bicentenary of the publication of Mary Shelley's first novel, whose significance for me personally is incredibly deep. It's a foundational text of modern culture, so I'm not alone. I think I've been trying to write about it in pretty much everything I've done since 1988, when I wrote my undergrad essay on it for David Norbrook at Magdalen College Oxford.

I'm so sad that I can't be at the bicentenary celebrations in Rome this week. I'd been invited but I can't make it.

Italian Hyperobjects Is Out

Iperogetti is a word even more extradinary than hyperobjects and I think the lettering on the cover, which looks like cigarettes standing on end, is fantastic. Here's a piece about it in Esquire. 

Spanish Hyperobjects (Mexican press) is also out, right about now.

The Dutch translations of Being Ecological and Dark Ecology have been out since about April.