Nancy Rommelmann

No New York: Adventures in the Town of Empty

Go pledge. Adele's the bomb.

 

No New York: Adventures in the Town of Empty

Go pledge. Adele's the bomb.

 

Ristretto Roasters: Hot People Hot Coffee

Remembering Cathy Seipp Redux

Our brilliant and generous and irascible friend Cathy Seipp died five years ago today. We still miss her, for the small kindnesses and the big voice, the brunches and the opinions, and for her inimitable skill at bringing together what Matt Welch called, "the unlike-minded weirdos." Thank you, Cathy.

A group of us are tweeting #MissSeipp and Facebooking and blogging today, March 21, about Cathy. Join in, will you?

Below is a remembrance of Our MissSeipp, published in 2008 at LA Observed.

Today is the one-year anniversary of the death of our friend Cathy Seipp. I say "our" because she so impacted her core group of friends, of which Matt Welch wrote on this date last year, "[Cathy] deserves all the credit in the world for creating this community of unlike-minded weirdoes around her." Indeed, Cathy had put me in touch with Matt and his wife Emmanuelle Richard three years earlier, when I had some questions about health insurance. Cathy radically disagreed with Matt and Emmanuelle's semi-positive position on socialized medicine (Emmanuelle is from France), a view I shared, and I think she threw us together with the idea that we might talk some sense into each other; that, or give her the opportunity to sit us down as a group and scold us, something we all would have thoroughly enjoyed. Cathy also was my initial liaison to Jackie Danicki; they'd met through blogging; had some face-time in London, face-time I admired and wanted to emulate, and did.

I'd actually met Cathy many years earlier, when I was still reading scripts for a living. I desperately wanted to be a journalist, and so, would type out articles at home, and fax them cold to publications around LA. No one ever answered me, but one.

"This is Catherine Seipp," the woman on the phone said. "I got your article. It's good. Now, what do you want me to do with it?"

Cathy was at Buzz at the time, and I told her, I wanted her to publish it, whereupon she gently but pointedly told me, that's not the way it worked; you sell the idea, and then write it. "This way, you get paid -- or at least get a kill fee."

I didn't know what a kill fee was, but she'd given me a strategy.

Within the year, I was a columnist at Buzz, where Cathy was both a columnist and a contributing writer. She also scared the hell out of me. She had an opinion about everything: the LA Times (which she notoriously skewered each month, under the byline Margo Magee); writing for Hustler (yay); same-sex marriage (nay); the texture of the chicken at our monthly contributers' lunches at Maple Drive. I remember mentioning at one such lunch in 1995 that the magazine was sending Hillary Johnson and me and our two small children to Las Vegas, to write about how the city was becoming kid-friendly.

"That's a sin," Cathy said from across the table. I thought she was kidding. When she repeated it, I knew she was not.

During the next five years, Cathy and I became friends, then good friends. We met for monthly breakfasts at Kokomo at the Farmers Market, a group that included Hillary, Cathy, Amy Alkon, Jill Stewart, Sandra Tsing Loh, Denise Hamilton, Monica Corcoran, Kerry Madden, Emmanuelle, other writers in town for a reading or a story. We called it the Writer Girls breakfast, though I don't think there was any edict about men coming or not coming; I do recall seeing Ross Johnson there once; also, David Rensin and Luke Ford. Though perhaps there was an edict, as I can't imagine Cathy not having one.

To say Cathy was the center of this group is to state the obvious; she was the one who sent the email invites, to which she expected an RSVP. I remember more than once someone showing up who had not, and Cathy disapprovingly raising her eyebrows, and then gently if pointedly remarking that it really is better if you RSVP, so that we know how many tables we need. Really, it's out of courtesy for the servers.

Cathy and I knew each other as colleagues, as friends; as mothers. We both had daughters born in 1989, and before I met my husband in 1997, had for the most part raised them ourselves, on what we earned as freelancers. We didn't need to beat this point, but a point it was. I don't know if it contributed to my being one of the handful of writer girls whom Amy called, in June of 2002, to say Cathy had lung cancer.

"She only wants a few people to know," Amy told me, and that the surgery would be at Cedars. I called Cathy. She told me, she'd found out really as a fluke: she had asthma, and had not been able to shake a cough, and the doctor had decided to do a chest x-ray, which he looked at and then, promptly walked her down the hall to oncology. I do recall Cathy telling me, "The doctor said, if the surgery takes 30 minutes, it means he couldn't get it. If it takes an hour, he could."

Cathy said that when she came out of the anesthesia, she'd asked the nurse, "How long did it take?"

"Forty-five minutes," the nurse told her.

"Which you can imagine, was very frustrating." This was Cathy, the day after surgery, in her hospital bed, surrounded by her family. I'd walked into the room holding a poundcake, whereupon Cathy said, "That's so kind of you, and Nancy, do you remember my mother?"

Picture this scene: a room full of shellshocked people who know the surgeon could not get the cancer; that the prognosis is bad. And Cathy, making introductions, making sure the older folks have seats, sending someone down the hall for ice. Her composure was surreal. I think of it often, especially when I am being a weakling. I think of Hillary walking in with the gift of a peignoir, so that Cathy might look beautiful as she convelesced, and Cathy -- still covered in mecurichrome or whatever that yellow stuff is they paint on you during surgery -- holding it up to her chest, commenting on how pretty it was, and how thoughtful. I think of Jill Stewart, with Cathy when she was wheeled to her room post-surgery, telling the nurse, "You need to get her some painkillers," and when the nurses dillydallied, Jill charging after them down the hall, saying, "YOU NEED TO GET HER PAINKILLERS, NOW!"

And how do I know this story? Because Cathy told it to me; she told all the cancer stories; the funny ones, the terrible ones. Cancer was now part of the narrative, and we were not going to be namby-pamby about it; we were not going to wear pink ribbons and tiptoe around. As she famously announced at a party, "I just want to let everyone know having cancer hasn't made me a better person."

I have written previously about this woman's courage.

I think of her rather as a dance mistress in this. Her friends who knew about the cancer reacted with varying degrees of emotional spasticity: to ask or not to ask about the new chemo? Is bringing over more food annoying or nice? Oh my god, Maia? How much crying is not okay? But whether in person or psychically, one sensed Cathy clapping her hands, and saying, "None of this. We are not going to freak out; we are not going to lie on the floor and throw a tantrum. We are going to do this dance this way."

And we did. We nearly always did what Cathy wanted us to do.

This became a difficult toward the end of her life. She was very sick; some of us questioned the rationality of continuing treatment -- she was on her third round of chemo, plus radiation to shrink the tumors simply so she would not be in such unbearable pain. Maybe we should look into a visiting nurse? Hospice? But Cathy did not want that, and as Sandra so wisely said, who were we to question Cathy on decisions concerning Cathy? And so Amy took her to chemo, as did Emmanuelle, who also created a Google schedule called Team Cathy, so that people could drive, bring food, pick up Maia from the train. If you die in your 40s, and if you were, as Cathy was, the centerpiece of your group, you are surrounded by robust, capable people who are going to do everything they can to save your life, though we all knew, there would be no saving. There would only be attempts at comfort. I flew in from Portland for a week last Feburary to be with Cathy, to basically drink milkshakes with her and dish the dirt and take naps. Jackie came from London the following week and did the same.

In the weeks leading to Cathy's death, it was as though we -- the weirdoes, the writer girls, Cathy's myriad other friends, and the masses teeming over at Cathy's World, a veritable clusterfuck of folks posting 200, 300, 968 comments on whatever Mistress Cathy wrote -- became a buzzing hive. Thouands of phone calls and emails and blog posts passed in the days leading up to her death. Maybe this is the way it always is, but I -- and many of Cathy's friends, most of us in our 30s and 40s -- had not experienced the protracted death of a friend; we did not know how to sit on our hands; we had to keep trying, just as Cathy was.

On March 21 2007, just after 2 pm, I was at the public library when my cell phone rang. It was Emmanuelle, the third time we'd spoken that day, this time to tell me, Cathy had died. I sank down in a nook between the wall and a bookcase; asked Emmanuelle if she were okay; she said yes, but there were still things that needed to be done. Of course.

These things included to continue talking about Cathy, a conversation that reached such a din by the next day, Technorati listed "Cathy Seipp" as its #1 search, a fact we cheered and which certainly Cathy would have loved, though I also imagine her saying, "Well, yes."

Sandra was recently in Portland, and we spent time together, including a few hours at Ristretto talking about work, kids, and of course, Cathy. Sandra was at the hospital during the days preceding Cathy's death, a time that was -- no surprise -- attended, with various degrees of decorum, by the unlike-minded weirdoes and others. There are few people in the world who can tell a story like Sandra; the grand accents; the sweeping mannerisms; the spot-on caricatures were all there, and as I sat there listening, I realized, I had cried, but I was also laughing. And you might think, what a terrible thing, laughing at the narrative of your friend's death. And maybe it is a terrible thing, but it didn't feel terrible; it felt like a continuation of Cathy, and in truth I think she would only want; would most certainly demand that we continue the narration of her life, which includes her death.

I spoke yesterday to Amy, who said, "I find myself mentioning her as often as I can. I just want her here, and for people to know about her." Me, too.

 

A Love Story, with Pastry

Wherein I tell the true story of a chance meeting with Kim Boyce, a meeting that's led to continual laughter, sleepless nights, and one of these days, a bottle of wine.

 

So This Is Love

Last night, we had our all-staff-and-friends Ristretto holiday party. Usually, we do this at a dive bar, keep an open tab, get some food and karaoke. This year, it was not an option, for financial reasons; because we were busy opening a third location; because I was flying back and forth across the country, and because the week between Christmas and New Year's, Din and I were both hacking our brains out. The staff was fine with no bash, except they kept saying, "We can just do it at your house, it will be better, we will bring everything." And we thought, yes, great, but not this week, we are just so sick...

About a week ago, I got a text from Rachel Goldstein, our first-ever employee, now manager and art curator at the Williams cafe. She wanted to set a date for the party -- how about the 7th? I thought it was a little funny, not really Rachel's style to text, but I was grateful: it was on. The staff, again, kept saying, you guys don't have to do anything; we're going to bring everything. Well, okay!

Din and I really laid in very little. I made two spanokopita and some cookies. He bought three bottles of booze and some ice. And we had a case of cheap wine. And the music turned on. At 6:45, our crew started to arrive: Stephen with homemade salsa, Steve with wine; a few bottles of bourbon appeared. Alyssa carried in the best cake ever made in the history of cakedom. They were homemade salted truffles from Natalie and Rachel; there were homemade empanadas from Josh and his girlfriend Anna. Homemade bread, homemade gin, bourbon; a killer mac & cheese; beer. Wine. More wine. Champagne. Friends. The house was glowing. It was full, twenty of us crammed in the kitchen...

"Rommelmann! Come spend some time in the fucking living room." This, from Josh Gibby. Okay! We started talking about marriage; we were in Josh and Heather's wedding, about how...

Ting ting ting ting ting!

Someone was tapping a glass. It was Natalie, standing in front of the stereo, calling for quiet. Forty people quieted down. I noticed they were all already gathered around, and behind her, Dave Allen was shooting video with his phone.

I can't remember her exact words, so here is a paraphrase:

"We are here tonight at Nancy and Din's and we want to say thank you to them for having this party, and for having such an awesome company, and for treating us so well. We love Ristretto, and we love you guys, and so we got you something from all of us."

And then, from stage right, Rachel and someone (and forgive me, I don't remember who because I was so startled) walked in carrying this huge... something, covered in a blue sheet, and they take off the sheet, and it is what you see above, a beetle carved from wood that was part of an art show at Williams that Rachel curated several months ago. Din and I, at the time, had loved this piece, but it cost something like $1200, and there was no way, not with building out the new shop...

"We knew you guys loved it," Natalie continued, "and so we all chipped in, and some of the customers, too, Keith and Justin and Andre, and Tafv, too, when she was here, and we got it for you."

I don't know what Din and I looked like, seeing this, listening to this, but I can tell you what it felt like: I was floored, and flooded. And so Din and I took a moment to tell them what is absolutely true: yes, Din has a good idea, and he works hard, but we are nothing, Ristretto does not exist without these people, and that we love them, and consider ourselves beyond fortunate.

Cheers. We toasted some more. Jennifer told me, I'd lost her ten bucks because she'd bet I would cry and I didn't, and what up with that? We drank more wine, and ate more cake. The room was happiness qua happiness. It was a wonderful party, they made it all so.

1940s Paree in 2011 Brooklyn

Last week, with Tavie, taken by my best friend Sarah Knowles, in Bar Tabac

 

Bad Girls of LA Lit

Oh, you know you want to go

Michael Totten, Libya, and "The Road to Fatima Gate"

When I moved to Portland from Los Angeles, in 2004, I knew no other writers here. I had, however, been given an introduction, by Matt Welch, to Michael Totten, a blogger writing about the Middle East. Michael and I were not covering the same terrain, but nevertheless, met for a coffee at the then-rather wonderful Gotham Building Tavern, and made what might be considered small shop-talk. It was not until we were walking to our respective cars that we really got going, about how serious each of us was about the work we do; about sharing opportunities, and about what it was like to be a very ambitious journalist in a town that preferred its news within a 20-mile radius (or from wire service). A friendship was born.

Over the years, I have watched, in awe, Michael make his career: beholden to no one, on his own terms, and on his own dime, often with money donated by his loyal, many-thousands fan-base. We have, at least a half-dozen times, spoken of the books we are working on, how we want to publish them, how we don't, and when the hell was all this going to happen?

It is happening in March 2011, for each of us. My novel, The Bad Mother, is being released March 1. Michael's book, The Road to Fatima Gate: The Beirut Spring, the Rise of Hezbollah, and the Iranian War Against Israel, is now available for pre-order. You can read a sample chapter here.

Or, you can read one of the very finest pieces of journalism you will encounter, "In the Land of the Brother Leader," a piece Michael orginally wrote for the LA Weekly, about his time in Libya, a piece with special resonance right now.

Congratulations, Michael x 

Books, Books, Books, Ice Cream

Read Patti Smith's "Just Kids" while in El Salvador. Loved loved loved. Get it.

My review of Daphne Kalotay's "Russian Winter," from this past Sunday's Oregonian.

And my novel, "The Bad Mother," in on Amazon, in paperback and Kindle. I would love if you buy it BUT not yet: I saw some glitches in the first edition which, in the brave new world that is digital publishing, can be fixed rather quickly. I'll give the sign when we're good to go.

Until then, a few shots from El Sal. Yes, we were there for the coffee, but here we are eating ice cream, first, Leticia and I in Ahuachupan, and second Din, outside of Metapan.

 

 

Season of Sharing

 
This is Harper Bates, his wife Amie and one-year old daughter, Nari. Two years ago at this time, Harper, Din and I had recently celebrated the opening of Ristretto Roasters Williams, which Harper, an architect with Holst, designed. The entire process had been a blast, Harper coming up with concepts and then having us into the offices, where we would talk and tweak and where Harper, a ball of energy, would say things like, "Fantastic idea. I'm going incorporate that and we'll have another meeting when I get back." Back from one of his many hiking trips, including a gargantuanly long one, I don't remember where, only that Din and I were like, three weeks hiking and camping out? Better you than me, buddy.

It was following this hike that Harper took a tumble down a flight of stairs, he would later tell us, and that he figured, it was just exhaustion. He went to the doctor and, a week before his daughter was born, was told: not exhaustion, ALS. He was 37 years old.

I am crying as I type this because, it makes no sense. There's no reason, there's no fairness. When I was younger, it did not occur to me that these sorts of things would happen to anyone we know, because we were all made of Kyptonite. But we are not.

Harper and Amie are one of the families profiled in the 2010 Season of Sharing. If you can, donate, won't you? It's easy and it's the right thing to do.

 

Steve Dublanica, "Keep the Change" - Ristretto Reading Series, Nov. 11 at 7 PM

Several years ago, I received an email from a friend: he had a friend, Steve Dublanica, well-known as the Waiter Rant guy, embarking on a new book on tipping. Steve would travel the country, watching and working with people in different industries that traditionally include tips, taxi drivers in New York, croupiers in Atlantic City and such. He also wanted to work at a Northwest coffee shop, and how did I feel about him hanging out at Ristretto Roasters? I felt fine.

Steve came, he worked, we adored him. I told him, when the book comes out, we’d throw him a party. While Steve reads from Keep the Change: A Clueless Tipper’s Quest to Become the Guru of Gratuity, at Powell’s on the 10th, you can also come hear him read at Ristretto Williams (3808 N. Williams Ave.) on the 11th, at 7 PM. Perhaps he will read the chapter he wrote about us, in which he says such kind things, I blushed. Might we pour a little wine after the reading? Yes.

This event is free and open to everyone, as are all Ristretto Reading Series events... you are a fan, right? Not yet? Come on in!

Coming December 8: Win McCormack and The Rajneesh Chronicles: The True Story of the Cult that Unleashed the First Act of Bioterrorism on U.S. Soil

Andrew Sullivan's Best Practices for Bloggers: Honesty, Integrity, Corrections, the F-Word

via Thompson on Hollywood

Ristretto Reading Series: Kim Boyce, "Good to the Grain," October 29

The only thing that could make us as happy as having Kim Boyce's outstanding pastry in our pastry cases every day, is if she read for us from her spectacular baking book, Good to the Grain. And maybe let us throw her a little party.

So we asked. She said yes.

Please join us on Friday, October 29, at 6 PM, at Ristretto Roasters Williams, for coffee, pastry, reading and Q & A with Kim Boyce, pastry chef extraordinaire.

Want a preview? Check out "Afternoon Delight," a profile of Kim in Willamette Week (Oct. 27).

Kim Boyce is a former pastry chef at Spago and Campanile. While at Campanile, she helped Nancy Silverton with her Sandwich Book (Knopf, 2002) and has cooked alongside chefs like Mario Batali, Claudia Fleming, Lidia Bastianich, Alice Waters, and Anthony Bourdain. She has contributed to Bon Appetit and has been featured in the Los Angeles Times on numerous occasions (both as subject and contributor). In 2010, Kim and husband, chef Thomas Boyce, relocated to Portland with their two children.

This event is free and open to everyone, as are all Ristretto Reading Series events.

Coming November 11: Steve Dublanica and Keep the Change: A Clueless Tipper's Quest to Become the Guru of Gratuity

To Talk or Nor to Talk?

On the phone, that is.

Just saw this post, by my friend Amy Alkon, who weighs in on the pro-phone-talking side. She was commenting on our good friend Jackie Danicki's tweet, saying, she does not like to listen to long phone messages.

My feeling: I don't like long phone messages, but more than that, I don't like talking on the phone. The average phone call between my husband and me:

Din: Did you get the [whatever it was he needed me to have]?

Me: Yup.

Din: Cool.

If I had my way, and in addition to any work-related phoning I need to do, I would speak daily for a few minutes with my daughter, now living in New York; every couple of weeks with my parents, and three times a year with my two best friends, one in Northern California, the other in New York. That's it. I do have a good friend in LA (and he knows who he is) who likes the phone, and I always enjoy our conversations; they may even be important to our respective mental health. But I would love him just as much if we never spoke on the phone.

Amy's post was essentially asking, has the phone to you become obsolete? Can you get by with email and tweets and texts? The answer for me, is yes, with the exception of Skype, which I adore. Being able to see my baby girl when she's across the country is wonderful.

What about you?

Kim Boyce Bakes

We are ga-ga thrilled to have Kim Boyce, former pastry chef at Campanile and Spago, baking for Ristretto Roasters. In a post today on Portland Food and Drink, Kim tells Food Dude:

I was sitting on a bench eating bagels with my kids and Nancy [Rommelmann] walked by... I introduced myself and asked if she needed pastries for Ristretto.

Kim and I first played the LA name-game, and then I said, I'd love to try her stuff. I asked her to do some baking for Ristretto based on her fantastic pastry, and her gorgeous book, Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours. I was leafing through it one Sunday at the Williams cafe and happened to read her bio... which was when I learned she'd been at Spago and Campanile (the latter, my very favorite restaurant ever). I had had no idea; she'd never made a peep about this. I called Din and said, "This is like having Frank Sinatra ask if he can sing us a few songs."

Kim will be doing all the baking at both cafes, beginning this Saturday. She will be adding lots of items, depending on what she seasonal ingredients strike her fancy and what she wants to create. She pretty much has free reign, and right now, to me, the pastry cases look like jewel boxes. Come by often to see what she's making, and in the meantime, I have three words for you: apricot crumble bars

Bad Day Movie

Back in the day, back in LA, everyone was making videos and short films. I wrote "Drive Baby Drive" for Paul Rachman, and this L7 video (which is sounding freakin' good this morning, seriously) for one of my best friends at the time, Modi Frank. Modi has a huge body of work, including a film she made with Exene Cervenka, called "Bad Day," which I think they started in about 1987...

It's just been digitally released. You can see in its entirety if you hit the link. I watched a million bits of it over the years, during editing. Go ahead and download it -- there are some big big stars in it, though back then, they were just the people sitting in your yard at night drinking beer and smoking pot. 

An email Modi sent reads, "Viewers will be able to pay whatever they want for the download in order to view AND a portion of the proceeds from “Bad Day” are going to Gulf Coast aid organizations that help the people affected in the Gulf region."

By the way Modi: you look totally hot in that photo xx

Matt Davis Says Goodbye to Portland, His Way

Glad to call him a friend, and understand just about everything in his farewell-and-eff-off, Portland goodbye post, and even if I didn't, I would think it funny and smart as hell. But you know who doesn't? Portlanders, that's who. Funny.

Grand Central

Taken yesterday, by the inestimable Jackie Danicki, after we spent 45 minutes leaning against a marble wall in the terminal, drinking iced coffee and talking, mentioning,  more than once, how grateful we are for our work and our lives and the wonderful people we share them with. 

What Communism Wrought

Six or seven years ago, we were having, as we often did in our home in Los Angeles, a few interesting people over for drinks. We would drink in the basement, where there was a full bar, and I mean a real old-fashioned wood bar, with room for eight of ten people at the rail and brass nameplates where the regulars had sat. The house had, decades earlier, been a Shriners hall, and when they left, they left the bar. Anyway, on this evening, two of the remaining people at evening's end were the political cartoonist Roman Genn, and Stuart Swezey, who owned Amok Books. I wasn't there for the beginning of the conversation, but could not help but hear the midpoint, as Roman's voice was rising; this, because Stuart was apparently expressing his admiration for communism, as it existed in the former Soviet Union.

"You're fucking kidding me," said Roman, who grew up in Moscow, and as a political cartoonist, had numerous run-ins with the police state until immigrating, in 1991, at the age of 19, to the US. "Have you BEEN there?" he asked Stuart. "Have you LIVED under this regime?"

Stuart had not, but he would not be divested of his idea that communism was a beautiful dream, all that equality, and sure, it hadn't worked out, but the ideal...

"No! No fucking ideal!" Roman was saying. Roman is a very, very funny guy, and he tried, a little, to inject some levity into explaining to Stuart that he had no idea what he was talking about, a position I roundly seconded, believing then as I only more strongly believe now, that communism is the very worst of the worst*, that it will only and only can lead to oppression and mass murder. (For a quick tour 'round, try Martin Amis's Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million.)

I am recalling this today for two reasons: I am in New York, at my mother's apartment, at the breakfast table where I used to debate communism with my late stepfather,  David Levine, a lifelong communist and someone who felt as Swezey did. Always a great way to start the day. And also, because of today's NYT front page story, about journalists around Moscow being beaten, stabbed, having their brains kicked in and worse when they call out the authorities for any reason, at which point others in authority not only do not press charges against the assailants, but against the journalists. Want change? they seem to say. Fuck you. Here's a kick in the teeth instead.

*As David posits in the comments, Nazi fascism was worse, to which I will add, it was no picnic under Pol Pot. But aside from wackadoos and hate groups, you don't have people waxing poetic -- as they do about communism -- about how utopian it would have been if only those terror regimes had worked out.