Next Reading : Thursday, August 19th

featuring poetry from
Kim Gek Lin Short (Tarpaulin Sky Press)
Brian Fitzpatrick

and fiction by Rion Amilcar Scott

with musical guest TBA

8pm sharp!

http://www.theroastdc.com/big-bear-cafe.html

Big Bear Cafe – Counter Culture in Bloomingdale

Things you see when you step into Big Bear Cafe in Bloomingdale:

- tall windows and ceiling fans, giving the space a bright airy vibe
- a woman behind the counter with a giant Obama tattoo on her left breast
- wooden chairs filled with locals enjoying their coffee and the paper
- a friendly barista in Buddy Holly glasses taking everyone’s order and finding a minute to chat with customers
- glass bottle milk used in lattes from Trickling Springs Creamery (the only dairy options are whole milk or soy, for you calorie counters)

You will have time to notice these things because Big Bear Cafe is crowded. And while the baristas were busting through orders as (more…)

for the LOVE of: ECAC

check it:

benefit open mic hosted by a new member of the big bear team: alaina dopico

big bear cafe, 1700 1st street nw

august 1st

7:30pm-10:30pm

pay whatever you can. anything given with LOVE is the greatest gift

featuring:

RASHEED COPELAND member of DC’s 11th Hour Slam Team competing in the National Poetry Slam in August and the winner of the 2010 NUSPA for best male performer

come along and support ECAC!

Emergence Community Arts Collective(ECAC) is a community center on Euclid street. It is a true gem in this city, providing a safe and peaceful environment for members of the community.

There will be:

sweet smells

baked good

popcorn

RASHEED COPELAND

and enough love to get you through the week!

churchille and his birdhouses.

A SPECIAL SUNDAY CHERYL’S GONE…

Elisa Gabbert, Christopher Salerno, Chris Tonelli, & Julie Enszer

Elisa Gabbert is the poetry editor of Absent and the author of Thanks for Sending the Engine (Kitchen Press) and The French Exit (Birds LLC). With Kathleen Rooney, she has co-authored several collaborative poetry collections, including Don’t ever stay the same; keep changing(Spooky Girlfriend Press) and That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness(Otoliths). Recent poems can be found in Denver Quarterly, The Laurel Review, Puerto del Sol, and Salt Hill.

Christopher Salerno is the author of “Whirligig,” and a new book, “Minimum Heroic,” selected by Dara Wier for the 2009 Mississippi Review Poetry Award. His poems can be found in journals such as The Denver Quarterly, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Jubilat, American Letters and Commentary, Black Warrior Review, Octopus, Free Verse, Asheville Poetry Review, and The Bedside Guide Anthology. He is co-curator of Raleigh’s So and So Series, and co-editor of So and So Magazine. Currently, he teaches Writing at North Carolina State University.

Chris Tonelli co-curates The So and So Series and is the author of four chapbooks, most recently No Theater (Brave Men Press) and For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press, forthcoming). His first full-length collection, The Trees Around, can be pre-ordered now from Birds, LLC, and new work can be found in The Laurel Reviewand Fou. He teaches at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where he lives with his wife Allison and their son Miles.

Julie R. Enszer’s first book of poetry, Handmade Love, was published in 2010 by A Midsummer Night’s Press. A chapbook, Sisterhood, is forthcoming in summer 2010 from Seven Kitchens Press. She has her MFA from the University of Maryland and is working on a PhD in Women’s Studies. Her poetry has previously been published in Iris: A Journal About Women, Room of One’s Own, Long Shot, the Web Del Sol Review, and the Jewish Women’s Literary Annual. She is a regular book reviewer for the Lambda Book Report and Calyx.

Please Place Elbows Wherever You Like:

“Part performance, part dinner,

it’s unlike any other food experience in the city.”

-Express Night Out, May 2010

tickets: banishedproductions.org

“Suna no onna”
Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964

TNT WDC MAY
13 may 2010
at peregrine espresso
660 pennsylvania se
9pm START / $5 to pour / free to hang out

we’re celebrating moms at this month’s tnt!
bring your mom, a mother-figure, or any friend you please (mom always said to play nice with the other kids). we won’t make them pour latte art, we just like seeing new faces! complimentary beverages will be provided.

if you are competing that night we’ll be pouring head-to-head and moms will be judging!

RSVP (via Facebook): http://bit.ly/tntwdc-may2010

thanks to our sponsors this month: PBR and counter culture coffee.

Collin’s Latte

Christy is planting asparagus tonight.

She says it is best when planted under a full moon.

.

Cultivation

Since asparagus often originates in maritime habitats, it thrives in soils that are too saline for normal weeds to grow in. Thus a little salt was traditionally used to suppress weeds in beds intended for asparagus; this has the disadvantage that the soil cannot be used for anything else. Some places are better for growing asparagus than others. The fertility of the soil is a large factor. “Crowns” are planted in winter, and the first shoots appear in spring; the first pickings or “thinnings” are known as sprue asparagus. Sprue have thin stems.

White asparagus, known as spargel, is cultivated by denying the plants light while they are being grown. Less bitter than the green variety, it is very popular in the Netherlands, France,Belgium and Germany where 57,000 tonnes (61% of consumer demands) are produced annually.

Purple asparagus differs from its green and white counterparts, having high sugar and low fibrelevels. Purple asparagus was originally developed in Italy and commercialised under the variety name Violetto d’Albenga. Since then, breeding work has continued in countries such as the United States and New Zealand.

In northwestern Europe, the season for asparagus production is short, traditionally beginning on April 23 and ending on Midsummer Day.

Companion planting

Asparagus is a useful companion plant for tomatoes. The tomato plant repels the asparagus beetle, as do several other common companion plants of tomatoes, meanwhile asparagus may repel some harmful root nematodes that affect tomato plants.

hi it’s Collin (weird guy who works here)
i book shows from time to time @ big bear
tonight is very special because i’ll be playing this one:
BUILDINGS (me!!)/ CAVES (great psych pop from brooklyn)/  ZIGGURAT (tropical jazz noise from DC)

music at big bear runs from 7-10pm,
music must be over by 10.
hope to see you there!

Elizabeth Arnold
Dan Gutstein
Christy Zink
Maureen Andary

Elizabeth Arnold has received a Whiting Award and fellowships from the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Lannan Foundation. She recently learned that she has won an Amy Lowell travelling scholarship for 2010-11. Her three books of poems are The Reef (University of Chicago Press,1999), Civilization (Flood Editions, 2006), and Effacement(Flood Editions, 2010). Arnold is on the MFA faculty at the University of Maryland. She lives in Hyattsville, Maryland.

non/fiction is Dan Gutstein’s first collection. His writing has appeared in more than 60 publications, including Ploughshares,Denver Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, and Best American Poetry, as well as aboard metrobuses in Virginia. He has received awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, University of Michigan, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and other groups. He works at Maryland Institute College of Art, and prior to MICA, served as Visiting Assistant Professor in creative writing at George Washington University.

Christy J. Zink is an assistant professor in the University Writing Program at George Washington University. Her work has appeared in the American Literacy Review, the Washington Post, and in the anthology Electric Grace. She was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and leads community writing workshops in Washington, DC.

Maureen Andary is a cabaret folk artist from Washington, DC, and one-half of the duo The Sweater Set. Learn more, and listen, athttp://www.maureenmusic.com/

This Friday, April 2nd, the Big Bear Cafe will be hosting artists from the 52 O Street Studios for an opening evening reception of their work.  Fifteen artists will be exhibiting at the Big Bear, preceding their April 24-25 open house. 52 O Street is a local artist collective that has housed inner-city working artists for the last 32 years. They are fantastic.

Also, during the reception Trade Winds Spanish Wineries, headed by Bloomingdale resident Estebe Salgado Agirreazaldegi, will offer wine tastings to the neighborhood as we solicit community feedback on the potential wines for the BBC’s expanding menu. Estebe imports from select family wineries in his native Basque region of Spain.

When lilac leaves are the size of a mouse’s ear, sow peas, lettuce and other cool-weather crops.

When lilac is in full bloom, plant beans.

Once lilac flowers have faded, plant squash and cucumbers.

When daffodils begin to bloom, sow peas.

When oak leaves are the size of a squirrel’s ear, sow corn.

When maple leaves reach full size, sow morning glories.

When apple trees shed their petals, sow corn.

When dogwood reaches peak bloom, plant tomatoes and early corn.

When lily-of-the-valley blooms, plant tomatoes.

When daylilies begin to bloom, plant tomatoes and peppers.

When bearded iris are in bloom, plant peppers and eggplants.

Once aspen has leafed out, plant pansies and snapdragons.

When dandelions bloom, plant spinach, beets and carrots.

When forsythia is blooming, crabgrass is germinating. Treat for it. Also prune roses and feed your lawn.

When crocus bloom, prune roses.

When crabapple and wild plum are at budbreak, eastern tent caterpillars are hatching. Begin looking for and controlling them.

When shadbush blooms, plant potatoes.

When catalpas and mock orange blooms, sow cabbage and broccoli for fall harvest.

Plant perennials when maple leaves begin to unfold.

MidCity Paper; March, 2010

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Susan Tichy is the author of four books, including A Smell of Burning Starts the Day (Wesleyan University Press) and The Hands in Exile (Random House), which was selected for the National Poetry Series. Ahsahta Press published the best-selling Bone Pagoda in 2007, and the recently released Gallowglass. Her poems have appeared widely in the US and Britain, and have been recognized by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and by numerous other awards. She teaches in the Graduate Writing Program at George Mason University in Virginia, and otherwise makes her home in a ghost town in the Colorado Rockies.

Sergio Waisman is the author of the novel ‘Leaving’ (2004) and of the book of literary criticism ‘Borges and Translation: The Irreverence of the Periphery’ (2005). Waisman has also translated six books of Latin American literature, including ‘The Absent City’ by Ricardo Piglia, for which he received an NEA Translation Fellowship Award in 2000. His latest translation is ‘The Underdogs: A Novel of the Mexican Revolution’ by Mariano Azuela. Sergio Waisman is currently Associate Professor Spanish and International Affairs at The George Washington University.

Will Schutt is a poet and translator from New York City. He earned his BA from Oberlin College and his MFA from Hollins University, where he was a teaching fellow and editorial assistant at The Hollins Critic. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Faultline, FIELD, Harvard Review and The Southern Review. In 2003, he co-founded Verso, a culture and arts magazine based in Siena, Italy, where he was a contributing editor and translator until 2007. He guest edited the “Focus” section of the summer 2008 issue of A Public Space, which featured a selection of his translations of contemporary Italian fiction. He is also the recipient of the 2008 Gertrude Claytor Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets.

This will be one of Susan’s first readings from Gallowglass. She’s a great reader, so I’m incredibly bummed that I’ll be out of town for this one. Do come out and support her, Sergio, and Will (who is an incredible smoker of cigarettes. it’s really just fun to watch)

many of you may know clara mcginn.  she’s cranks orders out of the big bear kitchen every sunday morning.  long ponytail.  glasses. yeah, you know who i’m talking about.

what you may *not* know about clara is that she is a serious foodie and has an adventurous, sophisticated palate.  the girl really thinks about food.

i once listened to her describe the importance of having the perfect number of capers on a lox bagel:  “they add a really nice crunch.”

another time, i think her eyes actually swirled like pinwheels as she described an udon noodle dish her dad made for her birthday.

clara was working in the kitchen a few weeks ago as i made a batch of lentil soup.  when the soup was ready, i asked her to give it a taste.  (i was nervous.  i won’t lie.)

she immediately started analyzing it.  what spices were in it?  how did the shiitakes get that springy texture?  finally, after some careful thought, she approved.  (phew!)

she also had a suggestion:  “i think you should make a coconut curry soup.  that would be really good.”

maybe clara’s idea impressed me so much because when i was her age, i had never had coconut curry, never tasted udon noodles and couldn’t have cared less about capers.  however, i could have written volumes about my love for processed cheese products like cheetos, velveeta, and aerosol cheese.  what a silly fool i was then.

and so….this week’s soup is miss mcginn’s sweet potato bisque, in honor of clara mcginn and her epicurean ways.

with caramelized sweet potatoes, coconut milk and 6 different spices, the soup is creamy, complex and aromatic.  i kind of want to put some behind my ears.

a garnish of ground cashews and a few drops of sriracha seal the deal.

don’t thank me.  thank clara.

clara mcginn

This is where the BBC interns have worked for the past 8 months learning to bake.  Spike, Isaiah, Allie and all of the staff at Woodberry Kitchen are amazing.  Also, you can see Maggie Reid from Reid’s Orchard (one of our farms at the Bloomingdale Farmers’ Market) when Spike goes to Waverly.  Maggie is something of a local celebrity.

See the wood-burning oven in the background as Spike talks?

It is similar to what we hope to build this fall outside at the BBC.   Imagine cooking pizza next winter outside in the snow using an artisanal open flame oven.  Or drop your baguette, hallah, or ciabatta (difficult) dough to be baked by the radiant heat held in the stone.

We’ll see what happens.

Ficke!

One of the most courteous and detail oriented members of the BBC Staff, Matthew Ficke is both a fine barista and our general systems analyst.  His cappuccini are fantastic, and he makes an incredible grilled chicken and hummus sandwich that will blow you away.  It is not on the menu, but at times you can convince him to make it.  Ask for grilled onions.

Ficke will be leaving the BBC for a couple months in the Spring to hike the Appalachian Trail.  The rendition (above) was done by a potential new staff member, Eleanor, depicting Ficke coming to enlightenment on a mountaintop after he had mistakenly eaten a wilk vegetable.

Ficke, we will miss you, and we will celebrate when you come back.

our prodigal son..

Say hello to Ficke!

Regular hours

M-F (7am – 6pm)

Sat (7:30am-6pm)

Sun (8:30am – 6pm)

Concerto for 2 Violins & Cello

RV565 – Mov. 1-3/5

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Snow Hours (Monday, 2/8 – Friday, 2/12)

7:30am-6pm

M-F