Saturday, May 25, 2002
I just realized today that parts of the journal are broken, but I don't know why. Patrick and I went to Stonestown to get him a new pair of dress shoes, which he needed for the reading tonight. We chose a pair from the Kenneth Cole New York line at Nordstrom and had lunch in the Nordstrom Cafe: cobb salad and Nordy water for Frank, chicken sandwich and potato chips for Patrick. This afternoon at 4:00 PM was the first Lodestar Quarterly reading. Aaron Jason hosted our presentation of readings by Lauren Wheeler, K.M. Soehnlein, Katherine V. Forrest, and Felice Picano. Ms. Wheeler read several poems. Mr. Soehnlein read from his story in Issue 1, "Jones Was the Guy." Ms. Forrest read from her forthcoming science fiction novel. Mr. Picano read from a fascinating work in progress about the early twentieth century death of his uncle, Vicenzo Picano, and the resulting mystery surrounding it. About 60 people turned out for the reading—not bad considering it's Memorial Day weekend and plenty of locals are likely to be out of town. Lodestar Quarterly has 121 subscribers, and since our first issue went live in mid-March, we've had over 2600 unique sessions (visits). After the reading, Patrick and I went to dinner at Millenium with a bunch of our Lodestar Quarterly speakers and staff: Aaron Jason and his boyfriend Jamie Schindler, Daphne Gottlieb, Karl Soehnlein and his boyfriend Kevin, Felice Picano, and Katherine Forrest and her partner Jo Hercus. Millennium is a fine dining vegetarian restaurant. For our large party, they prepared a special menu with our event name at the top: "Lodestar Quarterly Reception Dinner". The choices were: STARTERS—grilled asparagus new potato salad, warm spinach salad, oyster mushrooms on the half shell (raw plate); ENTREES—Asian style Napoleon, phyllo tamale, spring risotto verde, linguine with artichoke and dill tomato sauce; DESSERTS—two choices: (a) chocolate cherry cake with peppered espresso cookie or (b) cacao nib and peanut-studded cannoli with chocolate tart, white chocolate mousse, chocolate truffles, and chocolate sorbet. Amanda was our server, and considering the size of our party, all our service was between adequate and good—not extraordinary. Drinks were Ty Nant sparkling water. One half of the table had a French syrah called Mas de Janiny (2002). The other half had Coteaux des Baux from Chateau Romanini in Provence (1998). A neighboring table had a tablecloth catch on fire from someone who left a candle on the seat of a chair and folded the tablecloth back but then left to take in some dishes. That was the most severe error in service the whole evening, and it did not cause as much alarm as you might expect. Listed on the menu: Chef Eric Tucker and Sous Chef Bruce Enloe. Everyone talked about their own projects, Lodestar Quarterly, and the Lambda Literary Foundation's recent change of directorship. After dinner, Jamie and Aaron took Patrick and I to the piano bar called Martuni's for a drink—a thank you for us picking up the check at dinner. I had never been to Martuni's before—it was fun, as piano bars usually can be.