Simply Urban Living

French Parents Say "Non"

2012-01-27T08:36:00.000-08:00

In a book review in this weeks Economist, we learned about Pamela Druckerman's new book Bringing Up Bébé, her memoir of having a baby in France and realizing that French children are much better behaved than their American counterparts.

"With a dollop of research and a big helping of anecdotes gleaned from friends, Ms Druckerman identifies two elements to French parenting that set it apart from what she calls the “Anglophone” version. One is that the French teach their children to be patient. Babies are not picked up at the first snuffle from their cots; children are expected to wait until parents have finished a conversation before getting their attention. This, she concludes, stems from a less child-centred approach, in which the adult’s needs remain at least as important as those of the child. Parenting is just one part of a French mother’s life, alongside stilettos and a briefcase, not the high- investment, all-consuming project it has become to over-anxious parents in New York or London.

The other element is that French parents impose a strict cadre, or framework, on their children. While her English-speaking friends tiptoe around their infants’ sensitivities—“do you think that was nice, darling, to throw sand into Ruby’s face?”—their French counterparts are unapologetic about saying non, or ça suffit (that’s enough). Ms Druckerman argues that this framework allows them to give their children more space. She finds herself stunned to watch parents in New York fretfully following their toddlers around the apparatus in a fenced playground; French mothers just sit on a bench and let them get on with it."

In other words, French children are raised the way American children used to be. (*With some culturally differences, obviously, school children in America were probably never served 3 course lunches)

Without exception, adults my age (we'll put them in the category of 25-35) are appalled at the behavior of our slightly older friends' kids...actually, that's not quite right. We're annoyed with the kids, we're appalled at our friends' behavior as parents. Of course, since we're in the age group that are only just starting to have kids we haven't had the authority to complain (except to one another) and we've been told again and again that we just don't understand what it means to be a parent. Except, of course, that my mother agrees with me and also rolls her eyes at parents today. "Oh my gosh," she says, "just tell the child no" or "Just put the kid to bed, you are the parent." For probably the last 20 years it has been prevailing wisdom that good parents give up their lives for their tyrannical children (case in point, I recently read a blog post that called parents in my generation "narcissists" for insisting that children conform to their pre-child lifestyles).

But while parents today are overly permissive of behavior they are overly controlling of actions. Children have every minute planned for them, stay at home moms must spend all day playing with their kids, and heaven forbid a child be able to walk a block alone to the park.

American children may express themselves freely but they have no autonomy. French children may only express themselves in polite, respectful ways but they have oodles of autonomy.

And now the sociologist in my comes out. I will give you my working on theory on why American parenting has changed so drastically in the last few decades. (Here it comes, are you ready?)

Consumerism.

Materialism (the obsession on material goods) and Consumerism (the belief that we can buy anything and should buy everything) have conspired to produce insecure adults who constantly seek out self-actualization but look for it in all the wrong places. In an age of non-stop advertising we are used to hearing the message that we are not good enough but that we can be good enough if we just have the right _______ (fill in the blank). We shop for the right clothes, food, movies, games, books, friends, religion, and schools. (For example, a friend who doesn't even want children is basing her house purchase on the quality of the school district so that her imaginary children can go to good schools -assuming the school district is still thriving in 10 years when she has kids the right age to attend).

Most of us can't shop for an actual child but we can shop for everything that will make a perfect child. We believe that with the right activities and the right accessories our children will be perfect and we rearrange our lives so that our sole focus can be rearing said child, whose perfection will in turn make us happy. Of course, we make ourselves miserable while we do it, but we've come expect the failure of what we already have to make us happy (which is why we keep shopping) so we just assume that is the normal way of things.

Like I said, this is just a working theory and I certainly need more time to think about it and its implications. In the end the differences in parenting come down to focus and priority (in other words, values). In France children are taught first and foremost to respect others and that they are responsible and required to participate in the social life of the family and community. In the United States children are taught first and foremost that their time and efforts must be focused on productive activity, they aren't taught to respect others or to partake of group time so when free time occurs they are socially maladjusted and badly behaved.

Fortunately, we can change all that.

On Getting Older

2012-01-19T15:18:00.000-08:00

"Legitimate manners owe their value to the fact that they manifest the rarest conditions of acquisition, that is, a social power over time which is tacitly recognized as the supreme excellence: to possess things from the past, i.e., accumulated, crystallized history, aristocratic names and titles, chateaux or 'stately homes', paintings and collections, vintage wines and antique furniture, is to master time, through all those things whose common feature is that they can only be acquired in the course of time, by means of time, against time, that is, by inheritance or through dispositions which, like the taste for old things, are likewise only acquired with time and applied by those who can take their time."

-Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (trans. Richard Nice)

Stars When You Shine, You Know How I Feel

2012-01-16T21:59:00.000-08:00

"There were no 'Northern Lights' last night but there was a big moon and a sky full of stars shining down on the glaciers and snow covered peaks. It was a beautiful night with a constant breeze that seems to have come from out among the stars and it seems at times that if you listen very carefully it will whisper secrets as old as time.

Pretty soon the moon and the stars and this breeze got together and filled me with a longing so great that it seemed I'd die of pain if I couldn't reach out and touch your Mommie. You aren't old enough to really understand what I mean but you will someday. Right now just imagine what you feel like when you want "num num" real bad and it isn't in sight and when you want to hold Teddy real tight -put this all together, double it and it is just a faint hint of how I feel.

Maybe it is a good thing to be apart now and then. Not that I have to be away from your Mommie to know how much I love her but a thirst now and then makes you know and remember how really sweet the water is.

I'm counting on you to take care of Mommie and keep her safe for me because there wouldn't be any moon or stars in the sky without her. The breeze would whisper no secrets and the warmth would go out of the sun. So you guard her very carefully and then you'll always have a pair of footsteps to follow, and if you follow her footsteps you'll grow up to be a sweet, lovely person just made for love.

This love is why we are apart right now. You see we want you to always be surrounded with love so you'll know how important it is. So now we taste of loneliness in order to share some of our love with you. We are happy to do this because you are very much a part of our love."

-From Reagan: A Life in Letters.

This is an excerpt from a letter that Ronald Reagan wrote to his daughter, Patti, when she was 21 months old. He was away on a trip to Glacier Park. I think it's one of the most beautiful love letters that I have ever read.

On Losing Weight

2012-01-11T13:36:00.000-08:00

Have you read the new, horrible article "The Fat Trap" recently published in the New York Times?

Well, save yourself the agony. I'll give you the bad news here.

If you want to lose weight you will never be able to eat like a thin person. You will always, for the rest of your life, have to eat less and exercise more than a person of the same size who never lost weight. If the always thin person needs to eat 2000 calories to maintain their weight, you'll only be able to eat 1800 (or something like that).

Some people are calling this news "a relief" -I guess because they feel vindicated about how hard it has been for them to lose weight...or something. I, on the other hand, do not feel vindicated. I feel annoyed. I don't want to have to count calories for the rest of my life, it isn't natural.

So, with my, and the world's, new found pessimism, I am officially not trying to lose weight this new year. Never again, I say, never again.

Instead I'll focus on trying to exercise so I feel fit and trying to eat well because I like vegetables more than most other foods. Geesh, you'd think I'd never thought of being healthy for its own sake before.

Whatever.

Pleasantly Plump,

-R.

Epiphany

2012-01-06T05:34:00.000-08:00

Are your Christmas lights still up?

Mine are. I'm sitting on my living room sofa, drinking coffee and watching the sun rise up over my bedecked balcony railing.

Today is Epiphany -the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles. I am a gentile.

I am a gentile and my people were notoriously hard to convert. Scottish and Viking we fought off the Romans and resisted missionaries for nigh 1000 years. We're a stubborn, wily bunch of people who think nothing of living in the far flung northern reaches of the world. We let nothing conquer us.

And I always try to remember this aspect of my heritage. The brusque roughness. The inconquerability. The determination to make a place for oneself in the world. To be free.

But, I hope my heart is more open than the one tradition has handed down to me.

I hope I'm open to seeing God's manifestation; open to seeing the Truth and the Light.

Instead of thinking on our stubborn refusal to see God, I'll remember during the dark days of northern winter that my ancestors burned fires all the night through. They lit candles, lit lamps, kept watch. They had hope the light was coming. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

Happy Epiphany.

The 7 Billion Series, #2

2011-11-19T20:10:00.000-08:00

A History of Rationing in the United States of America

In my last post I mentioned that I was intrigued by the idea of rationing as a potential solution to the distribution of resources (particularly food), but I really didn't know anything about the topic. I knew that the USA had rationed food and gas during World War II but I didn't know why or how we did so. How might a rationing system work in such a consumer driven nation?

Food has been rationed by the government only once in the history of the United States. From 1942-1945 various food stuffs were rationed to the population by the Office of Price Administration; a federal agency set up to mete out scarce resources during the war. The OPA rationing method was two fold, first the agency set price limits for consumer goods and secondly it assigned alottments for scarce items. But to really understand why the OPA used this method we have to go back to see what happened with food during World War I.

The United States entered World War I on the 6th of April 1917, three years after the war started in Europe. Food shortages were already a problem for our allies. In many places in Europe (including France which hosted a significant portion of the fighting and was also the traditional supplier of much of Europe's grain) fields had not been tended for several years. The war was being fought on fields needed to grow food, animals needed to pull plows and harvesters had been conscripted into the army, or slaughtered for meat.

A significant amount of food needed to leave the U.S. in order to feed the allied troops and the civilians in allied countries. Troops do heavy and stressful work -they need more calories than we do at home; I've seen estimates of 3,500-4,000 calories a day.

Rationing was not instituted in the United States, instead we let the market and individuals self-ration. Citizens were asked to cut back on sugar, fat, meat and wheat. "Wheatless" days and "Meatless" days were promoted (the current "Meatless Monday" trend is so vintage).

Scarce foods, those that were imported by ship and those need for the war effort, saw market prices soar, which meant less people at home could afford to buy them. The cost of living in World War I rose 65%.

A lot of economists saw the huge rate of inflation as contributing to the later world wide depression. So 20 years later when the fighting took up again, governments were looking for a way to keep inflation low.

And we'll talk about that next time. Stay tuned for "The 7 Billion Series, #3"

Differences in Winter and Summer

2011-11-18T13:03:00.001-08:00

It isn't winter yet, but we're getting close.

The weather has been unseasonably warm, so mostly we can tell it is almost winter because the nights are getting longer and longer. It's dark now by the time I think of making dinner, and so it is no surprise that I only want to eat quick, comforting meals. There is much to do and little time to do it.

Sometimes, when I think of winter drawing near, I picture the Earth moving through space; hurtling hundreds of thousands miles per hour toward an unknown destination. Spinning fast, and faster around the sun and seeming to move farther away each day. Tipped on our axis, we're in danger of spilling away entirely. It is in these moments that I can understand the superstitions of my ancestors who burned bonfires all night on the solstice with the hope that the sun would return.

The Sun from Mars -so far away (APOD.com)

In the spring and summer life and light explode outward and so we live with abandon, think of our own pleasure and dance away our nights and days with sangria and laughter. But later in the year the light begins to fall away. We begin to cling to it and one another. We draw in close. We sit near one another, near fires, near light. We drink in warmth and long for comfort. Our traditions become dearer to us.

And then winter comes, and with it the light comes back to us. We put away our fancy lights and our candles. the mornings come earlier and the evenings later. The snow comes and lends brightness and extra sunshine to the world. We're sure, again, that the light will come back to us, that the warmth will return. So, we begin to enjoy our selves again. We go outside, we play, we laugh. We forget that we were so afraid of the dark.

Winter is only a month away. We're getting close.

The Davenport (as my grandma would say)

2011-10-31T07:34:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite cartoonists, Allie at Hyperbole and a Half, put up a great blog post about Depression. It's sad and funny and most of all true! Everyone's depression is different, and yet, her post so perfectly captures much of my experience.

For example:

For Allie, the self-hatred really played a key part in her depression and it was there for me too, though in a more subtle way. The self-hatred I felt was masked behind overwhelming guilt and hopelessness, and the sure feeling that everyone else secretly disliked me.

Go read her entire story: Adventures in Depression

Pressure

2011-10-27T13:11:00.000-07:00

October 31st will be a milestone day for planet earth. Statisticians predict that is the day our population reaches 7 billion. You probably have seen articles and news stories about our population this year, everyone is talking about it. National Geographic devoted an entire issue to it. NPR is running an long term series of short stories about it. My friend sent me this article yesterday along with the note, "Wow, I'm just beginning to read this article, and in the very first 'Problem,' I find some good and then terribly disturbing advice."

Since I work in environmental sociology, I read the work of a lot of experts with a lot of conflicting ideas and information about the problems that come with our growing population and I have to admit I struggle about the appropriate solutions. My main struggles are: 1) I'm only an individual and change that will make an impact need to be systemic and 2) so often we humans enact "good" changes that cause problems we didn't foresee, how can we be sure that we don't do that now? Still, I'm the kind of person who feels guilty if I do nothing, so at the very least I'll tell you what I think and as we celebrate the birthday of our 7 billionth person I'll share some of my ideas about what we can do to consume only our "fair share" of resources.

Here is my email to my friend:

First, the issue of population growth is real but it is poorly explored in the first problem. The world population is currently growing both because of the birth rate and because people are living longer. Presumably, the average age of death will stop rising at some point, and that will give the population a chance to even out (though, in some parts of the world the death age will continue to rise for quite a while, because they're so far behind us). So, population growth is more complicated than he states.

Secondly, there are 1 billion hungry people in the world but it isn't because we don't grow enough food, it's because we have distribution issues. Meaning some people eat more than their fair share, and a lot of food is thrown away every year. As the population continues to grow and with weather patterns changing as drastically as they are, we could experience food shortages in the future, but right now we aren't. I don't think it helps to overstate the issue.

So, on to his solutions. (We'll leave access to abortion aside for a now -it opens a can of worms too big to handle in this email)

Individual women don't need to focus on having only 2 children, rather, the overall birthrate needs to be 2.1 (children per woman). Not all women will have children so some women can have more. However, it still may be helpful to think about policies that encourage low overall birthrates. In wealthy nations, increased education and career possibilities, and open access to reliable birth control, have lowered the birthrates without government policies being implemented. Some people theorize that implementing the same social change in other places will lead to the same outcomes, but there isn't clear evidence for that. Life expectancy also influences how many children people have. Where childhood death rates are high, people have more children.

To me it seems that the larger problem is unequal distribution of resources, pollution, and unsustainable growth of consumption. In the future shortages could in fact mean that we go back to a rationing system for our consumption, unfortunately, I don't see how this could be implemented on an international scale. Also, we're overworking our resources currently, and that could mean that we eventually hit a "peak" in production, after which we produce less.

Distribution problems cannot be fixed only through individual effort, because the distribution of resources is a system of complex components it would require changes in how the system is conceived of and operated at a community, corporate, national and international level. It will also require rethinking the values behind our current system -the concept of shalom seems ultra important here. The current system hurts not only the have-nots, but the haves (us) too. Having too much isn't good for us, and humans aren't good at saying no to what's offered to them. My example of this is that the CU cafeteria serves dessert at every meal. There is only so much an individual can do to not eat it -wouldn't it be so much easier to offer dessert only at supper? People could still have it and they wouldn't be tempted to over-indulge. In a larger way, if our society didn't offer so much food then we wouldn't be tempted to eat it. There is a balance between individual responsibility and societal responsibility.

I'm intrigued by the rationing idea. Maybe I'll figure out how much people were able to consume during WWII and then try to follow those limits as part of my Advent devotions.

At What Price, Halloween?

2011-10-20T18:36:00.000-07:00

Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you.

I read an article this week about modern day slavery -and I was unhappy to learn that I have been unwittingly supporting it. The slaves are workers in (brace yourself) chocolate plantations in Africa. American companies don't own these plantations, but they do know that the vast majority of their cocoa is coming is being produced by these laborers.

Children are being bought and sold.

Kristen Howerton at www.good.is wrote about this with more information and compassion that I am able to. Check out her post:
http://www.good.is/post/child-slaves-made-your-halloween-candy-stop-buying-it/

Here is more information:
http://www.slavefreechocolate.org/index.html

Stop buying chocolate.

I suppose the upside is that I'll lose weight if I cut back on how much chocolate I eat.

Feast or Famine -Social Structures in the Food Supply

2011-10-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

Humans don't eat alone.

Oh, I've been known to grab a snack on the go or eat a meal in my car but that kind of eating is always hurried, empty and a tad shameful.

No, no, humans eat together. We eat meals together, we prepare food together, and we grow, manufacture and sell food together. We have complex formal rules to regulate our ways of eating and we have hidden subconscious instincts. Though Americans might deny it, we are above all social creatures. We're meant to live together, we're meant to influence each other, and we're meant to be influenced by others. It is not good for man to be alone.

I was at a lecture this past week about feasting and famine and, as happens at most lectures, I was presented with more statistics than I could process. BUT, I do remember one set of data: we produce 17% more calories per person today than we did 30 years ago --that's despite the exponentially growing population. For all the faults of our food system, it is truly amazing that food production has increased so much.

I already knew that we have so many starving people because of distribution issues, but to hear that statistic brought the idea fresh to my mind. I live in a country where 2/3 of adults are overweight and around the world people are dying of hunger because we kept the food instead of sending it to them.

The same evening on the news there was a report about a long term study of 10,000 people who had lost significant weight and kept it off. There was a long list of things that they had done for the past five years to maintain their success. They wrote down everything they ate and recorded calories and grams of fat. They kept their diets simple and thus easier to control. They did several other onerous activities. And you know, good for them but I can't help thinking that we aren't meant to live that way. Humans shouldn't have to write down every piece of food they put in their mouths.

Then it occurred to me that we wouldn't have to go to such extreme measures if, instead of having this food presented to us, it was shipped to the people who are dying of hunger. Both in the U.S. and abroad the food issues are centered around distribution.

Now, I'm not trying to say that there is no individual responsibility (well, I am kind of); I'm just saying that biologically we're driven to eat when food is available and culturally we are taught to eat when someone presents us with food. What happens when I eat in the cafeteria at school? I eat a heaping plate of food, I go back for dessert, I don't finish eating until the other people with me are done eating.

Maybe we need to think about tackling the obesity epidemic systemically. Let's leave the government out of the discussion for now and work on affecting change in our own social networks. For starters, the cafeteria could put out dessert only at supper (rather than at breakfast, lunch, and supper). When we plan church potlucks we could plan reasonable meals. When we have parties we could supply moderate amounts of snacks instead of gluts of junk food. Doing these few things barely scratch the surface of the problem, but they are a start. Because the other part of the lecture was this: Americans rarely celebrate feasts because they are meaningless to us, we eat too much food everyday to care about special meals.

Food for Thought

2011-09-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

This evening a friend sent me an article about a recently published study linking ADHD to the consumption of certain pesticides. I've seen other studies making such links in the past and the fact that the results seem to be duplicating has me worried.

I eat mostly organic, so I am not particularly concerned about future offspring. I'm worried because if pesticides are a cause of ADHD there are profound ethical implications. Organic foods are often more expensive than non-organics, and they are harder to come by. The poorest of us often don't have the luxury of consuming organics, they also have less access to treatment for behavioral disorders and less access to support systems that can help them have a successful education with a learning disorder. And, of course, having a less successful education affects their future earning capabilities placing their children at greater risk to continue the cycle. Let's not kid ourselves, the poorest people in our country are minority peoples; institutional racism at it's finest.

This has me thinking about how much I spend on food because, frankly, I have no idea. We don't budget our food (we work better buy budgeting our "must pay bills" and our savings and then using the rest however we want). To complicate the budget, we tend to buy food in bulk and we put up a lot of food in the summer and fall meaning we buy less in the winter. This makes it difficult to figure out how much it costs for us to eat the way we do. I'd like to figure this out, however, so that I can make a meaningful comparison between my budget and the U.S. Government's estimates of how much someone my age spends on food. Any suggestions?

From the Farm

2011-09-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

I must apologize about my lack of farm/CSA updates. We started traveling and I stopped blogging as frequently and I stopped writing down what I was getting from farm...which I do every year. But, I am back on the bandwagon!

This week from the CSA

1 bunch kale

1 huge bunch of celery, including the leafy tops

1 head broccoli

3/4 lb salad greens

1 bunch parsley

1 huge eggplant

1 bell pepper

2 cucumbers

2 zucchini/summer squash

4 small tomatoes (stripeys)

3 regular sized red tomatoes

5 heirloom tomatoes (very large)

1/2 qt dragon tongue beans

1/2 qt okra

1/2 qt tomatillas

basil

8 hot peppers

8 8" stalks of cosmos (flowers)

What else we've been getting (in addition to more of what is listed above):
green beans, wax beans, cherry tomatoes, onions, garlic, potatoes, kohlrabi, chard, beets, radishes, carrots, cabbage, and weird herbs -like hyssop!

My sweet husband is in the kitchen right now, processing veggies for the freezer. What a guy! And later tonight I am making and canning salsa! I've never made salsa before but I have high hopes. We still have so many canned tomatoes from last year that I don't want to process more of them unless I do something different, hence the salsa. I really want to make chutneys this week but since I'm starting class, prepping to teach a class, and leading a study at church, AND going camping this weekend...well, the chutney seems like a bit of a dream, doesn't it?

Weaknesses

2011-08-30T12:04:00.000-07:00

If there is one problem I have with my career choice it is my continued inability to not take criticisms of my writing/arguments personally. I get emotionally attached to what I write but criticism is part of my job, something that I work with everyday. I try to think of my writing as a dialogue with others but that only takes me so far because I am very uncomfortable with contentious discussions. I don't even like to read arguments that I've heard before and know I disagree with because I tend to get angry with them! I can't afford to get angry about this sort of stuff.

How do I get past this problem?

Cool Summer Morning

2011-08-11T06:57:00.000-07:00

This morning has been the first cool morning of the summer. When I came out to the living room I had to turn around and go get a sweater. I couldn't bring myself to make a smoothie (brrr!).

I made myself a cup of tea while I checked my email.

I looked at lovely pictures of blueberry butter that a friend made and I imagined a joyful picture of a crumby, jam-sticky table surrounded by children laughing and eating good things.

The towels are hanging on the line and the sun is just starting to hit them, they should be dry soon.

And I am bundled under an afghan, writing away.

7 Quick Takes Friday

2011-07-29T07:37:00.000-07:00

The idea of 7 Quick Takes Friday comes from blogger Jennifer Fulwiler, who hosts it weekly at her site, Conversion Diary. (and I can further thank my friend Pam over at Mosaicsynapse for introducing me to the idea)

***** 1 *****

I've finally memorized the key strokes needed to type a few staple accent marks. The acute accent over an e (é), which is alt + 0233, and the cédille (ç), which is alt + 0231. I learned about the alt codes some time ago but for some reason, on my computer, they only work if I use the number key pad. Now I can write things like, "I sautéed some green beans for a Salad Niçoise."

***** 2 *****

Speaking of salads and green beans, here is the farm veg for the week!

***** 3 *****

Thursday night for dinner I made a beet and corn panzanella salad. Nothing could have been simpler or more delicious! I roasted three beats and peeled them, cooked some frozen corn, tore up a few basil leaves and tossed them together. Meanwhile I tore up a loaf of sourdough and made croutons and Husband made a dressing of honey, lemon juice, garlic and olive oil. Toss to combine and serve. It was a big hit with everyone.

***** 4 *****

Have you heard of Tim DeChristopher? He's my hero. He is a Utah man who went to an auction to lease federal lands for new oil drilling. He was going to protest, but when he got there he was asked if he would like to register as a bidder and he said yes. The Bush administration was pushing through this auction last minute and the public had not had the recourse required to officially protest the sale, and as DeChristopher sat in the room, listening to the parcels of land sell for ridiculously low prices ($12 an acre), he looked up into the spectator gallery and saw a woman from his church crying; he decided then that he would drive up the bids, and in the end he bought land that he could not pay for. He was arrested and questioned, he raised money for the down payment on the parcels he won but was not allowed to pay for them. Months later his lawyer got a call from a journalist who wanted to tell him that he had heard from an oil company person that DeChristopher was going to be indicted. Yes, the oil companies had the inside scoop, this is right before the gov't oil regulators in Washington DC were discovered to have been accepting bribes of sex and drugs from the oil companies. The auction that DeChristopher took part in was later ruled invalid and none of the land has been developed. This week DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in prison for his act of Civil Disobedience. You can read more about this story from this 2008 Salt Lake Tribune article and you can also read Tim DeChristopher's moving statement to the court, read at his sentencing.

***** 5 *****

So, our elected officials in Washington are pretty much schmucks, aren't they? No, I'm not still referring to the miscarriage of justice that is the DeChristopher case, I'm referring to the ridiculous tomfoolery that's keeping our politicians from raising the debt ceiling. I'm with McCain on this one, our politicians are all hobbits.

***** 6 *****

I am reading "Cinderella Ate my Daughter", which is about the rise of girlie girl culture in the last twenty years. Now-a-days, all little girls are princesses, which is super annoying (to me, at least, and also to Peggy Orenstein). My future non-princesses and I are going to have a little heart to heart about non-democratic governments and the lackluster role of princesses in European politics -something to the effect of, "you aren't a princess, you are a responsible and patriotic citizen of a republic where you have a responsibility to be part of the public discourse and help ensure that the government maintains the freedom of all people, because we are all created equal."

***** 7 *****

As for a more serious reason why "princess" culture frightens me -I see its rise co-evolve along with the frightening and disturbing facts brought to light in the the Newsweek article, "The John Next Door." Please, no matter who you are, read this article.

Pierre Bourdieu and the Costume of Academia

2011-07-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

I have been searching for a backpack to replace the hunter green bag I have been carrying since the late 1990's. The bag is in great shape (other than the leftover-from-high-school markered graffiti on the front pocket) but the zipper can't hold up to the weight of what I cram into it, causing it to pull apart and dump books all over the ground at inopportune times. I'm afraid one of these days it's going to dump out my computer and I'll be up the creek, so to speak.

Choosing a bag is harder than I thought it would be because I am trying to find both form and function. One shoulder bags look more professional but they strain your back when you have to walk two miles across campus. Backpacks are comfortable and easy but make you look like a student.

Enter the bag that I have my eye on;

http://www.llbean.com/llb/shop/54122?feat=816-CL1

This bag appeals to me because I "have a fetish for historical authenticity", as I suspect many academics do. Think about the stereotypical image of an academic -they (probably "he") is wearing a tweed jacket and loafers, is a little bit eccentric, and spends his days in an office surrounded by books on dark wood shelves. It appears that he's popped right out of an Edwardian safari. The two other professor stereotypes I can think of are: 1) the hip cutting edge professor with lots of gadgets who bucks trends and is always in trouble with the administration (aren't all professors always in trouble with the administration?), and 2) the very put together and professional professor who frightens you with their perfectionism and demanding brilliance.

But here is why I think the historically centered image remains the strongest for us, the appearance of academia as being long established gives it, culturally, the appearance of legitimacy and authority. Looking historic symbolizes the academic's right to hold and give out information. Pierre Bourdieu says of time:

Paradoxically, precocity is an effect of seniority: aristocracy is the form par excellence of precocity since it is nothing other than the seniority which is the birthright of the offspring of ancient families...The embodied cultural capital of the previous generations functions as a sort of advance (both a head-start and a credit) which, by providing from the outset the example of culture incarnated in familiar models, enables the newcomer to start acquiring he basic elements of the legitimate culture...Legitimate manners owe their value to the fact that they manifest the rarest conditions of acquisition, that is a social power over time which is tacitly recognized as the supreme excellence: to possess things from the past, i.e., accumulated, crystallized history, aristocratic names and titles, chateaux or 'stately homes', paintings and collections, vintage wines and antique furniture, is to master time, through all those things whose common feature is that they can only be acquired in the course of time, by means of time, against time, that is, by inheritance or through dispositions which, like the taste for old things, are likewise only acquired with time and applied by those who can take their time.

Living in the City in the Summer

2011-07-27T09:24:00.000-07:00

Hospitality. That's what our friends modeled to us last week when they invited us, and our cat, to come stay with them during the heat wave. We stay comfortable in our un-air-conditioned apartment until the temperatures reach over 90 degrees and last week, and I'm sure you all know, we spent two days hovering near 100. We spent two days living in community, sharing food, chores and the bathroom shower schedule. It was a nice little break from our ordinary routine and I am very grateful, especially because their cats were not thrilled to Baron as a guest.

Our building has a beautiful court yard, which our balcony looks out on. In the evenings it is in full shade and very enjoyable. The building, which has been making extensive improvements to the grounds, has recently put out lawn chairs and cafe tables. We've been eating al fresco frequently. A great way to stay comfortable until the evening temperatures cool the house.

I'm interested in exploring ways to keep cool while using less energy in our homes and would love to hear suggestions!

Real Things

2011-07-26T09:37:00.000-07:00

Years ago, I had what I called a "pretend" job. I worked full time at it, and it was work that needed to be done, but was intensely unsatisfying because it existed in state of meaninglessness. I spent all day fixing errors and merging duplicate records in an online database. The organization I worked for had moved to online files, immanently useful and easier to use, but because of human error in various departments, there were always new mistakes in the system, and someone had to fix those mistakes. Do you see why I called it a "pretend" job? I didn't actually work with real things -not even real ideas. This wasn't because I worked with computers, I believe that technology is very much a real thing. My job wasn't real because it was formed out of the empty space between creating and using a product. I created nothing and I used nothing. What did I do? I'm not sure.

Today, when I examine our culture I see more and more people caught in that empty space where nothing is real. We have become so occupied with convenience that we begin to find our activities meaningless. We eat food that isn't real (it was created in a lab and produced in a factory) in front of the TV or driving our cars, we eat so fast we barely realize we're even doing it. We buy greeting cards for birthdays and sign our names at the bottom without writing one heartfelt word, letting someone else speak our emotions and thoughts for us (do we even feel or think?). We wash our laundry and throw it back in the laundry basket, digging through it all week to find what we need. We are so busy, too busy to cook, to write to friends, to take care of our homes. But what are we busy doing? I'm not sure.

Create something this week. Make dinner from scratch, write a letter to a friend, fold your laundry and put it away (maybe tuck some nice smelling soap or potpourri in the drawer). I guarantee, if you make something with your hands and with your thoughts, you feel more alive. You'll feel like you've done a real thing.

Beat-the-Heat-Library-Week

2011-07-19T07:08:00.000-07:00

There is a heat wave hitting the Midwest and since we don't have air conditioning I have left the comforts of my living room for the free cool air of the public library. I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to find the best place to work: not too loud, not so quiet that I felt bad using my computer (quiet reading room? no.), and preferably somewhere I could drink water with out being afraid a librarian was going to sneak up behind me and kick me out. And I found the perfect area! It is near the periodicals reading room, it also is very echo-y but I brought my headphones today to listen to Pandora or NPR. Also, the periodicals reading room at our library is very nice. There is a big fire place (not on today, thank goodness) lots of big tables and lots of comfy chairs. I stopped in to read the New York Times this morning.

Since I scoped this all out yesterday I was able to make a bee line right for it this morning, which reminded me a lot of going to work in the morning, something I haven't felt in about two years. But it was actually kind of nice.

A stampede of children just zoomed past me, that is not like being at work. Apparently there is some kind of circus performing in the auditorium across the way this morning. This should be an interesting day.

Friday's Musings

2011-07-08T14:35:00.000-07:00

***** 1 *****
We celebrated my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary this weekend. They were married in 1961 -can't believe that was 50 years ago. I remember celebrating the 45th anniversary of the end of World War II, and now we're coming up on the 65th. And 1990 was 21 years ago, and I am almost 30.

***** 2 *****
My grandmother thinks that the barrage of horrible storms rocking the world are the result of sin, and I think she may be right. Only when she says sin she means homosexuality and abortion and people drinking; when I say sin I mean greed and materialism and loving mammon. The punishment fits the crime, the world is destroyed because we destroyed it.

***** 3 *****
I am reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. It was recommended to me long ago but I am only just getting around to reading it. I'm trying to read more books and finish what I read, as I have several half-read books laying around my house. I've been chastised into changing my ways so that I don't get popcorn brain.

***** 4 *****
Have you heard about Lisa Bloom's new book, Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumb-downed World? I'm in love with it right now, and all I've read of it is the Amazon preview. I discovered Bloom through her "How to Talk to Little Girls" article that has been floating around the internet.

***** 5 *****
One of my mom's cousins uncovered their great-grandmother's memoirs, which are just a few pages about her childhood and extended family that she jotted down in the late 70's, just before she was incapacitated by a stroke. Grace Griffin was from Scotland, a Rattray by birth and she and her family moved to the United States when she was a teenager. I especially love her accounts of her grandfather who was a collector of antiquaries. She mentions that he had two Ferrara swords and that now-a-days we have lost the techniques needed to make them. The blades of the sword were so flexible you could touch the tip to the hilt. The last she says of them is, "I never got to dance over them." Then she mentions that her grandfather taught her the first steps of the Highland Fling. What a Scottish Lass!

At Home in the City

2011-07-03T19:00:00.000-07:00

My friends are all together tonight watching "Game of Thrones" and I am sitting at home watching "Sex and the City 2", with cramps and chocolate and popcorn. I felt too bloated and bleh to go be with people so I am having a girls night with just me.

Here is what I dislike about "Sex and the City". I disapprove of a lot of the behavior of the characters, who are about as materialistic and hyper-sexed as a stereotypical American urbanite can be.

Here is what I like about "Sex and the City". The characters have real depth, have real problems (despite being uber rich WASPs), and are real friends. The narration that Carrie provides throughout the episodes offers genuine and well thought reflections on the ethics and mores of our culture. Ultimately, the show is about the commitment four best friends have to each other and to themselves, and as the characters age their problems grow and change and so do their attitudes about life.

And though it was nice to have a girls' night and watch the movie (which started out horrid but ended well), it would have been nicer to watch with my girlfriends. I guess my body was telling me that tonight is about self-love.

Week 3 of CSA 2011

2011-06-24T09:26:00.000-07:00

Not such a good week eating all our greens -I now have four heads of lettuce in my fridge.

Week 3 Pick-UP
1 bunch scallions
1 bunch chard
1 bunch kale
1 bunch broccoli rabe
1 chinese cabbage
2 heads of lettuce
1 kohlrabi
1 lb mixed greens
1/2 quart of snap peas (u-pick)

It was muddy and rainy at the farm so I think not many people will take time to go out and pick their peas this week -hopefully that means more peas fore me next week! I will say though, there's nothing like slogging through a June rain in your winter boots to harvest vegetables. What bizarre weather we're having! (And in case you are unsure of the cause of this strangeness, I recently heard about this thing called "climate change.")

I spent an hour last night picking out recipes from The Food Matters Cookbook including my lunch plans for the day, "Pasta with Broccoli Rabe and Bread Crumbs", and my dinner plans, "Creamy Navy Bean and Squash Gratin with Bits of Sausage" (with greens on the side). See, I still have winter squash in my pantry and I need to cook it while the weather is cool. Me and my first world problems, I keep awake at night trying to think about how I am going to eat all the vegetables we have on hand.

Oi, they upped my dose of Zoloft and I now feel absolutely zero desire to lay around, which is great! My energy/mood/vitality really tanked in May and June, despite the fact that I've been exercising, and sitting in the sunshine and eating super healthy veggies, and partying with my friends, and generally getting a lot out of life. Maybe this new boost in self-will/drive/energy will translate into the allusive but oft sought after "cleaner house".

And now, off to spend the weekend with my in-laws! Hey look, here is my brother-in-law, modeling an "Obama 2012" shirt on the Barack Obama website.

Have a good weekend!

2011-06-17T08:31:00.000-07:00

Week two of CSA 2011
1 bunch scallions
1 bunch swiss chard
1 kohlrabi
1 bunch cilantro
2 heads lettuce
.68 lbs spinach
.90 lbs mixed greens

Lot's of choices this week and I was with two newbie (to CSAs) friends who were full of questions for me.

Friend: "Which do you usually choose kale or chard? And what's the difference between them?"
Me: "I choose chard and Husband chooses kale. Kale is heartier, you can freeze it without blanching. Chard is sweeter (and better)."
[Aside: I related this story to Husband and told him I would choose kale next week for him, but he said it didn't really matter since soon we'd be getting chard AND kale every week. He's right]

Friend: "Look at this bok choy!"
Me: "That's a kohlrabi, the bok choy is over there."

Friend: "You can choose between chives, radishes, bok choy, frisee and cilantro, which do you want."
Me: "Cilantro." [and she chose frisee, will wonders never cease?]

Friend: "Do you have to put your name down anywhere or something?"
Me: "No."
Friend: "It's just the honor system? I could come out here every week and steal vegetables!"

At the moment I'm feeling virtuous because we ate all our greens last week. Pride comes before the fall, they say, so I should probably try to balance out my vanity by remembering how far behind on my dishes I am. I am grounding myself until my chores are done.

Final Friday thoughts: No More Water But Fire Next Time
For a great article about how climate change is affecting us right now, check out the essay by Chip Ward that is currently gracing Grist.org "How the West Was Lost to Wildfires"

"The Rich Man Gets His Ice in Summer and the Poor Man Get His in Winter"

2011-06-15T08:55:00.000-07:00

When I was about nine years old I read the above quote in "Little Farmer Boy". Laura Ingalls Wilder describes her husband's family winter task of cutting ice blocks off the lake. I didn't really understand the saying back then, because, who needs or even wants ice in the winter -it just seems like a cruel joke. With an older, wiser mind I began to see the sense of it. The rich bought their ice in the summer and paid for it with cash, but the farmers harvested theirs and made it last, in the ice house, for as long as possible. More than that, the farmers butchered their animals in the winter so that the meat stayed frozen and good for many months which meant less work curing and preserving it. The winter ice was a blessing.

This is the first summer of our married life that I haven't worked, and by that I mean that I don't have a pay check because I don't have a summer assistantship. We're not broke, but with weddings and parties coming up this summer we are feeling the pinch. This translates into significantly less money to spend at the farmer's market. With the farm food coming in now, we don't have to buy a lot of food so we still get lots of fresh veggies. The thing that's hard is that we usually eat what we get from the farm and buy from the farmer's market the things we would like to preserve for the winter. If we don't put up food now, we'll have to buy it later and that will be more expensive.

My proposed solution, freezing right away the vegetables that keep well and eating those that don't. Sadly, we've been known to throw out a lot of good-vegetables-gone-bad because we didn't get around to eating them. Shameful. So, later in the summer when we're bringing home four bags of produce we'll just have to make do eating the lettuce so that we can have broccoli in the winter.

Ah, there is the connection; The rich eat their broccoli in summer and the poor eat theirs in winter.

Wistful Monday

2011-06-13T12:39:00.000-07:00

Isn't it interesting that words to describe melancholy are so beautiful? Melancholia, Lugubrious, Wistful, Saturnine, Dysthymia.

I'm wistful today but that is only because I am bored. I have a kitchen full of dishes to do and I don't want to do them. I want to have fun, of course. But, I got to have fun all weekend long and now it's time to buckle down.

You can relieve my boredom but leaving me a joke or amusing message in the comments!

Talk to you again soon!

An Emphasis on Leaves

2011-06-09T15:39:00.000-07:00

Every Thursday from the beginning of June until the end of October I drive ten minutes west on the freeway, exit into a planned neighborhood in the suburbs, make a sudden left turn onto a hidden dirt rode and unexpectedly find that I am on a farm and the city is hidden away behind tall trees. The farm is my CSA and today was my first weekly pick-up for the season.

The first thing to know about being part of a CSA (community supported agriculture) is that you get A LOT of leafy greens. In most parts of the world that would be okay but in the United States we eat very few vegetables and of those few vegetables almost none are leaves. IF we eat leaves it is inevitably lettuce, or maybe raw spinach, or maybe cooked spinach served with a lot of cheese and cream and some kind of pastry. New CSA members are usually excited for all the fresh, yummy, sustainable, local produce they'll receive when the season starts but when they pick up the first week's worth of veggies and all they have is a grocery bag full of leaves, well, it's a little intimidating.

Actually, it's a lot intimidating because all you can imagine doing with those leaves is eating salad and the sudden vision of you eating huge salads for lunch and supper leaves you feeling full and bloated and panicked.

Honestly, when you pick up that very first bag of vegetables for your very first year as a CSA member, you also feel a little disappointed because you were expecting variety and all you have are leaves. You don't know yet that the leaves truly are a good variety and that you can do a diverse number of things with them. You did know that leaves grow on plants before fruit does (or maybe you didn't know this but you're learning fast) and so it makes sense that all you have is leaves but you are used to going to the grocery store with a list and picking out any and every vegetable you want and this week none of those vegetables are in your CSA box. Here is a CSA secret, your farmer is an enthusiast and enthusiasts are excited about what they grow and what they eat and so they pick weird things for you to eat, things that aren't normally in American cuisine, things like bok choy and kohlrabi and black radishes.

It has taken a lot for me to get used to eating things as they grow instead of buying vegetables on as my fancy strikes. It's frustrating because some of the foods that I associate eating together aren't ready to eat at the same time. Also, corn on the cob is rarely ready by July Fourth and that is a real hardship for me.

This is our fourth year with a CSA and this is perhaps the first year that I haven't been scared of the first week bag full of greens. I am learning to enjoy different tastes combinations and new recipes. I am learning to put by our extra food for winter and to eat the foods that doesn't store well first and I am learning to plan meals only after my weekly farm visit.

What do I plan to eat this week?
1 bunch radishes (with greens, which saute nicely)
1 bunch chives (with flowers)
1 head bok choy
2 heads lettuce
1 head frisee (a type of endive)
1 lb spinach
1 lb mixed greens

I will probably eat the lettuce and chives raw and cook the bok choy, spinach, frisee and radish greens. I'll eat some of the radishes raw and some cooked and I will use the mixed greens in smoothies.

Geography from where I stand

2011-06-06T08:12:00.000-07:00

In our house when we say "The City" what we really mean is Chicago, where Husband's family live. When talking about our own little city (as opposed to the suburbs) we say "downtown" and confuse our friends by saying we live "downtown" when where we really live is in the first residential neighborhood outside of downtown. In our city we use the name of our boroughs to describe where we live, but that doesn't help the out-of-towners

"Up North" refers to where my parents live which isn't as far up north as it could be, only an hour and half away from us, actually. If I say we're going camping "Up North" I only mean the UP. "Down South" refers to anywhere south of Chicago, though "The South" refers to the old confederate states.

"North Country" is the land around Lake Superior. "Copper Country" is the Keweenaw". "The Lake" is Lake Michigan. I never talk about Lakes Huron, Erie or Ontario.

I always orient myself west, toward the ocean. It makes no difference to me that I live closer to the Atlantic than the Pacific. "Out West" starts somewhere around the western Dakotas, where the landscape is rugged and there are cacti and rattlesnakes, say around Deadwood, SD. "The West" refers only to states which touch the Pacific Ocean.

The "Midwest" are the Great Plain states; people here disagree with me, but whatever, we live in a "Great Lakes State". The Midwest is in the middle of the country, and we are, sadly, decidedly to the east, though you might convince me to include Indiana and Illinois in the term "Midwest"; it's inexplicable, I know.

That's the lay of the land from where I stand. How do you describe your geography?

2011-05-21T13:46:00.000-07:00

“Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg, Brooklyn.”

Reading on the cliffs of Lake Superior. June 2010

It is warm and rainy, which is, I think, my favorite weather. My moods, I am sure, do better when the sun is bright, but I see the world most clearly on days like today. Rain washes away all the dust of worries in the world and the trees and buildings can be seen in their most brilliant colors. The light is subdued so that the brightness of the world is not washed out. And, as I discussed last night, the smell of rain maybe my favorite scent.

On a day like today there are only a few necessary tasks. One must eat delicious but simple food, wear a floaty dress or skirt, cut lilacs, and read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. If so inclined, listening to city sounds, cars and birds and your neighbor's classical music will enhance the experience.

7 Quick Takes Friday

2011-05-20T21:44:00.000-07:00

The idea of 7 Quick Takes Friday comes from blogger Jennifer Fulwiler, who hosts it weekly at her site, Conversion Diary. (and I can further thank my friend Pam over at Mosaicsynapse for introducing me to the idea)

I am technically posting this on Saturday, I know, but it's still Friday to me as haven't go to bed yet.

*****1*****

I rearranged my apartment today and I think after 3.5 years I found the best set up for my stuff. I'll post pictures once all the little stuff is back in place (I am a tease, I know).

*****2*****

Are you a Doctor Who fan? If you aren't you should be.

The Doctor is a time traveling alien who leads his friends and the audience on crazy adventures. The Doctor could alternately be described as "a crazy man with a box".

The classic television show has been on for about 40 years but if you're new to it you should start with the new stuff. After a few years break Doctor Who was relaunched in the early 00's and "Series 6" is currently in production. [called "series" instead of "season" to distinguish from the old and new]. You can get by with starting with Series 5.

*****3*****

If you are a Doctor Who fan, who do you think River killed? Also, who is the kid? Also, what the hey is happening this season!?!?! Holy Moly.

*****4*****

I am dressing as a Weeping Angel for Halloween this year. Possibly the scariest monster ever.

Photo courtesy of Replica Prop Forum member Penwiper. You can link here for more pictures of how she put together this costume.

*****5*****

Did you know the word petrichor was coined in the 1960s and means, "the scent of rain on dry ground". One of my favorite smells ever. My new favorite word.

*****6*****

Steven Moffat: a straight out genius, am I right?

*****7*****

Opinion poll:
1. Is the TARDIS' name Sexy or Idris or both or neither?
2. Who is scarier, the Weeping Angels, the Silence, the dust particles that eat you, or the Daleks?

Lovely

2011-05-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

French does not have a word for lovely. It has words that mean pretty, pleasant, charming, good, delicious and excellent, but not lovely, because lovely means all of those things at the same time. Lovely has some je n'est ce quoi, doesn't it? It is a word whose meaning is unique to itself.

I am looking for something lovely right now. Everything is pleasant, the weather is excellent, I am drinking a delicious mocha coconut frappuccino...but I am craving something more, something altogether lovely.

I will let you know when I find it.

Spring Cleaning

2011-05-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

Now that school is done it is time for spring cleaning. And bonus, though it is late in the spring it isn't summer yet so my seasonal cleaning can be considered timely, which is a rarity.

Looking around my house, I am a little overwhelmed with what needs to be done. Both my spare room and my bedroom are overflowing with clutter, so that has got to go. My pantry and hallway closet both need to be reorganized. Our sporting goods closet (in the spare room) is currently open with stuff spilling out of it. I can't get to my closet in my bedroom because there are suitcases and laundry baskets in front of it and I can't get to my vanity table because my treadmill is in the way. Clearly I have my work cut out for me...and that's just the mess, not the year's worth of accumulated dirt on fans and in corners. Oh bother.

What's a savvy lady to do but pull out her housekeeping books and see what the experts recommend.
Cheryl Mendelson, the author of the big yellow book, Home Comforts says:
-Launder underbedding and washable spreads and covers
-Turn mattress
-Wash pillows
-Clean lampshades and light bulbs
-was mirros
-clean the oven
-wash and wax woodwork and floors
-organize frequently used drawers, cabinets and closets
-dust/wash miniblinds and other shades, door tops, and other hard to reach areas.
-wash windows in and out, and screens
-clean blades of fans and ceiling fans
-wash or dry-clean blankets, comforters and quilts
-rotate seasonal clothing
-give away unused items
-clean and polish jewelry
-clean and polish silverware
-clean all walls, ceilings and floors
-wax the furniture
-vacuum books
-move and clean under and behind large appliances and furniture
-shampoo rugs and upholstery
-empty and clean all closets
-dust or wash china, crystal and knickknacks
-wash shades and curtains
-organize and/or store photographs, videos and cds
-organize household business records and throwout those no-longer needed
-review insurance and update household inventory.

On top of this there are a few things I need to do, namely scraping and repainting the window frame in my living room. Also, need to defrost my freezer and that's always a mess.

Martha Stewart adds that we should
-clean cabinet shelves and reorganize
-clean the inside of the medicine cabinet
-scrub out trash cans
-rotate stacked books to prevent warping
-vacuum mattresses and box springs and bed frames
-vacuum refrigerator coils

Well, I guess, I'll start with the kitchen

Food For Sundays

2011-05-15T05:53:00.000-07:00

Many churches have Sunday potlucks and the church I attend is no exception. Every Sunday we eat a meal together and most Sundays we end up cooking that meal together because we don't arrive with our food prepared even though we are supposed to. It makes for a long Sunday evening but it also makes for a closeness and camaraderie amongst us.

I do not live in a location where I can attend a big Sunday supper with my family, and even if I did I doubt that there would be one since my parents have changing schedules. Supper with church has really evolved into what that family meal might be. It is raucous and disorganized with people starting to eat before all the food is done and kids running about, asking for more food. There are always at least three people talking loudly in the kitchen simultaneously telling three different stories. It is chaotic and homey.

Today I am making more macaroni salad. I, apparently, love mayonnaise now.

7 Quick Takes Friday

2011-05-13T15:28:00.000-07:00

The idea of 7 Quick Takes Friday comes from blogger Jennifer Fulwiler, who hosts it weekly at her site, Conversion Diary. (and I can further thank my friend Pam over at Mosaicsynapse for introducing me to the idea)

***** 1 *****

Had friends over for coffee today and one of them made Turkish coffee. Yum! The only down side is that she had to cook in my embarrassingly dirty kitchen (and I'm not saying that to be modest about a slight mess. It's gross.) The coffee had cardamom and cinnamon in it. Awesome.

***** 2 *****

I like cloudy days but today the clouds are a weird tan-ish grey color. Are they just funny clouds or do we have some visible smog on our hands?

***** 3 *****

I have been craving macaroni salad all week. I don't know why, I used to hate macaroni salad. I didn't even know I had started to like it until I wanted it on Monday. I made it twice this week. The first time it had tomatoes, kalamata olives, celery, garlic and tuna. The second time it had kalamata olives, celery, onion, fresh thyme and homemade baked beans. Both times I made it with orecchiette (not macaroni), balsamic vinegar and Duke's Mayonnaise. If you haven't had Duke's Mayonnaise you need to make an effort to try it. Seriously the best mayo I've ever had...maybe the only mayo I actually like the taste of.

***** 4 *****

My laptop screen replacement was a success! As I suspected, the hardest part was taking the darned cover off the screen in the first place. Once the new LCD screen arrived it only took about ten minutest to install. Good thing I didn't spend $80 for the diagnosis like the computer company wanted me to do.

***** 5 *****

I have a wedding to go to in July and I want to wear a fascinator. Too much?

***** 6 *****

My friend is having an open house for earning his doctorate on May 21 at 6pm. I saw on a billboard that the end of the world is supposed to start on May 21 at 6pm. Poor friend, all those years of hard work and he won't even get to celebrate.

***** 7 *****

I've been thinking more about Bobos in Paradise and the problems of being a Christian in a society where individuality and self-expression have been commodified. Try this quote on for size, "[In this new era ] Karl Marx may have had it exactly backward. He argued that classes are defined by their means of production. But it could be true that, in the information age at least, classes define themselves by their means of consumption." (Brooks 2000, 61)

Classes

2011-05-13T14:57:00.000-07:00

Reading Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There

In the United States we don't talk much about class, except to assert vehemently that we are of the "middle class" which apparently makes up all economic groups between the poverty level (bottom 15%) to the top "2%" of wealthy households. Yes, in the United States if your income is within 16%-97% of all households, you too are middle class.

Of course, we know that's not true.

Furthermore, as a sociologist, I am here to tell you that more than just financial situation defines social class. There are a host of ways in which class is defined that includes income, education, connections, occupation, tastes, hobbies, location, and more.

My family background is decidedly working class. Farm families who left the land and moved on to become skilled technicians. My grandfather was an electrician, my grandmothers were a dental hygienist and a telephone operator, my father was enlisted in the Coast Guard, as was my uncle and my aunt is a receptionist. My estranged grandfather received his PhD in Chemistry in the early 70s but he didn't have much of an influence on the family. My mother, ambitious as she is, has moved from a stocker at WalMart to a store manager, though her career climbing only started when my father retired from the C.G which was the year I left for college so I have not been very much a part of her new white-collar life.

My husband's family is a little different. His grandmother was a debutante in Chicago, a descendent of the steel barons who built the EL. His grandfather was an officer when he was in the army. His aunts and uncles are nurses, doctors, dentists, and bankers. He grew up in a middle class home (honest) with his father selling cars and his mother selling houses. His dad though, was from a more working class background, and fortunately for me, there really isn't much disparity between his parents' households and mine.

And luckily for me, what my background lacked in inherited knowledge was made up for in the broad range of social experiences I had living in many locations.

Now I find myself now as a member of the "intellectual class", most often described in literature as "elite". I can't deny it, though it's very strange to me. My friends are mostly highly educated people; they are professors, lawyers, doctors, artists and musicians. My friends aren't rich but they're influential and we certainly have the attitudes of the elite class. We've traveled overseas and realistically plan to again. We go to museums and galleries, to the opera and concerts, we buy organic food and microbrew beer. We drink coffee out of French Press pots. The thing is, despite discussing class frequently at work, I don't notice it in my own life until someone does something that's outside my normal purview. (Like someone offering me coffee and then getting out the Folgers, because really, does anyone drink that anymore?)

I think, like me, a lot of my friends are balancing the differences between how they were raised and the new social class they find themselves in. The experiences are different and so are the expectations. We're trying to decide where to live, how to raise our families and how to entertain in a world that's a little different than where we grew up.

Has anyone noticed this other than me?

Tuesday Musings

2011-05-10T10:57:00.000-07:00

Husband and I bought a new sofa and a new coffee table, both are lovely.

The color is washed out so you can't really see how green the sofa is. I will take another photo when the light is better.

On the coffee table you can see my Klimt's Kiss Baby Blanket. I am almost done with it! (Good thing, because the baby was born in December!) I'll put up pictures of the blanket when I am finished but for now, here is a picture of Klimt's The Kiss

******

In related news, we're broke.
And because of poor planning on my part we are out of bread, milk, and parmesan cheese. I guess this means we'll actually have to eat the food filling up our freezer and pantry. Maybe I'll eat all my canned tomatoes before tomato season comes around again. That would be a first.

******

Lunch today: pasta with olives, cherry tomatoes, garlic, tuna and lemon juice. Lemonade to drink.

Dinner tonight: Hamburgers but I'm not sure we have any buns (time to go dig through the freezer) Baked beans (and boil some beans) and corn.

******

Several weeks ago I cracked the screen on my laptop and so I have been using my husband's computer which is annoying because his computer doesn't run on the same system as mine and because none of my stuff is on it and I have to keep converting from my external hard drive to his work computer to a thumb drive to his laptop.
Now that the semester is done I called up the computer company to see how much it would be to fix - they told me it would be $80 to cover the cost of diagnostic and shipping (back to me only, I have to pay extra to ship it to them to begin with) and after diagnosis they would call me and tell me how expensive the repair would be. After diagnosis!?! I know what's wrong with it, it doesn't need to be diagnosed. Screw them, how hard can it be to replace an LCD screen? Not very, I'm guessing. In fact, I will venture a guess that the hardest part was figuring out how to remove the casing around the screen so I could find out what product number I needed to order.

I ordered a screen on Saturday ($80 including shipping) and it's already on its way to me. I'll keep you updated on the repairs.

******

And that friends, is all I have for today. Enjoy your Tuesday!

What is Summer For?

2011-05-09T08:11:00.000-07:00

Those of us lucky enough to have careers with flexible summer scheduling tend to make plans for our free time which are perhaps a little too much for the few sunny months we have available. Reading lists that are too long, canning project that are too ambitious, a remodeling project that may remain unfinished for years; we just don't have time to do all the things we think we should.

So this year I am trying to expand my success rate but decreasing my summer projects.

What I have planned:
1. Reading. I'm not making a list of books to trap me! This year I'm simply vowing to turn off the tv and radio once I've heard the news and read to entertain myself. I have many half-finished books sitting around my house and those are my priority.

2. Writing. I plan on writing my master's thesis this summer. I must write at least one page a day with Tuesdays and Thursdays set aside for full 8 hour days. Vastly doable!

3. Crocheting. I have a couple of unfinished project which I would like to finish by midsummer. These may take priority over reading for a while.

4. Cleaning. My house has too much stuff. I would really like to get rid of vast amounts of it. Once a week I will pick an area of my house and THROW STUFF AWAY!

So that's it. Those are my summer projects. Too much for the next four months? I hope not!

What is your summer for?

My Personal Reflections for the week of May 1, 2011

2011-05-03T16:25:00.000-07:00

This is a prayer composed for my personal use this week, but it occurs to me that others might have an interest in using it themselves -either for their meditations or as a beginning place for discussion.

Father,
thank you for sending us victorious and for all the peace and surety we daily experience by your hand. Remind us everyday that justice and vengeance, which are yours only, are given not for our merit but so that your kingdom may reign on the earth.
Help us to never rejoice in suffering but to pray for our enemies, to have compassion and to desire mercy in our hearts and with our hands so that we can live by your example to us.
Though today we feel relief we pray for those who are broken hearted that they will find their hope, as do we, in your words, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death."
Through Jesus Christ the Risen Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Spring Cooking

2011-04-15T09:30:00.000-07:00

OK, I get it, you guys are not super inspired by the poetry fest I had going on. FINE. :)

In my part of the world spring has officially set upon us. The days are a mix of sizzling sunny gorgeousness and April showers. The daffodils and hyacinths and tulips are up and adding a stunning array of color to our grounds. I suppose this means I really should put away the Christmas angel that's sitting on the bookshelf in my living room. Hmmmm.....

The lovely weather also has me craving the delicate vegetables of spring...vegetables that we really don't get to eat here until JUNE. Nonetheless, I have been pouring over my vegetable cookbooks, dreaming of the yummy foods that I will be able to make soon.

Holy Week is coming up and we try to make our celebrations for Easter at least as festive as they are for Christmas. We've been practicing Lenten abstinences but now things are really gearing up. Palm Sunday is this weekend and I was just delivered a bunch of fair-trade palm branches for use at church.

I have a bit of cleaning frenzy to do this weekend. Both because I am preparing for Passover, which starts Monday night, and also because I am supposed to to have my closets cleaned out by Easter as part of my Lenten devotions. So, time to trim off the excess!

The focus of so much of Passover is food and it is a great opportunity to get rid of foods that are past their freshness. Old items that sit in your cupboards unused and unneeded. Because of my school schedule, we're hosting a Seder on Wednesday, the third evening of Passover. I bought two big legs of lamb to roast for the meal which will be Sephardi themed. I'm very excited, as always. For Passover you fill your house with flowers and bright decor because you are celebrating freedom and life. I need to give my house a thorough spring cleaning in preparation. Everything should be airy and crisp and new.

And of course, Easter Sunday, for me means ham and potatoes and asparagus and lemon pie. I think this spring I will make shaker lemon pie. And I'll wear a flowery dress and my hair in a breaded crown.

So how is that for spring food?

The First Night by Billy Collins

2011-03-27T09:26:00.001-07:00

The worst thing about death must be
the first night.
—Juan Ramón Jiménez

Before I opened you, Jiménez,
it never occurred to me that day and night
would continue to circle each other in the ring of death,

but now you have me wondering
if there will also be a sun and a moon
and will the dead gather to watch them rise and set

then repair, each soul alone,
to some ghastly equivalent of a bed.
Or will the first night be the only night,

a darkness for which we have no other name?
How feeble our vocabulary in the face of death,
How impossible to write it down.

This is where language will stop,
the horse we have ridden all our lives
rearing up at the edge of a dizzying cliff.

The word that was in the beginning
and the word that was made flesh—
those and all the other words will cease.

Even now, reading you on this trellised porch,
how can I describe a sun that will shine after death?
But it is enough to frighten me

into paying more attention to the world’s day-moon,
to sunlight bright on water
or fragmented in a grove of trees,

and to look more closely here at these small leaves,
these sentinel thorns,
whose employment it is to guard the rose.

9 Months Until Christmas!!!

2011-03-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

Annunciation by John Donne

Salvation to all that will is nigh ;

That All, which always is all everywhere,

Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,

Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,

Lo ! faithful Virgin, yields Himself to lie

In prison, in thy womb ; and though He there

Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He'll wear,

Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may try.

Ere by the spheres time was created thou

Wast in His mind, who is thy Son, and Brother ;

Whom thou conceivest, conceived ; yea, thou art now

Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's mother,

Thou hast light in dark, and shutt'st in little room

Immensity, cloister'd in thy dear womb.

With Mercy For the Greedy by Anne Sexton

2011-03-24T13:43:00.000-07:00

For my friend, Ruth, who urges me to make an appointment for the Sacrament of Confession

Concerning your letter in which you ask

me to call a priest and in which you ask

me to wear The Cross that you enclose;

your own cross,

your dog-bitten cross,

no larger than a thumb,

small and wooden, no thorns, this rose—

I pray to its shadow,

that gray place

where it lies on your letter ... deep, deep.

I detest my sins and I try to believe

in The Cross. I touch its tender hips, its dark jawed face,

its solid neck, its brown sleep.

True. There is

a beautiful Jesus.

He is frozen to his bones like a chunk of beef.

How desperately he wanted to pull his arms in!

How desperately I touch his vertical and horizontal axes!

But I can’t. Need is not quite belief.

All morning long

I have worn

your cross, hung with package string around my throat.

It tapped me lightly as a child’s heart might,

tapping secondhand, softly waiting to be born.

Ruth, I cherish the letter you wrote.

My friend, my friend, I was born

doing reference work in sin, and born

confessing it. This is what poems are:

with mercy

for the greedy,

they are the tongue’s wrangle,

the world's pottage, the rat's star.

The Second Coming (Slouching Toward Bethlehem) W.B. Yeats

2011-03-23T11:55:00.000-07:00

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Readjusting

2011-03-22T11:08:00.000-07:00

Things are really coming along with my treatment for depression. I'm feeling much better these days, though not as well as I hope I will feel by the end.

I am having a hard time readjusting to what the appropriate amount of stress is in my life. I am in graduate school which is a particularly stressful and time intensive occupation. There is too much work to do in the time allotted and many deadlines. Grad students are notoriously stressed out and anxious.

But my depression took me beyond this "ordinary" stress of graduate school. Every little thing in life was too stressful to deal with so I shut down. I couldn't get dressed because it was too stressful.

Now that I am recovering, when I meet stress or anxiety I don't know if it is normal or if it is still abnormal. How do you determine how much stress a given situation should make you feel? I'm stuck on this one. I know I shouldn't be stressed about getting dressed, but should I be stressed about checking my email when I know I may be receiving communications about an upcoming project deadline? There are a million everyday occurrences which cause me stress (probably you too) and depression has given me the eyes to notice all of them. How do I sort through this mess?

More Thoughts on Infant Baptism

2011-03-21T19:33:00.000-07:00

It is gonna hit the fan...it being tempers and family disgruntlement. The point of contention: baptism. My family are Baptists and believe in credobaptism, and Husband and I have decided we are definitely for paedobaptism for our children. We don't have children yet, nor am I pregnant so we have more than nine months to think about how we can dialogue about this issue in a loving and peaceful way. We don't want our decision to cause a riff in the family (who are both our blood relatives and our brethren in Christ!) but my family has notorious difficulty discussing contentious issues in a civilized manner. We have a tendency to take offense with other's actions and to be vocal about our disapproval when we feel it's called for. Perhaps what is most needed is prayer. Prayer, Prayer, Prayer.

So why am I planning on this step which differs from my upbringing? The tricky part of discussing this is that it's hard to summarize twenty-eight years of experience and learning in a short statement. When I was in college a friend of mine was rebaptized after converting from a Baptist faith to the Orthodox Church. This offended me deeply because it felt like a rejection of my own baptism. The Orthodox Church believes that one receives the Holy Spirit at their baptism and chrismation but I knew that I had already received the Holy Spirit and as I reflected on my friend's conversion I decided I could never be re-baptized because it would be blasphemous for me to do so (denying the work of the Spirit in my life). It was at that time that I began to believe that at baptism the Holy Spirit performs a real work of grace in our lives. I am not sure what that grace is but I believe that it is there. I was surprised as anyone to suddenly find myself with a sacramental view of baptism.
Despite these changes in my beliefs I still was not ready to embrace paedobaptism. In fact, while studying interchurch family issues in preparation for marrying to a Roman Catholic I came across the story of a Baptist/Roman Catholic couple who, instead of baptizing or dedicating their children, held the catholic rite of initiation for them to enter the church as catechumens. I was interested in exploring a similar compromise.
But I believe God was working on my heart during this time because I have come a long way in my understanding of paedobaptism without a lot of formal study or conversation.
What moved my heart in the end was not all the discussion of infant baptism in the early church and the covenantal view of baptism which one usual hears; it was simply the fact that paedobaptism so perfectly models God's grace to us.
I could give lots of Bible verses, and someday I probably will do that here, but for now this is enough for me to meditate on: salvation is by grace through faith and not by our own merit. Infant baptism shows us clearly that His grace is extended to us while undeserved on our part and it reminds us that faith is also a gift to us. Faith is not something we do to deserve grace but something we are given through the grace of God. He is faithful to save and His promises are to both us and to our children.

Ephesians 2: ⁴ But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵ made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.⁶ And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,⁷ in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. ¹¹ Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— ¹²remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. ¹³ But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

¹⁴ For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, ¹⁵ by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, ¹⁶ and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. ¹⁷ He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. ¹⁸ For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

¹⁹ Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, ²⁰ built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. ²¹ In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. ²² And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

7 Quick Takes Friday

2011-03-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

The idea of 7 Quick Takes Friday comes from blogger Jennifer Fulwiler, who hosts it weekly at her site, Conversion Diary. (and I can further thank my friend over at http://mosaicsynapse.blogspot.com/ for introducing me to the idea)

***1***

Have you heard of the show Portlandia? It's a show about the culture in Portland, Or -but really it seems to be about the culture of my contemporaries; post-collegiate 20-and-30-somethings. My friends and I get a big kick watching clips from the show and laughing at ourselves. Here is a good introduction

***2***

Today I heard about a controversy brewing in the alternative food movement, in short the terms "urban homestead" and "urban homesteading" have been copyrighted by the Dervaes Instituted. Considering that these terms are used to describe a whole movement, a lot of people are up in arms. You can read a great summary of the controversy at The Ethicurean.

***3***

On the other hand, there are some who think we shouldn't use the term "homesteading" at all. Maybe this is a great opportunity to come up with a new term.

***4***

One of my dirty little secrets, I can't remember the last time I read a fiction book. I start them, but I never finish them. Hmmm... Well, whatever the reason for my lack of interest in fiction, this novel has me intrigued: Pope Mary and the Church of Almighty Good Food

***5***

Have you read The Little Prince? Husband and I just bought a pop-up edition to bring as a gift to a christening this weekend. It's a beautiful book.

***6***

The New York Times is going to start charging for some of its online content. You'll get to read 20 free articles a month and then you'll get charged after that -a pretty fair system in my opinion but I know people who don't believe it will work out. Well, I get the Times free at school so I suppose I won't be paying for a while anyway.

***7***
And now you can say, "I've read that."

March -Still Winter

2011-03-10T15:47:00.000-08:00

I have taken to walking around town coatless though it is scarcely warm enough. In fact, it probably isn't warm enough at all, but there you go. Yesterday I walked to church and back in only my wind-breaker and today to the downtown library in only a sweater and a hat. It was a tad chilly today, I admit.

I want so much for it to be spring but we are still solidly cold in winter, with snow covering front lawns and ice marring the sidewalks.

But I can be patient. Just a couple more weeks.

Spring Holidays

2011-03-04T10:25:00.000-08:00

Had friends for coffee this morning -a ritual we will be keeping through Lent this year. We made plans for Ash Wednesday services and then, skipping the discussion on what we would be giving up for Lent, we moved right on to planning our Seder Dinner.

Last year Husband and I had six friends over to celebrate Passover with us, a holiday that our church observes (with Maundy Thursday flare added to it) and already this year said friends have been clambering to know if we will be hosting it again. What's a girl to do but say yes and start pouring over Passover Menus.

[My friend was dismayed to learn that she is scheduled to be out of town on the first night of Passover -"I'll change my flight!" she said, "If they try to charge me I'll cry and say that I didn't realize it was Passover when I booked it and I have to be home!"]

In the past I have always made chicken for Passover but this year I think I will spring for a leg of lamb. Exciting! Now to pick out a charoset recipe, a soup recipe, a green vegetable recipe, a potato recipe, and desserts (no flour! no milk!).

I was also told today that I must make chocolate cake for Easter.
"I normally make lemon meringue pie for Easter"
"You can make both" said friend
"Well, I normally make the ham, someone else will have to if I am making cake."
"No," said friend, "You have to make the ham, no chocolate cake, I guess."
I didn't tell her this but I am now pretty much convinced I will make all three. I give into culinary pressure easily, you see.

And so, of course, will all this talk of holidays and food I still haven't decided what I will be doing about Lent. It's much easier to plan feasts than fasts.

2011-03-03T09:12:00.000-08:00

Husband bought me purple flowers for Valentine's Day. Purple tulips, to be exact, and I love purple tulips. Here is a picture of another bouquet from a couple of years ago -a bouquet I received for Easter, I think.

Flowers should always be purple, if at all possible.

I have been absent from the blogosphere for a few weeks. I have been busy living and that living has been glorious. But, I do enjoy blogging and I have missed it and so now I am back now to get myself settled into a writing routine. I have been catching up on all my favorite blogs and have begun to appreciate anew the heart breaking beauty of some of my favorites. I remember now that I love these pages because they make life beautiful; I can make life beautiful too.

Beauty is something you still see in the world when you are depressed (think of stereotypical tormented poet). Sometimes you can see it with such stark clarity that all you can do it to represent it in some form. But you cannot actually participate in it. You cannot have a beautiful life and appreciate the day to day joy that beauty brings.

Talk to an average person about depression and they will inevitably ask you what you do that makes you happy, what bring you joy. Because we (humans) are unhappy when things are going poorly and we're unhappy when we are stuck in situations (jobs, etc) that don't offer fulfillment, there is a common wisdom that the depressed person is perhaps, depressed because they are in such a circumstance. Someone told me recently that I needed to figure out what "gets me up in the morning"...um, nothing gets me up in the morning, I want to lay in bed all day with the covers over my head.
You know when there is a depression medication commercial on TV and they go through the symptoms of depression and they say, "you don't enjoy the things you used to enjoy"...that's misleading because they make it sound like your tastes have changed. My tastes didn't change; I knew I still liked studying sociology, I still liked cooking, I still liked making my home beautiful, I still liked talking to my friends, but I didn't want to do any of those things, or even if I wanted to I couldn't bring myself to actually do them. That's a better way of saying it actually, I wanted to do the things I enjoyed but I couldn't bring myself to actually do them. Depression plays tricks on you because no matter how logical you are about the situation, depression makes you feel differently. It's confusing and guilt causing.

Things are much improved now that I have been on medication for a several weeks. This week particularly I have been surprised at how easy it is to do things. I don't have to force myself to study, I don't have to repeat a mantra to myself over and over again just to keep me on task. I am able to make goals for the day and meet those goals. Whereas facing a days' activities was daunting to the point of tears just a few weeks ago, now I am energized by thinking about the fun things I get to do. This is how I used to be, I remember.

For a couple of years my favorite quote has been "In the depths of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer" (A. Camus), but right now I just can't feel that quote. I don't feel like there is a summer with in me, and if there is it seems that it is not invincible. But, maybe, there are purple flowers in me...or maybe there is just anti-depressant medication in me, increasing my levels of serotonin; either way, things are looking up.

Transitions.

2011-02-07T11:28:00.000-08:00

Writing phrenetically today. Thoughts are just flying, flying, flying out of my fingers.

Monday I have my counseling appoints and today we talked about transitions. For me, it's hard to start a task, even if I enjoy it. The effort it takes to do something just seems insurmountable. The problem though, isn't really that I don't want to do the task, it's just the transitional period that's hard for me to get past; the actual getting up and going in the other room, putting my shoes on and heading out the door. My depression-busting homework for the week is trying to talk myself past the transitions.

But there are other transitions happening in my life. I started on medication which means changing some of my habits. I can't drink alcohol, eat grapefruit, or take aspirin or ibuprofen. Right. Well, I have 15 pounds of grapefruit in kitchen right now so I guess I should give that away. My therapist and my doctor have conflicting beliefs about how soon one can expect to see results from their medication. My doctor says several weeks, my therapist says that it takes several weeks to see the full effects but that most of her clients report small changes sooner. I don't know if I am feeling effects or experiencing a placebo effect or what but I am hyper today...full...of...energy! This past weekend I have been full of energy during the days and kind of agitated at night. Anyway, I started exercising again this past week. We have a treadmill and I am trying to spend at least part of my daily reading time walking on it. I even ran the other day...for about four minutes.

Some people have commented that's brave of me to talk about my depression. I can understand why they would think that, but I am here to say that bravery has nothing to do with it. The reality is, it is a relief to talk about it. It's a relief to wake up from the fog. It's a relief to say "I'm not really this way, I can be happy, I can have a life". My therapist tells me that because we (dysthymic people) hide our depression so well, and because our friends only see the portion of our lives in which they are involved, that most people probably haven't noticed anything as being amiss. But I have anxiety that they will have noticed cranky/depressed/lethargic/uncaring/unmotivated Me and not realize that I was that way because something was wrong. Anyway, that's one reason why, at least on the blog, it's easy to talk about.

And now, to transition back to homework.

New Scandinavian Cooking

2011-02-05T10:51:00.000-08:00

I'm Scandinavian and I love Scandinavian foods; the butter, the pastries, the potatoes, the coffee, the pickled things. Yum! Husband, on the other hand, thinks I put too much butter on things. He doesn't like pickles or dill. For years I despaired of bringing him around to my way of eating.

Enter Andreas Viestad and New Scandinavian Cooking, a cooking show on PBS that is full of delicious Scandinavian foods and also crazy Scandinavian adventures. If you want to watch someone cook outside in a fjord or on a fishing boat or dancing around a May Pole for Midsummer's Eve then New Scandinavian Cooking is for you. Whenever we watch the show, which is one of our favorites, we always want to eat salmon and travel to Norway. Even when one of the other two hosts is doing a show in Sweden or Denmark, I still want to travel to Norway. But I'm Norwegian, so that must be why.

Recently Husband borrowed Andreas Viestad's cookbook from the library. Kitchen of Light, like the television show, mixes delicious food with stories and pictures about Norway. He writes poetically and comically about living in a far northern climate and reveling in the summer sun or cozying up in the winter darkness.

And the recipes are a wonder.

Tonight I am making Spice Crusted Salmon, made with coriander seeds, cumin seeds, dill seeds, and fennel seeds. For Husband's birthday next week he requested clove studded ribs, slow cooked with oranges.

This food is delicious.

Slowly Going Crazy

2011-02-01T09:48:00.000-08:00

My family is crazy.

No, really. One of my grandmothers is an OCD hoarder -like one of those ones you'd see on TV. When she sold her house several years ago, she sold everything in it and my mother was sad to lose some heirlooms but said that she was relieved not to have to clean it out at some future date. My other grandmother suffers from depressive episodes. She was once hospitalized after a breakdown and had early electro-shock therapy. She doesn't talk about though, she says it's the worst thing that ever happened to her.

Don't even get me started on the craziness that is my dad...

When I was a kid I was afraid that I was going to be like my first grandmother, an obsessive hoarder, because I couldn't bring myself to throw things away. Luckily I outgrew saving Starburst wrappers. I outgrew it right around the time I had my first depressive episode.

I have been seeing a therapist and I've started treatment for dysthymia. Dysthymia is chronic minor to moderate depression. It is often diagnosed because the chronic (lasting for years) depression develops into a major depression episode. A person with dysthymia suffers the same symptoms as major depression but with less day-to-day severity. They can function fairly well so others don't always notice that something is wrong. The person with dysthymia knows something is wrong but they don't always recognize it as depression, they may see themselves as having character faults -laziness, gluttony, unreliability. They may have low self esteem or have symptoms of ADHD. Over time dysthymia may have serious effects on life. It can effect job performance and social and family relationships. It's a like a slow flow of water wearing out a persons' ability to cope. It's like when you've had a bad week and you're exhausted and you know that if one more stressful thing happens you're going to snap -but it's like being like that all the time. Even on good days, even when on vacation or when nothing is due and no work needs to be done, you still feel like things are going to fall apart at any minute.

I'll let you know how my treatment progresses and how things change for me as we go along. For now, I am just glad to have some options...and some hope of relief.

Week's End Wrap Up

2011-01-28T14:27:00.000-08:00

Friday rolls around and I think, "What have I done this week?" Well.

-Got our annual church business meeting out of the way -elected new officers, approved a budget. I was the 2010 President and so I led the meeting. We actually finished on time, which I consider quite an accomplishment.

-Friends came up from Chicago. We took them out for Grand Rapids brews. One local beer bar was having a weekend of special brews that were quite delicious (if strong) and they serve great pub food. There is a new Belgian style brewery just down the street from us -the beer is good but the food is better. Let me recommend the Duck-fat-butter. Seriously.

-A disastrous game for the Bears on Sunday. But what is up with all the hate for Jay Cutler? I don't get it at all.

-Dealt with a leaky faucet all week. The dripping...and then running was literally driving me crazy. Fortunately, the building's handymen stopped in today and fixed it.

-Scheduled an appointment to see a counselor about the fact that I'm going crazy.

-Started reading Rachel Held Evans' "Evolving in Monkey Town". When I finish it I have a Skype coffee date with a friend to discuss.

-Watched Jack Black movies. This was largely to drown out the sound of the dripping faucet. The Holiday and King Kong were the two movies that were calling me.

-Took advantage of a movie theater deal to see True Grit for $3 per ticket. The movie is truly fantastic. Though, I don't know how they can look Hailee Steinfeld in the face with only an Oscar nod as Best Supporting Actress. The movie is about her character, her character is in every frame of the film, her character drives the plot and all the other characters. Yep, that's a supporting role. She's fabulous, and she deserves an Oscar. And she deserves it for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

Now, time to rustle up some dinner.

Have a great weekend!

Winter

2011-01-18T18:20:00.000-08:00

I used to hate winter.

Though when I was very young I lived in cold climates, I spent many, many years on the temperate west coast. We would occasionally drive into the mountains and have a snowball fight, but most of our winters were spent in rain and fog. I like rain and fog. I like green Christmases.

But now I really, truly, deeply love a white winter. I don't value winter only as a time of bundled up coziness, I also value it for its piercing freshness. Some see spring as a time of new beginnings, but feel that way about winter. It is clear and new. Every snow fall brings a blanket of new beginnings. Winter cleanses the senses and the soul. I love the feel of it on my skin. Winter may now be my favorite season.

This all started in the winter of 2003-2004, when I lived up in Houghton, MI. For the first time since moving back to the Midwest, I participated daily in outdoor winter activities. Sledding, hiking, watching the Northern Lights. The fear and despair that used to grip at me in winter began to slide away into the dark. The freshness and newness of the days began to shine in me.

And then I found this quote from Albert Camus, "It was in the depths of winter that I finally learned that there is in me an invincible summer."

I am Scandinavian and my husband and I have been exploring that heritage the past few years. One thing I've learned about is hygge. Another thing I've learned about is the love that Scandinavians have for candles -the Danes burn more per capita than anyone else in the world. It's dark in Scandinavia in the winter, much darker than here, but they kindle fires to inspire warmth, to remind them of the warmth of the sun. And hygge also brings warmth. An invincible summer.

And that, in the end, is why I like winter the most. I love the cold new freshness. But even more I love the hope that shines out of the darkness.

MLK Day

2011-01-17T17:26:00.000-08:00

Martin Luther King is represented amongst statues of saints at Westminster Abbey. His statue is located above the west entrance and was added in the 1990s with several other Christians who died violent deaths in the 20th Century. They were added in a statement reflecting on the great martyrdom that took place in that century.

I remember when I first learned of the statue -I wasn't at all sure what I thought of it. On the one hand I was excited because I respect Dr. King's work so much. On the other hand, I wasn't sure if he died a martyr and I knew that despite his great work his personal life was riddled with various sins. I was a teenager who still saw things in black and white and there was too much grey area in this case.

Strangely, now that I am more comfortable with grey area, I actually see the church statue in more black and white terms. To me it seems perfectly clear that MLK should be included, that he served Christ truly and dedicatedly. I can see now that none of us are perfect -and if perfection is our standard for admiring one another then we're going to be pretty fake to each other, always trying to show that we measure up. I knew back then that you couldn't earn God's love or Christ's redemption...but some how the message that you can't work your way into heaven didn't translate to an understanding that Christians aren't always going to be good.

I also couldn't see then that MLK's shortcomings were often used by his detractors to discredit his work for racial equality and justice for the poor. I was wise enough to know that an extra-marital affair didn't change how important and true his work was but I wasn't savvy enough to see how for some people it would negate all he had said. And that people often used his sins an an excuse to continue their own sins.

And so I sit here today wondering why in white American churches, Martin Luther King isn't more respected, more celebrated. We all sit around reading C.S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wendell Berry...maybe even John Calvin or Martin Luther (of the Lutheran ilk)...but we don't read Martin Luther King, Jr. Why?

Family Inheritance

2011-01-10T03:04:00.000-08:00

"Your hands are so soft" my sister says, holding my hand we cross the street.
"Well," I say, "I don't really work, I'm a graduate student. No callouses."
"No, your hands are soft like Grandma's hands" she tells me.

No one could accuse Grandma of not working. She is determinedly blue collar but her hands are magically, inexplicably soft.

I am surprised and suddenly proud of my skin; this inheritance, one thing of my grandmother's that I will always cherish and remember.

All the blisters I get are worth a little more; the hassles of sensitive skin a little less trying. The softness of my grandmother's skin is beautiful and, in our family, legendary; something that we children all marveled after. We all love the wonderful feeling of her holding our hands. Through the thinness of her skin all the love and warmth inside her flows right into us. It brings tears to my eyes to think that I will always have this part of her with me.

Why Do People Malign Mr. Rogers?

2011-01-07T20:58:00.000-08:00

It seems like every time I read about promoters of hyper-masculine Christianity I read a quote from them about how what we need is manly men, not feminine pansies like Mr. Rogers. I don't understand this at all. How was Mr. Rogers a pansy or feminine? Because he liked kids? Because he didn't yell at kids on his TV show? Because he taught kids to be patient and kind to one another? What attributes, exactly, are so objectionable?

Here's the thing, Mr. Rogers devoted his entire adult life to working with children, to teaching them that they were respected and respectable, that they didn't have to lie or cheat because who they were was good enough. Love from Mr. Rogers was unconditional.

I once read an account of an autistic boy whose ailments were so sever that none of the specialists could offer much hope that he would ever be able to to interact with others. But the child watched television and began to adore Mr. Rogers' show. And after a time, he began to show improvements in his interactions with others while the show was on. Given more time he began to be able to have some meaningful interactions with others. His mother credited his progress to Mr. Rogers.

Then there is the famous story of Mr. Rogers' stolen car. The local news ran a story about how his car had been stolen and "what was the world coming to" and such. That kind of thing. The next day, his car turned up in front of his house with a note in it, "Sorry. We wouldn't have taken it if we knew it was yours." Wow. That's a man who commands much respect and is much loved. Even car thieves, probably cynical youths either looking to make money or else aimless looking for a quick thrill, didn't want to wrong Mr. Rogers.

Yet to some, Mr. Rogers is a man worthy of our scorn. A man who doesn't act like a real man. Do real men don't help autistic children or inspire the souls of criminals? Would a real man not dedicate his life to working with children?. Or if he did, would it only be by playing sports with them or taking them hiking or something cool and active. Maybe playing with toys in the living room, or talking to kids like they're people worthy of respect, isn't something a real man would do.

My final comments are on the myth (see Snopes for details) that Mr. Rogers was a Marine Sniper who killed lots of guys and was totally a bad-ass. I've heard from friends in the Marines that this is actually told to them during their basic training. A myth perpetuated by the Marines even though Fred Rogers never served in the military at all. So why do they do it? Because Mr. Rogers is totally cool. Mr. Rogers is a guy that everyone grew up respecting and, as a decent human being, he's someone we admire. He's also soft spoken and lean, he's not a body builder. If he can do the hard work of the military then so can we. Mr. Rogers wasn't a Marine but the Marines know something that some macho Christians are missing:

Mr. Rogers was a real man.

Just because he displayed the love of 1 Corinthians 13, because he showed the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control) [Galatians 5:22-23], because he taught children to love one another [John 13:35] and just because he was meek, merciful and peacemaker [Matthew 5], just because he was all those things doesn't mean he wasn't masculine. Anyone who says otherwise needs to ask themselves who their example of masculine really was.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding. Where does it say in the gospels to be a bad-ass? Where does it say to be tough guy? I'm not being sarcastic, I really don't understand where these teachings come from. And I really don't understand how maligning Mr. Rogers accomplishes anything. He was a minister of God who sought after righteousness. His life, though not perfect, is a shining example of Christ's message and Christian love. He's a man who stood up to the world, who wouldn't ignore the "least of these" just because the world said he should.

I am reminded, finally, of 2 Timothy 2:22-25
Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful.

Well, I am still baffled about all of this but I feel better for having said something.

End of Vegan Advent

2011-01-06T07:25:00.000-08:00

Whelp, my vegan experiment only lasted three of the four weeks of advent and I was so busy with school I didn't write about it at all!

It was a very good experiment and one I enjoyed a lot. It stopped early because I just had so many Christmas parties to attend and well, I wanted to be able to drink eggnog and eat cookies.

I didn't feel deprived when I was eating vegan. I made vegan cookies (hard to do with out eggs, but yummy), I learned that almond milk makes great vegan hot cocoa. I tried vegan pizza which is surprisingly good but get's old fast because the "cheese" topping was very heavy. I got to introduce friends to tofu which they were surprised to like. I've always liked tofu and there are ways of preparing it that I'm really interested to try so I know it will stay part of my usual repertoire.

My mother-in-law asked me if I felt different after eating vegan for a while. Nope. I felt exactly the same as ever. Also, I'm pretty sure I put on weight...which might not surprise you considering I talked about cookies, cocoa, and pizza already -but I ate regular good-for-you food too. I think I gained weight because I was very stressed out and not sleeping much. The first week I was hungry all the time, but once my body got used to the change I wasn't anymore.

Conclusion: This year I will try to incorporate more vegan and vegetarian meals into my diet.

Pondering: This morning I read a blog post titled "Virtuous (almost) Vegetarian Food". Virtuous? How is it virtuous? A quick perusal of the post reveals that it is virtuous because it is "healthy". This falls smack into what Michael Pollen calls "nutritionism" in which Americans believe in magical good and bad foods. Good foods will save you, they're miraculous; if you eat only the good foods you will never die (or at least you'll live a very long and happy life). A little bit of the good food can make any ordinary food good for you too. So, as I heard in a General Mills commercial the other day, "There are Whole Grains in Every Box!". Awesome, I'll go by those Fruity Pebbles now, I know that they're good for me. Bad foods will kill you, they are to blame for all your troubles and only gluttons eat them. I can proclaim my righteousness by buying things that say "Zero Trans Fats", "Low Sodium", "No Sin". Of course we all eat the bad foods anyway and feel guilty for doing so...or turn our guilt away by hedonistically exclaiming over how "sinfully good" a food is.
The truly righteous can take their food eating experience to to ascetic levels, which is what I think we're seeing in the Virtuous Vegetarian Food of the post. It's virtuous not because it tastes incredible or because the cook is a virtuoso in the kitchen, but because she's given something up to eat it. She's not eating vegetarian because that's what sounds good to her, she eating it because it is good for her. Self discipline and all that. But I'm not interested in this. I've already left behind one legalistic religious system, I don't need to adopt another so that I can live in fear of being judged by others about my food choices. Though I totally am afraid of being judged, which is why I don't tell anyone how much fast food I eat while I'm commuting back and forth for school.

Amongst all these thoughts I run up against my own thoughts about good and bad foods. I think that a lot of our food production system is unethical. People are oppressed, animals are abused. We pollute our water harming people and ecosystems down stream. We're wasting our topsoil. We thrown about 30-40% of the food we produce in this country. American's are almost all over-weight.

James 5:4-5 says, "Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of the slaughter." Do these verses sound like America to you? They do to me.

I believe that we should try to eat with justice and peace in mind. That the right thing to do is to stand up to a bad food system with our food choices, to go against the grain.

I need your opinions. How do I talk about making food choices that I think are good (or bad) and how do I encourage others to think about their food choices without creating another legalistic system?

More On My 2010 Resolutions EDITED

2011-01-05T05:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I didn't talk about what was probably the most important thing we learned from our no-buy-year. This little bit of wisdom has become so ingrained into my life that I forgot to even mention it; it's just second nature to me now.
When we started 2010 we were concerned with a lot of food ethics and health issues and there were a lot of foods we wanted to buy but just couldn't afford. Most everyone knows what I am talking about. The lesson we learned from our little experiment is that we absolutely could afford to buy the foods we wanted it was just a matter of changing our priorities.
Of course, I am not talking about buying lobster tails and champagne for every meal. I am talking buying organic and local staples: dairy items, flour, etc.
Last January I already bought organic milk, the Meijer brand. I am firmly convinced that organic milk is better for you than the regular kind of milk. Moreover, organic dairy cattle only eat organic foods which is a very important step toward reducing hypoxia in our waters. However, Meijer Organic milk is ultra-pasteurized which I am not a fan of, and also, a lot of organic livestock raised for large corporation live in conditions that don't stand up to the spirit (and sometimes the law) of organic farming. I had concerns that this might be the case with Meijer's milk (and it certainly is the case with Horizon and some other national brands ***EDIT see comments for Horizon's perspective on my statement***). Now, don't quote me as saying Meijer's organics are unethical...it's just that I couldn't find information about their herd source so I didn't know and back in January 2010 I wanted to buy milk from a place I could know.
There is a lovely local, organic, non-homogenize, "regular" pasteurized brand of milk that all the little stores near me carry but it is...$8 a gallon (plus bottle deposit for the glass bottles!). I really wanted to buy this milk but the cost was prohibitive. It was obvious that I couldn't afford it since I always ran out of cash by the end of the pay period. I was the kind of person who budgeted so I knew where my money was going...in theory. Then started the no-buy year and once I stopped spending $4 for a specialty coffee whenever I wanted one I realized I was easily able to afford what really amounted to a $2 increase for a half gallon of milk (the size I buy). This same story follows for organic butter, organic cheese, and many other foods. It used to be I would go to the grocery store and lament the things I could not buy, now I buy those foods and skip the coffee shop on the way home.
Of course, this all seems very obvious and you're probably rolling your eyes at me. In my defense, I really didn't spend extravagantly before this project. I went out when my friends did, I saved money for a rainy and retirement and payed my bills on time. I just needed something to force me to change my habits so that I could learn what those habits were. Even though I thought I knew where my money was going I really didn't realize that my limited funds had room to be rearranged; that my spending habits were a matter of my priorities. And yes, I realize that there are some people who are genuinely broke, who rely on food stamps and food banks to be able to feed their families...or people who don't need assistance but are scraping by on the low end of "above poverty". That, however, is a discussion for another time, because the majority of Americans can and do buy luxuries. And I think that most Americans, like me, think they can't afford something because they're choosing to spend they're money elsewhere. It's a matter of priorities, and if your priority is with having coffee shop coffee or drive-thru lunch, ok, but know what you're choosing -I certainly didn't know. I think a no-buy experiment would be helpful for anyone if only to make them aware of their habits.

Year End Wrap Up

2011-01-04T09:42:00.000-08:00

Well, it's that time of year to tell you all a little bit about how my 2010 projects turned out.

First, a confession, the "No Buy Year" really fizzled out in the end. We completely abandoned our decision to not eat out at restaurants and we also spent money on Christmas presents for others and on some clothes necessities that we needed. (See previous post for list of both essential and non-essential purchases we made in 2010).

All in all I think the year was a success. We didn't buy non-academic books, didn't buy movies or music, and didn't update our wardrobes beyond the necessities (socks, underwear, jeans without holes in them)...except for that sweater I bought. Oops. We didn't buy a Christmas tree or Christmas presents for ourselves and honestly didn't miss them. So that's something to contemplate on for the future.

But we did learn a lot about our spending habits and that sometimes things that we think are necessities really aren't. Sometimes you think you need socks (my husband ALWAYS thinks this) but in reality you just need to do laundry. This says a lot about the sad state of our laundry pile, I realize.

Also, it really is okay to go to a restaurant or a bar and share food or not drink. Seriously, they just think your the DD when you don't drink at a bar, no one looks down on you for it. Bonus, you could actually be the DD. Having friends over for coffee can be just as fun as going out for coffee...provided your house is clean. But bonus, having your friends over more often forces you to keep your house clean. There are some big upsides to a lot of the trade offs we made.

I learned that a lot of things we do for entertainment in the United States rely on money -but it doesn't have to be this way. Instead of going out for dinner, have a dinner party -or a progressive dinner party. Have happy hour cocktails at your house, watch the big game at home with friends instead of at the bar. Remember your mom and her friends gossiping at the kitchen counter? Have coffee at home, too. I know sometime we need to get out of our own house -so take turns with your friends. And then, on the day both really don't want to be home, go out and have fun doing it.

I know all the things I said seem really obvious -and I probably knew all about them before I started this project, but actually trying to put these things into practice changes your perspective on them. And it does take practice to remember to do these things. When a friends suggests meeting up for drinks you have to remember suggesting they come over to your place -but your first inclination will be to agree to go out. You just have to change your habits and that takes time.

So, what will we do in 2011. Still try to eat out less because this is our number one money wasting area. We need to keep more easy meals available at home to cook to especially help on days we are both tired. Try to buy items (including clothes) used instead of new. This will help cut down on things our society throws away as well as help our pocket books. Finally, I think we will still try to keep a tight rein on the books, movies, and music that we buy. Since we have access to more than one great library system, buying these things really isn't necessary.

Do you have any questions about our year? Leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer you.

On the Fifth Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me...

2010-12-29T07:11:00.000-08:00

Today is my 3rd wedding anniversary! It's also the 5th day of Christmas, but as a friend wrote this morning, I have only one golden ring. My true love and I will re-enact our wedding day by driving from Northern Michigan to Grand Rapids in order to spend the evening at a party with our friends.

I have been largely absent from blogspot for nearly a month and for the last five days or so I haven't really been on the internet at all. Sometimes I think we are too connected to everyone in our society. It used to be that if we traveled for the holidays people just couldn't get a hold of you. Without cell phones and email and facebook and blogs a person would have to know where you were going to be in order to find a phone number to call you. I think that wasn't such a bad thing. So I turned off my phone and put away the computer and I just enjoyed a week with my parents and siblings in Northern Michigan.

All this time away from technology has been fun for us. We've watched some movies, played board games, went bowling with my family (during which my little brother ripped his pants open) and gotten in plenty of reading and crocheting. We've spent a significant amount of time following our cat around my parents' house, watching him antagonize the other pets. I've worked on crossword puzzles.

Hubby and I have also had a lot of time to talk about the future, not least of which, our thoughts on paedobaptism and candidates for future godparents (and the qualities to consider -spiritual maturity, good mentoring capabilities, geographic proximity). I would love your thoughts on baptism because I grew up baptist and he grew up catholic and so we couldn't come from more opposite baptism backgrounds.

Happy Christmas! Happy New Year!

Reflections From a Very Small Person

2010-12-02T12:38:00.000-08:00

I am sick. And of course, when I am sick I usually have an appetite only for chicken noodle soup, which I cannot have. I guess I will have to try other remedies to make me well...and sleep may well be one of those remedies. I am at the busy time in the semester when sleep is a precious commodity. Sometimes I think graduate students must be uniquely suited to the mind-numbing non-sleepness of early parenthood. Not that I've experienced it, but still, we grad students look at weeks (months!) of barely sleeping and know (or have delusional hope) that "this too shall pass". Plus we are used to grabbing naps where we can, packing bags with items for all contingencies, and being hopelessly bound to someone else's schedule. Someday when I have children I will let you know how the experience compares to graduate work.

Yesterday, I made vegan hot chocolate with vanilla almond milk, cocoa powder, sugar and a dash of coffee for good measure -it was quite good! I absolutely had to have hot chocolate on the first day of December which also happened to be a first day of snow. Too perfect. This weekend I plan to put up my Christmas decor and send out cards (many of which were written last year and never mailed! eep!). It's all very winter-y around here.

I also made polenta, which frankly is ok without butter and cheese. If I decide to make it again I am definitely going to have to experiment on ways to give it more taste. Tonight we are eating leftovers. I'm hoping that the split pea will be as nourishing and satisfying as chicken noodle.

Finally, here is a little humbling and beautiful reminder that God is Great and we are not: NASA discovers a new form of life.

And an alluring photo of deep space to remind us that our horizons are so very small.
This is the Ultra-Deep Field Picture taken by the Hubble Telescope. It is the furthest away picture we (humans) have ever been able to take. Astronomers pointed the Hubble at a patch of black nothingness, let it focus for days, and as a result got this picture of 10,000 galaxies.

Here is a little video that gives a brief history of the photo. I like the quote, in reference to the 10,000 galaxies here, "This is the number of galaxies in nothing."

EDIT Inflation: The Cost of Food

2010-11-30T11:01:00.000-08:00

Tuesday is a day away from home so I am eating leftovers and drinking black coffee (instead of lattes). Tomorrow evening I will post another vegan dinner update; I expect to make Mark Bittman's Creamy Polenta and Garlicky Mushrooms, which he posted about this week.

Meanwhile, this morning I barely caught a news segment about how much food costs have risen this year. I didn't have a chance to listen to the whole thing so this afternoon I looked up the USDA statistics for October. Here is a list of foods and their percentage price increase over last October. Are you ready?

Beef 7.3%
Pork 12.8%
Chicken 3.1%
Eggs 0.7%
Milk 5.8%
Cheese 4%
Ice Cream (1.3%)
Butter 25.4%
Fresh Fruit (2.3%)
   Apples 3.7%
   Bananas (4%)
   Citrus (0.7%)
Fresh Vegetables 4.4%
   Potatoes 1.2%
   Tomatoes 6.6%
Processed Fruits and Veggies (1.6%)
Bread (0.8%) with a projected significant increase in the upcoming months because of the weather's effects on the wheat harvest.
Coffee 3.0%

A 25% increase in the price of butter?! Good thing I'm eating vegan this month.

So, did you get a raise this year that will offset this increase?

****EDIT**** Just in time for this post, the Newsweek published an interesting article about the foods we eat and our socio-economic status. And I was just thinking about doing a paper on this too, is it too cliche to write it after the Newsweek writes about it?
I think there is more the story of poor people and junk food than is currently being discussed. We're missing some nuance and I'm pretty sure it has something to do with cost because, I don't know what people are thinking but it is WAY more expensive to eat fast food every day than to buy food from the store. We're getting our signals crossed in our reporting, I think. It's cheaper to buy junky mac and cheese than to make your own, for sure, but it is not cheaper to buy McDonald's for your kids. So we're aren't defining junk food and "good" food well enough in these articles for a start. I would like to see more work that empowers the poor to eat well, instead of just reinforcing that eating well is unattainable.

Vegan Kick Off

2010-11-29T18:07:00.000-08:00

I celebrated the end of the Pentecost season with a binge on cheese, spanikopita and chocolate covered almonds. Sunday officially began Advent and nearly four weeks of eating vegan.

On Sunday I already ran into an awkward situation. We went to my father-in-laws house to watch football and he made chili cheese nachos. He had no idea I had suddenly switched to being vegan; the day before I was eating pizza and buffalo wings with the rest of the family. Happily, my loving husband ran down the street to Chipotle and bought me a vegetarian burrito bowl which I ate with chips. That was day one.

Day two. Leftovers for lunch. For dinner I put together Vegan Split Pea Soup! My own recipe and it is super good even if I do say so myself. I might never use a ham hock again, this way is much easier.

Vegan Split Pea Soup
1 small onion, diced
1 clove garlic, pressed or minced
1 1/2 T smoked paprika
2 C split peas (rinse and pick thru them first!)
2 C vegetable broth
3 C water
salt
lemon zest
juice of half a lemon
more smoked paprika to garnish

Set your onion to saute in at least 1 T of olive oil. When soft, add in garlic and paprika, stir together. Add peas, stock, water and salt to taste. Cover and bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer and cook for about 30 minutes until the peas are tender. You could cook it much longer if you wanted to. Stir in the lemon juice.
Serve with a sprinkle of lemon zest and smoked paprika and maybe a drizzle of olive oil.

The soup turns out smoky and comforting. Vegan Day 2 is a success!

To Zion

2010-11-26T14:28:00.000-08:00

The day after Thanksgiving is a day of old movies and after watching high school flashback "Never Been Kissed" childhood favorite, "Sister Act II" came on. Now, those of you in the know will remember that my brother, sister and I loved the Sister Act movies because of the strong resemblance between our mother and Whoopi Goldberg but the real talent in the movie is with the young singers, especially Lauryn Hill.

Listening to "Joyful, Joyful" sparked curiosity in me; What is Lauryn Hill doing these days? I could recall much about her after the release of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill which was released in the 1990's. A quick wikipedia search revealed that her life has been a bit strange in the last decade. However, it all seemed to be speculation so I will leave you to your own research if you are curious.

And I will also leave you with two videos.
"Joyful, Joyful" from "Sister Act II"

"Killing Me Softly" by the "Fugees".

Goonies Never Say Die

2010-11-13T21:38:00.000-08:00

It is raining.

A nice change of things, really. It's been so darn pleasant that I have been having a hard time imagining that it is autumn. Here in the north country we have usually had snow by now (it's usually all melted, of course, but still). I am tempted to put on my snow boots and dance the Heikki Lunta Dance, but I am not yet desperate enough for such drastic measures. I'll take the rain for now.

My brothers, parents, husband and I had dinner tonight and began plotting out the relaxing vacation we get to spend together in late December. Amongst the presents and the Christmas Goose and the Wii Guitar Hero jam session we are going to have two movie marathons.
The first marathon will be before Christmas and will be an homage to my husband's hometown, Chicago's northwest suburbs. We will watch Home Alone, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Adventures in Babysitting.
The day after Christmas will be a tribute to my old stomping grounds, Astoria, Oregon. We will watch Goonies, Kindergarten Cop, Short Circuit, and Free Willy.

All this planning because my oldest brother and I put together a great rendition of a classic Goonies quote, "And then I made a noise like this, huagh, huagh, huagh, HUAGH. And then I dumped it over the side on the people in the audience, and oh, this was horrible. All the people started getting sick and throwing up on each other. I never felt so bad in my entire life."

To which my little brother, who was born in Astoria, said, "What movie is that from?"

Goonies Never Say Die.

Still Moving Toward Christmas

2010-11-12T19:11:00.000-08:00

In a continuing effort to distract myself from writing papers I have been reading previews of Christmas craft books on Google Books. I get to see just enough of the pictures to get some good ideas and then they are cut off -but it still slakes the desire I have to immediately go out and buy said glittery, pretty, crafty Christmas books.

Which brings me to my question du jour: How do I decorate my house when I can't buy anything (including a Christmas tree)?

Here are some pictures from last year. :)

Slouching Toward Bethlehem

2010-11-11T18:37:00.000-08:00

With the end of daylight savings times the dark winterly nights are upon us. We don't have cold weather yet but Jack Frost is just around the corner. Thanksgiving season is with us and after that, Advent. With all these seasonal changes my household is gearing up for a diet change. In Advent, like in Lent, we abstain from certain foods. Abstention, for us, adds to the anticipation of the season, focuses some of our spiritual energy, and, I'll be honest, helps balance out the rich dining that accompanies all the parties and feasts.

This year I am planning on eating vegan during the week...with an exception for fish occasionally. Otherwise, not meat, no dairy, no eggs Monday-Friday. Orthodox Christians do a similar type of abstention but also occasionally give up olive oil and wine. I've left off Saturday and Sunday from my fast for two reasons. The first is that we enjoy a large group dinner with our church on Sundays. The second is that I want to bake Christmas cookies and I will eat them while I'm baking so I'm not going to set myself up for stress and failure. The point of this exercise is to make changes that remind me to contemplate the meaning of the season, not to discipline myself into being a miserable Grinch.

The added bonus of eating vegan is that we will be forced to eat from the over flowing bounty of our freezers (and fridge) which are full of our summer harvest. Come the last Sunday of Advent I need to have a batch of Paula Deen's Grandma's eggnog chilling in my freezer and it is not going to fit unless I work my way through some veggies! I'm not sure there is a better incentive to eat vegetables than that.

Here are the meals I have planned out for the rest of the month. Most are not vegan (that doesn't start for three weeks yet) but many are vegetarian. All of them use a ton of vegetables.
Creamy Celariac Soup
Kale and Walnut Pesto on fish, with rice
Veggie Pizza
Cauliflower Pasta with Tomato Sauce and Cheddar
Farmer's Cabbage and Mushroom Pie
Pumpkin and Sage Soup
Brussels Sprouts with Portobella and Sunflower Seeds, with Quinoa
Beet and Carrot Burgers, with oven fries
White Bean and Kale Gratin
Chicken Cutlets with Buffalo Sauce, with Cabbage, Pear and Walnut Slaw
Tomato, Chickpea and Pasta Soup

Review: 2010 Purchases

2010-10-25T09:09:00.000-07:00

How has my no-buy year been going? Well...

Here is what I have bought this year:
1. Wedding/Baby Shower/House Warming Presents. When it came down to it, my conscience wouldn't let me show up without a present since I actually could afford to bring one. $$
2. Camping Gear. I had a class on Isle Royale this summer, plus we took a family vacation and camped our way across the U.S. I bought things for this, rain gear, a new sleeping bag, a back pack. Yep. I spent a lot of money, but I had the money, thankfully, because I hadn't been purchasing things before this. Our trip, however, proved to be our undoing. $$$
3. Eating Out. This started because it was 90 degrees in our apartment and we could cook...but it quickly devolved into laziness. We've been eating out too much. Time to cut back again. $$$
4. Alcohol. Our rule against buying alcohol has gone out the window. We've been buying beer and wine. Yep.
5. Glass Casserole Dish. With my school schedule I needed something I could freeze food in and then cook in. So I bought a casserole dish. $9
6. Jeans. All my jeans had holes in them. I can't sew and with school I haven't had time to learn. I bought a new pair after several weeks of wearing trousers began to wear on me. $30
7. Plan to buy: Christmas presents for other people (our family) -as with wedding presents, we feel too guilty not buying them. $$
8. Movies. We've gone a couple of times. $30
9. Things we planned on buying namely, school supplies and vacation souvenirs. $$
10. Computer stuff. A new laptop battery for him and a subscription anti-virus for me.
11. New contact lenses -but this probably counts as medical. Still, I could have kept on with my glasses. $50
12. A hair cut for him. You don't want to see what happens when I attempt to cut his hair. Or when he attempts to cut his hair. Actually, it's pretty funny so you may want to see it after all. $20
13. Pots for our summer plants and summer plants, most of which died unfruitful deaths.
14. A pressure cooker that our friend's parents were selling for $20. Awesome!
15. Wedding attire. Dan was in a wedding and I bought a dress and shoes to wear (from a consignment shop!). I used my birthday money but over spent by about $10.

I may be forgetting somethings. All around, I think we have done pretty well. What do you think?

Dinner Parties and Season Thoughts

2010-10-23T04:32:00.000-07:00

I attended a harvest themed progressive dinner last night and not I am up at the dark side of dawn to do homework...which is clearly what I am doing.

Two of my good friends, who both live in this apartment building, hosted a dinner for, I think, 10 people which included several courses -quite the accomplishment in two little apartments. I made pork scallopini at my friend's request and it turned out better than I thought it would. I really, really liked it and will definitely make it again. Little pork cutlets topped with a warm salad of red cabbage, pears and walnuts.

Dinner also included spiced apple cider, mulled wine, red wine, pumpkin beer, butternut squash ravioli, various little appetizers, a salad topped with fried goat cheese medallions, chicken in a goat cheese wine sauce, and apple crisp topped with ice cream.

And now today we're going up north to visit my parents and walk through a corn maze...in the rain, apparently. Oh well, that's what fall is like! I guess we will get some more use out of the rain gear we bought for camping this spring. Yes, that is a confession of buying something. We bought a few things for camping -not least of which was a new tarp after our old tarp blew away in a wind storm in Montana.

So, now I will get back to work and dream of future dinner parties. I'm thinking of hosting one for my wedding anniversary this year. A Christmas themed anniversary party. Yum!

Oranges

2010-10-22T06:47:00.000-07:00

"I want fruit" I said last Monday night. It was the evening, it was cold outside, we couldn't get to the farmer's market until Friday at least. The fridge was (is) literally overflowing with vegetables.

"I want oranges." I said, "Could you please go buy some oranges?"

"Orange aren't in season." My husband said.

He was right of course, and if we are going to eat tropical fruit in Michigan it should at least be in season.

I didn't care. I wanted oranges and I wanted them immediately.

So he bought me oranges. They are lovely, juicy, wonderful oranges. I am savoring them. I'm eating them voraciously. The oranges are calling to me as I type this.

Dear readers, I think there is a moral in this vignette, though what that moral is I have not yet decided.

What do you think?

Quick Fall Lunch

2010-10-20T11:03:00.000-07:00

It is a blustery fall day and I am working at the disk in my office watching orange and yellow leaves whip around in the air. My cat also likes watching the leaves so he is keeping me company and we are warm and snuggly with sweaters and coffee and a delicious lunch. Very cozy.

Most days I can't be bothered to do any cooking for lunch. To my mind, cooking is much better suited to morning or evening. Today, however, I was forced to cook my lunch. Oh, I tried to get by on a "light lunch" -you know, an apple, some pinconing cheese, and one small slice of herbed sourdough. But after skipping breakfast and doing some heavy yoga this morning that lunch was not going to cut it, by one o'clock my tummy was rumbly. I searched for leftovers but they were all of dubious age and edibility. I looked through the vegetables but none could be quickly eaten. I rummaged in my cupboards for canned soup but all I came up with was a can of tomato sauce. There was nothing else for it, I had to cook.

Pasta is about the easiest thing you can ever cook and since I had a can of tomato sauce in hand I decided to make my friend's favorite quick meal; pasta in tomato sauce. I should clarify here that I mean plain tomato sauce, not spaghetti sauce. You cook your pasta, pour on the tomato sauce and garnish with a little Worcestershire sauce or cheese. My friend calls this Depression [Era] food but I think of it as homemade spaghetti-os.

And let me tell you it is a deliciously satisfying meal. I'm enjoying mine with Worcestershire sauce and cinnamon. In the fall you should always add cinnamon to your tomato sauce.

Ta!

Fall Quick Meals and Cooking Ahead

2010-10-15T18:43:00.000-07:00

Mes Amis, many apologies for not posting in a month. It is the sad reality when I am in school, my thoughts are more tied up in my school work than in house things. As it should be, I suppose. Still, it makes for sad blogging.

However, I have missed writing about home things and so I am back! Hurrah!

One problem we do run into while I'm in school is having food in the house that is good, nutritious -and easy enough to make that we won't go out for fast food. On days I commute (an hour and fifteen minutes one way) my husband takes the bus which extends his commute too. To top it off, on Tuesdays he has to walk to the Farmer's Market to pick up our CSA vegetables and then walk home with them. He's tuckered out when he gets back and after sorting through and prepping bags of vegetables he is in no mood cook.

So I have been putting together a list of our favorite no-fuss meals to get us through the school year. The plan is for me to cook these easy meals when I'm home on Mondays, freeze them in containers for us to eat later in the week.

Thoughts so far:
~Soups and Chilis, particularly chicken noodle soup and chicken stew which I have been craving like crazy this fall.
~Whole roasts (Chicken, pork, beef) -makes great sandwiches for lunches and also the leftover meat can be used in casseroles, tacos, soups, etc.
~Casseroles -Shepherd's pie, tuna noodle casserole, you know comfort food.
~Our favorite pasta dishes -rigatoni with tuna and sun dried tomatoes, cauliflower and spiral noodles with cheddar and tomato sauce

I am also loving my new go -to way to cook vegetables. Instead of using olive oil and then adding spices and such I just use the bottle of home made vinaigrette that sits on the counter by the stove. Sometimes I add a little butter or garlic and I usually add a little wine to steam the veggies but using the dressing really does make the veggies that much easy and when you're tired that is a real life saver.

Also, I am loving corn with chili powder and Parmesan cheese. I had drippy Mexican style corn on the cob this summer and ever since I have only wanted to eat corn with those flavors! Wonderful!

And now, I am off to plan a menu for lunch with my brother. I think roast beef sandwiches with horseradish cream and radishes...

Reflections on Agrarianism and the Academy

2010-09-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

Having read Kimberly K. Smith, Wendell Berry and the Agrarian Tradition: A Common Grace (2003), Chapters 1 and 2.

Fifty-two pages of the history of Agrarianism in the United States, examining the origins of the values (at least as they begin with Jefferson) of individual independence, freedom, thrift, community, ecology, preservation and conservation, etc. What struck me most was the relationship between Jeffersonian agrarianism and the values of the academy. Not a surprise, really, since the leisure time fostered by Jefferson’s agriculture was to be used in academic pursuits.

Smith informs us that leisure is not one of the benefits Berry values in agriculture but I cannot imagine that that is true. Berry is an academic by profession. Not only did he work at the University of Kentucky for years but he is a prolific writer of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. The old southern agrarian warnings against the materialism of northern industry is something that reflects so closely to modern discussions about the purpose of the academy that I can’t help but think they’ve also informed Berry’s view of materialism and industry.

In the academy, particularly in Liberal Arts colleges, there is an ongoing lament that schools are increasingly expected to produce a product rather than students learning for the sake of their and societies’ betterment. English departments’ (Berry’s own field) funding are being cut because English and Literature (and other Humanities) aren’t “useful” in a trade sense. It isn’t immediately apparent how they will increase job prospects at the end of an expensive four years of education.

Also, what is tenure but “intellectual independence and freedom from pressures” (pg 31). The worry sometimes expressed by academics, that funding is increasingly more important than creative research, only highlights the traditional perception of the academy being a place that is (or should be) beyond the reach of industry.

Not only must Wendell Berry’s views on the world be informed by the conditions of the academy of which he is apart, but our own views as members of the academy (particularly those of us from the Liberal Arts tradition) are likewise informed. It is only natural that we find resonance with the agrarian values of independence, freedom, and “distrust of the establishment and Corporate America” (pg 26). But like Berry, this professional sympathy with agrarian values does not explain our interest in environmental and ecological concerns. Chapter Two sums up the birth of ecology from Thoreau to Muir to Abbey, and from Pinchot to Roosevelt and Bailey to the New Dealers to Barsodi, McWilliams, Goldschmidt, Carson and Leopold. Berry’s ecological heritage is ours as well and it is good to be reminded from whence we came.

Another point can be found toward beginning of the first chapter in the discussion of the southern elitism and the defense of slavery as it promoted leisure and thus culture. Is this a kin to the comments we hear, which promoted the continuation of industrial agriculture because it has birthed and supports our modern lifestyles which are characterized by pursuits outside of manual labor (i.e. leisure)? When future generations look back on our moral ambivalence about the harmful (environmental and human) effects of our current form of agriculture will they see our justifications as lacking and our unwillingness to make difficult changes as symptomatic of our culture’s moral failures? Are we promoting the continuation of institutions we know to be wrong for our own material comfort? Is leisure not only time for cultural pursuits but also indicative of our value for slothfulness? I am afraid this is exactly how they will see our defenses. In an economy which is increasingly driven by the "service sector" and consumption; in which we don't actually make anything because all our manufacturing has been shipped overseas to be done by poor people. In a culture in which our business can be attributed to trucking our kids to soccer practice and piano lessons and in which watching television (interacting with art?) consumes a significant amount of our at home time, I can't help but think our leisure, far from promoting a growth in good citizenship, is in fact contributing to an excess of nothing...that is to say nothingness. Jefferson, in his belief that land owners make good citizens failed to envision sub-urbia in which good landowners are those that promote a vision of wealth and leisure in which nothing productive can be done with their land (gardens, clothes-lines, chickens -no way!) and their value to their community is all in the appearance of conformity to a benign middle class utopia. Status quo is the way to go.

Sub-urban landowners today have the distinction (along with the aristocracy of post-revolution France) of not seeing the workers of the world and of having the luxury of dismissing the workers' struggles with only the barest of conscience soothing actions. The rich everywhere continue in this luxury but you should note that the sub-urbs were designed specifically to promote this kind of idyllic ignorance.

Aldo Leopolds' fear of believing that breakfast comes from the grocers and that heat comes from the furnace is recognized in a people so wholly invested in a corrupt production system that allows their own slothful leisure.

Searching for Security

2010-09-12T18:11:00.000-07:00

The other day I was visiting Apartment Therapy, reading about all the people like me who live in apartments and are trying to can and find replacements for cellar potato storage. I thought to myself that it was really a sign of our times that this hip young person's website, dedicated mostly to showing off cool home design, would have enough reader interest to talk about canning. Is this what people do now? Some of my friends do have a middling interest in the craft, but most think that we are a little crazy for our canning habits. Often, I think they're right.

Then today I read the most recent Brocante Home blog post, a tribute to 9/11. Allison hit on something profound when she connected the rise in "womanly" pursuits to 9/11. Women, she said, turned en-mass to knitting and baking and other homemaking arts as a direct response to the tragedy. We were looking for safety in tradition. Well, the Sociologist in me snapped to attention at her proclamation.

It is undeniable that we have a skewed and romanticized view of history. In fact, I'm reading a book right now that sets me on edge because its seems a little villainous to slander people of the past. They are dead, after all, you aren't supposed to speak ill of them. Plus we used to be kids and kids find the world to be a happier, simpler place. But looking back on our lives we remember how much more "wholesome" things used to be and so it's easy to believe other, older people that their nostalgia is reality.

That our view of the past is romantic doesn't change our belief in it. That past can be a compelling "safe place" when the world turns against us. After 9/11, it makes sense that we would look for a safe place to be, home and church.

In the last decade we have seen a resurgence in home arts, in high churches (orthodox, catholic, anglican) and in fundamentalism of many kinds. Are these things related? In some ways, no, but it seems to me that they at least have a common thread in the search for meaning after 9/11. We all want the world to be a better place. Some choose to make it a better place with canned tomatoes and chocolate cookies. I think they're on the right track.

Gathering and Putting Up

2010-09-11T17:10:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again. Almost Fall and the weather is cooler and wetter than we've been used to. It's time for sweaters and sweatshirts, soups and hot chocolate. It is also time to get serious about putting up food for winter.

With all my traveling this summer I missed some of the earlier veggies that I love (asparagus and pickles), I only just barely made it to peaches in time. I'm scrambling to get tomatoes done this week and next. I am also freezing last minute blueberries, stringing jalepeno peppers, freezing corn and shelling beans.

I like this time of year. I like the warmth of the oven and the bright colors of vegetables and fruits. I like seeing the abundance; reorganizing the freezers to make things fit, filling up closets and pantries, looking with exasperation at the vegetables that are cluttering the counters, tables and floor.

But at the same time I wonder WHY I do all of this. Why do I try so hard to eat locally and to put by my own food?

I do have a few ethical considerations that inform my choices. The first is that I like to keep my money in the local economy. I like to support small business owners rather than multi-national corporations. I also think foods taste better when they aren't industrial produced. I don't like tomatoes that are forced to 'ripen' with carbon dioxide or milk that has been homogenized and ultra-pasteurized and shipped halfway across the country. I don't like eggs that have pale yellow yolks and sat in cold storage for a month before I even bought them.

Mostly I buy local foods because I like to be connected to the place I am in. I like learning what Michigan tastes like.

Eating and Abstaining

2010-08-01T21:11:00.000-07:00

Today The Kitchn hosted an article about eating and abstaining as a response to stress. Not in an eating disordered way, just as a normal and occasional response to the things going on in our lives. It's a brief article but it reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend about emotional eating.

My friend's stance was that emotional eating was wrong, that food is for nutrition and that if we eat because we are upset or because we lonely, etc. then we are not treating food the way it was meant to be treated. I've heard this argument before. I completely disagree with it.

Sure, eating a tub of ice cream because you had a bad day at work is extreme and unhealthy. But eating a bowl of ice cream when you had a stressful day seams like a reasonable way to mitigate your bad feelings (i.e. to cheer yourself up). The textures are soothing, the flavors and smells release 'feel-good' chemicals in the brain. Eating that bowl of ice cream really does make you feel better.

Problems arise, of course, when food becomes the only way that you can deal with your emotions. If eating ice cream is the only way that you know how to deal with stress then yes, you have an unhealthy issue with food. Nevertheless, I maintain that most emotional eating isn't unhealthy.

Let's look at it from another point of view. Eating is social and communal. Meals and foods have meaning for us that extend beyond nutritional value. We have comfort foods, feisty foods, refreshing foods. Foods remind us of our childhood (for good or bad) or of our days in college or of our weddings. Foods can also have culturally proscribed meanings. Turkey, cranberries, and pumpkin pie are, for many Americans, important symbols of our national heritage and self-identities. When I have roast turkey, I don't just think about the meal I'm eating. The sight, scent, and taste of the turkey fires the neuron pathways in my brain to remember other times I've eaten turkey and so I am filled with the warmth and happiness of Thanksgiving. This is the crux of emotional eating. If someone is new in your neighborhood, invite them over for a meal like this and they will feel at-ease and welcomed. They will feel at home.

Alternately, sometimes when I am upset, I can't imagine eating a thing. Maybe this is because food would make me feel better or remind me of good times and I subconsciously don't want to be made to feel that way. Maybe stress hormones just keep my body from feeling hungry. I'm not sure the cause but abstaining is still a result of my emotional state. But I also abstain for other reasons. Lenten fasts, food boycotts, and support ethical or sustainable agriculture are all partially fueled by emotion. From a Christian point of view, if food were only meant to be physically sustaining then there would be less meaning to abstention and fasting; because food has other meanings for us, abstaining becomes a way that we can focus our spiritual attention.

Food invokes emotion, it gives meaning and it provides context. I hope I never have to see food as purely utilitarian. I say, bring on the emotional eating. Please also bring on the endorphin releasing aerobics class. Exercising can be emotional, too.

Letting Go of Materialism

2010-07-30T09:57:00.000-07:00

You all know that I have been on a quest to eschew materialism this year and I have been reflecting on what I have learned and what advice I could give to people with similar goals.

I suppose that if there is one thing I've learned it is that being non-materialistic (or even being frugal) is absolutely NOT the same as being cheap. Cheapness is miserly, it is Ebenezer Scrooge before his reclamation. There is a reason that miser forms the root of the word miserable. A miser cares more for her money (or her future money) than for herself or those around her. If money means more to you than happiness does, if you have a hard time being generous, if you are miserable in your life now because you are waiting until you have enough money to be happy, then.you.are.being.materialistic. I highly suggest you go watch A Christmas Carol and imagine yourself as Scrooge. You can rent the movie from the library for free. You can read it for free online too.

Frugality, on the other hand, is living within your means and trying to reduce wastefulness. We can all stand to be more frugal. Frugality knows that its best friend is generosity. Frugality puts money and material possessions in their place. Frugality walks the line between cheapness and liberality. It is a fine balance.

Living in America, it is hard to give up materialistic urges. Yet materialism makes us miserable. It stems from the same grasping desperate need to comfort ourselves with money that cheapness comes from. They are two sides of the same coin.

If you want to let go of materialism grab a sheet of paper (or open a word document) and write down your reasons why. Here are some of my reasons:

- living paycheck to paycheck was stressful (even though I got to eat out and buy nice things, I was always

worried about money and paying bills)

- The recession really had me rethinking my values and security.

- I wanted to donate more money to charities

- I felt overwhelmed with clutter

- I wanted to save more for traveling, retirement, having kids, buying a house, etc.

- I realized that I knew a lot of people who are monetarily successful and yet unhappy.

Then write down what you think being non-materialistic will mean for your life. For example:

- I will have more time at home in the evenings

- I will be able to entertain more often.

- I will have more time for my hobbies

- Life will be simpler

- I can get rid of extraneous stuff

- I can take advantage of free events which means paying more attention to community activities and being more

involved.

- I will be happier and less stressed out

Remind yourself of things in life that make you happy:

- make a list of things you are grateful for and review it daily. Make it a long list, at least 25 things.

- find the little pleasures in life you enjoy and make a point to relish in them as often as you can. Smile and

enjoy them. For me this includes things like drinking tea while I work, looking at blogs about crocheting and

cooking, and admiring my umbrella with the umbrellas on it (it leans against a wall in the hallway so I get

walk past it several times a day).

- Get outside and enjoy the sensations of the natural world. The feel of the air on your skin, the smell of grass

and water and pavement. Bugs and dirt absolutely will not hurt you.

- Talk to friends daily. Remember how your mom used to talk to her friends on the phone(you know, the

yellow phone in the kitchen that had the really long cord.) If you can't meet for coffee at least pick up the

phone.

- Be kind and generous to others but don't tell anyone, keep it as your own private pick-me-up.

- Think positively. Be an optimist. Smile while you are working or reading and you will enjoy what you are

doing more. Can't smile, put a pen sideways in your mouth and hold it between your teeth. It mimics the

muscle movement of smiling and triggers your neuro-pathways to alert your brain that you must be happy.

- Challenge yourself to grow outside your comfort zone. This can be painful but is ultimately rewarding.

Summer

2010-07-20T20:13:00.000-07:00

The cicadas are out tonight, fans are turning in the house and in the sky clouds are floating by.

It is almost a month after the solstice and summer is in the long hot days of its waning. But summer isn't nearly over. We are right in the middle of it.

Going back to school has given me the summer that I used to only dream of. Because, now I am an adult and I can do my own things in the summer and make it my own time. And what I am discovering is that summer is just as long and relaxing and wonderful now as it was when I was a child. How can it be? I am astonished

I am blessed with my work in academia because of the lifestyle it affords me. I have a lot of work to do, too much sometimes, but it is the type of work that allows me to read, to research interesting subjects, to travel and meet new people and have interesting discussions. My lifestyle lets me bake cookies and go on road trips. My lifestyle lets me snuggle my kitten and make sun tea in the mornings. My job lets me be the mistress of my own life and that is a powerful and wonderful gift.

But this gift remains only if I let it. I can let the workload overwhelm me, let the stress make me forget how happy I am to be a learner and a teacher. I am determined not to be so jaded, not to let a good thing be ruined by the everyday mundane details.

I can choose to be the maker of my own happiness, and so I do.

And in parting, here is a picture of me reading on a cliff on Lake Superior in the North Country.

Blessings!

Shapes in Nature

2010-07-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

Last spring I watched a Nova episode about Fractals. (See episode here)

Ever since, I have been looking at shapes in nature that share the same characteristics. Here are a few of my favorites -look at the veining in in each of these.

A tree without leaves

A human brain cell

corals

human lungs

River Delta

Crab Nebula

Summertime Foods Series

2010-07-10T07:52:00.000-07:00

What's a family to do when it is a humid 90 degrees, they live in a 90 year old apartment with no air conditioning, and they are HUNGRY. Well, the answer for us was to temporarliy lift the ban on buying deli foods and take out. Now I am complining a list of cool summer foods for us to eat. Green Salads, Gazpachos, Slaws, Un-Green Salads, Antipastos, Ceviche and more!

Today: Green Salads! (I call anything with greens for a base a green salad)
I make a lot of salads because we get a lot of lettuce from the farm. This week we got two heads of lettuce and 3/4 lb of mixed greens. All our other excess veggies can be frozen but the lettuce we have use now. I think the key to being happy with this is to keep plenty of different salad fixings around.

Onions, scallions, garlic, kalamatas, various cheeses, marinated artichoke hearts, fruits, nuts, crutons, hard boiled eggs, root vegetables, beans, meats, leftovers, etc.

I make dressings from scratch based on the kind of salad I've made.

It helps to have a list of salad suggestions handy when I lack inspiration.

Also, I've learned not to toss the salad together before I serve it. Make it look pretty in the bowl and let people dig into layers; everyone finds this more appetizing.

Last salad rule: everything, especially the greens, need to be in bite sized pieces. Most salads are served in chunks so large you could never fit them in your mouth and I hate, hate, hate using a knife on salads.

Favorite salads:
Greek Salad: lettuce, onions, olives, tomatoes, feta (or ricotta salata because Husband doesn't like goat cheeses) fresh herbs, red wine vinaigrette with garlic and oregano.
Fajita Salad: lettuce, sauteed onions and bell peppers, cilantro, tomatoes, avocado, cheddar cheese. Make a vinaigrette with garlic, cumin, chili powder and mixed herbs to flavor, whisk in sour cream. Serve with tortilla chips for added crunch.

And wouldn't you know, I don't have any pictures of my salads!

Late Spring -and project failures!

2010-06-10T11:10:00.000-07:00

Husband and I just returned from a two week whirlwind vacation to the Dakotas and Montana. We visited national parks, camped and hiked, and occasionally fought nature (and came out the victors!). It was a glorious trip and made even better by visiting lots of family and making new friends from California to New York City. We at s'mores, had sing-a-longs, drank cocktails, celebrated birthdays and graduations, hugged, watched birds we had never seen before, marveled at the mountains, smelled the cedars at Glacier, felt the prairie winds, shared the road with buffalo and wild horses, watched the evening primroses bloom, and had a lot of rest our souls and bodies.

Now we are back and it is CSA day! The first pick-up of the season is always exciting and I have spent the morning putting together recipes in anticipation of it. Time to break out my salad bowl and wash my new moose shaped salad claws (antlers?).

Friends, we bought stuff on this trip -lots of souvenirs, which we were always planning, and lots of eating out, which was not planned. We went off our spending fast in a major way! So, now it's back onto the straight and narrow. And after all the junk food we ate on the trip, it is also back to our vegetarian ways. And no more junk food...after I finish eating my birthday cake.

Types of Human Omnivores

2010-04-10T13:31:00.000-07:00

My brother-in-law recently converted from a vegetarian to a vegan diet. More power to him, I say. However, I it has made me think about my position on animal products and I thought I would take a few minutes to write about them.

I am a self proclaimed "committed omnivore" and that means that I have my own bias that I am working from, but here is my view of omnivorous humans.

1. We are biologically omnivores. There are vegans who will say we are not but the consensus of the scientific community is that our bodies (cell structure, intestines, teeth structure and more) are structured to consume both plant and animal matter. Our closest biological relative, the chimpanzee (closest in behavior, genetics, and anatomy) is also omnivorous, in fact, chimpanzees hunt and kill other animals to eat them. While humans can now manufacture some of the nutrients that we need (and get from animals) I dislike the idea of having to take a B12 supplement so that I do not eventually succumb to a psychosis.

2. While a vegan diet does require the least amount of land for food production, it requires only high quality land on which vegetables, fruits, grains, and nuts and seeds can be grown. A study by Cornell University found that while those who ate "moderate" amounts of meat and dairy required more land (only .1 acres more) the diet utilized more lesser quality lands where hay can be grown or animals pastured. The study found that in the state of New York more people could be fed if the population ate "moderate" amounts of meat and eggs because these "low quality" lands could be used. Moderate is defined as less than 2oz of meat and eggs per day.

I believe that westerners absolutely must cut back on their meat consumption. In the US we eat an average of 5.8 oz of meat per day. Depending on the study you read, that is 2 or 3 times the recommended amount for optimal consumption (from a 'green' point of view). As an ethical eater I am concerned by the treatment of animals and I believe that animals should be allowed to graze and forage. As an ethical eater I also am concerned about commodities production. That the Amazon rain forest has been jeopardized by soy production and that corn and soy are in nearly every food product sold in the US, and that these commodities require huge amounts of water, and that our subsidies wreak havoc on developing countries' agriculture are all major concerns to me. I want to encourage all Americans to try to cut their consumption of corn and soy, and to try to eat only organic varieties.

Over Lent Husband and I ate a pescetarian diet which I really enjoyed. In fact, I am tempted to keep eating this way, though Husband is glad to have some meat again. My mom remembered a couple of years ago that when she was a kid she didn't like meat and since then she has largely lost her appetite for it. My parents have moved toward an increasing vegetarian diet since then. I am glad to see my family moving in this direction.

Regardless of whether you eat meat or not, humans require a very varied diet for best health. Please do not fall into the habit of soy meat, soy cheese, soy eggs, soy milk, soy mayonnaise, as well as the soy already in the processed foods we eat.

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

2010-03-25T10:30:00.000-07:00

The title quote for this piece is one that we have all heard before and one that is at odds with many other quotes. Carpe Diem comes to mind. But whether you feel strongly that "patience is a virtue" or that we "make our own luck" when it comes to frugality there is one hard and fast rule that has proven itself to me time and again, "make do".

"Making do" is the moral of today's story.

For the last several years I have been vacuuming my apartments with a little yellow stick vac that my mom gave me when I moved into my first apartment. It was handy for small jobs, and handy for storing, but it was also a nuisance. It filled up quickly and wasn't very powerful. You can't do the furniture or corners with it and it doesn't have a rotor brush. Still, it has worked for me for about 6 years. I sometimes longed for a real vacuum, sometimes borrowed my friends' vacuums, and even registered for a vacuum for my wedding, which I did not get. I wasn't being particularly frugal by not getting a vacuum -I just never did. There was always something else I wanted.

Boy am I glad that I waited. Last week in the "free room" in our apartment building (the free room is a little room in the basement that people put thing they no longer want but that other people might like) we found a working vacuum cleaner. A quick check up showed us that the belt needed to be replaced and that the suction when using the hose feature was not very strong -though the floor suction was great. Well, I wanted something stronger than the little yellow vacuum so I decided to keep the free one despite its troubles. We replaced the belt, cleaned the filter (it's a bagless vacuum! score!) and I have been vacuuming to my hearts content.

But I really wanted to vacuum the edges, and the couch, and window sills. So, today I took apart the vacuum cleaner and low and behold, there was a clog in the hose. Why was there a clog? Because someone tried to vacuum up not one, but two straws. Who would try to vacuum up a straw?

A better question is, who would get rid of a vacuum in perfect working order? I am hoping it was someone whose new roommate happened to have a better vacuum. I have a feeling, though, that it was a person who was tired of the 'broken' vacuum hose and 'broken' rotor brush and so they got a new vacuum.

All the better for me -I made do for a long time and now my patience has been rewarded. Now, time to vacuum the couch!

Saving Money

2010-03-13T18:28:00.000-08:00

I have never been a saver. I worked in finance for a few years and so I quickly learned the importance of saving for retirement -and that was about the only thing I did save for. I had a small savings account to cover large expenses (like car repairs) but mostly I set aside my retirement savings and spent the rest. Whatever I wanted I bought for myself (well, you know what I mean). But, I did set by a good chunk in my
Roth 401(k), after all, I figured that once I retired I would like to continue spending money.

Then I heard about voluntary simplicity, I learned about New Monasticism, I heard an interview with the woman who wrote "Not Spending It", my very good friend started telling me all about how she wasn't a spender -she saved, saved, saved. I was intrigued; because there were things that I wanted to save for (like a house) and because all my spending was fun but not fulfilling. And, of course, you know the rest.

I stopped spending money. I just quit cold turkey, and it was easier than I thought it would be.

I am not a strong-will-power person. I eat dessert every time, can't stick to a diet, definitely can't stick to a budget, and tend to procrastinate. I was able to do this project because of a couple of things. First, I had a partner in crime -my husband. I have someone to be accountable to and someone who is as committed to this project as I am. Second, I made the rules simple. I didn't come up with elaborate exceptions or give myself rewards, I can't buy anything. Though extreme, it is easier for me because I can't make excuses. I can't buy something early, or make exceptions for myself. Nada. Nothing.

The thing that surprises me is that I love saving money. Don't get me wrong, I still love shopping -mostly because I love pretty things (I could tell when I was at World Market today, a place I find very tempting). But I don't agonize anymore about not spending money and it is easy to walk away because I have no other choice. And as much as I love pretty things I also love being thrifty and clever. I love finding free things and making things. I love find coupons and specials. With eight more months of this ahead of me I hope to be thoroughly addicted by the end. I don't miss shopping at all.

What savings have I been up to lately? Well, a couple of weekends ago World Market had a coupon in the ad flyers for $10 off a $30 purchase. That was great because there are foods that we buy there, pasta and oil, namely. So I gathered a few of the coupons from the trashcan in the mail room (where everyone throws away the weekend flyer without looking at it) and have made several trips to the store. I now have enough pasta to last me for several months (along with a stock pile of few other things). All the stuff I stocked up on is stuff that I would have bought anyway, but I saved $40 because I was able to buy it now. Even better, I am part of the World Market rewards program and after I spend $100 I get $10 back. That means for the $80 I spent I earned $8. So I bought $120 worth of groceries for $72, that's a 40% savings! Of course, it sounds crazy to spend $80 in one month at World Market, but since I'm not spending money on anything else I have the cash to stock up for the future.

I was thinking about this awesome savings venture and was curious about the other things I could save on. I have not traditionally been a coupon clipper but I think that I am now hooked. I found a coupon for our toothpaste, for vegetables and for tuna fish. I have recently been to the Crown Prince website (I buy their sardines) and learned that they have a frequent buyer program. For every 5 labels you mail to them they will mail you 5 coupons for 50 cents off any Crown Prince product. I am seriously considering switching to their tuna because of this, but I have to check the prices first.

Husband suggested that I look into ordering some of our frequent items online where I can buy them bulk. Amazon sells a lot of our favorite packaged foods for cheaper than we can get them in the store. Though our favorite (and sadly expensive) cranberry juice is MORE when you buy it online. My rules with this are that it has to be less expensive including shipping and it has to be a non-local product. I can order my sardines online because you can't get Michigan sardines. I can't order peanut butter because I buy from a local company. Of course, once I order sardines and have all those labels it will be cheaper to buy them in the store because of the coupons.

So, do you have savings tips for me?

Summer Plans

2010-03-13T07:21:00.000-08:00

I have some major traveling in my near future.

The week before Memorial Day I will head out across this great country to visit family in Montana, hitting up several national parks and monuments along the way, as well as seeing some beautiful prairie. The drive through South Dakota is one of my absolute favorites. On the docket: the rolling farmland of Minnesota, the little town in North Dakota that I used to live in, the northern bad lands, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Big Sky Country, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Devil's Tower, Mount Rushmore, Badlands National Park (southern badlands -very spooky), and then a nice trek home to wrap it up. It will be whirlwind for sure but Husband has never seen these places and I have to admit that I am anxious for him to. I love these places in my soul.

We will return home the first weekend in June, which is very well because I will be leaving two weekends after that for a week long camping trip at Isle Royale National Park. It will be guided and we will be doing a lot of hiking -very exciting stuff. Then I will get back and we will leave for a wedding that Dan is in over 4th of July weekend.

Now, how much of this traveling can I accomplish without having to buy anything? We will see. :)

One this is for certain. If I am going to spend the summer traipsing around the country I need to get into shape. I need my body to ready for long hikes (some up mountains) and for shorts, dresses, and bikinis. But dang, won't I look good after spending nearly all of June camping? Maybe I will finally get my hair to back toward the lighter blonde I enjoyed as a child. And now that my narcissism is done (for the moment) I need to walk down to the farmer's market and buy eggs.

Ta ta!

Following My Forebearers

2010-03-11T06:43:00.000-08:00

I watched a movie last night about my forebearers. Not my genetic ancestors but my simple-living ancestors. More accurately speaking, probably my simple-living older siblings. The movie I watched watched was made in the 1990s and it was about the scourge of materialism that is making Americans sick in body, soul and mind...and planet. This nearly 20 year old movie expressed perfectly my concerns about materialism and it gave me some new fodder for thought. The movie is called Affluenza and you can find it at a library near you. The ideas they discuss are so 'up-to-date' that it will shame you to realize that people were saying this stuff 20 years ago (and a great deal longer).

Did you know that the 1828 Merriam-Webster Dictionary defined consumption as,

1. The act of consuming; waste; destruction by burning, eating, devouring, scattering, dissipation, slow decay, or by passing away, as time; as the consumption of fuel, of food, of commodities or estate, of time, &c.

2. The state of being wasted, or diminished.

Etna and Vesuvius have not suffered any considerable diminution or consumption.

3. In medicine, a wasting of flesh; a gradual decay or diminution of the body; a word of extensive signification. But particularly, the disease called phthisis pulmonalis, pulmonic consumption, a disease seated in the lungs, attended with hectic fever, cough, &c.

These 1828 definitions are very close to the definitions that we use today but they differ in that they emphasize the wastefulness of consumption. I think this is an aspect of the word that we have forgotten, and we have conveniently wiped our memory of these old definition by changing them in our dictionaries. The fact of the matter is, we used to value thrift in the USA. Simultaneously admiring and hating the Barons of old (lumber barons, oil barons, railway barons, etc) our ancestors survived only because of their thrift and craftiness. Pioneers, early farmers, and industrial age factory workers only made it through a lot of hard work and through saving their hard earned resources. Of course, they wanted to make it to a life of luxury, like the Barons. That was the dream and it is a dream that wasn't reached for most Americans until after WWII, today most Americans have made it.

But despite the fact that we've made it to an age of mass prosperity, Americans' reported Happiness peaked in 1957 and has been steadily going down ever since. In my opinion we grow unhappier because our possessions are consuming us. "...destruction by burning, eating, devouring, scattering, dissipation, slow decay..." and all that. We might think that we are consumers, but really, we are the ones slowly dying. Our stuff lives on forever in the trash heaps of time.

And so, I will part with one of my favorite adages. It hails from a bygone era when being thrifty was a matter of life and death (maybe it is today as well). "Use if up, wear it out, make do or do without."

End-of-Winter Updates

2010-03-08T11:11:00.000-08:00

Well, I haven't written about my little experiment for a while, have I? Things on that front are going very well. I can't believe how little I miss spending money. The odd longings come now and then, mostly when I am hungry and don't have access to a grocery store, but all in all, I have been having an easy time of it.

We went to a wedding on Saturday night and brought a homemade gift, which I forgot to take pictures of (drat it all!). The gift was a set of pancake and muffin mixes all wrapped up in brown paper with handmade labels. I boxed them all up in a re-purposed and re-decorated clementines crate which I saved from this past winter. It looked very cute in the end and I was quite happy with it. The wedding was beautiful and I spent the evening dancing, drinking, and talking with good friends. A very fun party.

The real trouble I am having with my no-buy-year is that my jeans have all given up the ghost and so I must learn how to patch them asap and then find the time to do some sewing. Luckily I am on spring break right now. Three pairs of jeans in one week, I think I can manage it. Well, I think I can at least get one pair done.

I have much to do over my spring break. Some things for school, definitely, but also lots of household stuff. I think that I will join the Apartment Therapy Spring Cure this year as a means of motivating me to get my place on the up-and-up and keep it that way. I am hosting a Seder at my place this year and hosting church during the month of May so my timeline fits right in with Spring Cure schedule.

I love Apartment Therapy -very inspirational for people with small spaces (like me!). Check it out -it is sure to help you with your small and big spaces too! Apartment Therapy

I opened up a jar of peaches this week. It was the first of my canned fruit that I opened (I spent the winter months eating apples, applesauce, citrus and frozen fruit). I am delighting in the peaches. I love canned peaches. I once read an article about home-growing food in which the author said she always fed her son store-bought canned peaches because they tasted different than the home-canned ones. Well, I don't think there is much of a difference between the two. I canned mine in light syrup so they are (slightly) less sweet than you would normally find, but otherwise they taste exactly the same. Which is to say, they taste like cooked peaches in sugar water. But there is something very homey and summery about peaches, isn't there?

This is our first week of real spring-like weather. Our snow which we had last week (we went snowshoeing last weekend!) is all gone on the south-facing lawns and roads and still lingering in the shady northerly areas. But I have had my windows open and have abandoned my winter coat. Spring is in the air. I am sure that we will still get a heart-breaking snowstorm or two before the warm weather really sets in, after all, spring doesn't really start until March 20th and around here Easter is traditionally barely warm enough to wear your new spring clothes. Still, when it has been sunny for nearly a week straight, it is hard to believe that this is just a lull before the cold weather returns. We had a warm winter this year, but a cloudy one, so the sunny weather is a joy unto itself. Yet March came in like a lamb...

For my parting thought, I submit a picture of my cat enjoying the first March sunshine of his young life. He's also sticking out his tongue at you.

Some of My Happy Things

2010-03-04T10:07:00.000-08:00

...or should I say some of my hygge things!

I have started my spring break -one of the best parts about being in school again! While I certainly have work to do, I thought I would start my vacation off the right way by enjoying the sunshine, having breakfast with friends, and then writing about some of the hyggelig things in my household. While money can't buy happiness I have found that these possessions always put a smile on my face and joy in my heart. I am a firm believer that everything you put in your house should be beautiful or useful or preferably both! I don't remember where that quote came from but it is one of my mottoes.

So here we go -in no particular order:

My 'distressed' wood floors

My paint colors

Still Life with Citrus

(vase by Husband's aunt, bowl by my sister)

Artwork by family

Measure cups and spoons

Old-fashioned kitchen scale

Pot-holders

Vintage spoon holder -used to be in my parent's kitchen when I was a kid

Teapot with ugly green tea-cozy and my favorite tea cup

Umbrella with green and pink umbrellas on it

Our marriage certificate -signed by all our wedding guests

Family Matters

2010-02-26T05:44:00.000-08:00

You may think I have been absent from my blog but I have not been. I just haven't been writing. I show up here everyday, think "I should write something...hmmm..." and then check the blog rolls on the sides of my page. I find that I can't read Tastespotting at all during Lent. I'm too worried that it will give me horrible cravings and temptations. So everyday I look at in on the top of the updates and flee.

But here I am today.

Readers, it has been an eventful week.

My grandfather died this week. No undue sympathy, please, we were not close. I haven't seen him since I was around three years old. I'm finding that his death is not a grieving time for me so much as an emotionally weird time. My mom's two younger half sisters (my mom's parents divorced when she was an infant and her father remarried but she lived with her mom) have been in contact with her and now me. It is nice to gain 'new' family, but also peculiar. I have dubbed this year 'The Year of Long Lost Family'. If you think you might be related to me, please let me know, I am quite at my leisure.

I found my grandfather's obituary to be a little odd, though I can't put my finger on why. It's touching that my family was included in it, since we really didn't know him (some of my siblings have never even talked to him) but it just reads strangely to me. Maybe because his family is from a different religious tradition than the people in my general acquaintance? Here is the obit -let me know what you think.

Also, I did not know that my grandfather had his PhD, though my grandmother has hinted at it in the past, now that I think about it. I think that's pretty awesome. In my more immediate family (aka, the grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc. that I grew up with), I was the first person to graduate with a college degree. It's strange to come from two have two such opposite heritages. But I'm please to have another PhD in the family, I wish I could have talked about that with him before he died. I'm not even sure he knew I was in graduate school. His PhD was in inorganic chemistry. Maybe I'll try to look up one of his articles...not that I'll understand it, I'm sure. :o)

A Long (or short) Weekend

2010-02-07T19:48:00.000-08:00

I had a very long weekend. After attending two lectures on Thursday afternoon, I commuted home, made dinner with friends and family (fabulous mushroom and delicata squash sauce over pasta) and furiously cleaned for Husband's birthday party. The party wasn't until Saturday but if you knew my poor excuse for housekeeping habits you would realize why the Thursday cleaning was necessary. Actually, Husband and Sister had been cleaning during the week, too. Part of this cleaning project has entailed a re-arrange of Sister's bedroom (originally our library so it has all our books in it) and our bedroom, in which I am trying to create an office, walled off from the rest of the room. It should be nice once it is done, but right now it is a mess. Friday, more cleaning, dinner with friends again (surf and turf!) and lots of bagel baking.

Saturday was Husband's party. Brunch from 10:00-2:00. We had a full house but no stress! I made bagels, gluten free bagels, cinnamon rolls (dozens and dozens), fruit salad, and two frittatas. We served cream cheese, lox, onions, and all the rest with the bagels, and Husband made pots and pots and pots of coffee. Two of our friends were super helpful in the kitchen, two of our other friends brought their kids (unexpected!) and dozens of people came and filled up our little apartment past capacity. We had not enough sitting room, but the whole place was cozy with people and the chit-chatting and food table kept the standing people occupied and comfortable. I had lots of compliments on the arrangement of the food table, which was nice and unexpected. It is here that my new favorite word comes into play: hygge.

Hygge is a Danish word (and I am Danish!) taken from a Norwegian term (and I am Norwegian!) which doesn't have an English equivalent (and I am English so I wish there was an equivalent). It means, roughly, the feeling or mood you get when the home, or life, or the setting, or the people are just right and you are content and life is beautiful. You try to make hygge in your life. A fire place, coffee with friends, and candlelight are all hyggelig (the adjective equivalent to hygge, pronounced hu-gah-li). Those nice, homey, comfy things that we do around the house to make everything comfortable and cozy and intimate, those things are hyggelig. My tabletop was hyggelig and the party was hyggelig. My sister helping my friends' sons make valentines out of construction paper and glitter glue was very hyggelig. Did I mention I love this word? It perfectly encompasses everything I strive for in my home, and in my life.

My friend describes hospitality as "making space for others". Making space is one of the main goals of the church I go to. I am not sure if hospitality started out as a stated goal or if it grew organically out of the lives of the founding members, but now-a-days it certainly is a talked-about and taught-about value. How do we treat the 'others' in our lives and in our communities and in the world? This goal has directly resulted in the fact that this week and next week we are having guest lecturers (Dr. Rik Stevenson and his wife Denise Stevenson) who are talking about the racial divide in the church in the U.S. Tonight was super interesting and, paired with a discussion in one of my classes a couple of weeks ago, is definitely pushing me to pray about what my role should be in racial reconciliation. Should it explicitly be part of my professional work? Clearly it is part of my everyday life but do I need to make it part of my life's work? I need prayer and meditation about that, but I have found that when I have nagging feeling about something, there is something that I need to learn or do. Prayer, I learned from the nuns, is making space for God. Prayer is being hospitable to God.

And now I have to do a weekend's worth of homework in only a couple of hours!

Ethical Actions

2010-02-03T07:38:00.000-08:00

More about my subject from yesterday...

I recently read about a study that found people who buy ethical products are less likely to act altruistically following the purchase. So, if I go to the store and buy organic local non-homogenized milk then I am less likely to make a donation to the bell ringer standing outside the store. One hypothesis for this phenomenon is that if I have already done something good I don't feel pressure to do something else that's good. Basically, I feel self-righteous when I buy an ethical product so I can walk past that bell ringer with a good conscience, and if I didn't do anything 'good' when I was in the store then I will feel guilty to walk by without giving some change. But once I give some change then I won't feel guilty about not acting ethically in the store. Or so the theory goes. We use good deeds as penance for living in material splendor. In this way, Marx was right that we use good deeds to maintain our satisfaction in the status quo. We know that our life styles hurt other people but since we are good people (see the good things we do!) we can ignore the demand that we work for justice.

I noticed that this week when I posted my note about buying the new computer battery. I asked a lot of questions in that note about the responsibility I (and probably all of us) have to stop wasting things. But the responses I got back related only to the recycling of electronics. I learned important information but I wasn't satisfied that my questions had been answered...or even considered. Then it occurred to me that we might be using recycling to assuage our guilt over wasteful consumption.

Actually, I don't like how passively that last sentence was written so let me rephrase it. We use recycling to assuage our guilt over wasteful consumption.

Recycling is important, of course, but it doesn't change the fact that in the United States each household is estimated by the EPA to have 24 electronic devices, which are designed to be obsolete in only a few years so that we have to buy new ones. If you count computers, external hard drives, cell phones, blue tooth devices, ipods, remote controls, calculators, printers, tvs, radios, game consoles, dvd players, vcrs, and digital cocks I think the number of electronic devices is higher than 24 per household, at least, it is in the class of people I know. And of course, we all have electronic equipment at home and the electronic equipment we use when we are at work. And the electronic equipment we use in hotels, restaurants, stores, etc. Heak, I have a robot vacuum. We all know that most of these things are not recycled. And oh, the batteries! Don't must of us just chuck the batteries when they die?

And we want more and more, don't we? I have been salivating for months over a Kindle that I think would make school life so much easier and my husband would love an IPad if it multi-tasked (though I don't see the point). The latest and greatest cell phone is always tempting, especially when you can get it for free. We would love to get a flat screen TV. I could go on and on.

If I recycle everything I get rid of am I justified in this overconsumption. Afterall, which of the things named here do I really need? Certainly not my robot vacuum. Maybe a cell phone, maybe a computer. Maybe.

Consumers again?

2010-02-02T06:01:00.000-08:00

When I consume food, I eat it, my body processes it, and then I exude a different product altogether. When I buy material goods I throw them away in nearly the same condition as when I purchased them. Am I really consuming them if I only use them? Are we mislabeling ourselves when we call ourselves consumers? Are we deluding ourselves about the wastefulness of our culture?

We bought something only 23 days into our no buy year, a new battery for Husband's laptop.

His battery hasn't been holding a charge for a couple of months now, and it was our intention to keep the computer plugged in all the time. Inconvenient but easily doable. But then his cord broke and he couldn't use the computer at all. Luckily, he had just bought the cord in June and it was still under warranty, so Apple replaced it for free...and since he was already at the store we decided he should just buy the new battery, too. That's $100.

What do you think, was it worth it? Should we have stuck with our plan of just making do? His laptop is several years old already, though it functions very well minus the power issues. Electronics waste is some of the worst and most prolific waste in our culture right now. Electronics are obsolete quickly and their parts have heavy metals which are dangerous pollutants. Now, Husband recycled his computer battery so that helps me to feel better...I guess I am just seeing a lot of grey area on this decision.

The other reason I am torn on this one is that we are technologies heavy household. We have three laptops, mine for school, Husband's from school, and Husband's for work. We also have my old broken laptop which won't turn on but which I don't want to get rid of until I can wipe the hard drive. A desk top computer (Husband's from college, but we don't have a monitor right now, nor the space to set it up). And finally, we have Beth's desk top, Already that's a lot of stuff to dispose of (in the future). I am sure some of you are in the same boat. What are your thoughts on culture necessity of electronics versus the landfill volume of obsolete equipment?

Thirteen Things that I Love

2010-02-01T05:47:00.000-08:00

A friend once played a game with me in which we were supposed to name things that we truly loved about life. Not things we liked or our favorite things of the moment, but things that we really loved, and they didn't have to be tangible "things" either. I don't remember my list then, other than that "Watching children taking communion" was on it. Here is my list now:

The color of green trees when it rains. When it's raining in the summer the leaves are their brightest color. So are red brick walls.

Purple flowers in the spring. I love purple flowers, they are bright and cheerful, they look well in my vintage green kitchen, and they smell better then any other flowers. Purple tulips, purple irises, lilacs and hydrangea. I love them all.

The smell of the sea when you haven't been to the seashore in a long while. I grew up near water always, almost. I can't imagine living in a land-locked place. I need to be by the sea.

The feel of a breeze on wet hair. When I was young I took swimming lessons at the pool in the park near our house. We always walked there and back and I remember that my head was always wet and cold. Now I like to open the window when I shower so that I can feel the breeze on my hair when I get out. It brings back a thousand memories of all the places I have lived.

Billowing curtains in a quiet house. When I picture a the perfect home there are always gently billowing curtains, whether I think of a bathroom, a kitchen, a hallways, a bedroom...the curtains are always filling and falling with the breeze. And in the background you can hear children laughing, and lawnmowers, and the gentle sounds of birds and dogs and far away traffic.

Cats laying on a sun warmed floor. When I was a little girl I would come home from church and take off my nice dress and then, still wearing my slip, I would run into the living room to find our cat and lay down with him in the sun spots. I still love the sun-warmed feeling and the cool feel of satin.

Grey skies in December. Grey skies and rain remind me of Christmas in Oregon.

Streetlights sliding over the dashboard of a car. When you drive under street lights the shadows move in funny ways, backwards and forwards and sideways. It's beautiful. Reminds me of a friend from high school.

Throwing open all the windows and listening to the outside noises.

The quiet stillness when you walk out to your car in the morning.

Heirloom tomatoes, especially the pink ones and the green stripy ones. And basil.

The serious and wondrous postures of children taking communion, and the joy of being family with them.

Reading "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn"

Keeping Up

2010-01-31T08:46:00.000-08:00

My husband has close to 50 pairs of socks. I had occasion to count them this weekend after he and my sister did an astounding 11 loads of laundry yesterday! I am eternally grateful to them. Currently all those clean clothes are sitting in folded piles in the living room because we are in the midst of a major re-arranging of our bedrooms. When three people live in a 650 square foot apartment things can get a bit cramped...and disorganized. Not to mention, I am desperate for some office space to work in. I just can't work in our living room, it's much too distracting.

Anyway, the sheer volume of our possessions is becoming overwhelming. Something's gotta give and I increasingly feel like that something will be my sanity. Hopefully once the re-arrange is done I'll be able to have more peace at home.

I am feeling isolated lately. My family is very supportive of my school work but I don't feel like I am able to spend undisturbed time working on it at home. Someone always wants my attention or some kind of housework always needs to be done. And I really feel like, with the exception of the dishes, the housework doesn't get done without my direction. Not that I am so good at keeping up with it, I've really let the house go. But I feel like I can't work at home because I am overwhelmed by all the things I would like to do here. I feel like everyone else is content to let the house fall apart. In fact, I feel like other people don't even notice how messy it is (and worse dirty). Or if they do, they blame me. They probably don't blame me, but I blame myself and so I am projecting those emotions. I feel like a failure because I have a messy house, but I don't feel like anyone else cares. Because they don't care they don't do all the stuff to keep up with the housework, and then I notice it and it makes me feel like crap. And I am resentful of having to orchestrate chores for others to do. I hate making to do lists for stuff around the house -mostly because that makes me think about everything that needs to be done and that makes me hate myself. But still, no one else thinks to dust, wash windows, sweep the floor, or shred the papers without my explicit direction. This is all from my perspective of course, and things probably aren't as bad as I perceive them to be, but it's really got me down, right now.

I'm still new to grad school and I am sure I will figure these things out as time goes on, but right now I am really depressed about how things are going. I really need an office. Somewhere I can hide away from all the things that distract me.

Must remember, "It was in the depths of winter that I finally learned that there is in me an invincible summer."

It's been sunny for days and days and that is really helping me out. I have been drinking tea from the beautiful scallop edged tea cup my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas and I broke out the hideous green crocheted tea cozy that has been collecting dust on the top shelf of Husband's closet (with a broken lamp and his childhood baseball card collection). Now I can drink pots and pots of a tincture called "Fairy Tale Tea" and I am quite fond of the cozy. Makes me feel quite wonderful. My kitten, for the first time since we got him in October, has found the wonderful cat-comfort of lying in sun spots and can now be found sprawled out in the kitchen or in the living room, eyes tight shut, soaking up the warmth of the winter star. Thank goodness that our windows face south. Did I mention that my sister is going to wash all my 'hand wash' items for me? I am quite content as long as it is sunny.

Changing Tides

2010-01-15T23:09:00.000-08:00

Well folks, school has started again and I am once again reminded how much I love academia. I feel so blessed and so happy being in school. I realize that some people don't understand that at all. I know more than one person who can't imagine being back in school. For me, the rhythms and rhymes of school are comforting, homey, peaceful. The work is relaxing and enjoyable (at the end of the semester the work is incredibly stressful and enjoyable).

I like my classes this semester -statistics, professional development, and an ethics/philosophy class on sustainability. I am taking up a research project -starting where another student (who moved to California) has left off. Plus, I have my own (shared) office space up on the fourth floor of my building. The wind blows strangely through the hallway up there, howling and creepy when it is late at night. The ceilings are slanted and the windows are dormered. There are two other girls in my office; we have old metal Steelcase desks with wooden surfaces. In the metal drawers of my desk are pencils and files and post it notes. The room is filled with empty filing cabinets, rolls of old Sociology poster, and the faint smell of pencil shavings. We have an old industrial metal coat tree. The room as a whole has vintage, pre-war feel to it. I love things with pre-war style.

Our no-buy experiment is progressing well. I went grocery shopping hungry tonight and I really wanted to buy a candy as I waited in line. But, I stayed strong! Yes! I also went out this week with some friends and I had just water and it wasn't awkward at all. I was nonchalant about it and everything was cool; I'm glad to know it is a viable option for the future. I will say though, that I am torn about whether to tell people that I am not buying stuff or not. I am afraid that people who know will feel obligated to buy things for me, which I absolutely do not want them to do. So when I go out with friends, do I talk about the experiment or not? What do you think?

More notes on not spending money

2010-01-10T09:52:00.000-08:00

We have been talking to many of our friends about our no-buy year and there have been some intriguing conversations thus far. Some people pity us but most are intrigued (and most are horrified that we can't buy alcohol, lol). What has actually been the most exciting thing to hear is that our experiment has influenced people to also examine their spending habits. One friend has told me that she decided not to buy anything for herself that she already has (like a new winter hat). Another married couple told me that after hearing Husband and I talk about our experiment, they also talked about doing something similar. I am really amazed and humbled. When we started this it didn't even occur to me that other people would follow our example. Not that our friends are particularly materialistic, I just didn't think other people would be interested. Neat!

I have been playing around with all the setting options in gmail, google docs, and google calendars -totally loving all the neat stuff I can do. I am actually trying to get my life organized, which for me is not at all easy. Gulp. I'm a work in progress! :)

Simply Urban Living

French Parents Say "Non"

On Getting Older

Stars When You Shine, You Know How I Feel

On Losing Weight

Epiphany

The 7 Billion Series, #2

Differences in Winter and Summer

The Davenport (as my grandma would say)

Pressure

At What Price, Halloween?

Feast or Famine -Social Structures in the Food Supply

Food for Thought

From the Farm

Weaknesses

Cool Summer Morning

7 Quick Takes Friday

Pierre Bourdieu and the Costume of Academia

Living in the City in the Summer

Real Things

Beat-the-Heat-Library-Week

Friday's Musings

At Home in the City

Week 3 of CSA 2011

"The Rich Man Gets His Ice in Summer and the Poor Man Get His in Winter"

Wistful Monday

An Emphasis on Leaves

Geography from where I stand

7 Quick Takes Friday

Lovely

Spring Cleaning

Food For Sundays

7 Quick Takes Friday

Classes

Tuesday Musings

What is Summer For?

My Personal Reflections for the week of May 1, 2011

Spring Cooking

The First Night by Billy Collins

9 Months Until Christmas!!!

With Mercy For the Greedy by Anne Sexton

The Second Coming (Slouching Toward Bethlehem) W.B. Yeats

Readjusting

More Thoughts on Infant Baptism

7 Quick Takes Friday

March -Still Winter

Spring Holidays

Transitions.

New Scandinavian Cooking

Slowly Going Crazy

Week's End Wrap Up

Winter

MLK Day

Family Inheritance

Why Do People Malign Mr. Rogers?

End of Vegan Advent

More On My 2010 Resolutions ***EDITED***

Year End Wrap Up

On the Fifth Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me...

Reflections From a Very Small Person

*EDIT* Inflation: The Cost of Food

Vegan Kick Off

To Zion

Goonies Never Say Die

Still Moving Toward Christmas

Slouching Toward Bethlehem

Review: 2010 Purchases

Dinner Parties and Season Thoughts

Oranges

Quick Fall Lunch

Fall Quick Meals and Cooking Ahead

Reflections on Agrarianism and the Academy

Searching for Security

Gathering and Putting Up

Eating and Abstaining

Letting Go of Materialism

Summer

Shapes in Nature

Summertime Foods Series

Late Spring -and project failures!

More On My 2010 Resolutions EDITED

EDIT Inflation: The Cost of Food