essay about wendy rose that i am oh so far from being finished with
profile of a cow and its caretaker which will be part of a book called cows of america
emails, grant proposals, syllabi, all kinds of work related documents, tweets, and lists
this record is brief, but (except for the last item) it illustrates a new commitment to writing.
i have other plans for 2012, plans associated with writing. i just finished a blog post which will eventually be published here. i have a writing retreat coming up (san franciscans take notice). and i am in the process of writing reports and application essays (rest assured, fresno friends, these applications are not for other jobs). if you want to know more, though, you’ll have to follow me here. i’ll let you know when/if i have writing-related news.
lesson learned this year #1: what i have to say sounds smarter when it’s single spaced.
A year ago, I joined a Facebook group for people who agreed to read 110 books during 2011. Then, I did the math and realized that there was no way I could accomplish that goal so I quickly left the group. Still, I decided that I wanted to step up my commitment to reading, so I’ve spent the last year reading much more than I normally do. Because much of the time I read on the treadmill, I didn’t read a lot of heavy books, but I have still managed to complete 54 books this past year–and since I’m in the middle of three other books, there’s a chance that I’ll add to that list before the year’s end.
Some of the books have been forgettable; others keep coming back to me. I had purchased Richard Flanagan’s Wanting a long time ago but had never read it. It isn’t the type of book that I’m usually drawn to, but I find myself thinking about it occasionally and wishing that one of my friends had also read it. The novel combines several story lines: an aboriginal girl in what is now Tasmania, the British colonizer John Franklin who first takes care of and eventually destroys her, and Charles Dickens who creates a play about Franklin’s disastrous trip to the Arctic. It’s a meditation on desire and colonization–and the destruction that we can leave in our wake.
Another book that I’ve recommended to several people is Annia Ciezadlo’s Day of Honey. Ciezadlo and her husband are journalists who spent several years in Iraq and Lebanon after 9/11. While there, she became obsessed with discovering local food traditions and their origins–so her account of being in the midst of the Iraq war includes recipes and stories about food.
I also really enjoyed Henrietta Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the story of the African American woman whose cells, now labeled HeLa, are used in scientific research all over the world. However, her cells were taken without her informed consent and her family didn’t even know about let alone benefit from their sale. Not one to read a lot of scientific work, I was still fascinated by this story.
I look forward to another year of reading. For now, here are my favorite ten books of the year (in the order that I read them):
Richard Flanagan, Wanting
Jim Burke, What’s the Big Idea?
Annia Ciezadlo, Day of Honey
Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Patti Smith, Just Kids
Dorothy Wickenden, Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers
Philip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice
The other night, my mom asked if I wanted a homemade gingersnap. I kind of sniffed at the idea, especially when she told me that they were frozen. But then, she took one out of the container and bit into it–and suddenly, I remembered these gingersnaps from when I was a kid. I remember making the recipe and how satisfying it was to roll the dough into balls, coat them in sugar, and then bake them in the oven. The other night, I had my first gingersnap in years–and it was chewy, spicy, and rich. I even loved them straight out of the icebox.
In the spirit of the season, then, I give to you this recipe which came off a “C&H pure cane sugar” cardboard box at one point. Enjoy!
C&H Gingersnaps
¾ c. soft shortening
1 c. C&H Golden Brown Sugar, firmly packed
1 egg, unbeaten
¼ c. molasses
2 c. sifted all-purpose flour
¼ t. salt
2 t. soda
1 t. EACH ground ginger, cinnamon, and cloves
Combine shortening, sugar, and egg in mixing bowl, beat until fluffy. Add molasses and beat well. Sift dry ingredients together and add, mix well. Chill dough thoroughly; shape into 1” balls and roll in granulated sugar. Place 2” apart on greased baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes. Makes 4 dozen “crinkle-top” cookies.
A few months ago, I was in Berkeley to meet some friends at Jupiter. I arrived a little early, so I walked down to Pegasus, a bookstore I love, to kill some time browsing. I collect cookbooks, so after looking at some of the new books, I moved to that section and found a gem. In fact, this may be the perfect cookbook: Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty: Vibrant Vegetable Recipes from London’s Ottolenghi. It has a gorgeous cover (check my link to Amazon) with a picture of roasted eggplant with pomegranate seeds–and the interior is filled with beautiful, imaginative recipes for vegetable dishes. Although I’m not vegetarian, I tend to cook vegetarian food at home. But I’m also bored by many of the vegetarian cookbooks I own, which is why Plenty was such a great find. I love that the recipes combine ingredients in interesting and innovative ways–and that they include “exotic” spices and herbs. I also find just about every picture appealing; I turn each page and think “Oh, I want to make THAT!”
Picture from Plenty
Today I cooked a dish adapted from the cookbook: Puy Lentil Galettes. I left out the galette part and only prepared the lentils. The result was a fresh tasting, slightly (surprisingly) sweet, and healthy dish. I highly recommend it. Here’s the recipe:
Puy Lentils (adapted from Plenty)
Ingredients:
1 c. puy lentils
2 bay leaves (mine were quite small so I used four)
1 t. cumin
1 t. coriander
4 T. olive oil
1 medium onion (roughly chopped)
2 large garlic cloves (minced)
3/4 c. Greek yogurt (I used non-fat)
2 c. baby spinach leaves
3 T. chopped cilantro
2 T. chopped mint
juice of 1 lemon
salt and black pepper to taste
1. Cook the lentils in a quart of boiling water with the bay leaves for 20 to 30 minutes, or until thoroughly cooked. Drain and set aside.
2. Heat olive oil and fry the onion for 6 to 8 minutes until golden and very soft. Add the cumin, coriander, and garlic and cook for 2 more minutes. Add to the lentils and cool.
3. Add the yogurt, spinach, herbs, and lemon juice to the lentils. Finish with salt and pepper to taste.
Today is the National Day on Writing as designated by NCTE, NWP, U.S. Congress, and even the Fresno City Council. NWP has been instrumental in encouraging an internet meme, #whyIwrite. In that vein, I wanted to share a youtube video I love and one of my Facebook updates for today.
First, the video.
And one of my facebook updates: I write to make sense of the world, to discover what I think, to share what I’m passionate about.
I am endlessly fascinated with dystopian visions of the future. I just finished reading two novels by Margaret Atwood: Oryx and Crake and its sequel The Year of the Flood. Of course, Atwood is a master of this genre, authoring such dark novels as The Handmaid’s Tale (which I couldn’t put down when I read it “for fun” while in graduate school). In these novels, I find visions of the future that seem possible to me–the disintegration of society, the ubiquitous and malevolent influence of media and consumer culture, the “dumbward” spiral of humanity. Others may get hooked on futuristic visions of war and Battlestar Galactica style-conflict, but me? Give me the hopelessness of a broken world in which humanity struggles blindly to retain and revive its ideals.
In trying to identify what it is about these texts that so enthralls me, I’ve come up with a couple of things. First, I think that these texts reveal characters in unimaginable situations who must make difficult decisions–and that these decisions often reveal something about the self that these characters never knew before. Do any of us really know what we’d do if we were starving with no end in sight? Would we share what we have with others? Would we hide ourselves from view, selfishly eating whatever food we did find? I’d like to think that I’d be generous–to be honest, I’d like to think that I could continue to desire life even in such difficult situations. But do I really know how I’d respond? Do I really know what I’m capable of?
I think I’m also fascinated by these texts because they illustrate the classic good vs. evil conflict. In some cases, that conflict is internal, but in other versions, a pocket of heroic people fight whatever evil power has taken over the world (be it the dark majority, a lethal virus, evil institutions, etc.). In these dystopias, there is still hope–and the two sides are finely delineated. I’m drawn to the clarity of these visions–it’s easy to root against zombies because they don’t have consciousness, they aren’t “human.”
I don’t want life to be this hard, but sometimes I do wish that it were this clear.
Lately, because of something that happened to a former colleague, I’ve been thinking a great deal about the tragedies that are too much a part of life. Each time I’ve considered blogging about this, I’ve found myself absolutely unable to do so. Oddly, the fact that it’s the 10th anniversary of 9/11 is the only thing that has enabled me to attempt this blog entry; I started writing thinking I was going to blog about something more distant, but ended up tackling something that, in all honesty, I still don’t feel able to adequately discuss.
Although I try to look at all the positive things that happen in the world, sometimes the flip side, the side where people are cruel and dangerous and commit unspeakable acts, can’t be ignored. During the first week after Jen’s death, I felt this need to understand how her ex-boyfriend could ever do such a thing to someone he supposedly loved. I kept wanting a newspaper to publish a long article about who this person was and how his life had led him to such a horrible act. No such article has been published yet. I spent last weekend in San Francisco and forced myself to stop scanning internet news sites to find out more about Jen’s murder. I also thought a lot about this need for an explanation–and realized that I probably wouldn’t ever understand how this man could do what he did . . . no newspaper article could ever account for how someone could take the life of another.
So I’m left in mourning over the ugliness that human beings can perpetrate. I’m not celebrating Jen’s life here–that would resonate too much of closure and I feel like she should still be alive making a difference in the lives of those she encounters. I’m also not typing the name of the man who killed her–I’m too angry about the fact that their names will be linked in almost any story written about Jen. There’s no happy ending to this story, only sadness for a life which ended too early, too violently, and too undeservedly.
Summer has not always been kind to me. I’ve sometimes worked too hard or experienced the depths of grief because of a loss. I’ve wasted the summer away sleeping or not doing much that was very meaningful. Long stretches of unstructured time make me nervous. I know that I’m not good at self-discipline and I feel guilt about not being productive. I have issues with summer.
However, something surprising happened this year: I was able to reconnect in a really deep way with my writing self. I was able to write through the insecurities I developed as I wrote my dissertation and I think . . . I hope . . . I’ve developed a new relationship with writing. I have two new projects that I want to work on–and much of that desire comes from completing a writing commitment successfully. I remembered something that I hadn’t felt for awhile, that writing makes me feel alive and conscious of my cognitive and analytical abilities in ways that bring me deep satisfaction.
This morning, my friend Doug posted an article on Facebook–it was intended for our mutual friend Esther, a native of the Netherlands, who just returned from spending a month there. The article, “The Dutch Way: Bicycles and Fresh Bread,” discusses differences between American and Dutch culture, emphasizing how respect for bicycles and bicyclists are inherent in such everyday practices as how one opens a car door (by reaching across the body with one’s right hand, which also allows the driver to look behind before opening the door).
The article uses the phrase in my title, “a preference for simplicity,” to point out the deeply embedded cultural differences between the U.S. and the Netherlands. It made me ponder what my life would look like if I tried to shift my everyday practices towards simplicity. Since the article uses food and transportation as its basis, these are also the areas of my life that I’m considering. In the area of food, I tend not to cook–I buy a lot of prepared foods which involve too much packaging. This is an area in which even a little change would have a lot of impact. Right now, I’m cooking more because I have more time–so I need to think about how I can continue this practice when my life gets more stressful. I do have an herb garden and some sorrel growing in pots in my backyard–and there are plans in the works to get some raised beds in my yard.
As for transportation, although I don’t even have a bike anymore, I think I do okay with this. In fact, I blogged about this same issue a few years ago and have made some changes in my life. I drive a Prius, I tend to run errands in groups (i.e., go to the grocery store after my gym workout and group my visits to one geographical location), I try to work at home when I can, I’m one of the few people in Fresno who walks from one store to the next in the outdoor malls instead of driving, and I really like walking when I can. I’m sure there are still small improvements I could make, though. I’m going to have to think about that–and about what other areas of my life could be shifted towards simplicity.
I’m still reeling about the terrible news coming out of Norway right now. How could this have happened in such a peaceful nation? One of the only “new” presentations I ever developed while on Fulbright there was on violence in the U.S. Edvin Svela, a teacher of really wonderful students at Oslo Katedralskole, asked me to come in to talk with his students about this topic. The students had a lot of questions:
Why are guns so pervasive in the United States?
Why is it so easy to buy guns?
What is the rationale behind the death penalty? How can death be an appropriate sentence for anyone?
Why are a disproportionate number of those executed people of color?
Why is violence such an integral part of American identity?
These questions reveal how distant these students felt that violence was from their everyday lives. According to these students, in Norway, gun permits are granted only to hunters who have taken an intense course on gun use. They couldn’t understand why anyone else would need a gun, nor could they understand how violent acts could be so embedded in a culture.
Their innocence is why I’m even more upset about what happened there. When I read last night that there were over 80 victims on Utøya, I was sick. I went to bed wishing that there was some way I could wake up to better news. I think about the wonderful students I worked with in Norway; I hope that none of them were on Utøya yesterday . . . I wish that no one had been there. I wish that nothing had happened at that camp.
I didn’t have to tell the Kate students that violence is wrong, damaging, and too often cyclical. They already knew that, and I hope they still do. The worst outcome of the gunman’s act could be more violence. I hope that Norway will maintain its more pacifist views as it moves through this difficult time–I hope that as Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said: “You will not destroy us, you will not destroy our democracy and our idea for a better world.”
