Redneck Parade

I heard a rumor that some friends were going to a dance tonight, so I texted one of them and invited myself. It turns out that plans change, and it was decided that we would go to a rodeo instead. Cool. I'm always up for interesting times ... because this was not just any rodeo. This was the Mule Days Festival Saturday Night Rodeo. Little did we know...

I really think half of the state tried to make it to the rodeo at the same time we did. Traffic was absurd. We gave up after driving about half a mile in half an hour, because some of us were really hungry, the rodeo had already been going for an hour without us, and we just weren't having the fabulous times everyone else seemed to be having. It was fabulous, no joke. But all the other people were sitting in the backs of pickup trucks. Flying Confederate flags. I wish I had been brave enough to take photos, but it was dark and they might have had guns.

In our attempt to escape the rodeo traffic, we ran into a redneck parade, with even more trucks and flags. The whole town must have been out, because Main Street was mobbed with them, as well as spectators. I never knew driving a truck, full of people in shorts with their cowboy boots, and flying a redneck flag was a spectator sport. But it is in Benson, where the population of hipsters seems to equal one.

Even better were the official signs along the side of the road prohibiting equine traffic. What is this place?

When we finally got out of town, we found a place that made authentic Eastern barbecue. Pork sandwiches with cole slaw and hush puppies, drenched in vinegar sauce. I think I might have just seen a snapshot of the real South.

On Dreams

I just realized that I have been having a recurring dream, and I'm pretty sure it has been going on for years. I dream I get in cars and nearly back into things because I can't get the brakes to work. And by "things", I mean everything from parking lot blocks to people. Yikes.

Just for fun, I went to an online dream dictionary, and there it was. Dreaming you are driving a car means that you are in control of your life. Dreaming about braking means that you lack stability. So, in essence, I am in control of a chaotic mess that disconcerts me in my sleep (and, might I add, in my awake as well). That sounds like me.

But I still think dream interpretation is a bit hokey.

On another note, I have this awesome friend who loves to tell me how awesome I am. If you've ever seen the episode of The Vicar of Dibley: The Handsome Stranger, this next bit will be very funny to you. If you haven't seen it, you need to. Trust me, you are missing out on one of the funniest television events in the universe.

So, my awesome friend told me that I am not "on the shelf"--I am in the special display case. In other words, he thinks that whoever marries me will have won the figurative lottery.

That's a sweet sentiment, but I'm afraid that winning the lottery comes with a lot of strings attached. Yes, but he assures me that winning the lottery and paying the associated taxes, etc. is still preferable to not winning the lottery. I think that playing the lottery is gambling, and I don't find that attractive. But I also think I'm overthinking, as usual.

I Win

I don't tend to win very much. Not at games, not at races, not at raffles. My luck ran dry after that time in fifth grade when I accurately guessed the number of M&Ms in the jar at my class Christmas party, and I haven't won much since. I'm okay with that, usually. It's almost as fun to see other people win, and then I don't even have to worry about winner's guilt or trying to figure out how to gloat gracefully.

But lately I've been feeling like a loser, and like the last person picked for the soccer team. Instead of making a loser list, I'm going to make a winner list. This is another one of those self-indulgent, somewhat narcissistic posts, where I assume everyone who reads me is as interested in me as I am.

Here is what I won:

I won a get pale in the summer contest I declared against myself after the fact. I didn't think it was possible for someone to get paler than I already was, but I was wrong. I think there is no longer a shade of makeup pale enough for me ... and I ought to know after the effort it took to find the previous color.

I won at going out on another first date. He might think I'm totally weird now and will probably never talk to me again, but at least we went out once. And I had fun even if he didn't.

I won at not passing out on Monday evening when I got suddenly light-headed, dizzy, and nauseated. Never mind that I never should have got sick in the first place and that after I narrowly avoided passing out, I lay on the floor trembling for a good half hour, called my mom even though she's terribly stressed and there was nothing she could do for me anyway, and then had my friend come over because I couldn't even walk to the kitchen for my own drink of water.

I won at finishing the book for my book club in just 2 days. I should have been drinking lots of water and sleeping, but I finished the book instead. If reading were an Olympic sport, I would win.

And...

I won today because I started it so early! Everyone says it's best to have an early start. I was so ahead of today that I woke up for it yesterday. I didn't go to sleep last night, but what does that matter when you can be early enough to work that only one other person is there and most of the lights are still out?

Please excuse me if it isn't funny. This is a desperate attempt to be lighthearted in the face of a brutal couple of weeks.

More Books!

I just wrote a very intense post, but I'm saving it for later because it needs editing. So, I'm doing another book review. Earlier this week I finished reading the latest of Connie Willis' time travel books. And, for those of you who are worried about spoilers, I'm pretty sure I've left them all out.

Titles (it was a two-part book): Blackout, All Clear

The setting: Oxford, England. Year 2060. Mr. Dunworthy's history department is in chaos. Too many historians are going through the net to too many critical times and places, and everyone's having trouble keeping calm. Wardrobe, research, scheduling, and operations are all flying by the seat of their pants. And a Japanese historian has come up with a set of equations that might prove that time travel is destabilizing everything ... dun dun dunnnnnn.

Main Characters:

Polly Churchill, a World War II specialist whose enthusiasm takes her to London, to work as a shopgirl during the Blitz.

Merope/Eileen, another WWII historian whose first assignment lands her in the country residence of Backbury, serving as a housemaid whose employer is taking in about a dozen evacuated children from London's East End (the dodgy part).

Michael Davies/Mike Davis, traveling to Dover to research unsung heroes and covering as an American reporter.

Colin Templer, who first showed up in Doomsday Book as an incorrigible twelve-year-old with a mania for the Crusades, is now seventeen and desperately in love with Polly—desperate enough to try to convince her that he can use time travel to catch up to her in age, if only she will wait for him.

There are lots of other characters, but I won't mention them because the list would get too long and it would mean major spoilage.

Connie Willis writes like no one else. Other readers have complained that her books could benefit from tighter editing, but oddly enough, I disagree. I feel that just about everything in these books belonged. The suspense got really bad a few times, and because I was reading the second one on Clive, I couldn't skip ahead without losing my place. Aargh.

There were several points where I felt like things dragged, but it was a bit like the forest part in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It just had to be there.

The most beautifully-developed theme of the story didn't become clear until the last page, even though the lead-up was all there. And then it sort of hit me in the head and left me feeling a bit desperate. Like I did when I finished the last book in the Bean series. Like I did when I finished Doomsday Book.

It's funny, because I felt like religious tone of Doomsday Book was intentionally ambiguous, as well as very satirical. It was powerful, but it left me a bit worried about the author and the characters. To Say Nothing of the Dog had no religious message whatsoever. Blackout/All Clear was different. The message was cleaner, and very sweet.

I suppose if I were to find a flaw in the writing, it's that none of the characters have any background. They all take place explicitly in the present (past?), and while they're developed well enough for action heroes, they don't have much depth beyond being intelligent, resourceful, creative, good-hearted people. This has to be a deliberate decision on the part of the author, and it does make sense. Why worry about a character's personal past when the story is about traveling back in time to do research on the past of the entire human race? They have to retain a certain Everyman quality for it to work, I guess, but I do think the characters would be more enjoyable if they had more individuality. In spite of Eileen's fascination with Agatha Christie and the fun nicknames some of the characters came up with for Polly and Mike, the only one who had a personal past was Colin, and that mostly because he was in a previous book.

Additionally, it's obvious that the main characters are just there to be juxtaposed against the "contemps". These books are more historical fiction than they are science fiction. I'm not a particular fan of either one of them as genres, but they work really well together.

Mama's Girl

A friend asked me one time if I'd ever been in love with a man who wasn't fictional. I think I might have mentioned this on a blog post before. Well, actually, I've never been in love with one who was. But if I were, it would be the Virginian.

Read it. But if you don't read it, at least watch High Noon. It's sort of the same. Sort of. Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly could have been the leads, at any rate. I'm sad that the movie versions of The Virginian all look so awful, particularly the most recent one from 2000. Bill Pullman would not be on my list of choices to play a mellow-voiced, tall drink of water, manly-man cowboy, and I read the synopses for three different versions. They all scramble the story around until it's unrecognizable.

But the real story was therapy for a wounded soul after having read a terrible, terrible book club pick.

What does it say about me that the Virginian trumps Captain America, if only slightly, as an archetype? I am proud to announce it means that I'm a lot more like my Mama than I ever thought. I may have certain derogatory opinions about John Wayne's acting ability, and I may never be able to sit through an episode of Gun Smoke without my eyes and ears bleeding, but I actually do love Westerns. The good ones. Peace Like a River? Loved it so much I bought like 6 copies just to give away to people and share the love. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Silverado? I challenge you to a quote war. I even liked the remake of True Grit (minus that one part ... you know what I'm talking about). Add The Virginian to my list.

On Teaching

People keep asking me why I ended my teaching career, and it's a difficult question to answer. Most of the time I feel I have to justify it, because obviously the only reason someone would quit teaching is if he/she were no longer altruistic enough to put up with the unpleasantness of the profession for the good of the children. As if the fact that I quit means that I no longer care about the future of America's kids or something. I will explain in allegory, in order to avoid the negativity attached to specifics.

One day I was walking down an interstate. There were lots of people, and I was pretty confused. I saw a bridge with some of the railing broken off, and below it was a very large lake, in which a multitude of kids were noisily splashing around. It looked kind of like swimming lessons, so I jumped in.

But pretty quickly I realized that the splashing around wasn't playing or swimming. Off to the side there was someone working with a group of them on synchronized swimming and water aerobics, but most of the kids were drowning, having been crammed into a bus driven by a drunk driver that sent it flying off the bridge and crashing into the water before I got there. My first instinct was to drag all the kids out of the water so they wouldn't drown.

Some people yelled at me to teach them to swim, but I looked down and saw that someone had tied my hands behind my back. The best I could do was bob around, gasping for air when I surfaced, and hold my breath when I was under the water line. Most of the kids were in a similar situation. Some of them knew how to swim, so they were okay, but there were a lot of them stuck in water too deep for their heads to surface.

I asked the people standing on the edge of the water—they must have been lifeguards—if they could help, or at least untie my hands. They told me all I had to do was teach the kids how to breathe underwater and everything would be fine.

Yeah. That's what it felt like.

In spite of the media claim that teachers are leaving the profession in droves, I haven't seen much of that. The only other former teachers I know are the ones who got advanced degrees and went into academia--and they are still teachers dealing with offshoots of the same issues.

Maybe it's true that all those "veteran" teachers are more altruistic than I am. Maybe they really do care more about the kids of America's future. Maybe I just wasn't strong enough to persevere in a good cause. Maybe I have a martyr complex and felt more responsibility than I should have. I am idealistic, but I'm not an idealogue, and I don't find fulfillment in devoting myself to causes in which I am given accountability disproportionate to my authority. It was four years I will never get back, and while I don't regret it, I can't do it again. I'm glad I did it because I learned so much, and I really hope that I was a positive influence on my kids as well. I sure did try to be. I'm even more glad that I was blessed to be able to change careers, and that I can go to work and live my life without that crushing, demoralizing anxiety and guilt I used to feel every day.

Kazuo Ishiguro

It seems Ishiguro's most famous book is Remains of the Day, mostly because Merchant Ivory made a movie out of it—starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. You can't go wrong with those two. And actually, the cast was a lovely list of the finest actors and actresses England has. It was a good enough film that I wanted to read the book, which I did, several years ago. It was a brilliant portrayal of a stuffy English butler. English? I thought this author was Japanese. Well, he is. He seems to have this thing for World War II England, though.

I just finished reading When We Were Orphans. It was a trip. I really do enjoy the whole unreliable narrator thing, especially when said narrator isn't too far off base. I've experienced the Roger Ackroyd effect, as well as The Sound and the Fury, and it's unsettling to be put inside the mind of murderers and the mentally handicapped. I think it just might be more unsettling to be put inside the mind of someone who is sometimes insane and sometimes not; someone who is so haunted by his past that he mixes things up to the point that you really think he's dangerous.

The narrative centers around the investigation Christopher Banks, a young English gentleman, is putting together to find his parents, who mysteriously disappeared when they all lived in Shanghai, when he was nine or ten years old. When it became clear that his parents were not coming back, officials sent Christopher to England, but he grew up believing that if he could become a brilliant enough detective, he could figure out what happened and save his parents from captivity, and at the same time fix the mess China was in at the time (the fight between Chiang Kai-shek and the communists, and the invasion from Japan). At the same time, he mixes up his memories of the events surrounding his parents' disappearance with some confusing things going on with his best friend. His half-hearted love affair with a London friend, Sarah Cummings, and his adoption of an orphan named Jennifer deepen the theme of the lost, confused child who can never manage to pick up the pieces of the past.

The most striking thing about the story is the obvious portrayal of the incompleteness of a child's comprehension. Our perceptions of the world are shaped during childhood, and misconceptions become hard-wired. I find myself remembering very small things that happened when I was little, that have had a deep and lasting impact on my life. It only makes sense that something as big as having one's parents disappear, and subsequently being sent to a boarding school on the other side of the world, could be unsettling enough to send one very near the edge of insanity, where all it takes is a little trip into a war zone to tip the scales.

It wasn't as depressing as I make it sound. There is some resolution, though not the sort to make for a happy ending. And I would never, ever attempt to make it into a movie. Certain scenes would be too gruesome. The book is finely written, and I would recommend it (not for everyone, of course) but I will never read it again.

I Am Legend

For some really strange reason, when they started advertising the movie, I was all about it. I watched all the trailers, I talked to my students about it, and I tried to find friends to go see it with me. No one wanted to.

What's not to like about a zombie apocalypse movie starring Will Smith, a German Shepherd, and lots of badly-designed CG monsters? Not to mention all those weird mannequins.

When I was a child, I happened across the old version of the story, which was called The Last Man on Earth and starred Vincent Price. Of course. It scared my socks off—but not any more than the Will Smith version scared me when I finally did watch the dvd with the siblings, several months after all the hype was gone. I was lying on the floor in the dark, trembling. Gingey can call me a pansy all she likes, but that doesn't change much, I guess.

I think it's because, almost like my annual cravings for hot dogs, sometimes I have an uncharacteristic desire to be frightened, but only in a way of my own choosing. There's a big difference between the tension you feel when Will Smith is driving around singing Bob Marley to his dog and the tension you feel when Vincent Price is wandering around plunging stakes into the undead.

And what brought all this on? The book. I went to a friend's house last weekend and we spent the better part of the day watching episodes of The Twilight Zone. He was convinced that I would love it, and he wasn't far wrong. In one of the stories, a man passed a display rack of the 1950s version of the story—re-titled, apparently, to the Vincent version. Before I judge, I should probably make sure that wasn't the original title, but it appears to me that the original title is actually I Am Legend. After all, it is the last line of the book.

I got ahold of the book last night and decided to read it. For variety. Too many princess books is bad for the intellect, and everything else on my immediate reading list is massively long. That, and I'm sort of on a sci-fi kick right now. We read A Wrinkle in Time for my book club, and I recently watched In Time (an okay movie if you can get past Amanda Seyfried's fringe ... well, actually, I liked it a lot. Not in a "that's such a mind-blowing concept and a great movie!" way, but an "it was mildly interesting and even a little bit sweet, and I guess Justin Timberlake isn't so bad" way).

The book, though, was rather a surprise. It wasn't anything like the Will Smith version, which makes Robert Neville much more noble and ends much more happily. Must be the difference between 1950s and turn-of-the-century media. We tend to like happy endings more these days. Aside from the depressing ending, however, it was a really great book. It's hard to describe the style, but it was somewhat like these more modern writers such as Cormac McCarthy and Norman Maclean. A lot of it reminded me of The Road. The movement by movement detail created a beautiful tension, rather than boredom. It referenced Shakespeare, great Classical music, and other great stuff. I especially liked the parts where he made fun of Dracula (a really dumb book).

I could quote a lot of impressive passages, but I will leave with one of my favorites: "Was there a logical answer, something he could accept without slipping on banana skins of mysticism?"

A Short List of Awesome Things

1. When Adobe suddenly decides, for no specific reason, that your document needs to be in Cyrillic instead of English

2. Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes

3. The hot cocoa dispenser at work

4. Attending my third meeting of a book club, several members of which actually seem to have read more books than I have

5. We're going to Boston ... and so is Heather!

6. Being outside at night means almost always seeing frogs, rabbits, and deer

7. Admitting to myself that 5 am is not a sustainable start time for the day

8. Never feeling professionally obligated to read another paranormal romance, ever again

9. Blisters turned into calluses

10. My three-minute commute

If I wore bright red lipstick like Peggy Carter, maybe I could date Captain America.

I went to see The Avengers this evening with some friends. Movie ticket prices are outrageous, but I'd still say it was $10 well spent.

Oh, and on a side note, I fell in love with Captain America on Monday night while making a pie. I have got to get me one of those. The 'ceps are nice, but I turned all mushy when Tommy Lee Jones threw the grenade and Steve ran, curled around it, and shouted at everyone to run away. It seems to me I always get a crush on the little guy--because he's always the bravest and the smartest. But then to take him and turn him into a Buffster without losing the brave and the smart. Wow. Do they make 'em like they used to?

I don't usually care for super hero movies. I only saw Captain America because a friend told me I should see it before seeing The Avengers. And I only wanted to see The Avengers because Joss Whedon was in charge. Well, I must confess that the hype had something to do with it as well. I don't conscientiously avoid trendy stuff, but I do make sure it's trendy because it's good and not just because people are lemmings.

Everything about The Avengers was good, except maybe the last line. It was so bad it might have spoiled an otherwise good film, but this film was, fortunately, enough to fight it ... and the extras in the credits helped. Well, there were a few other things that made it less than perfect, such as a few unexplained holes in the plot. But one expects that and doesn't mind when everything else is so well executed.

Just as I had decided that every movie has to sacrifice something major, that it can't be a balance of good in all its elements, I am proven wrong. It actually is possible to have a good cast of characters who work as individuals and as a team, with a good story (and an excellent script, not always the same thing); expensive, showy special effects; and beautiful set design and camerawork.

On that note, I will end, because I don't like spouting spoilers, and I've run out of intelligent things to say. Thus, I will end with a quote.

"You're walking on tiptoes, big man. You need to strut."

Room mates

I like to think I'm equal opportunity when it comes to who I let live with me. I don't discriminate based on species.

So I watched a spider roam around my kitchen during General Conference a little over a week ago, and while I kicked the caterpillar out of the dining room, I left him outside the patio and wished him well. Beetles are left to bumble undeterred. But.

Roaches are not welcome. They are specifically excluded from the equal opportunity policy. Period. It must have thought it could get away with loitering in my lavender and tea-tree oil-scented home, but it thought wrong. The solution to the game: Me, in the bathroom, with the library book. I disposed of the remains rather messily, so I'm sure if someone comes to investigate they will find evidence in the form of roach guts but hopefully not smeared on the walls after I took a disinfectant wipe to them.

I had this awesome room mate one time. She asked me the day after I moved in if I liked to kill bugs. I believe the answer is now a decided no.

My Plant

I have this horrible fear of killing plants. Perhaps it's because I've never managed to keep one alive ... until now.

Almost 2 months, and my basil plant is alive and well. This is a record worthy of public rejoicing (yay!). Look how pretty it is there, sitting next to the artificial tulips.

Maybe now I can get another plant to keep it company. I don't know. I might worry about them getting along while I'm away at work. Basil might be a bit fiesty, or even territorial.

Welcub to Dorth Carolida

It's snowing! Oh, wait. Snow isn't yellow. Um ... (epic sneezing session ensues).

Check it out.



Okay, so the pollen man is a bit of an exaggeration, but not the rest of it. This morning, we woke up to what looked like a fog—but it wasn't moisture, it was pollen. I took a few photos of my car, but they don't capture the craziness anywhere close to the comic strip. Every outdoor surface now has a protective layer of yellow film.

Also, I wish I knew how to safely take good pictures of scenic views while driving—because my route to the temple is a slice of heaven. Trees, meadows, log cabins, a vineyard, family farms, plant nurseries, a gorgeous lake, and a few picturesque ponds. It sure beats 635 during rush hour. The temple itself is rather nice as well.

I love it.

:D

Some days I'm so overjoyed by the privilege of being alive, it's unreal. I took a walk on a nature preserve near my apartment and I shopped for curtains. Nothing special about that, except that I'm alive.

Do you ever think about how you felt in the pre-existence about what your life would be like once you were born? There's the scripture that talks about all the sons of God shouting for joy, and I wonder how that joy compared to the kind of joy you can feel on a good day on earth—especially when it's a day that's good just because it's good and not because anything amazing had to happen.

I Love Food and Food Loves Me

Eat clean. Do it because it tastes so very good. I mean, it's nice to go to the grocery store and be told by the person behind you in line that you eat really healthy. Then it's not so nice to get your bill, because fresh is always more expensive than packaged, even when you don't buy meat because you only eat it on special occasions. But then you get home and have these kinds of meals:

Cauliflower soup
Rutabaga and potatoes sautéed in olive oil and garam masala (I made that one up myself)
Cucumbers in lime juice
Red peppers dipped in edamame hummus
Spaghetti squash with tomato-barley sauce
Green salad with four kinds of lettuce, shredded cabbage, and cilantro
Butternut squash soup, in vegetable stock

And finally, do it because it feels classy to eat a meal of vegetables whilst sitting in a clean apartment decorated with glass vases full of purple flowers.

That's what I do. I don't have a social life, but I sure have a culinary life.

On Moving

Because I know there are so many readers out there who are avidly awaiting an account of my move, I will give one.

I drove 19 hours to my new home, passing through 7 states and stopping 4 times (three times to refuel the vehicle, once to sleep).

The southern states are quite picturesque, so I will give a somewhat detailed account of each one:

1. East Texas. What’s not to love? There’s a great Texas icon on the East side of Dallas. I, however, had seen it all before, so the most exciting part was how quickly I got to Louisiana.

2. Louisiana is much prettier than I expected, based on the view from I-20. Most of it was dead trees (it was January) and fields, with the occasional boggy swamp. Some of the cities didn’t smell too nice, but we won’t hold that against them. I stopped in Shreveport, and the girl at the cash wrap called me honey.

3. Mississippi was more of the same.

4. I was advised that when I got to Alabama I should just keep on driving without a stop, however, I ran out of gas and was really, really hungry. The drivers were friendly, but the people at the filling station weren’t. They ignored me at the sandwich shop, which was just as well, because I’m not crazy about food obtained from filling stations. I’m sure it’s sanitary, but it doesn’t seem like it could be.

5. It took so long to actually get to Georgia that I began to wonder if I had missed the “Welcome to Georgia” sign. I was feeling pretty good, to the point that I almost decided not to stop in Atlanta for the night according to my plan. But I hit a wall as soon as I passed through. The drivers all seemed really rude, and the bright lights of downtown started to blur together. So I did the intelligent thing and found a hotel. I am beginning to wonder if it is common in the South to have a limit on how hot the shower water can get, because in Georgia, as well as here in NC, it’s plenty warm, but not warm enough to turn my skin red the way I like it. Scalding hot showers are the only reason I survive winter anywhere. Anyway, after about 4 hours of sleep, shower, and a free hotel breakfast, I got back on the road bright and early.

6. South Carolina was the prettiest to look at, from the 20 anyway. So many rivers. I never realized it before, but I love being able to drive over a river. People back in the day didn’t have that privilege, so I have decided not to curb my enthusiastic enjoyment of it.

7. Then I got to North Carolina, and everything since then has just been a big blur.


Here are a few fun (or commonplace) facts:

If you tell people in North Carolina that you just moved from Texas, they want you to A) decide on the spot whether you’re for Duke or UNC, or B) display your outrageous Texas pride by procuring a flag or a twangy accent. Sometimes both.

Air mattresses are cold.

Trees are everywhere!

Trader Joe’s is a great place, especially if you don’t have any cookware or utensils. Eating baked potatoes with your hands after cutting them up with scissors is pretty cool once, but not for a whole week. I recommend the butternut squash soup, although the stuff I make myself is much better and doesn’t have sugar in it.

Don’t move Back East without a GPS or a handheld device with a google map. Even with one of said devices, you will probably get lost.

You can’t always trust the Meetinghouse Locator on the Church website. I went to the wrong ward on Sunday. But then I went to the right ward, and we have a Singing Sunday School class and a seriously cool bishop (he invited me to have dinner with his family and the missionaries, and afterwards, we all played their 8-year-old daughter’s Roboticized Uno game).

You can seriously buy a huge bag of collard greens cut up and ready to go, just like spinach back home, but I won’t … partake.

When the photographer took my photo for my work ID badge, it actually came out rather nice. How often does that happen? We'll see how the driver's license photo does ...

By Popular Request (Heather)

The Art of Pie.

Pie should not be difficult to make. I think it's hard for me because I stubbornly refuse to use recipes.

However, I used the apple pie recipe in my Better Homes and Gardens standard cookbook, and I followed it so closely (well, for me, anyway). What happened?

It burned.

Black.

I blame the oven. It was overenthusiastic. It had nothing to do with the fact that I put it in to bake and promptly went back to bed.

The tragedy of the burning of the apple pie was that I didn't exactly follow the crust recipe. I made a crumble for the top, involving hazelnuts ground up in the food processor I tend to forget about. It should have been divine. It would have been divine, had it not burned.

So I did what any self-respecting food artiste would do. I took it to the company dinner anyway, and then guilted my friends into eating it, burnt crust and all.

That was a dry run, the week before actual Thanksgiving day. The real pie was yet to be created.

In my own defense, my trusty BH&G cookbook had no recipes for berry pie. I call that gross neglect in covering the basic food groups, but that is immaterial.

I went online, because that's what we milliennials do when we want to cook. I found dozens of raspberry pie recipes. So I glanced through enough of them to assume I had got the hang of it, then I went to the kitchen and started shelling hazelnuts again. This time it wasn't as time consuming because I had a nut cracker that actually believed in cracking nuts. And because Gingey helped (Yay, Gingey!).

The root of the problem was that I assumed that when you see cornstarch as an ingredient, you can just estimate how much you need, and I didn't put nearly enough. Not only that, but I forgot to follow the recipe I invented for the crumble top, and I put excessive amounts of butter.

I'd like to say we had raspberry pie for Thanksgiving, but it was more like raspberry soup. However, the point is that it tasted good. That, after all, is essential to the art of baking a pie.

Proof that it tasted good? Gingey ate at least four "slices".

Incidentally, I bought some more raspberries yesterday, and I still have an entire bag of hazelnuts left. For anyone who has the patience to come over and help me crack them, there will be pie with your name on it. And it will be a work of art.

On Blogging

It's hard to blog (is it strange to you how many verbs are seeping into polite conversation?) without an Internet connection, so I'm just going to make a list of the topics I would have posted about in the past few months had I shelled out the funds for it.

Mistborn, book review of an obsession-inducing trilogy

The Art of Pie

Turkey Day. Yuck. Haven't we figured out it's about the mashed potatoes?

Anyone Can Draw (?)

I don't agree that All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. But I probably did learn it when I was five.

You did not give birth to that dog, so why do you refer to yourself as its "mommy"? The limitations of the English language

Expound if you will.

The Truth

The truth is that I am not as nice as I assume I am.

We live life based upon a set of assumptions about ourselves, otherwise every moment would be too overwhelming to survive, and not just for those with the emotional range of a teaspoon.

However, sometimes I find myself in situations where I am decidedly not the person I assume, and it is uncomfortable. I say things that are unkind. Or I interrupt people. Or I talk endlessly about myself and don't really listen to people. Or I even encourage them in negative thoughts, conversations, and behaviors. Then I think about it later and realize my actions were contemptible. I realize that I had no business to say or do what I did, and I wonder how I let myself get out of hand, because I'm supposed to be better than that. My self respect is intact because I wake up every day assuming that I am not the sort of person who does those kinds of things.

So today, most of all, I am thinking about the ability to re-evaluate my life and repent. The Lord gave that blessing to me, because I sure need it—and that is what I am most grateful for. Today hasn't been about a gluttonous turkey fest (my fam went out of town, and I stayed behind to be with my sister, who had to work; I cooked a nice meal, without any turkey, and was just happy to be able to do something nice for someone else for a change). It's been about what I can do to change my attitude, my thoughts, my words, and my deeds and actually be the person He wants me to be.

Bad experiences don't mean anything if you don't respond to them with faith, so my leap of faith is starting now, with being thankful for the people I usually talk badly about. There are people who have hurt me deeply; I have allowed their choices and/or personalities to make me angry. But it's not my place to get angry, it's my place to be grateful, for the good and for the bad.

The truth is also that I happen to be one of those people whose life is overwhelmingly full of good things over bad things.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I hope you have as much to be grateful for as I do.

A Truth Universally Acknowledged

This is going to be a long, somewhat pretentious post.

I think people assume I like Jane Austen a lot more than I really do. Occasionally, a friend will assume that I have even gone as far as to read some of the endless (brainless) Jane Austen spinoff books. I must admit to having read one of them, Jane Fairfax. It was awful, and I will never touch another one again, even if it isn’t a bodice-ripper, which most of them are. For the record, Jane Fairfax was a tame, if stupid, retelling of Emma, from the point of view of the titular character. Can you see that working?

The fact is that when it comes to literature written by women, I prefer Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, and even Virginia Woolf. My favorite book in the world will probably always be Jane Eyre, and Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, and North and South will remain in the top 10. I can’t say I will re-read Virginia Woolf often, but when I read The Waves, I wanted to underline the entire text, it was so beautiful.

However, I do love Jane Austen and will freely admit to having read all of her completed works, including Love and Freindship and The History of England, comic pieces she wrote in her teens—some of them multiple times. (No, I have not forgotten how to spell. She wrote the novella before spellings were standardized, and that has always been its official title.) And if you want a good, solid spoof, her early works are screaming at you. There are few books I could classify as being funnier than L&F and HofE.

Sometimes I come across recommendations for books on Amazon.com, and I can’t seem to leave them alone. Eventually I add them to my wishlist, and at some point they end up in my hands. This was one of them. I resisted for a long time, but temptation got the best of me, and I caved in a big way.

But it was thirty-three chapters of what I love best! I make fun of myself often and roundly for liking to read the introduction to a book just as much as I like to read the book itself—and I can’t seem to get over a mania for Norton Critical Editions of classic works—because of all the fun literary essays in the back. With that explained, what could be better than an entire book of literary essays by intelligent people—most of them great fiction writers themselves—about Jane Austen? My favorites were probably by Lionel Trilling, who I am guessing is a famous Jane Austen scholar. He started one of his essays by recounting the creation of a university class focusing entirely on Jane Austen, and realizing it was so full the only fair way to pare it down was to have each student come to his office for an interview. He was startled and dismayed to find out that not only did all these students come and interview, but they were not at all put out by having to justify their reasons for taking the course—in essence, they had to persuade him of their worthiness to be on the roll in the first place. What followed were bribes, letters of reference by former professors, and desperate pleas … and in the end, those who were excluded were very bitter. What other college class could create such a scenario?

Other essayists included Virginia Woolf (of course), Susannah Clarke (the incomparable author of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell), C.S. Lewis, Eudora Welty, and E.M. Forster, just to name a few. I must say, too, that these people know how to write a good essay. I didn’t get tired of reading about the same person or the same six books until the very end. And even though I was heartily glad to have gotten through the entire collection, I was a little sad there wasn’t more.

Talk about pontification.

One of the greatest things I take away from this experience is a greater appreciation for a writer who can capture the comedy of everyday life. It is quite fair to state that there is nothing in Jane Austen’s work that is paradigm challenging, or that stands out as making them essential to the canon of great literature. This is even more true if you are coming from the perspective of a male.

But as a woman, Jane Austen is worthwhile for several reasons, the most prominent of which is that her work shows, in a way that is light-hearted and amusing, issues that women have dealt with and continue to deal with no matter what era they live in. What do you do when the people you are hanging out with are giving you a bad reputation? What do you do when the sister you love is destroying her future? What do you do when your family members are idiots? What do you do when you don’t have any money but you still want to be respectable? What do you do when it looks like the only respectable life is earned through securing the hand and heart of a respectable man, but there are so few respectable men to be found? What do you do when you have a sincere desire to see everyone around you happy, but they are constantly stepping on you? What do you do when someone you love and trust disapproves of a decision you made?

Real dilemmas, tackled in a hopeful and fun way.

Jane Austen looks at the small picture, focusing on three or four families in a country village. She lived through the war with Napoleon. She had a family member lose a husband to the guillotine. She wasn’t stupid or unaware of the big picture.

But she wrote about relationships, because for women, everything boils down to relationships. Shakespeare writes about kings and princes, Dickens writes about great philanthropists and adventurers, Dostoyevsky writes about the philosopher. They are great authors, and their works are much more striking as contributions to a societal significance. Jane Austen, well, she helps people feel connected.