2011: taking stock of the first quarter

I made some resolutions in January. I made them in keeping with my philosophy that this works best when I resolve to do things I really want to, but need a little extra motivation to do. Here's my new twist: reviewing my progress once a quarter. So, here we go.


Dye sock yarn with Kool-aid and knit socks: I've gathered all the supplies, but the time to do this has been hard to come by. I no longer have any long days without a small hamperer helper. This means I have to plan well for a day when nothing else really needs to be accomplished in the four hours I have in the morning.

One new recipe a week: At least 17 new recipes already made this year. I think it has actually been more, but I've been lax about writing them down. A lot of these have been curries, some breads, and things found on the internet.

Write more. Publish more: I have been writing more, but prose. I've been publishing short pieces on food and cooking online at Simple, Good, and Tasty. I've been sending poems out to magazines and competitions. I've written a couple poems, but not quite enough to be happy with.

Make and send birthday cards: A near total fail. I used to be very good at remembering to send cards to family and friends and I enjoyed doing it. But in the last four years I have had a hard time remembering - or, more accurately, remembering at the right time.

Read more: My goal for 2011 is 60 books, which is a fairly modest goal for me, but I am still losing ground. I find that when my emotions dip, so does my desire to read. I've read eight books this year. (Though, to be honest, I have read a ton of picture books, cover-to-cover browsed several cookbooks and knitting books, and read a lot of magazines...but, the goal is about books.)

Make a quilt, start to finish: Because I have not made a quilt in about five years. In the past three months I have finished a top, a smallish top for a wallhanging, but I think I am going to count it. Next up is to piece together some batting for it.

Finish four unfinished projects, one per season: In February I took an abandoned stub of a knit scarf and turned it into an earwarmer/headband for Cora. It turned out pretty well, and she was thrilled.

Whew. OK. On with the second quarter.

Imagination to Real Object

I find that when I have frustration and turmoil in one part of my life, I most often compensate for that by making things: cooking, baking, sewing, knitting, etc. It is a good time for Cora to decide her dollies need a throne, because I will find a way to make one. It is a good time for Bon Appetit to declare they have the best-ever brownie recipe, because I will try it out. It is a good time for mutter paneer cravings!

Red onion and friends - ready for curry!

I tend not to examine this too closely. I know it has something to do with control and satisfaction and compartmentalization. It works for me. So, I have been in a frenzy of making for about a month now, you may have noticed.

Another dog.

Last weekend, I made progress on a couple sewing projects, and some knitting ones, and even some writing ones. But one in particular was special. I have a little muslin, drawstring project bag for knitting that I really like. But I tend to work on more than one project at a time, and I kept thinking maybe I should buy another one. Then I decided that was ridiculous, because I have muslin. Surely I could make something myself?

Hat from Noro Silk Garden yarn - love it!

And then I started thinking about how plain muslin is, and what could I do to enliven it? I remembered this beautiful poppy ribbon I bought, oh, maybe eight years ago, and never could bear to use. So I went upstairs and found the ribbon and the muslin and sketched out a pattern. Then I thought it could use a lining. I looked over at the bins of fabric, and there was a fabric, pressed up against the side of the bin, just the perfect fabric!

Once again neglected to take process photos -
having too much fun to go downstairs for the camera.

So, then I thought about how it would look if the lining were rolled down over the outside muslin, for extra color and to set off the ribbon. And what if the bottom of the bag was the lining fabric?

The colors are not a perfect match, but I like that.

And then I made the bag. The process wasn't perfect and one corner is a little goofy, but I love my project bag. I love that I figured out how to make it. I love the way it came together, from thinking about buying something, to making my own, better version. I love that I had the time available and that most of the materials were ones I've had for years, just waiting for the right project. Very satisfying!

Noro sock yarn in the bag - but I've ended up using size 0 dpns
instead of the single circular. Socks take me a long time.
More on that later.

FFF: Your Choice

Nora's theme this week is "You choose!" I've been waiting all week to post this one (and then took all day to get a moment alone with the computer). Here is what you see when you casually announce that for breakfast you are making COOKIES!

Passing on the Narrative Addiction

I don't know what "playing barbies" is like in other homes. But, it is taken very seriously at our house, most especially by Cora, Master of Ceremonies, Chief Director, and Queen of the Narrative. She constantly surprises me with her storylines. For Christmas she received a vet's outfit (with cat) and a ballerina outfit for her dolls (not all are Barbies-proper; most are Disney princesses). She dressed up the dolls, assignment me the veterinarian dollie, and played the ballerina bringing her cat to the vet. When I asked if her cat was sick, she responded, "Well, yes, but really I am here to tell you that bad guys want to kill you." Oh. Well, that changes the story, doesn't it?

Last night, Chris was out at a concert. Our evening progressed normally. At bedtime Cora and I went to her room, put on jammies, and I read her several stories and sang some songs. At which point she jumped up and exclaimed that she had forgotten something! Barbie and Ken were supposed to go to a party! A ball! A Very Important Ball. She had to play with them for just a little bit. A little arguing (admittedly, my heart was not in it; I am tired of being the grumpy mommy), and we struck a deal that she could come back out to the living room and play quietly for a while if she promised to 1) let me do my own thing, and 2) be cheerful and not crabby in the morning.

The storyline, in brief: First the decorations had to be made and taped up in the ballroom (which might look like an ordinary cardboard box to you). And then there was the dressing (which involved going to the Target store, where the really pretty ball gowns are, natch). Finally, they made it to the dance, even though Ken wouldn't wear his shoes and Barbie was *really* angry at him. Then, accompanied by whispery songs the dancing started. Barbie and Ken did an awful lot of slow-dancing. Then, um, Barbie had a baby. A small polly-pocket sized doll just popped out from under her ballgown. How embarrassing. Ken is going to stay at the dance, but Barbie is taking the baby home to nurse it. Ken says he'll dance with his other wife for a while.

And that was the end of the story. Then Cora pulled her Dick & Jane anthology off the shelf, curled up next to me, and read several pages. Out loud. While I tried to continue reading my murder mystery. But, I can certainly forgive a little reading out loud.

I know what you are really wondering, though. What happened the next morning? Most weekdays, Chris and Cora get up earlier than I do. Today, as on several days, I woke up because Cora was upset about something. She wanted to play a computer game before they left for school. She was being very crabby indeed. On my way to the bathroom, I reminded her of her promise, and pointed out that she should have breakfast and get dressed and then see if there was time for games.

When I came out of the bathroom, she had stopped fussing. She went out to the kitchen, ate her breakfast, got dressed, and then asked nicely if she could play a computer game. She and I sat together and played some games on the PBS site, and then she went off the school. Cheerfully. *Whew*

Well-stocked, and proud of it

About two months ago a friend paid me a compliment that I keep returning to and treasuring. She was helping me pack up and rearrange things in the pantry, in anticipation of the house going on the market. At one point she told me that she really admired and envied my well-stocked pantry.

I know that many, many cookbooks are happy to tell you what you should have in your pantry, what a "well-stocked pantry" will have. But what I find is that it is more important to know what my family likes, eats, and tends to think would be tasty. Lots of tomato products. Various kinds of beans and rices and pastas. Certain produce should always be on hand, certain condiments. Certain categories of food can be completely dispensed with (any kind of fish, any canned soup product).

My friend's comment was especially nice to hear because I do take a certain secret (up until now) pride in my pantry - in the readiness of it. I like it that I can do a decent amount of baking and cook on the fly, if need be. I like being able to pull a nice lunch together on the spur of the moment, especially in the summer when Chris and I are both pretty much home for lunch together most days. It's nice to grab up a bunch of good-looking peaches at the store and come home and waffle between pie and cobbler for a while, and know that either one could be made from what is on hand. Or bringing home an awful lot of zucchini in a CSA box and knowing I have everything I need for zucchini bread.

Getting those CSA boxes has really given me some great opportunities to exercise my pantry - both the physical pantry and also what I think of as my mental pantry, which is not so much stocked with food as with ideas about food. I have loved our CSA this summer - I learned a lot last summer about how to manage the box, what to expect, and how to work in new veggies for my family. There have been many fewer incidents of throwing things away completely unused. There have been times we haven't used something up entirely, and there have been times we just couldn't bring ourselves to eat more of something (I'm looking at you, kohlrobi), but on the whole, way fewer than last year.

The other night I made a fresh corn polenta recipe from the recent Bon Appetit - the only thing I needed from the store was the mascarpone. We had it with grilled chicken with some leftover jerk marinade that Chris has made a few days before, and with green beans - all the veggies involved were from the CSA. There was leftover polenta, of course, and once refrigerated it firmed up nicely. Earlier in the week I'd made tomatillo salsa from CSA tomatillos, onions, and jalapenos, and we had that with stacked cheese enchiladas, but there was extra salsa, of course.

So, the other day, faced with lunchtime and not wanting a sandwich, I started poking around the mental pantry. Here's what we ended up with: leftover chicken (retail chicken, nothing too virtuous there), and then a pan-fried polenta slice topped with a salad of chopped tomatoes (two kinds from the farmer's market) and black-eyed peas that just happened to be in the pantry and the leftover tomatillo salsa. It was the kind of plate that I find myself looking at with great satisfaction.

It was a combination of the "luck of the box" from the CSA and a prepared pantry. And it fit in with what we are striving towards: only buying what we might call ingredients, basic building blocks, and trying to buy locally and/or responsibly. (In this last respect, that leftover chicken totally didn't fit in.) But if we can keep to these rough guidelines, we can have meals like that: Totally unplanned, totally made up, totally delicious.

Hold on / Let go

From the ages of about 5 to 15 there were few things I loved more than dancing. Somewhere towards the end of that period, around the age of 11 or so, I had to admit that it was unlikely that I would ever be good enough to make a life of it, and eventually some recurrent knee issues really put that thought to bed. I like to think that I can still appreciate dance.

But I'm having trouble mastering the steps to the dance I am currently engaged in. This hold on/let go dance of moving, of waiting for a house to sell, of leaving - in painful gradations - people and places I love, of looking for places to fit into in the new place, of leaving room for new people, of managing the emotions, bedtimes, meals, expectations, and needs of our little family. Every day is both rehearsal and performance. Every day requires changes in the choreography.

Today has been a day when it seems the only part of the dance I'm able to execute with any ability is the "hold on" part - and, of course, I think we all know that it is the "let go" part of the dance that earns the applause.

Long Live the Kitchen Table

There have been a couple times in the last few weeks when I have been in the kitchen and felt entirely at peace - which is a funny thing to say, because it is usually the times when I have two things going on the stove and something in progress on the counter, and a growing sink of dishes. It's like that old saying about the duck - serenely floating above the water, paddling like mad beneath - except that for once I actually feel like the top part of the duck!

(And here is how life with Cora is currently affecting me: I have an irresistible need to say Guess what? Duck butt!)

I am having a good and successful time using up nearly everything from our Harmony Valley CSA box. (I cannot say enough good things about Harmony Valley.) I found a new cobbler recipe that is quick and easy and comes out the way I want it to. I made a cherry pie with cherries from a friend's trees that I loved, which is amazing, because I have not, historically, had much interest in cherry pies.

Every summer it seems like there are a few dishes that become the Dish of the Summer and that get made about every other week, or more frequently. And I'm not just talking about things like quesadillas or ham and pea pasta! Last summer it was a black-eyed pea-feta-and tomato salad. This summer it has been my version of a Rick Bayless Beans-Greens-and-Chorizo taco filling and a wilted spinach and bacon and egg salad. What I find astonishing here is the presence of greens and spinach - not previously staples of our table - but this summer we are all about the greens. Even Cora, though she is a dedicated raw food purist when it comes to her vegetables. And her fruits - she is not a fan of pie. Or cobbler. Or tarts. Or even blueberry pancakes (!!) - she wants her blueberries on the side, please.

The kitchen often feels like the one area of the house, and my life, that I am in control of, or where I feel fully prepared and competent. Even though our kitchen is off in a corner of the house, it feels like the center. And if I can keep centered there, then I can carry that into the other areas.

I admit it: lately I envision myself as an octopus. Only psychically, of course. Or does that sound worse? But, I do try to pull myself, my tendrils or tentacles, from that center, that calm and knowing center, rather than from the places where it all feels like chaos and limbo and anger and sadness. Those are the places I am not enjoying finding myself lately. Not much gets created in those places that is going to nourish anyone.

Today I ran into the poem "Perhaps the World Ends Here" by Joy Harjo. Her first line is "The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live." And later she writes "It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human."

Oh yes. And this summer, I would say that the instructions served up by our kitchen table are: Be creative. Learn to love what you thought you would not. Make something your own. Know where you are safe, and how to carry that safety with you.

July: Opera Month

This month has been opera month at our house. We finally reached the premiere of the opera Chris and I have been working on for the past three years - and lately I have been walking around marveling at the fact that we wrote a show that has sold out five performances in two locations! By the end of the month about 1300 people will have seen it. That is kind of amazing to me, still.

Last night, as I sat and watched and listened, I could remember doing the research for the story, learning about life in a small Wisconsin town in 1900, about lumberjacks and logging camps, about the nearly unmentioned abundance of "crazy" old men living hermit-style just outside the towns, almost all of them amputee veterans of the Civil War (call it Soldier's Heart or PTSD, it has always been there), about folksongs. I learned so much more than what made it into the opera! And then starting to put the story together, learning the characters, the false starts and abandoned plots.

The opera was commissioned to be about a moment in a small town's history, a moment when the town changed its name in the hope of attracting a factory, more jobs, more people. I wanted to be sure that, while staying true to the historical moment, it was also a story that was about people now as much as it was about people then - about having to make choices, about the hard choices we have to make when something changes, about how far a person might be willing to compromise, and when compromise becomes unacceptable. It's a story I certainly recognize, and it has been rewarding to hear that other people have, too.

(Another) Love letter to my CSA

I love my CSA; this you already know. I've written before about how we tried a CSA about 12 years ago and the amount of bok choy we received was...daunting. But last summer we tried again, and fell in love. This summer we signed up with the same CSA as last year, Harmony Valley, and I find it even more exciting. Usually around Tuesday night I start checking the web site to see what we might be getting in our box, and I start thinking about the next week's menu. Then, on Thursday, we pick up our box. (This year we also bought a coffee share and a sample cheese share - heaven! And, wow, we drink a lot of coffee.)

Although, like any activity done with a four year-old, it can sometimes be more exasperating that expected, I do like to take Cora with me to pick up the veggies from "our farmers." On the best days, she helps me unpack the veggies from our box into our grocery bags, and we talk about each thing as we move it. I love that she will try almost anything while we are standing there in a stranger's garage. Last week she ate a bite of cabbage leaf, some fennel fronds, some carrot greens, an amaranth leaf, and cheered for the broccoli.

So, here are some of the meals we'll be having (or already had), thanks to our box of veggies; I'll put an asterisk by the things that came in the box.
- salads with beets* and blue cheese* (but Chris had feta, as the blue is too blue for him)
- carrot top* and basil pesto on orechiette
- Welsh rarebit (cheddar*), with simple potato salad and blanched carrots* and broccoli*
- cabbage* and paneer curry with a fennel*-golden raisin rice
- greens (amaranth*), black beans, and chorizo tortilla filling with salad (quesadillas for Cora with jack cheese*)

And of course the garlic and scallions we got will find their way into these and other dishes as the week goes on. I'm getting better at using everything before it goes bad, and at leaving in the "share box" things I know we will not use (sorry, kohlrabi, we gave you a good try, but weren't eager to eat you again right away). One thing I like about doing the menu-planning this way is that I start with certain pieces to the puzzle, and then have to try to find ways to make as many of them as possible fit, with as many pieces from the cupboards as possible. And I think I did pretty good, because after I made the plans, I only had 15 things on the shopping list that were new non-staples to be bought (I'm not counting things like milk and eggs and fruit that we would be buying every week regardless). Of course, this is also thanks to two other things: a well-stocked pantry and knowing our tastes well. I may not always need coconut milk, but if it is on sale, I know it is worth picking up a can.

So I'll end with one more food-news item, unrelated to the CSA (mostly). One of our favorite sides, come spring, is a caprese salad. Just typing that makes me think about basil and tomatoes! But, for Cora, it is all about her favorite cheese, the "squishy cheese" - fresh mozzarella. Luckily, she will also eat basil, but for the last two months she has been resisting the tomatoes. I don't even try to put one on her plate anymore. So tonight, with our pizzas, when I passed the caprese around, I just gave her cheese and basil. I would say this is probably the ninth or tenth time we've had caprese this year. After a few minutes, she ASKED if it would be OKAY if she tried a tomato. Of course, we tried to be very nonchalant about saying yes. She ate four pieces of tomato. Hallelujah! I believe this means that eventually beets will be tried as well.

Career path? What career path?

(Me, circa 1979, possibly designing my "girl detective" business cards.)

Today I gave my seventh of nine presentations to incoming firstyear college students about the academic expectations at the institution where I teach - about 10 of these sessions run concurrently and a large percentage of incoming students attend. The two main points of the presentation are the classes they need to take to graduate (aside from their major) and how college will be different from high school.

There are two sets of statistics I like to quote to them. One is that the average college student changes his or her major three times over the course of their undergraduate years. The other is that the average person will have seven discrete changes of career in his or her working life - and two of those probably don't exist at the time you are in college.

They seem to find this discouraging - along with the fact that in college you don't get time in class to do your homework. And, that homework? It isn't crossword puzzles of vocab terms. (Horrifying!)

Anyway, this has set me to thinking back and remembering all the careers I imagined for myself over the years. I'm leaving out "girl detective" - a Nancy Drew inspired choice - and mainly thinking of once I hit high school and through college.

So, my aspirations included: UN translator, marine biologist, oceanologist, bookstore owner, teacher, writer. (Writer: check. But that has hardly been a career. A vocation, yes. Definitely NOT a hobby. ) (Teacher: check - or maybe I get a check-minus for only being part-time? Without that precious published book, it's as far as I am likely to get.)

Career paths actually walked: bookstore clerk and then asst. manager, library services, technical writing, graphic layouts, marketing manager, adjunct professor, and virtual database manager (a new one! also part-time, like the teaching).

But tonight I was especially thinking about "bookstore owner" and I was remembering that I actually spent quite a bit of time, as an undergraduate and shortly after graduating, drawing up layouts of my store, thinking about programs I would have. So, this is back in 1992-1993, and Chris and I were figuring out where the cafe would go, where there would be a space for live performances, making sure there was room in the kids section for kids to actually flop down and look at books, where authors would stand to give their readings. And so on.

Don't get me wrong - I like what I am doing now. I'm pretty happy with my working life (though it could pay more, and hey part time people like health insurance too). But tonight I'm feeling a little sad about dreams gone by or dreams held in abeyance. I am pretty sure I've missed the boat on UN translator - the languages I used to be pretty fluent in are slipping away. But I'm not quite ready to completely close the door on the bookstore dream. Not yet.

Dinner, Beautiful Dinner

I wish I had taken pictures of dinner tonight, but while the beautiful food was part of the beauty of the whole thing, it wasn't the whole of it. There was the weather, the complete lack of mosquitoes and other bugs that make me stay inside in the summer, the perfect temperature, the nice company of Chris and Cora (though she did wiggle away half way through and spend the next 30 minutes carrying sand from the sand mountain to the sandbox...skirtful by skirtful).

So, it is hard to explain all the dimensions, but let me try with the food:
- Lemon-garlic chicken kabobs (on sale! less than a pound for the three of us, so more of a meat side dish, just like I'm trying to do. grilled to perfection by Chris.)
- Pesto pasta (leftover pesto, ends of two boxes of pasta - linguine and fettucine - and Cora LOVES it.)
- Golden beets (roasted while Cora napped two days ago) and blue cheese (organic and local from our CSA - perfect for me, but a little sharp for Chris)
- Salad (end of a head of red leaf plus baby spinach from the CSA plus sliced radishes from Cora's garden - she chose them, pulled them, washed them, put the slices in the salad, and even ate a couple slices)
- Plus Leiney's Sunset Wheat beer for the adults.

So, food that was on sale, leftover, needing to be finished up, local, CSA-grown, homegrown, that everyone liked and everyone contributed to the making of the meal. It might sound a little corny, but I love that!

This goes along with my larger summer food project - all those things above, and also to make a bigger push to eat more veggies and to try some different ones. Not too many new or different things tonight, but all the rest was there. This is in connection with a plan I have for my fall classes. One of the books we will be reading is Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and I'm going to ask my students to create for themselves some kind of semester-long project or plan (it needn't be food-related, of course), track their project/endeavor, and then their final paper will be a reflection on their experience, much like Kingsolver's book is. And just like AVM has sidebars with more information (scientific info and recipes), I'm going to ask them to have sidebars also.

I haven't done an assignment like this before, so this summer I am being my own guinea pig and doing the assignment myself. Then I'll also have a "short-form" model to show them. They will probably think I am the biggest dork ever...but, let's face it, that's inevitable.

Thoughts on reading and picture books

Last night, after stories and songs and settling Cora into bed, I came downstairs and turned the monitor on. All was quiet, her bedtime music faint in the background, for about 15 minutes. Then, some stirring. Then, she said loudly, "I am tired of your tricks! I am coming down the chimney to eat you up!"

We've been reading various versions of The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. We've read the original story, we've read The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark, and we've read the particularly delightful The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig. Now the original, you might remember, has the wolf actually gobbling up the first two pigs, coming down the third pig's chimney and falling into a pot of boiling soup, and being eaten up in turn by the third pig. The other two revision versions do not feature much gobbling of anyone - the little fishes escape, the little wolves all live together and the pig learns to be nice.

A friend asked me the other day how I handle scary things in stories with Cora - things like wolves swallowing little girls whole, wolves gobbling little pigs and then being cooked, stepmothers demanding the lungs and liver of beautiful girls, and the ever-popular red-hot-iron-dancing shoes. Scary stuff indeed, and stuff I absolutely gobbled up as a child myself. I mostly handle it through these multiple versions, showing that stories can change and be changed - this removes some of the power of authority from the originals, and gives some of that power to Cora. She can choose which version to hear, or to think about, or she can create a new one that is somewhere in between (she is a big fan of having the wolf vomit up Little Red and Grandma - not, I think, a version you will find in a picture book anytime soon). So, I told my friend about this.

Then, another friend who was there mentioned that in the Waldorf philosophy - the educational world her children were raised in - there is a bias against picture books, even for very young children. As my friend explained it, the idea is that you only read aloud to your child without showing the pictures, or from books that have no pictures. This approach, the philosophy says, allows your child to create his or her own pictures and learn to rely on and exercise her imagination.

"I don't think my daughter would stand for that," my friend replied.

I didn't really say anything at the time, because I was surprised at how horrified I felt! On the one hand, I see the Waldorf point. On the other hand, I don't see Cora's imagination being fenced in by the pictures she sees. She likes it when we get to the end of a book and there's a picture of the person who wrote the story and the person who drew and colored the pictures. She likes studying the pictures and talking about them - we both like the books where there are things happening in the pictures that aren't part of the text. A recurrent element for example, like the chipmunk in each picture of When Will It Be Spring?, always doing something different, always near the main character Alfie, a small bear cub. Or the details of a dress, a castle, the way the only color in the Olivia books is red, and so on.

And I think that when it comes to scary things, illustrations can help to make the scary manageable - it delineates it, the same way talking about fear puts it in a linguistic container, instead of letting it spill all over your mind. One of the pages Cora particularly likes to look at in the three pigs book is a close up of the wolf's slavering face - she sits and traces his teeth with her finger and stares into his eyes. Then she closes him up in the book. Safe. And then she pretends to be the Big Bad Wolf, and tells me how much she loves him.*

Right now I'm reading a new book by Maria Tatar called Enchanted Hunters: the Power of Stories in Childhood. In this book she explores "how literature touches us when we are young, moving and transforming us with its intoxicating, enthralling, and occasionally terrifying energy." She writes mainly about the books we read to ourselves as children, but also about picture books and the stories that are read to us.

At one point she quotes the poet Dana Gioia as saying, "The books we read are no different from the people we meet and the cities we visit. Some books, people, or places hardly matter, others change our lives, and still others plant some idea or sentiment that influences our future."

At the end of the introduction she says something I really love: "Words have not just the astonishing capacity to banish boredom and create wonders. They also enable contact with the lives of others and with story worlds, arousing endless curiosity about ourselves and the places we inhabit." I believe this is also true of art, of the stories visually told.

*I admit to being particularly pleased about her affection for the Big Bad Wolf, as he was my invisible friend for much of my childhood.

Food. It's all about food.

(I really didn't think I would write this much - I had planned just to capture a few recent thoughts about White House gardens, meal planning, etc. And then...)

Earlier this week I was really excited to read about the organic vegetable garden that is being dug into the White House's South lawn - just down from the swing set, I believe. I found this exciting for a couple of reasons. One is that, like the swing set, it makes the White House seem like much more of a home - a place where a real family lives. Maybe it's the presence of schoolage children in the WH (when is the last time that happened?), maybe it is the politics, maybe it the point we are at in national culture, I don't know; whatever the reason, I like it.

I also like that everything grown there will be actual food - it isn't just a show garden or a school project. It's a working, family-feeding garden. Reading about all the different things that will be grown there - especially the lettuces - really made me think about the state of our own gardenspace and about food. I also like that Mrs. Obama knows not everyone has a green thumb or the space to flex it. “You can begin in your own cupboard,” she said, “by eliminating processed food, trying to cook a meal a little more often, trying to incorporate more fruits and vegetables.” (I got my quote from the NYT.)

Reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle last summer sparked a mini-resurgence in my efforts to make our eating a little more health and earth friendly. And this idea continues to grow. Of course, we are also in the midst of Cora's toddler diet - the one where her likes and dislikes are entirely unpredictable. She used to like dressing on her salad. Then she didn't. Then she didn't like salad. Then she did. Then tonight she asked if she could have some of my "syrup" on her salad, too. And ate it all. Except for the piece she put on the floor for our cat Arvo. Who ate it. And later threw up.

So we have the usual dilemmas: to what extent are we okay with fixing her a separate meal? I try to either make things we all will like, or overlap our meals. So, while I might put spicy jerk sauce on our baked chicken, I leave hers plain or just use lemon juice and oregano on hers. Or, if we have mutter paneer, she has plain paneer and rice, with maybe a side of pb&j. Some of the same, something to round it out. But, of course, sometimes there is no getting around the fact that she won't eat enchiladas, refried beans, and rice. But, she will eat a quesadilla, and we will all have some guacamole. If we really want to eat something totally out of her league, she can usually bet on getting her quesadilla and guacamole, with a side of banana or applesauce. (And, I do plan out all our meals week by week. The shopping is mostly easier, but mostly it is easier on me because I don't have to make as many decisions throughout the week.)

This summer I plan on a few tomato plants, and definitely herbs. We're going to try some radishes and carrots, but I think we will be fighting the squirrels and odd rabbit over them. I would love to grow some lettuces, because I love lettuces. But, I think for it really be a success I would need a cold frame, and that isn't in the cards this year. So, my grow-my-own plans are fairly limited. But, I continue to try to eat more locally - I made a valiant attempt at getting us a CSA share this year. Unfortunately, finances and jobs are too uncertain to commit to one.

But, we do cook our own meals almost every night. I try to make each dinner also serve for lunch the next day, either as leftovers or as starter ingredients for something else. Breakfasts are mostly cereal or oatmeal. My big plan for once the berries start rolling in is to make some granola and have it with berries and yogurt most mornings throughout the summer. (Will I make my own yogurt? Tune in next season to find out!) We do still eat meat, though I keep trying to reduce the frequency. I'm intrigued with Mark Bittman's idea of being vegan until dinner time. I think being lacto-ovo vegetarian until dinner might frequenly work for us, except for those lunchtime leftovers some days.

We try to avoid processed foods, or at least choose "better" processed foods, like Annie's mac and cheese or Amy's frozen dinners, things like that. We had an interesting experience earlier this winter with high fructose corn syrup and Cora's digestive system - no more fruit snacks! Back to the Whole Foods brand cereal bars! Still, sometimes we all have a craving for chicken nuggets. Sometimes that cheesiest mac and cheese that comes in the blue box fulfills a nostalgic yearning. Sometimes I don't have time to make my own cookies.

Because we do like cookies. And cake. And boy am I anxious to make some pies this summer. And I do believe that when these things are homemade, they are less evil. And I am all about less evil in my pantry.

The waiting.

We are waiting. Waiting to hear whether we will be moving or not, what our summer and fall will look like, where we are going with our lives. We are in that strange and uncomfortable limbo of "everything went really well...I think everything went really well...did everything go really well?" that is so familiar, I think, to anyone who has been on a job interview.

We were pretty sure it would be at least a week before we heard anything. That week is over and we are trying to stave off the second-guessing mode that has been inching closer and closer. Waiting, I may have said here before, is not a strength I possess. I can do it, but not easily. Not without some major distractions on hand.

I thought maybe I would distract myself with potty training! Yes! Fun! Pull-ups! M&Ms! Constant entreaties to please sit on the potty, please, please. Reminders of how if one finds diaper changes offensive to one's existence, one could always choose...THE POTTY!!

Yeah. That worked for about as long as (and about as well as) you might think. We'll continue buying diapers for a while longer yet. We'll continue waiting.

Stuffing my head with poems

Well, I suppose the universe isn't going to just dump beauty on me without me making room for it in this head that is so crowded right now with troubles and worries and sadness from a variety of sources from the personal to the global. So, I'm trying to make a little room, move things around, clear a little space. I thought I would start with a poem that not only will start this process for me, but reminds me why I need it.

Robert Hayden wrote this poem not so long ago (1966), but I imagine that as true as it is for me, it would be for people of any time and place.

Monet's Waterlilies

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon
poisons the air like fallout,
I come again to see
the serene, great picture that I love.

Here space and time exist in light
the eye like the eye of faith believes.
The seen, the known
dissolve in iridescence, become
illusive flesh of light
that was not, was, forever is.

O light beheld as through refracting tears.
Here is the aura of that world
each of us has lost.
Here is the shadow of its joy.

I have loved this poem for years - it was the poem that led me to discover the rest of Hayden's amazing poetry and its lines ran through my head repeatedly in the months following 9/11, and whenever I turn to the arts for solace and sustenance.

I love the way Hayden describes Monet's painting and how he tried to capture light, preserve a light that "was not, was, forever is" - though when I read this poem I usually think of the haystack series, Monet moving down a line of canvases as the light changed. How "the eye like the eye of faith" believes it is seeing waterlilies from a distance, that up close dissolve. And the description of that dissolution as being like seeing through tears, the way you do look at a world you have lost, even as you can still see "the shadow of its joy" - meaning perhaps that the world is not entirely lost, is within reach, if removed for a time.

As a rule, I don't like to get all Chicken Little about the state of the world...

...okay, that is a complete lie. Consider that most of my favorite books involve some sort of post-apocalyptic landscape that even while I am reading I know will give me day-horrors for weeks (or months, or years), but I still can't keep from reading. Few people know this, because I like to mostly keep it to myself, but I can get very Chicken Little indeed...

but the other day I did an online poll at a parenting web site. The poll was this: What is the most important value for kids to learn? And the possible answers were:
Empathy
Respect
Generosity
Responsibility
Honesty

In a bit, I'll reveal what the voting was when I was last there, but first I'll tell you which one I picked and why. Ready? Got your guess?

Empathy, of course. I think it really contains all the other choices, for one thing - it is hard, perhaps impossible to empathize without having respect for the person, situation, etc. you feel empathy for or with. Feeling empathy would seem to lead directly to being generous and honest, and also to responsibility. In fact, I would say that empathy is the only choice that can possibly encompass all the others, so it is my favorite kind of answer: the carpetbag answer.

Now, I know not everyone might think this way, trying to get the most out of his or her vote, but I still expected results to be pretty evenly distributed among the possible responses. Here are the results up to the point I cast my vote:

Empathy: 17%
Respect: 41%
Generosity: 2%
Responsibility: 19%
Honesty: 21%

While these are all fine values, I'm a little taken aback by the low score of generosity, and that honesty scores second-highest. Do people think it is a quality too often taken advantage of? Why the low interest in generosity as something to teach kids? Does respect or honesty also contain the promise of generosity? I suppose respect might, but I don't think there is anything in honesty that also promises generosity. I think there are a good many people who are very honest, but hardly generous - who, if they were being honest, might actually see generosity as a weakness.

In fact, honesty seems to me to be the quality on this list that is the most discrete, the one with the least overlap with the others. I confess I think that scrupulous honesty is overrated, is, in fact, on some level dishonest, disrespectful, and definitely lacking in empathy. Of all the qualities on this list it is the one I feel most ambivalent about. Honesty is good and to be encouraged, but not at the cost of everything else. If you want my honest, respectful opinion.

If you don't, well, I will try to understand how you feel.

Pictures and a book report

I haven't posted pictures for a while, so I will scatter a few throughout this otherwise non-picture realted post!

The book I meant to write about earlier is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. Unfortunately, I returned it to the library without remembering to copy out the quotes I wanted to. Rats! But, it is okay, because eventually I am going to buy my own copy, because I LOVED this book. Why do I love it? Here's the list:

* It is by one of my favorite fiction authors, and she brings the same gifts to her nonfiction writing: humor, honesty, kindness, and thought-provoking intensity

* It tells the story of a grand experiment: she and her husband and daughters live for a year on food they either grow themselves or that they can buy locally - the term locavore is more widely known now than when they began.

* They are not over-the-top fanatical: yes, they have a lot of good land to farm in a Virginia hollow, but they aren't willing to give up coffee and non-native spices but they find an acceptable way to buy these things (via fair trade sources).

* The book itself is a family effort, with her husband contributing sidebars on scientific and biological ideas, issues, and resources; oldest daughter contributing short columns and recipes; and while the younest daughter doesn't write for the book, she is clearly just as involved in the experiment as anyone else (I loved the stories about her hen flock and her business acumen).

* What could have been guilt-inducing was instead inspiring. I don't have land to farm, the knowledge or inclination to do so, but there are indeed many ways I could adjust our buying habits in order to bring our food purchasing and consumption more in line with what we believe.

To this last end, we've decided to frequent the farmers markets more often - there's one we can get to quite easily on Saturday mornings, and one downtown on Thursdays. Also, more locally grown and organic produce and meats. On our last trip to the grocery store we really noticed the prices being higher than, say, a year ago.

Trying this experiment of our own may not save us much money - though the more we can resist out-of-season produce the better chance it will - but at the same time, maybe I would rather we are good food rather than cheap food. I don't like that this is the choice so many people are faced with in this country. I don't like it that the cheapest food in the grocery stores is the highly-processed, not-good-for-you food!

At the very least, we will do our own grand experiment and see how it turns out.

Lucky

It has been quite a weekend. Cora turned two on Saturday, which alone amazes me. You mean it was really just two years ago that we met her face-to-face? Because we don't have any family close by, Cora has had an early entry into the world of birthday parties. Last year she had one at a park and we were lucky with the weather. This year, we were not so weather-lucky, and we moved the party to indoors and I had a frantic day or two of deciding what to DO with seven little girls in our little house. But, the party was a lot of fun, with Wonder Pets, coloring, cupcakes, and dancing with streamers (Chris is still wondering of "Brickhouse" was a good choice, but seriously it was Cora's first favorite song).

I'm glad the party went so well, because the morning was not promising before the party. Without fail, no matter the time of day, if you ask Cora what she wants to eat, she will respond with great enthusiasm and hope: "Pizza!" So, I made her a breakfast pizza, modeled on my memory of a delicious one we once had at a cafe. My breakfast pizza was good, but nowhere near my vision, took much longer than I thought, and Cora was not that interested in actually eating it. Sigh. In the couple hours between pizza and party, there turned out to be many things to whine and complain about, much flopping about of little bodies, and not a lot of cooperation. Going outside to wait for party guests turned out to be the best idea I had all morning, if anyone wants Cora's opinion.

After the party, it turned out that there was to be no napping. Unfortunately for the mommy and daddy who had been up way to late cleaning up. I half-jokingly said to people today that someone had clearly flipped the two-year-old switch in our girl, because she was an ornery handful almost all weekend, with the exception of her party, church this morning, and front-yard clean up time this afternoon (finally some real live springlike weather!). During some pre-dinner coloring she even, for the first time, told me she was going to do something herself: "No, Mama, do myself!" (take the cap off the markers, the beloved markers)! Chris was leaving for a recital this evening and I was dreading having to face bedtime alone.

But.

The ritual of pajamas-teeth-upstairs once again - knock on wood - stood me in good stead. Once upstairs, she wanted to lie in our bed, with covers. So we did, and I told her a little story about how two years ago we first met her, and she interrupted me to make sure I had my head on Daddy's pillow, because she had her head on Mama's, and that's the way it should be. And she lay on her side with her thumb in her mouth, eyes a little heavy, listening to my story. And then she reached out and patted my head and said, "Mama pretty hair." We talked a little more, I carried her into her room, we read some books and sang some songs, and then I set her down in her crib. For the past few nights this has been her cue to jump up and start crying. But tonight she just watched me walk out of her room and then fell asleep. I came downstairs and finished reading a book.

What I liked about our bedtime tonight was that I didn't feel like I had to make her do what I needed her to do, and I didn't feel like I was letting her postpone bedtime indefinitely. It felt like a good mix of what she felt she needed to do - be in our bed for a while - and what I felt she needed to do - be able to fall asleep on her own, without a big exhausting cryfest first. This, I suspect, is two. As so much of the weekend showed, it doesn't always work so seamlessly. But, once in a while, it can, and that is what I want to remember from the weekend Cora turned two.

Paper Cuts

No, this is not a post about how I have lacerated my fingers with student papers (although I did somehow manage to gouge a chunk out of my knuckle while peeling a garlic clove. ouch). Over at the New York Times online they have a set of blogs, most with rotating guest authors. The ones with a literary focus of some sort are collected under the umbrella Paper Cuts (because if it's online, it has to be cleverly named). One of the Paper Cuts offerings is "Living with Music" on Wednesdays.

In the Wednesday column, some book/publishing person gives a playlist of 10 songs - a desert island playlist, a currently-in-rotation playlist, an "I love the blues and you should too" playlist, whatever. I think the people chosen must all be very hip NY people that we in the Land InBetween don't get to hear too much about. But, their lists are still interesting, mainly because, of couse, it must be an annotated list, and the comments, stories, backgrounds, rationale is often entertaining.

And then there are the comments from the "Living with Music" readers, who seem mainly content to rip on the guests for being too studiously trendy or hip or arcane. And there is nothing worse - nothing more phony, as our friend Holden would say - than being these things studiously.

Well, come on, people! Don't you remember the dreaded question that begins around jr. high and never lets up? "So, who's your favorite group?" "What kind of music do you like?" And the stomach-grinding moment as you try to catalog every song you've ever listened to and rate its social acceptability to the person asking the question? The fine calculations required to answer correctly would make you dizzy.

When A.M. Holmes says she likes Johnny Cash's version of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" I think two things. One, she probably really does like it (what's not to like?). And two, the sheer brillance! It's like ordering devil's food cake with seven-minute frosting flavored with pomegranate - retro, current, trendy, nostalgic, ordinary, innovative, quirky, and homey.

The other brillance of the blog is that it is an irresistable lure for writers, especially. Make a list, say a little something, sure, you can have a theme, you can make it a story, you can be all pomo or tell it straight, shape it how you like! So where's my playlist? Well, I'm thinking about it.

A brief catching up

In the days since the last posting, Chris has gone to Jamaica and returned (singing and playing trombone in 11 concerts in six days, while still managing to get a wicked sunburn), Grandma Jan has been to stay with us, I have been sick with some abbreviated form of flu (I thought it was food poisoning, but now other people are telling me they have had similar cases in the past couple months), and now we are all busy dealing with the fact that Spring Semester starts in one week even though we may not get above freezing until the end of the month. Hee hee!

Spring (the semester, not the season) will be a welcome change from the fall (though less financially rewarding) as I will have just one class, the freshman course in poetry and drama. I am excited about the books I chose, even though as usual I am bothered by having to leave out some very good poems. There are some I've had to admit just don't work well with the average first year student, some that I can't bear to have "dissected" again (oh how they love that word for interpreting poems! really, "vivisected" would be more accurate - you can just hear the poems screaming), some I'm just tired of teaching and need a short break from, and some just don't fit neatly into the thematic groupings I am using this time around.

I am hoping this decrease in coursework will equal an increase in time spent in creating - I would love to see myself devoting more time to my writing and quilting than I did in the last four months of the year (not that hard, as any amount of time would be an increase). Plus, there are a lot of house projects to be tackled. I'm kicking off this anticipated season of creativity with a workshop this coming weekend, which I hope will lead to a kind of "fountain of youth" of either inspiration or motivation (I will take either!). I know that most of the time I am my own worst enemy, distracting myself with false obligations, postponeable chores, and inane diversions. Knowing this has yet to make me immune.