This week’s box:
Basil, beets w greens, salad mix, cucumber, red potatoes, summer squash, green beans, chard, red onions.
We had the potatoes with chicken and green beans last night. I think I’m going to make a big pot of soup topped with pesto. That should take care of most of this at once.
This month Scribner is releasing a “restored edition” of one of Ernest Hemingway’s most popular books, A Moveable Feast.
The reason I read for the revision was that the book as we know it it had been cobbled together by Hemingway’s fourth and last wife Mary in the aftermath of his suicide, and that what she included, and did not include, reflected her desires, rather than those of the author.
The story, unsurprisingly, is more complex. The revision was commissioned by a grandson of Hemingway’s from his second marriage. He felt his grandmother, for whom Hemingway left his first wife, Hadley, got a bad rap from the book. So not only is he doing to Moveable Feast what he criticized Mary for doing, he’s got a vested interest, as well.
An op-ed from Hemingway’s friend and publisher A.E. Hotchner adds another wrinkle.
I wonder–what’s more important–what is “true”, or that A Moveable Feast as it was is a lovely, wonderful book.
For those of you have a Google home page, and use Gmail, Google reader, and other Google goodies, go check out the new themes they’re offering in honor of Comicon. I wish someone could explain to me why Spider Woman and not Jean Grey, but there are some favorite kid comic characters, like Owly and Johnny Boo, and some from some of our favorite books, like Robot Dreams and Adventures in Cartooning.
I’m toying with “women in the DC universe” but I’m really not the target market. But still: Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Supergirl–these were my childhood idols. I’m grateful I lived pre-Disney princesses!
Yesterday I posted about an experience I thought was ironic. Today, I told 3yo Guppy to take a nap while I tried to finish my chapter in Infinite Jest before taking my own nap. Guppy whined, cried, and made such an utter pest of himself, saying he wasn’t tired and just wanted to play quietly downstairs, that I gave in.
This is what I found on the couch when I came downstairs after my little lie-down:
Any idea how hard it is to read Infinite Jest, in general but the section about Eschaton in particular, while being pestered by a 3yo? For example:
Uninitiated adults who might be parked in a nearby mint-green advertorial Ford sedan or might stroll casually past [Enfield Tennis Academy]’s four easternmost tennis courts and see an atavistic global-nuclear-conflict game played by tanned and energetic little kids and so thus might naturally expect to see fuzzless green warheads getting whacked indiscriminately skyward all over the place as everybody gets blackly drunk with thanatoptic fury in the crisp November air–these adults would more likely find an actual game of Eschaton strangely subdued, almost narcotized-looking. (327)
And but so, I think Guppy’s nap is annoying, not ironic.
My friend and erstwhile-writing-group member Judith Yates Borger kindly sent me a copy of her first novel, Where’s Billie, a mystery set in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. Full disclaimer: I’m not going to have anything like objectivity on this book. I saw it through several drafts, and have a great deal of affection for it.
That said, this is a very good book. At the center of the mystery is newspaper reporter Marguerite “Skeeter” Hughes. As a running joke through the novel, she routinely deflects people’s questions about her nickname. Skeeter is given the dud assignment of responding to an anxious mother’s report of a missing teenage girl named Billie. She soon finds there’s a great deal more than a sullen teen run away from an unhappy home. As she puts together her story, Skeeter fills us in on both newspaper and Minnesota cultures. This was a hoot to read–as a non-native, I sometimes laughed, sometimes felt abashed at the spot-on characterizations. In pursuit of Billie, Skeeter also struggles to care for her two daughters, play phone-tag with her husband, and maintain some kind of objectivity as the story hits closer and closer to home. She is shot at, her car is bombed, young girls are being lured into danger, and there’s meth and a connection to the mayor thrown in for good measure.
Borger is a retired journalist, and this background stands her in good stead. The story unfolds easily and quickly in straightforward prose. Skeeter has a dry sense of humor, as well as good insight into her struggles to balance work and home. In the end, the main mystery wraps up satisfactorily, if not neatly–read it and you’ll see what I mean. For Skeeter, though, things aren’t so Minnesota nice; there were a few things, one of them major, that I didn’t see coming.
Where’s Billie has a lot to offer–a solidly plotted mystery, an engaging main character who could easily helm her own series, ethnographic insights into journalism and Minnesota, a nefarious bad guy and a complex yet satisfying ending. It’s good stuff. I recommend it and look forward to a sequel.
On the bus to 5yo Drake’s swim lesson, I’m irritated by the cell-phone conversation of a person behind me. I turn around.
It’s a Buddhist monk.
What’s more ironic? That I’m irritated by a monk, or that a monk is having a cell-phone conversation on a bus?
For those in the NE ‘hood, the converted church building on the NE corner at 26th and Taylor Streets NE is now a monastery, with three Tibetan monks in residence. The house has been repainted traditional Buddhist colors of gold and red, there is a Direct TV satellite on the roof, and I’ve heard talk about an open house this Friday, 24 July 2009, at 5 p.m.
Last Thursday’s CSA box (week 6) from Foxtail Farm included kale, zucchini and yellow squash, green beans, purple onions, cauliflower, carrots, salad greens, and THREE bulbs of fennel. Here are some of the things I found to use them in:
Roasted Cauliflower Popcorn disappeared so fast I didn’t get a picture
Carrot, Dill, (Fennel) and White Bean Salad
All are from 101 Cookbooks.
Outside of the (CSA) box, my husband G. Grod made Philly soft pretzels;
They were a hit, so they’re sure to be on the menu come Eagles season.
I bought a pound of Door County cherries,
we ate them all.
Then I bought ANOTHER pound, and I made Cherry Brown Butter Bars from Smitten Kitchen.
They vanished in less than 24 hours.
From Infinite Summer, a comment on reading Infinite Jest by guest guide Brittney Gilbert:
Infinite Jest takes focus. I cannot listen to music while reading this novel, nor can I take it in with television on in the background. I can’t skim parts and still get the gist. The text requires 100% participation on my part. It has become a meditation. I have to be present and mindful in order to fully ingest the words before me. I cannot click to open a new tab, to check to Twitter to see if anyone famous has died, or refresh D-Listed. (Which I am proud to say I have not done even once during the drafting of this post. Yet.) It’s just me and the lavish landscape Wallace created.
“I am in here.”
I have chosen to care about this book, to give it a place in my life. In doing so I am rewarded with messages in IJ about the importance of being present. Of just breathing. Themes abound in IJ about focus, about choosing what it is that you pay attention to, and how crucial it is to do that with the utmost care. If only because our whole lives depend on it.
By virtue of being what it is, a dense, complicated, scattered work of immense volume, Infinite Jest enforces its own themes. Focus, presence of mind and conscious choice are all things thrust upon the reader when they enter into a contract to finish DFW’s IJ.
I did it. I finally made it through all the feeds from the blogs and sites I read. This past May preschool ended and our routine changed then changed again, plus I’ve been slowly working myself out of a minor slough of despond, and my number of unread items ballooned to 415.
And I didn’t read them all in a day. Or a weekend. Or a week. It’s taken several weeks to slowly, slowly get to zero.
Part of it is my own fault; I fret that I might miss anything. Also, I’ve carefully selected and regularly cull the sites I read. Most of the stuff on my to-read list is stuff I actually WANT to read. And some of it, as from The Morning News or Arts and Letters Daily, can be long and challenging. So I skimmed what I needed to skim. Skipped what I could skip. Made time for things that took time. And I’ve finally made it back to zero unread items.
Now I just need to do this every day. Wish me luck.
The first full-length Wallace and Gromit film, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, was a pick for the kids that G. Grod and I enjoyed immensely, too, even if one of us did use it to catch some zzzs. I was worried that the were rabbit would be scary for 3yo Guppy, but neither he nor 5yo Drake had a problem. I think the stunning cuteness of the bunnies trumped just about everything. Very cool was how Drake pieced the mystery together aloud on his own. I think those Scooby Doo dvds have given him some valuable training in amateur detection. The movie has a lot of naughty jokes for adults that sail right over the kids’ heads. Cute, funny, and lots of fun to boot.
First, filmmaker Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line) picked Fallen Idol as one of his favorite movies on the Rotten Tomatoes TV show. Then, it was mentioned several times in the extras for one of the three Carol Reed/Graham Green collaborations, The Third Man, which we just watched. Clearly, it was time to watch this film.
Phile, a young son of a foreign diplomat in London, is left mostly to the care of housekeeper and her husband, Baines, a valet or “man” or butler or some such. The boy likes Baines, who is kind to him, but not so the wife. When the boy follows the man one day, he (and the audience) find out about an affair. Fallen Idol is a strange, uncomfortable film, with a dual awareness, of both the child and the viewer of the film. As the boy sees both more (and in one important instance) less than adults wish him to, he makes the hard transition from innocence to awareness.
Baines: There are faults on both sides, Phile. We don’t have any call to judge. Perhaps she was what she was because I am what I am. We ought to be very careful, Phile. ‘Cause we make one another.
Phillipe: I thought God made us.
Baines: Trouble is, we take a hand in the game.
Phile learns not only about evil in the world, but of the low opinion most adults have for children in general. Given what the poor child has to endure from the adults around him (and absent from him, too) Fallen Idol shows what a raw deal Phile gets.
From Infinite Jest:
Feral hamsters are not pets. They mean business. Wide berth advised. Carry nothing even remotely vegetablish if in the path of a feral herd. If in the path of such a herd, move quickly and calmly in a direction perpendicular to their own.
Every time one of our boys has spun around till he got dizzy and dropped (and that’s a LOT of times) my husband G. Grod said we should watch Parenthood again. We finally did, and he was right. Watching it as a parent is an entirely different experience. It’s full of cliches, yes, but they’re cliches because they’re true, and there are so very many funny/painful moments of recognition.
Interestingly, while the fashions and especially the hairstyles look twenty years ago, the basics haven’t changed–moms and dads worry about money and getting laid off, overzealous parents try to bully their kid into achieving, other parents try to deny their kid needs special ed, ne-er do well brothers show up when they’re not invited, and more.
Steve Martin is funny as the dad, but it’s not surprising to find he didn’t have kids of his own then (not sure if he does, now); he seemed to be straining a bit. But the movie is full of pleasures, like Jason Robards as the patriarch, Mary Steenburgen as Martin’s wife, plus glimpses of the very young and already talented Joaquin (fka Leaf) Phoenix, and Keanu Reeves.
One of the creators’ favorite segments is the roller coaster speech, since they show it several times in the extras, which were entertaining.
[Gil has been complaining about his complicated life; Grandma wanders into the room]
Grandma: You know, when I was nineteen, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster.
Gil: Oh?
Grandma: Up, down, up, down. Oh, what a ride!
Gil: What a great story.
Grandma: I always wanted to go again. You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all together! Some didn’t like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.
The speech is sappy as hell, and I’d dismiss it, as Martin’s Gil does in the movie, but on further reflection, I think it works for me. Parenthood _is_ like a roller coaster–the waiting, the tedium, the long boring parts seem to take forever, and the actual fun stuff happens so fast it’s gone almost before I can enjoy it. Even so, I like roller coasters, and for most parts of the day, I wouldn’t trade in my kids.
(But this morning, when 3yo Guppy was crying, then stopping, then crying, lather, rinse, repeat, for the most ridiculous reasons, I did consider calling the hospital and inquiring whether he was still under warranty.)
Rhett Miller, at Paste, on figuring out what one of his recent songs was about:
I realized, you know, “Oh, my God. I think it might be about DFW.” I started going through the lyrics, and there’s the one, “Same time tomorrow I know where you’ll be / same place as always / right here beside me,” and while I was thinking about it, I looked and over and on my bedside table was my copy of Infinite Jest, which is always right there
I fell in love with the Old 97’s when I saw the only-OK movie Clay Pigeons. Miller’s got some interesting insight into his writing that reminded me why I enjoy his music.
Does the photo of this cake mesmerize you, too? I saw this on the lovely food blog Smitten Kitchen yesterday, and was, indeed, smitten. Thank you Deb, for creating what looks to be a go-to recipe.
I showed it to 5yo Drake, who will be 6 in August. He said he would like it for his birthday cake. Which is good, because I was going to make it anyway.
My CSA is a half box of produce every week. Week four had a lot, and I wasn’t finished when the new box arrived, which left me feeling a little stressed. But with a batch of tabbouleh and some cucumber-yogurt soup, I dispatched the last of the previous week in order to face the new kids:
Cauliflower, scallions, snap peas, cabbage, garlic scapes, broccoli, cucumber, lettuce, green beans, yellow squash, and beets with greens.
First up was Braised Tofu and Peas in Curried Coconut Milk from Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian that used cauliflower, scallions, snap peas, cabbage and garlic scapes. Not only did it use five things, but it was delicious and pretty to look at. And the fry bread we made to go with it was pretty tasty, too. (Added later: Fry bread DOES NOT KEEP. It turns hard and yucky. Eat immediately, then throw out any leftovers. Another lesson learned.)
For the salad mix and cucumber, I went with Food Matter’s Thai beef salad and Super Natural Cooking’s shredded green beans,an easy, different way to prepare that staple.
On Sunday, though, I hit a wall. I couldn’t face making a stir fry using the broccoli, beets and greens. So we went to Black Sheep Coal-Fired Pizza. It was awesome.
That break left me ready for the stir fry. I peeled and grated the beets, so my hands looked like Lady MacBeth’s. The pan was a lovely contrast of red, orange, green and yellow (the latter only because the broccoli was beginning to turn, though)
before the beets turned everything red. Alas, it is their nature. As I expected, the kids wouldn’t touch the veggies (alas, it is their nature), and my husband G. Grod and I ate it because it was good for us and tasted OK. Thankfully there’s not too much left over, unlike last week’s barley with asparagus and green onion sauce, which is the thing that won’t leave.
Tomorrow I’ll make Super Natural Cooking’s Otsu, a soba noodle dish with cucumber and tofu, then that book’s Sushi Bowl to finish out the week and (I hope) this week’s batch before the next arrives on Thursday. I still don’t know what to do with the yellow squash; I’ll probably throw it in the sushi bowl.
My self satisfaction about being a thrifty home-economist locavore is waning, and we’re not even yet at the height of summer. The break for pizza helped, but I’ve got to keep my veggie mojo going or I’m going to be buried in greens.
And because I forgot to post it, here’s a shot of last week’s Creamy Cauliflower Soup with Pesto, from SNC. I know, I need to work on my food photography.
We’d held off on Toy Story 2, saving it, literally, for a rainy day. I hadn’t seen it since it was released, so I was eager to see if it was as good as its reputation–many claim it’s one of the few films sequels better than its predecessor.
After Woody’s arm is ripped, he’s relegated to a high broken-toy shelf with a squeaker-malfunctioning penguin. When the penguin is put in the yard-sale box, Woody tries to rescue him, but is instead “captured” by Al of Al’s Toy Barn. Woody finds he has a past as a television star, and has to figure out where his loyalties lie–with new friends or his old ones.
I’m a big fan of the first Toy Story; it’s stood up to multiple viewings with the kids. So I was suspicious of the sequel’s ability to surpass it. I was pleasantly surprised. The the animation, the music, the voice talent, the layers of story and the many in-jokes (genuinely funny and not just cheap pop culture throwaway gags) made for a lovely afternoon with our little family cuddled on the couch.
I could, of course, have been unfairly influenced because 3yo Guppy let me snuggle with him for nearly the entire movie. But I think my favorite moment was when Al drives from his office to his apartment–catty-corner across the street. 5yo Drake looked indignant. “That’s not far; he should have walked!”
Apparently he DOES listen to me, even if pretends otherwise.
I am nervous, though, about the sequel. Third movies tend to break franchises, not make or better them. There are a few exceptions, though they likely prove the rule. I can think of The Bourne Ultimatum and Harry Potter 3. Others, anyone?
From Infinite Jest, which I’m reading as part of the Infinite Summer challenge, an example of the late David Foster Wallace’s weird, esoteric humor, ongoing sentences, vocabulary gymnastics and unique phrasing:
Wednesday is the U.S.A. weekday on which fresh Toblerone hits Boston, Massachusetts U.S.A.’s Newbury Street’s import-confectioners’ shelves, and the Saudi Minister of Home Entertainment’s inability to control his appetites for Wednesday Toblerone often requires the medical attache to remain in personal attendance all evening on the bulk-rented fourteenth floor of the Back Bay Hilton, juggling tongue-depressors and cotton swabs, nystatin and ibuprofen and stiptics and antibiotic thrush salves, rehabilitating the mucous membranes of the dyspeptic and distressed and often (but not always) penitent and appreciative Saudi Prince Q—. So on 1 April, Y.D.A.U., when the medical attache is (it is alleged) insufficiently deft with a Q-Tip on an ulcerated sinal necrosis and is subjected at just 1800h. to a fit of febrile thrushive pique from the florally imbalanced Minister of Home Entertainment, and is by high-volume fiat replaced at the royal beside by the Prince’s personal physician, who’s summoned by beeper from the Hilton’s sauna, and when the damp personal physician pats the medical attache on the shoulder and tells him to pay the pique no mind, that it’s just the yeast talking, but to just head on home and unwind and for once make a well-deserved early Wednesday evening of it, and but so when the attache does get home, at like 1840h., his spacious Boston apartments are empty… (34-5)
This sentence was preceded and followed by five lines apiece that I haven’t included, and followed by one other sentence in its large paragraph. I’m not sure which part I find most amusing: the Prince’s Wednesday Toblerone binges, the phrase “febrile thrushive pique”, or “it’s just the yeast talking.”
After reading, and being transported by, Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, I added David Hajdu’s Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, to my reading list. Even though it was the last of my K & C related reading (and thus a likely candidate to be pushed off the TBR list), I not only read it, but enjoyed it immensely.
Churches and community groups raged and organized campaigns against comic books. Young people acted out mock trials of comics characters. Schools held public burnings of comics, and students threw thousands of the books into the bonfires; at more than one conflagration, children marched around the flames reciting incantations denouncing comics. Headlines in newspapers and magazines around the country warned readers: “Depravity for Children–Ten Cents a Copy!”…The offices of one of the most adventurous and scandalous publishers, EC Comics, were raided by the New York City police. More than a hundred acts of legislation were introduced on the state and municipal levels to ban or limit the sale of comic books…Soon, Congress took action with a set of sensational, televised hearings that nearly destroyed the comic-book business…
Page-one news as it occurred, the story of the comics controversy is a largely forgotten chapter in the history of the culture wars (7)
Hajdu’s coverage of comic-book fear and censorship to the 1940 and 1950’s is well-researched, filled with compelling personal accounts and anecdotes, and eminently readable. For readers who want to explore the history embedded in Chabon’s Pulitzer-Prize winning book, for pop-culture history buffs, for those interested in youth culture and censorship, or just anyone who likes a well-written account of a little-known phenomenon, I highly recommend this book.
I have hit all the page counts thus far reading Infinite Jest for Infinite Summer, and am paused at page 169. I’m flat out loving this book, even while knowing that tons of stuff is sailing over my head. I’m so boggled by all the little things that match up , e.g. Hal’s uncle’s modified tennis academy motto, “The Man Who Knows His Limitations Has None” (81) with the section on Schtitt’s take on tennis play a few pages later (83-4). I’m curious but not (yet) obsessively so about the seemingly (though I seriously doubt it) random divisions marked by an icon of what looks to be a crescent soon after a new moon.
What do I think it’s about, at 169 pages in? Getting out of one’s head and relating to people in person, among other things. And the irony, deliberate I’m sure, of that theme ensconced in a huge book that requires concentration and shutting out of distractions, is not lost on me.
This week’s vocabulary search was much helped by the Infinite Jest glossary, though I did have to use other sources as well. Note to self: looking up words later in a clump? Not helpful. And yet, jumping on the computer each time I don’t recognize a word? Unhelpful in a different way. Reading and ignoring the words I don’t know? Ooh. Crazy.
incunabular, annular, raster, synclinal, uremic, leptosomatic, quincunx, bradykinetic, varicoceles, tympana, aleatory, somatic, pedalferrous, fulvous, halation, ephebes, agnate, erumpent, vade mecum, rutilant
