Girl Detective

From this week’s kitchen.

Salad #7 from Mark Bittman’s Minimalist article 101 Simple Salads for the Season

1 lb. carrots, peeled then shredded
2 Tbl. EVOO
1/2 Tbl. lemon juice
1 pint fresh blueberries, rinsed and sorted
1/4 c. toasted pepitas (I had these in the pantry so used them instead of sunflower seeds)

Salad #14 A Moroccan Thing (at left below, next to the finished Shredded Green Beans, recipe after next)

1 lb. carrots, peeled and shredded
2 Tbl. EVOO
1/2 Tbl. lemon juice
1/4 tsp. cumin
1/4 c. golden raisins

Mix olive oil, lemon juice and stir in cumin. Add raisins to carrots, pour dressing and toss.

From Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Cooking

Shredded Green Beans

3/4 lb. green and/or yellow beans, tops and tails trimmed
2 Tbl. EVOO or clarified butter
2 Tbl. water
grated zest of 1 lemon
grated zest of 1 lime
1/4 c. chopped fresh chives
fine-grain sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Slice beans on a diagonal into roughly 1/8″ pieces. Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the beans and stir until coated with oil, then add the water. Cover and cook 2 or 3 minutes, until the beans are brightly colored and tender; give the pan a good shake midway through to ensure even cooking. Remove from the heat and stir in the zests and half of the chives. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve garnished with the remaining chives.

I had chard stems left after I used the leaves in a soup. I had shredded raw beets after I used some in Bittman’s Salad #43 from 101 Salads. I combined these in Bittman’s More-Vegetable-Than-Egg Frittata, which was delicious, though less lovely than the chopped chard stems, thus no picture.

All the above veg are from our CSA share from Foxtail Farm. I bought some local fruit from our grocery cooperative, Eastside Food Coop and did a loose variation on Mark Bittman’s Patchwork Foolproof Pie with pluots and raspberries.

It was a stunningly red and bubbled fiercely when I took it out of the oven. I served it with Sonny’s Pure Vanilla Bean ice cream.

While I was making the latter, G. Grod and the boys were in the backyard, watering. 5yo Drake was taking his turn with the hose when I said it was time to come in for dessert. Drake didn’t listen when G. repeated this, and turned the hose on G and the house. We told him he couldn’t have dessert. He expressed his displeasure with a lengthy tantrum, and by making an “I am Stupid” sign he taped to G’s back. (With G’s knowledge. Drake isn’t all that subtle.)

I’m nearly halfway through David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, which I’m reading along with the crowd at Infinite Summer. Along with some incisive commentary, there’s a lot of griping, which I find interesting.

One of the sites “guides”, Avery, recently wrote that she was not enjoying the book:

I resent that I’m having to work this hard, that I feel like I’m indulging the author. I resent having to read enormous blocks of text, with no paragraph breaks, for pages and pages at a time. I resent the endnotes that (more often than not) only serve to either waste my time or confuse me even further. I resent that I’m continually reaching supposed milestones (”just make it to page 100!” “get to 200!” “300 is where you get rewarded for all your effort!”) that don’t actually represent any appreciable change in tone, style or plot.

I feel like my time is being wasted with an overabundance of technical explanations of subjects – tennis, drugs – that are largely irrelevant. DFW is explaining the wrong stuff.

Many commenters suggested she put it down, but she said she’d continue, if only because she’d agreed to as one of the site’s guide. For clarification, Avery was invited as a guide to represent younger, i.e. twenty-something readers. Her opinion is not atypical; many commenters voice some of the same complaints: the text is long, uninteresting, deliberately irritating, rambling, unfocused.

These comments usually are met with other readers, often those who have read the book before, telling them to Hang In and Keep Coming Back, advice that’s echoed from the text’s AA segments. There are frequent exhortations to trust the author and assurances that he had a plan, and many of the disparate themes will come together. Even so, it’s easy to see where the criticisms are coming from. The text is a challenging one. For example:

Last spring’s airless and B-redolent section of Thode’s psycho-political offering ‘The Toothless Predator: Breast-Feeding as Sexual Assault,’ had been one of the most disorientingly fascinating experiences of Ted Schacht’s intellectual life so far, outside of the dentist’s chair, whereas this fall’s focus on pathologic double-bind-type quandaries was turning out to be not quite as compelling, but weirdly–almost intuitively–easy. (307)

I’m reminded of when I taught first-year composition a few years ago. The course was structured around non-fiction essays and one book, The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass. Some of my classes were for “remedial” students, though a more PC term was used. Many of theses students spoke English as a second language, and most were the first of their families to attend university. Some of them boasted they’d never read an entire book. The course progressed, and the students struggled with the assigned essays and reading. A frequent theme in their papers was complaint–they didn’t like the author, they didn’t think the author did a good job.

On one hand, this was a good thing. They were actually reading it, engaging with it, and forming their own opinions. Further, they were voicing a contrary opinion, something I could see took courage for many of them. Dissent was often discouraged in their secondary schools, they told me.

On the other hand, their criticism was not supported by their experience as readers. They were not experienced readers, and while that didn’t make their emotional reaction to the texts less true, it did fail to support a reasoned, academic analysis of them. They contended that because they didn’t like an essay, or because they didn’t understand it, that it wasn’t well-written. It was my job to try to bring them beyond an emotional reaction to the text to a critical one. That I sometimes succeeded was tremendously rewarding, for both me and the student, I believe.

And but so, I see a strong similarity between my former first-year students and those who are struggling with and rejecting Infinite Jest. It’s a challenging, at times deliberately provoking text. It’s also extremely smart, funny, and the further I read in it, the more intricate, layered and connected it becomes. My husband and I are reading together; we’ll frequently share connections we find to some other, at the time seemingly throwaway, bits earlier in the book. These ties bespeak planning; the careful layering of information withheld then shared bespeaks great care and precision. I’ve been puzzled by some readers’ claims of carelessness and inaccuracy.

For example, there was a discussion about a character described as weighing 200kg. Many commenters criticized this for impossibility, or criticized the author for sloppy writing. Few noted that it was a good deployment of hyperbole. Fewer, if any noted that this exaggerated figured appeared multiple times later, drawing connection through the text.

I’m enjoying the puzzle nature of the book, but I can understand why it’s postmodern puzzley-ness alienates and even offends some readers. I wish, though, that some didn’t take their dislike as equal to IJ not being a good book. Liking a book is not an index of its quality. Ditto for “getting it”. For example, a lot of DFW’s math commentary flies over my head. I don’t, though, claim he’s inaccurate or untalented to include it. I go with it. I Hang In. I Keep Coming Back. And for that, this book rewards me.

At 2 hours and 33 minutes, I want a movie to be worth my time, not just my money (both for the ticket AND the sitter). Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was entertaining, but not quite entertaining enough.

There was much in its favor. It was nice to see the familiar actors again, and they all did very well. The visuals were great, and there was even a quidditch match this time. The best part, though, was the banter and interplay among the students as their hormones surged. This had many funny moments and exchanges.

What didn’t work was how tedious the plot became. The film seemed to treat plot as a burden, lavishing time on the scenes with students, then rushing through key points from the book, like the reveal of the half-blood prince. During the penultimate scene, in which Harry and Dumbledore go off alone to battle something serious, I thought, “This is boring. I wish I were napping instead.”

That boredom took some of the power out of the final scene and the death of a major character.

Most critics seem to like it more than I did. I recommend it, but with reservations. Don’t pay full price, though it is worth seeing in theaters for the stunning visuals.

In a rather bizarre DVD turn of events, the DVD pilot for the upcoming Syfy series Caprica was released before it was shown on television. The series won’t be shown until 2010, so it’s got a very long lead time.

Eric Stoltz is Daniel Greystone, a Bill Gates-ish computer mogul. His daughter Zoe, played by Alessandra Torresani looking like a long-lost Deschanel sister, is rebellious, something of a programming genius and dabbling in weird VR stuff with two friends. Esai Morales is Joseph Adams, ne Adama, a Tauron emigre who has become a successful lawyer.

Both men’s daughters die in a terrorist explosion. The fathers meet in the aftermath, and try to come to terms with the tragedy. Stoltz is creepy, Morales is engaging, it’s entertaining to see a young Bill Adama. The racism stuff feels heavy handed, as does the pilot overall. I’m not left excited about the series, which is a prequel to Battlestar Galactica. While that show was space opera, this one feels much more like soap opera. Perhaps I just wasn’t in the mood, but it felt sort of slogging and obligatory. I liked the series so much, and felt it ended well and satisfactorily though many didn’t. I’m not sure I need to go back to that universe. Read tv critic Alan Sepinwall’s review of Caprica.

In 2007, I linked to a story about the third, and reputedly final and most authentic of the Blade Runner versions, but only recently got around to watching it. I liked the original. I really liked the “Director’s Cut”. This final cut is the synthesis of both of those, and it transcends them. This dark, moody film has aged very well over almost three decades, albeit with restorations. Harrison Ford’s bounty hunter is hired to track down four rogue nonhumans, but it’s hardly a straightforward mission. A few of the beginning scenes are clumsy and repetitive; this is likely the result of having had multiple versions available. The whole, though, is both stunning to look at and complex and engaging to ponder. If you liked either of the first two versions, see the Final Cut; it’s worth it.

Saturday, Foxtail Farm (from which we get a CSA) had a Kids Day and potluck lunch. The boys got to pick potatoes, carrots and green beans and feed cows, chickens and goats:

I used light colored Rainier-like cherries from Door County WI:

to make Cherry Slab Pie from Smitten Kitchen. I used 2/3 c. sugar since the cherries were sweet. It turned out well; I’d definitely make it again.

As part of Infinite Summer, I’m at page 390 of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, or about 40% through it. The past week’s pages featured two very long segments, one on a nuclear arms race game that the students at Enfield Tennis Academy play, and another on the ethnography of Boston AA. Both sections had few breaks and were tough to read, but both, as is typical of the book, were full of humor, pathos and increasing connections between characters we’ve met previously.

On AA old-timers, known as Crocodiles in Boston AA:

Of course–the Crocodiles dig at each other with their knobby elbows and guffaw and wheeze–they say when they tell Gately to either Hang In AA and get rabidly Active or else die in slime of course it’s only a suggestion. They howl and choke and slap their knees at this. It’s your classic in-type joke. There are, by ratified tradition, no ‘musts’ in Boston AA. No doctrine or dogma or rules. They can’t kick you out. You don’t have to do what they say. Do exactly as you please–if you still trust what seems to please you. The Crocodiles roar and wheeze and pound on the dash and bob in the front seat in abject AA mirth. (356)

This made me wonder, briefly, if I could approach parenting my small children this way. “Drake, I suggest you: look both ways before crossing the street/get that Lego out of your mouth/quit hitting your little brother Guppy/stop calling me stupid.” Then wait for whatever inevitable reaction/consequence there is, then laugh at him. I don’t think this would work very well.

I started Shadow Country this past April, soon after the Morning New Tournament of Books. Cited by many of the judges as one of the books they skipped, I can now see why. At just under 900 pages, it’s not only long, but it’s dense. The number and sprawl of an enormous cast of characters was beyond my ability to hold in my head; at about page sixty I went back to the beginning to make a character list since I could not find one online.

Shadow Country the story is historical fiction based on the life and death of Florida pioneer and supposed desperado Edgar Watson. Shadow Country the book has an interesting history as well. Matthiessen originally envisioned and submitted it as one work with three sections, each told from a different point of view. Deemed too long, it was roughly edited into three separate books and released over a period of years. Decades later, Matthiessen decided to have another go at the story, and rewrote it, editing and trimming it down from about 1,300 combined pages to its relatively svelte 892.

I might have preferred it, though, as three separate volumes. It’s so dense with characters, events, locations and history that I had a hard time following it and often had to refer to my notes. Having more literary “cushion” might have made it easier to digest, and a faster read even if it were technically longer.

Though it wasn’t easy to read, I found it worthwhile. So worth it, in fact, that I had to return it to the library with 120ish pages unread when my three rounds of renewal were done, wait several months for it to be available again, then finish it while in the midst of reading Infinite Jest.

There aren’t many books I would do that for. Edgar Watson is a fascinating character. His story is interwoven with that of the state of Florida and a history of racism at the turn of the last century. The first section of the book is told from revolving viewpoints of people and relatives who knew Edgar Watson. The second segment is told by his son Lucius, a historian. The third is told by Edgar himself.

With so many stories growed up around that feller, who is to say which ones was true? What I seen were a able-bodied man, mostly quiet, easy in his ways, who acted according to our ideas of a gentleman.

Few writers could handle these acrobatics of Point of View, yet Matthiessen manages it skillfully, turning the tapestry of the tales into one story, though it’s always shifting. It’s fascinating, compelling stuff. It won the National Book Award last year.

And yet. This would not be a book I would press on a stranger, or even someone I didn’t know very well. It’s clearly a life’s work for Matthiessen. While rewarding, it’s definitely not a book for general audiences. But if you’re interested in U.S. and Florida history, like thick books that you can sink into for weeks or months at a time, or love historical novels with complex characters, then this is certainly worth checking out. Just give yourself plenty of time to devote to it.

Lenore Skenazy has a new book, Free Range Kids : Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry, reviewed at STATS (link from Arts & Letters Daily):

Skenazy shot to startled stardom when she allowed her nine-year old son to ride the subway alone, then wrote about it in her column in the New York Sun. Cue lights, camera, daytime talk shows. Skenazy was branded “America’s Worst Mom,” a title she now sports proudly, and one that has inspired her efforts to persuade other parents to give their children a taste of the freedom they had growing up “without going nuts with worry.”

Her central thesis is this: life is good, people are mostly good, and kids are both hardy and more capable than we think. In fact, she explains, we’re living in what is “factually, statistically, and luckily for us, one of the safest periods for children in the history of the world.” The problem is that everywhere we look, we’re told otherwise. Which is why, perversely, in the safest of times, we’ve become the most neurotic parenting generation in history.

I was thinking along these lines earlier this week. My 5yo son Drake is in a day camp, and one day a week the teachers take the kids to the neighboring water park. Drake’s been doing this for weeks, and loves it. Then a mother of a new kid wondered if there was adequate supervision. I had a brief moment of worry, then self correction–he loves it, there are teachers, and there are lifeguards. And, I like the break I get. Enough.

It’s hard enough to regulate my own tendency to worry. It’s even more difficult when other parents worry more, or when I get the stink-eye from other parents who clearly don’t think I worry enough.

I’m discovering a lot of life lately can be answered simply with, “Lighten up, already.” I’m trying to do just that.

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

Lemony Chickpea Stirfry

Carrot, Dill, (Fennel) and White Bean Salad

and Vibrant Tasty Green Beans

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.