academics

Civilization, Regretting Chocolate, Brain Fatigue

Children don’t understand what it means for your brain to be tired, so they ask complicated questions at bedtime, or when you are trying to daydream while driving. What is the next number in this series? Why is it important to be civilized? This is the point in the test at which I want to start bubbling in C for everything. Or is it B? I think it’s just important that you fill in all the bubbles, or was it one bubble per row? Will I be expected to show my work?

Usually I cool off at some point and give them the correct answers—both are logarithms—then remind them of the child’s mandate to read everyday, even better if you read something besides the names of Minecraft video clips on Youtube. My own parents must have felt just as strongly about reading, which is why they set limits by having only one TV and no TV reception. The house was full of books, and while my friends who had cable were out to dinner or on vacation with their families, I read several of them.

My dad must have noticed that I didn’t pack Die Odyssee when I left for college—I had discovered it was a translation, not a vampire book—and I think that’s when he started sending me clippings from The New York Times to encourage me to keep up my vocabulary and critical thinking skills. In fairness to UVA, Physics for Non-Majors, e.g., might have provided either of these, but I didn’t sink my teeth into it as I might have if I hadn’t had mono so much. After school I tested out a non-linear series of jobs and then got married, and he continued to send the clippings. I wonder if they still come now and then–I rarely open my paper mail. Come to think of it, when I was in my twenties, there were times I was in Las Vegas or Cuba or living with a mouse and a catalog model and a Swedish recluse in Gramercy and generally difficult to pin down. I might have missed some letters then too. I bet that’s when my dad sent the epic letter containing all his “life advice.” If I had read it, I might have had a better answer for my son to his question why be civilized? As it is, it sounds like what he has learned from me is to regret eating chocolate, a behavior I hope I have neither modeled nor promoted.

Every so often, I try to read one book to the two children. Recently it has been Rebecca. More than a page about the rose bushes of Manderley is enough to convince my daughter she wants to read something current, in solitude. Her brother falls asleep. When my brain is tired from making up answers all day, this works pretty well.

Nützliche Ausdrucke, Yotam, Sentient Food

Frau Holmes used to say, “Wenn Gott wolte, dass ich koche, warum hat er dann Restaurants geschaffen?” It was one of the only nützliche Ausdrucke I never really liked, although I think she meant it more as a feminist than as a creationist. She also used to tell us once you see a new word, you will keep seeing it. How true that has felt lately, when the word Ottolenghi first started popping up all over my Twitter and podcast feeds. Actually, I’d like to know how it’s possible I’ve been missing a fantastic word like Ottolenghi. Christopher Kimball says that’s where everyone is going now in food—and he would certainly know, but I’m not sure I would have said he would know first. Then again, I think the whole living on a farm in Vermont thing, like the bow tie, is a bit of a put-on. Also, maybe I did know about Yotam Ottolenghi and I just forgot. I tripped or was tripped while running in White Clay Creek over the weekend and may have hit my head—there was very little blood, unless I was bleeding from my nose again and no one told me.

A little less recently, but still not soon enough, I came across David Leite (rhymes with eat—apparently not German). Lynne Rosetto Kasper is a fan so it might have happened sooner, except that I had to stop listening to The Splendid Table because it aired back to back with You Bet Your Garden, which I think was hosted by Gilbert Gottfried. Sometimes I would accidentally hear a little bit of that show and later that day, through some sort of transference, all my plants would die. I try not to take a point from anything I read, but I hope we’re not going any one place in food. I like to make a wheat berry salad sometimes, or an #ottolenghi cauliflower cake that was very difficult not to Instagram*, but I also want to make the bacon bourbon butterscotch popcorn from Leite’s Culinaria. If Christopher Kimball or Yotam Ottolenghi or David Leite has some ideas for things for me to cook, I am very open-minded. But I do also like restaurants. So Gott sei Dank, I suppose.

*But I did text it to my brother. He said it looked sentient. He has read a lot of Hermann Hesse.

Role models, Smut, The Rebel Army

I watched Gone With the Wind some embarrassing number of times around the year of its 50th anniversary release, and then I read the book twice. I wouldn’t say I identified with Scarlett O’Hara though. I would never have married Charles Hamilton. Her self-preservation instinct was just so much stronger than I can ever imagine mine being, probably because I grew up with air conditioning and very little exposure to war.

When I was 14, we moved to Connecticut where I had two friends, some whole wheat croissants, and a copy of Vivien Leigh’s biography, which turned out to be mildly smutty. There was a fun role model! I don’t have it anymore, so I can’t go back and check on these things, but this is my impression of that book: Vivien Leigh hated to leave a party early but got up early to make everyone breakfast and never had or at least never complained of a hangover. At some point, she married Lawrence Olivier, who was a virgin until age 24. I wonder if he was insecure about that. Vivien didn’t like her hands. Maybe they commiserated. Actors.

When I took a film class in college, I was surprised to learn Blaxploitation had nothing to do with Butterfly McQueen. I guess I was less surprised my film professor didn’t share my enthusiasm for Gone With the Wind. I think that was exactly how he put it, though he let me get away with one of those papers that must be so tedious to read, where every casual detail is meaningful. I remember, for instance, making something of the one black and one white puppy (or was there also a kitten?—interspecies would have been even better) spooning on the front porch while the Tarleton twins explained why they needed to join the Rebel Army. That paper was so boring, I think it cured me.

Malibu Stacy, Almost-Contest II, A Milestone

Dear E.S.B., (identity protected,) I was kind of floored when you chose to go into statistics professionally, instead of lifeguarding, which seemed like such a natural fit for someone so pretty, with an unusual talent for not squinting. It must be the long, thick Swenson lashes. Oops! Anyway, I was thinking about you, because I have finally seen the appeal of statistical data, at least as it applies to my own blog analytics. I have nothing like the intimacy with my readership that, say, Facebook has with all of us, but I do know that I’m about to cross the 1600-view threshold. Real blogs–the kind with photographs, ads, and sincerity–get this kind of traffic in a week. Still, it thrills me, though I would never admit it. I wanted to get a 1600 on my SATs, once upon a time, only I didn’t care about statistics yet, and that was a problem, or several, maybe, and the answer wasn’t always B.

I was thinking about holding another blog-wide contest, to commemorate the 1600th view. Two problems: 1.) WordPress will not tell me with enough specificity who’s reading it. 2.) What if the winning viewer turned out to be someone I didn’t know in real life, and the prize, cookies? Would that person even want to eat them? Maybe the prize should have been something inedible—I mean–not a food prize. A chance to be mentioned on the blog? Wow, who is getting a big head?

The Humming Game, Shamanism, Feet

Running is just like life. In literature, we would call such a comparison iambic pentameter, because of the connection with feet. Or we may have called it that other thing—was it a Nagual? Although I was never offered an Echols Scholarship when I was at UVA, (please refer to my upcoming post about birth order,) I did manage to get a willy-nilly liberal arts education anyway. For instance, I could talk about Carlos Casteneda for hours if you and I were both on peyote. Or music—jazz or classical, but we would have to play the game where I hum something and you try to guess what it is (Mozart’s Piano Concerto 21 in C Major.) Also, I think I remember that my wrist is distal to my shoulder—if it isn’t, I have just fallen down some steps. Wasn’t I talking about running? Thank goodness, because I was getting out of my depth.

The thing is, how much do I really want to write about the ways in which running is like life? Because if you read Runner’s World or The Huffington Post or you yourself have ever been a runner or have sat next to a runner couple at El Diablo Burrito, you know running makes everyone philosophical. I get out there, and get high on endorphins, and I get a lot of big, stupid ideas. If I’m running with anyone else, I talk way too much. There is good photographic evidence of this starting around mile 16 of the New York Marathon, when Stevie puts on her headphones. Running is probably more like drinking. What would Caballo Blanco do?