BaLtiMoRe RoLL

A TimE For WeDDInGs

Last year at this time, J and I "eloped" (or whatever you want to call it) during a beautiful autumn week in the Kyoto region of Japan.

Ginkaku-ji Temple
(We said our private vows just down the road from this temple.)

This year we headed north to Woodstock (where my parents live) and Rochester (where the rest of my extended family lives) where the trees were bare, the air was cold, the skies were grey, and the ground was covered every morning with fresh snowflakes. Upstate New York (and by that, I mean truly upstate, and not just 20 minutes north of NYC) is really not at its best in late November. The Rochester area is plagued by "lake effect" weather, so it's pretty grey and gloomy most of the time.

Fortunately, J and I were there to visit my family, so weather was hardly an issue. As J has found, visiting my family doesn't actually involve leaving the house, so it really doesn't matter what it's like outside. In fact, the gloomier the better because it makes staying inside that much cozier. We played games with my little cousins, drank Abuelita hot chocolate, looked at my cousin's photos from their trip to India, and of course, did some work off in my grandmother's sewing room while the rest of the family played more and more games. (Truly, they are obsessed with games.)

But we did brave the cold weather one day as J and I trooped around the Hudson River Valley with my mom, checking out potential wedding sites. I am sure that everyone has forgotten by now that we've been planning to have a "real" wedding, but we are!

We had decided a while ago to do the wedding near where my parents live since they could really help out with planning. Also, since J and I will be moving soon, we didn't want to plan a wedding in a place where we won't live anymore or in a place where we don't live yet. So since J and I don't get up to Woodstock very often, we decided we'd look at wedding sites on the one free day we had - rain or shine.

Of course, we got rain.

First we checked out Olana Historic Site, a Persian-style historic house overlooking the Hudson River from high atop a hill. Ahead of time, we were sure this would be the place we'd pick. In fact, I hardly felt like I needed to see it in person because the photos on the website made it look incredible. But when we checked it out with the idea of having a wedding there, we just couldn't make it work. The only lawn we could have held the wedding on was a strangely shaped hill with dips and craters all over it. Most people would probably leave with twisted ankles instead of fond memories.

Instead, we ended up picking Clermont, a site that we hadn't even planned to visit because the website made it look pretty boring to us. But we were driving by it, saw the sign, and sort of sighed and decided we might as well stop and check it out. Already we were tired of traipsing around in the cold rain. But I guess serendipity had a little something in mind for us.

Even in the rain, we all loved the place. There's a big white house (the Livingston Manor) constructed between 1730 and 1750 sitting on 500 acres of rolling lawns and forest right on the Husdon River. Lilacs are planted along the path that leads to the house and should be in peak bloom by mid-May.

The Livingston Manor

View of the Hudson River from the Livingston Manor

So we reserved it for Memorial Day weekend, for an outside wedding on the lawn behind the house overlooking the Hudson.

I know that there's so much still left to do, but I feel really accomplished having made this decision. Everything was feeling really open-ended for a while and I just felt like there was no way to make a decision, but now we have a date and a place! And I'm really happy that it's only six months away and not a year. We really don't want to spend a whole year planning this thing - it's been long enough already!

Now there's so much to do. Finish up this grant application this week. Finish up my dissertation asap. Move as soon as J finishes his dissertation. Figure out what to do with my time of unemployment when I'm finished with my dissertation - travel? work? both?

And now, we have to plan this wedding too. It should be a busy six months...

eLuSiviTy

One of the most frequent adjectives that I've noticed used to describe seadragons is "elusive". And so will I be elusive tonight and will not be making an appearance at the blogger happy hour...

Will I come to the next one? Perhaps. :)

A BoRinG LumP Of DouGH

I am sorry, but lately my life has been about as exciting as a lump of dough. So I really haven't had much to blog about. Want to hear about how I cooked some broccoli for dinner? Or about how cute my cat looks when he sleeps on his back with his paws in the air? Or about how I'm writing, writing, writing all the time and still feel like I have a long way to go with my dissertation? Or about how I'm trying to reconcile the fact that I am not enjoying writing this dissertation, but I have high hopes that the research position I am still trying to get for next year will be as fun and exciting as I imagine? Hm, I suppose I could write about that, but I just haven't felt like it.

So instead, I will actually write about a lump of dough, but a real live lump of dough and not a metaphorical one.

On Sunday I spent about ten hours photographing a little lump of sugar cookie dough with my friends Chiaroscuro and ViSuaLLyMiNDeD. We originally planned to spend the afternoon making and photographing food: a butternut squash soup and some holiday cookies.

In the end, we burned one set of cookies, ruined others by putting on some gel frosting that burned holes into the dough, and we never even got to the soup. We spent forever photographing the dough both as a big lump and after it was rolled out. We also spent about half the time eating other food, chatting, and playing with the cats. Yes, my photos turned out about as exciting as they sound.

But actually it was a lot of fun, and we did end up with a few edible cookies, so I have no complaints. It turns out that I am a terrible cookie artist though. Check out that awful abomination of a cookie on the left. I decorated it myself. It's supposed to be a woman wearing an apron.

Chiaroscuro decorated the one on the left, and it's supposed to be a man wearing pants. (So, no, that's not a diaper.)

Our idea was to take some stock-oriented photos, but I wonder if anyone will want photos of cookies depicting an ugly fat woman wearing an apron, a fat man wearing a diaper, and a floating flower between them?

HaIr Cut

A little over two months ago, I went to the hairdresser to have my bangs trimmed because they were doing this really stupid thing where they'd stick out on the sides of my face like wings. I had tried to cut them myself, but I'd failed miserably. I looked a bit like a three year old.

Unfortunately, the day I finally went into to cut my hair cut for real, my regular hairdresser was sick. Since I was leaving for London the next day, I decided to let someone else cut my hair. Unfortunately, when I said trim, she heard, "hey, would you mind cutting six inch layers all over the back of my head?"

Every morning thereafter has been a struggle. First of all, my hair is way too thin for layers like that, and secondly, wasn't that look popular ten years ago or something? I fought against it every day, trying to make it do stuff it wasn't meant to do. And I waited and hoped for fast growth.

Today I decided that it was time to cut off all the long ends to match the short layers. When I showed my hairdresser my hair, I felt a little bit better when she commiserated with me. "This was two months ago?" she asked, holding up the still very short top layers. Yes. Yes, it was.

When I told her I wanted all of the bottom length cut off, she was hesitant, but she agreed. The only problem was that the layers I wanted to match were still too short. So she cut the sides to be around chin length and did what she could with the back.

It's a bit soccer mom the way she blew it out, but it's much, much better than it was before. And the bangs are too short, but that's because I had tried to cut them myself again and this is all she had to work with.

So here it is. I leaned back so you could see the length (and so it would look fuller than it really is).

I don't think I've had hair this short since I was in kindergarten, and I have no idea what to do with it. I'm afraid it's going to look soccer mom no matter what I try. Any tips?

Also, I don't think that picture looks like me. Is that just because I am me? You know how sometimes you don't really recognize yourself in pictures? At least, I don't. I mean, I do, but it takes me by surprise, like, "oh, so is that what I look like?"

And no, it's not that I can't recognize myself after the hair cut. This isn't new. :)

Maybe it's because I'm more familiar with other people's faces than my own, so I don't actually see me very often unless I'm looking in a mirror.

Oh, or maybe it's because I'm used to seeing mirror images of myself and pictures aren't mirror images? That actually makes sense, don't you think?

Or maybe that picture really doesn't look like me after all. Maybe it's not me, how would you all know? I mean, all three of you readers who've never met me in real life...

(Actually, a photoblogger who recently saw a picture of me commented that he had assumed I was black. That stopped me dead in my typing tracks. To see me is to practically see through me. J laughs at me sometimes because he can trace my veins through my practically albino skin... Anyway, I guess my real name had made this photoblogger think I might be black. Kinda like how J's grandfather heard my name and assumed I would be Haitian.)

Who'S The GiFt ReaLLy For?

Today I was talking with my sister about Christmas gifts and I asked her what she wanted. She thought about it, and said she thought it was too expensive, but something that she's been wanting is the Sex and the City box set. I internally groaned because I really hate that show. (Narcissistic whiny sex-obsessed shallow material women... I think I've complained here about it before.)

But then, I remembered that when I'd previously asked for the Buffy the Vampire box set, that my mother had told me she didn't really want to give it to me because she didn't like the show and preferred to give me something that she also liked. (Incidentally, last year she got me a tripod and a camera bag... I guess she likes tripods?)

So in response to my sister, I said, "You know, if I had the money, I would get you the Sex and the City box set!" I meant to contrast it with my mom's reluctance to get the BTVS set. But my sister assumed I was referring to my not having the money to buy it, and she responded, "I know! If I had the money I would buy you a car!"

How totally sweet is that. No hesitation, she just burst out with how she would buy me a car if she had enough money.

I did explain what I really meant, and she defended my mom's decision not to choose to buy the BTVS set, saying, "Come on, aren't there things we don't buy for Mom because we don't want her to have them?" And I laughed, because it was true. Of course, it's not that we want her to be unhappy, but over the years we definitely focused more on re-stylizing her wardrobe than on buying her classical music CDs and other things that she would request.

It's funny how you want to give someone a gift that they will love, but at the same time, it often comes along with your own biases about what you think will improve their lives somehow.

Chile Poblano Cream Soup

This is one of my favorite soup recipes. It's a cream soup, so it's not the healthiest, but it's really yummy.

Here's my variation on it:

Ingredients
3 oz butter
1 onion, sliced
3-4 poblano peppers, sliced and cut into 1/2 inch strips
1/4 C sliced jalapeno peppers (from a can/jar)
2 C chicken broth
1 C cream

Instructions
1. Melt the butter.
2. Fry the onions in the butter until starting to brown.
3. Fry the poblano peppers with the onions until they soften.
4. Add the jalapeno peppers until they are warm.
5. Add the chicken broth and cream. Stir. Heat until hot.

So easy and so tasty.

ThiNkinG And WriTinG

Epiphany in Baltimore recently mentioned that his students "don't think about their writing enough. Or realize that thinking is writing."

It's funny to me that sometimes writing feels so disconnected from thinking. I have thoughts in my head, but why can't I get them out onto the page?

Other times writing and thinking feel so interconnected that I can't do one without doing this other. Today I was trying to think through some experiments to write up for a proposal, and I could not wrap my mind around it all, so I kept grabbing sheets of paper and writing out my ideas.

The connection between thinking and writing is something that I really became aware of when I was a writing tutor in college. Students came by the writing center with papers and I tried to help them work their ideas into a coherent and logical essay. Sometimes people came in asking for help with "grammar" or "punctuation" or "proofreading", but we were actually trained not to do that. And other times, people knew they were stuck and just needed to talk through their ideas.

It was actually a pretty exhausting job, to have to jump into someone's topic (which I often had no background in) and help them form and/or structure their arguments. But it was challenging and I loved it. And I really enjoyed watching students go through the process of making their arguments clearer and getting excited about the papers that had previously been causing them so much pain.

The best experience I had was with a student who was really, really stuck. She just could not get anything on the page. (She was actually an older student who had been out of school for years, so I think she hadn't had to write a paper in a really long time.) She could talk about the ideas, but as soon as she tried to write them, she'd freeze up worrying about the exact wording. So I came up with the idea to have her "say" her paper outloud. We moved over to a computer and we talked through her paper, and as she answered my probing questions, I typed up what she was saying. Soon enough we had drafted a decent amount that she could go back home and work on. I really hadn't been sure if what I was doing was going to help her or would be too much of a crutch, but I was really happy to see that it seemed to work.

I also suggested that if she continued to have problems, that she could tape record herself talking about what she wants to write about. That way, if anything came out sounding good, she'd have a record of it and could transcribe it from the tape. And that way she'd be free to talk through her ideas without worrying about getting it in writing just yet. I often find that people can put their thoughts into words if they stop writing for a second, and start a sentence with "What I really want to say is..." Then, you just strip off that preface and you're left with what it is you wanted to say. :)

Anyway, the woman I helped came back to the writing center a couple of times after that and it was amazing to me how much easier it had gotten for her to write. She was able to bring in papers already in draft form, rather than just having a set of really disjoint sentences.

I don't tape myself when I write, though I think I would do it if I had a little portable tape recorder. Sometimes I wish I could go out for a walk and just talk out my paper, then come home and transcribe it!.

But what I usually do when I'm having trouble is just to talk outloud to myself as I type. (This is another reason I like to work at home).

Whenever I really get stuck, I realize that the problem is actually not with the writing but with the thinking. I thought I knew what I wanted to say, but my lack of words has more to do with the lack of explicit thought than with writer's block! I don't have a trick to solve that problem though... I just have to do more thinking.

What are some of your tricks to get the words out?

UnHinGed, Part II

There are updates all over the web about the Washington Times article I posted about a couple of days ago. Most of what I see continues to be shrieks from conservatives about how disgusted they are that the Democrats have "admitted their racism". I could report on all the back and forth, but a quick search of blogs for Steele will do the trick for you.

However, I did notice this today. A "correction" of sorts from the Washington Times:

Due to an editing error, The Washington Times yesterday incorrectly reported the comments by a spokesman for Maryland senatorial candidate Kweisi Mfume regarding racially tinged attacks against Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele. Mfume spokesman Joseph R. Trippi said it was wrong to pelt Mr. Steele with Oreo cookies or to call him an "Uncle Tom."

- Correction from The Washington Times

Here is Joe Trippi's response.

Oh yeah, it was just an editing error….

“Even the spokesman for Mr. Mfume’s campaign said pelting Mr. Steele with Oreo cookies and calling him an “Uncle Tom” are simply “pointing out the obvious.”

When it was actually……

“Trippi said it was wrong to pelt Mr. Steele with Oreo cookies or to call him an “Uncle Tom.”

- from JoeTrippi.com

Also, Malnurtured Snay brought me attention to a couple of interviews on WBAL with Mfume and Marriott. Listen to them below if you're interested in hearing their response to how they were quoted in the Washington Times article.

Kweisi Mfume
Salima Siler Marriott

That's it for now. I'm not turning this into a political blog. I don't have the energy or time for it. Of course, I hope that my little posting has encouraged at least a couple people to think twice about the the Washington Times article before taking it at face value. I don't hold high hopes though. Spin and knee-jerk reactions are pretty powerful, and they're a lot easier than examining the evidence and having a real conversation about race and politics.

RacISt LiBeraLs UnHinGed

An article in today's Washington Times ('Party trumps race' for Steele foes) has many conservative bloggers steaming in anger at black Democrats in Maryland. Michelle Malkin writes that it is "exactly the kind of unhinged liberal hatred and bigotry against minority Republicans I talk about in my book." I checked out the article for myself and came away with the feeling that it is actually the writer of the article who's a bit unhinged.

The author, S.A. Miller, pulls together many quotes that look suspiciously out of context to support the main claim that "black Democratic leaders in Maryland say that racially tinged attacks against Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele in his bid for the U.S. Senate are fair because he is a conservative Republican."

What I notice, however, is that that none of those quotes from Democratic leaders actually say that they think racial attacks against Steele are "fair".

The first quote is this:

"There is a difference between pointing out the obvious and calling someone names," said a campaign spokesman for Kweisi Mfume, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate and former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Is that a statement that's in support of racially tinged attacks against Steele, or is it more likely pointing out that acknowledging someone is black is certainly fair, but taking it farther by calling them names is not fair. I mean, I don't know, I'm just speculating. But I would be really hesitant to use that quote to bolster an argument that Democratic leaders think racial attacks on Steele are ok.

The next quote, from State Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, is this:

"Party trumps race, especially on the national level," she said. "If you are bold enough to run, you have to take whatever the voters are going to give you. It's democracy, perhaps at its worse, but it is democracy."

Again, I don't see where she is saying that racial attacks are ok, that they're just part of the game. She does say that you have to "take whatever the voters are going to give you", but it's certainly a stretch to conclude that she means that "attacks against Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele ... are fair". In fact, if you read the paragraph preceeding her quote, they cite her as saying that "she does not expect her party to pull any punches, including racial jabs at Mr. Steele". (As for saying "party trumps race," I'm not exactly sure what she means since there's no context here.)

Moving on to the next quote, we have Delegate Salima Siler Marriott saying:

"Because he is a conservative, he is different than most public blacks, and he is different than most people in our community," she said. "His politics are not in the best interest of the masses of black people."

That sounds fair to me. What's wrong with making the point that he's different than most public blacks because he's a conservative, or having the opinion that his politics are not in the best interests of the black people?

Now, the potential kicker here is in the previous paragraph, where the author of the article tells us that Marriott said Mr. Steele invites comparisons to a slave who loves his cruel master or a cookie that is black on the outside and white inside because his conservative political philosophy is, in her view, anti-black.

WOW!

Um, don't you think that if she actually said that, then that's what they would have quoted, and not her other much more reasonable comment? I'd be very interested in knowing exactly what she said, and the context in which she said it. Was she condoning the racial attacks? Who knows. I certainly don't know from the little I have to go on.

Next, there is one case of a direct racist attack by a Democratic leader, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr, who called Steele an "Uncle Tom". However, he later apologized for this remark. The Washington Times asserts that Black Democratic leaders think that racial attacks on Steele are fair, but if Miller thought an attack like his was "fair", then why would he apologize for it?

And then, as if Marriott was responding to the fact that Miller apologized, the article cites the following quote by Marriott.

"That's not racial. If they call him the "N' word, that's racial," Mrs. Marriott said. "Just because he's black, everything bad you say about him isn't racial."

The author doesn't say that this quote is in response to Miller calling Steele an Uncle Tom, but it is strongly implied by directly following the Miller paragraph with this quote. Again, if it was in response to the Miller name-calling, I kind of think the author would have made it a point to say so. Otherwise, I am left with the strong suspicion that this quote refers to something else, maybe following up on the earlier things she was talking about. I highly doubt she meant that Miller's name calling wasn't racial. Who would say that?

Turning to page two of the article, we find that Steve Gilliard, a blogger from New York (not a Black Democratic leader in Maryland) posted a manipulated photo of Steele that showed him as a black-faced minstrel. Yes, that's bad. So what did the Maryland Democratic Party have to say about it? Did they shrug it off, calling it "fair"?

Actually, no, they,

denounced the depiction as being "extremely offensive" and having "no place in politics or in any other aspect of public discourse."

Seriously, this article is just waaaaaay to easy to "nail" (ala Stephen Colbert). I am almost (but not quite) surprised that conservative bloggers even bothered to link to this ridiculous article.

Next we learn that Joe Trippi (spokesman for Mfume) thinks that Steele's willingness to attend a Republican fundraiser at the all-white Elkridge Club in Baltimore is something that "should be part of this debate." Ok, I don't see what's so terrible about that. The author of the article points out that Democrats also have used the club for events, so I suppose all that can be said there is that maybe everyone should rethink using this location for events. But again, bringing up this issue is not the same thing as saying that racial attacks on Steele are "fair".

Finally, the article ends with some reasonable quotes from State Sen. Verna Jones and Kweisi Mfume criticising the Republican party for not promoting the interests of the black community. Again, they are not saying that racial attacks against Steele are "fair because he is a conservative Republican."

No one is saying that.

I don't usually engage in much, if any, political blogging, but this article really made me angry. I came across it via various sites that had linked to it, and everyone was expressing the same horror, decrying the black Democrats who were supposedly condoning these racial attacks. I had to read the article for myself, and now having read it, I'm more disappointed in the state of political discourse than ever.

Part of me feels like it's pointless to even post my reaction to this article. I mean, it's so obvious, isn't it, that the article was biased and not at all supported by any real evidence? But I figure I might as well post this, for whoever who might have read the Malkin-type reactions and/or read the first few lines of the Washington Times article and walked away with the conclusion that black Democrat leaders really do think racial attacks are fair when they're aimed at conservatives.

ShoWing Off His Fig LeaF

J is still working on becoming friends with Tako (our cat). For some reason, most of the time Tako still treats J as though he were going to eat him. The only thing worse than J is a sudden loud noise, though sometimes J is the sudden loud noise making him officially the scariest thing Tako has ever encountered. Tako has been known to fly in fear from the front living room to the back bedroom in about 1 second flat. I'm not sure his feet even touch the ground.

So J continues to try to get on his good side. And sometimes Tako actually begs for J's attention, usually when he wants a really good rubbing in the sink. But it's always on Tako's terms and when the petting is over, it's over and they go back to being mortal enemies.

Anyway, this morning J was calling Tako and I suggested that he put his hand out towards him. He did and Tako came up to him, rubbed up against him ever so quickly then took off running for the other end of the hall. So I guess J decided that the outstretched hand thing was the way to Tako's heart.

Later this evening I saw J in the kitchen, calling out to Tako and extending his hand. When Tako rubbed up against all the nearby furniture but wouldn't actually come near him, J called out in frustration, "Tako, I'm showing you my fig leaf."

I do hope he actually meant "olive branch", because if he's offering our cat his fig leaf, I might have to call the authorities...