From the monthly archives: January 2010
A gorgeous, clear morning here in Brooklyn. It rained heavily and gustily on Monday, was warm (meaning, around forty degrees) and beautiful on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then yesterday morning I was putting on my running shoes around 7:30 and looked out the window, and it was snowing mightily. I still went out – it snowed ever more mightily as the time wore on – but running in the snow is lovely when it’s not too deep. And the ground was warm, so the snow melted by the time I’d emerged from the subway in midtown.
But I think it’s pretty cold today.
I still sound like I’m hacking up a lung, and people tend to inch away on the subway, but I’m really quite a lot better. I have enough energy to to walk around and do things, and after two weeks of misery, I’ll take that. I even went running twice this week and will do so again tomorrow.
I’ll be heading toward the IAM office around noon to work and then help coordinate our evening event, a concert/poetry reading by Brooke Campbell and L.L. Barkat. (You should come! But if you’re not in New York, you can still watch it streamed live online at 7pm EST. You probably won’t get a glimpse of me, but you’ll see where I work a couple days a week.)
Before he left this morning, Tom said to me, “Can you believe it’s almost February?” And no, I cannot. Until yesterday I thought it was mid-January. February is an exciting but exhausting time in our world; we’ll head to Jubilee in mid-February, where we’re both presenting workshops, and then two weeks later – this year, it’s the first weekend in March – is the IAM conference. Conferences like this are wonderful, now that we are on the speaker side of things, because we get to meet new friends or see far-flung friends again. But they’re undeniably tiring. I’ll be packing the Airborne when we go to Pittsburgh.
I’m sorry for these dull, quotidian entries. I’m not back into the swing of blogging yet, and I forget the blog exists until Fridays, when I sit down to write blog entries at the other three blogs to which I contribute. I’ll get better. I need to flex the personal essay muscle more, now that I spend a lot of time teaching it.
There is a reason I haven’t blogged in over a week, and that is that I have been rather ill in between being rather busy. I’m still sick, but I have to teach tomorrow, so whether or not I have a voice I’ll be there. (Thankfully, my students are slated to present on various film history topics tomorrow, so I won’t need to say much.)
If you, too, are under the weather, you ought to check out Katy’s list of strategic ways to combat what ails you. My blood pressure precludes the use of Sudafed, but I did run through my supply of Breathe Easy tea and have moved on to elderberry syrup, echinacea + propolis throat spray, and slippery elm lozenges, which I am trying not to use up too fast.
But it’s been a good week, if we don’t count the hacking cough. Last night, Tom led a bourbon tasting at an IAM event for young patrons, and all twenty or so participants, plus staff, enjoyed themselves greatly. There was good food and good music and good company – and that’s all you really need.
Pocket litter, as Gideon calls it:
• I’ve been a long-time user of Remember the Milk for to-do lists, by which I live and die, but I’d found over the past few months that certain things just weren’t conforming to the way I live my life. Enter Things, which I had heard about but was really convinced of by ProfHacker. I think I’m in love.
• By the way, the aforementioned ProfHacker is a fantastic site for those of us who teach at the college level.
• The truly brilliant Two Gentlemen of Lebowski, now about to be performed in NYC.
• William Zinsser’s insightful talk/essay on writing good English – essential reading, even if you, like me, harp on good writing for a living. (HT Rob)
I haven’t had a week like this in a long time. Fighting off illness was only the half of it – and I’m functional, but have a lingering chest cough. Lots of tea.
My later section of research writing was cancelled, but in its place I’m doing some work with the online education program at King’s. It’s exciting work that uses all the skills and education I’ve accumulated to this point (amazingly enough), but it’s also disorienting to suddenly pick up another set of responsibilities you hadn’t thought about until that moment. Added to getting lecture preparation finished on the right day (still trying to remember that class is on Monday and Thursday, not Tuesday and Friday), and piloting an online version of the class I taught last semester, and that’s just tiring. The other jobs (including a grand push to get the next print edition of Comment ready by Jubilee) have been an icing on the proverbial cake (which I, being barred from gluten for the time being, cannot even eat).
Yet I’m very thankful. I spent many years working in not just full- but part-time jobs (in college and high school) that I nearly unilaterally disliked or was at least bored by, and so I had come to expect that I could never really like work. I’m unspeakably grateful to have a to-do list a mile long with things I actually want to do (yes, even laundry).
Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m not a little stressed out, and since I do in fact have high blood pressure, I should probably be watching the stress level. I’ve taken up real running again (and the weather has been cooperating – thirty degrees is ideal for street running), and I have been very carefully watching my diet and laying off the coffee for the most part. I think what I probably really need is a yoga class and a vacation, but this will do for now.
It’s vaguely nervewracking to wake up with a sore throat and nagging cough on Friday when you have to start lecturing to college students on Monday morning. Hence, I am working from my cozy bed today, doing all the things I’d be doing in the office but not actually going out in the cold.
Because it is cold; not unbearably so, but chilly, and there is pretty snow coming down that I can see against the dark rooftops of the apartments and buildings from my window. The flakes are tiny, light, and floaty, which is the best kind of snow, because it sticks to the ground, but not to your eyelashes. And in New York, unlike most other places in the country that are getting snow today, an inch of the white stuff does not shut down schools and workplaces. It just means boots and a pretty, clean coating for a day.
I’ve spent most of this week working from home, my last like that for a while. The Curator‘s web host and I had a run-in after a WordPress upgrade went awry, and I spent most of Wednesday trying to fix it and finally just migrating to another host in utter despair. If you poke around the site, you’ll see that a few things broke, a little, but nothing so terrible that it obscures actual articles. By Wednesday night, I’d lost the will to fix things anymore. It hasn’t come back yet.
Tom has been shooting lengthy hours this week (lengthy, but not as lengthy as I thought they’d be – in the film industry, a thirteen-hour day is “short”) on a set in Bed-Stuy. He’s been leaving before six o’clock (and in some cases, before five o’clock), but coming home cheerful considering the circumstances. It’s hard work. I couldn’t do his job.
I haven’t finished my first book for Fifty Two Fifty Two yet, but you should pop on over there and see what the others have been reading. I’m delighted with the reviews that have popped up so far. (I, too, am reading Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, and if it looks like everyone in the world is, that’s mostly but not entirely because several participants are in the same book club with me.)
I am restricted mainly on this diet by the proportions of protein, carbs, and fat in the food. “In this case, too much protein at one meal is as bad as too much carbs or fat,” my doctor told me, and so I am looking for very precise numbers.
So I’m scouring nutrition facts and doing lots of mental math, and was happy to run across this recipe in January’s Real Simple, which works if I have some added protein. (I modified it slightly because it calls for Parmesan, which I cannot have, and fresh rosemary, which I did not have. I also used a little bit of rice pasta instead of soup pasta because I can’t have gluten. But not much. Very carby.)
I am eating the leftovers right now and dang, it is goooood. The onions and garlic give it excellent flavor.
Kale and White Bean Soup
Adapted from Real Simple, January 2009
Hands-on time: 25 minutes
Total Time: 30 minutes
Serves 8
2 TB olive oil
4 cloves garlic chopped
2 stalks celery, sliced
1 large onion, chopped
Kosher salt and black pepper
2 15.5-oz cans cannellini beans, rinsed
1 cup small soup pasta (4 oz) [I used a very little bit of rice penne.]
1 bunch kale, thick stems discarded and leaves torn into 2-inch pieces (8 cups)
2 TB chopped fresh rosemary [I actually used a little bit of dried thyme, which is not the same thing.]
1/2 c shaved Parmesan (2 oz), plus 1 piece Parmesan rind (optional) [I skipped it.]
1 TB fresh lemon juice [Oops, I skipped this too, but it doesn't need it.]
1 loaf country bread, warmed [And I cannot have this, but it would be a great accompaniment.]
Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, celery, onion, 1 1/2 t salt, and 1/2 t pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, 4 to 6 minutes.
Add the beans, pasta, kale, rosemary, 8 cups water, and the Parmesan rind (if using); cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the pasta and kale are tender, 4 to 5 minutes.
Remove the Parmesan rind. Stir in the lemon juice and sprinkle with the shaved Parmesan before serving. Serve with the bread.
Nutrition Facts: per serving (1/8 recipe) – 205 calories; 6g fat; 10g protein; 29g carbs; 5g fiber.
We celebrated the New Year sumptuously: games, pizza, and champagne with friends on Thursday night; a long, languid day of delicious food and old friends on Friday; a day spent at the Kandinsky exhibit at the Guggenheim, Cafe Sabarsky, and The Princess and the Frog with friends on Saturday; and church plus our favorite brunch spot on Sunday.
Tom went back to work very early yesterday morning. I worked too, but from home, and only kind of feel like I’m at work this week, since I have only two days in the office. But next week the semester starts, and so I am busily prepping materials for my two classes (one college writing class online, and two sections of the same research writing class in the actual classroom). The spring is a busy time, with several conferences and a lot of projects popping up, and so it’s important to be as organized as possible.
But all that organizing needs a respite, and so I have started recording the movies I watch along with starting the Fifty Two Fifty Two project. I haven’t finished a book yet this year, but I’ve gotten into Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, the 2009 Pulitzer winner, which our book club is discussing next Tuesday, and I’ve read the first two interviews (Dorothy Day and Truman Capote) in the Paris Review Interviews, Volume 1 – which is completely delightful. I tend to read a whole bunch of books at once and finish them all on the same day.
Last: my doctor put me on a fairly restrictive diet because, as it turns out, I have Stage 1 hypertension – nothing to get too worried about, but also something I shouldn’t have at my age. And so I’m off dairy and gluten for a while, and eating a very specific amount of certain things. I found myself re-reading Jenni’s article from Comment a while back.
I’ve become quite in love with cooking and good food in the last year or two, enjoying the cheese counter at the local gourmet market and baking homemade bread, but I can receive these things again when I am well. It is good discipline for me to experience some “fasting” along with my feasting, and I suppose, in that sense, that Father Capon would approve.
I shamefacedly produce my list of sixty books, thanks to some reading for reviews, articles, and my M.A. thesis. I won’t be forced to plow through enormous books of theology or philosophy in one sitting this year, so fifty-two books will in fact be a bit challenging.
I’m always surprised how much more nonfiction I read than I think I do. However, I am a very bad poetry reader – something I’m trying to remedy. Do you read poetry? How exactly do you go about doing it? Whole bunches at a time? One or two poems a day until the book is done?
Fiction
Unveiling – Suzanne Wolfe
A Gate at the Stairs – Lorrie Moore
The Forecast – Caroline Ferdinandsen
Light Boxes - Shane Jones
Netherland – Joseph O’Neill
Johnny Hiro – Fred Chao
Play It As It Lays – Joan Didion
The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
Swann’s Way – Marcel Proust
Revolutionary Road – Richard Yates
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
The Brooklyn Follies – Paul Auster
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Díaz
Another Faust – Daniel Nayeri
The American Painter Emma Dial – Samantha Peale
The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri
Silence - Shusaku Endo
A Moveable Feast – Ernest Hemingway
Lush Life - Richard Price
The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
The Road – Cormac McCarthy
The Wild Things – Dave Eggers
Memoir & Journals
A Homemade Life – Molly Wizenberg
The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food – Judith Jones
Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1964 – Susan Sontag
Lit – Mary Karr
The Red Leather Diary – Lily Koppel
Girl Meets God – Lauren F. Winner
Thesis Research
On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art – James Elkins
Art and the Bible – Francis Schaeffer
Art in Action: Toward a Christian Aesthetic – Nicholas Wolterstorff
Rainbows for the Fallen World – Calvin Seerveld
God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art – Daniel A. Siedell
Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical – Hannah Faith Notess (ed.)
Not That Kind of Girl – Carlene Bauer
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – Haruki Murakami
Theology/Philosophy
Surprised by Hope - N.T.Wright
The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection – Robert Farrar Capon
An Altar in the World – Barbara Brown Taylor
Mudhouse Sabbath – Lauren F. Winner
Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church – James K.A. Smith
The Strategic Smorgasbord of Postmodernity: Literature and the Christian Critic – Deborah Bowen
Real Love for Real Life – Andi Ashworth
Other Essays and Nonfiction
How to Read a Book – Mortimer J. Adler
Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays – Zadie Smith
Through a Screen Darkly - Jeffrey Overstreet
The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry – Kathleen Flinn
Nuts & Bolts: A Practical Guide to Teaching College Composition – Thomas Newkirk
The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers – Cathleen Falsani
The Wordy Shipmates - Sarah Vowell
Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York – Luc Sante
Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life As a Christian Calling - James W. Sire
What the Best College Teachers Do – Ken Bain
The Well-Educated Mind – Susan Wise Bauer
Real Sex – Lauren F. Winner
Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There – David Brooks
Up in the Old Hotel – Joseph Mitchell
Random Family – Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life – Barbara Kingsolver
Reading
- Works of Love (Kierkegaard's Writings, Volume 16) - Søren Kierkegaard
- Twelfth Night - William Shakespeare
- Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography - Amy Frykholm
- Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy - Dave Hickey
