Syzygy of Worlds

Summer Garden

2011-09-10T20:45:00.000-04:00

It's been hard to maintain a garden, this summer. Back in June there was a yellowjacket nest near the woods, and there were scouts patrolling my garden; every time I pulled a weed they would come to see what had changed and who had changed it and why. Some deer decimated everything that wasn't a weed, and the few things they missed, they stepped on. Here are some pictures of what managed to straggle through.I grew this 'Mr. Majestic' marigold from seed. It's the sole plant that survived; squirrels dug up the other seeds and ate them. I love the striped petals. At least deer don't eat marigolds-- yet.I have two rose-of-sharon bushes-- this light pink one, and another with a lilac-bluish tinge to the blossoms. The deer chewed the buds off the second one, though. Rose-of-sharon likes to grow at the corners of the house where the downspout is, so that it gets lots of water. It's the national flower of Korea, and reminds me of some folks I'm fond of and haven't seen in a while. The deer didn't eat my monarda, either. This specimen came from a plant sale at a local botanical gardens a few summers ago. I forgot to stake it, so it flopped everywhere. I love the way it looks like fireworks. Hummingbirds like these, but I didn't see any this year.The feverfew finished blooming by mid-July. It's a biennial; I got two little plants many years back when I was first diagnosed with migraines, and now they've taken over my garden and come back every year. They're pretty, with leaves that smell muskier than chrysanthemums', and dainty flowers a little larger than baby's-breath but with a similar effect. Sometimes I make a tea of the leaves, but prefer to mix it in with another type; it tastes rather unpleasant. There are times when I have felt that it slightly dulled my headaches, but I'm not sure if it's that or the fact that drinking tea is therapeutic for me.The liatris bloomed earlier in the summer, too. Goldfinches like the seeds; I've often seen them perched on the blooms and pulling them apart to see if they're ready yet. I have five or six of these, nice big clumps that I grew from corms. The flowertops are over waist high. One year a pest control man decided to put a termite trap right on top of one of them. I guess he thought it looked like a perfect place. I was greatly displeased.These black-eyed susans are descendents of a plant that my auntie got for me at the farmers' market in Tonawanda a few years ago. Its leaves and stems are fuzzy, and the flowers are big and soft-looking with rounded cones. This year the flowers have been rather stunted due to being constantly chewed off and trying to grow off the sides of the stalk in a desperate attempt to survive. The flower on the left is what it originally produced.The fuzzy black-eyed susan reseeded itself and grew some non-reddish ones, too. The flower variation in its offspring is interesting. Here are two of the results. I also have some black-eyed susans which a neighbor gave me several years ago. They have narrower petals and leaves, flat "buttons," and are not fuzzy. Next year I'll be giving away a lot of fuzzy and non-fuzzy black-eyed susans to happy homes, since there are too many here and they're choking each other out.These are my leucanthemum daisies. A neighbor gave me three spindly, half-dead specimens and insisted that they would grow-- and grow they did. I just gave away several bags this year, and can't even see where I took them out.My phlox barely had a chance to bloom before being eaten. Now there is literally one floweret sticking off the top of a stalk, but since that picture was too depressing to post, here are the original plants that mine were divided from, in my Nagypapa's garden. Hummingbirds love these-- it's so cute to see them checking each tiny floweret on a whole florescence. Actually, if you look really closely, you can see a sphinx moth somewhere towards the left half of the picture. They look like overweight hummingbirds with antennae, and are hard to get used to.My dahlias are still trying to bloom. I didn't stake them, either, and then couldn't find them in the tangle until they resurfaced. These white-tipped burgundy ones are some of my favorites.I wanted to take pictures of some young skinks with turquoise tails, but couldn't find any. Here's a spiderweb, instead. The spider has a curled leaf near one side of the web where it sits to keep out of the sun and rain. It chose not to be in the picture. I know how it feels.

I'll have one more post for fall flowers in the next month or so, and that's pretty much it for this year's garden. Right now there are more horse nettles and microstegia than anything else. I think next year I'm going to downsize slightly and give away bunches of things, so that the remainder can have room to grow again. There are also some fascinating mushrooms coming up with all the rain we've had here-- stay tuned for more in the next few weeks. ^_^

How to Construct a Personal Dress Form

2011-08-17T22:30:00.001-04:00

I've wanted a dress form in my own size for a long time. Not only would it make fitting a lot easier, I would be able to post pictures of my outfits on this blog. See, I'm violently non-photogenic-- not so much as in looking particularly bad in photographs as simply hating having my picture taken. I also don't model clothes well in pictures, and would rather not stand around for photo shoots, to say nothing of finding a photographer. In addition, I have quite a few skirts and things that I'm going to attempt to sell online, and clothes on models tend to sell much better.

Professional adjustable dress forms cost a lot more than miserly me is willing to shell out, and I've read that many will only be an approximate fit because while it might get the basic proportion of hip-waist-bust, it can't simulate the exact shape of an individual's torso (for example, very narrow or broad shoulders). Even more expensive ones can be custom-made, but if I were ever to gain or lose a significant amount of weight, I might very likely never fit that size (or shape) again.

I read a few articles about how to make dress forms out of duct tape. This involved having someone mummify your entire torso in several layers of duct tape. Comments from some of these people indicated varying levels of success mingled with reports of overheating and panic attacks because of the restrictive procedure. Many said that the resulting form would not hold its shape and needed to be stuffed with insulation foam. The forms also commonly came out a size or so larger because of all the layers. I have asthma to begin with, so this didn't seem like the best way to spend an average of three hours. Other equally uncomfortable-sounding methods involved paper tape, papier-mache, plaster bandages, and other things that you'd have to be cut out of with a buzz-saw.

Later, I came across an article on how to make decorative dress forms out of rusty chicken wire and got the idea to make one in my size, by the same general principle.

Here's how I did it, for around ten dollars and a little over an hour.

All you need is about six feet of about two-foot-wide chicken wire, duct tape, and wire cutters or tin-snips, and someone who can spare five minutes. Mesh could work instead of chicken wire; the point is that the wire has to be stiff enough to hold its shape but pliable enough to bend with the fingers. Here are some diagrams, since photographs might not be as clear.First, I measured from the top of my shoulders to my knees in front and back, taking all curves into account, and cut a piece of chicken wire of that length. It ended up being a little longer than I am tall. I covered the ends temporarily with a strip of duct tape to keep from scratching myself. Then I clipped a hole in the middle big enough for my head to pass easily through and taped the edges of it, too.Next, I slipped it over my head so that it hung down in front and back like a poncho. My particular roll of wire was two feet wide, so it extended several inches past both shoulders. It's advisable to wear very thin clothing for this, and nothing that would bunch up around the waist.With the chicken wire rolled tightly around me and fastened with a couple spare bits of wire at the sides, it was easy to cinch the front to fit my shape. I found that scrunching the wire a little smaller than I was made it sit at just the right shape when released. My brother shaped the back and shoulders. This whole process took less than ten minutes. It is perfectly comfortable, since the wire isn't tight enough to inhibit breathing, and the entire thing can be taken off and finished later without losing what you'd begun. You also get to experience what it's like to be a tomato plant.
All right, now for photographs.After unfastening the side wires, I took off the form and put it together again, making sure that it fit my measurements. At this point the shape should definitely look familiar, but unless you're accustomed to seeing yourself in a wetsuit or leotard in a three-way mirror, it might seem odd in places. If it's fitting your measurements, resist the urge to make it "look right." Since I cut the initial hole for my head a little large, I used a smaller piece of chicken wire to reshape the shoulders. I used empty duct tape rolls to make a neck.I covered the form in a single layer of duct tape to keep the wires from poking out, and to keep it from losing its shape outward. I might also sew a stretchy velour cover for it, just to give it a nice finish. Here's the just-about-finished product modeling the clothes I'm going to wear to work tomorrow (from Goodwill, of course). That's the sweater rumpling up on the side, not the dress form. I need to find some tape to finish covering up the rest of it, and also adjust the slope of the shoulders (right now they're unnaturally square).There are only two drawbacks about this model that I can see. Firstly, it can't be pushed hard against; it can support a good weight, but has the potential to collapse if squeezed or punched in frustration(I also wouldn't leave anything very heavy on it, like a ballgown or winter coat which could gradually press the wire out of shape, for long periods of time). Stuffing it with newspaper or insulation foam might reduce the chances of being crushed. Secondly, it can't be pinned to as a model with a layer of cloth or foam could. I guess if I sew a covering for it, I could conceivably pin things to it.

And there you have it-- an affordable dress form which can be made in any size and shape imaginable.

Hungarian Cold Cherry Soup

2011-06-18T23:10:00.004-04:00

Here is one of my favorite things to eat. It's a cold Hungarian summer soup, and is not difficult to make. The hardest part is finding cherries.The recipe calls for two pounds of cherries. It can be just a little more or a little less; generally one bag from the grocery store is enough for this.I like to pit the cherries. That's not actually required; the soup can be made with whole cherries, which leaves a little more flavor inside of the cherries rather than in the entire soup-- but then you have to eat it very cautiously, which isn't so nice. Incidentally, cherry pits have cyanide in them. So do apple seeds. So do millipedes. (One or two won't kill you, and it won't leach out into the soup. Cherry pits, that is.)Dump the cherries into a pot and add a slice of lemon (or a couple teaspoons of lemon juice) and two tablespoons of sugar. Simmer it for ten minutes or until the cherries are softened. Don't let it boil, and don't cook the cherries down-- that's too far.In a separate bowl, mix together two teaspoons of cornstarch and three tablespoons of sour cream. Make sure it's nice and smooth, with no starchy lumps. This is a thickener for the soup, but certainly not enough to make it taste like sour cream or anything like that. Take the pot off the burner and stir in the sour cream mixture. Don't worry if it looks all nasty like this.Put the pot back on low heat and stir it until the spots dissolve and it's a nice even pink color. Don't let it boil. The consistency will thicken ever so slightly, but this isn't going to be noticeable until you eat it, so don't worry if nothing seems to happen. After it's done, put it in the refrigerator to cool. This is a cold soup. It wouldn't taste so nice, hot.This soup is served with whipped cream. The soup itself isn't very sweet except for the flavor of the cherries, which means it's delicious, because who needs tons of sugar, anyway? It's such a lovely mauve color. Also, this picture doesn't fully capture how pretty it actually looks.

In Hungarian, this soup can be called cseresznyeleves (cheh-rehs-nyeh leh-vesh), or meggyleves (medy' leh-vesh) if sour cherries are used. Cold apple soup is good, too, and is made along the same general principle, but I'll write a post about that one, later. Enjoy!

Hat Alteration and Re-Trimming

2011-06-06T16:30:00.002-04:00

Last week at a thrift store, I found a perfectly miserable hat.It is made of a sort of stiff netting, with concentric rings of a straw-like material. The brim is bent out of shape, the crown has a dent, and it is surmounted by a fluffy pink feather boa. Once upon a time, it must've looked somewhat nice, though the feathers seem a little... much.Here's the hat sans feather boa.

Fortunately, I had a stiff wire hoop leftover from my lampshade hat (which is currently stalled in production while I think about how to finish it). It's just the right size to fit within the brim, and hold it straight. I had to paint it first, though; why is it that paint sticks with indelible cheerfulness to everything I don't want it to, and peels off everything else? I ended up having to cover it with masking tape and repaint it. Hopefully it won't be terribly visible. I also reshaped the crown with part of a frosted flakes box and duct tape, and covered it with some black crushed velour salvaged from an old dress.

The trim was a puzzlement. I decided to see what I could do with some of my leftovers, instead of spending on more things. A satiny ribbon from another old dress looked sharp when wound twice around the crown, and I looped and lumped some wired gauzy ribbon into pretty much the only bow I know how to make. The center of the bow needed to be covered up, but I didn't have any big decorative brooches that would match-- so I made a sort of flower by rolling and gathering strips of velour to match the rest of the crown.That's the front view. It's very light to wear, but it obviously fails to keep the sun off the wearer's face. Oh well.

Dewdrops on Roses

2011-05-23T16:10:00.001-04:00

Now that school's out, I've been gardening early in the morning before the heat is too great for me (>79°F). In a few weeks, that time will probably change. I love being up early, as long as I don't have to talk.This is a miniature rose that I've had in my garden for a few years, with genuine dewdrops on it. I don't think there are too many things that feel cleaner than dew from roses. The blossom is only a little bigger than the circle I can make with thumb and forefinger, so it's not large. It has a very slight fragrance. The flowers are rather indecisive; last year they were more apricot colored, and this year it's pale pink. This is not the original shape the flowers were.Here is a different flower from the same little bush, with a statue of the Blessed Virgin in the background which was a present from my family for a certain recent academic accomplishment. This is the shape the flowers used to be-- see, it's more typical miniature-rose-shaped. The entire bush is a little less than knee-high. It blooms now, and again in October.This is a rambler rose that went wild. It would be covered in little clumps of these peppery-smelling blossoms, but the deer keep chewing most of them off.
My oriental lilies are blooming, too. I used to have them all in one clump, but then a deer beheaded them all in one fell swoop. Last year, I planted them all over the place as a defensive measure. So far, nothing has chewed them. They're so bright it almost hurts to look at them.Look at this! I always wondered how columbines got their names; I couldn't see anything birdlike about them. After some research, I found I just had to change my perspective a little. Here's a top view. Can you see three doves clustered together?The rose campion has been blooming for a couple weeks. I grew it from some seeds that friends gave me. The foliage is silvery grey-green and almost as soft as lamb's-ear, and the flowers are such a vibrant magenta that my camera can't seem to capture it. The seeds look like poppy seeds except more porous, and the pods are an interesting shape.The denizens of the garden are fun to observe. There are about a dozen five-lined skinks (Eumeces fasciatus) that skitter around hunting slugs and grubs and other nuisances. Males are taupe with a red head and faint stripes, females are black with yellow stripes, and juveniles of both sexes are black with yellow stripes and a brilliant blue tail. Here's a male sitting on the deck. He's at least eight inches long, which is apparently about as long as they get. I would love to play with them, but they're fragile little things, and they can drop their tails if they feel threatened-- so I just look at them, instead. Look at his handsome little red face.

One thing I have observed about skinks is that they often flick their "hands" against their flanks. I don't know why, or what this means, and I must find out. My only guess is that it has to do with their circulation-- but I have some more research to do. That's actually what he's doing, in that picture.
Here is a peculiar insect which was standing on a campion bud. It has lovely golden eyes and two stripedy antennae much longer than its body. I'm not sure what it might be-- it sort of reminds me of a katydid, but it's wingless, and rather the wrong shape.

I'll have more pictures, soon. The ice plant is just beginning to bloom, along with the feverfew, and in a couple more weeks the black-eyed susans and monarda will be starting to open.

The Editing Process: Viewing One's Work Objectively

2011-05-18T19:20:00.004-04:00

Once upon a time, I thought of starting a blog so that I could write about writing. Then I decided to write about other things, too. Here are some recent thoughts I've been mulling over, concerning the editing process. This is by no means a comprehensive guide to this issue; I'm sure I've left out some aspects of it.

Please note that I'm not "aiming" this at any individual in particular, so if it "speaks" to you, don't take it personally-- I've had discussions on this topic with several people. Also, keep in mind that it applies not only to writers but to any other kind of artist, and even to life in general. Please also note that I don't mean to imply that every writer necessarily struggles with this issue.

One of the most important things for the personal progress of any art is for the artist to reach a point where he can detach himself emotionally and personally from his work. This does not happen during the actual first-draft writing process, of course-- at that time, it's equally imperative that a writer be deeply immersed in his work. When it's time to edit, though, it's also time to separate his imaginary world from his identity.

It is imperative that a writer learns to look at his work objectively, and realize that it is not him. It may be a part of him, his prized possession, or even the most important work of his life-- but it is not him. Of course he has given it life, and feels through it, and even to an extent lives through it, but it is not him.

This detachment will not hurt his book, or the world inside it. If he clings too tightly to it, it will be unable to grow. If he does not release his art to the possibility of growth, it will only ever be a reflection of his own ego. Think about it-- if a writer is dead set against anyone saying anything against his book, he's essentially stating that it is finished: he doesn't want anything to change. Not only does he not want it to change, but in requesting an editor, he's not really looking for help in refining his manuscript; he's looking for someone to agree with him.

The writer has to understand that if someone comments, "This part wasn't clear to me, and I really don't find Annie a very engaging character," it does not mean that he personally is confusing and boring. Just Annie, and that one part in the book. He might think that that passage was perfectly clear, and Annie might be his ideal woman-- but what can it hurt, to step back, take a deep breath, and double-check?

Now, it is natural for the writer to still feel attached to his book, during the editing process. There's nothing monstrous about becoming a little discouraged with the amount of work that needs doing, nervous that something important might be lost, or sad that the life seems at times to have gone out of the project. Don't worry. It's not dead; it's resting.

Notice that this does not mean desensitizing oneself. Ceasing to care what happens to a writing project is the wrong approach to helping it grow. Remain connected, but remember that this time the journey is not a voyage of discovery, but one in which a path is cut so that others can follow. Every writer will find something to change or fix to make the way clearer.

If a writer asks for someone's help and ends up either lashing out at them, defending every little thing, or crumpling into his shell like a wounded barnacle, he's not going to get very far-- and besides missing out on what might be valuable opinions, he'll run the risk of deeply confusing or even hurting the person who was only trying to help him. This certainly doesn't mean he has to knuckle under and submit to every piece of advice, or even agree with the critiques. The writer will always know his work best. It is often possible that, despite the very best of their intentions, some people may have valid reasons for not being able to understand his work in order to edit it, though they may enjoy reading it or really want a part of that world.

If a writer is still so absorbed in his story that he can't bear any contrary opinions, he might need to rethink his goals. Sometimes all that is needed is time away from the story, perhaps working on a different one for a while, or an unrelated activity altogether. If he is simultaneously unable to bear criticism but has a publishing schedule worked out for himself, trouble can be expected. This can be especially hard when writing has become a form of escapism, the only thing in life that seems to be going well. That's no time to edit.

I often have to reassure commenters that I won't find their critiques personally insulting. Actually, most people who are familiar with me as a writer know that I'm constantly poking fun at my own work. I take it very seriously, but not so personally that I can be shattered. I've had to learn to be patient with myself, and with my work; I know it's worth it, in the end. On the flip side, I have to remember that not everyone automatically realizes the degree of detachment that is necessary, and that some are still learning it. I've forgotten this several times, much to my shame.

The deep and necessary personal connection to a story-world is also why I'm reluctant to give detailed feedback on unfinished first drafts. They're too fragile, too mutable, for me to take into my own hands. I don't want my editing to cause someone to continuously restart their book, to discourage them from at least getting one full draft written, or to overload their creative circuits with technical details. I do make exceptions for people who have stopped writing a draft for various reasons and want to begin again.

You discovered a gem-- now, to show it at its very best, you have to summon the calmness, focus, and strength of mind to cut it.

My Garden

2011-04-28T15:15:00.002-04:00

My garden has been blooming away steadily. We've gotten a lot of rain this spring, so everything is quite verdant. One of these days I need to fertilize the flowerbed, but I have to get some more weeds pulled, first. Here are a few pictures of what's been blooming, these past few weeks.This is a 'Lady Banks' rose. It's a thornless climber, and escaped from the garden a while back. It's currently up in a tree. The flowers are fragrant, and grow on long flexible branches that fling out from the main stem and drape themselves in picturesque curtains like something out of a fairy-tale.A neighbor gave me some periwinkle cuttings a while back, and the past couple years they've started to look really nice. Some are solid glossy green, and others are variegated, but the flowers on both are the same noncommittal jellybean purple. They're a hardy groundcover, but completely noninvasive-- the roots are shallow and nontenuous.Now for my actual flowerbed. A few years back, I was given some seeds for a columbine, and couldn't remember what I did with them. Apparently I planted them at some point, because it bloomed for the first time last year and is looking nice, now. I haven't found out what cultivar it is-- it's a single, almost black. Quite striking.Against all odds, my cranesbill plant has survived and is reaching a hearty size. It has had many near-death experiences, including being hacked off its parent plant and struggling for years to display two tiny little leaves like a pair of pleading hands. Once something else was planted on top of it, and it's been stepped on quite a few times. Now it's finally big enough to see. The pink flowers are dainty and crepe-like, almost like a primrose's but much longer-lasting, and the foliage turns crimson in the fall.My coreopsis is back. Seven years or so ago, we got a single coreopsis 'Nana' plant. It kept growing and growing, and when I divided it, each plantlet reached the size the whole thing had originally been by the end of the summer. My entire garden, at that time, was blazing orange from the coreopsis, and pale purple from a few other things I had. It was hideous. Finally, two summers ago, all the coreopsis died of brown spots, and last year my garden was all cool and pleasant colors. And this year-- the coreopsis is back; it had reseeded itself. There are only a couple little plants here and there, but by next year I might be ready to give some away, again.This burgundy bearded iris bloomed for the first time, this year. There's also a similar apricot-colored one, but it didn't bloom this year.This pale purple iris bloomed for the first time this year, too. I have a solid dark purple one, but it hasn't bloomed in a while.This white iris bloomed for the first time last year, and began blooming Holy Week of this year, but then it got all beaten down and bedraggled in the rain. This picture can't come close to showing how spotlessly white the petals are.These dwarf bearded irises are only about knee-high.I love everything about irises except their short bloom time. They smell wonderful, and are nice to touch (I have a need to touch flowers), and their varying textures make them look like silk and velvet.Here is my Spanish lavender plant! I love the way the flowers look-- I've heard them described as pineapples with bows on top. It doesn't smell the way English and French lavenders do; it's definitely a lavenderish smell, but it's actually closer to the culinary pine smell of rosemary. It's a fun plant to touch, because it's so soft and benevolent-looking. I'd tried to plant regular lavender before, but it rotted within a couple weeks, and I once had a Spanish lavender plant, too, but like almost everything else in my dorm room it died a long, drawn-out death. I did some research and found that it likes sandy soil, so I put this one in a pot with about three parts sand and two parts topsoil. See, all soil would be too rich and the plant would rot. So far it seems to be doing quite well, other than needing extra water because the sand drains it all out.The gigantic chives are blooming, too. These make really nice cut flowers, and keep their color when dried. They would also look pretty in a salad.

This is pretty much everything that's blooming, right now; I'll make a separate post for the rhododendrons and azaleas, since we have so many kinds. ^_^

Ah, Holy Jesus!

2011-04-20T22:55:00.002-04:00

Ah, holy Jesus, how hast Thou offended,
That man to judge Thee hast in hate pretended?
By foes derided, by Thine own rejected,
O most afflicted!

Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon Thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone Thee!
'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied Thee:
I crucified Thee.

Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered,
The slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered.
For man's atonement, while he nothing heedeth,
God intercedeth.

For me, kind Jesus, was Thy incarnation,
Thy mortal sorrow, and Thy life's oblation;
Thy death of anguish and Thy bitter passion,
For my salvation.

Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay Thee,
I do adore Thee, and will ever pray Thee,
Think on Thy pity and Thy love unswerving,
Not my deserving.

Text: Johann Heermann, 1585-1647; trans. by Robert S. Bridges, 1844-1930
Music: Johann Cruger, 1598-1662
Tune: HERZLIEBSTER JESU, Meter: 11 11 11.5

This is my favorite hymn for Passiontide. The tune is solemn and reverent, and the words are brutally honest. The second verse is so powerful that sometimes it's difficult for me to sing. The fact is, Christ died because of my sins, and because of yours-- there's no point in hedging around it, and there's only glorious gain in acknowledging it.

Please pray for me and all other church musicians as we begin celebrating the Triduum tomorrow! My prayers are with you all.

Captain Nemo

2011-03-31T00:00:00.004-04:00

When I was applying for colleges, I had to write an essay about a fictional character who greatly influenced my life. I ended up submitting a very tame essay about Combeferre from Les Miserables, a young revolutionary who fights for what he believes in, but whose real tendencies are scholarly, preferring "illumination rather than conflagration."

That's not who I wanted to write about.

The single fictional character who probably influenced me most, growing up, was Captain Nemo, from Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Charles Dickens' characters influenced me as a collective whole and probably tie with Captain Nemo. The Captain represented to me, half humorously and half seriously, the sort of fantasy life that I would live, if my imaginations came true. Captain Nemo was a master at all the things that I was passionate about, then (and still am). He was aloof, elusive, anti-social and anti-society, and lived in his submarine, the Nautilus, out of reach of the world. The Nautilus had a sumptuous library, a pipe organ, and a museum of great works of art, along with the most extensive mollusk collection in the history of the world.

I liked the way that Captain Nemo could be good at things that many people nowadays don't realize can fit together naturally-- such as languages and science. Back then I didn't know of the term renaissance man, but I recognized the type, and it made perfect sense to me, especially when being confronted with the academic "choice" between music and the sciences.

I'm a taciturn book-lover, I've been avidly, though intermittently, collecting mollusks for 11 years, and I'm a pipe organist. Three things inspired me to learn to play the pipe organ. The first was visiting my grandparents' parish, which had a choir loft with a pipe organ. One Sunday after Mass, my grandfather took me up to see the organ, and the organist showed me the stops. I was younger than five, at the time, and I thought it would be much more interesting to be upstairs and fool around with little knobs than to sit still with the rest of the congregation. The second inspiration was the dedication concert of the electronic organ that was installed at my old parish; I was six at the time, and I don't think I sat through more than twenty minutes of the ordeal, but I was immensely impressed at the grandiose noise that the thing made, and the way it could fill up the entire space.

The third inspiration was, of course, Captain Nemo. The emotional climax of the book (and the Disney movie) involves Captain Nemo playing his pipe organ chaotically, expressing the tortured anguish of his soul dissonantly with all the stops pulled out. I knew I wanted to learn how to do that; not long after I saw the movie, I began taking lessons. I have always enjoyed rampaging around on the instrument, but through the marvelous patience of my organ teacher, I finally settled down midway through highschool enough to learn church music and nice peaceful songs, so that I would actually be good for something. Captain Nemo influenced me, not because he was someone I wanted to emulate or become, but because he was an example of how one person could encompass the vast spectrum of interests that I was told was unnatural.

Well, my life has changed since then. I'm not majoring in biology and sacred music anymore. I'm studying English, and I know God doesn't want me to run and hide at the bottom of the ocean (though it continues to be a temptation). The saints are my true heroes, as they've always been. Also, some friends stole my submarine. I still identify with the Captain in many ways, though, and humorously consider him an alter ego of sorts.

Oh-- by the way, I'm not a psychopath.

My Mollusks

2011-03-09T16:15:00.008-05:00

I have been collecting marine mollusks since I was about nine. I'd always had a few around, as curiosities and from trips to the beach, but when I was nine, it dawned on me one day that all of them had names. For some reason, this fact kindled within me an insatiable curiosity to know as much as I could about mollusks, and I began collecting them avidly.

When I started out, I would line my shells up inside cardboard boxes and trays, with labels glued beside them. Today, I have the tiny ones stored inside little spice jars, tooth-floss containers, computer cartridge boxes, and film cannisters (remember those things?), and most of the larger ones wrapped in quilt batting and packed away. My smallest is a few millimeters long, and the largest is bigger than my head. Someday I would love to keep the largest ones in a curio cabinet, or the entire lot in a cabinet of drawers, like museums have. I also developed a slightly better labeling system, and a catalogue somewhere on my hard-drive.

Since I prefer finding them to buying them, and don't visit the Atlantic Ocean regularly, I only have about two hundred different species (but probably over a thousand specimens). I have found specimens of a majority of the species native to the coast of North Carolina.

Several years ago when I got a camera, I decided to take pictures of my entire collection. I'm going to have to redo some of them, one of these days, now that I'm more used to how the camera works. Here are a few of the pictures (links to the album at the end of this post). I could talk for hours about my collection, and mollusks in general, so it's going to take a great deal of effort to keep this pleasantly brief.

Cyrtopleura costata (Linnaeus, 1752)
Angelwing
10.2 cm
Anastasia Island, FL (also native to NC)
29 December 2004
The common name of this shell is pretty obvious. These aren't matching valves. They are some of my most fragile shells. I've read that if you dig up a live one, it will clench itself together in fright and shatter. I wonder if that's so.Martesia cuneiformis (Say, 1822)
Wedge-shaped Piddock
Topsail Island, NC
December 1999
This one, in the same family as the angel wing, fascinates me, because I had it for years and never knew it. I had brought home a tiny piece of driftwood from the beach, and one day noticed a bit of something embedded in it. I quickly realized it was the shell of a little clam, and spent several hours carefully excavating it with a pin and a pair of tweezers. For this picture, I slid it back into the cavity so you could see. It's a boring-clam, the same relative shape and size as a pistachio. Hordes of these things can wreak havoc on docks, piers, ships, and anything else wooden that's in the water-- pretty much the maritime equivalent of termites. They chew with their tiny mouth-parts. Isn't that fascinating?Atrina rigida (Lightfoot, 1786)
Stiff Pen Shell
17.2 cm
Southport, NC
27 May 2003
I have both valves of this shell, but here's the inside of just one. Isn't that lovely? The little circles are the leftover bits of barnacles which encrusted it. This is a very brittle shell. It anchors itself to something in its habitat with "roots" known as byssal threads. The threads of some species can be collected and woven into a very fine silky gold cloth. Some suggest that the golden fleece of Greek mythology might have actually been a cloth of byssal threads.Diodora cayennensis (Lamarck, 1822)
Cayenne Keyhole Limpet
Emerald Island, NC
Keyhole limpets suction themselves to hard surfaces and creep about eating algae and detritus. All keyhole limpets have a little hole like that in the top, unlike true limpets which are just cones with no holes (saith the Peterson Field Guide).Oliva sayana Ravenel, 1834
Lettered Olive
4 cm
Fort Macon, NC
27 December 2001
These are fairly common in NC, but this is the only specimen I've ever found on which the markings and coloring are of such high quality. The inside is a delicate lavender color, and the outside is clearly marked with the "letters" that give this shell its common name. Usually, olives are discolored pink, white, or black.Epitonium krebsii (Mörch, 1874)
Krebs' Wentletrap
.3 cm
Anastasia Island, FL
29 December 2004
This is one of my tiniest shells, only three millimeters long. This picture was zoomed in so you could see the delicate details on it. Wentletraps are some of my favorites; the funny name is actually derived from the Dutch word for "staircase," if I understand correctly, on account of its ribbed spiral shape (had to double-check that on Wiki; it's been a while). It reminds me of a donut of some sort; there's another wentletrap native to the Atlantic that really looks like something to eat.Here are links to the albums. Let me know if they don't work.
Gastropod Album I
Gastropod Album II
Bivalve Album I
Bivalve Album II
Oh! I didn't mention, for anyone who didn't guess already, that gastropods are essentially snails ("stomach-foot") and can also be known as univalves, and bivalves are essentially clams ("two parts") and can also be know as pelcyopods ("ax-foot"). I have a list of good field guides and things like that, if anyone is interested, and I love identifying shells, for anyone who's curious about one. It would be amazing to be curator of a museum's mollusk collection.

I have several other collections (including Upper Devonian fossils), but not as extensive as this one-- but that's for another time. ^_^

A Buckram Hat: Restoration, Alteration, and Reconstruction

2011-03-04T17:30:00.006-05:00

Several weeks ago when I was at Goodwill looking for something specific, I saw two hats for sale. I bought one, which I'll write about later. The second was pretty battered, so I passed it up. Then I went back and bought it the next day. This is a post about how I fixed it, for less than five dollars. Since it's black and relatively shiny, the pictures are a little washed-out-looking.

Here is the original. The crown and underside of the brim are black velvet, and the top of the brim is black taffeta. It's trimmed with grosgrain ribbon which may have been black once, but was a sort of dulled dark grey. Once upon a time, it must have been very elegant. As you can see, the hat seems to have been crushed; the unevenness of the brim is where it's creased and rumpled.Here's another view.The first thing I did was to clean the velvet. Little puffs of dust arose as I did so. I think this hat must have been stuffed in a box of old clothing for a long time. I used a small scrubbing brush because it was handy, and I got it slightly damp and gently buffed at the velvet. It came clean quite nicely. Here are some before and after pictures. The white in the first one is dust, and afterward is the sunlight getting caught in the clean velvet. I removed the inner band, as it was caked with dust, and the ribbon trim, since it was ugly. The milliner used glue. I'm just beginning, and even I know better than to attach trim with glue. It just makes a mess of everything, can ruin the hat, and if it ever needed readjusting or a makeover... it'd just make a mess.

Here's a picture from before. I won't post one from after, because the clean velvet makes an appearance many times, below.Next, I overzealously decided to iron the hat. I did this even though I knew every hat book says it's almost never a good idea to iron hats, and even though I knew by experience that ironing velvet ruins it. I'm still not sure why I did this. Maybe because I wanted to see what would happen. The hat also started to smell weird. The lumps weren't ironing out. The hat had layers to it, and the framework was what was creased. I needed to steam it heavily, but I was afraid of scorching the fabrics. So, I detached the crown from the brim.

At this point, I discovered that it was actually a covered buckram hat. I've been wanting to learn how to make these. Buckram is a sort of roughly-woven fiber netting stiffened with glue that can be softened and shaped when heat or very slight damp is applied. It looks like a cross between cheesecloth and burlap.

Here's a picture of the three layers. I tried to iron it again, but I couldn't get quite enough steam on it, the glue in the buckram was melting all over the iron, and the fabrics were stretching because of wedging the iron in between them. The only way I would get it to reshape would be by steaming it properly.So, I took the brim the rest of the way apart. First, though, I looked up how to make bias tape online (or rather, confirmed what I knew) so that I could refinish the outer edge. I carefully undid the seam that held the brim to the wire hoop in its outer edge, and then the other stitchings that held the three layers together. I hid the wire hoop behind my bookcase so that no one would be tempted to take it away and play with it.

At this point, I felt like I'd pretty much taken apart a watch. The thing cost less than two dollars, though, so I didn't feel too nervous taking it to pieces. I'd also examined it carefully in each stage of undoing, noting how many seams held it together. It looked straightforward enough, and turned out to be, too. I ironed the taffeta while I was waiting for the pot to boil. Then I ate this.The velvet steamed out quite nicely, of course. That's the only way I know of to fix ruined velvet, and fortunately it wasn't truly ruined, and only in one spot. It took a while, though, and I kneaded it to bring the plush back out. I like the way the swirly steam came out, in this picture.The buckram was a little trickier. I don't have a hatblock, so I didn't have anything to mold it against, but I smoothed at the spots with my fingers, and as the glue melted and the material became malleable again, I flattened it bit by bit under a textbook. I couldn't flatten the whole thing at once, of course, because it's not a flat brim- it's sort of angled. This is what I was trying to smooth out:After I was done steaming the various parts of the hat, it was time to begin reassembling it. I decided that I wanted the entire top to be velvet and to use the taffeta for the underside, especially since the latter looked a bit distressed, and overall suffered the worst from its past. I pinned the taffeta onto the buckram. It took a while, because the taffeta seemed to have stretched just a little, most likely because it had been stretched onto the framework for so many years and was now lax and flabby. I ended up trimming off a little bit of it that hung over the edge. Sewing the velvet on was easier.I retrieved the unharmed wire hoop from behind my bookcase, and whip-stitched the brim back onto it. That was a little bit tricky, and I sewed a few inches on one side and then a few on the other, to make sure that it was going back on evenly. When I first laid it out, and even as I was sewing it, it seemed much wider than the hoop, but somehow it actually fit on there. I used white thread because I was expecting to have to take it apart, and didn't want to undo the basting stitches-- but I got it on there, first try.Reattaching the brim to the crown was a little tricky, and in some places it came out less tidy than I would have liked. The buckram around the inner edge had frayed a little, as had the taffeta, making it very slightly wider than the crown. But somehow, again, it managed to all fit together. I attached some fresh new grosgrain to the inside opening of the crown, to cover up the seam in this picture.I decided to bind the outer edge with white satin, since that was what I planned to trim it with. I cut a strip the proper length on the 45-degree diagonal, ironed it in half, and attached it to the edge. This took quite a while, because even though it was cut on the bias, it still rumpled a little on the underside and made it look frumpy. So I bought a yard of braid trim and sewed that on, too, to even it out and make it lie flat. The exposure on this picture is adjusted slightly to show the trim more clearly.I scribble-sketched several pictures of how I could trim the hat, and decided to capitalise on the somewhat-lumpish look by making it appear intentional, with an elegantly rumpled band and bow. I cut a long, broad band out of satin, and gathered both ends; then I arranged it around the crown, hiding a few dents and the sloppy join. The bow had me baffled for a while, since I'm not sure how to make them aside from tying them, and didn't want to use up that much material. Finally, I had one of my brothers bend an old wire hanger into a figure-eight, flattened the ends, and covered it with gathered satin.

Here's a view from the front.And from the side.
There are a few things I might do to see if I can tidy it up a little in general, but it's pretty much finished. So far, I have been told by one person that it's creepy. Maybe one of these days I'll have someone take a picture of me modeling it.

Maple Pollen Photomicrography

2011-02-25T15:40:00.000-05:00

Back when I was sorting out potential career paths, I seriously considered becoming a palynologist; that's why I was a biology major for a very short time, until becoming an English major and surprising next to nobody. Yes-- I considered dedicating vast portions of my mind to the study of pollen (and spores).

It still fascinates me, of course.

Some might wonder what good palynology is, or what kind of work a botanist that ridiculously specialized could find. It's actually quite important. Pollen is a crucial part of agriculture. Some aspects of the health of forests and other environments can be assessed through pollen samples. Archaeologists can find out what plants were cultivated or indigenous to an area by traces of pollen. Forensic scientists could solve a crime if pollen on an item of interest could be traced to a specific area. There are many other applications; archaeological palynology fascinated me the most.

Here is a blooming twig from a red maple tree (Acer rubrum). See the anthers? They're the little reddish things sticking out on the ends of the stamens. The pollen comes from inside the anthers. There's some yellowish pollen visible on the ones toward the bottom of the picture.This is some pollen magnified 40 times. On first glance, it looks much like the cedar pollen from my previous post. If I had an electron microscope, I'm sure there would be very obvious differences even in its basic appearance. However, one thing stood out almost immediately, that surprised me: the maple pollen, magnified 40 times, is about as big as the cedar pollen was, magnified 100 times. For some reason, I was expecting the maple pollen to be smaller; it doesn't bother me as much as cedar, so I hypothesized imaginatively that it was tiny and that cedar was big and malevolent. Of course, maple pollen isn't sticky the way cedar is-- that must have something to do with it.Here it is again, magnified 100 times. At this magnification, 19 cedar pollen grains fit in that circle of view with plenty of leftover space. That would be a tight squeeze, here.I'm not sure which pollen will come into season next-- but when it does, you'll find out what it looks like. ^_^

Frog-Song

2011-02-24T22:20:00.001-05:00

Last Monday evening, I heard the frogs singing in the woods for the first time this spring. It's such a thin, silvery, growing sort of sound-- the sound of the woods coming back to life. In honor of that event, here is one of my all-time favorite poems, by one of my all-time favorite poets.

Assault
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I
I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.

II
I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!

~*~

Cedar Pollen Photomicrography

2011-02-21T16:45:00.007-05:00

Last spring, I brought you pictures of all the nice plants that begin to sprout in the woods near my house at this time of year. This spring, I bring you something a little more... sinister.

Starting today and ending in April or May, I will present photomicrographs of all the different types of pollen that clog the air in my corner of the world, as they make their appearances.

My chest imploded, this past weekend, or might as well have. I spent two days flopping around gasping like a fish trying to evolve. Today I've either gotten better or gotten used to it. I figured out pretty early on that there must be some pollen flying already. This week, Eastern Red-cedar (Juniperus virginiana) is the culprit.

Here is what a branch looks like, up close. From a distance, the tree has gold highlights.I picked a sprig of cedar and made the second-worst wet mount slide I had ever made in my life. Then I made a nicer one. In my defense, it's been a few years since I did any actual work with a microscope, and longer since I used it for fun. Here's some of the pollen, without the cover-slip on yet. What I discovered immediately is that cedar pollen is unpleasantly sticky, with that same aromatic sap that is all over the tree itself. Whenever I climb that tree, I get black sap and little stringy strips of bark all over my hands, and it takes rubbing alcohol to get it off satisfactorily. I believe that this causes the pollen to adhere itself to the insides of my lungs. Here are some grains at 40 times their real size.Here are the globules again, at 100 times larger than life. Only 100 times. Isn't that morbidly fascinating? They're enormous. And sticky.There is a higher magnification on my microscope, but it's for oil immersion. Hopefully I'll get better at taking pictures, so they won't come out so blurry next time. Feel free to print these out to pin up and use as dartboards. You get more points for lower magnification, because it's smaller.

Random biology anecdote of the day: my lab instructor three years ago pronounced the word nucleus, nuculus. This should be a crime. I have nothing further to say on that subject.

That's all for today, my dears. Tune in next time for Maple Pollen Photomicrography.

Movie Review: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

2011-01-11T17:20:00.006-05:00

Recently, I went out to see The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I brought my trusty writing notebook with me, and made a tally mark in one of two columns whenever I especially liked or disliked something. Here are my somewhat-disjointed thoughts.

Warning: some spoilers ahead, though not the ending nor too many major plot points.

(I can't say much about actual quality of the 3-D, since it was the first 3-D movie I'd ever seen; I didn't care much for it, it gave me a headache to look at, and seemed very jumpy and constantly whooshing around, but that's only my perspective.)

The overall lack of attention to detail was disappointing. One thing that can endear a movie adaptation to me is when the little things about a book are paid attention to, and included in the movie as tips-of-hats to the author. The Chronicles are full of bits like that, especially descriptions, advice, and useful items to take note of. I first read the Chronicles when I was about 7, but didn't touch them again (though I'd loved them) for almost ten years. In that timespan, I forgot most of the plot details and non-major characters, but what I did remember stuck indelibly. An example of this is from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where Aslan breathes on the creatures which have been turned to stone- the description of "a tiny streak of flame creeping along the edge of the newspaper" has always been in my mind. Its unexplainable absence from, and unimpressive replacement in, the first movie, was one of the only things that kept it from being perfect. How many of you remember similar things you learned or loved from Lewis (like lisping S's to keep from being heard when in hiding, or "the smell of bacon and eggs and mushrooms all frying in a pan")?

One thing I remembered from my first reading of the book was to kick my shoes off if I were ever to find myself in deep water, because it would be easier to swim. This was not included in the movie, and, among other small missing details, contributed to my feeling of something missing. Is this too nit-picky? Some people might think so. Are these details indispensible? That depends on if you're happy to settle for a shallow action movie, or if you want a world to become absorbed in.

If it seems too nit-picky to haggle over the elimination of little things, consider what's included in its stead. For example, the token snow-and-jingle-bells scene so that it could be marketed for the "Holiday Season." But we'd seen that, before, and much better, in the first movie. There were other things in Coriakin's house that I would have enjoyed seeing much more. One of my brothers, who knows the books perhaps better than I do (having memorized vast portions of them all), was disappointed that they didn't have the dufflepud dinner scene, with invisible plates jumping around.

Here are a few observations that I made marks for, in the movie:

--The first thing that made me groan interiorly was the attack of I-Can't-Wait-To-Be-King syndrome. That, probably more than anything else, is what ruined Prince Caspian in my eyes- Peter Pevensie's angst at "losing" a kingdom derailed the entire plot. See, the impression that I got while reading the books was that the Pevensies grew up both physically and, to some extent, spiritually, during their reign in Narnia, and that they retained full memory of this on returning to our world. This would, in my understanding, make them quite mature. Of course they're still kids, to an extent, and they still have growing to do, just as anyone on earth does; throughout the books, the Pevensies undergo struggles that are familiar to all of us. So to me, the constant vying for kingship, dealing with being king/not being king anymore, inability to take orders, and any number of other instances of sheer immaturity, is annoyingly incongruous and severely detracts from the story. I can't imagine anyone with such a juvenile overall attitude towards true leadership being remembered for thousands of years as one of Narnia's greatest kings. That kind of kid needs to be given pushups, with someone's foot on his back.

Interestingly enough, the only place that I can remember contested kingship coming into place in the books is actually the Deathwater scene-- but even then, Edmund declares, "I am one of the four ancient sovereigns of Narnia and you are under allegiance to the High King my brother." A far cry from Edmund (to say nothing of Peter) whining about playing second fiddle to anyone.

--A subcategory of that is Petulant King syndrome- Caspian lashing out in rage, "You insolent fool!" at a slave-trader, instead of prudently choosing to remain silent and anonymous.

--Speaking of slave-traders, guess what? There are no Calormenes. Everyone is vaguely "Mediterranean." This is one of the subtler points in the movie, but I was watching specifically for it. We must be politically correct, my dears. Calormen must be de-Islamified. This could be looking ahead to the fiasco which would be The Horse and His Boy. I'll be writing about this point, and its pros and cons, in depth sometime soon.

--I was relieved that the White Witch (now bilious green) had a much smaller role than the trailers seemed to indicate she would. Several people I know guessed that she only appeared so there would be bigger names in the movie; they're right.

--There was no mention of Narnia being flat, and having ends that one could sail off. I can't imagine why this was cut out; it would have fit perfectly with Eustace's obsession with "facts," and explained to the uninitiated how Narnia can have "ends," anyway.

--I was impressed and pleased that Eustace's line, "I'm a pacifist" and the addition of "Can't we just talk this through?" were included. In a society where weapon-bearers are burned on the altar of Dialogue, it was pleasant to hear it coming from a brat running away from a fight. Also, the boy who played Eustace did an amazing job.

--I missed the mermaids, especially since Lewis's mermaids are so unusual-looking. There were watery humanoids, but I'm still not sure if they were meant to be nymphs or really bad merfolk. They certainly didn't have purple hair and bodies the color of old ivory.

--The scenes with the picture on the wall and entrance to Narnia were breathtaking.

--Oh, and where have I seen glowing blue swords, before?

The single negative point that marred the movie for me was the plot and its pacing. The original book is episodic, but not debilitatingly so. It might have needed a little help getting to the screen, but definitely not a rewrite, and there was simply no need for the majority of the liberties that were taken. Other people have written about this in-depth, notably my friend Mr. André, so I won't spend time repeating if I can help it.

Pacewise, the movie felt rushed. There were lovely panoramic shots of the Dawn Treader skimming over the waves, but besides that, the movie never really slowed to enjoy anything. My Narnia-expert brother was disappointed that they skipped over so many parts that were really from the book. I agreed, and added that they rushed through the parts that they kept.

Take, for example, the Coriakin's Island sequence. The dufflepuds, when visible, got about a minute and a half of screentime. They looked great, and the few lines they got were funny, but the movie barreled along before they could really be enjoyed. Lucy was in and out of Coriakin's wonderful house in no time flat. Worst of all for the plot, it is never explained who Coriakin is, or why in the world they should even listen to him and take his advice in the first place. The effect was of having something that looked like it'd taste wonderful, but then having the next sample shoved in your mouth before you could really savor any of it.

The "improvised" bits of plot, on the other hand, did not work at all for me, especially because they got so much screentime and Importance in comparison with what would've made the movie great. I'm sure there's some way it could've been strung together better than this. The added characters did nothing to enhance the story, and barely gave themselves an excuse for existing.

As for Eustace not unbecoming a dragon sooner...
This undermines the make-it-all-better line that the screenwriters give Reepicheep, when he tells Eustace that "sometimes extraordinary things happen to ordinary people"-- since the only extraordinary things that Eustace subsequently participates in happen while he's a dragon, not an ordinary person. His extended dragonhood also undermines the entire point of his becoming a dragon: in the book, it is a curse and a punishment, the result of his selfishness and greed; as a dragon he becomes a great burden to those responsible for him, and stalls the voyage. He cannot progress in manhood until he has been "absolved" of dragonhood; once he is restored to a repentant human form, he is able to do "the first brave thing he had ever done" in striking a blow to the Sea Serpent. This is not the case in the movie; in dragon form, he is not only not a burden, but even helps the crew out of a few tight situations and clumsy plot points. This could possibly have been explained as good coming out of evil, but instead seemed portrayed as the luckiest thing that could have happened, and great fun, at that.

Oh, and remember Eustace's perfect line, describing his return to humanity? "You know- if you've ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is fun to see it coming away." I loved that, as a kid, because it made perfect sense, and I knew exactly what it felt like. It's been replaced, in the movie, with something like, "It was like a thorn had been pulled out of my foot." I've never had a thorn in my foot, so I couldn't connect, but if it's anything like having a thorn in my hand, it has none of that secret satisfaction that comes of picking at a scraped knee. Also, in the movie's transformation scene, Aslan unfortunately came off looking (to me) like a cat in a litterbox commercial.

By the time the credits finished rolling, I actually had one more tally in the good column than the bad-- but since one of the bad ones was for the entire plot, this is my verdict on the movie, as a whole:

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was better than Prince Caspian, but the good does not outweigh the bad.

Here's André's excellent review.

Also, who didn't take botany? The lilies in the sea were just a bunch of oriental lilies floating on top of the water. In the book, they are clearly aquatic lilies, with "broad, flat leaves." This is like the difference between African and European swallows, folks.

Adventures in Millinery

2010-12-26T21:15:00.007-05:00

Welcome to Les Chapeaux de Coq Mort, my atelier of inspired millinery creations. Doesn't that sound so top-drawer and modish?

I got a hat last summer that happened to be a bargain at under two dollars, since its value was over thirty-- but for various reasons that I'll relate in this post, I never wore it. Then, a couple weeks ago, I came to a startling realization:

I can alter hats the way I alter clothing.

Here is the original hat, as modeled by my stylish assistant, Héloïse Lait-Écrémé. She's a bit empty-headed and heartless, but she's not talkative, so I put up with her. And she has a lovely grecian nose.I'm not sure if it's supposed to be worn as pictured above, or if it's actually a cloche:Now, there was nothing wrong with it, stylistically, the way it was; I know of several people who wear hats with frames like this, and look perfectly elegant. I always wear my hair up when I go out, though, and it won't fit on over my hair. I can ram it on, but then I look like I have a swelled head, and I never like to help people prove their accusations. My hair is much too long altogether to wear a cloche. So it sat on my bookshelf (which is full of books, and hats on top of the books) for about half a year, where I looked at it and tried it on frequently, trying to decide what to do with it.

As a general rule, I don't wear small hats. I tried to wear a pillbox once, and the effect was decidedly underwhelming. My sister, on the other hand, wears small hats perfectly. Part of this is because I have knee-length hair that looks best swept up Gibson Girl-style under a huge brim; I revel in turn-of-the-century styles in general. For a while, though, I've wanted a hat that's not visible at 300 yards, for when I want to fly under certain radars, but hadn't been able to find one that suited me. Recently, while looking at a site of intriguing old photos, I noticed a couple hats from the 1880s that I rather liked, and looked up some fashion plates from that decade.These pages showed me exactly what I was looking for.

The result is not based on any of those hats; further research may reveal that it is a close match (which wouldn't surprise me, with the amount of pictures I've seen in the past), but it is not meant to be "historically accurate," and I'd like to say rather that it is inspired by the styles of the 1880s.

I went out to the craft store and selected some trimmings. This is probably why most hats are so expensive-- I used lower-quality trim, but even if I'd wanted a whole mess of it instead of just a bit, it would've cost me. I wish more places just sold untrimmed hats. I got a yard each of wide and narrow cream satin ribbon, some bronze stripedy pheasant feathers, and some olive-green feathers. Since most of my clothing is either brown, cream, or green, it will match just about anything.

The first thing to do was to alter the hat. After removing the original trim, I measured how much I wanted to lower the crown, and spaced pins around it at equal heights.Then I cut from pin to pin, to completely detach the crown from the brim. At this point, I felt quite daring, like anything could happen. After all, I had just cut a thirty-dollar hat in half.Here's Héloïse wearing the crown. Green eyes are lovely.After cutting down about an inch of the remnant of crown sticking up from the detached brim, I fit the brim back over the crown. For various aesthetic and practical reasons, I shouldn't have done this. Next time, I will put the brim under the crown, or match the ends to each other perfectly. Since I did it this way, though, the join is actually visible from beneath the brim, instead of looking less like a hat from a thrift store that got cut apart and tacked back together.Then, I reattached it, a little lower down. This makes the crown shallower, so I can wear it on the top of my head, above my hair. See the difference from the original?After I was sure the height of the crown was correct, I re-attached the fine-quality petersham ribbon around the inside of the crown. Actually, it was only an old piece of elastic. I also used blue thread, because I was too tired by this point to find anything that actually matched. This also made it look less professional.I could've even just put a ribbon around the crown to hide the new join, and left the hat just like this, but eccentricity got the better of me. Balancing non-symmetrical elements is not one of my strongest points, so this was the best I could come up with. I cocked the right side of the hat, and put in the bunch of green feathers and two pheasant feathers. Six pheasant feathers was overkill, or roadkill, or something. It took me over an hour to get the cream ribbon around the brim smooth; since it's on a curve, it kept coming out lumpish and warped, and every time I detached it, I managed to snag it again until I had only a very short bit to work with. I still might change that part, later. When I first planned the hat, I thought I would sew some thinner ribbon around the edge of the brim, but wasn't sure, because of the bias. Sure enough, the bias crumpled it, but fortunately an edging was a bit of an overload in the first place, and it ended up looking much better without.Here's the view from the other side.One more view. I'm not very handy with a camera, and the flash washed out all the other flash-pictures I tried to take, but this one shows what nice colors the feathers really are. The pheasant feathers are my favorite, and the wispy strands of peacock feathers that play with the light.This has been a demonstration of affordable eccentricity. Here are some reviews from family, friends, and innocent bystanders.
"That is the creepiest hat I have ever seen."
"Did you make that? It's... interesting. Not my style."
"Oh, what a cute hat!"
"It's very pretty."
"You look so handsome."
"You are one of the few people I know who might actually go around with a dead rooster on her head." (In answer to my gleeful declaration that I'd wear it even if it looked like I'd electrocuted a rooster and tied it to my head)
"Ok... that is seriously creepy. What kind of creep wears hats like that?"
"You have too many hats."

No, I don't. But I aspire to someday have too many hats. ^_^

Hungarian Christmas Treats, part II

2010-12-25T02:00:00.002-05:00

Here's how to make beigli. I decided to make a web album on Picasa instead of an illustrated step-by-step blog post of unusual size. Here are the ingredients, and a picture of the result. I can make these in about two hours, but before I got good, it used to take me a lot longer.

Pastry:
4 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups butter
2 Tb. sugar
1 package active dry yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water
sour cream or milk as needed
4 egg yolks + 3

For the filling (per roll; pastry makes 3 or 4):
1 can poppy seed filling
1/4 cup white raisins
1 Tb. grated lemon peel, or juice
OR
2 cups ground walnuts
1/2 cup sugar
1 Tb. melted butter
apricot preserves
oven at 375°F

The photo-directions are HERE.
(I like the poppy seed kind best.)

Boldog Karácsonyi Ünnepeket!

Hungarian Christmas Treats, part I

2010-12-24T22:40:00.003-05:00

Every Christmas Eve, we have Hungarian wine soup, and pastry, if one of us got around to baking (and it lasted an hour beyond that). Here's how to make borleves (approximately, "bore levesh").

Ingredients:
4 c. red or white wine
2 c. water
1 stick of cinnamon
8 10 cloves
3 egg yolks
3/4 c. sugar
a bit of lemon peel

Cooking time: 35 minutes

Here's the wine I used. The bottle says California 2009 White Zinfandel. It's pink, though. I guess that's one of those things like red clover really being purple, and likewise with cabbage. See, as soon as I got used to white wine being yellow, someone said it was pink, too. Oh well. It took me a while to gingerly screw the cork out, never having done that before-- but I managed.Put the wine and water in a pot with the lemon, cinnamon, and cloves. Then cover it and let it simmer for half an hour. I was later informed that this should be cooked in an enamel pot, since it's acidic. A lot of the alcohol ends up cooking out of it, so it's not quite as potent as it sounds like it might be. Also, I put in ten cloves, because that was more satisfactory to me than eight. Eight sounds funny because it's such a specifically random number. It's as if the recipe said to me, "Four shalt thou not add, neither shalt thou add seven, excepting that thou then proceed to eight," or something. It distracted me greatly.
When the wine is done simmering, take it off the burner. While it cools, separate the eggs and beat the yolks with the electric mixer to make them fluffy. Then add the sugar, a little bit at a time, so that it acquires the consistency of lava, thick and pasty.Stir the sugared yolk mixture into the wine slowly, a tiny bit at a time. Then move it back on the burner and heat it slightly. Do not let it boil, or all the egg will scramble, and it will be a slimy mess. As you can see from the picture below, the little flecks are egg-- I didn't even let it heat to a simmer, and it still did that. That's my luck when it comes to puddings, custards, and pie fillings. I'm sure if I tried to actually make an egg-drop soup, it would come out clear as tap-water.

Fortunately, my trusty mesh strainer rescued me again, and no one ever knew what it had looked like before.Serve the soup hot, in mugs. You can make it earlier in the day and let it mull in a crock pot, as long as it doesn't boil, and the house will smell wonderful; the soup will also absorb more of the cloves and cinnamon.
This bowl was for serving purposes only. It's probably a bad idea to have that much of it. Also, don't drink and drive; you might spill a drop.

Those festive things in front of the bowl are another Hungarian tradition-- candies wrapped in fringed tissue paper and aluminum foil. They're hung all over our Christmas tree. Some family member who shall not be named figured out how to cleverly extract the candy such that no one would ever suspect it was just a hollow exoskeleton hanging decoratively from a branch.

I'll follow up this post with a longer one detailing the process of baking one of my favorite Hungarian pastries.

Boldog Karácsonyi Ünnepeket!

God Bless Us, Every One!

2010-12-20T16:15:00.003-05:00

Four years ago, I wrote this article for some friends, and am now reposting it for your amusement. It's from the latter years of my drama days, where the highlight of my existence was drafting friends and siblings into madcap garage performances of Shakespeare and other authors whose works I loved. The Sort-Of Shakespearean Players (S.O.S.Players, for short) have especially fond memories of A Christmas Carol; the fuzzy videotape of our production is as necessary a Christmas film to us as The Muppet Christmas Carol and It's A Wonderful Life. I'm posting it as-is, resisting the rabid temptation to edit myself.

~*~

[In 2004], I directed a production of Charles Dickens's beloved story 'A Christmas Carol'. I was fifteen at the time. Over the summer I adapted a script, and recruited a group of my fun-loving friends to perform in it with me. Most of us agreed to play multiple roles in the show, and I myself took on all the left-overs. I stubbornly insisted on designing and constructing all costumes by myself, wanting to be sure that there was nothing anachronistic in the way my actors were dressed.

The rehearsals were highly stressful to the overworking and overpaying director that I was, and I kept a close record of who attended the Saturday morning rehearsals and what excuses the amateur Thespians who'd gone AWOL offered. My notebook is littered with notes concerning absences; I look back at some of the excuses just to make myself laugh:

In the shower
Still asleep
Strawberry picking
Cleaning up a graveyard
Just plain forgot

Fortunately, I could always depend on my sister Victoria, then 12, and my brothers Josh and Johnny, 10 and 6, to be there. They couldn't miss rehearsals if they wanted to.

The rehearsals were full of fun, and we all enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. However, by the last day I was getting decidedly nervous, especially when Ebenezer Scrooge skipped the dress rehearsal because he was feeling decidedly sick to his stomach after strenuous finals at school and was afraid he was coming down with the flu.

The day of the performance dawned brightly, and after prowling around until a proper hour of the morning, I called up Scrooge only to find that he was perfectly all right and never felt better, and I sighed with relief and slumped onto the sofa to bemoan my night of lost sleep.

This was to be a home production; we transformed our large, comfortable living room into a theatre. One doorway led into the kitchen, another into the garage, situated conveniently at stages right and left for easy entrances and exits. We were planning to have one final run-through of the show before the large family dinner we would have before the show, and I was trying to put together a large Victorian bed for Scrooge. This bed was made of PVC pipes and red curtains, originally intended to be a puppet theatre but easily converted into something that resembled an elaborate bed with nice curtains. Unfortunately, I could not get it to stay upright and was getting considerably frustrated with it when my brother Josh, who was ten at the time, sidled up to me.

"Hey Mar," he said.

"Get out of here," I grumbled irritably, trying to stuff one end of a PVC pipe into another.

"Mar, I was just wondering...whether you wanted any lighting for this show."

I looked up from where I was kneeling on the carpet. "Not really, Josh. I just wanted this to be a simple production. Nothing fancy." My brother is a technowhiz-electronics guy, and I had awful visions of my nice little production being overrun with lights, sirens, and fluorescent orange electrical cords.

"Oh, it won't be anything outrageous," Josh promised.

"Ok," I said, just to get rid of him.

The house was really, really quiet for a long time.

When I looked up, Josh had set up a stepladder just off stage, and crowded on and around it was every lamp in the house, with the lampshades reversed to make spotlights, looking for all the world like a garden of giant flowers turning their faces up as if to see the sun through the ceiling. Josh was standing proudly among them, a silly grin on his face, and already dressed in his fat Mr. Fezziwig costume just to pacify me.

I didn't say anything; I was afraid to.

Half an hour later, my troupe of faithful actors began arriving. The final dress rehearsal was- well, if the old actors' adage that "the worse the dress rehearsal is, the better the performance'll be" carried any grain of truth in it, we were destined for Hollywood. I walked around with a smile plastered on my face, trying not to cry. All the months and months of backbreaking work, and we were going to be the laughingstock of the town...

Somehow, we all sat down to dinner; we hadn't taken off our costumes, and "Fred" soon had enchilada sauce splattered all down the front of her white shirt. From there on, things started really going wrong. Somehow, we got all the parents and family members (a considerable crowd of around twenty) seated in the living room, and I herded all the actors off the stage. Then- but you know, I think I'm going to tell this from a different point of view, just so that you can see what really happened...

**************************

The lights go down. Or rather, off; the only way to reduce all spotlights being to unplug the entire extension cord from the wall, producing an effect of a complete blackout. Worried whisperings from the audience. Let us look backstage at the actors for this performance. They are all seated on the kitchen floor, as all the chairs are being occupied by the audience. Nervously looking out of the bed-sheet curtain is Ebenezer Scrooge, an extremely youthful old miser with thick, curly gold hair and blue eyes; the corners of his mouth are twitching as he tries to put a scowl on a face that normally communicates to the average observer that he wouldn't hurt a fly.

Next to him is sitting Bob Cratchit and Mrs. Cratchit, bearing an unusual family resemblance; sitting curled up in Mrs. Cratchit's lap is a little Cratchit daughter, looking very shy and sweet. Right beside them, Tiny Tim is randomly whacking at people with his crutch. Scrooge's good-natured nephew Fred is leaning against the wall in one corner, the enchilada splotch effectively hidden by a very tight, two-dimensional vest splitting at the sides.

A Lady and Gentleman are lounging around in the shadows, and a tall black figure moving suddenly in the darker corner of the kitchen might be recognized as the Ghost of Christmas Future if she would move a little more into the light. Mr. Fezziwig/Gentleman is perched up on the stepladder, ready to plug in the lights again. A small Lady and rather mischievous looking Little Scrooge are whispering in the opposite corner; Belle and Young Scrooge are sitting boredly by.

Ah, yes- not to forget the director. Her long hair is folded, tucked under, and pinned in a manner which not only makes it appear delusively short, but sticks out around her head giving her a rather odd, lumpy appearance. Long chains from a broken swingset dangle from her arms and neck, jingling loudly to make the only sound in the quiet House. She moves forward now and pushes Scrooge and Bob Cratchit out onto the dark stage, tripping over the properties and trying to orient themselves in the dark.

The lights come on suddenly.

Enter Fred, a smiling Fred unusual in this show for the only person wearing a genuine silk top hat.

"A Merry Christmas to you, Uncle!"

"Bah, humbug."

Poor Fred stumbles on a line but pulls through it heroically; she is one of the only ones who has completely memorized her lines for the show. Scrooge can be seen stealthily referring to a small blue notebook on his desk. His voice is husky, but he vehemently repeats his signature line with relish, trying not to smile each time.

Exit Fred. Enter a Lady and Gentleman; the Lady is at least two heads taller than the Gentleman. They ask if Scrooge would like to contribute to a fund to "buy the poor some meat and drink and means of warmth," and when that is refused, they look at each other and exit timidly. A church-bell strikes six o'clock, a bell whose sound strangely resembles that of a tin pan being beaten with a wooden spoon; but we must dismiss these outrageous fancies and concentrate on the scene before us. Bob Cratchit has risen from his nondescript desk and is putting on a ragged plaid coat and equally shabby gray top hat, a hat that appears to be made of strips of construction paper stapled together. It is obvious from his attire that he is not rich. The spotlight jumps to him and he flinches and puts a hand before his eyes. The directress can be heard shouting offstage to Mr. Fezziwig, who pokes his head out of the curtains and wiggles his eyebrows at the audience from on top of the stepladder. The lighting adjusted, Mr. Cratchit begs to have Christmas Day off from work, and when his employer grudgingly agrees, the scene blacks out in the midst of thunderous applause from the wings and gallery.

Scene two opens in darkness; by squinting hard the tall, straight figure of Ebenezer Scrooge can be seen sitting in an armchair before his bed. He is wearing a purple-and-blue-striped bathrobe and trying to look at his script in the dark. For this scene, he had been supposed to wear a nice white nightcap with the old grimy strings of a mop attached, to make it appear as if he has gray hair, but he has somehow conveniently lost this in the jumble of other stage properties. It will not appear in this show.

Scrooge looks worriedly offstage; the tin pan strikes midnight and a rattling of chains can be heard coming from somewhere behind his bed. Enter Marley's Ghost, rattling her chains, and brushing up against the solid-looking bed manages to send the whole flimsy structure of PVC pipes and nylon crashing on top of Ebenezer Scrooge. Some slight confusion ensues, and in the obscurity they manage to right it quickly and proceed with the scene. Marley strikes a pose and an eerie blue spotlight comes on suddenly; the change of color being effected by a clear plastic plate held in front of the lamp by the ever-obliging Mr. Fezziwig.

Marley is the only one who knows herself to be capable of memorizing any number of lines; therefore in writing the script she has not omitted a single one of that character's speeches, and the audience wonders how so airy a spirit can be such a windbag. The rather Shakespearean Ghost exits, and almost immediately the striking of the pan is heard again.

Enter the Ghost of Christmas Past, bearing a singular resemblance to the tall Charitable Lady of Scene One, dressed in filmy white gauze and bathed in white light. A look of overdone shock comes over Scrooge's face, and he takes the Spirit's hand as she leads him to a little desk on stage right. The spotlight shifts to a small boy sitting at the desk, of rather a mischievous countenance, whom Scrooge immediately identifies as himself in days gone by. The boy tries to seem dejected; enter his little sister Fan, who comes up to him and expresses a desire to take him home. (This same young lady has been rather long in entering, as a result of her wire-hanger hoopskirts getting stuck between the doorway and the stepladder, and her oatmeal-can bonnet sliding off her blonde head). The boy jumps up like a jack-in-the-box, and with an explosive "Home, dear sister?!" seems just as happy as any other boy would be at the prospect of going home on Christmas instead of staying at school.

Scrooge reaches out a hand to touch the boy, but the Spirit admonishes him not to do so, as these are but shadows of the past and have no consciousness of them. Scrooge obstinately does so, and finds that perhaps the boy is not so shadowy as the Spirit asserts, as with a loud "hey!" he exits the stage with Fan.

The lights snap off, and there is some confusion again. The lights snap on again, to normal lighting now, revealing an older Scrooge sitting at a card table counting pennies; she is wearing a tight tan corduroy vest that is much too short, and a black cardboard top hat which strangely contradicts its name by lacking a top. It slides over her face and Dick Wilkins, her friend, catches and rights it; this same Dick looking very much like the windbag ghost of the previous scene.

Enter a short Mr. Fezziwig, with a pillow in his shirt, who has with reluctance descended the brilliant stepladder. Dick Wilkins notices with chagrin that Mr. Fezziwig is not wearing any shoes. Mr. Fezziwig invites everyone to a large Christmas party, and the stage is instantly in a turmoil as the money is swept off the card table and replaced with a bag of apples and a pyramid of empty plastic cups. Mr. Fezziwig disappears offstage to adjust the lighting, and Dick Wilkins stoops to press the play button on a device that appears rather modern considering this takes place in the nineteenth century. Instantly music from The Nutcracker blares out, and guests begin arriving; some of them stand in a circle drinking and laughing, and others attempt to dance; Dick Wilkins dances with Fan, with a height difference of at least four feet between them, considering Dick's hat. Mr. Fezziwig hovers around with a benevolent grin on his face; his hat several times either loses its brim or its crown, and can be seen on his head in various states of decay; he finally casts it aside, flinging it behind him where it knocks over the pyramid of cups.

Exit the guests, with the exception of the Young Scrooge and Belle who immediately strike poses in center stage and burst out laughing. This is one of the most highly tragic scenes in the play; what is more heartbreaking than the failure of young love? Belle seems most bent on casting off this undesirable boyfriend, and reads her speech off some cue cards which have unfortunately been shuffled quite bewilderingly. She wanders about the stage squinting at the little cards until she steps on one corner of her sweeping dress, revealing the hoopskirts- a framework made of grapevines- underneath. Finally, managing to find the correct line, she tells poor Ebenezer sadly, but with a smile on her face, that she cannot accept him, and that when they had become engaged, he had been a different man. Ebenezer declares, "I was a boy," much to the amusement of the audience, and bursts out laughing herself. A grim Dick Wilkins can be seen surveying the scene from on top of the stepladder, shaking her head sorrowfully and prompting the two ex-lovers in their tragic rejections.

Somehow, amid the roars of the audience, that scene ends.

"Show me no more, Spirit, show me no more!" Scrooge implores, covering his face and shaking with either tears or laughter, most likely the latter but possibly both. The Ghost of Christmas Past insists that she must show Scrooge one more scene. Enter Belle again, this time with Marley's Ghost/Dick Wilkins, who now appears as her husband. The Husband remarks sadly that Scrooge is a lonely man, and then the lights go out.

The striking of the tin pan announces the coming of the Ghost of Christmas Present, in a teal bathrobe, a giant jingle bell around her neck, and a wreath of poinsettias in her strawberry blonde hair. She seems to have recovered sufficiently from being rejected in the former scene, and looks very happy and jolly indeed.

To Scrooge's surprise, she leads him to the Cratchit residence, where a flustered Mrs. C is welcoming home her daughter and setting the table. Enter Mr. C and Tiny Tim, who seat themselves at the table and, after a short grace, begin a very simple meal of pita bread and water.

Marley/DickWilkins/Husband, watching from offstage, watches this scene with the utmost satisfaction. Of all the people in the play, the Cratchits do their scene to perfection, and the way the little family huddles together eating their flat, meagre fare is very touching to behold. They have all memorized their lines, and this scene becomes one of the most special in the play. It is only marred by a certain young Peter Cratchit, looking like a thinner version of Mr. Fezziwig, who slurps all of his water out of his cup and flings it behind his back, causing Scrooge's bed to totter precariously once more. Holding up his crutch, Tiny Tim says, "God Bless us, every one!"to the delight of the audience, and the Ghost of Christmas Present turns on Scrooge, reminding him that it might be a good idea to reduce this surplus population. As if taking these words to heart, the Cratchits vanish from the stage.

The scene shifts to Fred's house; his Wife, a Lady, and two Gentlemen are with him. They have a dance, which turns out rather longer than the First Gentleman remembered from the dress rehearsal, and when the song ends, they all sit down dizzily to play twenty questions. Guessing from the clues that the gruff, unkind, London-dwelling animal is none other than Uncle Scrooge, the Wife wins the game. After proposing a toast, the good-natured nephew brings the scene to a close.

The Ghost of Christmas Present, after a little chat with Scrooge, exits the stage. The tin pan strikes again, and in a red light, the spooky Ghost of Christmas Future enters. This tall personage could not be persuaded to memorize any lines, and only with reluctance appeared on stage at all, but agreed to this role in which she only had to point her finger at various actors and properties. She is covered from head to foot in black drapery- old skirts, a blanket, some netting, and a dress- and on one hand wears a black glove with a skeleton's hand on it; a very dramatic effect when it comes to pointing at people and things. Scrooge, strangely enough, does not appear very frightened by this ghastly specter; perhaps he is used to them by the third round or perhaps again it is merely an effect of the infernal lighting.

In a monologue which is rather hard to read in the obscurity, and in answer to which the Ghost only points its skeletal hand randomly at the walls, floor, and ceiling, Scrooge finds himself at the Cratchits' house, where once again that family does a phenomenal job. The Cratchits, sans Tiny Tim, live their parts with a touching reality, and the audience is perfectly silent. The melancholy blue light goes down, and comes up again on two Gentlemen. One of them is our Marley/Dick/Husband/FirstGentleman who now appears as the Third Gentleman. The Fourth Gentleman is a broom with a smiley-face frisbee stuck to its head, wearing Fred's top hat and the remnants of someone else's costume. The two gentlemen begin to talk to each other, the one putting words into the other's mouth. (This was actually the continuation of a tradition from my production of The Comedy of Errors the year before- so many people were missing at the performance that I dressed up a broom as one of the characters and read its lines; it was so hilarious that we decided to do it again the next year and I "ventriloquated" the lines into the Broom's mouth.)

Scrooge gathers from this dialogue that someone has died, and that no one cares very much about it at all. The lights go down and come up again on two Rag-Women and Marley/Dick/Husband/FirstGentleman/ThirdGentleman, which last now appears as a plain old Man with a decided Cockney accent. They proceed to rummage through a sack of Scrooge's laundry and bed-curtains; the latter are not mentioned without a sidelong look at the rickety PVC structure to see if it still holds firm.

The lights go down again and the dark Ghost of Christmas Future points at a tombstone propped up on a chair, on which he reads his name from the script. He falls on his knees before the Ghost, pleading most eloquently to restore to him his life and that he will be a nice person again. The Ghost points at the tombstone yet again, almost as if she does not see Scrooge; perhaps she doesn't, for even if the black drapery had been pulled away from her face, there is still the blue cover of the script between his face and hers.

At this point the lights begin flashing dizzily from red to blue, to portray the inner turmoil in Ebenezer Scrooge's mind; much to the dismay of Marley/Dick/Husband/FirstGentleman/ThirdGentleman/CockneyAccentMan and the delight of the audience, Mr. Fezziwig wails out an imitation of a police siren and bangs on the tin pan as the Ghost of Christmas Future disappears.

Finally, all the lights are turned back on, albeit with some slight confusion about finding the extension cord in the dark. It is plugged in, and the forest of lamps turn their faces on Scrooge, who finds himself back in his bedroom and bursts into raptures of joy. He expresses this by kissing the armchair and bed, which last comes very near to tumbling onto his head again. A small, mischievous boy walks across the stage with hands in pockets; Scrooge accosts him and asks what day it is. The boy tells him loudly that it is Christmas Day, and Scrooge sends him to buy a prize turkey for the Cratchits.

"I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future! The spirits of all three shall strive within me! And as Tiny Tim says, God Bless Us Every One!"

The play ends. A rather disordered curtain call ensues; the audience gives a standing ovation, and all the characters bow and bow again. The small boy throws a fake turkey into the audience to see their reaction.

The play is a success.

Fortunately, no encore is called.

**********************************

I love to watch the video of this show with my friends. I know that even when we're all a hundred years old, we're always going to remember this very special performance. We all had such a good time at rehearsals and at the performance, and we still call each other by our "stage names." It was far from perfect, but somehow even in its imperfection it was an endearing, memorable performance, and I wouldn't change a bit of it- its quirkiness made it all the more lovable. I will always remember that Christmas Past, and I have a feeling that I haven't seen the last of directing and performing in that show- I will definitely make it a part of my Christmases Future. And in this Christmas Present, may God Bless Us Every One!

~*~

Merry Christmas, my dears. ^_^

Nature (being a book written 15 years ago)

2010-12-10T19:25:00.002-05:00

Here is an informational science book I wrote when I was six.
MT. EVREST IS ThE TALLEST MOUNTAIN IN ThE WORLD MT. SINI IS A BIBLE MOUNTAIN MT. MICHL IS A hIh PEAK
[Mt. Everest is the tallest mountain in the world. Mt. Sinai is a Bible mountain. Mt. Mitchell is a high peak.]WILLO tREES HAVE mASCETOS BRANChES HANG LOW BRADFRT PARS HAVE FLOWERS BUT ThER SMELY
[Willow trees have mosquitoes. Branches hang low. Bradfort Pears have flowers, but they're smelly.]GOLD FISh LIVE IN SEAS ThEY LOOK GOLD SO ThRE GOLD FISh
[Goldfish life in seas. They look gold, so they're goldfish.]
ROCKS ARE CRESTALS ShELS ARE MINRALS ROCKS ARE DIFRINT
[Rocks are crystals. Shells are minerals. Rocks are different.]WATR CAN HAVE LIFE TO LIKE FISh AND SEA WEED AND ROCKS AND SAND
[Water can have life, too. Like fish and sea weed and rocks and sand.]ROSES HAVE ThORNS DASIYS HAVE POKY MIDlS PANSYS HAVE LOTS OF LAEFS
[Roses have thorns. Daisies have pokey middles. Pansies have lots of leaves.]SAND IS A MISTRY You FIND ShELS AND ROCKS You BILD SAND CASLS
[Sand is a mystery. You find shells and rocks. You build sand castles.]

Mt. Mitchell must've been the only mountain in America whose name I knew. I'm not sure what I meant by saying rocks were different. Or that rocks and sand are alive, for that matter. I wasn't sure exactly what sand was, though, so like a good little scientist I admitted it was a mystery, rather than make something up.

I Take Notes, Part IV

2010-12-03T14:20:00.002-05:00

Part four in a series.

Hispanic Civilization, Profesor C. Imagine a very small, soft-spoken Chilean man, with thin iron-grey hair combed over his head, and a mustache and goatee. He always wears khaki or olive pants and tan, olive, drab, or grey sweater-vests. He invariably enters the classroom carefully carrying coffee in a mug with a picture of a motorcycle on it. His favorite movie is The Motorcycle Diaries.

A sample of his very long lectures:
"Ehm...eh...ya know- it's a llama! Eh...it lives in, ya know, en Chile, y, eh, entonces... it is very, ehm, important to the economy, ya know, there en...en Chile."

*

On the Conquistadors and the Incas:
"They tried to consolidate the villages, and this created a cocktail of germs."

*

"Now, you ask what is a Gaucho- well, you did not ask, but I know, someone thought it."

*

On the Gauchos, with their rugged and otherwise uncivilized habits:
"Their skills did not make them... very accepted in society."

*

On the tendency of Gauchos to disaccept the law:
"They didn't like it when the Gauchos burned the countryside and drove the cattle away and killed them with bolos- and ate them."

*

To a tardy student:
"Oh, yes, come on in- this is just like Kinko's."

*

"They had to build a fence, or else, ya know, the cattle would, ehm, run away."

*

The class wasn't overly enthusiastic, either. It was 70% male, and lunch hour.
"Can anyone define hegemony? Hegemonic?"
*after a long pause*
student, with complacent helpfulness: "I believe it's a made-up word."
"It means dominance."
"And we couldn't just say... dominance?"

*

"I used to have a motorcycle. But my wife, she sold it, said it was too dangerous. So a few weeks ago I went to a course to ride, you know, dirt bikes? I fell in the mud, hurt my back. So, eheh, these kids, they all want to know why a grandpa is trying to ride the bike."

*

Due to the Profesor's soothing accent, I have only these quotes and a few pages of indecipherable notes.

***
More from Professor B, macroeconomics. There were a lot of other funny things he said, but mainly because of his thick Scottish accent- so they mightn't seem funny if I posted them here.

"I watch economists on tv, and you can almost see the demand and supply curves behind their eyes."

*

"So, Kool-Aid is $0.20- it used to be $0.12. So you're not going to buy 18 packets."
"I'm not?"

*

"So in that case, what do we do? Buy less coke. -This is coca-cola we're talking about."

*

"One of the most soul-destroyin' things to do is work for a textbook publisher. You write thousands of questions and get paid five dollars."

*

A student asks,
"So, what should I invest in? I mean, I'm asking you this personally. What would you suggest?"
"The best thing that a young person could invest in? $300 for an hour in Professor B's office for a consultation."

*

"So, put your names and email addresses down on the sign-up sheet for the Study-Budy-List. Also, put down what times you're available to study. Do not write down 'Any Time' unless you really are available at any time. Because if you do, be prepared to get a phone call at one in the morning and hear, 'Hey, huh-huh, want to study economics? Production possibility frontiers? Huh-huh.' Because it will probably be me."

*

"And on the index card, I want you to write-"
"Wait! Which side of the index card?"
"I want you to write it not on the front or the back, but on the little edge of it right there. No. Either side is fine. You guys are really neurotic, today."

*

"You've been trained to know things, whether you know them or not. You've been trained to bs. Sometimes the answer is, 'I don't know.'"

*

"When you get your exam back, it will have a face on it. It might be a happy face, like this-- :) Or it might be an implacable, noncomittal face, like this-- : Now, the face you don't want to see is this one-- :( And if you get this one, that looks like this-- :`( See, he's crying. He's in despair. Come to my office."

*

"You can bring a calculator for the exam; doesn't matter if it's scientific or graphing. Any kind. Except a human calculator that's trained in economics."

*

Two guys talking before class:
"When I was little, we didn't have the internet at home. I had to walk to the library to get it."
"Uphill both ways?"
"Yeah."
"But how did you know that without google maps?"

*

"Please put your information down on this paper if you're planning to graduate or transfer or escape from this place some way or another."

*

When his thick accent makes words or phrases unrecognizable:
"There. I've written it down and translated it into American for you."

*

About me:
"I chose her because she looks so intelligent. I expected a good answer."
(...sorry, Prof. $7000 out of $20,000 is an awful lot to invest. But I really believed in my imaginary venture. I had the entire scenario planned out in my head. Really.)

*

"You can choose any country for your project. Even a tiny little tinpot rubbishy little country like Greece."

*

"Keynes spent ten years explaining his theories, and then he dropped dead."

*

"Required reserve ratio is abbreviated RRR, but it sounds really stupid when you say it. Like a seal."

*

"So you finally decide you're going to spend your hundred dollars. You lift up the mattress and take it out, Benjamin Franklin blinks in the bright light..."

*

Close to finals, a student asks,
"Can you please repeat that?"
"Aggregate price levels."
"No, from the beginning."
"Good morning, welcome to Macroeconomics 251, we're going to have fun this semester-"

***
British Literature II, Professor C. A small, thin man, with thin grey hair, a big nose, and bright little eyes. He always wears khaki pants and a drab sweater over a polo shirt, except on St. Patrick's day, when he wears orange. He has a rather high-pitched voice, and when he needs voices for characters when reading he gives them squeaky voices. The first semester we were suspicious of each other, the second semester it was all-out war, and the third semester we decided we liked arguing.

Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss...
"It's easy to be bold when you're stuck on the outside of an urn."

*

"Ok, look at the third paragraph, second line. In case anyone doesn't know what a letter is, that's when in the old days people would write with a pen on a piece of paper and fold it up and put it in the mail. The person who received it would respond in sometimes three days, a week, a month, never..."

*

"And that, that is something we all strive for. -Not to be drunk, but to have dignity."

*

A concerned student asks,
"But doesn't Frankenstein put clothes on his monster?"
"He's a scientist. He's not playing with dolls!"

*

While drawing what could be an inverted toilet plunger on the markerboard:
"And this is South America- Oh, [Professor M of Western Civ] would be horrified! He's always telling me, 'They don't know where bloody anything is!'"

*

a note that I slipped under his door on 1 April:
KURTZ IS ALIVE

Seven Great Future Movies

2010-11-05T23:35:00.003-04:00

During a conversation with a friend earlier this week, I mentioned two or three books that I think would naturally make wonderful movies, and later called to mind a few more. Each would present unique challenges to the filmmakers with regard to things like historical accuracy, special effects, and quality appropriate actors (as in, people with real acting ability), in order to remain faithful to the books.

They all feature tight, well-paced, gripping plots, original and enjoyable characters who develop inspiringly as the stories progress, interesting settings, and marvelous denouements and endings.

So, in no particular order:

1. Rifles for Watie
Harold Keith
This young adult historical fiction about the American Civil War was published in 1957. The author did extensive research for years beforehand which involved talking with actual veterans and visiting the places he planned to write about. It takes place in the western theater of the war, shifting the focus away from the better-known eastern theater battles like Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg. The protagonist, a young man from Kansas Territory named Jefferson Davis Bussey, joins the Union Army at the beginning of the war. Initially mature but innocent and eager, Jeff's sincerity and love of justice are honed to fuller maturity and true manhood by his experiences in the war-- but this is so deftly woven into the plot that it could never be mistaken for a trite coming-of-age story.

(Has anyone else noticed that coming-of-age stories tend to be more about children becoming teenagers, as opposed to children becoming adults?)

Right from the start, Jeff meets good and bad people on both sides of the war and realizes that "the enemy" can't always be defined as "people on the other side"-- especially when he is chosen for a special mission to go undercover as a Confederate soldier. Other characters include the beautiful "rebel to the backbone" Lucy Washbourne, a spirited young Cherokee woman; Jeff's despicable commanding officer Asa Clardy; Heifer Hobbs, the deformed, nurturing cook of a Confederate cavalry unit; Jeff's fellow soldiers on both sides of the war; and several actual historical figures.

Rifles for Watie shows the ugliness and sadness of war without demonizing the courageous people who fight to defend their countries-- as opposed to so many of the movies made these days that are only too willing to settle for pacifism and condemn the armed forces.

2. The Princess and the Goblin
George McDonald
I think this would make an amazing live-action film (or maybe even stop-motion claymation). Great care would have to be taken to preserve the symbolism and not let the whole thing get psychedelically weird in places. With all the (mostly bad, or good gone bad) fantasy films coming out these days, it would be nice to see something with an actual meaning.

3. A Wrinkle in Time
Madeleine L'Engle
I almost hesitate to list this one. It inspired much of my current writing today, and I have such vivid mental images of the Murrys and their house and actually everything in the entire book, that it would probably end up difficult for me to see. However, if a film director could give a faithful interpretation of the book, I might be able to enjoy it. The 2003 Disney one was abysmally bad (and I've only seen parts of it). Meg needs to look unattractive. Calvin needs red hair and freckles. Charles Wallace needs to be the polar opposite of the kid who played Anikin in Episode I. You know, maybe I'll just have to direct this one myself, someday. I'm almost as protective of it as I am of my own books. Still, I think that it does have the potential to make a really good movie.

4. When My Name was Keoko
Linda Sue Park
I read this one recently and really enjoyed it. It takes place in WWII Korea during the Japanese occupation, and is told alternately through the eyes of Sun Hee and Tae Yul, a young girl and her brother. Forced to change their names and forbidden to speak anything but Japanese, the Kim family struggles to retain their Korean traditions and identity in secret, but involvement with the resistance puts them in even greater danger. A variation on one of my favorite plot devices occurs at one point in the book. It is full of simple but poignant scenes of everyday life during wartime that would translate well to the screen, with just the right balance of realistic adventure and meditative showing (not telling). Also, little Korean kids are really cute.

5. The Singing Tree
Kate Seredy
This is the Newberry Honor sequel to the Newberry Medal winner The Good Master. It takes place on a ranch on the Hungarian plains during WWI. Every single time I read this book, I cry-- it is so moving and so powerful. I've never attempted to read it aloud. The title refers to a story that one character tells of traveling through a war zone in which everything was destroyed by bombs except one tree, on the branches of which sit all the birds that survived, both predator and prey, resting together and singing at the rising of the sun. This is an apt metaphor for the Catholic Nagy family, whose home becomes a refuge for many as the war progresses. Young Jancsi Nagy and his cousin and best friend Kate are fun-loving youngsters who come to accept adult responsibilities when the Great War turns everything upside-down.

In spite of the darkness of the premise and the sadness just outside the loving boundaries of the Nagy ranch, I'm not sure if I'd call The Singing Tree a sad book. Its portrayal of faith is immensely uplifting, as are its characters-- a beautiful family with a loving marriage between a strong and kind husband and a nurturing and capable wife. Positive pictures of manhood and womanhood are always so enjoyable. While I wouldn't call it a sad book, I wouldn't put it in the "heartwarming" category, either-- it is devoid of saccharine sentimentality, and too full of real thoughts and feelings to ever be reduced to just a "cute family movie." (The costumes would also be spectacular, especially during the wedding at the beginning, and I hope there would be gratuitous shots of Hungarian sausages hanging from rafters. In every scene.)

6. Johnny Tremain
by Esther Forbes
I have read this book so many times that I can't even remember how many it's been, and I don't think I could ever get tired of it. Everything about it is so fresh and colorful-- the characters and every detail of their world are realized to perfection, and the join between fiction and fact, the invented characters and the historical ones, is seamless. The high drama of the setting-- Boston, in the 1770s-- lends itself naturally to the screen, and familiar events such as the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere's Ride, and the Battle of Lexington are interspersed with the more personal dramas of a young boy and his life.

Johnny himself begins as a cocksure, arrogant apprentice to a silversmith, but when an accident leaves him with a deformed hand, his eyes are slowly opened not only to his own internal changing, but to the changing of the times around him.

The characters are so clear-cut and so memorable that it would take very carefully-selected actors to capture their essence. The cool and perceptive but never-surrendering Rab Silsbee is one of my favorite characters in children's literature, and he along with Johnny, Cilla Lapham, Lavinia Lyte, and a host of historical figures from Paul Revere to John Hancock, have been so carefully described physically and characteristically that it would be both very difficult (reading the book) and very easy (ignoring it) for a director to get them wrong.
I have, unfortunately, seen the butchered rendition that Disney made of this in '57. Don't watch it unless you need a good laugh-- although what's been done to it is more depressing than amusing. Maybe if you need a good cynical laugh. And those songs... oh, those songs...

7. Journey to the Center of the Earth
Jules Verne
Here is where I rant.
Is it really that hard to follow a book? Seriously? I understand when attempts are made to adapt a book to the screen that does not lend itself well to adaptation either because of a disjointed storyline or other valid reasons, and some things must be changed a little. But the one and only thing that I could maybe justify changing in a film adaptation of Verne's original adventure story is making the account of the travels to and through Iceland slightly shorter.

What needs changing? Certainly not the characters. Axel is a fine protagonist that I liked immediately, with his thoughtful and studious personality, love of organizing collections, and good common sense, as well as his further responses to adventure. Professor Liedenbrock's eccentricity and enthusiasm make it easy to grow fond of him the same way Axel does, and Hans' perpetually passive stoicism balances out the mineralogist and his nephew. I see no sense in trying to "improve" on any of the characters or make them more "accessible" as past versions have by giving the Professor a love interest, or reducing Axel to a prepubescent boy (who is subsequently attracted to women ten years or more older). I won't even get into how much I hate it when women go along for the journey-- that's another can of worms. This is about a deep (get it?) love of science and discovery, not about distractingly clad love interests.

The plot doesn't need changing, either. Not every scene is a fast-paced action scene, nor does it need to be. They do not need to be attacked by Tyrannosaurus rexes. That's from a different movie. It's called Jurassic Park. It's not as good as Journey to the Center of the Earth. The only dinosaur-like creatures in the book are aquatic and seen from a distance. They also do not need to discover the lost city of Atlantis at the center of the earth. Hans does not need a pet goose that gets tragically murdered. They do not need to be pursued by rival scientists or goons. They do not need any adventures "greater" than the ones that Verne gives them. The world also does not need a steampunk version, in case any filmmaker is reading this and suddenly thought that might be a good idea. The plot is just fine the way it is, and so is the ending.

It makes me wonder if anyone bothers to read books before filming them, anymore.

Anyway-- I would love to see some of these books made into well-researched and faithful movies.

(On another note-- is it too much to ask for a version of The Last of the Mohicans in which the proper characters die in the proper ways? I can't feel sorry for David Gamut randomly getting shot, or fathom Alice jumping off a cliff. It discombobulates me.)

The Holy Bible and The Rotten Potato Book

2010-10-23T16:34:00.010-04:00

Last year, my sister and I came across two big boxes in the attic packed full of the artwork we'd done as kids. Among the pictures of flowers, the Holy Family, and each other, I found the long-lost books I had written at the ages of 5 and 6. These books ranged from one end of my spectrum of interests to the other, including religion, science, poetry, day-to-day life, fiction, and absurd observational humor. I was always writing and illustrating; my dad would bring home enormous stacks of stripedy paper that the computers at work spit out, and my sister and I drew all over the blank sides.

I know I've told some of you about these books already, but this is the first time any of the original illustrations have been open to view. Today, in a special edition post, you can read two of them. After this, I'll only show one at a time.

So, without further ado, I give you The Holy Bible and The Rotten Potato Book.
~*~*~*~
The Holy Bible
JESUS CALMS ThE STORM
JESUS HAD BEN TEChING BY ThE SEA WENE ThEY HAD TECAT A LONG TIM JESUS SAID LET US GO TO ThE OThR SID oF ThE SEA AFTR A LONG TIM A StORM CAME PIACE BE STILL
[Jesus had been teaching by the sea. When they had taught a long time, Jesus said, "Let us go to the other side of the sea." After a long time, a storm came. "Peace. Be still."]
All my people had three fingers, until I was about ten. Then I realized that people generally have more than three fingers. Note that Jesus' lone disciple there doesn't look too fazed by the weather.
SACEUS
SACEUS WAS A tAx COLECTOR ONE DAY JESUS CAME SACEUS WAS TO SMAL TO SEE SO HE CLIMND IN A TREE JESUS CAME AND
This one's unfinished. Maybe I figured everyone knew what happened next. Also, Zaccheus is very obviously a gecko. How else could he stick to the side of a tree stump?
FIRST ESTAR
AFTR JESUS DEIAD ON thE CROS HE WAS BIRID IN A TOMB IN thRE DAYS HE ROSE ThAt WAS ThE FRIST ESTAR!
That guard on the left looks a little worried at the gigantic guy in orange long-johns hovering over a very small tomb and smiling menacingly. I think that the bumblebee suits were supposed to be lorica segmentata, hence the stripes.
ABRHAM AND LOT
ABRHAM WAS PAKING HE tooK HIS NEPHEW LOT WITh HIM THEY RODE CAMLS AWAY FROM HOME
I'm not sure why I drew a bactrian camel, as opposed to a dromedary. I love the implication that Abraham packed his nephew. And I didn't know camels could get dropsy.
JESUS ENTRS JURUSLUM
JESUS RODE A DONKY to thE TEMPL PEPLE WELCOMD JESUS AND ShOtED HOSANA
Not a donkey- a WILDEBEEST. Jesus very obviously rode a wildebeest into Jerusalem. Or maybe the wildebeest's name was Hosana, and the people of Jeruslum shot it. I can't say I blame them. But they welcomed Jesus, naturally. The worst thing is, if I tried to draw a donkey today, it'd still look like a wildebeest.

~*~*~*~
Now, in a slight departure from spirituality, I bring you the true story of:
ThE ROTIN POTATO BOOK
The cover of this one is a little faded, so I'll omit it.
VEGETABLS ROTE TO IN FACT TODAY MOM FOND ROTIN POTATOS IN ThE CLOSET
[Vegetables rot, too. In fact, today Mom found rotten potatoes in the closet.]
WhEN VEGIS ROtE thEY SMEL
ROTIN VEGIS CAN GET SMLYR AND SMELYR YOU WILL GET SICE FROM thE SMEL
SOMTIMS VEGIS CAN GROW MOLD
The last page is also too faded to show up well in a picture, but it proclaims emphatically,
ROTIN VEGIS STINK!

~*~*~*~

Have I changed much, my dears?

I take notes, part III

2010-08-28T00:35:00.002-04:00

Here's the next round of Professor Quotes, mostly leftover from last semester. There may be a couple repeats in the history section, but- I'm sure no one will mind.

***

The great Professor M., Western Civ I and II. He retired. I'm tragified. Every time I walk by his empty office, I try to imagine him traveling around the world making waspish comments, and it makes me feel a little better.

*

"Shut your book and listen. And take notes. Don't even bring your books to class. This is not grade-school. There aren't pictures to color in there, anymore."

*

"No leaving the classroom to go to the bathroom. I'm an old man. If I can hold it for an hour and fifteen, so can you. Most of the time you don't really have to go to the bathroom. You have to answer a call from your girlfriend or your drug dealer or someone."

*

"So, I've had a few people ask what year we're starting this course from. We're going by a timeline rather than specific dates. So no more, 'Do we study from what, year zero?'"

*

On the importance of the discoveries in the Iron Age:
"I mean, just think of the importance of these discoveries. We use roughly the same techniques to smelt iron ore, today. Think about it. What are our tanks made of- paper?"
"Actually, a lot of stuff gets made out of plastic, these days."
"I haven't heard of plastic internal combustion engines, and I wouldn't want one in my vehicle."

*

"So, what kind of natural resources did the ancient Mesopotamians and their surrounding neighbors have? I do not want to hear anyone say oil."

*

Chariot wheels were revolutionary in that they had spokes and were lightweight, as opposed to circles cut out of wood. He was trying to get us to guess this.
"What would the wheels need to be like?"
"Round?"
-.-

*

"So, the Hyksos attacked Egypt around 1650 B.C. and established an elite military aristocracy. Do they throw out priests and useful people? No. Only communists are that stupid."

*

"Now, I'm not going to ask you to memorize dates, generally speaking. There will be one or two. I do want you to remember general time frames, though, without getting bogged down. I do not want to hear, 'They're only 500 years apart!' That's like Christopher Columbus sailing across the ocean and introducing himeself to Bill Clinton!"

*

"While this ancient culture on Crete is fascinating, no one can decipher their writing. This creates problems even about naming them. Archaeologists call them the Minoans. We have no bloody idea what they called themselves."
"Cretins?"

*

"Now, Crete has a very different environment than Egypt and Mesopotamia. The island is about 2/3 mountains. It's easier to trade for grown food. There are, though, two things that they did have an abundance of."
"Christmas trees?" "Goats?"
"Grapes and olives, which were considered exotic. Exotic in the sense that you can't live totally off wine and olive oil."

*

"If you haven't looked at the clarifications of the definitions I posted online, you might want to do so before... December."

*

"Most people don't learn from anybody's mistakes, including their own."

*

"In 336, someone murdered Philip of Macedonia. Some Hollywood experts suggest Angelina Jolie did it."

*

handing back an exam:
"Some people didn't realize England is an island. Sometimes I wonder- is anything getting through?!"

*

"So, how do you keep a palaceful of aristocrats happy? You give them special privileges. You allow them to give you your shirt in the morning when you get dressed. You allow some of them to be in your presence. Or sit in your presence. On a stool, or a chair with a back, or a chair with a back and arms. -You think that's funny? You're exactly the same way. People these days will do anything for status. Who the hell is Tommy Hilfiger? I bet his shirts are made out of the same stuff, maybe at the same factories, as the ones that say Family Dollar Store. Or Ralph Lauren. His name used to be Ralph Lifshitz. Why doesn't he put that on his shirts? You think I'm making it up? The last class did. I'm not. Go look it up yourself. People will do anything these days for status."

*

while sketching a rough model of the solar system, a student asked,
"Will we have to know this for the test?"
"Well, if you don't know if Saturn or the Moon is closer to the Earth..."

*

"If your head was the size of a planet, and I threw this marker at it, the marker would fall under the forces of gravity exerted by your head. No offense, but your head doesn't have much mass."

*

on the development of constitutions:
"Obviously, no one would sign a contract that says, 'Make me a slave!' Well, maybe a few kinky people- but we're not talking about them."

*

on the paying of debts:
"But that's the way our country operates. Maybe the money will come from the moon!"

*

on mercantilism:
"Imagine what would happen if we didn't allow imports. What would I be driving? A Chevy Vega? A Ford Pinto with an exploding gas tank?"

*

"--I don't know why I'm writing PETER on the board. You should know how to spell it."

*

"Louis XVI was not a mean tyrant- he was a famously nice person. Not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Not interested in politics. He really liked hunting and locksmithing. He would've happily spent his life killing animals and picking locks."

*

"You're not ignorant peasants, but you behave surprisingly like them sometimes."

*

"So, how did the aristocrats try to control the peasants?"
"By sending soldiers after them?"
"No. We're talking about all of France, here. That's like trying to kill mosquitoes with your car!"

*

"Now, by fraternity they didn't mean Greek organizations on college campuses."

*

"When the Habsburgs weren't fighting, they would intermarry."

*

"You don't just replace a king like a lightbulb."

*

"So, the Church was often a target of the enlightenment. The Church, they thought, got in the way of 'equality.' So they came up with something that they called the Church of the Supreme Being. Catholicism is outlawed. You have to believe that there's a Supreme Being and a soul that survives after death. And, the Supreme Being is a Jacobin. That's it. This is exactly what you could expect of a religion invented by a government committee."

*

"The 1801 Concordat with the Pope finally ended all the **** that had been going on about forcing people to choose between the Church and the government."

*

"So, Napoleon escapes from Elba in March of 1815. An army is sent to arrest him, and he stands up and tells them that if any of them want to kill him, to just go right on ahead. Now, one of them could've said, 'D--- right! You froze my butt at Moscow BAM!!!' But no one does."

*

"Napoleon comes to the conclusion that he won the battle of Waterloo. That's what politicians do, when they write their memoirs."

*

"Today, no one in Texas picks cotton by hand, unless you have a pet cotton plant in your backyard."

*

"The steam engine is first developed to pump out water from flooded coal mines. Unless you want to go snorkeling with a pickaxe."

*

on materialism:
"Nowadays, people have walk-in closets the size of my living room!"

*

"The way people talk about globalization, you'd think it started only 15 years ago."

*

a student doublechecks,
"There's no Prussia today... right?"

*

"As part of the bargain, the British get Malta, Crete, and Gibraltar. The British love islands!"

*

on Bessarabia:
"I'm somewhat reluctant to even mention it, because people will imagine it's somewhere near Mecca."

*

"William II does something else dangerous. He reads a book. Which is dangerous for some people to do."

*

"If you think terrorism was invented on September 11..."

*

the prof asks,
"Now, what would we do, if we were given an ultimatum like that?"
"We would scoff."

*

"If you even want to use thinking to describe the mental processes of William II."

*

"So, where will the French go if war is declared?"
"Paris?"
"The French are already in Paris."

*

"When people are being stupid, the hardest thing to do in the world is to make them be smart!"

*

"As a matter of fact, there is still a large amount of unexploded WWII ordnance in Belgium today. Their government has to collect it before it maims people. A lot of it is on their beaches. This tends to blow up tourists and teenagers who don't think history matters."

*

"They're not about to just go up and say, 'Hello, ve are de Germans, ve are going to sink you.'"

*

"Eric, would you get the door? Sam isn't here to perform the usual... duties."
"He never misses."
"Yeah- this is the first time."
"He must have a deadly illness."
"Ok, let's get started."

*

"I mean, the Mexican government does not take this seriously. The Germans can't even get to Paris. How are they going to get to El Paso?"

*

"Marxism is adhering to the ideas of not Groucho, but Karl, Marx.

*

"Now, Marx does not believe in utopian ideas. He does not think everyone will live happily with the Easter Bunny providing everything we want."

*

"I will tell you right off, I'm not a Marxist. There's a lot of moonshine in his appeal."

*

"Do you think that the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer? If you believe that, you're halfway to being a Marxist, whether you know it or not."

*

"The Bolsheviks aren't really about to let just anyone in on the government. You don't want every Tom, Dick, and Ivan making decisions."

*

on Leon Trotsky:
"And who do you think was the leader of the Red Army?"
student in the back: "TOLSTOY!"
[This is the only time I ever heard the Prof genuinely laugh. I thought I was going to die, it was so funny...]

*

on the Versailles Peace Conference:
"Obviously they're not going to come up with a solution that actually works. That's the delusion of diplomats-- they think they can write something on a piece of paper."

*

on Hitler during WWI:
"He suffers just like everyone else. Well, he doesn't get killed, obviously, but..."

*

"Now, Nazi was just a nickname, something the newspapers used. Like Democrats and Dems. What self-respecting Democrat goes around saying, 'Hi, I'm a Dem.' No Nazi ever called himself a Nazi. Except American Nazis; they're too stupid."

*

"All human beings do dumb things; some just do dumber things on a bigger level than others."

*

to a tardy student who's a fan of the defeated ACC team:
"You're not late. You didn't lose the NIT, either."

*

"Most conspiracy theories are nonsense, but there's not always a way to prove them wrong. Just like the Da Vinci Code and other 'historical' books. There's not an iota of evidence to prove it. And that's why some people want to believe it."

*

"Now, don't imagine that the Germans were all appalled and shocked when Hitler came into power. No. They think Hitler is a Savior."

***

Statistics, Mr. M. Imagine a very tall man, so skeletally thin that he looks two-dimensional. Rawboned, gaunt, lefthanded, always wears either black, dead-blood red, gray, or shades of charcoal. His chin juts and nose is sharp and straight, making him almost Greco-Roman, which is helped by his close-cut, thin brown hair that curls slightly on his forehead. He would look natural in a tunic or toga.

*

"Don't move to Estonia; it's the least happy country in the world."

*

"So we have two- oh, I gave it away. How many samples do we have?"
"Two."
"At least you're listening."

*

"If that's a cellphone, turn it off. If it's just ambient music- that's fine."

*

at the school's fall festival, the professors and instructors had to stand on top of posts and beat each other off with padded foam sticks. This is jousting, apparently.
"So, come on this afternoon, watch me get... jousted. -Is that a word?"

*

"All right, so: quiz, attendance, homework, jousting..."

*

"So, why is this sample of happy and sad people not a very good one?"
"It doesn't have everyone in it?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"I dunno... some people might just be angry."

*

"Now I'm going to make up some numbers because I don't remember what the actual results were."

*

"It's much easier to catch mistakes when there's 30 people looking over your shoulder. You don't have that benefit on the test, though."

*

"Sometimes outliers can be disregarded. Like if I took a poll about how many first-cousins someone had and they said 263, you'd think oh, maybe they thought you meant second and third and fourth cousins. Or maybe just misheard and thought you wanted their weight."

*

"This is pretty obviously a left-skewed curve. It'd be more obvious if it was more even. Of course, you can't just randomly draw in higher bars where you need them."

*

"Problem 15? Ok. So we're going to draw a frequency distribution, here. In this column we're going to put the dead guys... and over here, the dead ladies... By the way, if any of you have ancestors who died on the Titanic, I apologize for my... cavalier treatment."

*

"So, looking at this data from the Titanic, about 25% of the female passengers die, and 80% of the male. What phrase comes to mind?"
"Learn How To Swim?"
"Um... actually, I was thinking of 'women and children first.' Apparently, that's really what they did."
"You could've just watched the movie."

*

a student asks,
"What if you were off by one percentage?"
"Well, you would fail the course, for one thing. -Just kidding."

*

"The mode isn't used as much, but it can come in handy when you're working with non-numerical data. Like if you were to ask a roomful of people what their favorite ethnic food was. I'd hate to think what the average of Mexican and Chinese food would be."

*

"61 was a record for homeruns for decades, until people started using steroids. Now the record is 73."

*

"First, turn on your calculator. Is everyone still with me?"

*

"Now, at this point, you have a lot of choices on the screen. If you're not sure, if you're staring at your calculator, and your calculator is staring back at you..."

*

"All right, let's have a quiz!"
[everyone panics]
"But not now..."
[he looks at the clock thoughtfully, and people relax a little]
"...in the last fifteen minutes of class."
[resigned sighs, muttered complaints]
"Next Monday."
[outrage at the cruelty of his little tactic. He did find out which people had studied and which hadn't. Except for me; I hadn't studied, but kept a stony face anyway. Of course, he probably remembers my record from last year, too.]

*

"Ok, so any more questions? Questions about the syllabus, homework, attendance? All right. We don't have anything else to talk about. Except, [with glee] statistics."

*

"This funky E-looking thing is a capital sigma."

*

"You might want to use the graphing calculator to do basic arithmetic as well, but you can probably figure that out for yourself."

***

More statistics, the rest of macroeconomics, and old music classes, coming soon...

Womanly Clothing, Part I

2010-08-20T21:17:00.000-04:00

This is not a post in which I will rant about the state of women's clothing "fashion," but in which I will relate how I took action yesterday, for $3.39 and a couple hours.

The local Goodwill is the source of most of my clothing which I don't sew myself. Even with a good selection, it's not always easy to find things that will fit me- and lately I've taken to altering clothes to fit my particular shape.

I needed a plain white button-down blouse for summertime- without superfluous and useless pockets smack-dab in the middle, a constricting and wrinkly-tight bodice, or indecent neckline- to wear with skirts or beneath jumpers, and saved myself some time by not looking for something I knew I'd never find. Blouses are not difficult to sew, but between collars and buttonholing, they can take a while. I purchased a very generic long-sleeved white cotton dress shirt, and transformed it by hand into a modest, charming, and feminine summer blouse.
~*~*~*~
Figure 1. In which is shown the very generic long-sleeved white cotton dress shirt before alteration. Well, slightly after; the cuff is obviously removed. It was stuck back together to show its original aspect.Figure 2. In which the sleeve is removed from the bodice using a seam-ripper or manicure scissors, and the cuff is cut off carefully as close to its edge as possible.Figure 3. In which the seam down the sleeve is undone, and the material spread open.Figure 4. In which the material is ironed to ensure accurate measurements in Figure 5 (see Fig. 5).Figure 5. In which a desirable sleeve pattern is pinned to the old sleeve, taking note of the bias.Figure 6. Which shows the resulting pieces cut from the old sleeves.Figure 7. In which the scraps are displayed, from which shall be cut two sleeve bands, one of which is shown at bottom. The remnants may be used to cover buttons if desired. The cuffs are useless to this project, being the one part of the buffalo we do not end up using. They may be saved for the occasions in which one feels the urge to tear off one's shirt-cuffs and project them at an offender.Figure 8. In which a running-stitch is put at the top and bottom of the sleeve.Figure 9. In which the bottom of the sleeve is gathered to the length of the sleeveband and pinned accordingly.Figure 10. Which shows the sleeveband sewn firmly to the gathered sleeve.Figure 11. In which the bottom edge of the sleeveband is turned under and ironed.Figure 12. In which the ironed edge of the sleeveband is turned up and fastened with a whip-stitch, taking care to remain invisible to the right side of the garment.Figure 13. In which the two sides of the sleeve are sewn together. (N.B.- the seam at far right is the running-stitch from Fig. 8.)Figure 14. In which the sleeve is gathered, pinned to the armhole of the bodice, and fastened in place.Figure 15. Which shows the completed blouse against a rustic backdrop, with specimens of Rudbeckia and Leucanthemum. (N.B. The author wonders why undergarments cannot be advertised in like manner.)
~*~*~*~
I will post more picture-guides of affordable alterations and ideas. It is always nice for college students to have clothing options that cost only 1/38 of a single textbook's price. Someday I hope to be able to offer sewing classes to young women who would like to learn the simple techniques requisite for altering and constructing their own clothing.

Down in the Woods

2010-04-26T22:57:00.002-04:00

The happy little subjects of Kingdom Plantae have been comporting themselves beautifully for the past month. Here's what's blooming now.

Down in the wet lower part of the woods near the creek are hundreds of ravishingly handsome Jack-in-the-pulpit plants (Arisaema triphyllum). The cup-and-lid part is called the spathe, and the "Jack" is the spadix. They're all the same species, but there are two subspecies: some are dark green with a purplish-brown spadix and stripes on the spathe (subsp. stewardsonii), and others are light green with yellow (subsp. pusillus). In the fall, fruiting bodies lower on the spathe turn into a cluster of vermilion berries full of nice and poisonous calcium oxalate (CaC2O4).
This one looks so debonair.
The banks of the creek are covered with oxymoronic Blue Violets (Viola sororia sororia) which are about done blooming, now. It's surprisingly difficult to photograph them without their exquisite color getting washed out. This one is faded on its own account, which made it a bit easier; the color ranges from this to a deeper violet.

Sweet White Violets (Viola blanda) are also in bloom. They're much tinier than the blue violets but tend to have longer stems and a sweeter scent. Like all other violets, their seedpods disperse mechanically, meaning they burst open and fling the seeds every which way.
Also growing with the violets are Bluets (Houstonia caerulia), which are such a pale and delicate blue that photographing them is even more difficult than violets.
Throughout the woods grow five different species of fern; two are of current interest. The first is the Christmas Fern (Polystichum acrostichoides), which produce the characteristic fuzzy fiddlehead or crosier as its new fronds unfold. That's right, folks- ferns are curled up before they're born, just like humans. Could this mean that they are our nearest living relatives? It is a solemn thought.
The second is the Southern Lady Fern (Athyrium aspleniodes). It unbunches itself from damp little sprouts in the earth- unlike the Christmas fern, it dies back completely every fall. Its fronds are dainty and lacy.
On one part of the upper slopes of the woods is a colony of Perfoliate Bellwort (Uvularia perfoliata). Each is a single slender stem with a six-petaled, drooping yellow flower on the end that smells sweetly of lemon. The leaves are perfoliate, which means that the stem passes through them, making it look like they have been strung on. These are such happy little flowers. This picture is from two springs ago, since it came out better than the one I took this year.
Smooth Solomon's Seal (Polygonatum biflorum) gets its name from the fact that apparently when the right angle of its root is broken as it grows every year, the scar resembles the seal of Solomon. While this may seem an odd extrapolation of the imagination, one must admit it has a nicer ring to it than Drooping Greenish-White Bell-Shaped Flower.
Another common lawn-flower is Thyme-leaved Speedwell (Veronica serpyllifolia). The clover leaf in the picture should give a good idea of the scale. It's amazing that things this tiny have such particular names.
The tulip trees (Liriodendron tulipifera)are blooming, now. Liriodendron is such a lovely word... I don't think I'm going to call them anything else inside my head, now. Their peppery flowers grow a hundred feet up in the air, so here's a picture of a fallen one, with the bark of the trunk in the background.
The wild black cherry trees (Prunus serotina var. serotina)are also blooming. This picture's from last spring. The little hole in the leaf was probably chewed by tent caterpillars, which primarily target this tree for their devastation.
The blackberries are blooming already! The genus is Rubus, but there are so many species in the south that I'm not altogether certain which this is. I know there were swamp dewberries at one point- they have clouded, luscious navy blue berries and taste much sweeter than blackberries; I don't know whatever became of them, though. These'll ripen mid-June.
Now here's a curious specimen- I had no idea of its existence in the woods until today. I knew there were a lot of blacksnakeroots in the woods, but assumed they were all of the same species merely because I hadn't noticed this particular one in bloom. It puzzled me greatly for about an hour, after which amount of time I was finally able to identify it (by means of actually looking up pictures of every single Sanicula in a list of species until I found it). Without further ado, I give you Canadian Blacksnakeroot (Sanicula canadensis). Should've known the troublesome thing was Canadian, Mr. André. ;)
Cleavers (Galium aperine) are blooming now, too. It's a low, sprawling plant, exceedingly messy-looking as the season progresses. The flowers are minute. Apparently it gets its name because its ever-so-slightly sticky leaves are supposed to stick to one's clothing, but I've never experienced that phenomenon. It's in the Bedstraw Family, some species of which smell exceptionally sweet when dried. I'll have to dry some of this one of these days to see if that carries over.
Here's the other chickweed- Mouse-ear Chickweed (Cerastium vulgatum). It's fuzzier than regular chickweed and not so crisp-looking, and tends to grow into unsightly clumps which are, however, easy to remove. So many garden weeds are pretty when they're examined up close, though. I s'ppose that's why one should always leave enough time to look for beauty. Or at least pause a moment to appreciate it before consigning it to the weed-pile.
The Fringe-Tree (Chionanthus virginicus) is blooming, now. I missed it, last year- it's in a part of the woods I don't frequent, so when I noticed my neighbor's blooming I went down to see mine. It's not as full as it used to be- it's grown tall and spindly, and the flowers are at the very top. It smells so fragrant that I can smell it long before I see it. It's in the olive family.
The wild Easter lilies, also known as Atamasco or Zephyr lilies (Zephyranthes atamasca) are blooming in the swamp! They grow on tall stems with a tendency to sprawl, and have a profusion of leaves nearly indistinguishable from stems which grow in a messy mop all over the ground. The flowers are six-petaled, pure white and tinged with pink as they age. They smell like burnt plastic and don't last very long when cut. They give an ethereal beauty to little hidden spots in the woods.

Maple-leafed viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium) is a shrub with maple-like leaves and heads of pretty, tiny white flowers that smell like garbage.
This plant (Hexastylis arifolia) is known by many names, all of which are surprisingly relevant and accurate. I usually think of it as Hexastylis and refer to it as wild ginger, on account of the pleasantly gingery smell of its foliage. It is also called Little Brown Jug, referring to the peculiar shape of its flowers (visible at the base of the plant). Heartleaf is a more general name for many different species, some of which are threatened or endangered. This particular species is common and widespread. I have located a couple of the endangered ones.
Indian Strawberry (Potentilla indica) is actually from India. It's very weedy. The berries are edible but tasteless. The same can be said of many genetically engineered strawberries from California.
Yellow Wood Sorrel (Oxalis stricta)is another common European introduction. The leaves can be eaten in moderation, and get their sour taste from the oxalic acid that will disagree with you if you eat too much. I saw a recipe for cream-of-sorrel soup that I intend to try sometime.
Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida)is about finished, now- it bloomed just in time for Easter, this year. In the past ten years a fungus has killed a sad percentage of the trees, including a particularly beautifully shaped one in the front yard, but the remaining trees seem to be healthy. This picture is from two years ago. The four white "petals" are correctly known as bracts; the actual flowers are the little yellow ones in the center inflorescence.

***
There are several other things blooming, including at least five species of grasses and a hawkweed, but I haven't identified all of them yet, so I'll post them separately. I miss the crested dwarf irises- there were two colonies when I first moved here, but they haven't bloomed for seven years or so and have all but died out. I was pleased to find that the wild geranium didn't get killed by the sled run my siblings cut wantonly into the woods, and to discover some new patches of cranefly orchids. I'll post pictures as new things come into bloom. ^_^

Wildflowers, part I

2010-03-19T18:11:00.001-04:00

This spring and early summer, I've decided to chronologically post some of my ongoing documentation of all the botanical species in the woods. Here are the ones which are currently in bloom.

With the help of a botanically-minded friend who narrowed this specimen down to the Mustard Family Brassicaceae, I've finally identified this ubiquitous weed to be Arabidopsis thalania, or mouse-ear cress. For years I've wondered what it was. It always bothers me when no one bothers to mention the commonest plants of all. This is a true weed, native to Eurasia.
These "lawn violets" are Viola tricolor, smaller than my smallest fingernail, and sprinkled delicately through the grass like something out of Lothlórien.
I have at least two types of chickweed growing in the lawn. This one is Stellaria media, another non-native species. It is distinguishable from mouse-ear chickweed by its less fuzzy stem and leaves, and its petals, which are so deeply divided that they seem almost separate.
The maples are budding! Acer rubrum is the commonly seen red maple, but come to think of it, the one in the foreground of this picture might be an ornamental. I'll have to double-check.

I looked around in the woods for a while to see if anything was up- I expected the ferns to have fiddle-heads already, but I suppose they're late this year on account of all the snow. The cleavers are sprouting already. I was glad to find a few patches of orchids in sheltered places. I need to be careful of poison ivy, though.

My Garden, 2010

2010-03-19T17:40:00.000-04:00

While writing the last post, I decided halfway through that an exhaustive census of my garden would bog down the meditation too much, and I'd be better off posting it separately.

From my descriptions and lists of plants, it's probably going to sound like I could join the Royal Horticultural Society, but in reality I can't tell if I have a green thumb for the red clay. My garden is more like a concentration camp for Kingdom Plantae. Over the years I've been able to find plants that like to grow themselves without much help from me; after May it's much too hot and buggy to go outside again until October. For a while I had drought-tolerant plants, which rotted in the more recent water-logged summers, and now I have a goodly collection of hardy veterans. A couple years back I realized with horror that the color scheme in my main flowerbed had become bright orange and pale purple, which looked perfectly nauseating and migraine-inducing. This year I've cut it back to red, white, and blue.

I dearly love medicinal plants and old-fashioned flowers. I would love someday to have an English cottage-garden. Right now that's just in my imagination, though.

Here's what's blooming currently:

Camellia japonica ssp.
I have four camellia bushes, which have grown into an enormous clump together. I'm not sure of their cultivars. The two which are blooming right now bloom only once a year. They remind me of York and Lancaster, even though they're not roses. The other two bushes bloom in early summer and again in fall, and have single white and pink flowers, respectively.

Narcissus spp. 'Ice Folly,' 'Tahiti,' 'Fortissimo'
My daffodils are starting to get old- blooming a lot less. 'Tahiti' hasn't gotten any buds this year, nor has 'Fortissimo.' I have a pink one that also has no buds, but I can't remember the cultivar. 'Ice Folly' has been the most reliable. There were some generic yellow ones when we moved in that still bloom sometimes, and today I found a tiny miniature one that planted itself near the fence.

Hyacinth spp.
These hyacinths are at least ten years old- they're not as full as they used to be. They're scattered around the natural area in the front yard.

Helleborus spp.

A neighbor gave me a tiny little hellebore at least seven years ago- I planted it in my old flowerbed, in the red clay and shade. For years, all it would put out were two pathetic leaves, which it would painstakingly replace each spring. I later moved it to my raised flower bed in full sun, where it thrived. A few years ago it bloomed for the first time on Ash Wednesday, finally living up to its common name of Lenten Rose. For a couple years, it flowered a pale greenish-white, but for the past two or so it's sent up a stalk of dark rose-speckled blooms alongside the others. I transplanted it to the other side of my flowerbed last summer, when it had grown bushy and knee-high and needed to be in the back with the taller plants; its broken rootlets emitted an evil-smelling odor. Hellebores are extremely toxic. I've been wanting to extract a little of the helleborin, just for fun.

The squirrels found some of my crocuses, but I was immensely pleased to find they'd missed at least one clump- it sprouted just a few days ago! I shall post more pictures when they bloom.

The rest of my collection, in no particular order:

Achillea borealis sp.
My pink yarrow plant survived the winter- I had my doubts, when I planted the division last fall. I like the rusty orange yarrow, too, but pink it very nice.

Phlox paniculata
I love my phlox plants- my aunt gave me one a few years ago, and I've been able to divide it into several good clumps. It grows waist-high and blooms perhaps five rounds of fragrant white blossoms. The hummingbirds love it- it's so fun to watch them check each of the fifty-odd little flowers on each stalk.

Phlox subulata
I like my creeping phlox, too, but it only blooms for one measly week in the spring. I evicted it a few years ago and stuck it in the rock garden down with the iris collection.

Monarda didyma
I got this bergamot plant at the ongoing plant sale at the N. C. Botanical Gardens last summer. It's very hardy- over the winter it's grown a dense mat of musky-mint-smelling leaves. If it keeps on the way it is, it should be beautiful. As an aside, I strongly recommend visiting the Botanical Gardens (located in Chapel Hill) and buying their plants, which are thriving specimens hacked off of invasively thriving specimens. And they sell carnivorous plants, which is automatically great.

Salvia x sylvestris 'May Night'
My salvia is getting a bit old- they don't grow much, and after a while the woody center ages out and makes little tiny plantlets that don't grow, either. It's light purple, and butterflies like it when it does bloom.

Verbena sp.
A purple verbena plant was planted in my garden, almost killing something I'd planted there already. It's currently sprawling everywhere. I like more upright, forthright flowers.

Rosa sp.
This yellow rose grows in a pot on the patio. Its branches are very slender and it needs a lot of pruning and propping up. It has some of the loveliest, sweetest-smelling blossoms all summer that I've ever known, but each one only lasts a day or so before disintegrating.

Scabiosa columbaria 'Butterfly Blue'
I dearly love pincushion plants, but have had no luck with them. I like the dark red ones best, but aside from having seen them somewhere once I've never been able to find them again. My current one bloomed nicely for the first few weeks of its life, and then dwindled into two little mounds of leaves that I can cover with each of my hands. Every year it sends out a handful of sickly, spindly-stemmed flowers that are already dead when they open up. That's probably my fault, somehow. Or maybe it hates me for where I'd planted it originally.

Tanacetum parthenium
I got two little feverfew plants a few years back when I'd been having migraines for a while and desperately wanted an excuse to drink tea all the time. They're doubles, so the flowers look like slightly-larger baby's-breath blossoms- very dainty and pretty. They seem to be a hardy biennial- They bloom both the first and second year and then die, but by the first year they've already reseeded themselves, so I have them popping up around the garden. One finally escaped the boundaries. The leaves smell like a muskier version of a chrysanthemum, and as a tea I find them unpleasant unless mixed with mint or some more aromatic herb. I am still undecided as to whether they have any actual effect on my migraines, or if relaxing and drinking tea in general is comforting.

Leucanthemum x superbum 'Becky' (?)
A neighbor gave me three little stalks of very sad, wilty-looking daisies about four years ago. Now I have about sixty-four square feet of them. They're beautiful, dense, hardy, drought-tolerant- there's a reason they sell for $11 a pot if you see them at the gardening center. The one draw-back is that the june-bugs like to chew the flowers up. A favorite pastime of my brothers is to wait until a june-bug lands on a flower, then bend the stem back carefully and release it so that the marauding insect is violently catapulted through the air. If anyone wants some daisies, I need to thin them out- they grow so densely. A rabbit built a nest in them last year, and we didn't even know for almost a month.

Lychnis coronaria
Rose campion is one of my favorite plants, because it looks so unique and has a saint's name (two saints' names!). I grew them from seeds collected from a friend and they're quite hardy. They have silvery velvet leaves almost like lamb's-ear except less plush, vibrant magenta flowers, and poppy-like seeds and seed-heads. The deer like to chew it down, which makes it rather unsightly. I will have an overabundance of seeds; ask me around June.

Geum chiloense 'Blazing Sunset'
I got this last year- I'd seen geums before but wasn't sure how well they do down south here. I'm surprised and pleased by this one- it's not only survived the winter, but looks like it's ready for action. Its flowers are crepe-papery, almost like poppies, and the same flaring orange-red. I'm looking forward to seeing it bloom again.

Dianthus sp.
My carnation plant is now ten years old. It's warm velvety red and smells like cinnamon candy. It's been transplanted innumerable times. After its first couple years it shrank down to three single spidering stems, and both refuses to die or to grow any bigger. I'm not altogether sure what to make of it.

Delosperma cooperi
I don't like my ice plant. It's very old and has become rather decrepit-looking. Last summer it only sent out one flower; it looks rather weedy. Back in the days when it actually bloomed, it was quite attractive; satin-fringy magenta flowers on succulent leaves. It's rather exotic, though. I prefer old-fashioned flowers.

Helianthus giganteus (?)
Tickseed grows over ten feet tall and more, bushes out, and blooms in late summer with a profusion of golden-yellow composite flowers. It spreads below the ground and I suspect it might be difficult to get rid of. If anyone wants some, they're welcome to a piece.

Rosa sp.
This miniature rose is perfectly beautiful. I rescued it and planted it in my garden; somehow I always thought miniature roses were hard to grow, but this one takes care of itself. It only blooms once, in June, with perhaps two blossoms- but they last for several weeks. It decided last October to bud and bloom once more. The flowers are light apricot, paling to pink as they age.

Rosa sp.
This climbing rose grew behind the camellias for ten years. I'm not sure what possessed anyone to plant it there. It's hot pink, with wild-rose-shaped flowers that smell peppery.

Rosa sp.
This thornless climbing rose escaped my clutches and is now thirty feet up in a tree. It's yellow and smells sweet. I like the way it looks, up there, so I think I'll leave it.

Aquilegia vulgaris 'Nora Barlow'
This is the only columbine I've ever had any luck with. All my other ones always got mildewed and died. I rescued them from my Grandfather's garden- they'd reseeded everywhere and he wanted to get rid of them. I always want to call them harlequins instead of columbines, though. They've reseeded vigorously in my garden as well- if anyone wants seeds or seedlings, let me know.

Iris ssp.
A neighbor gave me a sack of around sixty bearded iris rhizomes last year- I planted them too late for them to bloom but for one dark apricot-colored one. I already have dark purple and purple-and-white cultivars, and I can't wait to see what the rest turn out to be. Irises are one of my favorite flowers- they smell so amazing, and come in so many different colors, and barely need any maintenance.

Chrysanthemum sp.
I have many clumps of chrysanthemum that grew from divisions from a single plant- bright purple single blossoms with yellow centers. They bloom in October. In the past couple years they've been a little choked out by the daisies, and I'm trying to give them some breathing room; it's tough because they're nothing but green for most of the growing season.

Heuchera micrantha var. diversifolia 'Palace Purple'
Heucheras are hardy and do nicely around here. I once had a lovely one, with middle-green foliage and coral-pink flowers- it would send up a new round of stalks every couple weeks and bloom for a good while. It didn't survive its first winter, though. This one that I have now has purple foliage, and stringy greenish-white flowers; it's mainly grown for the foliage. I don't like it much. I'm going to have to get a pink one again someday.

Hosta ssp.
I don't like hostas, especially since deer do. I have a bunch planted down in the iris rock garden. They have variegated foliage.

Lilium ssp.
The deer ate half my tiger lilies last year, so they didn't bloom as nicely; they're a dwarf cultivar, so the stalks are only about a foot and a half tall.

Liatris ssp.
Liatris do well around here, especially in full sun. They don't bloom past June, but the goldfinches love to peck at the seeds if you leave the stalks to dry.

Rudbeckia sp.
It took a few years, but my susans are finally starting to spread. They're some of my favorites.

Geranium sp.
Crane's-bill is a hardy little plant. I grew it from a root clipping, and it just keeps on living. It's smaller than I'd like it to be, because it keeps getting inadvertently traumatized by people who don't notice it. It has finely-cut foliage that turns coppery red in the fall and delicate pink primrose-like flowers.

Hibiscus syriacus
I have two rose-of-sharon shrubs, one of which grows at the corner of the house nearest my flowerbed, and the other down in the iris rock garden by the woods. I like them because of the biblical references (even though that specific flower's identity is unknown), and because they're the national flower of Korea. The flowers are single dark lavender with crimson centers.

Ipomoea tricolor 'Heavenly Blue'
I've always wanted to grow blue morning-glories, and this year I finally got some. My idea is to grow some in a pot along with the moonflowers, and then train them up strings to the eaves to create a living curtain.

Ipomoea alba
If you've never grown moonflowers, you're missing out. They're so easy to care for- just throw the seeds out there, and they're drought-tolerant. They open in late afternoon and close by morning. The blossoms are plate-sized, pure white, and have an intensely rich, feminine fragrance. If I get to heaven and the Blessed Virgin doesn't smell something like them, I think I shall be a little disappointed for all eternity.

Convallaria majalis
I've never grown lily-of-the-valley, before. The Hungarian name for them is gyöngyvirág, or pearl-flower. I got them because they reminded me of the St. George legend- that wherever his blood fell as he battled the dragon, these flowers sprang up. I haven't seen any sign of life from the roots I planted last month. I saw some pink ones for sale the other week- mine are white.

Dahlia x hybrida 'Duet'
I've been looking at this type of dahlia for quite a while, now- I wanted a red flower, and I missed my dahlias. I used to have a bunch of purple and yellow ones that bloomed all summer, but I decided to dig them up one February and traumatized them so much that they never came up again. They weren't dinner-plate dahlias, though. I'm excited about these. They're already starting to come up.

Tagetes patula 'Scarlet Starlet'
Marigolds are fun. I grew some yellow ones, the other year- threw at least a hundred seeds out in the garden and let them come up; they took over. By the next year I was tired of them- too much yellow. These are a rich and velvety burgundy. I like the way they smell, and the deer don't.

Azalea and Rhododendron ssp.
There are also at least a dozen different types of azaleas growing around the yard, and some pathetic rhododendrons. I wish mountain laurels grew around here.

***
Well, I'm pretty sure that's an exhaustive list. I'm sure I'll suddenly remember something in the next couple days.

I'll post pictures of each flower as it blooms. ^_^

Dust

2010-02-19T14:28:00.001-05:00

This year, I did something I've always wanted to do- bury something on Ash Wednesday that would bloom into life by Easter.

Mid-February might seem rather early for gardening, especially for some of you northern folks, but for this region it's just about right. After all, by the end of May it's already much too warm and humid to be outdoors past eight in the morning, which leaves me with these next two months to make preparations for my flowerbed, and the two after that to enjoy it. This might be the last year for a long time that I'm able to have such a lovely garden, and I want to have as much fun with it as possible.

Right now it looks rather bleak, especially from a distance:

When I look closely, though, some of the plants are starting to get tiny green shoots.

On Wednesday, I planted some crocus corms and a lily-of-the-valley root. I got them a few weeks ago, but due to weather and inclement professors still hadn't planted them; I finally decided to save them for Ash Wednesday.

I wanted crocuses this year, because I hadn't grown them since I was a very little girl. I especially like the white ones with fine purple stripes; I've always liked striped flowers, probably because they look like candy. I remember growing crocuses near the mailbox when I was little, and discovering them one day, and watching them carefully- it was such a miracle to my mind that they came back the same every year, and were so many different colors, and knew to open in the morning and go to sleep at night. Then I got older and didn't find it quite so much of a mystery anymore, and then I grew up and knew it was a miracle again. I got some this year, to remind me of that.

I also got a lily-of-the-valley root. It was on clearance for less than I'd ever seen them sold before, and it reminded me so of St. George and consequently Georgie that I decided to grow it this year. I was doubly glad I'd chosen it, because while I was paying at the counter, the tired-looking cashier's face brightened, and she said they reminded her of her mother.
"We always had them in the garden, growing up. A big old patch of them on one side of the front door, and hyacinths on the other."
"That sounds lovely."
"It was- they smelled wonderful."
"I'm going to give them a try. I know they'll take over a garden up north, but I'm not sure how well they do down south."
The cashier looked me dead in the eye and said, "Virginia is the South."

I once read somewhere that it takes more faith to plant a flower than to plant a tree- if one plants a tree, he can hold its slender sapling stem as he shovels the dirt around its roots, and leave it there, and watch it as it takes to the ground and extends its branches. Flower bulbs and seeds are different, though- a little piece of something, with barely anything visibly alive about it if at all, to be buried carefully and left there- to be trusted to the earth, and waited on for a time.

It's so simple, when it only happens in a garden. I know seeds will come up if I care for them and they were planted in the right places. Before God made man, he was a gardener. He understands the life inside seeds that I have to be content with simply knowing is there. He cares for what he plants better than I can, and never plants anything in the wrong place. He also never plants dead seeds. In spite of this, it's still difficult to trust God, sometimes- but when I am blessed with such beautiful analogies in creation, it gives me something to hold on to.

Time and again, I find myself returning to the dust of my garden for comfort. Its symbolism is always there, comforting me with utter sense, even when I'm not conscious of it. Someday I'll return to the dust in a deeper way than planting things in it- though to me it's a beautiful thought, not a grim one. Souls are a lot like flowers.

Try planting a little something, this Lent. Spend a little time meditating as you take care of it every day. Lent is not about barrenness, but about death waiting breathlessly to come to life.

I Take Notes II

2010-02-03T23:07:00.002-05:00

As promised.

Professor BT, Spanish I and II. Imagine a short, heavy Peruvian man in his early 70s who looks like an Inca, has a deep, thick, and rumbly accent, goes on philosophical tangents, and thinks that we need basic words defined as well as translated.

"Do not tell me that the cat escape and you run around on top of roof to catch and she fall down and she dead so you go to funeral. -That, that is no excuse for to miss class."

*

"There is no free coffee, even in Paris."

*

"If you don't learn to conjugate now, you are going to have a hard time. It will be a handicap to you. I don't want to be the carrier of bad news, but I want to be realistic. I want to be blunt. I don't want to discourage you, I want to encourage you to study. So, I am going to give you extra work."

*

on irregular verbs:
"This is a dangerous field with a lot of mines. You do not want to blow up."

*

"I know it is pain in the neck to buy- it cost $70.00- but this is capitalist society and they want your money."

*

"Don't try to trick me- I know the rules of the game. After you miss class, I have right to separate from the course. The next time you do the same trick- you skip exam- you get a C."

*

"Nobody put a gun to head and say you go to Spanish II. You decide, you make investment."

*

"No telephones alive in this class. Don't say grandmother fixing antenna on roof and she in hospital. Or brother break leg. Everyone want to talk on phone and be popular- even in bathroom. No telephone alive and ringing in my class."

*

"First, let's understand what the word 'verb' means. El verbo es la palabra mediante la cual se expresa un compartamiento del sujeto."

*

on accidents and verbs:
"Not mean verb break its head or leg- not that accident. This is grammatical accident- voice, mood, tense, number, person."

*

"If I hit someone on the head, is it active or passive?"

*

"Human beings have to locate themselves in life. So- they measure time. *pause* They measure time."

*

"This is equal opportunity course. That means no one escape. Do not hide under table."

*

"I don't enjoy to inflict you pain, to be sadistic- but we have work to get done. This is very difficult; three times more difficult."

*

defining a one-star hotel, when someone merely asked for a direct translation:
"One star, you might find maybe a roach crawling around. No star- you end up in hotel full of thieves and they come knock at your door and maybe at your head, too."

*

"Well, we know we all are mortals... we need a verb to describe the situation where we get stiff."

*

over-explaining instead of translating vocabulary:
"When you want to go from point A to point B, you use different modes of transportation. Medios de transporte. You can walk, you can take a bicycle, plane, train, whatever. A metro is an underground train that goes very fast and carries you from one point to another."

*

"There is no study guide in this course. You read de chapter. There is no reason for me to rewrite de whole book."

*

"You must internalize all these words."

*

going over word lists took a long time.
"You buy them, and they are not all dried up, they are still green- and that is why we call them green beans!"

*

"Wait- so cerdo is pork, or the actual pig?"
"The whole thing is actually a pig, you know."

*

explaining the expression "estar aburrido como una ostra":
"You know what an oyster is- they sit at the bottom of the sea, they look pretty but don't do anything."

*

"Wait- so is chorizo made of chicken blood?"
"No."
"Oh, good."
"It is made of beef blood."

*

"Ice cream can come in different flavors."

*

"Peruvians- we are too short to play basquetbol. My fellows, we are too little."

*

on hockey:
"You go to special places where the ground is frozen, for you to practice the sport."

*

"When you play a sport, you do not go naked. What do you need? A uniform. Some even have the names of the athlete on it."

*

on helmets:
"You wear these because there is the possibility that you land on your head. You need protection, or else your head open like a watermelon."

*

"We think we have developed, but really we have not. We go to sports, watch two guys beat each other up. Why is this better than Romans? Or go to bull fight, watch them kill poor animal. -Of course, we turn into steaks afterwards. But sometimes bull kills the guy. We are not civilized- not yet."

*

"Me?"
"Yes, you. You think I skeep you? You think you escape?"

*

"Irregular is something that is not regular. Like a shirt that is missing one sleeve and one pocket."

*

on how many students pass:
"Usually, the rate of mortality in this course is 50%."

*

"You can fall from several places. For example, you can fall on your back."

*

a student says,
"Do I have to roll my r's, man?"
and
"I'd rather learn Turkish..."

*

on our hospital vocabulary list:
"As human beings we are very fragile, and experience many situations of agony."

*

on scantily-clad people:
"Some people, they get so used to heated houses they think they can just go outside- and then they catch cold. That is what they think."

*

"Look at the picture. Tell me what is item seven?"
"El... hoover?"
"NO! La aspiradora."

*

"Vacuum cleaners are not very popular in Latin America because the floors are made of-"
"Dirt?"
"-wood or tile."

*

"Wood or tile floors are very hard. You can put a rug on it, if you want to make it- soft."

*

"If you do not do any homework, that is laziness. And laziness must be punished."

*

"A bathtub is where you fill the water and take a bath."

*

handing back a test:
"There were many casualties."

*

"We as human beings are violent. We kill each other. The whole history is a litany of wars and crimes."

*

because saying the same thing with ten times more words makes people understand:
"Maybe someone in your family gain weight, have a heart attack. Then you say you need to exercise. Understand the usage of the word?"
"No..."
"I explain again. A member of your family, maybe brother or sister, gains weight exponentially. So you decide-"
"I'm lost."

*

"People collect things. They are ratpackers."

*

"Some people like to reproduce their environment by painting."

*

"Some people like to spend all day try to get a fish out of the water. It entertains them."

*

"My wife is such a bad cook, she can burn water."

*

"The moon has phases. One of them looks like this: ( "

*

"Margarine is full of highly toxic polysaturated fat."

*

"People can get mad. People get so mad they can have a heart attack. People have died, getting mad."

*

"Human beings are full of emotions. They can be wonderful or evil. We descend to the darkness very swiftly."

*

"There are always people trying to get into your private life. Especially the government."

*

"Children adopt computers and sit all day, eating crackers, eating everything- and then they turn into balloon. We have an epidemic, right now."

*

"I used to be 5'7. Now I am 300 pounds, and it compress the discs in my back so now I am only 5'5. Now my wife, she taller than me. That is sad, but true."

*

"What are these trees in the picture?"
"...nouns?"
"No. A forest."

*

"I have brought this music to show you that Latin music is very rich. It is not just chachacha."

***

Professor JM, Western Civilization II. See part one for description. This semester, he's at his bombastic best. ^_^

on the syllabus:
"Please turn off your beepers, pagers, cell phones, boom boxes, etc."

"You have to take notes. I don't care if you say, 'Oh, I love history, I know all this, I watch the history channel!' You will do badly."

*

"This is a European history course, and for those of you who didn't recognize it, this-" *thumps map* "-is Europe."

*

"There's a tendency in students to think that if they don't believe something, no one in the past could've believed it. And that's... false."

*

On being asked why education was limited in the Middle Ages:
"If automobiles all cost $100,000, how many of you would know how to drive?"

*

On Luther burning his writ of excommunication:
"And obviously there were a lot of students around who enjoyed bonfires and tweaking the Pope's nose."

*

"Do I hear voices in the back of the classroom?"
"Sorry, I just... I missed what you said and didn't want to interrupt-"
"Feel free to. Because, you know, I might know the answer."
"I didn't want to make you lose your train of thought-"
"I'll find another one. This is not a movie where it can't be stopped."

*

"Now, modern Americans might have a hard time understanding that there was only One Church. Here it's, don't like one church, join another church. They don't like you, go start your own bloody church."

*

"Now, don't confuse baptists with anabaptists. You see anabaptist, and think baptist, and then Jesse Helms."

*

"Churches these days make up the strangest names for themselves. I can't tell what they are. There used to be a church near my house called Westwood Baptist. Now, I know what that is. But now it changed its name to Summit Church, and... I have no idea."

*

"Do you think government leaders wanted Luther's philosophy applied to laws? Why don't you try going down I-40 at 95 miles an hour and when the cop pulls you over say, 'Here I drive, I can do no other, and my conscience requires that I drive 95 miles an hour.' And see what happens."

*

"Now, you can read in your textbook about Calvinism. It says a lot, and it might overwhelm you, so here's my take on it. The book doesn't say this, but... it doesn't contradict the book. The real take of Calvinism is, it's anti-Catholicism."

*

"Now we have a situation- and by now I mean the 1300s and 1400s-"

*

On the fame of William of Orange:
"You didn't think they named Orange County because they grow oranges there, did you?"

*

On Elizabeth I:
"She was called the Virgin Queen, although I seriously... doubt that."

*

On Elizabeth I sending help to the Netherlands to fight Philip II
"But wait- didn't that hurt their relationship?"
"After 22 years, he's figured out she's not going to marry him."

*

"So, the Armada was blown into the North Sea. Have any of you been to the North Sea before?"
"Yeah."
"What's it like?"
"Cold, choppy... I don't know, I was on a cruise and I stayed inside the whole time."
*class begins talking about sea cruises*
"This is not a tourism class. You'll just have to go there and take your chances."

*

"Who was the ruler of England in 1556?"
"George?"

*

"We have a new dynasty. The Bourbons. That ought to be an easy name for some of you to remember."

***

Professor TB, Macroeconomics. Imagine a man who looks exactly like Einstein- mustache, flyaway white hair, likes to stick his tongue out, always wears shabby black- but has a Scottish accent so engaging that it's the main reason I'm taking the course. He couldn't decide whether to go into biology or literature, so he became an economist.

"Mr. B, I hear there's a reason why you always wear black."
"Yes, there's a story behind it. Do you really want to hear it? I'm warning you, it's stupid."
"Yes."
"Well, I was walking along one day and saw this wonderful climbing tree. So I started to climb it- but I slipped and fell into a fork of it and got stuck with half of me sticking out one side and half of me sticking out of the other. Finally, these two guys came along and helped me get unstuck. My chest and ribs were all bruised and scratched- not dangerously, just pretty badly, so I didn't want to tuck my shirt in. But when I wore black pants and a red shirt, it looked sloppy. So I thought to myself, if I wore all black, it would match. And then it was so comfortable I decided to always wear black."
"..."
"I told you it was stupid."

*

"A rolling stone gathers no moss, but at least it doesn't get caught by the police."

*

"Congratulations! You've just drawn your first economics diagram! That wasn't too hard now, was it?"

*

on the question of whether apartments are a resource or capital:
"Apartments don't occur naturally."

*

"Here you don't walk like an Egyptian, you think like an economist."

*

"You see these mothers with little kids waiting in line at the grocery store, and all the kids are whining and screaming for candy. Just give them some. Let them rot their teeth out. They'll get new ones later."

*

"So, Arboc would have to go entirely into producing televisions. But you can only use so many televisions. Unless you're my son. If you're stupid enough to go into his room, you can see he has screens everywhere- it's amazing, like mission control or something."

*

on his creative vocabulary:
"I had a thesaurus for breakfast this morning."

*

"But all things are not equal. Look at your highschool gym class. You have the jocks, and then you have the people who get chosen last. That's awful. That's a vicious, vicious thing. The little guys with the glasses and the gray hair. But when it comes time for economics class and they need help- look who can do it now!"

*

"Apparently nematodes are nasty little worm things just waiting to sink their teeth into some tobacco roots."

*

"You can look this up in Chapter Two if you have additional questions. Make yourself a note. 'Having fun in Chapter Two. Wish you were here.'"

*

while rummaging around in his briefcase:
"Talk among yourselves, please."

*

"We can instantly say, therefore, in a chorus, with harmony, that the opportunity cost has decreased."

*

after a hands-on example:
"That was fun. Now we've got to do the serious stuff. Sorry, guys."

*

"I have a bit of a headache, NOT a hangover."

*

"I lost my train of thought."
"Well, hang on. Another train will come along."

*
email received last Monday:
Hi,

There's an opportunity cost to doing problem sets--not getting to go out in the snow, clean the car,sled, throw snowballs at neighbors or whatever your next most preferred alternative is.

So, let's make your problem sets due on Thursday (not Tuesday).

Enjoy the snow and be safe!

Best to you,
TB

***
To be continued...

Ammonites

2010-01-15T22:30:00.003-05:00

This week, I received a package from Amorette- a beautifully embroidered bird reminiscent of Hungarian folktales, a delightful stack of letters, an ammonite, and some tea-bags which made everything smell wonderfully spicy and homy and old-fashioned.

This post is about the ammonite, though. An extinct subclass of cephalopods of the Devonian era resembling nautiloids, their coiled shells are commonly found fossilized today. Like nautiloids, their shells are comprised of a series of camerae, airtight chambers separated by walls called septa; these ensured buouyancy for the tentacled creature, which lived in the outermost chamber of the phragmocone. The septa are preserved as intricate hoarfrost tracings on the shell's surface, like delicate oak leaves or ferns in appearance.

The septa markings are easier to see in this picture which Rette took of a larger specimen:

Perhaps the most amazing thing about it to me is simply that God crafted it with such precision and care that even after the creature died, what remained of it took on a new beauty and continues to give glory to its Creator- after four hundred million years.

If a common tentacled marine organism was special enough to be fashioned so fearfully and wonderfully, how much more must God care about us?

I Take Notes

2009-12-13T19:23:00.005-05:00

To celebrate the end of the semester and the fact that I only have to drag myself through this five more times, summers not included, I now present you with Professor Quotes Episode One, or, The Girl In The Back Is Listening.

Professor WW, Southern Literature and Culture. My favorite professor ever. Imagine a tall, distinguished southern gentleman with white hair, icy blue eyes with a sardonic twinkle, an Alabaman accent, and the habit of mercilessly satirizing modern "culture" and politics.

"Music these days is a bunch of people who don't play guitar so much as they play amplifier."

*

on hunting:
"I believe all God's creatures have a place. Next to the mashed potatoes."

*

"Democrats never spend a dime. They invest trillions, but they never spend any. Oh, no. Ha, ha."

*

on a stupid promotional movie for the university, on youtube:
"It was so awful that parts of my body relocated as my skin crawled."

*

"Why do I need a transition here?"
"Because without one, you will cause cognitive whiplash."

*

on term papers:
"Don't write The Collected Quotations of So-and-So, with a Connective Tissue by Yourself."

*

"Why does everything have to be a science these days? They just changed the name of the home economics board to The Department of Domestic Sciences. Does that make us The Department of Punctuation Sciences?"

*

on the cotton gin:
"Eli Whitney saw a cat attack a chicken and come away with only a pawful of feathers, or so the story goes. And immediately a candle went on over his head, since the electric lightbulb hadn't been invented yet."

*

"If you email me at 2:30, I likely won't get it until the sun comes up."

*

"Is 'good-bye' the opposite of 'bad-bye,' like for people y'all don't like? It's all that's left of 'God be with ye,' telescoped down to 'bye.' In another hundred years we'll be saying '-ye' when we hang up the phone."

*

on being teased for his venerable age:
"I don't remember the War of the Northern Aggression... not clearly, anyway."

*

on an obstreperous interruption during a lecture:
"Oh, a car alarm. Let's hear it for technology."

*

on Go Down, Moses:
"The grammar of the sentence is there, but in between is a lot of... Faulkner."

*

on Pong:
"There are probably a lot of people pumping gas today because of that game."

*

"What is "The Brown's" or "The Smith's" supposed to mean? What is that apostrophe for? Do you go up to the door and knock and say, "Hello, are you the Smith?" I am going to spend my retirement going around with a belt-sander removing apostrophes from signs."

*****

Professor MW, Biology. Imagine a short man who looks like Vizzini from The Princess Bride and talks with the same emphatically explosive manner.

"The Ice Man was definitely killed. They say he went out hiking and just fell over dead, but he must've fallen on his arrows."

*

"Plants don't care if we get colon cancer. They probably want to see us all DIE!"

*

"The cow just falls over. That doesn't seem 'mad' to me. Now, if it was running around killing other cows..."

*

"Cadherins are the reason why you can go into the shower in the morning and your arm doesn't wash down the drain."

*

"All fatty acids are hydrophobic, just some are more saturated than others. Like Animal Farm."

*

"One student came up and told me that my lecture of the sun supernova-ing in 4 billion years was giving him nightmares. He must have an inflated view of his self-worth and longevity, because there's really nothing to worry about."

*

"When do legos become fun? When you put wheels and propellors on it, and send it into your cat. It's the function of carbon when you attach it to things that makes it interesting."

*

"Any more questions for test one? No? Ok. I'll think up fifty or so for you."

*

"Arsenic is a necessary mineral. You need a tiny bit. If someone tells you to go take arsenic pills as a supplement, is that good? No, it's natural selection."

*

Moment of the Year:
"What kind of mammals regulate their body temperature?"
"Reptiles?"

*

"Telophase undo's... undo's... UNDOES... prophase."

*

"I wanted you to see Gregor Mendel's garden. Now, there's nothing testable about this picture- but look at the size. It's a 20x30 space. That's tiny. Like if we took over the geologists' little rock garden in the courtyard. I don't even know what that's good for. Rock garden. Are they waiting for them to mate, or something?"

*

on plants and the visible spectrum:
"If plants were strong enough to utilize gamma rays, they'd probably get up and chase the cows around the fields."

*

on the real definition of organic:
"Up until about two years ago, you could grow a head of lettuce in a plutonium dump and call it 'organic'."

*

on electrons, with sound effects:
"Now, the electron is traveling at the speed of light, like this: zing! Zing! Bazing! Zing!"
*class stares*

*****

Professor JM, Western Civilization I (with the favored adjective "bloody" dropped from the front of most nouns). Imagine a middling-heighted man with grey hair and eyes, a ringing loud voice, highly-caffeinated movements including perpetual motion and hitting the boards for emphasis, and way too much energy in general.

"And so, near the end of the Hundred Years' War, we see one of the most brilliant military geniuses in all of history. And that is- ?"
"St. Joan of Arc?"
"THANK YOU for not saying Napoleon, like my morning class."

*

"Oh, so you think the panic surrounding the Black Death was funny? You think people don't do that today? Ok. What if you heard some mysterious illness struck Miami. The next day, the people who had are dead. The day after, a hundred people are dead. It appears in Orlando, and Jacksonville, and Charleston SC, it's coming up 85! Tell me the people in the Middle Ages were stupid for panicking."

*

a student asks,
"So... why do people sometimes say Catholics aren't Christian?"
"Because they're confused."

*

to the people who whisper during lecture:
"Why don't you open your notebook and close your mouth."

*

"You think you're all so independent and original, don't you. Most of us are independent thinkers who think exactly what everyone else around us thinks."

*

"American Catholics don't like to confess things. It's not part of our culture. Unless you confess it on Oprah and she forgives you."

*

in a moment of ire towards historical inaccuracy in modern entertainment:
"You get this from television, from those idiot shows on television!"

*

"The word 'university' is from the Latin 'universitas.' This same word is translated as 'guild.' Universities began merely as teachers' guilds. So if you think you're not stuck in a medieval institution... *evil snigger*"

*

"In the teachers' guild, apprentices correspond roughly to students, journeymen to those with a bachelors' degree, and masters to those with a master's degree. Grad students are practically serfs."

*

"I don't mean to make light of global warming, but hell, anyone who thinks the climate always stays the same has too much AC."

*

"Pikes were twenty feet long. If I had a pike, I could WAKE UP STUDENTS IN THE BACK OF THE ROOM WITH IT."

*

"If you were at war in the Middle Ages and suddenly captured the king, what would you do with him?"
"Kill him!"
"NO. When will you start thinking like a Medieval warlord? You ransom him."
"Oh."
"And that's just what happened, at Poitiers in 1356. Devastating loss for the French. So now the English have the king, and they hold him ransom for five years' worth of English revenue. Just imagine what would happen if we captured Hugo Chavez and held him for five years' worth of oil! You know, I sort of like that idea."
"Dr. M... they might not want him back."
"Oh, true."

*

"And so what did the English charge Joan of Arc with?"
"Witchcraft and crossdressing."
"Well- ok."

*

"A lot of manners in the Middle Ages were very bad, almost as bad as manners have become in America today."

*

"There are people who believe the Bible dropped complete from Heaven, in English. This may come as a surprise to some people, but the Bible was not written in English."

*

"Jesus is not the son of Mary and Joseph Christ. That is not a name. Do not write it in your notes."

*

"Ancient Greek was like text messages. There was no punctuation, and no spaces between the words."

*

"Please ask me before you ask the person next to you. Because, you know, I might actually know the answer."

*

on the syllabus:
"If you can't stay awake during class, you're probably not getting enough sleep at night."

*

"Dr. M, so... did Diocletian insist on keeping being called 'Dominus et Deus' even when he wasn't emperor anymore?"
"Well, he didn't go back to, 'Oh, just call me Dio.'"

*

every five minutes or so, invariably:
"Ok. Questions about... what we have... saidaboutthis."

*

"And so, by 1200 B.C., we enter a period of crisis. Raiders! Who can tell me who the raiders were?"
"The Mongols?"
"NO! The Mongols didn't come until millenia later! Why do people always blame it on the bloody Mongols!"
[People continue to guess Mongols at regular intervals whenever invaders come up until Professor M bans them. Towards the end of the semester:]
"Then, raiders came. Who were they?"
"The...Mongols?"
"YES!!"

*

"Who can name some other catastrophes that happened around this time period?"
"The Protestant Reformation?"
"Well... that depends entirely your point of view, but... ok. Any more?"

*

"Why was the nobility at first skeptical of Joan?"
"Because she was a woman?"
"Why did it matter if she was a woman?"
"Because... saints don't talk to women?"
"Some of the saints are women."
"Oh."

*

"Ancient Greeks were not voted into the assembly. Any free, adult male citizen was automatically part of the assembly. Citizens were NOT voted into the assembly. Write that down. 'Citizens were not voted into the assembly.' And on the test, someone is going to tell me that they ran for office."

*****

Episode Two, including foreign language and music professors, can be awaited in the future.

The Tooth Fairy is Naked

2009-11-06T17:25:00.002-05:00

Two afternoons of every week, I work for a taekwondo studio's after-school care program, teaching a group of about thirty kids martial arts and helping them with their homework. As an instructor, I also teach some of the regular evening classes. It's not an easy job- no kid wants to sit in a room for four hours waiting for their parents to come pick them up. Quite a few of them are typical kids with no self-control that their parents think martial arts training will magically transform into model children with superpowers. Nearly all of them are from the upper-class both-parents-have-careers families in this corner of town, and are spoiled rich-kids.

It's a challenging job, and there are days when I want to defenestrate them all, but I do love each and every one of them. As an instructor I have to hold myself to my rank and not be their "friend," especially with the older kids, but with the little ones it's different. I've gotten to know them quite well in the past two months; I love people-watching. Here are the nine most enjoyable ones- most of the other 21 are insufferable, and perhaps I'll describe them at some later point. There are also a few funny ones in the evening classes, but I don't see them regularly enough to get to know them, so these nine are the ones I'll end up mentioning most in later posts.

-Amanda is five. She's Chinese, pale with a very grave face, steady, thoughtful brown eyes, and long black hair that she doesn't like touched. Her head is full of the most outrageously creative ideas, but almost no one listens to her, so she's pinched and reticent and sullen in attitude. She somehow reminds me of a crumpled flower. When I teach her, I have to listen to a little idea from her here and there, and just the joy of having been listened to is enough to make her obey me enthusiastically for the next five minutes. She's cold, unaffectionate, and a little peevish, but fiercely loyal and intellectually engaging. She insists I smell like butterflies.

-Zach and Xandra are siblings, eight and five respectively; they both have the same dimples, freckles, and warm brown eyes, and sensitive natures, but Zach's hair is blond and Xandra's is butternut brown. Both are respectful, cheerful, affectionate, and enthusiastic; Zach likes to read and Xandra likes to draw pictures. I've never had to ask either of them more than once to do something, and I've never had to punish either of them. Zach is usually one of the first people to greet me when I come upstairs. Xandra is effortlessly flexible, and always declares that stretching in a straddle split makes her look like a strawberry cake. This is a mystery that will haunt mankind forever.

Here is Xandra's impression of what I look like. I had a Malacandrian moment, looking at it.

-Seth is seven. He's half Filipino, with short black hair and very bright eyes. He has elfin features and a chipper, piping voice, and reminds me of a little bird. He has a very symmetrical smile and impeccable manners. Seth is a lot like I was, at his age- precocious, but in an enthusiastic and scholarly way, with nothing of the show-off in him. He soaks up information like a little sponge and squeezes it out all over everyone. When he stops to think about something, he places one tiny finger against his chin, tilts his head, and gives a little high-pitched sigh, and then looks up quickly like he's been zapped with the answer. He says he is motivated to work hard so that he can become a plastic surgeon when he grows up, because his grandmother told him plastic surgeons make a lot of money. He's an innocent but calculating little capitalist.

-Logan is nine. He has a very long face and enormous prominent caramel-colored eyes that make him look like a combination of Silas Marner and an insomniac horse. His hair is ash brown and very thick, growing in a coarse, rounded mop. He likes to play marbles, and is impressed that I can flick shooters better than he can. Logan likes birds, especially raptors, and saves all the rough sketches I make for him so that he can color them in. He can be a bit of an instigator, sometimes, but he mostly keeps to himself. He says I am one of the three nicest teachers he's ever had.

-Harrison is five. He's Korean, and one of the hardest of the kids to work with. I suspect he gets made fun of a lot for his heritage, especially since sometimes he seems to understand Korean better than English. He always insists very firmly that his name is Harrison; I wish I knew what his Korean name was. He has very soft black hair and a peach complexion and those eyes that Koreans have, warm brown with lanterns behind them. He's a solemn child, and usually doesn't speak when spoken to unless I kneel down by him and ask him things very gently; he doesn't obey commands. For some reason, I am the only English-speaking instructor he trusts. He likes to draw fish and name them all Kim.

-Jayden is eight. He and Zach are friends. He's African-American, with very light gold-brown skin. He's a good student and usually spends his free time reading. He wants to be a math teacher. He always has a gently concerned expression on his face, and is soft-spoken and considerate. I don't know him very well, since he tends to keep to himself, but he's always more than happy to show me what he's doing, or have me sitting by for quiet companionship.

-Camden is seven. He has pale skin, freckles, alarming blue eyes, a skeletal grin, pale red hair that sticks straight up, and a general appearance of having been violently electrocuted and infatuated with the results. He's like a little stick of dynamite throwing off sparks and waiting to go off, and yet at the same time he's very calm and gentle. He only just started, but his pushups are better than most of the higher-ranking students'. Camden likes to draw, frequently starting out his pictures with a wedge-shaped sun shining out of the top right corner of his page and a quantity of blue water along the bottom, and staring dreamily at it while he tries to decide what to add next.

-George. I really oughtn't to have a favorite, and I'd certainly never betray the fact to the kids themselves, but George is the dearest little monkey in the world. He's five, Chinese, with sparkly dark eyes that disappear in crinkles when he laughs, downy black hair that sticks up all over his head, and what he describes as "a dark skin." Georgie is very earnest and insistent, and his narrow eyes are always fixed on me seriously when he's talking. He's not afraid to show affection, and likes to reach up and hug me around the knees with a blissful little smile on his face. Last week when I was sitting on the floor with Xandra, he came up and jumped on my back and wrapped his little arms around my neck and kissed me. For obvious reasons that kind of behavior is unacceptable, but it touched me deeply. He's so small that he always tugs on my belt to get my attention. Once a couple kids were arguing over which of them had just scribbled on the other's homework, and in my peripheral vision I saw George coloring at the far end of the room and listening attentively, and then he pattered over to inform me that it couldn't've been him because he had been sitting at the far end of the room. I feel extremely maternal toward him, and he responds to it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He looks at my eyes very gravely sometimes, knows I need love, and tries to give it to me in his own endearing little way.

This is a house Georgie designed especially for me.

I think it's the moments when they're with me and able to forget about society and just be little kids, that makes the job worth it- they say the drollest things, sometimes, and give the most fascinatingly outside-the-box answers. A lot of them only want to be listened to. And in a child's eyes, there's a pristine innocence and eternity that is nowhere else in this world.

Amanda: (during my first week, when she couldn't remember my name) Look! It's Long-Hairy!

George: I'm hungry.
Me: You may have some of my pretzels, if you like.
(George proceeds to commandeer the entire bag)
George: (generously noticing now I don't have any) Here. I'll share these two.

Seth: (chattering while playing War) I know I'm going to win this, because I'm a Libra, and Libras are born with good luck.
Me: Is that so.
Seth: (matter-of-factly) Yes. I always have good luck in everything I do, and it helps me through life. That's why I'm glad I'm a WHERE DID YOU GET THAT ACE?

Amanda: My sunflower seeds taste like french fries.
Me: Do you know why?
Amanda: Yes. Because they are made out of french fries, and have bits of salt up and down their bodies.

Me: (Playfully, during meditation) You should all be focusing and centering yourselves right now. Back straight, hands on your knees. Eyes CLOSED. I don't want to see any of you roughhousing before class; it drains your energy and then you turn into dead jellyfish as soon as I ask you to do anything. (Pause) Why do I hear laughing?

Amanda: You can't see the tooth fairy, you know.
Me: Really.
Amanda: Yeah- (whisper) I think it must be naked.

An Addendum to the Post Previous

2009-10-29T19:45:00.002-04:00

In reading through the previous article again several hours prior to having posted it, I realized why it had seemed so incomplete to me while proofreading- through whatever slip of mental outline, I neglected to define anachronisms and how they are connected with renaissance men.

An anachronism is, quite simply, anything appearing in an era to which it does not belong. Historical inaccuracy can sometimes fall under this category, as in movies or illustrations where something is depicted as being used or existing when it had not yet been invented or discovered. When a person is described as an anachronism, it is implied that they are outdated or otherwise no longer compatible with the present time.

As can be inferred from my previous post, renaissance men in the 21st century are clearly anachronisms, since their mentality and lifestyle are not understood or accepted, let alone desired, by modern society.

On Anachronisms & Renaissance Men, Part II

2009-10-23T23:00:00.001-04:00

In the introductory post of this series, I mentioned anachronisms and renaissance men without elaborating upon the terms. Now that you've had a good three months to research them yourselves, I have returned to sate your curiosity with the fascinating details.

A renaissance man, simply put, is someone who is passionately gifted or deeply knowledgeable in many different fields, and is unlimited in the desire to pursue each of these to the fullest, relate them to one another, and moreover feels that such a universal embracing of learning is perfectly natural. The term originated, as one might guess, in the renaissance, to describe individuals who embodied the cultural and intellectual blossoming characteristic of the era. Common marks of a renaissance man included an aptitude for languages, studying and experimenting with the known sciences, the composition of scholarly works along with poetry, fiction, and music, deep thinking in philosophy and theology, and sometimes skill in physical feats. This well-rounded, life-pervading education was considered an ideal state of being.

Of course, the concept of the renaissance man is not peculiar or limited to the period of the European Renaissance; a term perhaps more chronologically inclusive, but which I disappreciate for sounding too arithmetical to my traumatized brain, is polymath. Every age of history has seen notable figures of polymathic capabilities: Aristotle, Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Benjamin Franklin, to name a few.

St. Albertus Magnus was a noted scholar of his day, writing eruditiously in a multitude of different disciplines which aside from theology and philosophy included logic, alchemy (chemistry), mineralogy, ethics, astrology (astronomy), physiology, politics, botany, phrenology, and geography. He also would have spoken some form of German, Greek, and Latin. Much of his scientific aptitude was derived from the study of Aristotle's works, the preservation of which are largely due to his efforts. St. Thomas Aquinas was blessed to have him for a professor.

The idea here is that different fields of study do not coexist but are interdependent, and not only are they highly compatible with each other, but one person can excel in many. In modern times, this seems to be looked on as somewhat of a remarkable phenomenon, and anyone displaying any level of expertise or even interest in multiple fields is in danger of being stuffed and put in a museum.

This mentality is deeply a part of who I am, as is manifest in the syzygial metaphor I use for my mind. While some people are certainly graced with a gift to be exceptional scholars, this open, balanced, life-long inquisitiveness in every area of learning is something every education ought to be based upon- radiating connectedly in all directions from a Center, like an orb-weaver's web.

Because I Can't Just Have an Ordinary Houseplant

2009-07-26T01:34:00.006-04:00

During finals of last semester, my mind cleared momentarily and I found myself in the garden section of a local hardware, looking for monarda. I didn't find any, but they did carry a small selection of carnivorous plants, and I suddenly discovered a great curiosity within myself to learn about them. In the next few weeks, I did some extensive research on carnivorous plants in general and venus flytraps in particular, and decided that if I passed a particularly traumatic math class, I would get one.

As most of you know, I passed precalculus. As most of you have probably guessed, this post will be about my flytrap. If you are one of the handful of people to whom I have related the marvels of my little green friend ad nauseam, you needn't read it if you don't like.

Venus flytraps are native only to the vanishing wetlands of eastern North Carolina. Since the soil is poor in nutrients, they have the fascinating ability to capture insects to obtain the nitrogen they would otherwise lack. To simulate the stagnant atmosphere of NC and the soil of the wetlands, it is best to grow flytraps in peat moss in a small terrarium with plenty of sunlight. After satisfying its conditions of habitat, it is relatively easy to care for- water once every week or so, and just let it sit there. My kind of houseplant.

Mine came in a small terrarium. It had two open traps, one of which had the remains of a fruit-fly inside of it, one unopened trap, and seven leaves from which the traps had not yet unfolded. The traps unfold from the tip of each leaf. It is entirely green- the traps, in some cultivars, turn bright red when they have enough sunlight. I'm not sure if mine is one of those- it probably is, but green is nice enough on its own.

From my researches, I understood that flytraps are notoriously difficult to grow and slow-growing in general, so I was surprised when within a few weeks it was cramped within its terrarium. I began the slippery and redolent task of transferring pickles from one large jar to two smaller ones and absconding with the former.

My researches have since indicated that the interior of a pickle jar is the best substitute for the atmosphere of certain parts of North Carolina.

Being a scientist, I scorn the idea of calling a plant by anything but its established name, but being an artist I rather like the idea. This particular specimen got named Milo, after the Venus de, in honor of its common name. One of my brothers and I are also fond enough of The Phantom Tollbooth to rightly appreciate the appellation.

I have fed the flytrap on two separate occasions. The first time I tried, the only trap open was the one with the remains of the fruit-fly, indicating that it had already caught something before. Each trap can only be used so many times before it simply wears out and dies, and since its edges were curled outward, I suspected that it would not close anymore. I was right.

When a new trap opened the next week, I fed it by hand. The traps are about the size of my smallest fingernail, and while they could capture something like a fruit-fly on their own, they are not strong enough to catch any larger live insects by themselves. Even if a trap is able to hold an insect larger than itself, if it is unable to seal itself completely around it, that trap will die. I fed it a pre-killed mosquito. When a live insect brushes against small trigger hairs on the pads of the trap, the trap snaps shut. Since I fed it by hand, I had to be sure and brush the insect against those hairs so that it would close.

I forgot one thing, though- after the trap closed initially, I neglected to keep prodding at it and brushing against it to simulate the action of a live insect trapped inside, and later that evening the trap reopened. The plant does this to prevent expending energy trying to digest inanimate objects such as sticks, rocks, bubblegum, and mathematics professors, which might accidentally fall into its traps. It takes so much energy for the plant to trap something that setting off empty traps just for fun will eventually kill it. When a newly-caught insect within the trap struggles, it causes the trap to seal itself and begin filling with digestive acids.

So far, all three traps that I have fed took three days to finish digesting their insects. When the traps reopen, the indigestible exoskeleton of the insect remains stuck to the leaf-pad. Unless there is a prodigious number of traps on the plant, it's not a good idea to feed more than one at once. This week, there are twelve traps open, with three additional ones unfolded as of yet, and two emerging leaf-buds, so on Wednesday, I fed two traps.

Here is a short video of the process. The voices heard in the background, with the exception of myself begging them not to shake the table, are my two botanical art students and their parents. Sometimes if the two rambunctious boys sit still and draw various plant specimens well enough, I have a flytrap-feeding afterwards.

Isn't that amazing? Watch it again. Isn't that amazing?

Here is a fly's-eye view. Look at it cross-eyed to imagine the way it must look to compound eyes.

I was greatly engrossed, edified, and entertained by Dr. Barry Rice's Carnivorous Plant FAQ, which I would recommend to anyone who was interested in growing or learning about carnivorous plants, or just for fun. Dr. Rice is a leading expert on them, and the FAQs answer everything concerning them imaginable. His book, Growing Carnivorous Plants, is also a great resource and full of lovely photographs of flytraps and other fascinating carnivorous plants, such as pitcher plants, sundews, waterwheels, and bladderworts.

Doesn't God have the most interesting ideas? Just look at what he made. This little plant, perhaps more than any other, shows evolution for the profane mockery that it is.

(Unfortunately, I was unable to exact revenge upon the mosquito that bit my forehead.)

On Anachronisms & Renaissance Men, Part I

2009-07-23T19:07:00.005-04:00

Yesterday, a friend sent me a couple links to Mary-Sue tests designed to help writers ascertain if their characters are realistic or too idealized. A Mary-Sue is a character who is so endowed with desirable attributes, talents, characteristics, powers, and circumstances as to be annoyingly unbelievable and rather like a shapely plastic mannequin on which an exorbitant amount of jewelry has been hung. They're commonly seen in fanfiction and fantasy novels, and are more often than not the author fantasizing the way he would wish himself to be if the world went his way.

My characters aren't afflicted with Mary-Sueism, but as I was going through the questions and laughing at them and the results, I noticed something oddly familiar about them. After thinking about it for a moment, I retook the test answering each question for myself as if I were a book character, checking only the boxes that would indisputably apply.

For any score higher than a 71, the results say, “Irredeemable-Sue. You're going to have to start over, my friend. I know you want to keep writing, but no. Just no.”

I scored a 122.

My dears, I am a Mary-Sue. Shocking much?

Now, before anyone dashes off to run their characters or themselves through the test and despair, there is a note at the end that says the results will contain some degree of inaccuracy, and that it is even possible for someone to score very highly and yet be a well-developed, balanced, and original character. The test only takes a tally of the most commonly clichéd traits and situations, not of how cleverly or originally they are integrated into the story or of the counterbalancing challenges the character might face.

The questions that caught my attention were the ones regarding hobbies, tastes, and mental abilities- things like knowing multiple languages, singing and playing musical instruments well, having “refined” tastes in books, music, and movies, learning skills quickly, practicing martial arts, collecting interesting things, knowing a wide range of assorted facts, possessing a high level of intelligence, being expert in more than one field, being astonishingly good at something which is not one's profession, photographic memory, and dressing in an unusual style.
Are these things so unattainable that someone who lays claim to some, most, or in many cases all of them is some superhuman wonder?

My mind went spinning off down several tracks. What is so unusual about listening to good music, reading good books, and watching good movies? Is there something particularly stunning about collecting something, whether it be mollusks or stamps or minerals or bird's-nests or postcards? Is having a hobby that interests one, be it building models or crafting or photography something unheard-of? Is knowing trivia or odd bits of interesting information a superpower? Is knowing and being interested in languages besides American English the very stigma of otherworldly superiority?

The next thought was, what are people supposed to do instead? Excluding a few other unmentioned yet obvious categories such as playing sports, exercising, and any other wholesome activity, what one thing is there left to do? What is one to do, when there are no books and no music, nothing to collect, to study, to want to know simply because it's interesting, to build or sew or play with or talk about? It begins to sound like a desert island scenario. So, what do real people, not unrealistic Mary-Sues, do with their time? I asked several friends if they could enlighten me, and discovered that without these phenomenally unknown activities, modern people get addicted to video-games, shop, go to the mall, gossip, and enjoy bad music, books, and movies. Please note that I am not, of course, speaking of people who may not be particularly blessed with gifts in art and music, or whose pecuniary standing or otherwise lack of opportunity prevent their proper nurturing.

The next mental track was the realization that throughout history, the cultivation and enjoyment of these marvelously impossible activities was something that the commonest of people strove for. Even 100 years ago, these accomplishments were held in what was apparently another half of education, and one whose almost complete absence today has perhaps catalyzed the atrophy of the artistic intellect in society. I have know for a long time that I am an anachronism, but the fact that my anachronistic tastes may lead people to believe that I am not old-fashioned but unrealistic to the point of nonexistence is beyond disturbing.

Is the tendency to want to give now-unusual abilities to a character really a manifestation of a half-forgotten, almost inaccessible latent desire to pursue these things for oneself? Is it the mysterious gravitation toward a culture which is missing in the world today? Do they feel instinctively that sometimes the only progress is moving backwards? Perhaps- yet at the same time, they remain so depraved or deprived that it cannot be recognized, and until that balance comes, modern culture will remain one-sided, and what ought to be normal will remain the epitome of eccentricity.

Perhaps this was rather a far station from where my train of thought set out, but the idea I began with remains- the world shuns the enjoyment of simplicity, and the cultivation of gifts, to the point that someone who chooses otherwise is regarded as almost unreal.

The Secret of Priest's Grotto: A Holocaust Survival Story

2009-07-20T17:01:00.017-04:00

Between writing my seventh novel, editing my third, and trying to make myself helpful with those of a handful of friends, I haven't had time for any demanding reading commitments this summer- but I can never pass up a good nonfiction picture-book whenever I come across one in the course of my rambling researches.

Be it known that I shall rant on the state of our local library system in another post.

Be it known that it meets only the most primitive of requirements to deserving the appellation of Library, viz., it contains books beneath a roof.

Be it known that it might not even be a library after all, since it doesn't really have any books and warehouse-style skylights aren't quite the same as roofs.

Anyway, I did find a fascinating book last week: The Secret of Priest's Grotto: A Holocaust Survival Story, by Peter Lane Taylor with Christos Nicola. It came up on a search in the library system for nonfiction books on caving (one of many things I love reading about) and I ran to hunt it down before someone else got to it first.

It begins with telling how the authors, two expert American cavers, were exploring some cave systems in the Ukrainian countryside. On later hearing locals allege that several Jewish families had hidden there during the holocaust, they became interested and attempted to investigate- but all their searches for more information deadended, until they were contacted by a survivor who shared the harrowing and almost incredible story of courage and raw determination.

The families had indeed lived in the caves, concealed in a subterranean world, from October 12, 1942 to April 12, 1944. Assisted only by neighbors who left them food, they lived day to day in complete darkness, under threat not only from the Nazis who frequently searched and blocked the sinkholes and known entrances, but from the dangers of the caves themselves.

After meeting with the survivors of the families, the authors returned to the caves and found the chambers where they had lived and the tortuous passages they had penetrated. The book is full of photographs of the simple artifacts, the caves and their surrounding regions, and haunting black-and-white pictures of the families themselves.

The darkness of their experience is almost unfathomable. Perhaps the saddest part to me was one survivor who had been a little girl at the time, and who, in her unbroken year underground, had forgotten the sun.

Read this, if you can find a copy- it is sobering and inspiring. History books written by those who experienced and discovered it have something no textbook can ever teach. Besides what it said in itself, it heartened me to know that books like this are still written and published (Kar-Ben Publishing, 2007) and furthermore that such compelling stories can be about the strength of families.

Syzygy

2009-07-19T19:44:00.005-04:00

I suppose I've kept you wondering about my blog name and picture for long enough.

Astronomically speaking, a syzygy is when three or more celestial bodies come into conjunction and for a while stand in alignment with each other; the word is from the Greek σύζυγος. It has less common meanings in astronomy, and is also used as a technical term in other fields including philosophy, poetry, and zoology.

Syzygy has been one of my favorite words since the first time I heard it many moons ago, and particularly describes the way I think- and hence the content and style of this blog.

I had originally intended to start a blog in which to post musings and advice on the mysterious art of writing and my wanderings in the world thereof. That began even further back, when I conceived the idea of writing a book about writing books, which ended up on the back burner as I actually wrote the books I was going to write about writing about. Several people expressing a degree of impatience at the nonforthcoming help, or otherwise, that I had vaguely promised, I figured that I could start smaller with a blog, and if I ever came up with anything press-worthy I could always compile, edit, and publish my posts in print.

Pondering the idea more, I realized that while writing may be the way in which I am best gifted to communicate my passion with others, it would be nothing without the things I write about, the things which inspire me, and the things I love besides. Among these are the worlds of music, literature, poetry, philosophy, the sciences, the outdoors, martial arts, foreign languages and cultures, and history- all within the universe of my Catholic Faith. What I have to say about writing would mean nothing if I excluded them.

The picture represents the galaxy in my multidimensional, multifaceted, multifarious mind.

I walk in many spheres. When these come into alignment with each other, my mind and soul are illuminated, ignited, and inspired.

It's a Syzygy of Worlds.

Also, it sounds cool.

^_^