midlife mama

The book bag

2011-11-08T19:22:00.001-05:00

Nick needs a new bag. And that's what I blogged about this week at Inside Higher Ed.

Halloween Muffins

2011-10-31T22:29:00.003-04:00

I just didn't get into Halloween this year. But I did bake some muffins! Recipe (and a few random musings) over at IHE, as usual...

Academic Guilt

2011-10-24T20:26:00.002-04:00

Why do I feel academic guilt? That's what I blogged about at Inside Higher Ed...

Interruptions

2011-10-18T09:54:00.004-04:00

I was writing my blog post, but I kept getting interrupted. And then I wrote about the interruptions. As one commenter has already noted, the interruptions, they are actually my job...

We live to serve...

2011-10-11T07:56:00.002-04:00

What do we get out of academic service? Having spent my fall break on it, that's what I'm blogging about at Inside Higher Ed today...

Cross Country, really?

2011-10-04T08:00:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time I was a soccer mom. Now, I'm not. And for some reason that's what I felt like blogging about at Inside Higher Ed today.

Who Speaks for Anon?

2011-09-20T11:20:00.001-04:00

Over at Inside Higher Ed this week, I reflect on how I got here. (Where, you ask? Why, here, in your computer!)

Told you I was busy

2011-09-15T08:46:00.002-04:00

I published this post on Monday, but I'm only getting around to linking it here today. Sigh.

Feminism, Baking, and a New Muffin Recipe

2011-09-06T10:04:00.002-04:00

All in one easy-to-read blog post, over at IHE!

storm damage

2011-08-30T12:16:00.002-04:00

Perusing old entries, I've discovered that this blog is a useful record of past storms. So here is my Irene entry...and, for the record, we don't have power back yet and I am getting crankier by the minute about that.

This year's transition

2011-08-23T10:50:00.001-04:00

The new semester has begun for me, but as always, not for the kids. Still, I'm reflecting on what this year's transition means, over at Inside Higher Ed...

Back to...something

2011-08-16T08:59:00.002-04:00

I'm reflecting on work, and getting back to it (or something) over at Inside Higher Ed today...

Fourteen years

2011-08-02T08:25:00.002-04:00

This week at Inside Higher Ed I am reflecting on a few of the changes I've seen in the last fourteen years. Why fourteen years? Because it was Nick's birthday yesterday!

Talking about the news

2011-07-26T07:16:00.002-04:00

For some reason I felt like talking about the news in my blog post for Inside Higher Ed this week. I was grateful for the news from New York in amongst all the tragedy, but overall it was a pretty bleak weekend.

Did you miss me?

2011-07-19T09:13:00.003-04:00

I took a few weeks off from Inside Higher Ed--and from pretty much everything else, too! Vacation was glorious, but now I'm back at work.

Summer Off? Summer Job? Or what?

2011-06-21T11:45:00.001-04:00

Over at Inside Higher Ed's Mama PhD blog, a lot of us seem to be thinking about what summer means to us, and to our kids.

End of an Era

2011-06-14T07:00:00.002-04:00

Nick graduates from middle school this week, but the bigger milestone is the one I blogged about at Inside Higher Ed today. (Hint: it involves a uniform.)

Transparent Teaching

2011-06-07T11:20:00.001-04:00

Do you talk about why you do what you do in class? Do your students tell you why they're there, or what their expectations are? That's what I blogged about this week at Inside Higher Ed.

this week's milestone

2011-05-24T13:00:00.002-04:00

Hmm. Daughter home from college, me away at workshop. What's wrong with this picture? That's what I blogged about today at Inside Higher Ed.

Apparently blogger was down

2011-05-16T22:33:00.001-04:00

But I haven't posted in so long, I didn't notice. Still, here's something I did manage to write--I even met my deadline!

Call me crazy...

2011-04-19T11:42:00.001-04:00

...but I kinda like April. Not everyone in academe does, though, so I blogged about it at IHE today.

Going away, coming home

2011-04-05T10:11:00.001-04:00

I went to a conference last week, and then I came back. And then I blogged about it a little bit at IHE.

March Madness

2011-03-29T08:24:00.003-04:00

So, you may have heard, a team from my town is in the Men's Final Four. No, it's not the Spiders (though we did make it to the Sweet Sixteen)--it's the VCU Rams. And that's actually the last thing I want to blog about today.

Spring Break #2

2011-03-21T21:52:00.002-04:00

Mariah got home Saturday. Today it was 70 here in Richmond, while it snowed in New England--so she's enjoying her spring break so far. So am I, and that's what I'm blogging about today at IHE.

Spring?

2011-03-15T07:33:00.001-04:00

The cherry tree outside my office has bloomed--the earliest, I believe, since I started keeping track of such things (not all that long, then...) I knew it would be out when I went into the office yesterday morning and I even remembered my camera!

And now (or within a week or two) the sprint to the end of the semester starts...

another question

2011-03-08T10:26:00.001-05:00

Seems that lately when I link to my posts over at IHE all I have is a question. And here's another one: am I a role model?

What do I do all day?

2011-02-28T22:06:00.001-05:00

That's my question of the week over at Inside Higher Ed...

what does it take to raise a child?

2011-02-15T09:52:00.001-05:00

I blogged about Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother over at Inside Higher Ed today...and I wondered why the nanny only gets a sentence in the memoir.

Pause

2011-02-08T08:22:00.001-05:00

In which I take a brief break, over at Inside Higher Ed...

In which I get self-indulgent

2011-02-01T07:23:00.002-05:00

In my post over at Inside Higher Ed's Mama, PhD blog today I get a little self-indulgent.

Tiger Mothers, Drifting College Students...

2011-01-25T07:27:00.002-05:00

Was it possible that the whole Tiger Mother thing would blow over before I mentioned it? No, it was not...

Service? Administration? Paper-pushing?

2011-01-18T08:26:00.003-05:00

How do we spend our time in academe? That's (sort of) my question this week on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, PhD blog.

New year, New (or at least clean) office

2011-01-11T07:01:00.003-05:00

I'm not moving offices, but it almost looks like it after all the work Mariah did for me. Here's what I said about that over at the Mama PhD blog at Inside Higher Ed...

Blogging at year's end--or beginning

2011-01-03T21:15:00.002-05:00

I'm back from a brief break from the Mama, PhD blog at Inside Higher Ed with some questions about blogging and holiday newsletters and stuff...

Holiday Sweets

2010-12-20T20:12:00.002-05:00

Too much to do for a real blog post, but I did want to make note of the baking (and sweet-making) so far this year:

Just finished my third batch of spicy pumpkin seed-cranberry bark (substitute dried cranberries for cherries, add a half teaspoon each of cinnamon and chili powder if you like). This one's for us; the others have been (mostly) given away.
Spice cookies. Three batches, I think. Nick made the last ones, and they are fantastic. Even better with a few chocolate chips on top and warmed briefly in the microwave.
Whole-wheat chocolate chip cookies. I make them small and I got almost 6 dozen out of the recipe.
Cranberry thumbprint cookies. These are, sadly, almost gone. Maybe I can make more.
Speculatius. This recipe isn't online; I'll try to post it before too long. If I get ambitious, it might be below. They are delicious--and, again, the recipe makes lots.
Double chocolate cookies. I didn't chill them twice, though--I mixed the white chocolate chips right in and then chilled them once. It worked out fine.
Chocolate-macadamia shortbread cookies. I didn't have salted macadamias so I upped teh salt in the dough a little and they were amazing. Note past tense, alas.
Amaretti. And there are three egg yolks leftover from them, so probably by New Year's there will be mocha butter balls as well.

OK, here's the recipe for speculatius, adapted from the Joy of Cooking (1953)

Cream until well blended:
1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar

Mix together in another bowl
3 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg

Beat these ingredients into the butter mixture alternately with:

4 TBS sour cream.

Beat in 1 cup broken nut meats. (I use walnuts).

Shape the dough into a roll with floured hands. Wrap the shaped roll in waxed paper and chill for 2 hours or more. Once it's firm, cut it into thin slices. Bake them on a greased cookie sheet (or use parchment paper) in a 375F oven for about 10-12 minutes, or until done.

A discovery

2010-12-18T10:19:00.003-05:00

This year, as I've already mentioned, we joined a CSA. And the vegetables were great. We discovered that we love beets, we ate kale and chard as often as we could get it, and salad turnips were a revelation. During the heat of midsummer we had as many tomatoes, and as much basil, as we could handle, and there were always melons. It was wonderful.

In the fall it became clear that the drought over the summer had done a number on some of the crops. The earliest sign was that there were no zucchini--this was astonishing, as anyone who's ever had to sneak zucchini onto a neighbor's back porch knows. There were no fall beets, and the potato and carrot crops weren't what they might have been. Still there was kale, lovely kale, and there were some winter squash, and those delicious turnips.

And rutabaga. Even the name puts me off a bit. Looking at them, you wonder how anyone ever decided to eat one: they are purple and white, knobbly and hairy, and altogether unbeautiful. My first attempts at cooking them didn't go over too well, either: I peeled and chopped and roasted one along with our potatoes and sweet potatoes, and Nick carefully pushed each offending chunk to the side. I could hardly blame him. It had a bitterness that was somehow sharper, less welcoming, than the bitterness of my beloved fall greens.

So the rutabagas sat in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator, passed over for turnips and squash, potatoes and sweet potatoes.

The CSA ended just before Thanksgiving, almost a month ago. We have finished the kale, the salad greens are long gone, and last week I used up the last two carrots. There are still a few salad turnips left. And the rutabagas. What to do with them?

Then Lisa, from our CSA, linked to a post about rutabagas. I was unconvinced about the first two recipes (though I will no doubt try them before the winter is over), but the third looked promising. I have a history, after all, of putting vegetables into baked goods. So I tried the cake.

Of course, I was well into the recipe before I noticed that the finely chopped apple that's called for is actually dried apple, and I didn't have any. I had, however, recently bought some chopped dates for baking, so I substituted those. And I was loath to waste good maple syrup on something we might not like, so I used some leftover apple cider syrup that I'd made to go with pumpkin waffles a while back. It was good, sort of like a ginger cake, but Nick was still skeptical.

So this morning I tried again. And I now present to you my reworked recipe for rutabaga-ginger muffins, just as I made them this morning. (Note: I'm not sure I expect you to go out and buy a rutabaga if you don't already like them, just to try this recipe. I bet you could also use grated winter squash, or maybe sweet potato, instead. But if you've got a rutabaga lying around, you might give this a try.)

Rutabaga Ginger Muffins & Bread

Ingredients

1-1/2 cups milk

2 tbl. ground flax seeds

1/2 cup melted butter

1/3 cup honey

1/3 cup molasses

3 cups flour (I used one of whole wheat and two of unbleached all purpose)

4 tsp. ground ginger

2 tsp. cinnamon

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. sea salt

2 cups grated rutabaga

1 cup chopped dates for baking

2 tbl. maple syrup or apple cider syrup (scroll down)

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Whisk together the flax seeds and the milk and put aside to thicken for about ten minutes. Melt the butter if you haven't already. With a hand mixer, beat the milk and flax seeds for a bit, then add in the melted butter, molasses, and honey.

Stir in the dry ingredients, sifting them beforehand if you're concerned about lumps (I'm not). Stir the grated rutabaga and the dates into the batter. It will be thick.

I used this amount to make 9 muffins, baking them for about 20 minutes in greased muffin cups, and one loaf of quick bread, which took about 35-40 minutes. (Half this recipe would make one 9" by 9" cake.) Bake until the sides pull away from the edges and the tops are browned. If you have it, drizzle some syrup (maple or other) over the hot muffins or cake or bread; it will soak in and add a bit of sticky sweetness.

*Note: this recipe is easily made dairy-free by substituting vegetable oil for the butter and non-dairy milk for the milk. It is also gluten-free in its original incarnation. I have never tried it either gluten- or dairy-free so can't vouch for those options.

With a little help from my friends...

2010-12-13T22:19:00.001-05:00

...I got my grading done. Or mostly, anyway. Here's the update at IHE.

Not much to say

2010-12-06T20:25:00.002-05:00

This time of year is so in-between: classes are over, but there's still plenty to do. Holiday stuff is ramping up, but I'm not quite ready to do it. Here's what I posted over at IHE today:
Classes are over, so I’m breathing a sigh of relief, right? Well, in a word, no. Now we hold all the meetings that could wait until the end of the semester. Now we clean up the mess in the office made by being too busy to do so all semester. Now we grade. Now we get sick (not on my to-do list, but my son spent two days at home last week with a nasty cold, and I fear it may not be far off for me, either). Now people call with questions that have been answered three times already, but not recently. Now it’s time to send out reminders for next semester. Now there’s holiday baking (or knitting, or shopping — or, in my case, all three). You get the idea.

I love this time of year, really I do. There’s a snap in the (very cold for Virginia) air today, and I feel energized by it. Later in the winter it will bring on the desire to hibernate, but it’s early yet. And I like the variety of having different things to do. While my classes this semester were truly a pleasure, it also felt good to wake up this weekend and know that I didn’t have to prepare for them. I wrote a book review instead, fulfilling an obligation that I took on back in September when it seemed as if November wouldn’t be all that busy. I guessed wrong about my workload, but got the work done in the end.

Shifting gears keeps things fresh. One of the reasons I love academe is that it’s rarely the same from day to day or season to season. Classes have their own personalities and rhythms, requiring new approaches even to what might seem familiar material. Next semester I’m teaching a brand-new class. I’ve taught all the material in it before, but never in quite this configuration, and I find myself looking forward to seeing what it says to me when paired up differently.

But first there’s this semester to finish up. The papers will come in soon and the grading will start and blogging may be sparser as first the grading, and then the holidays, consume my attention. I wish you all the variety you can stand, as the seasons shift around us.

Seriously, Advent?

2010-11-29T21:14:00.002-05:00

Sunday was the first day of Advent, the beginning of the new liturgical year in the Christian church. But it doesn't really feel like a new year when we're in the midst of wrapping up a semester. That's what I just blogged about at Inside Higher Ed.

Muffins

2010-11-22T22:41:00.004-05:00

Once upon a time, this was something of a recipe blog. It's been a while, but I still use it as a repository of my own favorite recipes, and I'm still trying new ones, too. Here's one I tried this weekend and posted about over at IHE. I tried to make healthy muffins; you can be the judge of whether I succeeded.

Preheat your oven to 350F.

In a large bowl, melt ½ stick (1/4 cup) butter in the microwave. Stir into the melted butter: ½ cup flax-seed meal, 2 eggs, 1 cup leftover cooked oatmeal, 1 tsp. vanilla, ½ cup brown sugar. (If you don’t have any flax-seed meal, you could use a whole stick — 1/2 cup — of butter.)

Once the wet ingredients are pretty well mixed together, add the dry ingredients: 1 cup flour (I used unbleached white, but you could probably use half and half white and whole wheat if you want them even healthier), 1 tsp. baking powder, and 1 tsp. baking soda. Add spices if you like—I used about 1 tsp. cinnamon and ½ tsp. ginger.

Stir in ½ cup chocolate chips and ½ cup dried cranberries. Or use a full cup of raisins, omitting the chocolate chips. Or mix and match to your own taste. (Yes, I'm aware of the irony of adding chocolate chips when I just said I wanted healthier muffins. I'm willing to give up some butter and sugar if I can have some chocolate, is all I have to say about that.)

This is a very stiff batter — it takes more stirring than most muffin batters and it can be scooped, not spooned or poured, into muffin cups. This should make 12 muffins, or 6 extra-large ones, if you have an extra-large muffin tin. Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes. When done, the tops of the muffins should be golden brown and should spring back when pressed. Mine may have taken a minute or two longer than 20 minutes .(I made the extra-large ones.)

Turn out of the muffin tin onto a cooling rack for a few minutes, until you can eat them without burning your mouth.

Countdown

2010-11-16T08:52:00.001-05:00

I'm counting down to the end of the semester over at Inside Higher Ed...

Teaching, Farming, and Curricular Change

2010-11-09T06:34:00.002-05:00

Sometimes two ideas come together and no matter how hard I try, they insist on being yoked. That's what happened to me this week when I faced a mountain of kale and the possibility of some curricular change. Weird, right? You can decide for yourself at the Mama, PhD blog at Inside Higher Ed...

Rally weekend

2010-11-01T22:21:00.001-04:00

Did you go to the "rally to restore sanity and/or fear"? Did you watch it? What did you think?

I'm still deciding. But I loved the music and the talk, I really did.

By the way: go vote tomorrow. Don't forget.

Social networking and other things

2010-10-25T21:57:00.001-04:00

I didn't publish a link to last week's IHE blog post; it was a little frivolous, so I didn't bother. And then, somewhat weirdly (I thought) the comments exploded. Who knew feelings ran so high about academics' work wear?

This week I saw The Social Network and spent the weekend with Mariah. Here's what I thought about that.

Fall Baking

2010-10-11T22:35:00.004-04:00

I took last week off from the Mama, PhD blog--I'd had a busy weekend and needed to catch up. But this week I'm on fall break, and I'm spending as much of it baking as I can. So this week I'm reposting the recipe for beet cake that's down below. And, since that feels like it's not really a post, here's another recipe: sweet potato molasses muffins. This recipe is adapted from one I found on epicurious.com; I haven't tried the original, but this adaptation (combining two different comments on the original) is pretty tasty:

Preheat the oven to 400F. Butter (or spray) a 12-cup muffin tin or a 6-cup large muffin tin.

Bake a sweet potato until soft, then scrape out the flesh and mash it with a fork. You'll need one cup of the puree. I recommend baking several and keeping the puree in the fridge so you can make lots of muffins, or add it to soup, or cake, or whatever else you think of.

Now, the recipe:

1 cup sweet potato puree

1/4 cup molasses

1/4 cup agave nectar (honey might also work here)

2 eggs

1/2 cup plain yogurt or buttermilk

3 tablespoons melted butter or vegetable oil

Whisk above ingredients together in a large bowl. Then add:

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 cup oat bran

3 tablespoons flax seed meal

1 tablespoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix the dry ingredients gently into the wet, stirring only until everything is moist--don't overmix, but make sure you don't leave any lumps of flour or baking soda, either--those are nasty!

Scoop into muffin tins--this makes 6 large muffins or 12 (maybe only 11) small ones. Bake 18-20 minutes, maybe another minute or two if you're using the large muffin tin.

These are not very sweet muffins but they are light and tasty. Next time around I'm considering getting some corn meal in there and leaving out the spices to make sweet potato corn muffins--yum!

More Failure...

2010-09-28T10:29:00.001-04:00

It must be the time of the semester; I just can't stop thinking about failure. (Why, yes, I am grading my first set of papers, why do you ask?)

trying to learn a lesson...

2010-09-20T22:24:00.002-04:00

...from the beet cake. Do we learn from failure? I do, sometimes. Read more about it at Inside Higher Ed.

Beet Cake: Redemption

2010-09-19T19:49:00.005-04:00

Last week I made about the worst cake I've ever baked. Except for the first one, baked when I was about 11, which was a crazy cake using Nestle's Quik instead of unsweetened cocoa, and not enough sugar. Seriously, that one was inedibly bad, but this one was almost as bad.

It was a recipe I'd made before, which made it all the more galling. I hate to share the recipe having said it was bad, but really, it's a perfectly good cake--if you do it right. It's this chocolate zucchini cake that I learned about from our wonderful CSA farmers. It's a pretty tasty cake if you do it the way Lisa does, or the way I'd done it before. But I think I made at least two strategic errors with last week's cake. First, I used all beets for the veggies; previously I'd used zucchini, and that was terrific. Second, I threw in a half cup or so of buckwheat flour, which made it heavier than it should have been.

I hate to waste food, so I've been working away at that cake all week. Mark helped some, but Nick flat refused, and I could hardly blame him. Actually, both Mark and I kept eating it in part out of curiosity--was it really as bad as we thought? Maybe it just tasted, you know, like beets--we both like beets, so why didn't we like it? But the fact is, we didn't. Still, I felt that beet cake should work--after all, beets are sweet, right? Otherwise they couldn't make sugar from them!

So I googled around a while, searched out epicurious, looked for vegan recipes, and otherwise explored the possibilities. Most recipes for chocolate beet cake seem to be efforts to create a red velvet cake without red food coloring, but most commenters seemed to agree that it didn't actually work. Jessica Seinfeld had a recipe--and, again, it was hard to find people who were positive about it. And my point wasn't to be deceptive about this at all; I just thought it might be an interesting use for beets (which, again, I quite like), and perhaps a healthier chocolate cake as well.

In the end I took from a number of different recipes and came up with this. It worked, but I'm not sure I can even quite repeat it. One thing about this one is that I had some leftover squash puree in the house so that became part of the veggies in the cake; I think that may have helped reduce the excessive "beetiness" of the first cake while still helping keep the whole thing moist. Another thing is that I cooked the beets and then pureed them with their cooking water, so the beets were a lot moister in this version than the original--and, I think, mellowed by cooking. With those caveats, though, I now give you:

Beet Cake, Redeemed

Ingredients:

1 cup cooked pureed beets* and/or squash, cooled. (I imagine sweet potatoes would work, too; your puree can be quite a bit waterier than if you actually meant to eat it)

1/4 cup plain yogurt, buttermilk, or sour cream (I had some Greek yogurt and used that)

3 eggs

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup oil

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup chocolate chips, optional

Method:

Preheat oven to 350F

Butter or spray a 9-inch square cake pan

Whisk together the first 7 ingredients (puree through vanilla). Sift the flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda into the liquid ingredients, stirring only until you can't see any more flour. (Don't overmix.) Fold in the chocolate chips, if using, and pour into the prepared cake pan.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, until the top springs back when pressed lightly. Serve warm with ice cream (or plain) and see if anyone guesses what's in it.

*I had shredded beets left over from last week's disaster, so I put those in a microwave-safe bowl with water and steamed them until they were soft, then dumped all into the blender to puree. The squash was cut in half and the seeds, etc., scraped out, then turned cut-side down into a baking pan and baked at 350 for about an hour, or until soft, then scraped out of the skin and pureed in the food processor.

a new stage in parenting

2010-09-13T21:51:00.000-04:00

Over the 15 years that we’ve had children in school, my husband and I have managed not to have latch-key kids. Until now. For years, one or the other of us could be at home in the afternoon when they got home. Sometimes that meant picking them up from school and bringing them up to campus while I finished the work day, sometimes it meant finishing the work day at home, but one way or another we managed. It helped, of course, that we both had very flexible schedules, and that we (and our department chairs) were able to schedule our classes for prime times, so that one of us could get usually home before the school day ended. I did once teach a night class rather than teach during homework-and-dinner-prep time, and I’m in awe of those who do so all the time — that is really not my time of day. For a while one or the other of my kids was often in after-school soccer because it bought us an extra hour before pickup time on practice days—that ended, though, when it became clear that neither one had any interest in soccer beyond the camaraderie, so when the games got serious they gave it up. (And, for the record, no, I’ve never asked a childless colleague to teach late so I didn’t have to, nor has my chair ever made such a request for me. So far — fingers crossed — it’s all worked out fairly easily.)

More recently, my husband has picked up much of the slack, working from home as my administrative load has increased. So now, though I still rarely teach late in the day, I do occasionally have meetings that go until 4 or 5 pm — or even, as today, beyond. (Sometimes I even schedule them myself.) The first few weeks of classes when it was clear that this would become a more regular occurrence there was still no problem — my middle-school son wasn’t back in school yet anyway and was at home with his dad.

But school started last week and his dad’s out of town right now, and I’m solo parenting it for once. And today and tomorrow I have late afternoon meetings. Since my son is thirteen and reasonably responsible, we decided he could have a key and let himself in, and he’d call to announce his return.

I’m waiting for that call right now.

And after reading Susan O’Doherty’s blog post today I’m already counting the ways this could go wrong. A party in Central Park isn’t at all my concern, nor do I expect the cops to get involved, but there are many different kinds of near misses. He left a lunchbox at school last week; did he somehow lose his key? Or is the bus running late? If he missed the bus I would already have heard, I imagine, but what if he just couldn’t manage the rather sticky key in the very old lock?

Of course the call just came and all is well. There’s homework to worry about, and I do still have that meeting to go to, but for the moment another milestone’s been passed and all is well.

I do know I’ve been fortunate in this one. My milestone is a lot of other people’s day-to-day existence, and more parents than not patch together after-school programs, childcare arrangements, swing shifts, babysitting co-ops, and various other maneuvers to make their days work. I’m grateful that we managed to do all right for this long. And, like a lot of other parents every day, I’m glad that call came in when it did.

(cross-posted from Mama, PhD at Inside Higher Ed)

a food post

2010-09-13T18:58:00.004-04:00

When I was a little girl my mother cooked dinner every night. Usually it was a meat, two sides, and dessert--at least in my memory--but there were exceptions to that rule. Spaghetti with meat sauce was one--usually served with a salad on the side. And there were other things that we had every now and then that were usually called "caloosapotti," which was someone's (my brother's? Mine?) mispronunciation of "ratatouille." I have no idea how the word "kallusapoti" should be spelled, but maybe you can get an idea of the pronunciation from my two attempts here.

One of the central features of calloosapotty was that it couldn't be repeated. If we liked it--or if we didn't--Mom would say, "you'll probably never eat it again." These were improvisational dishes, dishes that just incorporated whatever was fresh in the garden, or leftover in the fridge, or both.

I came up with one of those improvisational meals tonight and it was so satisfying, I just have to write it down. I may never really repeat it, but I can probably approximate it again. It involved turnip greens (we got little salad turnips in the CSA share on Saturday), and eggplant, and some leftover tomato sauce.

I started with the turnip greens, sauteing them in olive oil with sliced garlic. As the greens wilted, I added a sprinkle of pistachios and some raisins. My favorite way to eat spinach is sauteed with garlic, raisins or currants, and pine nuts--but I didn't have pine nuts so pistachios were my substitute.

While the greens were sauteing I sliced the eggplant into half inch rounds, brushed both sides of each slice with olive oil, and placed them on a cookie sheet in the oven at about 400F. When I remembered, I turned them over and brushed them with a little more olive oil.

When the eggplant rounds were brown on both sides, I piled the greens onto them (removing the garlic slices as I did), then topped each with about a tablespoonful of tomato sauce and about the same amount of shredded Italian cheese (Trader Joe's "quattro fromaggio" blend). Then back in the oven to heat the sauce and brown the cheese.

Oh, my goodness, those were delicious! No, I couldn't get Nick even to try one, but I don't even care--I wanted them all! The turnip greens were surprisingly mild, the eggplant was creamy, and the sauce and cheese were just right. I may never repeat it exactly, but it was delicious. I'm sure it would be great with spinach or chard or kale, with or without pine nuts and without the raisins, if those seem odd in this context, but I've got to tell you, they were really good. I'm sure this dish isn't authentically anything--it's calloosapoti, pure and simple, and it hit the spot.

[edited to add:] The moral of this story may simply be that I will eat anything, given enough olive oil and garlic. I can live with that.

On Not Always Saying No

2010-09-06T21:00:00.002-04:00

Is service the housework of academe? I'm not sure, but it certainly takes up more of my time...read on at the Mama, PhD blog at Inside Higher Ed

Mothering at Mid-Career: Cinderella’s Legacies? - Inside Higher Ed

2010-08-31T14:11:00.000-04:00

This week at Inside Higher Ed I'm connecting my first-year seminar to some recent blog posts on our site:

Mothering at Mid-Career: Cinderella’s Legacies?

Veggies Galore

2010-08-09T23:14:00.001-04:00

This year we joined a CSA, the lovely local Frog Bottom Farm. (Well, by local, I mean less than two hours away.) This past weekend they held a fabulous potluck, and it made me think a bit about how getting a weekly share of produce has lessons for both the teacher and the parent. Here's my IHE blog post about that...

sometimes things go well

2010-07-26T22:08:00.001-04:00

We had a great--though very brief--trip to the beach this weekend, and on the way home I got to thinking about how nice it was not to have to hold anyone up over the waves the whole time--or to have to drive home (Mariah drove). These musings coalesced into this week's blog post over at IHE...

Mmm, granola...

2010-07-19T22:19:00.002-04:00

It's been a while since I posted a recipe here. I decided to remedy that, sort of, by including one in my blog post for Inside Higher Ed...

Probably only of interest to book nerds...

2010-07-12T23:07:00.002-04:00

...is the story of how I've been rearranging my office.

Can it really be mid-July already? This summer is going by too fast!

Taking a summer movie seriously...

2010-06-28T22:27:00.003-04:00

I'm blogging at IHE today about Toy Story 3D, which we loved. Actually, I'm talking about all three Toy Story movies, just for fun. And it's my 100th blog post over there, too!

planning

2010-06-21T22:00:00.001-04:00

I really want to write something about the three Toy Story movies, having just seen the third one this past weekend. But right now I have a lot of other things to write instead, including this weekly blog post at Inside Higher Ed. So for now all I'll say is, yes, it's that rare sequel that lives up to its predecessors.

Summer Jobs

2010-06-14T23:08:00.002-04:00

One of the best things about being an academic is that summer is still really different from the rest of the year, just like it was when I was a kid. I remember some long summers spent reading on the couch, or outside--really, reading wherever I could. But what I really remember most are the various summer jobs I had starting when I was about sixteen. They weren't good jobs, of course--when you're sixteen you've got no skills, after all, and no experience--but they were formative in some significant ways. Now it's Mariah's turn.

Read more about summer jobs at the Mama, PhD blog at Inside Higher Ed...

Sad Stories

2010-06-08T13:28:00.002-04:00

I haven't blogged much lately, as everyone who still checks in here knows. The once-a-week gig (more or less) at Inside Higher Ed seems to satisfy whatever need I have to broadcast my opinions to the world. I do miss the recipes I used to post here--but at least the ones I put here are still archived. And I miss writing as much as I used to, but there are other things taking up that time.

If I were still blogging more I have no doubt that I would have had some things to say about the BP spill. And I probably would have had something to say about the heartbreaking loss Katie Allison Granju (mamapundit) has just suffered. In fact I did manage to say a little about both in this week's post for Inside Higher Ed. There's more to say about both--but I'm not sure I'm the person to say it.

Sick Day? - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

2010-05-25T10:56:00.004-04:00

One day I'll go back through old blog posts and see how often I get sick during a break. Or, more likely, I won't--it might just depress me. Anyway, I've got a cold and laryngitis, and in a blatant plea for sympathy I'm blogging about it over at Inside Higher Ed.

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Deja Vu all over again

2010-05-17T22:56:00.002-04:00

Lately all I do is run workshops. I've done two in the last two weeks and I've got two more before the end of May, then another one in August. It's teaching, of course, but it's also not--I'm facilitating groups of faculty rather than leading groups of students. And it's teaching me a lot about teaching. That's the context for this week's blog post over at IHE.

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Teaching and Tae Kwon Do, again - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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back again

2010-05-10T22:21:00.003-04:00

Again I missed one of my posts over at IHE. Last week I blogged about my phone ringing while I was in a workshop (among other things); this week I have a little more to say about that workshop.

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It's over? Really?

2010-04-27T07:15:00.004-04:00

Our semester seems to end weeks earlier than anyone else's, which always feels like a gift in April (though not so much in August, when we start weeks earlier than anyone else, too). This year I had an unusually great last day of class...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Semester's End - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

Last week, by the way, I ruminated about rubrics and spreadsheets and what my job will look like in twenty years--and forgot to put it here. So, a two-fer!

Oh! And, I almost forgot, but the Mama, PhD blog at Inside Higher Ed was named one of the top parenting blogs recently by this neat resource--I love the idea that nurse practitioners are recommending parenting blogs to their patients. Makes perfect sense. Our blog is the top one listed in "specific parenting issues."

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Not yet

2010-04-13T13:34:00.002-04:00

So, I don't have an iPad. Yet. Here's a little of my thinking about that.

Easter, and a quick correction

2010-04-06T09:03:00.000-04:00

Easter was lovely, even if our usual houseguests went elsewhere this year. (Ah, who can blame them for going to see our parents, even if I couldn't make the same trip?) We had friends over, enjoyed great food that reprised several earlier Easter menus, and talked until well past dark. But then we had to get up in the morning--or I did--to go to work. (Mama, PhD blog post alert!)

And, just to be clear, I did not really stay up until 5-something a.m. Sunday to finish my various Saturday activities. Rather, my time stamp was still set to Kabul time. It isn't any more and the Saturday post now says Saturday again. Whew!

Productive

2010-04-03T21:19:00.003-04:00

Today I made:

A banana breakfast ring (it's in Nigella's Feast)
A bracelet (I've been experimenting with chain maille [edited to add the picture])
Turkey burgers
Granola (I make it sort of like Caroline does)
Yogurt (this is the basic method, but I strain it to make it thick like Greek yogurt)
Flatbread dough
Pie crust (I did something like a double recipe of this, though I didn't use quite that much shortening; it's for rhubarb pie for tomorrow)

I also did three loads of laundry and made a big grocery run. And did a little cleaning. Now I'm knitting and watching basketball (well, I'm about to be knitting). Whew! That felt good.

advising...

2010-03-30T09:29:00.000-04:00

...
For many years I had a clipping up on my door from the University of Richmond's alumni magazine. It was from an interview with a major donor who had made his fortune in a field well outside academe, and in it he was asked what his major was. I no longer have the clipping, but to the best of my recollection he said something like, "I did everything wrong; I majored in English." He went on to explain that his undergraduate major was not career training in any conventional sense, though he was, of course, prepared to learn in whatever field he chose. But the damage, for me, was done: majoring in English is somehow doing things wrong.
...
read the whole post here

in bloom

2010-03-25T09:39:00.002-04:00

I came into the office Monday morning wondering if the cherry tree would be in bloom. It wasn't, but a thunderstorm roared through later in the day and by the end of it there were pretty clearly a few blossoms out. Today it's out in full, showing off against its usual backdrop of red brick, black leaded glass panes, and grey skies. We're supposed to get temps down to 30F Saturday morning, but spring is definitely here nonetheless.

Mothering at Mid-Career: Getting Over It

2010-03-23T08:48:00.000-04:00

When I saw the piece on "the other 'F' word" in this week's Chronicle, I have to admit it took me a while before I felt like reading it. Really? I thought, are we still talking about families and the academy? Aren't we done yet?

Apparently not...
(read the rest here)

Mothering at Mid-Career: Unknitting

2010-03-16T07:08:00.001-04:00

There are some undertakings so overwhelming that, if you knew too much about them before diving in, you might never embark on them. Having children, for example, is way too daunting if you think about the time and money spent, the income and sleep lost — you'd never do it if you drew up a detailed budget beforehand. Writing a dissertation — or a book — is a similarly unmanageable project that might cow anyone who really thought hard about how long it would take for how little reward. Sometimes I think the academy, or the human race, reproduces itself only — to borrow Samuel Johnson's quip about second marriages — through the triumph of hope over experience.

read the rest here...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Talking about Teaching - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

2010-03-09T07:21:00.003-05:00

It's an odd thing, writing a blog. Folks I know — or colleagues I don't know, for that matter — can stumble across it in ways they're unlikely to come across my academic work, but they don't often let me know they read it.

today I talk about one time when someone did let me know, and why I'm glad about it...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Talking about Teaching - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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ps: this piece should really have a link to Becca's recent column on social reading...

On Getting (and asking for) Help

2010-03-02T12:09:00.001-05:00

When my son was about three we took him out to a restaurant where kids were welcome. He sat in a high chair with a tray, and we put things on it for him to eat. I can't remember exactly what it was that he was so intent on, but I do remember him chasing a piece of food around the tray with his fork, trying — and failing — to spear it. "I got it, I got it, I got it!" he chanted. Then, almost without taking a breath — "I need help!"

I feel like that a lot.

this week's post at the Mama, PhD blog at Inside Higher Ed...

February Blues

2010-02-16T07:28:00.003-05:00

I'm not a big fan of February, despite Mardi Gras, President's Day...even my birthday. It's just not my favorite month, and this year it seems particularly bleak. Nonetheless I have a fabulous cookie recipe and decided February would be a good time to share it...go look!

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: February Blues - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Unbalanced...

2010-02-08T22:36:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to maintain some kind of balance, but ...well, you can see how well that's working.

slow learner

2010-02-02T07:27:00.001-05:00

Some things I've learned so far this semester...

(today's blog post over at Inside Higher Ed)

A post about knitting, sort of

2010-01-26T07:42:00.001-05:00

After blogging at this site for well over a year, I start to fear that I'll repeat myself. And, sure enough, when I sat down to write a post about knitting, I discovered that I'd done it before. That earlier post was a pep talk of sorts, a reminder to myself that I need to make time for things I love that aren't directly related to my work. Sometimes that can be hard, since one of my greatest pleasures, reading novels, is indeed directly related to my work and therefore hardly "counts" as a leisure activity.

But these days reminding myself to knit seems like less of an issue — what I need, it seems, is a reminder to finish what I start. Or, perhaps even better, to start what I can finish.

read the rest here

Advice to my daughter (and other bright humanities undergrads) - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

2010-01-19T10:22:00.003-05:00

Mariah goes back to college today--I couldn't resist giving her a little advice before she goes...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Advice to my daughter (and other bright humanities undergrads) - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Happy New Year in Social Media - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

2010-01-05T07:43:00.003-05:00

Yes, Facebook is killing the blog (my blog, at least). So maybe it's just too-too something to blog about it, but I did, anyway.

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Happy New Year in Social Media - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Happy 2010

2010-01-01T08:55:00.005-05:00

We rang out the old year in fine style last night, with an easy dinner pizza and salad before heading off to see Sherlock Holmes. One of the biggest changes from last year--and certainly from the beginning of the decade!--is that there are now plenty of movies we both can see together as a family and want to. And we had a blast with Sherlock Holmes, though it is ridiculous and over the top and probably nowhere near as Victorian as it thinks it is. Whatever. (We also loved the preview for Iron Man 2, btw.)

We then went home for a belated celebration of Mariah's 20th birthday. Since I'd been at MLA over the real day she hadn't had a cake with candles, and I was happy to oblige. Or sort of. Instead of cake I got inspired by a recipe I found at 101 Cookbooks for a bittersweet chocolate tart. As usual I'm incapable of actually following a recipe, but I did come close. Mariah and I had been out earlier in the day for, among other things, bittersweet chocolate for the tart. I picked some up at Trader Joe's and came home to find that, in fact, it was bittersweet chocolate with almonds. I was about to just sub in whatever chocolate I had when Mariah suggested that the almonds would be good in the tart anyway, so in it went. (If you try this variation at home, use about half of a pound-plus bar of TJ's chocolate.) My tart pan is bigger than it should be, so the tart came out thinner than the one pictured in the original, but I hope you'll agree that it looks pretty good anyway--and it certainly tasted great!

This has been a quiet holiday, for the most part. It's been nice to hunker down at home and enjoy each other's company, and that of our new cat, Sergeant Pepper. Sarge arrived Christmas Eve from the pound and is now officially Nick's cat; after a few days he seems thoroughly acclimated to us and we to him.

I hope the new year brings you all the chocolate, cats, and/or other treats that you hope for.

Now and Then - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

2009-12-22T13:47:00.004-05:00

I was late with my blog post this week, which is ironic, considering the topic...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Now and Then - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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semester's end

2009-12-14T22:24:00.003-05:00

I haven't finished my grading yet. I haven't started the Christmas baking yet. And don't even talk to me about the Christmas shopping (this year, with shipping!). Not yet. I have, however, been thinking about my students...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Thinking about my students - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: End of Semester Bullets and Questions - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

2009-12-08T07:19:00.002-05:00

I have a draft of a post about Thanksgiving lying around, but I haven't gotten to it yet--right now, I only have time for bullet points and quick questions...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: End of Semester Bullets and Questions - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Boys and Girls, again - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

2009-11-24T07:02:00.003-05:00

revisiting last week's blog post--new evidence that girls don't civilize boys, and yet another claim for children's literature...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Boys and Girls, again - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Do girls "civilize" boys? Should they?

2009-11-17T07:04:00.003-05:00

Boys, girls, books, and gender balance in this week's blog post...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Gender balance, again—this time in books - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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November?

2009-11-09T23:32:00.003-05:00

If it's November it must be job season. Here's what I think about that right now:

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: November - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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In Memoriam

2009-10-29T20:08:00.004-04:00

I learned today that one of my high school teachers, Otis Benson Davis, died earlier this week. O.B., as we all called him (only behind his back--to his face he was, of course, Mr. Davis), graduated from Kent School in 1942 and returned to teach there full time in 1949. He retired from active teaching only a few years ago, in 2006.

I graduated from Kent 36 years after O.B. did. He was my AP English teacher, my senior year; he was also the English department chair, and his influence was pervasive in the department. He was the co-author of the textbook we used for AP English, The Idea of Man (now out of print), and he was the teacher who introduced me to Hamlet, King Lear, and Oedipus as well as Out of the Silent Planet and Point of No Return. O.B. didn't think that, as 17 and 18-year-olds, we were too young to "get" dramas of middle and old age such as Point of No Return and King Lear; he didn't think we needed to be pandered to or coddled. I might choose different books than he did to teach seniors in high school--I imagine he chose different books, too, over the years--but I still remember what we read and, especially, his presence in the classroom, pushing, probing, questioning so that we read better, read deeper.

Part of AP English then--and, I imagine, now--involved drafting the college essay. My first draft, as I recall it, was unimpressive. O.B. wrote in the margin that it was a "cursory adumbration" of a much better essay. I had to look up "adumbration." I didn't ask him to define it; I knew it was my job to figure out what he meant and then to act on it. We sat around a seminar table in his class and discussed our essays, and the books we were reading, and started to feel like scholars.

We weren't, of course, but his confidence in us was, at least for me, infectious. When I started teaching I thought of O.B. all the time. I couldn't emulate him as a teacher--I didn't have his gravitas, his beard, his pipe. But I could and did remember the care he took with my essays, the love he had for literature. His was the approval I sought, the criticism I learned from, the example that inspired me. I can't say for sure that I'm an English professor because O.B. was my teacher, but I know he was a part of what made me choose the path I did. I did have the chance to say "thank you," years later, and I'm glad I did, but I'll say it again.

Thank you, O.B. Rest in peace.

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Bullet Points on women in the news - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

2009-10-26T23:46:00.002-04:00

Catching up on some recent articles on women, the women's movement, and (yet again!) mothering in the academy...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Bullet Points on women in the news - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Parents' Weekend from the other side - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

2009-10-19T23:21:00.002-04:00

As a professor, I'm rarely all that aware of Parents' Weekend on our campus. Occasionally an advisee has brought his or her parents by to say hello; sometimes I've run into a student with parents in tow and have stopped to chat. But most often I simply register the additional folks walking around the campus and then go on with my own business.

This time it was different. I was the one in tow.

read the rest here: Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Parents' Weekend from the other side - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: My take on "Opting Out" - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

2009-10-13T11:26:00.002-04:00

do mothers really have choices about "working"? I'm not so sure...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: My take on "Opting Out" - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Blog U.: On children's literature and academic administration - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

2009-10-06T07:47:00.002-04:00

Today's blog post is about how Where the Wild Things Are and Alice in Wonderland help me through academic meetings....

Blog U.: On children's literature and academic administration - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Where I work...

2009-09-29T08:56:00.000-04:00

"Once a week or so I leave my house in the morning at the usual time, bag packed, computer stowed—but instead of heading straight to my office I go elsewhere." read more here...

Let's talk

2009-09-15T07:26:00.002-04:00

Do you talk to your kids away from home, or do you "talk" on facebook? How about your colleagues--e-mail, or phone? Does it matter? I'm trying to do both...with mixed success. Here's today's blog post over at Inside Higher Ed.

Labor Day

2009-09-08T07:44:00.002-04:00

I worked yesterday, and I enjoyed it. Really. Check it out here:

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Labor Day - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Getting ready

2009-09-01T23:37:00.002-04:00

The Yarn Harlot (Stephanie Pearl-McPhee) has a great post today about letting a child go. My daughter's not going quite so far away as Australia, but tomorrow we take her to college and leave without her. It's all new. I said a little bit about it today over on the Mama, PhD blog at Inside Higher Ed--more later.

Mothering at Mid-Career: Ready, Set…

2009-08-25T07:44:00.002-04:00

I'm back at Inside Higher Ed today, and back to class as well. More later!

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Ready, Set… - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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The White Horse

2009-08-12T17:02:00.003-04:00

The White Horse of Uffington appears to be about 3000 years old, and is part of a complex of ancient sites in the Vale of the White Horse. The horse itself was probably constructed by digging trenches and then re-filling the trenches with chalk blocks; it needs to be cleaned regularly to remain visible. In Terry Pratchett's Discworld, a remarkably similar location exists:

There were odd carvings in the chalk, too, which the shepherds sometimes weeded when they were out on the downs with the flocks and there was not a lot to do. The chalk was only a few inches under the turf. Hoofprints could last a season, but the carvings had lasted for thousands of years. They were pictures of horses and giants, but the strange thing was that you couldn't see them properly from anywhere on the ground. They looked as if they'd been made for views in the sky. (The Wee Free Men, 119)

The image appears on pre-Roman British coinage, and while there has been some debate as to whether it is really mean to be a horse, it has certainly been referred to as such since at least the 11th century. In A Hat Full of Sky, the sequel to The Wee Free Men, Tiffany reports that Granny Aching said, “Taint what a horse looks like, it's what a horse be." While there don't appear to be other carvings of similar age still extant [edited to add: in England; my brother reminds me of others in Peru] (the Cerne Abbas giant, for example, seems to date back only to the 17th century), this may be because other carvings were not maintained as the Uffington White Horse has been.

Near the White Horse is the site of Uffington Castle, an Iron Age hill-fort. Also nearby is the “Dragon Hill,” reported to be the place where St. George slew the dragon. In The Wee Free Men, Tiffany walks to the top of “Arken Hill”:

There was a flat place at the top where nothing ever grew, and Tiffany knew there was a story that a hero had once fought a dragon up there and its blood had burned the ground where it fell. There was another story that said there was a heap of treasure under the hill, defended by the dragon, and another story that said a king was buried there in armor of solid gold. There were lots of stories about the hill; it was surprising it hadn't sunk under the weight of them. (52)

I took my class to the White Horse during the last week of classes. It was a warm, sunny, day and the wind blew along the ridge as we walked up the hill towards the carving. Then we sat up above and looked down at the flat-topped hill and thought about the people who lived on this land, and carved the horse, and buried their dead. Sheep graze on the hillside now and tourists come and walk among them.

(Cross-posted from the other blog, which I've been neglecting even more than this one...)

weekend jaunt

2009-08-02T04:30:00.010-04:00

We left for the Lake District Friday morning under overcast skies, with a promise of intermittent rain Friday and heavy downpours Saturday. Raincoats and umbrellas in the back, we pressed northward, getting to the hotel by about 2 pm (just under four hours). We'd chosen a hotel Mariah and I had stayed in nine years ago, hopeful that it would live up to our memories of it. (It did.) After checking in we took a quick walk to see the sights, then decided we'd best see what we could of the local attractions before dinner since the next day would likely be rainier.

the stream running under the road, across the street from the hotel.

I remember hanging over this gate with Mariah nine years ago.

Once we got our legs stretched we decided to head towards Windermere, Ambleside, and Grasmere. Despite the threatening weather, Windermere was like Fisherman's Wharf in SF: awash with tourists, spilling off the sidewalks into the (very narrow) roads. We drove on through and made our way to Rydal Mount, the last home William Wordsworth lived in (and the loveliest). Mariah remembered it so fondly from our trip in 2000 that we paid the admission to the gardens and had a glorious walk through them. It started to rain in earnest at the end of our walk, but held off until then.

Nick enjoyed experimenting with the "macro" setting on the camera. There are lots more of these flower photos.

From Rydal Mount we made our way northwards towards Ullswater, after driving through some glorious countryside. Ullswater is a spectacular lake, though it looked rather forbidding in the late afternoon with the clouds overhead.

I think it might have been the drive back from Ullswater, over the Kirkstone Pass (not the way we'd come), that was the most spectacular bit of the day, though really, it was all gorgeous. The road through the pass warned of difficult conditions in the winter--even in summer, it was windy and narrow and occasionally sheep took up a little more of the lane than one might wish for--but the views of waterfalls and lakes were spectacular.

After a great dinner at the (complete with candle on Nick's ice cream--we decided it was our celebratory dinner) we retired to our room. Mark and I walked around the inn one more time--the rain was just a drizzle at this point. (It had been showery off and on all afternoon.)

Have I mentioned the stone walls yet? You can see them in this photo--they divide the countryside absolutely everywhere--up on Kirkstone Pass, even, where you'd think no one would bother, they mark the boundaries of the roads as well as marking off one grazing area from another. The something that does not love a wall would have a hard time in the Lake District.

The next morning we had our full breakfast in the dining room and set off northward. "Full breakfast" included eggs, bacon, sausage, grilled tomato, grilled mushroom, potato cake, and blood pudding, which I decided not to try--the veggie full breakfast, which Mariah had, included veggie sausage and veggie bacon, and beans instead of blood pudding. Most people would just go back to bed after a meal like that, but we only had one more day so we forged ahead.

We'd picked up a flyer for the "Lakeland Sheep and Wool Centre" in the hotel and made that--in Cockermouth--our destination, though we weren't too particular about how quickly we got there. We took the ferry over to Sawrey and drove through Beatrix Potter country, then up northward towards Keswick. Seeing a sign for the Castlerigg Stone Circle we decided to follow the (very narrow, twisty, one and a half lane but two-way) track up the hill to the top, where we found these views.

The skies look a little threatening in the pictures, but actually by this time they had cleared and it was warming up and turning into a glorious day. We could have stayed up on that hill for hours, I think. The views are spectacular in every direction, and the circle is, as such things always are, mysteriously beautiful. Why is it there? The ring of stones replicates the ring of hills around it; we felt as if we were in one bowl placed in another bowl.

Eventually we drove on from Castlerigg through Keswick to Cockermouth--where we decided that the Sheep and Wool Center was really not worth much, after all--it was basically a big shop, with the promise of a "show" in a theatre--and barely any yarn for sale, even! (The show may be fabulous, and others may have a great time there, but it wasn't for us.) We headed back to Keswick for lunch and found ourselves in a somewhat overtaxed tea room, where there was something wrong with every single order: chutney on the plain cheese toastie, forgotten scone and strawberries with the strawberry cream tea, beer not cold enough to serve and then brought with a warm glass, you name it! Situations like this sometimes make me feel very American: bad service really annoys me at home, and I can be unusually assertive when things are going wrong in a restaurant. Somehow, though, this was fine--we had a great table right by a window, where we could see all kinds of people (and their dogs!) go by; the food was good, once it came, and we weren't in any particular hurry. So we lingered and eventually ate and then headed "home" to Oxford, ready for another adventure.

another day

2009-07-29T04:27:00.002-04:00

Lately the rainy days have been more common here than the sunny ones. That's mostly all right with me--the rain hasn't been too hard, and usually there's a break here and there so I can walk home. It's cool but not too chilly and I'd always rather be a little too cool than a little too warm. So I try not to complain too much.

The other morning we walked to the college (1.7 miles, but who's counting?) in the rain, and it was an umbrella-and-raincoat kind of a rain. Since the streets of Oxford are crowded in the mornings, this made walking difficult--too many umbrellas, too little space. After a while I began to wonder if I should just fold mine up and trust to my hood, but the wind kept blowing it off my head. (Oh, and threatening to turn the umbrellas inside out, for that matter.) Complaining seemed like an option, though it obviously wasn't going to do any good.

Still, that was a rare kind of a rain. And by the end of the day it was sunny and warm and folks were going to dinner in sundresses and summer suits.

It's rainy again today but I'm trusting to the capriciousness of English weather that we'll have a few breaks in it and I'll get out for some grocery shopping.

A sunny day in Oxford

2009-07-19T00:30:00.002-04:00

One of the great pleasures of being in Oxford this summer is that we've been here before. There are things we know not to do (let's just say certain pubs are no longer on our list) and others we know to do again and again. We're living a lot further away from the Port Meadow this year than we were four years ago, so I hadn't had a chance to visit until yesterday. But the day dawned brght and sunny, there was nothing on the calendar, and there were three bikes* downstairs that could take us there in no time. (Well, not no time. But only about twenty minutes.)

The Port Meadow, for those not in the know, is one of the great wonders of Oxford. It's a large expanse of common land where horses and cattle range freely. It's bordered by a canal with a towpath perfect for biking, and on a sunny day it's really lovely (though I imagine it's quite desolate in the winter, when it floods).

This was that sunny day. And so was the day four years ago when I took a camera out there. So here's just a little side-by-side comparison, for fun.

*Mariah had to stay home to nurse her cold and work on two papers. This is a working vacation for both of us.